Gunships
- Thread starter LauriFB
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To focus more on the multicrew direction mentioned, I've always felt a sense of disappointment in how gun turrets have been handled in other titles. While immersive your impact was difficult to measure when shooting on Gun's of Icarus until ships were visibly on fire. On the other hand, there is Elite Dangerous' Gunner role which rips away the sense of immersion with a 3rd person perspective of the ship that has no pivot point leaving a sense of clunkiness. However, if you have ever used their ship-launched fighters that is the kind of experience that people have longed for out of the multicrew gunner role.
To elaborate, having a cockpit console that allows spawning into one of the various gimballed turrets on a ship for a more intimate weapon/gunner relationship would feel amazing. As if every player can become a ship's R2D2/gunner. Additionally, similar to the ship-launched fighters in Elite Dangerous, being returned to the cockpit because of the wing going down really sinks the sense of intensity while still being forgiving. Unless you are trying to maximize the silliness gamer's enjoy when attempting to capitalize on shooting their personal weaponry while standing on a ship/plane. The problem has always been the set-up time so a spawn system becomes crucial still.
To elaborate, having a cockpit console that allows spawning into one of the various gimballed turrets on a ship for a more intimate weapon/gunner relationship would feel amazing. As if every player can become a ship's R2D2/gunner. Additionally, similar to the ship-launched fighters in Elite Dangerous, being returned to the cockpit because of the wing going down really sinks the sense of intensity while still being forgiving. Unless you are trying to maximize the silliness gamer's enjoy when attempting to capitalize on shooting their personal weaponry while standing on a ship/plane. The problem has always been the set-up time so a spawn system becomes crucial still.
This makes me think of another aspect of large ships that we haven't been able to test at all. Ammunition.
None of the battles have been long enough to require reloading of any weapons, giving fighters with difficult to reach magazines equal footing as gunships with ammo stores and accessible magazines. It could be that fighters become much less useful once battles become larger than a few ships since fighters will run out of ammo and need to leave the battle to resupply.
None of the battles have been long enough to require reloading of any weapons, giving fighters with difficult to reach magazines equal footing as gunships with ammo stores and accessible magazines. It could be that fighters become much less useful once battles become larger than a few ships since fighters will run out of ammo and need to leave the battle to resupply.
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So you realized that Gunships are utterly useless, and instead of making anything that would ease up aiming, or a turret buff you decided to neuter gunships even more by replacing the current turrets (wich are while hard to aim do decent damage, and fully utalize all the great features such as yolol engineering) with a freakin' pea shooter?
Now please do tell me what the actual hell???
Now please do tell me what the actual hell???
@Zaff
The main problem with turntables, or how game development call them: joints are their uncontrollable behavior when they are attached on a dynamic object, like a ship. Having 1 of them is ok, having 2 is dangerous, 3 or more can go completely crazy, like SE rotors. Having forces go back and forth also loves to break the logic. When it comes to game developing and Physics, a general rule is "fake what you can".
PhysX 4.0 have awesome back-and-forth solver that makes hinges stable, according to the tech demos, but FB decided to roll with a custom made physics engine, that is in early state (at the moment it doesn't even handle persistent contacts, like landing on the moon). Turrets might be possible later on, but currently the physics engine needs hella lot more work to make them possible.
The main problem with turntables, or how game development call them: joints are their uncontrollable behavior when they are attached on a dynamic object, like a ship. Having 1 of them is ok, having 2 is dangerous, 3 or more can go completely crazy, like SE rotors. Having forces go back and forth also loves to break the logic. When it comes to game developing and Physics, a general rule is "fake what you can".
PhysX 4.0 have awesome back-and-forth solver that makes hinges stable, according to the tech demos, but FB decided to roll with a custom made physics engine, that is in early state (at the moment it doesn't even handle persistent contacts, like landing on the moon). Turrets might be possible later on, but currently the physics engine needs hella lot more work to make them possible.
Lauri I am confused on what prevents the tripods from looking like turrets but functioning as they would in this new system? If a gunship is going to have static tripods integrated into the ship, how is it not possible to do that same thing with something that looks like a turret? The majority of the complaints are going to be that it looks ridiculous to have an endo standing there with a tripod on the side of a ship but him sitting in a turret doesn't, despite them being essentially the same thing.
It could even be the case that we have two types of turntables/cradles, one that is only controllable by the host ship and one that is only controllable by an attached player.
