SpaceSimCentral

opinions are quite different, i remember this from the very start of the project.once i would have said, "which direction you (we) like to go?"personally i feel, games with all that advanced weapon systems exist far enough, examples have been posted here.but i don't like to dictate. hmm... repetiveness, a racing game is as repetive as a game can only be, nonetheless it thrills me each time i play one, i start to sweat at my steering wheel and that's what i like. would any "driving aid" make the game better? @marceland you win? ok, i will have to download me a recent release before i can judge.but i never had a chance to stand them since a while, either i'm such a lousy pilot...ok, shields, yeah i guess hmmm.... wait... i guess shields won't work on a 10t capacity fighterplane...i mean the direction i would have liked to go with pioneer is complete different to what we have now.

 i mean the direction i would have liked to go with pioneer is complete different to what we have now. one advice : try the last version of Genesia :nyam: Download link dircetly on my signature ^^

@vuzz, i will answer to this under a different topic. neither i have a lot words to tell about "where combat has gone".imho (but you know, opinions are like...) it has and will be gone with more advanced weapons.if you like to counter repetivity, then i have one hint, don't think to much about weapons, this will change as much as the type of tires i mount to a racing car,not more and not less.what counteracts to repetivity in a racing game (sorry for this lame comparison) are the tracks. that in example a "Barber Motorsports Park" is n-times more fascinating as a "Hockenheim Ring".if one is working hard here to counteract to repetivity then it's walterar and his "adventures", this is what the track means for a racing game.it's what obstacles are for a golf course and the layout in general, not to fall into this "dogleg right - dogleg left" scheme, the clubs (weapons) i use, are really secondary. but i'm sorry this isn't the topic here, thus i will stop to comment right now, before i make everybody angry (again).

It doesn't matter how you look at it combat isn't fun or challenging.It is beyond my imagination how players here are able to defeat an enemy with near equal weaponry. No way!The AI hits you because it has autopilot and you don't.So make weapons which you can hit easier or dumb the AI accuracy down or both. @DraQNo killing at first shot you still need many hits to destroy your target.And dodging projectiles reminds me of Galaga:). No serious there is no need for that. I don't have premium beta but what I see in videos, none of the weapons in Elite:Dangerous is dodgeable and it seems everybody have lots of fun.For Pioneer I think it's more important to make a believable world and set the game in it rather than make a game and build a world around it. Back to dogfighting:A big problem with the AI is that it shots you from every angle.If you try to get behind him it just turns and fires at you.So you end up accelerating, decelerating towards the enemy all the time and this finally ends in jousting. Has anybody found a thrilling solution yet having dogfights without jousting and without WW2 style, or is this it? There's another approach of combat with only automated long range weapons(laser beams,drones,missiles...), but for sure nobody would like that. And...Hud improvement: The distance readings to the enemy ship should be made bigger and clearer.Because if it turns dark blue when the target comes nearer, you can hardly read it (with space as background).

