Wish list for Star Wolves 4 or expansion/dlc for 3

[Goumindong]

A X^3 style game world would be nice (as in, a real working space economy). But i think that the primary motivation in Star Wolves is making the combat good.

And there are significant problems in that regard which ought to be fixed.

Lets break these down into weapons and maneuverability/piloting.

Maneuverability and piloting are clearly king in combat. Well, that is, until they break and your pilots get so maneuverable that they simply stop an turn in spot(where they are then murdered).

In General what this means is that people who have good piloting skills dominate people who do not until such a time as the ships they have get too maneuverable and are prone to simply being terrible.

Not the least because of this, but also because other specializations need to have oomph (we will talk about missiles later). Piloting ought to be a separate function than maneuverability(in order to rectify this I am in the process of modifying all the maneuverability values for every fighter in the game for SW 3).

I.E. piloting determines what you do with a ship, maneuverability determines how well you can do it.

To be more explicit, as a pilot gets better, he should get better at doing specific tasks such as "getting and staying behind an enemy pilot" or "keeping enemy pilots from staying behind them" or "keeping enemies off the rear ends of wing mates"

As it is, it seems pilots simply fly around randomly and take pot shots when they can, no different piloting techniques are used when you have lasers or your opponent has lasers etc. This may not be the way that things really are, but unless specific target orders are given that is certainly the way things seem. One member of the wing will catch a bogey on their tail and the other members of the wing will happily sit there trying in vain to shoot someone else while their friend gets shot up. And that friend, even though he can simply get out of the line of fire by speeding up to their max speed won't do it and will keep trying to turn into the enemy.

Either each member of the wing needs to be able to be given much more complicated orders (while still being able to maintain wing functionality), or the piloting ability needs to get a lot smarter about how pilots fly and not simply make them more maneuverable (or give them bonuses to hitting or not hitting)

The second issue that needs to be resolved is missiles.

Missiles have a large problem in that they are either ridiculous useless (enemies shoot them down easily for non-specialized pilots) and when they hit they do about as much damage as a single volley from high quality weapons (for instance a cleaner with 2 helios combat lasers does 400 damage for two hits, 440 for a laser specialist, almost as much as a torpedo).

Or, with the right "clickies" they're massive ridiculous killing machines which murder entire wings without doing much. ALRMs with the missile damage boost clicky pretty much kills any wing in the game before it can do anything. Considering you get 2-5 clickies per map and well...

Missiles either need to be treated more like regular guns (I.E. their marginal cost of use needs to be zero) or removed as specialty and given status as long range pre-engagement killers that you use when you think the resources are worth it.

They can be both but it would require a large departure from the current system. I.E. consider a system where missiles "regenerated" inside a fighter. So that you reasonably had a full load of missiles for each engagement, but only for that engagement. Use them wisely. While at the same time, your mothership could, a limited number of times per map, launch area torpedoes that did massive damage.


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Solving these two problems are, imo, the most important aspects of making a better Star Wolves.

Excellent observations Goumindong. Yeah, there's really only "one" AI and the manueverability/speed pretty much determines how each ship flies. They all behave more or less the same. I don't hope for something as customisable as Dragon Age's combat tactics (that would be awesome gravy though), but you figure a pilot who's got a repair module equipped would at least have enough brains to use it on a damaged teammate right?

The LRM missiles do seem to be designed for pre-engagement: their range pretty much means you're invited to blow things up before they even see you. I'm... not too comfortable with this (it feels cheap :p ) but some players enjoy this. Ditto torpedoes. The other missiles - well, a "regenerating" load is an interesting idea. For my mod I simply upped the pod count and toned down the damage a lot. Mothership missile launchers are also a good idea, although it may be wise to differentiate which missiles can be used by what.

I mentioned something else in another thread I think: degradable modules. Right now a nearly-destroyed ship flies just as good as a brand-new ship. Ha. What if certain hits could cause modules to take damage? The idea is the more damage a module takes, the less efficiently it operates. Each module would have a min/max rating for what it does. For example a shield module which gives 200hp. Max would be 200hp, let's say min is 50hp. When it is intact (100% ok) it produces 200hp. The more damage% it takes, the lower the value goes, until at 1% ok it produces only 50hp. When a module reaches 0% it's considered destroyed (dock at a station to get it repaired).

This way we can boost weapons indirectly as well: e.g. lasers would only produce "normal" damage and only have a very low chance of inflicting damage on modules. Kinetic guns would have a better chance of damaging modules. This would make up somewhat for their crap "normal" damage. Heck, there could be "hacking" type modules for use by system specialists which would temporarily disable a ship's modules (set them at 0% for a certain duration). And modules which prevent this kind of hacking. Repair modules would certainly be much more useful.

There's a lot which SW3 can change fairly easily - we're not talking about massive game engine changes either. I'm kinda disappointed the next installment seems to be mostly about better graphics but we'll see when it comes out. One can hope...

[ChronoDome]

I Totally Agree With Goumindong

The Pilot Should Be Aware Of Enemy Fighters In His Rear
Rather Than Making A Complete Stop And Turning For Your Death.

