future features

beard · Post by **beard** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:16 pm

I am enjoyning this game but would like to see some future improvements. IMHO of course.

Middle hud have long, medium and short range mode, with magnification.

Remove cockpit struts option.

Remove enemy ship graphic in the right hud, it just looks crap. text would do fine. I think the ship graphics are one of the major let downs.

Auto countermeasures, the modern F4 falcon has this and I am sure future birds should have, toogle on and off.

Visble or audio notification of being spiked by E ship.

Allegiance style ship hud?? as welll as your cockpit. It works well.

Weapon selection is confusing.

Many more wingman commands.

thanks anyway.

G

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:39 pm

Erm...

Middle hud have long, medium and short range mode, with magnification.
1. This doesn't really make sense - wanting it, I mean.

Remove cockpit struts option.
2. Wha - why on earth should it be removed?

Remove enemy ship graphic in the right hud, it just looks crap. text would do fine. I think the ship graphics are one of the major let downs.
3. It looks just fine to me, and visual identification is much faster than text. Seeing that picture of a Wraith tells you right away, rather than just reading "Wraith" there. I also think that the graphics are amazing, pal.

Auto countermeasures, the modern F4 falcon has this and I am sure future birds should have, toogle on and off.
4. Countermeasures add quite abit of strategy to the missile arena. Btw, most modern fighter jets require the pilot to activate flares - chaff - other countermeasures manually.

Visble or audio notification of being spiked by E ship.
5. Spiked?

Allegiance style ship hud?? as welll as your cockpit. It works well.
6. ...you might want to clarify this, I'm clueless.

Weapon selection is confusing.
7. Confusing? ...how? It's quite straightforward, imo. Click and drag.

Many more wingman commands.
8. Telling them to do - what?

*goes off to play Massive Battle*

Post by **Vice** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:43 pm

Middle hud have long, medium and short range mode, with magnification.

Why? Do you think it's too cluttered at the moment or something?

Remove cockpit struts option.

Possible, maybe through some kind of visual HUD aid that filters them out. For interested players, importing custom cockpits is also available.

Remove enemy ship graphic in the right hud, it just looks crap. text would do fine. I think the ship graphics are one of the major let downs.

Non-constructive opinion based criticism won't help me improve what you don't like. If it's that much of a problem with you, press G to switch to the range display with text descriptions of the ships.

Auto countermeasures, the modern F4 falcon has this and I am sure future birds should have, toogle on and off.

Additional thoughts from others? Important? Over-simplification?

Visble or audio notification of being spiked by E ship.

There is no spiking in the game. If you can see them, they can see you.

Allegiance style ship hud?? as welll as your cockpit. It works well.

What is it you want to see on the HUD?

Weapon selection is confusing.

Great, how? Again, non-constructive opinion based criticism won't help me improve what you don't like. If a scroll bar and drag-n-drop is too confusing to you, there may not be much room to improve things by your standards.

Many more wingman commands.

Great, like what? Again, non-constructive opinion based criticism won't help me improve what you don't like.

[Edited on 3-15-2007 by Vice]

tha_rami · Post by **tha_rami** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 7:15 pm

Additional thoughts from others? Important? Over-simplification?

Very over-simplication. The countermeasures need to be dropped by the player.

Weapon selection can indeed be confusing, I must say. It takes some getting used to and maybe using the scroll wheel by default (besides [ and ]) would be good. Unless he means pre-battle weapon selection but I don't think so, since that's plain clear.

More wingman commands. Well, you know what I'd like. Agression levels and such, but that's not really for frontal warfare. Arvoch is frontal warfare, not tactical warfare. You're in the front lines, always.

For the rest, I disagree with beard on all points. (nothing personal)

Welcome to the forums. Hope you enjoy your stay.

Pariah · Post by **Pariah** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 7:48 pm

Remove cockpit struts option.

I play with the 3D cockpit turned off. While I think that immersion is higher with the cockpit turned on (especially if you are using TrackIR), I prefer visibility. Before the 3D cockpit of 2.0 you could just turn the struts off and maintain your "dash" which I liked, but the conversion to a fully 3D cockpit affected all of that. If we were fulfilling wish lists I'd ask for a fully 3D cockpit with dome style glass that didn't have struts, maybe just a nice frost effect. I, however, think that this is just personal preference and is not relative to constructive comments that benefit the entire community.

Auto countermeasures, the modern F4 falcon has this and I am sure future birds should have, toggle on and off.

