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[Alex]

Well, you can always "run simulation" real quick to see it. There are many things that are "nice to have", but if you have all of them, you end up with something of a mess. For me, that's steering into that territory; there's already a way to see the arc, and the number in degrees is fairly easy to interpret (perhaps with a bit of practice) to boot.

[Anysy]

I think instead of degrees, it should be in radians. Radians are more awesome. I am however torn on if I want actual ratios of pi or just numbers though. Both have their benefits.

[Alex]

Hooo boy. Grads, let's just compromise and use grads.

[Pelly]

I think instead of degrees, it should be in radians. Radians are more awesome. I am however torn on if I want actual ratios of pi or just numbers though. Both have their benefits.

That is a amazing argument for using radians....especially as 180 degrees = 1 Pi radian, YAY more maths to implement a unneeded measurement when degrees are used for the weapon arcs and shield arcs, if this is a really important addition then I am sure that it can be added in later, when the core is complete.

Hooo boy. Grads, let's just compromise and use grads.

YES Lets use them!   (for anyone without a sarcasm gland, this is sarcasm, not directed at alex though)

[Spardok]

Some really cool changes for this patch, the one I like the most is of course the battle map change . Though with the way objectives are being redesigned I strongly agree with posts made earlier on in the thread that they may as well just be removed all together. A thing on CR, pretty sad to see that it will affect frigates so strongly in a negative way. I read up to around page 5 and I didn't see anything about the exact formulas for what influences CR by % or flat # would love to know if these will be available early on or if we have to wait for patch release. On a last note, has using hull damage as a direct % of ship CR been looked at? I would think having half your ship destroyed would be more of a deciding factor of its combat readiness compared to being in combat for a few hours.

[RawCode]

With radians we definely shoud use IEEE 754 floats represented in HEX...

90 degrees == 0x3f000000r

this will be awesome!

[Durandal4532]

I wouldn't get rid of battle objectives, dynamic buffs/debuffs on the battlefield are fun!

What I might do based on what I think you're planning is to have them be like sensor packages or whatnot dropped by player ships that affect a given radius. Then, you can drop your Sensor Pod, give a +25% speed boost to ships within [distance], and that bonus can be either captured/hacked/whatevered as it is now or maybe even destroyed by the enemy? If they are just deployable objectives, I feel like you'd want to deploy them all instantly at the edge of the map. I do think there should be some option of placing them automatically. It adds such a possibility for variation to the fights to have "terrain" so to speak.

Really, anything that adds variation and player agency to the fights is a good time!

Although who knows, until we have .60 I won't know if this is already much better handled than my ideas.

[Talkie Toaster]

On a last note, has using hull damage as a direct % of ship CR been looked at? I would think having half your ship destroyed would be more of a deciding factor of its combat readiness compared to being in combat for a few hours.

I'd argue against that as it's textbook death spiral. The more damaged your ship gets, the less able you are to fight back, the more damaged you get... that's already in to an extent as losing ships degrades your fleet performance, but that's a fairly major event that really signals you to reassess the fight. Instead, gradual CR reduction with damage could lead to fights getting decided by the first salvo then dragging out as you wail on an opponent who poses increasingly little threat (or visa versa).

[lindsay lohan]

I don't have any suggestions but this is very exciting stuff on the horizon. I don't post often but I'm impressed with the development team's work. Thanks.

[MindsEye]

The stages of battle with choices in between is a neat idea. Kind of makes you feel more of a commander. My question is will this limit options to preventing retreats. Sometimes maybe I will not always want to engage in a chase scene and may want to invest in something else. For example tractor beams,gravity wells, or some type of performance damaging weapons or systems. Will frigates and the chase scene be the only option for the game?

[Alex]

On a last note, has using hull damage as a direct % of ship CR been looked at? I would think having half your ship destroyed would be more of a deciding factor of its combat readiness compared to being in combat for a few hours.

Not directly, but engine flameouts and weapons being disabled affects CR post-battle. Not too keen on having the impact be in-battle, basically makes CR another healthbar, and we've already got one of those.

I don't have any suggestions but this is very exciting stuff on the horizon. I don't post often but I'm impressed with the development team's work. Thanks.

My first thought on seeing the post was "hey, spambot!" Was a nice surprise to find out otherwise, and thanks

My question is will this limit options to preventing retreats. Sometimes maybe I will not always want to engage in a chase scene and may want to invest in something else. For example tractor beams,gravity wells, or some type of performance damaging weapons or systems. Will frigates and the chase scene be the only option for the game?

If someone tries to run, you can either let them go or chase them down. At the moment there are no alternative ways to prevent a retreat, although you can choose to harass the retreating fleet instead of engaging in a full-on pursuit. That just costs them CR without costing you anything.


Also: updated the OP with more notes, mostly modding changes this time.

[Cycerin]

Impressed with the additional campaign modding options. Very good work - does this pave the way for communication actually impacting the gameplay? Does this mean we can write a whole host of responses for a faction, or at least have random strings upon hailing? I'm a bit hazy right now and not that good at visualizing implications.

Hope you haven't forgotten about additive blended decorative weapons.

[Gothars]

My first thought on seeing the post was "hey, spambot!" Was a nice surprise to find out otherwise, and thanks

Ay, my cursor was already moving towards "remove", too

Control group management can now be done in the fleet deployment dialog

Yay

Decorative, background parallaxing planet added to campaign battle depending on where the battle takes place

Nice, do they have the absolute (small) or relative (to the ships, big) same size as in the campaign? Or something in between?

[Alex]

Impressed with the additional campaign modding options. Very good work - does this pave the way for communication actually impacting the gameplay? Does this mean we can write a whole host of responses for a faction, or at least have random strings upon hailing? I'm a bit hazy right now and not that good at visualizing implications.

Right; you could do that - as full-fledged a dialog system as you care to code up. The vanilla implementation is still the same few strings from the .faction file (pending "real" dialog options), but mods are no longer tied to that if they don't want to be, and could create an entirely different dialog system.

Hope you haven't forgotten about additive blended decorative weapons.

It's still on my list, along with a bunch of other things This update is by no means the extent of the planned changes, just what got done in the last 10 days or however long.

Decorative, background parallaxing planet added to campaign battle depending on where the battle takes place

Nice, do they have the absolute (small) or relative (to the ships, big) same size as in the campaign? Or something in between?

Somewhere in between - atm it's 1.5x the campaign planet size, up to a maximum 500 pixel radius. Also depends on how far away from the planet the engagement is - farther away means it looks smaller and the parallax is slower.

[K-64]

Is the sun/suns (depending whether the system is a binary one) included in that battle background stuff??