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Air Combat Feedback / Issues Thread


Chris

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As Closed Beta V9 (which currently requires being on our Experimental branch) contains the first iteration of the realtime air combat model from X1, this thread is intended as a dumping ground for all those little gameplay issues that affect the air combat but aren't quite bugs - missing features, visual or sound problems, etc.

Basically, if something is clearly breaking the game (e.g. a crash) then report is as a bug in the normal bug report forums. If something just isn't working properly (e.g. if the interceptors aren't pathing properly towards their targets, missiles aren't visually creating explosions, etc) then post it up here.

For now let's avoid the meta discussion about whether the X1-style air combat is the right model for the game, or suggestions about where the air combat should develop from here. For the next week or two I'm mostly interested in making sure the air combat actually functions correctly before we start changing things up.

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Typical, an update drops and I'm back-to-back shifts! Anyway, just a couple of points to make from the first couple of air encounters I have had, a probe verses a Falcon.

 

1) I can't tell if missiles have been fired or not - there doesn't seem to be any graphic for them or any kind of "tell" that a missile has been launched, but I assume they have been fired because there's quite the lightshow when a Falcon gets into range.

2) Equally, I can't tell if the probe is shooting the Falcon. I can see the Falcon taking damage, but I can't see the probe shooting the Falcon

3) Autoresolve seems to be a better option than the minigame, because the Falcon seems to take more damage in the minigame even though all it's doing is charging straight towards the probe. Shouldn't both be doing the same amount of damage?

4) Feature request: Could it be possible to set waypoints? 

5) Back to feedback. As evasion is no longer twitch-based but autocalculated, could there be some kind of feedback for evasion failure, especially for weapon systems that would lend themselves to such feedback? Currently evasion appears to be entirely random. I mean, it IS entirely random, but it appears to be entirely random without any underlying reason. Some form of visual narrative would be helpful to explain to a player why a probe has just dodged 2 missiles when beforehand they hadn't. E.G.  if a aircraft fails to evade a missile, then some kind of narrative such as "MISSILE LOCK CONFIRMED" to indicate the missile cannot be evaded. As there will never be many actors on the field at any time, there shouldn't be a lot of visual clutter. 

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On 11/3/2019 at 3:55 PM, Max_Caine said:

1) I can't tell if missiles have been fired or not - there doesn't seem to be any graphic for them or any kind of "tell" that a missile has been launched, but I assume they have been fired because there's quite the lightshow when a Falcon gets into range.

2) Equally, I can't tell if the probe is shooting the Falcon. I can see the Falcon taking damage, but I can't see the probe shooting the Falcon

Thanks. The projectiles are being spawned from the craft like they were in X1, I suspect they're just being hidden by the needlessly huge aircraft pathing indicators (which will be fixed in the next build).

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've done quite a lot more combat since it was introduced in v9. As we're now on 9.3 would like to give some gaeplay related criticisms.

 

1) There needs to be some kind of visual trigger why a missile doesn't hit a target. An aircraft doing a flip, or a missile lock signal failing, or something just to show that a missile was evaded, otherwise it looks like a bug.

2) At the moment when I run out of fuel for an aircraft, it crawls towards an edge while the ufo runs rings around it. As the escape boundary is locked to the relative position of the ufo, my aircraft keeps changing direction and can never get closer to the exit.

3) I would suggest upping the top speed of falcons and phantoms - the ufos they can overtake are 5x faster in air combat than they are on the strategy screen, and it makes air combat horrible. 

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I don't know if this is intentional, testing out crappy ideas, lack of sufficient UI explanation leading to my misunderstanding of things, or a bug.  Probably some of all of them.

I built a foxhound and it literally was ON TOP OF the alien ship before the missiles locked on and fired.  In x1 the Foxtrot (or whatever) would take time to lock but it was a LOT less than the time it took to reach firing range on the alien craft, so you could still fire without getting the ship shot to pieces.  (And frankly, that was the ONLY reason I ever built them.  They sucked otherwise.  But for that period between the dodgy probes and the later ships that needed a "real" interceptor they were quite useful in this role.)

Similarly the sidewinders now have an excessively long lock-on time (vs. none for x1) and they don't even start the countdown until you are already in range.  Which also means the alien has shot the hell out of your ship before you can fire.

I wouldn't mind this as much if you could still order two or three baby-interceptors at a time.  But with the achingly slow ability to slloooowly build ONE fighter at at time also in this build, it makes the fact that air combat is impossible to get through without damage a real pain in the butt.  Not so much for the first combat.  That's annoying, perhaps, but seems realistic at first and almost seems cool then too.  But I quickly realized it's a massive downside because there often won't be time to repair the ship before you have to send it after another alien.  Which means cumulative damage.  Wash rinse repeat boom no more interceptor... and not even close to enough time yet to build the new one(s) you need before the NEXT wave has spawned.

If this is something that needs to be fixed by research, well... ok, that at least would explain things.  Maybe a project after the first air combat where your pilots say "shoot man our weapons aren't locking on fast enough we need you eggheads to improve our tech".  But otherwise, I can't see any logical reason for you to not even try to lock on until they're already blasting the crap out of your fighter.  NO fighter jock in the history of the world does that.  Not at least a "jock" that is sufficiently skilled to survive a standard takeoff and landing, at least.  Maybe you don't succeed in locking on.  Maybe you miss when you fire.  But you at least start trying the millisecond you become aware of the enemy.  Short of cloaking devices, this is WAY before you are in their range (and vice versa).

Hopefully this is just testing crappy ideas out and this will be "fixed" (or at least explained) at some point.

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