Alpha 9 released

[s2odan]

It is made to be a challenge, but once you figure out the tactics required it will become easier.Such as dodging bullets... John also informed me that the AI tends to be accurate in bursts pretty much like a human would be, so basically when you see multiple big blobs of death shooting towards your face, its time to dodge and forget about getting a hit on him for a while. Also its imperitive that you keep a minimal aspect to the enemy ship, so he has a much smaller target to hit, the enemy will always be trying to do this with you too which in turn makes it harder to hit. A good tactic is to try and get below the enemy, presenting a nice fat target, but he wont like to let you do that.I'm really impressed with the AI, hopefully if you can give it a chance you will be too. It's designed to have certain weaknesses which can be exploited by the player, but believe me I understand your frustration as I felt it too at first I think what we would really need is a pilot school in the game or just documents, to describe in detail a good tactic for surviving an encounter.Failing all that you can always use the guided missiles

[Brianetta]

s2odan wrote:
Failing all that you can always use the guided missiles
Only because the AI doesn't know about them yet. (:

[robn]

s2odan wrote:
It is made to be a challenge, but once you figure out the tactics required it will become easier.
So what you're saying is that the AI acts the way a competent human familiar with her ship and space battles in general would. I like that! Good write-up, thank you.I think at this point we're not hearing more screams because its so difficult to actually get into a fight right now. Once the new intercept AI is done (a few weeks, probably, unless John finds a few spare hours and motiviation before then) I suspect we'll have lots of interest in either dumber enemies or better tools to kill them with

[Brianetta]

Or smarter enemies. Enemies who can be bought off. Or help which can be summoned.

[Potsmoke66]

was visiting my daughter over the weekend, sorry*the prev. posted clip is 9.01, the latest nightly build i downloaded CTR-F12 didn't works as you know for shure.*first time since 4 years

[Potsmoke66]

i guess what john (and perhaps me) makes so "ninja" is the long time experience with FE2 and i guess especially FFE, battles are extremely hard i feel, often they attack you in groups of 3 or even more fighters, sometimes convois that protect a bigger ship.they fight hard and often they shoot you down before you took a breath.you will have to find a way to split the group, so you can beat each fighter single (i tell you merlins and gyr fighters can be horrible hard additionally i'm usually one of the "bad guys" i don't care smuggling slaves and weapons, therefore each system some pirates and headhunters awaiting me and i'm expecting them...).if they would have only lasers (in FFE), really no problem, usually i only get hit by very early fired missiles (sometimes they fire missiles before you can see the attackers).but that's only experience, nothing special, if one plays that often he must get better, or get frustrated of the game.allready, in FFE, i fly a big parabel around my enemies to possibly attack them from behind, it gives me some advantage, but still fails often.that was a bit off topic pioneer, just to remeber tactics in FFE.but something that some argued about FE2 and FFE is when you don't move they often can't hit you to...they're just to fast and can't match a "0 speed", in battles.i will stay a bit with FFE now, i've allready planned to do some clips to show others how to beat FFE in a legal way, because i know lots find it very hard (while others think it's easy, but ok don't ask thurwitt or me..., those imperial pilots usually fall in somekind of bloodrush when they see more then one ship).btw, after a succesful photo or bombing i like to "clean" the sky...i will give the "CTRL-F12" fighter a new chance, let's see...

[s2odan]

HmmmOne thing I would have never said about FFE is that it was Hard... The game was very very easy, the AI was shit.Edit// Actually thats not quite true, the game could prove to be a challenge but not down to clever AI or clever game mechanics, quite the opposite, it could prove to be a challenge because of a seriously flawed combat system. They could not aim, they could not fire backwards, in-fact there was a lot they could not do and the player could.To compare them is rather funny. This is not FFE, you need to be smarter and better to win here.And Ctrl+F12 is not the debug pirate, it is a pirate in a LADY BIRD... you know that lumbering hulk of a ship (Big and Slow). :DTo get the Debug Pirate, start a new game at the Debug Point, you will be evenly matched against a pirate... Same ship same everything except you will have 1ton of hydrogen fuel and he will not.... Have fun
Quote:
*first time since 4 years

Pioneer is 3.

