homeworld has no more movement to its ships than does sins, I dare you to prove me wrong on that point.

bingo, you would make any form of micromanagement absolutely impossible, holding positions: impossible, fleeing would be another thing made quite difficult.

its a very big can of worms that would be opened for no other reason than "it seems right".

lol if this game was based off of realism....it wouldn't exist!

Again, ships in Homeworld didn't move when attacking unless they were assigned to deal with multiple targets, pursuing craft, or rotating to align their guns. Considering the first two points are generally in Sins, moving to align guns would require that turrets be animated and allowed to track targets. Where are folks getting this?

I was just wondering is there someone here in the army that also happens to be in the tank devision IF yes then please post wehter mordern day armys use constant movements when engageing in combat
as i think that might finaly deal with the plusability of this argument

finaly is there anyone on this forum who is a physics profesor at mit or sum such IF yes could you please post as to how modern objects move in space

im requesting this as there seems to be allot of controversy over this subject

I don't want to prove anyone wrong about HW or anything, I just said it seemedas if they moved. Adama's idea about the slight camera movement...

Hey Schod, while I said I don't want to prove you wrong on this, didn't the Hiigaran destroyers in HW2 move to broadside? I know this doesn't define movement for all the ships, but I know at least the H Destroyers did. And Heflys is true. Maybe even the Vaygr destroyers..? can't remember, only really played the Hiigarans. But I agree that ships didn't move simply because they could - there was usually a reason. Perhaps in an expansion such reasons could be provided for Sins? Or would that be foolhardy as well?

On top of that, I have no idea how to spell Hiigara. Is it Hiigara or Higaara?

Hey Adama, that was the HW series... I may not know much, but at least I know that... That's an excellent idea about the camera movement.

I reckon there's a difference between a tank manned by 4-5 individuals, and 7 kilometer battle ship with a crew of at least 1000+.....In space.

As far as I've seen, AI makes no effort to keep long range ships away from short range enemy ships while attacking. It seems possible to give them a move order and they'll keep shooting if enemies happen to be in their firing arcs while moving, but I can't tell them to back off slowly to keep the distance for a while longer. That's something I'd really like to see.

It could be initially implemented without the AI part. Or if that makes micromanagement too important, then only have it after teaching AI to do it.

This would also allow one to, say, keep moving towards certain target while giving priority to maneuvering so that firepower is focused on another. Then after "sneaking" to range for the other target, switch.

lol yes there is indeed
what im trying to fide out (if the experts would help)
is if its impractical to do mass manoeuvres wit a tank squadron because you might loss unit cohesion the it might be the same with even bigger forces on a vaster plane

although i will grant you the point that there is Probably less cover in space as to here on earth

but its the closest analergy i can find

maby we should ask someone in the navy what there protocall is for large fleet engagements is although from the reading i did the fleets stay far apart while the jets do all the fighting the escort is more for anti sub patrole for the aircraft carrier ( i may be VERRY mistaken with this as i am in no way in the navy army or airforce) but i would like an opinion of someone in the know

I see.....

unit cohesion is a point to which i'd like to add
imo it is okay for the ships to be relatively still in combat (as, with computer aimed weapons and homing missiles far faster than your propulsion speed you couldn't really dodge anyways), what i find would be more important is formation and positioning.
which would of course only make sense if ships were somehow more vulnerable in the back (disregarding the existing fact that they have to turn to open retaliation fire if they get attacked from the back)
which brings me to the fact that sins has cool default formations if you move your ships normally, but in combat i have the feeling its just a jumbled mess of your ships and the enemy ships. they dont really keep formations or something like that
but then, formations would be quite useless as atm a ship can just fly straight through almost any amount of ships of a small to reasonable size without taking much damage, so you would build your perfect bulwark of defense ships, and the enemy just flies through the middle (somewhat) unharmed

ok, this got a bit confusing, but what points i tried to make:
movement may add dynamics, but is purely eyecandy and would make management quite difficult.
more advanced formations on the other hand are mostly static (even if they obviously can move in formation) but provide tactical possibilities, and add flavor too

Fleets (not control croups) do stay in a formation and individual ships move around to engage targets in range and all that cool stuff.

Moving ships has been beat to death during beta, and this is one thing that is very unlikely to happen. To everyone comparing it with Homeworld, the only ships that moved around were your fighters and bombers. And hey, guess what, fighters and bombers in Sins do the same thing! The scale in Homeworld was such that a frigate wasn't that much larger than a fighter, but their frigates certainly stood still. This may give the impression that ships don't move around in Sins, but in fact their behavior is pretty identical to Homeworld.

And once you have 2000 fleet points worth of ships battling another 2000 fleet points worth of ships, the last thing you want is random movement bringing half of your ships out of range of the target you want to kill..

I'm just going to side step the present arguements and say a few things.

