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[Darrow]

Hey everyone, i honestly didn't know where to put this. It's abit of suggestions but at the same time it's also general discussion and my thoughts and comments on the current game build.

Let me start off by saying i love the feel and the potential of Starfarer. I actually bought this and Spaz around the same time oddly enough so.


That being said there is obviously a few hurdles and bumps to get over. Let me start off with my general thoughts and annoyance.


First off the one thing that really stands out and bugs me is the amount of blandness and lack of a better damage model on ships. Although areas get grayed out it really has no effect on the overall status of a ship. Meaning if i concentrate my entire firepower on the engines they never get shut off or completely destroyed. This completely removes any tacticalness of "Lets kill his engines then board him". Also be good to see holes open up and crew members fly out!

Ships being damaged and exploding..... One thing about space battles is always seeing the ships explode or start losing power. Right now your ships do not lose any weapons... do not have pieces tear apart and do not have any inner explosions or small explosions going on. What im trying to say is ships just explode and thats it. Why do larger ships not split inhalf? Or have pieces start falling off? Not to mention why are there no escape pods flying out of ships just before a explosion?

Another let down for me was the complete lack of boarding options, or simply disabling a ship to have a smaller "assault" vessel dock beside it and have marines cut in and take over the vessel.

Shields are one huge annoyance for me. I love the fact that you can activate them at will, but i hate how low of a tolerance they have. It's honestly ridiculous how fast flux builds up when your shields are being hit. Especially on Flagships and larger ships. Shields really need a stronger and more balanced system. The most obvious problem that i think is just how much flux the shields build up when being hit.

Fighters/Bombers i almost feel like fighters and bombers arent doing what they should be doing. Bombers of course are fine. But what bugs me is the utter uselessness of all fighters. I dont like the fact that huge cannons can hit fighters and i find them far too slow. The way they attack is ridiculous. They run straight at large ships and dont seem fast enough. Fighters should focus purely on bombers/other fighters and smaller ships. I honestly completely dislike how Fighters are currently implanted, maybe ive just watched too much battlestar galactica and star wars. I'd really like a system like Star Wars Empire at War where the fighters actually engage other fighters in cool dogfights.

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.

Tactical Map, the tactical map lacks very key functions... i havent figured it all out yet... but i'd really let to set fighters to guard or patrol areas in space or ships. Not only that but the current warp in at the bottom of the screen is getting abit old in space games.

Ships having general features.... What i mean by this is that every crew should have a crew amount shown, the amount of flux shown... (i think it should lower as the ship takes more damage) the engine speed etc  etc. The more damage ships take the lower everything gets. Right now it's simple.... pound them till shields drop in like 2 seconds... pound them some more... and watch them explode.

Ship abilities! Some ships should have personal abilities. What i mean by this is that certain ships should be able to boost other ships, shield strength wise or flux wise. Not only that but change it up abit! You could perhaps have a huge battleship and it should have a a mode or a switch where you can get it to disengage from it's wings or armor support and turn into a speeder lighter version. Stuff like that is interesting.

Damage models... i covered this already abit but my biggest gripe in all space games is the utter lack of damage detail or the way of dealing with damages. The game is very complex so why not allow you make simple decisions on the field of battle to repair and stop inner fires etc. What i mean is.... lets say the engines take a rocket hit and they are broken and draining power. Why not enable it so you can disengage the engine and see it fly off to stop it from adding flux or something. Why not give you the option of sealing areas on the ship down if a ship takes heavy damage. But at the same time this would obviously slow your crew down in your ship causing it to reload slower etc etc. Same thing applies to getting boarded. Why not allow you the option to lockdown the ship or venting the entire ship or self destructing? These are all things that you never see in any space game!


My current thoughts on balance.... as of right now theres obvious balance issues. To run through a few that i've noticed.... Shields really need a tuning they feel useless and so many situations. Small Frigates/Smaller ships.... they really arent upholding to what they should be and people have even made jokes plenty of times on the forum about small ships being useless. battle lenghts.... honstly find that battles need to last longer. Not as a whole but if two capital ships engage it should be a decently long battle. Instead of this hammering back and forth for 10 seconds then another 10 seconds of killing hull. Fighters/Bombers need some serious looking into. They should really be smaller and faster, they shoulnt be getting hit by huge cannons.




Anyways, thats all on my mind as of right now. Obviously everything is being worked on and its just the combat build. But it doesnt help to throw things and ideas out there. I really do see great potential for this game, and i and im sure others are interested in a real and true space game. The time has come to go abit beyond the classical shoot back and forth for 20 seconds and watch ships explode, if you get fighters and capital ships more balanced and create the epic feel and visual of battles that we see in movies of huge carrier and capital ships fighting back and forth and you add another element of not just the ships but the crew and dealing with damages to the ship the game will go quite far.

