Topic: Big maps and SFB style disengagement rules?

[Dizzy]

Here I was thinking jousting...or how about a map where a race is run around nav gates...with collisions activated for that mission only....NASTREK

LOL - I like it - maybe a skirmish mission with a legendary helm/nav officer so you get a little extra in the way of HETs

dave

Trek hockey with a puck 

[Capt_Bearslayer_XC]

He shoots... HE SCOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[NuclearWessels]

Trek hockey with a puck 

And a couple of speed 200 or so asteroid defensemen trying to play the trap

dave

[762_XC]

"Neutral zone trapping twat"

 

[FPF-Paladin]

This is frickin amazing stuff... soon as I get my monitor fixed (don't know if this one will handle games, damn it...) I'll catch some of you guys who are testing this out.

I don't know what the end result will be dyna wise, but the possibilities are exciting and open... go where no d2 has gone before.



... yes, kill me before I make another really bad joke.  Please.

[el-Karnak]

This is frickin amazing stuff... soon as I get my monitor fixed (don't know if this one will handle games, damn it...) I'll catch some of you guys who are testing this out.

I don't know what the end result will be dyna wise, but the possibilities are exciting and open... go where no d2 has gone before.



... yes, kill me before I make another really bad joke.  Please.

I thnk the major advancement that us humble scripters are trying to make on the dyna is to eliminate the dreaded "Red-Lines" from PvP play. We are doing this by make humungous maps and providing a "warp-out" mechanism to leave the map if you need to disengage from the mission, just as you would in the current missions by taco-belling across the red-lines.

[NuclearWessels]

OK, went with the self-extracting installer before the size of this thing starts to grow, here's the new link:
http://www3.telus.net/NuclearWessels/sfc/downloads/EDWarpPatrols.exe
I think I've updated all my links in this thread to also point to it...

This ups the speed you accelerate to, updates some briefings, closes a couple of loopholes (not all of them) and adds two new missions, just to screw around with using the warp in combat.  They handle 3v3 drafting, though they're probably more appropriate for single-player. 

The new scripts are Met_EDWarpRaider.scr and Met_EDWarpADaysWork.scr, and they're the two sides of the following scenario:

 - 4 convoy ships, 3 defense platforms, and 3 friendly ships are scattered randomly across the map.
 - 3 enemy empire ships are randomly placed on the map.
 - 2 pirate ships, and a pirate base are randomly placed on the map.

Because of the size of the map, ships typically spawn more than 500 apart, and frequently you're at distance 600-800 from the nearest enemy. 

The convoy ships have preset headings and a speed of 10-12, and won't deviate from that.  AI ships that are hostile to one another will magically start heading for one another, although because the AI doesn't warp it will often take them a LONG time to find one another.

As the defender your problem is to find the 5 hostile ships and the pirate base and nuke them all.   The problem you're often faced with is which enemy to chase down while leaving the rest of the convoy/bases vulnerable to the other hostiles.

(Use the nearest enemy key, warp away, and odds are by the time you've killed the first one or two some of the others will have made contact with your allies, so you'll know where they are.)

As the attacker your problem is to find the 4 convoy ships, the 3 defense satellites, and the 3 defenders and nuke them all.  Same ideas apply.

There are undoubtedly some glitches and hiccups, but I wanted to experiment with a mission where the warp is actually useful/appropriate

So far, this usually seems to take 30-60 minutes to play out (though that was playing rom vs gorn, so will probably go a bit quicker with other race combinations).

dave

[NuclearWessels]

... is to eliminate the dreaded "Red-Lines" ...

Hey - this is starting to sound like hockey! 

Agreed though, that's definitely the most practical aspect of the process

dave

[el-Karnak]

... is to eliminate the dreaded "Red-Lines" ...

Hey - this is starting to sound like hockey! 

Agreed though, that's definitely the most practical aspect of the process

dave

If the NHL can get rid of the 2-line off-side pass rule then so can we.

