[[Template core/global/global/poll is throwing an error. This theme may be out of date. Run the support tool in the AdminCP to restore the default theme.]]
Preface:Avorion is one of my favorite games. While I myself have always been utter garbage at three dimensional design, The sheer scope of the game captured my imagination. I left the game a while ago for other games, but recently, spurred on by Dark Disciples amazing star wars ship designs, I decided to rejoin the game and see what had been added, what had been fixed, and if the game was still alive. I began building a fleet in creative (I only have one hour a day to play and I don't want to go back to grinding yet). To my delight I found out about custom fighters, and even realized I could fly my own fighters. They were a bit buggy, and seemed to teleport through my ship on impact (no collision damage is what I chalk that one up to), but nevertheless fun and gave a great sense of scale. One thing remained unfixed however: salvaging using fighters. Salvaging using fighters is still clunky, and requires more effort than just doing it yourself. Anyone who has ever tried to salvage in avorion using fighters can tell you this. When pieces of a wreck get split off they are not targeted by fighters. This means you have to target every little piece of salvage. In creative this is no big deal as I don't need materials. But I can imagine players not in creative who need every bit of material would find this frustrating. The system need not be so frustrating. In this paper I will discuss fleet mechanics, fighter mechanics and other suggestions that could make the game more engaging, give more life to the universe and make having a fleet more practical than just having a single mothership. Without further waffling, I present:
A fleet In Being
-A in depth look at Avorion fleet, fighter and other-
-mechanics-
(All credit for above image to skyworld for the screenshot and Blackdisciple for ships)
Table of contents:
Fleet mechanics
Slow movement speed
Jump range
Fighting
Fighter improvements
Fleet mechanics: One of the coolest things in any space game is a battle fleet. The sheer size and scale of a single battle ship from a drone is visually interesting. A battlefleet consisting of the same battle ship from before with a supporting fleet of anti fighter corvettes, Cruisers, Supply Ships and a carrier is a sight to behold. You would also assume that a fleet would also be to more powerful choice, allowing the battleship to focus of heavy weapons and corvettes to focus on anti fighter weapons. But in game, this is not the case, a single massive ship is the route to go. In its current state, fleets are a liability to bring with you, and are only useful for protecting sectors in your absence. There are several things that make a traveling fleet unpractical.
Movement:For some inexplicable reason, other ships in your fleet will always be slower than you. It does not matter that the corvette escorting you can move at 2000m/s and your dreadnought can only travel at 800m/s, the ship you are controlling will always lag behind you. This is mostly a cosmetic annoyance when traveling through a friendly sector. But when entering into combat, this can be a massive danger. If you are relying on your corvette escort to take care of fighters and the corvette is relying on you to defend it from larger ships, This can cause major problems. I get it if you are faster than your escort, that obviously it won't keep up with you.
How it could be fixed: simply have all ships accelerate till they reach the ship they are escorting, then match the speed. For example if a destroyer going 900m/s and is ahead of its escort which is stationary, the escort would boost to max speed until it reaches a certain set distance from its escort where it would stop accelerating and match the speed of its charge, in this case 900m/s
Suggestion to further improve the escort behavior: add a sub menu to escort behavior and other modes. This menu would have two modes: advanced and, simplified
Advanced: advanced mode would be a pseudo python programing. This would consist of If/than, If/else, while loops and other settings. Below an example of patrol behavior is shown. The code would run for top to bottom and each blank would have a set of preprogrammed conditions to use. Conditions involving distance or speed would have a blank spot for the player to enter a desired distance or speed.
Example 1: If than
If <> then <>
If <Enemies present> than <Launch fighters
If enemies are present in sector the ship will launch fighters.
Example 2: If/than/else
If <> then <> else <>
if <Sector is clear> than <patrol> else <Launch fighters>
if the sector is clear the vessel will patrol. Else, launch fighters.
Example 3: While loop
While <>, <>
while <Sector is clear>, <patrol>
while the sector is clear patrol
Simplified: Much like the current system, but with slightly more customizability (Wip)
Suggestion to add a fleet formation designer menu: A fleet is only as good as its organization. In the current state of the game it is not possible to set formations. Ships just happen to in any order. What this would do is allow for a player to set a formation of his ships. Say for example you are transporting materials to your factories and you have to go through some unclaimed territory and are weary of an ambush. Using the formation designer you could put your vulnerable transports in a line with a battleship at the front, a cruiser at the back and corvettes on the flanks. You would be able to set multiple formations that you could call upon in any situation and use the programing mode to set different formations at different conditions. Formation one for traveling through friendly space, formation two for when entering combat.
