First of all happy holidays Devs and congratulations on the new update and its achievements! Second, when are we getting a targetting system? Please, it's a nightmare trying to fight ship to ship... Best wishes to all the team!
I presume you haven't read all the threads from people playing on servers then.... Pretty much broke the game...
I can give you a modded config that makes it more fun. Is it singleplayer (vs drones/ PVs) or multiplayer ship-to-ship combat ?
For SVs, having weapons aim at the mouse cursor instead of the crosshair in pilot mode is actually something I suggested before. Like other space games with mouse-based controls. It would help a lot. Not everyone prefers flying with pilot mode on though. As for CVs, these days I arrange main weapons in broadside format for proper broadside CV combat. The sideways controls take some getting used to but, once you get the hang of it, it's actually quite fun, despite not being as efficient as the standard front-facing main weapons. It's more fun than flying a CV like a fighter or just watching your turrets do everything.
Thanks Kass, but there's so much work still left to be done, that no amount of modding will get it close to an enjoyable experience i.e. controls are still crap (joystick player here which makes it worse), SVs are seriously underpowered versus CVs, matching speed is impossible because the CTRL function gets disabled with any other movement, no targetting so no 1st person combat possibility, etc. I appreciate it though... Yes, I've tried this strategy with terrible results. Our weapons are so underpowered and ship controls are so crap that once you disable the enemy NPC, they've managed to drain your shields, blow several of your turrets away and most blocks on that side of your CV. This game needs better controls and targetting systems to allow for more strategic combat, not just park and let the AI shoot... Thanks for your input though!
Controls are tied with design, so no amount of "modding" can change that, we have to build/ tweak ships with thruster placement in mind (+ rcs or not) and also adjust the sliders in the statistics page. For combat capacity vs AI, one major change in my config is the speed of all projectiles, range and damage output adjustments. Shields are much tougher too, and recharge very fast, but I can fight drones around a POI in space and almost not get hit because all lasers/ rockets go slower. SV lasers have unlimited ammo, only take energy, and rate of fire is faster. So even if a target moves a lot, I can simply "barrage" its way with lasers, and I tested slower projectile approaches extensively to balance ship-to-ship combat to be more fun and easy. One thing we have to keep in mind is that at 100m/s there is simply no magical way to be able to aim perfectly with a ship, and targets are very small. Not caring about running out of ammo is a key point, and being able to close-in without being hit a hundred times is also key. So actually "avoiding" enemy fire is easy, but hitting tiny turrets at 300 + meters while strafing is very hard. So turrets have to be made more fragile, like "glass cannons". About "targeting" : what other game did you play that you felt comfortable and why was it like that ?
Yeah, I've modded my game as well, but not made the turrets glass...! I prefer to have to consider ammo and despite playing with HOTAS I have pretty good aim. I have some pretty manoeuvrable combat ships that can get quite close to a base's turrets without getting hit or at least not losing all it's shields. I've modded rockets to have extraordinary power, so if I do manage to hit they're gone with 1 hit, lasers and plasma need more, but not so many as to make it tedious... So in answer to your question, I suppose there's two main issues for me personally: 1.- Fighting drones. In space they move so fast that you can easily lose where they are, but they are not fast enough so you can chase them. If you match the speed with CTR+W you're unable to do any strafing because otherwise the steady speed disengages (what a f*****g brilliant design). So in this case a targetting system that tells you where they are and which way to turn would improve the experience enormously! Plus allowing the set speed to be maintained whilst doing other manoeuvres... and why not allow us to CTR+ in any direction simultaneously? 2.- Fighting CVs and stations. In the case of the CVs they have the same issue with the CTR+ i.e. no way to pursue. But as you point out, distance is a huge issue! I have pretty good eyesight and I'm on a 27' monitor and I can't tell where the bloody turrets are till I'm so close that I'm getting shot to death... So a targetting system that allows me to at least know where, roughly, a turret is would be invaluable! So when I do the passes at 100m/s with auto-break off, I'm at least aiming roughly in the right direction! I would also appreciate a clearer warning when I have a firing solution, as many have said, the crosshair turning red is barely appreciable. At the moment the strategy I use with stations is absurd! I basically have to get out of my seat and use a sniper to look at the station closer to get an idea where those bloody invisible turrets are, make a note of the surroundings, get back on my seat, aim a few degrees out of the station, press full throttle, disengage auto-break and hopefully turn in time to shoot in that general direction... I would also really like my turrets to focus on the targets I want e.g. deal with CVs turrets in the back whilst I deal with the engines, not the stupid sentries that are inside the ship... Ha, ha, ha, ha! I've always believed that this game has all the necessary mechanics for incredible gameplay, but the Devs prefer to keep concentrating on silly recipes, visuals and the early game experience. If they gave us the ability to "dog-fight" the drones, give aim and accuracy a reward, let us make strategic decisions by programming our turrets to hit specific things, let us chase those damned CVs and hide on their blind spots, stop the ship advancing when we take all its rear engines down, etc. Then this game would be epic! As for other games I've known with some of these features... hmmm...! I think pretty much all space games I've ever played, they all have some sort of targetting that at least tell you in what direction your enemy is, others like the X series or Elite even give you sub-targetting: power plant, shield generator, turrets. Even this Rebel Galaxy Outlaw that I've been trying out has many of these mechanics (match speed, target CV turrets, etc) and it's a pretty basic game...
