Targeting. Static reticle or Floating reticle ?

[Captain N]

Thing is, space combat sims generally must create challenge by limiting the rotation of the ships, and in particular the rotation of the cannons. The less limited the rotation, the less the actual position of the ships matters. Since there are no "walls" to hide and take cover behind, the only thing about your position that matters is whether you are in the "six" of the enemy or not. If both ships are allowed to swivel their weapons without limit, it just becomes a contest of who has the biggest laser. And in reality, that's what it would be like, which is why I'm not much for realistic combat.

This is I feel is the one thing that the original, classic Elite understood well, but where almost every space sim since has floundered.

In Frontier, the player had practically the ability to turn on a six-pence (using mouse controls), which was more or less fair considering the huge distances and velocities involved - if you played the game the way most people did. Though, once you figured out how to match velocity with the enemy and get close enough and stay there, you quickly realised the AI ships didn't have the same turning rate as you did. It became quite easy to just dance around them and continually burn their ass with your superior aiming while they had almost no chance of hitting you. This was pure artificial lack of difficulty and certainly wouldn't work in a multiplayer game! If the NPC ships had the ability to turn just like the player, it would have been incredibly frustrating. Almost all space sims rely on 'artificial stupidity' of the AI opponents to make things fun to some degree, even the original Elite, but nowhere it was more obvious than in Frontier.

I was just trying out Vendetta Online yesterday, which has the nowadays standard control mechanics for a space sim: full three axes rotation, side thrusters, pseudo-newtonian with a limited max speed. They've tried to keep things interesting by making all weapons fire slower than light projectiles and by having a lead reticle to ease aiming. It struck me again just how dull this is. Your position relative to the enemy doesn't matter at all. Translation is just something you do continually to make your movement a bit less predictable, while you're "strafing" around the target, always pointing your weapons at the lead reticle (because there's no point in ever pointing them anywhere else). It's effectively an FPS without the walls.

I have hopes for ED that they stay with the Elite control mechanic we've seen in the demos. There's a chance for at least one space sim to break away from the monotony and bring back the beauty, elegance and excitement of Elite combat.

 

[Slopey]

I have hopes for ED that they stay with the Elite control mechanic we've seen in the demos. There's a chance for at least one space sim to break away from the monotony and bring back the beauty, elegance and excitement of Elite combat.

^^ This. +1.

 

[The Killer Edible Poet]

Thing is, space combat sims generally must create challenge by limiting the rotation of the ships, and in particular the rotation of the cannons. The less limited the rotation, the less the actual position of the ships matters. Since there are no "walls" to hide and take cover behind, the only thing about your position that matters is whether you are in the "six" of the enemy or not. If both ships are allowed to swivel their weapons without limit, it just becomes a contest of who has the biggest laser. And in reality, that's what it would be like, which is why I'm not much for realistic combat.

This is I feel is the one thing that the original, classic Elite understood well, but where almost every space sim since has floundered.

In Frontier, the player had practically the ability to turn on a six-pence (using mouse controls), which was more or less fair considering the huge distances and velocities involved - if you played the game the way most people did. Though, once you figured out how to match velocity with the enemy and get close enough and stay there, you quickly realised the AI ships didn't have the same turning rate as you did. It became quite easy to just dance around them and continually burn their ass with your superior aiming while they had almost no chance of hitting you. This was pure artificial lack of difficulty and certainly wouldn't work in a multiplayer game! If the NPC ships had the ability to turn just like the player, it would have been incredibly frustrating. Almost all space sims rely on 'artificial stupidity' of the AI opponents to make things fun to some degree, even the original Elite, but nowhere it was more obvious than in Frontier.

I was just trying out Vendetta Online yesterday, which has the nowadays standard control mechanics for a space sim: full three axes rotation, side thrusters, pseudo-newtonian with a limited max speed. They've tried to keep things interesting by making all weapons fire slower than light projectiles and by having a lead reticle to ease aiming. It struck me again just how dull this is. Your position relative to the enemy doesn't matter at all. Translation is just something you do continually to make your movement a bit less predictable, while you're "strafing" around the target, always pointing your weapons at the lead reticle (because there's no point in ever pointing them anywhere else). It's effectively an FPS without the walls.

I have hopes for ED that they stay with the Elite control mechanic we've seen in the demos. There's a chance for at least one space sim to break away from the monotony and bring back the beauty, elegance and excitement of Elite combat.

This. I hope so too.

 

[robbiec]

Static for me, floating takes away the fun of a nice deflection shot

 

[brycec]

Static for me, floating takes away the fun of a nice deflection shot

I voted for static but after reading through the comments I'm not certain now! I suspect that the reason for static is because of the static gun points - at least for the front weapons - perhaps with the larger ships where you can get turret mounts that you could have a floating reticle?

