The planet with radiation was greenish, the first planet I got to when I started playing. I spawned in a space station that was orbiting it. It could have been a gas giant. I think there was a factory on it, which is what I was trying to get to. It wasn’t micrometeor damage.
The deafening roar with no damage could have been a mine, I’m not sure exactly how mines work. It was at a friendly station. I think it was a glowing projectile that hit me though, something fired from a capital ship. It wasn’t a ship collision. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to do any damage, though it did send my ship spinning.
In general, collisions ( and to some extents, mines / sockwave proximity damage ) has been tuned down irrealistically. I don’t think it’s very fun to die out of the blue because something out of your control exploded a kilometer away from you. Same for collisions; I’ll probably end up increasing collisions damage a bit, but not to insane levels.
That makes sense. I instinctively try to get away from large exploding ships because I keep thinking that’s going to kill me, which is the case in many other games. It’s nice to not have to worry so much about that. It’s also fun to fly head first into your enemy and spin around without actually dying as well.
I was only talking about stations and such, sorry I didn’t make that clear, but the system might be adaptable when selecting a ship out of an enemy fleet. Here’s a crude paint diagram of what might work because I think it will be easy to reference to:
So basically, taking a queue from Warframe, while holding down t (maybe double tap t?), you can right click and it switches from installations to ships. I think that the easiest/quickest way to find an appropriate target is to have the list first broken up by ship type, then it can list all the ships of that type, sorting by nearest, until the list is full. List refreshes only every 10 or so seconds so it isn’t a nightmare.
It would make it more complex, but I think that normally you would probably just use the nearest target shortcut or simply eyeball your next target when in a battle. This system would probably be used for planning prior to jumping into a battle.
I see what you’re thinking and it’s a great way of making sense of a target blob (which happens quite a bit when you’re far away from a battle).
Might I suggest that it could be streamlined with a bit of contextual help?
Holding T while facing a target blob brings up the wheel as you say.
When the target contains multiple stations, the default wheel displays those first as options.
When closer, the wheel contains the mission target (most likely the station), plus a few high-priority ship targets based on the ship class you’re currently flying and any bounties that are active
Perhaps a right-click could bring up an alternative, manual selection as per your step 4.
The idea being that the wheel suggests targets for you based on what you’re looking at/what’s close to you, and what you should be able to fight, eliminating the need for categories of ship.
E.g. Interceptor wheel would primarily suggest interceptors and bombers.
The idea being it would be quick to use as a default (hold T, select suggested target, done), with some manual categories if you want to take time with them. More advanced targeting may be better suited to the star map once it’s completed.
The tricky part I would imagine would be getting the contextual sensing right, as opposed to creating a simple menu. I don’t know what level of work that would create.
Could apply a similar thing for G, having a wheel that helps you select nearby targets if you hold it.
The details are still a bit blurry for me. Would you hold T and it’d show this menu with targets in the direction of the currently selected target ? Would I be able to press T ( select a target somewhere ) turn my ship 180°, then hold T and still see targets around it ( now in my back ) ? What would happen if I hold T and I currently have no target ? Would it highlight all targets in my view ( front of the ship ) no matter the distance ? Or do nothing ? Or highlight targets in a radius around me, in my current location ? Etc…
No, it would show targets that are within a certain area of screen space centered at the current player field of view, irregardless of a previously selected target. The hold-t system has the same practical outcome as tap-t, except that hold-t allows you to further define a single target out of a target blob within that certain area.
So…
… there would be no difference between the two practically speaking, it’s only the functionality that changed slightly.
I propose that the hold-t system has a circle of screen space centered in the player’s current view, and the menu populates the list with targets within that ‘circle’ (geometrically speaking, the system would populate the list with targets within a huge truncated cone, with the smaller end being the ‘circle’ that the player sees, and the much larger end being way out in the distance directly in front of the player view point (idk if this helps)).
It all depends on where the player is looking.
