Patch 0.2+ - Feedback thread

Battlescape
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How about adding one more small craft class called fighter that would be somewhat more forgiving basic craft

runs away from developer mob

anyways my feedback:

Tested a bit the new version.
I really liked that big land base. Nice details. You really have to come close to appreciate the scale of the thing.
Perhaps some tiny moving bee crafts would help sell the scale in the future.
Or more shaking when moving at mach 3.

New NPC crafts make the game way more alive when there are no players.
Erm …do i suck so badly ? … or are they really that good ? :slight_smile: (played only with joystick and throttle, didn’t tried mouse yet)

Game usually runs smooth up until i get closer (several Km) to some bigger structure. Game then stops for a few seconds, like if its loading textures.
Is it the reason for the way faster initial loading times ? … i think long loading at the beginning will be better solution in the future. Its an issue only at present, since we lack proper settings menu in game.

Btw thank you to whoever though about us non-widescreeners with hud elements scaling :wink:

issues i encountered

Controls.:

Anyone know of some list of possible parameters which can be set in the control settings in profiles .xml files? It would made our life lot easier. For instance are there any other parameters how the axis behaves ? Example :
Type = “Axis”
plus all the possible input events… i would really love to set things like warp on a button.

I ask because Throttle axis need some other way to be set, currently it controls rate of change…it is hard to explain for me :slight_smile: It is messed up.

speaking of throttle…
Throttle bar visual
Lines on throttle bar… look like recommended warp speed setting for current place in space and the other has to be max safe air speed, good for beginners i like that.
… would be nice though, if they were visible even when throttle setting is higher above them. They get obstructed by the throttle setting bar itself. Perhaps adding bit of alpha channel into a color of the throttle setting bar. (transparency)

The head-look
I would love to see a way to separate cockpit head looking axis from axis of ship control.
That would seem to be one and only step needed for head tracking to work and we are golden :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
I tried writing different axises - mouse, joystick, anything into the .xml file, but it works only in default mode with ship control axis while button is pressed. :thinking:
…i blame gamepads :laughing:
please don’t simplify it to a point that it wont be possible to use anything bit more complicated.
Sure making it accessible for all is great idea, but intentionally limiting the advanced control settings for the same reason is not.

Radial menu …don’t know about the design when you couple it with all the switches in cockpit …seems out of place… perhaps on one of the MFD monitors ?
Another thing is they aren’t exactly self explanatory… perhaps some category name written over the cells that belong to same category ?
It would be perfect on Hat switches ? Anyone figured out how to set it up ? It too seems locked to mouse only.

Warp seem strange … and the weird throttle axis functionality with hotas makes it even stranger. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:
engine sounds not changing while in warp like before don’t help either.
I was more fond of previous functionality alá I-War 2. (the one with almost instantaneous reaction to input). Perhaps mix between the two.

Flight model in atmosphere - did anything change ? I tried various planets. Banking and pulling seem to have no effect whatsoever compared to just yawing.
I guess there is bit of drag in the atmo and craft generally don’t like to turn as fast, but it seems way too weak. It lack that fluid dynamics feel from the first version.
In “slow” speed around 50 m/s sure why not make it nimble vtol.
But above 150m/s (540Km/h) it just feels wrong. Anything flies, even stones, given enough speed.

also how do i turn on the massage in the interceptor ? :joy:

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203

Interceptor may benefit horizontal gimbals for the sole purpose of crossing fire at the target’s distance.

Interceptor also feels it runs out of energy a bit too fast.

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This was adressed by flavien in the discord channel, maybe it will be fixed before the alpha weekend.

Still possible, use
<Input Event = "Warp" Keys = "YOURBUTTON" />

Totally, can’t wait to have separate headlook back. Flavien was already pestered several times about that by different people. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Not possible, its bound to the mouse right now, I also tried.:disappointed:

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Land bases are really nice. Can be a bit hard to find though - when your screen is filled by one planet/moon you should see the indicators.

