Some days it is hard to know where people want thing to be honest. Especially when you name your "Suggestions" section "Game Design Proposals". To me a game design proposal is a 30 page design document that covers the core elements of a game. Wording is everything...

it'd be nice if you played the tactics card they would encircle the enemy, or something.

has anyone noticed the camera behaving alot better? alot of the battle i have watched after todays patch were alot better at capturing the action and alot less zooming in on the backside of hulls. it even did a few swing maneuvers i haven't seen before.

I have not played today, been messing about in Borderlands. Mmmm...shooting people good. But I will have to check it out.

I agree with you on camera angles I really hope they improve those. However you shoe horned the laser thing into your post and that is one thing I must comment on. Lasers are not a beam of light they are Pulses that move so quickly they look like one single beam Example:







See the Pulses? Now lasers that we know of are incredibly weak and useless as weapons, without a significant energy source. The Pulse is the weapon part of the laser, so the point is to make the pulses as powerful as possible. More powerful pulses are more visible to the naked eye, so it would stand to reason that the laser technology would come so far as that the pulses are so strong you dont see a straight beam anymore. One thing I would like to see is lasers not missing its target. Lasers are direct energy weapons and cant really miss. If anything Id liek to see them being absorbed by shields, or being misdirected, as arcing around the target or dissapating, not firing blindly into wild space...that doesnt really make sense.

I'll be honest... the camera ANGLES don't seem too bad to me. However, the fact that sometimes the BACKGROUND moves exactly the same as the CAMERA whilst the fleet in view appears to spin on the spot... I didn't know there was a tech for pirates to turn on a dime... as a fleet... really weird if you ask me and it's not like it happened to me once.

Blindpatriot wrote:
...Lasers are not a beam of light they are Pulses that move so quickly they look like one single beam...

I agree wholeheartedly and there should be more of a difference between lasers and kinetics as far as visuals are concerned. At first, I miss took lasers as high level kinetics (since all weapons have an alternate appearance at higher level) and noticed that my ships didn't explode right away (had no deflectors, but plenty of shields) and THEN realized they were lasers.

Blindpatriot wrote:
One thing I would like to see is lasers not missing its target.

I disagree wholeheartedly... unless they are going to move MUCH faster.



Another option could be to use the term 'ENERGY WEAPONS' instead of laser. This would solve most problems with the "laser isn't a laser" bit and could be explained as a highly energized bunch of particles,plasma etc...

BUT WAIT!!! THEY DID THAT ALREADY!!!

under the tech HYPERMAGNETICS, which unlocks the module PINCH GUNS, it says...

High energy electromagnetic fields are used to "pinch" the plasma generated by controlled fusion reactors. The resulting beam is more then happy to put holes in anything it comes across."

...like this whole laser not being laser argument.

Blindpatriot wrote:
I agree with you on camera angles I really hope they improve those. However you shoe horned the laser thing into your post and that is one thing I must comment on. Lasers are not a beam of light they are Pulses that move so quickly they look like one single beam Example:







See the Pulses? Now lasers that we know of are incredibly weak and useless as weapons, without a significant energy source. The Pulse is the weapon part of the laser, so the point is to make the pulses as powerful as possible. More powerful pulses are more visible to the naked eye, so it would stand to reason that the laser technology would come so far as that the pulses are so strong you dont see a straight beam anymore. One thing I would like to see is lasers not missing its target. Lasers are direct energy weapons and cant really miss. If anything Id liek to see them being absorbed by shields, or being misdirected, as arcing around the target or dissapating, not firing blindly into wild space...that doesnt really make sense.

Hurm that does not really look like any laser I have seen...looks more like a plasma cutter...though it could be a chemical laser. But it certainly does not look to fit the core definition presented: LINK

Quoted from the very article you posted

Pulsed operation

Pulsed operation of lasers refers to any laser not classified as continuous wave, so that the optical power appears in pulses of some duration at some repetition rate. This encompasses a wide range of technologies addressing a number of different motivations. Some lasers are pulsed simply because they cannot be run in continuous mode.

