Space combat is primitive?
- Thread starter Neva
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In case of Elite they complain about how unimaginative some ships are though, like the Type-10.
Anyway, if you want to make combat in your own ships interesting for yourself then build them that way, you can even design your own modules and operate them with YOLOL code. It is kind of your fault if your are too lazy for that.
Anyway, if you want to make combat in your own ships interesting for yourself then build them that way, you can even design your own modules and operate them with YOLOL code. It is kind of your fault if your are too lazy for that.
And? We should not expand combat mechanics because some ships in Elite are unimaginative?
Ow really? Can you give an example? How I can get away from this align+shoot at point blank paradigm using modules or YOLOL?
Yeah, calling someone names instead of proofs or examples will definetly work.
In return I can say that you have no idea what you are talking about.
Ow really? Can you give an example? How I can get away from this align+shoot at point blank paradigm using modules or YOLOL?
Yeah, calling someone names instead of proofs or examples will definetly work.
In return I can say that you have no idea what you are talking about.
this may have been mentioned already, but space combat in starbase super dependent on the ship, it may not be super hard to master if you just use one ship however most times you will be using different ships with different turn speeds with different guns, (guns only really matter because of rate of fire) it can even come down to how many people are in your squad and what ships they are using
You could definitely argue its different in all space games because of different fits/shotguns vs snipers etc etc but honestly starbase just pulls it off well
You could definitely argue its different in all space games because of different fits/shotguns vs snipers etc etc but honestly starbase just pulls it off well
There was no name calling in that, merely an observation as there are quite a lot of videos and other media available of Starbase that you could have watched to come up with ideas.
The most basic ones that comes to mind is to use a cargo lock frame hidden behind doors and loaded with whatever trash and try to use inertia to hit other ships when you release your cargo.
Or use missiles as mines with 0 or low speed and using the trigger range to detonate when the enemies get close.
Also it seems you willfully ignore the intricacies that go into building the ships themselves in Starbase, you may not even get to the aim+shoot phase because your ship falls apart just from somebody looking at it.
Since you like to call everything primitve, please tell me what combat paradigm the other space combat games that you enjoy playing have, that is more in it's very core than the primitive target and shoot?
The most basic ones that comes to mind is to use a cargo lock frame hidden behind doors and loaded with whatever trash and try to use inertia to hit other ships when you release your cargo.
Or use missiles as mines with 0 or low speed and using the trigger range to detonate when the enemies get close.
Also it seems you willfully ignore the intricacies that go into building the ships themselves in Starbase, you may not even get to the aim+shoot phase because your ship falls apart just from somebody looking at it.
Since you like to call everything primitve, please tell me what combat paradigm the other space combat games that you enjoy playing have, that is more in it's very core than the primitive target and shoot?
I haven't played the game yet but how do sensors work? Maybe it would be more profitable to attach to an enemy ship with a very small ship undetected so they could "warp" to their base, giving away the location of their stuff. Instead of playing "if it's red it's dead" just find new ways to PvP so to speak. Baiting players into traps is also fun in many MMOs.
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Currently, the only sensors available are single-point rays with limited range, so for the most part, detection is reliant on the eyeball mk1. Although there are plans for a radiation sensor that can detect ships that are carrying active reactors or certain rare ores from up to (in extreme cases) 1000 km away.
I think the game could use a little bit of the ol' rock paper scissors thing (and I know we are in early stages of development, but that won't stop me from speculating 
).
I know it makes no sense from physics standpoint (but with speed limit and afaik no "inertia" as ships slow down when not under power, this is a moot point), but I think that ships with less weight should be able to have slightly larger top speeds, maybe using a "boosting" part for their thrusters. The part's power and fuel requirements and boost time would scale exponentially with ship's mass. The part itself can also be fairly heavy, limiting weapon load of the ship to balance the speed further and acting as diminishing returns by itself. This would imho result into at least two play styles for small ships - heavy fighter and light interceptor. Strategy based on enemy fleet composition then ensues.
As for larger ships - large weapons may have requirements on structural stability of the ship's hull (I am not sure what the current requirements are - no CA access), so that shooting the thing would stress the whole hull (or larger part of it near where the weapon is mounted). Ships with larger hulls would have more more stress resistance, as there is more mass to absorb the "vibrations", if the hull is not already stressed by armour. You could then have artillery ships with powerful long-range weapons suited for destroying large ships, but requiring protection from fighters that get too close. Or you could have tanky cruiser with lots of smaller caliber weapons that can smash smaller ships, but require people to man them. This would also result in variable fleet composition and battle strategies.
