Controlling Captial Ships - Utilizing the third-person view for "better" captial ship combat

[S0lace]

Heya.

First up on why i think this is important, because i do think it is.

I love Starmade. Every aspect of it, from gameplay to development...


Except the Ship-Combat.

It has always bothered me that we are building these gigantic leviathans but in the end it feels like we are just piloting a little fighter, because all weapons are facing forward (except when turning the weapon computer which is weird tho).

Of course there are turrets that enhance the experience, but sadly i've found them to be relatively unreliable to find their target for example or even work in the first place, especially on servers. That might be my own stupidity, but i'd still like to present my idea.


What we got right now:

Note: I'm using "SkylordLuke"'s Venator class for this demonstration.

Forward facing weapons which are locked to the first-person crosshair;
If we want to aim, the whole ship moves with it.

Also we can't really shoot to the side.
It makes the size of the ship really irrelevant as it feels like piloting a tiny starfighter.


What i propose:

A permanent Third-Person view, with all weapon-systems (that are able to aim there) locked to our crosshair, including turrets and sideways facing weapons.

Every turret could get its own small crosshair which would (try to) keep up with the players-crosshair (influenced by turret-rotation speed) and enable the player to engage in more dynamic battles that are not just about staring each other in the face.

_____________________________________________________________________


Now i don't know how any of you feel about this, but i personally would actually like to take my ships into combat more often with a system similar to this: Right now either just standing right infront of the enemy or strafing 24/7 is kinda boring.

-Sol

 

[ZombieMouse]

You want that glorious moment where two capital ships pass each other broadside with little fighters flying in between eh? Sounds like you're after something like the turrets in World of Warships.

 

[jayman38]

I agree. It's the difference between....

which is just shoe-horned first-person combat, versus the kind of tactical command over the systems that one would expect.

This suggestion kind of goes along with the suggestions to give turrets hierarchical targeting priorities. In this case, the turrets would need "fire on my selected target" in its priority list somewhere. Also, we need to have a different command for nav-selecting a target (do NOT fire on this target. I'm just scanning it or using it as a reference point, or something) and a regular attack target (yes, kill this thing.)

 

[Deserea]

If this could be implemented...it would be very interesting. WoWS is interesting to play, but i wonder what kind of problems this would make with all the calculations that would need to be done, to make it work like WoWs does.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I'd be happy with a 3rd person view tied to the entity instead of the galaxy.
[doublepost=1498173832,1498173797][/doublepost]Orientation that is sorry.

 

[sayerulz]

I would add to this the ability to set turrets into control groups. Otherwise, ships like the Venator where it's impossible to have all of your turrets facing the same target at once will be even more suboptimal, because their turrets will not be able to engage other targets. If you have control groups however, you can, for instance, control the turrets on the right side while leaving the ones on the left to do their own thing.

Otherwise, excellent idea.

 

[S0lace]

You want that glorious moment where two capital ships pass each other broadside with little fighters flying in between eh? Sounds like you're after something like the turrets in World of Warships.

I'd be lying if i said the "quality UI design" i did in paint wasn't inspired by it, but i believe WoWs made a pretty understandable and solid system.

Also let's be honest here: I think epic broadsides of fancy ships are way more fun than phallus-shaped gigantic cannons strafing like they're A/D'ing in a FPS.

 

[jayman38]

I would add to this the ability to set turrets into control groups. Otherwise, ships like the Venator where it's impossible to have all of your turrets facing the same target at once will be even more suboptimal, because their turrets will not be able to engage other targets. If you have control groups however, you can, for instance, control the turrets on the right side while leaving the ones on the left to do their own thing.

Otherwise, excellent idea.

This is one of the reasons why turrets need target hierarchy lists instead of one single, static setting.

Example logic: If the turret has a setting of "Attack My Target" above other targeting settings, but cannot point towards the pilot's target, the turret should switch to the next target priority, whether that be Anti-missile spray, auto-lock onto another hostile, or something else.

Another example: If there are two targets, one a nearby enemy that cannot be pointed at, and a distant target that is being targeted by the pilot, and the AI has a priority of auto-attacking over "Attack My Target", when the nearby ship slips out of the firing arc, the turret auto-selects the "Attack My Target" priority, and will return to auto-target when the first ship gets into the firing arc.

This auto-selection process will require occasional line-of-sight calculations to all targets in range, which should be spaced out, so it might take a while for the turret to return back to a higher priority target.