hmm... ermpf... i didn't liked to comment here further i said, but you tickled me. jousting, ha, ha, s2oDan very early argued about that, i guess it is this way, actually yes the AI didn't leaves you much chances, pointing always towards you.besides interesting to hear that it didn't changed this jousting behave, well i would say it's what i expected. making the AI less hard, right attempt i guess, it was far less hard until alpha9 i guess, of course jousting was the type of fight nonetheless.it's not only that they have a "autopilot", you could "buy" yourself one to (crewmember), but this is no solution to me.it's also that somehow drag has been removed from control, check the behave if you control the ship with the mouse, it's like pointing with a crosshair on the screen, no drag, no inertia, i never liked that. even in space a mass is a mass and it needs something to compensate it's acceleration (even 0), this is what is left of inertia.the "flipping", this behave that the AI always points on you is maybe even my fault, i used "engines off" to flip the ship, which gave me a little advantage, while the old AI used to make turns with "engines on" and drawed a wide parabellum. in fact for a external viewer it would look like my ship is almost fixed in position and works like a turret, while the AI has been flying around it like a gone-wild bee. but nonetheless it was possible to match the speed and course of a ship, to hang on his tail and blast him off.actually i know one can forget all this and like you stated i even have no idea how to beat them, pointing always towards me, especially if both have the same armament. but before you could mess with a ship holding a plasma accelerator, even with a 1MW gun, it was just a question of patience, one could say. i'm not sure if it's the behave of the AI only, it's the lack of inertia, something has changed to "lateral acceleration" and i'm not sure if this is realistic. actually i revived "alpha8" i will open a topic soon, the behave of the ships is completely different, not only for the AI.as example, whatever i do, how high i set lateral acceleration ever, i never get this behave that the ship moves like a crosshair on the screen, inertia is always there to put a drag on it. it has stupid little missions, not much to do, but nonetheless "alpha8" i PLAY, anything later frustrates me.jump to any system, depending on lawlessness a handful of pirates awaits you, that's enough for me, repetive yes, still it's action.actually i have to refine this behave a bit, often they await you and you get killed before you "rematerialize" from hyperspace completely,means you have no control over the ship yet, but they already fire at you - bang, you're ashes. but i like to start my career with the weakest ship possible, no shields and a lousy weapon, it should be possible in this way.starting the game and cheating myself money to buy a larger ship, shields or a better weapon, isn't playing the game to me. that's "alpha testing" but not playing. playing is to start a career, you are "Jameson" the absolute mr. nobody, the "space rookie".you inherited a ship fom whoever own $100 cash and that's it. anything we add to this is the "cherry on the pie". what i can imagine well has nothing to do with fighting or weapons.i can easy imagine to start with a "shuttle" no weapon mountings, no hyperdrive, no autopilot.first learn the mechanics of manual spaceflight, earn some money with trading goods interplanetary, maybe fulfill some easy reconaissance (scout) missions, or get a job as interplanetary "taxi driver", maybe to challange "fortuna" with mining, why not?if one likes then to be a "trader", a "fighter", a "miner", a "scout" or even a "explorer", it should be his opinion.if and how this will affect the game itself, this is written on a different sheet of paper. and i'm sorry, yes repetiveness is unfortunately a part of all that.i mean real life is repetive to, you have a job and it's often not very pleasing, often very repetive. and if that "goddamn" autopilot fails to dock or land, well "shit happens".if the guided missiles won't hit, "shit happens".and if i can't interrupt a engaged hyperspace, or only with the cost of being thrown into "delta sector" (or losing the drive as a absolute minimum), "shit happens".if i turn to ashes because i idiot forgot to mount a atmospheric shielding, "shit happens".if i hang in the spacestation dock, because i forgot to refuel, "shit happens".if the starport simply didn't exists in a certain system, "shit happens" (write a note, a blacklist, a log, but write it yourself. experienced "frontier" players know they need a lot of handwritten notes, i still have "tons" of them lurking around somewhere).if i have to search the starport myself, "cool challange".if my ship has so little capacity that i don't know on which equipment i will have to forgo for a specific task, "cool challenge"(means: "i would need a hyperspace cloud analyzer, but to fit it i must remove something else").if a ship gives me a lot of cargo space but isn't suitable for fighting, "cool challenge".if i can't lift off because i'm overloaded, "shit happens" or "cool challenge"(means a ship can prob. theoretically hold 500t, but you can't lift off with 500t at 1G gravity). "act wisely, know the capabilties of your ship" the imperfection will counteract well to repetiveness. it's a game and you can reload, what matters? and yes WW2 type of dogfight, why not?truely the behave of the AI with it's steady pointing towards you is realistic, but dammit no human has such a precision.just imagine yourself under conditions of free fall, aha, yes you "fall" in a certain general direction, imagine it as a tunnel if that helps you,you can rotate the ship along all axes without affecting this general direction much (a matter of acceleration, on low levels you affect your direction, accelerated to 10km/sec you won't affect much to that with your lateral thrust, a reason why i tend to accel to 10km/sec in good old frontier to get best results in fighting), that's what the AI does actually, still there IS (should be) some inertia to the ship, if i can compensate this inertia by 100% something is tricked, something isn't realistic then.and this i feel when i move the ship with the mouse, it's like pointing with a crosshair, no inertia to feel, is that realistic? i don't know.it feels a bit like playing "Missile Command" with a mouse.but like i said the precision is inhuman and further i repeat myself, i'm not sure if that what has changed to lateral acceleration is realistic.in my humble opinion, someone blew out the life of the game, i only asked myself often "why?", why this, why change something which was good?dammit yes, i often asked myself if the goal was to destroy PIONEER? no, i don't like to hear now complicated expressions which should explain the mechanics of spaceflight, here are not many users who will understand this and one could tell us the blue from the sky.but what we can is to imagine how a stone of a certain mass acts under conditions of free fall, for this we don't need a expression, just imagination. and dammit if i'm in doubt i will ask, i don't know, dr. mitchell perhaps (or whosoever) at least someone who can explain this without mathematical expressions, or in a way a idiot like me can understand it. someone who can visualize it! BUT I BETTER STOP NOW TO "RIDE THE BLUE SKIES" (before everybody gets angry). (looks better now) what i liked to say finally to your comment "zzz"i didn't need a HUD to beat a enemy in alpha8...neither this weird directional crosshair, none of it, i just match speed and direction and "here we go".of course the jousting isn't to avoid most time (except the ship is far "slower", weaker in thrust, then i can hang on it's tail)but like i said i assume it's realistic, i assume - i'm not sure.

