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Post by chasergrey on Oct 24, 2016 1:05:57 GMT
Guys-
These orbital mechanics "puzzle" missions are NOT fun. I've suffered through several of them, and am now being kept from the rest of what look like the serious combat levels because I can't intercept a polar orbit around Neptune. I bought COADE because I wanted to play a space combat simulator, not so I could solve orbital mechanics problems. (If I wanted those, I can have them in Kerbal Space Program with much better graphics.) Pretty, pretty please can we have more figuring out how to defeat enemy fleets, and less straining at the screen adjusting burns so I can complete a near-impossible maneuvering task? Because honestly, the utter shit-eating frustration of the latter is rapidly overtaking the fun I get from the former.
(I have no idea if the devs read this forum of not, but I figure here there's at least a chance they'll see it. Anyone else feel the same way, or am I the only one feeling like I didn't buy this game to do maneuvering puzzles?)
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 24, 2016 1:48:46 GMT
if you want to just design fleets you can use sandbox.
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Post by ross128 on Oct 24, 2016 1:50:19 GMT
There's only one dev, but he does read the forums when he can.
Surface of Giants is certainly a... uniquely frustrating mission. One trick, which I know seems counterintuitive, is to bring some long-range drones or missiles and maneuver yourself into an orbit parallel but retrograde to the station. From there, your ordinance can drop down and match orbits at relatively low cost (~2k-3k dV usually), and the retrograde orbit will slam them into the station for free. This bypasses the problem where if you try to intercept the usual way, it's very difficult to get an intercept that doesn't cost 10k+ dV.
It's quite fortunate that this beast of a mission doesn't come along until after you've already unlocked module creation, so nothing important is walled off behind it and you have your full toolbox to make ships specifically for the task. That said, it would be interesting to eventually see something that can put our ships' combat capability to the test, rather than merely their maneuvering characteristics.
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Post by chasergrey on Oct 24, 2016 2:01:34 GMT
if you want to just design fleets you can use sandbox. I would like to play combat scenarios involving tactics, not endlessly fiddling maneuver nodes to find the one right solution. And now that I finally got to the first major fleet scenario (Vesta), I resent having the rest of the space combat sim held hostage to a fiddly puzzle.
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Post by chasergrey on Oct 24, 2016 2:04:09 GMT
There's only one dev, but he does read the forums when he can. Surface of Giants is certainly a... uniquely frustrating mission. One trick, which I know seems counterintuitive, is to bring some long-range drones or missiles and maneuver yourself into an orbit parallel but retrograde to the station. From there, your ordinance can drop down and match orbits at relatively low cost (~2k-3k dV usually), and the retrograde orbit will slam them into the station for free. This bypasses the problem where if you try to intercept the usual way, it's very difficult to get an intercept that doesn't cost 10k+ dV. It's quite fortunate that this beast of a mission doesn't come along until after you've already unlocked module creation, so nothing important is walled off behind it and you have your full toolbox to make ships specifically for the task. That said, it would be interesting to eventually see something that can put our ships' combat capability to the test, rather than merely their maneuvering characteristics. I'll give that a shot. Already tried using custom long-range missiles strapped to a flying fuel tank with 30 km/s of dV, but didn't try the Retrograde orbit. Have to try that. And your last sentence-exactly! I bought the game thinking combat capability would be what mattered, and tactics.
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erin
Junior Member
Smash Mouth Plays From The Depths Of Hell As You Traverse A Deep, Rat-Infested Cave
Posts: 57
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Post by erin on Oct 24, 2016 2:46:38 GMT
Yeah, the orbital maneuvering missions past the more general tutorials are a frustrating exercise in "kerbal", IMO. It should be possible to have the computer plot a feasible course to targets within the Solar system, modifiable afterward as necessary
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Post by shiolle on Oct 24, 2016 6:09:50 GMT
There are quite a lot of people who want more strategic (in the vein of Escape Velocity: Nova or even 4x games) mechanics in this game, like being able to play a mercenary, having to build and manage your fleet, plan operations, even trade. Guess what that would involve? Yes, more orbital maneuvers.
The thing is, before the last 3 missions, you were basically spoon-fed in terms of operational planning. The game has done all the work for you up to putting you in orbit around the same body as the target. In this sense, you already had an "autopilot" on for the majority of the campaign. Maybe something akin to mechjeb could be introduced, but I don't think it should contain anything beyond simple transfers.
The last three missions (four, if you consider "On the Surface of Giants" a combat mission) are a bit more realistic. You still don't need to fly across the solar system, but you start around the moon where your base is and you have to get to another moon or moons. All of them happen around gas giants, which makes sense. You need to do that on a deltaV budget and still have a capable combat fleet. Unfortunately, the enemy still doesn't maneuver defensively or the missions would be much harder.
