Squadron formations

[Paullus]

I know many squadron suggestions have been posted, but I think this one warrants a separate thread.

It would be really nice if in fleets/future squadrons, we could decide different flying formations. Then on the fleet command tab, we could have a scroll down (or some layout) of saved loadout formations.

The loadouts could be saved by flying all of the ships to respective positions in space, and saving these positions as a loadout.

These loadouts could even be saved in a blueprint-like format, where the coordinates of each ship in the saved loadout are attributed to the position each ship has in the fleet list. Then you could save the fleet formation and give it to any fleet you make in the future, and also share it with your faction/friends.

 

[gregolegomonkey]

A (probably) better way of saving the formations for future use might be through the use of a three dimensional GUI for manual positioning, kind of like the galaxy map. That way, instead of using coordinates (oops, my titans think they're fighters) it is more of a relative/proportional positioning using the average size of the ships.

 

[Paullus]

A (probably) better way of saving the formations for future use might be through the use of a three dimensional GUI for manual positioning, kind of like the galaxy map. That way, instead of using coordinates (oops, my titans think they're fighters) it is more of a relative/proportional positioning using the average size of the ships.

I agree that it should scale, but a 3D gui would still need to have some sort of coordinate system that it then scales based on bounding boxes. I think it would be nice to get the accuracy in the system through piloting each ship to their respective places. Then one could have blue-angel wingtip to wingtip flying formation.

 

[Edymnion]

Could make it block based. An invisible, intangible block (like a pickup rail or area sensor) that would function sort of like the pickup rail. As in, you put them around the "command ship", and then fly a fleet ship into one like a pickup rail. Only instead of docking it, it just makes the ship remember that this is it's default position, and that it will return to trying to virtually "dock" to that spot whenever its not doing anything else.

 

[Paullus]

Could make it block based. An invisible, intangible block (like a pickup rail or area sensor) that would function sort of like the pickup rail. As in, you put them around the "command ship", and then fly a fleet ship into one like a pickup rail. Only instead of docking it, it just makes the ship remember that this is it's default position, and that it will return to trying to virtually "dock" to that spot whenever its not doing anything else.

This is a good idea. then it would probably be easier to "break formation" at the end of an attack run to deal with enemy fighters etc. I do still think a good asset to this would be the ability to save and share formations.

 

[thecrazy13.main]

I was thinking maybe they could update the current AI with a series of tactical strategies that could be customized on a grid like the map, and through this you could have them preform maneuvers and other tactics.

For fleets, you could have a system of A-Z with a number (0-9) or (1-9), with some being attack and some being defense, and could be customized for individual fleets, or generalized using ship classes to apply to all the AI fleets universally. I also think an in-fleet command structure should be present, with the mothership being directly in command of assigned support ships that will be in command of the smaller fighters, and if you destroy one of the support ships than all the ships under that support ships command will scatter. and destroying the mothership will cause the entire fleet to scatter into their individual groups under the command of the support ships (essentially creating new fleets for each support ship)

The factions also need more ranks, maybe 10-20 ranks, and players could be in command of support ships or even individual fighters in the fleet.

The new ships class system is pretty great, but it could use some more diversity, like boarding craft, and juggernaut class. speaking of boarding, I think on-ship battles should become a thing, maybe it could be achieved by having each ship have a crew, and you can use a ship to latch onto another ship and have the crew of the latching ship try to get into the ship they are boarding and fight the crew of that ship for control.

so basically, formations, tactics on a kinda map-like grid (place ships in a grid system to make tactical formations) boarding, better AI's, really I think the whole combat aspect of the game is really lacking, you can't get awesome space battles with just lasers and missiles and the ships sitting back and circling.