Changing Cruiser Command's direction

[WhyteDragon]

because the ai is so good on weps and can do True DPS (because players will lag click slow), can we make it so you can just hold down the button or hold click on the map for it to auto shoot? because that will help deal true dps on weps without relying on ai, because lets admit, besides wraiths and destroyers, weps are one of the most fun roles in the game.

That or add more weps consoles but we dont have enough people for that

PSH. I'd take Power or Navigation over Weapons any day. Not to mention Infiltration, though most people complain that it's broken when I do it. (Not to deny it -- it is kind of broken, to be honest... which is frustrating since the concept is so enjoyable.)

While I can agree that AI does shoot faster than a human, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a better option to a human weapons manager. There a couple of reasons for this:

• Sometimes the weapons AI bugs out for a few seconds and doesn't shoot when initiating combat.
• The weapons AI will only focus upon the first targget it finds and will not stop, allowing a wraith or infiltrator to drain tens of thousands of joules of energy before a player may pull the bot off weapons.
• The weapons AI is very accurate when dealing with an enemy ship's trajectory, but completely ignores the velocity of the battlecruise it is shooting from. This means that a BC travelling at roughly 100m/s or more will make an AI shoot at a space that is slightly offset from where its target is. This will cause it to miss small ships quite a bit.

TBH, shooting really fast is nice and all but the downsides are rather large to having an AI on weapons. It's pretty much good for stationairy battlecruiser fights and rushes where you need 'burst.'

That's just comparing the balance between an AI and human in the current metagame though. Honestly, if there was such an option to 'detect keyboard press' periodically without causing lag, I would be all for it. Failing that though, I would hardly call a weapons on AI necessarily superior. It has advantages and disavantages currently.

Also, I don't like the idea of adding more weapons consoles. Ignoring Navigation (broadsides) and Weapons (regular), not to mention science (Yamato), small ships already contribute a lot to DPS even if people refuse to use them during combat for whatever resaon -- most likely man power or upgrades. Moreover, it's already been pointed out that Siretu desired a new direction that favored small ship combat a bit more, so why shouldn't we press for making small ships in battlecruiser combat more viable rather than just making it purely about the battlecruiser by adding more weapons consoles?

TLDR; Detect key state would be cool if it didn't lag. More weapons consoles doesn't necessarily agree with the game's direction.

[Red-Rocket]

ya more weps consoles isnt an option,
although it would be helpful to auto-kick off an AI when you enter the console it was occupying and when you leave it will re-enter that console. which could be very helpful
probably why people rely on BCs so much is late game BCs are so strong and will kill anything in seconds that isnt protected, same goes for small ships late game destroy other small ships quickly, maybe we should increase health of ships and slightly nerf some BC weps so that destroyers will have an easier time of taking on BCs without the need of 3 besides it with leech. (which is sorta broken as well lol)

[WhyteDragon]

ya more weps consoles isnt an option,
although it would be helpful to auto-kick off an AI when you enter the console it was occupying and when you leave it will re-enter that console. which could be very helpful
probably why people rely on BCs so much is late game BCs are so strong and will kill anything in seconds that isnt protected, same goes for small ships late game destroy other small ships quickly, maybe we should increase health of ships and slightly nerf some BC weps so that destroyers will have an easier time of taking on BCs without the need of 3 besides it with leech. (which is sorta broken as well lol)

There is an EXCEEDINGLY obvious reason as why to not do this; Small Ship tanking. Everybody starts launching from the battlecruiser with chompers, tanks, docks, launches, tanks, docks, launches, tanks, docks, launches, BC spends maybe 40GW on shields and calls it even.

With the current system, increasing small ship health is an nonviable option. And even if it was, through the creation of HP in hanger or something else, there are still other issues to address:

Battlecruiser deals Too Much Damage to Small Ships
--> More Heath on Small Ships (To scale against damage
--> More Damage on Small Ships (To scale for wraiths, corvettes, ETC.)
--> More Hull on Battlecruiser (To scale against corvettes which already deals nearly all of the battlecruiser's health when fully upgraded.)
--> Issues with Battlecruiser Damage (Due to the large increase in hull.)

And that just draws it in full circle. The easier way to look at it is to simply 'decrease battlecruiser damage,' but there still remains other aspects like repair kits and missiles and that begins getting complicated. How many threads have there been complaining about upgraded battelcruiser hull making fights too long? This would basically cause that all the time. To be honest, to implement this change there would have to be an overhaul of the system that made hull tanking a more primary method of tanking.

