Let's Design TIE FIGHTER 2!

[Alan Bolte]

I'd like to see less 'dozens of fighters you have to personally destroy,' and more 'a dozen TIEs (and the surface guns) beat down on 30 Rebel scum with moderate losses' like at Yavin. That'd require some out-of-this-world AI though, which quite frankly is what I've been wanting to see from games for some time, and likely will continue to wait, for a decade at least.

I also wouldn't mind a little more control over my speed, being able to actually fly from one moon to another at sublight would be pretty cool. I also agree with all of what Shep said, although flying on Vader's wing once or twice would be cool. He does like to fly, after all.

[MKSheppard]

Your first error is in thinking I'd be flying an F-16 of any bloc against Rebel scum.

I was using it as an example.

I'd expect the TIE fighter to be the most reliable of all the Imperial craft; with the least amount of manhours per hour of flight.

TIE Interceptors, probably 25-50% more man hours they're high speed!

TIE Avengers, probably 100-150% more man hours

TIE Defenders, 200-300% man hours; all that performance in such a small package has to come at a cost.

Which would prevent you from going OMGLOL, I want 72 TIE Defenders on my ISD, and unbalancing the game horribly.

[RogueIce]

More rebel scum killing action.

Yes, this. Taking on random space pirates and civil wars and stuff are fun, but I'm flying for the Empire. I want to kill Rebel scum! And no, random Rebel reinforcements of Rogue Imperial Going Warlord (yet AGAIN) #4758 doesn't count. In fact, I want no fucking rogue Imperials going all warlord and shit while the Emperor is alive. Enough of that shit.

[Vympel]

It's not like the capital ships in TIE Fighter (or X-Wing for that matter) were a big help to you when they were actually involved in missions anyway - rare was the mission when they'd actually even fire at enemy capital ships, more often they'd just sit there and you'd have to save the completely helpless little dears from a random fighter group firing warheads at it.

Annoying.

[Vendetta]

True, the Shiny New TIE Fighter needs to have proper capital ship attacks, where hordes of fighters have to launch to overcome mad future space CIWS, and even then it's only to knock out the surface guns so a friendly capship can come and to the real damage.

[Praxis]

Man Hours of Maintenance Needed Per Flying Hour
F-16C/D Fighting Falcon 22.1 Man Hours

So lets say we deploy all 72 of our fighters, and fly them for oh, two hours.

That's 3,182.4 man hours of maintenance we'll need to do; and it's going to take some time to do.

Meh, assign 3,000 techs to do it. We're in an ISD!

[Uraniun235]

I'd like to see less 'dozens of fighters you have to personally destroy,' and more 'a dozen TIEs (and the surface guns) beat down on 30 Rebel scum with moderate losses' like at Yavin. That'd require some out-of-this-world AI though, which quite frankly is what I've been wanting to see from games for some time, and likely will continue to wait, for a decade at least.

Well, the OP does specify "a multi-million dollar budget, a team of Lucasarts developers, programmers and artists, and the carte blanc of George Lucas", so you could choose to go with fairly basic graphics (or even just rip them off from Alliance) in favor of sinking a couple million dollars into game AI R&D.

(Then when you go to implement your shit-hot AI you find that anything more than a couple dozen fighters completely murders the CPU on any desktop computer around... Well, maybe not, but there is that possibility.)

[Starglider]

(Then when you go to implement your shit-hot AI you find that anything more than a couple dozen fighters completely murders the CPU on any desktop computer around... Well, maybe not, but there is that possibility.)

Hire me and/or my company to do the AI and this will not be an issue.

[Vendetta]

What you're more likely to find is that whilst people say they want good game AI, they want an AI that's good at faking good, but still bad enough that they can win.

Also, whiz bang explosions look good in trailers, so you want those as well.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I was using it as an example.

I'd expect the TIE fighter to be the most reliable of all the Imperial craft; with the least amount of manhours per hour of flight.

TIE Interceptors, probably 25-50% more man hours they're high speed!

TIE Avengers, probably 100-150% more man hours

TIE Defenders, 200-300% man hours; all that performance in such a small package has to come at a cost.

Which would prevent you from going OMGLOL, I want 72 TIE Defenders on my ISD, and unbalancing the game horribly.

I know what you were getting at, but I was only going to have myself with the Advanced or Defender and maybe a wingman too. Any maintenance duties would be priority one for those craft because, let's face it, the other bucketheads are only good for distracting enemy fire and annoyingly taking it as well.

If all the engineers and droids keep me ship shape, I'll offer far more than a fleet of otherwise incept TIE Fighter guys. I doubt you'd tell if their weapons were offline or thrusters not fully functional.

[Starglider]

What you're more likely to find is that whilst people say they want good game AI, they want an AI that's good at faking good, but still bad enough that they can win.

The role of game AI should be equivalent to a gamemaster in table-top roleplaying; ensuring the player(s) have as much fun as possible by giving them a challenge which is hard, but beatable. Good AI should try to characterise the player's skill level, behaviour and preferences and tailor the game experience to maximise probable enjoyment. This is easier said than done of course - though a significant part of the problem comes from game designers who are not AI-literate and just can't let go of the idea of scripting absolutely everything. Publishers also tend stick their oar in and complain at the notion that player experiences may vary - some will have an awesome time but there will be a few for which it goes wrong and sucks. I have no idea why this bothers them so much, given that some people will hate the game no matter what you do, but there's still some irrational dislike for anything that isn't a scripted movie-like experience there in game publishing.

Of course we will ignore all that, deploy cutting edge tech and keep the level designers on a short leash.

