Read by Schine Fleets and what could be used to control them

[TheOmega]

You would still get to pilot your ship, just battles would be bigger and more fun. You should also have then jump with you to move in for battle.

 

[dwwojcik]

This would tie in well with the NPC crew. You would pilot you command ship, and the other ships and starfighters would be crewed by NPCs. You would give orders to your crew members via some sort of tactical map. The AI wouldn't need to be very complex, just "follow me", "go here", "shoot this", "dock in the hangar", etc. Maybe the communication receiving equipment could be built into the faction module, and having a communication broadcasting block on a large ship would nominate it as the flagship.

More complicated commands such as "search and destroy" and "patrol" would be problematic for a number of reasons, mainly too many of them going out and doing their own thing would impact performance because that's that many additional sectors that would need to be loaded. It would be best to keep AI activity to purely Player support.

Perhaps instead of putting a hard limit on AI-controlled ship mass, it would be better to nerf the AI as ship mass increases, as in, the AI would be able to pilot a large ship less effectively than a player could. It makes sense that large ships would be harder to control. Perhaps an AI would be competent with something up to around a destroyer or a cruiser sized ship (obviously ship classifications can vary between shipbuilders, this would be up to the developers to decide. Maybe there could be an server setting to scale the nerf to best match the scale of the ships players on each particular server are building... a destroyer in one servers eyes might be a dreadnought in others.) You could bring additional carriers, as long as it is designed to tank a lot of damage and isn't mean to do much shooting itself (as opposed to a battleship with hangars, the fighters are usually an afterthought.) Other than that, unless you have a friend who can captain your battleship or larger cruiser, it might be best to leave any other capital ships back at base.

 

[Wolverines527]

Hmmmm im thinking maybe a way to have like a target reticule like system and what ever ships you have in the list of ships following you.

Heres an example

Select attack ships
New alaxzandrea (x)
Levitation(x)
Bismark()
Iowa()
Yamato()

And by clicking on the ship the chosen ships will attack the enemy ship till ordered to stop or till the ship is destroyed

Fighters would be next to impossible to target with this method but this was geared more toward example

 

[Kaamio]

For limiting AI spam I'd prefer to go with the soft cap of energy used by control enabling blocks. I've mentioned this before but ability to control AI drones could be tied to controller and antenna arrays, cost scaling up with drone size and amount. Support for multiple flights would be superb, so you could have either several different type flights or multiples of same drone flight... carry 20 drones into the fight even though you can only afford to control 10 of them at once, or 20 if you stay still, disconnect the holy coffee machine and don't breathe

 

[Ithirahad]

Interesting idea but that kinda ruins the point of the game, I personally enjoy Starmade because of the building and control aspects of how the game is currently set up. If I wanted to play a game with a map controlled fleet I would simply go play Homeworld or empire at war. Many different ideas would work for controlling fleets the issue is one that works without changing the core dynamics of the game itself. Starmade is primarily designed to be a player controlled game with pvp interactions. I like the idea of adding some sort of better ai control for fleets but if the core design of the game is changed to implement this I would rather the system remained the same as it is currently. You are welcome to disagree with this viewpoint but I enjoy playing starmade for the same reasons I enjoy playing minecraft. Player interaction with an opportunity to pit your greatest creations against one another and being able to rebuild those creations later.

I fail to see how it would get in the way of that. In fact, it would help, because people could build and fly fighters in squadrons to attack things, rather than race to build bigger and bigger ships to kill each other until it gets to the point at which nobody even wants to fight in the first place because losing a ship just costs way too much. As for using energy to limit fleet ships... well, I think I'd rather have it be the cost of maintaining a bunch of NPCs, than an energy limit. But either way works fine.

 

[Wolverines527]

For limiting AI spam I'd prefer to go with the soft cap of energy used by control enabling blocks. I've mentioned this before but ability to control AI drones could be tied to controller and antenna arrays, cost scaling up with drone size and amount. Support for multiple flights would be superb, so you could have either several different type flights or multiples of same drone flight... carry 20 drones into the fight even though you can only afford to control 10 of them at once, or 20 if you stay still, disconnect the holy coffee machine and don't breathe

I agree with this idea it was very creative with the antenna i don't think i have ever used an antenna for much of anything this would give it a purpose to be within a ship

 

[Ciaranhappy!]

sorry if someones said this, but what about a system to make the ships follow you around, and you can use the block to make ship stop following or wait or stuff like that, and in buttle they have there own ai's?

 

[Wolverines527]

Well looks like schine has its own idea on fleets so i guess its mission accomplished

 

[Wolverines527]

And i guess we will see how it turns out

 

[serge1944]

We can use real chain of command.With admiral,captains and continue.

 

[dwwojcik]

We can use real chain of command.With admiral,captains and continue.

Faction ranks could be used for that.

 

[herr_phil]

In the interim why not use commands like they have in so many flight simulators?

