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Post by Wolfee on Aug 13, 2015 16:01:36 GMT -5
Without focused commands, ships as of yet each individually target (usually turrets) and enemies become extremely hard to destroy. Usually you can just group attack and they'll all target the same thing, but if you want to attack while moving or not have to issue special orders for every ship to attack you, enemes become significantly tankier as ships must kill enough turrets to finally target the hull.
Could there be a button (probably besides the "group attack participation" button) that switches the priority of the ship's weapons? For simplicity's sake, each ship can have two possible priorities: switch between turret/hull for miniguns, turret/little-aliens for lasers, ship/little-aliens for flak, etc. This way, in formations, each ship can accomplish a role without getting stuck targetting something unwanted (such as lasers targetting turrets as you get mauled by little previously purple aliens) without micromanagement. If the priority isn't in range, the ships would of course target other stuff until another priority target enters its range.
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Post by Staff of Charon on Aug 13, 2015 21:12:52 GMT -5
I agree with the problem, and I like this idea.
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Post by Space Borders on Aug 15, 2015 10:23:45 GMT -5
Justified, but you need to give me some time to get to this.
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Post by Space Borders on Sept 7, 2015 5:14:18 GMT -5
Ok, so this is something that needs some work. I'd like to split this up into two parts.
1) The player selects a target.
Does anyone of you ever attack individual turrets and I'm not talking about using special powers or the nuke or anything like that, just a plain attack command? If nobody attacks individual turrets, then perhaps we should drop this feature completely. So whenever you tap near a ship, the ship itself is attacked, not any of its turrets.
2) Having the AI prioritize targets.
This is actually a big one (not in terms of development), because the game heavily relies on micromanagement. That's actually supposed to be the idea of this game. If the AI makes targeting choices that are too smart, it would start to rely more on itself than the player, which would be bad. However, I do see how it can be very annoying when a laser attacks turrets rather than a million drones flying around, so here is a small idea:
How about having lasers prioritize drones when the ship has reached the maximum experience level? At least that way, the ship would have to be "trained" first.
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Post by acbirkland on Sept 7, 2015 7:08:34 GMT -5
I do, I use the laser centaurs/anti matter ship to try and drop some of the turrets before the big ships get close.
But if you really wanted to make Targeting play a bigger part, you could add more hard points like the engines (of course) command centers (reduce damage output by 10% or something) etc etc.
Although on a personal note I think that the Alien ships should get a bit of a health boost, I'm at the part in the game where anything thrown at me gets brushed aside easily, even on hard.
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Post by Clinkzbone on Sept 7, 2015 9:57:11 GMT -5
1. *raises hand* I target turrets sometimes, because it's sometimes faster to strip a ship of its weapons than to actually destroy it. This way I can turn my attention to other targets faster.
2. Make it like the targeting system on alien ships then. Lock onto the first viable target (so in this case a turret), and don't change targets UNLESS ordered to do so, in which case priorities drones over turrets. Tada! Retain micromanagement by forcing the player to actively set their ships to target drones. Actually this is kinda what we already have but eh.
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Post by Space Borders on Sept 11, 2015 10:05:27 GMT -5
1. *raises hand* I target turrets sometimes, because it's sometimes faster to strip a ship of its weapons than to actually destroy it. This way I can turn my attention to other targets faster. 2. Make it like the targeting system on alien ships then. Lock onto the first viable target (so in this case a turret), and don't change targets UNLESS ordered to do so, in which case priorities drones over turrets. Tada! Retain micromanagement by forcing the player to actively set their ships to target drones. Actually this is kinda what we already have but eh. Yep, kinda what we have now, with the only difference that you force the turret to select the target type of your choosing. One problem would be targeting drones that move very fast across the screen, not the weak ones, but the ones that are equivalent to EDF fighters. But the idea is actually good, at least there wouldn't have to be a new button. I'll see if I can implement that in a nice clean way, don't want to add a nasty workaround to achieve this.
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Post by Space Borders on Sept 11, 2015 10:11:55 GMT -5
I do, I use the laser centaurs/anti matter ship to try and drop some of the turrets before the big ships get close. But if you really wanted to make Targeting play a bigger part, you could add more hard points like the engines (of course) command centers (reduce damage output by 10% or something) etc etc. Although on a personal note I think that the Alien ships should get a bit of a health boost, I'm at the part in the game where anything thrown at me gets brushed aside easily, even on hard. Don't forget that part of this update is about a more advanced AI. Playing on level 5 is not that easy anymore. The enemy seeks out weak points like repair ships, carriers, the Daedalus etc. Also, the UFO now spawns additional wingmen to support the leader, e.g. a battlecruiser is accompanied by two heavy destroyers. Regarding modules, that's quite a lot of work and will not make it into this update for sure, but granted, the idea is very nice (just like in Homeworld).
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Post by joe130794 on Sept 12, 2015 5:26:39 GMT -5
Maybe have EDF fighters target alien fighters by default.
Also I suggested modules a long time ago, Probably better to wait for a sequel to add them. the missions on AE are well matched up last time I played and adding modules would mean needing to make gameplay harder and I don't think they would fit into the prequel having more specialised ships than in AE. Maybe in the prequel though, start with mainly civilian ships and slowly militarise them over the course of the campaign.
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Post by three3pryme on Sept 12, 2015 11:01:04 GMT -5
i think the prequel wont have many missions. But we will cross that bridge once we get to it
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