Ship to Ship Alignment Option

[Madman198237]

Random idea I had earlier. A cursory search revealed a couple of two-year-old threads for the topic, however they differ in one or two important ways from my suggestion, so here it is:

Give players (Probably not NPCs, simply because the pathfinding would get murderously complicated) the ability to use a core beam to align their ship to another ship. By "align" I mean retain relative position---if the enemy accelerates forwards, your ship should follow (With minimal delay). If it starts spinning, your ship begins a tight orbit to keep up with the spin. The aligned vessel is still capable of movement, though a large part of its thrust might at any one time get turned towards just keeping it aligned with the other vessel. This allows for all sorts of fun things like manual fighter landings and BOARDING! Mostly boarding.

Balance: This idea is self-balancing, since you must have a ship MUCH faster than the enemy ship---if they go into a roll, you'd likely lose them if you aren't extremely fast.

End result: Small, fast ships (Small because if it's longer than 50m in front of the core, the core beam won't reach, if I recall correctly) are capable of fixing position relative to another vessel for boarding. Of course, don't stay there TOO long, because while they're not moving from your point of view, you're not moving from theirs. This makes you a REALLY easy target.

 

[Dire Venom]

Pretty good sugestion, I can see it being used a lot as a quality of life improvements as well as quite useful for spectating.
I assume it would work like how the core beam does.

 

[Madman198237]

Well, yes. That's why I mentioned that it would be controlled by the core beam.

Which also prevents you from doing some sort of hundred-meter-long warship attack based on using large numbers of thrusters to hook onto the enemy ship and just blast the same spot repeatedly, before firing a massive M/P missile straight into it for MASSIVE system damage...

That has potential, actually.... Swarm of ion drones with a C/C and M/P-using clinger? I'm going to have to work at that, actually....IF this gets implemented.

 

[Dire Venom]

I would love the option of being able to do this in reverse => Taunting an enemy ship and forcing it to follow you :D
Nothing like watching a 2 million mass battleship spazzing out and crashing the server as it attempts to do a loop de loop ^_^

 

[Madman198237]

That would be why there are restrictions in place, Dire.

Because otherwise the lunatics get more destructive tools to blow things up with.

 

[EricBlank]

That takes half the fun out of it though.

I think this would be a great improvement especially trying to align properly to moving objects to dock. Ever tried to catch an out of control, spinning push-effect powered vessel (or npc ship) you accidentally undocked from in a game without the automatic speed/rotation dampening? Not fun. Restrictions on forcing other craft to align like faction lock-out or size restrictions would be mandatory, as noted.

The fleet mechanic basically does that already but it definitely needs work. Things just freak out, and of course you need to put them in a fleet first.

 

[Arcaner]

This sounded like a good suggestion at first, smaller ships could now move like the X-Wings (Star Wars) and bomb specific areas of a cap ship, but as I thought about this more and more, it began to appear... inconsistent.

There is a LOT of stuff that can go wrong. To state a few:

#It negates the disadvantage big ships (even those with excellent thrust) face- Manouverability. A big ship with lots of thrust could now exactly follow a small ship. Not cool.

#How far does the core beam extend?

#What determines the relative separation if one ship is faster? Does the slower one keep lagging? And I'm not even gonna talk about rolling...

#Collision calculations between two ships trying to move at same speeds in the same direction. Enough said.

#What's to stop the ship being chased from deliberately flying near a planet/asteroid/shop/other entity, and cause them to collide with the chaser?

#Is this the end of skilled piloting of small ships? ?

#That's it, I'm done (for now)

I don't want to be the sour grapes here, but it doesn't seem easy to implement.

P.S: There are a lot of good things (BOARDING!!! WITHOUT TRANSPORTERS, SHIP TO SHIP ASTRONAUT TRAVELLING!!! ) but it felt necessary to shoot down some of the plus points being mentioned here.

 

[Cluwne]

[insert Interstellar reference]
Seriously though, there should be a requirement to reach target's velocity or angular momentum before you can "align", otherwise it doesn't really make sense.

 

[Madman198237]

I find none of your objections convincing, and enforce my reality on the world!

But seriously: I SPECIFIED that there will be no "bigger ship pacing small ships" because of thrust disadvantages----the bigger ship will almost CERTAINLY have less thrust in rotation, pitch, or just standard movement. And if it DOESN'T, well, um, yeah?

Remember, this system WILL NOT allow a ship to exceed its maximum delta-V (Maximum change in velocity; acceleration) or maximum speed (Self-explanatory). The aligning ship HAS to be logically able to keep up with the smaller ship---if the smaller ship rolls, the bigger ship has to be capable of flying a loop around it to keep pace. This is why you're pretty much protected from bigger ships tracking small ones like that.

But if it DOES become an issue, it should be simple to institute a "mass check" where M1 must be < M2 or Ship2 cannot dock with Ship1.

As for matching them first, you've got to get within what I BELIEVE to be 50m core-beam range (I could be mistaken, sorry if I am) to lock onto them like that. After that, it's simulating a flight computer following the enemy ship---with delay if necessary for balance reasons.

 

[Zekester81]

A ship should only be able to do this if it has the ability to do so(maneuverability, thrust). A match target speed key would be nice to go along with this, that only matches the current speed of the targeted ship at the moment the key is pressed. I'm in favor. There are many other games that have a similar function(at least with speed) and it would facilitate docking to moving objects. I have one added suggestion, that this not function(well) if you're in combat, say a 10 second you-haven't-been-shot timer. I don't think this will eliminate piloting skill in any way.

