As a long time Star Control fan, wanted to give my feedback on the fleet battle beta.
That's it for now. Thanks and keep cranking away!
Hello! I have bought the pre-order Origins pack on Steam, and trying to start Fleet Battles BETA for the first time.
After pressing the green button INSTALL, I've got the message below. And nothing happens. The buttons don't work.
Help me, please! I wanna try Fleet Battles BETA!
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Welcome,
You now have access to the Star Control Fleet Battles Beta.
To download through Steam; Right-click "Star Control: Origins - Fleet Battles BETA" in your game list and click "Properties", on the BETAS tab enter the code "**********************" and press "Check Code". Afterwards you can use the drop down list to choose "Closed Beta".
Sincerely,
The Star Control team at Stardock
This is a great discussion. One impression I keep getting is that many people have t actually played the old super melee recently. My love for all things Star Control is well known. However, I also do t have the luxury of nostalgia colored glasses. There were some great ships and some not great ships. There were some exciting battles and there were some grindingly dull battles.
Players will shortly be able to create their own arenas, including wrapping. But I doubt most players will use the wrapping feature.
i think a few Let’s play views on YouTube of competitive sc2 battles may be eye opening.
There are definitely some ships that were terrible or at least that I didn't enjoy playing, like the Druuge. However I distinctly remember my brother being a monster with that ship and somehow using it's bizarre mechanics to absolutely destroy me. Mainly he seemed to be able to use the enhanced range on the main gun while drifting backwards to hit me with fast, pinpoint and devastating hits while I tried to be fancy. Agree with your statement though, some great, some not so great, some on the verge of greatness or too niche. However when you throw out the ships that aren't so great, you are still left with an awesome experience! Once I play the latest build of SCO, I'll be back with more thoughts...
Oh I liked the Druuge. But many of the battles just ended up with both ships flying roughly the same speed endlessly in one direction pointed at each other battling it out.
I like my space ships to, you know, fly around.
Yes, if Ship A is faster than Ship B and is already outside of Ship B's range, then there's precious little that Ship B can do about it unless Ship A decides to return. However, if Ship A is unable to damage Ship B from outside of that range either, then this simply presents a stalemate unless Ship A simply wishes to run away: in order to threaten Ship B, Ship A needs to accept some risk in return. There are numerous ways a stalemate can be broken without putting an unrealistic barrier into place that dominates the map even if neither player is trying for a drawn-out stalemate.
As I noted above, in proper physics of fighting in a vacuum, there should be no significant advantage from being the pursued over the pursuer... and any minor advantage is offset by the fact that the "run away and shoot back at a pursuing enemy" only works if the enemy in question cooperates. Placing weapons forward so you can hunt down and advance towards an enemy while still being able to fire is superior in most real combat situations.
You could claim that game mechanics might change that, but in that case it's the result of the game mechanics, and not a realistic scenario.
As for the ship design thing... Hasn't it already been said that custom ships aren't available in unranked/ranked anyway, and thus are only available in 'friendly' games where players can agree not to use a ship that's absolutely broken on a given map? Broadly speaking, the SC2 ship design principles work. Bigger ships are generally slower and have better weapons and/or defences which the faster ships are going to have to brave in order to go on the offensive. Even the Kessari Quadrant ships, as much as some people deride them due to mines and simple guns being everywhere, work in the context. Now, of course, if you had total design freedom, you COULD design a super-ship which can both outmaneouver almost any other ship while being able to inflict effective damage from outside of the enemy ship's range despite point defence and most other defences... but in this case, I'd say that the situation is that the ship itself is broken, not the map. Don't design ships that can both outrun and outrange the majority of other ships in the game, and an open map won't be a problem. Seems rather simple to me, as well as being realistic: any weapon that can be mounted on a small, fast ship, can in principle have a bigger version with longer effective range that can be mounted on a bigger, slower ship.
Yes... and "stalemate" = "broken". And there is no way to break that stalemate.
If you are chasing me and I lay a mine, it is a weapon approaching you at high speed. If you lay a mine, it is meaningless and simply left behind. If I launch a missile at you it has a double-rate of closure, if you launch a missile at me it has a long slow uphill climb to reach me. These are just the two most obvious examples. What we call the Kaufman Retrograde is about a 3-1 advantage.
A wrap around map might feel more free too you, but it is still just another kind of barrier. And Brad pointed out one reason why it is not a very effective barrier, it often results in endless pursuit across the map as if there were no barrier. That is one of the problems that needs to be fixed for space combat to be fun, and the wrap around map does nothing to fix that problem.
I didn't work this stuff out by myself, I had a little bit of help. Mathmaticians, engineers, and scientists from places like NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories, Ames Research Center, and LLNL. Doctors, lawyers, and too many real-world military men to even begin to count. A back seat electronic warfare officer from an EF-111 Raven, a Colonel from 1st US Space Command, and the current director of threat integration of the US Army. The SFB Staff really is a serious group of people, and we spent 40 years figuring all of this stuff out.
It is very counter-intuitive and many people have a lot of problems accepting some of the realities of the tactics of open space combat, but we really do know these things with certainty at this point.
You make it sound like it didn't work in SC2. Or "it only works with SC2 ships, but won't with SC:O ships".
It didn't really work all that well in SC2. It worked well for some matchups, but not others. Super Melee was fun, and I had spent many hours playing it in SC1 with both my brother and best friend. But Subspace was much, much better. I think SC2 was the best computer game ever made, but I think people like me who say this are thinking more of the amazing story and the general structure of the entire game than they are of the Super Melee.
