My heart. She bleeds for the poor souls who get shouted down for wanting a bit of fun.
So why do we need to face a ship to tell who's in it?
- Thread starter indiebob
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Are you sympathising with me or are you saying rotating a ship is "fun"?
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Being a retired U.S. Navy Submarine Vetern, I must be cautious because I know stuff. That said, one look at modern ships (Not planes) will clearly show what is commonly referred to a a "Sonar Sphere". These are usually placed at the front of the ship and cover 360 degrees around the ship. There is an additional piece of equipment called a towed sonar array. This would put the sensors behind the engines and away from any interference or noise they would present. There is also the Aegis Combat system Which can engauge multiple targets with different weapons at the same time.
What we have here is a Space SHIP game advertised as using 3302 technology when it is truly an Aircraft flight simulator in space based on 80's aircraft technology.
The important question is; Are you having fun? I can succinctly say YES! Could it be more realistic to the year 3302; absolutely. Would this have a negative impact on gameplay? I do not believe so, but I am a player, not the designer.
We play the game by Frontier's rules, not ours.
What we have here is a Space SHIP game advertised as using 3302 technology when it is truly an Aircraft flight simulator in space based on 80's aircraft technology.
The important question is; Are you having fun? I can succinctly say YES! Could it be more realistic to the year 3302; absolutely. Would this have a negative impact on gameplay? I do not believe so, but I am a player, not the designer.
We play the game by Frontier's rules, not ours.
I guess the scanner only works facing forward. There is a forum where you can post your suggestions.
Subspace radar is omnidirectional, so it can tell the model, distance and direction of travel of another ship in any direction, but your scanner is at the front.
So you are saying that the ship scans the actual person inside the ship, though the shields and hull ... which weapons cannot penetrate, gets say a DNA reading off them and looks that up on the galactic database? I always thought there was a transponder which broadcast your ID... otherwise how would they be able to apply a bounty to people who shot you from behind?
modern fighter jets have a passvive 360 degree RWR but a frontal cone active radar, so this mirrors how it works in the real world.
Here is where we run into simulation problems. Are we in Space Ships or planes? I believe we need to think outside the limitations of earth's atmosphere and gravity. Planes need to be light and balanced for atmospheric flight. Space ships do not have these limitations, especially when you consider it is 3302 and not 2016. There are planes with 360 degree radar. Google Check the F-35's radar.
It's because of gameplay.
You could come up with a somewhat working explanation though.
Whatever the scanner uses is obviously not radar. But let's say it's magic space radar and otherwise works remotely the same as normal radar. So you get heading and bearing of a contact for free and you also get some information about what kind of contact that is providing your resolution is high enough and you have a suitable database.
So it's a Python, it's THERE and it's going THAT way is perfectly fine. The little image is just a generic representation in case you forgot how the Python that tore you a new one looked.
You cannot deduct the rest of the information without facing it because that requires a different magic radar with an even higher resolution to pick up glitches in the FSD and for reasons of interference with your own drive that's in the nose of your ship with a rather limited spread. So if you face it you can pick up glitches in the FSD signature to ID an individual ship. And with the correct database its current registered or suspected owner.
You could come up with a somewhat working explanation though.
Whatever the scanner uses is obviously not radar. But let's say it's magic space radar and otherwise works remotely the same as normal radar. So you get heading and bearing of a contact for free and you also get some information about what kind of contact that is providing your resolution is high enough and you have a suitable database.
So it's a Python, it's THERE and it's going THAT way is perfectly fine. The little image is just a generic representation in case you forgot how the Python that tore you a new one looked.
You cannot deduct the rest of the information without facing it because that requires a different magic radar with an even higher resolution to pick up glitches in the FSD and for reasons of interference with your own drive that's in the nose of your ship with a rather limited spread. So if you face it you can pick up glitches in the FSD signature to ID an individual ship. And with the correct database its current registered or suspected owner.
We are in make believe space planes where the primary design requirement is 'fun / game mechanics' not 'realistic'. If you want realism from a space game you are playing the wrong one. Try Orbiter, or to a lesser degree Kerbal Space Program.
I'm just adding information that is relevant. I enjoy playing ED. Please see my previous post. I am having Fun and plan on playing ED for quite some time. I understand that game play decisions need to be made by the designers. I humbly submit my previous posts as food for thought. We will see how things go as the game design progresses.
Ok. I can play.
Goodness no, I am sympathising with you. What are Frontier Development thinking when they make us use the joystick to "steer" our spaceships? When it's obvious just displaying everything without needing our input is the pinnacle of fun.
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We have a 360 degree radar. It that round thing on your console that lets you see where everything is around you. Perhaps you missed it?
This thread is about the absolute chore that is facing a ship before you are able to find out the inside leg measurements of the pilot. As far as I know the F-35 can tell that there is something out there but does not have the ability to magically assess all of the weaponry installed on that craft as well as telling you the name, rank and favourite colour of the pilot. Pretty sure the F-35 can't work that last lot out even if you point it toward the other craft.
Also that bit about space ships not needing to be light, I'm pretty sure Frontier recognise that because even the F63 Condor is as large as single decker bus squared (make a square ut of 4 of them and you about there). That's a 'tiny' ship.
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Deleted member 38366
D
At least for Allied NPCs it used to be different. You'd be able to lock them up and instantly get all details (unsure only about SubSystems).
Ever since Allied Status (green contacts yielding full Info from any angle) was limited to Majority Faction's Authority/Security Ships, this vanished.
