Jousting

Tomsk

T
Hello,


I've been reading through the forums and have noticed a lot of people commenting on the "jousting" in Frontier Elite 2 and First Encounters. Generally saying that fighting with newtonian physics isn't fun, because it always comes down to jousting.

I feel compelled to say, this is entirely untrue. Here's a little story based on one of my recent fights in FFE (I still play it). It's me in my Viper Mk II (my favourite ship, the retros are fantastic) vs an Imperial Explorer.



Okay another enemy, suppose I shouldn't be surprised I am in Riedquat after all. Okay engines to "off" mode for combat. Why on earth did they call it off, they should call it "manual control" .. but ... whatever. What have we got ... Wow! (Plasma accelerator beam streaks past the cockpit) ... must be an Explorer. Quick target it ... yes, Imperial Explorer in all it's glory, oh and with a fat bounty as well. Why on earth do these pirates attack me, I don't carry any cargo in this ship? Probably just for s**ts & giggles ... Well I bet he thinks his day is made against this little Viper, but this is going to be the day he dies!

Okay offset my nose, punch the retros hard need to get some side slip to avoid that plasma accelerator. One hit and I'm toast. Yup that's good, lets add a bit of vertical slip into the mix. Point the nose above him, and a quick punt on the retros. Now lets shift it around a little and avoid that beam. Hmm .. closing too slowly ... don't want to be in front of this thing forever. Swap the nose over to the other side, and hit the mains. Yup closing quicker now ... Okay 10Km, he's still spraying that plasma accelerator all over the shop, he really can't cope with that sideslip I'm adding. Keep it moving constantly and he doesn't know where to aim. Still I need to be careful, he only needs to get lucky with that thing once!

Okay 5km now, time to loose a bit speed. Hold the retros ... want to add some extra sideslip as well ... want to come in nicely behind him not fly through him! Push the nose over to the side to add some more slip, use the retros to lose speed. Right there he goes he's passed ... and now he's mine! Spin round quick ... fire the mains to catch up ... yes good. Okay I'm in position now ... so let's start banging him with this pulse laser (I prefer the 5MW pulse to the 1MW beam .. better bang per tonne IMO).. getting some solid hits. Hard to miss that thing after all .. they might as well make Explorers come out the factory with a big fat target painted on the ass! Okay he's trying to turn back into me, no surprises there ... okay use some slide slip and circle strafe behind him. Perfect. He doesn't realize it but he's dead already. I can slide round him, faster than he can turn, pummeling him all the while with my pulse laser! Yeah he's starting to hurt now ... shields are down. He must be wondering what the hell is happening ... surely I can't defeat him in my little viper ... guess he just jousts all day long, and never learnt to use his thrusters!

Careful ... don't want to let him escape ... crap missile launch! On the ECM fast ... okay no problem, not navy grade ... god I hate those things. Lost my hold on his tail though in the scramble for the ECM ... Okay he's starting to get some angles and firing again ... Dodge the beam!! ... Okay need to get back on his tail ... more sideslip, and let's start adding some closure. Gah bit too much, overshot him a bit ... it's more a side attack than my preferred tail shot ... but it doesn't matter he can't hit me, and he won't last long now ... my pulse laser is whittling him down fast. People always underestimate the pulse laser, but if you can aim it can deal some serious hurt.

Boom! And there you go! 400 credits in the bank for the bounty ... and not a scratch on me. Of course there wouldn't be a scratch on me because if he'd so much as touched me with that accelerator then you would now be able to pass me through an air filter.

Well .. he sure had a bad day didn't he ... but then if you will go pirating in one of those floating bath-tubs ... those things turn like the weird mutant child of a robin reliant and a double decker bus. People only buy them "'cos they can fit the big guns". Guess it works for jousting ... but what they don't tell you in the shop is that you're gonna die if you meet someone who actually knows how to fly a small ship.
 

adam

A
Hey Tomsk nice write up :)

Have you played E D yet? FA off gives plenty of opportunity for battle descriptions much like you described...
 