I Hate Those Fighters Equipped With Chain Guns And Yataghan.
These Fighters Always Manage To Destroy A Single Ship In Your Team.
Grinds Them Up When My Pilots Making A Turn.
(Even If My Pilots Are Already Fully Perked And Their Fighters Is A Wyvern Mk II)]
(I Always Say: WTF!?!?! Even With A Support From The Mothership With Top Tier They Still Manage To Destroy A Fighter!?!?!)

He/She Should Do The Best To Avoid Enemy Fire
Or He/She Should Boost The Speed To Avoid Enemy Fire
Or Maybe Don't Make A Complete Stop While Turning

And Gives Me Another Idea (Another Request)
The Pilot Should Not Only Concentrate To Its Single Target

For Example:
Your Pilot Has A Target But It Is Right Behind Him...
So He/She Would Make A Turn
But There Is An Enemy Fighter Right In Front Of Him/Her
And Should Open Fire To Take It Down As Well

I Always Order My Fighters Which To Kill First
But Always Re-Order Them
If There Are Enemy Fighters Right In Front Of Them

Its Very Stressful
Re-Ordering Them Again And Again

Edit:
When I Said Chain Gun
I Meant All Types Of Rapid Fire Like Vindicator
But Sometimes Aliens Are Causing These Troubles As Well
Because Of That Green Missile

[Goumindong]

I actually don't mind the whole "you have to give specific orders to your team mates" aspect. For instance, i love that I can have a single member of my squad on missile/repair duty and he can still attack.

All I do is pause when i hear/see a missile, turn on the anti-missile defense and when the offending missiles are no longer in the air, turn off the missile defense. (ditto repairing)

My gripe is more that when I have pilots on Defend or Attack they are incompetent. An order of defend or attack should not have the pilot do a specific simple thing (though they should focus on the target you have selected), but should influence their behavior in a very specific way.

A pilot on defend should be concentrated only on getting an enemy off his rear(or concentrated on getting enemies of his friends rear, either one), and should be fairly successful at it. All of this of course depends on whether or not the pilot is good enough and the ship is fast enough/agile enough. A slow but agile ship should attempt to out turn an enemy, a fast ship should run out of weapon range and then re-align when the enemy can't shoot at him, so that when the enemy is back in range its no longer a threat or no longer a threat anymore. Pilots on defend should still be able to shoot(as shooting is part of defending yourself), just concentrated on not dying more than making others die. If i have a pilot on defend(or attack, it doesn't matter which) and a target they should make sure that that target won't be able to get a good shot off on whatever they're trying to kill.

A pilot on attack should be concentrated on attacking the target and should be fairly successful at it. The way in which they go about it should be different for each weapon. If they have lots of lasers they should be concentrated on making passes at high speed (because all you need to do is get the enemy in your sights for a second).

If the pilot has high RoF weapons then making high speed passes isn't valuable, the pilot should be concentrated on getting into a position where they have lots of time to make attacks.

If the pilot has SRMs active they should align themselves so that their friends won't be incidentally hit by their shots. I can't tell how many times i have blown up me entire team because i launched an SRM/LRM and had the super damage clicky on and then another team mate decided to fly right into the path of the super-missile of doom.

In addition, a pilot who has missiles active needs to have some sort of consistency of when they will use them. If missiles are active then the pilot needs to fly at a distance where the missiles will actually fire. Again, i cannot tell you how many times I have triggered SRMs for a missile pilot and had the pilot do nothing buy shoot their 2 small guns at enemies and never actually use the missile!

Pilots need to be better at running away from their wing-mates and escorts. A wing of pilots attacks my mothership which should be an easy fight considering the proximity to the laser/chaingun spewing monster... Nope, because invariably the enemy will chase one of my pilots off of the mothership and he/she will drag the others out there so that they can have a fight away from our fire support. It would make sense if it was the enemies running away, but its my own damned pilots!

For some reason i feel that these problems did not exist as much in the first game. It seems like as piloting got better my pilots were less likely to run away from the fight because they got someone on their tail and were incompetent at shaking them. That my pilots were less likely to sit and spin while enemies chewed them up and were more likely to fire their missiles.

______

That being said i want to elaborate on the LRM/SRM thing.

There isn't much of a problem with long range engagement missiles existing and being effective. The problem is that LRMs/SRMs use the same resources. I.E. LRMs and SRMs are money and purchase limited and use the same launcher.

So if you want to use SRM's because you think missiles in dog fights are cool, then you can't use LRM's. And if you want to use LRM's because you know that LRM's are awesome and pre-engagement is valuable you can't use SRMs. (and you're probably going to be flying a ship that is worthless in a dog fight anyway). Because of this you're pretty much locked into playing a certain type of way. One of those ways which is pretty clearly inferior to the other.

The second problem is that missiles both do too much damage and don't do enough damage and there can really be no middle ground with the current setup. As it is, the clickies mean that LRMs or SRMs will simply take out an entire wing in one hit but that SRMs are pretty weak otherwise.

