Topic: What are peoples preferences on ship speed?

[Red_Green]

Well this was a big complaint by a number of people. I have made a mod that gives no significant increase in speed when people build ships with out shields. This will keep the game from looking  fighter like at times.

Also can make it so an FF manuevers like a Cl.  A CL like a CA and so on. Just to make the ships handle more like star ships were accustomed to from previous versions. This won't throw off balance as long as its done evenly across all 4 race slots

What do you guys think? 

A couple snags is I am almost done, but now have to convert it to build 534.
Also I have dial up so can't offer a server for game play. I would be interested if anyone wanted to set up a server with this mod when its done. I have been working on it for 3-4 months. Including time building ships.
Its called the Rise of Kingdoms mod.  It will have a few twists not seen before I believe.

[Red_Green]

As I have the ships now. The Dn's max speed is 21 before anything else is upgraded.  Also the Dn's are dead in space when they reach 25% hull integrity.
I remember SFC2 as the ships neared the end they had speed 4 at best. In SFC3 I was surprised that just before a ship exploded it was still zipping around at speed 30.

Now dead in space at 25% hull integrity is a bit much. So more tested needed.
Just thought I'd see if anyone has a preference as far as should ships get slower as they take damage?  What about the top DN speed?  I think it looks more realistic to have DN's putzing around. I never felt there was enough difference as far as maneverbiulity between classes.

[Cozbo]

Then main thing about SFC3 is making sure that ships can turn properly. I don't like any ship of any class to turn slower than 1.00. and small ships should be able to turn at 2.00 or better.

Ship top speeds and turn rate with stock sheilds  should vary by race too.
Klingons should be fastest and turn better
FF:  80-100; 2.2
DD: 70-80; 2.0
CL:  60-70: 1.8
CA:  50-60: 1.6
BCh: 40-50; 1.4
Dn:  30-40; 1.2
BB:  20-30; 1.0

OR:

All ship classes fly about 25-35 max speed  without/with sheilds respectively, except fighters/shuttles(which are fitted with special SH  engine stuff so they fly like speed 100.

There are some important tactical reasons why  turn rates should be kept up above 1.0

The max impulse speed is there, might as well use it. If you prefer slower moving  stuff try slowing the game speed down  1 or 2 levels. This slows down the ships but doesn't effect the turnrate: to weapon recharge ratios. it makes the combats longer as all ships appear to move slower and weapons take longer to charge, but you are more likely to get the best shots that way and do more damage when you do fire.

when playing by myself i will sometimes slow it down just so i can change camera angles and watch the action else where  in a fleet action.

[Red_Green]

Thanks for the reply Cozbo.  Well because the game conflicts  with my IP softeware, I can never get online. So play solely against the AI. The biggest problem with the AI is always ships circling you. When turn rates are all above 1, there is never any need to turn. You can just keep going backwards and let the AI circle you and it will position itself right it front of your arcs.

 I have my turn rates like this atm.

From memory so not exact and this is for the Feds.

FF =0.87
DD=0.69
CL=0.55
CA=0.42
BC=0.45
DN=0.30

All below 1. What it does is make the turns incredibly wide. So the AI cant keep making tight turns in front of your forward arcs, thus killing itself. Instead the AI has to make a wide arc and it sets up more chasing.. It makes reverse much more valuble I think. Though turning in reverse is harder yet.  It also makes switching shields paramount. With fast turn rates, the facing changes so often, by the time the shield reinforment changes, you have a different shield exposed. These turn rates, at least with the DN class. Seem to match the rate  it takes to reinforce a different shield.

Any way, the battle with turn rates has kind of a age of sail feel to it with the DN classes.  I think mines play a bigger role with slower turn rates as well.

My races have differnet flavors, buy size of weapon arc as well as turn rate. The Lyrans have wide firing arcs but weapons do less damage. They have 240 degree primaries and  180 degreen heavies. Still testing balance with other races, but seams close.

As far as the slow turn rates, If you play SFC3 awhile and go back to OP. OP turn rates will seam slow as snails. But that is what I got accustomed to and prefer it. 

[interloper]

I would kinda like to see the ff stay as more of a fighter myself, I love
playing a klingon bop with 100 speed and 2.something turning
just my humble opinion

[The Pelican]

The reason why Turn Rates NEED to be high in SFC3 is because there is very little for a player to do while they are turning their ship around!!

Your thinking is flawed red_green, you are lowering the turn rates to make the AI turn in wider arcs - but you are also forcing the PLAYER to turn in the same wide arc, meaning that nothing has changed.