[Puddlejumper]

I think that to make the game more attractive for some of the usual starcraft set a few things should be done:
Here's some food for thought:
1. Make most consoles inaccessible for those with less than a certain amount of play time - only the higher level player icons. this will keep the rifraff off of power console.

2. Put a fighter bay up on the main level near spawn with a big arrow pointing the way and clear instructions on the startup screen on how to use it. Wraiths seem fine, but soup up the corvette, miner and destroyer a little so that they can maybe do things like disable engines or weapons on the main cruisers, and maybe even give some very targeted mining capability to a fighter (corvette?) so it can bring in single loads of specific mineral needed. This will increase importance of fighter pilot types and help them see the importance of proper management of other roles before they start flipping switches

3. Make single engagement kills against well upgraded defensive arrays near-impossible without using a full array of both missiles AND ray attack, with the small ships tilting the balance so that a single engagement kill could be reasonably accomplished without relying on missiles and robot loaders.

4. Increase redock range or find a mechanic so it is easier to operate a smallship and then jump back to the main CC. Maybe make the tractor beam for grabbing your own smallships from a couple screens away and boosting them back to redock/safety instead of what it is currently (i.e. rarely used). This would also give the smallships great reason to communicate with CC on a regular basis, increasing team dynamic nicely.

5. Add an option where when set the CC's don't move or move like 5x slower with a huge boost timeout (like 5 minutes) and it's mostly smallships that do the heavy lifting.

6. I hate to say it... maybe combine power console and nav so additional player can be out on smallship. Make science able to shoot yamato and also do the shield booster that power console currently uses. Put science console where power console currently is. Put bigass fighter ship dock where science console is to attract the newbies. Make fighter ship dock not carry miners just to make it more clear what they are to do.

[WhyteDragon]

Good feedback, but there are some issues I would like to point out:

1. Make most consoles inaccessible for those with less than a certain amount of play time - only the higher level player icons. this will keep the rifraff off of power console.

1) What if a player had their bank files reset?
2) What if nobody on a team had the necessary reputation to access the power console?

I understand the concern, and in a sense I do agree with it, but it heavily impedes games where there are no veterans around. That concerns me.

2. Put a fighter bay up on the main level near spawn with a big arrow pointing the way and clear instructions on the startup screen on how to use it. Wraiths seem fine, but soup up the corvette, miner and destroyer a little so that they can maybe do things like disable engines or weapons on the main cruisers, and maybe even give some very targeted mining capability to a fighter (corvette?) so it can bring in single loads of specific mineral needed. This will increase importance of fighter pilot types and help them see the importance of proper management of other roles before they start flipping switches

There are a large number of ways making the Corvette more viable for movement and hunting, such as Ionic Transfer. I personally do not believe it needs a mining function -- given upgrades it can contribute a large amount of DPS in any fight, especially Battlecruiser to Battlecruiser.

For those who ignore the tutorial and enter a game with 0 reputation, there is already a guide that automatically comes up to direct them towards the hanger and to launch a wraith. (Used to be a miner -- assuming it's wraith now.)

3. Make single engagement kills against well upgraded defensive arrays near-impossible without using a full array of both missiles AND ray attack, with the small ships tilting the balance so that a single engagement kill could be reasonably accomplished without relying on missiles and robot loaders.

... I'm not sure I understand this personally. The wording is a bit strange.

If you're referring to the battlecruiser being destroyed in a single engagement, I would retort that such a thing usually only happens when both teams go all in to a fight. (Rushes are usually the exception.) There are even times when after going all in people escape.

Even been assaulted by a large number of missiles, if a team chooses to run they usually can -- small ships are too slow to keep up with a BC at full pelt and often require their own BC's protection if they don't' want to get picked off, meaning that small ships are only good in 'standing fights.' Missiles seem superior for 'chasing scenarioes' since they require a forward face, which is often the ship's orientation during pursuit.

The main reason they can run is simply due to the difference in power expenditures -- pentaburst costs 1000 energy, a 100th of your capacitor, per shot. Inevitably you will be able to deal a fair degree of damage to your opponent, but you will almost definitely be spending more energy than them, even if you account for shielding. That's simply how I see it - if you have the teamwork, you should be able to escape.

4. Increase redock range or find a mechanic so it is easier to operate a smallship and then jump back to the main CC. Maybe make the tractor beam for grabbing your own smallships from a couple screens away and boosting them back to redock/safety instead of what it is currently (i.e. rarely used). This would also give the smallships great reason to communicate with CC on a regular basis, increasing team dynamic nicely.

The tractor beam thing I don't go against. But I find the reasoning behind the redock range to be questionable. Why should a miner be able to dock on their BC from miles away? The radius is intended as it is because you have to actually reach your battlecruiser to dock. And that seems incredibly intuitive to me.

