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Re: Small things that would be nice to have

#211
BFett wrote:
Mon Jul 10, 2017 2:06 am
So you'd rather I say some general range of numbers so that it doesn't upset you? You seem to be nit-picking
concrete numbers are completely worthless with our current knowledge.

you could as well answer the quesion of "how much damage should missiles do?" with "5".
its as worthless because it exists in a vacuum, without any other numbers to give it any meaning in the context of the game.

what dino said, basically.
give practical constraints which are independent of the actual numerical parameters in the game.
"1500 meter" means nothing without the rest of the game "fighter dogfighting range" has meaning because we can imagine the distance in a gameplay context, regardless of the actual numericals that they end up being.
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Re: Small things that would be nice to have

#212
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
Sun Jul 09, 2017 1:32 pm
Flatfingers wrote:
Sun Jul 09, 2017 1:04 am
Is that confirmed?
Well, the videos all show that destroyed ships stay there after the fact.
:shrug:
And no features at all, including player-managed factions, have changed status since the dev videos.

Ooooookay. :thumbup:

(Also, is this a helpful way for people to talk to each other? Maybe not?)

With respect to BFett trying to engage constructively with the practical implementation questions I suggested, okay, all right, "don't cross the streams" because "it would be bad." Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

So now that we've courteously established that suggestions based on real-world measurements are less useful than ones that focus on explicit gameplay consequences, who else would like to take the risk of expressing an opinion on how ships should react to discovering recent battle debris?

For that matter, how should ship-based NPCs react when a fight breaks out near them?

Also: should colony NPCs notice/care if a battle happens near their home planet?

How about space stations?
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Re: Small things that would be nice to have

#213
Flatfingers wrote:
Mon Jul 10, 2017 11:14 am
And no features at all, including player-managed factions, have changed status since the dev videos.

Ooooookay. :thumbup:
no, its just that josh mentioned them a couple of times in a positive context (in recent times as well) and theres no data that indicates otherwise.
i just dont assume that everything changed just because josh didnt show it :P

Flatfingers wrote:
Mon Jul 10, 2017 11:14 am
With respect to BFett trying to engage constructively with the practical implementation questions I suggested, okay, all right, "don't cross the streams" because "it would be bad." Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
so "give us a phenomenological effect" because "we cant do anything with that number without other numbers to compare them to" is bad?
("give us something to understand" because "what you said is ununderstandable for us")
Flatfingers wrote:
Mon Jul 10, 2017 11:14 am
Also: should colony NPCs notice/care if a battle happens near their home planet?

How about space stations?
do they have any relation to the combat parties?
-even if they dont care for either party, do they have any interest in keeping the area safe/free from combat?

do they have any tools to affect the combat?
(long ranged equipment, subordinate ships)
Flatfingers wrote:
  1. Should NPCs in different roles behave differently? (small combat ships, big combat ships, miners, traders, civilians)
  2. What behaviors should NPCs express when they encounter a fresh battle site?
  3. How close should an NPC ship be to a battle site to trigger this behavior?
  4. How big does a battle site have to be? One wreck? Five? Twenty? More?
  5. For how long after wrecks are created should reactions be triggered?
  6. (Bonus question: how are wrecks removed from existence? They don't last forever, do they?)
  1. well, if theres still combat going on ships should follow their general danger avoidance behaviour counterbalanced by their incentive to go there. if they want really hard to get those escape pods they'll fly between crossfire to get them out
  2. i'd imagine some general flocking (curiousity) along with some scavenging and (i'd hope) some escape pod collection from ejected crew. the stuff a player would do when encountering a wreck
  3. active battle or wreck site? for active its prolly some general risk assesment/avoidance. combatant firepower/range/(speed delta x range) etc. for a wrecksite it should depend on the characteristics of the NPC/faction. if they arent curious, dont care for survivors and have high opportunity cost for salvage they should just ignore it (or when they already looked at it)
  4. i'd say opportunity cost again. a big industrial salvage and reprocessing capital shouldnt care for a single fighter wreck tumbling through the universe (besides maybe sending one of its parasite ships) but should approach the remains of a fleet. unless the opportunity cost for gobbling up that fighter is negligible. tldr the general opportunity cost calculations still have to apply and take the ship's equipment, other tasks, the npc/faction's dispositions and so on.
  5. i'd say as long as the wreck is "new" for the NPC, if they didnt see it before. why check it when you already checked it? (beyond seeing it as resource "asteroid" object)
  6. the trivial solution would be to just despawn them after some kind of timer, either deteroriation (with contained resources diminishing until gone) or just some arbitary game timer. the more interesting solution would be to remove wrecks by salvaging them. they contain some percentage of the equipment the intact ship had and some of the resources the ship was built out off and one can extract that with more or less specialised means.
    why shouldnt they last forever? (except technical reasons of course) having a wreckage field for a long time after a battle happened would be really cool in my opinion. :shrug:
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Re: Small things that would be nice to have

