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[Fishbreath]

First, I'm kinda curious as to what engine is backing the game. Something home-built? Either way, it delights me to see Java being used for a game project.

Second, you guys are always mentioning a to-do list. Is there any chance we could get that put somewhere we can see it? Most of us are already drooling over things to come, and I expect we could be a lot more focused in our drooling if we had an idea of what's coming next.

Third (and the only non-question), although I like the way the strategy plays out, I'm less sure about the current tactical balance. Mostly I think this comes from the interplay between ship size and maneuverability and engagement range. I'm going to go ahead and single out the Conquest battlecruiser (from The Last Hurrah) as my example here. Not only is its heaviest non-missile firepower stuck in broadside mounts, but it also doesn't have the maneuverability to bring it to bear on anything but targets of its own size and larger, targets which I don't like to engage with my largest aspect facing them. Weapon ranges are so short in comparison to the ship's size that I can't really expect to outrange opponents, and even most cruisers can back in and out of my range if I try to put broadsides on them.

It comes down to a matter of ship design; as it stands, the ships I like the most are the ones with the ability to concentrate all of their firepower on a single target--the Hammerhead, the fire support cruisers from The Last Hurrah, and the Apogee variant from Hornet's Nest, all of which are maneuverable enough to use their fixed mounts to best effect. Anything larger than those ought to have much bigger fields of fire or much scarier fixed-mount weapons (fast projectiles and long ranges). That at least tilts the balance back toward neutral--small ships can still outmaneuver big ones, but the margin of error isn't quite so huge.

[Alex]

Hi there!

First, I'm kinda curious as to what engine is backing the game. Something home-built? Either way, it delights me to see Java being used for a game project.

Yep, it's all homegrown. Using LWJGL to talk to OpenGL, OpenAL, etc, but everything above that is custom.

Second, you guys are always mentioning a to-do list. Is there any chance we could get that put somewhere we can see it? Most of us are already drooling over things to come, and I expect we could be a lot more focused in our drooling if we had an idea of what's coming next.

You'll see a "live patch notes" thread in the near future, listing items for the next release as they're being done.

Third (and the only non-question), although I like the way the strategy plays out, I'm less sure about the current tactical balance. Mostly I think this comes from the interplay between ship size and maneuverability and engagement range. I'm going to go ahead and single out the Conquest battlecruiser (from The Last Hurrah) as my example here. Not only is its heaviest non-missile firepower stuck in broadside mounts, but it also doesn't have the maneuverability to bring it to bear on anything but targets of its own size and larger, targets which I don't like to engage with my largest aspect facing them. Weapon ranges are so short in comparison to the ship's size that I can't really expect to outrange opponents, and even most cruisers can back in and out of my range if I try to put broadsides on them.

It comes down to a matter of ship design; as it stands, the ships I like the most are the ones with the ability to concentrate all of their firepower on a single target--the Hammerhead, the fire support cruisers from The Last Hurrah, and the Apogee variant from Hornet's Nest, all of which are maneuverable enough to use their fixed mounts to best effect. Anything larger than those ought to have much bigger fields of fire or much scarier fixed-mount weapons (fast projectiles and long ranges). That at least tilts the balance back toward neutral--small ships can still outmaneuver big ones, but the margin of error isn't quite so huge.

Hmm. I think there are a few components to this. One is that capital ships like the Onslaught or the Conquest are heavily reliant on Nav Buoys to make them more effective. Those actually give a flat +25 bonus to top speed, which is massive for these ships.

Another point is that an unsupported capital ship is supposed to have problems. If a Conquest didn't have trouble bringing its heavy guns to bear on frigates, that would probably make it overpowered. I'll grant that the broadside takes some getting used to, but the ship also has better-than-average speed and maneuverability for a cap ship, and can engage Onslaughts and the like on uneven terms. It also has by far the most powerful shields.

Finally, the tactical balance is by no means perfect, and we'll be working continously to improve it. This is certainly food for thought - thank you for sharing!

[Fishbreath]

Hmm. I think there are a few components to this. One is that capital ships like the Onslaught or the Conquest are heavily reliant on Nav Buoys to make them more effective. Those actually give a flat +25 bonus to top speed, which is massive for these ships.

I must have missed this part of the manual. That's pretty darned important right there.

If a Conquest didn't have trouble bringing its heavy guns to bear on frigates, that would probably make it overpowered.

I even have trouble getting the broadside guns to bear on cruisers. Part of that might be the massive levels of turning inertia, though; that's something that'll take some getting used to, I expect.

