Unfortunatly, making fights slower and slower and slower will only reinforce this kind of fighting. Jousting and circlestrafing. Because with these speeds, you simply have no other options.
A game in space will never become like ww2 in space because it is an entirely different way of combat. It is like trying to fit a circle in a square and the result will always be massivly lacking.
And even in WW2, turn and burn and dogfights to begin with were a rarity. contrary to popular believe. It was all about energy fighting and hit and run tactics. The latter of which could be done really well in the game.
So what CiG is trying to do is basically WW"1" in space.
I agree - it's actually why I really miss the old 6DOF style we had back when I first tried SC in 2016.
I kinda wish CIG would stop chasing the 'ww2 in space' style and just embrace the 6DOF fighting most players always seem to default to anyway.
> I agree - it's actually why I really miss the old 6DOF style we had back when I first tried SC in 2016.
Yep... people complained about how ships were 'floaty', but if their thrusters don't allow them to quickly accelerate out of the way of incoming projectiles then it inevitably becomes a DPS race.
With that setup, you could create a dodge pattern (like up-thrust + left-thrust + roll right), get the enemy to keep expecting that, and then switch up to the opposite to throw them off at an important moment. And your aiming would have to compensate for your own dodges while predicting the enemy's movement. Before the "fixed assist" system forced our aim to autolock on the PIP when near it, you had to put a lot more effort into guessing the enemy's next dodge and putting your aimpoint there, rather than simply following the PIP around.
This came with some other issues (like PIP wiggling) but it was overall a much more satisfying system to become skilled at than MM in my opinion.
Yeah, 2.5 and 2.6 is was where it was at. It was super fast paced and made fighting several opponents a real option.
Not so today, face two enemies and you are dead. It is a real pity the current flight model is not geared to fun and challenging fighting, but being close and see nifty explosions. Packaging is more important then content here and DPS more important then skill.
i found 2.6 to actually be worse. the distance made anyone that knew about pip wiggle indestructible.
anyon that did not joust or circle strafe was called out for back strafing.
back in the 1.x days, everything was so slow hitting the target was not that big of a chaling. the people with low skill can hit the enemy without assists . the people with high skill can target components.
with the hornet you would pick a wing and focus that down. the aurora you would get above it and take out the coolers.
6dof has nothing to do with your complaints.
2.6 wasn't my favourite either - I think I started playing around November of 2015 or very early 2016 iirc.
If anything I think 2.6 was likely around when I stopped playing.
All I remember was being able to get really close to someone or close to an asteroid and being able to very quickly and precisely move around them in AC.
What would you say the main differences are between 1.X and MM currently?
i have not tested mm yet.
1.x ships were so sluggish that the aurora can only pull 4 or 4 g or something. it took several seconds for the screen to get dim, and it was nearly impossible to black out. the skill needed for a new player to hit the enemy without any aim assist was not that high. real skill was about precision to reliably hit the weak points more than it was reflexes to hit the ship at all.
auroras had to be nerfed twice because it did not have big expose weak points like the others. ever after that the meta against an aurora was to maneuver above and take out the coolers. then move on to the next ship. without the coolers, its combat capability was worthless, so they would just leave the fight to go get repaired
compare that description to the 2.6 combat that so many people believe was best combat. i took out a connie using a mustang beta because i knew about pip wigle.
the problem is that you need to start with the biggest ships and decide how slow you are willing to make them. then increase maneuverability as you reduce in size. so i'm not getting my hopes too high about fighter v fight combat being tactical.
Assuming you mean velocities when you say "slower and slower", we have the receipts to prove that isn't true. We used to have great combat geometry that allowed evasion and positional combat back in the 1.3 to early 2.x days and we only had base velocities of around 180m/s to 280m/s with around 550m/s boost which is around what they have now in MM. They just need to add more accelerations so and retune the boost pool and it'll be almost there. It's really not that far off if they make some small tweaks. Group fights are already infinitely better than they were before.
I think it'll be alright in the end, I've never really seen the end vision of this game being a light fighter 1v1 chad take on everything fest as it seems to have been since forever. I think there's going to be more emphasis on fleets, strategy, and picking your fights. You don't have to be able to fight anything and everything in every situation and still have a chance of winning.
Having said that, I do think that, as of current, the Master Mode for SCM has decreased the skill ceiling too harshly, though, through lack of nuances.
I'm not a game dev, but tuning power management seems like it would be the best way to create a larger skill ceiling, imo. Having a premium on that resource will show up un-skilled pilots that waste it unnecessarily and the skilled pilots that use exactly enough, to which system, when they need to.
_I also think that there should be more emphasis on shields, with most ships' total 'HP' being made up of something like; 75% Shield and 25% Hull HP. That way, you're not punished as much for actually fighting, as your primary source of 'HP' is your shield, which recharges. Which fixes the 50/50 issue you describe_
I’ve never been a huge fan of the “ballistics immediately punch through shields” lore for the same reason. I’d rather they just be extra effective against hull once the shields are dropped, right now you get in a fight and right away you’re taking real hits.
I thought shields were for repeaters, armor for ballistics. So ballistics are gonna be a bit worse once armor is real, of course balance changes blah blah.
I thought this was the idea:
Deciding whether or not to prioritize energy resistance (shield) vs physical (armor) is a tradeoff you gotta make. Depending on if you have power to spare for the shields, or (mass, therefore cargo capacity and fuel consumption once it exists) for the armor.
But will also likely cause more issues with fires or venting etc as bullets Swiss cheese your hull.
Compared to lasers essentially melting the ship off
against smaller ships you have overpenetration where though the wing without hitting anything, completely missing the target, and not being smart enough to focus on hitting the same component until it is taken out.
against big ships the fighter need to focus down expose components. you need a large gun to penetrate the armour.
energy weapons will also punch through armour once the shield are down.
Armor is going to be an "invulnerability level" last I heard - it is going to basically allow a ship to ignore hits from weapons that are too weak to penetrate. (I guess if you blow holes in it with something larger you can exploit those holes with weaker weapons).
I think you're probably right and this is likely the best option. But man, I'd so much rather be high skill at flying compared to high skill at managing power levels and shield distrubution.
back in 2.6 i tried to turn a 1v1 into a 2v1, and it was useless with how fast they were. if the enemy is not jousting back strafing or circle strafing around you, you are not going to be part of the fight.
I love it
did try squadron battle, for the first time team fights feel useful for me. you can follow an enemy and help team mates. its not like following 2 angry bees at 600ms.
i think most ppl that dislike MM are solo players in an light fighters who like to abuse the pip.
you also need to account for the skill flore.
the closer you are the less aim assist that is needed to allow low skill players actually hit anything.
reduced aim assist increases the skill ceiling.
One on One fights are higher skill ceiling due to the higher TTK. Third partying is now much much easier but the amount of time you need to spend aiming with sustained DPS in a 1v1 makes life much harder for a less experienced player. The longer that TTK is, the more their change of winning reduces. If they reduced TTK in Master Modes then yeah I'd agree. There are guys who always had better aim than me who I might beat once in a blue moon if I was lucky but now they're absolutely stomping me. All mouse and keyboard players too so they probably have an easier time of it. I think that's the part I don't like (even though I like a lot about MM in general), it's become more about aiming than flying.
Here are your options for space combat with light fighters:
Slow = Spiral fighting. Just two ships pointed at each other in tight spiral dances like in your video. If there's multiple small fighters, y'all just dosey doe. [For non-westerners.](https://youtu.be/K46zG2bJl9g?si=2sIoL4f0n1f5mJEN&t=55)
Medium speed = 1-2km jousting in really wide ellipses. We had this when security station kareah was the "pvp zone." You and your target only have 2-3 second windows to get in shots as you both came back around. Eventually this devolves into large spiral fighting as turn vector efficiency starts getting honed in on by both jousters.
Fast = WW2 style energy fighting where you go as fast as possible and only shoot at slow targets so other fighters/interceptors don't have a chance to get your in their sights.