The flight control with a xbox controller is really, really good.It seems it's even better than SC's Arena Commander.(from a glimpse of YT videos)But the combat isn't. I don't say that my suggestions are the solution for a great dogfighting experience so it's the best to try out several mechanics and you will see what works. I know there has to be the code written for all the ideas people have on this forumand this is a hobby project but there is no other way.

i like this statement of you:For Pioneer I think it's more important to make a believable world and set the game in it rather than make a game and build a world around it. but i know opinions are different, i see since long different derivates of PIONEER. one will prefere this, someone else something different, that's fine to me. perhaps in the end each wil profit of what a different branch is developing, still there doesn't have to be one pioneer. even your statement could be interpreted different. i hear in it something like: "what counts is a little bit of realism as far as sci-fi could be, story i write my own"someone else might hear in it: "foremost it has to please and entertain the player, no matter if the behave is cheated" i can only speak for myself and what i like, i can't see in someone elses brain.i like to stay to FE2, newtonian physics and true mechanics, story i like to write my own. if something is "displeasing" well then i have to handle this as part of the game. but i know not everybody is totally addicted to FE2 and most see it as a boring game, no one has to tell me, i know i don't have many friends who really liked it, i guess not a single one.in fact, my first copy of FE2 i inherited from a friend who felt it's boring.while i couldn't stop to play it, i was addicted to it from the first minute on.yes i'm pretty sure he would appreciate something with a good story behind no matter if spaceflight and combat is halfaways realistic or not, that's secondary to him.while i like exactly the opposite to that, story doesn't harms, but it's secondary to me, if trading is boring then trading is boring because it's boring. to me this reflects sci-fi, because how is a trader characterized in a sci-fi story? a totally boring fellow who finds it's a good life flying weekly the same route. just like someone who picks a job as trucker driving daily the same route, safe, safe income, safe life. "ok, buddy that's your life and i understand your decision well. but i need daily action, something new, surprising, a challange of some sort, i like to construct and solve daily a new problem, if i can't have this i would rather tear down everything and start all over".or like one stated not to long ago: "if i start a project it has to be perfect, no matter how long it will take me" while i said, "see and i'm the opposite to you, it doesn't have to be perfect as long as it's finished soon, i have to do all in one try, more or less, else it's never finished. when i paint a picture it's finished in one try or never, even if this try lasts 16hrs at once or more. i have to be addicted to it, "next day" i might dislike my own work and trash it". at least, in general, i can stay long to a idea or even longer to a person, this is really important to me, love never changes (but hate as well). funny no? am i right when i assume that therefore a perfectionist finds it easy to split? simply because it's maybe not perfect enough anymore? isn't it a little bit a mirror of the character one has? "i'm sorry" for not believing in zodiacs, but beeing such a fine example of a sigitarius "aim at the heart", erm yes, could there be aimed somewhere else on? the guts? i don't know.