Best of luck, and i love the game so far. (Sorry if this is the wrong area?) 

[Avan]

My answers are just from what I've seen Alex & the other staff post so far, so they can give more definitve answers

First off the one thing that really stands out and bugs me is the amount of blandness and lack of a better damage model on ships. Although areas get grayed out it really has no effect on the overall status of a ship. Meaning if i concentrate my entire firepower on the engines they never get shut off or completely destroyed. This completely removes any tacticalness of "Lets kill his engines then board him". Also be good to see holes open up and crew members fly out!
--no idea on this

Ships being damaged and exploding..... One thing about space battles is always seeing the ships explode or start losing power. Right now your ships do not lose any weapons... do not have pieces tear apart and do not have any inner explosions or small explosions going on. What im trying to say is ships just explode and thats it. Why do larger ships not split inhalf? Or have pieces start falling off? Not to mention why are there no escape pods flying out of ships just before a explosion?
--things like splitting ships may be done in the future? I dunno, this has been talked about before. may/may not end up working out well/looking good. Note that you can only get so fancy before you get into the real of 'cool, but utterly impossible to implement from the circumstances (or at all!)'

Another let down for me was the complete lack of boarding options, or simply disabling a ship to have a smaller "assault" vessel dock beside it and have marines cut in and take over the vessel.
-- you do that after the battle from what I can tell (in the main RPG game anyways)

Shields are one huge annoyance for me. I love the fact that you can activate them at will, but i hate how low of a tolerance they have. It's honestly ridiculous how fast flux builds up when your shields are being hit. Especially on Flagships and larger ships. Shields really need a stronger and more balanced system. The most obvious problem that i think is just how much flux the shields build up when being hit.
-- next released has better shield tolerances across teh board

Fighters/Bombers i almost feel like fighters and bombers arent doing what they should be doing. Bombers of course are fine. But what bugs me is the utter uselessness of all fighters. I dont like the fact that huge cannons can hit fighters and i find them far too slow. The way they attack is ridiculous. They run straight at large ships and dont seem fast enough. Fighters should focus purely on bombers/other fighters and smaller ships. I honestly completely dislike how Fighters are currently implanted, maybe ive just watched too much battlestar galactica and star wars. I'd really like a system like Star Wars Empire at War where the fighters actually engage other fighters in cool dogfights.
-- no idea again on this--

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.
-- there will be custom equipping down the line. The refitting screen however is not yet implemented afaik, but its a high priority. And some capships do have PD type weapons, even if yes they are not automatically equipped, there are reasons for this (ie, being able to completely dedicate your ships to anti-capship role or something) --

Tactical Map, the tactical map lacks very key functions... i havent figured it all out yet... but i'd really let to set fighters to guard or patrol areas in space or ships. Not only that but the current warp in at the bottom of the screen is getting abit old in space games.
-- just set them in the same group --

Ships having general features.... What i mean by this is that every crew should have a crew amount shown, the amount of flux shown... (i think it should lower as the ship takes more damage) the engine speed etc  etc. The more damage ships take the lower everything gets. Right now it's simple.... pound them till shields drop in like 2 seconds... pound them some more... and watch them explode.
-- no idea on this--

Ship abilities! Some ships should have personal abilities. What i mean by this is that certain ships should be able to boost other ships, shield strength wise or flux wise. Not only that but change it up abit! You could perhaps have a huge battleship and it should have a a mode or a switch where you can get it to disengage from it's wings or armor support and turn into a speeder lighter version. Stuff like that is interesting.
-- this is coming down the line (abilities in general) --

Damage models... i covered this already abit but my biggest gripe in all space games is the utter lack of damage detail or the way of dealing with damages. The game is very complex so why not allow you make simple decisions on the field of battle to repair and stop inner fires etc. What i mean is.... lets say the engines take a rocket hit and they are broken and draining power. Why not enable it so you can disengage the engine and see it fly off to stop it from adding flux or something. Why not give you the option of sealing areas on the ship down if a ship takes heavy damage. But at the same time this would obviously slow your crew down in your ship causing it to reload slower etc etc. Same thing applies to getting boarded. Why not allow you the option to lockdown the ship or venting the entire ship or self destructing? These are all things that you never see in any space game!
--... maybe the reason you don't see insanely complex things in space games... is that they are insanely complex to implement. I'm a developer myself, so I know where to draw the line between fanciful pipedream and cool idea. (even if I only make utility programs and mods for games, as opposed to games from scratch)--