Crash_Happy

C
I loved the physics in Frontier and thought that the combat could be like a ballet. Dangerous is going a different route and looks great, so I'm still happy.
 

Tinman

Tinman
ZenSpider said:
Deep breath, grab popcorn.

Welcome to the forums! :)
Click to expand...

Indeed!

original


:p
 

Tomsk

T
I hadn't spotted laforge's post, that's some good material and I really like the video demonstration!

Of course, I'm not complaining too much. I don't have Alpha access (just standard Beta) but from people's videos it seems that Elite Dangerous does give you enough control over the thrusters to pull some of these sorts of maneuvers. Although, it looks a lot more fast paced. The thruster power must be pretty high relative to "full throttle speed".

Mostly I thought I'd just try to give a sample of why I actually really rather enjoyed the physics in FE2/FFE, even if it did take a bit of practice. ED looks good so far, I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on it when we get to standard Beta. Hopefully it will have retained enough of it's Newtonian characteristics that we'll get a "best of both worlds".
 

ToadMan

T
I have to admit I'd have a liked a full newtonian flight model perhaps with some "technology magic" to make it possible to play multiplayer effectively, but I can understand why they didn't go that route.

Anyway, the combat in ED is reminiscent of the original Elite with just enough "proper" physics to make it interesting so the trade off seems to be working so far. My only concern is that the fighting feels a bit like WW2 flight sim, except the element of energy preservation is missing so the dogfighting may be a little shallow. To overcome this there needs to be enough variety in weapons, ships and outfits to ensure different styles of play and combat can evolve....

Toad.
 

Adept

Adept
ToadMan said:
I have to admit I'd have a liked a full newtonian flight model perhaps with some "technology magic" to make it possible to play multiplayer effectively, but I can understand why they didn't go that route.

Anyway, the combat in ED is reminiscent of the original Elite with just enough "proper" physics to make it interesting so the trade off seems to be working so far. My only concern is that the fighting feels a bit like WW2 flight sim, except the element of energy preservation is missing so the dogfighting may be a little shallow. To overcome this there needs to be enough variety in weapons, ships and outfits to ensure different styles of play and combat can evolve....

Toad.
Click to expand...

If Enegry Fighting is entirely missing it just means that the ships acceleration numbers are too high compared to their top speed. I got used to thinking "Speed is Life" in Allegiance, where it took a while to build up good speed, or you had to burn off a significant chunk of your precious booster fuel.
 

Andrew Sayers

A
There's a wonderful Youtube video showing how to do combat well in the Frontier games. It's true that many people incorrectly argue those games prove Newtonian flight can never be fun, but as you'd imagine Frontier know their own game better than that. Frontier's argument is that they started with a simpler flight model and found multiplayer combat turned into circle-strafing with both players locked on to each other and constantly firing. This isn't so much a Newtonian thing as a multiplayer thing - you'd get exactly the same behaviour if you made a map without any terrain in a first-person shooter. Frontier's solution was to take some liberties with the flight model. Many alternative suggestions have been put forward, but that's the one they've gone with.
 

nats

Banned
nats
Yeah I will miss the kind of combat we had in Frontier: Elite II. The thing that really made it remarkable for me was the way you were having this amazing battle revolving around each other and yet all of the ships were, at the same time, travelling in one direction at a very fast speed into the centre of the system. I always loved that and I feel it will be compeltely missing from ED where I am sure combat will be in a completely static location. You just wont get that feeling of fighting whilst in the midst of your journey anymore.

Along with the lack of being able to speed up time and seeing the planets changing their actual position in space as you approach them, I feel these are the two biggest downsides to the multiplayer route that Frontier have chosen.

I still remain to be convinced that the multiplayer aspects will be worth these sacrifices, which for me were part of what made Frontier:Elite II very special and unlike any other space game.

