I know the following idea is too radical and will alienate many here, but I just want to post it anyway
Make Fighter ships behave like the ships in the old Interplay games “Descent”. Not Descent Freespace. Just plain Descent. In other words, the ships should move in all directions (strafing and forward/backward) at the same speed.
So instead of dogfights where fighter ships chase each around, twisting and hoping to get behind someone’s tail, it would be more like Descent’s combat, where people are strafing around and shooting at each other head-to-head.
Right now the strafe speed of the ships is way too slow to make the combat interesting. My idea is to make the strafe speed much faster, and the forward speed much slower.
This could make dumbfire missile combat very interesting too. Let’s say Fighters can access a dumbfire rocket that does 50% health damage. However, it travels slowly.
If two Fighters are facing off, they can shoot rockets at each other and strafe to dodge them. Strafe too slowly or incorrectly, and massive damage will result.
This is already an option in T4-5 and for some ships in T3 too. I’m currently using a strafing Wolf and does wonders. It doesn’t match forward movement speed like you suggest for all ships, but there are some which can come close to it (one example is the Lance S or some empire gunships). However not only movement speed is important there, but acceleration in the different axises, where you have no upgrade available whatsoever.
As someone who played the Descent series, I would say it’s an interesting concept.
The only difference or downside is that Descent takes place in mineshafts and other closed environments where strafing is necessary to stay alive.
Star Conflict is in open space, which means boosting strafe speed that much will result in fighters becoming too unpredictable and hard to hit. I like the idea, but it just wouldn’t be practical in this environment.
this is how i fly my gunships. like a space helicopter with ions. why do I use ions? because point and click adventure is very effective at killing inty pilots who think they’re a damage dealing class
That’s pretty much how I fly my fighters and frigates. Hell, my Styx’s strafe speed is more than half my max afterburning speed. I also strafe a lot to put distance between my tackler and enemy intys. Afaik ‘strafe acceleration’ (so to speak) cannot be reduced either with armoured hull modules, so strafing is already very viable even for tanky ships.
Star Conflict is in open space, which means boosting strafe speed that much will result in fighters becoming too unpredictable and hard to hit. I like the idea, but it just wouldn’t be practical in this environment.
Fast moving intys are already enough of a handful. I don’t want to see Fed gunships put on their speed buffs and circle strafe me.
As someone who played the Descent series, I would say it’s an interesting concept.
The only difference or downside is that Descent takes place in mineshafts and other closed environments where strafing is necessary to stay alive.
Star Conflict is in open space, which means boosting strafe speed that much will result in fighters becoming too unpredictable and hard to hit. I like the idea, but it just wouldn’t be practical in this environment.
Ironically, to me Descent’s combat wasn’t that good. There was usually no cover, so people would just strafe around madly while shooting slow velocity weapons at each other.
It would probably be boring in open space parts of Star Conflict maps too. But if there was more cover it could be cool.
I just keep wondering how space combat games can be really fun and engaging in multiplayer. IMO, no space game has ever figured this out.
Freelancer was the example of a funny solo or multiplayer space game, while it wasn’t as deep as a simulator as the X saga, it was so freaking funny to play, and the fights were awesome.
