The fact that turrets currently turn in the range of 120 degrees per second is to begin ridiculous but more importantly absolutely kills the small ship game 100%. The entire point of smaller more maneuverable vessels is to avoid the large guns on massive ships. However since the game's design makes turrets spin like tops small ships are rendered completely pointless. And that is why we have the game we have today which is 100% who has the biggest CV with the most guns and the best lag shot builds. I have no idea what direction Eleon has intended for Empyrion since there has been no real announcement or read map. However I can say if there was ever any intention of making this more in depth and tactical than hurk smash big ship wit udder big ship then turrets are going to have to be slowed waaaaaaaay down. Look at EvE Online if some help is needed. That game for all its spreadsheets knows how to do fleet combat. Big ship guns very slow. Small ships hard to hit. Must deploy our small ships to deal with their small ships. Suddenly we have a reason for carriers and fleets, support destroyers, the world just opens up. And all you would have to do is slow the turrets. It cannot be any easier.
Shadex you have some good points there and EVE Online is a really good example of a game with very finely tuned and thought-out combat involving many ships of different sizes, each with a valid role (even late-game). I'd have to say the first step would be to slow down large SVs and CVs a bit too, as currently large ships are still ridiculously agile and fast, and slow turrets might even miss them. Also I'd have to say Eleon has done pretty great work so far with such a small dev team. But I agree in essence that turret targeting needs to go in the direction you're suggesting.
True. What I want to do via a custom setup/ scenario is to remove all "insta-hit" weapons for CVs/ BA (bullets type), and use mostly only weapons which have adjustable projectile speed (artillery, laser, plasma, rockets), and make different "tiers" of these via the config files. Then even if turrets turn fast will not be so bad because players in small ships will be able to evade enemy fire, and no more "invisible insta-hit" by hitscan bullets. Mass propelling weapons like cannons and miniguns are not very "sci-fi" and I would keep them for "ground combat" (ex. HV tanks) and make them short-range for SVs. I may make an exception for the railgun though, both for SV and CV, but I would make them long-range, slow rate of fire, and massive damage, with big visual tracers...
What's the point in doing a second Eve-online? The features of Eve-online are mostly artificial limitations for the sake of PVP balance. If you follow a similar path, then you can also borrow ideas from WorldOfTanks - a light tank without armor rushes across the field, an enemy tank shoots a shell of a huge caliber at it and receives a message "did not pierce!" Something similar now and so is in Empyrion - when four minigun turrets try to hit the raptor, they drop a cloud of cartridges, and he manages to dodge shots out of the blue for half a minute. It may make sense to make more explicit restrictions on speed characteristics for ships of different sizes, but limiting weapon characteristics would look completely ridiculous.
I don't agree. It has balanced PvE with a variety of viable late-game ships and load-outs too. What EVE online gets right is to have multiple optimal strategies in combat. So instead of having one pathway of good, better, best ships, there is a variety of roles and strategies like a very complicated rock-paper-scissors. No one ship or strategy is king, which makes gameplay more dynamic than it would be otherwise. Speed, range, power or something similar is the obvious rock-paper-scissors in a game like this, and while there's no need to be identical to Eve, its an example of strategic highly customizable space ship combat done right.
When they say the words "PVP", "correct balance", "rock-paper-scissors" to me and at the same time cite as an example games that regularly change their balance and nerf old ones by introducing new ships, and this process is endless, then I have only post pictures like "facepalm". Splitting ships into role types and increasing their number inevitably leads to a constant imbalance in the game and the need to drag along a bunch of friends to collect a fleet of all the necessary ships. I spent enough time in eve-online to make sure how much time I wasted there - the only useful thing I got out of there was friends and acquaintances. It only remains to ask - if everything is so good at eve-online, what are you doing here?
Obviously, I like block-building space combat. And did someone say everything is good at eve-online? Play the ball, not the person. If you play Eve much, you'll see people fly around in all sorts of different ships and use all sorts of strategies in both PvE and PvP. That's a strong indicator things are balanced. And new ships typically don't change that. Virtually no-one has or tries to collect all ships. Even large teams have a few specific tools or fleet combos they know how to use well. Shadex didn't say copy Eve, just that it is a great example of fleet combat - which it absolutely is, whatever its other flaws might be.
ok - let me stop the discussion from my side. We just have different opinions about the same game - nothing more.
I just want to point out that because humans adapt (normally ) games have to do the same (balance & goodies) to keep players interested. These games mentioned in the thread here are not of the linear story type and are more hinged upon "replay value" which requires changing things regularly because these games are usually supported by a core player base that knows all the tricks after a few days/ weeks/ months.
