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Should Larger Ships Require Multiple Players?


Vorengard

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Not against a swarm of fighters its not, even when the fighter fleet is half the cost of the battleship

Thats a good point.

I was more thinking along the getting mugged scenario. But yes, fairness or flawless balance is not expected and just the way these games sometimes go.

 

Actually, while I'm still not fully behind the 1 man army ship. This thread has changed my opinion somewhat. Cheers.

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i asked the same question some time ago. And the answers was that it wouldnt make no sense to have crew members shooting. But im glad that my topic was read by someone and, in my opinion, it will make the multi-crew more fun and interactive.

 

Ship cannons/weapons

03 June 2016 - 05:53 PM

I haven't, yet, read all topics, but I have one question about big size ships.

Will they have automatic fire target or it will be crew shooting?

in my opinion its more fun to have crew shooting instead of IA fire, but if there is no crew how can a big size ship fire?

Only use counter-measures, use engines to get away????

I search for a game were I can be part of something and not play "alone". And this game take my attention because of that.

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I think that the whole system regarding how many players are needed is a good idea for a more immersive game-play style, however if people code up an 'AI' of sorts, it should be just as efficient (and possibly even more efficient) than a crew of actual people.

I have several problems with this. Firstly, it removes people from the act of space combat, which is bad because this is an MMO, and the entire point of an MMO is fighting other people.

 

Secondly, I don't want to play a game that's all about "who has the better code." The point of the LUA code is to allow us to customize our experience, not to build a game that's automated. Not only does that defeat the purpose of an MMO, it's not even fun. Sure, setting my fleet of robot ships on someone would be great... the first few times. But if I want that I'll go play an RTS, not a game that's supposed to be about player interaction like DU.

 

Sure, scripting could be limited and less efficient, but in terms of anything beyond the most basic setups (press button go forward) what does that add to the gameplay? I want a space combat system that's about piloting skill, not coding skill.

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So...

 

You'd alienate everyone that wants to play as a lone wolf?

 

"Fleet of robot ships"  that's a GIGANTIC leap from customization of controls.  My understanding is the LUA scripts run on the players local PC, and the player can only run one at a time.   I doubt ONE LUA script could control a "Fleet of Killer AI Ships".

 

Then you have people saying "AI has been banned in the lore".  I'd respond banned on EARTH, 10,000 years ago.

 

It seems to me, that ANY LUA script could be labled "AI", "Nazi", "Fascist", "Racist", or any other derogatory term in order to ban it.  It's what happens EVERY DAY in govenment and politics.

 

All this does is force one persons opinion and beliefs upon another person.

 

How about we allow NovaQuark to provide the elements and tools.  And allow the players to use those elements and tools however they want to build whatever they want. 

 

Isn't this JC's vision?

 

MMO != PVP gank fest

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Alienate? No. Restrict? Yes absolutely. No game can be all things for all people. I have no problem with one-person ships, but, beyond a certain point, those ships should have limited capabilities as a result. You want to fly the death star all by yourself? Great. Go right ahead. But you shouldn't be able to use more than one system at a time. I will take an effective team-based game over a system that makes everyone sacrifice a bunch to make everyone happy. If you want predominantly lone-wolf, go play Elite:Dangerous.

 

Might I remind you that you are the one that suggested an AI that controls ships. I think that's a bad idea in every regard because what's to stop people from permanently logging in alts to run those AI? The use of programs like ISBoxer to do something similar was already destroying segments of the gameplay in EVE, and I believe it would be even worse in DU.

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How about we allow NovaQuark to provide the elements and tools. And allow the players to use those elements and tools however they want to build whatever they want.

 

Isn't this JC's vision?

 

It certainly is.

But its only natural to get some push back against the 1 man death star.

 

You cant deny that player interaction is a big thing. And there is nothing wrong with playing the lone wolf.

 

But it has some drawbacks, you shouldnt expect an equal footing. Its your choice playing the lone wolf nobody is forcing you to do it. LUA as far as I know is not intended to replace humans. Its to customise your play experience.

 

But like you said its JC's and team NQ their game, we can only voice our opinions/preferences.

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Please site a quote of me advocating "AI controlled ships".

 

And if this game isn't going to be all things to YOU...  Are you going to rage quit?

 

I've explained multiple times in this thread why multiplayer ships will be more effective than ANY single player ship.  Even if its a death star.

 

Yet some of you are terrified of LUA coders...

