Starbase - 15 Minutes of Uncut Combat discussion thread

Joined
Aug 11, 2019
Messages
12
#2
a wonderful video to see the robots jumping out of the fighters and fighting in space reminded me of some scenes of the gundam, the most interesting thing is at minute 3, where we see the respawn, but I have not yet understood if it is possible to respawn only on the stations or c is this possibility even on ships.
 

Atreties

Veteran endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
110
#4
A few personal takeaways, some praises, some concerns -

  • The base/default spatha fighter ship is real bad. Inability to see downward relative to the cockpit was crippling in the fight.
  • Seeing the cockpit hatch blow off was epic as hell. Having to fight slightly clippled due to lack of reticule was unbelievably epic.
  • Seeing wrecks from prior in the battle is so cool. Loved when he blew up the fighter and some of the debris from it pinged off his cockpit window.
  • Seeing the pilot change the controls settings to his taste was cool, but also reveals some potential headache. If you have a several of a ship that your group shares, having to change stuff all the time to suit your tastes will get annoying. Maybe we can get presets somehow eventually.
  • I wish we got to see some combat repairs when the pilot got disabled but not destroyed in the 2nd fight, but the ship likely doesnt spawn with any repair mats aboard. Makes me wonder how viable combat repairs will be in anything other than huge ships.
  • We've seen 2 fight videos from the perspectives of small fighters. I want to see how a small group will work a medium-sized ship like one of those gunships next, or even a huge one. I have a feeling the gameplay will feel much different.
  • I wonder how people will be able to tell friend from foe in a fight like this in practice. Obviously, color schemes can be spoofed, and some groups will have similar color schemes. I wonder if we'll be able to get little indicators of where allies are or something. We're robots, it wouldnt be that weird.
  • The desync and slight visual stutter from other ships was somewhat concerning. Once, a ship just kinda poofed, seemingly disappeared.
  • Flight controls seem like they will be strange on a keyboard and mouse. Hard to get fine control. The pilot was constantly overturning their aim and such. I wonder if that was partially due to this limitation. Also makes me wonder if we can bind some of the controls to mouse inputs.
  • Why are the maneuvering thrusters constantly firing? Is the ship super unbalanced or something?
  • I'm hoping that player-made ships will prove to be much more durable. Time to kill seems very short, to me, still. I know these are small fighters, but still.
 

Naija

Learned-to-sprint endo
Joined
Aug 16, 2019
Messages
22
#6
a wonderful video to see the robots jumping out of the fighters and fighting in space reminded me of some scenes of the gundam, the most interesting thing is at minute 3, where we see the respawn, but I have not yet understood if it is possible to respawn only on the stations or c is this possibility even on ships.
yeah respawning is of great concern. Maybe respawning on your ship will only be viable on medium and large ships not small fighters. The only reason this player was able to get back in the fight was because it was happening right next to the station.
 

Recatek

Meat Popsicle
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
286
#7
Very interesting. Curious about the boarding fights and whether we'll actually see those on player-optimized ships. I doubt most players will want to waste space on creating interesting interiors for fighting in.
 

Morrgard

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
374
#8
Very interesting. Curious about the boarding fights and whether we'll actually see those on player-optimized ships. I doubt most players will want to waste space on creating interesting interiors for fighting in.
I would love to see some proper boarding action sometime soon showcased, really looking forward to them.


Time to kill seems very short, to me, still.
Still amped up, it will take longer
 

Vampiricdust

Learned-to-turn-off-magboots endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
47
#10
yeah respawning is of great concern. Maybe respawning on your ship will only be viable on medium and large ships not small fighters. The only reason this player was able to get back in the fight was because it was happening right next to the station.
Everyone should be mindful these are devs cheating to test combat. Not only was distance to combat made shorter on purpose, but devs have unlimited free respawns. You'll notice the price of the ship was 0. There will be no rejoining a fight like this for players. We will be lucky if they ever make respawning even a limited option aboard large ships.

The only thing to take from this video was the actual combat. However, these are dev made ships, meaning they don't have time to design and test hundred of iterations of designs. They are testing mechanics only.
 

Recatek

Meat Popsicle
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
286
#11
Large "I've poured hours/days of work into this thing" ships should definitely take far longer than a few seconds to kill, even without an academic degree in ship design. I'm fine with these sorts of throwaway fighters going down quickly though.
 
Joined
Aug 14, 2019
Messages
4
#13
Great video!

