We're about to play Y200 fleet battles in Ted's MASTER'S MAZE, so we're going to find lots of these issues to grouse about.
| By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Saturday, August 06, 2005 - 10:05 pm: Edit |
Ammunition Disucssion.
| By Gary Bear (Gunner) on Saturday, August 06, 2005 - 10:21 pm: Edit |
Type-VI and ADD
1. ADDs, G-Racks, and E-Racks should be in half-space increments. Type-I drones in a G-Rack should "grey out" an additional space. Type-IV drones is a G-Rack should "grey out" 3 additional spaces.
2. Type-VIS, M, & F should come "pre-built". No construction should be allowed for these drone types, as they have no construction options other than speed.
3. ADDs should be "pre-built" in the client.
4. A-, B-, C-, D-, and F-Racks should not allow Type-VI or ADDs.
5. E-Racks (& ScatterPacks) should not allow ADDs.
6. G-Racks should automatically add 8 ADDs in storage.
7. ADDs should automatically add ADDs in storage (60 for ADD-30, 24 for ADD-12, 12 for ADD-6).
| By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, August 07, 2005 - 09:37 am: Edit |
William posted:
Quote:The current UI is not quite up to the task for the large number of drones that can appear. With about 30-40 drones on the map (Kzinti vs. Fed) it is hard to keep track of where everyone is supposed to be going. This problem occurs in the paper-based game too, but could still be better. My recommendations:
* Launched seeking weapons should include the name of the unit that launched them as part of their auto-naming system.
* When a seeking weapon is selected, highlight its target somehow. For instance, color the background (or outline) of the target's hex and automatically bring the target to the top of its stack (so its facing can be seen).
* Displaying the facing, speed, target, and target's hex in the mouse-over tooltip for seeking weapons would be helpful.
* Have some sort of "next unit to move" button in game control. Instead of having to track down all the units that are due to move, the software could find one. This wouldn't have to be completely 100% religious about observing the movement order of precedence, other than preferring ships to shuttles and seeking weapons, as long as pressing the button again would bring up a different unit.
* When attempting to advance to the next impulse, the game checks if all units have moved. It would be good if this check were also done when IA is called, or could be done manually. With a lot of shuttles/seeking weapons on the board it is easy to miss one somewhere.
* Ready rack facilities for fighters and MRS shuttles would be nice.
* The game seems to distinguish between different kinds of drones. ADDs and type-VI drones are automatically defined and can be loaded in ADD racks, and these types of drones are not available for other racks. This works well enough in tournaments where ADDs and drone racks cannot use each other's ammunition. In non-tournament however, this messes up E- and G- racks which can fire these types of drones. Fortunately, new types of drones can be defined which duplicate the ADD-rack-only predefined type-VI/ADD rounds, and those can be loaded into the G/E racks, ignoring the predefined types. Chaos could result on ships with both G- or E- racks and ADD launchers, such as carrier escorts, PFs and the occasional Federation ship.
* Fighter SSDs with integrated expendables do not work very well. There is no way to load the ammunition on the fighter before it has been launched, and the drones all disappear when the fighter lands. My recommendation would be to integrate the fighter SSDs with the "load SP" button so that drones loaded that way appear on the fighter SSD after the fighter is launched. Of course, in the case of a fighter, it would not (necessarily) actually be an SP, so the name on the button might want to be changed.
* Support for chaff on fighter/shuttle SSDs might be nice, it currently has to be tracked manually.
* Carriers with plasma-D armed fighters which do not have plasma-D racks themselves have no way to record the plasma-Ds they carry in their expendables.
* Everything I said about fighters also applies to MRS shuttles. MRS shuttles (which are speed 8, 10 damage and can usually carry some drones or plasma-Ds under the fighter procedures) do not get any of these special abilities, instead appearing to be ordinary admin shuttles.
| By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, August 07, 2005 - 09:38 am: Edit |
Les posted:
Quote:
drones have to be loaded into scatter packs one at a time. On the list we pick them from you can see them all so it would be nice to highlight the 6 spaces worth and add all at once. No a problem in duel but load a kzinti fleet with scats and it becomes tediuos.
Doing the math manually on if you are still within percentages(and bpv) is tediuos as well. Perhaps a diplay area with running totals?
