Upcoming fighters: hollow box or no?

[mossfoot]

So here's a pickle. If you are flying an Anaconda and launch a defence fighter piloted by an NPC, your attacker will probably see it as a solid box, right?

but could that be a problem? Or would it be better if it wasn't the case?

Consider: these are fragile things already, but an AI is still no match for a human pilot. So an attacker is always going to target the live CMDR over the NPC controlled ship. If you are in the fighter the attacking CMDR is unlikely to ignore you in favour of the main ship because you are more of a threat, able to take advantage of opportunities the NPCs aren't programmed to recognize (target subsystems for example).

being labeled with the hollow box puts a target on your forehead. If you're commanding the main ship, it's unlikely the attacker will ignore you and target the fighter for the same reason.

but if both were hollow (it is part of your ship after all) then the attacker wouldn't know who to focus on and rely on their own judgement to determine who the human is.

alternatively the fighter box could be always solid, since you aren't physically on the ship anyway.

its kind of important to address this now, since it will be more of a factor when multi-crew is added.

 

[Julio Montega]

There was that question in one of the streams,
sandy said whichever craft the player commands is the hollow box.

If the fighter would be launched displaying permanently a solid box, but be treated
as a "child" object of the "parent" ship, qualifying as a player target, i guess cz
ai won't bug so much out and see both targets as even priority wise.

It would be great to be able to fool the NPCs with a fighter.

 

[Jynessa Loraeyn]

So here's a pickle. If you are flying an Anaconda and launch a defence fighter piloted by an NPC, your attacker will probably see it as a solid box, right?

but could that be a problem? Or would it be better if it wasn't the case?

Consider: these are fragile things already, but an AI is still no match for a human pilot. So an attacker is always going to target the live CMDR over the NPC controlled ship. If you are in the fighter the attacking CMDR is unlikely to ignore you in favour of the main ship because you are more of a threat, able to take advantage of opportunities the NPCs aren't programmed to recognize (target subsystems for example).

being labeled with the hollow box puts a target on your forehead. If you're commanding the main ship, it's unlikely the attacker will ignore you and target the fighter for the same reason.

but if both were hollow (it is part of your ship after all) then the attacker wouldn't know who to focus on and rely on their own judgement to determine who the human is.

alternatively the fighter box could be always solid, since you aren't physically on the ship anyway.

its kind of important to address this now, since it will be more of a factor when multi-crew is added.

I absolutely agree - I was a little meh, when it was said in the livestreams that an enemy would be able to see which you were piloting, main ship or fighter, because you'd see the hollow box change to whichever you were in.

This strikes me as very, very weird. I'm not sure why even for gameplay reasons it's better for an enemy commander to know not only which of the ships you're controlling, but even be updated the moment you switch between them!

They should either both be hollow, or the fighter is consistently solid and the main ship is consistently hollow.

I'm just hoping it's one of those work-in-progress things.

But thanks for bringing it up. I'll add my voice to the 'shouldn't be obvious which the "human player" is flying' side.