Hit the ` key (or whatever works) and a menu pops up like:
Fleet Operations
1. Fleet
2. Squadron
3. Ship

And if you hit the number it brings up another menu
Orders Menu
1. Regroup
2. Attack my target
3. Engage at will
4. Hold Position
5. Jump to safety
6. Launch ships
7. Recall launched ships
8. Navigate to my waypoint

The only difference would be in the ship menu where it would show the name of the ship and when you select it, it would give you above options plus the option to add to a squadron.
Ship Menu
1. Flower Corvette 88
2. Flower Corvette 89
3. Liberty 144

Squadron Menu
1. Alpha Squadron
2. Beta Squadron
3. Gamma Squadron
4. Delta Squadron

Eventually if crews are added you could expand the ship menu a bit:
1. Flower Corvette 88 (Commodore Hendrick - OK)
2. Flower Corvette 89 (Commodore Williamson - Hull Damage)
3. Liberty 44 (Lieutenant Michaelson - OK)

 

[Wolverines527]

In the interim why not use commands like they have in so many flight simulators?

Hit the ` key (or whatever works) and a menu pops up like:
Fleet Operations
1. Fleet
2. Squadron
3. Ship

And if you hit the number it brings up another menu
Orders Menu
1. Regroup
2. Attack my target
3. Engage at will
4. Hold Position
5. Jump to safety
6. Launch ships
7. Recall launched ships
8. Navigate to my waypoint

The only difference would be in the ship menu where it would show the name of the ship and when you select it, it would give you above options plus the option to add to a squadron.
Ship Menu
1. Flower Corvette 88
2. Flower Corvette 89
3. Liberty 144

Squadron Menu
1. Alpha Squadron
2. Beta Squadron
3. Gamma Squadron
4. Delta Squadron

Eventually if crews are added you could expand the ship menu a bit:
1. Flower Corvette 88 (Commodore Hendrick - OK)
2. Flower Corvette 89 (Commodore Williamson - Hull Damage)
3. Liberty 44 (Lieutenant Michaelson - OK)

Hmm imteresting idea

 

[nightrune]

I think it needs to be block and power based. I think a communications module is a good idea, but I'm wondering if we shouldn't just have a linking mechanism. I've got a few ideas for these.

My quick idea was to have a dedicated drone control block for each drone on the "mother ship." It would draw power based on either the power or mass of the drone ship. I think the power should be reduced if the drone ship has an NPC crew, and even more with a human crew. I really think you should still send orders to human crews as well. They should get ordered actions.

One more idea is comms jamming, it it needs balancing. I like the idea a small jammer ship can come in and get a small window of dead drones that only do what they were last told, but it shouldn't be infinite.

 

[Wolverines527]

I think it needs to be block and power based. I think a communications module is a good idea, but I'm wondering if we shouldn't just have a linking mechanism. I've got a few ideas for these.

My quick idea was to have a dedicated drone control block for each drone on the "mother ship." It would draw power based on either the power or mass of the drone ship. I think the power should be reduced if the drone ship has an NPC crew, and even more with a human crew. I really think you should still send orders to human crews as well. They should get ordered actions.

One more idea is comms jamming, it it needs balancing. I like the idea a small jammer ship can come in and get a small window of dead drones that only do what they were last told, but it shouldn't be infinite.

Thats a very agree able

 

[dwwojcik]

Schema has said he wants to move away from autopilots and move towards NPC crew, so slaving autonomous ships to your own is something I don't see happening. In my opinion, the Bobby AI should remain, at least in its current state, because autonomous point-defense turrets and whatnot exist even today, and disposable drone starfighters sounds really cool, but robotic battleships... ehh, not so much.

Well... robotic battleships does sound pretty cool, come to think of it.... hmm...

 

[Andem]

I would limit this use to within the sector, because i can imagine all those cheaters sitting on their planet overseeing massive space wars while being in no danger whatsoever.

 

[Master_Artificer]

Maybe not fleets, but squadrons like this:


You would need a couple friends to make a fleet.

 

[Wolverines527]

I would limit this use to within the sector, because i can imagine all those cheaters sitting on their planet overseeing massive space wars while being in no danger whatsoever.

I didnt think about that i was mostly thinking about flagships being the sole controller of fleets so that is a good point you made

 

[MacThule]

I would limit this use to within the sector, because i can imagine all those cheaters sitting on their planet overseeing massive space wars while being in no danger whatsoever.

Well that wouldn't be cheating - that'd be realism. Fat-cat politicians do sit at home and send young boys from the working classes out to fight and die while staying safe and warm at home or in a bunker. For an industrialist or merchant, this mode of engagement would be exactly right.

It just means you have to counter-attack to make them stop. But the home planet is invulnerable, you say? No problem - make losing a fleet-controlled drone ship cost faction points (whether or not the ship is factioned). Not as many as a player death - just a fraction. Then as you shred wave upon wave of drones and invest the enemy's base, fend off a few player sallies, they are constantly losing FP.

At negative FP, it's only a matter of waiting for the next faction turn to complete and the home base will no longer be invulnerable because the faction can't afford any stations/planets/territory and all are auto-revoked. Viola - victory against the craven aggressor!