note, i believe that stuff will begin moving

I want my ships to stay where they are. If I plant them just out of the range of the gauss platforms, I don't want them moving into the kill zone and getting blown up just because someone thinks it would look cool. archpsi, your little scenario there could easily be accomplished with a bit of micromanagement.

Actually, unless damaged they are. Its the human element that screws up

Never said it would. Processing time is the question, and frankly within twenty years we'll surpass the human brain. By then predictive firing and computer assisted/corrected aim will be child's play.

If the designers are going to be wasting processor cycles with unit AI like this I say forget it. The limiting factor on realism is computing power, and to waste it on something little more than a gimmick (like this thread) is not a good sign.

*cough* Antimatter, jump-drives, and weapons that consume more energy than retrorockets argue this point to nil. If you had a choice to let yourself drift into fire you would not do it.

To a point they have to be. The game is already overflowing emulated 64bit numbers if I read one of the preview right. Only so much can be done with today's computers, and there's no guarantee that realism is fun. Physics is right up with graphics as the heavyweight load contender in a game.

Forget about Star Wars and CPU assisted firing mechanisms. Think more of calvary than our modern navy! The ships should not be dogfighting and weaving to avoid enemy fire. To avoid being in the enemies firing solution (range and cone-o-fire) they need to move. Movement should not be about dodging lasers, but rather being in a position where the laser cannot target you.

Overall and ultimately, movement during combat is a necessity. Currently it is very micro-intensive to flank and maneuver effectively, but not impossible. However, in all most all cases in dynamic vs static combat with all else being equal, the one who moves dynamically will beat the one who stays static. This is the problem, this is more than a gimmick, and this should be discussed more!

two questions.


1 why are we assuming that the only computer is going to be attacking only.
wouldn't there also be a computer on the other ship trying to make sure that the enemy fire will miss.


2 why in this forum when someone doesn't like something that post becomes a gimmick or a troll.

The problem with ships maneuvering to get out of the line of fire of enemy ships is that most frigates have only forward firing weaponry. This means that if they are running circles around the enemy, then neither side is firing at the other. Sure, avoiding fire is nice, but not if it means that we can't fire back.

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your not the only one who ever disagreed with something that i or someone else has said on this forum and i am including the galciv and joeuser sites with this.

Here, let me fix that...

I'm almost suspicious that the person who's complaining about being called a troll is trolling!

I could call myself a troll and actually be serious, would that work?

Using star wars for a technological comparison is a really bad idea. Manual targetting and lever action firing systems? It's a miracle a star destroy can hit anything, let alone a corellian corvette, which is a scant 150 meters long. Wonderful movies, but an absurd universe once you start thinking about it. Faster than light travel and manual targetting. The millenium falcon was a light freigter a fraction of that size, with manual targetting, it should be all but impossible to hit something so small at any sizable distance.

As to the logic of the thread. Battle looks really bloody boring right now, aesthetically it needs something. What's the point of differing pivot rates? Capital ships even have upgrades for it. We also have firing arcs on those turrets, the point of those? The game design says that ships are supposed to move to avoid fire, it being a beneficial thing to do. They can either do it all by themselves, or people can micromanage the game to death to achieve the same effect. I'd prefer tactical reasons to fleet composition and ways to accomplish superiority over superior strength through thinking, but the game does tell me that those light frigates should be trying to get out of the firing arcs of the main guns on a capital ship.