Jump range in fleets: Not all ships have the same jump radius. It is easy to forget this when crossing vast distances. In the current state of the game, you only see the jump radius of your current ship. If you jump further than other ships in your fleet can, these ships will jump however far they can, but no further and will not attempt to reconnect to the fleet. A possible way to do this would be a second circle in red that indicates the max jump range of the ship in your fleet with the smallest radius. Additionally if you leave behind a ship it will automatically attempt to reconnect with the rest of the fleet. This would make jumping whole fleets less painful.
Fighting as a fleet: A third reason it is impractical to use fleets over a single massive ship is how inept your ai captains are at combat. At the current moment, ai ships will always hold fire till they point bow forward at enemies. This not only looks terrible but it can lead to larger ai controlled ships being defeated because even though an enemy ship is in a good to be fired at, the ai won't. What I'm suggesting is ai controlled ships use their weapons like independent firing weapons. This could lead to much more aesthetically pleasing fights with ships emptying broadsides into each other. Additionally, the player should be able to set roles for each ship. Some possible roles could be: anti fighter, artillery, charge, hang back. An example of one of these roles would be anti fighter for example, set a frigate to hold its position in formation and use its chain guns, lasers or missiles to target enemy fighters. This would give reason to build purpose built ships rather than just battleships
Fighter Improvements:Fighters are one of the most interesting features of Avorion. Fighters while at first may not seem all that dangerous, can deal great amounts of damage. The mining, salvaging and healing fighters also have great potential, sadly however, they are still impractical to use. Every time a wreck splits, you need to Manually select each piece of wreckage. Same goes for mining with fighters. There is a easy way to fix this luckily. Regular fighter wings have an option called, defense, where the fighters target anything attacking in the general area of your main craft. Simply apply this to salvage and mining fighters. Target one piece of wreckage. After salvaging that, the salvage fighters will target all wreckage in the area of the first wreck and spread out from there. This would make salvage fighters more viable. A possible change for fighters would be target priority. For a air defense screen, the player would select a fighter squad and set it to target enemy fighters.
Suggestion
Charless
Preface:Avorion is one of my favorite games. While I myself have always been utter garbage at three dimensional design, The sheer scope of the game captured my imagination. I left the game a while ago for other games, but recently, spurred on by Dark Disciples amazing star wars ship designs, I decided to rejoin the game and see what had been added, what had been fixed, and if the game was still alive. I began building a fleet in creative (I only have one hour a day to play and I don't want to go back to grinding yet). To my delight I found out about custom fighters, and even realized I could fly my own fighters. They were a bit buggy, and seemed to teleport through my ship on impact (no collision damage is what I chalk that one up to), but nevertheless fun and gave a great sense of scale. One thing remained unfixed however: salvaging using fighters. Salvaging using fighters is still clunky, and requires more effort than just doing it yourself. Anyone who has ever tried to salvage in avorion using fighters can tell you this. When pieces of a wreck get split off they are not targeted by fighters. This means you have to target every little piece of salvage. In creative this is no big deal as I don't need materials. But I can imagine players not in creative who need every bit of material would find this frustrating. The system need not be so frustrating. In this paper I will discuss fleet mechanics, fighter mechanics and other suggestions that could make the game more engaging, give more life to the universe and make having a fleet more practical than just having a single mothership. Without further waffling, I present:
A fleet In Being
-A in depth look at Avorion fleet, fighter and other-
-mechanics-
(All credit for above image to skyworld for the screenshot and Blackdisciple for ships)
Table of contents:
Fleet mechanics
Slow movement speed
Jump range
Fighting
Fighter improvements
Fleet mechanics: One of the coolest things in any space game is a battle fleet. The sheer size and scale of a single battle ship from a drone is visually interesting. A battlefleet consisting of the same battle ship from before with a supporting fleet of anti fighter corvettes, Cruisers, Supply Ships and a carrier is a sight to behold. You would also assume that a fleet would also be to more powerful choice, allowing the battleship to focus of heavy weapons and corvettes to focus on anti fighter weapons. But in game, this is not the case, a single massive ship is the route to go. In its current state, fleets are a liability to bring with you, and are only useful for protecting sectors in your absence. There are several things that make a traveling fleet unpractical.