5. Add an option where when set the CC's don't move or move like 5x slower with a huge boost timeout (like 5 minutes) and it's mostly smallships that do the heavy lifting.

I don't think I'm buying it. By design, small ships can't compare to the battlecruiser alone. And by this design, it is set up so that they will have to. It will be too obvious when the battlecruiser moves. I can agree that we do want to make small ships participate more in battlecruiser combat, but I don't think this is the way to do it simply because there won't be battlecruiser combat -- just SS on BC.

6. I hate to say it... maybe combine power console and nav so additional player can be out on smallship. Make science able to shoot yamato and also do the shield booster that power console currently uses. Put science console where power console currently is. Put bigass fighter ship dock where science console is to attract the newbies. Make fighter ship dock not carry miners just to make it more clear what they are to do.

This is a question I ask quite often.

Why?

I don't get the point. To force more small ships out in combat?

Small ships are often not found in BC combat for several main reasons -- they are vulnerable, they require additional upgrades to be effective, and they do not move easily with the BC during high speed scenarios. Destroyers are often 'the exception' due to their damage output and abilities, but they cost a butt ton of kermicuilite and pyromanite to set up. Ultimately it is simply a matter of unavailable resources, which free up late game -- so they have larger appearances the longer the game goes.

Moreover, power is an EXCEEDINGLY stressful situation. A good power manager should be shifting their power settings almost constantly. Plus, if you combine Power/Navigation, you are setting it up such that the battlecruiser can be a 'one man show.' The whole point of the battlecruiser was that it required 2-3 people to run properly, not just one.

Also, I find human miners to be exceedingly useful. They are much more flexible than AIs who will constantly mine what is in front of them, will respond to orders, will mine attacking wraiths and body block appropriately, and will even scout fields. There is so much more a human can do on a miner than an AI. I do not believe you can simply dismiss it like that.

[Puddlejumper]

The why would be exactly to force more small ships out to combat. This whole thread is about crowd appeal and I think that would help create more of it. Newbies are going to be in smallships very very likely, so making them more interesting would increase new player uptake. There seems to be a middle game that is shorter than it could be where smallships (the larger ones) are the primary mode of engagement with BC.

Please address the console rearrangement idea also, I couldn't tell if you liked it.

Also, the idea of putting mining in a smallship that also has weapons is exactly to increase the attractiveness of non-AI mining. Let's face it, mining is kinda monotonous even when getting shot at and isn't engaging to most new players. I'm not a game designer nor intend to ever be, but I can say that indicating new players are going to need to start as miners isn't helping the popularity of the game on battlenet.

Hey I love the game as it is, and it is a ton of work to change most of these things I mention, but as a new player as of last week, I thought I'd give my impressions. They may be inaccurate, but I bet other new people might arrive at some of the same conclusions. Science and Power are boring (even though power is VERY critical obviously to do right), at least until you've played many games. Separating Nav and Power does help make it take two cooporative bodies to run the BC well which is right and good, but I think there may be mechanisms to make that happen that would still make the stations more interesting.

[WhyteDragon]

The why would be exactly to force more small ships out to combat. This whole thread is about crowd appeal and I think that would help create more of it. Newbies are going to be in smallships very very likely, so making them more interesting would increase new player uptake. There seems to be a middle game that is shorter than it could be where smallships (the larger ones) are the primary mode of engagement with BC.

Please address the console rearrangement idea also, I couldn't tell if you liked it.

Also, the idea of putting mining in a smallship that also has weapons is exactly to increase the attractiveness of non-AI mining. Let's face it, mining is kinda monotonous even when getting shot at and isn't engaging to most new players. I'm not a game designer nor intend to ever be, but I can say that indicating new players are going to need to start as miners isn't helping the popularity of the game on battlenet.

Hey I love the game as it is, and it is a ton of work to change most of these things I mention, but as a new player as of last week, I thought I'd give my impressions. They may be inaccurate, but I bet other new people might arrive at some of the same conclusions. Science and Power are boring (even though power is VERY critical obviously to do right), at least until you've played many games. Separating Nav and Power does help make it take two cooporative bodies to run the BC well which is right and good, but I think there may be mechanisms to make that happen that would still make the stations more interesting.

That's fair. And I fully recognize the miner issue, which is why the metagame was changed to incorporate a system that was geared primarily for player wraiths rather than player miners. To be honest, I would actually ask the veteran players to play miner typically in order to make sure they're doing it better than an AI.