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I have to agree on adding another interceptor and/or fighter. To be honest the present one is horrendous and as a builder of hundreds of horrendous models, I should know. Not only is it aerodynamically the equivalent of a brick but it’s also a humongous eye sore. I get the sense that when it was created, it was slapped together because the old designs were no longer possible given the sudden departure of previous designers. As for the capital ships they are amazing and spot on. But one ship, especially an interceptor, can be detrimental for PR. IMO. .

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I kinda like it… :slight_smile:
I am not a fan of bomber but Interceptor looks nice

Also i forgot about visual effects.
I understand most of them could be placeholders. But since you were tweaking explosions anyway.
Blue, green, or orange … hmm.
They still blow too much like if ships are stacked with gas cans :slight_smile:…

Anyone ever played Nexus : Jupiter incident ?
There were some amazing explosions. Yet simple. Slow animated effects and big slowly dissipating blinding flash of light.
Nothing fancy like multiple parts of ship debris, just that flash of light and slowness to add to the feel of the scale. You immediately knew something major just happened.

Or simply disabled hull of the ship after small explosion. Dissabled ship just slowly rotated and remained on the battlefield. Of course that might not be good performance wise.

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I think we all do. But kind of isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. Still, it’s early so who knows.

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It would certainly be alright if capital wrecks persisted or left some sort of wreckage as that would allow salvaging.

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This would likely cause other issues in the game, if players join and train on an automatic gimbal weapon they are unlikely to progress and will never learn the skills needed to move to the “proper” weapon. Additionally there will be constant conflict between players in both modes, it can be annoying to be using the manual weapon and be killed by someone using something that literally aims at your target for you. If the gimbal was manually aimed it would be fine, but battlescape’s rotation rates are so fast that a manual gimbal is unlikely to be very useful, but it would still simplify aiming somewhat allowing players to just “click” directly on the lead indicator which can be a bit of a mental barrier for some new players, so it’s worth considering manual gimbals as an option if the alternative is some automatic gimbals.

I suggest, if the goal is to make a good more forgiving starter weapon, not go with autoaim, but instead area detonation flak, or a high high spread chaingun to ensure some damage lands, heck even high capacity low yield lockon missiles of some sort could work. Those would be preferable to automatic gimbals as it would allow for evasion and spoofing mechanics to come in as hard counters against over-reliance on them.

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The best suggestion yet in my opinion. The standard weapon we have now already is somewhat forgiving. It has quite big hitboxes.
All of the example given sound cool to me.
Weapons that have AOE damage even when not directly hitting the target (proximity fuse) and reward better aim/prediction with higher damage is one possible variant.

In my opinion manual gimbal (where you aim the guns manually) should not be an option. Rather increase the rotational maneuverability of the Interceptor. Even going so far as to make it a special case and have it have infinite rotational acceleration to mimic FPS responsibility. That’s just my opinion though, I would rather prefer having classical FPS responsibility than deal with several separate crosshairs.
The handling of a fixed maneuverability, without infinite acceleration, can be trained on the interceptor. Like “Calibrate your eye-hand coordination” of some sorts. It gets more difficult when the responsiveness of the ship changes.

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I don’t see how auto-aiming gimbals are different from proximity fuses or missiles, these can all be tweaked to be too forgiving or perfectly balanced: on gimbaled guns, projectile damage, muzzle velocity, or gimbal angle can all be adjusted just like explosion radius or whatnot on a flak. Just give us choice so each player can choose his favorite weapon.

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Because your brain knows the auto aim is there.
And there will be that little voice in your subconscious telling you, that you suck because you cant fight without it. It wont be strong but it will be there.
And when the time comes (and it will come) there might arise animosity between the two groups. One group will say that the gimbal users cant aim so they resort to this almost a cheat. And that pretty much guarantees millions of topic on forums demanding removal of the gimbals and invites elitism.
The other group will subconsciously know they are worse at aiming. And instead of dealing with it and focusing on their strengths, they will have that nagging voice in their head telling them how they suck and focus em on their weaknesses and they will be inventing arguments why it is not a cheat and so on and so forth.
It will be eternal forum battle.
Fact is that it is a little aimbot. But do we want players that have slower reflexes to feel so incompetent and useless to eventually leave the game ? No.