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Secondly, I don't want to play a game that's all about "who has the better code."

 

 

I'm pretty sure JC has been very clear that there WILL be a market for constructs built and programmed by players.  This means there will be competition between builders for "who has the better code".

 

And I'm sure that you Vorengard, would be willing to purchase the new "Ripper Technologies LUA Superturret Mark I", if it gives you a leg up on your competition.

 

Otherwise...

 

Every player would be expected to build their own ships and constructs.  The market would ONLY exist to get rid of the scrap and junk you weren't interested in.  This is definitely NOT what has been described by JC and the dev blogs.

 

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So my 2 cents:

Should a single person be able to pilot a large ship: Yes

 

Should a single player be able to have a combat effective large ship: Yes, but automation should not be free. Meaning a 10 gun automated ship should always be more expensive then the 10 gun manned ship. Automation should require elements that require power. More power would mean a larger generator, more fuel and more weight. The ship would be slower and less maneuverable unless you add more engines. All of this would increase the cost and operating cost of the automated ship compared to the non automated ship.

 

Should a 10 gunned ship need 10 players: NO. I personally think that would be kinda bland game play for gunners, always shooting just 1 gun forever.  It also has serious risk of creating 1 or 2  bad situations.

Situations 1: its always better to have 10 weaker/smaller ships with 10 players then 1 powerful ship with 10 players.

Situation 2: Player count is more important then strategy, ship design, player "level" or skill and the game becomes about how many noobs can you recruit to shoot guns.

 

Personally i think large ships should be most efficient with multiple players but not 1 per gun or element. I would love in NQ came up with a system where how trained you are and skills you have in certain trees determines what elements you can use and the number you can use. I have some ideas about a point system determining what you can/cannot use in a ship but it is just too complicated. In theory after years and years of playing the game someone could fly a strong ship by themselves but it would always be far worse then a multi crew or heavy automated equivalent ship.

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I'm pretty sure JC has been very clear that there WILL be a market for constructs built and programmed by players. This means there will be competition between builders for "who has the better code".

 

And I'm sure that you Vorengard, would be willing to purchase the new "Ripper Technologies LUA Superturret Mark I", if it gives you a leg up on your competition.

 

Otherwise...

 

Every player would be expected to build their own ships and constructs. The market would ONLY exist to get rid of the scrap and junk you weren't interested in. This is definitely NOT what has been described by JC and the dev blogs.

 

Well ofc, people will sell whatever they can. Junk, trollships, traps,...But also new inventions with new scripts, better code, faster responses and so on. People will pay for better performing ships, bookmarks of veins, codes, maybe even passage on a big ship of a certain nation to infiltrate it - where's a buyer, there's a seller.

 

Builders will probably fight the hardest PvP, the market so better get your codes right ;)

 

And I agree: let NQ hand us the tools - test them for 2 years - nerf/buff them - release the game. That's why alpha and beta are crucial to DU

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Bear in mind,

 

This entire tread boils down to "Should we NERF LUA scripts because of the POSSIBILITY that they won't be balanced?"

 

It doesn't matter what the construct is.  Large ships,  multiplayer ships, territory defense, roulette tables, or a Coffee Maker... 

 

I'm coming to the defense of LUA. My concern is to not limit LUA until it has been demonstrated to be too powerful.  Otherwise we're responding in Hysteria, Ignorance, and Fear.

 

From my perspective, this game is interesting from a coding and building perspective.  When you talk about limiting LUA, you're making assumptions before all the facts are in, that will directly impact gameplay.  We ALL want balanced gameplay. 

 

 

Just don't start nerfing things before we have an opportunity to test it.  Who here has heard of "Interactive Mode" in Star Citizen?  Chris Roberts completely screwed up his game and pissed off a TON of backers because of the misperception that a joystick was more effective at flying a ship than a mouse.  There are tons of examples where the mouse can be just as effective as the joystick if modeled properly.  My point is...  Don't start limiting things until they prove to be a problem.

 

 

I'm not really interested in PvP, and my ship will most likely not have ANY weapons.  (I'd prefer to outrun, outsmart, and outmaneuver you)  :)

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I think a lot of these discussions/topics are about people starting to get antsy and anxious (like me) to try out DU and see what it can actually do.  Currently, EVERYTHING is hypothetical without the ability to prove/disprove the theories.  I just hope Alpha starts out real soon so a lot of these questions can be answered.

