Poll: Camera

[Vic]

If the camera ran at a rate similar to standard Yolol chips (1 frame per second), I wouldn't be opposed to it. A 1 fps camera would allow you to armor up cockpits and close off windows, but not work for any sort of effective aiming device.

Actually that would make it 0.5 fps since a yolol chip runs a command every 2 seconds. And you could potentially increase fps by staggering the refresh of multiple cameras placed next to each other.

Anyhow I'm against cameras, more in favor of making things more hands on for players than showering them with convenience. Besides, it's not like convenience isn't already part of the deal: if you want to land properly you can already program a chip to do it for you based off a beacon in your base or maybe even coordinates. Also if you're landing manually, seeing in the direction you are moving and knowing where your ship is relative to a station you are docking to are two seperate things. Just letting people figure it out on their own and try to be good or bad at it seems more rewarding and fun.

Cameras would be insanely useful in large ships, since the whole crew can't be everywhere at once. If someone boards your ship or a segment breaks, cameras would allow a player to pinpoint the disturbance and go there, without spending any time searching for that one single wire break in a maze of a ship.

Just a thought but if you're running a maze of a ship with skeleton crew you probably deserve every second of the time it takes you to locate that boarder.

 

[Eranok]

'convenience' is the best way to destroy this game's major selling point, which is its sandbox / DIY side.

 

[Unlucky]

'convenience' is the best way to destroy this game's major selling point, which is its sandbox / DIY side.

A bit of a contradictory statement since the game encourages you to build to achieve convenience.

Don't want to hand build components? Automate a factory.
Have a sequence of events you want to run? Program it in YOLOL to function off a single button press.
Hell, don't want to fly your ship? Setup a receiver and have it autopilot.

Cameras are not defined as convenience. They are a tool like the rest that can be used in conjunction for the sake of convenience.

 

[Eranok]

I got your point Unlucky, it makes sense
Aside from the sandbox, the other main argument is the MMO side.

If teammates can replace cameras, I feel like it aligns better with the game.

Also, I would launch alpha/beta with the game as barebone as possible, see what players do, how it feels, and consider things like cameras after.

 

[Quinc]

I am opposed to the idea that every ship should have a specific, singular area where you need to focus your shots. I get the impression that those who are anti-camera are afraid of an armored cube with no singular feature that screams "shoot here".

Large ships like the Centurio present a notable target with their command bridge, but when protected appropriately that size also obfuscates the individual role that every unit on the bridge plays, and targeting (say) the navigator out of a half dozen stations is going to be no easy feat for a fighter...
I'm all for adding options, but cameras detract from the pool of variety more than they add to it.

Ironically this highlights why I am opposed to the idea that every single ship needs an external bridge/cockpit. You should have to think about which feature you need to shoot first, and the answer shouldn't be obvious. So the most obvious weak spots should also be the easiest to protect, but ultimately everything should be rather vulnerable. Each hit should have a noticeable effect, and adding armor merely increases the number of hits necessary to disable. I also believe in a smooth continuum between a fully functional ship and a fully destroyed ship.

Ideally there would be a balance between external and internal cockpits with cameras. There are many factors involved and achieving balance is inherently difficult and risky. There is a chance that you will not be any balance, but simply giving up on the idea of balance will have the same effect of detracting from the pool or variety.

'convenience' is the best way to destroy this game's major selling point, which is its sandbox / DIY side.

I think this can become a dangerous false dichotomy in most areas. Though it might be true with cameras. Convenience has to be balanced with other things, but humans like convenience so you need a clear example of how other features are being destroyed. Would be "inconvenient" option feel challenging or frustrating?

 

[Lionard Freezer]

(i sadly dont know how to make quotes so dont judge me)
Quinc there will most likely be no real convenience in this game which isnt made from players (or so it seams for now)
but i get your point. its like with the ship editor and blueprints. the way the devs set it up is quite what you said you wanted: a balance of convenients and inconvenients. the question is how to implement cameras without breaking some of the games most important points (first person only, DIY aspect,etc)

 

[dusty]

I am opposed to the idea that every ship should have a specific, singular area where you need to focus your shots. I get the impression that those who are anti-camera are afraid of an armored cube with no singular feature that screams "shoot here".

eh, not really. In reality, I don't think the bridge is an especially vital part of any ship, given proper redundancies, and armor cubes are a ridiculous concept anyways.

