Long range primary weaponry?

[Sesk]

I read the interview with Bernd and it made me wonder if X Rebirth will have long range weapons, like "sniping" lasers, for capital ships, or will it still be the same dog fighting between capital ships like in X3.

It always bugged me that capital ships had to hug each other to engage in combat, avoiding collision and chasing each other down. It resembled fighter combat, on a larger scale, too much.

[Geek]

Are we playing the same game ?
X3TC capital guns range is over 6km and heavy missiles much more.
I never had to dogfight in a M1/M2.

[Bobucles]

6KM is hardly long range. It barely reaches from one side of a capital ship to the other!

Weapon range in X was limited due to AI issues. Presumably those issues are fixed in Rebirth, so such weapons should be possible.

There will always be weapons built for dogfighting, though.

[amtie]

Capital ship weapons were too slow. So anything at long range (apart from the beam weapons which were extremely rare to find AND mount) was relatively useless.

I want Nexus or Freespace-style capital ship weapons, damn it! 3km/s projectiles flying from one ship to another, heavy plasma beams cutting through a ships insides!

[unknown1]

I have to agree that 6 + Km range weapons on 2-3 Km long Capital ships is awful.The weapons range is just 2 -3 times bigger than the size of the parties involved

Imagine two childrens throwing at each other with rocks.The range of the throwed rocks can go as long as 100 meters,so the range of these primitive weapons is 50 times bigger than the size of the parties involved.

Nowdays , a small destroyer in the atlantic can pinpoint and shoot with a cannon ,not missile,right at the top of one of the Giza piramids in Egipt,hitting it with 0.2 meters accuracy.
You can make the math yourselfs.

And to think that space behemoths can shoot at just 7 km..is ...inexplicable

[shadowrunner85]

yea, the range to capital ships have bothered me to, I hope this will be drastically increased in X:R, but I dought it , considering that X:R combats will be concentrating on dog fights, and considering game play, they properly wont plan the game in a way that takes fighters a long time to reach an enemy cap.

personally i would love if the cap on cap combat was really long and involving several steps:
1. planing, scouting, searching (5-10minutes)
2. Then hunting, evading, trapping (1-5minutes)
3. and if all goes well, ENGAGE in combat (10-30+minutes) and make it more than about ho has the most DPSxEHP
3.5 in combat, make decision like;
3.5.1. do I hold the fighters close to my cap, to support friendly fighters, but at higher risk to take damage, or do you take the fight to there cap. risking heavy losses.
3.5.2. placement off own cap ship and decide which side of the ship you want to face (sacrifice) to enemy fire, and own firing solution.
3.5.3. electronic warfare, jam enemy systems, and firewall your own systems at expense of efficiency.
3.5.4 damage control, mid combat repairers at expense of crew lives and moral.
3.5.5. energy control, overwrite/overcharge systems at expense of damaging systems and/or power-supply and conductors

I want combat to be long and hectic, full of decision making, but still slow passed enough that you have time to make decision.

if the game is something like this, long range between caps wont be an issue, the range will only work as an delay to your decisions, witch gives you time to rethink and plan your next move. and also a slow passed combat like this will give you time already from the scouting part to call in reenforcement or mercs.

[Nanook]

...
And to think that space behemoths can shoot at just 7 km..is ...inexplicable

It's a game, and players like to see the effects of their guns and missiles. What you'd get with your 'realism' is maybe a tiny burst of light hundreds of km away, if you managed to hit something. You'd probably never even see the opposing capital ship. Realistic, maybe, but not very exciting.

[Alan Phipps]

I agree with the thrust of shadowrunner85's post but with a couple of concerns:

1. That the AI is able to do likewise to the Player ships, or at least to give a good simulation of the steps with reasonable resultant outcomes (and opportunities to take appropriate counter-tactics by both sides).

2. That all this does not bring the rest of the game to a crawl on 'then typical systems' when fleets do meet in-game.

[amtie]

It's a game, and players like to see the effects of their guns and missiles. What you'd get with your 'realism' is maybe a tiny burst of light hundreds of km away, if you managed to hit something. You'd probably never even see the opposing capital ship. Realistic, maybe, but not very exciting.

Nexus had the weapons range quite well. Weapons range, at a guess, was probably around twenty times the length of the Angelwing and similar cruiser-sized ships. Weapon speed was also good.

