Sensors, Scouting and Stealth in Battlescape

Battlescape
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Last week has seen a few of these intellectual masturbation threads that we loved so much on the old forums, but we know where that leads. It leads to a complete disconnect from what the developers are thinking and what is planned to be implemented and what the community considers as common ground on a wide variety of topics.

I would advise caution considering what happened once already concerning these types of discussions. Building dreams is easy, implementing them, no so much. Let’s hope the developers get more involved and actually step in these types of discussions, so we don’t dig the dream hole too deep.

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I can’t think of a snide or sarcastic enough comment to reply to this with. :wink:

LATER: *No one’s talking about some ridiculous outside-of-scope feature here. People getting a bit carried away with elaborate/decadent implementations of a basic mechanic like this isn’t something to get worked up over.

Showing players where other ships are is something that’s been a core feature to any space game since the 1984 Elite and Infinity’s version is probably going to go through a fair bit of tweaking and balancing all the way to beta anyway. Plenty of time to chat about how-tos and what-ifs for fun while it gets ironed out.

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We need developer input in these types of threads, then we can see if the feature details are ridiculous outside-of-scope ones and I’m not talking specifically about this particular thread, but rather all the threads of this type discussing some or other feature to microscopic levels.

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I have suggested some time ago that INovae should get a community manager that would deal with this kind of requests, instead of always pinging the dev team. Either hire or propose to members around here.

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Oh, I’d say to keep at it so long as you enjoy it. It’s not like we’re designing their gameplay for them. In all the years I’ve been doing this, my motivation has been to go through an intellectual exercise in gameplay design. Staying within the realm of INS’s gameplay universe has just been a design constraint. We could just as easily be designing fantasy MMO gameplay for all I care.

The same goes for developing spaceship models. I could have been just as entertained by working on structure models for a zombie game.

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I agree about the community manager, have been asking the developers for some time about that, apparently @Hutchings will be doing the job until one is really needed. Also is it too much to ask for developer input on how they want to implement sensors at this point?

@INovaeFlavien, @INovaeKeith

I do realize it’s thanksgiving, so shame on me, sorry for the ping. :frowning:

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I don’t think a community manager is needed or should concentrate on keeping gameplay discussions at bay or show us what direction I-Novae is going in. The devs should clearly state what can and what can’t change.

What I propose is that, with every release of the game, the devs should clearly lay out what new things they implemented and what they expext from us to test and feedback.
Then they should clearly lay out what they are working on next and what direction they are going, what may and may not change.

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30

I like the idea of line of sight comms because it gives a very definite purpose to orbital mechanics. Want 100% communications on a planet/moon? Better setup a constellation of satellites. It’s possible to do with any orbit, although a geosynchronous orbit is both easiest and best. Leaving the calculations to the players, instead of to the computers, would just be another form of non-combat player skill implementation.

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After thinking about line-of-sight comms between player ships a while, I’ve decided it would probably end up being tedious. I’d like to retract my earlier thoughts on how it would be fun to implement.

This shouldn’t be something ever spoken or typed in the game’s chat:

‘Hey newbie; go sit at X place in the middle of nowhere for the entire battle and do nothing because we need a comms relay. We’ll give you some credits when it’s over so long as you don’t leave that spot. Go read a book while you wait or something.’

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Why would it have to be a ship? We have communications satellites now, I assume we have them in the future also. It’d be more like a “mine layer” sort of gameplay, where you achieve orbit, lay a satellite. Achieve orbit, lay a satellite. It wouldn’t take but a few satellites per celestial body… Or a few cleverly placed in orbit around the star(s).

Of course, it would be as much about shooting down the enemy satellites as it is placing your own, and if the satellites are not stealthy, the ones placing will have their work cut out.

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If the gameplay is thought good enough, there should an indication that the ship acts as a relay.

The enemy should be intelligent enough to want to severe that relay. If the relay ship is small enough, it will get destroyed too easly, and if it’s one of the big ship, you’re immobilizing a valuable resource.

A satellite cannot fight back and is more difficult to reposition, but is cheap to produce and can be massively thrown away.

Both options are valid IMO.

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I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a cool system to have with satellites, I’m just wondering what it would add to gameplay for the amount of extra effort the satellite version would need to get implemented.
Not sure if the ‘fun vs effort’ would add up at that point.

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Right, I’m not saying you couldn’t use ships as relays, just that it shouldn’t be mandatory. Send a few “bombers” outfitted with satellite layers ahead of an operation to lay hundreds of satellites, then arrive a few minutes behind that. The enemy would be too focused on the battle to worry about severing comms.

Or send your satellite layers to a diversionary planet, and get the enemy to place themselves in the wrong spot.

Or just fly blind and use the element of surprise.

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CONS:
Small amount of extra work to model and texture ‘satellite’.

Forces the minimum requirement for finding your way to be a fully 3D system map in order to show a detailed enough view of comms signal connections. The current prototype just marks locations on your hud rather than bothering with a full map.

‘Hundreds’ of extra physics objects for the server to keep up with might not be so great for performance.

