Couple problems with flying the cap ships using the same interface we have now:

*Scale: Whereas in a fighter your ship might have extended a couple meters in each direction from your point of view, in a cap ship you could have hundreds of meters of ship in each direction.

*Perspective: things get smaller the farther away they are. It doesn't help to have a first person perspective when you need to survey the tactical situation of a ship that's almost a kilometer long. You need to be able to see the entire scene.

*Mass: I'm not sure mouselook would even work for a cap ship, the mass is so huge. Know how sluggish the Behemoth feels when flying in mouselook mode? Multiply that by 10. I'm fairly certain a cap ship would be impossible to control using mouselook.

I'd expect that the captain would have some kind of 3rd person view of his cap ship. The mouse would rotate the angle, and the "w" and "s" keys would zoom in and out. This way the captain could get a better view of the overall tactical situation quickly. Anyone play "Ares" by Ambrosia Software? That's the kind of tactical view I think we need.

The actual steering of the cap ship could be the captain's responsibility, but it would probably be complex enough to relegate it either to AI or an actual player "helmsman." The captain would be more concerned with getting an overall picture of things, planning strategy, designating waypoints and targets.

I'd imagine a helmsman would have complete control over all the cap ship's thrusters. I.e. if he set the cap ship spinning, it would go on spinning until he brought it to a halt again. The helmsman wouldn't need to worry about the overall tactical situation to the same degree as the captain... the captain would designate a waypoint based on the overall picture, and the helmsman would manipulate the thrusters to take the cap ship in that direction.

In the same manner, the captain could designate groups of gunners, and assign each gun group a target... the gunners would only have to worry about firing at their designated target... unless told to "fire at will!" ;p

Of course, on cap ships with smaller crews, the helmsman and the captain's roles could be combined, but I think a cap ship would be more effective with these responsibilities divided amongst two officers.

i like the idea of seperat "consoles".

the way i see it there would be several tabbs that could be activated only by the owner of the ship.

tacticle (used for general overview, and controles helm privleges)
weapons controle (sets weapon AI and or player privledges for weapons)
cargo and hangar controle (manages cargo and hangar bays, and sets player and ai privleges for fighters)

Also there would be several panels accesable by anyone who is onboard the ship.

Helm (can only be occupied by one player who has been given access at a time, and allows unlimited controle of navagation and manuvering systems ~uses a similat 3rd person view to the tacticle display~)

Weapons Controle (this is similar to the turret selecting panel on the current HAC but only playes with acess can controle a turret)

Cargo and Hangar controle (allows reconfiguring and selecting ships from the hangar, and or manipulating cargo access levels dependent of set privleges)

Basicly this system gives the chip owner controle over who can use what. Controle would be fairly specific for the cargo and hangar panes but for the others would simply be a yes or no setting.

player's privleges for the hangar could be set to "unlimited" (just what it sounds like) "Owned only" (similar to the station interface where the player has unlimited acess to anything he/she ownes onboard the cap ship) "Limited" (player only has access to the ship he/she landed in and any cargo set to "Comunal") "Blocked" (player can't acess the hangar or cargo at all). The cargo controles would be simple: any player who has access above "blocked" can load cargo that the own into the ":comunal" area and take cargo from the comunal area.

as for the tacticle display:
i'd like to see two options. One being a 3rd person view like what we have now, and the other being an abstract tacticle display, where ships are represented as simple symbols (this would be usefull in large scale battles where it's easier to recognise a red triangle as a Serco fighter, a blue rectangle as an Itani bohemopth etc. than diferentiating between the various hull designes, and collor scheams that have no real baring on alingment)

A similar effect to the abstract view could be achieved if the targeting rectangle were displaied over every ship and color coded similarly to the radar.

Hi,

I support the idea of different interface... more over a different engine. You do not need a realistic 3D engine for a game where your enemies are not lone fighters but squadrons.

