Remove firing arcs. Add targeting enhancements.

[Valiant70]

With the weapon update coming up and manual turret aim already in, I thought it would be a good time to revisit some old ideas about weapon arcs and soforth.

Part I: Remove firing arcs.

Now that we have manually controllable turrets, let's go ahead and take off the default wide firing arc. If you want your main beam on gimbals, by all means have your way! Just put it on a big turret.

Part II: Lead aim reticle.
Calculate and display a point of aim according to the velocity vector of the target and the muzzle velocity of the currently selected weapon. Simple as that. This has been a glaring omission since the beginning.

Part III: Assisted aim.

I've seen this in at least two games and it works amazingly well. The arc would be very narrow, about 3 degrees off the crosshair, and may be reduced by the user if desired. If the target is far enough away that it fits entirely within said circle, assisted targeting kicks in and fires at the center of the target. The system also takes lead aim into account - you would still point the crosshair at the lead aim reticle.

Once the target is "big" enough in your screen to fill the assist circle, it is assumed that you're firing at whatever part of the ship you want to hit, and assist is disabled. If you're a really good shot, you might want to reduce the assist arc a little, to 1 or 2 degrees.

If you have enough recon strength to detect the ship's active reactor, assisted aim targets the reactor instead of the center of the ship, and remains active until you're close enough for the reactor itself to fill the target assist circle.

There are multiple reasons for this.

1. As it is now, you can't reasonably hit stuff beyond a certain distance even with a beam. This would allow you to hit some part of the target provided it is in range of your weapon and fails to take evasive action.
2. This completely separates flight control from aiming mounted weapons. You should "fly" the gun sight onto the target instead. That's how mounted guns work.
3. This allows joystick and "glide" style mouse input (where you don't have to pick the mouse up to continue turning) to be viable alternative to "warp" style mouse input (what we have now, where you have to keep moving the mouse to keep turning). Without assisted aim, neither of these control styles will ever be accurate enough to fight with. Lack of viable joystick play in a space game makes me very sad.

 

[JinM]

I want to add another reason for assisted aim:
This is the future, why can't my computer help me with targetting calculations?

 

[Dire Venom]

So much agreement to be had, yes yes!!

Currently Ship mounted weapons cannot be controled by the AI.
However, the player can create fixed weaponary on a docked entity (no turret) with limited firing arcs that fires if a target is within it's cone of fire.

This is a complex and entirely unessacery operation, just doing as suggested in the OP makes a whole lot more sense and would significantly improve combat. You can already sort of do it, so why not make it a full game feature that doesn't require 10 years of game experiance to use?

 

[Valiant70]

So much agreement to be had, yes yes!!

Currently Ship mounted weapons cannot be controled by the AI.
However, the player can create fixed weaponary on a docked entity (no turret) with limited firing arcs that fires if a target is within it's cone of fire.

This is a complex and entirely unessacery operation, just doing as suggested in the OP makes a whole lot more sense and would significantly improve combat. You can already sort of do it, so why not make it a full game feature that doesn't require 10 years of game experiance to use?

And while we're at it, let's reduce the arc of mounted guns to something reasonable instead of shooting a laser beam at a 30 degree angle out the end of the barrel!

As an added bonus, this makes evasive action like strafing meaningful when avoiding a larger ship's guns, because the pilot can't hit you just by moving the cursor. The ship must turn.

 

[Dire Venom]

And while we're at it, let's reduce the arc of mounted guns to something reasonable instead of shooting a laser beam at a 30 degree angle out the end of the barrel!

As an added bonus, this makes evasive action like strafing meaningful when avoiding a larger ship's guns, because the pilot can't hit you just by moving the cursor. The ship must turn.

Still "Turrets" :P
All hail the mighty Ball Turrets!
Kinda hard to evade unless you can strafe faster then the turret can turn :/

 

[Valiant70]

Still "Turrets" :P
All hail the mighty Ball Turrets!
Kinda hard to evade unless you can strafe faster then the turret can turn :/

Yes, but the turret hardware is going to cost quite a bit of extra mass to support a gun of the same size, and it's a lot more vulnerable once the shields are down. It's still an improvement, but it doesn't leave big ships defenseless against fast little ones either.

 

[komatodik]

Yes, but the turret hardware is going to cost quite a bit of extra mass to support a gun of the same size, and it's a lot more vulnerable once the shields are down. It's still an improvement, but it doesn't leave big ships defenseless against fast little ones either.

at this point everything is far more vulnerable once the shields are down... and turrets may be usefull as weapon in general, they also do open some new strats for fights. and... well. if we are speaking about minmaxing... turret hardware mass is less than 2% of ship,or so. or the ship is small enough it can go fine without turrets

 

[petlahk]

Please! Please! Can the whole community agree with something for once! I hope so! This idea needs to happen!

 

[uberadiant]

And while we're at it, let's reduce the arc of mounted guns to something reasonable instead of shooting a laser beam at a 30 degree angle out the end of the barrel!

As an added bonus, this makes evasive action like strafing meaningful when avoiding a larger ship's guns, because the pilot can't hit you just by moving the cursor. The ship must turn.

Completely agree with this. All weapons should fire straight out of the barrel, with the firing arc created by the movement of the turret.

 

[lupoCani]

With the weapon update coming up and manual turret aim already in, I thought it would be a good time to revisit some old ideas about weapon arcs and soforth.

Part I: Remove firing arcs.

