I think jousting is a symptom of objectiveless combat. In the full game the nature of combat will be quite different because it’ll have a proper context. There’s a huge difference between a few dudes deciding they wanna shoot each other and a battle/skirmish that involves multiple teams with various different craft trying to complete specific objectives. I myself hope for a lot of high speed chases at low altitude 
2 Likes
Issue with this is that flying higher into thinner air lets you overtake anyone who tries to fly low and fast.
I guess there might be times where both you and the ship you want to kill are both hiding from the 3rd team and use the terrain to avoid detection?
Is that something that something like increased agility at lower altitudes could help balance out? Easier to chase from up high, but easier to dodge from down low?
2 Likes
I don’t see that as an issue. If you want to gun the guy you’re chasing, you’ve got to close with him, and that means dropping to his altitude. Either you race ahead of him and try to ambush him as he flashes past or you get into a canyon chase.
The general idea is that if you want to maneuver with an enemy, you need to get into the same control regime.
Unless you have missiles that can cross the control regimes for you. Which is one reason I don’t like missiles.
“Oh, look, a guy in a canyon. I can either get into a dramatic chase involving elite flying and gunnery skills or I can fly in the open, picking a spot of my choosing above the canyons and shoot one missile and laugh as he tries to evade and slams into a wall.”
Fox 1.
3 Likes
missiles are not that bad, you just can carry a few of them and they can’t turn too fast due to aerodinamics, and they have to move in a spiral in order to follow a target, worst if they are used on open space, they won’t be able to use aerodinamics to make turns, which means more expensive missiles with auxiliar propulsion, that will probably last a few seconds chasing your enemy’s tail.
That and IRL they are no good in not open areas, so if you are not really close to your enemy, you will just waste a missile, wich is something since you just can carry a few, unless Inovae decide to make the weapon part like arcade games where you carry 100 missiles in 2 wings (?)
Oh and missiles do have also a significant weight
Fox 2, Fox 2
1 Like
I think missiles should be specifically designed balancing wise in consideration to the other weapons instead of putting them in another class. They would be guns with different stats and effects. I think with that mentality it’s easier to make missiles less strong and ask oneself at every step of adding a feature like guidance if balancing would be influenced by it.
Some of the missiles I would love to see. Because I imagine them to be fun:
- Rockets / Unguided, high spray, low damage
Comparable to Kinetic Weapons - Itano Circus / Guided, high speed, low damage, easy to evade, chaotic flight pattern
Comparable to Gatling Guns - Missiles / Guided, medium damage, little harder to evade then Italo, flies straight and sprais little
Comparable to Blasters - Anti Capital Torpedoes / Slow, High damage, easy to evade
Comparable to Heavy Blasters
Also …
- Bombs / unguided, unpowered
Comparable to … suicide attack?
None of them should have any guidance system that can’t be evaded in 5 seconds max and would only be needed to evade them if the shooter fired them at the right time in the right direction.
With a plethoa of fun missile types I think I and probably others could accept not having the traditional Sidewinder or AIM style missiles.
I find balancing them with weight and ammo restriction really annoying, boring and frankly not a lot of fun. Even in the Infinity Combat Prototype. Missiles had most of the negative tendencies JB mentioned. And them being expensive and the low amount you could carry didn’t really make them fun either.
FOX 3, SPRAY 86
This makes me remember … anyone played:
That game totally eliminated jousting by its use of 3 weapon types. Rockets, Bombs and Mines.
If the opponent was Jousting, Mines would totally wreck them.
In principle Mines in Rockets, Rockets, Rockets are high radius explosive devices that start off with the same momentum when you drop them and then slow down rapidly, if an opponents flies to close to them, they go boom.
This means if an opponent is directly flying towards you he will fly into the mine.
Playing … RRR I noticed how fast it made you stop jousting. Transferring that from a top down 2D world to a first person 3D world could be difficult though, as there’s quite a lot of information that isn’t visible in the 3D first person view.
3 Likes
Low altitude flight is strictly worse than high altitude flight, unless you’re trying to avoid being detected.
In this situation, a group of bombers would fly at low altitude to evade air defense radars. The other team could have fighters on CAP to detect incoming bombers and destroy them. The attacker has a trade-off, risk early detection by flying high or risk easy destruction by flying low.
