possible idea for Gunnery crews enhancement.

[stella]

Take a deep breath - this is a biggie

We all accept that (most) capships, esp Khaak, are a lot more "nails hard" that they used to be (assuming you have gunnery crews v3 installed).

Bear in mind, I'm mainly talking about in Khaak sector fighting, here.

I've been trying to think of a way to bring a bit more tactics into it.

At the moment, tactics are pretty much "meet it head-on, and on your own, or you're dead". Any other ships with you will stop the use of Area effect weapons, and, as I say, you're dead. Attack a KM2 from any angle other than head-on and, again, you're dead.

I floated this idea a while ago, and for me, it just won't go away. I know there are a lot of ifs and buts, but here we go again anyway.

Atm, area effect weapons (specifically PSG's) cannot be used if a friendly is within 7km of the relevant ship. What about saying "I'm the forward gun turret. Is there anything within 7k that's in front of me? No? PSG's ok, then". This would work in reverse for aft guns, and lefty and righty for left and right guns.

It wouldn't have to be smart - a very basic in front/behind check would suffice. Having said that, I'm not sure how difficult this would be to implement. You'd have to be able to check orientation, to find out where "in front" and "behind" were.

This would allow for tactics such as having multiple ships. You could tell them to attack your target (making sure you're in front), hit the enemy, then hit the brakes, and try to dive for cover behind one of your other ships, as he attacked. Since he's now out in front, and can use his PSG's, he has a fighting chance.

It might also go some way to stopping that annoying situation where you just get into range of a KM2, and your aft guns cap an M5, stopping you from using PSGs. We all know the outcome of that particular scenario.

I hope it would allow you to think more. As I said earlier, atm, there's only one way to do it. If there was a possibility of getting your AI ships to use all the weapons at their disposal, and using a bit of strategy, wouldn't that be something?

I know there would be a problem with Ions arcing, but PSG's don't suffer from this.

There are probalbly 1001 other pitfalls that I haven't thought of, but it's an idea, isn't it?

[GCU Grey Area]

I'm having a similar argument with the crew of my Ray over when to fire the Ion d's & when to use a 'safe' weapon. Sometimes I just don't care if some daft customs inspector has flown his ship between my Ray & the K I'm trying to capture - I just want those Ions to fire as soon as they're in range.

Suggest adding an additional command which could be given to each turret: 'Gunnery Crews: Fire at will' which simply doesn't bother to check for potential friendly fire incidents & will switch to area effect weapons when enemy ships are in range, regardless of any player/AI ships which are also going to get hit by the blast.

[cynric]

Suggest adding an additional command which could be given to each turret: 'Gunnery Crews: Fire at will' which simply doesn't bother to check for potential friendly fire incidents & will switch to area effect weapons when enemy ships are in range, regardless of any player/AI ships which are also going to get hit by the blast.

agreed

[The_Vamp]

Suggest adding an additional command which could be given to each turret: 'Gunnery Crews: Fire at will' which simply doesn't bother to check for potential friendly fire incidents & will switch to area effect weapons when enemy ships are in range, regardless of any player/AI ships which are also going to get hit by the blast.

agreed

I would like to call it the "I dont give a damn" setting. Alternately, "if it moves kill it" setting. Somehow all of this could be best describe as the "Split" setting, which kind of wraps all of this up into a nice simple package. Anyhow, I agree. Sometimes saving that 11% hull on a m5 (that the unknown wisely chose to ditch) isnt worth the lives of you and your crew....

[Reven]

This hadn't been announced yet, but there is a command already in development for the "custom" menu called "Gunnery Crews: Override". This is a one-command-fits all override system where many of the internal settings of the plugin can be changed.

When you run the command, it will ask for:

1. A list of turrets (just enter 1, 123, 164, 123456, etc - stick all the turret numbers together that the override will affect).
2. The override you are setting. Each one will have both a name and a number - you will be able to enter either.
3. The value for the override. The manual will have a chart of all the overrides along with the types of values it can handle. Some will be true/false, some will be numeric, some will be wares (guns that are excluded, etc)

Right now, I have two settings, one to enable WMD usage despite friendlies being in the area, and one to set the non-combatant range. I plan on having overrides for just about everything, from gun selection, to target prioritization.

[stella]

Ah - but does it set the vcr, too?

[frymaster]

unfortunately stella although the customisation will help ameliorate this there isn't a way to get the range from a turret to a target (the only command is "is target in range of turret?") so a more customised approach isn't possible.

What I do in khaak sectors, and what the script should do if it was possible, is start firing my GPSGs when the turret is 5km from the target - still technically out of range, and the target is 8km from the bridge. Yet, because of the bloom effect of PSGs, they still hit.

The only way to do this in scripts would be to get the absolute position of the enemy ship, the absolute position and heading of your ship, work out from that the absolute position of the turret (from your ships's co-ords plus a hard-coded list of turret positions for different ships) and from that work out the difference.

This can be done, it's just (for a continous script like the turret scripts) too slow to be practical.

[stella]

Can't you do a "get distance from ship"? I know that's from the centre of the ship, but all turrets will be closer to the target than the result. That's fine. As I said, it doesn't have to be perfect. "Close enough is good enough" as the saying goes.

[Burianek]

I'm pretty sure Reven experimented with trying to get WMD 'friendly fire' code as optimized as possible for quite some time before releasing it. The script editor just isn't very conducive to this particular problem. And if I know Reven like I think I know Reven, I'll take his word for it that it's pretty close to being fully optimized. (he's pretty thorough)

[stella]

fair enough

[Burianek]

Please start posting all AEGIS / Gunnery Crew related questions and topics in the appropriate thread.
I realize the thread is long, but there's a lot to say about this topic.

Also, you may find relevant information being indexed in the plugin's FAQ.

It may seem like a royal pain to read through multiple pages on the topic, but this will make sure everyone has equal opportunity to find any issues that may have been previously dealt with, rather than having to search through multiple threads entitled 'I Have a Question About the Gunnery Crews' to get an answer to their question.
It's also extremely difficult for Reven and the moderating staff to try to keep track of on which thread which discussions are taking place. (not to mention the redundant Q&A going on)
I think it might make all of our lives a bit easier.
It will make it easier for Reven to answer questions in a timely manner and help prevent multiple instances of the same question occuring over and over again.
(and is guaranteed to make it so the Gunnery Crew thread doesn't need a sticky )