And regarding the point and shoot gameplay that some complain about - once there are some actual trade-offs and not a single meta ship build, it's going to be more about who and what you point at and shoot, with strategies based on what your oponent uses (scanners that tell you their ship build stats might be useful here).
).I know it makes no sense from physics standpoint (but with speed limit and afaik no "inertia" as ships slow down when not under power, this is a moot point), but I think that ships with less weight should be able to have slightly larger top speeds, maybe using a "boosting" part for their thrusters. The part's power and fuel requirements and boost time would scale exponentially with ship's mass. The part itself can also be fairly heavy, limiting weapon load of the ship to balance the speed further and acting as diminishing returns by itself. This would imho result into at least two play styles for small ships - heavy fighter and light interceptor. Strategy based on enemy fleet composition then ensues.
As for larger ships - large weapons may have requirements on structural stability of the ship's hull (I am not sure what the current requirements are - no CA access), so that shooting the thing would stress the whole hull (or larger part of it near where the weapon is mounted). Ships with larger hulls would have more more stress resistance, as there is more mass to absorb the "vibrations", if the hull is not already stressed by armour. You could then have artillery ships with powerful long-range weapons suited for destroying large ships, but requiring protection from fighters that get too close. Or you could have tanky cruiser with lots of smaller caliber weapons that can smash smaller ships, but require people to man them. This would also result in variable fleet composition and battle strategies.
And regarding the point and shoot gameplay that some complain about - once there are some actual trade-offs and not a single meta ship build, it's going to be more about who and what you point at and shoot, with strategies based on what your oponent uses (scanners that tell you their ship build stats might be useful here).
couple key points, one is yes there is inertia in the game, inertia by definition is the resistance of any physical object to any change in it's velocity. meaning an object moving in a straight line will continue to do so until some force interrupts its speed of movement or direction. the next part is very important, object size in space is not judged by the same speed of the object that we would where the resistance and force of gravity and aerodynamics come into play on planets. aerodynamics, which plays an important role on speed and movement on earth because it is the understanding of the motion of air when affected by a solid object, think of race cars and jets. in space, there is no air or wind because space is a vaccum.
now with gravity the other extremely big key component on movement and speed while on earth is taken in consideration due to the fact it is a physical but unseen force constantly pushing down on all objects. now in space what actually matters is not so much the design of the style of the ship but rather the power of propulsion from its thrusters. another form of inertia SB utilized are small direction thrusters on the front of your ship to go in reverse or to slow down.
the funny part is, in the game we got no gravity in space, but on the moons, that shit will rip your ship straight to the surface for a violent landing.
now with gravity the other extremely big key component on movement and speed while on earth is taken in consideration due to the fact it is a physical but unseen force constantly pushing down on all objects. now in space what actually matters is not so much the design of the style of the ship but rather the power of propulsion from its thrusters. another form of inertia SB utilized are small direction thrusters on the front of your ship to go in reverse or to slow down.
the funny part is, in the game we got no gravity in space, but on the moons, that shit will rip your ship straight to the surface for a violent landing.
You are correct, hence why I included the quotes. As I understand the physics implementation as of now (I'm not in CA to check), this premise is already selectively broken, since you have to keep stacking thrusters to reach a certain top speed for certain mass, when in reality it's the thruster's exhaust velocity that should be the key factor for that, while mass and therefore inertia effects acceleration (in vacuum ofc). With less thrusters, longer burns should be all you need to reach the same speed. This seems to not be the case (let me know if I am wrong).
Also, once you stop applying thrust in SB, the ship starts slowing down, as if artificial drag was induced. I only deduce this from some videos I have seen so I might also be wrong about this one (and I kinda hope I was).
So in conclusion, physics principles are already selectively broken, so why not break them a little bit more for gameplay's sake? Another example of this is boosting in Elite, where your top speed is artificially larger while boosting and then drops down once the boost is done (which also makes no sense from inertia point of view).
Edit: SB, not EA
Also, once you stop applying thrust in SB, the ship starts slowing down, as if artificial drag was induced. I only deduce this from some videos I have seen so I might also be wrong about this one (and I kinda hope I was).