I think if there was a multiplayer you would soon find out that "figuring out how to defeat enemy fleets" involves a good understanding of orbital mechanics. Right now you can exploit the hell out of the fact that AI only starts attacking you after you have achieved an orbit around the same body, another advantage I don't think players need.
Regarding putting ships combat capabilities to the test, remember all those woes about Ceres and Vesta? Remember how people complained about the "learning curve becoming a learning cliff"? That's what "putting ships combat capabilities to the test" was like. The thing is, the virtual arms race happening on the forums has left all stock ship designs too far behind. There are enough cookie cutter builds or just simply great designs on the forum to make beating the crap out of stock ships not a challenge at all. I keep thinking it would be better if the campaign didn't allow you to roll out new ship designs on a whim. Nor do I find it particularly realistic.
I'm sorry for being condescending, but I think you whined enough about this mission already. "Near-impossible maneuvering task"? Are you kidding me? This mission is quite simple with the stock ships if you simply follow instructions in the briefing. There are plenty of play-throughs on youtube too if you don't get (or don't want to get) some of the concepts. Do you want to be spoon-fed through this part too?
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erin
Junior Member
Smash Mouth Plays From The Depths Of Hell As You Traverse A Deep, Rat-Infested Cave
Posts: 57
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Post by erin on Oct 24, 2016 10:13:03 GMT
Jesus Christ.
For my own part, these orb-mech missions would be a lot less tedious with some better guidance tools, and guidance tools aren't antithetical to learning. Far from it. The quality of the game's intro to orbital mechanics benefited much from the helpfulness of the instructions in the first missions, in my experience. I've personally confidently completed most of these, and I have no problem with the nature of the missions in themselves, but it would be nice to have at least, say, a phase angle display somewhere, if not a useful autoplotted example trajectory. I can understand not coding in the latter due to effort, and perhaps N-body simulation makes that less simple a prospect than I imagine, but giving people examples and allowing them to play with that is certainly more useful in getting one's bearings, and less frustrating; I have a feeling many would get far less into ship design without some stock ideas to play with.
Did someone constrict your exhaust nozzle too much, pal?
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Post by ross128 on Oct 24, 2016 14:39:34 GMT
The only things that actually make Vesta "difficult" are the tight budget (relative to what the AI gets) and the fact that after fighting entirely passive enemies through the campaign, you finally get an enemy that fights back.
Once you squeeze enough point defense into the budget and stop panicking about the waves of missiles and drones heading your way, the mission suddenly becomes pretty trivial (though the AI spitefully parking its ordinance when it realizes it's going to lose is annoying).
I think what really bugs me though is that there are only what, three or four missions after unlocking module design? And very few missions where you can even bring custom fleets. The game feels like it's 90% tutorial. This isn't meant harshly, the game was made by one person and the amount of depth it has entirely justifies the length of the tutorial, it's more an unavoidable consequence of its situation than any fault of the developer. The real meat and bones of the game are the ship and module designers, and there the game really shines.
It could be more with more time, money, and manpower behind it though. We've essentially got an amazing character creator, but very little game to put those characters through. Of course, my comments about the games' potential should also be taken with a large helping of salt, because I have a tendency to be overly ambitious. That said, I hope the game's success so far is able to fund future development to realize some more of its potential. If it doesn't work out, or it burns out later, I would like to suggest releasing the source-code if/when that happens, as a failsafe. If nothing else, I feel like this game could form the foundation of an amazing open-source project.
