IMHO, that was outstanding. When you don’t know for sure, you face the fog of war. You guess. You doubt. You hope. You gamble. That stuff just doesn’t happen when you know for sure that the enemy is there and he has a certain number of guys with him and they are in specific ship types and they have specific armament and you even know the names of the pilots.
Players should doubt.
Edit: What Naiba said.
I like the no health indicator, I don’t like the uncertainty of hits landing, that needs better visual queues.
I posted this in another thread but I’ll say it here. Many ppl in this thread have said you guys need to sell the dream, and I think this one statement given by Keith in the AMA sums it up short and sweet:
We’re working to recreate the epic space battles seen in popular movies and TV series such as Star Wars, Serenity, and Battlestar: Galactica. Combined with our ability to handle seamless planetary transitions and our focus on perfecting space combat we’re going to create a well polished experience that really distinguishing itself from other space games. Our technology by itself provides an unforgettable experience and the media types that have received the prototype have spent entire days just flying around and exploring.
The first sentence could be a huge bold impact quote at the top of the KS page IMO.
I also believe this statement from your 80 lvl interview gives a lot of credibility to the engine and should be included somewhere on the KS page as well:
*This engine represents the biggest leap in game technology in 20 years. If you look at mainstream games today, they are built on the same techniques that built DOOM in the early 1990s. At the core of today’s engines, it’s quite similar. For example, CRYENGINE 3 I think its limitation is 3 km x 3 km, and they are level based. You’re essentially building these 3D blocks – this is the same for Unreal Engine, CRYENGINE, and Unity – and these 3D blocks get unloaded and another one gets unloaded if it was already there. That’s how levels work. Levels from an engineering perspective work by and large the same way as they look to a player.
We have broken through that barrier with the I-Novae Engine. Not only have we removed the need for loading screens, other than at the very beginning we have an initial loading screen, but we have done that with environments that are of an unfathomable huge size. At that point, there’s nothing you can’t do from a creative perspective. Whatever type of game you can possibly conceive of, you can build with our technology. We’re building the technology so it can be applicable to a whole range of games whether that be an RPG, FPS, RTS, anything.
I think it would definitely be an interesting addition to have a support ship class that has some sensor ability to probe that type of information. Maybe it might not be an exact second-to-second representation of that target ships status, but it would provide some level of information regarding the targets current ability.
That’s a great idea.
Could also work as a team wide sensor upgrade, if those type of upgrade trees are planned for some commander role to be working with.
Picking between stealth, sensors, defense, offense, speed, power, can work really well in these kinds of games. See NS2 for a game with similar teamplay/resource goals as battlescape with a commander role and upgrades.
I was thinking of some sort of computer system voicing out damage. No numbers but maybe something like…
“Target has suffered some glancing blows” >80% health
“Target appears to be critically damaged” <25% health
“Target’s power subsystems appear critically damaged” <10% or 5% when you actually lose power etc
Obviously there are many more varieties of phrases for different levels of health.
Something like that. Don’t explicitly say the amount of “hitpoints” left just have the computer give some sort of indication based on its sensors?
Natural Selection 2 is almost identical to Allegiance. All those games (NS1, Savage, etc.) are based around that same model of a commander, upgrades, different units / equips. I imagine an I:BS that integrates those concepts as one of the more amazing games I’ve ever played - except that it’d be on a previously unseen scale of awesomeness.
Maybe it could be something like the hitcam in war thunder? Or maybe your special hit sensors would display a list of affected modules on the hud, like pilot, hardpoint, wing, etc, with color coding for the severity of the damage.
Would be fun seeing shells ricochet off your target now and then.
And hit nearby friendlies by accident. The sloped armor of the Helion would seem to be particularly likely to produce ricochets.
Would be nice if this was more likely to happen with kinetic weapons than energy-based (no idea if more realistic but would be a nice little difference)
Just felt this is getting somewhat relevant to the current topic
A 3rd person hitcam may not be the best choice IMHO, but a target camera could be pretty nice. Maybe with some shaders to make it look different, a bit like the IR camera some planes have.
Would a damage overlay would be a good idea gameplay (and dev time)-wise?
A damage model? Of course, otherwise ships are just HP sponges. There’s already plenty of that in eve online.
the good olde ICP already has modular ship damage so you can relax and assume that will be the same in a proper game.
“$400k - Better, more detailed damage model for internal ship systems.”
Might still be a difference between damage effecting whole systems like weapons, sensors and engines, or your front port upper RCS thruster is damaged. Now you can’t roll clockwise or pitch downwards without also turning in some other direction as the forces are no longer balanced in the RCS system.
You guys know the picture in the new KS update has already been used in the previous update don’t you? @INovaeKeith
Yes they do. Nobody is perfect.