Reply To: ((OOC)) Fighter Squadron of the 2nd Fleet, 4th Light Division

Terran Stellar Navy Forums (OOC) Division Development ((OOC)) Fighter Squadron of the 2nd Fleet, 4th Light Division Reply To: ((OOC)) Fighter Squadron of the 2nd Fleet, 4th Light Division

#4653
Gabriel Wade
Participant

While this has turned into a discussion about Communications officers and coordinating allied vessels, which I don’t mind too much as it’s an area that seems to need some attention, there are differences between coordinating allied vessels via the Comms interface and coordinating player controlled fighters via verbal communication over Teamspeak.

1. There is no delay caused by clicking through a series of options and potentially having to go back and forth between interfaces to confirm ship designations, headings, etc.

2. There is no A.I. to have to contend with and “babysit” once you’ve issued orders.

3. The fighters being controlled by players will be much more easily coordinated, especially if you follow an organization of them in a similar way to what I outlined in the first post: The Captain makes the call and hands it to the CAG, Comms officer, whatever you want to call it. The CAG/Comms relays the order to the Flight leader, and the Flight Leader coordinates the Flight (team of pilots) to execute the order. Simple, straight-forward, minimal chain of communication which is as compartmentalized as possible. The CAG/Comms will still need a science/cap map to keep awareness, but not nearly as much as with allied vessels.

I don’t know how long the fighters can stay out or how far they can fly. In the 2nd video I shared above it showed him about a full grid away from the cruiser he launched from. And they don’t seem to be capable of travelling any faster than 1/2 warp, which is a very rough estimate.

As for how much downtime there is for pilots during rearm/refuel the information I have says about 30 seconds, and there’s a small blackjack mini-game in the lower right corner (at least in the current iteration) to help pass that time. We could potentially have them assigned to other duties, but with that small of a wait, I don’t think it would be wise to do so. I’m sure they’ll be itching to re-launch as soon as the’re capable.

The question is, if a fighter is destroyed, what do we do with the pilot? With the current mechanics shown in the vids it looks like the pilot “respawns” back at their home carrier and can launch another fighter. So do we have them wait until their “ejector pod” is “picked up” (could be represented similarly to what we do for the life pods when a TSN or NPC vessel is destroyed) and have them relaunch in another fighter if one is available? And if we don’t have them relaunch, or if we don’t have another fighter available, what do we do with them then?

Perhaps, if there is capability, the GM could make another fighter available, either as a reserve or when we pick up the pilot we also “retrieve the wreckage” to repair and re-deploy for efficiency sake, and perhaps just have a longer wait-time as a penalty; say, 1-2 minutes?

  • This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by Gabriel Wade.