There is a reason warplanes use 6000 rpm guns... Cranking the SV lasers up helps and to avoid eating ammo like popcorn I made it simple : infinite ammo. We can try with miniguns but they don't have same visual help as lasers to see where we shoot. Lasers are energy-based, after all. That's what they used in the old Star Wars series. We have many other areas of concern in this game than making lasers eating ammo... For drones I drive backwards and let them chase me : they come almost in a straight line. Chasing them makes adding our speed and the drone's speed, and often we lose them when crossing paths. They're hard to see, they could use a good paint job. See next : That is also a question of "design" . The game has very nice blocks, but in POIs they tend to get lost in the kaleidoscopic scheme of mixed colors + reflections + distance pixelation etc. I took the Thermica Station in my small test scenario : the left one is default, the right one I painted a bit : On the left side, even at close range, the weapons are hard to see. That's because nothing really makes them stand out of the rest of the structure (same for CVs). Add a bit of reflections/ sun light in the face, and it's virtually impossible to see them. The one on the right has been painted all white, and despites that we still see the richness of the blocks textures and trims. Lets go backwards a bit. At 800 meters : That's on my potato laptop's 17-inches screen. We still see where the weapons should be on the right base, but on the left ? Lets go further : Now even at 2 km we can still see the "turrets areas". If it was standardized on all POIs then these color hints would be the early warning. Clearly things can be done to alleviate the problem. It all depends on the objective, but I would have no problem making the changes to all POIs in my game if needed, because even at close range the visuals don't help at all. It could even be a "standard" to give a chance to players to use any other weapon than just the homing rockets... For drones I have to check something. Back in a moment... .
Ok I checked the drones... They are hard to see and I tried changing model, but honestly it doesn't make a difference. They would need to be 5 times bigger, or else have some emissive colors so we can see them from very far. We could make a suggestion for this, as they are most of the time hidden by their "names" on screen... On a side note, I tried to change their weapon models, hoping for something more "visible" but all blocks get scaled down to the drone's scale. The first one is the "original" mesh, below is the CV rocket launcher, top right I tried the warp drive... At least the last one (antenna5, deco blocks) shoots forward... To mod the drones we can swap their mesh in the eClassConfig file, and we can swap their "weapon" with any model (I think) from the items/ blocks files. In the eClassConfig.ecf file, just look at this line for a specific entity : { +Entity Name: SpaceDroneLegacyLaser, Ref: SpaceDronePlasma ... HandItem: laserSpaceDrone The "HandItem" is the weapon used and can be found in the ItemsConfig.ecf file : { +Item Id: 565, Name: laserSpaceDrone, Ref: rocketlauncherDroneSmall Meshfile: Entities/Enemies/Drones/Weapons/laserSpaceDronePrefab << original model Just change the path to the desired model : Meshfile: @models/Blocks/Mothership/Antenna05Prefab << new model Maybe I should have tried the Christmas tree... .
Ha, ha, ha, ha! You crack me up...! Of course the paint job makes a massive difference and I really appreciate your work and examples. I would still prefer a targetting system since it's really silly that the enemy would paint the area around their turrets... And I love that the drones can in fact disappear when fighting in space! That's a huge part of the appeal of space combat: it's big, it's empty, there's no up or down and all it takes is one wrong manoeuvre and your enemy could be anywhere around you. A basic computer indicating target's direction seems like a minimal tool in a ship from the far future. In any case, I've decided I'm taking a long brake from this game now since none of the latest updates have been to my taste or areas of interest. I'm going to wait for more end game content (including ship combat improvements) to play again. I can't see myself doing the whole survival from scratch again without any further purpose later on, I've already done it more times than I can count and I've built cities and huge fleets of all kinds of vessels... I definitely need a brake! Take care and be safe!