Presently from what I have seen of the game it is looking good, but it is also not looking very unique. It looks very similar to many other space games I have seen come and go over the years. I am still waiting to see that 'special something'. Elite for me wasnt about the ships, the look of the stations, nor the equipment or the gameplay choices - its was about the exploration, the planet landings, seeing realistic solar systems, feeling like you are in a massive galaxy, and the way you travelled into the systems which was always flipping spectacular. Real shame some of those more major elements have been lost. Really dont want to see ED become just another Freespace or Freelancer game.
 

Mike Evans

Designer- Elite: Dangerous
Frontier
nats said:
Presently from what I have seen of the game it is looking good, but it is also not looking very unique. It looks very similar to many other space games I have seen come and go over the years. I am still waiting to see that 'special something'. Elite for me wasnt about the ships, the look of the stations, nor the equipment or the gameplay choices - its was about the exploration, the planet landings, seeing realistic solar systems, feeling like you are in a massive galaxy, and the way you travelled into the systems which was always flipping spectacular. Real shame some of those more major elements have been lost. Really dont want to see ED become just another Freespace or Freelancer game.
Click to expand...

I'd love to see a game doing the same kind of flight model as ours (including the generally slow turn rates and inertial camera movement). Sans the planet landings everything else you've mentioned is going to be present in the release game and will be available to alpha/beta backers before then. I don't think you've lost anything really.
 

Dejay

Dejay
I think aesthetics can make a big difference. And suspension of disbelief. I guess the worse curse spoken upon you as space game developers would be: "May you have geeky fans"
 

nats

Banned
nats
Mike Evans said:
I'd love to see a game doing the same kind of flight model as ours (including the generally slow turn rates and inertial camera movement). Sans the planet landings everything else you've mentioned is going to be present in the release game and will be available to alpha/beta backers before then. I don't think you've lost anything really.
Click to expand...

I think the present combat is probably an improvement over the 'jousting' of the other games even though I did enjoy that jousting. But the problem is now its nothing very new really - XWing, Wing Commander, X games, Freespace - they all had the same type of combat in a static location. If this game was being made in the 90s it probably wouldnt be considered as being that special.

But I will most miss the apparent movement of the galaxy around you as you speed up time to travel the vast distances. In the multiplayer environment it must always remain 'real time' and as such the galaxy will be relatively static around you for most of your game time. You might notice some moons have moved over a few weeks but that will be it. I think that was a major element from Frontier that has been lost. When you entered a system and started speeding towards the planets - that was the best bit of the whole game for me, I wont be seeing that here. I think that is a shame.

So for me there is not a lot that is 'Frontier: Elite II' here really (which was my favourite game of the series - the one that really blew me away), other than the various ship designs and whatnot which dont mean much to me really.

Its really a completely different game from the old ones, with some nods to the old stuff. Thats fine though, I try to welcome change when it comes. I try to have an open mind and I am sure I will enjoy it all nevertheless. Just the losses are a little painful and I am hoping the additions will make up for them. I dont think we will ever see the likes of Frontier: Elite II again though. So with that my dream for a new Frontier game has really been squashed a bit.
 

Memnoch

M
Jousting can occur, if you allow it in the first place. There are times when the AI pilots will just power away from you and then turn and come at you. They will do this if you allow them to get far enough away by the looks of it. Stick close to them and they will instead attempt to out turn you.
 

Captain N

C
Funnily enough, whether you're fighting while moving at a great speed towards a planet, or while in a "static" location doesn't really make any difference at all in terms of the actual fight.

The only reason it felt different in Frontier was because of the space dust effect showing the motion relative to the planet, but that particular effect wasn't even realistic. In real space, you would see no indication of such motion.

I don't think it would be difficult to change the space dust effect in ED in such a way that instead of showing the player's motion relative to the current reference frame, it would show the location's orbital speed around the nearby planet, but then it would again be completely useless for the gameplay purpose it was created for.
 
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