Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: TaLaR on September 18, 2018, 12:07:11 AM
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Leave current 'Engage asap' mode as is, and add as separate 'Engage as formation', tweak-able at design time.
Formation would be defined by:
1) Max distance to get ahead of previous step in formation:
Broadsword have speed of 200, Flash bombers 170 - they are closest thing to naturally occurring formation in game as is. And yet Broadswords would get too far ahead of Flashes, if target is too far away. Would be nice, if you could leash them some 100-200 range ahead of Flashes with transition to full speed attack at set range per formation step (you could always fine tune by switching to 'engage asap' manually). Before that formation travels at speed of slowest fighter wing.
2) Spacing within formation step.
Tight - Medium - Wide. (Either space to next wing within formation step, or distance from center if single and offset).
3) Offset of formation step.
Center - Side (whatever is closer from current position, just avoid center) - Other side than behind formation step - Other side than ahead formation step (2 ways to make it possible for slower fighter wing to pick closest, while faster one adapts to it).
4) Distance at which current step will break formation and switch to normal engage
So example formation could look like (6x, Astral):
- Wide, Any side, Break at 1000: 1x Broadsword. Offset left of right to the max - to prevent missing fire from hitting other fighters. (Suffers the brunt of long ranged fire, they are the cheapest + carry flares)
--200 space
- Medium, Center, Break at 1000: 2x Flash. (Deploy mines while Broadswords provide distraction, medium spacing to better protect other fighters and avoid lumping)
--100 space
- Tight, Center, Break at 1000: 2x Longbow. They more or less want to hit center, where shield is most likely to be present. (Hide behind mines, fire sabots safely)
--100 or more space
- Wide, Any side, Break at 1000: 1x Dagger. Offset left of right to the max - shields deploy from dead center on front shield ships, side shots have chance to bypass. (Fire Atropos timed to arrive roughly after sabots hit, while enjoying mine protection for self and Atropos in flight)
This is somewhat similar to what happens with this fighter set naturally, but Daggers fire Atropos too early, Longbows risk by getting ahead of Flashes and Broadswords can goo too far ahead if target is far. So it's very much not ideal.
Or (6x, Astral)):
- Wide, Any side, Break at 1000: 1x Broadsword. (same distraction as above)
--200 space
- Wide, Center, Break at 500: 5x Flashes. (Bomb the enemy from frontal cone and maybe even sides instead of single lump, deny as much area as possible)
Or (2x):
- Wide, Any side, Break at 1000: 1x Broadsword. (same distraction as above)
-- 200 space
- Wide, Other side than ahead step, Break at 1000: 1x Claw (exploit opening created by Broadswords on other side)
Or (2x):
- Wide, Any side, Break at 100: 1x Claw
-- 0 space
- Wide, Other side than ahead step, Break at 100: 1x Claw
Same thing, depends on implementation which would be preferable:
- Wide, Center, Break at 100: 2x Claw
(simultaneous attack from sides to bypass non 360 shields. 1st configuration looks somewhat awkward, but you get the idea. Break distance needs to apply to either wings themselves or formation step center, whatever is closer)
These 3 scenarios just do not happen naturally.
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Thank you for the suggestion! It spurred some thinking which in turn spurred this:
https://twitter.com/amosolov/status/1042461390068494336
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corresponding fighter power nerf in 5, 4, 3...
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Mmm, surprising turn of events. Wasn't expecting something so quickly. :) Hurrah!
I absolutely adore that first GIF. The Longbows peel off after they launcher their sabot missiles to reveal a wing of Daggers coming in to finish the job. Absolutely terrifying how well-coordinated they turned out to be!
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Fighters have gone really long way from role-playing migratory geese to competent wing tactics :)
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role-playing migratory geese
;D
Awesome!
Running the danger of repeating myself from twitter: Wouldn't this be awesome as special behavior you unlock via fighter command skills? It would be so nice to be able to actually see the result of a skill, instead of it being hidden behind numbers.
Although I'd understand if you'd want everybody to see this cool show all the time, Alex^^
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Wow, that looks great! I'm guessing that the offsets that you mentioned on the twitter comments are defined in the fighter csv?
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Wow, that looks great! I'm guessing that the offsets that you mentioned on the twitter comments are defined in the fighter csv?
Yup:
Yeah, it's a value in wing_data.csv. Since Sabots get launched at a certain range, travel at a certain speed, etc, this coordination is just achieved by having the right offsets for the bombers. It's not always this on point but it's fairly representative.
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Wow, that was really fast.
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Dang.
That's, like, really cool.
I think Gothars is actually on to something though with fighter coordination being skill-based. It's sort of like better auto-aim accuracy or target leading: your carriers get better at using their fighters via coordination. I wouldn't mind if all fighter behavior was like this but I wouldn't mind seeing a gradient in fighter effectiveness that isn't just numbers-based.
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... role-playing migratory geese ...
Harsh! ... but possibly fair. And at least funny.
Running the danger of repeating myself from twitter: Wouldn't this be awesome as special behavior you unlock via fighter command skills? It would be so nice to be able to actually see the result of a skill, instead of it being hidden behind numbers.
Although I'd understand if you'd want everybody to see this cool show all the time, Alex^^
I think Gothars is actually on to something though with fighter coordination being skill-based. It's sort of like better auto-aim accuracy or target leading: your carriers get better at using their fighters via coordination. I wouldn't mind if all fighter behavior was like this but I wouldn't mind seeing a gradient in fighter effectiveness that isn't just numbers-based.
Hmm. So this kind of feels more like a core behavior to me. If it's tied to a skill, then it makes a lot of things tougher. Balancing gets trickier. It also gets more difficult for me to spot problems, as it's one more thing that can be on or off - meaning 99% of my testing will happen in one of those two states.
