Quoting cuorebrave, reply 22

This isn't a tournament. It's a battle through the stars, where there are no barriers, to the death, for the right to live in this galaxy.

End of cuorebrave's quote

 

In adventure mode, however super melee is different.

I was thinking this concept would be especially useful for MP Melee.  It keeps everyone in the battle while also helping to alleviate sensory overload, with all the ships, vapor trails, torpedoes, and blasters flying around. 

You could also have different Melee modes.  You could have a 'Melee Royale' with 6-10 or more players duking it out in an arena sized for 1v1, or you could have 'Tactical Melee' in a substantially larger arena, include more celestial bodies and have the map shrink as more and more ships are vaporized into oblivion.

Sure does, but is also a bummer when on the receiving end.

The retrograde is usually only a potentially game breaking issue when the only objective is fighting to the death.  Part of the reason it is a problem is that the psychology of it is all wrong, it is a fight being forced by a game.  In real life nobody would fight to the death in the middle of empty space for no reason at all.  There will almost always be an objective.  Any time there is an objective it doesn't matter if the map is infinite in size, the players will fight over the objective.  What ever and wherever that is.  Even if the objective is in motion, like a hockey puck;-)

A few changes based on feedback:

1. "Arena" size is being increased.
2. The leash size is going to be affected by the speed difference between the ships. Thus, a faster ship will be able to have a much bigger distance versus a slower ship as compared to evenly matched ships.
3. The planet(s) will be near-ish to the center
4. As you near the edge, you will start hitting the ort cloud which will have asteroids. It's not a hard edge, you just run into more and more asteroids until you get so many that the damage becomes severe (depending on your piloting skills).
5. Do you know the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field?
6. I have asked for a "hard-core" option (SC2 style) but it won't be default but we might allow it as an option also in multiplayer.

Well, it depends if you're in Star Wars universe or the real one, because in the real universe "asteroid fields" are extremely sparse. In the one in our solar system, the average distance between any two asteroids is 2 million miles (about 8 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon).

Seems like the SC:O universe is going to be closer to the Star Wars way of doing asteroid fields, in which case "Never quote me the odds!"

1) good

2) ok

3) good change, planets are currently a non-factor

4) better than invisible walls

5) pretty easy actually.  Asteroids in space are typically pretty far apart.   

6) YES!!!  This makes me happy.

An asteroid field works.  In Sinistar we had unbeatable cloaked ships that would start swarming you if you strayed out of the game area.

Are we only concerned/concentrating on 1v1 melee?  If a fun, functional method for group battles is a possibility, I think SC:O will find its way into more gamers' hands.  If considering group melee, how would "leashing" work?

I think we should ask the question - what do fast ships *actually* do, when they want to escape a slower ship, in actual space?

Also, what happens to slow ships that try to flee a faster ship, in actual space?

I'm okay with arena sizing increases, but the ship visualisation is going to need some imrpovements. Currently when fully zoomed out a lot of the ships (or spawned allies) become difficult to read behaviour from as the models are too small. This is also magnified by the blue nebula backdrop. This is when the ownship centering makes it a lot more manageable.

Single player focus camera works for adventure mode and online, but there are three things to consider.

1. unless you use split-screen you can't do local MP.

2. It's not great for spectators, don't expect Twitch streamed competitive tournaments without another option.

3. It will take away the Ilwrath Avengers major weakness when the Ur-Quan Conflict arrives.

The camera zoom acts as a distance gauge between you and the Avenger, and the camera is always centered between the two ships, so you always know the position of the Dill-rats ship.

My suggestion would be to be able to choose SPF cam or zoom cam as an option and set zoom as default for spectators.

SPF will give the cloaked ship a way of figuring out which way it's pointing, I remember one version of Time Warp used this camera and allowed you to see the Ilwrath ship. (The ai totally broke but that's beside the point.)

EDIT: Frogboy, can we get Twitch integration?

