Firing Arcs

[KlatuSatori]

https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/281-diversity-of-battles-and-wars/

 

- About "Friendly Fire" and "Manual Targeting":

We would like to implement that. We really would like. But there a very high chance we won't, at least for now (maybe with computer technology evolving, it will change in the future). The fact that massively multiplayer single-shard sandbox games like EvE Online are able to reach several thousands of players at the same place and the same moment is possible due to some compromises (and while we are aiming to higher flexibility in this regard, we're still subject to compromises too): combat system using Targeting/Locking/Firing mechanics in this kind of game is not completely unrelated to the ability to create massive battles, as it's an efficient way to lighten a lot of real time combat calculations.

There has to be some kind of friendly fire mechanism and piloting skills involved in dogfighting. One way I've been thinking is for weapons to have a firing arc as well as a range. You can fire at any time, and each ship that falls within the arc and range has a chance to be hit (though only one or zero ships can be hit by a single shot). Ships that are at a short range and ships that are closer to the centre of the arc have a higher chance of being hit.

 

Some weapons are also capable of targeting a ship that is within it's firing arc and range, but the lock is dropped if the ship leaves the arc/range at any time. Ships that are targeted when a shot is fired have a slightly higher chance of getting hit (but the above still applies). The effect of targeting on hit chance can be another stat for the weapon. Alternatively, rather than directly affect the hit chance a target lock could make the centre of the arc follow the ship for the purpose of hit chance calculations. This sort of thing makes sense for gimballed weaponry.

 

This system can also be applied to weapons with 360 degree firing arcs, such as missiles, except these will require a target lock.

 

Undoubtedly this is still more resource intensive than a simple target and fire system, but I'm sure it's also much less intensive than having ammunition and particle beams as actual physical entities traveling through space. The positions and velocities of all ships are already being constantly updated, so it is a matter of determining which ships are in the arc/range and then determining which of those, if any, is hit.

[Commander_Kapow]

To be honest if Tab targeting is part of the game it would be very disappointing for PVP. it would lead to simple stats crunching and skill will get slightly buried under who has the best macros which I would not really enjoy (Only my personal opinion of course). My most played Game is Elite Dangerous - which obviously is a different cattle of fish to Dual Universe and one of the biggest pitfalls of ED is their networking system (caugh p2p caugh....) but with today's technolgy we should be able to achieve much better combat then tab targeting. As long as the Targeting is skill based - Controlling a turret manually/AI or facing your dog fighting ship for half as described above for a second to get a lock and fire ect, or using arcs.... then it would be ok or soft targeting (rather similar to arcs) in a style of Elder Scrolls Online allowing for more latency as the aiming in general vicinity with pro calculated delay leads to hit or miss result while using a assumption system to give result to players to give the illusion of Real Time..... Not exactly ED dogfighting with real physics, but skill would be still required and thus I would still find it very satisfying to PVP or risk going out to mine into an are where I might get attacked (although I would clearly have to shelf my Hotas for this one ).

 

Side note - I'm not a PVP player, but I like it when If I have to engage in PVP it will be skill that decides on my life rather then Macros/stats. 

[caravaggio2000]

I'd be happy if space combat was like the old pc Tie Fighter game. It would be nice for some actual skill to be involved.

[KlatuSatori]

I completely agree that a pure tab targeting system would be disappointing and I also think it would have negative consequences for the game - fighting extends to battles which extend to war which extends to territory control. If there is little or no real time skill involved in fighting then the possibilities for each of those larger elements are reduced.

 

It is hard to say exactly what the devs have in mind though because we know that there will be targetting but we also know that there will be multiplayer ship crews which presumes manning of guns. We also know that there is LUA scripting, but that it will be limited such that having real players manning stations will always be vastly superior to a "robot". It seems to me that these things three things are kind of contradictory. Scripting a robot to target nearest and fire is easy, and we know that that is possible because there will be automated defenses. There is target selection, of course, but that is a fairly minor element and also not too difficult to script multiple weapons to work together well.

[Commander_Kapow]

My main fear is that Tab Targeting in combination with Scripting will simply mean that victory falls to those who have better scripted guns/targeting instead of skill. I would love to read a Devblog addressing the issue of targeting and combat on it's own. It would be really interesting to know what NC plans for us