[Brianetta]

There were two things I disliked about FFE. The bugs, and the fight model. Frontier was slightly better, but still awful. Thing is, dogfights in space, and real physics, don't really co-exist. It can't happen in real life as it does in games and films, and the only way to make it happen is to put physics aside. FFE tried to do marry the two by introducing a fight frame and forcing your ship's engines to off. The combat computer was a bit of a joke, but I suppose it had to look like they'd tried something.If I want dogfighting in space, I'll play Oolite. If I still had a Windows machine, I'd play Tie Fighter. Normally, I prefer the realism of space.

[Pyros]

Brianetta wrote:
There were two things I disliked about FFE. The bugs, and the fight model. Frontier was slightly better, but still awful. Thing is, dogfights in space, and real physics, don't really co-exist. It can't happen in real life as it does in games and films, and the only way to make it happen is to put physics aside. FFE tried to do marry the two by introducing a fight frame and forcing your ship's engines to off. The combat computer was a bit of a joke, but I suppose it had to look like they'd tried something.If I want dogfighting in space, I'll play Oolite. If I still had a Windows machine, I'd play Tie Fighter. Normally, I prefer the realism of space.
Jousting comes to my mind.An I fully agree that realistic newtonian physics cannot coexist with "classic" space dogfighting. Realistic space battles could be more of launch missiles and other exotic weapons than aim, lock and shoot your lasers. But in a game, fun should take clear precedence over realism. Realism place is simulators (which are also a game, but you know what mean )

[s2odan]

Quote:
Jousting comes to my mind.An I fully agree that realistic newtonian physics cannot coexist with "classic" space dogfighting. Realistic space battles could be more of launch missiles and other exotic weapons than aim, lock and shoot your lasers. But in a game, fun should take clear precedence over realism. Realism place is simulators (which are also a game, but you know what mean )
Its a hard balance to find. Yes if we went the realistic route ships would be able to engage each other 1000s of KM apart from each other and would use computer aimed projectile weapons which would be no fun.On the other hand, the old Frontier and FFE model does not work either, we need some happy medium between the two and ideas are always welcomed.

[Brianetta]

Pyros wrote:
But in a game, fun should take clear precedence over realism.
We have realism (well, an approximation of it). We either turn it off, and make fighting a fun and rewarding game in itself, or we leave it on, and cope somehow. Seriously: the only way to make the realism/fun trade-off is to either get rid of the current realistic physics, or to temporarily switch off realistic physics for an artificial "fun mode" when the scrapping starts.I'm happy to neglect fighting. In Frontier, my strategy was always to trade heavily in the safest systems, until I could afford a ship where I didn't need to worry about survival. I'd carry missiles, but I didn't bother buying a laser. I never went looking for a fight, because it was difficult and uninteresting, principally because the Newtonian physics model really gets in the way of close-in ship-to-ship combat.

[s2odan]

Quote:
Seriously: the only way to make the realism/fun trade-off is to either get rid of the current realistic physics, or to temporarily switch off realistic physics for an artificial "fun mode" when the scrapping starts.
For me the fun is in the newtonian physics, remove that and you remove all fun. I'm sure I'm not alone in that opinion.

