G33X Nexus Entertainment > Precursors

Capital Ship Movement

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Morgul:
I decided to post a copy from our current wiki about Capital Ship Movement control. Dave and I worked everything out. and I think the idea will me *much* more intuitive... but I wanted opinions from the forumites.

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Capital Ship Control Design Doc

There are two different styles of Capital Ship Movement, AutoNav and Manual. They both are equally functional, and both use the same underlying movement system, but the interfaces are both pretty different.

AutoNav

AutoNav mode allows you to select a point in 3D space, much like Homeworld. You move your mouse in the XY Plane, and when you hold the shift key, it locks XY movement, and allows for Z-axis movement. When you release, it locks the Z axis, and allows for XY movement again. Once you select that point, your ship will orient itself properly to go to that point. If you hold the control key, a representation of the ship will be shown at the last point selected, allowing you to set the orientation of the ship when it reaches that point. Holding control will allow you to set the yaw, and control+shift will allow you to set the pitch at the destination. Instead, if you right click, you can specify as many points as you want, building a path for your ship to follow. (Note: The AI is rather conservative, and will avoid objects by a safe margin. Also, you can't specify points on the surface of or inside solid objects.)

Manual

Manual mode is the Capital Ship version of the Fighter movement style. It gives complete control to the pilot, allowing for much more advanced manuevers than AutoNav. It uses the same system for pitch and yaw as AutoNav but only allows for one point to be selected. It provides control for roll, and sideslip.

Movement/Targeting

It is important to note that constantly being in Movement Mode (regardless of which) could be rather distracting (visually) and rather annoying (from a gameplay perspective). Also, one would like to be able to target other ships, and possibly even engage in combat. So, there should be a key to toggle between Targeting mode and Movement mode.

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So, what do you all think?

fehknt:
first thing that strikes me... can't one control yaw and pitch in one mouse stroke?  Why make it two?  (or if i'm making stuff up, correct me) <:o)

and just a clarification, for my benifit: we are going to have it be possible for one person to manage the nav system, and another to manage the targeting, and another to man a specific turret (fed targeting info from the targeting station), right?  Or is each area planned to be more defined -- as in, one person does nav and targeting. period.  you cannot split that job up, you cannot combine and jump into a specific turret after you set a course, etc.

I definitly like this, especially as it seems to naturally follow from the fighter control scheme.

BigDan:
I would say on capitol ships you should maybe make it a team effort, one person pioleting one or several fighting in turets , one runing tactical , so on and so forth, this would give it a real life feal as a very large ship with its own limits and benifits.

Morgul:

--- Quote from: "BigDan" ---I would say on capitol ships you should maybe make it a team effort, one person pioleting one or several fighting in turets , one runing tactical , so on and so forth, this would give it a real life feal as a very large ship with its own limits and benifits.
--- End quote ---


The simple answer is: yes. You have the option of being the captain with a munch of AI's doing the jobs for you... *or* you can assing as many people to whatever jobs you want. Stations will be freeform, and definable. Basically, imagine a list of functions, and you get to assign keys to them, for your station. You could have 'Grab me a coffee' in a button on the same station as 'Fire the Flaming Green Missles of Death'. (The rest could even be environmental science, or even CNN News.)


--- Quote from: "fehknt" ---first thing that strikes me... can't one control yaw and pitch in one mouse stroke? Why make it two? (or if i'm making stuff up, correct me) <:o)[...]
--- End quote ---


Well, think about it this: You're not in the persepctive of the ship. You're in a 3rd perspective, *almost* like RTS. (Seriously, it's a stripped down version of RTS where you can't select more than one ship, or do the kewl 'order' system of RTS)

So, since you're in an independant view, and the shi[s orientation can change without yours changing... it makes it pretty mugh a pain in the butt. We *could* do it, but it's less intuitive then Homeworld's system (which I love.)

Dawn:
I like this a lot! A couple of thoughts though, first off, I think that having humans or PC's manning turrets should have a HUGE advantage over AI/NPC's. I'm not sure how we can realistically achive this as in reality, AI could be far better aims then humans can dream of being but it woudl be nice. Secondly, I like the idea of capitol ship in third person. Obviously capitol ships would have turrets and I think that as the ship commander/captian (we will have to eventually set in stone what rank this is) should have the ability to fire individual turrets at indivdual targets. He should have complete control of every aspect of the ship at his fingertips, so that it's still baised on skill. In otherwords a simple little figther could take out a capitol ship after about an hour of firing his lasers at it because the commander is to noob to be able to click on his little dude and start alll weapons attacking.
We should also set the amount of mass a capitol ships hanger has as relative to the mass of fighters that general players have. Players should be able to dock as long as there is room for them in the hanger and take control of either an assigned aspect of the ship or one they have privelegs to that they choose.
Also capitol ships should be expensive! As in no single player can easily attain one. It has to be the corporate work of an alliance to bring together enough money for one of these behemoths, and obviously the alliance would work as a team to defend it and use it as what it is.

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