and yes WW2 type of dogfight, why not? I think that one thing that is essential for Pioneer is Newtonian physics. If this game turns into another high speed submarine excursion like Elite 4, I'm out of here.@marceland you win? ok, i will have to download me a recent release before i can judge.but i never had a chance to stand them since a while, either i'm such a lousy pilot...ok, shields, yeah i guess hmmm.... wait... i guess shields won't work on a 10t capacity fighterplane...i mean the direction i would have liked to go with pioneer is complete different to what we have now. I must make a confession regarding my kills. I've been playing Scout+ with a combat autopilot installed. I've learned a lot from it, and if I work with it, operating the thrusters while it aims, I can eat Eagles for breakfast, Centurions for lunch and Denebs for dinner. I've learned how to do OK without it too.

@Gernotstill there doesn't have to be one pioneer But you need at least one Pioneer that is functioning. @Gernoteven your statement could be interpreted different. i hear in it something like: "what counts is a little bit of realism as far as sci-fi could be, story i write my own"someone else might hear in it: "foremost it has to please and entertain the player, no matter if the behave is cheated" I mean in a believable futuristic world this kind of dogfighting wouldn't exist.It would be with high accelerated projectiles and automated long range weapons or maybe something exotic, I just guess.So you have to deal with that. So if the fiction is set in stone and clear you can start building a game in it.Find some game mechanics to make it challenging maybe a bit more tactical for the long range weapons and disabling automated weapons with viruses or something.Maybe there is less fun maybe not, but for me the whole world counts and should be plausible and not depending on only one or two great and fun making game mechanics.And when I see fighters shooting each other in a dogfight in a space sim I say hey it looks fun but I had this a hundred times and games should develop further. Pioneer is open source, the guys can do whatever they want without looking at the mass market. Infinite freedom if they can agree among themselves.It can be a niche but unique game, a simulation like Orbiter in a Star Wars or Elite like world.But I read somewhere in the Wiki: "Pioneer is a game and not a simulation".So it's not gonna happen. But maybe we can have a little approach to this side. :biggrin: It's just a thought and first you should fix combat with the minimum of effort to have a functioning Pioneer. Bye. :bye: P.S. Gernot good luck with your project!