And it won't really work as the only map for SCO because they want to have an editor that allows people to make any ships they want. The only reason that it half-worked for SC1/2 was that the ships were specifically designed for that map.
What style of ship combat people want will probably happen pretty organically. That is, what maps people choose to download and play (and create) as well as what ones people choose to use when they set up their custom games.
Naturally, I think we should keep statistics on this. But then again, everything should have a statistic attached to it.
Interesting to find the Kaufman Retrograde brought up here.
The reason the retrograde works in space games and not so much in "real world" is that, to borrow somebody's quote "Space is big! Really, really BIG!" A defending fleet can give up a lot of territory flying in reverse lobbing ordinance at the attacking fleet. Real world armies can't afford to give up a lot of territory.
Another SFB player
It's not so much room to run as it is the relative speeds of the weapons and targets. Ground units are essentially motionless compared to projectiles or missiles. Fighters are closer to the speeds of projectiles and missiles, and space ships move even faster in relation too the weapons.
Spent some time with the latest build. Maybe it's just me, but the graphics seemed sharper and there were better sound effects. I felt the individuality of the ships more, but still a ways to go. My core issues still remain. It's also making me go back and play some Star Control 2. That game is still absolutely amazing even now....won't lie, big shoes to fill.
SC2 was a perfect format for a game, a big game containing little "mini-games". Many have attempted to do this in other games over the years, but "quick resolution" usually makes for a better game than "tactical mini games". The "mini-games" usually take too long, and are of a different genre then the game the player was wanting to play. When someone decides to play a strategy wargame, for example, a tactical mini-game for combat resolution is just getting in the way of the game they were wanting to play. So they skip that part with quick resolution, and the devs really wasted a lot of time on something most people will just ignore. But it just works with Star Control, because the player was wanting to play an arcade game when they decided to play it... and the arcade game aspects of SC are the mini-game, the adventure game just surrounds and connects them. Another reason that it works in SC is that the mini games are very short, lasting only a few minutes, they are not like 30-45 minute long "tactical battles" in a strategy war game that attempts to do the same thing.
I said all of this because I always thought that SC2 was missing a mini-game. This would be too much to add to SCO at this late date, but maybe it could be a part of a major SCO2-scale DLC at some point in the future. You fly your ship and space (Air), and your lander on the ground (Armor), but you never get out of your vehicles (Infantry). I've always thought that SC should have a third "mini-game" for ground/boarding combat. You could have a classic top down infantry game, like Contra, running around blasting stuff with adventure/rpg elements to the map (like the original Castle Wolfenstien or a lot of other games). You could have a wide range of maps. Ship-to-ship "ground combat" boarding other ships or space stations, with every boardable ship in the game having its own unique deck plan. There could be a wide range of "ground maps" for both on the ground/outside and inside of buildings for ground combat that happens through the lander/shuttle. These would be short, just a few minutes to resolve, just like the other SC mini arcade games are.
This really would complete the experience, it has always felt too me like this was "missing" from SC2.
EDIT: Having used computers since the earliest days of DOS, I understand a lot more about programming than you would expect a non-programmer to know and I half understand it when I see it. So the thought occurred too me... isn't Ashes of Singularity an SCO ground combat/ship boarding arcade mini game with a different paint job on it? Don't you already pretty much have this?
I would say what's initially cool about Star Control 2 is this crazy story and this giant star map (based on real stars) that they give you with the game. So where should you go at the beginning? Well your fuel limits where you can go, so you try to go somewhere close by and grab some resources, which also helps you learn about fuel costs when sending landers, planet weather conditions, what the orbit color means (FIIIIIIIIIRE!), and generally how the game works. You go back to your home base and the commander gives you a hint to progress the story. Well ok sure, I could go to Rigel, but I'm a space nerd and know Alpha Centauri is a big deal, so I'm gonna go check out that area. Wait what's this?? Alien!! Melnorme?! Cool! My random exploration was rewarded! I also learned a little bit more about the universe/story! Let me go back home and improve my ship and add some more fuel tanks! Oh also my starmap has been filling out with these nice little spheres to show me where races are!
Star Control 2 is masterful. It's an RPG (story, building up your fancy ship), Adventure/Open World (finding random items to move the plot along), with fun and quick, Arcade-style combat. The mini-game of scanning planets and collecting resources/plot-driving items helps immerse you in the idea that this is a real universe and somewhat real planets (the designations are hilarious...Urea world anyone?). You take on missions from various races, have multiple options with each race on how you approach things, and consequences for your actions. Kind of like Mass Effect or most Bioware games. The one great thing with Star Control 2 is I never feel like I'm "wasting my time". There's always a goal or a sense of adventure in your travels. Each race has a lot to tell you about themselves, the universe and drive the story along. There's a lot of depth in each race and the inter-relations between them aren't superfluous. I can't point to a single race and say, "This race is boring or pointless". Even the big bad, the Ur-Quan, have a ridiculous amount of depth along with their nemesis. I really hope Stardock has hired some expert writers to flesh all this out, because I'd say that without a strong story and depth to the inhabitants of the universe, nothing else will really matter.
Happy new year everyone!
I found something really annoying.Sometimes one of the ships "bumps" into something invisible and stops or gets pushed...It wasn't an asteroid.I saw that asteroids appear in the middle of the screen and start flying (BTW I think you should create them off camera).I think it is possible that the AI ship and mine collided with an asteroid before it actually appeared.
Another issue, if you select to "Load" a fleet, you cannot go back.You must load a fleet. Can't I change my mind?
A suggestion, I think you should limit "fleet points" to on-line games.I have become an excellent player and would like to give the AI fleet more ships.Why should you prohibit it?
Thanks!
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