I don’t see how much work would be required here, other mechanics would balance the situation.
Interesting. Why is that? And is it something that would translate to an object that doesn’t use the atmosphere for lift?
My point was more on ‘canyon chases’ than anything else. If you’re trying to get away from someone who’s already seen you, what possible incentive is there to fly low when you can fly straight up and get away? You’re just going to force the other player into an engagement or maybe they’ll sit above your ship for a while wondering what you’re trying to do.
If you’re actively fighting someone, why would you be racing through a canyon rather than just turning around and blasting their ship right back?
1 Like
To give low altitude flight it’s due, you will get higher lift force down low, allowing a tighter turn. That is only for aircraft which use atmosphere for lift
But, low altitude has many other major issues:
- Higher drag, increasing fuel burn, decreasing maximum speed
- Higher dynamic pressures at lower velocities, if a vehicle is limited by dynamic pressure, then it cannot maneuver at high speed and low altitudes: q ~ density * velocity^2
- Much higher aerodynamic heating, again reducing possible velocities: heating ~ density * velocity^3
(Recall that density exponentially decreases with altitude.)
For combat negatives:
- Low altitude puts aircraft into the range of AAA, causing much higher aircraft loss rates. This was observed in Vietnam by the USAF and was one of the driving forces behind the push to stealth.
- Low altitude decreases warning time for ground-launched weapons. At high altitude, aircraft can maneuver to evade. At low altitude, there isn’t enough time before the missile hits.
- Low altitude decreases aircraft energy (speed + altitude) compared to hostiles. Interception can come from above while the low altitude aircraft doesnt’ have energy to dodge.
For combat neutral:
- Low altitude decreases sensor range, for attacker and defender. Whether this is bad depends upon your mission.
The use of low altitude tactics in the past was driven by the superiority of defense radars and missiles over aircraft. This lead to very high US losses from AAA in Vietnam. After the development of stealth, the US went back to medium / high altitude bombing whenever possible.
What does this mean for Infinity? Without aerodynamic lift considerations, the balance between low altitude and high altitude depends upon the style of air defenses chosen for the game. If air defenses have long range, then low altitude flight is required for attackers.
There is also a critical role for the sensor model. Do we allow destroyers to target aircraft in atmosphere? (I say yes, because every opportunity for seamless orbit to surface combat should be a strong candidate for improvement.) But, if we allow destroyers to target aircraft, do we add sensor weaknesses so that they cannot pick-up aircraft at low altitude? This drives attackers to low altitude.
In either case, the exact balance depends strongly upon sensor model and air defense weapon model. I hope that the points above give some historical background.
5 Likes
Awesome! Thanks, DrRansom!
1 isn’t going to matter for Battlescape, since the ships functionally have infinite fuel.
2 probably will help ship maneuverability, since the drag force (q is the drag coefficient here, right?) is constantly aiding the ship in slowing, which will help actively help it in changing directions. Of course, it also makes it more difficult to pick up speed in that alternate direction.
3 is really interesting (and not something I’ve studied), and I think if we ever see heat management become a thing, would be great to include in the game.
So, 1 and 2 here probably aren’t much of a factor, since we’re more likely to see craft attacked from above. 3 is already built into the game. This would leave ships more vulnerable to missiles than, say, blasters or machine gun fire, coming from above right?
What about for ship-to-ship combat, specifically? If we pretend there aren’t any ground-based defenses in the vicinity (and we can ignore the risk of actually running into something). Are there any advantages to flying low at all? Or is this a case of the higher ground always being dominant?
1 Like
I really like Lomsor’s ideas of different type of missiles.
Mines also sound interesting way to counter jousting.
And best of all at least for me it sounds doable,
and doesnt destroy immersion, and doesnt restrict controls of the ship directly.
Isn’t there currently some form of aerodynamic lift in the prototype?
Because rotating and pitching is currently more effective then just yawing. It does kinda feel like a lifting surface.
Made a quick and dirty showcase gif of a mine hit in ROCKETSROCKETSROCKETS
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Yes, there’s some sort of aerodynamics in the prototype. I suppose there’s some argument to be made over what, exactly, constitutes lift here. I, at the very least, have been talking about lift as the dominant force keeping the ships in the air, which clearly isn’t aerodynamic in nature in Battlescape.
