I’ve had several of my friends mentioning that they would have more interest in playing this game If they could fly in a ship as a group rather than individual vessels.
The first idea is to have a class of ship, a step up from a Frigate, which has the majority of its firepower on the left and right sides, with blind spots on the front and back.
The impact on balance that this would have cannot be ignored, but this is still something I know that many would love, I can’t say if it would be worth it or not.
The second idea is to have several parts of a ships operation split between players. One could activate certain modules as needed, another could focus on firing turrets, and the pilot would be in charge of flight, main cannons, and most basic modules. It would be a ship that can perform many tasks at once, and has the power of 3 (maybe more) people contained in one unit.
Until a fair balance could be achieved, this might be best restricted to certain non-competative game modes, or as an escort target in a special game mode.
It is not an easy thing to balance. In a previous game I played, the 3 man ship could take on 1 ship easily, 2 at once rather sketchily, and 3 organized individuals could take it down unless the gunboat captain had a trick up their sleeve or the attacking pilots were ill prepared.
there was hope dreadnoughts could be piloted/gunned from several players, but didnt happened. Now destroyers will be implemented (we only know those ships will be bigger than frigates)…i think it would be great to have something like that (a ship controlled by multiple players where everyone is dedicated to a portion of the ship functions)
Even if it had to be a single pilot, I would look forward to having a different flight and fire mechanism to give a much different flavor to the role.
Basically, rudder-like maneuvering witht he WASDQE keys. You would set a turn rate between zero and max with your steering keys, and it would save that rate until you center it or adjust it.
The reason for this is, at a certain point, large ships become tedius to turn, and you may want to be able to begin a turn without holding W the whole friggin time.
Also, the reason for the keyboard flight is to open up the mouse for looking around your ship, and firing weapons in what directions the arcs allow, think artillery broadsides.
I can’t really say what kind of weapons would be fair, but I think reverse-falloff would be an interesting concept to look into. Basically, the weapon projectile would be weak, and gain strength with range. This would make a powerful artillery weapon able to be very effective at a certain role, but not be overall overpowered. It would require spotters at long range, and the predictive foresight of the operator to bring in effective strikes.
im not sure if i quite understood you, but you can use free aim to hold your ship course and aim wherever you want (to do broadside or even back shots). You can further keybind pitch to your keyboard in order to separately control the movement of your ship and your turrets. Also theres a cruiser speed keybind (default is: / ) that allows to set speed to maximum/minimum/increase/decrease (toggle, not hold).
Basically I want to see more than forward facing ships. Ships that can be in the midst of a battle and still able to bring all guns to bear, but of course have their strengths and weaknesses
You are playing the wrong game for that I think. All the ships in this game are single-pilot operated. I don’t know if destroyers will have these kind of feature, but I would doubt it.