Idle_Scholar

I appear to have lost a NFRG and a VULTRE. Both show up as being ordered in my report, and my remaining cash is what it should be, but both craft are missing from the map.

To be honest, a quite short range like 3.5km would simulate a flack barrage quite well.

The best way of testing things would be to take two fleets of 5 NFRG's and see what combination of figter/bomber loadout is optimal. Trouble is that's a bit difficult the way the games currently set up.

You could also make it so PT's hit shields. But yeah I don't see a massive amount wrong with what just happened. Without gravewell generators it'll always be possible to get 100 things with PT's together and jump in right next to an enemy cap-ship. I think the trick is to balance it so that, if you start form 10km away or something, and you have even points and a CAP your capital ships stand a chance. The main thing you've got to be carefull of is not making it so that fighters/bombers are more effective in some combination than their cost in capital ships. To be honest, what I'd do in the main game is make it so that fighters and bombers are less cost effective, but much easier/take less time to build and keep supplied.

We were thinking maybe PT's need their range shortening a bit. To give interceptors a bit more of a chance.

Damn you. Damn you to hell! :'( 1 shotted by TB's as well. And one of your ships should have been called the Lucifer. It would have been fitting.

Could missiles fire somwhat slower, but do a bit more damage to compensate. At the moment anything with a pair missiles can slavo off 20 in a round. This doesn't really give any interceptors much chance to intercept and the bombers typically run out of missiles and have to return to base anyway.

I set up a list of orders going 1. Attack 2. Jump, I then set up an attack list going 1. Carreck 2. No Target Now that the Carreck's dead should the ships jump?

This works great untill some of the docking capeability is destroyed. But in principle it would make things easier to make small craft a sub property of larger ships.

With respect the the squadrons, you could make the squadron selectable vie LMB, and the individual ship selectable via LMB+ALT, in the same way you can currently select enemy units (or use any other method of differentiation). You'd need to make it so that you can't then give orders to that one unit, without taking it out of the squadron. With the docking thing, just add a wait command until all the individual units have docked. Then if th player attempts to dock a 74 unit squadron with a capital ship with 1 spot the rest of the squadron just sits there. For situations where small craft outnumber docking slots you can then either use that as an incentive to make sure there's enough docking or add a bit of code where the craft take it in turns to to dock, R'n'R and then undock. Again the entire squadron can WAIT until all individual's have done this and before folowing the next order. Does the current escort order cause the escorting unit to attack any unit engaging the escorted unit, or just to fly alongside it?

[qutoe] as you mentioned ATTACK with a radius is a DEFEND, but i would like to know which functionality is not there? I dont see any, so I wont do a RADIUS on ATTACK Z damage sustained - i just added that yesterday by setting your HULL BREAK LEVEL it will break out of ATTACK orders (and many others) when it gets to a certain hull damage level V fuel - same thing as damage, just added yesterday W warhead - I suppose I could add that too Y time has passed? hmm not sure on that one, what would be the tactical reason for that? Please detail further... until X is destroyed? well you can currently have it not attack targets unless its a given unit, and then put a NO TARGET after that in your priority list. But perhaps if I added something like a NO TARGET, like say a BREAK priority target, where if it runs out of priorities and reaches a BREAK, then it breaks out of its current combat mission (ATTACK, DEFEND, PATROL, BOMBARD). what do you think? Ok so if I understand this. First you need to set a unit to not attack (weapons not free?) unless it's on the list. Then if you put a NO TARGET in on tthe list it'll stop attacking. But will it then move down to another order (say JUMP)? Kobra's got what I was sort of saying. Basically it's the rudiments needed for scripted behaviour.

Can the ATTACK order be given conditions, such as; untill unit X is destroyed/gone, untill Y time has passed, or Z damage has been sustained, or W warheads remain, or V fuel. Also an ATTACK radius would be cool. I know some of the functunality is there with the DEFEND order but not all. Ideally you'd want to have ATTACK always there but activated by conditions. So you could queue up a list of behaviours, say jumping around, and if you ever encounter an enemy the ATTACK order comes into play.

Have a look at the ship comparison thread. The chart made by Kobra will help you considerably when deciding what to buy.

If you put small craft into a fleet, then load them into a carrier they all move to the carriers fleet when they launch again.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think the TUFTR's should stand a chance. It's more that the points cost of a TD doesn't even remotely coincide with it's effectivnes as a dogfighter. Therefore waht's the point in buying any other type of fighter?

Can there be a smoothing mechanism for hit rates between fighters? At the moment it's almost impossible to hit a TD, and cheap fighters are almost entirely useless. I think from my crude analysis you need to outnumber TD's 20+ to 1 with TUFTR's to have an even chance, whereas TD's only cost about 2.5 times as much. Oh and yeah it would be nice to have a reliable source of bits for the fighters and ships (fuel etc), as at the moment a lot of stuff is pretty useless without missiles.

When you're allies with someone, can it be made possible to share sensor data? Also, could some indication of effective detection range be put in. Say the distance at which there's a 75% chance of detecting a fighter.

I've noticed this too. (that's light speeed btw)

The problem at the minute is that TD's seem to be insanely hard to hit. I sent in 23 TUFTR's against about 30 TD's. Now sure the TUFTR's are badly outclassed, but looking at the report it's a bit ridiculous. Over the course of the engagement the TUFTR's fired 58 times, but only hitting 4. That's about 7%. The TD's meanwhile fired 161 times and hit 125. That's about 77%. Now of course the TD's should win, but at a 7% hit rate you'd actually need 11 times the number of TD's in TUFTR's just to start with the same number of hits, excluding the fact that TD's carry heavier weapons and armour so the TUFTR force needs to be hitting at twice or three times the rate of the TD's. Now the TD is about twice as fast as the TUFTR, but only has 15* more rotation (about 30%). For what little it's worth my years of X-wing and Freespace dogfighting experience has shown that first, one on one maneuverability is much more important than speed and second, even if you can always beat an enemy one to one you can't stop his mate shooting you while you're distracted. In lieu of actually simulating the mechanics of a dogfight there probably needs to be a smoothing mechanism so that there isn't a 70% gap in hit rates. A small gap certainly but not the gaping maw we currently have.

But TD's have CM's which are supposed to be better anti-fighter

I'm having a lot of trouble trying to salvage any weapons. I move my ships of recent (unsalvaged) wrecks and all I seem to get is chassis, armour and propulsion. So it would be nice to preferentially salvage materials, and also to move automatically from wreck to wreck like a harvester in homeworld or something.

Maybe you could have a combat/non combat-rate? Where the non-combat recharge rate is significantly faster.

I was mostly talking about dogfighting but I'd be interested to know how your calculations work. Also check your PM's

TD's realy do seem to be the very best and most cost efficient fightrs at the moment.

Can we have an 'engage at X range'. At the moment if you select the attack order a ship will move continually closer to it's target. Certain ships are better off at range and it would be nice to tell them to stay that way, whilst still swiveling to face their target.