Fleet Formation Flying

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

One key property of any fleet is the ability to fly in formation.

1) The fastest speed of a fleet is the top speed of its slowest member. This also includes in Rebirth the speed of boosting. To match speeds while boosting means that faster ships require the ability to control boost acceleration and velocity.

2) The minimum turning cirlcle of a fleet is dependant on the least agile member. When in formation a fleet should coordinate its manoeuvring so each member turns at the same rate.

3) When jumping, the whole fleet should jump together. This may mean a rethink of the current mechanism. Such as the fleet opening a wormhole for travel rather than using individual jump drives. Thus allowing all ships to leave and arrive in formation.

There are some very good reasons why a fleet needs to travel in a formation See this article for a discussion on Carrier Group tactics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Carr ... up_tactics

[XenonSurf]

Yes, I would really like XR working like this, but until the new title is out I'm afraid we'll have to deal with the current state...I don't believe any patch is going to change that.

I recommend you to use:
Faster Ships mod
MultiAssignment mod

Both will facilitate somewhat fleet management.

XenonS

[UniTrader]

well, my Movement Scripts have a routine implemented which coordinates group Jumps - but the follow/escort script has to be aware of this functionality, tha Vanilla scripts are not and it could be a few weeks until i start working on the related part of my Extension..

[BigBANGtheory]

Formations are important but a higher level function of both grouping and movement, imho you need the lower levels the basics of fleet command sorting out first.

Some players naturally like to control the formation themselves using groups they have defined, though I accept that maybe too much micromanagement and undesirable for others. I like too but I could live without it, its not a absolute requirement however navigation and facing/direction is I'm afraid.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

Not entirely sure what your point is. Some simple examples.

A single XL ship with say 6 fighter escorts. The escorts need to maintain a position relative to he capital. They are in a formation. As the capital turns and manoeurvers so do the escorts. The problems occur when the capital is ordered to fly to another area of space.

1) The fighters dock at the capital, the ship jumps, the fighters undock and resume their positions. When travelling onward, the maximum speed is that of the slowest fighter, assuming the XL ship has a variable boost speed.

2) If the XL ship cannot act as a carrier then they should proceed at the speed of the slowest fighter. Thus the capital is provided with support the entire journey. The current method whereby the capital jumps and boosts to its destination and then has to wait for the escorts to use highways does not make much sense to me.

As far as I am concerned when creating a group of ships, they must by definiion have some kind of formation. It is only when a formation is correctly maintained that groups (fleets) make any kind of sense to me.

[BigBANGtheory]

Well the point is this.... Formations are based upon groups so if you struggle to form and organise groups quickly and efficiently you are going to run into problems. For example adding and removing ships from a group in response to changes during battle. You may start off with a fighter screen upfront but then need your fighters elsewhere and have them break formation perhaps because of enermy anti-fighter weapons or you need their speed to intercept something elsewhere.

Next up you have navigation and facing, the principle here is simply that you want the strength of your formation in the right place at the right time pointing in the right direction to maximise your strength and exploit your enermies weaknesses. What is the point of a formation if the enermy is allowed to hit you from the side or rear? Or worse if you have two groups that engage one after the other instead of at the sametime your losses will be much worse as a result.

So yeah the point is for formations to work for tactical gameplay and not just cosmetic fluff the player needs to be able to command movement orders much better than XR / X3 provides and has a quick/clean/efficient means of grouping and un-grouping ships.

One the plus side the path finding and collision detection seems much better in XR, with X3 although you had formation options they didn't really work that well with large ships if at all in practice.

[UniTrader]

I agree and disagree with you - yes, better fleet control is needed but not in the way you describe it because this is micromanagement the player/commander shouldn't be bothered with. My approach would be (example cases):
Case 1: Attack surface elements of an caps hip with bombers (like the drostan):
Select target object, say that you want to attack its surface elements, and that bombers should be used for this - and that's it. The rest should be done by your commanders (creating a bomber wing from the available Ships, give them the order to fly to their target ignoring other enemies the , add attack surface elements order, assign an escort wing to them to make sure they reach their target, and add a return order for everyone when they succeeded in their objective or it is no longer feasible to continue, or in case of success maybe even a regroup order to continue together with other wings to attack other targets )

This is just my personal opinion on this though

[BigBANGtheory]

Well there is nothing wrong in having the AI or some script logic play out the micromanagement on the players behalf so long as the player can override it if they don't like what its doing.

You might for example want to park your bombers 2km away from a target whilst a fighter wing clears out the threats and the capital ships go for anti-fighter weaponry. Or you could assign a fighter wing to protect the bombers or even just charge in with capital ships soak up the damage before releasing the bombers at close range... These are all tactical choices that maybe some would rather the AI handle I think its missed gameplay myself and as a commander I want to make those choices sometimes, I want to decide when to engage and be able to adapt during a fight.

What you descibed Unitrader isn't fleet control its more a short checklist of objectives letting your generals figure out how to achieve it. Its a bit like having the co-pilot fly your ship whilst you just set the destination, not in itself a bad thing until you feel the urge to fly yourself and reliase you can't.

