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how will the large crew that large ship may have work in a game like this


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I've tried to record a few major criticism of DU:-

 

1. Sub

2. PvP

3. Empty

4. Crews

5. Voxel "flying pens" (!)

 

There's been enough discussion on 1 and 2 so no need to cover them again. On 3 not much so far. I think actually the gameplay on offer will entice a larger number of people along with the prospect of constant improvements from the current already decent state (for pre-alpha) to the server performance. Also the seamless world-space transitions and SCALE, it think will make higher immersion, like the cinema big screen feeling. So I'm comfortable on that (add in the minecraft fever of "just one more brick")...

 

Onto Crews, yes constructive criticms: What is "fun"? Single person sitting in a chair every 5sec pressing a red button. THAT is not fun. So how do we have large crews and the crews have fun?

 

1. Results

 

If the larger ships can transport more stuff or are superior in pvp, then they will be rewarding.

 

2. Connectivity

 

If the larger ships require interesting team work and communication ; are part of a larger organization coordinating

 

3. Interactivity

 

If the larger ships have multiple systems and different players coordinate those to out-gun and out-move and out-defend other ships, I think it will be very rewarding being technologically superior and kicking ass in PvP. I listed a lot of potential roles a ship might have with a larger size above... I did some siege gameplay in other mmorpgs, that was ALWAYS FUN! Just not as dynamic as a large ship with lots of crew attacking other such I imagine at the moment!

 

4. Frequency

 

Plenty of down-time to fly solo ships and mess around or rotate crews. Also large ships, what other things can they do. What other things can players do on large ships?

 

On botting. I do not know. All mmos have botting issues. That's a lot of a/cs to try to fill up with bots... gluck.

 

The question of fun is important but I cannot make head or tail of the above communication attempt: It's not constructing an argument as opposed to saying "I already know it's not fun". I think as a means to scale up PvP with more impressive ships and player numbers it is innovative. I do agree the question of fun remains unknown I would not agree that it is known yet. Is it for everyone? No. But for some it could be brilliant fun.

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right, after my first reply, i'm now going to go through and take the time to point out lots about this thread now i have read it all.

 

56 minutes ago, THEMADE said:

If that would be true, it would be basically equal with a suicide from them.

How? DU is a *multiplayer* game. It has been said that we will have to work together to complete objectives, such as getting off alioth at launch within a week iir. 

 

56 minutes ago, THEMADE said:

in hots for example with the hero chogall(one moves, other one fires). basically noone picks it....

This could be for a completely different reason. Lets find one. I will start with looking at the fact that in HOTS or any other MOBA, People expect to play their own character, not share one. And not picking it could be for a reason such as they are weak because of damage or something, not that its hard to coordinate.
 

 

56 minutes ago, THEMADE said:

Deal with it, the idea of multiple players working together on a same unit isn't working.

The reason is simple: it's boring, it only takes away fun while give nothing in exchange, you only get handicap this way but gain nothing. You also bound to other players, so you can't even just paly whenever you want.

How does it take fun away? It might do that for you, but you don't represent everyone. And you only getting a handicap while gaining nothing? You are gaining not only loot from slaughtered enemies due to being able to coordinate with multiple players, and not have to control every aspect of a battleship on your own. Want x guns to target Y systems but only for a certain amount of bursts? You need voice comms for that, and people are the only ones that can respond to voice comms accurately as of now. Gl trying that, plus everything else, in the middle of combat on your own.
 

 

56 minutes ago, THEMADE said:

lol, the combat in a scifi game is boring already, you want to take it to a entirely new level? Can you even imagine how f boring it would be to just stand before a single cannon, click on a enemy ship, and then push one button to fire? What do you think how many hours would it take to get bored of it? Hint: less than one...

Even if it would be not lock&hit game, but aimed, it would be still f boring (in wow there was encounter where some players controlled cannons, it was fun on the first run, and became a boring chore afterwards...)