Now that we have manually controllable turrets, let's go ahead and take off the default wide firing arc. If you want your main beam on gimbals, by all means have your way! Just put it on a big turret.

Strike "just" or "big" from that sentence, preferably the latter.

As it stands, there is no "just" about that. Big turrets are hard to pull off, especially if there is any semblance of aesthetic limitation, like imitating preexisting designs, or following a set tradition within a faction.

One day, we may instead be able to skip the "big" part. Having to direct the entire weapon in the direction you're firing has always seemed a relic to me, something that seems alright for a fighter or small ship, but not for anything larger. Linking main weapons to turret outputs is long overdue, and before anyone says otherwise, perfectly plausible to balance by limiting such turrets' rotational speed.

 

[Valiant70]

As it stands, there is no "just" about that. Big turrets are hard to pull off

Well, that's the idea. You don't get a rotating gun for free.

ne day, we may instead be able to skip the "big" part. Having to direct the entire weapon in the direction you're firing has always seemed a relic to me, something that seems alright for a fighter or small ship, but not for anything larger. Linking main weapons to turret outputs is long overdue, and before anyone says otherwise, perfectly plausible to balance by limiting such turrets' rotational speed.

Yes, you would definitely have to balance it with rotational speed. Currently there isn't any balancing in place for that. Massive turrets can rotate at max speed if given enough enhancers.

 

[Valiant70]

To further combat "island" ships, the lead aim indicator should have a way to target small floating pieces of ships that may contain stabilizers.

To do this, the lead aim indicator should just use a different colored copy of the "highlight" outline you get when you target a ship. This would allow pilots to target any part of a ship effectively.

 

[Dire Venom]

To further combat "island" ships, the lead aim indicator should have a way to target small floating pieces of ships that may contain stabilizers.

To do this, the lead aim indicator should just use a different colored copy of the "highlight" outline you get when you target a ship. This would allow pilots to target any part of a ship effectively.

Or even just some way of targeting mass "density".
I would hope the AI would do that already rather than just shooting somewhere within the bounding box

 

[Valiant70]

Or even just some way of targeting mass "density".
I would hope the AI would do that already rather than just shooting somewhere within the bounding box

If I’m not mistaken, missiles and AI currently target a random block.

 

[Durendal5150]

Love everything about this suggestion. It would go a very long way in bringing the game's combat up to par with other space combat games, and well above other block games.

Linking main weapons to turret outputs is long overdue, and before anyone says otherwise, perfectly plausible to balance by limiting such turrets' rotational speed.

I'm 100% onboard with that. I'd say an option might be to require only a single level of docking distance. So the system blocks would need to be on the turret 'base' requiring the construction of turret-wells like on actual warships. That's largely just personal preference though.

 

[Valiant70]

So the system blocks would need to be on the turret 'base' requiring the construction of turret-wells like on actual warships.

I'd be on board with that.

 

[Durendal5150]

I'd be on board with that.

It occurs to me that could potentially make the calculations easy as well. Instead of cross-grid block linking (which has always been something of a disaster) we can simply count systems touching the turret rail and turret docker as all one thing. Or link the base-side elements to the docker itself/rail itself. With a computer with a linked docker assuming all the system blocks linked to its other side as its own.

 

[lupoCani]

Well, that's the idea. You don't get a rotating gun for free.

That's misrepresenting the issue. Heavy rotating firepower is not so much "not free" as it is monstrous, bulky and above all, niche. Costly or not, building ships of that nature is just a whole other category of design. Whether or not you believe this is a good thing on the meta level, referring to the act of "just put it on a big turret" seems slightly dishonest.

 

[Valiant70]

Heavy rotating firepower is not so much "not free" as it is monstrous, bulky and above all, niche. Costly or not, building ships of that nature is just a whole other category of design.

Engineering a large turret shouldn't be easy, and should require the ship to be designed around it just as many ships are designed around a giant mounted gun battery now. Your alternative is building several moderately sized turrets, which is equally challenging but can arguably be more stylish. The point is, making a large, powerful weapon swivel to cover an entire hemisphere of fire (give or take) should be a challenge.

That's misrepresenting the issue

Whether or not you believe this is a good thing on the meta level, referring to the act of "just put it on a big turret" seems slightly dishonest.

See, the problem with starmade dock is that you can't say anything in a remotely informal manner without everyone twisting your words til they scream and then jumping down your throat. Kindly remove yourself from my larynx.

 

[Nosajimiki]

I don't really see the point of this. In general, I only hull-mount weapons because I WANT a manually aimed weapon that can not be fooled by various Counter-AI mechanisms or because I want a weapon designed to be shot off into space like distractor missiles or waffles guns. If distractor missiles and waffles auto aimed at the enemy, this would cause them to malfunction when an enemy is near my crosshair rather than help them do as they are supposed to. You'd also have the issue of this messing with Salvager beams which the game engine would also have to address.

Anything you want to use aiming assistance on can already be put on a turret with an AI block set to fire on target. This is more useful than aiming assistance because it means that I don't have to manage that weapon system while I handle more important things like scanning, jamming, commanding drones, etc.

Firing arcs help with pixel-perfect aiming when you need to do something like hit a tall-skinny ship from >5 km. If you had to manually aim your ship, I'd suspect actually hitting things would become impossible with larger ships.

Only part I really agree with here is that leading reticules would be nice, particularly for cannons and dumbfire missiles.