Realistic? Combat

[Budd]

Realism would be very boring and stupid with a thrust based engine in space, more or least unlimited speed, no ablilaty to turn without skidding etc. With that in mind combat should try to be interesting and varied, like ww2 without gravity. Bombers or capt ships would be slow and rely on turrents and formations for defence, fighters need speed and agility etc, game does this quiet well but is flawed. Any attacked ship should head straight for friendly base or gate in straight line keeping speed up to escape whilst turrets fire away at enemy. If you ever played a good ww2 sim it is fatal to attack a bomber with rear turret straight behind, you have to manover in front/ sides and dive in for short attack and dive out [classic high side yoyo attack my fav]. In short all ships should have their manoverability 1/4 at least, turrets should have lightest weapons, fixed guns on fighters =med damage, fixed guns on Ts Tp etc =med 2 high [because ship is bigger can fit bigger gun in front], fixed gun on Capt ship=mega damage. Also turning must result in loss of speed, thus inc adv to defender running, and would allow more fighter types [Intercepters=fast/poor turn,Dogfighters=slower/good turn]. This gives more tactics to cambat and trade. Example, You are attacked from behind in Ts by pirates, no prob head for base, jump in turret blast away good fun, even though you are out gunned bigger shields means u should win and firing is easy because enemy is straight behind you most of time. Same situ but sneaky pirate doesnt engage you straight away but flys beside you out of range till he overtakes you then turns in for short attack on your defenceless sides, Q? can u make it to base or should you run back. this would mean posistion before combat very important, now you can look at map and deside whether or not to make run in sector by posistion of enemy. Additional roll controll on top/belly turret would be helpfull to roll ship to face enemys to keep linear trajectory. And because big guns need fixed point ie front and size of ship to fit them it would be suiside to get in front of any bigger ship, thus giving any capt ship adv in initiating combat with anything! Even TL's would be dangerous head on. Formations would be more dangerous to attack if they kept posistion ie 3 or more Ts with rear turrets firing togehter would be deadly. In short if a turrets guns=1, then fighters guns=3, Capts guns=10/30. This would mean a fighters short burst [ie diving tactic] would equel damage suffured from turret firing for longer, then aim and skill would determin winner, plus firing them turrets would be alota fun.
Any comments except about my poor crammer, spelling, physics etc would be appreciated.

[Mistral]

I like the game but at the same time I'm not blind to its faults.

<SNIP>

However, small ships can turn stupidly fast which makes combat a point and shoot thing and almost completely removes the need or ability to use manoeuvres to gain an advantage.

I play IL2:FB (not very well, mind) and most WW2 planes (I know these are spaceships and not WW2 planes but at least dogfighting is fun in WW2 planes) take around 20 seconds to do a 360 turn. It seems to me it's closer to 2 seconds in your starting Discoverer and that doesn't even have anywhere near max rudder tuning.

I think it is this that makes ramming such a problem. No matter what direction a ship is going it can very shortly turn to point straight at you to shoot. All the time you're pointing straight at them to shoot. End result, two ships flying straight at each other.

The shots do have a very low range and they do move very slowly.

And while there is a pseudo-physics engine it is very basic and can't really be called a real physics engine.

I said the very same thing earlier.

I wonder if there is a setting (it should really be a simple constant) that we can decrease to make all ships turn more slowly. I think it would definitely be worth trying if we could.

[Budd]

It would make the combat a lot better if rudder settings for all ships could be changed, anyone know how?

[Skeeter]

Brianetta told me it could be scripted to change speeds and turning to what u fancy, so i guess we could see freespace two style combat, hmm i wounder if we can script the attack pattern of ai ships to be better like freespace 2 combat ai.

[Storm_Front]

Modding the speed and maneuverability of the X2 ships is quite simple (once the game is unpacked). Take a look at Storm_Fronts Mod Kit at xscripting.com. You can also mod the missiles, lasers, and shields if you so desire. There are several tutorials out there on how to unpack the game using Stone-Ds tool or X2 modder.