Spot on. I think sometimes (often) the game has done something just for the look when it is not practical and would have never evolved that way, followed by stating that bigger ships can't become a "one ship to get to beat everyone" and to make smaller ships useful (which is a dumb way of saying it isn't going to be as fun because someone will whine when their single seat is not able to take out a capital ship). There is the one big thing: Turrets need to be fun, and without the HMD and better range of control, that'll never happen.
I'm pinning this comment, in particular, because your last sentence emphasizes the point I'm trying to make: "Turrets need to be fun, and without the HMD and better range of control [e.g. better turret positioning], that'll never happen". Yes: turrets are useful in big swarms of dogfights. But, big swarms of dogfights don't happen all that often. and there are other ships more dedicated to big swarms of dogfights--the hammerhead, for example; TTK is still relatively high and SC requires more "time on target" than others - because it requires more "time on target", turrets ought to exhibit better positioning and range of controls. Heavy fighters are trading maneuverability for firepower, and that's been a role observed in historical WW2 designs, too. The ultimate problem is that the extra firepower - often bigger guns or additional turretry, aren't positioned well enough to make that trade off worth it. Hence the several comments pointing out the superiority of light fighters.
Yeah and on top of that most CIG designs ignore about 80 years worth of fighter design lessons. Look at the horrid rearward visibility in the Gladius for example. All Fighters designed after 1942 had either a bubble canopy or one giving close all round vision to it. Even the 109 got much improved visibility with the "Erla-haube". Despite their popularity, both the Corsair and the Hellcat were outliers when it comes to canopy design. And the Corsair especially should not be taken as a design study for any fighter, it has godawful visibility in every direction. Just try landing that sucker on an aircraft carrier.....admittedly unlike the Seafire, not every landing is a throw of the dice on wether the landing gear holds or not. Hell some fighters were redesigned to have Bubble canopies, like the Spitfire, P-51, P-47, The Typhoon (Tempest got it from the get go). Then look at more modern fighters and the types of canopys favoured in SC are pretty much gone. And as much as I love the P-38.....I would love it even more if the struts in the canopy were gone! As for those whining that the Bubble Canopy spoils the lines of a Spitfire.....I don't care, I care about effectiveness and Situational awareness. And so did the real life pilots whose life was on the line. Same goes for the seating position, which is low compared to all late war fighters which had high or higher seating positions. Even modern Attack helos have higher seat positions than SC. Even an AH-64D Apache Longbow has better rearward visiblity than Varius fighters in SC. If you use the Co-Pilot as a gunner, he needs a good seating position, high and unobstructed. Never even mind some of the more modern tech that @OminousPineapple was talking about. I think the best example of how not to design a fighter, despite it's optics rather fitting SC, was the Porsche Starfighter for Star Wars. Awful cockpit design. Although the Arrow is one in how to screw up details....who the hell decided to to put a bright red light right into your vision when you look at your deep six?
@@LupusAries The Andromeda is worse: Bad vision dead center and everywhere else too. CIG is trying to be "artsy" and lost the concept that this is supposed to be about a 1000 years into the future. The transparency on MFDs is terrible, you can't read them most of the time unless the outside star is positioned right. Transparency is great for a HUD, but it is terrible when done to be artsy by people who don't actually have to use the MFDs. Myself and many others have complained about visibility in the Constellation series for years, and nobody has bothered to remake those in the gold standard. Better yet, also make all MFDs so they are useful in any light (transparency on those is for artsy effect, and not reality of using them). In general, someone from the 1950s would reject much of the visibility and HUD design. I really want a game that feels a thousand years into the future, not an art deco monstrosity. The turret design is a huge problem because nobody wants to use turrets. The fear that these big ships would become OP is baseless, and they thought that would happen before they ever had players to test. Every turret player needs a HUD that lets him/her view a line art drawing of the enemies even through the ship; one has to anticipate when the enemy is coming into the correct angle before they actually get there. I'd love an F35 helmet in this game. Imagine someone a thousand years from now finding a working F35 helmet; they'd have to ask "what extraordinary advanced civilization built this? This civilization must have moved somewhere else and no longer be here...how did they know the English language??". I would love it if every ship designer at CIG had to have lessons in a real world simulator with an actual CFI or ATP training them. They wouldn't have to be proficient, but I would like if nobody could design MFDs or HUDs without first having basic instrument flight training and navigation training. Incidentally, I've heard other people say the same thing about the helicopter. Often the needs in game are closer to what a helicopter needs. On the other hand, if the gunner had a valid HUD which allowed an X-Ray view of his target even through the ship, then all seating positions could be left as is. But there is nobody to tell this to at CIG. They're so overwhelmed with negative talk and overwhelmed with developing that there is no way to catch the ear of whoever makes these higher level decisions. There are people from CIG going through the forums, but this particular topic will never become an "epiphany". The only way this causes a truly high awareness to the guys at the top is if hundreds of people vote it up on a forum thread. Hundreds or thousands of people may agree, but perhaps 5 or 6 people will ever vote up the thread.
