Dogfighting in Elite Dangerous

nats

Banned
Dogfighting in Elite Dangerous

I just wanted to open a thread to discuss dogfighting in Elite Dangerous - how it could be made to be a wonderful gameplay experience. We already know that David is well up on his ideas including heat generation increasing a ship's radar image, cooling plates, various weapons and various states of damage. I wanted to discuss here other ways the dogfighting could be enhanced.

Firstly the weapons:

David has mentioned that this game will feature a lot more weapon types, and he shows some sort of plasma weapon in the video. I think that if we could see both downsides and strengths to the various weapons types it would make the choice of system more open. In Frontier it was obvious that the more powerful beam lasers were better because they were easier to find a target with than using the pulse lasers.

My view is that in this game, to open the field a bit, pulse lasers should be made a lot more powerful that beam lasers. And when you think about it a short pulse would probably be able to have more firepower in a short single burst than a continually streamed laser. This might make choosing beam good if you are not very accurate, but the sharpshooters amongst us might prefer the pulse laser for its superior hitting power when it finds its target.

I love the idea of plasma weapons, most games have them. They could possibly be used to fire a burst of several plasmas at once like a shotgun - great for close up work. Maybe for those players who like to get close on a ships tail and kill quickly - remember Jango Fett's plasma weapons in Attack of the Clones? Something like that maybe. The one in the video fired a bit slow to make it really effective. Perhaps that could be the cheapest version - maybe the starting weapon for most people!

Regarding the ships:

The ships could also be made variable to make the choice a bit more interesting. In Frontier the ships were all pretty much the same other than of varying hull strength - they could tun far too quickly which made combat a continual jousting match where luck had a big part to play. This game should enhance the ship choice by perhaps making ships different.

So for example you might have a fighter that might be really nimble but very weak. It might be able to turn around an opponent easily but a few shots will finish it off.

What about a ship with a very high speed but one that cannot turn quite so well - this might be the choice for boom and zoom attacks as opposed to turning battles.

Maybe have one that doesn't roll so well but climbs better - might be used in a different way entirely to a ship that can roll very fast and change direction quickly.

Then there are the lumbering beasts. These I think should be easily able to defend themselves from pirates using automated turrets - but that you can take control of if desired - one of the most fun bits of Privateer was running way from a pirate and blasting it from a rear turret. The problem with Frontier is that whilst you were in one turret the others were useless and you couldn't move the ship easily. Perhaps (tied in with my thread on software on this forum) you could buy software to provide evasion movements automatically that run whilst you are in a turret, thereby preventing the ship from being too easy a target. Perhaps it would also move the ship to defend shields that are weakening automatically.

Anyway I am sure there are many other ideas for enhancing combat and dogfighting, so over to you lot.
 
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My view is that in this game, to open the field a bit, pulse lasers should be made a lot more powerful that beam lasers. And when you think about it a short pulse would probably be able to have more firepower in a short single burst than a continually streamed laser. This might make choosing beam good if you are not very accurate, but the sharpshooters amongst us might prefer the pulse laser for its superior hitting power when it finds its target.

With luck I hope FD takes this concept one stage further and really opens up the weapons choice.

Stolen directly from SW:TOR, in that game if you chose to be a Jedi (which was the only class my friend took when I was watching him play one day) you had a stock weapon (the light saber) but it had several components that could be interchanged as you leveled up - You always kept the original casing though.

Now, adapting that for Elite: Dangerous I would like to see the weapons in this game become modular as well. In the original Elite you had 3 types of lasers - Pulse, Beam and Military; and unless mistaken you had 1 type of missile. However by making these components modular you open up more possibilities. For instance:

Beam Lasers:
  • Power source
  • Lasing material (through which the laser beam is formed)
  • Cooling Systems
  • Crystals (purely to change the colour - vanity item)
  • Clock (continuous or pulse)

Missiles:
  • Fuel
  • Propulsion engine
  • Warhead
  • Guidance system
  • Casing

Now admittedly the above took me a few moments and I am sure FD can come up with a much better design but hopefully you get the idea.

Some of the components (like the crystal) could be vanity items that can be sold in the shop to allow people custom weapon colours.

