Docking, Hangar and Small ship interiors. Oh my

[Siretu]

So I'm more and more looking forward to winter break to start doing some serious work on the standalone (hopefully).

One thing that literally kept me awake last night was thoughts on small ship controls and docking. I'll go through it one subject at a time, although a lot of the things kind of blend together.

Small ship interiors:
I was thinking of how to implement small ships carrying several players. This naturally made me realize that it would be a lot easier if ships had their own interior. It would have several advantages. First of all, it would mean that small ship flying works the same way as BC flying, e.g sitting on a console gives you control, moving off the console removes control of the ship. For the wraith, this would probably not be that important, but I think it helps with the immersion if you can zoom in and the top of the wraith fades away and you have your marine there and you can move around in the small spaaaaaace inside the wraith.

For larger ships, it would work even better since the interiors would allow for several different functions on the ship that you can switch between during flight. Maybe there's an agile ship with a 360° turret on the top? As I/we design larger "small" ships, it might start evolving towards a grey zone where there is no real definition of "BC" (since there will be several different versions of BC layout). In other words, assuming we're having different BC sizes, we could generalize it to having different ship sizes, which means technically allowing you to start an 1v1 with two wraiths instead of two battlecruisers.

This line of thinking brought me on to the next subject.

Hangar:
So if I am to allow multi-player ships, there needs to be a way to enter them before actually launching them. The current design in SC2 doesn't really work for that since as soon as you decide you want to use a ship, you launch it and fly away.

My idea for this wasn't actually properly thought up until I started writing this thread. Basically, The ship stands somewhere in the hangar (where you parked it) and you can see the interior. If you're in the hangar and you right click the ship, you'll enter the ship. However, you wont automatically go to the navigation console situated in the ship which takes control of it. This way, the amount of people who want to go on the ship just has to go inside the ship and then the pilot takes control of the ship and flies out.

This brings me to my next subject.

Docking (and launching):
So if you're already in the ships, and the ships already exist in the hangar and the hangar is already in the actual BC flying around (in other words, the hangar interior is not situated somewhere else on the map, like in SC2). Why not just let the player fly out the ships themselves? It definitely makes more sense.

Imagine it also from an perspective of intuitivity. Learning how to take control of ships is the same for the BC and for the small ships, which is kind of the same things as controlling consoles in general. Assuming the player have learned this, they don't have to understand that the button with the cloak icon is actually a launch ship button. When they get in the ship, they just walk on the beacon (it'll be shiny and blinking and stuff, like in SC2) and fly the ship out.

So, before going on to talk about docking, I want to mention on of the things that definitely makes me the most excited about making a standalone version of Cruiser Command: Scale

[sidenote]
I've talked before about my idea of having seamless zoom where you're actually running around on the inside of the moving BC instead of having it be separated as a non-moving part somewhere else and teleport the camera between. Having the ships actually exist inside the hangar means that we naturally get a realistic size of the ships. Just using zoom, we'll be several different views of the battlefield. When you're in a Wraith, you'll probably be zoomed in more, and you'll come upon the GIGANTIC battlecruiser in comparison. When you're navigating the battlecruiser, you might see the huge battle with another battlecruiser, with muuuuch smaller ships flying around, all controlled by their own player. Side note: I am also thinking about having most ships pretty fast and small which makes them hard to hit. The Battlecruisers are still scary to the small ships though, firing a lot of projectiles from several hardpoints which makes it a challenge to dodge.
[/sidenote]

So, my thoughts on docking is basically the same as launching. Going close to the BC and pressing D doesn't really make sense if we have this huge system and game design around real sizes and getting the ships into the hangar. Might as well let the players fly the ships inside the BC themselves. It allows for more player cooperation to turn the BC to allow for easier docking and it means more close calls when getting chased by enemy ships. Can you manage to get inside the hangar horse fields before you're blown to pieces.

Summary:
So basically:
* All ships have interiors and are controlled by standing on the ship's navigation console.
* The ships exist in the hangar and you can easily jump in and out of "their interior" by right clicking the ship.
* Makes ships with several players and several functions possible by just having more people jump into your ship.
* Dock ships by flying them into the hangar port right into the hangar.
* Launch ships by going into the ship's interior, taking control of the navigation console and flying the ship out.

[Degra]

I approve.
This would also allow for some more interesting medium-sized ships, like a 2-player Destroyer where the second player could have science-like abilities, or controls a second weapon.

[bbot]

This also means that infiltrators can bomb individual ships.

[Siretu]

Yep! Also, you better hope players park their ships properly!

[Degra]

What happens though if the BC is turning while you're in a ship inside the hangar, but haven't parked yet?
Will you just turn with the BC? (I think that would be the easiest solution)

[Siretu]

My idea is that when you fully enter the hangar, you will automatically "clasp down" and kind of stick to the BC's movements.

[slapshot]

So does this mean we get to have like a millennium falcon type ship with a pilot who has a 2nd person as a gunner up top? maybe even an AI gunner?

also.. not sure if an infiltrator has room to dock "inside" another ship.. or how that would work

[Dreadnought]

We might have a problem with small ships being able to physically be in the hangar, if you want to try to fit 10 destroyers in the hangar, the hangar will have to be half the battle-cruiser and the BC will have to SCALE to huge proportions to be able fit with scale.
Also, some battlecruiser designs might have several hangars to fit with their design ideas and benifits/drawbacks
And, what about docking, where will the ship go? are you going to just FLY THE THING into the porthole of the hangar...especially if the battlecruiser is on the move....in combat? while launching ships is totally doable and cool, docking them will be a pain.

Herez mah solution ~
Youl have hangar slots like before, but the difference is that you will directly load the ship you want on to a pad, or if a ship is already loaded on to there, you can just select another ship and the game will load another one on (want to have a cool animation like in warcraft 3? or just insta cycle through the ships O.o)
Once ready, you can fly it out all cool like ^^

Heres my pretty paint picture to illustrate some points, and introduce some other ideas as well.

Hangar Design Ideas.png (102.45 KiB) Viewed 610 times