#214
Since number 3 seems to need an additional response...

BFett wrote:
Sun Jul 09, 2017 11:00 am
Flatfingers wrote:
Sun Jul 09, 2017 1:04 am
3.How close should an NPC ship be to a battle site to trigger this behavior?
3. Within about 1.5 km.
3.
Just outside of combat range or possibly a bit closer. Play testing would probably be the best way to refine the optimal distance. It could be also that certain ships have larger or smaller trigger bubbles depending on the type of ship they are and the role they play. I'd imagine that scout craft would have larger detection radii than fighters, but possibly a bit smaller than a VIP transport. Again, probably a lot of variation.
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Re: Small things that would be nice to have

#216
Random idea:
-Visually determining that a wreck is a wreck (large range - something like 'visual size larger than something') makes an NPC wary in case who killed the ship is still around. Tries to stay hidden, uses sensors. Fearful NPC's might right out flee.
-Every ship has a 'black box' that records how and when it died. Interacting with this box needs to happen at a shorter range. Very old boxes might need physical extracting because they ran out of power.
The willingness of going to check the box depends on the NPC's personality and how hard it is to find.
-Once that information is extracted, the NPC uses it. i.e. if the battle is recent and the ship was an ally, they might flee or prepare for battle, or inform their faction of pirate activity, if the battle is old they might just care about salvaging, and so on.
Warning: do not ask about physics unless you really want to know about physics.
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Re: Small things that would be nice to have

#217
"Compound weapons"
A group of (identical?) Weapons that get handled as a single object and fire in unison.
This would also include ammunition layouts.
For example an eightpack of missile launchers could consist of 6 damage missiles and 2 ECM missiles as penetration aid to confuse point defence.
And the eightpack would fire 1 eightpack ammo batch thats "constructed" using 6 damage and 2 ecm missiles.

(Yes, i read more Honor Harrington, where they used fancier missile swarm compositions :V )
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Re: Small things that would be nice to have

#218
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
Sun Jul 30, 2017 5:14 pm
"Compound weapons"
A group of (identical?) Weapons that get handled as a single object and fire in unison.
This would also include ammunition layouts.
For example an eightpack of missile launchers could consist of 6 damage missiles and 2 ECM missiles as penetration aid to confuse point defence.
And the eightpack would fire 1 eightpack ammo batch thats "constructed" using 6 damage and 2 ecm missiles.

(Yes, i read more Honor Harrington, where they used fancier missile swarm compositions :V )
Is this the same as grouping weapons together to all fire at the same time when they are in the triggered group? If so, I believe that Josh was working on this in one of the Road to Beta updates. It's certainly a feature that will be nice to have in LT.
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Re: Small things that would be nice to have

#219
Its more than that.
You basically create a "new weapon" that you handle as one solid device for all intents and purposes.
You mount/unmount it as one, you load ammo into it in whole salvos for the whole assembly, not individual pieces of ammo (eg eightpacks of missiles with the defined ratios instead of 8 individual missiles).

If your own designs all use a 5 array of cannons you want to use in unison with defined ammo composition (eg two EMP warheads, three anti hull charges) you put them together in the designer as a composite cannon and just mount that into your ships instead of individual cannons.
Your logistics and fire controls dont care anymore that the fivepacks are actually multiple individual cannons.
You build them in packs, you transport them in packs, you organise their ammo in 5-piece packets and so on.