This is good in one way as the clickies limiting LRM usefulness means that you can't just sit back and bomb every enemy you see with your 400 range radar then redock and get more(exception is berserks of course as they have so few hit points and weak ABM). But its bad in another way that SRM missiles only do about as much damage as a single high quality laser shot unless you use the clickies... and if you use the clickies then your entire wing will explode because the SRM will turn into the equivalent of a torpedo.

If SRM's are to be limited use weapons they have to do a LOT of damage, they pretty much have to take out a ship(any ship) in one hit. But at the same time, they can't be such that the explosion is able to hit multiple ships.

It is funny when the MSF stops me for being a pirate and starts to attack and a single SRM wipes out 8 of them. Its not funny when a patrol launchers a SRM at an enemy pirate I am tangling with and the explosion kills me when I am unable to shoot down the missile! (because you can only shoot down missiles that are targeted at your wing, not allies, and not enemies. So if a missile is shot at an enemy and you are too close when it goes off you get hurt)

Its funny when you can lay waste to swaths of enemies by launching 8 LRMs in quick succession that all explode in huge gigantic fireballs of wing killing death. Its not funny when those same "fast launch" clickies are useless with SRMs because they send 3 missiles at the same target before you know it and the explosion of the first one blows up the other two!

To put it in a simple way, the reason that these problems exist and cannot easily be remedied is that SRM's and LRM's use the same game resources. Think about a game as an attempt to succeed against some odds using limited resources. When two things use the same resource you will always and only use the better of the two things (unless you're masochistic). If two things use the same resource and have wildly divergent uses then balancing them becomes problematic.

If SRM's and LRM's are on different resource schedules then you can design them in such a way that each one is useful.

[Dantiandeo]

Hi, I'm long in with Star Wolves but new to the forum. To be brief, i agree with ChronoDome and Goumindong suggestions and alot of the other thing.

One thing about the fighter not just focusing on its primary target wouldn't be so hard...just look at the mothership, it does it all the time.

Also i do NOT believe this has not be mentioned yet as it seems to me( might be that i'm blind tho...). How about online play...I'm not suggesting MMO style, More like Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale style. Every Player has his money and stash of items and controls his own fighter. The Mothership would either be an AI that takes commands from the person who started the session or who ever decides to steer it. And I even produced a solution for breaks. Upon Pressing Spacebar there would be a message (e.g. "Player XZY suggests Pausing") and everyone that agrees presses spacebar as well, within like the next 2 seconds. If not everyone agrees it will be chosen to have a pause depending on how many said Aye. Majority Aye means Pause and majority Nay means no pause. I'm still trying to figure out how to handle loot. This online play would heavily rely upon Free Roam Mode.

It could also be that there are different servers, or example one server is just completely you and the group o friends you have decided to play with, where the storyline quest could be you and your friends trying to build up a reputation as a reliable mercenary group/ Traders Company/ Transport Service/ Guards/ Etc.

And on another server you could battle another group of players.


Having this "1-Player-1-Ship" Multiplayer mode would also give rise to REAL tactical game play. Since Players do not just chose target and wait until target eliminated. This would be good if it could get a system similar to Star Trek online with the 1-player-1-ship.

Thats all from me for now.

[Goblin Wizard]

I've just read this interview.
Damn...after each answer I had one thought "I want this in Star Wolves...I want this...I want... I WANT ALL OF THESE!!". Truly, I'd like to see all these features in Ashes of Victory or SW4.

Some best parts below:

"The world has to live on its own, driven by AI. Traders dock on stations to trade, miners go deep into asteroid fields to search for ore, scientists roam the sector looking for anomalies to research, police squadrons go on patrols and deal with pirates, military fleets round up and attack enemy fleets... all of that and more goes on regardless of where the player is. The AI doesn't act only when you're nearby... they live their own lives."


"We actually aimed for this "scenario" approach, to ease modding and mod implementation, but it also enables us to easily create new content and ad it as new scenarios. And I'm not talking about DLCs here, but rather new game content we intend to release as free updates. It is our wish for SPG to last longer and not flash for a month and then disappear."


"RPGWatch: Capturing enemy ships has always been a favourite element of mine - how does it work in Starpoint Gemini?

LGM: Every ship has a predefined maximum number of Troopers it can carry. When trying to take over a ship, you first have to knock out one of his shields, either by draining it, destroying it, hacking it etc.. Then you can transport Troopers onboard to try to take it over. There's also a Perk that improves your Troopers."


If those guys will keep all promises it'll be a fantastic game. The Elite Games team should really consider "borrowing" some ideas form them.

Thanks for the heads up Goblin Wizard, I'll look it up.

Edit:
Apparently it's somewhat like Space Empires: Starfury, in that it's not actually 3D but flying around on a plane. Well, crap. I enjoyed Starfury but I don't think I can't stomach another 2D sim. The other ideas are pretty good though, like being able to hire crew to man the mothership, and ship boarding combat instead of just shooting up everything.