[David]

(Alex got to this as I was writing a reply! Ah, but I shall add my distinctiveness to the thread regardless.)

Conquest Battlecruiser:
I'm glad you brought this one up because this ship was a conscious decision to try something different. I'd watched "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" and I thought wow, wouldn't it be neat if we could put some 18th century naval broadside tactics into this? ... kinda!

The other side of the Conquest is the WW2 naval concept of the battlecruiser as a ship that is heavily armed like a battleship but more lightly armoured like a cruiser -- the idea being to outgun anything that can catch it, and out-run anything (due to low armour weight) that can outfight it. Thing is, I'm not sure that the Conquest is filling the role of cruiser-killer in Starfarer right now because with its maneuverability and armament it can take out an Onslaught without too much trouble. This may be a matter of how each ship is outfitted: the Onslaught has large turrets, but they're in the center of its hitbox rather than on the sides like the Conquest, so the Conquest has a much greater effective range.

Maybe I'd replace the Hellbores on the Conquest broadsides with something a bit more subdued, replaced the Gauss Cannons with Hellbores (or Hephaestuses), and drop the speed a touch, make shields weaker, weaken armour a bit. Maybe. I'm talking about nerfing the Conquest and it's my favourite ship!

(I daresay, I love talking about the tactical roles of ship design and hearing peoples' responses to ships.)

Firepower Concentration
This may be a personal preference, or maybe it's that it's simply the most fun from a piloting perspective to be able to point all the guns in one direction and blast away. Ideally ships of all roles would be enjoyable to pilot.

I'm wary though of the idea of increasing weapon range more and more. Engagement range is already pretty high with some weapons (Gauss, particularly, but it's meant to be a specialized weapon) and encouraging the player to zoom out even more hurts the graphics. It's like the problem with Supreme Commander: Optimal game-playing probably took place when all the gorgeously modeled units were abstracted into little icons in the strategic map. This may be an argument for a highly abstracted combat game, but it hurts all the flavour that the graphics should be adding to the experience.

[Alex]

I must have missed this part of the manual. That's pretty darned important right there.

Added to the manual. My apologies

Thing is, I'm not sure that the Conquest is filling the role of cruiser-killer in Starfarer right now because with its maneuverability and armament it can take out an Onslaught without too much trouble.

Let me just say that the Onslaughts in the current missions are far from optimal (hence, "Outdated Battleship"). I think it can be kitted out to chew the Conquest up and spit it out - you can expect to see an absolutely beastly one in the next alpha release. It would be too cruel to loose it on you in the very first one

[Fishbreath]

I went through and tried again with the Conquest, and have finally beaten The Last Hurrah. I revise my opinion of it slightly--it's a wonderfully entertaining ship, but I remain convinced that in its role as a cruiser killer the broadside guns are almost useless. Other ships won't line up nicely for you to gun down, so as an anti-cruiser ship I find myself limited to putting the shields up, putting battery no. 4 on autofire, and letting that burn the cruisers down.

The Hellbore cannons proved useful when I had to duel the last remaining Onslaught when the rest of my battlegroup ate it, but only in that instance--zipping around something large and slow and unmaneuverable at close to medium range with nothing else to distract me, and even in that case he died a lot quicker when I moved into range of the fourth weapon group. I think that, as it stands, the heavy missile load and the great secondary battery (particularly the gauss cannon) are what makes the Conquest good right now, because it doesn't have anything like the maneuverability it would need to use the broadside guns in anything beyond a one-on-one situation with a similarly-unmaneuverable opponent (relative to cruisers and below, anyway).

I think it's just that broadside guns feel really, really clumsy to me in a Newtonian-mechanics game--unless you're at point-blank range, you can't circle a foe and keep them trained, and all it takes for an enemy to avoid them is to not sail directly alongside you, If they do that, you're limited to firing them in passing, and in a ship that takes as long to turn around as a capital ship, you're better off just letting the missiles and secondaries do their work.

On another note, are there any plans to have more than four weapon groups? I feel like using all the number keys might be a nice option to have even if none of the default configurations take advantage of it.

[David]

Hmm.

What if we had a cruiser-sized hull with good speed (but poor turn) and decent shields that was built to make passes by the side of larger ships while unloading a broadside? Yeah, we're going to have to try this one.  

And yeah, I guess the Conquest isn't so much filling a cruiser-killer role as it is a battleship with better maneuverability and some quirky heavy firepower. (Someone sack the design team of whatever shipyard built this thing!)