 

As for the lone wolf discussion, we have 2 hands, scripting and the ability to due multiple things at once.  The low efficiency/effectiveness will make running big ships less attractive, not to mention the large amount of time and huge cost needed to build such a ship (which I hope is a long time...not creating a star destroyed in a couple of hours).  I can see a ship with multiple weapons systems on it, you'd just need to switch to which weapon you want to use.  Each weapon has its own cool down period before reuse, uses a different energy source or munitions or combination of all these.

 

But in the end, we just need to wait and see what DU has in store for us.

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Bear in mind,

 

This entire tread boils down to "Should we NERF LUA scripts because of the POSSIBILITY that they won't be balanced?"

 

No, actually, that's not what I was saying in the OP at all, but you chose to interpret it that way because reasons.

 

There are a thousand ways to simply code the game so that a single person can do everything. Example: every other space game out there. How many of them use player-moddable LUA code? None of them. This is exactly my point. I'm asking WHAT DO WE WANT IT TO BE LIKE, not "oh em gee nerf Lua plox".

 

So, please contribute to the actual conversation here instead of going off on a completely unnecessary Pro-LUA crusade. If you want to do that, make a new post about it and I'll talk to you about it all day.

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I think a lot of these discussions/topics are about people starting to get antsy and anxious (like me) to try out DU and see what it can actually do. Currently, EVERYTHING is hypothetical without the ability to prove/disprove the theories.

 

...

 

But in the end, we just need to wait and see what DU has in store for us.

I completely agree that much of this forum has become that, but that's not what I made this thread for.

 

My intention was to do what these forums were really designed for: discuss what we would like to see in the game so that the Devs understand that. That helps all of us.

 

So, what is your ideal system for handling multiple people on a ship? Should that even be a thing?

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This thread is so full of bull. I'm loving it.

If you set up an area of denial on the scripts, you can have "solo-flown" battleships (it's simple math, don't worry people who payed attention in school will make those scripts for you). Just don't expect the scripts to fire the turrets in a coordinated and focused pattern.

Translation for those with no understanding of the arcane art of "words". Just because something is possible, doesn't mean it's efficient. If you spread 10 turrets, 100 dps, across a ship's armor plating surface area that can tank 500 dps across the area you are firing (and dumb-firing via the Area of Denial scripts), you are NEVER, EVER EVEREVER going to be as efficient as the ship that has fully player-manned turrets, that can coordinate their attacks and fire on your pretty bridge and cave your ship's metaphorical skull in.

Yeah, please, be my guest, all of you, add randomly targeting turrets on your ships. I'm certain it will work fine.

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Yeah, ok guy. That makes so much sense... except for a single teeny tiny detail you've apparently forgotten. You know, the one where JC said fully automating ships will not happen

 

So you can take your condescension and unbelievably arrogant attitude and shove it. 

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Yeah, ok guy. That makes so much sense... except for a single teeny tiny detail you've apparently forgotten. You know, the one where JC said fully automating ships will not happen

 

So you can take your condescension and unbelievably arrogant attitude and shove it. 

You are the kind of person I referred to as having "no understanding of the arcane art" known as "words".

 

Fully automated system example :

 

Step 1 : Scan

 

Step 2 : Identify

 

Step 3 : Lock

 

Step 4 : Relay Lock-on postion to a whole battery of turrets.

 

Step 5 : Fire

 

Step 6 : Repeat.

 

Simple Area of Denial as an example would be to fire the guns in a general deierection, asynchronised.

 

Also JC said the autoamtion will be very not efficient. Having an automated firing systme that can't be coordinatedmanully sounds liek a good trade-off. (well, not realy, people will just steamroll you).

 

 

 

Also, you seem very offended by me non specific comment on this thread. Is that stick broken or something and it's making you cranky?

 

^_^

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Thing is, what many "I want to fly Battleship solo" people don't get, is you can't solo defend a battleship if it's being boarded... or flanked by smaller craft and being killed via a "thousand cuts" tactic. Who's gonna fly those point-intercept fighters? A.I. ? Is this gonna be EVE Online levels of cancer with ships like a Titan being flown by 1 person?

I am all in for a situation of a certain person who'll fly a battleship solo and then having the eventual "negotiations" Teamspeak recording surface of the aspiring "solo Battleship" top-kek pilot, begging a 10-year old to not take away his 5000 Dollar ship from them, only for Litltle Timmy to humiliate them IRL through youtube.