Ironically this highlights why I am opposed to the idea that every single ship needs an external bridge/cockpit. You should have to think about which feature you need to shoot first, and the answer shouldn't be obvious. So the most obvious weak spots should also be the easiest to protect, but ultimately everything should be rather vulnerable. Each hit should have a noticeable effect, and adding armor merely increases the number of hits necessary to disable. I also believe in a smooth continuum between a fully functional ship and a fully destroyed ship.

Of course, but you can build an internal bridge (or a convertible bridge) even without cameras. Large ships aren't likely to be performing any intense maneuvers during combat, and so they don't necessarily need real-time visuals of their surroundings - and if they do, you can always rely on other players acting as spotters, and eventually radar, etcetera. In the end, the only difference between cockpits/bridges and cameras is that the latter are easier to hide and proliferate, and can be armored more readily.

For me, the problem is that a camera is inarguably better than all of its alternatives, unless it's purposefully flawed as per the second option of the poll. With a completely unrestricted camera, there's no room for variety in ship design for things like radar, cockpits, bridges, etcetera: if you want an effective ship, military or otherwise, it will almost invariably dictate having a number of cameras that all feed down to a secured CIC. To me, that's less interesting than encouraging interesting cockpit or bridge designs.

 

[Naija]

My concern over cameras is the possibility of them being used to make auto-aiming weapons. Reminds me of atlas where you had AI crew doing all the shooting. The shooting is the fun part for the player base. If you add the capability for weapons to be auto aimed that would be superior to crew then it takes away a lot of fun from the game. Also as others have said, cameras would lend to super tanky ship designs as there may be little need for a command bridge. My vote is no, or if they are put in. let them be extremely limited in refresh rate.

 

[Quinc]

I guess a big question is how easy should it be to see what is going on around you? This answers the question for a lot of potential features: 3rd person view, camera devices, sensor devices, radar, internal displays. Low visibility has a certain feel. If you need to get up and look around your ship to see what is happening, or can't quite tell who is behind you, you see flashes in the distance and know someone is shooting someone but not who is friend or foe, or need to engineer a system just to warn you when you are about to bump into something, etc. I do prefer actually seeing things. I mentioned challenging vs. frustrating earlier. Frustrating is bad, it makes players leave the game. Any difficulty that could be attributed to "I don't understand why that happened. How was I supposed to know?" seems like a frustrating kind of difficulty. Rangefinders and radar and descriptions from your friends aren't as good as seeing the thing. All of these information gathering devices represent options to solve the information problem, ideally all of them at the same time. There is a point where maybe you give the player too much information, but I would draw that line between 3rd person view and having camera devices.

It's not implausible that there's an armor that can stop a rail gun round in its tracks, or another that is particularly resistant to explosives.

Actually it is infact implausible because the developers are not stupid. There are ways to balance armor that don't involve cameras nor anything to do with visibility. Armor means more cost and weight in of itself. More weight means either less speed, or more structure & engines & reactors. If super heavy armor is overpowered then eventually the developers will nerf it, or buff armor piercing weapons.

As to balancing cameras with weapons or countermeasures that disable them: well, then you're just implementing a meta. ... This isn't necessarily that different from requiring a physical line of sight, ie glass cockpits, but while both a cockpit and a camera present similar benefits, the cockpit is less of a simple target. ... but is a ship bristling with cameras really an interesting design?

The difference is that with one has have cameras and camera meta, and in the other the game lacks these two features. Balancing things is hard. The developers might decide it isn't worth the time and money when they realize that they both have to implement it and balance it. This is true of any potential feature. A good camera meta would result in a mix of ships with cameras, and ships with external cockpits, and ships with both.
Yes I think a ship bristling with cameras can be an interesting design. See above. Yes large ships need to move around and maneuver and see what is going on and sometimes spotters are not available. A ship with more people aboard should be more effective than a ship with less, but the ship with less should still be possible. If you need multiple human beings to see in every direction then in general have has terrible visibility. See above.

