Horizons intended design? can't target ground targets as before

Godsailsaqueen

Godsailsaqueen
Hi folks,

I was doing a planetary raid on a settlement : I had to take skimmers down. But first, I wanted to do as before : destroy a few land turrets from my ship to make my way to the sentries easier.

The problem is that I had a hard time targetting one of those turrets!
My ship took quite a beating, really quickly, as usual with planet bases. So i ran... Can we still select ground targets?
Settlements from ++ and above are already very well defended, so if we have to get 50m from them to pick a signal, it just seems suicidal.

I heard that Michael Brookes intended to make us rethink our strategy when attacking these, by also reducing missile dammage to them. Did he mean "SRV only from now on?"?

Thanks!
 

Paineframe

P
From the 2.1 changelog:
"- Make all Skimmers and POI objects detectable by ground sensors only by default, we don't want ships picking them off from the skies without having to work for it. Note that anything firing at the player will still show up and be target-able back - note that POIs can still be discovered from ships"
 

Godsailsaqueen

Godsailsaqueen
Well, thanks for that, did not even see it...
But I sincerely don't like that approach at all. Telling us how to do things. What's next? Preventing anything that's not an asp- E to go beyond the bubble? Making mining ships unable to carry weapons?

Damn.
 

hunvagy

hunvagy
Godsailsaqueen said:
Well, thanks for that, did not even see it...
But I sincerely don't like that approach at all. Telling us how to do things. What's next? Preventing anything that's not an asp- E to go beyond the bubble? Making mining ships unable to carry weapons?

Damn.
Click to expand...

Well it's partially for your own benefit, too. Planetary base defenses will now dismantle your ship in record time if you try to hover about to pick off enemy skimmers and turrets.
 

Godsailsaqueen

Godsailsaqueen
Yeah, that is what I experienced, and I don't like that design at all.
"Bombing" runs were not that easy, but they added variety in the way I fly. I even had a specific bombing loadout.

And now they don't want you to do that, putting an artificial damage barrier.
It reminds me of games in which you had to destroy an objective with C4 ONLY, even though you had a bunch or grenades and bazookas.

Now my ship won't pick targets before he's half dead.
 

777Driver

777Driver
Godsailsaqueen said:
Yeah, that is what I experienced, and I don't like that design at all.
"Bombing" runs were not that easy, but they added variety in the way I fly. I even had a specific bombing loadout.

And now they don't want you to do that, putting an artificial damage barrier.
It reminds me of games in which you had to destroy an objective with C4 ONLY, even though you had a bunch or grenades and bazookas.

Now my ship won't pick targets before he's half dead.
Click to expand...

Why don't you equip dump fire missiles and manually strafe ground targets. Use the force!
 

Godsailsaqueen

Godsailsaqueen
That's a possibilty, but the ability to pick targets on the fly was useful on a small screen. I can't see them from afar! At least I know where I'm heading and firing... And if I get too close, I'm almost dead.

It is a weird decision IMO. make them more dangerous OR less practical to take down. The union of both just looks like an attempt to kill choice.

Make them targettable but unable to seek by gimbals and turrets at least. Why wouldn't I pick a signal when I can find a single crashed srv POI, 2km from them at 3000 feet high?

Lol, frack cohesion!

_____________________________________________________________________________
edit : and the fact that the signal of turrets and skimmers may be jammed by the whole settlement does not hold [squeeeee]
If I can see ships inside a station, I should be able to pick a huge turret on top of a building :rolleyes:
 
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Gaxel

G
This is really bad, now (doing a recover "something" mission) you have to run like hell with the SRV through a base and pick-up two canisters, return to the ship, transfer cargo, repeat. Very, very boring.
 

Tikigod

Tikigod
It's something I posted about in Beta asking Frontier to reconsider, as the way they went about it is just seriously broken.

How it worked then at least is that something could fire at you and be entirely invisible to scanner and untargetable. Once it scores a hit, it will be visible for about 3 seconds, and then go invisible again until it lands another hit.

It's cheap.

It's nasty.

And it never should have made it to live if Frontier really did carry over the behaviour exactly as was.
 