The rationale of moving the gun to the gunner's client instead of allowing another player to host it makes complete sense because it eliminates latency issues causing overturning. As far as the physics affecting a ship in bad ways, I am assuming that to resolve that the tripod has a static mass that doesn't move despite a player moving their gun around on it, so again why not just make current turrets do that? The turrets are under the control of the gunner and their mass is a fixed amount at a fixed point on the turret regardless of any movement, which is again how I assume the tripod is sidestepping the issues you mentioned.
It could even be the case that we have two types of turntables/cradles, one that is only controllable by the host ship and one that is only controllable by an attached player.
The rationale of moving the gun to the gunner's client instead of allowing another player to host it makes complete sense because it eliminates latency issues causing overturning. As far as the physics affecting a ship in bad ways, I am assuming that to resolve that the tripod has a static mass that doesn't move despite a player moving their gun around on it, so again why not just make current turrets do that? The turrets are under the control of the gunner and their mass is a fixed amount at a fixed point on the turret regardless of any movement, which is again how I assume the tripod is sidestepping the issues you mentioned.
we have made a followup to the question on the discord in relation to what Nelerath has said. so far, best thing for what he said was not another turntable/cradle(because of the parent and child entity problem), but a larger tri pod that visually looks like a ship turret (real life i think he said in a way) than a Anti-Infantry/Vehicle looking tripod(maybe it can be used for.. other things?[talking about the infantry looking one]) as what they think is a endo on a tiny pole stand looks abit.. odd to them. though we are still debating it at this current minute/hour when the time that this was posted.
me: wants to see even more advanced turret building cos actually the current one is kinda boring
devs: just stick this lil thing on ur ship and have profit
also lets remove the big turrets why not to make out of slow useless gunships even bigger joke such as a damn tripod on ur small ship. is it a ww1 game about sticking a machinegun in pillbox?
I mean why not to make big turret stats better, make it smaller cos i think on current state the turret taking to much space and dealing not so much damage, the dps/volume is very low. Maybe make some kind of short guns, with lower accuracy but with bigger fire rate and a bit higher dps, and a big need of additional cooling and energy ? those guns will balance fighters and gunships cos if u try to put short gun on a fighter u will need some additional systems which will increase ship weight and general size (cos u need to protect systems), what means if you try to put those gun on fighter it automatically will transform into slow gunship.
devs: just stick this lil thing on ur ship and have profit
also lets remove the big turrets why not to make out of slow useless gunships even bigger joke such as a damn tripod on ur small ship. is it a ww1 game about sticking a machinegun in pillbox?
I mean why not to make big turret stats better, make it smaller cos i think on current state the turret taking to much space and dealing not so much damage, the dps/volume is very low. Maybe make some kind of short guns, with lower accuracy but with bigger fire rate and a bit higher dps, and a big need of additional cooling and energy ? those guns will balance fighters and gunships cos if u try to put short gun on a fighter u will need some additional systems which will increase ship weight and general size (cos u need to protect systems), what means if you try to put those gun on fighter it automatically will transform into slow gunship.
its not about the stats part that is the current problem, its the physics themselves as well as network type. what the current issue is that the turntable's parent and child entities (parent entity being the turntable stator and child entity being the rotor plate itself) either constantly dysync due to different player users, or pops off due to physics calculations. what the tri pods are (and yes they look rather.. wierd and dumb in terms of looks) is that tripod weapons are node based entities. they have no parent or child entity, thus endoskeletons can control them with a mouse and not have any sort of delay. i do agree however, that the devs should not use Infantry-styled tripods, and instead make one that looks like a proper ship weapon turret thats just a reskinned tripod. and now finally. they wont be removing the turntable based weapons they can still be used but rather limited to stations as station defense. but lauri wont be responding in here until they are implimented. (heres proof): 12/22/2020 LauriFB: I'll continue gunship discussion once tripods and example gunships can be tested (and nothing will be removed/nerfed when they come).
I like this BUT current turrets have to stay, and maybe, just maybe, the correct solution is to make current turrets mouse-aimable.
No thicc armor will be able to withstand as much damage as the medium-large fighters we're seeing today, which have all fixed weapons.
Gunships need to have equal firepower + superior accuracy, to offset the lack of maneuverability and high cost to build.
A fighter could have turrets - but won't have the same amount of weaponry, because the current turrets are huge parts. That alone balances it already.
No thicc armor will be able to withstand as much damage as the medium-large fighters we're seeing today, which have all fixed weapons.
Gunships need to have equal firepower + superior accuracy, to offset the lack of maneuverability and high cost to build.