@@starcitizenhumor1260 I wouldnt mind the bad vision if they actually build combat more around paying attention to sensor readouts. You know, like IRL air combat does. This would also fix the copilot fun factor.
@@Justowner Yes. 100% agreed. I'd like to be able to fly on instruments when there is little visibility. I don't mean to necessarily have all the instruments to fight that way, but to do basic navigation at night near the surface of a planet, or in a field of asteroids. To be able to tell a friend to go to a coordinate, then head in a certain direction for a distance, so on, and find me. There is "sort of" a bad compass that has been added, but without true waypoints, it isn't much good. The existing instruments are more or less useless for real flight.
It really seems like a futuristic space game should have helmets with better augmented reality that can "see-through" the ship with a heads up display like.. oh wait, current military fighter jet pilots have this.
I used to rail about this kind of stuff on the old CIG forums. They were designing spacecraft like airplanes, with combat paradigms from airplanes, and assumed that with the right "tweaks" they could be made to work like airplanes (but in space). CR had a very romantic idea of space fighter combat that was based in Star Wars and WWII/Cold War air combat, but with the ability to do additional cool "space moves" like flipping a 180 or strafing around a target (but only sometimes!). Lots of people on the old forums were asking how this was supposed to actually play out given the "Fully Newtonian Physics" but really "sci-fantasy" look of the proposed spacecraft. References to Atomic Rockets were frequent, and just as frequently shot down because they did not "fit the ethos of the design principles". But at some point the "ethos of the design principle" has to mesh with the physics engine you are building, and since they are trying to keep that as real world as feasible for a game (velocity limitations, human processing limitations, hardware limitations etc.) that inevitably meant a clash with how things were intended to work with how the player base made them actually work. Now we see how this has to turn out and that you cannot have old fashioned aircraft style paradigms no matter how much you want to make "WWII fighters in space." That kind of combat simply will not work with any kind of Newtonian flight model that decouples movement with orientation, removes directional energy (altitude) and in general removes all the limits that made the old paradigm possible and necessary in the first place. A turning gun battle with "bogies on your six!" is never going to be a thing when you can just decouple and turn your six into the business end with all the firepower and there is zero consequences for doing so. I simply do not understand how the combat in SC is supposed to evolve into something more fun while still keeping to the old promises of "dogfights in space" (where "dogfights" retains all the old romantic notions it is supposed to have). Either CIG actually wanders off to read a good chunk of Atomic Rockets to understand how the gameplay loop *must* evolve, or they need to seriously start changing the parameters of the physics engine to start adding back in most of the "atmospheric limitations" that makes aircraft style combat paradigms *actually work.* If you want something that people will actually play this simply needs to happen.
Imo the way to get best from both worlds is if CIG properly models atmospheric flight model and give emphasis on it as well as adding purely space fighters.
Ironically, I feel like Star Wars Squadrons got this idea of "dogfights in space but with cool space moves" better. the speed of fighters are kind of glacial compared to those of Star Citizen, but there are mechanics built into the game that prevent front hemisphere fights from becoming the dominant method by which fighters engage each other. 1) there are clear trade-offs between prioritizing speed and maneuverability that you must carefully consider. You choose to prioritize maneuverability you sacrifice your ability to disengage once your committed, you choose to spec engines speed, you can boom and zoom and limit return fire, but you will also have a more limited window of engagement and your plane will be less responsive to angle of attack changes, so you have to time your maneuvers around objects and predicting your enemy's positioning more carefully. 2) You can drift to any pitch or yaw you want, but you can't strafe your fighter craft at whim, and because it requires time/charges to your engines systems to perform such maneuvers, they are usually a last ditch to shake an opponent quickly or a means to close that last bit of rate needed for a firing solution. I'm sure there is some irony to appreciate in Squadrons being made by EA, and the complicated history of that company with Roberts, but I'll leave that for someone else to discuss.
The current designs only make sense if future heavy fighters are primarily going after medium to large ships, or some kind of station. Where the pilot is mostly shooting at something big in front of them, and the turret gunner is supposed to be keeping light fighters busy long enough for the main target to be hit. But there isn't much gameplay like that. I hope that CIG actually delivers that, so these designs make sense. Or that they redesign the heavy fighters as this video suggests. Yes, decoupling allows the pilot to bring the main weapons to bear on an attacker while traveling in a different direction, but what percentage of the player base is going to be good enough at that?