- I like that there was no lead indicator and shots have to be gauged versus line up the targeting reticle and fire.
- I like that the physics seem to be a little more game friendly as opposed to true to life.
- I like the adjustable ship settings on the fly. Ship locks were neat as well ..... hackable?
- I like the hopping out of the cockpit with fire arm in hand as a last stand option or repairing to stay in the fight.
- I like that re-spawning was a process (Not just click and instantly appear in a ship and back into the fight .... it seems as it should be)
- I like the ship that had lost "some control" and was just doing circles with throttle full. lol .... killin me.
- I like that there were no player tags, only ship colors. Doubt if it is to stay that way, but, I could have some serious fun with that one and being where I don't belong.
- Looks like it might be joystick friendly is a plus.
- I wonder if you are dead in the water .... can you zip over to another damaged/dead ship and borrow some parts to repair your ship?

Keep up the great work devs (Everyone Involved)! I'm certain this game is your baby .... it definitely shows.
 

NoName

Learned-to-turn-off-magboots endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
49
#14
yeah respawning is of great concern. Maybe respawning on your ship will only be viable on medium and large ships not small fighters. The only reason this player was able to get back in the fight was because it was happening right next to the station.
I think this is probably for the best that only medium/large ships can have respawners as I would assume they are going to be large and heavy machinery. If they were smaller and lighter so small ships could have them it would completely unbalance them, what I mean is that you could fit way more on medium and large ships which could possibly cause imbalance in the game.
 

LauriFB

Administrator
Moderator
Frozenbyte
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
211
#16
One goal with uncut videos is to show current state of the game early on and continously show more, thus also showing how our development progresses. For us it's always fun to look back for 3-6 months and see the massive progress we have made, and hopefully with enough of these videos we can also demonstrate this to our players as well.

Another important aspect is to get feedback from you guys. Which things already look cool, which needs to be improved, and so on.

The base/default spatha fighter ship is real bad. Inability to see downward relative to the cockpit was crippling in the fight.
I agree :). The dev ships are made for functionality and looks, but they are never intended to be anywhere near the best ships, that's intentionally left for players to design ;)

Seeing the pilot change the controls settings to his taste was cool, but also reveals some potential headache. If you have a several of a ship that your group shares, having to change stuff all the time to suit your tastes will get annoying. Maybe we can get presets somehow eventually.
We already support pre-set binds, but as it doesn't cover yolol this is a good point. Maybe we should inspect some sort of universal tool automation, if this proves to be something the game lacks.

I wish we got to see some combat repairs when the pilot got disabled but not destroyed in the 2nd fight, but the ship likely doesnt spawn with any repair mats aboard. Makes me wonder how viable combat repairs will be in anything other than huge ships.
You can pack building tool and some materials to a mining backpack, but that would severely reduce amount of weapons carried to fight, and of course add extra weight to the fighter in the end game (currently carried items do not transfer weight to ship I think)

We've seen 2 fight videos from the perspectives of small fighters. I want to see how a small group will work a medium-sized ship like one of those gunships next, or even a huge one. I have a feeling the gameplay will feel much different
We have some gunship materials too, just need to go thru them. It's indeed quite different to run inside the ship rather than just fly with a fighter.

I wonder how people will be able to tell friend from foe in a fight like this in practice. Obviously, color schemes can be spoofed, and some groups will have similar color schemes. I wonder if we'll be able to get little indicators of where allies are or something. We're robots, it wouldnt be that weird.
We have planned ID broadcast system, but if you broadcast to your friends also your foes see you. It can be turned off though. We'll see how it turns out once we get tests ongoing with it.

The desync and slight visual stutter from other ships was somewhat concerning. Once, a ship just kinda poofed, seemingly disappeared.
There's a lot of optimization in the netcode and loading/unloading stuff. The "poof" happens when pilot dies and the ships host is changed to someone near, the new host gets ship without a hitch but all clients have to reload it, causing the short or not so short blink. Luckily our tech wizard has already plan for this, he just needs to find the time to fix it .. :)

Flight controls seem like they will be strange on a keyboard and mouse. Hard to get fine control. The pilot was constantly overturning their aim and such. I wonder if that was partially due to this limitation. Also makes me wonder if we can bind some of the controls to mouse inputs.
We will add more control options, and it's also about how you configure the ship. The manual yolol editing seen in the video most likely caused this overturning, as the player hacked the ship to turn faster than what's its original programming, thus trading accuracy to faster turns. Spatha has also "aiming mode" button, which slows down turning even more, but it's not really used among more experienced pilots.

Why are the maneuvering thrusters constantly firing? Is the ship super unbalanced or something?
The FCU is slightly inefficient, and one symptom is constant use of maneuver thrusters. If you skip FCU, you get total control over all thrusters, but that's painful unless the ship design and pilot skills are legendary. However, effect of FCU to efficiency is minimal compared to the ease it brings, especially when ship is damaged, so I'd guess most people will opt flying with FCU.

