I'd like everyone's opinion on this.

[Trafalgar]

You know, one of my favorite ships in Star Control II is the Spathi Eluder (and I rigged my flagship to emulate it by launching rear-firing tracking projectiles).

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

Convergence aside, aiming is pretty silly. The problems I see with the current system are these:

1. It is hard to get a sense of what's around you. Ships can get big and you have no way of knowing enemy position other than a vague direction unless they're directly ahead. Navigating obstacles is pretty ridiculous (you need to stop and zoom out to really get a view of what's going on). This affects aiming badly since you don't know if your shots are making it, or by how much they're missing, unless the enemy is close.
   
2. Turning scales worse than engines especially for asthetically-pleasing (longer than wide) ships. Let's proceed assuming this will not be fixed ever (or at least in the near future).
   
3. Turning and aiming are coupled.
   
4. 2 and 3 turn large (or even relatively small) ship battles into a "hippo ballet" as Tomino put it once. Dancing back and forth barely being able to hit anything most of the time because it's so hard to turn, but easy to run away. The coupling of aiming and turning mean that attempts to dodge affect your aim and vice versa. This makes combat extremely frustrating.

Obviously, making for straight-ahead-only firing arcs will only worsen the problem.

The solution I see is to split ship-control into two modes:the current one for finer control (good for small ships) and a new mode for bigger ships with a third-person ship view and keys to change ship orientation.
The cursor would be only for changing view angle and targeting (not aiming) the weapons at an enemy.
Weapons would automatically aim at the targeted spot on a ship similar to turrets (firing them would still be manual) and weapons would have to be able to fire in directions other than forward.
For firing ahead, you could create an offset to the targeted block in different directions. Targeting fighters in the new mode would be very difficult and probably seem pretty impersonal, but we are talking about a large ship with side-mounted weapons and probably turrets vs. something small and vulnerable. It's probably best you don't fly your battleship like you're dogfighting...and you could still switch to the old mode if you really want to.

As a sidenote, Space Engineers actually does this approach (albeit without the targeting stuff since they haven't fully implemented weapons) by having separate cockpits entirely for small and large ships. It seems to work pretty well there.

tl;dr:flying a warcruiser like a dogfighter is ridiculous, but it's all the current system really allows. The results are bad and we need a better way of controlling ships, such as one with remembered targeting areas, auto-aim, and separate turning controls, to fix this.

 

[Trafalgar]

Space engineers hasn't fully implemented weapons? :S

You can use the free-look key to look all around you in your war-cruiser. I don't recall if you can aim and fire while you're doing this. AIs could, in the last version I played much in (I haven't re-tested it in .14, mainly because I'm waiting for the weapons update and because it takes so damn long to build anything bigger than a fighter).

P.S. I liked your post because you used "affect" correctly, and that seems frighteningly rare on The Interwebs. <3

 

[Doomsider]

Perhaps overall length/size of the weapon could determine its firing angle. The larger it gets the smaller angle it is allowed to fire out and at a certain point for truly massive weapons arrays they just fire straight ahead.

 

[rece ktore leczo]

Perhaps overall length/size of the weapon could determine its firing angle. The larger it gets the smaller angle it is allowed to fire out and at a certain point for truly massive weapons arrays they just fire straight ahead.

Adjusting this stat from weapons tab would do the work. Of course instead of increasing value with the growing number of weapon block, firing arc would drop. If somebody wants to shoot at bigger angles then he needs to sacrifice other stats.
And different firing arcs for different type of weapons.

 

[CyberTao]

That would be an interesting twist o -o Lowering the Arc with increase in group size. Would still prefer a Thruster overhaul first, but that would work fine me thinks - 3- if it could even be done.

 

[Trafalgar]

You commonly have more than just one gun per weapon computer, and it's pointlessly tedious to set up many guns identically in that screen - especially when it just forgets your settings anyways (unless that was fixed and I missed it).

 

[dark_J]

Let's say, and bear with me now, we remove cursor aiming outright!?

So no more magical projectiles that speed away from your weapon array's barrel at a 45deg. angle, capital ships that fire pretty much sideways or plain silly instant core-drilling. Weapons should fire straight ahead, especially when built into your main ship, if you want to fire at smaller, more agile targets, you use turrets.

