The points system in UQM is pretty much for show.

Sure, there's the 200 points no Thraddash setup the community came up with, but any ship can destroy any other ship in the proper hands.

Especially the Eluder, Nemesis, and Jugger.

The the way the points work in this system achieves a lot more than they appear too on the surface when choosing a "fleet" or lineup of ships.  It is a "self-balancing" system that solves a lot of issues if you want players to choose a lineup/fleet of ships of different sizes/classes.  It can appear as though the points don't mean much, because in a detailed sense they don't mean much.  It is the class difference that matters.  In Space Hockey I am not even using points, just "spaces", because what really matters is separating the classes/sizes.  So in Space Hockey there are three classes of ships, think Nintendo Ice Hockey.  The little ships take 1 hangar bay space, medium takes 2 spaces, heavy takes 3 spaces.

At 6 point ship and a 8 point ship may as well be the same, but a 6 point ship and an 18 point ship makes a difference.  As you mentioned, in the end, any ship can destroy any other ship... and that is what discourages players from taking all big ships.  That, and the lower ship/life count you have if you do that.  On the surface it seems to simply be "ships cost points" and not be very relevant, but the BPV system is actually a great example of the genius of Steve "Something for nothing" Cole and how he is able to turn something that seems like nothing into an intricate and complex system that covers all of the bases.  The points system has a lot of aspects too it that aren't immediately apparent.

^ This guy!!! "It probably won't confuse everyone at this point." Thanks for the vote of confidence, Kavik! Have we finally moved on from our reptile brains?!

That was from many years of experience of explaining this.  It wasn't an insult, we know from decades of trying to explain this to new players that most people get confused if you try to use the phrase "speed is irrelevant" while trying to get them to understand that "speed is everything".  We've learned from experience that you want to wait until they get the "speed is everything" part before speaking the words "speed is irrelevant";-)

"Speed is life"... but that big slow scary ship that you can toy with using your speed is the same big and scary ship that made you not want to get near it in the first place.  That fact always remains, and as soon as you come within range it is the faster and weaker ship that, all of a sudden, is now in a hopeless mismatch.  Therefore, in balancing a 1v1 duel, you want both ships to equally "have their own domain" which you achieve by making the faster player decide on their own that their best option is to attack... even though they are at a big disadvantage whenever they are within range to attack.

Guuuuuuhhh whuuuuut?!? U big words no make sense to me lizard brain. Confuse extremely!

So you are a Gorn, then?  Good choice!  A tournament favorite, they are very powerful;-)

Hoo dis goooorn? Me no thinky gud.

(Also, side note: "That was from many years of experience of explaining this"... if anything takes literal human years to explain? Maybe it's inesplic-.... inexplics-........ too big a word for me.... how bout: "not gud".)

It's "Air Combat Maneuvering" within a different environment, on a 2D plane with no gravity (unless you are near a source of gravity).

"Speed is life" is actually a mantra of the Israeli Air Force that SFB players shamelessly stole from the Israeli's in the early 1980's.

Just tossing a few thoughts into the, uh, melee.

To get it out of the way, I'm a fan of screen wrap. I was sorry to see the confirmation that it's gone, as it's a valid solution to a very real problem. Having said that, here are a few thoughts, an illustration, and some explanation:

In this model, the arena itself is geometrically infinite in all directions. As long as the two combatants are moving in generally the same direction, they could go that way forever. There are no walls or boundaries.

The camera would smoothly zoom when opponents are closer, such as if both were in the blue zone near the slower ship (S), and pull out as distance increases. The view shown here would be about 90% out, with only a bit more to go as the faster ship (F) approaches the red shaded area and hits maximum field of view.

The blue area is unchanging in every matchup. It represents guaranteed active combat and there are no time limits or boundaries of any sort. This zone is "safe" as far as arena limits are concerned, although obviously not "safe" in a combat sense.

The yellow area represents the maximum attack range of the pursuing ship, and would obviously change depending on the ship in use. Some ships might have a greater range than shown here, some would have a shorter range (even potentially smaller than the blue area). As long as the faster ship is still within the yellow area, he's being a good sport—the slower ship still has a chance to pound him from a distance. The yellow area behaves like the blue area, other than dynamically resizing based on attack range.

The orange area is a thin ring just beyond the maximum attack range of the pursuing ship. It would take tremendous skill for the fleeing ship to stay within this ring, as velocity would easily carry it into the red area beyond (or back into the yellow). Since I consider "temporarily staying outside the range of your opponent's attacks" a valid tactic, this ring also has no penalties—it's just very small, and bordered on one side by danger and on the other side by limits, seen below.

Finally, the red area is "too far" from the pursuing ship. It's not close, not within attack range, not just outside of attack range momentarily, but genuinely running away and making the game no fun for anyone involved. I would propose this area have a short grace period, say 10 seconds, before the player receives a communication instructing them to turn around (i.e. "Captain, get back in the battle!" for humans). A second, more stern message would follow a few seconds later ("I'm warning you, you are disobeying a direct order") accompanied by a visual/audible 10-second countdown.

When the countdown reaches zero, if the fleeing ship is still in the red zone, the consequences occur. This could be fleet command remotely slowing and disabling your ship, for example, leaving you vulnerable to attack for 30 seconds. I suppose it could be insta-death, too, or any number of other creative penalties.

If a fleeing pilot proved capable of hanging out in the orange zone indefinitely, the pursuing ship could in effect "throw" them into the red zone simply by turning around and increasing the distance between them beyond the limit.

It's not perfect, and I just put a few minutes into it, but there you go. If I can't have screen wrap, something like this seems fair to me. The limitations are not invisible walls in space, but rather in-game lore limits on captains' responsibilities in battle.