Also, whiz bang explosions look good in trailers, so you want those as well.

Yeah, we need a decent ship physics model with all the components flying apart and exploding into persistent space junk. Plus cap ships getting realistically carved up to expose glowing innards, scrap and charred bodies getting blown into space by decompressions, that sort of thing.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Can we not just use this money to make I-War 3?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I wonder if they will ever allow us to command capital ships and starfighters at the same time.

It will be a personal dream of mine. Besides, realistically speaking, the only starfighters that can't deal damage to capital ships when their shields are still up.

[Starglider]

I wonder if they will ever allow us to command capital ships and starfighters at the same time.

You do this in 'Empire at War', it just doesn't have a first-person perspective.

[Praxis]

Physics is a must, and I hope that extends to interiors. For example, a direct hit on the fuselage is likely to cause a lot more damage than a hit on the wing. Systems can be damaged as well. The problem is that that means a LOT more data to keep track of if you've got hundreds/thousands of fighters on screen. And I want awesome explosions.


I'd like to see some realistic battle tactics. For example, an ISD and Mon Cal star cruiser face off and batter each other until the shields facing each other go down, then rotate to face stronger shields against each other; your mission is to start pounding the hull and weapons while that shield is down.

[Starglider]

Physics is a must, and I hope that extends to interiors. For example, a direct hit on the fuselage is likely to cause a lot more damage than a hit on the wing. Systems can be damaged as well. The problem is that that means a LOT more data to keep track of if you've got hundreds/thousands of fighters on screen.

You don't really need to track all that stuff for fighters the player isn't actively engaging. Mainly you need it for capships. Though that said, if we're targetting modern/near-future PCs with at least four cores, doing this for thousands of fighters won't an issue anyway.

I'd like to see some realistic battle tactics. For example, an ISD and Mon Cal star cruiser face off and batter each other until the shields facing each other go down, then rotate to face stronger shields against each other; your mission is to start pounding the hull and weapons while that shield is down.

Yes, this is the major jusficiation for having fighters in a fleet engagement. Having some kind of HUD that displays weak spots in the enemy capship shields (probably modelled at a greater level of detail than just 'facings') would be essential.

[Admiral Valdemar]

You did see cap. ships duke it out. It was just nothing other than them sitting back several klicks and lobbing all they could at one another. The ship with the stronger shields and guns won. No tactics at all.

So being told urgently to assist the ISD Vengeance as she suddenly finds herself going from hitting exposed metal to shields again as a large Mon Cal flips over and then calls in some Carracks to take some flak would be great.

You'd have totally fluid missions that don't rely on scripted events, because anything could go wrong even in a simple seek and destroy mission. The missions would then be infinitely re-playable given any randomised structure to the forces and tactics.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

What we really need is a game called Star Destroyer. Give orders to fighters, control the big ship, jump into the cockpit of any fighter whenever you feel like it. No minutiae like BC3K, though. We don't particularly care which toilet seat Crewman Johnson is currently shitting all over.

[Vendetta]

Battlestations: Empire, then.

You know you want it.

[Ace Pace]

To all those people who suggested massive battles...don't. It's called in space sim circles the battle of Endor syndrome, where everyone wants these huge battles.

But fun fact, as anyone who played bad FS2 missions can tell, these missions suck. You're a lone ship, you have an incredibly high chance of randomly dying from a stray laser, your effect is tiny(unless you plot device it), and generally, you can only see a tiny fraction of all the action.

[Bounty]

But fun fact, as anyone who played bad FS2 missions can tell, these missions suck.

So because they're not done right in one game, they suck, period?

I don't know if you'd accept it as "big" enough, but, for example, the Battle of Endor in RSII managed to be both expansive and really, really fun even though you don't really do much but blow up random TIE's for the first half of the mission. I'm not saying every space sim should have big battles, but a half-awake developer can make them work.

[Ace Pace]

But fun fact, as anyone who played bad FS2 missions can tell, these missions suck.

So because they're not done right in one game, they suck, period?

Actually, in FS2 itself, they're done well, largest battles are just a few ships and you feel like you matter. How fun is it playing this random grunt not doing anything?

I don't know if you'd accept it as "big" enough, but, for example, the Battle of Endor in RSII managed to be both expansive and really, really fun even though you don't really do much but blow up random TIE's for the first half of the mission. I'm not saying every space sim should have big battles, but a half-awake developer can make them work.

It's workable, but at the same time, it's not an essential component, and it drastically pushs up other demands on the game.

[Starglider]

Massive battles work great in Ace Combat. Of course, that doesn't play well with people who want it to be more of a sim. Frankly, the SW franchise lends itself more to Ace Combat / Rogue Squadron style gameplay than Falcon 4.0 style gameplay.

[Bounty]

Actually, in FS2 itself, they're done well, largest battles are just a few ships and you feel like you matter. How fun is it playing this random grunt not doing anything?

How fun is it to fight wars on your lonesome?

And it's not like you're expected to just sit on your elbows in a big battle. You can be told to weaken specific capital ships, or protect vessels from bombers, or clear a path for a boarding vessel - small jobs that need to be done while the rest of the battle goes on around you.

and it drastically pushes up other demands on the game.

Agreed on this, but this is more a fault of developers trying to push shiny graphics at the expense of performance.

[Vendetta]

Yeah, though with Ace Combat the improbably huge flying fortress is usually a boss fight, not the ship of the line of both sides.

That's why a Battlestations type game would be better for mass battles, so you could jump between direct control and tactical orders for all the ships in play.