 

[Johnson]

A little aiming help upgrade wont hurt the dogfighting. A 15 or 30 degree cone still keeps it challanging.

OT:

More control (and complexity) over ship systems like shield boosting and angeling could make fights more interesting aswell.
Sensors operations: concentrating the beam to get more details or better range, change the gain and speed/density filter to find ships amongst astroidfields, etc etc.

 

[Mazhurg]

As many have already indicated, reticules should be linked to the type of weapon in use.

If your weapon(s) is a hard mounted laser, then the fixed reticle makes sense as the gap will be instantaneously bridged, the laser aim is fixed and leading is not required.

For weapons either on turrets or with slower projectiles, then it does make sense.

Care should be taken to distinguish targeting and target path. One could see a vector based (velocity / direction) arrow on a HUD target that could easily be calculated by the sensory systems.

 

[OSH]

Static reticle. I want to feel like in original Elite.

 

[Mack]

This would require two joysticks and mean I'd need a refund of my pledge. On principle I will not fund developers who do not make their products accessible to disabled gamers. That's gaming apartheid.

Appreciate your point on that.

I guess my take is, I don't use joysticks (hate them with a passion), last game I played with a joystick was on the atari VCS 2600.

I use a mouse, and well perhaps I didn't really make myself clear in what I was asking. This is more about flight controls - Weapons is just a continuation of it, since generally where the reticle is, is the direction you may be going.

Mouse flight with a static reticle is basically crap and almost unflyable, as you're forever re-centering the mouse etc. as there are no hard boundries like on a joystick. So having something like Freelancer style controls (yes I know that game had no joystick compatibility) would for me be perfect - yet as proven by other responses, it would appear a lot of you are hardened joystick addicts!!

 

[MikeSnos]

I'm not sure if I'm keen on a aiming reticle that tells you where to point to hit a moving target as it removes a lot of skill from the game.

My thoughts exactly... otherwise we'd just be sitting and aiming without the effect of velocity, direction etc affecting our targeting... No skill in that really.

Bear in mind that missles kind of replicate the moving reticle idea although admittedly you do have to line up the get missile lock but after that it's a case of letting the thing loose when you see fit.

 

[Talon2779]

I would have fixed sight for large weapons but maybe gimble mounted guns that can fire off centre by a few degrees for if they are lower in power. The gimble mount could be an optional extra that takes up space and give the pilot a choice between fire power or accuracy.

 

[Tapio]

Forward fixed turret.

Aft,left,right,top and bottom have limited firing arc (you don't
want shoot your own ship, do you?).

 

[Bounder]

Floating reticles are a must for me. The arc size doesn't have to be huge but it should be adjustable from zero up to at least 60°. My optimum will be around 30°.

If it's adjustable down to zero like this then i can't see anyone reasonably objecting - it has no impact on players who don't use it but it's vital for others.


For those who cannot understand why ships would aim their weapons rather than their entire hulls - it's just a practical necessity for space combat - if you can't aim your weapons but i can, you're going to get pwned. You can't ban everyone from aiming effectively, therefore everyone will want to.

For the few instances where aimable weapons are plausibly impractical you can still have a floating reticle, that points where you want your ship to - that is, turning the whole ship is slow and inefficient compared to just aiming your reticle, so even if the weapon's stuck you should still be able to move the cursor reticle in realtime, even if it takes a while for the ship to comply and the crosshairs to settle on the target.

The idea though that a starship would be stuck with static ironsights for its main weapon seems like an absurd restriction. The crosshairs are part of the HUD, not some kind of antique hood ornament.

In any event, the aiming reticle should be able to move independently of the crosshairs, even if there's a big inertial lag for the crosshairs to catch up. Purely static reticles would be pushing the WWII cliche too far... If you wanna turn the aiming reticle off and just use crosshairs then you should be able to... maybe when playing with classic Elite keyboard layout or FFB joystick... most of the time though i expect to be using mouse and keys, like FE2/FFE.

For an idea of how it works check out Pioneer on mouse control (which, incidentally, i normally play via classic beeb keyboard layout) - the floating reticle's unobtrusive if you don't want to use it, but a big improvement on FE2/FFE when using the mouse..


Edit: obvioushly, if your ship's built around a whacking great cannon like an A-10 with its Gatling gun then that's not going to move much. But in the main i'd expect weapons systems more in keeping with helicopter gunships, with weapons pods attached to hardpoints. Static reticles would be no more practical on a Cobra MkIII than on an AH-64 Apache.

 

[Zak Gordon]

I'm not sure if I'm keen on a aiming reticle that tells you where to point to hit a moving target as it removes a lot of skill from the game.

Yeah, me too. So i guess that means i vote for 'Static'?

I like the system used in FFE(and Frontier), with a target reticle that stuck on your selected target but you had to maneuver your fixed gun sight to hit it. That required skill and let you know where the target was clearly enough.