Again, Your opinion, not everyone's. If you don't want to sit at a cannon, then in order to not be bored anymore, you are limiting yourself to ships one player can fly, e.g. non combat, interceptors, small bombers. And who says It will be as simple as that to fire a gun?
 

 

56 minutes ago, THEMADE said:

There are no reason behind this handicap anyway. It wouldn't balance anything, it would only promote botting.

There is a reason behind this, and that's to promote teamwork and cooperation, plus meaning that you have to work together if you want to make a large impact in a battle, or DU in general. Also, would you pay a few hundered euros/punds/dollars a month to crew your battleship with bots, not to mention the thousands on rigs for the bots to run on? Or would you prefer to be chatting with friends while not having spent that money?

 

56 minutes ago, THEMADE said:

Also ROFL, even in the WW2 there was warships where AA turrets was remote controlled. It would be 100% legit not be allowed to use technology already available in the past century in a time, where you can build spaceships by hand, and travel in the universe...

ROFL, remote control is different to automatic targeting. One person equaled one turret then, and it will in DU also. Also, "It would be 100% legit not be allowed to use technology" is literally saying that its ok not to use past tech, but i will assume you couldn't word it correctly so will take it as you saying the system is stupid. Why should the game devs make it your view of 'realistic'? We have no idea what future targeting will be like. Atm on warships it is mainly one person targeting with one gun. If not a team of people targeting with one gun. Who knows if that will change so that one person has the brain capacity to control them all at once in only around 500 years of evolution. Darwin, thats who. It took millions of years for modern humans to progress from slightly dumber intelligent life to current intelligent life. A leap like that wouldnt happen that fast.
(Tl;DR of this paragraph: This isnt tech available int the past or present, and for it to be so humans would have to evolve faster than should be possible)
(p.s. even if you could evolve the brainpower to manage all systems at once in that time, its still an unevolved you controling it)
 

 

56 minutes ago, THEMADE said:

You are lazy to do it and want to punish the others who actually put time into it?

Put their time into what? how is putting the effort into building a battleship solo, which isnt possible anyways in the time you would probs like, different from putting the effort into getting a crew together to do it?
(p.s. You are wrong to put time on this, effort would work better, so i used that)

 

56 minutes ago, THEMADE said:

Ofc big ships should be very expensive. Both to build, repair and to use.

very expensive in that you need to pay your crew, maybe?


Overall, what you seem to be saying here is that you would prefer to go alone, but still want to be as strong as people who are working together. If this is true, then maybe DU isn't for you. This game is based on teamwork, and not on everyone being able to run a death star on their own.

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Lol, it's an old joke, I remember Notch making it about Minecraft add an "i" before the "s" (being polite). One of those internet laws of games or something.

 

Emptiness is valid: A lot of MMOs design the world to ensure it does not feel empty! It fits space especially when the planets are truly 3D and so large too and modifiable (oh my!) so maybe less of a problem and in fact will reduce pressure and pvp initially probably (a good thing). Also it's a problem if the playing population is too small and never takes off. Whereas I guess building will be very enticing...

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On 12/02/2018 at 12:46 AM, Rick Windmiller said:

Being a turret gunner on a multi-crew ship can be very fun (speaking from own experience), games such as Guns if Icarus Online and Blackwake pull this off very well.

 

And being an "idle" crew member can also be very fun, at first just looking at the oncoming enemy and enjoying the show until the first barrage hits the starboard side, then you scramble into frenzied action as the captain notifies the crew where the breach has been made. Turrets might have been disabled, one of the thrusters might have been destoryed and the hull have been breached exposing the reactor core. Time is of the essence, the rest of the crew depends on you and your fellow engineers to get the ship up and running again before the next volley can strike.

And I suppose boarding parties will also be a thing, so not only will you need gunners and engineers, but also marines.

3

Actually, the bolded part of your reply got me thinking of another issue with this whole 1 person = 1 gun discussion. 

