Space combat is primitive?

[Venombrew]

i dont know what videos out there with gameplay of the actual players, but im in CA, and i have witnessed on a many instances of dog fights going down and it was anything but boring or primitive. descent sized agile fighters laying down gunfire while barrel rolling between large asteroids and other ship's debri floating out there. and anyone in CA can tell you a basketball size asteroid can jack up your whole trip, these guys were laying down some skill.

for those of you that think its all primitive and boring, players like that are gonna eat you alive! respect for those pilots!

 

[Neva]

i dont know what videos out there with gameplay of the actual players, but im in CA, and i have witnessed on a many instances of dog fights going down and it was anything but boring or primitive. descent sized agile fighters laying down gunfire while barrel rolling between large asteroids and other ship's debri floating out there. and anyone in CA can tell you a basketball size asteroid can jack up your whole trip, these guys were laying down some skill.

for those of you that think its all primitive and boring, players like that are gonna eat you alive! respect for those pilots!

I still can't see much difference from Space Engineers or Empyrion tbh.
Align your aim and shoot.
Gunfire effects, barell rolling and ship debris might look cool, but it's all the same base mechanics.

 

[Venombrew]

lol what are you looking for, because all these games ship combat is pretty much the same. sea of thieves, align your aim and shoot, planet side 2, align your aim and shoot, worlds adrift, align your aim and shoot. even in ship only combat games that have very little going on in in the need to render are basically map games that also align your aim and shoot with the exception of tracking. even as cool as the barrel rolling was, ive seen in all these other games as well, so honestly what are you looking for? cause when it comes to ship combat your only going to have so many mechanics anyway no matter how well its done. you only get 2 forms of combat when attacking in this scenario, aim firing or tracked firing. same with defensive and evasion, quick moves, shields and armor. since this is only alpha for another month we still got more forms of testing before the actual considered full release. and seeing how FB has already gave us tracking capabilties for mining, salvaging, towing, ship jacking(tractor beams got to love em), etc it be a matter of time our ship combat will have it too, locked on missles, etc. honestly outside of tracking and shields what else can they add that we dont already have, cause we got missles and torpedos. all is left is polishing these areas and expanding on their capabilities.

 

[Orlover]

This post is ONLY for anybody else reading this thread who has not gotten into CA but is wonder what combat in the game is like and if simply lining up a sight with another ship and clicking a button is boring. So here goes.

A few days ago during an event I was chasing Siga in my Mantis over the moons surface. Siga is a dev. Siga knows what the hell he/she is doing to put it mildly. Siga is using a ship WAY better than anything I can buy or make. Siga has helped me MANY times in my months of playing Starbase and has been great to talk to. I was absolutely determined to do everything in my power to put as many plasma rounds as I could into her/his ship and send that ship to the moons surface or AC rounds into Siga 's head cuz this is an event. My mantis-crusher was no slouch at all. It was probably the best ship out of the shops I could ask for during that event and while not nearly as good as anything dev or player made it would at least put up a fight unlike quite a few other shop ships. We were going full speed at each other and going into the usual dogfighting orbit, a lot of fights end up like this in an orbit around each other with both pilots trying to get an edge on turning or speed so they can line up a shot good enough to win. If you break off at the wrong time and try to run, you catch rounds into your butt and yer done. Turn too soon toward them and you might miss align your shot if you cant turn fast enough. Too late and they might score enough hits on you and take you out before you finish turning. Its a dance. We were heading right into each other, didnt even care if we hit each other and it was obvious. The event was just getting started and we had a lot of ships to go through still. Siga caught me on the next pass and my ship took some damage, wasnt even sure what it was at that moment. But I got some hits on his/her ship and down it went toward the moon, I followed and kept firing for a few seconds. Then my ship stopped responding, seems a fuel line or something got hit and I was not pulling up. A few seconds later we both hit the moon at good speed like we were trying to land. .........thing is, You don't really land on the moon, you are supposed to just float above it not hit at at 100KPH+. Touching the moon is no bueno. Both our ships had chunks flying off of them as they ground to a halt, must have been a hell of a sight for the people in SB channel watching the stream. As soon as my ship stopped I hopped out of my seat, took out my rocket launcher and sprinted to Siga's ship.
Siga WAS STILL IN THE SEAT!
There I am standing on the ship, rocket launcher out and all loaded, got Siga dead to rights. Unbelievable luck, this guys way better at this than I am. I'll never forget what happens next. "Kill me" Siga says over zone chat. *HES STUCK IN THE SEAT!* It happens sometimes when canopies and ships get all banged up, game wont let you out of the seat if it cant figure out where to put you. Have to relog to fix it. I fire the rocket launcher to send him back to the insurance terminal. *BOOM*.......Nothin. No parts flying off, no dead Siga , nothing. At first I raised my eyebrow like "bro you left your god mode on during an event?" Nope. See we had faught and fired and went around so much fighting during that whole thing that we had not noticed that when we crashed, we had slid.....all the way from the combat area to just over the safe zone border under the warp gate. Laughed a lot over that one.

