A couple questions about combat

[immortalfrieza]

For one, I'd like to know how turrets work. Before the AI of the turrets had the annoying tendency to hit friendlies and neutral targets if there were any in the vicinity of combat with a hostile target, which of course made THEM hostile and thus turning everything into a free for all, you could even end up destroying your own ships sometimes. For the few fighters that had them and for Transports this wasn't much of an issue due to the lower scale of range for the weapon, but once you got to bigger things like TLs and Capital Ships this became a major issue that made those classes of ships pretty pointless to actually use.

I'd say one solution to this is to have both player and AI ships automatically designate a "Hot Zone" when a hostile target being aimed and fired at, which is shown on the HUD by a sphere of red lines marking the outside of the zone that covers the max range of the weapons involved plus a little more for safety's sake. This functions as basically a signal to any ships that says "you may be shot if you remain in this area, we are not responsible for any damage, Get Out" and any ships inside this sphere will try their best to leave it as quickly as possible unless they happen to be the target and any other ships hostile to the one firing. Thus, neither the player nor the AI can be faulted for any ships that are hit within that area. That, and have turrets avoid shooting in the direction of stations even if a hostile ship goes near or behind it unless said station is designated as hostile the ship that is firing.

I'd also like to know about ship capturing, both smaller ships like fighters and larger ones like capital ships, will we see a return of the marine system? I'm particularly interested in this because ship capping is the whole reason I got into the series in the first place so how it works is really important to me.

[Falcrack]

There could be rules that if an an NPC controlled turret hits a ship which it had not targeted, then it is not counted against the firing ship. In addition, the amount of hits and resulting damage could factor in, so that if it was just a stray shot that dinged the shields it would not be counted.

There are a number of ways it could be made more sophisticated than simply "Your shots hit my shield! Prepare to die! I hate you forever!"

[immortalfrieza]

There could be rules that if an an NPC controlled turret hits a ship which it had not targeted, then it is not counted against the firing ship. In addition, the amount of hits and resulting damage could factor in, so that if it was just a stray shot that dinged the shields it would not be counted.

There are a number of ways it could be made more sophisticated than simply "Your shots hit my shield! Prepare to die! I hate you forever!"

The problem with that is it's too exploitable. If aggression only counted for ships you were targeting then it's all too easy to deliberately target something where there's a lot of ships in the way and use friendly fire to bring down other ships and stations while technically attacking a "safe" target. The amount of hits and damage being factored in likely wouldn't fix things much since at a time where friendly fire is a concern you're probably firing hundreds of shots per minute which would go over that threshold quickly anyway. Especially if you're flying a capital ship being attacked by a bunch of fighters where shots are going to be going every which way.

There needs to be something that not only tells the other non hostile ships that you're not trying to attack them but also informs them that it's a good idea to get out of the way RIGHT NOW if you don't want to be shot, and have the AI react accordingly. Something that also informs the player of same would be helpful as well. My "Hot Zone" idea solves the issue quite handily.

[PowerPC603]

Only damaging targeted ships would make some weapons useless, especially the ones who do splash damage (AOE weapons).

You only target one ship, but multiple ships get hit simultaneously.

Such weapons are good against groups of fighters to take them down quickly with only a few shots.
This wouldn't be possible anymore.

What they could do, is calculate if there is a free path between the turret and the target.
If a friendly target is in between them, don't fire, even when the target is in range and hittable by the turret.
This could be a big help when you have fighters helping out in bringing a bigger target down.

[Thrake]

There could be rules that if an an NPC controlled turret hits a ship which it had not targeted, then it is not counted against the firing ship. In addition, the amount of hits and resulting damage could factor in, so that if it was just a stray shot that dinged the shields it would not be counted.

There are a number of ways it could be made more sophisticated than simply "Your shots hit my shield! Prepare to die! I hate you forever!"

The problem with that is it's too exploitable. If aggression only counted for ships you were targeting then it's all too easy to deliberately target something where there's a lot of ships in the way and use friendly fire to bring down other ships and stations while technically attacking a "safe" target. The amount of hits and damage being factored in likely wouldn't fix things much since at a time where friendly fire is a concern you're probably firing hundreds of shots per minute which would go over that threshold quickly anyway. Especially if you're flying a capital ship being attacked by a bunch of fighters where shots are going to be going every which way.

There needs to be something that not only tells the other non hostile ships that you're not trying to attack them but also informs them that it's a good idea to get out of the way RIGHT NOW if you don't want to be shot, and have the AI react accordingly. Something that also informs the player of same would be helpful as well. My "Hot Zone" idea solves the issue quite handily.

But the "fix" to your "exploit" is that I turn off my turrets unless I'm in a sector full of hostiles, or in an empty sector, which is more silly than abusing the system as I'm effectively playing with turrets off 90% of the time. Why should I be punished to lock you from abusing your single player game? If you find it fun, why prevent you to do it, and force me into these weird situations? If you don't, maybe you have enough self-control not to do that... Also station defense is a nightmare to take down fighters without hitting the station.

I do disagree that friendly fire should be turned off, maybe some slight improvement to the AI of fighters would be useful, anti-capital weapons are super slow, it's not too hard to predict that if you stand right in the middle beetween two capital ships it's going to hurt and fighters have the speed/maneuverability to prevent this. Now however hitting from the rear is much safer...
Bigger ships isn't much of a problem, they are slow and big enough for me to see it coming, so I stop shooting temporarily.

Now no friendly ramming fire I wouldn't mind, flying an M2 is like flying a giant space fly swat and I can tell you it's not flies that I swat, but I think XR already does it?