As to distance, I’m not sure how far out you can select a target using the current method, but unless there are technical limitations, I don’t see why the hold-t can’t have the same distance. The only issue is that at extreme ranges, the ‘circle’ that the system populates the list with can include the entire solar system. There’d have to be some way to define the area in order to narrow the search. Maybe it can automatically do so based on distance to the nearest target in the player view, or it can be player defined somehow, maybe with the scroll wheel.
The current system is like a laser-pointer. It selects exactly what the player view is looking at, even if what I wanted is something behind or even a little to the side. What this system tries to do is to help players select a single target out of a target blob.
While this sounds nice if you want to select target out of a blob, there would then be no logical way to include the mission targets into the circle menu.
I would rather use the hold-t circle menu to just display mission targets and targets that are tagged by the team.
For the blob selection problem I would suggest using another solution. Since the target blob icon stacking has to be fixed anyway I would rather have a better way to select those when the targets are accumulated.
For example if there are more than 2 targets in close proximity at a distance greater than 200 kilometers, the individual target icons should disappear. Instead there could be a circle outline that has a radius that includes all the accumulated targets within. This circle has a shortlist next to it where individual targets names are listed. The list is ordered by importance. At the top for example would obviously be listed the station or base, the next entry could be mission specific targets or tagged targets and so on. This list should not be greater than maybe 5 entries.
If you have your crosshairs over this circled accumulation you can select the circle, by first selecting it the top most entry is highlighted, pressing t once again highlights/selects the next item. You could thereby skip through the list.
When for example a planet is very far away the circle list should start at the top with the planet itself and then stations etc…
Technically speaking, excluding shrapnel, this is only an issue within atmosphere and the extent to which it’s an issue depends on the density of the atmosphere. In space there would be no damage from the shockwave itself.
Just a couple of points of feedback, sorry if they have been mentioned before.
The worst experience I had so far as a newb, was spawning in to a station, and maybe hitting the wrong direction on the controls (user error) but ending up completely stuck in a corner and not being able to turn the ship around, or knowing how to respawn. Not sure if this is from the inertia of the station or what, but it can be very confounding. Other times I got myself stuck just from wayward flying.
The other thing I’d like is a quick check six button. Coming from playing a lot of World of Warplanes, that game has a quick reverse camera button which is super handy for quickly checking who is behind you. It also has a lock camera on enemy feature. Obviously, you guys have a much more sophisticated radar system, and maybe I just need to get used to using that, but I did find myself occasionally wanting to quickly check my six o’clock.
Very good point. It’d be fairly easy to implement. It has one main drawback though: yet another key. We’re already overloaded with keys and we’ve run out of space ( especially on gamepads ) a long time ago. Adding more features requiring dedicated keys is becoming a real challenge. And if we implement it just for K&M, people playing on gamepads will be at a (small) disadventage.
Makes perfect sense. Can’t keep adding controls without adding more fingers. I did play around with the radar and I see you have a front and rear facing mode, I will try using that instead.
then again, choosing a gamepad is intentionally choosing a controller that is inherently at some disadvantage for almost every game on the market. People don’t choose gamepads to be hyper competetive, it’s a convenience thing, and they’d continue to do so regardless. Sure, they should work well enough but does it make sense to limit the available options for everyone to make a small difference in advantage for a controller that’s already significantly worse?
A reverse camera is very helpful and i use it often in the games it’s present in.
I have to say i find the current capship controls super cumbersome to use. Cant find any combo of control sheme and view that i actually like. Part of the problem is that a lot of essential stuff is either hidden in the radial menues that i find shit anyways or in new shortcuts that i either cant fit cause i have no key lefts already or that i cant find.
Was much better when i could use zoomed out 3rd person with target mode and have target mode not invert. I need inverse mouse in direct mode but cant fly that way in target mode. But that was also when most guns were still autoaiming. Does not help that capital control mode essentially stops the normal strafing/accelerating etc cause of key conflicts.
A simple one press key to set heading would be MUCH better than holding a key.
Holding a key means in that time you can not do any radial menues or such.
I would also need at least some clear indication of what guns autoaim or not, why they can fire or not. It is nearly impossible to tell with everything going on at once. Is it angle? Destroyed? Energy? No clue. Info is all over the place.