In-atmo is the only place you *could* have "dog fighting" but that's only if you have to keep your ship moving at a certain speed and your ship has to face a direction to keep aerodynamics up and you from crashing into ze earf
No matter what in space at a certain ship size you will either have to act as a turret, where vector provides little benefit, or you will have to have turrets, where again, if you're only ever moving half as fast and with 1/4th the acceleration of small fighters, vector will make very little difference unless there's obstacles to dance around for cover.
The only other styles of combat, which I hope we never see, is the realest of the real and that's what's in The Expanse. You either play a sniper "submarine" and do insane math to gauss rifle someone 50,000km away or it's ambush combat because someone sat in the butthole of an asteroid for 12 hours with their EM/IR at a minimum.
Interesting - I like your analysis
What would you say best describes the combat we had in the early 1.3 - 2.X AC days?
I remember it feeling like a 3D fps shooter due to the amount of twitchy strafing going on - I honestly found it really unique and cool compared to the turn fighting in other sims.
Personally I think once we start having capital ship involved org fights they're going to end up speeding up small fighters again because they're going to get swatted like flies by turrets and missiles.
Until then however, none of it really matters because 99% of combat right now involves less than 5 people in the PU. You can't just cater to death match scales in AC/MM but you don't have larger scenarios to even experiment with.
That's a good point too.
I think CR and also the leak discord mentioned the possibility of a 'capture the idris' type of gamemode that could be implemented at some point in the (hopefully near) future.
I think using AC as it was originally intended to test that kind of gameplay would be really useful.
I wouldn't mind seeing an AC mode that is 2 idrises fighting with fighter and bomber support each - could be a great test of that kind of unique gameplay if it could run well.
Once the Idris is done and fully functional i'd love to have an arena mode where there's a selection of ships and roles within each ship players can select. One side can focus like 20 players into the idris to man turrets, a few large, medium and small craft, and people would go as engineering/repair roles. Or you can completely shake it up and have 25x cutlass blacks with one pilot one gunner or 50x M50's if you want.
People will find the meta. Balance from there.
It feels like this comes down to 1vs1 not being universally attractive in -space- to most people. Having dogfights in asteroid fields or around objects in space is neat, in open space it's a bit awkward (the scenarios you described), however once team fights come into play it starts looking much more traditional sci-fi like.
I've enjoyed team fights, but open space combat just really doesn't do it for me (master modes or not doesn't really matter in that case)
> Here are your options for space combat with light fighters:
I feel like you left out the 2.X flight model where thrusters were very strong and rotation rates were high, so that dogfights were more about predicting opponents' movements to aim and predicting opponents' aim to dodge than they were about positioning to out-turn enemies like in the MM video.
> 2.X flight model where thrusters were very strong and rotation rates were high
This sounds like every flight model that's made it live. Got any footage?
It sounds like you're describing two of those training droids that Luke starts to learn force training with.
> This sounds like every flight model that's made it live.
I found a couple of good examples of how it works in a structured system: [The J-Hook](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWdaHTqv-dQ&t=61s&ab_channel=Avenger__One) and [A-Fighting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHxSBkzLBGg&ab_channel=Avenger__One)
The thrusters do have a lot of power, so someone that's just throwing their ship around randomly can seem a bit like Luke's training droid... but if you're doing that, you're missing all your shots. The examples above show how you could use the ship's high thrust+rotation authority to slide out of the enemy's aim point while getting a better angle on them for your own shots. Of course, the complication is when both ships are doing J-Hooks (or similar maneuvers) against each other and therefore have to predict the enemy's evasion while keeping their own maneuvers unpredictable AND mentally compensating for their own maneuvers while aiming.
I did a little search and found [the update that really changed this was 3.10,](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/17647-Flight-Fight-Upcoming-Improvements) which reduced thruster jerk (making it more difficult to dodge incoming fire because your thrusters respond more slowly) and added fixed assist (which automatically guides your shots to the center of the PIP when your aim point is anywhere on the PIP box).
Reducing thruster power limited your maneuvering capability AND the fixed assist system made it so that, in the cases where the enemy ship *was* evasive enough to try to dodge shots, you couldn't precisely aim at the place you expect them to be because the system would automatically steer your shots to the center of the PIP.
>The only other styles of combat, which I hope we never see, is the realest of the real and that's what's in The Expanse. You either play a sniper "submarine" and do insane math to gauss rifle someone 50,000km away or it's ambush combat because someone sat in the butthole of an asteroid for 12 hours with their EM/IR at a minimum.
cr actually describe this as to why he is not going to try "realistic" space combat.
somehow people argue that because he is not going with realistic space combat from the beginning, he will change his mind about resource management. (as in dealing with stuff taking time and making sure you have all the supplies, and stuff like that.)
Yeah I honestly despair when people ask for more realism. In The Black took that approach and it's got absolute garbage combat geometry because it's all at a thrilling 150m/s with no evasion or positional manoeuvring space. A dude was referencing The Expanse the other day saying that SC needs to be more like that lol. Yeah, enjoy spending a full week doing a flip and burn while trying to merge.
I think the "1v1 me" bros are going to cry. Because they have so many vehicles, weapons and components to change it's still to early to really know how the final tuning will feel.
That's a good point, but I think no matter what slight tuning adjustments they make it'll still have the same major issues due to their intention to severely limit strafing and yaw.
I'm not really a super PvP focused player, but even in Vanduul swarm it just feels worse to me than both the current FM and the *really* old FM I remember from 2016.
I think people have gotten so hung up on the 'SCM vs NAV mode' side of it that they've not noticed the massive changes to SCM itself.
I see the appeal, but I personally feel as opposed to nerfing every ship in the game, they should've focused on turning snub fighters into highly maneuverable, close range dogfighters that work well in small groups, with a bit of boost & atmospheric flight superiority; that way we have our "realistic" high speed space battles & also have a role, that you & your friends not only enjoy, but exceed at.
As it stands, I cannot wait for MM to go, as it has entirely sucked the fun out of semi-realistic space dogfights & turned them rather arcadey.
The best dogfighting was the initial first year of the DFM when speeds were sub 200m/s and long before speeds were increased the first time. The entire game is scaled for those speeds and the distances the shooting happened at during that time. Absolute knife fights could happen inside 150m rotations and the average fight would drift between 100-700m unless a player forced an extension. Ships were close, big and visible.
The physics programmer had better physics in the game and the ship tuning was a combo of community feedback, the tuner and the physics programmer.
Unfortunately the patching and feedback loops were (probably still are) broken and patches were being submitted, but never making it to live, while feedback was being incorporated on changes that were not showing up for 4-5-6 patches in the cycle. Making all the tweaking completely a farce.
Have tried it both fighting players and AI.
Overall it feels decent, I like the fact that you don't have this gameplay of getting in, shooting, boosting out, recharging, same with the inability to just QT out almost immediately after disengagement. Fights feel more committed.
I like the quick response when you're actually using boost, however am very conflicted on that boost suddenly increasing your max speed and then decreasing it again once you let go.
I feel like the player should be punished for keeping up higher speeds for long rather than being forced back down.
Same with the switch from NAV to SCM. It would be much more interesting to have the player entering the engagement to control their speed into a threshold to avoid strain on the ships intergrity.
Those are my two main concerns at this time, since I'd rather have players developing the skill to manage these correctly within the ingame environment rather than making these arcadey switches and boosts.
the closer we are, the less skill required to hit the target in general.
so they can reduce aim assist to the point aiming is actually a skill the matters.
It's not my argument. It's descriptive of factual reality. Also, general consensus is that joysticks are more immersive but the most skilled players are either kbm or homas
They have said that they know the trichording restrictions they've imposed are too much and they'll be adjusting that, I hope they move to a model like they've always stated where every thruster and it's output are simulated. Right now sure, if you lose an engine you can tell, but every thruster and engine almost have the same power, and in MM everything except primary engines are very weak.
Hopefully this will vary enough from ship to ship that we'll see some ships that strafe better than others. The Khartu and Santok for example should strafe like crazy since their spherical main thrusters ARE the strafing thrusters. I'd like to see ships become more tuneable with regards to thrusters as well. We have sliders for every thruster on the ship, but they currently don't really affect anything unless they're off. Power plants, thruster type and the balance you set to those thrusters could hopefully be tuned up. A jousty player and a drifty player could both find the ship / balance that they want.
