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Ishina Fel
Caldari Synergy. Imperial Republic Of the North
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Posted - 2008.02.01 19:24:00 -
[1]
A thought just occured to me - is it possible to organize drones and/or fighters in "wings" of up to five, which would behave as if it was one single entity? Drones already move as a group more or less all the time; I cannot really think up any scenario where it would be actually beneficial to send your drones on different targets.
That would, for example, allow the game to only track the current position of the group, instead of tracking each drone separately as it is now. That would free up some of the ehavy congestion that carriers and motherships in particular are causing in today's fleet battles.
I know it may lead to drastic changes in how drones work, but I wanted to throw the idea out there and leave the details to the devs to ponder. They can decide best if this can be implemented, and if it'll even have a lag reducing effect on the server.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today! |
Kiki Arnolds
Caldari
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Posted - 2008.02.01 20:27:00 -
[2]
How would this work when the drone groups starts taking damage? how is that damage distributed? ç¦ |
Jacob Mei
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Posted - 2008.02.01 20:51:00 -
[3]
Homeworld 2 did something like this for fighter squads.
Basicly each "squad" was a single game unit. As this unit took damage you would see the individual fighter ships explode. The destruction of the squad meant the destruction of the unit basicly. To "heal" the unit you docked the squad in a carrier or mothership which the crews built new fighters and added them to the remaining squads.
Problem with this approach though is that you wouldnt be able to customize the squads, IE they would have to be all one type of drone.
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Ishina Fel
Caldari Synergy. Imperial Republic Of the North
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Posted - 2008.02.02 11:27:00 -
[4]
Edited by: Ishina Fel on 02/02/2008 11:29:45
Originally by: Jacob Mei Problem with this approach though is that you wouldnt be able to customize the squads, IE they would have to be all one type of drone.
Hmmm. Maybe not, actually.
Here's a practical implementation idea:
-Player has the choice when launching a drone group to launch them normally or as a wing. When in space, a drone wing can be 'disbanded' at any time, setting the drones free to roam individually. When this happens, all drones simply start with the coordinates the wing had before the disbanding, and each drone will start with the same damage status (i.e. wing had 50% armor, all drones start with 50% armor). However, a wing cannot be formed in space; it must be specified when launching a drone group. Wings can contain aynwhere between 2 and 5 drones.
-Players should not be forced to, but have an incentive to launch drones as wings. Incentives could be, to start with, the simple fact that drones will no longer randomly wander off to different new targets after their current target has been destroyed.
-A further incentive could be survivability. Let's assume an opponent locks and fires on the drone wing. The wing would have shield HP and armor HP as all its member drones added together, and the attacker has to chew through all of it to reach the structure HP. Now, if you had five drones in the wing, the first one would die at 80% structure, the second and 60%, and so on till the last drone dies at 0% structure. The attacking player still needs to deal the same damage to kill 5 drones as before, but only at the very end the drone wing starts losing drones, and therefore damage output and ISK. This feature is especially useful for logistic and EW drones.
Also, it might be worth noting that a wing can shield tank much better, having the base shield hp of all member drones added and a shield recharge time of the average of all members. Like, a wing of 5 Hammerheads would have five times the shield HP of a single Hammerhead, but the same shield recharge time as a single Hammerhead. All this would mean that, if 5 drones in a wing fought 5 identical drones not in a wing, the drone wing would probably not even take armor damage by the time they obliterated their targets.
-A wing can be made up of any combination of drones or fighters, up to five members, and just becomes one single 'drone' with one 'turret' for every actual member drone. The wing moves at the speed of its slowest member drone, and has a signature radius of the average radii of its member drones. Each 'turret', i.e. drone offensive potential, can still be tracked separately. You could even mix EW drones into a regular drone wing if you wanted.
-Fighters would be unable to warp when in a wing with regular drones, or alternatively, can not be put into wings with regular drones. Assigning fighters to a target ship would only be possible by assigning a wing, and disbanded fighter wings leave the control of the ship they were assigned to before and return to the control of the carrier (maybe even return to the carrier).
How does that sound?
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today! |
Carniflex
Caldari Fallout Research Fallout Project
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Posted - 2008.02.02 11:36:00 -
[5]
That is pretty good idea I think. Altho might not be easy to implement code wise.