Believe me, the AI are FAR more dangerous in fast, maneouvrable ships. Ask anyone who plays any mod. The game is MUCH harder in the smaller ships than in the bigger ships.

The most dangerous ship I have ever seen was a Tholian Destroyer in an early version of DomWars. Lightning Fast and an amazing Turn Rate, you could not defeat that ship in anything below a CA until you had Legendary Officers. It was just an absolute nightmare to fight.

[Mog]

Looks like you missed where he said what tactic he's using. Kaufman Retrograde - ie moving in reverse, keeping a strong front shield facing the ai enemy. Your own turn mode doesn't matter at all then, just fire when AV is extremely low. It's actually a better tactic than starcastling, and is why I never want to see reverse in the older SFCs.

[interloper]

?-lost me on that one 

[FPF-DieHard]

. . . Kaufman Retrograde-. . .  It's actually a better tactic than starcastling

True, but "Kaufman Retrograding Twat" just doesn't have the same ring to it 

[Mog]

Read the end of the first paragraph in red_green's last post, here:

"You can just keep going backwards and let the AI circle you and it will position itself right it front of your arcs.
"

[Age]

   The reason I like reverse in a game or this one.The ships do move a lot faster and when approaching a planet or an asteroid. You can't avoid them because of your speed stop the ship and go into reverse.The only time I use reverse when facing a ship is to but some distance so I can turn and get behind them.This done with HET.

[Red_Green]

The reason why Turn Rates NEED to be high in SFC3 is because there is very little for a player to do while they are turning their ship around!!

Your thinking is flawed red_green, you are lowering the turn rates to make the AI turn in wider arcs - but you are also forcing the PLAYER to turn in the same wide arc, meaning that nothing has changed.

Well one could argue that making the turn rates faster does nothing tactically except make the battle shorter.
With slower turn rates, getting your weapon arcs on a target becomes a game within a game. I could easily argue that with all turn rates above 1 you have nothing to do, as soon as your weapons are charged you can turn and fire.
Turning takes more micromangement at slow rates. There is a more pronounced trade off between closing on the target and turning to get your arcs centered. You have to go at mid impulse to get the best turn rate.

There is another factor I modded in, thats the base weight of ships. I  increased it. This helps make the classes more distinguised. The DN's not only turn slow, but are sluggish from dead stops. I simply what to give the feel that a DN is a capitol ship.

And if you play with slow arcs with the EEK missions infleet battles, there will be something to do all the time 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
quote author=The Pelican link=topic=163343536.msg1122400852#msg1122400852 date=1089818472]

Your thinking is flawed red_green, you are lowering the turn rates to make the AI turn in wider arcs - but you are also forcing the PLAYER to turn in the same wide arc, meaning that nothing has changed.

To this specific point, I say. Yes the player will have wide arcs. But what happens is instead of always being in range of between 5-10 as you are with the AI circling in short arcs. With wider arcs, the AI often is going away from you off to a distance beyond 20. This makes for more sparring at range. Now if there are 3 vs 3 missions, you might even decide to target a second ship.  If people don't like the chase aspect, then you could always play my Lyrans with the wide weapon arcs. For Lyrans its a good tactic to stay parrallel to your target.

Something else happens tactically that you might not think of at 1st. Shields get time to recharge between vollies.
I incresed shield strength and recharge rate, plus lowered shield mass. This makes sheilds must haves in this mod.
And while your turning, you will constanly be reinforcing the next shield face. Timing it so the just as the face currently reinforced leaves the enemies ship arcs, the face entering the weapon arcs becomes reinforced. So there will be management while turning. Plus things to repair. Alos mines to drop. I suggest using nuclear ones. 


As far as speed goes. The FF class is about 20% faster than stock( somewhere between speed 54 and 64 depending on race). While the other classes are close to stock. So speed is similar to stock, its just ships turn slower. However, the biggest thing, is that it wont be possibly to gain much more speed by dropping shileds for example. I just feel that angular velocity was too big a factor for CA's and above. It should be DD's and FF's that get the benefit from that.
About the only way to gain speed now would be to drop weapons, this might be viable in a destroyer. You might consider just equipping anti-matter mines and a single diruptor. Allowing you to harrass the slow DN's.

[Cozbo]

I believe if your only  game is single player then you can make it fly how ever you wish.
Using reverse was the first tactic I learned in this game. Slow ships that can't turn fast are easy prey for the ship in reverse.