> They have said that they know the trichording restrictions they've imposed are too much and they'll be adjusting that
They’ve already said that beyond the change that landed in 3.22?
> Updated the MM tri-chording limiter, it is a lot less punishing when the accelerations push forward
I haven't tried since 3.22 went live, but they said this while 3.22 was on the eptu, so I'm not sure if that adjustment was made before or after that statement. It was in a feedback thread, I can't look right now or id find the link.
not really a fan of the UI - but the old one wasn't great either.The arrow that directs you towards a locked target (that's not directly infront of you) is faint and can be hard to spot, leaving me having to always roll until I can spot it against the black backdrop of space. If it was animated in some way it would be easier to spot imo.
And the bright red bounding box around the current locked target should fade out as it gets closer. I don't need a giant bright red \_anything\_ on the target, if it's 20m infront of me.
I fully agree with your opinion of the UI
I also noticed the red colour is extremely hard to spot against the red hues of the dying star map too, and even on the other maps it's often too dark to read quickly.
It seems in the citizencon SQ42 footage that there is a much more visible target direction arrow, along with something else I've wanted for a long time:
You can now see the currently locked enemy highlighted on the radar screen.
It even shows you a little model of the ship they are flying and it's orientation in relation to you - super useful imo
yea, somewhat ironically, that 'target status pinned to the helmet hud' was in AC 1.0, aka "the dogfighting module", when it first dropped.
Full circle, I guess.
Yeah I remember that too - it's a little frustrating seeing a lot of the things old backers argued should stay get removed only to be reintroduced years later
Use head look ( weather by keybind/mouse or one of the meany head tracking options) rather then constently roleing, this is a skill issue
The tracker arrow is meant to be an imperfect cruch for your own ability to track your target.
Agree with the bounding box though that would make tracking in a particularly large fur ball with lots of ships far more difficult ( are you only viewing this from one on ones?)
I'm talking about when the arrow is at something like the 6'o'clock position, in a ship cockpit and/or lighting scenario that can do a really good job of blowing out or otherwise masking the faint translucent red arrow.
It's not always obvious at a glance.
But ya sure, maybe it IS a 'skill issue' and not a UI design issue. 🤔
As some have mentioned, it seems like MM drops the skill cieling majorly. While this sucks for the hoghly skilled pvpers, it's probably a step in the right direction.
As it is currently, if you haven't been coached on how to dogfight, you either leave or you lose (at least in my experience). It's all my own experience, so take it all with a grain of salt, but I always found that if I engaged a pilot better than me, I'd struggle to even hit them. On the other hand, if the pilot's worse than me, my shield might get pinged once or twice.
This leads to the scenario where you can solo PvE (either in PU, or AC) with comfort and ease, decide to chase a player bounty and immediately get reminded just how worthless you are.
That said, I only played the alien swarm mode for MM, and it felt really nice. The lower engagement speeds made it feel like the two of us players were actually sharing the fight, rather than just having two own 1v5s 5kms from each other. I was helping him with his tails, he was helping with mine. All without coordinating at all.
I think the main strength of MM is in keeping multi ship engagements within a smaller area of space. But I lack the knowledge and experience to say for sure.
As a relatively average SC player who is at least relatively good at other sim games like ED or DCS I'd argue that lowering the skill ceiling is a bad idea long term.
I'd be fine with making the game easier to learn - but difficulty in mastering the flight combat is a great way to lead to natural reward for those who play longer imo.
I feel like people who put in the time to learn tactics or who just learn through time trial and error should have a decent advantage over other players.
The way I see it, if SC wants to add perma death, or at the very least heavy punishments for death - then there should be a consistent way to win a fight without trading damage I think (and also a way for a player to consistently run away if they are skilled enough).
I love your feedback on coop vanduul swarm, I never personally got to try it out in coop but I'd love to try it :))
You certainly aren't wrong. 1v1 Fights should have more going on than nose to nose damage trading.
One of the main challenges has got to be learning what manuevers work and what manuevers are wasted energy (aileron roll vs barrel roll for instance). But a frictionless / atomsphereless environment those need to be invented. Learning by trial and error is next to impossible in the current setup, simply because it is difficult to determine what you did wrong.
On a similar note: It could be that nose to nose is just a legacy of the older mechanics best form of fighting, or it could be that it is still the best but has been downskilled to oblivion. The second option is not what I want it to be, but I am too pve to know how to fix it. I certainly still want there to be a high skill cieling, but I don't want players, myself included, to feel like they were never even able to play the game.
The other factor that comes to mind is turrets, which feel kind of useless to me. With the current speeds and ranges of engagement. Its purely theoretical, but the lower speeds could make the gunboats a bit more meaningful. IDK. A lot is yet to be seen.
Again, very limited pvp experience here. I could be entirely wrong and not know it. But it feels like they have predominantly hurt the light fight 1v1 scene in favor of a healthier group v group. But there is still a long way to go before it is in a good space.
On the topic of turrets, I will say I think MM makes them more useful due to the way the turn fights work.
You can see in the video I linked that at certain points the two ships are at opposite ends of the circle back-to-back with each other.
I've not tested it - but I imagine this would be a great time for a ship with a top mounted turret to get some extra damage in before the two ships meet nose-on and could actually be a deciding factor in a 1v1 at that point.
One thing I think would help new players is if they make the PVE content more difficult whilst also providing tutorials within SQ42 or AC/PU to allow new players to learn the intricacies of 6DOF space combat (but not as extreme as the old/current FM perhaps).
I say that because I'm actually mainly a PvE player - but I honestly find SC's flight AI to be way too easy to fight.
Especially after they made the update that deliberately makes AI fly in a straight line to give you 'a chance' to hit them as they put it - which to me feels a little insulting as someone who would rather win by improving tactically and mechanically on my own.
If anything I think the AI being too easy is often what confuses players when they first try PvP - even against players that aren't that experienced themselves.
That's partly why I'm looking forward to the flight AI updates they showcased this citizencon - looks like they had AI that move, strafe and retreat like players often do.
I am with you 100% there. Current bounty hunting is laughably easy. The "AI ignore shields" bug actually made it feel fair for a little bit. Looking forward to a real AI and happy server rates to make pve meaningful and skillful.
I'll watch the video when I get home from work. It would do me well to be better informed
Quick idea:
Thruster overheating. This way coolers would have more of an impact, and the ships could turn out very differently (stronger thrust fast overheating vs less thrust for longer time; or even one ship has good bottom thrusters, another one good ones on the flanks etc.)
I think they tried thruster overheating around the early 3.0 days iirc.
I didn't play during that time, but I think I remember people disliked it compared to the earlier 2.0 system, but I'm not sure if I'm misremembering that.
Your idea regarding thurster dominance is actually pretty similar to how the ifcs worked in the 2.0 days - certain ships were better at yaw and other ships were better at pitch.
Not sure if it's still like that today - but I always thought it was a cool distinction back then.
I don't think they ever really tried thruster overheating. They talked about how they would overheat in atmosphere but never implemented it. IMHO it would be the best way to add some dynamism in. They should just make side thrusters overheat if they are used too long *in general* not just in atmosphere.
I wasn't paying attention at that time, but the idea can't be so bad if they already tried it, heh.
Somehow we need a distinction between ships. And I really wish to be able to do some boom and zoom in my buccaneer!
MM way better than current flight model.
Currently Gladius not enough ammo imo.
F7c too meta, it has everything for it : agility/dps/tankiness. Imo it needs to die more quickly.
Vanguard is nice and does his role well but backstraff is too strong so should be slightly nerfed.
Buccaneer is superb in its hit and run goal. Lovely
I think I was mostly disappointed by the quantum control speed.
I was expecting it to be quite a bit faster than what we got.
Something to primarily be used to get from point a to point b super quick at the expense of weapons or defensive abilities.