1) Moving ships are less a realism factor than a dramatic factor. Would the starship battles in Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Star Wars Empire at War, and yes...Homeworld be as visually exciting if the ships all just stood in place like British Red Coats waiting to be shot?

2) Real world naval battles are (or were) very much a matter of manuever and position. Much modern sci-fi has taken up that notion as a way to represent starship warfare (thanks Nicholas Meyer).

So I say, toss out the arguing abut the relative merits of the term "realism" and focus on the idea that it would make the battles look even cooler! And maybe, as a side effect, introduce some more tactical concerns into the game.

This was one the I really liked about Empire at War, ships kept some momentum. Big fuggers like Imperial Star Destroyers tended to drift along slowy, and the direction of their primary firepower made a big difference in how combat effective they were (Star Destroyers don't shoot behind themselves terribly well).

And that's all I have to say about that....

Good old Nicholas Meyer! Yeah, I agree with Cigaunt. I appear to be agreeing with a lot of people recently.
But what of the problem of performance? Would it make an impact?

1) Other than Star Trek, none of the rest of your list actually had large sized moving ships. And Star Trek is a poor comparison because it really has no *small* ships. Starships of similar size are your bread and butter.

2) Naval warfare really has nothing to do with space warfare, and I'm pretty sure other than drifting on water all those lumbering carriers and battleships don't do intricate maneuvers. The rest of maneuvering into position in Sins is done by you the player.

i agree. moving ships would be cool.
i´ve seen an interview with one of the devs. he said that ships will act like babylon 5 ships - and they are definitely moving!
actually the combats are like every lame rts game...

da snada

  
hi there cigaunt let me know if im wrong

you like it in because you like the way it would look (just trying to understand whay your post is about)

on a personal note
I like my ships and the way tey fight the last thing i want is my 200 frigets to be dog fighting with the 200 enemy frigets and the fighters and bombers
ARGGGGGG what a mess

admirall hawk 'captain'
captain veer 'yes sir'

admirall hawk 'pull them out of we are going home'

captain veer 'why sir'

admirall hawk 'cuse i cant see whats goin on'

admirall hawk 'and im tired of the stupid missle frigats getting in there cuse they feel left out'
admirall hawk 'dont they know they are a spetialist unit and belong at the back'
.....
admirall hawk 'WHAT THE F&*#($^$(#$'
admirall hawk 'oh hell now the dreadnoughts going in, CAPTAIN'

oh and btw:

i liked the way ships moving in swords of the stars.
commands like close combat or stand of would be very usefull...


da snada

The comparisons to WW1 era Naval combat are inevitable as pointed out this is what modern SCI FI space battles are (clearly) modeled on, so please stop saying Naval combat has "nothing to do with this".

Perfectly rigid ships looks unnatural due to the fact we know that in space gravity and inertia (to name 2) have an effect on movement.. sitting still would likely require minor course corrections nearly constantly. This would be easy to implement, no one is asking for ships that mindlessly drift all over the place. IRC at least some of the Homeworld ships did something like this to give the impression they arent static "prop" pieces. TV Shows work in movement based on relative shield strengths, damaged ship sections etc, something I dont think Sins models however.

Looking for a tactical reason to move? Easy, many Cap ships have guns along their broadsides, they switch to a (Naval) broadside bombardment stance, their guns have a cooldown/reload time... so simply have them rotate, left side fire, rotate, right side fire etc. Depending on rotate speed could be something like a 50% firepower improvement.

i have seen the one capitol ship do this actually i forget its name but its the colonisation one
at first i thought waight wats it doing then i noticed hey its turning to broadside COOL

I really don't care at this point, except I wonder if it's moddable, because I'd love to see this in Dawn of Victory as well as some of the franchise mods.

great io cant seem to edit my post so now i have to double post

has anyone else seen this happen with other units or at all let me know thanks

Not true about Homeworld. I had focus fired ships moving backwards to pull the enemy in while keeping their front guns to the enemy, for example. Especially Ion Frigates.

This kind of movement is certainly a non-trivial addition (the more I think about, the more I feel it would have to be added to AI too) so I'm sure it won't happen very soon if at all. I just find it sad that my capital ship can't prepare to flee while still shooting at the enemy. (move outside gravity well backwards/sideways... or even up/down) The only possibility is to run away fully and any guns still pointing at suitable targets are just a coincidence. Same for any other possibilities.

Battlefleet Gothic'll have movement for at least one race, and hopefully we'll get the inertia working properly. There'll be more focus on tactical maneuver and more larger ships with a feeling of inertia.

Well, when you put it like that... I agree. In fact, when I think about it, a lot of shows show capital ships as slow moving, if at all, craft while smaller craft do all the fancy manoeuvres and flying. Well, they have to! So as far as scale is concerned, it makes sense to have larger ships stationary while fighters wizz about.