I agree that some players would appreciate more AI control and delegation than others though I'm pretty sure if they see the AI doing something screwy they'll want to do something about it other than reloading their last save wheni t all goes wrong

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

I can imagine the use of predefined and customisable fleet roles along side a set of rules of engagement.

The roles might include, interceptor, spotter, bomber, fighter support, missile frigate, destroyer, heavy destroyer and carrier.

Each role would have a set of behaviours, with sensible defaults.

For example:

The role of the spotters is to inhabit the outer shell of a formation and are there to detect enemies.

Once an enemy is sighted then the rules of engagement are used to determine how each fleet member reacts.

Heavy destroyers will want to get in close and engage he enemy with as many weapons as possible.

[spankahontis]

One key property of any fleet is the ability to fly in formation.

1) The fastest speed of a fleet is the top speed of its slowest member. This also includes in Rebirth the speed of boosting. To match speeds while boosting means that faster ships require the ability to control boost acceleration and velocity.

2) The minimum turning cirlcle of a fleet is dependant on the least agile member. When in formation a fleet should coordinate its manoeuvring so each member turns at the same rate.

3) When jumping, the whole fleet should jump together. This may mean a rethink of the current mechanism. Such as the fleet opening a wormhole for travel rather than using individual jump drives. Thus allowing all ships to leave and arrive in formation.

There are some very good reasons why a fleet needs to travel in a formation See this article for a discussion on Carrier Group tactics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Carr ... up_tactics

Even in nature that makes sense, herds of animals only go as fast as their slowest counterpart.

A way to synchronize all the commands of ships as if they were all one object needs to be devised, as well as a template for speed.

It will be tricky to have fighters and large vessels to travel at a decent speed as fighters even at top speed travel slow, your fleet would never make it any time soon.
Unless the Fighters escorting the ship are close to the Freighter, carrier etc. that they use the ships own Gravity Well to piggy back on?

[BigBANGtheory]

I can imagine the use of predefined and customisable fleet roles along side a set of rules of engagement.

That would work, possibly is even necassary to satisfy two different types of player i.e. those that want simple strategic commands whilst they watch things play out vs those that want real-time fleet command.

There is a careful balance to be struck in order for things like formations to work positively if you start assuming that formation through script logic will bahave as the player wishes your going to run into problems and negative user user experience...

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

I am also aware that for certain users a more RTS based set of controls is needed for those commanders who want to directly interact and control the fleet actions.

Would be interesting to replay a battle to see if the human commander fares better or worse that the AI.

I still think that you will need rules of engagement. So that once they have engaged the enemy they know wether they are to get in close and broadside the target, or to hold off at a distance and use a main weapon for attack

[edit one time]

[BigBANGtheory]

Would be interesting to replay a battle to see if the human commander fares better or worse that the AI.

See I would say that isn't particularly interesting, what I think would be far more interesting is Egosoft showing the same fleet engagement scenario (with formations ) in the manner Unitrader describes and then in the RTS manner I described and lets hear what others think. It could be like Radial menu vs. Tactical UI I know where my money is.

Its very easy for anyone to say "some players this", "certain players that" etc etc let the truth come out and speak for itself.

[Tarazu]

With an addition of fleet management and control where will probably be a need to overhaul the XR fleet combat also. Reading the carrier group tactics article linked above gives good insight into modern combat and a sci fi game should naturally be about future combat.

Here are a few key points IMO:
1. Fleet movement managed according to fleet tactics. Threat vector and fleet direction being the essentials. (No more dogfighting caps!)
2. Combat and armament overhauled to anti-missile/fighter/capitals. Basically back to X3, where this was much better. A carrier should not also be a destroyer (ex Arawn).
3. Fleet composition and grouping in a user-friendly way.
4. RTS player management via tactical UI where fleet movement and priority targeting is managed.

After the above features EGO could reevaluate the development direction. For example adjusting the level of combat micromanagement or add more tactical features such as stealth/cloaking etc.

[BigBANGtheory]

that is correct, when you cut to the chase (and I know we started off talking about formations) the current fleet management needs to wrap itself up in something flamable and go find the nearest heat source.

Then when you build the new system that works for the player... integrate formations back in with some tactical options / rules of engagement. I think if you get formations working in the context of the current system its just a cosmetic layer on top of a game that is famously missing depth of gameplay i.e. yet again tried to work around some core command and control issues without addressing them.

[Snafu_X3]

yet again tried to work around some core command and control issues without addressing them.

That's the key element isn't it? Until the basic remote command functions work satisfactorily anything built on top of them is doomed to failure or continuous inadequate patches to the scripts

Can we at least agree on a basic core of commands (strategy) before we go haring off trying to change ship controls (tactics)?

IMO basic core should include (in no particular order):

• Fleet facing
  Fleet jump (ie all together, or at very least strongest/slowest ships first)
  Defence/attack order (once at destination)
  Move to <position> (could incorporate 'facing' above)

Additions/changes to this list? Feel free to comment..