Development Cycle Archive

This is what I'd like to see:

For the Hardened Space-sim Veteran: Combat styles like the X-wing series of games (X-wing, Tie-Fighter, X-wing Vs. Tie-Fighter) where it's down to pure skill and your ability with a flight-stick.

For the Weekend Fly-boy (or girl): Combat styles like those in Freelancer, where you're essentially left to fend for yourself with a mouse, which would be accessible to all players without the possible extra cost of purchasing a flight-stick.

For the Strategist: Point and click, command based, RTS style, such as found in Eve Online.

Then there's the ships themselves, what tickles your fancy? Is it a run-down frighter, held together by a wing and a prayer, or a sleek interceptor raining down death from above? Then of course there is the Capitol ships. Fancy yourself as the Commander of an Interdictor? But how is it all going to be implemented? Should you be able to customise your ships? And if so, how?

If it were just left strictly to frieghters, transports, fighters, etc it would be simple enough, 2 of the 3 gaming styles above would be ideal. However, you toss Cap ships into the mix, and you start looking more toward style 3. Or do you forsee being able to enter a Cap ship, as if it were another enviornment, say like the space station in the tutorial part of the game? The possibilities are endless, but the practicalities are finite.

I personally would prefer to have the ships flyable via joystick, though I suppose it would be best IF it could be coded so that you had a choice of stick, mouse or KB. Then everyone would be happy, so to speak. Additionally, it would be possible to combine "twitch" with skill, if the skills wereto affect things such as special manouvers, ship operation, and attacks for dog-fighting.

A few examples of manouvers combined with dog-fighting skills would be:

• Countermeasure: to attempt to draw enemy missiles or torpedos from yourself
  
• Match Speed: a skilled pilot would be able to match his targets speed and therefore destroy it much quicker and easier
  
• Special Moves: perhaps have a series of offensive/defensive flight manouvers such as rolls and loops that could be used seperately or combined to allow you to escape your attacker and come in behind them or just simply dodge their fire. Think WW2 dogfights.. which is essentially what Lucas had in mind for the space battles in SW
  
• Specialised Targeting: Allows the pilot to target specific subsystems on a target, ie weapons, engine, wing, etc.

Operational ideas might include:

• Balancing: being able to set your power output to shields (if you have them of course) and weapons to maximise your attack or protection. While this should be allowed early on, perhaps the effectiveness or competence of the pilot would allow for this skill to increase via modifiers
  
• ECM: to make it more difficult for your ship to be targeted and seen accurately on rader. I could see this being especially important for freight runners who don't want any grief while running their cargo.
  
• ECCM: to cancel or diminish the effectiveness of your targets ECM
  
• Repairs: certain basic repairs could be done inflight, either via astromech droid or through some other subsystem.
  
• Jettison: If you need to drop cargo in order to make a fast get-away, or simply keep yourself from being destroyed

These are just a few ideas, and I'm sure the Devs have their own, but they would be nice to see none the less. Of course there's a whole realm of possibilities, but it will all be dependant on the system that is implemented.