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I think that’s a very good way to approach it.
Yes, please.
My expectation is that if I’m sitting 20 or 50km above a defended facility, I should be able to easily spot ships moving through the surrounding terrain. Masked approaches on a defended facility would be fairly pointless.
That changes if one of two things are true:
-
The ship sitting above the facility is distracted. That’s just an issue of tactics. But if the entire defending fleet is hovering 25km above the facility as the best defensive location, would they ever all leave that important location?
-
Sensors are artificially bad at spotting ships in canyons and such. This would permanently change the situation, requiring ships to patrol the surrounding terrain in hopes of spotting the guys using a canyon approach.
Sensors could also just be bad at differentiating a ship from something that it is near. So if I park a ship next to a big ring rock, I’m hard to spot on sensors. If I’m moving close to the surface of a planet, I’m hard to spot on sensors. And so on. That strikes me as the simplest and most universally-interesting solution.
False positives would be an interesting thing to throw into the mix.
I think pitch rates are just higher than yaw rates.
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Drag and lift force are proportional to dynamic pressure. In fact, the equation is: Drag (Lift) = Drag (Lift) Coefficient * Dynamic Pressure
What matters, though, is the dynamic pressure direct affects the craft’s structural strength. A spaceship, designed for high linear acceleration along the engine axis, may have very low structural strength to a high pressure force normal to the engine axis. This is where the Dynamic-Q limit comes into play. For example, look at the F-22 versus the YF-23. The F-22 is designed for high Q maneuvers, but the engine is a box to support that stress. YF-23 has high maneuverability but it isn’t designed for high-Q maneuvers, hence the thinner body.
For this game, Infinity can incorporate the dynamic Q limit into aircraft. Interceptors > Bombers > Corvettes would be a possible balancing limit. The dynamic Q limit, interacting with atmosphere modeling, would drive different flight behaviors at different speeds and altitudes.
Heat loading should definitely be added to the game. This will change planetary entry tactics and flight behavior across the entire game.
Remember that flying low is to evade ground-based air defenses. If there is a target, it will be surrounded by air defenses, which may include AAA or missiles.
Against opponent aircraft, the low flying plane is at a strict disadvantage. The opponent plane has energy to maneuver into a favorable firing position, while the low flying plane has to climb up to gain favorable fighting position.
The only benefit is if you’re flying low to evade a sensor lock. Otherwise, low altitude is a strict disadvantage. Higher plane has greater speed, energy, ability to choose engagement type (boom and zoom versus dogfight versus standoff missile, etc. etc.).
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The most realistic solution to the problem is to decrease radar resolution for low-flying aircraft. This was a problem in the early days. Later on, Doppler-radar allows for look-down capability. However, we can say that ships have internal jamming devices which decrease the Doppler accuracy of ships.
2 Likes
I strongly disagree to this line of reasoning.
Infinity is a game with massive ranges; a single focus point in a game could have as much space as the entire multiplayer map collection in Ace Combat, combined. The gameplay of infinity should be strongly influenced by the massive scale available.
The arcade use of missiles, and to be sure your missile description is very arcade, emphasizes short range combat. Missiles, in these games, are more like one-use powerups rather than a distinct weapon with distinct characteristics. They could be removed without any serious change in gameplay.
If I-Novae used your idea for missiles, then there would be no reason to engage anything at distance. The resulting gameplay would miss a very large element of what makes Infinity special. Instead, space and atmospheric combat would be indistinguishable from any volumetrically bound arcade flight game. Short ranged weapons will lead to short ranged combat.
For gameplay concepts, those which emphasize the scale of the gameplay environment and seamless orbit to surface interaction should be strong candidates for inclusion. If we restrict missile combat to a few kilometers at most, we are not including one of the most appealing aspects of the I-Novae engine.
For missile combat, what this means is that the game probably should take some cues from modern missile weapons. There should be long range anti-ship missiles, dozens to hundreds of kilometers, and there should be the capability to shoot at aircraft while in orbit (at least from a capital ship). The balancing component is through an advanced sensor model. If we include a reasonably detailed sensor / jamming model and allow for terrain masking through sensor noise / reduced effectiveness near the surface, then long range missiles will only be effective against opponents who are not flying optimally.
In this case, you still get the capability to shoot at targets from a very long range, unique to Infinity, but the opponents also get to play with altitude and terrain, also unique to Infinity.
