revamp space battle?

When? because right now the space battle consists of whirly bird....no whirly bird means eventual loss of shields and have to back off. its just a dumb thing now.

 

I would prefer a commitment to stop changing stuff that breaks custom configs so we don't have to re-do all that work each time when it renders scenarios obsolete. That way, we can mod space combat the way we want, we can share configs, and check many points out of the list.

Because any "revamp" done by Eleon or by anyone is due to be unsatisfying to some players, who will then ask for another change. That's the reason why we can mod the game right now. Only problem is that we have to make it a full time job. Just look at the guys working on Reforged Eden. Not sure lots of players have this dedication nor the time to do that.

 

It's not eleons fault their work means custom scenarios have to keep updating.

I would much rather eleon makes the changes they feel are necessary than committing to no changes because that simply doesn't get them anywhere.

You need to remember that not everyone plays custom scenarios.

 

We can also have custom configs for vanilla, in the "Mods" folder. These are also affected by changes.

I'm not saying Eleon should not change anything at all : adding new parameters to objects does not have to result in a game crash when discrepancies occur. Absence of parameters could simply point to hardcoded defaults. The way things happen now give us no clue as to what can cause a crash when using custom configs.

Same goes for some playfield templates: lots of items in there are being switched around, and finding which one is the culprit when crashes occur after a patch is a chore.

And honestly, when things like these happen, it only brings more work to Eleon via crash reports. I'm pretty sure this can be avoided.

 

ELEON Focuses on building a VANILLA-Game.
Everyone who likes to apply changes to the Data which ELEON provides may do so at his own peril.
Move along, move along!

Btw., ELEON stated a hundred times now that all who create their own stuff won't get any support from them.
Error Report are accepted for Vanilla and Vanilla alone.

 

They also provided the scenario function and dialogues. Are you telling me that if someone finds a problem with the scenario or dialogue functions, just because they are using it for custom content, Eleon will just dismiss these issues ?

Obviously this is not true, and counter-examples abound in the various bugs threads. Like I said just above, problems can be of several flavors, but mainly the following 2:

- player makes a typo or bad usage of scenario/ configs/ dialogue, which causes crash; Eleon does not have to hold the hand of the player on how to make his/ her scenario

-player makes custom scenario/ dialog/ config, and normal usage of any of these cause crash not caused by bad formatting or wrong values; Eleon will have a look at this.

Am I wrong ?

 

What are you talking about?
There have been no changes to shields or ship thrust in awhile now. Nor have there been any changes announced in 1.7 or beyond that we know of.
You can still spin to win as much today in 1.7 experimental as you could 3 months ago.

If your complaints are about a custom scenario then you need to talk to the authors of it, not here.
If you mean that you want spin to win removed from the game, then you need to be a little clearer in your post so people understand what you're asking for.

 

yes sorry about that. I mean the game has so much going for it now. I play RE exclusively and I've donated to that cause. However, the ship combat needs a lot of work. I feel that it needs a total revamp first from ELEON, for the base game which we can then tweak.

The only viable option is to use whirly bird, and it's just a lot of meh for a game that has so much better to offer because of the gameplay systems available.

sorry for the confusion

 

The next update to Reforged Eden is making some changes that should open up more fighting styles for capital vessels, and at least make it so you have more alternatives for fighting than just spinning.

I haven't heard of any plans for them to change ship combat in the main game though. We'll have to see what they have planned!

 

But how do you see this "revamp" ? Apart from not liking the "whirly bird" thing, what would you propose? How would you describe your idea of what would be a cool "revamp" of space combat in empyrion ?

Just bear in mind that it is very unlikey that the max speed goes up because of game engine limitations. But apart from that, what would you change, and how ? Can you give comparisons with other games or sci-fi movies/ series?

 

I'm still lost with the phrase "whirly bird." Exactly what axis of rotation is the frame of reference for this apparent cheese? Inquiring minds, etc.

 

There are a few videos out there. Vehicle combat consists of the combatants circling each other continually, usually clockwise, while turrets fire and manual weapons are fired when the combatants think they might score a hit. It's incredibly dull and completely uninspired. For me, these sort of mechanics are a complete put-off from PvP.

That said, I have hosted more than a few PvP events, and still host at least one with each version update, to see if any improvements have been made. In some areas, there have been improvements, but overall the basic concepts remain the same - float/fly in circles, take shots of opportunity, declare yourself "The bestest PvPer ever!"

Now keep in mind, I run ONLY 100% out-of-box vanilla, same for any events I host, because the game is still far too much in development to say that any changes made may not invalidate things like custom configurations, mods, addons, or the like. I'm simply not going to invest any time into any 3rd party anything until we reach a state where we can say, with at least 90% certainty, the next update isn't going to invalidate anything like this. The overall new player experience is going to be a vanilla one, or at least should be, before piling on layers of things that make fundamental, foundational changes. That's just me. You do what you like.

 

Gotya- avoid presenting your opponent with a firing solution for their main weapons and see who has a thicker skin, more automated pea shooters, and remembered to fill the ammo box.

Fundamentally isn't that what an encounter between a pair of dreadnoughts is whether they're made of xeno steel in space or iron clad oak on an ocean?