Also, I keep seeing the same old problem arising in the forums. "I want to fly a 500 crew ship, with only me, myself and I as a crew". People don't get that it's not a power fantasy game. Half this thread is the same old retort of "but I want this singleplayer feature in an MMO".

Some of you need to understand, that ANY sort of ship above a shuttle, will require at least two people skeleton crew - that's the bare minimum for those not understanding the term.

Yes, as Ripper pointed out earlier, having the ability to gimbal two turrets to aim at one point should be allowed... but following the EVE drone rules, in other words, only a limited number of them, depending on the Skill Training associated with "Turret Coordination", the CPU output of a Control Unit linked to the turrets and the Turrets themselves having a CPU requirement, in order to limit how many turrets of one kind can be equiped (for balance issues), i.e. a 500mm turret, requires 50 TeraFlops out of the Control Units 100 TF capacity, thus you can only have 2 of them controlled at once, but a 100mm turret, requires 20 TF out of the 100 TF the Control Unit can output, thus you can control up to 5 Turrets at once. Noted, the less the CPU, doesn't mean "less pwoerful", it only means the weapon is meant for a different role. A 100mm turret can be excellent for telling starfighters to piss off, while the 500mm turret is meant to tell frigates to piss off.

But even then, those turrets would need to be TIED to an "ammo" container to reload, which means those containers need people FILLING them with the ammo, or engineers repairing the turrets. What? Should we have automated repairs? No. Why? Cause energy is not forever.

That's an acceptable thing in my opinion, having specialised gunners controlling multiple turrets up to a limit. It would make a Batter Group able to coordinate more efficiently.

But automation? Automation should be random targeting in a general direction. Automation should not perform a coordinated strike. That's similar to having a I-Win button for any person in the game. Press 1 , turrets locking on one part of the ship and piercing through. THAT should be something achieved by players who have coordination.

To iterate, a random targeting automated turret systemm COULD theoretically, once in a blue moon pull off a battle-winning feat of coordination, but that's just luck. And I would not trust randomness if I was to fly a 5000 Dollar ship (from converting its in-game value to DACs RL money worth).

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I think that for a ship to simply fly and have basic functions, you could only have one person. If you want to have lots of guns and other equipment you will need a crew.

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The real issue here is balancing a fully crewed ship verses a gang of solo piloted scripted ships. 

 

For example. If we have a ship that has a crew of 10 people, and it runs in to a gang of ten solo piloted scripted ships of the same type. Which group should win?

 

There needs to be incentives for fully crewing ships otherwise people will just solo pilot them for numbers.

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The real issue here is balancing a fully crewed ship verses a gang of solo piloted scripted ships.

 

For example. If we have a ship that has a crew of 10 people, and it runs in to a gang of ten solo piloted scripted ships of the same type. Which group should win?

 

There needs to be incentives for fully crewing ships otherwise people will just solo pilot them for numbers.

Ships itself will be balanced by its core and thus its wattage output. Every element needs power (engines, RCS, weapons,...) so every ship needs to be specialized.

 

This balancing is independent from lua balancing imho

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The real issue here is balancing a fully crewed ship verses a gang of solo piloted scripted ships. 

 

For example. If we have a ship that has a crew of 10 people, and it runs in to a gang of ten solo piloted scripted ships of the same type. Which group should win?

 

There needs to be incentives for fully crewing ships otherwise people will just solo pilot them for numbers.

There don't need to be incentives. This is what is called 'the Meta'. Whatever fleet loadout is better for a certain job is what people will choose. An effective solo crewed combat ship should only be as big as a corvette, since a bigger ship would be less effective (due to less scripts being able to be run) and easily boarded.

 

For example, if there is a capital ships thats very good against other capital ships, it wouldn't have decent point defence. To counter it, you could build bombers to overrun its point defence and tear it apart. To counter that, you could build a capital ship focused on point defence that would have countermeasures against their bombs and be able to utterly destroy any strikefighter that gets in range. To counter this new capital ship, just use the old one since it is very good at destroying other capital ships.

 

The same goes for solo player capital ships. Yes, they would destroy other fleets with similar man power, but they would not hold up against boarders. So, you build up a squadron of shuttles to board and capture their ships one by one. Since they would be losing expensive ships very easily, the solo ships would have to rethink. They could either place interior turrets that would use up power or have multi crew ships without needing the retrofit.

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