With Sabot at WS-3 you have a extra ECMP readyin the shuttle bay, no way to reflect this except to add another ship grabs it ecmp and place offboard, then removet he extra ship.
The whole Ftr thing as mentioned previously.
Could the drop downs for the # of drones in reload be changed to a field you simply type the number into?
A little more space given to the drone type available window bottom right, or change that into a button to load a seperate window.
Quote:Les - For the extra ECP, instead of LAUNCH choose ADD PIECE HERE, choose the OTHER tab, and select PLASMA.
Quote:Gunner; doing that STILL takes it from the ones in the tubes.
| By Les LeBlanc (Lessss) on Sunday, August 07, 2005 - 02:31 pm: Edit |
* Launched seeking weapons should include the name of the unit that launched them as part of their auto-naming system.
As long as that is only visible to the owner. Only tourney drone racks(except klingon) are known otherwise the individual launcher is unknown with tacintel. IIRC
It would be good if this check were also done when IA is called
It is.
| By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, August 07, 2005 - 04:48 pm: Edit |
Les,
At the moment, TacIntel is not very well supported. BTW, there is a "Launching Unit Id" that tells you what unit a seeking weapon was launched from. When it comes to auto-naming I can definitely add it as an option. Just like adding the launcher to the name of the seeking weapon name is also.
Paul Franz
| By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 10:29 pm: Edit |
Seth said "I definately think FCOL should be tailored to fleet combat.", it got me thinking today after talking to Aaron.
What are UI the issues that are currently effecting fleet conbat?
I understand that SFB is not totally designed fleet combat. With having to do an EA for each and every ship, tracking seeking weapons and power usage. But are there issues with the client that make playing fleeting battles harder online. Or more to the point, what can be changed in the UI to help fleet play?
I have some ideas that I am pretty sure at least 1/2 the people playing online will say "no way":
| By Peter Thoenen (Eol) on Friday, September 30, 2005 - 08:47 pm: Edit |
Comments:
1) I am ok with this as long as it is toggable and you can break it at anytime.
2) See #1
3) Concern how one would 'unstack' pieces. Would prefer instead of a single counter representing a stack maybe make counters linkable (e.g. link counter B,C,D to like speed A ... when you move A all linked targets also move the exact same way)
4) Don't like this
5) NEW: How about (also toggable) auto movement of any item that doesn't choice where to move? E.g. drone has to move closer, non hex split so can only move to A. You just sideslipped and haven't satisfied your turn radius. etc etc
| By Gary Bear (Gunner) on Sunday, October 09, 2005 - 06:38 pm: Edit |
While waiting for Sheap to rejoin us....
Mines. The client has a field in Expendables for mines, but placing one does not subtract from the quantity listed.
Can we do something with mines like drone launch? Have an option for LAY MINE > TRANSPORTER or HATCH (also be to used by Mineracks) and then pick from the available mines and dummies.
Reminder to not allow HATCH and DUMMY to both be selected.
| By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Monday, October 10, 2005 - 09:30 am: Edit |
It would be really nice to fire an ADD from the "weapons tab" and then have that ADD automatically deleted from the appropriate ammunition rack. Currently, you have to specify fire in the text box and then manually delete the ADD. Thanks.
| By Philip S. Moore (Zaron) on Sunday, October 23, 2005 - 05:03 pm: Edit |
Ted,
I found you can launch an ADD. Yes, against the rules, but the client allows it. I manually type in the ADD fire, then launch an ADD, and delete the ADD. I can then look in expendables to see how many ADD I have left.
| By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Monday, October 24, 2005 - 07:01 am: Edit |
Ted/Phillip,
This is now a non-issue. Since I added to the client. And it is available for use.
Paul Franz
| By Peter Thoenen (Eol) on Tuesday, November 01, 2005 - 09:27 pm: Edit |
Was speaking with Gary online just talking aloud about some ammo ideas (and seeing how far we can stretch the current client model).
An idea to handle seeking weapons and shuttles (in current framework).
