The Need for Multiple Speeds.

[Richard Bong]

Exactly, I've seen quite a few people on Spectrum the past few days pointing out that the fundamental problem with every single one of the flight models CIG has implemented is they first design it around the Gladius, test it with the fighters in SQ42 the players get to use, then try to shoehorn it into SC...where it falls apart at the seems due to it not scaling well to the other hundred some odd ships not in SQ42...rinse...repeat. That this entire logic is backwards as SQ42 is only expected to be played for I think they said something like 30-40 hours average per player, but SC is where they are targeting having players putting in hundreds to thousands of hours, so instead the flight model should be designed around the ships in SC then balance SQ42 around that.
While some might point out the adage of 'how does a mouse eat an elephant?' (one bite at a time), the fallacy in this is that the mouse starts out knowing it is tackling eating an elephant, but CIG's design approach has been the mouse starts out thinking it is eating a small bite of cheese, then is shocked it actually has an entire elephant to get through...walks away when it hits so many bones it gets annoyed, then goes looking for a new bite of cheese only to realize it has once again started trying to eat an elephant.

The part of the segment that made me really shake my head is they are talking about positional combat and no more circle strafing while they show a Gladius and a Hornet circling nose to nose in a DPS race. That isn't "dogfighting."

 

[Deroth]

The "rest of the ships" are numbers in a database that any intern could enter in a couple of days, and it could be proof read within a week. What relevant systems are there for this? We already have space combat. If its not going to work, it is better to find out sooner instead of later. The proper terminology is "fail fast."

Check out Yogi's comments on this in DevTracker, there is actually quite a lot of DESIGN before even implementation, that they're only just started talking about internally yesterday, particularly for industrial ships.
Additionally, the HUD is going through yet another rework for this new flight model, which means a significant amount of work for the art team unless they wait until the new HUD engine that CIG expects to make HUD changes much easier and quicker to be implemented.

The part of the segment that made me really shake my head is they are talking about positional combat and no more circle strafing while they show a Gladius and a Hornet circling nose to nose in a DPS race. That isn't "dogfighting."

They didn't say no more circle strafing, they said no more jousting, two completely different things. Circle strafing is a form of positional combat, which is dogfighting, though jousting is also a form of positional combat and is also dogfighting.
It is in space, no atmosphere, no drag, and no lift, so the options are:

• Jousting (accelerate, charge past each other while firing, slow down to make an hairpin turn, rinse, repeat)
• Circle Strafing (this is a natural consequence of 6DoF, the trick is to balance acceleration, speed, and body effects to keep the fights within range of what enough people will find enjoyable)
• Combat-on-rails to force WW2 combat (like SWToR did for initial space combat, and was not well received after how much they'd talked up 'controlling your ship in space')

 

[Richard Bong]

Check out Yogi's comments on this in DevTracker, there is actually quite a lot of DESIGN before even implementation, that they're only just started talking about internally yesterday, particularly for industrial ships.
Additionally, the HUD is going through yet another rework for this new flight model, which means a significant amount of work for the art team unless they wait until the new HUD engine that CIG expects to make HUD changes much easier and quicker to be implemented.

The HUD, change doesn't really enter into the new flight model.

Which comment are you referring to, other than him saying they were doing SQ42 ships first?

 

[AccidentProne8]

They were never going to make everyone happy with these changes, I think this has potential, they know way more than I do, let's see it lol.

 

[Ayeteeone]

The "rest of the ships" are numbers in a database that any intern could enter in a couple of days, and it could be proof read within a week. What relevant systems are there for this? We already have space combat. If its not going to work, it is better to find out sooner instead of later. The proper terminology is "fail fast."

Systems; Armor, power transfer (control and gadgets), the reworked QT mode, HOPEFULLY a return to different types of weapon performance, shield performance, powerplant performance, signature adjustments vs sensor capabilities, a range of replaceable thrusters for each ship.. and probably a dozen more factors which aren't coming to mind.

At some point they really will have to bite the bullet and ship their best compromises for how they want ships to shoot at each other. THIS is what I want.. stop toying around with the damn thing and give us something to git gud at.

 

[Michael]

I hope they take their time to properly implement a fully functioning and fleshed out System.
I think many good ideas died to improper improper implementation and the expected communty backlash.

 

[RoosterRage]

The "rest of the ships" are numbers in a database that any intern could enter in a couple of days, and it could be proof read within a week. What relevant systems are there for this? We already have space combat. If its not going to work, it is better to find out sooner instead of later. The proper terminology is "fail fast."