Really weird thing is something similar happened again about an hour later with another player.

Now if combat like that is boring and repetitive for any of you out there, then I honestly can not old a conversation with you on the subject.

 

[XenoCow]

I have another interesting tale of strange combat.

During the last event (Territory Battle) I was one of the gunners on Phunky Monkey's ship. The turrets were all YOLOL controlled and were slow to turn. I had never used the YOLOL turrets before and so I hadn't understood the pain. Nevertheless, I did score some hits with my battery of slaved laser turrets.

Alas, it was not enough and soon we were dead in the space jelly. A couple fighters pulled up nearby and began shooting at us with plasma throwers, tearing the ship to shreds. My turret was destroyed so I hopped out and pulled out my rail gun, took aim at the cockpit of one of the fighters, and fired. The shooting stopped. I had killed the pilot. I turned to the other fighter and took a shot at it's cockpit too. I didn't kill that pilot but I spooked him or her enough to disengage.

Phunky Monkey had also somehow survived the onslaught but the ship we were on was not going anywhere anytime soon. I then flew over to the fighter I had first shot and, much to my amazement, was able to hop in and rejoin the battle (granted, I was not at all familiar with the ship, so did very poorly with it).

 

[Neva]

lol what are you looking for, because all these games ship combat is pretty much the same

Boring and primiteve. Yeah I know. But it doesn't have to be this way.
There's actually a lot can be done. Examples:
- Implement really long-ranged weapons (right now there's not much difference) so it would be possible to have two classes of ships: long-ranged snipers vs close-combat fighters. So in combat you'd have to think about range as well, fit ships to be as good as possible in their role and style of combat. Not just aim+shoot in a meta ship.
- Missiles. Right now they are trash and can only hit big slow ships. I've already posted a DCS video here, take a look. There's a lot more tactical maneuvering involved, A LOT. Not just lock+fire. You have to consider range, maneuver to bleed out enemies missile energy, decoy it, you should think about your radar angle limits, you can notch to disappear from enemies radar etc. etc.
- There's also an example in my first post.
Really, there's A LOT can be done to make battles more complex and deep.

 

[Neva]

This post is ONLY for anybody else reading this thread who has not gotten into CA but is wonder what combat in the game is like and if simply lining up a sight with another ship and clicking a button is boring. So here goes.

Well, tbh regarding combat you exactly described "simply lining up a sight with another ship and clicking a button".
A lot of words in intro, a lot of words after you hit each other, but the combat itself.. two loops around each other, two hits, end.

I have another interesting tale of strange combat.

Kinda the same here.
You was able to land a lucky shot.

Look guys, I get it that you can get into exciting situations in Starbase, get in combats with high stakes, get lucky shots etc.
But it doesn't change the core combat mechanics.
The problem is while anyone can get into theese interesting situations, imagine an average fighter pilot of a big fleet, dogfighting day after day. This aim+shoot style of gameplay soon becomes very VERY boring.
I've seen enought people in Space Engineers and Empyrion having this issue and I don't see why Starbase would differ.

 

[XenoCow]

Implement really long-ranged weapons

Personally I'd like to see this as well. It feels strange that weapon range is so much less than view distance.

 

[Venombrew]

Boring and primiteve. Yeah I know. But it doesn't have to be this way.
There's actually a lot can be done. Examples:
- Implement really long-ranged weapons (right now there's not much difference) so it would be possible to have two classes of ships: long-ranged snipers vs close-combat fighters. So in combat you'd have to think about range as well, fit ships to be as good as possible in their role and style of combat. Not just aim+shoot in a meta ship.
- Missiles. Right now they are trash and can only hit big slow ships. I've already posted a DCS video here, take a look. There's a lot more tactical maneuvering involved, A LOT. Not just lock+fire. You have to consider range, maneuver to bleed out enemies missile energy, decoy it, you should think about your radar angle limits, you can notch to disappear from enemies radar etc. etc.
- There's also an example in my first post.
Really, there's A LOT can be done to make battles more complex and deep.