I've also noticed that the strafing controls do not play nice with the Conquest at all - they're built to focus the bow of a ship on the target, not a broadside. It -is- a bit awkward to use, and certainly with the broadside being a lot of heavy, slow shells, it isn't great at hitting cruisers.

I wonder what a beam weapon broadside would feel like...

[Blips]

Hmm.

What if we had a cruiser-sized hull with good speed (but poor turn) and decent shields that was built to make passes by the side of larger ships while unloading a broadside? Yeah, we're going to have to try this one.  

And yeah, I guess the Conquest isn't so much filling a cruiser-killer role as it is a battleship with better maneuverability and some quirky heavy firepower. (Someone sack the design team of whatever shipyard built this thing!)

I've also noticed that the strafing controls do not play nice with the Conquest at all - they're built to focus the bow of a ship on the target, not a broadside. It -is- a bit awkward to use, and certainly with the broadside being a lot of heavy, slow shells, it isn't great at hitting cruisers.

I wonder what a beam weapon broadside would feel like...

I think the credibility of the ship's role could be improved by increasing the broadside weapon ranges.

[Fishbreath]

Switching the Conquest's forward guns to Hellbores across the board and the side guns to the spinal cannon on the Apogee would make for an interesting experiment, I think. It loses some of its capability to go toe to toe with big ships--without good strafing, its choices for using the Hellbores are limited to 'charge', which wouldn't end too well against something as well-armored as a battleship, but it's maneuverable enough to run down cruisers that way.

The broadside guns would gain some use, too, being long-range and instant-hit but limited on damage and broadside--it could put a dent in a battleship, but would have to turn and run before the range closed too much.

[Apokus]

(Alex got to this as I was writing a reply! Ah, but I shall add my distinctiveness to the thread regardless.)

Conquest Battlecruiser:
I'm glad you brought this one up because this ship was a conscious decision to try something different. I'd watched "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" and I thought wow, wouldn't it be neat if we could put some 18th century naval broadside tactics into this? ... kinda!

Well, while the idea is great (and belive me i love epic battles between battlecruiser/battleships! , it isnt logical.
While having 90% of your Firepower on your sides, you cant do anything if you have to chase a ship.. so the conquest is a slow, big and good armed Battlecruiser with a bit more then a frigate armor.. ok, but you cant harm anything you should because they outrun AND outfit you (onslaught for example is even in reverse mode faster then the conquest while moving forward.. not to mention if you try to strafe with the conquest to bring in your main weapons... the onslaught moves faster then you can turn around.. i tested it and had a lot of fun with one onslaught against 4 ai conquests on the other hand you cant hit frigates or other ships because they are too fast for the main weapons.. )
In my opinion the Conquest played like a modern HMS Hood @ WW2 nice to see, nice to have but outgunned and outrunned in the first and last battle :/

So thats one of the reasons why iam modding the Game right now, trying to give those ships a greater difference. to get a first look (looooot of work to do... maybe at the end of the night ill have a next video... right now i would guess 5% done. for example the main weapons are now in front of the conquest (mod. anti matter) with a minor increase of the anti fighter weapons/pd weapons, the weapons on the sides have a problem right now.. i messed up something again but if they would work as they should do they would be a good anti frigate weapon  )
Battlecruiser should eat a frigate at breakfast without even letting the frigate knowing what hit her because of a clear advantage in range and firepower.. (in WW2 Terms for example it would be 30cm with a range of 10km+ on the BC against 7cm on a frigate with a range of 2-3km.. it would be hard for the frigate to penetrate even the "weak" armor of a battlecruiser, not to mention the armor of a battleship)

Its something like that:

The % should give a clue about the "Damage" a unit should give to another one while its the target they are designed for

Fighter against:
Bomber       150% - The fighter should be faster and better armed against slower targets with less Antifighter capabilitys
Fighter    100% - Dogfight ... even
Interceptor   75%  - While the figher is more an allround class with limited capabilitys to attack larger ships too, the interceptor has only Antifighter/bomber capabiltitys. Hes even faster but has less armor then a fighter (he isnt supposed to attack a strong flak  guarded ship)
Frig      50%  - The Fighter has a few weapons that can penetrate the weaker armor spots of a frigate but the damageoutput wouldnt be the same
Destroyer   0%   - The Bullets and missles dont penetrate the armor... new paint and the ship looks like a new one after an fighter attack
Carrier      0%   - Same
Battlecruiser+   0%   - Same
Battleships     0%   - Same

