Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: [1] 2

Author Topic: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)  (Read 10330 times)

Avan

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1399
  • Pioneer of Starfarer Modding
    • View Profile
    • DevDB forums
telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« on: May 19, 2011, 03:52:49 PM »

There needs to be a better way to tell in-game (as opposed to in-warroom) via the UI what missiles you need to dodge or raise your shields for. Ships too, but they are less of a concern, given both that you usually do not have the same ships on either side of the battle in missions.

Dark.Revenant

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2806
    • View Profile
    • Sc2Mafia
Re: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« Reply #1 on: May 19, 2011, 11:02:19 PM »

Add paint.  It's a bit of work to go back and make masks for all of the ships but the end result would be pretty sexy (especially with a custom paint editor for your individual variants).
Logged

David

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 909
    • View Profile
Re: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« Reply #2 on: May 20, 2011, 12:42:28 AM »

Add paint.  It's a bit of work to go back and make masks for all of the ships but the end result would be pretty sexy (especially with a custom paint editor for your individual variants).

I did do a mockup for that very idea a long time ago but it didn't look very good -- maybe because it was a rather hasty mockup.

It might still have to happen in some form, but I think we rather hope to not have to do it this way. Could do another mockup. Alex? :)
Logged

mendonca

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1159
    • View Profile
Re: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« Reply #3 on: May 20, 2011, 01:18:35 AM »

Ships too, but they are less of a concern, given both that you usually do not have the same ships on either side of the battle in missions.

Not sure what the answer is (I'll leave it to those brighter than me) but when you start forming your own fleet, the nature of the campaign (at least as I imagine it - limited technology, civilisation in decline) would mean you end up collecting a rag-tag bunch of hulls - making the best you can of what you get (at least as you start to build your fleet).

In this regard, it could be of more value to discriminate between sides on ships, as well as missiles and such, as there may not be the general HI-TECH vs. MIDLINE vs. LO-TECH that exists in the current missions.
Logged


"I'm doing it, I'm making them purple! No one can stop me!"

Avan

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1399
  • Pioneer of Starfarer Modding
    • View Profile
    • DevDB forums
Re: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« Reply #4 on: May 20, 2011, 06:38:32 AM »

Discriminating against missiles and torpedoes is the bigger issue, moreso than the ships, at least for the moment.

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« Reply #5 on: May 20, 2011, 08:48:50 AM »

For ships, it is fairly easy to tell now - you can see the icon color before they show up on-screen, and any friendlies on-screen have a permanent hull+flux overlay. I'm inclined to say that's enough, though if it turns out that it's not when the fleets are highly mixed, I'm of course open to doing more about it.

For missiles, it's definitely a problem. I think adding them to the radar ribbon around the edge of the screen will be sufficient - you'll know whether they're friendly or not as they're coming up. If that turns out not to be enough, might have to try something else.
Logged

Fishbreath

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 37
    • View Profile
Re: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« Reply #6 on: May 20, 2011, 09:27:59 AM »

The radar ribbon can already get a bit cluttered, though, in a big fight.
Logged

BlacKcuD

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 6
    • View Profile
Re: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« Reply #7 on: May 20, 2011, 10:41:45 AM »

add an ingame tooltip or blinking red speech bubble to the missle as they come in flying towards your flagship or even larger allied vessels near you.

And with all these changes: just do an option in the main settings dialog to turn this feature on and off.

It might even add to the atmosphere of a big battle if you fly into a hornets nest and suddenly all of your screen is blinking red and you are like "uhoh...". as opposed to just suddenly eating a bunch of pixels and then dying for no apparent reason (the newbie look at things).
Logged

tinsoldier

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 144
    • View Profile
Re: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« Reply #8 on: May 20, 2011, 11:08:40 AM »

Discriminating against missiles and torpedoes is the bigger issue, moreso than the ships, at least for the moment.

I liked the ROMs you could get in Transcendence to upgrade your screen/overlay.  I never made it very far so I don't know how advanced they got but even the basic ones were pretty handy.  A similar mechanism that provides a handful of different ways to differentiate between friendly and enemy missiles might be a fun mechanic.  Specific subsystems in ships could be used for this too, e.g. radar/lidar/trek-sensor type things for doing FOF detection, detecting cloaked ships and long range scanning.  Mechwarrior had the concept of heat signatures versus relative size and vehicle type detection based on range.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« Reply #9 on: May 20, 2011, 07:08:30 PM »

The radar ribbon can already get a bit cluttered, though, in a big fight.

Yeah, will have to be careful about that.
Logged

Darrow

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 68
    • View Profile
Re: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« Reply #10 on: May 20, 2011, 09:17:40 PM »

Simple fix to friendly and enemy missiles is changing the colour trail.

So enemy missiles could be a Vibrant red, and friendlies the default colour.

or vice versa?
Logged

The Old Farmer

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 12
    • View Profile
Re: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« Reply #11 on: May 20, 2011, 10:07:20 PM »

I was thinking the same thing, red for enemy missles & TORPS and blue for friendly fire. Simple and easy to recognize.
Logged

Dark.Revenant

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2806
    • View Profile
    • Sc2Mafia
Re: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« Reply #12 on: May 20, 2011, 10:14:46 PM »

Small/faint red brackets around the enemy missiles would probably be a better solution than a trail for the realistic look they've got going.
Logged

Avan

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1399
  • Pioneer of Starfarer Modding
    • View Profile
    • DevDB forums
Re: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« Reply #13 on: May 20, 2011, 10:21:57 PM »

I was thinking of something some along the lines of those circles they had back in an earlier video around ships; brackets would probably be viable as well. I don't think that colored trials would be that fitting either.

Letsparty

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 10
    • View Profile
Re: telling friendlies from enemies (especially missiles)
« Reply #14 on: May 21, 2011, 12:12:38 AM »

a simple way to identify friendly missile is to add an overlay indicator similar to the ones for friendly ships
instead of flux and hull just add a small green missile icon (possibly in the orientation of the actual missile)
Logged
The sniper rifle. For when you want to reach out and touch someone.
WARNING objects in sniper scope may appear closer then they actually are.
Pages: [1] 2