So in conclusion, physics principles are already selectively broken, so why not break them a little bit more for gameplay's sake? Another example of this is boosting in Elite, where your top speed is artificially larger while boosting and then drops down once the boost is done (which also makes no sense from inertia point of view).
Edit: SB, not EA
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First off I would like to commend Neva for not stuping to the same childish behaviour despite the onsalaught of it being thrown back at them for genuine constructive critisim of current mechanics and how they can be reformed. I would also like to ask where the mods are on some of these comments. Is this seriously how a community should treat 'outsiders' looking to join them if they want it to be a sucessful project? A mod doesn't have to ban people or delete posts to keep the peace: they can step in as XenoCow did and tell people to grow up. This is far from the first time I have seen this behaviour on the forums or discord, and this community is getting a reputation in multiple other communities for being so unwelcoming of new people with new ideas/suggestions(I have seen nothing but negativity towards starbase outside starbase circles, because every time someone tries to bring it up as a cool up-and-coming game someone else mentions "its too bad the community is so toxic though"(actual quote), ending the conversation there). A closed minded and openly toxic community is the fastest way to kill any game. Starbase is and will be a niche game we need all the players we can get, especially the ones willing to put in effort to try and make it better for everyone. Secondly, I noticed that Neva is new to our (all of us, everyone, the whole group) community (may 11th) so welcome to the community. I truely hope your experience with it sharply gets better Neva.
I think the perfect time for this kind of open-minded discussion is right around the corner with it being an alpha and about to be in everyones hands. The time for change is now, while not everything is rooted to eachother and thus can be changed at this stage. Starbase is starting with such a promising base of its physicalized voxel damge combat without the cop-out that is shields, damage will be a serious consideration to take when fighting. The damage system gives a feeling of lethality to every strike, even if only digging a chunk out of your armour - it all adds up.
Please do, this is exactly why we are having this discussion. I would love to hear about specific maneuvers that can be used to gain positional advantages and counter manuevers to break away from an engagement or how velocity is willingly varried in combat for advantages against your opponent. In a fighter we change velocity and vector to change how a missile will lead its target, expending its limited energy it must use for speed or manuevering.
Personally I think that a lot is to be gained by having cross-sectional radar signatures with passive and active radar of varying resolutions. This can play off of asteroids masking you. Combined with another system for misc signals output of a vessle like RF, EM and others that can be be cleverly used in conjucntion with radar to get information on people searching for you (and thus probably up to no good). For example your EM sig for using a 'better' (omni-directional rather than conical, longer range/better resolution) radar.
Unfortunately at this time without better information on small ship combat maneuvers I can't give much feedback other than velocity probably needs to play a bigger role in which is varries significantly throughout a fight instead of always hitting your crafts top speed. My last serious combat information came from the tournament when turret armour was the only block with armour stats (taking about 3x the damage typically iirc?), and floor mats stopped all shots dead but got a hole in them as a result, so combined made a ship extremely durable to sustained fire and peircing shots were unusable due to the bug with floor mats due to contenders layering them multiple times (if memory serves me correctly). Functionally making the whole tournament a joke because only two or three teams actually employed this, making every other team irrelevent. (again, if memory serves some craft using this I think I calculated to have around twenty times the effective HP of a craft not using this from almost every angle, because of these issues.) Issues aside from that, I would really like to see dogfighting be heavilly based on knowing your maneuvers, ranges at which to use them, and managing your velocity (which I really think will require guided missiles of some sort to acheive, but if anyone can think of another way to force pilots to change velocities toss that idea in here!)
For large ship combat I think their role should be as the tank: extremely durable and relatively easy to repair mid combat (flipping open hatches/entering crawl spaces to repair your cables/pipes while ignoring noncritical hull breaches). Spitballing here:
I think the perfect time for this kind of open-minded discussion is right around the corner with it being an alpha and about to be in everyones hands. The time for change is now, while not everything is rooted to eachother and thus can be changed at this stage. Starbase is starting with such a promising base of its physicalized voxel damge combat without the cop-out that is shields, damage will be a serious consideration to take when fighting. The damage system gives a feeling of lethality to every strike, even if only digging a chunk out of your armour - it all adds up.
Please do, this is exactly why we are having this discussion. I would love to hear about specific maneuvers that can be used to gain positional advantages and counter manuevers to break away from an engagement or how velocity is willingly varried in combat for advantages against your opponent. In a fighter we change velocity and vector to change how a missile will lead its target, expending its limited energy it must use for speed or manuevering.