Mattk50 proposed idea that seems like a solution. That makes both useful in some field. While bypassing potential for unnecessary conflict inside the community.
I like that.

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Elite has gimballed weapons, so does Star Citizen, their playerbase does not seem to have a problem with it. Gimballed weapons have the tradeoff of less damage output.

I don’t think there is a correlation of people wanting the option to use gimballed weapon and their skill level. I for example want gimballed weapons because aiming is not the core gameplay in my opinion, if aiming is the main gameplay element that is supposed to bring fun, be challenging and make the game a good experience then the game is doomed. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I want to first fly spaceships, not just shoot them, with gimballed weapons I don’t have to worry about pixel perfect aim - this just isn’t much fun for me.

People with better skills will always have the advantage of beeing better, gimballed weapons don’t level the playing field at all and certainly not when they have tradeoffs.

Looking at other games also shows that gimballed weapons or auto aim isn’t a problem. Even in egoshooters such as quake there are weapons which beams bend and ‘auto aim’ to a certain degree at the enemy. I never heard anyone complain about that.

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Gimballing and auto aiming are completely different and separate. Please don’t conflate them.
You can have auto-aim without gimbals and vice versa.

I know nothing about SC, but in Elite the player has the choice of auto-aiming gimballing weapons or fixed, or a combination.
The auto-aiming gimballing weapons try to aim at the lead indicator (or the ship for hitscan lasers) but, to balance little skill being required, they don’t do a perfect job of this - they will overshoot the ideal aim point and gradually converge on that point, this is hindered by flying erratically. So to help out the auto-aim you should fly smoothly which has the drawback of making you an easier target.

Responding to your example of Quake with weapons that auto-aim, they are hitscan and low damage. The fact that they are hitscan means a human couldn’t do a better job at it and the fact that they are low damage means there is time to counter - it’s not frustrating or auto-win.

Being forced to use auto-aiming weapons when you could do a better job than the auto-aim is just annoying.

Different play styles must be catered for by different roles, not by reducing all roles to a common denominator.
Non-precision/twitch players can take advantage of the corvette or other ships with auto-aiming gimballed weapons, which themselves have pros and cons.

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I think the problem is that gimbal changes the focus of play for the interceptor.

(I’ll say now that gimballing on the slower bomber seems okay - pending balance)

With no gimbal, I found it quite difficult to land hits with the interceptor. My vision became very focused on my crosshair, and keeping it on target. This was more challenging and rewarding, but I lost situational awareness completely.

With gimbal, I have a lot more situational awareness during combat because my eyes aren’t locked to where the crosshair is pointing. However, as I’ve said already, the current setup is definitely too forgiving. A very small gimbal I think would be okay on the interceptor.

Totally against having the gimbal follow your mouse indicator. It limits control over turning when you’re trying to aim as well. But the crosshair/mouse indicator need to be made a little more distinct on the UI.

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Elite dangerous is so slow that aiming gimbals manually would be trivial and are mainly used in tandem with fixed weapon systems simultaniously, don’t actually track the target properly, and they can be spoofed (and operate in a large radius rather than the small radius of battlescape, cementing their purpose as “angle fighting” for the ED planes in space gameplay rather than aim assist). Gimbals in starcitizen are manual, which was one of my suggestions and frankly is so unlike the battlescape’s patches current function of last degree autoaim that it’s not even comperable, and even then their forums have spawned factions of people who think manual gimbals are cheating and break the game somehow, there’s a constant argument there.

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As a mouse and keyboard FPS player, who spend many hours on his aiming skills, I dislike the sound of the word aim assist, and so understand the outcry.
As a War Thunder player, who loves there flight model of the higher realism gamemodes, but who has given up on ever hitting a pixel sized target with a joystick or gamepad, I love to be able to equip a gimballed weapon on an interceptor in I:B.