The ships could also be made variable to make the choice a bit more interesting. In Frontier the ships were all pretty much the same other than of varying hull strength - they could tun far too quickly which made combat a continual jousting match where luck had a big part to play. This game should enhance the ship choice by perhaps making ships different

Adopt exactly the same kind of style for the ships as I did for the weapons. Make them modular in design so that when you purchase a ship, in effect you're purchasing "space" with a skin around it. (Cue vanity item in the shop for different skins)

All the ships have a number of hard points for weapon placement but the rest is up to you. Giving an example as before:

Cobra Mark IV:
  • 5 weapon mount points, 2 forward, 1 aft, left and right
  • Engine mounts for types I-IV
  • Maximum cargo space 60 units
  • Mass (empty) : 50,000 metric tonnes

Asp:
  • 3 weapon mount points, 2 forward, 1 rear
  • Engine mounts for types I-III
  • Maximum cargo space for 100 units
  • Mass (empty) : 75,000 metric tonnes

Now each of the components that you fit into the ships have various attributes like size, power drain, and are given a type number. (So Engines could be classified Type I to X say, consumes 20-60 units of cargo space and delivers 1000-7000 units of power; a beam weapon is classified as Type I-III, consumes 2-3 units of cargo and drains 100-300 units of power)

Then it's up to you - buy an engine that takes up some cargo space and delivers power to the rest of the ship, then as you add more and more modules into it the amount of "free" space shrinks and the power from your engines are drained. Whatever is left in "space" can be converted to cargo hold for trading, and whatever power you have left is used for the weapons and propulsion.


When you are outfitting your ship they could really go to town on this section - Show in blue-print form what your ship looks like when you add / replace items; give a little video in the corner showing it maneuvering about and firing; give a summary as to what the specs of the ship are, and importantly any +/- effects to the ship.

---

Admittedly the above is not specifically about dog fighting it should give you an insight into how I believe ship and components should be designed to give the player maximum freedom and choice. Depending upon how you equip your ship and with what types of components, heavier ships, or ones laiden with cargo would move slower and depending upon the types of engines you installed dictate the turning circle. Your weapons, again affected by your choice of components and what have you determine the style of combat you should adopt. (Up close and personal or long range with fire-n-forget weapons)

Endless possibilities - endless choice :D
 
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At the risk of sounding like a broken record: full joystick support including stick twist and throttle and Track IR. I reckon that anyone who says flight sims (whether in space or not) are better without Track IR hasn't ever tried it. ;)
 
I really like the idea of the interchangeable parts, including colour crystals too - quite ingenious. The more customisation, the better, so you really get a ship you're proud of, that works well for your style etc.

For gun types - you could have pulse and beam lasers of various powers (like the idea of pulse being available in higher power ratings). Lasers could be most effective against shielding and less so against armour.

Mass driver weapons that hurl projectiles (choice of materials, more dense = more damaging) could be most effective against armour but less so against shielding.

Plasma weapons would be middle ground between the two.

Mining cannons would be projectile weapons that you just fire into asteroids to break chunks off, or high power cutting lasers.

Military weapons could just be of the same types as above but just with a bit more refinement - maybe versions with higher power or cooling, but if you could add power/cooling modules to them all then great :)
 
I've seen braben mentioning two things - one that the control scheme should be more like original elite, rather than frontier. On the other hand, he i think in the FAQ says something about newtonian physics still existing and ships being tweaked regarding it.

What does this mean exactly, especially regarding ship combat? The reason i ask is because - yes i know "star wars style" (aka original elite) dogfighting is unrealistic..... but in frontier/FFE, ship battles just turned into repetitive "jousting matches", where both combatants basically "ride" towards each other, and try to hit each other. From the videos i've seen, this does not seem to be the case for E4, yet he mentions that newtonian physics are still in - how does that work?
 
I'm thinking inertia - fly by wire has been mentioned. So you'll turn your ship but it will fire thrusters and your direction will change more slowly, I assume it will be enough to not feel as direct as an aeroplane, but not so much that its uncontrollable.

I could see it being that you need to manually fire engines (or have the option to) meaning you can still spin on your axis if you want, and do complex manoeuvres only possible in low G
 
Not wanting to be Mr Pedantic Pants, but changing laser colours with crystals would totally ruin them, since they produce monochromatic light (over only a very limited colour range) that would be absorbed by crystals of different colours!

However, there is room for different colour lasers that depend on the tuning of the lasing material, typically red, green, and blue. You also get some VERY powerful infrared lasers too.

COOL IDEA ALERT: Maybe infra-red lasers would be good for stealthy assassinations, because you would need special infra-red scanners to see the beams! Maybe these lasers could come with special IR vision overlays, but that might not be necessary, if they are centered on the cross hair!
 
Yeah.. ok Dogfight in space...

well.... don't forget to add the medals

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Laser light can only be seen wenn it interact with somthing. Like a cloud or dust.
There is lot of smoke in the discotek.
 

nats

Banned
I'm thinking inertia - fly by wire has been mentioned. So you'll turn your ship but it will fire thrusters and your direction will change more slowly, I assume it will be enough to not feel as direct as an aeroplane, but not so much that its uncontrollable.