Personally I think that a lot is to be gained by having cross-sectional radar signatures with passive and active radar of varying resolutions. This can play off of asteroids masking you. Combined with another system for misc signals output of a vessle like RF, EM and others that can be be cleverly used in conjucntion with radar to get information on people searching for you (and thus probably up to no good). For example your EM sig for using a 'better' (omni-directional rather than conical, longer range/better resolution) radar.
Unfortunately at this time without better information on small ship combat maneuvers I can't give much feedback other than velocity probably needs to play a bigger role in which is varries significantly throughout a fight instead of always hitting your crafts top speed. My last serious combat information came from the tournament when turret armour was the only block with armour stats (taking about 3x the damage typically iirc?), and floor mats stopped all shots dead but got a hole in them as a result, so combined made a ship extremely durable to sustained fire and peircing shots were unusable due to the bug with floor mats due to contenders layering them multiple times (if memory serves me correctly). Functionally making the whole tournament a joke because only two or three teams actually employed this, making every other team irrelevent. (again, if memory serves some craft using this I think I calculated to have around twenty times the effective HP of a craft not using this from almost every angle, because of these issues.) Issues aside from that, I would really like to see dogfighting be heavilly based on knowing your maneuvers, ranges at which to use them, and managing your velocity (which I really think will require guided missiles of some sort to acheive, but if anyone can think of another way to force pilots to change velocities toss that idea in here!)
For large ship combat I think their role should be as the tank: extremely durable and relatively easy to repair mid combat (flipping open hatches/entering crawl spaces to repair your cables/pipes while ignoring noncritical hull breaches). Spitballing here:
- Possibly having respawn bays carrying extra endos to download you into
- more efficient for travel due to a better (but larger) thruster for efficiency forcing a fighter wing to need them for rearming and refueling.
- Low yield guided missiles that have to be spinally mounted (an lock on in a forward cone) but provide an airspace threat to fighters, with the same limitations as real life - they only have so much fuel and manueverability. smaller missile = less payload/fuel/turning radius, inverse also being true. As a missile closes on a target its fuel is used adjusting its course to intercept a target or accelerating.
- higher DPS per given requirements for turrets to offset the single target nature of large ships (1 vs 20 with equal parts/guns just less on each, the 20 ships will win because of target reaquisition and redundancy, their fighting capabilities are reduced a lot slower than one target)
- Allowing large ships high velocity small calibre railguns that do nothing but peirce
- Restricting sender antenna to larger vessles by requiring more power that could be provided by a reactor only practical on larger vehicles.
- Could be attacked with 'man cannons'. Seeing that we are robots we can sustain a significantly higher G-force than squishy humans, thus loading an endo into a can with a hardened tip to peirce into an enemy ship for a ranged boarding action (if well aimed) could be a great way to mix up mid combat ship fights with an on-board sabatuer or FPS fight.
I remember in the show "The Expanse", the captains of the ships usually tell the crew to shut off the reactor when they don't want to get detected. Like when they're traveling, they calculate their trajectory and forecast the route of their ship from their initial acceleration -- and since there is no air resistance in space, that initial thrust is enough to keep them going and just shut off their "fusion drives" (or something) to remain stealthy. It would be cool if a somewhat similar "meta" strategy was present in the game when it comes to trying to avoid detection.
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In the game, ships slow down when not under thrust, so travel requires a continuous power drain. It's possible to run ships on battery power, but the power density of the batteries is pretty bad so it's not terribly viable for propulsion. The developers have indicated they want to have stealth mechanics that specially designed ships can take advantage of, though. In the future, certain types of enviromental clouds may block radiation and allow ships to recharge their power reserves stealthily, solar panels for ships (although not the best for minimizing visual profile) might help the power management, and perhaps certain heavy materials might be able to block radiation to minimize a ship's radiation signature.
A radar that detects reactor radiation is coming soon, so this will actually be a thing.
However, space jelly will stop anyone from just coasting while being invisible, but I'm pretty sure that you can just run off of battery power to not emit any signals, using the near-invisible maneuver thrusters for movement instead of other options which can be very big and bright.
However, space jelly will stop anyone from just coasting while being invisible, but I'm pretty sure that you can just run off of battery power to not emit any signals, using the near-invisible maneuver thrusters for movement instead of other options which can be very big and bright.