dude you understand this is ALPHA right? you are aware how these testing stages work right? your complaining about a game that is literally stripped down to most of its barebones so devs can test issues with a very small percentage of players. the things you are asking for aren't even important right now, because what is the point if everything at its core is glitchy, buggy, unplayable even for the testers? you know how many crash supports ive personally submitted? did you really pay attention to @Orlover post, where he stated how Sigma was unable to even leave the cockpit after crashing because of some glitches we are still having. the things you asking for and trying to spin a negative look on the game isn't even important right now with issues like this. really what is all these extra features going to do for players who get stuck in their damn cockpit? trying to throw in all these extra mechanics and polish right now isn't going to help the development of this game right now. whats good with all these new machanics if the game can't even use them right now in this very very early stage of development?

if you ever been a tester of any project you would know that this post is so irrelevant right now at these stages. whats the point in cramming all these mechanics and features in when the devs are still working on maintaining the core part of the game that we currently have so far? this post of topic is way to early in the stages of the game, these are issues that need to be addressed much further down the road well into beta. they got to stress test the server with way more players to even know if the current model can handle what it already has before trying to add more, they still have a ingame currency to flesh out, social aspects of factions and companies to finish, auction house, combat both ship and endo, the list goes on. these things at its core need to be done first and foremost to be even have base version of the game. pretty much most testers would agree for cooler and more elaborate mechanics but they also know the game is defenitely not ready yet.

well maybe starbase isn't for you dude

 

[Neva]

well maybe starbase isn't for you dude

Why? Is it stated somewhere that devs are ok with current state of combat and are not going to change it?

 

[Venombrew]

no, but its like building a house where your more interested in having the roof shingled when the walls to hold the roof haven't even been erected yet.

 

[Neva]

Looks like you are arguing for the sake of argument.
First you said that combat is not boring, then you said that it's all the same for all similar games and nothing can be done about it and now you switch to "it's too early to discuss this stuff".

Nobody is asking to implement it ASAP.
It's a discussion.

trying to spin a negative look on the game

This is ridiculous. I don't see how your attitude of "Let us not discuss anything regarding game issues or it'll make game look bad" will help anyone.

 

[Walord]

dude you understand this is ALPHA right? you are aware how these testing stages work right? your complaining about a game that is literally stripped down to most of its barebones so devs can test issues with a very small percentage of players. the things you are asking for aren't even important right now, because what is the point if everything at its core is glitchy, buggy, unplayable even for the testers? you know how many crash supports ive personally submitted? did you really pay attention to @Orlover post, where he stated how Sigma was unable to even leave the cockpit after crashing because of some glitches we are still having. the things you asking for and trying to spin a negative look on the game isn't even important right now with issues like this. really what is all these extra features going to do for players who get stuck in their damn cockpit? trying to throw in all these extra mechanics and polish right now isn't going to help the development of this game right now. whats good with all these new machanics if the game can't even use them right now in this very very early stage of development?

if you ever been a tester of any project you would know that this post is so irrelevant right now at these stages. whats the point in cramming all these mechanics and features in when the devs are still working on maintaining the core part of the game that we currently have so far? this post of topic is way to early in the stages of the game, these are issues that need to be addressed much further down the road well into beta. they got to stress test the server with way more players to even know if the current model can handle what it already has before trying to add more, they still have a ingame currency to flesh out, social aspects of factions and companies to finish, auction house, combat both ship and endo, the list goes on. these things at its core need to be done first and foremost to be even have base version of the game. pretty much most testers would agree for cooler and more elaborate mechanics but they also know the game is defenitely not ready yet.

well maybe starbase isn't for you dude

my guy, were going into early access next month, pretty much nothing is worth overlooking but i do agree there is some more important issues to fix than combat, cause if there is no reason to fight no point in fixing fighting lol

 

[Venombrew]

my guy, were going into early access next month, pretty much nothing is worth overlooking but i do agree there is some more important issues to fix than combat, cause if there is no reason to fight no point in fixing fighting lol

remember EA is just first stage of beta and a lot of games don't make it past this point because this is where the real testing will begin if the system can even be maintained. they gonna load up the server with tons of players and trust me shit will break a lot in this first couple months. this is where worlds adrift crashed and burned, but i got a lot of faith in FB, their roadmap they showed us shows some very promising features, one of my favorite was in q3 i do believe the are adjusting ship flying abilities and control to work with the mouse(i do believe more in the sense of flying, and not just pushing buttons). if you haven't seen the road map do check it out, got some great stuff and they go over a lot of shit on it(not detailed info but what they have planned).

EDIT: i tried to find the road map but for some reason that topic is missing(that or i cant find it). but i saved a copy when it came out, to big to upload directly so i got a link to it below, make sure you click the full resolution in the center or it be fuzzy.
https://ibb.co/y5Zr9N8

 

[kiiyo]

I don't see how anyone can even start to think that combat isn't boring and primitive. It is literally aim, then shoot. Out of the cockpit you do nothing but position and shooties. Nothing. Barrel rolling between roids is... not advanced combat. At all.

