v1.13.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

The new fire at will option seems like it could save a lot of micromanagement for fighters and such.
Was that what motivated you to add it?

My campaign in which I was doing really well, suddenly took an unexpected turn. Now I need to react quickly to a lot of small, deadly ships

[Droll]

The new fire at will option seems like it could save a lot of micromanagement for fighters and such.
Was that what motivated you to add it?

My campaign in which I was doing really well, suddenly took an unexpected turn. Now I need to react quickly to a lot of small, deadly ships

To this effect wouldn't it be useful to have auto target not be on a per-ship basis but also have a variant of auto-target that does it on a per-BFC basis?
Many of my ships split even their larger guns into multiple BFCs to achieve multi-targeting ability but auto target only assigns targets per-ship (BFCs on the same ship attack the same target)

[captainwolfer]

The new fire at will option seems like it could save a lot of micromanagement for fighters and such.
Was that what motivated you to add it?

My campaign in which I was doing really well, suddenly took an unexpected turn. Now I need to react quickly to a lot of small, deadly ships

To this effect wouldn't it be useful to have auto target not be on a per-ship basis but also have a variant of auto-target that does it on a per-BFC basis?
Many of my ships split even their larger guns into multiple BFCs to achieve multi-targeting ability but auto target only assigns targets per-ship (BFCs on the same ship attack the same target)

A way to determine how much to allocate to each target would be needed then. For example, if a ship has both large "primary" beam weapons and a set of smaller "secondary" weapons, how do you make sure the different sizes of guns get the right target. Or if you have a massive enemy ship and some enemy FACs, how do you ensure most of the firepower is allocated to the big ship

[Droll]

The new fire at will option seems like it could save a lot of micromanagement for fighters and such.
Was that what motivated you to add it?

My campaign in which I was doing really well, suddenly took an unexpected turn. Now I need to react quickly to a lot of small, deadly ships

To this effect wouldn't it be useful to have auto target not be on a per-ship basis but also have a variant of auto-target that does it on a per-BFC basis?
Many of my ships split even their larger guns into multiple BFCs to achieve multi-targeting ability but auto target only assigns targets per-ship (BFCs on the same ship attack the same target)

A way to determine how much to allocate to each target would be needed then. For example, if a ship has both large "primary" beam weapons and a set of smaller "secondary" weapons, how do you make sure the different sizes of guns get the right target. Or if you have a massive enemy ship and some enemy FACs, how do you ensure most of the firepower is allocated to the big ship

Well separating primary from secondary armament would be really hard and I don't really mind microing that to fix it. However it is easy to separate BFCs with active PD modes from anti-ship weapons. That is the only distinction I really need.

[Jorgen_CAB]

The new Fire-at-will rule will select a random target for each BFC on that ship. A long as you set your different weapons to different BFC you should be fine.

I also think that weapons will follow the normal structure of fire... which should make it so that PD opportunities go before firing on an enemy ship. That is your ship will fire on any potential missiles using final fire before firing your weapons at an enemy ship. I presume you can set your weapons that have the heavy beams to never fire on missiles or at least only fire if the missiles are targeted at that ship specifically.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

The new Fire-at-will rule will select a random target for each BFC on that ship. A long as you set your different weapons to different BFC you should be fine.

I also think that weapons will follow the normal structure of fire... which should make it so that PD opportunities go before firing on an enemy ship. That is your ship will fire on any potential missiles using final fire before firing your weapons at an enemy ship. I presume you can set your weapons that have the heavy beams to never fire on missiles or at least only fire if the missiles are targeted at that ship specifically.

I do this in my current campaign. The multi-use railguns will fire on missiles if needed and on enemy ships otherwise. The heavy lasers will ignore missiles and only fire on hostile ships. You can do the same with fire-at-will because only the targeting changes, not the point defence status.

[Malorn]

I have to admit, I'm not sure I will do anything BUT fire at will, except in rare situations where I need to optimize my damage against larger forces.

[captainwolfer]

I really like the Fire at will option. I will probably set all my beam weapons to use it.

[Droll]

I have to admit, I'm not sure I will do anything BUT fire at will, except in rare situations where I need to optimize my damage against larger forces.

Fire at will sounds like the old auto-target we had in Vb6 but better

[QuakeIV]

Does it overkill targets or do they retarget the rest of the beams that tick once the closest thing dies?

[Malorn]

Does it overkill targets or do they retarget the rest of the beams that tick once the closest thing dies?

I would suspect they overkill. That would be the fair and reasonable way to do it, just like normal targetting.

[QuakeIV]

It would, but it does kindof move it into the 'off the table' category for me just because i feel like the majority of ships would all fire on the nearest target and massively overkill it.

[Jorgen_CAB]

It would, but it does kindof move it into the 'off the table' category for me just because i feel like the majority of ships would all fire on the nearest target and massively overkill it.

But the targeting is random with a weighted system. So while you will eventually get some overkill your ships should spread out the fire quite effectively otherwise.

[QuakeIV]

What he described implies that something substantially in front of the other targets would hugely throw off the weighting.  It'd be fine if remaining shots reallocated but it sounds like they wont.

[Jorgen_CAB]

What he described implies that something substantially in front of the other targets would hugely throw off the weighting.  It'd be fine if remaining shots reallocated but it sounds like they wont.

But all shots are fired simultaneously in any 5s increment, at least in an abstract sense. It would make no sense that you should be able to re-target once a target is decided for each fire-control in that time frame, that decision is based by the crews judgement. I also saw not indication for how the weighting system would work... I got the impression that it would become fairly random with a preference for any fire-control to target that which it are most likely to do most damage to.

In my opinion PD should work the same way... even if that would make PD less effective in general. But then again I think that the howl missile salvo mechanic need to be overhauled at some point anyway as full sized launchers versus box launched salvos is an anaemic issue in my opinion.