Cuorobrave. “Speed is life”. “Speed gives you the initiative.” A slower ship can't run away from or escape a faster ship unless the faster ship allows it to run away or escape. The faster ship chooses when and where exchanges of fire will take place, and the slower ship can't do anything about it. Realistice space combat makes for a terrible game on many levels, most importantly “flight model”. Gamers want space ships to fly like WWII fighters, not space ships. The way space ships actually fly is not very fun, but all of this speed stuff applies either way. In games/sci-fi the slower ship can escape by using a faster drive system (“go to lightspeed”). Most sci-fi universe ships have at least 2 drive systems, and most say that combat only occurs at sublight speed. So in games/sci-fi a slower ship can escape by “going to lightspeed”. Of course, the movies always gloss over the fact that this means ships would almost never be destroyed, because the crew would warp out of any fight to save themselves before that happened. Some universes, like my own and Star Trek, have three seperate drive systems. In Star Trek it is “maneuvering thrusters”, “impulse engines”, and “warp drive”. But at each level, all of the “laws of speed” still apply within each category. The faster ship always has complete control over the situation, like a law of physics, and the slower ship can't do anything about that.

The “leash”. The leash is a part of nature, it is always there. You can always imagine a line, or leash, between any two objects in motion. Even in 3D. I imagine Stardock is using this to control the SC2-like camera zoom between the two ships. Brad seems to be saying they are also using it to limit the distance that a faster ship can put between itself and the slower ship. While this won't cause any problems as long as the faster ship is allowed to go far enough away, it is going to feel/seem very strange to be at the end of the leash in the faster ship and all of a sudden feel like the enemy has you in a tractor beam and you can't go any farther. If you get the enclosed map size right, I think you'll find that you no longer need to use the leash to “tractor” the faster ship. The area walls/asteroid field will take care of that problem for you in a more general way that works for the widest variety of ship designs.

This is exactly what happens now.  And it doesn't just feel strange, it feels crappy.  Having a big/slow Scryve ship being dragged around by small/quick Trandals is just dumb. 

If they can find the right map size where the slower ship "owns the center" and the faster ship "has the initiative", the "tractor beam" won't be necessary.  The fast ship can still run a short distance, it's not as if the slow ship is anchored to the center and the faster ship dances around it.  There should be more room than that, but small enough that it doesn't take an annoying amount of time before the slower ship has the faster one pinned up against the asteroids by cutting off from the inside because it "owns the center".

And to give Cuoro a more complete answer... if the game supports it, which SCO doesn't really, a slower ship might also escape a faster one through what we call "disengagement by sublight evasion".  This is only rarely possible, you need something to "hide" in.  Asteroids, nebula, ion storm, magentic pole of a planet (Riker's favorite), etc.  If you have a cloaking device "sublight evasion" becomes easy.  But this is only an option when you are near some type of terrain that allows for it.

What I'm saying is - why not extend and zoom out the battlefield if the fast ship gets distance (or tries to run away), up to a certain point - until the point he eventually gets *so* much distance engagement is impossible, and he warps out of the fight? It's the fast ship's choice, for being just that. A fast ship, in control of the battlefield space, gets to decide if they flee or not. And if they flee the field, they get to send in a new ship. Or both get to choose a new ship. I think that's the most cohesive and natural way to do this. Hey! I guess I do have an opinion on this, after all!

Here are some suggestions for finding the right map size for the ship speeds that are present, and some ideas for how to get started in finding a good balance that will support the widest range of ships.