 

[apelsinsaft]

YES

YES

[edit] To clarify, this is a feature i would very much like to see

 

[kulbolen]

turrets arent unreliable unless you build them poorly... you can already build turrets that hit in any direction, and you can already build broadsides using cameras to change your viewpoints, you can scroll out backwards to get third person viewing angles on the broadsides... or double tap right shift to lock to third person rotating for a more "cinematic view."

a purpose built broad side camera system or targeting ai could be cool... but it seems like instead of just doing this you could do an entire camera control/turret ai revamp instead to get what youre looking for a well as a bunch of other options. cause this is already possible, but clunky, and a camera control upgrade along with some better turret ai options would make it way nicer along with fixing some of the games other probs

 

[Shadow2Lead]

Another game besides WoWS to look at for implementation inspiration would be the third person combat mode in Star Trek Bridge Commander. That game had the opposite problem StarMade has. The capital ship combat felt pretty good but the smaller and more maneuverable your ship was the worse it felt. Having both systems in Starmade would enable both large and small ship combat feel right.

In terms of implementation I'd like it to be some sort of battlespace simulation block that would be a camera you could switch to and would just be third person. This would allow it to have substantial power or other requirements that would be easily afforded on larger ships and too power intensive and/or massive for smaller ships.

 

[ZombieMouse]

I would add to this the ability to set turrets into control groups. [...] If you have control groups however, you can, for instance, control the turrets on the right side while leaving the ones on the left to do their own thing.

Otherwise, excellent idea.

+

This is one of the reasons why turrets need target hierarchy lists instead of one single, static setting.

This is basically how turrets worked in From the Depths (not played it in ages, so no idea if anything has changed).

You could create a turret group and assign as many turrets as you wanted.
Then set up the AI for that group to target based on enemy range, mass, speed weapons etc.
Oh, and you could also limit turret fire-arcs (left-right, up-down) so they would never try to shoot something blocked by the hull.

What all that meant in practice was you could have one battery set up for AAA, a main battey targeting big slow targets, and another for smaller faster ships etc. Basically you could always have the right type of gun firing at the right sort of target all the time all automatically, and yet still be able to take manual control of any battery or all the ship's guns at any time. 'Twas pretty cool actually.

 

[lupoCani]

Keep in mind that this is only half the problem. If ships can only aim forwards, we'll still be stuck shooting in each other's faces like fighters. Turrets, unless they can draw on the blocks of the mothership for firepower, are capable of fighting another ship of the same size by themselves.

 

[sayerulz]

Keep in mind that this is only half the problem. If ships can only aim forwards, we'll still be stuck shooting in each other's faces like fighters. Turrets, unless they can draw on the blocks of the mothership for firepower, are capable of fighting another ship of the same size by themselves.

I would call that a problem with weapons size/damage & power consume ratio. If the damage output, mass, and power consume of weapons were say, doubled, then you might see turrets that aren't 75% of the "main" ships mass be truly effective.

Has anyone tried running a server with this config? I'm curious as to how it would effect things.

 

[Brokengauge]

It would also help to be able to steer the ship from other cameras besides those facing forward.

I would also love some way to map "pitch" and "yaw" to the keyboard, so I can aim with the mouse, but steer with the keyboard if I wanted to.

 

[Kurtoid]

Great idea. Robocraft added exactly this, and it works very well.

 

[Captain Fortius]

The necromantic powers are strong in this one!

It sort of happened.
There's an option for manual turret control now.
But it's jittery, glitchy, and try to switch to free camera mode and your ship will tilt to odd angles.
Also, there's no way to steer the ship yet in free cam mode.
And your starboard turrets will try to shoot at targets on your port side like your ship wasn't in the way.

Half the turret lag could be eliminated if the AI realized that target lies outside it's firing arc and wouldn't try to move - or, even better, would try to acquire a target it can actually shoot at if it's on auto.
The other half could be solved by making the turrets save the angles they can traverse and elevate to a variable, then check against those when moving, instead of constant collision checks. Reset the variables when chunks in the turret or it's vicinity are altered.

As for how should it feel to control a mighty battleship;

It's common knowledge ships of the line are operated by manly shouting, and not a pansy joystick! :D

I'd imagine a command wheel;

-Push and hold "give command" button on your keyboard.

- Command wheel pops up.

-Move the mouse to select stuff such as "Accelerate" "Decelerate" "Turn" etc.,

-They lead to further sub-wheels that lets you set the associated numeric values.

-A few sets of voiceovers could be recorded to play alongside these orders.

 

[OfficialCoding]

Maybe as an option, but I personaly like the 1st person view most of the time. You should have a choice definitly.

 

[Ckeeze]

GIVE THIS MAN A SYSTEM TO GOVERN!