On the raft of a capital ship you can not manipulate all turrets. In best case you have time to poke on a 3D map to select the target ships or squadrons. Then its the NPC crews task to fullfill your will.

Same with navigation. You can not out maneuver any ship. Even a tiny correction requires to keep the turn button pressed for long seconds. Its easier to poke on the map where you want to go.

Regards,

Darkwood

I don't know if we ever posted our ideas on this or not (to the wiki or otherwise) but our preliminary plan was this (it's similar to what's been suggested):

Show a big "overhead" view of the entire sector (by finding the longest axes of the sector layout and putting a 2D grid over the center of mass of the sector extending out from there) - and render onto the grid a wireframe "no entry" zone by extruding the outsides of asteroids and stations and other objects in the way by the radius of the capital ship. It would work a lot like Homeworld's interface, with additional information drawn onto the grid itself. You could then move the grid up and down along the "Y" axis (by dragging with the right mouse button) and plot a course for your ship, setting waypoints by clicking on the grid.

This implies that the ship essentially "flies itself" although I do like the idea of an AI helmsman who could be replaced by a human player. That might be truly cool - it's very difficult to fly a capital ship by controlling its thrusters, but I imagine there might be some people very skilled at this (and many more not so skilled...) and this could give the capital ship owner an advantage. The waypoints would then be merely orders from the captain to his helmsman, indicated on his HUD.

Similarly the captain could assign fighter wings to targets or whatever using the Homeworld-esque interface, and, as a fighter pilot, your current target assigned by your captain would be highlighted on your HUD (separately from your selection mechanism).

Addendum: as LordQ suggested, we might want to overlay some kind of icon on top of each ship in the capital ship overview display. Drawing boxes around them might be sufficient though, we'll have to see how it goes.

edit: didn't see a1k0n's post. That sounds really cool. Please let us have the option to designate a human helmsman... no matter how difficult or complex it may be I guarantee some players would develop their cap ship skippering skills!

LordQ: yeah, I think we're on the same page. The captain should have control over who gets what responsibilities on his ship. One suggestion I might make is lumping "Cargo and Hangar" together with an "Engineering" console... in case system damage and repair is ever implimented... and I think a player would be happier playing an Engineer than a Cargo and Hangar specialist ;).

darvud: I agree with your post except for the part about having a different engine. That would create uneccesary work, and VO's existing engine is very versatile.

Same with navigation. You can not out maneuver any ship. Even a tiny correction requires to keep the turn button pressed for long seconds. Its easier to poke on the map where you want to go.

Yep... that's what I'm thinking. The captain would designate a waypoint and then the helmsman or the AI would take the ship there.

Which brings up another important point. There has to be an easy way for the captain to communicate targets, locations, and direction to his crew... so you don't have to say things like "fire at the blue fighter next to that clump of asteroids over there... no, no, no over there"

I'm thinking that the captain could select a group of gunners or the helmsman, then have an option "set target to..." with a list of ships in range. A brief message would echo for those players, letting them know the captain had designated their target. "Wait until we get inside 2k and give that ship a full broadside... helmsman, make sure our dorsal turrets are facing this ship."

Another good option for the captain would be the ability to set a waypoint that showed up on the helmsman's radar. In fact, the captain could set a series of waypoints to designate a route through a sector... they could look something like the storm exit points we have now, and they would pop up in sequence as each one was reached.

As an alternative, there could be a kind of compass or faint stereonet that showed the cap ship's heading with respect to some arbitrary "North" and some arbitrary "Up." That way the captain could tell the helmsman: "Make your course 170 by 30... full ahead. Prepare to engage!"

(didn't I just say that? :)

I love the way LordQ says "tacticle" it's cute!

But anyway, YAY Homeworld Interface! Now can we launch all zig and direct them to destroy our opponents? How far are you guys gonna take this "hands-off / non-twitch" approach?

I love the way LeberMac spells take off every 'ZIG' for great justice! it's cute!