zzz;i remember, that s2oDan and i debated about this very early, didn't i said already?yep, he came off with this idea to have more advanced weapons, it would be reasonable yes, i can't deny.personally i can't say how many space games similar to pioneer exist, i haven't the time for (even when i'm unemployed) and due to the work on my models i can only concentrate on one.if it's not pioneer and if i have seen enough of my models, well then i go and play something complete different, a racing game, a simulation or strategy game.back to your comment,what i told him back then, and actually i hope i haven't influenced to much with my thoughts and view to things, is;it's settled in a future which is more to see like the days of exploration, trade & combat with windjammers.even more, i see it in a future where the technology for spaceflight is cheap, but often unknown or not well known.a little bit like star-wars, many different tribes, some tribes use this technology but they have no idea how it works for real.something like medieval in sci-fi.now, one could counter that i builded this around the existing conditions, but and i hope i don't get misunderstood, i saw already frontier settled in such a environment.i like this star-wars idea much.of course pioneer doesn't have to follow this path.it's what you (resp. the recent dev team) get out of it.to the dogfighting and that you have seen enough similar and would wish something different, i guess what marcel commented on my thread suits for many, they would leave if this changes.further, as a "veteran" (i had to laugh when one called me this once, "a veteran", ok i'm playing games since the 80's) i feel this is most fun, true most work in this directionand probably something new would be fascinating, or could be? or if i thought long enough about, maybe there is no other way?lame, if i compare again to a racing game?but have games in which you can drive a vehicle which works automatic (sorta future car races) ever had good reception?or isn't it true that exactly things like "classic sports cars" (or however named) found the best reception?you pilot the car with as less help as possible from the machine, that's the challenge.like you said this counters to the sci-fi environment in which you could expect something quite more advanced, things we can only dream of now.(mind controlled fighters and weaponery? reasonable, but where is the fun in such?ok it could be fun if one would have the possibility to counter this with a simple battleaxe)but to counter this, apart from being a "vetaran" in computer games, i like sci-fi stories and one thing is clear as the blue sky, the best stories of classic sci-fiare those in which the technology isn't to advanced, it might remind of classic adventure stories and is truely nothing else, but as soon as these stories grew and have been settled in a more futuristic world with advanced technologies which allow near to everything i lost interest in them.the classic gunfight drama gets lost. man fights man, face to face, everybody can identify himself with the hero.lets roll it up from a different side, we have in SW nearly unbeatable machines, without the jedi and their supernatural powers it would be lame, no?the man who wins against a in principles unbeatable machine.with what sort of weapon?a sword!no super long range heat seeking missile, no, a simple sword.this is fantastic (in the meaning of the word).in times of childhood and our sandbox games and we do often played war, we had to give ourselfes rules, one rule was "no superpowers".what game if i say "here is my super-duper grenade with this i blow you all off" (yes, compare it to a nuclear weapon) ok, game over, fun is lost.in other terms i can't play chess with nuclear weapons, it works only if every figure has it's limited powers, even the queen can be beat by a peasant.but these are only my thoughts, maybe it would be interesting to find out if it would be fun otherwise, even if it would be maybe only to make clear,"ok, we knew it all the time, it isn't fun". edit:after a quick cigi,something really serious now,isn't it fact that the man who dropped "little boy" suicided?while have you ever heard that one of the marines who survived the "d-day" suicided? edit2:you both get a "thumbs up" from me, why?because i like marcels statementas well as i like your critcs, without critics no advance. bye, bye, for so long from Gernot and his battleaxe.

GernotIt's funny I have a similar approach. I play the game like it is set in a fictive early era of space exploration.There is no autopilot and I fly my ship only with about 1g acceleration to it's destination.Ship thrusters produce only so much g-forces a fighter pilot today can sustain. I want the universe to feel vast (travelling for days or weeks) and you can get lost in it forever. (I made a thread about this in the pioneer dev forum). But you realize this universe is quite inconsistent it wouldn't exist in this form. It's just fiction.In the early days of space exploration, in our real world in a hundred years or so when we can leave our solar system(I have not really a clue when)We would have all this sophisticated stuff, everything will be automated, already is. There is unfortunately no way back to the time of "only you, your ship and your skills" like in the days of your mentioned windjammers, even it is great.And that is why I want it to play in a different way. I like more an authentic and plausible game world.A world which can actually exist one day.And to move and act in such a world. It would be great to bring the freedom of the old days to a new age.But in the end what counts for me is authenticity. (I'm still talking of the game).  P.S. I make a new thread here on the forum which continues with this subject maybe you want to take a look.