It's usefull for folks that like to core in under 5 seconds, but I honestly feel that cursor aiming adds little to nothing to the game in terms of combat, it's unrealistic, cheaty and exploitable.

A Starmade without cursor aiming I think, would be a Starmade where we have to choose how to defend or attack, by taking into account (during flight and construction) that weapons are spread out and that there WILL be deadspots on your ships if not fully covered in turrets.

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Combat between big ships would hardly be affected during the shield stage, however, instant coreing will mostly be a thing of the past and players could focus more on armor and missile defenses (other mechanics are planned to combat this, but still).

Large vs. Small ships would be much, much better balanced with big ships not being able to direct the full force of their main cannons at that one speck in space that is your fighter. I'd still stay away from turrets however...

Small vs. Large would be easier, as deadspots between turrets would be more common with turrets strictly bound by their max angles and main cannons not nearly as effective. Hitting a large ship with your little weapons will still be easy as hell ofc.

Small vs. Small would become a little harder, but nothing too bad if one adjusts his focus to leading targets more than currently. Tho to be honest, you dont cursor aim much anyway when leading your fast moving opponent.

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I think this would solve so many small problems.

So... let me know what you guys think from your experience, and drop a comment/vote!

[Disclaimer] None of this is planned, I was just wondering off my own accord how everyone felt about this proposal as its a big change gameplaywise. Also, with the combat system getting a big overhaul soon this might just be a temporary thing anyway, provided that the feature does not carry over to the new system.

I like curser aiming I cant imagine this game without it. its a very useful mechanic and the games better with it than without it and if you want to play a game that doesn't use curser aiming then go play space engineers or star citizen both are two really good games BTW.

 

[dark_J]

Instant core drilling is usually done by turrets, and you know why? Because they ALSO benefit from the weapons aiming thing. Disable it on turrets (and perhaps increase their turn speed a bit) and voilaaa, 90% of your problem is solved

If you disable it completely people will just start using turrets as main weapons, so it wouldn't be super productive. Also, don't forget that core drilling will eventually be removed.

Small ship VS big ship. Really? I can already fly in circles around big ships and they can't do s*** about it. The only problem is the turret accuracy but this is solved with my suggestion in paragraph 1. Small ship VS small ship would become reaaaaaally tedious btw. Reducing the cone of fire is a much better idea.

One last thing, it would severely limit designs. Ships like my titan would be pretty freaking awful offensive wise because of the guns being so spaced apart. Besides, is turret porcupine ships what you really want?

I completely agree getting rid of curser aiming will ruin the entire game I honestly don't know what his problem is with curser aiming also the best way of fixing core drilling is using ablative armor AKA docked ships with there own shield value.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

Space engineers hasn't fully implemented weapons? :S

The basic missiles, machine guns, and personal weaponry mostly work, but are currently missing some animations and balancing; bullets pretty much do nothing while missiles utterly wreck everything. The turrets meant for larger ships, last I heard, do not do anything at all.

As for the topic, I think that, as posts above me show, people will certainly be mad if cursor-aiming is outright removed. I guess it was sort of silly to think piloting a battleship in first person is silly. Switchable modes might cause some balancing headaches, but it's a solution that'll please more people.

 

[dark_J]

The basic missiles, machine guns, and personal weaponry mostly work, but are currently missing some animations and balancing; bullets pretty much do nothing while missiles utterly wreck everything. The turrets meant for larger ships, last I heard, do not do anything at all.

As for the topic, I think that, as posts above me show, people will certainly be mad if cursor-aiming is outright removed. I guess it was sort of silly to think piloting a battleship in first person is silly. Switchable modes might cause some balancing headaches, but it's a solution that'll please more people.

actually in a recent update the missiles were nerved they cant do s*** to ships with heavy armor and can only destroy one block of light armor.

 

[ImperialDonut]

Perhaps overall length/size of the weapon could determine its firing angle. The larger it gets the smaller angle it is allowed to fire out and at a certain point for truly massive weapons arrays they just fire straight ahead.

That's not a bad idea actually.

 

[dark_J]

Perhaps overall length/size of the weapon could determine its firing angle. The larger it gets the smaller angle it is allowed to fire out and at a certain point for truly massive weapons arrays they just fire straight ahead.

that should be flipped larger guns have a larger firing angle because of large ships have larger guns smaller ships should have the very small firing angle because of there great maneuver ability.