Even early and mid-era jets had more going on- you need to watch altitude, velocity, take advantage of plane-specific advantages like the faster dive speeds of some planes, coordinate with your wingman, observe natural phenomena like rain and cloud that can change how your plane behaves drastically and lastly while missiles are practically a guaranteed kill it is ridiculously hard to tail your opponent for a duration long enough for the missile to spot the rear engines' heat/IR and then lock onto that reliably.

People say tripods will shake things up - and sure they might (personally do not think so), but I'm not going to whack it before I lick it. Even if tripods are in, fighters will stay the cheeseballs they are right now. with even more disgusting looking cockpits because of need of bulk up in that area, ha.

Even Star Citizen, a game far more complex in how ship systems are implemented, is upgrading their combat mechanics - because managing shields and overclocking is too bulky and is only done before combat.

Same stays true for SB - you flick your generator rates to a hundred when you enter combat, and flick em back down once done. That's it. Nothing else you do in combat.

I'm not going to get into how this should be fixed because I'm going to get bashed with the PvE stick enough for even posting this much. But something that provides significant drawbacks and equally significant advantages, in at least 3 variants, to make it an RPS system. Then we can start thinking a lot more about ship classes and such.

@Neva, thank you for posting this, very good discussion to bring up.

 

[Cavilier210]

we don't have shields, no innate coordinate system, and so no velocity, no targeting systems, and so on. We need those mechanics in order to make combat more in depth and interesting. However, this game is definitely a building game. Combat options will be coming later, but without these things, there isn't much to currently add in combat.

 

[Venombrew]

@Cavilier210 if you noticed they spent a real large amount of time on flushing out that endo combat system weaponry. but at same time, they were getting the player stations ready by time EA got here as well as they planetary mechanics(moon landing, gravity, atmosphere, moon mining), social mechanics(companies, factions, missions, auction house, currency, jobs) and ultimately the warp gates to help with flight time. that all being very heavily(other than the endo combat) towards the crafting, building, and exploration side of the game. which we all can agree is very important to keep people busy with stuff to do outside of pure pvp and the needed social aspect as well.

from there own road map it looks like q4 will be the siege defense, ship control updates, new alloys, advanced navigations for ships, new weapons and devices, updated yolo improvements, and new ship parts. so i think toward the end of q3 we will start to see some updates in ship combat.

 

[[QS] Combustible]

Guy, a lot wrong with this post. You’re judging based on videos. A lot’s going on that you aren’t hearing/seeing, same with almost all combat.

In WW2 dogfight you care about altitude advantage, your max speed, dive speed, turn time, maneuvering choices and a ton of other factors

Maneuvering is still a massive consideration, as well as speed. I can go into more depth, but it’s a big subject.

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.

Armor direction, taking shots, assessing damage, using belt fog, communication, and much more.

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.

There is SO MUCH variation, and multiple classes have made themselves known already.

Don’t post again on something you have so little knowledge of with such confidently incorrect opinions on again, please.

 

[five]

Why? Is it stated somewhere that devs are ok with current state of combat and are not going to change it?

From the current point of PHYSICS the game has. This is the type of combat we will see and like Combustible pointed out, what you are experiencing is only the tip of the iceberg and like in other games I am sure that over time the combat will become more complex with players from different games joining and bringing their flying techniques. Have you ever seen fighter combat in PlanetSide2? That style of combat or more specifically the strafing aspect of that game is what I wish to be able to bring to SB

 

[Neva]

You’re judging based on videos. A lot’s going on that you aren’t hearing/seeing, same with almost all combat.

Well, according to replies in this thread (and discord conversations) I see two two types of opinions:
1) Combat is indeed boring.
2) Combat is great, I just don't get it. Nobody is able to explain what is so great about it though, how it differs from Space Engineers, Empyrion etc.

Armor direction

What direction? You mean placement? Sloping? You do not change that in combat. I don't see any tactical choices for a pilot.

taking shots

Taking shots. What is so deep and tactical about taking shots?

assessing damage

Well yes, you kinda have to understand what's wrong with your ship, but there's not much you can do about it. Again, no tactical choices.

There is SO MUCH variation, and multiple classes have made themselves known already.

This is where "Nobody is able to explain what is so great about it though" comes from. Maybe you could provide some examples?
Because the only example I have right now is a document from ship builders that participated in tournaments. They ended up with only one meta ship with two variants of armament. That's it.