More Visceral Gameplay ideas

Post ideas & suggestions you have pertaining to the game here.
RPC
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Location: Hmm... I'm confused. Anybody have a starmap to the Core?

@PM yeah, I think adding new, tankier armors that are freighter only might be a solution.
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I generally disagree that fighting in Transcendence is all about kiting. It can be, but only if you play it that way. Medium and short range combat is also pretty viable, and a heck of a lot more fun when it works out. Personally I've got a few gameplay-based ideas, but I'm waiting until after the big armor/shield rebalance to see how that changes everything (because it really will change everything, one way or another).


Although obviously the mass distribution of armor needs fixing as part of that. That's been known for....quite a few years now.
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Press [crtl] to enter melee mode. Here, you can ram into enemies to deliver damage propotional to your momentum, but you can also crash into asteroids and debris.

Let strafing be the speciality of gunships aka Wolfen, Freyr, Sandstorm (Tundra?), Ronin series, Centurion, etc.
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I think I came up with an extremely simple solution to all of this, from the imbalances with kiting to the desire for more strategic combat - set the max speed when not thrusting to 75% of the speed acquired while thrusting. This makes it easier for ships to catch up to other ships that are attacking them from outside of their maximum weapon range, and presents a severe nerf to the presently unbeatable strategy of just pointing a howitzer at the target and using it as propulsion to stay out of weapon range. It also keeps fleeing viable, as opposed to the alternative of adding a ton of interceptors to the game, which might make it much more difficult. It's also more realistic for an accelerating ship to be able to outrun one that is not accelerating.

I think this may be what we're looking for. Thoughts, anyone?
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Location: Hmm... I'm confused. Anybody have a starmap to the Core?

That would be a great solution.
The only problem is I'm not sure how to set lower maxSpeed when not thrusting. Probably add a ministry ticket?
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An ugly and inefficient way to do that is to check all ships in the system every few ticks, and lower speed gradually for all ships above a certain speed. I did something like this in the Star Castle mod to simulate per tick dragFactor in deep space. RPC used a similar method for gravity in his Gravity mod.

With all of that said, I am not fond of the idea constant drag in non-nebula if ship is above x% of its max speed. It would certainly make inertialess drive much more attractive. If you will burn power constantly to keep max speed, might as well use the drive that lets you stop instantly on demand. I would be push thrust constantly. I would want max speed to be much higher (like .40-.50c) so battle speed is bearable, and I would want a true autopilot like Star Control 2's so that holding the button all of the time is not necessary.
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Location: Hmm... I'm confused. Anybody have a starmap to the Core?

@PM: It's not constant drag, it's just lowering the speed of non-thrusting ships to a lower cruise speed so that turning around and shooting backwards means that enemies have a chance to get close to the player.
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Under the proposed idea, if you do not thrust, you will drag/slow down until speed is low enough. You must constantly thrust to maintain max speed. If I need to do this, I might as well aim for inertialess drive as my endgame drive instead of titan or megadrive.

Come to think of it, this would make Omni and tracking weapons even better than they are now, as I can run-and-gun without facing the enemy. I can do this already, but drift and shoot with a howitzer or basic gun like in Star Control is a viable option. With this idea, we kill the drift-and-kite option, but leave the run-and-gun-with-autoaim-weapons alone.

I do not like the drag-until-you-are-slow-enough idea. It is a radical change from Transcendence for the sake of change. It also makes it less like Star Control 2, one of the two games Transcendence advertises being a fusion of.
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PM wrote:Come to think of it, this would make Omni and tracking weapons even better than they are now, as I can run-and-gun without facing the enemy. I can do this already, but drift and shoot with a howitzer or basic gun like in Star Control is a viable option. With this idea, we kill the drift-and-kite option, but leave the run-and-gun-with-autoaim-weapons alone.
This is why I advise nerfing the range of omnidirectional weapons - the ability to flee and dodge while firing them is, as you acknowledge, overpowered.
I do not like the drag-until-you-are-slow-enough idea.