Start by picking a range to balance before that excludes any outliers. The outliers will just wind up working out in the end. For example, you might have two “big scary evil” ships that have really powerful weapons and lots of health, so they move and turn very slow compared to all of the other ships. You might also have a few “glass-jaw” ships that are exceptionally fast compared to the rest of the group with really weak guns and usually get -one-shot killed when hit. Ignore the extremes on both ends, and use the fastest and slowest ships of the range you have chosen (these break points should be obvious too you) as the “baseline” ships for balancing both the ships and map. Forget about all the other ships at first, and just find the map size that works best for these two ships. In the end the outliers will wind up being well balanced (or very easy to get them where you want them) because the whole point is that those ships be extreme in their capabilities and deficiencies. So those big scary dead slow ships are probably going to take an annoyingly long time to manage to pin a faster ship against the wall, and might not be able to ever catch the very fastest ships. But that's exactly what you wanted with that design... right?

Once you have the “baseline” ships working in a fun way, and have spent significant time really getting those ships down well, start using other ships against both of those ships... the slow-end basline ship and the fast-end baseline ship. Get each of the other ships working well with both of the baseline ships, in a fun way that you think feels good. Don't even waste any time worrying about how any of the other ships will work together, just get all of the ships fighting both of the baseline ships well.

“It's A Kind Of Magic”! From this point everything should be in pretty good shape, without wasting a lot of time tinkering with and discussing each and every ship and matchup between them. Once you are past the first two steps here, you should be at a point where everything is working fairly well at a balance that will support the widest range of ship designs. You would be at a great starting point for your normal process of working out all of the types of details that you normally think of when making games, you'll have a “tactical base” settled that you all understand and can work from there to tweak ship designs and keep improving things within that combat environment.

Since you've changed from a screen wrap to a tournament arena, you'll probably wind up re-designing at least a few of the ships significantly. Do that while balancing each ship against the two baseline ship that you establish first. You might re-design the baseline ships a little at the beginning of this process, you want each to be a “typical” example of a ship of that health and speed, and to have “conventional” weapons/devices. So the fast ship should be a fast “gunship”, fast agile and weak with an effective “pew-pew” gun and some type of defensive device (either direct or maneuver related). The slow ship should probably have a medium range proximity torpedo-like weapon... or anything that is fairly powerful and effective out to about medium range. Beyond just finding the most fun you can get out of this matchup, you are actually most trying to find the map size that works best for them. One where the slower ship feels as though it “owns the center” and it is just starting to get annoying to chase the fast ship around the same time that you make it to the wall/asteroids.

This will save a lot of time in getting to a good place from which to start thinking about the details like how the rest of the ships work against each other, and not just the baseline ships. It's a big time saver that should leave you in a good place to finish it all.

Cuorebrave, yes, that is a form of "disqualification zone".  That would work, too.

Not a disqualification zone, per se, but an escape. Strictly because a fast ship could do exactly that in real life.

Jeff's ship, btw, is supposed to function like Sinistar.   I've been havign a hard time communicating this to the youngins working on it.

"I Hunger!"  I love it!  I love that you will have a tribute to Sinistar in this as a boss ship, that is great!  In Sinistar: Unleashed my brother is the voice of the true Sinistar at the end of the game.  "Beware... I live!"

I know I am flooding this thread with posts, but I am going to be offline for probably a month or so in a couple days. They are just about to start the public beta to start working this stuff out, so I am just getting this in before I am cut off from the world for a while.

I've been forgetting to include another key phrase about this problem of 1v1 dueling in this genre... “refusal to engage”. In this situation modern gamers would say “griefing”. In a random matchmaking “public” game like I assume Super Melee will be, the faster player doesn't have to fight if they don't want to. That's another major factor in why the faster ship needs to be contained, so they can't do that. In the last post I mentioned how the slowest “outliers” might not ever be able to pin the fastest ships against the wall. If you aren't willing to allow etiquette among players to resolve that, then you'd need to make the speed balance/map size tighter/smaller so even the slowest ship will be able to eventually cut off the fastest one. Or have some artificial time limit on the faster ship, in some way, but I personally don't like solutions like that.

There is never a “right” answer for all situations with this problem. It is always a matter of the design of the ships and map and what you think works best for what you are trying to achieve.