Bomber against:
Bomber      50%  - Well.. slow with a lack of anti fighter capabilitys and pilots not trained to get into a dogfight...
Fighter    20%  - the same but now the enemy has a advantage
Interceptor     10%  - the same but now the enemy has a big advantage (Mig25 vs B52 for example.. the mig is faster, better armed, better trained for this fight..go say good bye to the world)
Frig      150% - Not as fast as a bomber, strong armor, good amount of defense against fighter but cant stand against torpedos ect.
Destroyer   100% - The armor of a Destroyer is much stronger then a frigates armor, lot more anti fighter weapons but slower and easier to hit
Carrier      100% - Faster then a destroyer, less armor but at the end the same % like a destroyer (can evade torpedos easier but didnt survive the same amount of hits a destroyer can survive)
Battlecruiser   75%  - Should have enough armor to survive even larger attacks, the bomber should deal less dmg but increase the flux of the ship (compared to hits on the systems of a ship.. a bomber can damage a cannon for example.. but while we dont have this option of targeting subsystems right now i would handle it about increasing the flux - 30% flux / 10% dmg / 60% of the dmg catched by the armor)
Battleships     50%  - The Same like for the battlecruiser, only change it to 20/5/75 for example

Interceptor against:

Fighter    125% - Faster then a fighter, better weapons against him
Bomber      150% - Well..
Interceptor    100% - The same type, same chances to deal with each other
Frig      0%   - You dont try to attack something with "armor" with your little weapons..
Destroyer   0%   - Same
Carrier      0%   - Same
Battlecruiser   0%   - Same
Battleships   0%   - Same

Frigates against:

Fighter    50% - With the good amount of anti fighter weapons for a ship of this size it has enough to tell them that they are at the wrong place
Bomber      75% - The same like for the fighter, but the bombers are slower and easier to hit
Interceptor    25% - Too fast, only some luck hits would be possible but it dosnt matter in that case
Frig      100%- Same weapons against same armor ect so without a specialization it should be an equal fight
Destroyer   50% - too strong armor to get the max dmg possible, you can outrun the destroyer but he outguns the frigate
Carrier      25% - same speed, stronger armor and maybe the same armor so no target you want to fight alone
Battlecruiser   10% - well... to strong armor, to strong weapons - frigate should run for her life until she isnt a special version with only 1 mainweapon while having less armor/anti fighter capabilitys
Battleships   5%  - same

Destroyer against:

Fighter         10%  - Hard to hit a fast moving target, even with a big amount of Anti Fighter weapons
Bomber      25%  - Easier to hit then a fighter because the target is slower
Interceptor    0%   - Too Fast.. and no danger anyway
Frig              125% - Stronger Armor, Weapons and Range then a frigate
Destroyer           100% - Even Battle without specialization on one side
Carrier      100% - Same as against the frigate only that the advantages arent that big
Battlecruiser   75%  - Less Range and Power but faster and the same armor rate
Battleships        50%  - Less Range, Power and Armor only faster

Battlecruiser against:

Fighter    5%  - Good amount of anti fighter weapons but not specialized against them
Bomber      10% - Good amount of anti fighter weapons but not specialized against them
Interceptor    0%  - Too Fast
Frig      150%- Should be a "if you see it...point your weapons on it, waste one burst and go on to the main targets"
Destroyer   125%- Mainweapons should have some more trouble then against a frigate or carrier but not that much at all
Carrier      150%- Like the Frigate
Battlecruiser   100%- Even fight
Battleships     75% - Now the Battleship is better armed, has better weapons and some more range then the BC, harder for the BC to penetrate the Armor while staying alive for some time

Battleships

Fighter    5% -
Bomber      10%-
Interceptor   0%
Frig      175%
Destroyer   150%
Carrier      175%
Battlecruiser   125%
Battleship   100%

Firepower Concentration
This may be a personal preference, or maybe it's that it's simply the most fun from a piloting perspective to be able to point all the guns in one direction and blast away. Ideally ships of all roles would be enjoyable to pilot.

I'm wary though of the idea of increasing weapon range more and more. Engagement range is already pretty high with some weapons (Gauss, particularly, but it's meant to be a specialized weapon) and encouraging the player to zoom out even more hurts the graphics. It's like the problem with Supreme Commander: Optimal game-playing probably took place when all the gorgeously modeled units were abstracted into little icons in the strategic map. This may be an argument for a highly abstracted combat game, but it hurts all the flavour that the graphics should be adding to the experience.