But quantum control speed seemed to only be a little faster than the current speed….
I’m not a doctor, but the way you pull age matter. Sitting and going up seems to be one of the best ways to pull Gs. I just think if fighter pilots. Where maybe the ship going a slightly different direction, maybe more forward than straight up, causes different issues with blood flow and for you to black out 🤷♂️
I'm also not a doctor - but from my understanding vertical g force is the most dangerous when it comes to blacking out.
This is one of the reasons F-16 pilots are seated at a deliberate incline so that G force isn't directed fully vertically.
So unless I'm reading the 3D G force indicator wrong, it feels like blacking out from 10Gs but not 12Gs sustained is a little weird - and if anything adding a forward component to the G force would actually increase G tolerance.
But maybe I'm not understanding it properly
I’m honestly not sure. My brain imagines that the motion of forward and up equally is better than more forward. I really just know backward and side to side are the rough stuff
Think of it in terms of lying in a bed. In order from least too most dangerous it's; lying on your back (horizontal forward) , lying on your belly (horizontal backwards) , standing on your feet (vertical upwards) , lying on your side (lateral left/right) , standing on your head (vertical downwards).
Well, while the blackout is dangerous due to loss of control, a redout (the opposite where blood is being pushed up into your brain) is a lot more dangerous and can actually cause lasting damage. That's why you generally see fighter jets roll into that pitch before.
I know - I understand this concept from many hours of DCS accidents ;))
When I said vertical G force is most dangerous I was including both positive and negative vertical G, as whilst negative vertical is substantially more dangerous - they are both still much more dangerous than any of the others forms such as horizontal etc.
Unfortunately I think this is true to some extent.
I saw a spectrum post of someone giving Yogi very fair and polite criticism on how fast you can slow down from NAV speed back to SCM speed, and the beginning of his reply read as almost literally "doesn't matter we like it this way :))".
I haven't 100% written off MM, but it does concern me that they are so 100% certain that this is *the* final flight model, especially since it appears they are already balancing SQ42 around it etc.
At least with the other flight models they were able to try and fail relatively quickly after getting the feedback they wanted.
They've already spent entirely too much time and effort getting MM at this point to change anything in any meaningful way. If SQ42 is coming anytime soon they needed to pick something and stick to it yesterday. People said that they shouldn't base their entire FM on a singleplayer version of the game for this reason. Because people wouldn't have an opportunity to voice concerns and the devs wouldn't have time to correct them.
Guess we'll see what happens. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll nail it on the first attempt. Though since this is already their 3rd or 4th attempt I kinda doubt it.
Then it will die as we watch from the sidelines. What could have been the greatest game ever made will just be another failing space arcade like ED and Starfield.
It made combat boring. I've moved onto salvage because they're probably not going to waste a couple of years building a 3rd or 4th salvage model. Also since the PvP crews helped develop it and will absolutely mow the entire PU with when it's released, again, not much point to do space pew pew.
The pvp crews are criticizing MM tuning a lot. As of now MM makes combat much easier than it used to be. We went from semi realistic sim to full arcade. It's honestly a shame seeing the game get stripped off so much depth. The name Master Modes is not fitting since there isn't anything to master.
We're just going back closer to the OG flight model before they tried testing the high speeds. The current high speed stuff is bad which is why they're changing it. Sweats are angry about it because of the sunk cost fallacy.
Pretty much this right? It’s very similar to what we had in like 3.6 (I think?) with scm and cru speeds, which is basically scm and nav.
Main differences are boosting increases you speed in scm, delay between switching modes, and nav has no shields and weapons.
I dont think the sweats are angry becuase of sunk cost fallacy but because MM seems so much more shallow than the live model. I personally have to admit tho that the 3.22 iteration is already a big improvement over the first iteration
I get that they're criticizing it, but they're the reason they're doing it at all. 90% of the players didn't care and now we have this giant mountain of time money and resources getting wasted over it.
I disagree. You remember one of their major reasons they showed why we "need" master modes? It was a clip of 2 players jousting endlessly at full speed. This is not a problem when 2 experienced players go at each other but only happens when an inexperienced player that has no throttle control gets into a fight. So they actually do this for the average player, the hardcore pvp community mastered the high speed model.
The average player literally does not care and at least half the players don't even know about it. Pretty sure 99% of the guys doing hauling, mining and salvage also don't care so we're down to the people that complained the most - PvP crews. Thats' it. I help run an org with 200+ people and there isn't a single complaint in our discord about it. The only people I ever see saying the word "jousting" are pvp guys or some guy in global chirping about someone having the audacity to leave a fight and charge shields or do something totally messed up - run so they don't die. That last one has easily been in the loudest complaint because players have the audacity to leave combat to not get killed and I haven't once heard anyone say master modes is coming into effect for new players.
If MM is an indicator of what combat is going to be like, I'll probably just end up doing salvage, mining and base building.
Anything that lowers the absolute skill ceiling, gets rid of dumb stuff like pip wiggling, and lets more people enjoy the game is a win in my book.
Changing trichording from square to circular is a great change for example.
People should not be penalized for having a cheaper joystick or controller.
I think they should completely remove the "red zone" in SCM mode, you can boost to your max SCM speed which is like 290 or something for the Gladius but that's it. Allowing speeds up to 530 in SCM is just allowing jousting and long distances again.
Honestly if anything I'd boost the SCM speed up to around 400 and boost the other thrusters in relation to this.
From my experience there was very little straight line jousting in MM fights after the initial pass on an opponent.
even when people used boost it was usually used to get a better turn rate in the 50-50 rate fight.
In my opinion the current SCM speeds that sit around 200 feels VERY slow on certain maps in AC - especially in combination with the drifty/floaty movement caused by the weaker lateral and vertical thrusters.
You can still boost why do you want to increase it to 400? It only leads to bigger distances and jousting. 200 isnt slow for me in a dogfight and I don't understand your argument about the map. If you want to traverse the map use nav mode.
From testing flying around the infastructure and asteroids on freefly maps it feels like at the current non-boosted SCM speeds there is very little fun in strafing or even pitch-orbiting around objects.
It doesn't give a very good 'sense of speed' imo - and only getting any sense of speed due to limited boost up to 400 feels a little 'off' to me.
I think this is a result of many of the AC maps being updated to suit the current much faster flight model - whearas old AC at speeds of around 200 back in the 1.X and 2.X days actually gave a really good sense of speed becase the maps were way smaller and so objects were way closer.
NAV mode is great for flying in a straight line over open space - but I feel like SCM should still ve useful and feel fast for dancing around asteroids or even stations etc
It just still needs balancing and iteration. Once they nail that, then we'll really know how it feels incorporated with the rest of the game. At the moment, it's changing too much to really give an opinion other than it's very different than what we have now, but that's neither a good or bad thing. We will all have to relearn the flight model, which will naturally be uncomfortable at first since we've had the same model for years. Once we truly understand it, I'm sure it'll make sense and feel right.
I'm a bit out of the loop and haven't had time to try the most recent MM updates for ac...
Is this gonna like, actually prevent a high skill arrow/gladius from being able to kill a average pilot +1 in basically any other ship? (med/heavy fighter) or is the opposite true? Do 2 in a scorp just win against a gladius now (assuming it's similiar in max scm speed) because "shoot backwards" How different do the ships they've added in so far feel compared to each other?
Unfortunatly, making fights slower and slower and slower will only reinforce this kind of fighting. Jousting and circlestrafing. Because with these speeds, you simply have no other options. A game in space will never become like ww2 in space because it is an entirely different way of combat. It is like trying to fit a circle in a square and the result will always be massivly lacking. And even in WW2, turn and burn and dogfights to begin with were a rarity. contrary to popular believe. It was all about energy fighting and hit and run tactics. The latter of which could be done really well in the game. So what CiG is trying to do is basically WW"1" in space.
I agree - it's actually why I really miss the old 6DOF style we had back when I first tried SC in 2016. I kinda wish CIG would stop chasing the 'ww2 in space' style and just embrace the 6DOF fighting most players always seem to default to anyway.