I'm hoping that player-made ships will prove to be much more durable. Time to kill seems very short, to me, still. I know these are small fighters, but still.
I'm certain they will. Also the gunships in the video can take hundreds if not thousands of hits and are usually (partially) operational even after that. We just had another test and with a two-man shorthanded crew we managed to stay operational for solid 15 minutes against constant attacks from likely a total of over 20 fighters. Granted, we had friendly fighters also supporting us, but our gunship was the one being shot and rammed constantly. In the end we had exhausted all autocannon ammo and relied to hand-held bazookas, which still were pretty efficient with fighters coming too close. :cool: I'm hoping some of that material will end up to some of our videos as well, as I and my crewmate sure had a blast!
 

Stanky

Active endo
Joined
Aug 11, 2019
Messages
42
#17
One goal with uncut videos is to show current state of the game early on and continously show more, thus also showing how our development progresses. For us it's always fun to look back for 3-6 months and see the massive progress we have made, and hopefully with enough of these videos we can also demonstrate this to our players as well.

Another important aspect is to get feedback from you guys. Which things already look cool, which needs to be improved, and so on.



I agree :). The dev ships are made for functionality and looks, but they are never intended to be anywhere near the best ships, that's intentionally left for players to design ;)



We already support pre-set binds, but as it doesn't cover yolol this is a good point. Maybe we should inspect some sort of universal tool automation, if this proves to be something the game lacks.



You can pack building tool and some materials to a mining backpack, but that would severely reduce amount of weapons carried to fight, and of course add extra weight to the fighter in the end game (currently carried items do not transfer weight to ship I think)



We have some gunship materials too, just need to go thru them. It's indeed quite different to run inside the ship rather than just fly with a fighter.



We have planned ID broadcast system, but if you broadcast to your friends also your foes see you. It can be turned off though. We'll see how it turns out once we get tests ongoing with it.



There's a lot of optimization in the netcode and loading/unloading stuff. The "poof" happens when pilot dies and the ships host is changed to someone near, the new host gets ship without a hitch but all clients have to reload it, causing the short or not so short blink. Luckily our tech wizard has already plan for this, he just needs to find the time to fix it .. :)



We will add more control options, and it's also about how you configure the ship. The manual yolol editing seen in the video most likely caused this overturning, as the player hacked the ship to turn faster than what's its original programming, thus trading accuracy to faster turns. Spatha has also "aiming mode" button, which slows down turning even more, but it's not really used among more experienced pilots.



The FCU is slightly inefficient, and one symptom is constant use of maneuver thrusters. If you skip FCU, you get total control over all thrusters, but that's painful unless the ship design and pilot skills are legendary. However, effect of FCU to efficiency is minimal compared to the ease it brings, especially when ship is damaged, so I'd guess most people will opt flying with FCU.



I'm certain they will. Also the gunships in the video can take hundreds if not thousands of hits and are usually (partially) operational even after that. We just had another test and with a two-man shorthanded crew we managed to stay operational for solid 15 minutes against constant attacks from likely a total of over 20 fighters. Granted, we had friendly fighters also supporting us, but our gunship was the one being shot and rammed constantly. In the end we had exhausted all autocannon ammo and relied to hand-held bazookas, which still were pretty efficient with fighters coming too close. :cool: I'm hoping some of that material will end up to some of our videos as well, as I and my crewmate sure had a blast!
You know if you ever need about two dozen or more people to help with PVP tests. You know just like message me. Of course I'm only offering my services for furthering game development, AND TOTALLY NOT JUST WANTING TO GET A SMALL TASTE OF GREATNESS.
 
Joined
Aug 13, 2019
Messages
16
#18
You know if you ever need about two dozen or more people to help with PVP tests. You know just like message me. Of course I'm only offering my services for furthering game development, AND TOTALLY NOT JUST WANTING TO GET A SMALL TASTE OF GREATNESS.
TOTALLY for purposes of have development, totally 🙃
 

LauriFB

Administrator
Moderator
Frozenbyte
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
211
#19
Indeed, third goal is that we prepare the game to be ready to be broken by (pre)alpha testers :D. Every test so far has been progress, in fact yesterday we had a very enjoyable experience, I didn't experience any technical issues and on top of that we destroyed a ton of Kingdom fighters :LOL:
 

Morrgard

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
374
#20
I'm certain they will. Also the gunships in the video can take hundreds if not thousands of hits and are usually (partially) operational even after that. We just had another test and with a two-man shorthanded crew we managed to stay operational for solid 15 minutes against constant attacks from likely a total of over 20 fighters. Granted, we had friendly fighters also supporting us, but our gunship was the one being shot and rammed constantly. In the end we had exhausted all autocannon ammo and relied to hand-held bazookas, which still were pretty efficient with fighters coming too close. :cool: I'm hoping some of that material will end up to some of our videos as well, as I and my crewmate sure had a blast!
This sounds amazing, I hope we do get the chance to see that too :D Also very nice to see all those questions answered, he beat me to many of those!

Thanks!
 
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