Capital ship control scheme

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Should another control scheme for capital ships be added?

Yes - the one which was suggested
7
24%
Yes - but different one
5
17%
No (please comment why?)
17
59%
 
Total votes: 29

LightZodiac
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Capital ship control scheme

Post by LightZodiac » Thu, 19. Apr 18, 16:46

After years of lurking here comes my first post :)


In 3x we had fighters and capital ships sharing the same control scheme. Said control scheme is well suited for fighters which have most of their firepower in forward facing cannons, and which have speed as well as maneuverability. While flying fighter player is in full control of his offensive as well as defensive aspects.

Capital ships on the other hand are slow and bulky some of them have forward mounted cannons which can be fired while flying (but only on targets in front of the ship) some of them don't have even those... most of the firepower is concentrated in turrets spread across the ship.

So while we are piloting our capital ship we can directly control only some of our ship cannons and sometimes not even those, AI is assigned to controlling most of our turrets. And if we switch to turret view we can only control one group of those, again limiting our influence.

This in my opinion is not the best solution.

So I'm making a suggestion for alternative control scheme which players could opt to use when flying capital ships.

3rd person view in which players use keys to fly their ship and they use mouse to change the direction in which the camera faces as well as control their turrets/cannons.

Instead of having cannons assigned in forward/rearward/right/left/top/bottom groups let players assign cannons into groups of their liking, so players could eg. assign anti-capital ships in group 1, anti-fighter ships in group 2... etc.

So players could .eg fly their ship and fire group 1 on their own while AI controls group 2, then switch to group 2 and let AI control group 1.

Also it would be nice if capital ships instead of being limited to just one launcher like fighters are could have several launchers and launch missile volleys like M7M frigates were able to.

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sd_jasper
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Post by sd_jasper » Thu, 19. Apr 18, 17:06

I say no. It isn't a bad idea, but in my opinion isn't needed and would divert development time from other things. You can't pilot all your capital ships at once anyway, so I'd rather see better cap combat AI than more control over the guns on one of them.

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Post by Karvat » Thu, 19. Apr 18, 17:20

I only hope that the capital is as realistic as possible, that is difficult to pilot alone, and involve as many Npc as possible to be helped to manage them, some that govern the turrets, others the launching bridge, others that repair the ship , and so on

LightZodiac
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Post by LightZodiac » Thu, 19. Apr 18, 17:20

sd_jasper wrote:I say no. It isn't a bad idea, but in my opinion isn't needed and would divert development time from other things. You can't pilot all your capital ships at once anyway, so I'd rather see better cap combat AI than more control over the guns on one of them.
Even adding a simple option of using mouse to control camera would be great and it requires minimal work from the devs.

With said option moders could make better control scheme for capital ships.

Without it it's an impossible task.

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Post by Skeeter » Thu, 19. Apr 18, 17:48

I tried suggesting more dedicated capital ship control and management before and I didn't get a great reply back as they said basically no where not going full cap ship simulator. Which is daft because controls and management between a small ship like fighter and a huge cap ship is very different and should be played differently. They just don't want to do the effort of it I think.
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ajime
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Post by ajime » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 03:58

I usually wouldn't be bothered. but i had fondness of X3's camera systems on manning the guns. Anyways I have always had fun with clash of the titans close quarters automated turret duel to efficient turret firing arcs by personally being at the helm. And cheekily strafe incoming fire :P

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Killjaeden
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Post by Killjaeden » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 13:00

Having a world of war ships (or similar) control feature would i think be attractive to many newer players. I think i would use it too if well implemented. But it's a bit more complicated to implement if it's supposed to be usable. For example you need to assign turret groups that you can switch similar to the weapon groups in X3 - so that you can select which turrets you controll directly (f.e. anti capital ship guns), and which continue working under AI control (f.e. anti fighter and anti missile).
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LightZodiac
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Post by LightZodiac » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 17:31

Killjaeden wrote:Having a world of war ships (or similar) control feature would i think be attractive to many newer players. I think i would use it too if well implemented.

Dreadnought and Fractured Space have this kind of control scheme and it really works great. However those same games lack things like exploring, economy, trading... the list goes on. Making the fight aspect of the game a bit better certainly wouldn't hurt.