[BigMistake]

As it has been pointed out already, for our cap ships weapons to have any sort of effect at range, they need their projectiles to be much faster. It always bugged me how I could outrun capital ship shots in a fighter (X3TC). Nothing should even come to the speed of projectiles fired from a capital ship other than other projectiles.

I digress, It would be really cool to have the range 3-5x that of X3TC. Remember, we won't be flying the things anymore. We can have the best seats (or any for that matter) in the house for the fireworks. (I personally would position myself somewhere above or below the field of combat so I could watch both sides firing, that is, if I wasn't in "Knife fighting range" with the enemy capital.)

[TonyEvans]

Long range.. not even. Just "Longer" range would be nice. a 20-30-40km cap-ship weapon range would leave the enemy ship large enough to see and far enough that you're not risking trading paint with the AI in control.

[flyboychuckles]

...
And to think that space behemoths can shoot at just 7 km..is ...inexplicable

It's a game, and players like to see the effects of their guns and missiles. What you'd get with your 'realism' is maybe a tiny burst of light hundreds of km away, if you managed to hit something. You'd probably never even see the opposing capital ship. Realistic, maybe, but not very exciting.

That is what cameras are for. Currently when I launch an M8 Missile salvo I camera view the enemy ship to watch my pretty explosions.

I do agree that 100km is too much and I think that slow moving energy projectiles are no fun. I like rail guns, gauss cannons, beams and things like that. I like the idea of capital ships at 20-40km from each other and in between support ships like corvettes and fighters battling it out while the cap ships launch big missiles/heavy weapons at each other.

[DaveH1947]

A problem is after capturing a ship it gets destroyed by a long range missal even by my own capital ship. it seems if the range was further away you would have no chance at all

[Alan Phipps]

Since the way to capture a capital ship in X-Rebirth will likely still be by marine boarding or by using ship-infiltration drones, I don't think that the boundaries of long range capital combat will be too much of a factor there. Unnecessary missiles arriving from a distance after the combat has ended pose a problem even now and it would be nice to see some sort of safe-destruct facility for both Player and NPC use where appropriate.

[ConCorDian]

i think it will all depend on how the new engine manages this to how the range will be effected. id love to see a BSG(ish) multi purpose weapons, be able to switch them from long range destructive weapons to short range flak weapons.

as for the actual range, the new engine could make 100km ranges seem fine, there is more factors than just the range. gameplay needs to be the first and foremost, yeh a basis in reality would be good but not the most important. id imagine there will be a better balance between the two since Rebirth is supposed to be on a larger scale than any of the games prior... (even its development )

[Sesk]

What I had in mind for long range weapons is to be able to call in your capital ships and have them engage the other capital ships at long range, because AI vs AI capital ship fights in X3 honestly just look r*******.

And the whole "seeing the effect of their guns" is no longer relevant since you can't pilot those capital ships. And I wouldn't want long range weapons on fighters/small ships. Just large beam weapons tearing through the system and hitting other capital ships, instead of seeing 2 capital ships orbiting each other and constantly going into collision avoidance.

And I'm not saying 100km range, just like 30km, long enough so you can be in between them and shoot down fighters that they launch.

[TonyEvans]

Yea. Seems like after you've seen one capital ship battle you've seen them all. If I ever want to see a ship from a distance I usually use f3 it and watch from there. A hyper-manueverable camera "drone" would be nice. Maybe a bit/lot like Eve's camera?

[StarSword]

Yea. Seems like after you've seen one capital ship battle you've seen them all. If I ever want to see a ship from a distance I usually use f3 it and watch from there. A hyper-manueverable camera "drone" would be nice. Maybe a bit/lot like Eve's camera?

Actually I saw a Let's Play of X:BTF on YouTube. The X-Shuttle had one of those.

[Probe1]

Capital ship weapons were too slow. So anything at long range (apart from the beam weapons which were extremely rare to find AND mount) was relatively useless.

I want Nexus or Freespace-style capital ship weapons, damn it! 3km/s projectiles flying from one ship to another, heavy plasma beams cutting through a ships insides!

Then play XRM?

[amtie]

I was wandering about a mod that did this, but my searching didn't find anything. Is XRM for TC or AP? And what's it called (can't seem to find it)?

Edit: Nevermind. Found it. I'll try it out! Thanks!

We'll see if this long-range combat is the only thing that's needed to make X3 combat better, or if X:R needs something else in addition.