ESF Air to Air Feedback for Devs

[ToweTwelve]

Cripple (EMP) lock-on missile:
damage - 5 or 6 rockets to kill esf;
reload time - 4 or 5 sec;
lock-on time - 2 or 3 sec to get lock on;
a need to maintain lock - you need to hold enemy in reticule to hit the target;
effect - enemy aircraft will get the control penalty, as it is in critical state (burning) for 5 or 10 sec, cannot be countered by critical repairs;
can be countered by flares.
All numbers may vary for balance sake.

[CraazyCanuck]

Some nice Gal ideas.

Could also add an ammo/repair feature to a gal, that any nearby aircraft can benefit from. Keeps friendly aircraft in the air instead of having to land and repair/rearm.

[Gatekeeper]

Originally Posted by CraazyCanuck

Some nice Gal ideas.

Could also add an ammo/repair feature to a gal, that any nearby aircraft can benefit from. Keeps friendly aircraft in the air instead of having to land and repair/rearm.

One way of doing this would be to tie a fixed percentage of hull repair to each reload cycle, but to disable weapons while receiving ammo/repairs. That would prevent people abusing it to create invincible Gal swarms

Then you could also apply this to ammo towers and landing pads, but as some kind of base benefit (Amp Station? Interlink?).

[CraazyCanuck]

Excellent point.

[Pella]

I do believe that the current rotary's should be purely for Ground AI/AV.

Introducing a New A2A nose gun, That is on the same level of TTK as the M18 Rotary. But with the range slighly less than the needler. And you cannot equip rocket pods at the same time.

So this will split ESF's into separate AV/AI AND A2A Only. Not 1 that can do all like currently.

Add in the following, That goes in the Rocketpod's or afterburner slot.

NS Fuselage
+25% After Burner capacity than default.
+20% Increase to Flak Resistance / Further boosted by composite armor.

Tied in with the new NS Rotary, This will be a perfect ESF for dog fighting. And im sure all dog fighters out there will appreciate the move.

[PredatorFour]

Originally Posted by Pella

I do believe that the current rotary's should be purely for Ground AI/AV.

Introducing a New A2A nose gun, That is on the same level of TTK as the M18 Rotary. But with the range slighly less than the needler. And you cannot equip rocket pods at the same time.

So this will split ESF's into separate AV/AI AND A2A Only. Not 1 that can do all like currently.

Add in the following, That goes in the Rocketpod's or afterburner slot.

NS Fuselage
+25% After Burner capacity than default.
+20% Increase to Flak Resistance / Further boosted by composite armor.

Tied in with the new NS Rotary, This will be a perfect ESF for dog fighting. And im sure all dog fighters out there will appreciate the move.

Sounds good, only thing is would adding the new rotary stop people using the previous rotary for air? Or would the rotary we have now have some damage reduction against air?

I like the flak buff fuselage that'd be cool.

[Pella]

Originally Posted by PredatorFour

Sounds good, only thing is would adding the new rotary stop people using the previous rotary for air? Or would the rotary we have now have some damage reduction against air?

I like the flak buff fuselage that'd be cool.

Nerf the current rotary. So the dmg % is more on ground vehicles.

Look at mine and Higbys tweets. He seems engaged in the Idea.

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by CraazyCanuck

Some nice Gal ideas.

Could also add an ammo/repair feature to a gal, that any nearby aircraft can benefit from. Keeps friendly aircraft in the air instead of having to land and repair/rearm.

Originally Posted by Gatekeeper

One way of doing this would be to tie a fixed percentage of hull repair to each reload cycle, but to disable weapons while receiving ammo/repairs. That would prevent people abusing it to create invincible Gal swarms

Then you could also apply this to ammo towers and landing pads, but as some kind of base benefit (Amp Station? Interlink?).

Personally I'd make a "Repair" turret that replaces the Galaxies Guns and works like the Engineer's Glue Gun, while the rearm can still be an aura like on the Sunderer and Pads.
That way the Galaxy sacrifices Offensive Power for such a Utility, and requires extra man power to make the most of that Utility.