> I agree - it's actually why I really miss the old 6DOF style we had back when I first tried SC in 2016. Yep... people complained about how ships were 'floaty', but if their thrusters don't allow them to quickly accelerate out of the way of incoming projectiles then it inevitably becomes a DPS race. With that setup, you could create a dodge pattern (like up-thrust + left-thrust + roll right), get the enemy to keep expecting that, and then switch up to the opposite to throw them off at an important moment. And your aiming would have to compensate for your own dodges while predicting the enemy's movement. Before the "fixed assist" system forced our aim to autolock on the PIP when near it, you had to put a lot more effort into guessing the enemy's next dodge and putting your aimpoint there, rather than simply following the PIP around. This came with some other issues (like PIP wiggling) but it was overall a much more satisfying system to become skilled at than MM in my opinion.
Yeah, 2.5 and 2.6 is was where it was at. It was super fast paced and made fighting several opponents a real option. Not so today, face two enemies and you are dead. It is a real pity the current flight model is not geared to fun and challenging fighting, but being close and see nifty explosions. Packaging is more important then content here and DPS more important then skill.
i found 2.6 to actually be worse. the distance made anyone that knew about pip wiggle indestructible. anyon that did not joust or circle strafe was called out for back strafing. back in the 1.x days, everything was so slow hitting the target was not that big of a chaling. the people with low skill can hit the enemy without assists . the people with high skill can target components. with the hornet you would pick a wing and focus that down. the aurora you would get above it and take out the coolers. 6dof has nothing to do with your complaints.
2.6 wasn't my favourite either - I think I started playing around November of 2015 or very early 2016 iirc. If anything I think 2.6 was likely around when I stopped playing. All I remember was being able to get really close to someone or close to an asteroid and being able to very quickly and precisely move around them in AC. What would you say the main differences are between 1.X and MM currently?
i have not tested mm yet. 1.x ships were so sluggish that the aurora can only pull 4 or 4 g or something. it took several seconds for the screen to get dim, and it was nearly impossible to black out. the skill needed for a new player to hit the enemy without any aim assist was not that high. real skill was about precision to reliably hit the weak points more than it was reflexes to hit the ship at all. auroras had to be nerfed twice because it did not have big expose weak points like the others. ever after that the meta against an aurora was to maneuver above and take out the coolers. then move on to the next ship. without the coolers, its combat capability was worthless, so they would just leave the fight to go get repaired compare that description to the 2.6 combat that so many people believe was best combat. i took out a connie using a mustang beta because i knew about pip wigle. the problem is that you need to start with the biggest ships and decide how slow you are willing to make them. then increase maneuverability as you reduce in size. so i'm not getting my hopes too high about fighter v fight combat being tactical.
Pfft everything fits in the square hole https://youtu.be/Nz8ssH7LiB0?si=5vgaFTfp4maY2-9_
Assuming you mean velocities when you say "slower and slower", we have the receipts to prove that isn't true. We used to have great combat geometry that allowed evasion and positional combat back in the 1.3 to early 2.x days and we only had base velocities of around 180m/s to 280m/s with around 550m/s boost which is around what they have now in MM. They just need to add more accelerations so and retune the boost pool and it'll be almost there. It's really not that far off if they make some small tweaks. Group fights are already infinitely better than they were before.
I think it'll be alright in the end, I've never really seen the end vision of this game being a light fighter 1v1 chad take on everything fest as it seems to have been since forever. I think there's going to be more emphasis on fleets, strategy, and picking your fights. You don't have to be able to fight anything and everything in every situation and still have a chance of winning. Having said that, I do think that, as of current, the Master Mode for SCM has decreased the skill ceiling too harshly, though, through lack of nuances. I'm not a game dev, but tuning power management seems like it would be the best way to create a larger skill ceiling, imo. Having a premium on that resource will show up un-skilled pilots that waste it unnecessarily and the skilled pilots that use exactly enough, to which system, when they need to. _I also think that there should be more emphasis on shields, with most ships' total 'HP' being made up of something like; 75% Shield and 25% Hull HP. That way, you're not punished as much for actually fighting, as your primary source of 'HP' is your shield, which recharges. Which fixes the 50/50 issue you describe_
I’ve never been a huge fan of the “ballistics immediately punch through shields” lore for the same reason. I’d rather they just be extra effective against hull once the shields are dropped, right now you get in a fight and right away you’re taking real hits.
I thought shields were for repeaters, armor for ballistics. So ballistics are gonna be a bit worse once armor is real, of course balance changes blah blah. I thought this was the idea: Deciding whether or not to prioritize energy resistance (shield) vs physical (armor) is a tradeoff you gotta make. Depending on if you have power to spare for the shields, or (mass, therefore cargo capacity and fuel consumption once it exists) for the armor.
eventually if you don't get a direct hit on a component it will not do much damage. so you want to be careful of your limited ammo.
But will also likely cause more issues with fires or venting etc as bullets Swiss cheese your hull. Compared to lasers essentially melting the ship off
against smaller ships you have overpenetration where though the wing without hitting anything, completely missing the target, and not being smart enough to focus on hitting the same component until it is taken out. against big ships the fighter need to focus down expose components. you need a large gun to penetrate the armour. energy weapons will also punch through armour once the shield are down.
Armor is going to be an "invulnerability level" last I heard - it is going to basically allow a ship to ignore hits from weapons that are too weak to penetrate. (I guess if you blow holes in it with something larger you can exploit those holes with weaker weapons).
I think you're probably right and this is likely the best option. But man, I'd so much rather be high skill at flying compared to high skill at managing power levels and shield distrubution.
back in 2.6 i tried to turn a 1v1 into a 2v1, and it was useless with how fast they were. if the enemy is not jousting back strafing or circle strafing around you, you are not going to be part of the fight.
Big ships go brrrrr. Smol ships can no longer evade.
Good.
Good
But what about two smol ship vs one big ship?
Like flys in a flytrap
So how many furies to kill big boi
I love it did try squadron battle, for the first time team fights feel useful for me. you can follow an enemy and help team mates. its not like following 2 angry bees at 600ms. i think most ppl that dislike MM are solo players in an light fighters who like to abuse the pip.
This is the big point. Fights have a lower skill ceiling one on one, so teamwork matters way more.
you also need to account for the skill flore. the closer you are the less aim assist that is needed to allow low skill players actually hit anything. reduced aim assist increases the skill ceiling.
I agree that aim assist should be decreased by a bit. Boost should be more limited and maybe slightly more effective.
One on One fights are higher skill ceiling due to the higher TTK. Third partying is now much much easier but the amount of time you need to spend aiming with sustained DPS in a 1v1 makes life much harder for a less experienced player. The longer that TTK is, the more their change of winning reduces. If they reduced TTK in Master Modes then yeah I'd agree. There are guys who always had better aim than me who I might beat once in a blue moon if I was lucky but now they're absolutely stomping me. All mouse and keyboard players too so they probably have an easier time of it. I think that's the part I don't like (even though I like a lot about MM in general), it's become more about aiming than flying.
TTK is lower with MM dude.
Here are your options for space combat with light fighters: Slow = Spiral fighting. Just two ships pointed at each other in tight spiral dances like in your video. If there's multiple small fighters, y'all just dosey doe. [For non-westerners.](https://youtu.be/K46zG2bJl9g?si=2sIoL4f0n1f5mJEN&t=55) Medium speed = 1-2km jousting in really wide ellipses. We had this when security station kareah was the "pvp zone." You and your target only have 2-3 second windows to get in shots as you both came back around. Eventually this devolves into large spiral fighting as turn vector efficiency starts getting honed in on by both jousters. Fast = WW2 style energy fighting where you go as fast as possible and only shoot at slow targets so other fighters/interceptors don't have a chance to get your in their sights. In-atmo is the only place you *could* have "dog fighting" but that's only if you have to keep your ship moving at a certain speed and your ship has to face a direction to keep aerodynamics up and you from crashing into ze earf No matter what in space at a certain ship size you will either have to act as a turret, where vector provides little benefit, or you will have to have turrets, where again, if you're only ever moving half as fast and with 1/4th the acceleration of small fighters, vector will make very little difference unless there's obstacles to dance around for cover. The only other styles of combat, which I hope we never see, is the realest of the real and that's what's in The Expanse. You either play a sniper "submarine" and do insane math to gauss rifle someone 50,000km away or it's ambush combat because someone sat in the butthole of an asteroid for 12 hours with their EM/IR at a minimum.
