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886

Modding / Re: a look into missions I'm working on

« on: May 29, 2011, 07:39:45 PM »

How about just a straight up carrier battle?

887

General Discussion / Re: Galactic Economic Collapse

« on: May 29, 2011, 03:17:20 AM »

Yep. In fact, taking over a core world would be an extremely significant undertaking, and you'd need a well-maintained network of outposts to keep it afloat besides.

Would it be worth it? If it is, I hope the prize is as steep as the resources it needs.

888

General Discussion / Re: How does SPAZ compare with Starfarer?

« on: May 29, 2011, 03:07:30 AM »

Having played SPAZ, there is one other point to keep in mind: It is bloody grindy.

The basic problem is that the SPAZ world is large, but samey - there's lots and lots of systems, but for most of them the only real effective difference is what their tech level is, what blueprints they have to offer, and what services their civilians have.

This. For a game about a bunch of people living on board a junk ship salvaging parts around the galaxy, there really doesn't seem to be very much customization, or at least customization to any great extent, in how you conduct your operations. The advancement of the mother ship is very linear as it is plot based. There's really no real tech salvaging in special parts that you can add to your fleet.
How you compose your fleet feels a bit too artificially restrained. While there is some customization available in the way you choose the modules and weapons for the ships, there really doesn't seem to be anything like mass increasing or slot increasing like that in Aurora. Again, in a game about junk salvagers blinking across the galaxy, this seems to be a sorely missing option.

889

General Discussion / Re: A few questions.

« on: May 25, 2011, 05:22:25 PM »

1. Sandbox is reputed to be coming out at the end of this month.

No, no, no, no, no Campaign mode is coming much later than that - check out this roadmap for details.

http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/

890

General Discussion / Re: A few questions.

« on: May 25, 2011, 02:00:07 PM »

Hi,
Just bought the game. I have a few questions.
1. I assume we can only do tutorials and single missions at the moment. No sandbox game yet!?
2. Some menu buttons are greyed out, assume these are not functional yet?
3. Will we be able to assign our own keys in future versions? I hate the WSAD keystrokes!!!
4. It looks like the game is easily moddable. Will we be able to add our own space ships?

Thanks
drillerman

1. Sandbox is reputed to be coming out at the end of this month.

2. I guess they are.

3. I would think so, you just bought the first alpha version so there's still a way to go.

4. Yes. Here: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=22.0

891

General Discussion / Re: Viability of trading and mining vs combat?

« on: May 25, 2011, 01:08:28 PM »

Raiding gold carts for profit does sound like fun

The "gold" here would be Infernium, an extremely rare mineral that's the only source of starship fuel. It's rumored to originate in an alternate dimension populated by all manner of nightmarish beings. These occasionally spill over into humanity's domain through mediosolar openings known as "rifts" and spell doom for the unwary space traveler.

... but I've already said too much!

The reason the raiding of those gold carts became so important was because it's appolication was so wide ranging. It may not have been  vital like food or wood, but most of the higher tiered techs needed it. As well as most of the better units above the basic spears and archers. As such, in some multiplayer games, the defensive lines weren't in the front between the two players, but near the transportation lines of these valuable resources.

892

General Discussion / Re: Viability of trading and mining vs combat?

« on: May 24, 2011, 04:42:46 PM »

That;s awesome! From the sounds of it, what you described sounds a lot like the logistics system in Warrior Kings. The bad part of that specific system though, was that the villages you set up away from the main base wouldn't really specilize all that much in the resources they gathered. All villages brought in the same resources, The only thing that made this sort of system stand out was that you had to plan how the wagons bringing in the resources to the manor didn't over stock in one place , thus making the management of the wagons carting the resources around vital to the resources coming in.
This system was incredibly fun in multiplayer from my limited experience of it. Raiding carts full of scarce gold ore was a very real viable strategy.

893

General Discussion / Re: Viability of trading and mining vs combat?

« on: May 24, 2011, 03:15:56 PM »

I'd much rather set something up and worry about the strategic aspects of it

How about the logistics part of it? Asteroids in belts are quite far apart. I think a very basic management of the supply lines from the mines to the refineries, factories, depots, and trade stations might be worth taking a look at.

894

General Discussion / Re: Viability of trading and mining vs combat?

« on: May 20, 2011, 02:28:03 PM »

Or you could just give the player control of how fast time passes, like in HoI, X3, and Star Wolves.

895

Suggestions / Deployment Positions

« on: May 19, 2011, 12:06:34 AM »

I haven't read all the suggestions, or kept up to speed on all the developments, so if this was already covered forgive me .

In any case, the suggestion is as the title reads. I noticed that you can shift your ships around before deployment when you put them into groups before battle, however, is there a way to separate the function of grouping and where they're going to appear along the bottom of the map?

896

Suggestions / Re: My thoughts/comments so far!

