Most firepower at the front of the ship. Check. Wanting the front of the ship pointing at what its shooting at. Check. Wanting to remain stable and your arc of fire to remain very small so you can concentrate firepower. Check.

Wanting your ship to be moving the hell around? No check.

It makes sense for fighters/bombers. It doesn't make sense for frigates, cruisers or destroyers guys - and it takes away from some of the race's flavor. (TEC ships are like, almost all forward based, where advent and Vasari tend to have much better all around coverage - particularly the vasari).

I actually thaink that the design of a space warship will be more like that of a ocean warship. Instead of turning the whole ship you just turn the turret.

Because most of the people in this thread are the inevitable people who can't help but complain. *Shrugs* Its a game - and personally, I wouldn't want all the ships dodging about and all that stuff all the time. Imagine the load increase on your system for 10 players whose ships never stop moving... try to zoom in and keep track of everything happening in that. Lol.



Highly unlikely, as unlike ocean ships, Ships in space have to worry about things BELOW and above them as well. Rather than just left and right on the ocean. Since you have to mount engines SOMEWHERE on a ship, it makes sense to make a back and a front... so I imagine we'll have ships that forward-orient for a LONG time to come. (Or until someone manufactures a frictionless drive or something, then we can have circular ships with guns and all around coverage...)

the element goes beyond simply what looks cool or is realistic, its about functionality. microing would be IMPOSSIBLE with this many ships moving more or less sporadically.

and trust me, you wouldnt find jiggling the visual much fun either. it would neither look good nor be very fun to try and drag-box while drifting around like you're riding a drunk monkey.

all you have to do is put turrets on top and bottom that should cover all directions

... Except wherever the hull is... chances are the hull (or another turret, sensor mast, heat sink, engine or other thing etc) will get in the way of at least one direction (usually forward or backward) which means they still won't be able to focus firepower particularly well. Although if your arguing just for turrets in general, Yes they'll use turrets but they won't be like Naval ships today, no - and they would be concentrated most heavily at the front.

Nothing below and above sea ships? have you heard of submarines and air planes?


even if they wanted to make ships zoom about, the extra load would raise the system requirements too much...
Not to mention battles will be impossible to control.

True enough, but remember that an ocean ship has depth charges and possibly torpedoes (or am I out of date here?) as well as sonar for the subs, anti-air and radar for the air units, and turrets (and radar) for the surface vessels. The nature of the weaponry changes with the type of enemy, and remember that no enemy unit can transcend its plane; for example, planes can't dive beneath the ocean - surface vessels can't submerge (or, for that matter, take off) and though subs can emerge, they become quite vulnerable (for several reasons) and thus keep submerged. Right? Therefore, you're not going to use torps on planes, turrets on subs or anti-air on surface vessels.
That is not the case here - a bomber can weave above, below, and to the side of any other space ship; a cap ship group might flank the enemy by going below it, while the group might also have gone above it.

But I do agree about the difficulty of control and the system load.

To condense my last post:

Ocean warfare has weaponry dependent on the plane of warfare. This would not be the case in space.

I would much rather ships NOT move around except when necessary to shoot. They would almost certainly wander off someplace and get killed, and moving around randomly provides absolutely no tactical benefit, as doing so would disrupt formation cohesion and has absolutely no defensive value. Heck, I would rather FIGHTERS have the option to stand their ground and SHOOT, because often they are leaving weapons range, and thus unable to fire as often as they could, something that is rather critical when trying to shoot down the Siege Frigate Rush. It's not like those siege frigates actually fire back, so what is the point of all the moving?

missiles wouldn't care which way they point when fired.

That's not the point (if you'd pardon the pun). What I'm trying to say is, you wouldn't fire missiles at submerged subs, or depth charges at planes.