However, if a fed ship tunrs like a tub,  he will 99% of his PvP to the Klinks and Roms because they will be able to set up the shot and wait for his tub to turn to the weak side and  then declaok and alpha him. They will be claoked again before he can get 50% of his arcs to bear. unless of course you make  them have super wide arcs. But then you are just creating floating batteries instead of starships.

I can't win a single PvP with a fed ship with a tunrnrate below 1.00. Mizra won't work right because you can't bring your weapons to bear fast enough. and torp and warp won't work right  because you can't line up the shot before th enemy cloaks himself again.

I have experimented  alot with this stuff and if you want it to work for PvP then you must keep turn rate higher than 1.0 even if you reduce the impulse speeds to 1/3 of maximum.

I would rather see you turn game speed down from 8 to 4 than to remove turn rates. At least the turn and the recharge and cloaking time would remain consistant with what works.

I think trying to make the game for Ai battles and trying to keep it balanced in PvP are two ver difficut and different things.

[Red_Green]

Maybe I should point out that my mod does not have Klingons or Romulans.
Its made up of Lyrans, Hydrans, Pirates and Feds. People may need to try it to see how they like it. As there are things about slow turn rate that are changed to balance it. For one, the going in reverse ploy is not that successful as you might think. Again I increased the ships inerta. For example of how it works.
If you are trying to turn on an enemy from behind but realize that you can't make the turn sharp enough and thus are about to zoom past him. Gaining no shot but leaving your ship in his arcs. You would then likely try to reverse and turn to get him in your forward arcs.
Well with incresed inertia, by the time you slow down and go in reverse and turn(which is like three times slower than turning going forward). The enemy ship well likely be at range 20 with its side facing you and about to turn on you as well.

I think your missing the point that weapons arcs have been modded as well.
Think about it. If your ship turned twice as slow but your weapon arcs were twice as wide things would even out. That is not the approach I took however.
The Federation ships already had faster regenerating shields. I further enhanced them to compensate for races that turn better. The Feds also have more arcs facing side and back.

Geez the way you all go on, you would think I was new to modding, I been doing it for 3 years as well as a bunch of other people in the forum that mod but just keep it for themselves.

As far as balancing for PVP. I think I am able to do that. I don't really balance the ships for the AI. As if a player plays a DN against an AI DN, the player will always win. I balance the ships against each other. If I can kill a Lyran DN in a Federation DN after 2o minutes. I then play the Lyran DN vs the Fed DN. If I can kill the Fed DN in 12 minutes. I know that the Lyran is stronger than the Fed.  Then readjust. I am careful to use the same tactics in both test battles.
Then adjust and retest.

The game should not be balnced against the AI in a 1 vs 1 battle cause the AI should always lose. How to balance the game agaist the AI is by 2 vs 1 or 3 vs 1 missions.  So the ships should be balanced for PvP. That is my goa,l even if I can't access the dynaverse. But the thread was asking about preferences not balance issues.

I don't think you should dismiss the mod because I can't log on. All the mods come out and are adjusted after there 1st run. Some of you may be surprised at the balance in this ones 1st release.

The ship turn rate is more of a preference issue as it can be balanced. If there is a will there is a way.

Edit- I just read the part where you address cloak. Since I don't have Klinks or Roms I don't need to worry abou that. However 1 ship per race will have a cloak varient.
For the Feds this will be the Defiant. YOu would be able to purchase it in the shipyard. The cloak will be un refittable, meaning you only can get it by purchasing the varient.

What you fail to realize is that since I am using Hydrans and Lyrans I don't have to follow the weapon arcs of the Klinks for example.

Thats why the mod is called Rise of KIngdoms. It gives the secondary races the spotlight.

[Red_Green]

I would rather see you turn game speed down from 8 to 4 than to remove turn rates. At least the turn and the recharge and cloaking time would remain consistant with what works.

I think trying to make the game for Ai battles and trying to keep it balanced in PvP are two ver difficut and different things.

On these 2 points. I do not understand the turn the games speed down idea. For1 thing the damage splashes would be slow as well. For another I can balance  the game  with slow turn rates. I wish you would just come out and say you do not like slow turn rates, instead you seem to be dissing my modding skills. This will work and I have already tested it. If my turn rates are to slow, you can turn up the game speed to 11. But that makes no sense to me.  The cloaking point you make is just false. Just about anything can be compensated for to balnce a mod.

