Does anybody know what is the “Mega Map” referring to in the first image ?
Mega map is the technique to stay in the game and not having to load between matches or switch between arc corp, your hangar, arena commander. Everything is on one “mega map”. Streaming in with as minimal number of loading screens as is practical.
That certainly applies if you can learn from your mistakes. And if you can’t you are doomed to repeat them.
Yes. There is however one problem with that statement; All the people that are unable to admit they’ve made a mistake, even to themselves. Those will never learn.
I don’t think Roberts is one of those people judging from his newsletters.
Derek “Smart” on the other hand I’m not that certain about…
Derek doesn’t need to learn as he knows it all already. That’s the main reason why his multiple re-imaginings of his games are so similar and why they are widely disregarded. He can’t learn. He thinks he already has the perfect product and is so deluded that he compares it to SC in a more than favourable light. His games are at least a decade behind graphics wise.
Roberts is a perfectionist, at least at first glance. Previous products have been ambitious and had to be reigned in. But with a serious budget and no one around to tell him no, it remains to be seen whether this will be his master-work or or just another disappointment.
I’m blown away with what they have managed to achieve, if you pardon the pun, with Cryengine. Back when I cared to play E:D I wouldn’t have bet a pound that they would be able to pull off what I have seen in their videos with what was primarily a very pretty looking FPS engine.
This may just be one of those cases where anything is possible if you through enough money, and time, at the problem.
Apparantly with the coming patch they changed the flight model. Now the ships have even slower top speeds but quicker acceleration, to combat jousting. It seems like they want to shape the combat to be more like planes in space aka Elite Dangerous. Problem was that combat gameplay was not fun for the majority of players, arena commander is not enjoyable for most fans if you listen to the subreddit opinions. Instead of inventing new gameplay that uses or penalizes jousting they opted to further cribble movement.
Isn’t acceleration limited by g-force blackouts/redouts, though?
Wonder what racing’s going to be like after this. I doubt they’ll bother shrinking the track size with tighter turns and such to make up for these changes.
I’m wondering what the combat will look like in IBS with full Newtonian flight if SC is having trouble with jousting, given they use a modified system already and have unlimited funding.
jousting is definately also a problem in the current battlescape prototype
My preffered solution to this would be to make jousting something you want to avoid doing, instead of something thats not easily possible, so that it becomes something only new players do because they don’t know better.
Jousting seems a lot worse in Star Citizen right now than Battlescape.
Reverse thrusting is deliberately awkward in SC. There’s no closing speed indicators for targets so it’s far easier to fly on past them when you don’t intent to, and the acceleration is very low in comparison.
Not saying there isn’t a problem with jousting in battlescape (Or that there won’t be when the networking is good enough to have serious combat encounters), but the ratio of ‘accidental to intentional’ is skewed far more heavily towards accidental in SC right now.
So yeah. We need a countermeasure to train new pilots out of doing it, where SC needs a flight-model change to make it easier to avoid doing by default.
Even something as simple as chaff, that fries a ship’s sensors if it charges passed a ship with chaff launchers at ‘high speed’, might be enough for Battlescape.
Another way to combat jousting is to reduce the turning rate based on the absolute speed. Go faster and you’ll turn slower which makes jousting harder. IIRC that’s what E:D does ( plus a cap speed ).
Jousting is just a side effect and not really the core problem. As Flavien points out the issue with SC was that you had fast ships with equally fast turn rates and only a minor g-force penalty. Hence probably why CIG are trying a slower more deliberate flight model.
Jousting gets you killed (or death by boredom) no matter what flight model you are using. The best pilots I’ve seen in many space combat games use all 6 degrees equally and that is what the game should ideally teach newbies to do.
My idea would be weapons that make jousting a dangerous thing. Like proximity mines etc. I think pilots would be very carefull to not slide into a mine. Or mobile shield walls.
Imagine we could drop a mobile energy shield after us in the shape of a circular plane. These shield walls could remain for 2 minutes or a number of health points. Dropping such a shield wall at the right moment could lead a jousting noob into crashing into it, wrecking him as a result. They would also add a lot to the gameplay. Depending on shield type they could be large and more vunerable or smaller and sturdier. They could allow passing through them from one side but not the other and so on. Since space is mostly open space and the game is going to be a shooter after all this would also serve as tactical cover. I think adding more than shooting attacks to the game will be important to have fun gameplay. That is what is missing from ED and SC to a large extend and makes their combat gameplay boring.
NO. No no no nononononononooooooo. Please no. Just don’t. I hate E:D’s system. It’s painful.
No.
This kills the game.

You lower the speed and the turning is too fast, you lower the turn rate and the speed is too fast. It keeps being revised down to WW1 bi-plane fighter aircraft every other space game seems to end up defaulting to.
Having a game where ships maneuver to avoid projectiles rather than avoid the front of enemy ships, at least in the same class, has always been more appealing to me than endlessly circling without getting to even take a shot.
I also don’t get why you’d want to cheapen your atmospheric flight model by artificially crippling the space one to fit that sort of mold.
I want IB’s motto when it comes to flight model: No compromise.
Give the players the tools and the environments, and we’ll figure out how to best use them. If jousting becomes a huge whopping deal (I don’t think it will), do something else other than nerfing speed and turn rate.
#No Compromise
I don’t think jousting will be a problem in atmospheres for IBS, due to there being drag present, so two independent flight models might be needed. As for limiting the turn rates with increasing velocity, problem there is that it could actually have the opposite effect and create more jousting, people failing to slow down and instead using high velocity passes as a tactic.
Please no. As others have said, this is one of the unique attractions of Infinity.
Other mechanics and tools etc can be introduced to make jousting less viable as a tactic.
I think it merely was a statement how jousting could be eliminated not that they want to do that.
If they cribble flight mechanics to fit the game into the stupid space plane ww2 dogfight mold, I will personally walk to belgium and change the code back.