 

[DrBaggy]

Joysticks/flight yokes make sense as it is how Jets, and aeroplanes are piloted. Analogue joysticks are way superior to simple digital ones like Atari VCS and are the equivalent of a steering wheel on a car.

With you Jonty! Makes it feel more visceral (especially when pulling over too hard and it flies off!)

 

[Bounder]

I put it to you, Prime Minister, that if you desire a turret laser then you're rubbish at dogfighting.

My concern's not so much about weapon mobility as ship manoeverability - being able to use the mouse cursor both for target acquisition/lock as well as for direct flight control. Like Pioneer, where you right-click on an area of the screen and the ship turns to point in that direction. Press and hold right-button and the mouse cursor leads the direction, with a mass-dependent lag.

This is a perfectly well-established form of flight control in previous games.

So then the question becomes: can i fire as soon as i get my mouse cursor over the target, or do i have to wait for the crosshairs to swing round and settle on the target - IOW are the crosshairs 'ironsights' that are fixed to the axis of your ship, A-10 Warthog style, or are they just painted onto the lens of the gunpod camera / projected by the HUD etc., wopan gunship style?

If it's the latter then no problem; aim and fire away.

If plumping for the former however then you require a control system that gets the ship's nose, and thus crosshairs, and therefore weapon, pointing at the bad guy ASAP.

And so we come to the classic pitch & roll control style on which we all reminisce...

So OK; pitch & roll manoevering's great fun but all else being equal, pitch and yaw puts steel on target quicker because the crosshairs can take the direct, shortest-path to the target.

An analogue control allowing both fast & course inputs as well as slow and accurate inputs - such as a mouse - is better suited to this task than a digital control such as a keyboard. Yokes: still analogue, but somewhat less responsive and accurate; and oriented towards pitch & roll flight anyway.

Straight line to target, vs frenzied epicycles; who's gonna win?

Pitch & yaw via mouse gives you full and direct control in both X and Y planes. Pitch & roll has no control in the X plane; just a rotating Y.

With P&Y your axial orientation is irrelevant to the target direction.
With P&R your ability to aim in the target's direction is constrained by your axial orientation.

It's just the basic facts of mechanics.

I enjoy using classic beeb keys in E2/3 and Pioneer, and look forward to doing so in E: D, however as soon as things get hairy i'll be switching to P&Y and reaching for my mouse..

 

[Captain N]

I enjoy using classic beeb keys in E2/3 and Pioneer, and look forward to doing so in E: D, however as soon as things get hairy i'll be switching to P&Y and reaching for my mouse..

Assuming yaw is available. Don't count on this.

If we can limit aim to the Z axis and a fixed ironsights we might as well limit steering to pitch and roll.

Jonty's chess analogue is apt: Does it make sense that bishops can only move in diagonals? Is it realistic that queens can move as far as they like in both diagonals and orthogonals while pawns can only move one or two steps forward?

If every piece on the board moved like a queen - chess would certainly be a much easier game to learn, and it would be a more direct, shortest-path-to-the-target type of game design for sure - but most of the depth of chess would be lost.

Similarly, if your cannons had the ability to turn freely in whichever direction irrespective of your ship's orientation or movement vector, battles would become a simple, predictable chore - you acquire the target, wait for it to come into range, shoot. The one with the most powerful weapon and strongest shields wins. Is this your idea of fun?

It's not so much about making sense than about which set of rules leads to the most interesting gameplay. In a multiplayer game the rules must apply to all players equally, so whatever liberties you allow yourself, you must assume your opponents will have as well. Unrestricted targeting in space very quickly leads to inability to evade fire.

 

[Mazhurg]

Similarly, if your cannons had the ability to turn freely in whichever direction irrespective of your ship's orientation or movement vector, battles would become a simple, predictable chore - you acquire the target, wait for it to come into range, shoot. The one with the most powerful weapon and strongest shields wins. Is this your idea of fun?

OT, but what a nice abstract for Eve.

 

[deMangler]

Just talking about reticules for fixed guns, it's not either/or. Probably both will be needed.
I seem to remember DB saying there would be energy weapons and kinetic ones.
While I am not a big fan of floating reticules it is a lot more difficult to judge the shot for kinetic weapons without them. I can't see how they could be realistically not in the game for those.
Also Multiplayer combat would require a whole lot more of an intelligent HUD to work. Lots more target info and so on would be needed so I guess floating reticules are inevitable.

 

[deMangler]

Having re-read the original post it seems what is being suggested is not just a floating targeting reticule but more like some kind of forward facing turret.
That would of course render dog-fighting completely redundant and thus ruin one of the main game-play elements of Elite.
Elite without dogfighting would be some other game. It isn't going to happen.