My current thoughts on balance.... as of right now theres obvious balance issues. To run through a few that i've noticed.... Shields really need a tuning they feel useless and so many situations. Small Frigates/Smaller ships.... they really arent upholding to what they should be and people have even made jokes plenty of times on the forum about small ships being useless. battle lenghts.... honstly find that battles need to last longer. Not as a whole but if two capital ships engage it should be a decently long battle. Instead of this hammering back and forth for 10 seconds then another 10 seconds of killing hull. Fighters/Bombers need some serious looking into. They should really be smaller and faster, they shoulnt be getting hit by huge cannons.
-- balance is being worked on. This /is/ only the first alpha - you might want to go with putting things in their relevant balance discussions, or making new ones for ones without discussions yet.--



Anyways, thats all on my mind as of right now. Obviously everything is being worked on and its just the combat build. But it doesnt help to throw things and ideas out there. I really do see great potential for this game, and i and im sure others are interested in a real and true space game. The time has come to go abit beyond the classical shoot back and forth for 20 seconds and watch ships explode, if you get fighters and capital ships more balanced and create the epic feel and visual of battles that we see in movies of huge carrier and capital ships fighting back and forth and you add another element of not just the ships but the crew and dealing with damages to the ship the game will go quite far.

Best of luck, and i love the game so far. (Sorry if this is the wrong area?) 

[Flare]

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.

[Alex]

Hi Darrow! Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I think if you look in the live patch notes thread, you'll find a number of your concerns are already being addressed.


Some more specific replies:

Re: cosmetic stuff (crew members flying out, escape pods, ships splititng in half, etc)
We'll be making various cosmetic improvements here and there as time goes on. However, just now I think it's more important to focus on features.

Re: boarding
Right, that'll be handled outside of combat. You'll be able to board any disabled ships.

Re: ship damage model
We're looking at that. If we're going to add complexity, though, I want to make sure that it's worth it - i.e, it's not a randomly tacked-on mechanic, but has meaningful and intuitive interplay with other mechanics in the game.

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.

I think some of the more involved things you suggest (venting compartments, detailed repairs, jettisonning engines, etc) would be more in place in a game that's focused on a single ship.

Re: ship abilities
Yep, definitely. These are planned - they'll give ship hulls much more personality and uniqueness.

Re: fighters
I agree that interceptors should be better at avoiding enemy flak. It might make sense for them to break formation in certain cases and engage individually - this has been on the "to-try" list for a while. Heavy fighters and bombers, though, are quite effective in their roles.

Re: frigates/smaller ships
I think if you play a little more you'll find most of them are incredibly effective in their roles (skirmishing, early objective capturing, etc). Some are a bit underpowered for the fleet point cost, but do keep in mind that not every ship in the game is a pure military ship. If a ship isn't great in combat, chances are that it's slated for some good utility in the campaign, or for some shiny systems that make it perform better.


Thanks again for sharing! I'm happy to hear you like the game.

[Flare]

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.

[Lethal Dosage]

You must keep in mind that the game's still in Alpha phase, many, if not most of the features have not been implemented or refined.

[tinsoldier]

Re: ship damage model
We're looking at that. If we're going to add complexity, though, I want to make sure that it's worth it - i.e, it's not a randomly tacked-on mechanic, but has meaningful and intuitive interplay with other mechanics in the game.

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.

I think some of the more involved things you suggest (venting compartments, detailed repairs, jettisonning engines, etc) would be more in place in a game that's focused on a single ship.

I really dig the idea of being able to have my bombers target specific sub-systems.  Takes me back to Homeworld.  An interesting thing about Homeworld was that subsystems had their own health bars so targeting the engines or a hanger was more difficult and didn't actually contribute to killing the target ship.  I'm sure some other mechansim could be applied to balance things such as shifting the extra energy gained from losing engines to the shields.  It kind of feels right to me.  I think there's a common theme in sci-fi where crippling an immense destroyer/cruiser doesn't get you a dead destroyer but just a super *** off one.

Of course, if the post-battle docking/looting is reminiscent of the Mechwarrior Mercenary games, killing big ships with precise attacks would yield you the best loot so it makes sense that there should be a risk vs. reward mechanic there.

[Darrow]

Thanks for the replies everyone

Been playing quite abit more recently and the one thing that is just driving me nuts is the huge Capital Ships/Huge Battleships just don't actually feel epic


I think theres a lack of fighters vs fighters fighting eachother between ships. They just simply die to fast and i think its more that they focus on big ships and not just fighteres. Where as id really like to see fighters mainly go for bombers and fighters instead of shooting other ships.


Not only that but in the Last Hurrah mission i simply just beatdown on the enemies huge battleships with my capital ship..... it was like 10 seconds of firing at eachother and they went boom.

I don't know but for me im just not liking how fast capital ships are dying... and the fact that all you have to do to disable bigger ships is shoot at them. I like the idea of flux and shields but man shields drop so fast.


The problem with capital ships right now is its more of a Beat ships down till the shields drop, shoot them for 5 seconds and ships go boom.