Naturally (following the ELITE OHC meme "every Player must remain an Orange Hollow Contact, even if they're Allied to the same Factions, Government and even if they run the same Community Goal as you"), none of this ever helped with Player contacts.
So it all goes hand in hand with the absence of any IFF. Not seeing anything about Ships behind you helps keeping the environment toxic, which seems the grand plan for every place.
Hence, I'd call it "working as intended". Don't want Players to find out the contact behind them is Wanted or carries an Interdictor.
Ever since Allied Status (green contacts yielding full Info from any angle) was limited to Majority Faction's Authority/Security Ships, this vanished.
Naturally (following the ELITE OHC meme "every Player must remain an Orange Hollow Contact, even if they're Allied to the same Factions, Government and even if they run the same Community Goal as you"), none of this ever helped with Player contacts.
So it all goes hand in hand with the absence of any IFF. Not seeing anything about Ships behind you helps keeping the environment toxic, which seems the grand plan for every place.
Hence, I'd call it "working as intended". Don't want Players to find out the contact behind them is Wanted or carries an Interdictor.
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I'd hazard a guess that the rear view wasn't added because of the multi-player aspect because that would make it too easy to be shooting at the person chasing you rather than it being a head-to-head battle. Side views would have been nice at least to look at planets but they were pretty much useless for anything else in the original version anyway.
I would of thought that fighting and steering the ship whilst using the rear view would put most pilots at a disadvantage anyway.
Side views, although fairly useless were still very nice to have.
Elite was the first game I ever played that had these multiple views with turrets and I used them all the time, t'is a shame we dont have them now.
Even one turret on top would do the trick!
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I guess this is one of the reasons for the debug camera
Given we have atmospheric flight models for our ships "only scanning forward" is not very high on my list of things that i do not really like about ED...
(and drag so ships have speed limits not to forget,...)
Frontier had it right and we could still have the dogfights and so on, just closer to the stations/ground harbours, just out of reach of station security/guns
We could have real blockade fleets and do blockade running!
Tough freighters plowing there way through lazor spitting armadas!
There is a LOT of things you can do with an realistic flight model, just read an book of the Chanur zyclus from Cherryh, there is a LOT of tactical stuff with the jump drive tech and realistic relativistic flight she uses in her books.
An freighter laying fire into the path of an heavy military ship coming in at relativistic speed for example makes the puny freighter wepons suddenly devastating (you do not want to hit a bullet at 0.6c no matter what speed it has, the impact has nuclear explosion proportions)
Rockets would make sense too again and so on.
Elite is verymuch to simple as it is right now (i want to slap people who claim Elite has a steep learning curve with an wet noodle until they DIE!)
I know few people want to spend weeks to "learn a game" but trust me, as more you really have to learn for it as more fun, as more options and if the sim is very realistic you suddenly know stuff that makes sense in RL!
(I do not really want to count the times where i had to tell people to put down that GPS nav after they told me that space flight and ground research in the fields of physics has no "Real world usable impact"
Yeah, without Einstein and a lot of accelerator research GPS would be usable today, riiiiiiight????
That is why we need sims who are close to reality (the only thing scifi in the chanur zyclus is the jump drive, and that still tries to be as close as possible to "possible tech we just do not know how to do it, yet"
That is why i tend to see red if things are dumbed down or done for "game reasons"
The art should be to stay as close as possible to reality and still make it fun.
Exxagerations in some areas are ok, but limiting today avaiable tech (an screen who shows the rearview/outside view of your ship from cameras mounted on finds/wings? Please, cheap cars today have rearview cams!)
(and drag so ships have speed limits not to forget,...)
Frontier had it right and we could still have the dogfights and so on, just closer to the stations/ground harbours, just out of reach of station security/guns
We could have real blockade fleets and do blockade running!
Tough freighters plowing there way through lazor spitting armadas!
There is a LOT of things you can do with an realistic flight model, just read an book of the Chanur zyclus from Cherryh, there is a LOT of tactical stuff with the jump drive tech and realistic relativistic flight she uses in her books.
An freighter laying fire into the path of an heavy military ship coming in at relativistic speed for example makes the puny freighter wepons suddenly devastating (you do not want to hit a bullet at 0.6c no matter what speed it has, the impact has nuclear explosion proportions)
Rockets would make sense too again and so on.
Elite is verymuch to simple as it is right now (i want to slap people who claim Elite has a steep learning curve with an wet noodle until they DIE!)
I know few people want to spend weeks to "learn a game" but trust me, as more you really have to learn for it as more fun, as more options and if the sim is very realistic you suddenly know stuff that makes sense in RL!
(I do not really want to count the times where i had to tell people to put down that GPS nav after they told me that space flight and ground research in the fields of physics has no "Real world usable impact"
Yeah, without Einstein and a lot of accelerator research GPS would be usable today, riiiiiiight????
That is why we need sims who are close to reality (the only thing scifi in the chanur zyclus is the jump drive, and that still tries to be as close as possible to "possible tech we just do not know how to do it, yet"
That is why i tend to see red if things are dumbed down or done for "game reasons"
The art should be to stay as close as possible to reality and still make it fun.
Exxagerations in some areas are ok, but limiting today avaiable tech (an screen who shows the rearview/outside view of your ship from cameras mounted on finds/wings? Please, cheap cars today have rearview cams!)
Wouldn't that be a better argument when NOT almost all info would already be pre
#eliteinanutshell