Solid, well-thought-out and explained video. As a super early backer who originally backed the Super Hornet and then upgraded to the Aegis Redeemer (the fan-made multi-role gunship, before it got nerfed) - I realise now that I've always been buying ships with what I thought was a capable co-pilot-gunner role - But after seeing your correct conclusion about front-hemisphere weaponry, unless CIG make changes to how weaponry delegation works, I might have burnt myself on my choice of ships...
Turreted fighters are literally the meta. And as the flight model slows they are only going to get better. There's nothing wrong with your choice of ship.
I've only tried head tracking with FOIP, and there's a significant delay in it. I don't have TOBII or Track IR, and I know lots of other players don't either. It's a solution, yes, but not one universally afforded to all :\
@@birthdaytruck Well Headtracking isn't needed - the Gimbal can be slaved to mouse free look. I've had that for the Vultures Salvaging Beams, but .18.1 reset a setting which i'm unable to find again.
I use TrackIR. It is an advantage, but turrets are still a failure. The reason being that once an enemy leaves over that tiny horizon (the ship's hull), we also lose visibility. We can't pick up and track visually in time. A real horizon that is miles away isn't a problem since the approach and attack doesn't last only a few seconds. If and only if the turret gunner knew where the enemy is even when not able to shoot at the enemy would turrets be fixed. The alternative is to give turrets far more range of motion, but then that's really because we could then see the enemy. Perhaps a bigger reason why we need more visibility is that the pilot of the ship we operate a turret from also randomly puts the enemy in and out of angle for firing on them. The time when we can hit is so brief it isn't fun. If we could see where the enemy is, and track them as they go into and out of angle, then even the short time at a valid angle would still be fun. The whole reply thread is losing part of its original meaning. It's about whether it is fun to gun a turret. It isn't. CIG made a mistake that we'd need to artificially limit those angles so a turret wouldn't be "too powerful". Instead they broke the effectiveness and fun. Adding visibility or improving range of motion would fix the FUN. Some will say it is "already fun". Well, yes, but it is so far less fun than piloting. It's more fun and effective to have two fighters with one crew member each than it is to have one fighter with two crew members. Far more fun and far more effective to leave out the gunner and just fly separate ships. I'd like to see the gunner fun go up enough that people WANT to fly the gun seat.
@@starcitizenhumor1260 The turret gunner interface really needs free look with the turret AI doing what it can to get a firing solution at where you're looking.
@@starcitizenhumor1260 A solution to visibility without compromising design would be VR helmets like they're designing for next generation jet's. They can link to cameras on the outside essentially letting the wearer look through the aircraft. This would allow a gunner to aim into blind spots without locking into a gun camera that greatly restricts their field of view making it hard to track targets.
great video, but I would like to point out that the majority of fights i've been in are not 1v1, and having a turret that can shoot behind or above the ship has come in useful in many situations with smaller ships buzzing past while the pilot is focused on a ship he can rotate fast enough to hit. in the smaller ships such as the hornet, i would definitely like to see a turret that can cover more of the pilots view, if not more than the pilots view. however i think on ships warden sized and larger, having independent ball style turrets can be pretty useful, and the better designed ships have a turret that can cover enough of the pilots vision to be effective against the larger targets that you'd both want to be focused on at the same time anyways.
I agree, turrets on a smaller craft are there to protect the vulnerable areas of the ship while the pilot fixes on his own seperate target. Take the gladiator for example, a light torpedo bomber with 2 fixed forward and a single twin gun turret on top. While the Gladiator is lining up for a torpedo run, turret protects the top and rear of the fighter while it has to maintain a relatively straight line. Once done and if it is engaged in a dogfight. The turret still works to protect the fighter as smaller more manoeuvrable craft try to get around and behind it to avoid its pilot controlled guns. Relying on the turret itself to take out another ship is in my mind, a useless exercise. pilot and gunner should be working in tandem to control the fight and keep a line of fire on the enemy at all times
I think that player skill does factor into this. A lot of people don't know how to optimally use HFs. At 10:29 the Hurricane doesn't lose his solution because of poor design he loses it because he doesn't know how to roll. Another example is the vanguard. Good point about the seats. However, the Vanny rn is a strange case it's often varied in preferred config and adding another pilot to use the gimbal isn't a bad idea at all. Although I turn it on, since gimbals basically work like auto aim it just makes you more accurate anyway.
The hurricane the hurricane IS badly designed though.. it's a ww2 fighter bomber designed for 2dimensional operation first &foremost which will always limit it in 3 dimensional spacial warfare
Very interesting and well thought out video, completely agree that they should add a helmet mounted targeting display to operate independent of remote camera for gunners and 2nd seaters.
The only problem I see in this explanation is the assumption that fighter combat will always be one on one duels as opposed to mass fighter skirmishes, where an additional weapon system such as a turret could be used to assist in the overall engagement rather than just the individual fight of its craft. This would be especially important if said turret were equipped with larger guns to be used against say corvettes or gunships.