How about adding a 'shuttles' and 'seeking weapons' tab to the IA box in the same way we currently have a 'weapons' tab. Would not need to be as detailed as the currently tabs as you would not load from these tabs, just launch. Would save you have to do IA (launch X) then actually launching in a seperate window. Would need to lin k these tabs to the expandable tabs (in the same way current launch popup is) to ensure expendables are actually expended.
| By Peter Thoenen (Eol) on Saturday, November 12, 2005 - 08:16 am: Edit |
When launching drones (and choosing launcher), could it display the launcher type (same on SSD) instead of a generic 1/2/3/N. Would prefer it say A/B/G/F etc etc.
Real PITA when you have multiple ships w/ different rack setups trying to remember exactly what Drone Rack #1 is on each ship.
A good example here is the Zin CLC and FFH.
CLC has C racks for Drones 1 / 2, B racks for 3 / 4.
FFH has the exact opposite (C racks for 3 / 4, B racks for 1 / 2).
| By Gary Bear (Gunner) on Friday, April 21, 2006 - 07:30 am: Edit |
Hey! Has anbody seen that SHEAP that was supposed to be coordinating this issue?
We're about to play Y200 fleet battles in Ted's MASTER'S MAZE, so we're going to find lots of these issues to grouse about.
| By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Friday, April 21, 2006 - 01:59 pm: Edit |
baaaa.
sorry I'll try harder.
| By Gary Bear (Gunner) on Friday, April 21, 2006 - 02:18 pm: Edit |
Do we want to discuss a single issue at a time? I think the scope has been identified in the posts above.
What's the biggest problem (to go after first)? Fighter Ordnance? Auto-Seeking Weapon Movement? Something else?
| By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Friday, April 21, 2006 - 02:59 pm: Edit |
If anyone has a serious carrier, like a CVA, you need to do fighter ordnance soon. If there's nothing like that in the game then it can probably wait. It would really be better if it could wait because fighter ordnance is sort of huge, and depends on drone reloads anyway.
I recommend not doing auto seeking weapon movement first. It probably won't work very well (especially the first time through), and I still don't think anyone agrees on how to do it. Personally, I don't think it should exist at all; what's really needed is an easier seeking weapon movement interface
IMO, a good place to start would be improving ammo reloads. There's really not that much to do for this, and it's guaranteed to be needed no matter what:
1) Eliminate the distinction between plasma, drone, and anti-drone reload ammo. Allow any ship to carry any type of ammo reload. Eliminate restriction of drone reload type by drone rack type (i.e. restriction on type-VI drones being loaded only into ADD racks). Some of this may have already been done? I don't remember.
2) Improve the drone construction system. This is a bigger topic.
2a) Right now drone construction is totally per-user; a user's drones follow him everywhere. It would be much better if drone construction were per-user, per-scenario. I might be playing as the Federation in Y167 in one scenario, and the Kzinti in Y195 in another, and the drones would be completely different, but I still have to have every drone from both scenarios in my list. Better would be to make these drone lists separate. Better yet would be to have some sort of drone library (all the user's defined drones), then import those drones into a particular scenario. Also, what happens if you load a saved game and your drone construction types don't match the ones used in the scenario (because you edited your drones since the last time the scenario was played, or because you loaded a generic scenario that someone else created)?
2b) Drone construction area on screen is small and awkward to use. Not the actual window where you define your drone types, which is fine, but the drone types area on the expendables screen. The component is too small, can't be resized or moved and doesn't have scrollbars. It spoils the drone-naming feature because if you assign a useful name, you can't read it.
| By Gary Bear (Gunner) on Friday, April 21, 2006 - 03:24 pm: Edit |
I agree that the drone construction part is the most awkward. But it does work.
I had an idea for using an offline tool (like EXCEL) to build the drones and drone loads and doing an EXPORT/IMPORT into SFBOnline. Haven't heard back from Paul as to how feasible/painful that would be. Or if it's just better to redesign how it works within SFBOL?
There is a CVA. A Fed CVA, in fact, in the campaign.
However, I'm not expecting any proposed enhancements to be done to support this campaign. We'll just have to muddle through and enhancements will come when they are ready.