Sounds like a better way to make PvP more interesting would be to make it scalable so you could have more units involved. As an alternative you could make turrets controllable by passenger/crew so you could use intelligent targeting and get better situationally awareness from engineering.

 

That's what I wrote above, in essence, because no amount of vanilla adjustments/ tweaking by Eleon has ever been unanimously welcomed by the community, which means that the player here may like the "revamp" but many others will cry to get a rollback for (reasons).

Actually possible to have fellow players onboard manning turrets, in multiplayer. I think the main problem is the very rapid/ janky/ unrealistic motion of big CVs (and small alike) that move/ aim as easily and rapidly as a player pawn, and it kills the feel of massive ship being slowly accelerated/ rotated by engines, like we see in most sci-fi movies/ series. Videos illustrate that perfectly, but many players are used to that way of combat, even if completely off-putting and un-immersive. As soon as Eleon tried to slow down rotation (by nerfing the RCS units) there was a huge outcry from players because their zippy CVs were not acting like domestic flies anymore.

When Eleon introduced the new flight mechanics, it was done to try to get closer to some realism, even though it's still arcadey. They added CPU to try to prevent players from compensating the more sluggish flight physics with more devices, RCS and thrusters, etc. It's like a vicious circle, because many players are hell bent on having their ships controlled like a player character that quickly shoots everywhere like a gunslinger so they try to get these new "control" mechanics to be rendered uneffective.

And adding tons of guns that run a script to hit a target while the ship is buzzing around, + tracers + physics hit detection spell out performance and synch problems. It also means that taking down an opponent is more a question of auto-turrets number/ types than a question of piloting skills and strategy. The lines have been blurred between CV and SV roles because of that, if we exclude the "firepower" components.

So - I guess - a "revamp" would aim at changing that, but players will fight it back if it's not done perfectly well and balanced.

Edit : and it's different in multiplayer and in singleplayer, or more precisely in PvP vs PvE, because ship AI can not properly emulate human tactics and have to rely on "tons of guns" to represent a real threat, because players can have a zippy ship that the AI just can't hit. And if PvE is adjusted to be challenging in PvE multiplayer, then it becomes too hard for singleplayer, without modding the game on a personal basis.

So back to square 1 : everyone wants Eleon to revamp space combat, but they can't please the 3 groups in one sweep : multiplayer PvP and PvE and singleplayer PvE, and there are players in each group who will demand that Eleon fix the game for them.

I think that summarizes the problem. Now, for solutions, more discussion is required, because Eleon has probably seen a thousand versions of the problems summary, but not so many proper discussions on core principles to make ship vs ship/ BA combat more interesting, balanced and immersive, for the 3 groups. Eleon has already cooked all kinds of new things to try to solve the problem, so players do have to be more specific regarding what they expect as far as a "revamp" is desired, else we may end up again with some new layer that players will find workarounds to get back to the actual state of space combat.

.

 

Some of the janky issues could potentially be mitigated to some extent by having graphically and RPC bandwidth expensive features disabled in multiplayer play- tracer rounds and visualizing weapons fire is pretty unrealistic; people don't see bullets in most circumstances, and nobody dodges a railgun round or a laser beam if they don't manage to not be where they were going.

Just making the process of actively ping'ing to find an enemy (or a resource asteroid) betray your own position would go a long way towards making things more cat 'n mouse. Rig for silent running.

I'm not sure it needs to be a zero sum "if one group wins the other two loose" sort of situation- like you say asking people to be specific about their ask beyond "fix it" would help disperse the smoke.

 

Ok I had to check this one because I had no clue what it was. Looks pretty cool :

https://fracturedspace-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Fractured_Space_Wiki

"CV" equivalents can range up to 2 km (more?) and can shoot master weapons at 25 km. For movement, it's similar to classical sci-fi universes like Star Wars/ Start Trek styles, big=slow and small=agile and fast.

I have the same idea for space combat, but my reference is more the old Star Wars / X-Wing and Tie Fighter series. Similar sizes and bigger for "CV equivalents" and frail but zippy fighters. Tie Fighters had superior agility but no shields, while Alliance fighters/ support ships were a bit more sluggish but had recharging shields. But I think the main point is to have a notable distinction between ship classes : fighters vs capital. X-Wing and Tie Fighter games had typical "max weapon range" for figthers at 2.0 km, and size of capital ships allowed "strafe runs" that required exposing the fighters to the capital ship's close range turrets for longer than we have to do in Empyrion because of small relative dimensions of capital ships. But I tested longer ranges in singleplayer, both weapons and render range, and it seems viable in some scenarios at least.

Capital ships could have specific long range weapons to tackle other capital ships, uneffective against small ships except if pilots are stupid enough to fly into the line of fire...

So the main problem in Empyrion, in my opinion, is the size difference being too small between SV and CV dimensions, due to blocks scale and max grid limits. A max sized SV will be 1/4 the lenght/ width of a max sized CV, for example, so it hardly comes close to the size difference between a capital ship and a fighter in Fractured Space or Star Wars universes. Even with a small SV the biggest CV will not seem so big as it will take few seconds to fly in and out of its turrets range at top speed.

