When I'm thinking about the formation interface in LT I'm imagining a holographic screen, like showed in the video.
This screen has a point telling me where the centre of the formation is. This way I can orientate myself better.
Next, it allows me to draw lines in 3D space. This is probably the hardest part. Since a screen is 2D it's very hard to actually draw in 3D. So what I'm suggesting is that the screen is divided in three parts. The X-plane, the Y-plane and a render of the 3D model that's combining the X and Y.
At the side there's a panel with some drawing options:
- Single ship placement. (A box that will contain a maximum of one ship)
- A line/vector which will put as many ships in it as possible.
- A circle (will dynamically divide the number of ships)
- A sphere (will dynamically divide the number of ships)
- A direction marker. (which way will the formation point?)
- An object of interest.
- Another formation. (creating and combining formations to make an entire fleet fly in formation, this is similar to the object of interest, except that it's created already)
- Tactics line (A line to create a link/relation between a formation and an object of interest, could be anything: follow the lead (do what the OoI does), protect, follow, scout, dock with, or any tactics the player can create)
Every item that can be put down has a few handles. A bit like drawings work in Powerpoint. You can rotate or stretch them in the X or Y plane, with or without automatic symmetry.
Creating a formation would work like this:
The player enters the formation screen and selects to create a new formation. He puts down one or more objects of interest in the X or Y view. In the other view, the player can move these objects around so they can be moved in 3D. There's a 3D view of the formation that turns around (or can be made static) so the player can see what he's doing.
Each object of interest can be named and doubleclicked. The game zooms in and the player sees an empty formation screen. Here he can again make new object of interest or draw actual formations.
There are multiple ways to draw formations. The player could put down single ship assignments or draw a line that would make LT put as many ships in it as possible.
The same would go for circles and spheres. These objects can all be moved in 3D space by moving them on the X or Y plane.
Now you have an object of interest and a drawing of a formation relative to it. What you need to do now is assign the tactics that each part of the formation has in relation to the object of interest. Perhaps the OoI is a carrier and the tactic is that the fighters will automatically form a sphere around it when an enemy is spotted, and dock when the coast is safe? Perhaps there's a wide circle formation around the carrier that has a few scouts flying in it.
Whatever the tactic is, the only thing you'd need to do is draw a line from the formation object to the OoI and choose the tactic from a dropdown box. (or create a new tactic?)
This ability to go multi-level will cater to the people who want to assign a formation to their entire fleet, without losing the ability to finetune the relations and tactics of each part of this fleet. Allowing the player to name each level of his formation would make breadcrumbs really useful.
Assigning ships to an actual spot in the formation could be done by selecting the name of the build from all existing ships, but that would leave out all future ships. That's why I think that using tags in ship creation and in the interfaces could work very well.
This might sound like a lot of micromanaging, but for me the whole idea of assigning tactics and formations is so I don't have to worry about them on the battlefield. If I want my fighters to only dock with the carrier to reload, I can do that. if they only should come out when there's an enemy, I can do that too.
I like the idea of creating formations that are built around a purpose, and that's what the object of interest is for. It will allow me to select any number of ships and assign a formation to them, knowing that only the ships used in that formation are "taken" and the formation looks exactly how I want it.
If I have created a formation with 1 transporter and 3 protecting fighters, I could select a group of 100 transporters and 300 fighters, click the formation once, and have 100 formations created for me. Without an object of interest in the formation editor, I'd first have to create a formation for the 300 fighters, then assign each formation to protect a transporter.
If I want to have a carrier protecting a destroyer, I can configure the formation and tactics in such a way that the fighters of the carrier will protect the destroyer, without having to click a dozen time each time you want to set up such a relation for a new carrier and a new destroyer. Or even 10 of those.
Another important aspect of a formation is the distance between ships. Some formations only work when ships are flying very close together, others would have many problems with that. I'm not sure how scale can be added to the formation editor without making it too complicated. A capital ship can be 100-200x the size of a fighter. Perhaps a good way to solve spacing is to have a minimum distance based on the size of the ship. For instance, a capital ship of size 50 will need 200m at each side. So two capital ships of size 50 in formation next to each other will leave 400m in between.
Post
Sat Feb 09, 2013 4:35 am
#1
The look of the formation interface.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.