Movement:For some inexplicable reason, other ships in your fleet will always be slower than you. It does not matter that the corvette escorting you can move at 2000m/s and your dreadnought can only travel at 800m/s, the ship you are controlling will always lag behind you. This is mostly a cosmetic annoyance when traveling through a friendly sector. But when entering into combat, this can be a massive danger. If you are relying on your corvette escort to take care of fighters and the corvette is relying on you to defend it from larger ships, This can cause major problems. I get it if you are faster than your escort, that obviously it won't keep up with you.
How it could be fixed: simply have all ships accelerate till they reach the ship they are escorting, then match the speed. For example if a destroyer going 900m/s and is ahead of its escort which is stationary, the escort would boost to max speed until it reaches a certain set distance from its escort where it would stop accelerating and match the speed of its charge, in this case 900m/s
Suggestion to further improve the escort behavior: add a sub menu to escort behavior and other modes. This menu would have two modes: advanced and, simplified
Advanced: advanced mode would be a pseudo python programing. This would consist of If/than, If/else, while loops and other settings. Below an example of patrol behavior is shown. The code would run for top to bottom and each blank would have a set of preprogrammed conditions to use. Conditions involving distance or speed would have a blank spot for the player to enter a desired distance or speed.
Example 1: If than
If <> then <>
If <Enemies present> than <Launch fighters
If enemies are present in sector the ship will launch fighters.
Example 2: If/than/else
If <> then <> else <>
if <Sector is clear> than <patrol> else <Launch fighters>
if the sector is clear the vessel will patrol. Else, launch fighters.
Example 3: While loop
While <>, <>
while <Sector is clear>, <patrol>
while the sector is clear patrol
Simplified: Much like the current system, but with slightly more customizability (Wip)
Suggestion to add a fleet formation designer menu: A fleet is only as good as its organization. In the current state of the game it is not possible to set formations. Ships just happen to in any order. What this would do is allow for a player to set a formation of his ships. Say for example you are transporting materials to your factories and you have to go through some unclaimed territory and are weary of an ambush. Using the formation designer you could put your vulnerable transports in a line with a battleship at the front, a cruiser at the back and corvettes on the flanks. You would be able to set multiple formations that you could call upon in any situation and use the programing mode to set different formations at different conditions. Formation one for traveling through friendly space, formation two for when entering combat.
Jump range in fleets: Not all ships have the same jump radius. It is easy to forget this when crossing vast distances. In the current state of the game, you only see the jump radius of your current ship. If you jump further than other ships in your fleet can, these ships will jump however far they can, but no further and will not attempt to reconnect to the fleet. A possible way to do this would be a second circle in red that indicates the max jump range of the ship in your fleet with the smallest radius. Additionally if you leave behind a ship it will automatically attempt to reconnect with the rest of the fleet. This would make jumping whole fleets less painful.
Fighting as a fleet: A third reason it is impractical to use fleets over a single massive ship is how inept your ai captains are at combat. At the current moment, ai ships will always hold fire till they point bow forward at enemies. This not only looks terrible but it can lead to larger ai controlled ships being defeated because even though an enemy ship is in a good to be fired at, the ai won't. What I'm suggesting is ai controlled ships use their weapons like independent firing weapons. This could lead to much more aesthetically pleasing fights with ships emptying broadsides into each other. Additionally, the player should be able to set roles for each ship. Some possible roles could be: anti fighter, artillery, charge, hang back. An example of one of these roles would be anti fighter for example, set a frigate to hold its position in formation and use its chain guns, lasers or missiles to target enemy fighters. This would give reason to build purpose built ships rather than just battleships
Fighter Improvements:Fighters are one of the most interesting features of Avorion. Fighters while at first may not seem all that dangerous, can deal great amounts of damage. The mining, salvaging and healing fighters also have great potential, sadly however, they are still impractical to use. Every time a wreck splits, you need to Manually select each piece of wreckage. Same goes for mining with fighters. There is a easy way to fix this luckily. Regular fighter wings have an option called, defense, where the fighters target anything attacking in the general area of your main craft. Simply apply this to salvage and mining fighters. Target one piece of wreckage. After salvaging that, the salvage fighters will target all wreckage in the area of the first wreck and spread out from there. This would make salvage fighters more viable. A possible change for fighters would be target priority. For a air defense screen, the player would select a fighter squad and set it to target enemy fighters.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
3 answers to this suggestion
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now