As far as balancing vs the AI. No one   balances  a player DN to a AI DN or whatever class because the AI will flat out lose. Games are balance to the AI but fleet missions and by being outnumbered by the AI. 

[The Pelican]

You asked for our opinions, and we gave them to you. We also gave our opinions on some of the examples you gave, you may have been modding for 3 years, but this is your first SFC3 Mod, between me and Cozbo you have 2 years worth of SFC3 Modding experience, I wouldn't even like to add up how many hours of modding experience, I have been modding for 12 years myself (first mod was for SWOS on an ancient Amiga 500).

I can tell you now, that the majority of the player base prefers higher turn rates. I know this for a fact because I've heard opinions from almost everyone who plays SFC3 these days. Even the players who no longer play said the same thing. They don't want it too high of course, but anything below 1.00 is considered criminal by some players.

Both me and Cozbo balance the same way - via mathematics. We then hand it over to the people who play our mods, and then we make adjustments based on the feedback, until the general player base agrees that the mod is ready to go ahead. Then everything is finalised and we release the mod. Although on some occasions, we release quickly built mods without any beta testing because the players need something to play. Usually the quickly built editions have a lot of problems with them. (like my last version of DomWars, the Speed & Turn Rates were way off what I wanted)

---------

Anyway, just though I'd point out that as far as I can tell, the Fed shields recharge at the same rate as the rest, they just happen to be stronger than the other race shields.

If your mod is for single player, then I don't suppose turn rates matter too much. It all depends on how long a player wants battles to last I suppose.

If you want mission scripts by the way, I have quite a few you'll find useful.

[Fluf]

Well I see what red_green is trying to do here.  Battlezone and LB5 use the same type of style.  Most BBs cant do 30 and have a turn rate under .70.  Its one of the things we did with the mod to slow it down and extend game play.  And quite frankly it works very well.  It does give the mod a more D2 feel to it.

[Red_Green]

You asked for our opinions, and we gave them to you. We also gave our opinions on some of the examples you gave, you may have been modding for 3 years, but this is your first SFC3 Mod, between me and Cozbo you have 2 years worth of SFC3 Modding experience, I wouldn't even like to add up how many hours of modding experience, I have been modding for 12 years myself (first mod was for SWOS on an ancient Amiga 500).

I can tell you now, that the majority of the player base prefers higher turn rates. I know this for a fact because I've heard opinions from almost everyone who plays SFC3 these days. Even the players who no longer play said the same thing. They don't want it too high of course, but anything below 1.00 is considered criminal by some players.

Both me and Cozbo balance the same way - via mathematics. We then hand it over to the people who play our mods, and then we make adjustments based on the feedback, until the general player base agrees that the mod is ready to go ahead. Then everything is finalised and we release the mod. Although on some occasions, we release quickly built mods without any beta testing because the players need something to play. Usually the quickly built editions have a lot of problems with them. (like my last version of DomWars, the Speed & Turn Rates were way off what I wanted)

---------

Anyway, just though I'd point out that as far as I can tell, the Fed shields recharge at the same rate as the rest, they just happen to be stronger than the other race shields.

If your mod is for single player, then I don't suppose turn rates matter too much. It all depends on how long a player wants battles to last I suppose.

If you want mission scripts by the way, I have quite a few you'll find useful.

I can tell you that your thinking is flawed Pelican. I released a mod for SFC3. IT doesn't have any ships but is a game mod.
I have also done mods I have not released. Yes I asked for your opinion. The title says What are your preferences on ship speeds?  I never asked if you thought it was possible to mod it. You seem to be saying its not possible or at least it does not change anything.

I ran into this same attitude when I started modeling ships for the 1st time. You all think you been at it lomger so like I need to ask for permission to mod the game in a different style then what you do. Its like I threaten you by doing something different.

Even if the majority prefer high speeds. I read many threads complaning about capitol ships handling like fighters. Also maybe you do not understand how inertia effects game play.

[The Pelican]

We seem to have got off on the wrong foot, My apologies for that. I mean no ill will to you or your mod, I simply have my opinion on how SFC3 should be, and I stick to those opinions. I do not claim them to be "right" - there is no right or wrong in any modding, only different ideas & opinions. I'm not only here to tell you how to make your mod, I'm pretty certain you already KNOW how you are going to make your mod. In the end, you can listen to 1000 people tell you the same thing, and still disagree with them.