opinions are quite different, i remember this from the very start of the project.once i would have said, "which direction you (we) like to go?"personally i feel, games with all that advanced weapon systems exist far enough, examples have been posted here.There are no games combining those advanced systems with kind of gameplay Pioneer has to offer - both in the sense of open, choose your own career world and in the sense of Newtonian flight mechanics.The closest there is is I-War 2, but it's not quite there and it's a deeply flawed game in quite a few ways. hmm... repetiveness, a racing game is as repetive as a game can only be, nonetheless it thrills me each time i play one, i start to sweat at my steering wheel and that's what i like.Correct me if I'm wrong (I never particularly cared about racing games - the closest I played for any amount of time and enjoyed it was Interstate '76 - it had you drive a car and even had a racing mission or two), but serious racing games tend to give player the ability to customize their ride, often in a very in-depth manner, and customizing your ship seems to be a big part of Pioneer like it was a big part of Frontier - problem being that ship and equipment progression were very linear in Frontier but we can fix it in Pioneer, hindsight being 20/20, shoulders of giants and so on. would any "driving aid" make the game better?Strawman. We are not talking about any "driving aids" here, we are talking about customizability. We are also not talking about game with sharply defined rules of participation and victory/loss conditions, but an open world where anything goes. Customizing your ship is an important aspect here as deciding how to tackle challenges posed by your chosen career path goes hand in hand with the choice of the path itself.Customizing weapon loadout is as much of a part of gameplay here as everything else.Currently we have large, heavy and (so far) useless missiles that probably won't become very useful even if they get an effective AI, because you get very few shots that occupy a lot of space;unguided rockets that won't become useful *ever* because they are just as large and heavy in addition to being unguided - pretty much the only way you can hit anything with such weapon is when you fire in salvoes, which you can't and won't with current setup;and vaguely energy based pulse cannons that are essentially the same gun with different amount of plusses and minor variations (mining, rapid fire, dual).Other than guns being projectile based and useless mines being replaced by useless unguided rockets Pioneer weapon system is a carbon copy of Frontier's, except Frontier's was never very good to begin with and haven't we established that Pioneer isn't going to be Frontier's remake after all? @marceland you win? ok, i will have to download me a recent release before i can judge.but i never had a chance to stand them since a while, either i'm such a lousy pilot...ok, shields, yeah i guess hmmm.... wait... i guess shields won't work on a 10t capacity fighterplane...i mean the direction i would have liked to go with pioneer is complete different to what we have now.It was a question to Marcel, but I can say it's perfectly possible to win in Pioneer (even without exploiting the chicken bug).The learning curve is admittedly steep and you are guaranteed to miss a lot unless you manage to approach very close, but all you basically have to do is dodging and hitting. Getting close might also require some practice because it's easy to enter a sort of self-enforced orbit around target and be unable to close despite thrusting towards it (that's Newtonian for you - not always intuitive if you don't have visual frame of reference).As for the shields, they are pretty much required for combat - not because of survival, but because of repair bills. I hope this aspect of combat economy doesn't get "fixed" because I think combat should be heavily disincentivized unless there is something in it for you. if you like to counter repetivity, then i have one hint, don't think to much about weapons, this will change as much as the type of tires i mount to a racing car,not more and not less.Actually, both me and reality respectfully disagree with you on that one.A tire is a device with narrowly defined purpose - there aren't exactly many different ways to roll along a stretch of a road - a weapon not so much. There far more different types of weapons than tires in the world.A weapon that's great for long range combat may suck in close combat, a weapon designed against large, not very mobile target may fail to hit a small maneuverable one while a weapon designed against small, maneuvrable targets may fail to more than scratch the big, armoured one. Weapons may have different velocity, rate of fire, damage, accuracy, AoE or multiple projectile salvo capabilities, different ammo and heat economy, different guidance and targeting capabilities, and so on, and all of that factors matter in deciding what your ship will be able to deal with, how many and how.Then there is deciding about the amounts of ammo carried. You have only so much space on your ship and any extra ammo will be cutting into your maneuverability, jump range and and delta-v budget. If flying a courier you might want to carry light self-defense armaments and minimal amount of ammo to give you necessary speed. but then you'll have to run from encounters if given a choice. what counteracts to repetivity in a racing game (sorry for this lame comparison) are the tracks. that in example a "Barber Motorsports Park" is n-times more fascinating as a "Hockenheim Ring".What counteracts repetitivity in any game is possibly large space of sequences of events that may happen during gameplay and doubling the number of dimensions squares this space - an awful lot of bang per buck. With ship configuration pretty much every dimension we add can be counted multiple times because both players and NPCs use ships to fight.This means that adding a couple of another dimensions to ship configuration in form of having multiple different weapons, multiple combinations of those weapons (because of multiple hardpoints) and ammo on top of that will alone go a long way. So will adding a damage model and some directional defenses and indirect attack methods to saturate and bypass them (drones!).Combinations rather than straight content.