Cuore, we call that "disengagement by separation" which is a fancy way of saying just flying away.  But SCO is like SC2 in that regard you will have the ESC-key escape like in SC2.  A short delay and you use your FTL drive to return to the mothership.  Flying off the map is redundant, but you could make that how the barrier works.  The critical issue as that the fight be contained, how you contain it almost doesn't matter.  Asteroids are the natural "walls" in space, they make the most sense as "realistic" walls in space.  One of the most popular SFB scenarios uses "asteroid belts" as walls and "asteroid clusters" as obstacles/room dividers to turn the map into a maze of "walls and rooms".  They can just be a solid wall at their edge, or something you enter with penalties like SCO is currently trying out.  The only barrier that doesn't work is one that aids the faster ship when it reaches it and makes it easy to dodge the slower one and keep running, because that defeats the purpose.

I couldn't resist after hearing about the Sinistar boss...

You should go all out and just make this boss fight like a level in Sinistar where he has appeared! Come up with a technobable explanation for why the ship's energy will not recharge in this fight. Add moving asteroids, exacltly like the game asteroids, to the map in the fight against Jeff/Sinistar. The player's energy does not recharge, but luckily for them the asteroids contain energy crystals. Each crystal restores some energy.

This would be, not exactly, but a lot like Sinistar. A Sinistar like boss that you have to fight while mining asteroids and collecting crystals to keep your weapons going. This will make the fight unmistakably like fighting the Sinistar, and a pretty cool tribute that is half Star Control and half Sinistar. A Sinistar level within Star Control!

It's not a boss ship, though. It's just a special ability for a regular ship.

Aw, that's too bad.  It's still great to have a Sinistar ref in the game.  A boss fight that was like a Sinistar level would be pretty cool.  It also fits in with the "Rifts"-like concept of encompassing all universes, having a player find themselves playing something very much like Sinistar for one fight.  But even a Sinistar-like ship somewhere is pretty cool too me.

If you try to explain this too early people get confused, so I had been intentionally avoiding mentioning this part. But it probably won't confuse everyone at this point, so here is an important point from the opposite perspective...

As I had mentioned before, in the end you want the slower ship to be able to cut the faster one off in a reasonable amount of time and get a shot in. Damage is permanent in SC, so the faster ship will eventually lose if it just keeps running to the wall. There are many other options the faster ship has to use its speed too its advantage in attacking the slower ship, so it will decide to use one of those instead of being target practice against the wall endlessly turning left like a NASCAR driver until it eventually dies. Without explaining it, by human nature many if not most players will do what we call the “Klingon Sabre Dance” if they have a significant speed advantage. But the point is that they will become aggressive and attack instead of running, which is a good thing since it's entirely up to them if and how a fight takes place.

Understanding that, to turn this around without confusing everybody... “speed is irrelevant at the point of contact”. If you take a picture and freeze-frame this at the moment the faster ship has closed to fire, its speed doesn't matter anymore. It is a harder target to hit. But when it is within range the much slower ship is, presumably, tougher and more durable with a more powerful weapon. The faster ship wins by making the bigger and slower ship miss. So by forcing the faster ship to become aggressive by putting it into a box(ing ring), you force repeated firing opportunities for both sides. No matter how the faster ship attacks, it has to come within range of weapons to do it. And at the point of contact all of a sudden the seemingly “hopeless” slower ship has all of the advantages, and the smaller and faster the faster the ship is the bigger that mismatch probably is.

Also remember that you have the points system and ship lineup at work here, which is deceptively more complicated in how it works than it appears to be on the surface. It's not a problem if my 50 point Ur Quan Dreadnought can one-shot your speed demon 5 point Sophixti, the points and ship lineup account for that. Damage is permanent, though, so any damage that the Sophixti can do will matter... so at those costs it breaks even if it can do just 10% damage to the Dreadnought. The points and ship lineup go a long way in making things work out in the end.