Killjaeden wrote:But it's a bit more complicated to implement if it's supposed to be usable. For example you need to assign turret groups that you can switch similar to the weapon groups in X3 - so that you can select which turrets you controll directly (f.e. anti capital ship guns), and which continue working under AI control (f.e. anti fighter and anti missile).
Yes, just as you said it also requires a system in which player can assign turrets to different groups and just as in X3 assign AI behavior to said groups. So player can chose to manually control anti-capital guns or anti-fighter guns while leaving the weapons assign to other groups under AI control, or even opt to have all of groups controlled by AI while he concentrates on flying the ship.

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Post by Dialgos » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 19:00

This idea is pretty nice i think. Me for example, i love Cruisers, Frigates, Carrier and so on. In my opinion it would be very great if you can sit in your bridge and give orders to the Staff leaders: Helm, Engineers, Fire Control and so on. So it is just borig clicking w for a long time but if you can mark a position at the map and the Helms officer flies to this position itself, you can command the rest of your ships or restructure your capital ship, while your ship is flying to the station itself. (with the help of stationed NPS --> no helms officer --> no movement for the ship) So something like a bridge simulator....

Hope this was the right Position to post this. I just found out that there will be X4

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ubuntufreakdragon
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Post by ubuntufreakdragon » Fri, 20. Apr 18, 23:34

I want a set course system first you set your new yaw and pitch with mouse x and y axis, than a click for confirm now x defines roll and y the radius/bend of your curve and thus your speed, too.
on controller left and right stick would do the trick.
than the cap flies the curve pressing shift allows to enqueue such maneuvers.

in combat i rather want to set priorities than fireing the turrets myself, e.g. primary traget, low interest target, ignore target, drain target shields, and i want a custom priority list for turret tarteting similar to the one in AP, to e.g. make incomming torpedos more important for light turrets than the primary target, which is top prio for heavy guns.
I also want to swich these rules on the fly e.g. first I was bombing a big target than some enemy bombers popped up.

Some auto maneuvers would be nice to e.g. fly to object, point main front guns @x, board side y
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Post by Geek » Sun, 22. Apr 18, 00:17

Yes and no - controlling the camera with the mouse is OK with me, firing the many turrets of a capital ships manually is not. It is neither immersive or practical.
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Post by adeine » Sun, 22. Apr 18, 04:33

I'd assume you can already play bridge simulator (get up from pilot seat and use 'auto pilot' commands).

I don't think directly controlling the ship should be entirely different from any other ship, and manually controlling turrets seems a bit arcadey; you'd have to make the turret AI/NPC gunnery control significantly worse for it to really be useful, and then you'd get annoyed with it when flying the ship or for any of your non-player ships.

In X3, you could use the external camera view to great effect with the keyboard to manoeuvre capital ships without ramming into things and weave in and out of combat. A lot of fun and very different from piloting smaller ships without the need for an altogether new control scheme.

If anything, this kind of control could be streamlined and improved on for X4 (X3 required you to manually cycle through cameras and zoom in/out every single time, and it wasn't the most graceful of systems).

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zwierzu
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Post by zwierzu » Sun, 22. Apr 18, 15:03

I for one would love Nexus: Jupiter Incident style camera and capital ship control.
It was easy and intuitive, but also complex enough to make it fun.
Or RTS-like capital ship controls, like Homeworld 2.
But both options would require really smart AI and it was never strength of X games, hope it will be better in X4 ;)

In my opinion player should never have full manual control over such big ships like in X3. Frigates - maybe, but not battleships.
I'm the captain - I give orders to my crew to perform a task and I shouldn't keep my hands always on the helm. In critical situations maybe, but not all the time ;P

Just my two cents. I love X games, but capital ship control should definitely be changed.

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Post by Honved » Mon, 23. Apr 18, 18:09

The player has the ability to either fly the ship manually (like a bigger fighter), or to issue "commands" via the control console (fly to sector, dock at station, etc.). The latter simulates issuing orders to your crew, except that the directions are currently highly limited by the ship's inability to dock at most stations. Basically, it just needs a few tweaks, like a "fly toward" (and stop before you hit it) and "heading" commands.