We weren't planning on having AI fighter drones, really. If we do, they would probably get pwnz0red by any real players, since we don't want the gameplay to shift towards "everyone shooting 500 fighters at each other's capital ships"...

Heh. Indeed! For great justice What you say etc etc

OK good, so only the multiplayer ships will be "controllable" in this fashion? How about multiple ships? Will a player be able to control more than 1 capship with this kind of interface?

i wouldn't mind having that many fighters shot at me once or twice actually...it'd be fun to see how long i lasted :).

i think my sugestion regarding cargo was miss understood:

the captains cargo tab is able to ste who can do what, but the general tab would be used to manage the fighters and cargo onboard the cap ship. So if pilor A was trading his cent in for a rag, he would use the cargo/hangar tab. Any number of players can use the cargo/hangar tab, but each player's access is limited by the privleges granted by the captain (so player A may have access to anything on the ship, but Player B may only have acess to the comunal cargo bay, and Player C may have access to what they own only, and Player D may only have access to the ship on which he came).

basicly the idea was based on the opinion that trusted players should be able to land, reload, and posable select a different ship from the hangar or even re equip one or more ships, but that players who aren't praticulary well trusted are limited to lesser acess, or even blocked out entierly.

however now that i think about it a "quartermaster" (someone who's job it is to manage all the fighters and cargo) may be usefull in battle. that way when a pilot lands he just grabs another ship and goes out inediately, while the quartermaster sees that the ship that was just landed is repaired and reloaded from ship's stores. and when the cap ship runs low on ammunition he can inform the captain, and posably begin reloading the fighters with soly energy loadouts to reduce ammo useage.

What about midsize ships? Would ALL multi-player ships use this interface? Are there no plans for a Corvette-style 2-3 player ship with fighter-type controls? At what point does the view switch from FPS to RTS style? :P

perhaps it could be implementes do that the FPS and tacticle displays were available for all ships, and that way the boarderline ships could be controled either way, but the extreem ships would almost exclusively be flown in the mode designed for them (fighters in FPS and cap ships in tacticle)

This is the coolest thread since sliced bread.

Homeworld interface for a cap ship? Heh, you'd probably draw in people from the HW crowd just to try that out ;]

RTS bah!

FPS woo!

this aint no RTS keep the cap ship flyable from "looking out the window like a pilot" view

It does add a lot of possibility for combat coordination. A cap ship pilot that can set waypoints that other pilots can see would be freaking sweet. It would be like MMO freespace! The cap ship sets objectives... talk about awesome. You could do raids on convoys and mark the transports as primary targets, escorts as secondary...

Yeah, all speculation and for the future. But sill, letting someone see the sector from a tactical viewpoint would add a whole new dimension to the game.

but this isnt an RTS...

But it IS multi-genre already, with elements of RPG and FPS. I could see it incorporating some RTS elements, too. I'm all for a (somewhat) Homeworld-esque interface for Cap ships. What Lord Q, Phaserlight, and a1k0n describe sound awesome to me.

Have you ever played Planetside, who?me? The commander skill tree gets an item that allows them to look at a map and set waypoints. He can also walk around with a gun like a grunt. The game is a total FPS, with minimal RP possibilities.

Sound familiar?

The capship pilot should be allowed to see a tactical view of the battlefield and set waypoints. You could even steal an element from planetside, and have a "command" part of your skill - everytime a group finished a mission that you were the group leader for, you'd get some points. You'd need that to use this extra mode.

But even without that, letting a capital ship pilot plan battles and set way points for his fighters can only add to the game. How can it possibly detract?

This will just add another aspect to gameplay, not detract from it.

A capship can't move it's mass as fast as a fighter... It'll be like a moth full of samo... or worse... do you really want to hold down the arrow key for that long just to turn a tiny bit?

I like the waypoint idea. I'll have to check out Homeworld to see what the interface is like.

It's just... that if there is a "capitol" ship that is about the same mass as a queen... that it be able to manoeuvre just as well.

-Zoras