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Rhaedas

Rhaedas
The problem was that ground defenses were being taken out easily by ships first. I know, I've done it. Now, maybe this is FD being FD, and swinging the other way before finding a common ground. I don't think they should be immune to fire, but it should be difficult given the size. Because think, when you're in an SRV and a ship is firing on you, do you really want him to lock on perfectly? Be a short run.

I think they should be targetable at very close range, but with the caveat that this can put you in danger of other defenses that will make you unhappy. From long range, shots can have small chances of some damage from grazing or splash, but no instant headshots, because as it was, they were pretty fragile to ship guns, and too easy to clear out.

As for the skimmer explosions, I think they should cause less actual damage, not take out a whole ship, BUT that explosion should do a number on your navigation. Use the same effect as the force shell, so running into one might only do some shield reduction or maybe a few hull points, but also could catch you off guard and make you crash if you're not paying attention enough. Gives the player more chance to respond, while still being a good retardant to people trying to just ram them to death. Heck, I'd like to see that with ships too, some type of concussion effect if you're too near one when it goes off.
 

Tikigod

Tikigod
Rhaedas said:
The problem was that ground defenses were being taken out easily by ships first. I know, I've done it. Now, maybe this is FD being FD, and swinging the other way before finding a common ground. I don't think they should be immune to fire, but it should be difficult given the size. Because think, when you're in an SRV and a ship is firing on you, do you really want him to lock on perfectly? Be a short run.

I think they should be targetable at very close range, but with the caveat that this can put you in danger of other defenses that will make you unhappy. From long range, shots can have small chances of some damage from grazing or splash, but no instant headshots, because as it was, they were pretty fragile to ship guns, and too easy to clear out.

As for the skimmer explosions, I think they should cause less actual damage, not take out a whole ship, BUT that explosion should do a number on your navigation. Use the same effect as the force shell, so running into one might only do some shield reduction or maybe a few hull points, but also could catch you off guard and make you crash if you're not paying attention enough. Gives the player more chance to respond, while still being a good retardant to people trying to just ram them to death. Heck, I'd like to see that with ships too, some type of concussion effect if you're too near one when it goes off.
Click to expand...

That's the flaw with how Frontier handled the situation, defences are still destroyable. You just have to blind fire at them against hitboxes that are somewhat broken.

All the change does is annoy and frustrate with game rule breaking scanner cloaked turrets.

There are much better ways they could have handled the situation, such as changing ground vehicle defence to be deployable defences that only pop-up after a ground vehicle they can fire at is in range, and leaving all other types of defences the hell a lone so they can still be targeted and dealt with when they're firing multiple missiles and heavy laser fire at you, but you can't even target them until after they've scored a hit.... the game at present is essentially going "Oh, so you're good at evasive flying? Well <bleep> you here's a punishment for being a good pilot and not letting yourself get hit repeatedly just so you can target something and attack back effectively".

But hey it's Frontier.... least amount of development effort for internally considered acceptable results.
 
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Godsailsaqueen

Godsailsaqueen
I originally did not want to feel so negative about that, even though the rant got the better off me.

I think I should post that elsewhere, on suggestions perhaps. Nothing's set in stone in this game. Maybe we should help them understand that this gameplay mechanic mattered to us.
 

Mugur

M
I hate when they make such arbitrary decisions in order to "correct" bad game mechanics. They simply kill the little amount of realism planetary landings may still have. They did the same after Horizons beta with POIs and the 2km altitude. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I will make a mission from destroying bases with dumb missiles... Probably the next move would be to make sentinels invulnerable to ships.
 
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Khromm

K
Had a similar experience to OP on a "kill skimmer" mission; lost 2 SRVs trying to complete that one. On the other hand, I did discover that if you land your ship within 1000m and have point defence on it, it'll automatically kill any missiles the skimmers fire at you. Am tempted to set my ships turrets to fire at will and see what happens next...
 

Eloy

Eloy
Don´t forget the hilarious nuclear explosion if you ram a skimmer that rips your shields and ship apart because they want you to play THEIR way
A toast to those who are accountable for such glorious, erm, "game design"

ninja´d (not really :D )
 
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