[ Edit - I see this as allowing for cultural differences: a Split would probably fly his capital ship as just a bigger fighter (it's his honor on the line if someone else were to make a mistake), while an Argon will issue commands and let subordinates actually operate the controls. Many M6 ships would be likely to "dogfight" against other M6s and M3s, possibly even against M4s, while most M7s and up would likely rely mainly or exclusively on turrets to engage targets smaller than themselves. ]
Last edited by Honved on Wed, 25. Apr 18, 17:20, edited 1 time in total.

LightZodiac
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Post by LightZodiac » Tue, 24. Apr 18, 20:32

Geek wrote:Yes and no - controlling the camera with the mouse is OK with me, firing the many turrets of a capital ships manually is not. It is neither immersive or practical.
You would still have the option of letting AI handle the cannons. I'm not proposing the replacement of current control scheme but rather adding another control scheme.

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Post by A5PECT » Wed, 25. Apr 18, 08:13

Just let me set a baseline turret behavior, then give me hotkeyabale "Open Fire" and "Cease Fire" functions. Naturally, if this is implemented then it would be wise to add a UI element to ships with turrets that shows whether the turrets are active or in cease fire mode.

If you want to have fun with it, let me mark targets so my turrets will prioritize them when they're in the turret's range and field of fire, and automatically have them switch to normal turret AI when they're unable to hit the target.

For more fun, let me do the inverse as well. Allow me to mark targets for exclusion, so my turrets won't attack that target no matter what (unless I remove the exclusion flag).
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Post by Fedora01 » Wed, 25. Apr 18, 09:47

I'd be up for a Silent Hunter-esque control scheme. Although I'm sure most people would find it unbelievably boring and it'd be an extra strain on the developers to do such a control scheme.
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Post by LittleBird » Wed, 25. Apr 18, 15:30

Reading all suggstions I would like to see less control options for the player.
You are the captain you command and AI will do.

With manual fly you can exploit the AI. If you press left AI aims were your ship will be. But if you simultaneously roll and stear your ship AI failes at aiming.
Yes we all did it I know :twisted:
And it feels more... right. The captain sitting on fly controls? Or loading torpedos? Noooo... but moving arround on your bridge and watching your crew executing your commands? Way better.
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Post by ajime » Thu, 26. Apr 18, 07:36

LittleBird wrote:Reading all suggstions I would like to see less control options for the player.
You are the captain you command and AI will do.

With manual fly you can exploit the AI. If you press left AI aims were your ship will be. But if you simultaneously roll and stear your ship AI failes at aiming.
Yes we all did it I know :twisted:
And it feels more... right. The captain sitting on fly controls? Or loading torpedos? Noooo... but moving arround on your bridge and watching your crew executing your commands? Way better.
Wish for some red shirts...
Not for me. CQC is my fun. I am more concerned the AI navigation failing to provide a good broadside gun arc than its aiming failure. If there's one thing that i learned about auto assault by your captains in XR, is that if you stay stationery, your turrets die faster. In that aspect the AI is somewhat competent with the zigzag but usually ends up with terrible firing arcs with minimal guns. When it does get into a good arc I always have to manually command the ship to hold positions. What can i say, I like to see my toys go maximum pew pew. :D

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Post by Killjaeden » Mon, 30. Apr 18, 16:10

LittleBird wrote:You are the captain you command and AI will do. <snip>
There's the problem - you are the captain, but the AI won't do exactly what you want from it, because it's incapable of this.

If there was real human crew, you could easily tell them to bank hard right and then left, keep the ship such that front and right turret banks always can shoot at the designated priority target, not waste laser energy by trying to hit M5 with PPC lasers, not shoot missiles while simultaneously firing when in a fighter, not crashing against a station or target ship, etc etc.

That's usually why manual control is allowed in such games - to allow players execute what they want to do rather than beeing limited by what can be done with AI.

Therefore,
Reading all suggstions I would like to see less control options for the player.
I strongly disagree. Unless the AI is made so good, that it is capable to execute whatever i would have done as player in direct control.

Even the most basics in capitalship combat are not realized in X thus far. Ships trying keep a certain facing towards their priority target (if they have turrets), and preferrably not the side that is already rendered ineffective from combat damage... In that regard (and also the way to easily and efficiently control ship) they should take a look at the AI auto-engage preference options of Battlefleet Gothic: Armada.
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