I think that a short-ranged, arcade based missile gameplay will lead to fights which do not show off the uniqueness of the I-Novae engine.
6 Likes
Well that’s definitely a different viewpoint.
What I don’t see is how what I imagine you propose is engaging and fun to play for both sides.
Attacker does:
- Aiming or clicking at icons
- locking on (waiting)
- Fire
- Do nothing
While the oponent has to:
- See incoming missile
- Evade / HIde
And boths switch sides every now and then. Without ever seeing the opponent. How does that show the scale of the I-Novae engine off? Sure you are able to engage from mind boggling distances and big numbers show up underneath the icons but I think that should be put in its own gameplay mechanic, like I-Novae planed, Destroyers that have long range weaponry and can attack ground installations. Giant beams hundreds of KM long.
Talking about missile mechanics, i would like to expose my ship’s stats mechanics idea:
Block based system, no it’s not minecraft, it’s just about the ship stats!
ship properties:
-Size (+blocks)
-Armor (-x blocks from size)
-weight (used blocks including areodinamics and cargo)
-Aerodinamics (-x blocks from size)
-energy reserve size (-x blocks from size)
-ballistic ammo reserve size (-x blocks from size)
-Engine+Thrusters(-x blocks from size)
-Cargo (-x blocks from size when used)
ship stats:
-OSMF–Open space maneuverability factor (100 points max).> -weight + engine.thrusters
-AMF --athmospheric maneuverability factor (100 points max).> -weight - size + aerodinamics - athmosphere density
-GFMF–Gravity field maneuverability factor (100 points max).> -weight - gravity -size + thusters *damage received if factor is negative
-HRF --Heat resistance factor (100 points max).> -Tº +Armor *uses energy depending on Tº
-ARF–Athmospheric resistance (+/- 100 points max).> -size+aerodinamics- athmosphere density *damage received if factor is negative
-BAR–Base Armor resistance (100 points max).> +armor -weight - gravity -size -Tº
*Distance from the local star also affects Heat + gravity in open space
size:
-small : 20 blocks
-medium : 40 blocks
-big : 80 blocks
-small capital : 400 blocks (?)
-medium capital : 1200 blocks (?)
-big capital : 3600 blocks (?)
Armor:
-Weak (1 block used each 20 blocks available)
-average (2 blocks used each 20 blocks available)
-good (4 blocks used each 20 blocks available)
-Bulk (8 blocks used each 20 blocks available)
-multiple layers (16 blocks used each 20 blocks available)
Aerodinamics:
-none (0 block used each 20 blocks available)
-spaceaero (1 blocks used each 20 blocks available)
-aerospace (2 blocks used each 20 blocks available)
-aerodinamic (4 blocks used each 20 blocks available)
energy reserve size:
-kinetic (1 block per 20 blocks available)
-ergo (2 block per 20 blocks available)
-energetic(4 block per 20 blocks available)
-autonomous (8 block per 20 blocks available)
ballistic ammo reserve
-pacifist (0 block per 20 blocks available)
-secure (1 block per 20 blocks available)
-defender(2 block per 20 blocks available)
-fighter(4 block per 20 blocks available)
-atacker(8 block per 20 blocks available)
Engine+Thrusters
-Station (0 block per 20 blocks available) <-actually a joke
-Pod (1 block per 20 blocks available)
-explorer (2 block per 20 blocks available)
-propelled (4 block per 20 blocks available)
-powered (8 block per 20 blocks available)
Cargo
-none (no blocks used)
-cargo (can use all the unused block to transport stuff)
Test: Small weak spaceaero ergo defender explorer cargo ship
-Size: 20 blocks
-armor: -1 block
-Aerodinamic: -1 block
-energy: -2
-ballistic: -2
-engine+t: -2
– unused blocks: 12
-cargo: 12 blocks
Base Stats around an earth like planet (no calcs done here, no formulas developed to do so, so i did it on a x/10 basis based on my personal opinion)
*Cargo is empty
-weight: 12
-OSMF: should be around 6/10
-AMF: should be around 5/10
-GFMF: should be around 3/10
-HRF: should be around 2/10
-ARF: should be around 4/10
-BAR: should be around 1/10
Ideas are welcome to include missiles here