75% max speed is hardly slow. That said, I'm not opposed to increasing max speed while thrusting rather than decreasing it while not thrusting.
It is a radical change from Transcendence for the sake of change.
It fixes an exploit that can presently break the entire combat mechanic.
It also makes it less like Star Control 2, one of the two games Transcendence advertises being a fusion of.
Star Control 2 did not have a maximum movement speed. This change would fix an issue that is the direct result of implementing one, and thus make the combat much *more* faithful to that of Star Control, in which a ship that was thrusting could always catch up to one that was not. I should also point out that SC2 had wrapping, asteroids, and a central planet, all of which worked as hard counters to kiting, and did not use the same controls for open world exploration as for combat.
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I did not acknowledge Omni weapons were overpowered here, only that adding drag to ships would not decrease their effectiveness much, while removing drift-and-shoot as a viable strategy. Also, I am against "nerfing the range of omnidirectional weapons" because then would not be an Omni version of the weapon but something different calling itself that, which it would not be; in other words, false advertising.

75% of anything less than .25c would be too slow to me. That makes a ship as slow or slower than EI500, and that thing is slow (at least until it gets titan or better).

Star Control has maximum movement speed on a per-ship basis, although outside forces can cause a ship to exceed their speed limit temporarily. In any case, drift-and-kite is definitely a mostly reliable strategy that can let Fwiffo or other fast ship with medium ranged weapons kill lots of Ur-Quan. No doubt Star Control had its balance problems and ship tiers.
JohnBWatson wrote:It fixes an exploit that can presently break the entire combat mechanic.
And the fix can make the game less fun and/or destroy its character for the sake of balance. I do not want to fly slow pokes just because of a perceived balance problem.
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PM wrote:I did not acknowledge Omni weapons were overpowered here, only that adding drag to ships would not decrease their effectiveness much, while removing drift-and-shoot as a viable strategy.
"Drift and shoot" would not be broken as an option, kiting would simply cease to be an 'I win' button. Pillboxing(focusing exclusively on firing without dedicating power to engines) was perfectly viable in SC2, it just didn't prevent any enemies from retaliating.
Also, I am against "nerfing the range of omnidirectional weapons" because then would not be an Omni version of the weapon but something different calling itself that, which it would not be; in other words, false advertising.
I think that's just nitpicking - the exact same thing could be said about reducing their firerate, and nobody thinks that that makes them too different from their fixed counterparts.
75% of anything less than .25c would be too slow to me. That makes a ship as slow or slower than EI500, and that thing is slow (at least until it gets titan or better).
As I said in the previous post, it would be just as effective to increase the thrusting speed of ships while in combat.
Star Control has maximum movement speed on a per-ship basis, although outside forces can cause a ship to exceed their speed limit temporarily. In any case, drift-and-kite is definitely a mostly reliable strategy that can let Fwiffo or other fast ship with medium ranged weapons kill lots of Ur-Quan.
The Eluder had a weapon that fired backwards - drifting while firing would be somewhat extraneous for them. At any rate, it takes a fair amount of skill to keep your ship drifting while avoiding the planet's gravity well, asteroids, and the enemy's attempts at wrapping back around the map to meet you. As I said before, SC2 has numerous hard counters to kiting that Transcendence does not have, in addition to a fundamentally different physics mechanic due to Transcendence's introduction of a maximum speed.
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I'm not sure kiting is such a big problem. To some extent, there need to be tactics that allow the player to beat enemies that ought to outmatch them. If it does need to be solved, I'd prefer to do it with AI improvements, such as:
- Using fixed weapons at full range when attacked at long range.
- Dodging shots, or at least zigzagging more, in some situations.
- Retreating when faced with an unwinnable fight.
- Turning damaged sides away from danger.
- Shooting down incoming projectiles with secondary weapons when there isn't an enemy ship they can target.

I feel like the ability to thrust in any direction (with more than a small fraction of full thrust) would actually make combat more boring. There's no question about which direction you should be facing- it's always towards what you're trying to kill. Also, the AI would need significant changes to be able to use it. I'd be OK with a device that adds that ability existing, though.

