Hiya! First post to this board. I've been watching the LT dev logs with interest for months now, I actually check the dev logs every night. Josh, I'm really impressed with your work. I'm sorry I couldn't back your project, I wish I could be playing LTP right now!

You still taking donations?

Anyway, I've played a long list of dogfighter games, and I've thought about how I would design a space flight combat sim. One thought that comes to mind is, if the guns can track independently, why not just let 'em track?

Fighters would act a little different. To keep it fair, you'd have a circle or a semi-circle in your HUD that shows the limits of your turret's turn radius. You get your target into the center of the HUD, and you get a little green indicator that shows you where the turrets are pointing. The turrets always try to point at the enemy ship, but they're a little slow, so you have to help 'em out a little by keeping steady and giving them the split second they need to track on your target.

As soon as the turrets line up for you, fire away!

Fighters would have a fixed forward-facing view, but BIG ships ought to work differently. I remember this cool view control from Battlefield 2 -- you could free up your view by hitting ALT, and look out the side window. It switched the mouse axes from yaw/pitch to pilot view direction. Tilt the plane over a little, then look out the side at the ground! Handy for spotting targets.

For big ships, this could be a toggle-switch -- hit ALT to go to "turret mode" then you can turn your view at right angles to your ship's flight direction. This way you can keep circling an enemy, while blasting him with your big 360-degree turrets! You'd get those nice green turret-tracking indicators, too. When the turrets are lined up with the target lead indicator, you let 'em have it!

Hokay, hope that helped.

- Alcaz

Alcazabedabra wrote:You still taking donations?

No, sorry. See FAQ sticky.

As for the suggestion, I suggest you wait for footage of the next higher Prototype version before you spend a lot of effort on "flight control" suggestions. The Winds of Change are blowing. =)

Well, all right Winds of change, I get it.

Too bad on the donations.

What about fixed guns on big ships? Forward-facing monster cannons, have to line up the ship's axis to fire 'em. Useless against anything small and fast.

Or, side-facing cannons, like you had on an old Man-'O-War -- turn your view sideways, flip flight control back on, then line up the flank of your ship with the enemy's and bang-ba-bang-bang, a string of cannons go off!

...meh, okay, out of ideas. I'll wait to see what he's got in the next prototype

(reading through old theads i am)


related to the "indicate where the turrets are currently pointing to"

why not project lines from the barrels along the firing vector, a virtual laser sight, that would indicate the actual position of your turrets.

enabling you to judge how long you have to wait until your turrets are aligned with where you aiming to and also enabling you to see firing angle limitations "in situ"

for a bit more tactical information

Whoo! Necro-posting!

Currently ships turn to match the turrets, right? I seem to recall that in an update video, but can't remember which. I do like the idea of having an option to move turrets independently from the rest of my ship. As limited as it was, Galaxy on Fire had a pretty decent turret system. You could switch to manually control turrets, but your ship moved in a straight line. The game later added toggle-able auto turrets in expansions.

Not sure if this has been suggested already, but I'm thinking we should be able to assign individual turrets/turret groups to attack only user-specified targets. As an example, I could tell my short range cannons to automatically target fighters, while my missile batteries are given orders to only aim for large ships. I could also split half my turrets between fighters and enemy turrets.

In this way, your capital ships could fight multiple enemies at once and won't feel like they're just a massive fighters.

Another thing I noticed was that turrets always seemed to have unlimited firing arcs, allowing them to fire through their host ship's hull. Is this still the case, or am I just behind the times?

Jazehiah wrote: Another thing I noticed was that turrets always seemed to have unlimited firing arcs, allowing them to fire through their host ship's hull. Is this still the case, or am I just behind the times?

probably a case of "proof of concept implementation is not done yet".

at least i very strongly hope so

Cornflakes_91 wrote: probably a case of "proof of concept implementation is not done yet".

I hope that's the case. It would certainly make the defense against enemy fighters all the more interesting if friendly fire included your own cannons. It would make for even more rewarding "trench runs" when you can get below turrets' firing arcs.

It also would require the use of fighter screens to flush out the "safe zones" on your hull.

WOW what a necropost.

Cornflakes, that's pretty much exactly what I had envisioned. The virtual laser-pointer thingy.

I just also like the concept of super-powerful but fixed-position guns, so you can fire off devastating broadsides at other ships.

Actually, with LTSL, I'm pretty sure you could mod something like that in, interface and all.

Maybe these targeting lasers could be part of the tech tree. If you did it that way, you'd likely want it as a part of scanning tech, so you could "see" enemy targeting lasers as well.

Even if it was added as a permanent or toggle-able function, it would certainly help with aiming. Now that I think about it, seeing your opponents' targeting lasers might not be such a good idea with all the munitions flying around... Still, just being able to track my own cannons would be nice.

Jazehiah wrote:Maybe these targeting lasers could be part of the tech tree. If you did it that way, you'd likely want it as a part of scanning tech, so you could "see" enemy targeting lasers as well.

I disagree with that.

That would be like the targetting reticule or speedometer would have to be researched before you could use them.

if you have precise enough scanner data about the enemy ship you should always be able to use the "targeting laser" information.

Jazehiah wrote: Now that I think about it, seeing your opponents' targeting lasers might not be such a good idea with all the munitions flying around...

Make it toggleable for every target.

You likely wont want to know the turret direction of every dinky fighter in the enemy fleet, but knowing the bearings of their battlecruiser's main guns could be very interesting.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:
Make it toggleable for every target.

You likely wont want to know the turret direction of every dinky fighter in the enemy fleet, but knowing the bearings of their battlecruiser's main guns could be very interesting.

Brilliant.

For people who really like micromanaging, you might be able to set it so the targeting visibility of each turret or turret type on each ship is toggleable.
That way you can focus on evading fire from only the guns that matter to you whether you're in a fighter or a capital ship.