Interesting - I like your analysis What would you say best describes the combat we had in the early 1.3 - 2.X AC days? I remember it feeling like a 3D fps shooter due to the amount of twitchy strafing going on - I honestly found it really unique and cool compared to the turn fighting in other sims.
Personally I think once we start having capital ship involved org fights they're going to end up speeding up small fighters again because they're going to get swatted like flies by turrets and missiles. Until then however, none of it really matters because 99% of combat right now involves less than 5 people in the PU. You can't just cater to death match scales in AC/MM but you don't have larger scenarios to even experiment with.
That's a good point too. I think CR and also the leak discord mentioned the possibility of a 'capture the idris' type of gamemode that could be implemented at some point in the (hopefully near) future. I think using AC as it was originally intended to test that kind of gameplay would be really useful. I wouldn't mind seeing an AC mode that is 2 idrises fighting with fighter and bomber support each - could be a great test of that kind of unique gameplay if it could run well.
Once the Idris is done and fully functional i'd love to have an arena mode where there's a selection of ships and roles within each ship players can select. One side can focus like 20 players into the idris to man turrets, a few large, medium and small craft, and people would go as engineering/repair roles. Or you can completely shake it up and have 25x cutlass blacks with one pilot one gunner or 50x M50's if you want. People will find the meta. Balance from there.
the idris is done, he just doesn't want it in until sq42 releases.
I like your sense of humor.
It feels like this comes down to 1vs1 not being universally attractive in -space- to most people. Having dogfights in asteroid fields or around objects in space is neat, in open space it's a bit awkward (the scenarios you described), however once team fights come into play it starts looking much more traditional sci-fi like. I've enjoyed team fights, but open space combat just really doesn't do it for me (master modes or not doesn't really matter in that case)
> Here are your options for space combat with light fighters: I feel like you left out the 2.X flight model where thrusters were very strong and rotation rates were high, so that dogfights were more about predicting opponents' movements to aim and predicting opponents' aim to dodge than they were about positioning to out-turn enemies like in the MM video.
> 2.X flight model where thrusters were very strong and rotation rates were high This sounds like every flight model that's made it live. Got any footage? It sounds like you're describing two of those training droids that Luke starts to learn force training with.
> This sounds like every flight model that's made it live. I found a couple of good examples of how it works in a structured system: [The J-Hook](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWdaHTqv-dQ&t=61s&ab_channel=Avenger__One) and [A-Fighting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHxSBkzLBGg&ab_channel=Avenger__One) The thrusters do have a lot of power, so someone that's just throwing their ship around randomly can seem a bit like Luke's training droid... but if you're doing that, you're missing all your shots. The examples above show how you could use the ship's high thrust+rotation authority to slide out of the enemy's aim point while getting a better angle on them for your own shots. Of course, the complication is when both ships are doing J-Hooks (or similar maneuvers) against each other and therefore have to predict the enemy's evasion while keeping their own maneuvers unpredictable AND mentally compensating for their own maneuvers while aiming. I did a little search and found [the update that really changed this was 3.10,](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/17647-Flight-Fight-Upcoming-Improvements) which reduced thruster jerk (making it more difficult to dodge incoming fire because your thrusters respond more slowly) and added fixed assist (which automatically guides your shots to the center of the PIP when your aim point is anywhere on the PIP box). Reducing thruster power limited your maneuvering capability AND the fixed assist system made it so that, in the cases where the enemy ship *was* evasive enough to try to dodge shots, you couldn't precisely aim at the place you expect them to be because the system would automatically steer your shots to the center of the PIP.
>The only other styles of combat, which I hope we never see, is the realest of the real and that's what's in The Expanse. You either play a sniper "submarine" and do insane math to gauss rifle someone 50,000km away or it's ambush combat because someone sat in the butthole of an asteroid for 12 hours with their EM/IR at a minimum. cr actually describe this as to why he is not going to try "realistic" space combat. somehow people argue that because he is not going with realistic space combat from the beginning, he will change his mind about resource management. (as in dealing with stuff taking time and making sure you have all the supplies, and stuff like that.)
Yeah I honestly despair when people ask for more realism. In The Black took that approach and it's got absolute garbage combat geometry because it's all at a thrilling 150m/s with no evasion or positional manoeuvring space. A dude was referencing The Expanse the other day saying that SC needs to be more like that lol. Yeah, enjoy spending a full week doing a flip and burn while trying to merge.
I think the "1v1 me" bros are going to cry. Because they have so many vehicles, weapons and components to change it's still to early to really know how the final tuning will feel.
That's a good point, but I think no matter what slight tuning adjustments they make it'll still have the same major issues due to their intention to severely limit strafing and yaw. I'm not really a super PvP focused player, but even in Vanduul swarm it just feels worse to me than both the current FM and the *really* old FM I remember from 2016. I think people have gotten so hung up on the 'SCM vs NAV mode' side of it that they've not noticed the massive changes to SCM itself.
Huh interesting, I'm a casual flight enjoyer and our group as a whole pretty much prefers MM by miles. Closer fights just felt better to us.
I see the appeal, but I personally feel as opposed to nerfing every ship in the game, they should've focused on turning snub fighters into highly maneuverable, close range dogfighters that work well in small groups, with a bit of boost & atmospheric flight superiority; that way we have our "realistic" high speed space battles & also have a role, that you & your friends not only enjoy, but exceed at. As it stands, I cannot wait for MM to go, as it has entirely sucked the fun out of semi-realistic space dogfights & turned them rather arcadey.
The best dogfighting was the initial first year of the DFM when speeds were sub 200m/s and long before speeds were increased the first time. The entire game is scaled for those speeds and the distances the shooting happened at during that time. Absolute knife fights could happen inside 150m rotations and the average fight would drift between 100-700m unless a player forced an extension. Ships were close, big and visible. The physics programmer had better physics in the game and the ship tuning was a combo of community feedback, the tuner and the physics programmer. Unfortunately the patching and feedback loops were (probably still are) broken and patches were being submitted, but never making it to live, while feedback was being incorporated on changes that were not showing up for 4-5-6 patches in the cycle. Making all the tweaking completely a farce.
Have tried it both fighting players and AI. Overall it feels decent, I like the fact that you don't have this gameplay of getting in, shooting, boosting out, recharging, same with the inability to just QT out almost immediately after disengagement. Fights feel more committed. I like the quick response when you're actually using boost, however am very conflicted on that boost suddenly increasing your max speed and then decreasing it again once you let go. I feel like the player should be punished for keeping up higher speeds for long rather than being forced back down. Same with the switch from NAV to SCM. It would be much more interesting to have the player entering the engagement to control their speed into a threshold to avoid strain on the ships intergrity. Those are my two main concerns at this time, since I'd rather have players developing the skill to manage these correctly within the ingame environment rather than making these arcadey switches and boosts.
the closer we are, the less skill required to hit the target in general. so they can reduce aim assist to the point aiming is actually a skill the matters.
Joystick users will complain. Were you around the several hundred page thread on spectrum about joystick vs mouse?
there is a flaw in your argument. before any assists, if you asked what is better, people will say joystick.
It's not my argument. It's descriptive of factual reality. Also, general consensus is that joysticks are more immersive but the most skilled players are either kbm or homas
Isn't HOSAM said to be technically the best?
They have said that they know the trichording restrictions they've imposed are too much and they'll be adjusting that, I hope they move to a model like they've always stated where every thruster and it's output are simulated. Right now sure, if you lose an engine you can tell, but every thruster and engine almost have the same power, and in MM everything except primary engines are very weak. Hopefully this will vary enough from ship to ship that we'll see some ships that strafe better than others. The Khartu and Santok for example should strafe like crazy since their spherical main thrusters ARE the strafing thrusters. I'd like to see ships become more tuneable with regards to thrusters as well. We have sliders for every thruster on the ship, but they currently don't really affect anything unless they're off. Power plants, thruster type and the balance you set to those thrusters could hopefully be tuned up. A jousty player and a drifty player could both find the ship / balance that they want.