My concern over cameras is the possibility of them being used to make auto-aiming weapons.

Naija, cameras would not be able to do that. Auto-aiming weapons would require a device that passes the enemy's position into YOLOL code. Auto-aiming weapons would be limited by the 0.2 second delay between each line of YOLOL code. I don't see how cameras would do that. Cameras capture an image and you need a human player to interpret that image. Either that image replaces the view from your ingame head on your real life screen, or you have in game screens that show what the camera sees.

(i sadly dont know how to make quotes so dont judge me)
Quinc there will most likely be no real convenience in this game which isnt made from players (or so it seams for now)
but i get your point. its like with the ship editor and blueprints. the way the devs set it up is quite what you said you wanted: a balance of convenients and inconvenients. the question is how to implement cameras without breaking some of the games most important points (first person only, DIY aspect,etc)

Go to the post, look in the lower right, "Reply" immediately puts the quote in the reply box. "Quote" creates a list and then you can click "Insert quotes..." in the lower left. Either way you get the text of the post with some special code marked in brackets [ ] at the beginning and end. You can actually change the text of the quote, but obviously that can be dishonest. I wouldn't mess with the code.

My point about convenience is that if you look at specific activities or experiences they can be very frustrating, or annoying, or tedious. Computer games should be the opposite of frustrating, annoying, and tedious. So you have to ask why players must do that specific thing, why is that specific thing important to the rest of the game, and how it could be changed. Example: Travel time is a fundamental part of the game, but it can also be tedious. So the developers added a very limited form of teleportation. I don't think you can implement teleportation with YOLOL code, so it is done with the insurance terminal. See "Station Features" video. You still need travel time when moving ships or cargo.

 

[dusty]

Actually it is infact implausible because..

I just wanna point out real fast: that's.. exactly what I said?

Low visibility has a certain feel. If you need to get up and look around your ship to see what is happening, or can't quite tell who is behind you, you see flashes in the distance and know someone is shooting someone but not who is friend or foe, or need to engineer a system just to warn you when you are about to bump into something, etc. .. Frustrating is bad, it makes players leave the game.. Rangefinders and radar and descriptions from your friends aren't as good as seeing the thing. All of these information gathering devices represent options to solve the information problem, ideally all of them at the same time.

I can't disagree that frustrating mechanics are bad, but I don't see the lack of cameras as an inherently frustrating thing - or at least, not in those scenarios. Most of the ships we've seen so far have had good visibility from the cockpit(s), and with a proper crew you've got coverage to know what's around you. Talking with your crew like this may not seem to be the most efficient, but that's a theme that's continuous with many aspects of the game: Why do we need to manually reload a ship weapon, instead of just pressing 'R' and waiting 3.5 seconds? Why don't plates just stick to beams, instead of needing to be bolted? Why is there no built-in GPS system? Communications is central to teamwork; Starbase seems focused on that, and I think it's been well-received that each role requires some portion of a dedicated crew to maximize effectiveness.

As for bumping into things: So far, low speed collision damage seems pretty negligible. That changes at speed, of course, but if you're zipping through a dense asteroid field you've probably accepted the risk of blitzing your ship at any moment.

A good camera meta would result in a mix of ships with cameras, and ships with external cockpits, and ships with both.
Yes I think a ship bristling with cameras can be an interesting design. Yes large ships need to move around and maneuver and see what is going on and sometimes spotters are not available. A ship with more people aboard should be more effective than a ship with less, but the ship with less should still be possible. If you need multiple human beings to see in every direction then in general have has terrible visibility.

Sure, I'd be fine with an implementation that yielded no clear-cut meta favoring one way or another. It'd be cool to see ships utilizing bridges, and others with a decked out CIC.. But I don't think you'd see that variety with cameras that have no downsides, aside from being somewhat more difficult to hit. A camera system without flaws is simply too powerful to not utilize, regardless of what their intention may be. Now, if we're talking low refresh rate, or low resolution, or low range cameras? That sounds like an alright compromise to me.