« on: May 17, 2011, 05:27:05 PM »

To your specific example - if ship stats get lower as they're shot, that will tip the fight more and more in favor of a ship that starts winning by a little bit - most likely leading to less interesting fights, because the losing ship is less capable and has less options to turn the tables on you. Incremental damage to ship capabilities is tricky to get right. Still, being able to damage engines and weapons IS fun, no argument from me.

Have you thought about an exponential damage model? It will still conform to an incrimental damage model, though you can still preserve the concept of a ship not losing (very much) of its operational efficiency as it takes damage. After a certain range, the damage and the decreased capability of the ship will eventually be more and more significant, I think if you balanced this well enough that you can still have ships fighting well after taking some damage, yet have the damage reflected in the performance of these ships. They will blow up quite easily I imagine after a severe beating, but even in a model where damage does not inhibit the ship's performance, at a certain point you just can't help one ship having an advantage over another. In fact, I think it's more or less expected that one of the ships win out after the other takes a mauling.

897

Suggestions / Re: My thoughts/comments so far!

« on: May 17, 2011, 03:32:56 AM »

Capital Ships...... MAN ARE THEY AWESOME. But at the same time i find so many key components missing. For one i feel that all capital and large ships should be able to launch fighters from their hangar. They should automatically have fighters inside them. Preferably one squad obviously. Not only that but why do the largest ships have no AA or Flak? I know you cant equip Flaks or choose your layouts yet but it should be a auto given that Large Capital ships and Huge Destroyers have built in AA. Instead of everything requiring slots some ships should just be given basics. Capital ships should have basic AA turrets that fire on their own... even if it's not overly strong.

In the way of defence for hangar less battleships, hangars need a lot of space; docking bays of any significance that are equipped with the assemblies that take care or are otherwise involved in the maintenance and logistics of the fighters take up an astronomical amount of space. There's really no real advantage of having a hangar that can house less than a dozen craft, the cost of carrying this sort of equipment on board only becomes effective past a certain threshold, and this threshold is situated where only dedicated aircraft carriers can achieve. Otherwise battleships are far better off putting some extra armor on, more ammunition, or installing bigger guns for their intended role.

Though of course, most vehicles do have to do some of the things well to be effective at their intended job, most tanks for example have to be equipped to deal with infantry when they get too close, even for tank hunters. But the concept of carriers are different. The upfront cost of installing a hangar and the facilities and crews it needs are incredibly high, and for the most part, play a very layed back role for ships that need to give and take punishment once they're committed to combat. It's something another ship can do for them that can make up for the high upfront cost of installing hangar facilities by installing a massive one to counteract the initial upfront cost.

A battlestar for example, can be far better disposed to the role of a front line slugger if they just dropped the two hangars (inefficient) and put on more armor or bigger/more guns. The fact that each battlestar needs to have two hangars so that they can still have a place for fighters to land if one is destroyed shows its inadequacy. For all intents and purposes, they'd be far better off tonnage wise if they had a few ships that have one very big hangar that can do all the carrier work the battlestars do but at a more efficient tonnage to the rate of fighter deployment, facility cost, crew resources, logistics, etc.

As for starwar ship design, I think all I need to point out is that during the clone wars and subsequent Empire era ships designs, flying underneath large carrier capable starships is a viable tactic as they appear to lack any guns on their underside. An apparently unforeseen design flaw for a multiple starfaring races over millenia. Unforeseen by technicians and scientists whose incompetence extends to their weapons powered by terawatt generators so inefficient their effects look like large gasoline explosions as they impact another ship at point blank range with no shielding involved.

898

Suggestions / Re: Odd bits and pieces

« on: May 13, 2011, 05:00:30 PM »

About the zoom issue, I think you should make the distance which you can zoom out much greater. Though I realize this may impact on the pretty graphics due to the fact that you can't really see the ship details that far out, it does leave a lot of room for modders to work with.
You don't have to change the present mechanics at the moment, meaning you don't really give all that much reason to zoom out more what we're zooming at the moment, I just think that a lot more things can be done if there wasn't a restrictino on how far the zoom function can work.

899

Suggestions / Re: Map, and Space Terrains.

« on: May 13, 2011, 04:55:00 PM »

Just wanted to say that battles take place in a separate space from travel.

Aw, damn. I was kind of hoping / thinking that the entire game was going to be just one large open map.

The pathfinding for your AI allies is going to be a major issue if that's the way it's going to work. You'd be losing battleships and fighter wings all over the place getting from point A to point B.

900

Suggestions / Re: Auto-fire notification

« on: May 09, 2011, 04:25:12 PM »

I think it can be easily overlooked due to the strafe key being tied to the same shift key that toggles auto fire. In the heat of battle, Switching weapon groups while strafing and having the weapon group remain on autofire after switching back is not exactly an easy process.