Cap.Ship combat COULD be...interesting?

[RandomBandit]

I was typing up a response to the ship balancing topic that is now a 'are missiles OP' thread and though I might have something here...

It started with a flak idea--
make a better FLAK weapon that keeps a cloud of very light FLAK over a good sized area...poof, swarm missile screen. I like the non-FAA FLAK gun for just that reason on cap ships. Set the rear and up/down to missile defense and you just don't get hit by missiles, plus they swat fighters that get too close for comfort. If you go and put a longer ranged gun in with them then they start acting stupid...we would need purpose-built turrets to have them work right...

Then some kind of idea came out--
...and still have a nice mix of guns...AMS turrets that holds light guns and flak with one slot, fast tracking and a permanent "Missile defense only" hard coded into them.
Same for real capital guns...slow tracking (no matter the mounted gun) only 3-4 slots and a selection of "attack my target"/"attack enemies"/"none".

So I thought about it for a moment, cause I hate being that guy...the one that has all these crazy ideas that would make the game better for him and just be bizarre for everyone else. I started to picture capital ships with 3-4 larger turrets (of even only 3 heavy guns) firing vollies off at each other, while the standard turrets (no longer able to mount capital weapons) are blasting away at lighter ships or even assisting the big guns, while a few nimble turrets are whizing off shots of light, rapid laser fire at the hoards of missiles coming with a FLAK burst going off now and again.

THAT is how I envision capital ships fighting. With less PPCs and IBLs flying around the battles would actually last. With M6/7s actually using CIGs and ISRs and IPGs as main guns (scale them up JUST a hair...and I suppose the Thresher could have a pair of ICs up front...or something like that to keep its identity) the feel of scale would be fantastic.

Maybe I am wrong and my tiredness is making things prettier in my head...but it sounded like a dang cool idea...your thoughts?



oh...P.S....whatever: Would such a thing be modable or is this a 'never gonna see it' idea...cause that would make me sad <--- that would be me...sad.

[Ferdilance]

In WW2 what you have just described was called a battleship.
Big guns for killing big ships - front and rear.
Medium guns for keeping smaller ships at bay - Turrets on side
Anti aircraft guns for the obvious - more turrets. Said to be unsinkable - not.

Modern warfare dosent have any real equivilant. Neither will future warfare. No mater what you build it will allways be vunerable to something.

When you transfer this to gaming you must have that vunerability built in or there can be no challenge or fun for the gamer.
I do agree that if you mix weapons in your loadout the AI should automatically decide what the threat is and fire the approproate weapon. There is no point shooting IBLs at an M4 nor FAA at an M2.

[RandomBandit]

heh, I realize that, where there even to be space combat, it would be NOTHING like what we are playing. However, it IS similar to WW2's naval engagements, and I think it would be fun to treat it as such. The M2s should, in fact, be space versions of an Iowa-class battleship (in some cases the USS Missouri )...that is what I had in mind as I was coming up with the above. The M1 carrier would be without PPCs and such (or have one capital turret for fun), but would have more light turrets and actually USE fighter wings as its weapons.

They would still be vulnerable (and more expensive/rare), but it would take something that resembles effort, and dare I say...thought, to take one down. Right now I can make ONE pass in my M7 (Thresher) and remove the opposing fleets M1 or M2. If I have an M2 instead then we just shoot each other until one dies (a few vollies at most) then the survivor devours the other's remaining fleet.

I agree with you last point there...It would be nice to have the AI fire the right weapons for the job (NOT reequip your ship, as needed, like MARS though). Heh, it would be a neat feature of Fight Command Software Mk2...smart turret AI.

[jlehtone]

I do agree that if you mix weapons in your loadout the AI should automatically decide what the threat is and fire the approproate weapon. There is no point shooting IBLs at an M4 nor FAA at an M2.

Now think of USS Missouri in the heat of battle, pulling in its 16" barrels (how many tons do they weight?), and pushing out of main turret holes some 40 mm pom-pom barrels.

X2 M2 had three guns per "turret". X2 had "Gunnery Crews" gun-switching script. Exploit in X3R lets playership run the AI's gun-switching turret script. X3TC has scripts too. And scripts that make the turret fire at either big ships, or fighters. Choose command to match the layout.

That is a design decision. Do you want the command to choose guns that best match current target, or do you want the command to choose targets that the guns can hit? Either way, the script logic needs sorted lists of guns and target types. Even players do not agree on what is "best gun".

Current ship models have limited number of turrets. Those turrets have had bugs in firing arcs. Perhaps still have. Dedicated turret types (main, secondary, AA) implicitly do require more turrets. More work that can go wrong (if at all possible).


"Cloud of light FAA". That was called Phased Shockwave before.

[Gazz]

I agree with you last point there...It would be nice to have the AI fire the right weapons for the job (NOT reequip your ship, as needed, like MARS though). Heh, it would be a neat feature of Fight Command Software Mk2...smart turret AI.

I think you got that backwards. MARS does that because vanilla AI ships always did that. (since Reunion at least)
The game has been built like that.

No weapon switching means a complete redesign of the whole cap ship / turret system.
jlehtone already listed the major points there...

Unless you're willing to modify all capital ship models/cockpits it's simply not going to work. Completely different concept.

[Rive]

Now think of USS Missouri in the heat of battle, pulling in its 16" barrels (how many tons do they weight?), and pushing out of main turret holes some 40 mm pom-pom barrels.

Umpf

You have the point

Otherwise the main and secondary batteries and the salvo fire... One class of turrets are badly missing. OK, I know, there are differences between turrets, so you can use them for main (PPC or Idunnowhatkindofotherbigsmokers for TC) and salvo (with PSGs or FLAKs or something else), but the scheme behind the secondary is quite different and there is no real solution for them.
Some extra dual HEPT turrets, maybe...

[efernal]

If the sectors were much larger like 10X larger I could see Cap ship weapons having about 30 distance. What is the norm 5? But they are not. I find it weird that they made code that swaps weapons instead of just building ships with more turret slots. 1 set for anti cap ship guns. And another set for Anti fighter guns. Or simply a lot of turret slots with 1 weapon in each and limitations on what gun can be used. Each slot should have its command menu. There would still be the select all option in the menu as well. Just like when you when you want to select all the drones in a sector, Only it works on just that one ship (through that ship's menu).

Yea I can hear the moans of people now about how that is too much micro managing. I say if you can keep tabs on a huge empire and can afford to buy/arm/supply these ships then a little bit more time to setup the ship shouldn't be such a dreadful task.

Just look at the blastclaw prototype in TC. It has plenty of turrets to make it a mean anti fighter machine. I like it so much I might have to try and get myself a regular one just to compare.