It's not that simple, each ship has to be balanced for its intended role and then tested this includes both space and atmo combat. Just entering a guess will cause way to many players to rage on spectrum like spoiled children that demand that the game be the way they think it should be.

 

[Richard Bong]

Check out Yogi's comments on this in DevTracker, there is actually quite a lot of DESIGN before even implementation, that they're only just started talking about internally yesterday, particularly for industrial ships.
Additionally, the HUD is going through yet another rework for this new flight model, which means a significant amount of work for the art team unless they wait until the new HUD engine that CIG expects to make HUD changes much easier and quicker to be implemented.



They didn't say no more circle strafing, they said no more jousting, two completely different things. Circle strafing is a form of positional combat, which is dogfighting, though jousting is also a form of positional combat and is also dogfighting.
It is in space, no atmosphere, no drag, and no lift, so the options are:

• Jousting (accelerate, charge past each other while firing, slow down to make an hairpin turn, rinse, repeat)
• Circle Strafing (this is a natural consequence of 6DoF, the trick is to balance acceleration, speed, and body effects to keep the fights within range of what enough people will find enjoyable)
• Combat-on-rails to force WW2 combat (like SWToR did for initial space combat, and was not well received after how much they'd talked up 'controlling your ship in space')

My mistake. I misunderstood them talking about circle straffing large ships.

Nose to nose DPS race circle straffing is at least as boring as jousting,
and uninteresting. That is not "positional combat," or "choices that matter."

There are much more interesting options, but Star Citizen seems to be stuck in Hollywood air combat, not actual WWII air combat.

Dogfighting in the sense they are after was a World War I thing. Yes, the concept was what WWII started with but Mallory's "big wing" in the Battle of Britain and the "Thatch Weave" at the Battle of Midway made dog fighting obsolete very quickly. Add in the P38, which the US Army Air Corp, entered the war with, soon followed by the P47, with flight and squadron tactics, similar to the "Big Wing" and the "Thatch Weave" and speed plus firepower became the dominate factors, not turning. Still to this day, speed to get into a favorable position followed by a single pass with overwhelming firepower are what determines victory in air combat.

 

[Richard Bong]

Systems; Armor, power transfer (control and gadgets), the reworked QT mode, HOPEFULLY a return to different types of weapon performance, shield performance, powerplant performance, signature adjustments vs sensor capabilities, a range of replaceable thrusters for each ship.. and probably a dozen more factors which aren't coming to mind.

At some point they really will have to bite the bullet and ship their best compromises for how they want ships to shoot at each other. THIS is what I want.. stop toying around with the damn thing and give us something to git gud at.

We have space combat now without those systems fleshed out.
Adding those systems will flesh out space combat in an iterative way.
The annual rewriting the entire flight system has definitely gotten old.

 

[Richard Bong]

It's not that simple, each ship has to be balanced for its intended role and then tested this includes both space and atmo combat. Just entering a guess will cause way to many players to rage on spectrum like spoiled children that demand that the game be the way they think it should be.

They have ship archtypes for intended roles. That is already done. That is all they need, they can differentiate and balance in iterations (like they were supposed to do after 3.14).

In the mean time, like "low speed combat" and the "apocalyptic change" shouldn't they be finding out if the concept even works when applied by the people that haven't been given instructions on how they want the ships to be flown? If this falls apart, like each of their previous attempts, isn't it better to find out sooner?

We are paying for the "privilege" of testing systems, let's get it done. Plug the numbers in, spot check it, and put it in a build.

 

[Richard Bong]

They were never going to make everyone happy with these changes, I think this has potential, they know way more than I do, let's see it lol.

I agree, especially the "let's see it," part.

 

[Ayeteeone]

We have space combat now without those systems fleshed out.
Adding those systems will flesh out space combat in an iterative way.
The annual rewriting the entire flight system has definitely gotten old.

I started playing the game back in 2.6.3. That flight model hooked me; it felt natural enough that I could focus on the tactics rather than the controls.

An example on game balance of how just one choice can make a huge difference.. do you remember how the ball turrets on the nose of the Gladius and Avenger used to work? As players we couldn't aim them off-HUD (still can't effectively) but the NPC's had something like a 240 degree arc available. They could apply a fairly constant stream of damage to any other ship in the game, and CIG decided to take it out because it was wrecking players. The only safe place was behind them, which few ships could reliably accomplish.