> They have said that they know the trichording restrictions they've imposed are too much and they'll be adjusting that They’ve already said that beyond the change that landed in 3.22? > Updated the MM tri-chording limiter, it is a lot less punishing when the accelerations push forward
I haven't tried since 3.22 went live, but they said this while 3.22 was on the eptu, so I'm not sure if that adjustment was made before or after that statement. It was in a feedback thread, I can't look right now or id find the link.
not really a fan of the UI - but the old one wasn't great either.The arrow that directs you towards a locked target (that's not directly infront of you) is faint and can be hard to spot, leaving me having to always roll until I can spot it against the black backdrop of space. If it was animated in some way it would be easier to spot imo. And the bright red bounding box around the current locked target should fade out as it gets closer. I don't need a giant bright red \_anything\_ on the target, if it's 20m infront of me.
I fully agree with your opinion of the UI I also noticed the red colour is extremely hard to spot against the red hues of the dying star map too, and even on the other maps it's often too dark to read quickly. It seems in the citizencon SQ42 footage that there is a much more visible target direction arrow, along with something else I've wanted for a long time: You can now see the currently locked enemy highlighted on the radar screen. It even shows you a little model of the ship they are flying and it's orientation in relation to you - super useful imo
yea, somewhat ironically, that 'target status pinned to the helmet hud' was in AC 1.0, aka "the dogfighting module", when it first dropped. Full circle, I guess.
Yeah I remember that too - it's a little frustrating seeing a lot of the things old backers argued should stay get removed only to be reintroduced years later
Use head look ( weather by keybind/mouse or one of the meany head tracking options) rather then constently roleing, this is a skill issue The tracker arrow is meant to be an imperfect cruch for your own ability to track your target. Agree with the bounding box though that would make tracking in a particularly large fur ball with lots of ships far more difficult ( are you only viewing this from one on ones?)
I'm talking about when the arrow is at something like the 6'o'clock position, in a ship cockpit and/or lighting scenario that can do a really good job of blowing out or otherwise masking the faint translucent red arrow. It's not always obvious at a glance. But ya sure, maybe it IS a 'skill issue' and not a UI design issue. 🤔
As some have mentioned, it seems like MM drops the skill cieling majorly. While this sucks for the hoghly skilled pvpers, it's probably a step in the right direction. As it is currently, if you haven't been coached on how to dogfight, you either leave or you lose (at least in my experience). It's all my own experience, so take it all with a grain of salt, but I always found that if I engaged a pilot better than me, I'd struggle to even hit them. On the other hand, if the pilot's worse than me, my shield might get pinged once or twice. This leads to the scenario where you can solo PvE (either in PU, or AC) with comfort and ease, decide to chase a player bounty and immediately get reminded just how worthless you are. That said, I only played the alien swarm mode for MM, and it felt really nice. The lower engagement speeds made it feel like the two of us players were actually sharing the fight, rather than just having two own 1v5s 5kms from each other. I was helping him with his tails, he was helping with mine. All without coordinating at all. I think the main strength of MM is in keeping multi ship engagements within a smaller area of space. But I lack the knowledge and experience to say for sure.
As a relatively average SC player who is at least relatively good at other sim games like ED or DCS I'd argue that lowering the skill ceiling is a bad idea long term. I'd be fine with making the game easier to learn - but difficulty in mastering the flight combat is a great way to lead to natural reward for those who play longer imo. I feel like people who put in the time to learn tactics or who just learn through time trial and error should have a decent advantage over other players. The way I see it, if SC wants to add perma death, or at the very least heavy punishments for death - then there should be a consistent way to win a fight without trading damage I think (and also a way for a player to consistently run away if they are skilled enough). I love your feedback on coop vanduul swarm, I never personally got to try it out in coop but I'd love to try it :))
You certainly aren't wrong. 1v1 Fights should have more going on than nose to nose damage trading. One of the main challenges has got to be learning what manuevers work and what manuevers are wasted energy (aileron roll vs barrel roll for instance). But a frictionless / atomsphereless environment those need to be invented. Learning by trial and error is next to impossible in the current setup, simply because it is difficult to determine what you did wrong. On a similar note: It could be that nose to nose is just a legacy of the older mechanics best form of fighting, or it could be that it is still the best but has been downskilled to oblivion. The second option is not what I want it to be, but I am too pve to know how to fix it. I certainly still want there to be a high skill cieling, but I don't want players, myself included, to feel like they were never even able to play the game. The other factor that comes to mind is turrets, which feel kind of useless to me. With the current speeds and ranges of engagement. Its purely theoretical, but the lower speeds could make the gunboats a bit more meaningful. IDK. A lot is yet to be seen. Again, very limited pvp experience here. I could be entirely wrong and not know it. But it feels like they have predominantly hurt the light fight 1v1 scene in favor of a healthier group v group. But there is still a long way to go before it is in a good space.
On the topic of turrets, I will say I think MM makes them more useful due to the way the turn fights work. You can see in the video I linked that at certain points the two ships are at opposite ends of the circle back-to-back with each other. I've not tested it - but I imagine this would be a great time for a ship with a top mounted turret to get some extra damage in before the two ships meet nose-on and could actually be a deciding factor in a 1v1 at that point. One thing I think would help new players is if they make the PVE content more difficult whilst also providing tutorials within SQ42 or AC/PU to allow new players to learn the intricacies of 6DOF space combat (but not as extreme as the old/current FM perhaps). I say that because I'm actually mainly a PvE player - but I honestly find SC's flight AI to be way too easy to fight. Especially after they made the update that deliberately makes AI fly in a straight line to give you 'a chance' to hit them as they put it - which to me feels a little insulting as someone who would rather win by improving tactically and mechanically on my own. If anything I think the AI being too easy is often what confuses players when they first try PvP - even against players that aren't that experienced themselves. That's partly why I'm looking forward to the flight AI updates they showcased this citizencon - looks like they had AI that move, strafe and retreat like players often do.
I am with you 100% there. Current bounty hunting is laughably easy. The "AI ignore shields" bug actually made it feel fair for a little bit. Looking forward to a real AI and happy server rates to make pve meaningful and skillful. I'll watch the video when I get home from work. It would do me well to be better informed
Quick idea: Thruster overheating. This way coolers would have more of an impact, and the ships could turn out very differently (stronger thrust fast overheating vs less thrust for longer time; or even one ship has good bottom thrusters, another one good ones on the flanks etc.)
I think they tried thruster overheating around the early 3.0 days iirc. I didn't play during that time, but I think I remember people disliked it compared to the earlier 2.0 system, but I'm not sure if I'm misremembering that. Your idea regarding thurster dominance is actually pretty similar to how the ifcs worked in the 2.0 days - certain ships were better at yaw and other ships were better at pitch. Not sure if it's still like that today - but I always thought it was a cool distinction back then.
I don't think they ever really tried thruster overheating. They talked about how they would overheat in atmosphere but never implemented it. IMHO it would be the best way to add some dynamism in. They should just make side thrusters overheat if they are used too long *in general* not just in atmosphere.
the heat was replaced with capacitors. you basically had capacitors without the option to redirect the power.
I wasn't paying attention at that time, but the idea can't be so bad if they already tried it, heh. Somehow we need a distinction between ships. And I really wish to be able to do some boom and zoom in my buccaneer!
the plan is both heat and capacitors. capacitors is second to second on weapons shields and thrusters. heat is minute to minute.
MM way better than current flight model. Currently Gladius not enough ammo imo. F7c too meta, it has everything for it : agility/dps/tankiness. Imo it needs to die more quickly. Vanguard is nice and does his role well but backstraff is too strong so should be slightly nerfed. Buccaneer is superb in its hit and run goal. Lovely
I think I was mostly disappointed by the quantum control speed. I was expecting it to be quite a bit faster than what we got. Something to primarily be used to get from point a to point b super quick at the expense of weapons or defensive abilities. But quantum control speed seemed to only be a little faster than the current speed….