Also, I'd prefer not to have thrusting increase maximum speed. It's OK in a game like NAEV, where you don't consume fuel except for intersystem travel, but in Transcendence it would be a trade-off between boredom and loss of resources. And you can't increase speeds too much or the violations of special (and even Newtonian) relativity become very apparent. Some of them are already. Higher time compression would be nice, but might be a problem for the game engine.
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NMS wrote:I'm not sure kiting is such a big problem. To some extent, there need to be tactics that allow the player to beat enemies that ought to outmatch them. If it does need to be solved, I'd prefer to do it with AI improvements, such as:
- Using fixed weapons at full range when attacked at long range.
- Dodging shots, or at least zigzagging more, in some situations.
- Retreating when faced with an unwinnable fight.
- Turning damaged sides away from danger.
- Shooting down incoming projectiles with secondary weapons when there isn't an enemy ship they can target.
Those are all absolutely good ideas, but I'd say that there still needs to be some means of damaging a faster enemy with a longer ranged weapon. If the exact same strategy can effortlessly kill nearly any enemy in the game with mathematical certainty, combat becomes tedious for those who use it and less rewarding for those who don't. While there should certainly be a way for the player to defeat better equipped enemies, I don't believe that the AI will ever be good enough that the player can't outsmart it. That said, there are also the 'hard' advantages of class based powers and the enemy's fireRateAdj.
Also, I'd prefer not to have thrusting increase maximum speed. It's OK in a game like NAEV, where you don't consume fuel except for intersystem travel, but in Transcendence it would be a trade-off between boredom and loss of resources. And you can't increase speeds too much or the violations of special (and even Newtonian) relativity become very apparent. Some of them are already. Higher time compression would be nice, but might be a problem for the game engine.
I don't think that a 25% speed increase when thrusting would be immersion - breaking on the basis that we have drives that increase speed by much more than this without issue, but testing would certainly be required to find an optimal balance here(as it was, I'm sure, to calculate the speed variables that we use now).
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How can you slow down without backthrusting in space?
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Another reason why I oppose drag everywhere is player who wants maximum speed will burn a lot a fuel going from A to B. This is one of the inertialess drive's disadvantages. People post that it is a fuel hog. This change will apply to all drives (and no drive). Adding drag to everything is a fundamental game-change with far-reaching consequences. One of which is players will be burning through fuel more quickly; I think many will not drift through vast swathes if deep space if they can go faster by thrusting, if only to reduce tandem.

I do not have a problem with kiting enemies to death. If the enemy is dumb enough to follow me mindlessly instead of disengaging and leaving me alone, it deserves to die.

The problem with Transcendence AI is all enemies seem to have a one-size-fits-all AI, and it is fairly stupid and predictable. There needs to be varying AI so the varying ships behave differently - and smarter sometimes. Sometimes, there is nothing it can do to win, and it dies. That is fine.

Adding drag to everything as a Band-Aid to the stupid one-size-fits-all AI seems like a cure worse than the disease.

@ JohnBWatson:
Transcendence has speed (and efficiency mods). It is okay for an Omni weapon to fire slower (although firing at the same rate is better). Nothing in Transcendence has a range mod (and when I added one, AI ignored it and could not behave properly, and I scrapped it). An upgraded version of the laser cannon from EI should have basic laser cannon stats. I would not have a problem with less range if it was a competitor's version (e.g., taubeam or neutron blaster instead of standard particle beam weapon).

Star Control stuff:
As for the Spathi BUTT missile... If you fired the missile forward, that is drift-while-facing enemy, you would hit yourself. Also, the range of the BUTT is shorter than Ur-Quan weapons, and short in general. Spathi often needs to aim the missile at the enemy despite being homing, while kiting, to give missile enough range to hit. Spathi (and others like Syreen) need the kite the Ur-Quan to kill them without taking damage or dying. Finally, Spathi (and many other ships) needs to drift to maintain optimal kiting range against slower enemies. Spathi can face away from enemy, but needs to drift to kite. Others like Syreen kite like we do in Transcendence.

Yes, there are external forces that can interfere with kiting. They happen infrequently enough to not be a factor. In the rare cases your ship gets blocked (not merely lightly pushed) by an asteroid, and the enemy catches up and kills you, you end the game, reload, and try again until you win. Planet is not a factor if you travel straight up-or-down or left-or-right, no diagonals.

Pillboxing works for ships that do not need to kite to win. Some ships are not built for pillboxing (and some cannot kite).

Transcendence, like Star Control, has maximum speed on per-ship basis. Unlike Star Control, there are few external forces that interferes with movement.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
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