Ok, I'm not participating in CA, but I've been closely following Starbase developement and there's one thing really bothers me.
PROBLEM:
It's spaceship combat.
It is very primitive.
Just aim at a target and fire your cannons. And try to move chaotically to make your enemies job harder. That's it.
I'm sorry but this is kinda dumb. Same stuff that we've seen in Space engineers, Avorion and lots of other space/building games. Armor vs cannons. Ok, I get it that developers try avoid domination of "deathbricks" by limiting structure stress, energy management etc. but this doesn't seem to change the core gameplay. This only moves meta from super-heavy-dozens-of-cannons-ultra-heavy-ships to more nimble fighters.
Some people compare it to WW2 doghfights.. In WW2 dogfight you care about altitude advantage, your max speed, dive speed, turn time, maneuvering choices and a ton of other factors. Armor and armament is the last thing you care about. Starbase space combat is more like Call Of Duty, but with no obstacles or cover.
There's several core problems with it here:
1) It's just boring. There's not much to master. Aim+Lead+Shoot. That's all. Seriously, it's more primitive then the most primitive shooter.
2) There's seem to be no point in trying to invent/use different ship classes. Meta is always going to be the same optimal proportion of agility/armor/firepower.
3) There's not much to experiment with. There's no place for different roles/classes of ships. There's no point in experimenting with ship designs other then trying to maximise armor/cannons/agility characteristics of a ship. Or finding new meta balance of those characteristics after some patch.
Current meta might change if for example devs make multicrew possible. But they'll just move meta from fighters to gunships. This won't really change the basic problem of primitive gameplay.
SOLUTION EXAMPLE:
There's different design choices that can be made.
I'll make an example.
Please, do not focus on it. It's just an example to show that things can be different. I'm not insisting that it's the only way it should be.
1) Missiles become super-agile and only the most agile fighters can evade them. But they do little damage.
2) Cannons become very heavy. You have a cannon - you loose a lot of agility. And it becomes almost impossible to shoot small agile fighters with them.
3) Armor can withstand a lot of missile damage, but makes your ship very heavy as well. But it cannot hold incoming cannon fire.
As a result - there's no optimal meta build. You can have a nimble fighter that can fight with other fighters but can't do much to an armored ship. You can have a heavy armored ship that can't do much to a fighter. So a fleet might need some middle-ground ship that can on one hand evade heavy ship cannons (by trading armor protection for agility) and on the other - can penetrate their armor with a cannon. And of course this one should be protected by light fighters. Why do you need heavy armored ships? Maybe because that's your capital ship. Or it's an ore ship / freighter that is heavy anyway. Or it can boost your fleet somehow with some heavy onboard equipement. Come on, it's an example, not a design document) Etc.
You see? With these three changes we already start to think about different roles, fleet composition etc.
There's other things that can be done in order to make combat more deep, but with this thread I want to state that there is a problem. I don't want it to go into pointless discussion of solutions/our wishes that might never be implemented in the first place.
P.S. I'm not here to wine, I'm really impressed with what Starbase is trying to achieve and I'll buy it anyway. But the futher developement goes - the harder it is to alter some basic game design elements.
PROBLEM:
It's spaceship combat.
It is very primitive.
Just aim at a target and fire your cannons. And try to move chaotically to make your enemies job harder. That's it.
I'm sorry but this is kinda dumb. Same stuff that we've seen in Space engineers, Avorion and lots of other space/building games. Armor vs cannons. Ok, I get it that developers try avoid domination of "deathbricks" by limiting structure stress, energy management etc. but this doesn't seem to change the core gameplay. This only moves meta from super-heavy-dozens-of-cannons-ultra-heavy-ships to more nimble fighters.
Some people compare it to WW2 doghfights.. In WW2 dogfight you care about altitude advantage, your max speed, dive speed, turn time, maneuvering choices and a ton of other factors. Armor and armament is the last thing you care about. Starbase space combat is more like Call Of Duty, but with no obstacles or cover.
There's several core problems with it here:
1) It's just boring. There's not much to master. Aim+Lead+Shoot. That's all. Seriously, it's more primitive then the most primitive shooter.
2) There's seem to be no point in trying to invent/use different ship classes. Meta is always going to be the same optimal proportion of agility/armor/firepower.
3) There's not much to experiment with. There's no place for different roles/classes of ships. There's no point in experimenting with ship designs other then trying to maximise armor/cannons/agility characteristics of a ship. Or finding new meta balance of those characteristics after some patch.
Current meta might change if for example devs make multicrew possible. But they'll just move meta from fighters to gunships. This won't really change the basic problem of primitive gameplay.
SOLUTION EXAMPLE:
There's different design choices that can be made.
I'll make an example.
Please, do not focus on it. It's just an example to show that things can be different. I'm not insisting that it's the only way it should be.
1) Missiles become super-agile and only the most agile fighters can evade them. But they do little damage.
2) Cannons become very heavy. You have a cannon - you loose a lot of agility. And it becomes almost impossible to shoot small agile fighters with them.
3) Armor can withstand a lot of missile damage, but makes your ship very heavy as well. But it cannot hold incoming cannon fire.
As a result - there's no optimal meta build. You can have a nimble fighter that can fight with other fighters but can't do much to an armored ship. You can have a heavy armored ship that can't do much to a fighter. So a fleet might need some middle-ground ship that can on one hand evade heavy ship cannons (by trading armor protection for agility) and on the other - can penetrate their armor with a cannon. And of course this one should be protected by light fighters. Why do you need heavy armored ships? Maybe because that's your capital ship. Or it's an ore ship / freighter that is heavy anyway. Or it can boost your fleet somehow with some heavy onboard equipement. Come on, it's an example, not a design document) Etc.
You see? With these three changes we already start to think about different roles, fleet composition etc.
There's other things that can be done in order to make combat more deep, but with this thread I want to state that there is a problem. I don't want it to go into pointless discussion of solutions/our wishes that might never be implemented in the first place.
P.S. I'm not here to wine, I'm really impressed with what Starbase is trying to achieve and I'll buy it anyway. But the futher developement goes - the harder it is to alter some basic game design elements.
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