 

[ImperialDonut]

that should be flipped larger guns have a larger firing angle because of large ships have larger guns smaller ships should have the very small firing angle because of there great maneuver ability.

Exactly the reason that smaller ships should have larger angles, it would have much less of an impact on the overall balance and aiming at a small quick target would be easier for them.

 

[dark_J]

Exactly the reason that smaller ships should have larger angles, it would have much less of an impact on the overall balance and aiming at a small quick target would be easier for them.

good point but larger guns shouldn't be nerfed to death they should still have a good firing angle also when it comes down to it this post is getting ridiculous it started of as a good idea but wont actually work we all just go back to the original mechanic of the game lets just stick with it.

 

[CyberTao]

No, I can see the issue with things as they are :u
Large ships inherently are s'pose to have a slight weakness to Smaller ship, depending on turret coverage to counter them. But with the current system, All a Large ship is, is a Oversized Fighter :/

There needs to be something that defines the role of Large and small ships, but doesn't limit what you create. Scaling the Firing Arc down with the size of a weapon is a good idea, as it doesnt actually limit you in any way, shape, or form but instead leans towards allowing more diversity in Ships :u Large Siege/bombers and Anti-capital ship types of ships wont need a large Arc anyways to take down its target, but may need an escort with a wider Cone of Fire to protect it from enemy ships o -o

It adds diversity to roles, is what I'm saying, Should the weapon's arc decrease with weapon's size * ^*

 

[Winterhome]

Really, I think that we should at least partially toss cursor aiming, and then overhaul how we handle turrets and how we handle turnspeed.

A large ship doesn't need to turn at all to demolish fighters at a 60 degree angle to its nose, it just needs to have a pilot with a large FOV setting, which is amazingly overpowered. A fighter, on the other hand, instantly turns when you try to aim it, so removing cursor aiming wouldn't hurt them much anyway.

Fight a pirate in a capship, you'll understand what I'm talking about when you get pegged at a 90 degree firing angle.

 

[Trafalgar]

The problem there isn't that cursor aiming needs to be ripped out, it's that it needs to be limited so the guns will only aim so far off the forward axis.

I take advantage of the fact that it is unrestricted by mounting my turrets on standard docking modules, the effect being that they don't turn but will still fire at enemies directly behind them because the AI can aim in all directions, except for the 45 degree cone (IIRC) in the 'up' direction, and except for the 180-degree half-sphere below where the ship is docked or something like that. Basically they get the same aim as turrets without having to rotate. of course, the main reason I do it is because turrets look bad clipping through the ship.

Unless this changed in 0.14. I can't seem to get the spawn_entity command (or the other similar one that spawns waves) to work more than once for some reason to test anything.

 

[Ciggofwar]

I don't have much luck at core hitting but my turrets do it faster to a pirate station than i can just hit one of their turrets! and while I'm moving through space my turrets are shooting I turn around to see and all the turrets on the pirate station are iced, yet the pirate ships are nearly impossible for them to hit for some odd reason I think the turrets need to be hard set and with a scale that you program on the x,y,z axis of + and -
for there ranging of arc of fire paths, also with a home position so all the turrets don't point forwards, side turrets will face the side etc...
You see long barrelled turrets with their ends shot off, as they crossed over the arc of fire zones with another turret and that gun barrel stops firing "it's damaged captain" now there is other options of limiting the arc, moving the turret, or shortening the length of the turret barrel.
I realize it's a progression of game mechanics but the end result will come down to programming the turret. So an improper place turret will collide and pop off when the turrets is not properly set. I do not want my turrets to reach through my hull and shoot, and block the passages cause there there and not there ? Looks awful and cheesy!!! Brings into game captainship skill of maneuvering, timing, aiming, angles, rather than just spam from a flying can. The other issue will actually be addressed to building a ship that requires thinking of how turrets will be effective and the design around them.

I don't knock or discount the AI for being a core punching hero, it doing what it's designed to do, taking out the enemy as fast and effective as it can, it leaves me with more salvageable materials, or an individual with a majority of their ship in tact during a mis-communication event.