EVE General Discussion

Maybe this has come up before, maybe it hasn't.

I forget just where in the CSM notes it was but one of the CCP employees asked something along the lines of what the playerbase would think of adding "cockpit" view and or joystick support, eg, flight simulator style.

Not much really came up in that regard. Made me a little sad.

Personally I like those kinds of games, particularly Decent: Freespace 1&2 from back in the day.

How would this work with EvE? EvE plays very much differently from this. So it got me thinking about how flight sim style of play could work well with EvE.

I would limit it to a handful of ships that fit that kind of play. Frigates, Fighters, and Fighter Bombers.

Some sort of functionality would need to be added to switch modes from standard flight mode to cockpit view, or a Starfox style third person view. Your guns and missiles would get locked forward and only able to fire and target in that direction. Guns and unguided missiles would essentially be "dumb fire" or have limited tracking ability only in front of the ship. Guided missiles would be fire-and-forget much like they are now. Perhaps a small or modest boost to damage and range to turrets for fighting in this mode?

Overheating and all that would still be the same, module activation and cooldowns would still be the same, ammo counts as well. Other modules would simply work the same way as they do now, like Target Painters, Sensor Disruptors, Neuts, prop mods, etc. 360 degree of affect, range, falloff all that jazz.

Carriers could have some new play modes added to them, too. Pull up next to a carrier, "dock" with it in some manner and take over a fighter or fighter bomber and wreak havok. Player controlled individual fighters and fighter bombers would get a good boost to range and damage for being independantly controlled. If it gets blapped, launch another and get back into the fight!

This could even extend further to dreads where when you hit seige you go to a "turret" view and take direct control of your turrets and blap stuff a la B-52 belly-gunner style.

#popcorn

It's pretty much impossible to implement this kind of thing in EVE currently. The server architecture for one runs on 1 Hz ticks and it can't go any faster, which kind of makes a lot of the split-second maneuvers and decision making you'd find in a dogfight impossible.
There are other games significantly better suited to this sort of thing.

No

Simply put, this wont happen.
This is not that kind of game. Trust me ive had the same thoughts.

First of all it would require a mass upgrade of the server.
Secondly it would mean you would have to change the architecture of the game.

Making this would make every frigate able to utterly destroy any other ship as the user will have those split-second maneuvers. While people who are in the standard view are limited to the manual piloting we have today.
Also the fact that no ship can actually turn upside down ingame.

Trust me let this go. It is a cool idea and all, but for another game.
And that game is currently being made, with pretty much the aspects you want. It is called Star Citizen, id advise you to go look at it.

You know what might have come up, a lot?

This thread, if you searched before you posted and/or if you looked in the right forum (viz. Features and Ideas). Hell, you could just have looked at the front page since we already have a thread on the topic.

The answer is the same as always: it can't be done and makes no sense anyway.
Also, IBTL

Really?

Who Let The Dogs Out?



DMC

No, how will I be able to dominate the game using alts if you make it all twitch-based?

****.

Meh.
With the exceptions of fighters, fighter-bombers, and drones, ships and other combatants don't get close enough for this to be even remotely necessary. Think about it - you set an orbit of, say, 2500 meters. Two and a half kilometers. Almost 8000 feet. For most ships, all you're going to see is a distant glint, and maybe an engine flare at that range. Oh, you wanna see the weapons racing at you? Well, that's already do-able.

Set an orbit of 5000 meters, and you're not even going to see the engine flares.

Sorry - EVE doesn't produce the kind of Star Wars 'air combat in space' action that would require or reward a joystick.

I think you should link that. It seems like an unusual thing for a CCP developer to ask, since it's common knowledge among not just the devs but the playerbase at large that the destiny engine updates only once a second, and changing this would be a fundamental rewrite.

I'm going to paint you a picture. You are playing freespace 2. But the game only updates once a second. Enemies jump, your guns energy drops or raises in increments of one second, and if you get hit by a capital beam you wont know till you're already dead.

Now, on top of this, add a three second delay to every action you take. this simulates the total server turnaround time to my home city, Adelaide.

Once a second game updates, three seconds behind the action. This is why we don't have cockpit view in eve. Frankly I don't think this is such a killer feature that I'd choose to rewrite the physics engine to get it.

By the way, frigates in eve are the same size as the GTC Orff, the cruiser you defend in the first mission of Freespace 1. They're a bit big to dogfight.

If the server side issues were solved, I wouldn't see any reason against it as an OPTION if people wanted to use it. Although learning how much to slow down by to maximize turning ability for the amount of turning you want to do would be difficult I imagine, giving some advantage to clicking. Either way, I'd like the idea, just don't lag the server over it.