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Escort Special maneuvers?
drasym
Member Posts: 36 Arc User
Was watching an episode of DS9 (forget the name of it) where Sisko instructs Obrien to take the Defiant in to point blank range... Obrien mutters something about "attack pattern suicide" but complys... and the Defiant procedes to zig/zag in and out of the superstructure of the cardiassian ship.. literally flying circles around the cruiser. Although I am aware escorts do turn much better than cruisers in game it seems to lack the feel I got from that episode. So I was wondering what if Birds of Prey and true escorts (Ie defiant is an escort and an avenger is not) had a skill like barrel roll and/or loop de loop built into the ship (similar to cruiser power to shields/weapons/turn etc) Other than the visual / fun aspect of the maneuver it could briefly make the ship harder to hit? Thoughts? comments on this. Please feel free to agree or disagree but prefer someone states why it would or would not work, or how it could be made to work.. without flaming.
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I thought WoW's forums had angry elitist snobs, but I never could have imagined the level STO forums has.
What you are failing to consider in all this, is that the Regents Super-Neg'var is several times larger than anything We've seen in our universe.... It's almost Enterprise J-type in size.
All you have to do in code is move to the 4 space representation of 3 space (technical name: quaternion) which gets rid of the singularity*. It is fairly trivial to write a class for this and replace the 3 space trig to support it (I have done this, had to convert a generic aircraft sim to one that allowed rockets and stunts). It took about a week and a half, one person, most of it testing.
Evasive or other short term bursts of turn are amazing in a BOP and similar ships. I cannot even begin to control my BOP when I hit that button, its TOO spastic as you can pull a 180 in just a second or 2. I would say this is probably on par with the show; try it in an escort and you will see what I mean.
* for the technically minded, when you rotate straight "up" (up can be any vector in space, its arbitrary), and then roll (spin about your long fore to aft axis) you lose information --- some of your angles are zeroed out. 3 space cannot determine what your new heading is when you come out of straight up. The extra 4th dimension of a quaternion retains this information; its a combination of the other 3 terms that prevent the mathematical problem. Do a wiki search on quaternion or gimbal equations for more info.
If you want to learn to fly at evasive speed, I find the best way is to train in the Praxis debris ring - if you can learn to avoid the rocks whilst at evasive, it helps a lot in general combat
If I recall, someone also made a racing map in foundry - I can't remember the name, but I used that to learn how to fly my corvette at high speed constantly
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There are no "true Escorts". There are only Escorts. The Avenger doesn't have any Escort-exclusive attribute, thus has nothing to do with Escorts.
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well ya.. the 2 dimensional thinking on the devs part is rather annoying. Ever been in a cannon/turret escort when a beam boat is directly under you? Can't point nose straight down, you have to fly away and turn around.. even though there is no up nor down in space and a ship should be able to point in any direction.. But this is a discussion for another thread I think...
Racing map? Will have to go search for that one in the foundry. Sounds like fun and good training at the same time.
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The in-game issue has nothing to do with the difficulty of coding the rotations, and everything to do with the fact that the developers don't want ships to become "upside-down" relative to the normal frame of reference. Thus, no loops or barrel-rolls. If we had the full six degrees of freedom, then we would probably need some sort of radar display in order to keep track of the relative bearings of all of the important targets.
Maybe an attack pattern gamma that puts all your equipped weapons on "spread mode", like having FAW, CSF, and torp spread at the same time (like the skills you get on the obelisk and dyson missions) with 50% less energy drain but less damage and a long CD shared with those abilities, and another variant that does that with the single target versions.
Maybe an attack pattern that gives you the defense of being top speed plus 20% for escorts that slow down/stop to unload into something.
Maybe an option that lets you deal more damage; but also take more.
I'm not an escort guy (my tac's in the event Dyson and my sci is flying a Luna waiting on a vesta), but this would make me consider getting my MVAE out from time to time.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
...which he would never had done if the chairs were.... 4 inches higher XD
Would be nice if every idle stance came with a unique sitting position as well.
Ontopic:
If escorts relied on boom and zooms, it would be nice. Otherwise you may have to settle with unorthodox maneuvers. Such as a sudden boost of speed to an involuntary drift to shoot at a shield facing, only to zoom off from the new angle.
Its not that they CANT do that its that they DONT WANT to.
And, at least this time, for good reasons. 360 degree fighting might be more realistic, but it wouldnt feel even remotely trek-like.
Thats already there. Its a console in the C-Store Sovereign.
Not THAT Riker Maneuver. The way that he sits (and leans and walks like his head is a battering ram) due to Frake's old back injury.
Perhaps. There is only 1 frame of reference: your captain. At his feet you have "down", above his head is "up", and in front of his ship is "ahead" etc. Everything is relative to the ship, in other words, not (as it is currently) to an exterior coordinate system with a defined up and down.
A simple 3-d display is important to find targets, yes. I am thinking way, way, way back to elite plus game. This had a circle with L shaped blips for each target. A target in the same plane as your ship (front to aft plane) would be just a regular dot/line type blip. Those below would have the "tail" of the blip (forming the L shape) going up (exactly like the L). Targets above are a mirror (P like but still L shaped, flip the L over see?). Simple and very easy to understand at-a-glance. The orientation of a target does not matter so long as you know where the front and rear of the ship are. Flipped over or not, if you know that, you know where it is going and what it can do from there.
I have played tons of space games that had 3-d combat and there was no issue at all. It may not feel movie-trek like because movie-trek was not really about space combat, it was about camera angles and the "art" or "presentation" --- rightfully so, its a movie. This is a game.
I do not actually mind it except for the limited "dive/climb" issue. You *should* be able to turn to face a target below you without having to spiral and squirm to get there. I also feel that banking the ships is idiotic, but I can live with that.
^This so much
Bridge Commander had 360 degree motion and it was stupidly easy to get turned around and lost, not to mention the un-trek feel when every ship is at a totally different angle and level to each other
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That perspective is not limited to space. On Earth 'Up' is actually 'Out' since you standing sideways on the planet.
Exactly. But the point is, all you need to know is your own orientation and the relative position (and partial orientation, one vector's worth) of your target(s). With nothing else, you can do 3-d space combat. Whether you (-anyone-) wants to or not is another story, but its easy to implement and not difficult to learn to pilot in such an environment. Again, Ive done it in dozens of games.