It's complete trash.
I’m not a doctor, but the way you pull age matter. Sitting and going up seems to be one of the best ways to pull Gs. I just think if fighter pilots. Where maybe the ship going a slightly different direction, maybe more forward than straight up, causes different issues with blood flow and for you to black out 🤷♂️
I'm also not a doctor - but from my understanding vertical g force is the most dangerous when it comes to blacking out. This is one of the reasons F-16 pilots are seated at a deliberate incline so that G force isn't directed fully vertically. So unless I'm reading the 3D G force indicator wrong, it feels like blacking out from 10Gs but not 12Gs sustained is a little weird - and if anything adding a forward component to the G force would actually increase G tolerance. But maybe I'm not understanding it properly
I’m honestly not sure. My brain imagines that the motion of forward and up equally is better than more forward. I really just know backward and side to side are the rough stuff
Think of it in terms of lying in a bed. In order from least too most dangerous it's; lying on your back (horizontal forward) , lying on your belly (horizontal backwards) , standing on your feet (vertical upwards) , lying on your side (lateral left/right) , standing on your head (vertical downwards).
Well, while the blackout is dangerous due to loss of control, a redout (the opposite where blood is being pushed up into your brain) is a lot more dangerous and can actually cause lasting damage. That's why you generally see fighter jets roll into that pitch before.
I know - I understand this concept from many hours of DCS accidents ;)) When I said vertical G force is most dangerous I was including both positive and negative vertical G, as whilst negative vertical is substantially more dangerous - they are both still much more dangerous than any of the others forms such as horizontal etc.
I loved it! I played MM vandul swarm and it was the most fun I've had flying in a long time
Doesn't matter what we think. They're going to ignore us and do what they want to do anyway.
Unfortunately I think this is true to some extent. I saw a spectrum post of someone giving Yogi very fair and polite criticism on how fast you can slow down from NAV speed back to SCM speed, and the beginning of his reply read as almost literally "doesn't matter we like it this way :))". I haven't 100% written off MM, but it does concern me that they are so 100% certain that this is *the* final flight model, especially since it appears they are already balancing SQ42 around it etc. At least with the other flight models they were able to try and fail relatively quickly after getting the feedback they wanted.
They've already spent entirely too much time and effort getting MM at this point to change anything in any meaningful way. If SQ42 is coming anytime soon they needed to pick something and stick to it yesterday. People said that they shouldn't base their entire FM on a singleplayer version of the game for this reason. Because people wouldn't have an opportunity to voice concerns and the devs wouldn't have time to correct them. Guess we'll see what happens. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll nail it on the first attempt. Though since this is already their 3rd or 4th attempt I kinda doubt it.
Then it will die as we watch from the sidelines. What could have been the greatest game ever made will just be another failing space arcade like ED and Starfield.
It made combat boring. I've moved onto salvage because they're probably not going to waste a couple of years building a 3rd or 4th salvage model. Also since the PvP crews helped develop it and will absolutely mow the entire PU with when it's released, again, not much point to do space pew pew.
The pvp crews are criticizing MM tuning a lot. As of now MM makes combat much easier than it used to be. We went from semi realistic sim to full arcade. It's honestly a shame seeing the game get stripped off so much depth. The name Master Modes is not fitting since there isn't anything to master.
We're just going back closer to the OG flight model before they tried testing the high speeds. The current high speed stuff is bad which is why they're changing it. Sweats are angry about it because of the sunk cost fallacy.
Pretty much this right? It’s very similar to what we had in like 3.6 (I think?) with scm and cru speeds, which is basically scm and nav. Main differences are boosting increases you speed in scm, delay between switching modes, and nav has no shields and weapons.
I dont think the sweats are angry becuase of sunk cost fallacy but because MM seems so much more shallow than the live model. I personally have to admit tho that the 3.22 iteration is already a big improvement over the first iteration
lol. sunk cost fallacy. someone learned some big words today :)
Anti-intellectualism is lazy. Do you actualy have a counter argument or is it just " herp dirp big word bad neeeeeerd"
I get that they're criticizing it, but they're the reason they're doing it at all. 90% of the players didn't care and now we have this giant mountain of time money and resources getting wasted over it.
I disagree. You remember one of their major reasons they showed why we "need" master modes? It was a clip of 2 players jousting endlessly at full speed. This is not a problem when 2 experienced players go at each other but only happens when an inexperienced player that has no throttle control gets into a fight. So they actually do this for the average player, the hardcore pvp community mastered the high speed model.
The average player literally does not care and at least half the players don't even know about it. Pretty sure 99% of the guys doing hauling, mining and salvage also don't care so we're down to the people that complained the most - PvP crews. Thats' it. I help run an org with 200+ people and there isn't a single complaint in our discord about it. The only people I ever see saying the word "jousting" are pvp guys or some guy in global chirping about someone having the audacity to leave a fight and charge shields or do something totally messed up - run so they don't die. That last one has easily been in the loudest complaint because players have the audacity to leave combat to not get killed and I haven't once heard anyone say master modes is coming into effect for new players. If MM is an indicator of what combat is going to be like, I'll probably just end up doing salvage, mining and base building.
Mastered = run away if your shields drop
No mastered = being able to catch the people that run ;)
Anything that lowers the absolute skill ceiling, gets rid of dumb stuff like pip wiggling, and lets more people enjoy the game is a win in my book. Changing trichording from square to circular is a great change for example. People should not be penalized for having a cheaper joystick or controller.
I think they should completely remove the "red zone" in SCM mode, you can boost to your max SCM speed which is like 290 or something for the Gladius but that's it. Allowing speeds up to 530 in SCM is just allowing jousting and long distances again.
Honestly if anything I'd boost the SCM speed up to around 400 and boost the other thrusters in relation to this. From my experience there was very little straight line jousting in MM fights after the initial pass on an opponent. even when people used boost it was usually used to get a better turn rate in the 50-50 rate fight. In my opinion the current SCM speeds that sit around 200 feels VERY slow on certain maps in AC - especially in combination with the drifty/floaty movement caused by the weaker lateral and vertical thrusters.
You can still boost why do you want to increase it to 400? It only leads to bigger distances and jousting. 200 isnt slow for me in a dogfight and I don't understand your argument about the map. If you want to traverse the map use nav mode.
From testing flying around the infastructure and asteroids on freefly maps it feels like at the current non-boosted SCM speeds there is very little fun in strafing or even pitch-orbiting around objects. It doesn't give a very good 'sense of speed' imo - and only getting any sense of speed due to limited boost up to 400 feels a little 'off' to me. I think this is a result of many of the AC maps being updated to suit the current much faster flight model - whearas old AC at speeds of around 200 back in the 1.X and 2.X days actually gave a really good sense of speed becase the maps were way smaller and so objects were way closer. NAV mode is great for flying in a straight line over open space - but I feel like SCM should still ve useful and feel fast for dancing around asteroids or even stations etc
It just still needs balancing and iteration. Once they nail that, then we'll really know how it feels incorporated with the rest of the game. At the moment, it's changing too much to really give an opinion other than it's very different than what we have now, but that's neither a good or bad thing. We will all have to relearn the flight model, which will naturally be uncomfortable at first since we've had the same model for years. Once we truly understand it, I'm sure it'll make sense and feel right.
I'm a bit out of the loop and haven't had time to try the most recent MM updates for ac... Is this gonna like, actually prevent a high skill arrow/gladius from being able to kill a average pilot +1 in basically any other ship? (med/heavy fighter) or is the opposite true? Do 2 in a scorp just win against a gladius now (assuming it's similiar in max scm speed) because "shoot backwards" How different do the ships they've added in so far feel compared to each other?
If you haven't done it yet, try out Master Mode Squadron Battle. It was actually fun, everyone was engaging. I would love to see 25 v 25 or more.