Or you could go another way and just add the match target speed key, and leave all maneuvering to the pilot.

 

[Madman198237]

Again: Your first point is in the OP. If it's not clear, somebody please point out to me what might be done to make it clearer.

As for the in-combat thing, one of the most major uses of this thing is in combat. The trick is to remember that you're sacrificing most of your mobility for the potential to blast your way into the enemy's vessel. Now, if it's a giant dreadnought then your hundred-mass boarding craft is trying to stick with, it won't be a major issue---you should be FAR faster. If the dread is trying to stick with the lightweight boarding craft, no dice. It won't even be capable of keeping up with the forwards momentum.

Remember, there are five dimensions of movement that a hostile vessel has to keep up with--- forward/backward, left/right, up/down, clockwise roll/CCW roll, pitch up/pitch down. The last two are really, REALLY slow on larger ships (Making it easy for small vessels to keep up) while the fourth one especially is hard to match---you've got to be able to match their angular speed, meaning you've got to cover the same number of degrees per second, but you have to do it around a larger circle, meaning a much, much higher total velocity, which requires more acceleration to keep up, which means you need much higher proportional engine power.

In other words, this won't be OP---it's just simulating the use of a flight computer or the abilities of a really good pilot (Which we can't truly simulate with computers and one-person-piloting system) to do what your ship is already technically capable of doing.

 

[Zekester81]

It was clear, I was just re-iterating it for importance.

And yes, I know this would be useful in combat, and one of it's major uses. however, if you have a tiny little boarding craft, I feel that being shot by a much larger ship would tend to make you break off, hence the 10 second(or more, or less) no combat thing. Basically, You would do some damage, remove some turrets, ect before attempting to board in a small craft anyways right, and if so, the no damage counter wouldn't be an issue.

Think of it as a safety/emergency feature.

 

[silverfoe]

sweet

 

[Madman198237]

Nah---again, it'd be willfully sacrificing some or even a lot of your mobility, depending on how persistent and knowledgeable the pilot of the larger vessel is. If they've got proper turrets you're liable to get killed regardless. Taking damage should NOT force you to wave off---you're the pilot, you make the decisions. If you think your shields will survive whatever it is you're doing at the time, great! You might die, but that's your choice.

This would require testing first, but IF it becomes a balance issue then what you might do is nerf the shields of the aligning vessel due to "interference" or whatever, leading to MUCH more damage being received.

 

[JinM]

I like this idea, and maybe we will be lucky and see this. =)

The bigger ship aligns to a smaller ship contra is so far totally wrong, as smaller ships can turn incredibly fast and a big ship is never able to do so, as long as there is no afk-bot in the small vessel. Even bigger ships can turn still relatively fast.

Keep in mind, this suggestion aims for one style of pvp in Starmade, namedly roleplay pvp, as you allways will have to agree that bigger ships have to set their turn/roll rate below a certain limit.

In vanilla pvp in Starmade aligning might never be possible and if so only from a small scout to a really big titan. As I only know from titans (300m plus) that they turn/roll amazingly slow.

Additionally in vanilla hardcore pvp there will be no real open blast doors and only rail-doors. Just saying. This suggestion will never impact hardcore pvp, as boarding can be countered easily, if you dont agree to build ships within a certain set of pvp-rules. And as soon as pvp has rules it is no longer vanilla hardcore but roleplay.

 

[Madman198237]

No, actually. Very much no.

Your ship designations are subjective, JinM, just like everyone else's---most people consider a 300 meter ship to be somewhere between "line vessel" and "small cruiser".

Also, they roll slowly anyway, no need to have them set roll speed lower. In order to AVOID having really low roll-speeds at that size, you've got to make a LOT of compromises on other aspects of design. Basically, it's not a player-defined thing, larger vessels have slower roll speeds unless corrected, and if they're doing that much to correct it that you probably don't need to board them to win anyway---just blow up their compromised shields and thinned-out armor.

And if they aren't nice enough to have decent interior/convenient doors? Well then, don't board them.

 

[SneakyFish]

This seems like it would be good for boarding, but only if weapons didn't work while aligned to a ship. Otherwise you could get into a blind spot and just slowly tear it apart. It could also take away the fun of skillfully piloting small ships to board larger ones which I personally would have an issue with, since that's something I've had a lot of fun doing even if it's difficult to pull off.

 

[Madman198237]

Yes, you could get into a blind spot and slowly rip the ship apart. However, you'd have to be small enough to dodge fire yet large enough to break through the shields of the other ship. Oh, and you've got to hope that the pilot doesn't just go ahead and warp out.

 

[SneakyFish]

Yes, you could get into a blind spot and slowly rip the ship apart. However, you'd have to be small enough to dodge fire yet large enough to break through the shields of the other ship. Oh, and you've got to hope that the pilot doesn't just go ahead and warp out.

Wouldn't you also warp with the ship? Like aligned astronauts do?

 

[Madman198237]

No, this would be a ship equivalent to alignment. You would NOT warp with them, unless it makes sense to---that would depend on the lore-based mechanism of jumping.

Well, it'd actually depend mostly on balance, but hey, same difference, right?