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Post by shiolle on Oct 24, 2016 16:12:19 GMT
Did someone constrict your exhaust nozzle too much, pal? What made you think I was even replying to you? My post was largely about the OPs idea to cut out the missions centered on celestial navigation because he doesn't like them. If you read my post, I said I'm not against some basic tools for trajectory planning (like Hohmann transfers, for example, including transfer window calculations). On the other hand, I am not ok with your idea of that 'sample trajectory'. But fist I would like to clarify if I understand you correctly. You're proposing to introduce a trajectory for each of those navigation missions that will allow you to click your way to mission completion without actually doing anything? Well, if that is your idea, then sorry: what you call 'get your bearings' I would call 'press Run Turn to win'. At the very least that could have been an option in the menu, and if selected, you shouldn't get any achievements for completing the campaign, because you haven't truly completed it. Your analogy with default ship designs does not hold in this case: you still need to play to win a battle using stock ships. You don't need to play if you are provided with a valid trajectory in most navigation missions. The only things that actually make Vesta "difficult" are the tight budget (relative to what the AI gets) and the fact that after fighting entirely passive enemies through the campaign, you finally get an enemy that fights back. Yes, neither Ceres nor Vesta are hard once you know what you're doing. Yet a lot of people found them hard, and oh my god, compared to the utter annihilation your own ships can deliver wherever you can field them in the campaign, Ceres looks hardcore. I think what really bugs me though is that there are only what, three or four missions after unlocking module design? And very few missions where you can even bring custom fleets. The game feels like it's 90% tutorial. The stated goal of the game is to find out what space combat would really look like. Then the campaign can serve as nothing but a tutorial. It shows all the concepts laid out in the dev blog, teaches you how to design the ships and gives you a starting point for your own designs in the form of stock designs. The rest is up to us. And yes, it doesn't have enough tools to follow up on that. I agree that more tools can be added to actually let players pit designs against each other. Skirmish multiplayer is one way to do that. Just the tool to share designs online, through steam workshop for example, would be extremely helpful. There is also this game called Gratuitous Space Battles, where you design your fleets, specify some tactics and post them online, presenting a challenge to other users. Other users would pit their fleets against these posted challenges. This approach has a number of advantages. For example, this type of multiplayer does not depend on how many people are online. If for some reason, player activity drops, it doesn't mean less content for the rest. There is one problem with adopting such approach to CDE. Originally Gratuitous Space Battles didn't let you control your fleets in battle, so both you and the person who posted the challenge (and wasn't there anymore) were on equal footing. However, many player tactics I've seen on this forum cannot be replicated using the AI stances the game currently provides, not to mention the fact that AI seems to have only limited ability to use orbital mechanics to its advantage.
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Post by nate2010 on Oct 26, 2016 9:35:37 GMT
agreed, I've just stopped playing due to "on the surface of giants". Im in the same boat, i just want to shoot at stuff, not do wacky orbital intercepts. I mean Im fine with having to do some work to engage, just...this is pretty excessive and not fun
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Post by cuisinart8 on Oct 26, 2016 22:53:53 GMT
If you really want to, you could probably edit your way past the mission. I think editing the records file in C:/users/(your name)/appdata/cde should let you basically skip the mission. Just copy/paste some completed mission's records in the correct slot, and you can go back to blowing ships to pieces!
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Post by lieste on Nov 3, 2016 18:13:46 GMT
I don't see "On the surface of giants" to be particularly difficult. You can do it with less than 15km/s delta-v without excessive care, and with a stock laser/railgun terminal engagement at around 2km/s in a safe orbit.
Burn slightly prograde/out from your initial orbit, and then burn to a halt in line with the methane depot orbit. As you begin to fall back in, burn 'down' in the correct orientation for the depot's orbit, and then correct the orbit height and phase to gain an intercept. Burning retrograde and out in the 10-20 minutes before the intercept can reduce the overtake considerably - but be careful not to de-orbit. (Adding in off axis just enough to break the planned intercept can help with staying away from Neptune, as can switching back and forth between Neptune and the Depot as FoR).
Once you see how to do it the braking and change of plane can be done together - and with a low thrust design you can see results in 1D3h and 14.1km/s (simultaneously) with stock components. Do major phase changes and plane adjustments at the Apoapsis and distant orbital node, and save the Periapsis for reducing orbital energy only and for the final tuning of the kill-intercept - you can set up a in-phase second pass at around 4km/s closure, or reduce the closure rate to guarantee a first pass kill.
The 11mm railgun is quite adequate for the kill phase and can be built into a single stage to kill platform.
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Post by Rocket Witch on Nov 4, 2016 1:50:46 GMT
Regarding putting ships combat capabilities to the test, remember all those woes about Ceres and Vesta? Remember how people complained about the "learning curve becoming a learning cliff"? That's what "putting ships combat capabilities to the test" was like. The thing is, the virtual arms race happening on the forums has left all stock ship designs too far behind. There are enough cookie cutter builds or just simply great designs on the forum to make beating the crap out of stock ships not a challenge at all. I keep thinking it would be better if the campaign didn't allow you to roll out new ship designs on a whim. Nor do I find it particularly realistic. A hard campaign mode with optimised versions of the stock designs and doubled enemy fleet sizes (while retaining the original mass/cost budget for the player) would be awesome for the combat missions.
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reviire
New Member
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Post by reviire on Nov 4, 2016 8:49:15 GMT
Custom scenarios that players can share could be a good idea. It would also give people a reasonable excuse to use black box modules, to create harder/easier enemies as the scenario requires. Would solve OPs issue, and give us more stuff to do.
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