A fighter could have turrets - but won't have the same amount of weaponry, because the current turrets are huge parts. That alone balances it already.
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So, I was talking on the Starbase Engineering Conference server, and we were discussing this topic there. What I said was:
It was mentioned that some of the problem comes from the separation of the turret base and the turning plate when being used by different players. I think the idea I have is pretty straight forward in the quote. However, I'm bringing it here because we also talked about how in the engineering profession, you can use equivalent force and moment models to model a distributed mass as a point mass, or node here.
Popchip quoted Lauri saying he didn't want to use hacky physics. This is not hacky physics. This is how professionals simplify complex load distributions for ease of modeling. Bridges, aircraft, buildings, etc all use this method. While it would be neat to have distriubuted loads and all the fun that comes with that, this may help to reduce the load on the connections, and smooth out latency issues.
I had thought to make a new suggestion topic on this, but instead I put it here.
So if the dev team is unfamiliar with that methodology, I recommend looking it up. I think you guys are great, and maybe even looked at it this option before. None of us know what discussions you all have internally. But, this is likely how you're doing tripods essentially.
It was mentioned that some of the problem comes from the separation of the turret base and the turning plate when being used by different players. I think the idea I have is pretty straight forward in the quote. However, I'm bringing it here because we also talked about how in the engineering profession, you can use equivalent force and moment models to model a distributed mass as a point mass, or node here.
Popchip quoted Lauri saying he didn't want to use hacky physics. This is not hacky physics. This is how professionals simplify complex load distributions for ease of modeling. Bridges, aircraft, buildings, etc all use this method. While it would be neat to have distriubuted loads and all the fun that comes with that, this may help to reduce the load on the connections, and smooth out latency issues.
I had thought to make a new suggestion topic on this, but instead I put it here.
So if the dev team is unfamiliar with that methodology, I recommend looking it up. I think you guys are great, and maybe even looked at it this option before. None of us know what discussions you all have internally. But, this is likely how you're doing tripods essentially.
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We're as concerned as the devs about the drawbacks of these turntables and want them to work as much as they do. Adding the tripods isn't going to remove the fundamental problems with the existing turrets. So in addition to adding these tripods, the pursuit of solving the existing, and seemingly irreconcilable problems in current turret design is something we should all strive to brainstorm an effective solution to.
Taking the tech for the tripods, and converting it into something resembling the current turrets, for all intents and purposes, seems like an idea many are on board with. Usability by separate players, and being able to combine multiple weapons into one control set are major issues being put out there. Large ships can only be viable if they can outperform the smaller ones in some way. One of those ways is elaborate and accurate control schemes for weapons. Longer ranges, toughness, repairability, power generation, and resurrection being other major factors. Right now we have 4 of those, somewhat. Without effective weaponry though, they can't compete, or defend effectively, against a heavy fighter group.
My observations during the PvP events that just occurred show that heavy fighters reign supreme. Defining heavy fighters as small crew, or singular crew, vehicles, with heavy armor, lots of weaponry, and substantial staying power. They can do everything a large ship can do, but only require 1 or 2 players to do them, while competing with, and even dominating, smaller cheaper fighters used in a swarm.
Taking the tech for the tripods, and converting it into something resembling the current turrets, for all intents and purposes, seems like an idea many are on board with. Usability by separate players, and being able to combine multiple weapons into one control set are major issues being put out there. Large ships can only be viable if they can outperform the smaller ones in some way. One of those ways is elaborate and accurate control schemes for weapons. Longer ranges, toughness, repairability, power generation, and resurrection being other major factors. Right now we have 4 of those, somewhat. Without effective weaponry though, they can't compete, or defend effectively, against a heavy fighter group.
My observations during the PvP events that just occurred show that heavy fighters reign supreme. Defining heavy fighters as small crew, or singular crew, vehicles, with heavy armor, lots of weaponry, and substantial staying power. They can do everything a large ship can do, but only require 1 or 2 players to do them, while competing with, and even dominating, smaller cheaper fighters used in a swarm.
yeh, thats what ive been talking about before on the discord. if they make a larger tri pod that resembles a ship weapon stand module and not a.. infantry type of tripod then everything is fine. the reason why i said the "idk why you guys think it will be removed" is that they think they will remove the current existing turntable equipment in exchange for tripods (they are clearly not) so that is my clarification of what i said. and right now i think lauri needs to.. rephrase the entire thing as it drove some people on the wrong road.