[Dizzy]

If warp works, we may need to rethink sublight convoy raids. Possibly have the convoys moving between 2 planets or bases and your objective is to see them get there or blow em up b4 they get there. Mb even have the convoys carry cargo they will beam to their objective when they get there and either you blow em up, steal the cargo, or whatever... But no more sublight in the middle of no where... convoys wont do that anymore. They'd either be at warp 2-5 or sublight somewhere near their objective.

my 2 cents

[NuclearWessels]

If warp works, we may need to rethink sublight convoy raids. Possibly have the convoys moving between 2 planets or bases and your objective is to see them get there or blow em up b4 they get there. Mb even have the convoys carry cargo they will beam to their objective when they get there and either you blow em up, steal the cargo, or whatever... But no more sublight in the middle of no where... convoys wont do that anymore. They'd either be at warp 2-5 or sublight somewhere near their objective.

my 2 cents

Or sublight in an area where the terrain would make higher speeds dangerous (nebs, asteroid fields, etc)

dave

[FPF-SCM_TraceyG_XC]

With all these big maps, and the potential to make some really long missions (like Dizzy's convoy raid idea)... instead of say running a dozen 2 minute patrols trying to flip a hex and pp farming... what if it was just one big long mission that paid out heaps and was a bit more interesting... could smooth out mission times between races... remove the monotany of the patrol mission... and add new life to the game. Imagine if every hex on the map had a maximum DV of 1... and taking one BIG BIG mission would flip it..

Just a thought... (it'll probably get bagged, but that happens)

[FPF-DieHard]

With all these big maps, and the potential to make some really long missions (like Dizzy's convoy raid idea)... instead of say running a dozen 2 minute patrols trying to flip a hex and pp farming... what if it was just one big long mission that paid out heaps and was a bit more interesting... could smooth out mission times between races... remove the monotany of the patrol mission... and add new life to the game. Imagine if every hex on the map had a maximum DV of 1... and taking one BIG BIG mission would flip it..

Just a thought... (it'll probably get bagged, but that happens)

It's an interting idea and you shoudl run with it.   Rip off missions fro game like Eve, make eveything not about pure comabt, boldly go where no scripter has gone before

[NuclearWessels]

That's more or less the lines I was working on with the "All in a Day's Work" mission a couple of posts back - you've got a bunch of things to juggle, and they're going to take time and a little thought.  If we mix in some non-combat goals/evaluations it could get fairly interesting
  - one or two of the civillian ships could be carrying high priority items, making them more "important" on some sliding scale
  - one of them could be carrying a bigwig who gets b*tchy if you get too far from him for too long
  - one of the enemies could be a big-name pirate, you get a bundle of extra prestige for whacking him, but it will mean chasing off into the boonies and leaving everything else unprotected for longer

etc etc etc

Having listening posts strung out in one of these missions actually makes them valuable, because you REALLY need the extra sets of eyes to pick up on where the enemy ships are.

Hell, maybe something akin to balance of terror, where you have a line of listening posts stretched out across this huge whack of space, and an enemy trying to sneak multiple ships through -- maybe trying to knock a couple of outposts offline and you have to judge which of the resulting holes they're trying to sneak the main fleet through.

Or have the trail of listening posts mark the trail that the convoy's follow -- that way they know there's a clear path ahead that's 200 wide.  The raider needs to decide where/when to try to jump the convoy to minimize the defender's chances to quickly react.

Deep strike missions could now involve fighting your way to and from the installation, possibly with restrictions in effect on the deep striker because they're trying to minimize the chances of bringing the entire defense fleet down on them ... a "Lone Gray Wolf" style of mission, where the escaping fleet is speed limited and has a helluva long way to go, but outguns what's trying to chase or intercept them...

We could make a GREAT Wyn cluster mission here ... we have this huge map that's entirely a nebula ...

We could have a border map where BOTH sides had a base or bats, way the hell apart from one another, and players would have to decide whether to go offensive or defensive ... (would have to work on the DV logistics and implications of that a bit)

As far as minimizing lag goes ... we could actually avoid generating AI on a chunk of the map until a ship got within range, allowing players to play out the map in segments, in whatever order they ran through things..

It really does open up a HUGE collection of possibilities, we're just barely scratching the surface so far!

