garrett rastok

Join Date 12/2006

questions about dogfighting, reinforcements, and others?

this game looks and sounds really sweet. like an epic space opera but i have a few questions.

1. what's the word on dogfighting? will fighter class ships engage with each other in dogfight style combat or just be swarms against and around cap ships? and how will it work?

2. what about reinforcements? will battles be long enough to where players can send in another fleet from an adjacent system if the battle looks desperate but where the current fleet can hold on till reinforcements get there? how will it work?

3. what about the relationship between fighter class ships and the cap ships? will there be one? like you can tell there are squadrons or wings actuallly attached to a carrier or other cap ship? will they have to go back to the cap ship and resupply, refuel or whatever excuse? the specifics can be abstracted. or will fighters just swarm enemy ships and never ever even leave the cap ship there swarming for whatever reason? how will it work?

thanks garrett

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Blair Fraser

Join Date 10/2006

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1. Dogfights all the way! Every fighter is a unique entity with its own AI, targetting priorities, weapon systems, engines etc. However, to keep things manageable, they are controlled as squadrons. You can see a few squads in action here: http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2006/289/935993_20061017_screen002.jpg.

2. Yes, it is possible for battles to last long enough to bring in reinforcements from across the same solar system. However, I doubt you could bring reinforcements in from a foreign solar system - the distance is just too great. There is no limit to how many ships you can bring into a battle around a planet.

3. Fighters are much smaller than capital ships (10m compared to 1000m). Squadrons of various types can be built from capitalships and orbital hangars. Each has its own carrying capacity which can often be upgraded depending on the ship class. You can tell your fighters to dock/launch when you feel like it, but once they've launched you can control them just like any other unit. As long as you have a capital or hangar in the orbital well the fighters will automatically remain fueled, however if you abandon them there, they will eventually run out and die. If you want to move them to new systems, they must dock with a capitalship.

There is a lot more to fighters but that is the basics, and I can't say everything

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omg blair i want this game... you make it sound soooo awesome!!!!
lets hope my sexy new laptop is able to handle it

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omg blair i want this game... you make it sound soooo awesome!!!!
lets hope my sexy new laptop is able to handle it

*points fatal to the "i want to have blair's child" ticket line* take a number..there are a few of your peers already in line

great to hear about the fighters having to have a command ship (something with a hangar bay of sorts for refueling basicly) in the area in order for them to stay active. keeps things a bit on the realistic side that fighters cant survive out in the vastness of space without a larger transport.

if for say the capital ships that the fighters launched from...say only one was in the battle and it got destroyed...do the fighers then start running on a fuel timer for remaining combat time or do they just stop working or what? (i can clarify this a lil more if need be)

and your fighter ai....so basicly its going to behave like it did sorta in hw2..you have your fighter squadrons that travel together but once they get into combat they go into a "save your own ass and kill the other guy" mode?

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Id like to see some automation but with a strategical edge to choosing the automation settings.

Alot of people used to like fighter micro in hw and hw2 but that would mean spending 1 minute zoomed in clicking at a rate of 90per second to win a fighter fight and save maybe 2 fighters. That in hw2 terms may win a game but in sins terms wouldnt effect much.

Going with Strategy id like to see option choosing for fighters set to each carrier ship.

For example i could set 3 of my front battlecruisers to "hunt captials" , and i set them to build mostly bombers. 2 other carriers behind will be on "fighter engaging" , so fighters automatically launch and engage fighters. Also you could set the engagement radius of fighters " fighter engaging-long range"..this might make fighters engage other fighters further away , possibly to allow your own bombers to have a better run if they are set on "engage captials-short range" so they stay near to your flak frigates. If fighters are on "fighter engaging -short range" they have the advantage of being closer to docking and hunt in closer swarms.

the obvious options could be
hunt , engage , defend , scout ,
mix with target setting
fighter , bomber ,capital , frigate , vulnerable , planet , platform
then radius
short range , medium range , long range , scout range , suicidal range

just an idea for fighter strategy , rather then making it a microfest that isnt worth microing with the scale of sins

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These are some nice ideas i have to say.

It was stated that even though you could micromange almost everything in the battles, you can also set prefrences of the captain of each fleet, to command each ship a certain way. So say you have some pricy ships that are very powerful, but very fragile in your fleet, you can make sure that they are used rarely and are mostly kept defended, same goes for being aggressive with other ships, or being more neutral and only attacking certain targets. This ofcourse is more for the capital ships and such im not completly sure for the fighters.

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Fragile Capital Ships? Sorry I only build dreadnoughts

I however have one question about fighters are they smart enough to dock with any avilable ship - per say there capital ship has been destroyed and some form of all ships retreat order has been givein. Will fighters that have lost their Capital ship automaticly dock with any ship that doesn't have a full fighter compliment?

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Thats a toughie that one. Imo I would sacrifice the realism of being able to dock at any ship with making fighters allocated to one ship stick with that ship. so if a fighter wants to dock , it wont just head back to the Carrier designated to build full fleets of bombers , but will go a bit further to dock with its own capital ship.

Now lets assume the capital ship has blown up , the fighters should then be given the order to fight to the death , or to assign themselves to available capitals to dock.

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i just wanna add my two very new cents, I just found out about the game today, and im rather psyched, especially the preview from gamespy, although the review was wierd.

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Well welcome to the forums then

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Thanks Blair for this info.
Since the first time I heard about this game (which is more than a year now) I have always been reminded that the scale of the universe (hence the models) will be properly
modeled. This is very exciting to me.
Just can't wait for the Beta to start

Thanks Rden

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