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Nicoli Voldkif
Caelli-Merced INC. Gunboat Diplomacy
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Posted - 2008.02.02 23:16:00 -
[6]
The easiest way to balance the wing is to add the HP of all drones but reduce the orbit speed. Fluff wise the drones are able to rotate taking hits but lose max speed in order to allow it to happen.
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Messingaround
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Posted - 2008.02.03 11:38:00 -
[7]
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Thargat
Caldari North Star Networks Triumvirate.
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Posted - 2008.02.03 13:27:00 -
[8]
Edited by: Thargat on 03/02/2008 13:31:58
I suggested about the same thing a couple of months ago when they discussed the carrier and drone nerfs.
Fiction wise: A fighter is more powerful than a frig even though it's much much smaller. The price of a fighter is also a bit high if you just look at the size and technology of the thing (compared to a frig, and I'm only talking fiction here). A carrier (wich is HUGE even compared to RL modern warships) can only hold 15 fighters at one time wich is a bit lame (immersion wise). As I said it's just immersion, but with the new trinity graphics there are "possibilities".
If CCP decides to nerf carriers down to 5 fighters "active". Why not make squadrons of them?
Instead of 1 fighter for each "unit", why not have 6 or 12 fighters following the same flighpath as one. In effect it would still just be 1 target (no changes in calculations or anything) and they would behave in the same manner as fighters do today. But graphics wise it would be a small manouvering cluster of fighters for each unit (some kind of formation). So a MS dropping 15 fighters on someone would in fact look like a MS sending 90 fighter sized craft to attack a target, wich as far as I'm concerned would feel about right damagewise.
They could also change the descriptions and values of the fighters and drones so that they really look and feel like squadrons instead of single items.
Ok, it would be a little odd if you shoot at the fighters and when the "unit" hits the last structure HP they all explode. One option would be to start removing the graphical representation of the fighters when they take structure damage and ignore the fact that they "should" loose DPS if there are fewer fighters in a squad (and the wierd part of fighters increasing in numbers when you remoterep them). There are probably several other ways to handle this though.
If CCP wants to adjust drones and fighter HP and DPS in future patches they could just add or subtract the number of fighters/drones in each group wich would help to keep the immersion intact.
In case you missed my point. It would only be a graphical addition of fighters/drones. No new calculations, just animations that makes it look like there are several fighters/drones instead of just one.
GFX solutions could be instance rendering (wich should put minimal extra stress on the GPUs of our computers) and clever use of LOD.
edit: And another neat function would be that the ROF is represented by strafingruns instead of just silly pew pew orbiting. (yes I've played too much homeworld).
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Mei Han
Gallente Mythos Corp RAZOR Alliance
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Posted - 2008.02.03 17:22:00 -
[9]
After seeing how a system can be locked down due to 10 Moms and 5 carriers releasing thier drones i cannot protest against drone changes. Fighter lag is much worse that the lag produced by 500 normal ships because Frighters do not lag and the sides do not play under equal terms.
I would even suggest that non cap ships could release maximum of 1 drone (even tho i do not like the idea, resembles to pet a lot tbh). That drone would have the basic atributes of a drone of its class multiplied by the factor the ships bw is bigger. For example an Ishtar releases one heavy drone. 25bw the ishtar has a total bw of 75. So 75/25=5(also maximum). The single heavy drone released by Ishtar will have 5times the damage 5times the shield/armor/hull.*
One step further is to unify the shield armor and hull of the drone to one. And the resistances recalculated to give the same effective HP.Or Even better, remove resistances all together and make the effective HP the total HP.
Another calculation that could help if it didn't exist is the one of tracking. Drone calculate tracking for every shot they make. I would suggest for a penalty in overall damage for the tracking to be removed.**
* That would have a weakpoint tho. The webbed drone would be doomed and nearly imposible to be recalled to drone bay.But if we just do not penaltise the damage due to ** that would balance the scale a bit.
Or another approach. Make drone/fighters a low priority in the server. That way drones will lag and not the player, and moms and carrier will give a 2nd thought about thier drone efficiency.
Those are some crazy ideas that have commed to mind. Because lets face it. Even with the new hardware and/or carrier/mom nerf as time passes fights will have more and more capitals. And every single drone/fighter burdens the server as much as a player controlled ship. Players lag, fighters play.
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