Theres not enough small tactics in fights. Where as you have you capital ship target the enemies engines or you have them disable the enemies shields. It's simple pound pound pound pound dead.

i really do like the smaller frigates, they feel quite right but i hope you can see my point with capital ships here or bigger destroyers/battleships. There's just a huge lack of a epic feel of two giant ships engaging eachother and it's too much of a pound eachothers shields down then kill them.


To be honest i personally don't think fighters and certain ships should even dent capital shields or their shields. I guess you could say i'm just completely against the simplicity of "Kill the shields, then shoot them" It's very repetitive and the fights arent feeling epic

[Avan]

I don't think that Fighters & other small PD/PD-like ships should do NO damage - I just think it should be inconsequential to a large ship (by use of exponential health curves vs. *shudder* /class-based damage adjustment/) IE - an Onslaught will have enough HP that the fighters can pound away at it with little pewpew guns and come off with only minimally ablated armor.

[Alex]

I really dig the idea of being able to have my bombers target specific sub-systems.

I like that idea too, but I think it's a case of the idea being more appealing than the reality of it. Can you imagine trying to manage targeting priorities for all the ships in a battle like that? I figures to be quite onerous.

Still, destructible weapons/engines etc are definitely on the table - I *do* like the idea - and we'll very likely try them at some point.

I don't think that Fighters & other small PD/PD-like ships should do NO damage - I just think it should be inconsequential to a large ship (by use of exponential health curves vs. *shudder* /class-based damage adjustment/) IE - an Onslaught will have enough HP that the fighters can pound away at it with little pewpew guns and come off with only minimally ablated armor.

That's already the case, though. A wing of Talons can fire away at an Onslaught for a *long* time and barely scratch it. However, once something stronger blows away the armor, weaker attacks hitting the breach do more damage. But large ships have nothing to worry about from interceptors, and to a large extent heavy fighters, unless there's a heavier can-opener around.


Overall, as I mentioned in another thread, capital ships will get a bit of armor/hull increase, in addition to the across-the-board shield improvements that are already in the current dev build.

In addition, you'll see some better loadouts. Frankly, the Onslaught in "The Last Hurrah" just isn't fitted very well. It's got lots of small-caliber guns and very few heavy hitters. I think I overestimated the difficulty of that mission, and toned the Onslaught loadouts down too much. So of course, when they're so toothless, it's just a matter of parking next to them and blowing them to bits.

[Admiral_Rom]

I don't know but for me im just not liking how fast capital ships are dying... and the fact that all you have to do to disable bigger ships is shoot at them. I like the idea of flux and shields but man shields drop so fast.
 
The problem with capital ships right now is its more of a Beat ships down till the shields drop, shoot them for 5 seconds and ships go boom.

I just signed up today after seeing the DIYGamer preview linked from a comment on Rock Paper Shotgun. I watched the videos and the game looked pretty awesome, even considering its an Alpha!

I havent tried playing it yet, but I just wanted to comment on the feedback from Darrow. I love playing space based games and was a big fan of Homeworld. I enjoyed Homeworld 2, but I didnt find the ship combat as satisfying as the first game because the ships felt a lot more "fragile" and died a lot faster.
 
Truly epic feeling combats between massive battleships should feel like slow ponderous affairs with lengthy broadsides traded on both sides. Theres two main advantages to this style of battle:
 
1) It feels more satisfying when you destroy enemy ships

2) The longer the combats, the more time you have for tactics and maneuvring to effect the outcome of the battle.

[Paradoxish]

I like that idea too, but I think it's a case of the idea being more appealing than the reality of it. Can you imagine trying to manage targeting priorities for all the ships in a battle like that? I figures to be quite onerous.

Have you considered something like a disable/disarm/destroy stance that can be set for particular battle groups? A battle group set to "disable" would always attempt to target engines while one set to "disarm" would always attempt to knock out weapon systems. Ye Olden Dayes space sims like Freespace used to allow squadmate commands like this and it never felt like too much micromanagement. I figure if you're going to bother having systems that can be destroyed with actual in-game effects you should provide the player with some way to take advantage of that, otherwise it seems like superfluous detail.

I think persistent stances like this might actually reduce micromanagement somewhat by allowing you to essentially set goals for certain ships or battle groups at the outset of a battle. Having battle groups of fighters/bombers with persistent disarm/disable orders would be incredibly useful.

[theShadow]

Indeed

Just more stances in general would be nice to have, such as a "defend" stance, where they will guard the flagship, a "suport" stance, where they will repair, refit, or generally assist other ships as necessary, etc.

[Alex]

Yeah, these are def. planned. Overall goal is to decrease micro and instead provide more flexible standing orders. The ship AI being what it is (i.e., more independent than your average RTS unit), it'll never respond to micro all that well anyway.