I'm sort of mixed between the two sides. I'm very annoyed when my iconus guardians and aeria drone hosts decide to break formation and move for no random reason causing ships to be destroyed or damaged for no reason. On the other hand, it is very boring to watch a fleet of disciples sit like red coats and shoot at some cobalt frigs. Having pointed out a few arguments of both sides, I am all for the visual appeal of some moving ships but not to the point where it affects the results of the battle. Citing HW2, no matter how much the fighteres/vettes manuvered, they always died in about the same amount of time when fired on. Despite the fact it was only cosmetic motion, it looked way more interesting watching them swoop in and out, especially when the fighters had their dogfights. Granted the frigs and carriers, didnt move as much, various features such as the engine glow on the back of the ship and blinking lights, voice comms, docking ports(does anyone think that the lack of these on caps and carriers seem a bit silly in addition to the fact that carriers are so tiny and can only hold a single squad of figheters? - could just be prenotions of what carriers should be like but eh), etc, brought the ships to life despite their lack of physical motion. Instead of perhaps, full sweeps and etc on the frigs in SoaSE, they could implement better atmospheric elements creating imersion and the illusion of dynamic combat.

And for all those realism debates and tactics debates, in the universe of SoaSE, these elements are completely different from what we currently have but that is not to say there aren't any similarities at all. There are some things that are central to both current warfare and that in SoaSe. Take for instance, Sun Zi: The Art of War(not Tzu for those of you who really know what you are talking about and have actually read the book), the elements presented in the book that are still studied and analyzed today are general tactical tips that can be easily overlooked during complexities of battle. For instance, the importance of intel, morale, etc. In today's world, one wouldn't study the chapters on certain factors like the chapters dealing with problems such as the use of fire; current day's technologies make these problems irrelevant (this isnt to say you cant find analogous implementations of ancient weaponry - fire can be interpretted as a weapon to flush out the enemy or rapidly destroy valuable resources etc). Now realistically speaking, assuming all the amazing things in SoaSe such as FTL travel, lack of any of any physical laws (or rather magical ways to counter them), ships would ideally be spheres with ports covering every angle for guns and thrusters, a minimally small and heavily armored hole for entering the ship, and sensors around the outer shell of the sphere (preferably heavily armored too). This way an individual ship can gather intel from every direction, move in every direction and fire in every direction; practical and probably very effective, but in terms of gameplay, absolutely boring. Sure, the ship designs and what not may be unrealistic, but in the end it looks nice and its fun to play, which is what matters the most.

Thus, the problem at hand should be addressed with regards to what is more fun/aesthetically pleasing (note that both the former and latter is subjective - something forum goers on the internet often forget), rather than what is more "realistic". The current model doesnt seem to be entirely pleasing in itself so perhaps it deserves a bit of reworking. After all if it was, this 12 page long thread wouldnt exist would it?

This I totally agree with, fighters and bombers should close to weapons range and NOT fly about UNLESS SHOT AT.

When fighters are shot at, fine, weave about. But when they are attacking a non defending target then for f-sake just bomb the heck out of it without moving.

um... the idea is that doesnt work, otherwise they'd simply get blown apart with a single shot from a railgun, and they couldnt use their movement based munitions...

fighters dont have movement based munitions in this game. They are armed with lasers and the like.

And it depends what they are fighting. If there is nothing in the system but miners and unarmed buildings then they would benefit from standing still and just letting loose with their weapons.

Think of it like the charged missles ability of the vasari, unable to move, but does more damage. It would be perfect for fighters and bombers. (if the AI knew how to use it right that is, it could also be catastrophical)

I have a sudden urge to slap you.

DUDE..... think about it. your ships do what you tell them to! if you want them to move while fighting, tell them to do it! if the enemy ships are sitting still and you're attacking, unless you tell your ships you want them to move while attacking, how will they know? this is stupid. you want them to make a game for you that allows you to make decisions but at the same time makes decisions for you. you can't have it both ways. how would you like it if you ordered your ships to do one thing and then they decided "it would be good to move while attacking" and then went off and did some other thing that you didn't tell it to do. its a delicate ballance of AI control and allowing the user to have command.

i for one think that they did an excellent job designing the AI to be able to take over and handle things in the absense of the user's oversight. to sum it all up: computer taking over your game = bad.

and, in case anyone was wondering, i speak from experience in object oriented programming. and this is not a flame, so don't take offense.


i do appologize if anything i've said has already been covered. i just read the first page and thought i'd put my two cents worth in.

wanting stand in front of ship like this when you have guns built into the side of you ship so you can strafe, and negate their over specialisation. no check.

i know full well, as does thozah, that this is pratically impractical

doesn't mean i don't want someone to figure out how to do it though.