Once weapon layouts customizations are in I want to have the choice between fixed weapons and gimballed ones. The weapons should be ballanced in such a way, that good aiming with a fixed weapon is significantly more rewarding, but does not totally outclass spray and praying with a gimbal.

While there are interesting concepts for weapon mechanics, which let you deal damage with a near miss but let you deal more damage with a direct hit, aim bots in form of turrets are a necessity of the game design and already implemented, so aim assist in a narrow arch in a form of gimballed weapons for the small ships shouldn’t be a taboo.

I am fine with different weapon loadouts for players with different skill sets, skill levels and controllers, but these players shouldn’t be forced in special ship classes. The choice of ship class should be only one of preference and tactical necessity.

Furthermore I hope that dogfights are refined for a time around gimballed weapons, because I:B is a multiplayer space sim with a complex flight model and not a FPS, so good aim should be one of several and not the only possibility to out-skill your opponents. If the dogfights with gimballed weapons are boring or there outcome to random, the game design of dogfights is off.

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There is also the fact that interceptors are the starter ship, used to earn enough credits to buy bigger more expensive ships, so there should not be a skill barrier at the first step.

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As i said on Discord, this does not have to stay true. Maybe it turns out that the Bomber for example is the best ship to learn the ropes in and the Interceptor is a specialist choice with a higher skill floor.

You guys need to keep one thing in mind: We have 4 ships that will be based on turret armament. And both the Bomber and Corvette are too slow turning to fit the FPS style twitch movement direct aim with the ship model. So only the Interceptor fills that role, as there is no budget to add the heavier fighter pre-release, as has been stated a few times.

It may be able to fill additional roles, but should not lose that one. For some people, me included, the classic formula from the ICP of a fully newtonian fighter with FPS style direct controls, manual aiming and a twitchy feel is a big part of the appeal of Battlescape as the arena fighting game it is. In the ICP, most of the ships followed that formula. Here, it is only one. Whatever is done to give it more value/options in other styles of play must not undermine that one core aspect that it brings to the ship roster and solely carries for the forseeable future.

I also think that it is not super healthy to think in terms of starter ships vs. late game ships. Yes, there will be a sort of progression, because there is an economic factor to the war we want to fight. But if we fail to keep all playstyles and ships viable throughout the progression of a match, this makes the game less attractive for players who want to play only one game style/one certain aspect of the greater war.

What does a support player do before he can afford a Carrier? What does an Interceptor pilot do if the field is full of anti fighter Corvettes and Destroyers? This will be a real challenge to get right.

Maybe we should consider all 3 small ships starter ships. Maybe a Carrier guy can fly a freighter before Carriers are available. Maybe an Interceptor can only equip certain weapons at a Carrier, not at the Stations/Bases that are available at the start. Many many ways things could work out. Imho a model where you start small and weak and always become stronger and better with the next ship falls short of what we need.

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The Bomber is the small ship that doesn’t require as much twitching flying skill. It can have just as complex a set of controls for target identification, designation, weapon preparation and delivery as the Interceptor has for engaging small ships.

No ship should be a starter ship. Each should be able to be stepped into and operated by any player. Their aptitude for the skills required by that ship type determine how good they are at it. Like I said, each ship should be its own game experience. It has to be because somebody is going to be playing the game using that ship.

The Interceptor is not the ultimate ship in Battlescape. It’s just one more ship among several. It has a role to play. It will crush some opposition and be crushed by others.

If the game is predicated on personal progression then it’s completely and utterly broken as a multiplayer game. The question is one of how a support player gets access to the full support game - because he’s playing the support game. If you’re a great support player, then your team should be giving you a Carrier when they have the resources for it because when you have a Carrier you contribute more to your team than when you don’t.

If they bring that much anti-fighter hardware then they’ve compromised somewhere else. That leaves a hole and your team will wreck that fleet because they didn’t balance it properly. So that scenario will pop up exactly once, and then everyone involved will learn to always bring a certain number of Interceptors and Bombers. That restores balance to the game.

It’s like asking “What if a World of Warcraft group was only made of Tanks? What would the healers and DPS players do?” The game design precludes the game balancing that way.

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