I do not like the console re-arrangement idea. The whole point of splitting navigation and power was to make sure one person could not run the BC, as I previously stated. This ruins that concept. Also, if we add a giant hanger slot in the upper deck, there is no point to using the hanger slots in the lower deck. It becomes meaningless.

Also, I'm not buying the 'to get more small ships out.' You're saying it will happen but aren't looking at the logic or consequences of it. Rather than have more people on small ships, you will have more people hanging around on the battlecruiser not doing anything. 1-2 people will launch the few smallships that are available, one person will run the new 'navpower' combination you are suggesting, an AI will be on weapons, and then the rest of the players will sit there doing nothing. Say what you want, but I doubt people find standing around doing nothing while watching other players do cool stuff is interesting. And to clarify, why would they be sitting around in the hanger rather than piloting small ships? Because there are none. Yeah, they could pull out a wraith -- if it hasn't already died, which it probably has, especially if they're new -- but their impact in a battlecruiser fight will be minimal. Corvettes/Destroyers/Minelayers/Infiltrators will be the only ones having a real impact, but you only start with one Corvette, Destroyers are expensive, Minelayers are overlooked, and it is exceedingly difficult to do infiltration properly.

It is not a matter of small ships not being used. It is a simple matter of available resources to purchase small ships. Upgrading the battlecruiser takes precedence, and should -- frankly, why would you upgrade a battlecruiser if it was weaker than some small ship you could mass produce?

That's how I see it.

[Sky]

The why would be exactly to force more small ships out to combat. This whole thread is about crowd appeal and I think that would help create more of it. Newbies are going to be in smallships very very likely, so making them more interesting would increase new player uptake.

That's what the new patch is testing out right now. We have three wraiths (rather then one), one corvette, and three miners.

There seems to be a middle game that is shorter than it could be where smallships (the larger ones) are the primary mode of engagement with BC.

I think I agree with Whyte here. If there was a ship that could go toe-to-toe with the battlecruiser when in numbers then there is no point in upgrading the battlecruiser. We would have a race instead to see who could mass produce said ship.

[Puddlejumper]

I don't pretend to be a game designer I'm not, but here's an idea that I think is interesting:

A ship of moderate expense - I'll call it an Escort for now - that could be upgraded to effectively defend itself against an enemy BC and also downgrade/interrupt an enemy BC movement or weapons (allowing allied BC a great opening) and then some other smallship (maybe multiple wraiths or I think preferrably corvette or destroyer) that could destroy that ship well without being a serious BC direct damage threat.

The BC then would definitely need to have at minimum the smallship destroyers alongside to ensure safe passage, and probably want one of the anti-BC Escorts to ensure the enemy has to similarly worry about things. Maybe in addition have a rather expensive missile that could also work in a pinch to destroy that Escort instead of the smallships (with the smallships being the cheaper faster solution and so favored).

Of course what is really needed for my optimal happiness is a standalone CC game, with its own expansions and options and single player, and a place where players of it go and know what to expect. And where you can have 2v2 or FFA cruiser battles. Playing CC in SC2 is kind of like finding rugby players in the middle of a basketball tournament. Much easier to find a crowd to casually throw a frisbie around outside the game than start something equally great but equally engrossing.

[WhyteDragon]

because the ai is so good on weps and can do True DPS (because players will lag click slow), can we make it so you can just hold down the button or hold click on the map for it to auto shoot? because that will help deal true dps on weps without relying on ai, because lets admit, besides wraiths and destroyers, weps are one of the most fun roles in the game.

That or add more weps consoles but we dont have enough people for that

The problem is that the only way I could catch this is by events that will cause network lag. Because of this, it's not worth doing in my opinion.

A thought recently came to mind regarding this.

My assumption regarding this was originally that this would cause network lag due to the number of detections that would have to take place. However, surely it wouldn't hurt the system that much under the following conditions, would it?:

1. Only enable this event while the player is both selecting and in control of the weapons console.
2. Either:
   • Check if the key is held down every time the cooldown for firing comes off.
   • Relate the keystate of the firing button to a boolean variable. When pressed, the boolean variable toggles to true and enables a firing trigger. When released, the boolean variable toggles to false, disables the firing trigger, and disables keystate detection for 1 second. At the end of the waiting period, it checks of the keystate of the firing button is down. If it is, the boolean variable toggles to true again and enables the firing trigger - if not, it sits on standby. The one second delay is to prevent 'key spamming,' limiting the trigger to only react at most two times per second. (1 Second as a number is arbitrary.)

I don't claim to be a fully educated programmer, or an IT expert, but if you're worried about flooding the network wouldn't it be possible by simply limiting the amount of received inputs?