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Air to Ground / Anti Air Combat


StarfordRaffles

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With the tab targeting system, is the targeting of buildings and other constructs from a ship (air to ground) something we will be allowed to do?

And, if so, anti-air platforms will have to be relatively cheap, effective and autonomous. Otherwise people will just fly around and bombard any constructs they see.  

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It would be strange indeed if ships flying in the atmosphere couldn't attack structures on the planet surface, or even engage player avatars. Anti-construct defenses on bases would have to be able to counter both flying ships and hovercraft. Anti-personnel turrets will also be needed.

 

We'll have to wait for the PVP implementation to see how it all works out.

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The information regarding Construct v. Construct combat is very limited, as we won't have it until the Beta next year, or the year after. We can, however, speculate from the existence of a cross-hair on multiple screenshots - GrHTqyQ.png , that we can expect some form of aiming required to lock onto a target, rather than just pressing "tab" like in WoW or other character-based MMOs.

I do remember reading a dev-blog or staff forum response, where they stated that they would like to have static defenses have some form of autonomous capabilities, to curb "Timezone warriors". 

 

Dual-Universe-5.jpg

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From what I've heard is that pvp will be a hybrid system, where there are elements that behave like tab-targeting, however you can acquire your targets via cursor/crosshairs. It will not be an FPS in that there is projectile tracking or hitscan based on your redicle, but instead, it'll use where your aiming to determine what construct or character your are "tabbed" to for targeting purposes. You'll need to be pointing in roughly the right direction, and in a situation where there are a ton of targets in a tight area, precision might matter.

 

But then it usses accuracy stats of the character and weapon against the evasiveness stats of the target factoring in distance to determine hit/miss, metrics for damage, its right back to a typical MMO when it comes to actually firing there. The main difference is that you'll be "aiming" for whatever target you are trying to "tab" to attack, instead of selecting your target with the press of a button. Also, this is might only be the case for some weapons.

 

There will likely be weapon systems that won't require an aim-target, but instead purely use a tab-target. This would be a construct-mounted weapon, and it would be the difference between a turret-mounted weapon system and a hull-forward mounted weapon system. There will be a tradeoff where you can have a higher damage weapon that you must aim-target, or a lower damage weapon that will auto-track target so that you won't have to be facing of flying towards your intended target.

 

As far as automated defenses go, there will be basically very little in the way of auto-turret defenses and the like. NQ is trying REALLY HARD to make sure that this game doesn't boil down to who has the most turrets (Space Engineers) or the biggest ship (Starmade), and that means a 1-player 1-gun rule. As far as AFK defenses go, it'll probably be something more like a combination of stealth and shield systems rather than an anti-ship array. We might actually get some anti-personal guns that will shoot at invading characters, but nothing that can hit ships without being manned by a player.

 

The best defenses will be Territory Unit-based defenses, laws, and other players. Settling in a city with a dedicated militia will be immensely helpful, in addition to having a system for setting and collecting bounties. Anti-ship defense turrets could be built as long as they can be manned, so even a small-ish city can defend itself reasonably well if there are even 1 or 2 people around to defend it. Apart from that, avoiding detection will be the best way to go.

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While we don't actually have any real answers to these questions at this time, I would be very surprised if Air-to-Ground combat wasn't a thing. Keep in mind that buildings and ships are both constructs, and so there's no reason to believe they would function differently in terms of combat and taking damage (besides the fact that buildings are static ofc).

 

2 hours ago, StarfordRaffles said:

anti-air platforms will have to be relatively cheap, effective and autonomous.

Not necessarily. Buildings could simply be resilient enough that destroying them isn't feasible without significant effort. We don't really know anything about automated defenses at this time, but JC has mentioned them in several interviews, and has specifically floated the idea that they would operate at significantly reduced fighting capacity for balance purposes. However, the main problem with strong automated defenses is that they are impossible to balance in an unstructured game. There's nothing stopping wealthy organizations from buying and installing tons of them all over their territory, thus making themselves impervious to attack from anything besides other major organizations. This would seriously cripple the viability of smaller organizations, not to mention solo players, and would ultimately push many people out of the game. 

 

So, while I sympathize with the desire to have strong defenses that people can't easily defeat, that would ultimately hurt the game. I'm much more in favor of very weak asset protection systems because that forces a more honest and interesting dynamic between players and organizations. If anyone can come along and wreck your stuff at any time, that will foster much more co-dependence and community unity than a system that makes this hard. Strong automated anti-air/ground systems are the antithesis of that.

 

(this might seem a little off-topic, but I think it's really important to explaining why strong automated defenses and hard-to-kill buildings are bad for the game)

 

EVE Online is a perfect example of why strong asset protection can be bad in an open-world single-shard game. In EVE there are rather robust systems in place that prevent people from quickly destroying other people's things (the reinforce and timer systems for player structures in particular). This is necessary in EVE because entire organizations can exist in high-security space where their assets are untouchable. However, huge segments of the community abuse this system and spend hours grinding down other people's structures just to piss them off, and they can get away with being this nasty and petty because there's fundamentally nothing anyone can do to stop them. This behavior would not exist if everyone was vulnerable to destruction at any time, because the community would gang up on and annihilate bad actors. 

 

DU could avoid this problem to an extent because virtually all of the game is open to PvP, so DU can (and should) implement a system that forces people to work together for mutual protection. Adding in strong automated defenses and buildings that take hours to kill would make it impossible to retaliate against people who are far stronger than you. For example: It would allow rich and powerful players to grief smaller organizations with impunity, because they could just retreat to their virtually unassailable base where the smaller players have no way of attacking them back. In contrast, If no one is ever really safe, then people will be less willing to make enemies and break other people's things just to be petty, because it could have very real consequences for them. So, going without major asset protection systems will allow us to avoid much of the trolling and nastiness that comes from giving everyone a place where they're relatively untouchable.

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On 22/09/2017 at 12:44 PM, Vorengard said:

 

EVE Online is a perfect example of why strong asset protection can be bad in an open-world single-shard game. In EVE there are rather robust systems in place that prevent people from quickly destroying other people's things (the reinforce and timer systems for player structures in particular). This is necessary in EVE because entire organizations can exist in high-security space where their assets are untouchable. However, huge segments of the community abuse this system and spend hours grinding down other people's structures just to piss them off, and they can get away with being this nasty and petty because there's fundamentally nothing anyone can do to stop them. This behavior would not exist if everyone was vulnerable to destruction at any time, because the community would gang up on and annihilate bad actors. 

I agree with this assessment. While we can have automated defenses, construct to construct (even if Anti Air), should require to be manned to keep with the intended balance. 

 

And strong community support to a degree should be pushed, we're rebuilding society, not isolated secret societies or everyone's personal cult. But strategy should play the most important role ultimately. If you know that you are going to be up against heavy AA, perhaps you should change how you approach the job. Go for a land assault, sabotage the AA, perhaps use EMP or electrical counter measures etc. Let's not dare dumb  the game down because we see some obstacles. 

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