Extra balance testing to work out satellites vs ship comm connections. Satellite HP, Satellite ease of detection, etc.

Extra UI work for satellite deployment.

Finding ways to stop a hundred or so players spamming satellites in the middle of a fight to lag out the server; without making the process of flying to a patch of empty space and clicking a button even less fun.

Having a bunch of people fly all the way out to the middle of nowhere to disable enemy comm networks makes smaller and less epic fights for everyone else.

PROS:
One or two extra tactical choices.

Satellites are cool.

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[quote=“Naiba, post:36, topic:1467, full:true”]
CONS:Small amount of extra work to model and texture ‘satellite’.[/quote]
I know you said small amount, but I don’t know it’s even significant enough to bother mentioning. The satellites would be tiny, only a fraction the size of a Hellion.

I’m not sure I understand. Shouldn’t there be a 3-D map anyway? You’re flying in a 3-D environment, after all.

Ballistic objects should just require an initial orbit calculation, then just requires a flight on rails. If we make them fragile to the point of impact with anything causes them to be destroyed, there is no concern of interactions changing the pathing.

I don’t know any reason to make them different, a radio is a radio is a radio. I assume we’re working with FTL comms, so there are no delays to work with. The balance would come from how many can a single ship deploy, how quickly they are deployed, and if there is a “lifespan” on the satellite.

If we make them deployable by bombers, then you need no more of an interface than what bombers already have. It would be like dropping a bomb, except you are not expecting it to explode and kill things.

Again, if we’re going to have bombers dropping bombs, the system is already going to need to account for such things. I would assume they have something in mind.

That’s your interpretation, mine is that you are generating conflict by forcing people to either allow the enemy to have full communications, or going out of their way to engage the satellite layers beforehand. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

[quote]PROS:One or two extra tactical choices.

Satellites are cool.[/quote]
So are fezzes and bowties!

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A few hours extra work is still a few hours extra work.

Not really. A lot of space games of the past have had top-down 2D maps. Some have had no maps at all.

This is still extra work/programming for making that work correctly.

I think your idea of what a bomber will be varies greatly from my idea of what a bomber will be. Will wait till i see what the devs plan for bombers is before coming back to this point. :wink:

Unless ‘Bomber’ is just a historical hold-over name and it’s really just a larger-than-interceptor, less maneuverable class of ship that lets you fit heavy blasters on it…

Going off to shoot one ship is not a battle. :stuck_out_tongue:

If you have a fleet of people protecting ships putting down satellites and have a battle there, instead of in the place the satellites are giving you comm access to, what’s the point of the satellites in the first place? It just seems borked.

Gah, you’ve got me doing this whole ‘wall of text comment and reply’ thing I hate now! It’s not like these opinions count or anything, I-Novae aren’t an open democracy. :slight_smile:

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Leave line of sight communications to some after-market modification. Any restrictions on communications can always be circumvented by out-of-game solutions, so line of sight is going to be for some niche crowd that enjoys the gameplay that results from having the restrictions.

When implementing line of sight communications, consider automatic relays.

  1. No automatic relays. Live within the limits of line of sight, just as field radios lived with the restrictions of terrain for so long. There’s no development or runtime cost for relays, and the gameplay remains perfectly reasonable.

  2. Automatic relays. They have to be big and tough because they’re going to be obvious. There’s no such thing as a stealth communications satellite; their very purpose is to be seen. So they would become a new focal point of combat, with one side trying to take one down and the other side trying to keep it going. The question is whether or not keeping a relay alive is worth the effort. Would anyone bother with the relays?

If there are no automatic relays, then I know when I will and will not have comms. If there are automatic relays, then some fraction of the game’s combat will revolve around those relays, and I won’t know when communications are going to go out. The more important communications are, the more that combat will center on the relays.

Essential: I cannot hack the computer at the power plant unless I have a communication line to our central computer back at base, across the system. Well, that’s a two-relay jump, and if the relays are down, we just can’t do anything.

Convenience: I cannot talk to the guys in another battlescape because I lack line of sight. They aren’t involved in what I’m doing, so mostly I have the occasional message that I need to get out or receive. If the relay is down, I can just send a runner for that odd message.

Also, forget about a cloud of satellites. They’re going to be expensive to implement and so should be very expensive in terms of game resources so as to keep their numbers down. There is no infinite supply of time space in the game, just processor cycles, data structures, and bandwidth. Communication relays are like mirrored surfaces in rendering. There’s a reason that it took so long to see them implemented.

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I have the feeling that everybody posting here think that the action is all the fun. Personally I’m quite the opposite, cuz the moments I enjoy the most in most games are the quiet ones…just before action, or when you are underpowered and trying to avoid contact. Full head on combat makes me loose interest really fast and just remind me of 1996 Quake-games.

Therefore I am positive to the idea about scouting, scanning…recon-runs and what not, as long as there is a meaning to do so, and if it gives my team (when part of one ofc) an advantage.

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Oh I have no problem at all with the inclusion of solo or small-group non (or limited) - combat activities. I just don’t want to see situations where entire war fleets start getting bogged down for hours trying to track and kill one aggravating enemy scout.