Still, you eat an elephant one bite at a time. What looks tasty?
| By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Friday, April 21, 2006 - 04:55 pm: Edit |
Actual on-board seeking weapon management would be simpler with a greater variety of groups. Right now, you only have F1-F9 for establishing 9 groups. If you could ALT-F# and also SHIFT-F# you would add another 18 groups. If you really wanted to go crazy you could also ALT-SHIFT-F#, ALT-CNTL-F#, CNTL-SHIFT-F#, and CNTL-ALT-SHIFT-F# to add yet another 36 groups. Thus, with all combinations, you could potentially set up to 63 groups of objects in the "game control" window. This number would be more than enough to allow a player to control vast waves of seeking weapons, fighters, and PFs quickly and easily. Want to control your fighter groups? Use CNTL-ALT-F1 for your F-14s, CNTL-ALT-F2 for your A-10s, CNTL-ALT-F3 for your F-18s, CNTL-ALT-F4 for your SWACs, and CNTL-ALT-F5 for your normal shuttles. Ships in the fleet could be assigned CNTL-F# groups in a similar manner. Drones groups could be assigned SHIFT-CNTL-F1 through SHIFT-CNTL-F9.
Basically, the idea is to have 6 groups of 9 hot-keys. This will allow you to assign a type of unit (fighter, PF, ships, drones, etc.) to a group (designated by hot key) and then use the specific hot key to select the group. The group could then be moved using the arrow button in the game congtrol window. Example (again):
CNTL-F1 through CNTL-F9: 9 hot keys for groupings of ships.
ALT-F1 through ALT-F9: 9 hot keys for groupings of fighters and shuttles.
SHIFT-F1 through SHIFT-F9: 9 hot keys for groupings of PFs.
CNTL-ALT-F1 through CNTL-ALT-F9: 9 hot keys for groupings of drones.
SHIFT-ALT-F1 through SHIFT-ALT-F9: 9 more hot keys for more groupings of drones.
CNTL-SHIFT-F1 through CNTL-SHIFT-F9: 9 more hot keys for groupings of plasma torpedoes.
CNTL-SHIFT-ALT-F1 through CNTL-SHIFT-ALT-F9: 9 more hot keys for groupings of scatter pack drones that launch later on in the turn.
Of course, you could designate any convenient scheme. The point is that you can then use these hot keys in conjuction with the arrow button in the game control window to very quickly and efficiently walk through all of the groups and move them lickety-split.
If you could use all 12 function keys, then the number of potential groups jumps to 84. With 84 hot keys for groups you could handle the largest of battles relatively easily.
I don't know anything about programming, but to a layman it sounds like a relatively simple implementation that would really help with dealing with large fleets and with the large number of seeking weapons they can chuck.
For these reasons (ease of implementation (?) and usefulness), I see this concept as a high-priority feature to implement. Naturally, I could be full of hot air, but just a thought.
| By Peter Thoenen (Eol) on Saturday, April 22, 2006 - 12:10 pm: Edit |
Quote:2a) Right now drone construction is totally per-user; a user's drones follow him everywhere. It would be much better if drone construction were per-user, per-scenario.
| By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Sunday, April 23, 2006 - 11:26 pm: Edit |
How can you possibly find any of the hundred-plus drone types you might have defined? One reason I didn't say "just define all possible drones" was because of the intractability of it.
| By Les LeBlanc (Lessss) on Monday, April 24, 2006 - 12:28 am: Edit |
There are not THAT many combinations. Just don't count external armour options in the combinations. External armour can alway be selected as an add on to the defined drones. after you select them since they don't chew up rack space.
| By Peter Thoenen (Eol) on Monday, April 24, 2006 - 12:14 pm: Edit |
Sheap: Cause when I get down to it, there are maybe only 20 drones I will ever actually use. I just named them accordingly. I don't need EVERY combination, I only need a subset of them.
| By Gary Bear (Gunner) on Monday, April 24, 2006 - 12:30 pm: Edit |
Then you're not playing enough time periods.
Easy to have:
(4) Type-I, Type-IV -M & -F
(3) Type-VIM, TypeVIF, ADD
(6) Type-IV -M & -F, 3 combinations of Armor (0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 spaces)
(4) Type-I MW, Type-IV MW -M & -F
(4) Type-III-M, Type-III-F, Type-III-ECM-M, Type-III-ECM-F
That's 21 right there, and I haven't even done Extended Range, ATG, StarFish, Swordfish, or Type-I armored drones.
| Administrator's Control Panel -- Board Moderators Only Administer Page | Delete Conversation | Close Conversation | Move Conversation |