Obviously, large ships need to maneuver, but we've seen no situation where they can't. Large ships shouldn't try to fly through the densest parts of the asteroid belt, nor move particularly fast near a crowded station. Plus, frankly, large ships shouldn't be brought out without a sufficient crew to man its stations; especially as we've been told that a ship as large as the Centurio can be minimally manned with a crew of just eight, which is hardly a big ask for a ship that costs over forty-five million credits in materials alone. Your crew is a multiplier, not a hindrance.

 

[Tatakai]

Anyone who is against cameras/third person view has never tried to park a large ship in Space Engineers or Star Citizen in first person only. It is incredibly difficult, even with cameras available (in SE). Go look at the SC reddit; tons of players who insist on flying in first person only (because immersion), complaining about landing large ships. It's definitely do-able, I can do it, but for a new player it will bring A LOT of frustration.

And you cannot use YOLOL/range finder auto-parking as a cop out. Not everyone knows how to program, and IMO it would be incredibly tedious to have to ensure every ship I fly has a YOLOL chip and range finder, just for parking my ship.

I would much rather see ship TPP implemented, but I will settle for cameras.

 

[Unlucky]

The argument against cameras is an extrapolated one.
The only fact here is that the game can be balanced with a fully fledged, non-gutted camera. If only for the reason that the inverse of that statement is that it's impossible to balance the game with normal cameras, which is false.

 

[dusty]

Anyone who is against cameras/third person view has never tried to park a large ship in Space Engineers or Star Citizen in first person only.

And you cannot use YOLOL/range finder auto-parking as a cop out. Not everyone knows how to program, and IMO it would be incredibly tedious to have to ensure every ship I fly has a YOLOL chip and range finder, just for parking my ship.

I would much rather see ship TPP implemented, but I will settle for cameras.

I've parked ships in Space Engineers without third person, and it was pretty much fine once I got used to the controls (and gravity, if applicable). Granted, cameras are a boon in that situation, and it's for that (sole) reason that I'd be okay with the compromised implementation. Sometimes, you just need to find a little wiggle room.

The nice thing about Starbase is that everything has a market, and not knowing how to program doesn't mean you have to be in the dark. Players can contract their services, including designing and installing rangefinders for whatever purpose; or they can sell pre-built modules, that other players need only bolt into their ships. These are solutions that encourage player interaction that ought to be explored first, before solving the problem with another mechanic.

As for ship-wide third-person perspective: I think you're out of luck there.

The argument against cameras is an extrapolated one.
The only fact here is that the game can be balanced with a fully fledged, non-gutted camera.

Of course the argument is extrapolated: all of the arguments are projections until actual gameplay experience is obtained, including those both for and against cameras. Many of us still disagree with your factoid.

 

[Unlucky]

Of course the argument is extrapolated: all of the arguments are projections until actual gameplay experience is obtained, including those both for and against cameras. Many of us still disagree with your factoid.

Okay so you are aware that you know nothing. And if features discussed on this forum happen to be in game it would be by happenstance alone.

That said, to disagree with my latter statement is to state that you know that implementation of a traditional camera will fundamentally break the game no matter how it is balanced, which contradicts your former.

To break it down since you seem a little out of your depth, you're saying "I don't know anything.. but this is what I know, so this is what needs to be done."

 

[dusty]

Okay so you are aware that you know nothing. And if features discussed on this forum happen to be in game it would be by happenstance alone.

That said, to disagree with my latter statement is to state that you know that implementation of a traditional camera will fundamentally break the game no matter how it is balanced, which contradicts your former.

To break it down since you seem a little out of your depth, you're saying "I don't know anything.. but this is what I know, so this is what needs to be done."

Huh. If you've misinterpreted my input and considerations on the matter at hand as statements of fact, then I can see why you might be aggravated; either way, I'm sorry that this seems to have caused you such distress. Nevertheless, please try to maintain some decorum - this is a public forum for discussion, after all.