 

Novaquark have categorically stated that, due to the networking limitations, combat in DU will be percentage-based, rather than aim-based (in other words, like EVE or WoW). If this is indeed the case, I'd imagine the job of being a gunner would be incredibly boring: sit at the turret, left click target, left click fire button, wait for the target to die or your ship to blow up. I dunno about you but I think such a role would bore me to tears, and I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one either. If they decide to go ahead with each turret requiring a gunner, then I'm pretty sure that the only combat that will take place will be fighters due to the fact that larger ship combat would just be flat-out boring for the players.

 

That said, I do agree that the other engineering stuff might be interesting to do.

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12 minutes ago, NanakotheNarcface said:

Actually, the bolded part of your reply got me thinking of another issue with this whole 1 person = 1 gun discussion. 

 

Novaquark have categorically stated that, due to the networking limitations, combat in DU will be percentage-based, rather than aim-based (in other words, like EVE or WoW). If this is indeed the case, I'd imagine the job of being a gunner would be incredibly boring: sit at the turret, left click target, left click fire button, wait for the target to die or your ship to blow up. I dunno about you but I think such a role would bore me to tears, and I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one either. If they decide to go ahead with each turret requiring a gunner, then I'm pretty sure that the only combat that will take place will be fighters due to the fact that larger ship combat would just be flat-out boring for the players.

 

That said, I do agree that the other engineering stuff might be interesting to do.

It really depends on how they implement it.  For example.  If it’s still “twitch” in that the projectile needs to be within a cone of 30% then it enters the percentage based system.

 

If it’s completely tab target combat, then they could make gunners have various shot types that they can utilize.  With different effects with each shot type of course.

 

Just because its not point and shoot doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyable.

 

Is wow combat boring because you don’t have to aim?

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6 hours ago, THEMADE said:

 

I can't even imagine how can anyone even think about forcing a such bad mechanism

nobody force you, nobody.

 

We got fighter class you know ? It got one pilot but can shot multi weapon on it.

 

If you dislike the big ship because you found it boring, you can choose to be a fighter pilot where you are the only pilot and can do everything you want.

 

And of course fighter class wont have the fire power equal with the big, strong, tank battle ship.

 

But dont worry, each type will have it own power. Fighter will easy to flight and much faster than a battle ship.

 

So what i want to say that nobody force you to do anything. If you want team work you will got it, if you dont, you also have your way. Remember teamwork always better than a solo one ( unless you are very good ) so dont hope so much about one small vessel beat a much bigger vessel. If you got beated because of that remember dont blame the dev force you to teamwork, that is your fault for not understand what your vessel can do.

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2 hours ago, NanakotheNarcface said:

Actually, the bolded part of your reply got me thinking of another issue with this whole 1 person = 1 gun discussion. 

 

Novaquark have categorically stated that, due to the networking limitations, combat in DU will be percentage-based, rather than aim-based (in other words, like EVE or WoW). If this is indeed the case, I'd imagine the job of being a gunner would be incredibly boring: sit at the turret, left click target, left click fire button, wait for the target to die or your ship to blow up.

Fairly sure they talked about a semi-lockon. If you don't know what that means it's essentially you aim at something, left click, the lock-on goes on the target (where you are pointing) it thinks you are aiming at, fires and calculates your accuracy. When you hit it also calculates damage versus targets health and other stats before giving the result (this all going really fast). I hope for sure that this is the kind of thing we will get and it's also easy to mask so you almost feel like you're actually aiming.

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12 hours ago, Hades said:

It really depends on how they implement it.  For example.  If it’s still “twitch” in that the projectile needs to be within a cone of 30% then it enters the percentage based system.

 

If it’s completely tab target combat, then they could make gunners have various shot types that they can utilize.  With different effects with each shot type of course.

 

Just because its not point and shoot doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyable.

 

Is wow combat boring because you don’t have to aim?