Freelancer had this. You could turn your CM's to auto. The auto mode was not nearly as accurate as the manual and you wasted a ton of CM's (and subsequently money). Accordingly, if you controlled CM's manually you benefited from skill and greater accuracy and also kept the use cost effective. I can see the argument from both sides but I personally like the challenge of manually releasing them and the skill that that requires.

All in all I'd say most of these points are personal preference things. Everyone falls in love with different games and their interfaces and thus everyones perception of a perfect system is different.

btw, some of my comments reflect features in EA though I think they are still relevant here

.

[Edited on 3-15-2007 by Pariah]

Post by **Vice** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 8:06 pm

Removing struts isn't a problem, I'll include a mod option for doing that (just by including a file named 'nostruts.txt' in the game's folder). New glass frosting will probably need to be done as well, to give the impression that the canopy is a dome. I could probably put an installer together that would apply the change(s) automatically.

[Edited on 3-15-2007 by Vice]

Pariah · Post by **Pariah** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 8:29 pm

Amazing as always. Would this be possible for EA too?

Thanks Vice.

Post by **Vice** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 8:33 pm

Oh yes, it's basically the same system. It's been added to the list for the next EA update as well.

beard · Post by **beard** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 9:49 am

Like I said IMHO

and yes and they are personal, sorry if you got offended. it isn't intentional

Middle hud maginfication for dogfighting, I think would be an aid. There is a lot going on, maybee a declutter option.

I dont like the graphic in the right hud spining around. Personal sorry.

CM is up to you, you could always switch it off.

If you have ever played Allegiance it has fantastic hud features, which aid navigation. dogfighting, avoiding missiles.

Wingman commands are pretty basic, attack- form up and recharge, mabee thats all you need.

"spiked" is when an e gets radar contact on your bird

seperate targeting for e and friendlies, when all e's are done with the targeting system tartgets the nearest friendly, why??

Its allot of fun, and I look froward to its developement.

Post by **Vice** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 3:20 pm

and yes and they are personal, sorry if you got offended. it isn't intentional

You are welcome to post personal opinions and requests, but if you don't back them up with specifics on what it is you want changed/added, then there's nothing very constructive going on and your comments won't carry much weight. And please do keep the forum rules in mind, foul language and name calling is a violation and results in getting banned.

Middle hud maginfication for dogfighting, I think would be an aid. There is a lot going on, maybee a declutter option.

Keep in mind, you can change a lot of the graphics in ways like that. Decreasing the size of the radar blips themselves would be one way to reduce clutter. Range selection might be another option, but knowing all nearby threats is pretty important.

If you have ever played Allegiance it has fantastic hud features, which aid navigation. dogfighting, avoiding missiles.

Great, but you still haven't said how it should apply to this game specifically. I have my own design style and preferences. You may not like it/them and that's fine. There's quite a range of HUD design approaches to games like this, it's a major reason there is quite a lot of visual diversity in the genre. Not a bad thing at all, imho.

Wingman commands are pretty basic, attack- form up and recharge, mabee thats all you need.

That's why I/we asked and why it's important to back up your statements with specifics.

seperate targeting for e and friendlies, when all e's are done with the targeting system tartgets the nearest friendly, why??

It must target something. It needs to target something. It exists to target. Without a target, it has no purpose.

beard · Post by **beard** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 3:34 pm

It must target something. It needs to target something. It exists to target. Without a target, it has no purpose.

I love that........but by default when no e is present can it target your carrier or mothership??

Here that isn't a swear word so once again ooppps

Wingman commands could be endless, did you ever fly the f4 in Falcon 4 superpak, I think there were over 100 different commands. Which they obeyed even when you were wrong. Spliting them and getting them to flank left or right would be interesting. Getting them to hold position, scout. close up, spread out, it could be endless but the overall goal is to enhance gameplay.

When carrying out the objective like building the shield theres not much they can do except await the reds on the radar.

I await cockpit mods with interest, I hope they come thick and fast.

Post by **Vice** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 4:02 pm

I love that........but by default when no e is present can it target your carrier or mothership??

Possible, but to help in navigation (if that is one of the goals), watch for the blue blip on the radar which will guide you back to your carrier after a mission.

Here that isn't a swear word so once again ooppps

Actually, I think I got you confused with someone else. So I owe you an apology. Please disregard my comment on the forum rule matter.

verbosity · Post by **verbosity** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 9:04 pm

Originally posted by tha_rami
More wingman commands. Well, you know what I'd like. Agression levels and such, but that's not really for frontal warfare. Arvoch is frontal warfare, not tactical warfare. You're in the front lines, always.