I could see it being that you need to manually fire engines (or have the option to) meaning you can still spin on your axis if you want, and do complex manoeuvres only possible in low G

Wing Commander had a key that you pressed to disable fly by wire momentarily to enable you to yaw along a target raking it with fire I seem to remember. A similar thing could be used for turning around on an axis whilst staying on the same vector as before to fire at a tailing enemy or whatever.

Regarding not being able to see lasers I see them needing to be seen for gameplay reasons otherwise it would be a very boring looking battle. Reality is one thing but lets not go over the top and spoil the gameplay because of it.
 
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What does this mean exactly, especially regarding ship combat? The reason i ask is because - yes i know "star wars style" (aka original elite) dogfighting is unrealistic..... but in frontier/FFE, ship battles just turned into repetitive "jousting matches", where both combatants basically "ride" towards each other, and try to hit each other. From the videos i've seen, this does not seem to be the case for E4, yet he mentions that newtonian physics are still in - how does that work?

Possibly for faster speeds newtonian is used and for combat speeds it reverts to slower but more "star wars" physics. Also possible that smaller craft can use those kind of physics for combat but larger ships aka capitals will still use the newtonian model (kind of makes sense).
 
I'm thinking inertia - fly by wire has been mentioned. So you'll turn your ship but it will fire thrusters and your direction will change more slowly, I assume it will be enough to not feel as direct as an aeroplane, but not so much that its uncontrollable.

Sounds a bit like how it would feel like to steer a hovercraft. If this is what's the case, then in practice it would be something in-between "star wars style" and full newtonian.... because to make turning sufficiently fast, either inertia would have to be "relaxed" or side-thrusters would need to be "magically strong".

In any case, if this is the target behaviour - fine by me. I could even imagine the "hovercraft-like" behaviour to be a lot of fun to master in a dogfight.
 
At the risk of sounding like a broken record: full joystick support including stick twist and throttle and Track IR. I reckon that anyone who says flight sims (whether in space or not) are better without Track IR hasn't ever tried it. ;)

Myself and 3 other people are hardcore BMS falcon simmers. I originally started with a simple logitech joystick. Now i use a track IR, Rudder pedals, a custom made control console and a foxy thrustmaster hotas set that has been programmed to work just like a real f-16 flight control stick/thrust & we would never ever turn back, I mean we would be lost without our track ir headsets. They give full 3d and 360 degree immersion in the cockpit

Here are a few pics of our set up in the man cave for a weekend of awesmoness...

falcon1.jpg


falcon4.jpg


DSC01212.jpg
 
Wow... what a set up!

I agree fully - I'd be lost without a Track IR. I could never go back to fiddling with a stick POV hat to look for enemy aircraft, or line up the landing into Biggin Hill!
 
All I see is a conversation I am going to have to have with my bank manager :D

Not wanting to be Mr Pedantic Pants, but changing laser colours with crystals would totally ruin them, since they produce monochromatic light (over only a very limited colour range) that would be absorbed by crystals of different colours!
It's only the same with FTL travel .. that's impossible, but will be in the game to allow us travel to the stars :p
 
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And I'm saying that you can have your fancy pants laser colours, but just not with crystals :p! You're actually way more likely to have FTL than passing red lasers through a blue crystal.
 
All I see is an excellent setup for elite...
;)

I'd love to get our loft done up and turned into a gaming room: snooker table (currently up against the wall in my room :( ) and definitely a set up like that. One for flying' and one for drivin'. :D

Ze problem? Money... or the lack thereof. ;)
 
I've been developing my flight sim rig recently with some nice rudder pedals (Saitek) and have an X52 hotas. Looking forward to Eliting with them, been playing Pioneer with it already and it feels "right."

Though my main bank balance drain has been on driving rig, I'm a bit mental when it comes to that, I run the site http://ravsim.com :p

Maybe someone will need to build a control pad for individual thruster control, now that would be fun. Maybe someone already has.
 
All I see is an excellent setup for elite...
;)

Our current set up is way to advanced for elite and frontier, i guess we will have to see about elite dangerous. We also just started getting into DCS-A10 And that is really not for the light hearted. One of my co simmers in the man cave also hs the Thrustmaster cougar a-10 hotas as well as the f-16 one. Doing a ramp start from cold dark cockpit takes an average of 6-10 minutes to get the plane running let alone setting up the mfds to assign targets and arming your weapons.
 
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