This is all speculation because we still have no confirmation as to what the combat system will be, but if it's a system as you and Zamarus suggest then that might make it a bit more engaging.

 

As to whether WoW combat is boring; it's a subjective thing, isn't it? What one person finds entertaining another might find boring. That said, In WoW you can move around and have dozens (or is it hundreds now?) of different powers you can use in combat for different effects. In the scenario described you wouldn't be able to move (as you're in a turret), and I doubt you'd have more than a couple of additional actions (maybe changing ammo?) if any. Basically, I'd imagine that tab-targeting in this situation would be like combat in EVE only you don't get to control the ship and you only get a single turret to fire, not exactly fun for me, but maybe other people will find it entertaining.

 

Like I said, though, it's all speculation; we still don't have a solid understanding of how combat will be done other than their ideas so we might all be totally off-base. That said, I do genuinely hope it's not what I described as I think that would kill capital ship combat.

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I think solo fighters will be more fun the for the individual - yes.

 

But I think when large orgs are gunning for power then the solution is large crews for larger ships.

 

It means there's a bottleneck or vulnerability: Those orgs have to be organized with larger ships and members working together to keep their dominance.

 

Bear in mind then it won't be the only combat, but the more powerful: Imagine lots of little ships and a huge ship with 50 different large guns or other weapons firing on these little ships. Even if the individual action is not as fun, then collectively I feel it will be immensely satisfying being the larger fish eating the little fish. And the reward for good teamwork. That's just my vision not how it will happen or how that will be better.

 

Also, as a crew member I quite enjoy chilling out. I can do some lua scripting in downtime and be working and playing atst. Some like making houses but I can do that already on this Earth, being a crew in a large ship is something for games and imagination for me. I mean looking at the vids of DU with the full planets and the scale of everything, that will be fun just gawping at and presumably being remunerated by someone for such important duties in quanta! Soldiering: "It's a good life for some." ~ real quote from my own life.

 

People can still have fun pew-pewing Han SOLO style all the same and in large fleets hunting prospectors. Large teams take a lot of social maintenance afterall.

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1 hour ago, NanakotheNarcface said:

This is all speculation because we still have no confirmation as to what the combat system will be, but if it's a system as you and Zamarus suggest then that might make it a bit more engaging.

 

As to whether WoW combat is boring; it's a subjective thing, isn't it? What one person finds entertaining another might find boring. That said, In WoW you can move around and have dozens (or is it hundreds now?) of different powers you can use in combat for different effects. In the scenario described you wouldn't be able to move (as you're in a turret), and I doubt you'd have more than a couple of additional actions (maybe changing ammo?) if any. Basically, I'd imagine that tab-targeting in this situation would be like combat in EVE only you don't get to control the ship and you only get a single turret to fire, not exactly fun for me, but maybe other people will find it entertaining.

 

Like I said, though, it's all speculation; we still don't have a solid understanding of how combat will be done other than their ideas so we might all be totally off-base. That said, I do genuinely hope it's not what I described as I think that would kill capital ship combat.

I think you are a smart guy and i will tell you this to prevent you from getting disappointed. 

 

Chances for capital ship combat is probably really small to begin with when you take in resources needed to build such ships and the vast space they roam which lowers the chance of engagement. "Killing capital ship combat" sounds really weird in this regard as it doesn't even exist until players are capable of battling with a couple of them. I recommend approaching combat from the perspective of that people will fight with what they can afford to put together, so you might see way more ground combat as well as fighter dogfights than you will ever see bigger ships even flying around. Keep this in mind as IMO it puts things in perspective, especially why it doesn't hurt to have the need for gunners as the ships themselves are most likely a huge accomplishment.

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1 hour ago, Zamarus said:

I think you are a smart guy and i will tell you this to prevent you from getting disappointed. 