[phungus]

Originally Posted by Whiteagle

I have to ask phungus, how are you expecting them to do a 3-d mini-map?

From what I remember from Second Life, those kinds of displays are a lot more resource intensive then then the X-Y-Rotation over a map picture we have now.

Games that were coded on the megabyte scale, like Wing Commander and Allegiance, had working 3d minimaps. Think about it, every object in this game must have a integer variables that define their postional coordinates in an (X,Y,Z) as part of the object's properties and these coordinates must be being sent to clients frequently to move objects around. I don't have access to the API, I don't know the call functions to get the integer variables that define the coordinate position, but I'm sure they are there (how else would position be determined and shared among clients?). I'm not a great coder, but I know I could create and code a working 3d minimap for ESFs within about a week if I did have access to the API. I'm sure Higby has better people then me working for him, the question is if he thinks it's worth it to put someone on it for a week, plus then putting someone on incorparating it into the ESF cockpit for aesthetics, which could be another few days. There's probably at least 10 things everyone has to do right now and adding an extra isn't helping, so I can see how such a thing can get passed over and ignored.

While 3d radar might not be trivial, it's not superdifficult and would take no more time and money then creating a new weapon. The issue is whether or not Higby thinks it's worth it. I know a lack of 3d radar is one of the biggest reasons ESF pilots focus on ground targets more then other air targets - the telemetric data they get is focused toward ground forces and completely ignores 3d movement, an essential part of A2A combat. Humans can really only effectively react to the information they have available to them, they can infer information by reasoning (one of our stronger atributes as a species) but the fact remains that so long as ESFs lack this critical information they will be subconsiously encouraged to focus on ground targets. ESFs will never be efficient in an A2A role so long as their main source of telemetry (the minimap) is only really functional for ground combat and 2d movement.

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by phungus

Games that were coded on the megabyte scale, like Wing Commander and Allegiance, had working 3d minimaps. Think about it, every object in this game must have a integer variables that define their postional coordinates in an (X,Y,Z) as part of the object's properties and these coordinates must be being sent to clients frequently to move objects around. I don't have access to the API, I don't know the call functions to get the integer variables that define the coordinate position, but I'm sure they are there (how else would position be determined and shared among clients?). I'm not a great coder, but I know I could create and code a working 3d minimap for ESFs within about a week if I did have access to the API. I'm sure Higby has better people then me working for him, the question is if he thinks it's worth it to put someone on it for a week, plus then putting someone on incorparating it into the ESF cockpit for aesthetics, which could be another few days. There's probably at least 10 things everyone has to do right now and adding an extra isn't helping, so I can see how such a thing can get passed over and ignored.

While 3d radar might not be trivial, it's not superdifficult and would take no more time and money then creating a new weapon. The issue is whether or not Higby thinks it's worth it. I know a lack of 3d radar is one of the biggest reasons ESF pilots focus on ground targets more then other air targets - the telemetric data they get is focused toward ground forces and completely ignores 3d movement, an essential part of A2A combat. Humans can really only effectively react to the information they have available to them, they can infer information by reasoning (one of our stronger atributes as a species) but the fact remains that so long as ESFs lack this critical information they will be subconsiously encouraged to focus on ground targets. ESFs will never be efficient in an A2A role so long as their main source of telemetry (the minimap) is only really functional for ground combat and 2d movement.

Oh I know it's very much possible with the Positional Data already in the game, but the problem becomes how to DISPLAY it!

That's what made them impractical in Second Life, since such a HUD had to be a rotating Sphere with you at the center, any client around you represented by a point set at their relative position, and the entire set up would mirror your rotations.

It's a bit more complicated then just getting their Global X-Y position and rotation then correlating that to the picture of the ground you see on your Current Mini-map, so I wonder how feasible it really is.