But what if CV blocks were less "generic" and more like compound blocks, hull parts, bays, walls, floors, etc, to avoid usage of small individual blocks and allow making bigger ships/ bases because less total blocks required ? If instead of having a 250 x 250 "small 1x1 blocks" limit it was more a question of total dimensions, but built on a larger grid with larger blocks/ compound blocks ? These could still be detailed and sexy enough to allow build diversity, but they would be definitively in another class compared to "fighter/ support ship blocks".

Other options regarding this could be the ability to mix block sizes inside one build, or ability to permanently "dock" several builds (grids) together, and have only one "master" to which controls are passed. Very big CVs could then be built from several smaller ones.

Besides that, there's always the option to nerf/ limit devices to fit any scenario we want, but it would not make up for that small CV max size issue. But that's just me. I know many players wished for a larger max grid size, but maybe this meant they wanted the ability to build much larger ships to get a feel of awe and power that such sci-fi monsters inspire...

 

Interesting conversation, and good points made. I've wondered about whether fuel / energy could be used as a way of providing some balance. Some people want big star wars type battleships, and some want fast CVs that behave like fighters (I do agree that I find this jarring, and am much more on Hummel's side of things). One thing that contributes to this is how little fuel they really need to keep up high manoeuvrability essentially through the battle.

One idea I had was that thrusters should consume much more fuel, the more powerful the more fuel inefficient it becomes. You could still build fast ships - but couldn't keep it up for very long.

However, I did wonder if just upping the fuel would work well. So I did wonder if thrusters could have two modes (a bit like the 'boost' function on jets now). In normal mode, they would have a lot less thrust, but be very fuel efficient. Turn on booster and they get their current thrust levels, but become massively (and I massively for this to work) fuel inefficient. Used for combat, and getting off planet. That then might open different tactics and builds - fuel management would be important for fast ships, but even though it would be hard to constantly be fast, it could give tactically advantages (e.g. dodging most fire and taking down a slower ships shields faster, dealing damage while 'slower', then retreating out to recharge shields). SVs could have a much more efficient high power mode, so be able to dog fight for much longer on average.

The current impact on top speeds would have to be revised, so that the much slower ships could still get up to a decent speed eventually of course.

I would see one advantage of this approach - as all current design would still work to a large degree (spinny ships probably would need the most adjustment to be effective, but would still fly), so the Dev's would hopefully get less of a backlash!

One thing about SVs - one reason they are not effective vs CVs is unless you are in a very large group, you can't launch squadrons (and if you could, think of the laaaag). One dreadnaught might be equivalent to 20 T4 fighters - and those 20 might be effective in taking it down resource wise, but that is just not going to happen.

 

I would be much more drastic and eliminate the possibility to have CVs behave like fighters, period. Small CVs designed as fast attack ships could still have decent maneuverability, but would never match a fighter's ability. This could be achieved by simply limiting device numbers like 1 T2 RCS per ship, and adjust it so even with minimal armor and devices, a small CV would still behave like tons of metal subjected to normal physics. A "prototype" could be made to check what is the most maneuverable CV that can be built "barebones" and use that as starting point to fix the limits.

Any actual structure that would undergo the G forces that would apply to the zippy movements possible now for CVs would just break in pieces or bend under the stress. This needs to get out of the picture. Since thruster placement can also affect maneuverability, then also limit thrusters in a way that it will not be possible to obtain such ridiculous angular and linear accelerations under even the most specialized configuration. Starting from there, all other, bigger builds will be slower and less maneuverable, subject to variations in design and function.

For weapons, I often stated that there should be one set of main weapons to be used as "main gun" for a CV (but no obligation to have one) and turrets as point defense against close proximity threats and agile fighters. That main weapon can have 2x or 3x the range of turrets and deal way more damage, to engage opponent CVs at distance, and it could be either a turret but with limited turn rate (to avoid using it for all purposes) or a fixed gun ( think Mass Effect railguns).

To compensate for the diminished maneuverability of CVs the shields and specialized hull blocks could be greatly reinforced, to allow combat to last more than a few seconds. CV turrets could be made very weak against shields to prevent their usage in great numbers just to bring down opponents shields with auto fire. Small fighters would not stand much of a chance alone against any CV and that's how things should be. Maybe some kind of short range or very slow torpedoes could balance things a bit but that would be the exceptional case.

That could be base to start building upon to get things a bit more realistic and balanced. Weapons limitations could be self-imposed by energy usage, more generators = more mass = less thrust = high fuel consumption, etc. I would use energy weapons as primary weapons to remove ammunition mass from these equations as much as possible (infinite ammo or very large clip values), and leave mass impact to fuel and other cargo.

I would definitively slow down homing rockets so they stop being the game breaker they are currently. No one likes to be one-shotted, that should be punishment only for the careless. Players should have a chance to try their luck against a CV in a SV, but they should be able to change their mind and retreat if they see it's useless.

It would help to have a shield strength/ recharge indicator for targets, to avoid wasting time and ammo if our ship has insufficient firepower to take the shields out by itself (SV vs CV).