 

Chances for capital ship combat is probably really small to begin with when you take in resources needed to build such ships and the vast space they roam which lowers the chance of engagement. "Killing capital ship combat" sounds really weird in this regard as it doesn't even exist until players are capable of battling with a couple of them. I recommend approaching combat from the perspective of that people will fight with what they can afford to put together, so you might see way more ground combat as well as fighter dogfights than you will ever see bigger ships even flying around. Keep this in mind as IMO it puts things in perspective, especially why it doesn't hurt to have the need for gunners as the ships themselves are most likely a huge accomplishment.

I get what you're saying and, to clarify, when I say 'capital ship combat' I mean more like 'anything that has 1 or more turrets on it'; I'm not necessarily envisioning Star Destroyers duking it out!

 

That said, when I say I'm worried that tab-targeted turrets would 'kill capital ship combat' I mean it more in the sense of "what is the point of having a ship with, say, two gunners who would have a boring time (in my opinion) with tab-based targeting when you could have 3 small 'fighter'-type ships that have much more engaging gameplay?" Hence why I'm unsure about the idea of tab-based targeting and mandatory manned turrets.

 

To be honest, I'm just worrying about something that I have no idea about so I guess there's no point in debating hypotheticals. Still, though, I'd like to see a comprehensive explanation from Novaquark explaining how they envision combat working in DU since it's going to be a pretty important part of the game.

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52 minutes ago, NanakotheNarcface said:

I get what you're saying and, to clarify, when I say 'capital ship combat' I mean more like 'anything that has 1 or more turrets on it'; I'm not necessarily envisioning Star Destroyers duking it out!

 

That said, when I say I'm worried that tab-targeted turrets would 'kill capital ship combat' I mean it more in the sense of "what is the point of having a ship with, say, two gunners who would have a boring time (in my opinion) with tab-based targeting when you could have 3 small 'fighter'-type ships that have much more engaging gameplay?" Hence why I'm unsure about the idea of tab-based targeting and mandatory manned turrets.

 

To be honest, I'm just worrying about something that I have no idea about so I guess there's no point in debating hypotheticals. Still, though, I'd like to see a comprehensive explanation from Novaquark explaining how they envision combat working in DU since it's going to be a pretty important part of the game.

This are all good questioning, given we do not know for sure but can try to form general impressions. It should boil down to being out-gunned.

 

3 solo-crew ships might be restricted in how many weapons they can fire, how effective their shields are, how large they can be without more crew and so on. So against a larger crew ship with say 20 guns (and much bigger guns and different types) the battle will be short. That's my guess: Significant advantage for crew ships. I see this as a consequence of: Voxel building Activity being a collaboration activity to build useful constructs then running these things and using them continuing to be a collaboration activity: Humanity pulling together to achieve great things in space, seems the tag line NQ are aiming for with DU?

 

The most important thing is the Social Interaction between players. So building and using are continuing that it seems is the ethos?

 

@Zamarus provides a realistic perspective I think. These big ships are like the big wandering sharks or orcas... most of the action will involve smaller fish against other small fish. Even avatar pew-pew planetside: Troop carrier ships etc. As above, "grunts are cheap(est)!"

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I think a good compromise is "one target per player" and pilots can't use turrets. So, if you got a ship with 1000 turrets bombarding a planet or something, one player can sneak up on your blind spot and start wrecking you. Besides, turrets are complex espacially when its the future so it would be good to have advanced heat and powet managment which gets increasingly difficult to take controover the more turrets you have. I also talked about maintenance costs before in another thread and turrets could have particularly high costs and break down easily, requiring lots of engineers on han for larger ships.

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NQ's design for DU is trying to make a game where combat is not the primary goal of the game, but one of the aspects of the game.

 

Large ships (requiring multi-crew) may have specific roles to play. Perhaps capital ships will be the only ships that can support the large guns needed to effectively take down the base protection shields. So they could possibly be DU's "siege weapons".

 

Single-seat fighters may struggle to kill capital ships, so to counter a base siege, the defenders will have to field their own cap ships to fight off the siege.

