Topic: SFC3 and Adjustable Firing Arcs!

[Magnum357]

Ok, I have heard that some people are not impressed with the firing arcs that are present in the game of SFC3.  I can understand this too.  Why didn't Taldren design in a feature to adjust Firing arcs?  If we can put in weapons and components on our ships, shouldn't we have some ability to adjust the firing arcs of weapons too?  

I'm not saying to make it a huge complex system, just something that is a little flexible.  For example, Taldren wanted to keep limited firing arcs to encourage more tactical flying and less Alpha Strike tactics.  Ok, that is fine, but you are sort of limited to what you can do with each hardpoint for each ship type.  What I think Taldren should have done is that each hard point had a set firing arc.  This Firing arc would be the most narrow feild to start with when you first design your ship, but you could increase the arc size if you wanted too.  But if you were to do this, any weapon you put on that hard Point would automatically increase the mass of the weapon by like 50% or 100%.  So if you had a hard Point on a ship that shows a really narrow FA firing arc, you could increase the firing pattern of the arc by increasing it too say FH (Went from Forward 90 degreee arc to  180 Degree) and if you install a weapon on that hardpoint that instead of being 200K in Mass, it is now 400K in mass if you install it on that Hard point.

Or, if Taldren is against this idea.  It would be nice to a least adjust where these limited arcs would fire in what direction.  So if you design a ship and have a Hard point that shows a Hard Point firing arce torward a forward direction, you could adjust the direction of the arc during design time to face Aft or mayby Starboard or Port.  This might actually be easier to program into the SFC3 patch then the last suggestion.

Now I seriously doubt Taldren could implement this into a Patch for SFC3 as it would probably require too much recoding and work for a simple patch for SFC3.  But if Taldren makes another SFC (like a Dominioin Wars Game as some have suggested) I think these suggestions would be helpful to the game and create even more interesting combinations of vessels to design.

[Tulmahk]

I love this idea!

In fact, you could implement it by way of more weapon variants.

Say, Disruptor A has a mass of 100 and firing arc of 40 degrees.  Disruptor B has a mass of 200 and a firing arc of 80 degrees.  In other words, put the firing arcs in as an inherent ability of each weapon, as opposed to making firing arcs a property of the hard points.  This way, every hard point would have the potential to house a 360 degree weapon (except heavies, which should be limited to 120 degrees or so at most).

Very good idea.  

[DrSchreber]

Just a thought but there might be another method of increasing firing arcs on the ships without changing too much.

What if you increased your firing arc based upon you Ops officer or your Tactical officer?

As I understand it Scanner Tech already increases the Range, so wouldn't it be easy to mathamatically increase the degrees in the arcs fired?

This takes into account some of the ideas already incorporated into the new system.

DrSchreber  

[EE]

Would it not be easier to just give us variants of each hull class, maybe with 3 different arc config's per class?

[Son of Technobabble]

Quote:
Would it not be easier to just give us variants of each hull class, maybe with 3 different arc config's per class?  

That sounds good... It could even save the Excelsior from oblivion...

However I think that HW arcs should be left untouched, there should NOT be even a slight chance of firing a Q-torp volley to the sides and that kind of stuff.

Quote:
Taldren wanted to keep limited firing arcs to encourage more tactical flying and less Alpha Strike tactics.

 
Well, IMHO klinks are supposed to do the decloak-and-alpha tactic most of the time, maybe roms too.

Quote:
In other words, put the firing arcs in as an inherent ability of each weapon, as opposed to making firing arcs a property of the hard points. This way, every hard point would have the potential to house a 360 degree weapon

Well, that's pretty risky. I wouldn't like my huge PhXIIF limited to a 60 degree arc when it could be mounted on the single 360 arc. Furthermore, that could lead to some weird effects such as port weapons firing at starboard targets and such...

Just a thought.  

[Fornax]

I don't think (IMO) you'll see them buy into the hull variant idea.
The current theme is to modify the hull specs - I agree though, it is somewhat disappointing that
basic modification features that you might expect are simply not present.

Weapon specs are hardcoded - not table based.

I remember an old netrek offshoot, dtrek, that in 1991 offered some nice tweaking options including torp speed, damage, reload speed.  Granted it was limited in that all (same weapon type) had to have the same configuration, but still, in some ways it's a leg up on this game created 10 years later.

Not saying I dislike this game - I'm just thinking that there's still something to shoot for in the future.  It ain't perfect yet.

Nax

[theRomulan]

The funny thing is, although we have set firing arcs the way they are to prevent rampant alpha striking, the problem is that mizia striking is utterly useless right now.  You can't knockout systems, even something as small as phaser 12 or a disruptor 1, without using the entire boatload of weapon systems, even with level 1-2 armor equipped.  I can understand that armor plays a part and everything, but stunning or destroying weapon systems of an opponent literally require an alpha strike.  

The current arcs merely limit how much of an alpha each ship gets, but the problem there is that now the ship with the most alpha potential is the one that has a great advantage.  Even breaking shields in this game practically requires alpha strikes.  

Until the patch fixes the shield reinforcment and perhaps hopefully weakens shields, I don't think giving people an ability to change weapon arcs would help at all except help us optimize our required alpha strike stradegy.  

[Aves]

I am a huge fan of having three to four varients of each hull, with slightly different hardpoints and arcs

Think of the different designs from SFC2, some would be HW loaded, others phasor escorts, etc.

This would require no new coding, just release two modified varients of each hull typem this would also add some badly needed variety to this game.

Taldren really needs to consider this
If they won't, it wouldn't take much for someone to make a mod that impliments this, but that would severly limit the playability of this concept.