[phungus]

Originally Posted by Whiteagle

I have to ask phungus, how are you expecting them to do a 3-d mini-map?

From what I remember from Second Life, those kinds of displays are a lot more resource intensive then then the X-Y-Rotation over a map picture we have now.

Originally Posted by Whiteagle

Oh I know it's very much possible with the Positional Data already in the game, but the problem becomes how to DISPLAY it!

That's what made them impractical in Second Life, since such a HUD had to be a rotating Sphere with you at the center, any client around you represented by a point set at their relative position, and the entire set up would mirror your rotations.

It's a bit more complicated then just getting their Global X-Y position and rotation then correlating that to the picture of the ground you see on your Current Mini-map, so I wonder how feasible it really is.

it doesn't need to be perfect. Sensory perception in humans is incredibly fluid and can even spontaniously create new systems to process non hardwired sensory data. Look at older games and how they did it, there are numerous examples of old games on the NES that handled 3d radar - it just needs to be functional, currently the minimap for ESFs is just the infantry minimap, designed for ifantry combat but a little bit bigger. There were functional 3d radars in older games that pretty much ignored the front-back axis (should be very simple to code) but the player can subconsiously figure this out based on what they are seeing, and after a day was never really an issue.

I don't think there needs to be a perfect 3d minimap for ESFs, they just need something that actually takes into account they are ESFs and not infantry. Currently the minimap information is designed for infantry to attack infantry, it's not surprise then that ESFs find themselves focusing on infantry...

[AThreatToYou]

I'd just put an altitude map in the center of the ESF console. Then they can use the minimap to determine the X and Y coordinates matching the Z and X provided by altitude map.

The altitude map would provide an X (distance from ESF in lateral, flat-plane meters) and Z (distance from ESF in vertical meters). Minimap provides both lateral coordinates (X and Y).

[Higby]

Good ideas in here!

I've been lurking in the thread for a few days and I just want to make sure that everyone understands what we're trying to do and when you can expect to see it. Our main goal here is to create some new, rewarding specs for ESFs to fly besides air-to-ground or more commonly hybrid specs like pods+rotaries which have no real downside. By creating some dedicated air-to-air specs and more specifically anti-ESF air-to-air specs, we hope that we can shift some number of pilots away from farming ground, and allow air to counter the ones that remain there a bit better. Ideally this results in fewer people being forced to run anti-air as infantry, and therefore makes close air-support a role with a bit more depth than "if there are lots of burster MAXes I'm done here, if not I win"

All of these changes are still 100% on the drawing board, they're not something you should expect to see in the next update or even the one after that - it's at least 3-4 GUs away, so please do keep the ideas flowing!

[Pella]

Originally Posted by Higby

Good ideas in here!

I've been lurking in the thread for a few days and I just want to make sure that everyone understands what we're trying to do and when you can expect to see it. Our main goal here is to create some new, rewarding specs for ESFs to fly besides air-to-ground or more commonly hybrid specs like pods+rotaries which have no real downside. By creating some dedicated air-to-air specs and more specifically anti-ESF air-to-air specs, we hope that we can shift some number of pilots away from farming ground, and allow air to counter the ones that remain there a bit better. Ideally this results in fewer people being forced to run anti-air as infantry, and therefore makes close air-support a role with a bit more depth than "if there are lots of burster MAXes I'm done here, if not I win"

All of these changes are still 100% on the drawing board, they're not something you should expect to see in the next update or even the one after that - it's at least 3-4 GUs away, so please do keep the ideas flowing!

All is good. Something as big as this requires good feedback from the community before putting it live. So i would rather wait until we all agree it's good. As there is alot of balance issues to be had with any ESF changes.

[phungus]

Originally Posted by Pella

All is good. Something as big as this requires good feedback from the community before putting it live. So i would rather wait until we all agree it's good. As there is alot of balance issues to be had with any ESF changes.

Agreed. I think it's good that the ESF update isn't being rushed, the issues with ESF are complex.