EDIT: I'm going to have to wander back over to the DIP forum and round up Chuut and Corbo's assorted mission suggestions, as well as a lot of the SFB mini-campaign scenarios ... there are a lot of things that might get new life here.


dave

[FPF-DieHard]

Make most of these missions into AI-stripped patrols so if they trigger in a hot hex it will prevent t00l from whining. 

Though it might make for an interesting change in the Dynamic if the game were more focussed on this stuff tghan the strategic war.  We may actually have that "cold war" server

[FPF-SCM_TraceyG_XC]

I've mentioned this ages ago... but if we had SQL, we could do a whole lot more too... mission scripts could send SQL queries to the server... move ships through wormholes from one side of the map to the other... genesis devices that create planets... starkiller torpedoes that turn stars into asteroids... even planet killers that break up planets...

Imagine a Doomsday Machine that actually destroyed planets as it wandered across the map... or a real Deep Space Nine that protected a wormhole...

[NuclearWessels]

Make most of these missions into AI-stripped patrols so if they trigger in a hot hex it will prevent t00l from whining. 

Though it might make for an interesting change in the Dynamic if the game were more focussed on this stuff tghan the strategic war.  We may actually have that "cold war" server

No sweat - I've put together two skeletons, one for the AI stripping missions and one for the "objectives" style of mission that require a variety of AI.

dave

[Dfly]

I got to fly a few missions on ED's combat at high speeds(250 and 500).  Here is a list of things I was still able to do while in higher speeds:

1-Fire all phasers at speeds 250 and 500(just had to turn them back on after hitting yellow or green alert)
2-Launch drones at speed 250, but not at 500
3-Launch shuttles at speeds 250 and 500, including scatterpacks,  forgot to try a ww
4-Multiple HETs, till I finally broke down(did 6 in a row)  While doing this, my Pirate ship never went below 66.7 % till it broke.  Even breaking did not slow me down till I broke 5 times and engines were too hurt.  I repaired engines, got speed to +20, hit green alert and went 500 immediately.  Tried red alert, slowed, hit green,no go.  Seems if you were in at 500 and lost engines(like engine doubling maybe?), then repaired them you could immediately go 500 again if you wish.

Now, pulling HETs at 500 is neet but unrealistic.  I would expect a ship would blow apart at that speed.  At the very least all life would be crushed by G-Force.

[NuclearWessels]

I've mentioned this ages ago... but if we had SQL, we could do a whole lot more too... mission scripts could send SQL queries to the server... move ships through wormholes from one side of the map to the other... genesis devices that create planets... starkiller torpedoes that turn stars into asteroids... even planet killers that break up planets...

Imagine a Doomsday Machine that actually destroyed planets as it wandered across the map... or a real Deep Space Nine that protected a wormhole...

Man, you should see the OCI (Online Campaign Interface) that Bonk had setup -- talk about sweet!  We just need to find a way to get him connected now that he's gone bush

dave

[NuclearWessels]

I got to fly a few missions on ED's combat at high speeds(250 and 500).  Here is a list of things I was still able to do while in higher speeds:

1-Fire all phasers at speeds 250 and 500(just had to turn them back on after hitting yellow or green alert)
2-Launch drones at speed 250, but not at 500
3-Launch shuttles at speeds 250 and 500, including scatterpacks,  forgot to try a ww
4-Multiple HETs, till I finally broke down(did 6 in a row)  While doing this, my Pirate ship never went below 66.7 % till it broke.  Even breaking did not slow me down till I broke 5 times and engines were too hurt.  I repaired engines, got speed to +20, hit green alert and went 500 immediately.  Tried red alert, slowed, hit green,no go.  Seems if you were in at 500 and lost engines(like engine doubling maybe?), then repaired them you could immediately go 500 again if you wish.

Now, pulling HETs at 500 is neet but unrealistic.  I would expect a ship would blow apart at that speed.  At the very least all life would be crushed by G-Force.

Heh, thanks Dfly - gives me a list of things to work on.  One thing I'm considering is allowing people to try this stuff at warp speed, but every time you do so there's a chance of a catastrophic breakdown.  (Basically because it's tough to prevent the actions scriptside, but you can detect some of it once it happens, and then...)

dave