That aside, I'd like to clarify my position, so as to at least contribute something of substance to the topic: While I'm not a game developer - and I'm certainly not aware of all the intricacies that Frozenbyte should consider when debating features like these - I do think it's a simpler thing to delay a feature and implement it at a later date, than it is to add a feature, and then (potentially) need to perform critical re-balancing or even wholesale removal at some time post-launch. For this reason, and considering (again) that all of this is purely speculative discussion, I don't think it's too much to consider waiting until some time after launch to decide if cameras are really necessary to the game, and to what extent. It may turn out that Starbase is perfectly enjoyable without them.

 

[Unlucky]

Huh. If you've misinterpreted my input and considerations on the matter at hand as statements of fact, then I can see why you might be aggravated; either way, I'm sorry that this seems to have caused you such distress. Nevertheless, please try to maintain some decorum - this is a public forum for discussion, after all.

That aside, I'd like to clarify my position, so as to at least contribute something of substance to the topic: While I'm not a game developer - and I'm certainly not aware of all the intricacies that Frozenbyte should consider when debating features like these - I do think it's a simpler thing to delay a feature and implement it at a later date, than it is to add a feature, and then (potentially) need to perform critical re-balancing or even wholesale removal at some time post-launch. For this reason, and considering (again) that all of this is purely speculative discussion, I don't think it's too much to consider waiting until some time after launch to decide if cameras are really necessary to the game, and to what extent. It may turn out that Starbase is perfectly enjoyable without them.

Sling an insult and then create the façade of a moral high ground and innocence, while backpedaling your argument. It’s a worn out tactic.. but hey if you want to victimize yourself then you do you.

There is an established need for this feature. Besides the points suggested by people on these forums, we have creative license to expand on that further. I will leave you with this; let people be a driving force for implementation of new ideas. You may be surprised to find that the majority of folks want to have fun when playing and forward these suggestions with good intentions.

Let Frozenbyte sift through and deal with the necessary balancing of those they choose to include, because at this point they’re the only ones who know what the big picture impact will be. The negative input from the community thrashing an idea would be more forgivable if we had specifics, but we don’t.

You’re absolutely right however. Not putting things in the game is easier than putting things in the game. I will give you that.

 

[dusty]

Sling an insult and then create the façade of a moral high ground and innocence, while backpedaling your argument. It’s a worn out tactic.. but hey if you want to victimize yourself then you do you.

I'm sorry, but.. what? I had to read through the thread again just to make sure I hadn't missed something, or otherwise made a statement that could be construed poorly. Up until last night, this thread was on-topic and populated with meaningful discussion, and nobody was 'slinging insults'. I genuinely have no idea where you're coming from.

There is an established need for this feature. Besides the points suggested by people on these forums, we have creative license to expand on that further. I will leave you with this; let people be a driving force for implementation of new ideas. You may be surprised to find that the majority of folks want to have fun when playing and forward these suggestions with good intentions.

I disagree on the need for cameras, but I do think many people want them, yes; and believe it or not, I think that the majority of the people here have no intention of creating scenarios that detract from gameplay experience (see: 'death cubes' and the like). What I don't believe is that the implementation of a flaw-less camera can lead to anything but the funnel-like meta of 'cameras, and ways to counter cameras', that will become so intrinsic to ship-building that it all but eliminates concepts that do not conform to it.

You’re absolutely right however. Not putting things in the game is easier than putting things in the game. I will give you that.

This is a disingenuous reduction of what I've said, and you know it.

 

[Eranok]

let people be a driving force for implementation of new ideas. You may be surprised to find that the majority of folks want to have fun when playing and forward these suggestions with good intentions.

Let Frozenbyte sift through and deal with the necessary balancing

Its pretty much the opposite.
In general, players are the worst game/feature designers and the best balance / bugs analysts

 

[STEALTH]

IF they bothered would cams I'd say only for the purpose of docking. Perhaps a device on that area that would activate the cam but nothing that would allow TPP during typical flight and/or combat. I get instant thoughts of the lunacy that was found in Empryion as a result of TPP Flight and something tells me many would instantly go that route if it entered this game.

 

[Killer_Rabbit]

I think a good idea would be to have the camera in black and white. Secondly I think it should only be shown on a physical in game screen rather than the players HUD and finally it should require a lot of power and a receiver of some sort that is maybe quite large and has to connect directly to the screen