In other cases the application requires the production of pulses having as large an energy as possible. Since the pulse energy is equal to the average power divided by the repetition rate, this goal can sometimes be satisfied by lowering the rate of pulses so that more energy can be built up in between pulses. In laser ablation for example, a small volume of material at the surface of a work piece can be evaporated if it is heated in a very short time, whereas supplying the energy gradually would allow for the heat to be absorbed into the bulk of the piece, never attaining a sufficiently high temperature at a particular point.

Other applications rely on the peak pulse power (rather than the energy in the pulse), especially in order to obtain nonlinear optical effects. For a given pulse energy, this requires creating pulses of the shortest possible duration utilizing techniques such as Q-switching.

The optical bandwidth of a pulse cannot be narrower than the reciprocal of the pulse width. In the case of extremely short pulses, that implies lasing over a considerable bandwidth, quite contrary to the very narrow bandwidths typical of CW lasers. The lasing medium in some dye lasers and vibronic solid-state lasers produces optical gain over a wide bandwidth, making a laser possible which can thus generate pulses of light as short as a few femtoseconds (10−15 s).

All energy weapons are direct energy weapons. Gauss, Pinch, Plasma, laser all must follow a very strict and determined path in order to remain stable. Lightning is Plasma that is not directed, that's why it arcs wildly all over the sky. Heres what lightning looks like when it is being controlled.







Top is random lightning hitting a rod. Bottom is guided lightning being controlled by a laser.

Energy weapons must be absorbed, or misdirected or forced to dissipate...they cant "Miss". Im just saying the animations in the game should represent this, because that would better differentiate beam from kinetics. Beam weapons that do Miss by misdirection should all follow the same path, not miss wildly like kinetic bullets. Or shields should absorb them. It would be great if shields had a power capacity that needed to recharge every phase..thatd be cool. Like a shield can only take so many beam salvos before shutting down allowing the beam weapons to damage the ship, then on the next phase the shields recharge. More shields you have the longer they last.

Blindpatriot wrote:
Top is random lightning hitting a rod. Bottom is guided lightning being controlled by a laser.

Energy weapons must be absorbed, or misdirected or forced to dissipate...they cant "Miss". Im just saying the animations in the game should represent this, because that would better differentiate beam from kinetics. Beam weapons that do Miss by misdirection should all follow the same path, not miss wildly like kinetic bullets. Or shields should absorb them. It would be great if shields had a power capacity that needed to recharge every phase..thatd be cool. Like a shield can only take so many beam salvos before shutting down allowing the beam weapons to damage the ship, then on the next phase the shields recharge. More shields you have the longer they last.

The wording of the Deflectors actually supports this, since it would be better for the damage to be absorbed than reflected. If it is a straight beam/string of pulses, then it would make sense for that to happen. Also punching holes through ships... I've wanted this since Free Space 2...

SyberSmoke wrote:
Blindpatriot: I was heading out the door when I linked, so I did not get to read the entirety of the document. BUT (always a but) your nitpicking on the term laser is moot any way due to the statement of the effect I was after and not the content its self. The idea being the effect of having a (Insert Generic Beam Weapon Term) cutting a path along the ship and showing that as a decal that could fade away. Plus as a method to have further effect of breaking the ship apart from the attack.



Notice that you glombed onto the laser and not the effect since the post was about cinematic content? Just as I am sure some one could have also mentally attached them selves to the idea of the HEAP rounds or the thought that a ship of this nature would not just break apart like that. Spirit of the post man...spirit of the post.



But you did get back on track to a degree...I admit that...so please get back on the rails of discussion about the cinematic effect that has nothing to do with physical reality.







I know, the idea of blowing through or over penetrating a dying target is just excellent. But...not really done sadly.

With respect I never got off track. You brought lasers and their visual effects into the original topic. I agreed with your camera angles and suggestions on that, so there wasnt anything more to talk about in that area. You put an emphasis on lasers and how they looked in combat, and so thats what I touched upon, because I too believe that there should be more work put into Beams, considering I still have trouble differentiating them from kinetics in the late game.

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