More wingman commands is a must IMHO, Mainly as in certain levels you need to have a little more control. often I've seen NPC command systems that have sub-levels ( a basic command and within a sub-menu slightly more specific commands.) I've not played in a while so apologies if these are already in-game but here are some:

1. attack smallest/largest emeny ship (good for the missions where you have to stop enemy bombers etc)

2. defend me ( this might already be in it so apologies, if it is could the wingmen be set to attack any ship that actually hits you. with options to try to 'take the hit' as it were)

3. rescue pilot. rather than having to do it yourself send another pilot to do this job.....

4. formation --> ( also includes tactics, possibly with some sort of custom 'tactic/manouvers' option).

you can see where this is going.... I could think of others but I'm off for another drink......

Post by **Vice** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 9:08 pm

Most of those are available (and you can direct your wingmen to attack a particular target of your choice as well, allowing for selectable control for option 1). You can even direct your wingmen to dual formation types. The problem I'd have with the remaining #3 is that it takes away the requirement for the player to complete the objective (resulting in more of an armchair general barking orders rather than completing the objective(s) themself). Interactivity is a big part of the design of AC and I do want the player to be involved in the primary mission objectives. Open to thoughts on it though, just my opinion

MMaggio · Post by **MMaggio** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 9:13 pm

I want to say something here. In regard to the multiple wingman commands, I am familiar with those games. One of the things I like about SW games is their simplicity and "intuitiveness" in the keyboard commands. I have games that require over 68 keystroke commands. That's ridiculous and can't be remembered. So, I am glad there are a minimum of wingman commands. If you want more, there are other games that cater to that avenue of gameplay. SW games don't. I'm glad.
Remember, no one game can make everybody happy all of the time. That's why we buy all these games.
I remember my grandfather telling me that, "it's a good thing not everybody likes the same thing, or they would all be after your grandmother"!:P

beard · Post by **beard** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 4:49 pm

wake turbulance------

now I must be dreaming

beard · Post by **beard** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 10:45 pm

Waypoints showimg up on the middle MFD??

tha_rami · Post by **tha_rami** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 7:19 am

Well, hey, Vice, you know what I'd like? Multiple primary objectives, especially in Arvoch. But that's just me, I guess.

Wolfox · Post by **Wolfox** » Thu Mar 22, 2007 2:58 pm

Originally posted by tha_rami
Well, hey, Vice, you know what I'd like? Multiple primary objectives, especially in Arvoch. But that's just me, I guess.

No, it's not just you... I like the idea very much.

beard · Post by **beard** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 5:34 pm

If the ships computer can read which part of the enemies shield is down or damaged

it would be logical to enable laser fire or missiles to concentrate on that part of the shield.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 5:45 pm

Logical - except that laser fire - while aimed - cannot be directed like a guided missile. And I'm pretty sure that firing a string of missiles at a target usually blasts through the same side.

verbosity · Post by **verbosity** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 6:12 pm

yes but if you were totally true to the idea of a laser beam then it would take 1.66782048 Ã— 10-6 Seconds ( 0.000001667... seconds ) to hit a target 500 metres away.....
and targeting would be VERY accurate...............

[Edited on 3-31-2007 by verbosity]

tha_rami · Post by **tha_rami** » Sun Apr 01, 2007 11:03 am

Originally posted by verbosity
yes but if you were totally true to the idea of a laser beam then it would take 1.66782048 Ã— 10-6 Seconds ( 0.000001667... seconds ) to hit a target 500 metres away.....
and targeting would be VERY accurate...............

[Edited on 3-31-2007 by verbosity]

Maybe in the nearby future they develop something that slows down laser fire?

beard · Post by **beard** » Wed May 02, 2007 10:25 am

Tell me to stop?

proximity mines, as in scout class ships in allegance.

Makes a terrible mess of the person trying to dogfight you??

I am having difficulty with missle evation, so maybee as in freespace , missles direction on the hud, or even on the central mfd.

verbosity · Post by **verbosity** » Wed May 02, 2007 11:15 am

proximity mines, as in scout class ships in allegance.

I think pretty much all the missiles should be able to be dropped as mines, of maybe just have mines as an option? I'm big on this Idea, It'll add so much to combat (esp PvP)

I am having difficulty with missle evation, so maybee as in freespace , missles direction on the hud, or even on the central mfd.

I have a simple rule in regards to missiles (in most cases anyway [not PvP])
if you can see it, turn 90degrees and hit afterburner
if not just hit afterburner,

Either way, remember to use your CM's and keep your jump drive handy (torpedos are not affected by CM's )