Its not just a fire control arrangement, its an aggregation of assets to simplify reasoning and logistics for the player.
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Re: Small things that would be nice to have

#220
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
Mon Jul 31, 2017 4:07 am
Its more than that.
You basically create a "new weapon" that you handle as one solid device for all intents and purposes.
You mount/unmount it as one, you load ammo into it in whole salvos for the whole assembly, not individual pieces of ammo (eg eightpacks of missiles with the defined ratios instead of 8 individual missiles).

If your own designs all use a 5 array of cannons you want to use in unison with defined ammo composition (eg two EMP warheads, three anti hull charges) you put them together in the designer as a composite cannon and just mount that into your ships instead of individual cannons.
Your logistics and fire controls dont care anymore that the fivepacks are actually multiple individual cannons.
You build them in packs, you transport them in packs, you organise their ammo in 5-piece packets and so on.

Its not just a fire control arrangement, its an aggregation of assets to simplify reasoning and logistics for the player.
although I can see how grouping missiles could be a advantage I see it as a draw back for cannons. say only ion cannons can fire EMP warheads, and some kind of Gatling gun for your anti hull charges. when you group these weapons together I am assuming you are firing them all at once as a single ammunition. the drawback I see is that the Gatling gun may have a increased firing rate compared to the ion cannon. therefore losing potential DPS.
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Re: Small things that would be nice to have

#221
Schaikerman wrote:
Mon Jul 31, 2017 6:33 am
although I can see how grouping missiles could be a advantage I see it as a draw back for cannons. say only ion cannons can fire EMP warheads, and some kind of Gatling gun for your anti hull charges. when you group these weapons together I am assuming you are firing them all at once as a single ammunition. the drawback I see is that the Gatling gun may have a increased firing rate compared to the ion cannon. therefore losing potential DPS.
well, the "simple" solution would be to make fire rate corrected ammo packs.
if the EMP cannon fires 1/sec and the gatling 7/s then a single salvo package would consist out of 1 emp and 7 gatling rounds

but i see what you mean.
i thought mostly about grouping very similar devices, not ones where you have to look at factors like different rate of fire or range
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Re: Small things that would be nice to have

#222
Type-Restricted flight zones: (explained by techno bubble blabla, gas clouds, radiation etc)

certain areas of space require a specific class of ship to pass though and maneuver within.

That could limit the ships to capitals (a natural barrier to progression)
Or limit to small vessels (give the player a reason use "downgraded tech" later in the game).

Those areas could contain precious resources, find artifacts, or be a general staging ground for battles.
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Re: Small things that would be nice to have

#223
Damocles wrote:
Mon Jul 31, 2017 9:09 am
Type-Restricted flight zones: (explained by techno bubble blabla, gas clouds, radiation etc)

certain areas of space require a specific class of ship to pass though and maneuver within.

That could limit the ships to capitals (a natural barrier to progression)
Or limit to small vessels (give the player a reason use "downgraded tech" later in the game).

Those areas could contain precious resources, find artifacts, or be a general staging ground for battles.

i wouldnt do it with any "hard" requirements, though.
with specialised ships/systems is should work better, but not be hard gated by them.
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Re: Small things that would be nice to have

#224
Examples:

Travel restrictions:
- wormhole can only support a certain mass of objects at passage. (player must choose a small ship to reach the destination, and cannot just bring the biggest battle cruiser)
- jumpdistance to next system is X units. Ship must have a certain sized jumpdrive and fuel (player can only enter region with certain tech level and resource logistics)
- area has mines, that react on large mass ships (player needs small ship to safely pass)
- area has mines that are many but weak (player need larger ship that can absorb damage to pass)
- area has many small clutter objects (asteroids, wreckage) (player need agile and small ship)
- area has clutter objects that move in a random fashion (player need ship that can absorb impacts)

encounters: closing in at /boarding a station
- enemy station has slow targeting strong weapons (player needs fast ship)
- enemy station has fast targeting weak weapons (player need ship with high absorbtion)

....

The idea is to have to choose an optimal tool for the task. So there is no shiptype that can dominate all others, rendering them useless.
Of course it should not be a binary restriction if possible; unless it makes physical sense (cant dock in a docking bay if the ship is too large for example)

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