Faster ships don't have to do more than they are already doing, just keep going. Nevertheless they may try slowing the opponent down by leaving some "presents" behind, shaking the tail off by taking a risky trajectory, or try losing visual behind a large body for instance.

I suppose slower ships either can make a jump to hyperspace given the conditions or cannot flee at all and are doomed. Some might have a  hull/shield strong enough to withstand the attack for the time necessary to obliterate the attacker.

I know all this because I've done it myself. Don't ask when or where.

For balancing purposes, it probably shouldn't be allowed for a any ship to have 3 or more significant advantages, like nukes to deal the most damage and a hyperspace drive to catch up to every runner in addition to maneuverability and small size/hit-box. Either ships shed weight (armor/crew) and become hard targets or "bulk up" and become hard hitters. Either they are big and turn slow or are small and can fly through the Needle's Eye (don't try this, last time I've been there it was hell due to all the debris flying around)...

This is IMO an awesome suggestion: more plausible than a rogue asteroid field. And consequences for disobeying a direct order could be the same as an asteroid encounter...

It's a form of disqualification zone, which creates a whole new set of issues at the barrier that a no-nonsense inarguable line/wall doesn't.  The point is to contain the faster ship, not give it a whole new set of options at the edge of the "tournament arena".  The faster ship has to be put into a box and forced to engage the slower ship.  You have to make attacking the best option available too it, so that the player decides to engage.  Telling them to turn around and engage does no good, the map has to be designed so that the player makes that decision on their own.  As long as the player feels that the best option available too them is to retrograde, then that is what they will do.

A disqualification zone does work, just not as well as a solid barrier.  An inarguable line in the sand works better than a nebulous line that the faster ship can "game" when it reaches that nebulous line.

^ Agree with Kavik. Without a box to constrain the faster ship they will continue to use ranged skirmish tactics to slowly whittle down their opponent. Not only would the faster ship always win, but it would be extremely boring to play on either side.

Its like an old cat catching a mouse - the cat isn't fast enough so its only option is to get the mouse into a corner and control the escape vectors.

Well, how about putting the closes star/pair of stars/black hole in the middle of the arena as a source of gravity that will also determine arena bounds since the battling ships presumably will not reach the escape velocity using their "normal" (subspace) engines? They should lose more of their speed the farther they get away from the center (of gravity), effectively stopping to a halt at, say, the Lagrangian point. Additionally, this should definitely complicate skirmishing in the "joust" style, as flying towards/past the gravity center should affect their velocity and trajectory.

That is a departure from SM gameplay and not a true representation of escape velocity physics.

I would prefer something which uses a sci-fi pseudo-physics mechanic to justify the limits. Maybe 'hyperspace engine field polarity reversal' - causes a bubble in space which is impossible to breach using non-hyperspace engines. And then it is also expensive to use hyperspace engines to breach it (increased emergency jump cost in adventure mode). Bubble goes away when opponent is destroyed. What happens when the ship hits to barrier is open for debate - it also allows for a perimeter line to be drawn.

Wouldn't they be able to generate more speed once they are further from the source of gravity?  Not to mention that the larger, slower ships would be at a massive disadvantage when fighting where the gravity is strongest.

I always considered screenwrapping as sort of fake simulation of 3D space and ship getting on the other side of the attacker, similar to WW1 dogfights. Thus, making chased ship the chaser.

If the escape velocity is the speed at which the sum of an object's kinetic energy and its gravitational potential energy is equal to zero, and the engine is already operating at maximum capacity, I don't see how it can compensate for the "loss" of either addends. Of course it's possible to use the gravity well to achieve even more speed than the engine can ever produce by slingshotting. Direction of travel is largely irrelevant. But I'm not physicist so feel free to correct me.

As for the slower ships I suppose no magic can make them faster so they should avoid disadvantaging themselves any further.

And if the arena is some sort of gravity well, like a star system, it could be explained in lore that it takes a huge amount of energy to break out of the star's gravity, so throttling out of the system with conventional propulsion means you can't run the weapons any more. 

We're closing in on page 4.

There's some good stuff here and we will be discussing them at tomorrow's meeting.  

As I said before, the old style wrapping isn't going to be coming back except as possibly an unsupported hard-core mode.  There are just too many issues with it that I think some people here are choosing to not remember (you could really grief with it and beyond SC fans of old, we've had a lot of negative feedback with it). 

OBVIOUSLY, the easiest solution for us would have been to just copy that.  There's a reason we ended up changing it several times to the current system which, we agree, is not ideal yet either. 

Hence, the discussion here is very helpful.

Just wanted to chime in that I fully support not having screen wrapping. Didn't care for it as a kid, didn't care for it in asteroids, don't care for it now.

The asteroid field mechanic sounds great - looking forward to trying it in action. Seems like a great way to limit the play field a bit, as long as it doesn't kick in too soon.

IDK how I feel about leashing, hasn't been too noticeable in the few rounds I've played so far, will pay more attention to it. I can say this though - obvious and significant leashing can be incredibly irritating (and in the case of racing games, it has successfully caused me to quit playing a game in the past).

With current leashing system, there is annoying tendency for several fast ships to stay outside of range in order to power up.

Tywon to regenerate drones.

Mowling to summon Jeff.

That will not be fun in MP.

So whatever solution is used, it needs to break these tactics.

If you are stuck with a ship slower than the enemy and they are running away, maybe you need a way to swap that ship for another in your arsenal.  Hitting the escape key and it takes a while to hyperspace out that ship.

Are you even a real professor!!!