But the main thing is in addition to being a power boost to fighters, I think it's also a gameplay improvement. With this, fighters become more consistent in effectiveness, there are more viable combinations, and it's a mechanic that's more satisfying to interact with. Locking that away behind a skill feels wrong.
There's possibly a middle ground here with having it be sort of like autofire aim, though, where it's not on/off but operates with varying levels of precision...
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I agree with Alex. It is like breathing. You do not have skills for breathing, unless the game is a parody.
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Help. I want to fly carriers now. This looks great. :D
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How tight are the tolerances on this system?
Like, hopefully modders aren't expected to spend hours tweaking wing offsets to make sure the different ordnance arrives at exactly the right time (and the player mixing fighter wings from different mods would likely muck it up completely). Will it work properly with the Wing Commander 1 fighter speed boost and/or Strike Commander 1 missile speed boost?
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Wing Commander 1... I want it badly for Warthogs and bombers. I almost do not want it on Thunders (they do not handle the extra speed well, though not as badly as prior releases).
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How tight are the tolerances on this system?
Like, hopefully modders aren't expected to spend hours tweaking wing offsets to make sure the different ordnance arrives at exactly the right time (and the player mixing fighter wings from different mods would likely muck it up completely). Will it work properly with the Wing Commander 1 fighter speed boost and/or Strike Commander 1 missile speed boost?
Wing commander etc doesn't mess it up, since they're going to maintain the same spacing regardless of what the top speed is.
If a skill, say, doubled the projectile/missile speed of fighters, that would probably cause problems. Or, say, if a skill doubled the speed of fighters, that'd cause more isolated problems such as interceptor attempts to screen coming in too early. But heavy fighters would be alright even under those conditions, since the duration of the decoy flares increases their margin for error.
Anything short of that should be alright.
As far as picking the right values for modded wings, I can't imagine it'd be too bad. Vanilla gives reasonable starting points, and, really, testing a wing paired with Broadswords and making sure it arrives at a decent timing relative to the decoy flare deployment (i.e. a few seconds after it) should be fine. Basically, I don't think you need to tune various combinations, just tuning the value based on how it interacts with *any* other fighter should put it in the right place. I.E. you could tune a bomber by timing its strike to arrive at the same time the torpedoes from Daggers do, and it'd automatically work with Broadswords, interceptors, and so on.
Longbows in particular are tuned to hit a little before other stuff but they're a bit of a special case, and in any event, they don't *have* to hit before the torpedoes to be effective.
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I may have missed if it was said somewhere, But to clarify, is the new fighter behavior constant, during engage at will, or was it created as a second mode like in the suggestion?
I ask, because I can’t help but think their may be times where I just want my fighters to chase down a target and not worry about keeping formation, especially if it’s a frigate.
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Are these interactions only for fighters deployed from one carrier, or can wings from other carriers join in if they are also set on attack?
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I may have missed if it was said somewhere, But to clarify, is the new fighter behavior constant, during engage at will, or was it created as a second mode like in the suggestion?
I ask, because I can’t help but think their may be times where I just want my fighters to chase down a target and not worry about keeping formation, especially if it’s a frigate.
It's constant. However, in some cases they may decide not to wait to get in formation (i.e. if their fellow fighters aren't catching up, or if the target is retreating).
Are these interactions only for fighters deployed from one carrier, or can wings from other carriers join in if they are also set on attack?
From one carrier only. It wouldn't work well with multiple carriers - they may decide to pull back and engage independently, and you also wouldn't want having one wing of Warthogs in the area slowing everybody down.
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I may have missed if it was said somewhere, But to clarify, is the new fighter behavior constant, during engage at will, or was it created as a second mode like in the suggestion?
I ask, because I can’t help but think their may be times where I just want my fighters to chase down a target and not worry about keeping formation, especially if it’s a frigate.
It's constant. However, in some cases they may decide not to wait to get in formation (i.e. if their fellow fighters aren't catching up, or if the target is retreating).
Are these interactions only for fighters deployed from one carrier, or can wings from other carriers join in if they are also set on attack?
From one carrier only. It wouldn't work well with multiple carriers - they may decide to pull back and engage independently, and you also wouldn't want having one wing of Warthogs in the area slowing everybody down.
escort command combines fighters from carriers in the escort & escortee groups? Since they're ordered to stick next to eachother, it lines up their refit distance
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I may have missed if it was said somewhere, But to clarify, is the new fighter behavior constant, during engage at will, or was it created as a second mode like in the suggestion?
I ask, because I can’t help but think their may be times where I just want my fighters to chase down a target and not worry about keeping formation, especially if it’s a frigate.
It's constant. However, in some cases they may decide not to wait to get in formation (i.e. if their fellow fighters aren't catching up, or if the target is retreating).
Are these interactions only for fighters deployed from one carrier, or can wings from other carriers join in if they are also set on attack?
From one carrier only. It wouldn't work well with multiple carriers - they may decide to pull back and engage independently, and you also wouldn't want having one wing of Warthogs in the area slowing everybody down.
could use a multi-carrier attack as an option. a single "push point" at which the fighters group up and ingress together.
assign the carriers to the point, the fighters group there and then attack. if the player makes stupid choices and it fouls the AI up a little bit it would still be worth it for the ability to do mass attacks which is really the bread and butter of air power (space power?) anyway.
but yeah, it's legit great looking and will probably improve tactical efficacy even in it's current form. you're approaching actual fighter tactics (that is to say, attack with some deliberation and don't all just trickle in and get wasted) and that's pretty neat.