 

It certainly sounds like the idea of "my battleship" will not be a thing in DU. It will be "our battleship" instead...

 

The multi-crew requirement of capital ships may be a subtle way to reduce the scale of warfare in DU. If bases are destroyed too easily, it will upset the balance of the game. Just because it's possible does not mean it has to happen every day...

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8 hours ago, NanoDot said:

NQ's design for DU is trying to make a game where combat is not the primary goal of the game, but one of the aspects of the game.

Just remember that there's no "primary feature" combat is not more or less a than any other major feature

 

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14 hours ago, NanoDot said:

Single-seat fighters may struggle to kill capital ships, so to counter a base siege, the defenders will have to field their own cap ships to fight off the siege.

I imagine we will also be able to make smaller bombers as well, that aren’t as successful against regular fighters.  So theoretically you could scrape by with bombers and fighters, but ideally large orgs will have all of the above :P

 

I’ve always likes bombers > cap ships > fighters > bombers.  It’s a nice balance, and it’s a pretty common occurrence so I imagine it will be in DU as well.  But who knows 

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29 minutes ago, Hades said:

I’ve always likes bombers > cap ships > fighters > bombers.  It’s a nice balance, and it’s a pretty common occurrence so I imagine it will be in DU as well.  But who knows

That would be a logical pattern for DU, because it gives smaller orgs a chance to survive. When you don't have the manpower to field a fleet of capitals, at least you still have a fighting chance with a bomber wing and the fighters to support them, because it's a credible defence force.

 

It may mean that smaller orgs will not be rolling over bases, but that may well fit into DU's strategic design. Alliances will have the offensive power, and territorial warfare will be "grand strategy" rather than "me and my 4 buddies gonna blow up ur base"...

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NQ wants the players to have a high level of freedom of action, but obviously there will be limitations through what is provided. Ideally for such a mindset there will be the ability to make bigger and more powerful weapons/ships until practically the costs will outweigh the practical use and thus be an 'evolutionary dead end'.

Ships and crews becoming bigger comes with advantages and disadvantages, both in terms of resources and fun factor. Whether it becomes more fun or more necessity to have/crew a mothership/battleship as part of a large group's workload will depend on what emerges. My guess is that battles will tend to be rarer the bigger they are - how often does the Enterprise actually fire on something and for how long? Players seeking only this will likely not find it that often unless it is seen as profitable for smaller ships working together to attack big ships too.

It then comes down to factors such as smaller fighters and crews being removed from battle back to an ASA, while possibly noone dies on board a bigger ship unless the ship is destroyed or boarded. Ressurection node rarity could have a massive impact on where a big ship is more valuable, for example.

On the question of fun, is it actually fun to not die but be bored instead? Probably not, so ships with big crews will need activities other than pvp action. Transporting goods, while a good use of the ship itself, may not require much more than the pilot staying awake, so will a crew on board have other tasks or fun (holodecks?) such as crafting, designing bps, etc etc, or will big ships have skeleton crews which can quickly call upon crew from nearby when a battle threatens?

In turn, this brings on questions such as the element of surprise, long-distance scanners etc, also which hours of the day might an org ship be vulnerable. Where might it go for the night shift? ;)

 

If I weigh various advantages/disadvantages, I reckon a ship having a hangar for boarding/departing while in space will be vital once some size is reached, and planet-landing will be vital to keep smaller-crewed ships safe at MSA/ASA's when their crews are inactive or not on board at all. This may be one of the main determinants of a size gap between bigger and smaller ship classes.

One other small point to ask of the NQ devs is maybe whether safe areas will include the space around an MSA too. I assume yes, so that dockyards can be built to build big ships that cannot cope with an atmosphere? Ok, that may mean smaller ships can be safe in moon orbit too, but will crews have a way to leave (airlock transfer...)? I guess it is really a small point, but opportunities have to be there in order to have options ;) ... 

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