It doesn't matter how you look at it combat isn't fun or challenging.It is beyond my imagination how players here are able to defeat an enemy with near equal weaponry. No way!The AI hits you because it has autopilot and you don't.Combat is hard but doable, it just requires practice. It is challenging, but you're right that it isn't very fun - mainly because it's the same thing over and over. So make weapons which you can hit easier or dumb the AI accuracy down or both.(...)A big problem with the AI is that it shots you from every angle.If you try to get behind him it just turns and fires at you.The problem here is symmetry. If the rules are the same for both you and the enemy, then weapon you will find easier to dodge is also a weapon you will find more difficult to hit with - you can't have it both ways.And if you try to make rules different for player and the AI (for example by nerfing AI's damage, accuracy, or so on) then you have already failed at making any sort of believable world - you might as well make a sidescroller.Enemy being able to "turret" is similarly just a consequence of Newtonian flight model, the best you can do is getting so close (while avoiding fire) that they won't be able to rotate fast enough, but this requires having more maneuverable ship. @DraQNo killing at first shot you still need many hits to destroy your target.It doesn't matter. If you can't do anything to avoid getting hit or at least mitigate its effects, then you just have to look at ship configs plus initiative to determine who wins. No human factor involved, no gameplay involved. And dodging projectiles reminds me of Galaga:). No serious there is no need for that. I don't have premium beta but what I see in videos, none of the weapons in Elite:Dangerous is dodgeable and it seems everybody have lots of fun.From what I've seen most of the weapons in E4 aren't hitscan.E4 also features "tweaked" physics where your velocity determines how fast you can turn around. Somehow.We definitely don't want it in Pioneer, especially given:For Pioneer I think it's more important to make a believable world and set the game in it rather than make a game and build a world around it.Tweaking physics = bad. So you end up accelerating, decelerating towards the enemy all the time and this finally ends in jousting.Has anybody found a thrilling solution yet having dogfights without jousting and without WW2 style, or is this it?I think there is a solution, but it isn't a simple one.You can't really have conventional fighter dogfights in space because they depend on aerodynamics and gravity, but a lot can be done.First thing first - currently there is no reason whatsoever to not face enemy, so the AI tries to do it at all times. There is also no reason to ever stop firing at your enemy, because at worst you'll need to cool down or fire at reduced rate. This means that the best thing AI can do is turret around facing you and firing - and it does.Ammo management I proposed aims at making continuous long range fire undesirable (because you'll run out possibly without even scratching your target), so that the player and the AI (after implementing some hit probability assessment heuristics to stop it from wasting all the ammo from afar) will have to try and close distance to ensure that shots will count. This may also allow ships to reach angular velocities beyond their ability to keep up with the rotation so turreting will at worst become much harder.Then there is damage model. Currently there is basically none. If there will be some proper damage model, the player will not just have to try to hit the target, but potentially try to score hits to different subsystems, trying to cripple enemy ship the most, and compensate for the damage he takes. This may mean trying to reposition yourself to hit juicy targets on enemy ships and reorienting yourself so that enemy can't hit yours - ships will no longer face each other all the time.If there are any directional defenses (like in I-War 2), then orientation will play a role in bypassing them, directional defenses also make multi-ship combat more interesting because splitting attacking force can make them much less effective.Then we have weapon systems. Multiple different weapons may take different tactics to use and counter effectively, and have different strengths and weaknesses. Different ship configurations may also have varied reliance on different subsystem's in combat - for example ship using fixed armaments will be crippled if you shoot its RCS blocks, ship with turrets will not, OTOH turrets can be incapacitated if you take out targeting sensors (basically taking out ability to select combat targets and de-selecting any selected ones), while the enemy relying on unguided rocket salvos will probably just shrug and pump salvos in your general direction hoping for one of the rockets to get you (especially if proximity fused). A ship with multiple different weapon systems can also require an NPC crew to use all weapon systems concurrently - for example one of you can pilot the ship and fire fixed armaments, someone else will fire turrets, someone will pilot drones and so on.Speaking of drones, they make a good stowable robotic or remote controlled wingmen allowing one to use multi-ship tactics (like attacking from different directions to bypass directional defenses) even when alone.Lastly, if you have remote control, why not have hacking allowing you to try and remotely control an enemy ship or drone? There's another approach of combat with only automated long range weapons(laser beams,drones,missiles...), but for sure nobody would like that.Yeah, I don't think it will work out in a game where you're pretty much a lone pilot in the hostile space - with enemies, possibly multiple ones trying to zap you across system you'd be instascrewed. Still I think what makes a good justification for close combat is piracy. We aren't really having all out military actions in Pioneer, we have a ship trying to gank another and run away with its cargo - you can't do it across system and you can't defend against it across system, because you don't know which ships are the enemy. It's more like carrying a handgun for self defense than military powers firing ICBMs at each other - sure the armaments are way beyond a handgun, but that's because you're flying a spaceship rather than walking in a dark alley. Of course this should shift pirate encounters from in system intercepts to attacks near celestial bodies and inhabited space, because that's where you won't be seeing a suspicious ship on intercept course from AUs away.Of course there should still be some sort of HUD zoom functionality, because even current close range combat often happens at uncomfortably long ranges.Oh, one more thing, reaction when taking fire. Projectiles may not carry much momentum but they carry a lot of energy. When hitting hull or getting vaporized by shields they should act as powerful, momentary maneuvering thruster trying to spin the hit ship around.

