Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kreuzberger]

As the headline states, I really would like to see two things in the game:

1. A feature, that enables the player to setup target choice of ship weapons. Often enough my capital ship was assaulting another capital ship, but none of it´s big guns was shooting at the adversary, instead shooting at several tiny fighters/destroyers, because they were closer. Either a click menue should be existing, where you enable/disable different sizes of targets or a general code, which makes big guns favor big targets (if in range) and small guns favor small targets.

2. Formations....at the moment space battles look like a martial artist fighting ...drunken style. Why not changing the escort option in battle to a simple formation, triangular...with the escorted ship on top and two escorts left and right behind it? This formation uses the speed of the slowest ship of the three and all three ships maneuvre exactly in the same way like the escorted ship.

PS: It would also help alot, if your ships would not venture too far away fighting while defending a certain point in space by command. Sometimes they get driven away so far by close combat, that the enemy is able to cap it.

[Alex]

Hi!

As far as #1: if you target an enemy ship (by mousing over them and pressing 'R') then all your autofiring weapons will shoot at them if they're able to.

For formations, it's come up before but ultimately I don't think they're very practical. Even if ships *could* move in neat formations, actual combat is a messy business, and locking a ship to a specific location is going to be a bad idea tactically much of the time. For example, ships are much better off alternating attacks and backing off when their flux maxes out - especially a smaller ship can use a larger/slower one to take the heat off.

It's just one of those things that sound neat in theory, but doesn't work out in practice. Like it or not, battles are chaotic, and ships are better off adapting to changing circumstances.

[Arkiuz]

In all honesty, even if we had things like formations, they'd fall apart pretty quickly.  Try running a Phalanx on a Battlecruiser and the first ships would end up breaking on the shield and those forward heavy guns.  It'd turn into a mess.  An intercepting 'V' would be okay but... you're dealing with weapons that fire in arcs, missiles that deliberately seek engines and, most importantly, abilities and shields.

I just don't see formations as viable, imo.

[Inventor Raccoon]

Formations are also not very useful in a game like SS where a lot of weapons (due to their range) require you to actively attempt to engage the enemy and require that the line of fire is clear. In a formation, I'm sure you'd run into a lot of circumstances where ships will stand by and watch others get torn to pieces because they can't move in to engage or they're being blocked by another ship, when it'd be much more effective for them all to move in and all attack at the same time.

[Igncom1]

Yeah with the game being 2D your ships can't fire over one another like a proper water navy can, so for the most part a formation just stops your battleships from being able to fire.

It's great for carriers and occasionally missile ships, as their weapons actually can go over allies. So i'd highly recommend them if you are looking for defensive styles of play!

[Kirschbra]

sorta related, as far as formations go... I wish that when I ordered my ships to attack they would do a little better job at actually engaging the targets,  I mean a wolf shouldn't have any issues running down fleeing ships, but it just kinda follows them out of range... 
when I have my escort ships escort my flag ship, they almost always seem to just stay out of the fight...  might have the do with behavior due to weapon ranges...   I guess the ai will never fly a wolf as good as me, but the wolf is magnificent ship, i can take out a large amount of frigates solo as a wolf, sometimes I can even solo a hammerhead with escorts

[Drokkath]

It's just one of those things that sound neat in theory, but doesn't work out in practice. Like it or not, battles are chaotic, and ships are better off adapting to changing circumstances.

Indeed. Even in zero-g 3D environment it's safer to stay further apart in case another ship nearby blows up and sends flying pieces from it in all possible directions thus becoming a hazard not only to one's foes but also one's own fleet.