I wouldnt increase the range all of the weapons.
But the "Main" Weapons (so the large anti capital weapons) should outgun everything a frigate can carry and hurt them really badly if they hit.
The difference between the ships should be larger then they are right now.

[Avan]

I must have missed this part of the manual. That's pretty darned important right there.

Added to the manual. My apologies

Thing is, I'm not sure that the Conquest is filling the role of cruiser-killer in Starfarer right now because with its maneuverability and armament it can take out an Onslaught without too much trouble.

Let me just say that the Onslaughts in the current missions are far from optimal (hence, "Outdated Battleship"). I think it can be kitted out to chew the Conquest up and spit it out - you can expect to see an absolutely beastly one in the next alpha release. It would be too cruel to loose it on you in the very first one

Even the 'standard' onslaught (as used in the Bis'mar mission) is sub-optimal in loadout I am thinking. Furthermore the AI doesn't seem to be too apt at working with it, given I can take an Onslaught and destroy another Onslaught taking no damage from the enemy ship through smart shield management and good use of LRMs. I think the AI would probably gain a big boost as-is if it fired all its LRMs at once and at tactically appropriate times rather than sequentially at the first non-fighter it sees, because the missiles can be shot down and are in very limited supply. My Onslaught could simply sit around and flicker its shields up and down (letting flux vent inbetween volleys), facing right into the missiles, and use its PD to shoot down what remained, and once the enemy ship had expended its LRMs, I could simply make a big loop out of its sensor range and come up behind it, at which point several successive volleys of LRMs would be more than enough to take it out.
A beefed up Onslaught would probably be quite a fearsome opponent, so long as its rear is not exposed.

[tinsoldier]

Oi, that "Predator or Prey?" mission is driving me nuts!  The best I've done so far is to get down to me and my carrier versus the elite carrier (a fight I lose 9 times out of 10).  But in my myriad of attempts, I've noticed a number of issues; things that seem to make it harder than it should be.

One being the AI of my ships takes a far too 'lone wolf' approach.  My interceptors and heavy fighters fly way outside the range of their custodian destroyer/carrier especially considering that 85% of the map is a mire of nebula.  In that mission, the destroyer is equipped such that a couple volleys of his chain guns and flak cannons is enough to wipe out entire wings of the interceptor drones but it's hard to bring my guns to bear on them before they wipe the floor with my interceptors.

Likewise, I've noticed my frigates have an annoying tendency to backpedal away from the drones flying way off away from the fleet.  Between their speed and shields, the frigates could easily lead them to my gun ship and between us we'd obliterate them but instead I tend to lose my frigates and fighters to this reckless strategy of theirs.

An example one of the devs gave previously suggested that the interceptors need to go out as far as they do in order to be able to prevent bombers from reaching the custodian ship, but that's simply not always the best strategy especially when they're escorting a destroyer with heavy anti-fighter capabilities.  Had I more control over them, I could mitigate that (maybe there are ways to control them that I am missing?).  Conversely, if they were smarter or if the player could provide more standing orders they would fare better  (e.g. stay within one screen of a capital ship in your fire group, defend ship XXX, etc).

Having said all that, I wanted to mention this was my first post and I'm enjoying the Alpha and look forward to what you guys do with it.

[Fishbreath]

That's something else I wanted to bring up in the original post: a system for 'standing orders' would be fantastic, something along the lines of what's available in Supreme Commander. I would love to be able to tell my fighters to patrol, or to escort within XXX range, or even (in the vein of Gratuitous Space Battles) tell fighters at what hull percentage they should fall back to the carrier.

[Blips]

Ok, so I agree that the Conquest-Class Elite Battlecruiser could use some fine-tuning, but the ship is bad ass.

I managed to pull aside an enemy Destroyer and laid waste to it, bombarding it with my broadside cannons. It was a very enjoyable moment .

[Fishbreath]

So I modded myself a Conquest Mk.II, with high-intensity laser broadsides and a forward battery of hellbore cannon, and it's a very, very interesting piece of hardware. It's still almost impossible to hit frigates and destroyers with the broadside or forward guns, but against cruisers and up it's remarkably dangerous--you can engage at range with the lasers and almost guarantee a flux-shutdown on them, at the cost of taking a while to do damage, or you can point your nose at them, ignore the broadsides, and really hammer cruisers and the like with the hellbore battery.

Owing to the beam broadsides, it's also got horrendous flux problems--it's got a lot of capacity to deal damage at range, but it's also got a lot of capacity to shut itself down.