but i know not everybody is totally addicted to FE2I am. but you know what?FE2 already exists.It isn't going anywhere.There is no need to make it again.And it isn't perfect.More importantly now, that it's been made and played extensively we can make it better even without being exceptional game designers or some code gurus. Because we have the benefit of hindsight and much more powerful machines to run our code on, and don't have to write everything in bare assembler.Sure it's difficult to deny that Pioneer will always be a sort of spiritual successor to Frontier, if only because "huge galaxy, realistic planetary systems, 1:1 scale and Newtonian spaceflight" leave very few possible role models, but the important part is that it won't be a remake and shouldn't be a remake. If there is something in game for no other reason than "it's how Frontier did it" then it should probably be dropped.P.S.Could you link that combat video?P.P.S.Sorry about triple post - quote limits.

And if you try to make rules different for player and the AI (for example by nerfing AI's damage, accuracy, or so on) then you have already failed at making any sort of believable world Every AI opponent in game shoots you with pin point accuracy because he has this weapon autopilot like you in Scout+ mod when you are a Spa member.This is far from realistic.Maybe there would be some master skilled pilots who shoots you like they would have weapon autopilot, but not all of them.So the AI should behave more like a human.And humans make mistakes. But first of all:The combat should at least be playable.Later you can finetune all the realistic aspects.

zzz, on 29 Jun 2014 - 2:17 PM, said:But first of all:The combat should at least be playable.Later you can finetune all the realistic aspects.There is nothing to fine-tune if you have hacked it away.Perfect accuracy isn't much of a game-breaker with projectiles at long range, though it would be nice to simply code a little bit of spread into the weapons.

Quick question on combat in Genesia, I tried my first assassination yesterday and it was a complete failure. I was around 2000 meters behind my target and was firing a dual 1mw pulse cannon at a planetary express (the old school flash gordon looking ship) and i might as well have been using a water pistol. Can anybody tell me why this is please?

Quick question on combat in Genesia, I tried my first assassination yesterday and it was a complete failure. I was around 2000 meters behind my target and was firing a dual 1mw pulse cannon at a planetary express (the old school flash gordon looking ship) and i might as well have been using a water pistol. Can anybody tell me why this is please? :mad:Genesia not have much to do with Pioneer, therefore your question is off topic here . If you post your question here :http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/topic/4304-total-mod-genesia/#entry47277[/url] I could answer you without flooder howheverI can easily see that a 1MW pulse laser against a Planet express ( witch have probably some unit of energy shields) is really utopic. to resume : its like you shoot a heavy tank with a pistol. Did you have equit the radar mapper to see the data of your target ? with this equipement you can see if you shoot are absorbed by the energy shields. The assassination missions in Genesia are the chalenge , mosts target are eavily shielded and jump directly when they are attacked In many case it's neccessary to have an hypercloud analyser to continue the hunt