when combat zones get more fleshed out.
- Thread starter joshman72nd
- Start date
Do you have any conceivable idea of how much time, effort, and money it would require to do anything remotely like that which Elites scale, graphics, and engine?
Well they have a 10 year plan and are sitting on a fair pile of money. We can dream
I dream about it too. If OP wanted to be realistic they should have said "years down the line" or something.Well they have a 10 year plan and are sitting on a fair pile of money. We can dream
A season dedicated solely to large scale wars and combat...I don't know.
Ahh freespace 2, one of the best arcade space games ever. Thats a player created mission but some of the vanilla missions were great. Escort, protection, undercover, cap ship defence / assault, would love to have that kind of variety in Elites combat missions.
War is coming folks...just wait til the Thargoids pop up. All hell is going to break loose...and those epic battles we've been hoping to see will start happening as the major powers start sending not just lone capital ships but entire FLEETS out to meet the alien threat.
That video is impressive (Freespace was years ahead of its time) but at the risk of sounding like a fanboy I prefer ED's multi-ship NPC combat even in its current raw state.
It's far from perfect though. My biggest gripe with the combat zones is that they're non-contextual. I want to see one faction's merchant fleets hauling bottom through supercruise trying to reach a blockaded world, with enemy wings dragging them out of FSD and their own military dropping in en masse in response. I want to see some of those battles go one way, with the merchant fleet thoroughly destroyed, and others in which the defenders turn the tide and end up escorting the cargo ships home and leaving behind a Salvageable Wreckage site full of smashed hulls and floating debris.
The current CZs are fun enough if you want to see ships kicking the snot out of each other, but with fixed locations and ever spawning wings of ships on both sides they feel like ignorable sideshows rather than realistic and dangerous flashpoints in a system-wide conflict. Maybe we'll get there eventually; most of the mechanisms are in place to create dynamic unfolding battles with actual resolutions. It just feels as though an awful lot of dots need to be joined up.
Ironically, the old Factions alpha training scenario with the two clashing fleets felt much more realistic than any current CZ, if only because you saw the fleets jumping in, and one or other side always emerged victorious with or without player assistance. I really wish the current CZs were more like this.
It's far from perfect though. My biggest gripe with the combat zones is that they're non-contextual. I want to see one faction's merchant fleets hauling bottom through supercruise trying to reach a blockaded world, with enemy wings dragging them out of FSD and their own military dropping in en masse in response. I want to see some of those battles go one way, with the merchant fleet thoroughly destroyed, and others in which the defenders turn the tide and end up escorting the cargo ships home and leaving behind a Salvageable Wreckage site full of smashed hulls and floating debris.
The current CZs are fun enough if you want to see ships kicking the snot out of each other, but with fixed locations and ever spawning wings of ships on both sides they feel like ignorable sideshows rather than realistic and dangerous flashpoints in a system-wide conflict. Maybe we'll get there eventually; most of the mechanisms are in place to create dynamic unfolding battles with actual resolutions. It just feels as though an awful lot of dots need to be joined up.
Ironically, the old Factions alpha training scenario with the two clashing fleets felt much more realistic than any current CZ, if only because you saw the fleets jumping in, and one or other side always emerged victorious with or without player assistance. I really wish the current CZs were more like this.
[video=youtube;Bx3AX2xhwP0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx3AX2xhwP0[/video]
Actually, in my opinion, currently Elite is not very far from organized fleet battle. We have wings, NPC can have quite large wings (at least 8), what is missing, is a wing formation (btw, in SSS convoys are already flying in formation). I like to see large ships wing staying in formation (like combat group should) engage other large ships wing, with appropriate target focus and support wings from smaller ships (which can be restricted to fly away from main wing no more that 4 km). I am not programmer, but for me it don`t looks so hard to implement.
Combat Zones need:
-Different kind of goals, maybe procedural or random
-Support ships to repair another ships and supplies
-Bombardment ships
-Capital HQ ships
-Military outpost with defense turrets and missiles
-Electronic Warfare ships
-Artillery ships
-Finite spawn
-Persistant NPCs going out and in from the CZ to SC and vice versa
This would be a start.
-Different kind of goals, maybe procedural or random
-Support ships to repair another ships and supplies
-Bombardment ships
-Capital HQ ships
-Military outpost with defense turrets and missiles
-Electronic Warfare ships
-Artillery ships
-Finite spawn
-Persistant NPCs going out and in from the CZ to SC and vice versa
This would be a start.
Probably by the time Star Citizen releases, so 2020 maybe.