Serious guys, think about it... simple and yet adds so much depth to the game (and surprise... instead of knowing exactly what your going up against, it make it all so much more unpredictable)

PS Add Q-ships too  

 

[Magnum357]

Ok, I have heard that some people are not impressed with the firing arcs that are present in the game of SFC3.  I can understand this too.  Why didn't Taldren design in a feature to adjust Firing arcs?  If we can put in weapons and components on our ships, shouldn't we have some ability to adjust the firing arcs of weapons too?  

I'm not saying to make it a huge complex system, just something that is a little flexible.  For example, Taldren wanted to keep limited firing arcs to encourage more tactical flying and less Alpha Strike tactics.  Ok, that is fine, but you are sort of limited to what you can do with each hardpoint for each ship type.  What I think Taldren should have done is that each hard point had a set firing arc.  This Firing arc would be the most narrow feild to start with when you first design your ship, but you could increase the arc size if you wanted too.  But if you were to do this, any weapon you put on that hard Point would automatically increase the mass of the weapon by like 50% or 100%.  So if you had a hard Point on a ship that shows a really narrow FA firing arc, you could increase the firing pattern of the arc by increasing it too say FH (Went from Forward 90 degreee arc to  180 Degree) and if you install a weapon on that hardpoint that instead of being 200K in Mass, it is now 400K in mass if you install it on that Hard point.

Or, if Taldren is against this idea.  It would be nice to a least adjust where these limited arcs would fire in what direction.  So if you design a ship and have a Hard point that shows a Hard Point firing arce torward a forward direction, you could adjust the direction of the arc during design time to face Aft or mayby Starboard or Port.  This might actually be easier to program into the SFC3 patch then the last suggestion.

Now I seriously doubt Taldren could implement this into a Patch for SFC3 as it would probably require too much recoding and work for a simple patch for SFC3.  But if Taldren makes another SFC (like a Dominioin Wars Game as some have suggested) I think these suggestions would be helpful to the game and create even more interesting combinations of vessels to design.

[Tulmahk]

I love this idea!

In fact, you could implement it by way of more weapon variants.

Say, Disruptor A has a mass of 100 and firing arc of 40 degrees.  Disruptor B has a mass of 200 and a firing arc of 80 degrees.  In other words, put the firing arcs in as an inherent ability of each weapon, as opposed to making firing arcs a property of the hard points.  This way, every hard point would have the potential to house a 360 degree weapon (except heavies, which should be limited to 120 degrees or so at most).

Very good idea.  

[DrSchreber]

Just a thought but there might be another method of increasing firing arcs on the ships without changing too much.

What if you increased your firing arc based upon you Ops officer or your Tactical officer?

As I understand it Scanner Tech already increases the Range, so wouldn't it be easy to mathamatically increase the degrees in the arcs fired?

This takes into account some of the ideas already incorporated into the new system.

DrSchreber  

[EE]

Would it not be easier to just give us variants of each hull class, maybe with 3 different arc config's per class?

[Son of Technobabble]

Quote:
Would it not be easier to just give us variants of each hull class, maybe with 3 different arc config's per class?  

That sounds good... It could even save the Excelsior from oblivion...

However I think that HW arcs should be left untouched, there should NOT be even a slight chance of firing a Q-torp volley to the sides and that kind of stuff.

Quote:
Taldren wanted to keep limited firing arcs to encourage more tactical flying and less Alpha Strike tactics.

 
Well, IMHO klinks are supposed to do the decloak-and-alpha tactic most of the time, maybe roms too.

Quote:
In other words, put the firing arcs in as an inherent ability of each weapon, as opposed to making firing arcs a property of the hard points. This way, every hard point would have the potential to house a 360 degree weapon

Well, that's pretty risky. I wouldn't like my huge PhXIIF limited to a 60 degree arc when it could be mounted on the single 360 arc. Furthermore, that could lead to some weird effects such as port weapons firing at starboard targets and such...

Just a thought.  

[Fornax]

I don't think (IMO) you'll see them buy into the hull variant idea.
The current theme is to modify the hull specs - I agree though, it is somewhat disappointing that
basic modification features that you might expect are simply not present.

Weapon specs are hardcoded - not table based.

I remember an old netrek offshoot, dtrek, that in 1991 offered some nice tweaking options including torp speed, damage, reload speed.  Granted it was limited in that all (same weapon type) had to have the same configuration, but still, in some ways it's a leg up on this game created 10 years later.

Not saying I dislike this game - I'm just thinking that there's still something to shoot for in the future.  It ain't perfect yet.

Nax

[theRomulan]

The funny thing is, although we have set firing arcs the way they are to prevent rampant alpha striking, the problem is that mizia striking is utterly useless right now.  You can't knockout systems, even something as small as phaser 12 or a disruptor 1, without using the entire boatload of weapon systems, even with level 1-2 armor equipped.  I can understand that armor plays a part and everything, but stunning or destroying weapon systems of an opponent literally require an alpha strike.  

The current arcs merely limit how much of an alpha each ship gets, but the problem there is that now the ship with the most alpha potential is the one that has a great advantage.  Even breaking shields in this game practically requires alpha strikes.  

Until the patch fixes the shield reinforcment and perhaps hopefully weakens shields, I don't think giving people an ability to change weapon arcs would help at all except help us optimize our required alpha strike stradegy.  

[Aves]

I am a huge fan of having three to four varients of each hull, with slightly different hardpoints and arcs

Think of the different designs from SFC2, some would be HW loaded, others phasor escorts, etc.

This would require no new coding, just release two modified varients of each hull typem this would also add some badly needed variety to this game.

Taldren really needs to consider this
If they won't, it wouldn't take much for someone to make a mod that impliments this, but that would severly limit the playability of this concept.

Serious guys, think about it... simple and yet adds so much depth to the game (and surprise... instead of knowing exactly what your going up against, it make it all so much more unpredictable)

PS Add Q-ships too