I.E. The firing arc of ONE size 2 gatling altered gameplay for everyone in the PU.

As a footnote, it is possible to set up Tobii and TrackIR to control a nose turret. But I've not had good results due to the need for precise aiming/tracking against the target. A minor change or two in how that system operates would turn many ships (Mustang, MSR..) into much more dangerous foes.

So maybe we are talking at this from slightly different angles. A flight model can be whatever they want to program with game engine constraints. Tweaking the combat experience is a whole other set of issues to deal with, of which flight performance is just one of many considerations.

 

[Deroth]

@Richard Bong
If you want to find all his comments you can check them out through the DevTracker:

Devtracker - Roberts Space Industries | Follow the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42

Roberts Space Industries is the official go-to website for all news about Star Citizen and Squadron 42. It also hosts the online store for game items and merch, as well as all the community tools used by our fans.

robertsspaceindustries.com

He has edited some of them, and possibly removed a couple as I can't find them anymore though.
If you want to do many-vs-few/one, no matter how many changes they make that can still be done, though the current flight model with minimal restrictions on speed and acceleration has greatly negated that option as jousting mostly negates it.
The current flight model came about because of players irrationally complaining about 1v1 dogfights in 6DoF naturally progressing to circle strafing, but now that jousting has become predominate CIG has realized it is just as bad, if not worse, than the old back-strafing that was so popular a few years ago.
There is also far more involved than just plugging numbers into a spreadsheet, there are new UI elements required for the new system (clearly displayed in both the CitCon presentation and the video released afterwards to further detail the changes for the new flight model), the HUD does require yet another rework that has to be updated for all ships, as well as further internal tests to determine how things should work for snub fighters, racers, and industrial ships (all of this is mentioned in the comments from Yogi.) So the earliest I would expect to see these changes would be 3.19 (and that would be a very aggressive development plan that would likely push other tasks back.)

 

[Richard Bong]

@Richard Bong
If you want to find all his comments you can check them out through the DevTracker:

Devtracker - Roberts Space Industries | Follow the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42

Roberts Space Industries is the official go-to website for all news about Star Citizen and Squadron 42. It also hosts the online store for game items and merch, as well as all the community tools used by our fans.

robertsspaceindustries.com

He has edited some of them, and possibly removed a couple as I can't find them anymore though.
If you want to do many-vs-few/one, no matter how many changes they make that can still be done, though the current flight model with minimal restrictions on speed and acceleration has greatly negated that option as jousting mostly negates it.
The current flight model came about because of players irrationally complaining about 1v1 dogfights in 6DoF naturally progressing to circle strafing, but now that jousting has become predominate CIG has realized it is just as bad, if not worse, than the old back-strafing that was so popular a few years ago.
There is also far more involved than just plugging numbers into a spreadsheet, there are new UI elements required for the new system (clearly displayed in both the CitCon presentation and the video released afterwards to further detail the changes for the new flight model), the HUD does require yet another rework that has to be updated for all ships, as well as further internal tests to determine how things should work for snub fighters, racers, and industrial ships (all of this is mentioned in the comments from Yogi.) So the earliest I would expect to see these changes would be 3.19 (and that would be a very aggressive development plan that would likely push other tasks back.)

If it was as far along as they tried to imply, 3.18. I was, personally thinking it belonged in 3.19, but 3.18 or 3.20 would work.

The HUD has required a rework since 2.5 (at the latest) and needs to get rid of the flash.

They have a working HUD, just use that and differentiate in later iterations.
They don't have to figure out each ship, they just need to figure out archtypes and sizes. They can differentiate in later iterations.

They need to figure out if this actually works and the best way to do that is put it in our hands.

 

[Richard Bong]

@Richard Bong
If you want to find all his comments you can check them out through the DevTracker:

Devtracker - Roberts Space Industries | Follow the development of Star Citizen and Squadron 42

Roberts Space Industries is the official go-to website for all news about Star Citizen and Squadron 42. It also hosts the online store for game items and merch, as well as all the community tools used by our fans.

robertsspaceindustries.com

He has edited some of them, and possibly removed a couple as I can't find them anymore though.

I looked there, and checked each of his posts, which is why I asked which you were referring to.
No worries.

 

[Jolly_Green_Giant]

I like it. I think their heads in the right spot with it and I hope it works out the way they want it to.