If you ask me, Speed & Maneouvrability don't make a huge difference, because if you scale them up or down, all you really do is change how long the battle lasts. In the end, what really makes the difference is the DIFFERENCE in Turn Rates between opposing ships. Slower speeds/turn rates do tend to make it harder to get arcs in position, however, weapons rarely miss as slow speeds & turn rates. Higher Speeds/Turn Rates have the opposite effect, weapons tend to miss (though Heavies hit more often if you have good AV) and it's a little easier to get your arcs in position. The difference is what matters, not the actual numbers themselves. If one ship turns 3 times faster than another, it's going to get it's arc in position faster, it doesn't matter if it's 0.3 & 0.9 or 1.0 & 3.0. All that would change is the speed of the battle - that is really what is boils down to - how long do you want your battles to last?

One thing I should point out, Shields tend to recharge very slowly, they recharge at a set rate, which is incredibly annoying. (I did ask Dave to make it moddable, but that was after 534 and that was the last work he did). I wouldn't increase them too much (downgrade the weapon damage, same thing in the end, it's floating point, not integer)

On Inertia, As you should know, there is no friction in space, therefore there is (theoretically) no limit to how quickly a ship can spin in space. All you require is energy, mass is truly irrelevent except to determine the amount of energy required. The bigger the ship does not mean that it will in fact turn slower than a smaller ship, nor move faster. (In fact, in canon Trek, the larger ships are usually faster than the smaller ships, but are less maneouvrable).

The concept of "slow turning" ships in Trek changes very rapidly after watching the opening episode of DS9!!! (Emissary).

Anyway, as I said before, if you need mission scripts, send me a PM, there are only 2 of us who write mission scripts (me & Karnak), and Karnak is busy working on missions for D2.

I also have a nifty little trick that installs damage textures without actually including every one of them in the model folder (saves loads of space - one of my specialities that one, cutting down the size of a mod) - new one that one, only figured it out last weekend.

And of course, if you ever need any help, you only have to ask. (Everybody else does it)

P.S. The "ships turning like Fighters" comes from the last edition of DomWars, where the Speed & Turn Rates were screwed up beyond belief. Tends to happen when you try and build a mod inside 24 hours..... I've fixed that now, much better in my upcoming edition. Bad edition of DW was v4.6, one of my worst since v1.0 (now that was BAD)

[Red_Green]

Thanks for all the info Pelican. Yea sometimes I get a bit stuburn about stuff.  The biggest difference with  ship handling how I have it atm, is  ships end up dead in space at the end. By the time there at 25% hull, they move about speed 5.  At hull str 10% they have no speed left in most cases. Before they blow up, almost every single weapon, impulse, warp, shuttle bay is disabled. And you either get the pleasure of pounded the hull to death or capturing.  As the armour and weapon str are set. A battle cruiser gets to pound on a DN with 25% hull str for a couple minutes    If your on the wrong end, this would be a good time to set self destruct mode    Now I know some won't care for this at all, but one of my pet peaves was ships blowing up while still moving at speed 30 and still firing 80% of there weapons. These were not frigates either.

A few interesting things happen at real slow turn rates. With a DN with 0.25 turn rate.(probably won't be this slow in the mod, more like 0.35 ish)  I was in a battle that, by the time the ship turned to bring its forward arcs to bear, the target was out of range of all weapons. That might sound boring as hell, but I was in a 1 vs 3 against the AI and was trying to take out at least 1 ship.
There was plenty going on to keep interest. I had 6 shuttles launched which I have drop mines. I gave then anti-matter mines in the loadout, but they were dropping normal ones. Scatching my head on that one.

When the capitol ships are moving at speed 25, the shuttles zooming around really stand out. 

Now my Lyrans may be a problem. I can balance them in 1 vs 1 battles, but they may be too strong in groups. There heavies are mytronic beam and shield inverion beam. These compliment each other well. Like just when you get ready to alpha strike all your weapons blink out until the target is out of your arcs. Plus 3 ships firing inversion beams wreaks havoc on shields.

 I am not too worried about the how this mod goes over. Figure I just make it how I want cause its a huge investment in time. There will probably be a few people that prefer the style of battles that I do. My biggest strength is attention to detail and adding in story boards and things. Hydran/Lyran fans might like it for the complete swapping of voices, music and sounds from SFC1 and 2. It may be the only SFC3 mod that gives minor SFB races there own slots.

The way I am doing the shiplist. The story campaign will not be playable. I can add a second shiplist to unlock the KLinks and Roms for the story campaign, though I am worried about people not reading the readme and trying the story missions with out switching shiplists. Because the game would crash, not to desktop but its coldboot time.  Then they might come after me