[robn]

I always rather enjoyed the combat in FE2 and FFE, but I was always a casual player and never really cared much for the physics model (though I didn't think it was cool that it was "real"). I also vote for keeping the physics model as-is, because its one the significant parts of Pioneer that both ties it to its Frontier heritage and separates it from most other games out there.What I would like to see instead is some thought put into how combat could be made interesting, exciting and challenging within a realistic physics model. Some TV shows have made attempts to get this right to some degree (mainstream examples include Babylon 5 and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica), so its not unheard of.This could be made of anything. New equipment/weapons, targetting systems, remote firing drones, who knows what. Something that always bothered me about Frontier (and by extension Pioneer) was how un-futuristic the technology seems given that its set some 1200 years in the future. Maybe this is our change to rectify that a little by dreaming up some really crazy combat technologies that still make sense given the physics model.I'm not the creative type, so it probably won't come from me. What ideas do you all have?

[m4r35n357]

s2odan wrote:


Quote:
Seriously: the only way to make the realism/fun trade-off is to either get rid of the current realistic physics, or to temporarily switch off realistic physics for an artificial "fun mode" when the scrapping starts.
For me the fun is in the newtonian physics, remove that and you remove all fun. I'm sure I'm not alone in that opinion.
Not alone, certainly. I am a bit concerned that there is talk about abandoning Newtonian physics to get around this, when we clearly know at least one person that can achieve successful combat under these circumstances. So, at the risk of repeating myself, surely the simple solution is to extract that knowledge and make it public? I really don't care if I have to use my right hand to do it! ;)Does John read these forums? Can someone make an instructive video? I don't believe in Ninjas!

[robn]

There is no plan to remove Newtonian physics. I repeat: THERE IS NO PLAN TO REMOVE NEWTONIAN PHYSICS. A couple of people musing on such things does not bring it any closer to being. Besides, even if there was a plan, there's nobody to do the work :lol:I'll try to remember to poke John and get him to post something. He reads the forums intermittently, usually when someone tells him to

[m4r35n357]

robn wrote:
THERE IS NO PLAN TO REMOVE NEWTONIAN PHYSICS.
OK, I believe you - I like unequivocal statements, thanks!

[Brianetta]

That was my bad, it seems. I didn't mean to imply that the devs were prepared to trade off physics for fun! I'm with s20dan on this; the physics *is* fun.

[SeanN]

A few ideas: What if there was a "combat" control mode--sort of like manual mode where you can do translations/rotations, but have the computer assist the player by keeping the ship in a distance range from the enemy craft. Using the number buttons on the keyboard: 1 could be apporximately 1500 meters, 5 could be 700 meters, 9 could be the most aggressive at 200 meters away--or something like that to keep the ships relatively close. Then have the shields/armor be weak where the guns stick out front/back but robust top/bottom/sides. That way you could shrug off much of the fire coming at you if you turned slightly away from the enemy craft but aiming would require you to expose the weak front or rear of your spacecraft. Hopefully those weaknesses could also get the enemy AI to turn away occasionally instead of pummelling me mercilessly . The combat might still be like jousting but maybe a tad bit more strategic and less reflex based.

[m4r35n357]

SeanN wrote:
A few ideas: What if there was a "combat" control mode--sort of like manual mode where you can do translations/rotations, but have the computer assist the player by keeping the ship in a distance range from the enemy craft.
This is currently achievable by using automatic speed control, just target, close in, and set to something like 10 m/s approaching to claw back any drift, or adjust as necessary. This is how I've got closest to making combat work. As the AI has evolved this technique has worked better or worse depending. I can't help thinking that this is roughly how it would be done in "real life".I'd be interested to hear of a good technique with manual speed control, it's an extra thing to concentrate on, and requires judgement of relative speed/ acceleration at large distances . . .So come on, who here can fight, and how do you do it (I know I've asked this in the past, but the AI has changed enormously since then, and I would hope there are more of us trying now)?

[robn]

m4r35n357 wrote:
So come on, who here can fight, and how do you do it (I know I've asked this in the past, but the AI has changed enormously since then, and I would hope there are more of us trying now)?
As an aside, I'd be curious to know who is actually playing at the moment, and if they're playing alpha 9 or nightlies, and what they're doing (playing "properly" (missions, fights, etc), checking out terrains, playing with orbits, etc).