Yeah but the problem with your assumption is that you assume your copilot would be able to find effective firing solution to either engage other threat or significantly contribute to the battle despite not having the ability to significantly orient itself to create those solution. When you start talking about multiple ship vs multiple ship, you also need to start talking about tactic and formation. And it wouldn't surprise me the for organised group having a fighter focusing on single task at hand would be more effective than having a fighter trying to do two things at once. If another threat show up on another hemisphere it is probably better than another ship engage it instead of a turret. And if you are outnumbered, well you probably either picked a fight you shouldn't have or got outmaneuvered.
@@benjaminparent4115 Given that the craft we're discussing are turreted fighters, I would think that the fact they have an entire dome of an arc of fire should allow any competent player to at least make an attempt on effectively firing on or at least harassing primary, secondary or tertiary targets. Furthermore we're also discussing the use of these craft in verse in general, but realistically when in the hands of players, notions such as tactics and formation typically tend to fall flat other than as an escort flight. Also, whilst you are correct that having 1 to 1 fighter parity would make the use of turrets semi redundant in such an engagement, historically such an assumption doesn't tend to pan out well, and after all it's the fights you don't want you should be most prepared for, not the fights you do.
@@archaean2331 problem with your comment is that you forget any competent player would just get a second one seated fighter instead of wasting their time in a turret. which is exactly how things play out.
@@the_babbleboom which is why when we are eventually able to hire npc crews that point will mostly become a non-issue, to say nothing of npc navy and pirate elements in verse. There is also the fact that as you may have noticed, there are a not insignificant number of various multi crewed ships in game.... crewed by multiple players. So your point really only makes a difference when discussing lone wolf style players, as opposed to actual team players.
In regards to the bed situation that kind of bed is also meant to function as an escape pod on these smaller ships. That is why they have one bed per crew instead of hotbunking. When and how exactly that will be implemented is still to be seen
That and from a purely lore perspective there would be downtime when doing things like long quantum jumps where automated systems can do the job and there may be a few hours before any action is required, so it would benefit both crew getting their heads down. Although I do agree it should be a three crewed ship.
Yawn 🥱...another ignorant comment. If you knew about what they're working on then you'd know that there's an order of things they're working on before that happens. Also, first things first...you act like they're unaware that old ships need a rework...except...they ARE aware and have stated this fact many times. Anyways, for one they are working on resource management. What's this? Well, think of the skin and shell of a ship as a living being...resource management essentially is putting in the veins, vital connections, and organs into the ship (completely physicalised components, component connections/wires, life support, internal ship atmosphere/gaseous environment, temperature control, etc). This is the first step towards engineering and multi-crew gameplay where people will have more to do then manning a turret, plus...the whole deal about resource management is to not only make things realistic and more immersive, but also make ships FEEL better and be more survivable. Connecting off of that is physicalised damage, the star of the show... eventually, each millimeter by millimeter piece of a ship will have their own damage values based on the material it's made of and will need to be chipped away with projectiles to then damage/disable a component or component connection to then disable the ship. No more ticking down of a general HP pool and then boom...no, ships will actually be much more survivable and have a LOT of longevity, more so the bigger and/or the more armored hull it has. Anyways, resource management is the main thing holding back reworks, but once that's done and they start implementing physicalised damage after they can then start with those reworks. Like I said before, there's an order to things that actually makes sense, there's no point doing a rework for a ship and then having to do another rework again...
@@tevarinvagabond1192 thanks for the essay, dude, as for that block by block damage model, that functionality is already present in indie games like Highfleet, Scrap Mechanic, Space Engineers, and Terratech, where if you punch through the armor of one of those block-based creations or techs or cars or giant rusty shitcans or whatever you call them, all that's left between bullets and essential subsystems is the hull plating equivalent of tissue paper. I'd like to call this the Crustacean Damage Model. I'd really like to see such a system implemented in Star Citizen once it becomes more stable (if the devs even bother).
@@engineer84-w8x Except, for the exception of Space Engineers, those are small games that don't have to render much and not as complex as what Star Citizen is doing...also, come on "if the devs bother with it"? They're literally working on it right now, it's part of resource management. Tired of toxic, negative people like you that don't even keep up with development of the game yet act like you know what you're talking about
I've gotten a bit jaded with all of the Star Citizen content floating around these days, so when I saw the title of this video, I assumed it would be some typical complaining about the state of heavy vs. light fighters. I'm really glad I clicked through though, because this was incredibly interesting material and super thorough, and you make some fantastic points I never even considered!
I don't see seating being an issue as long as they add the technology that negates it. Even in current times they are developing VR helmets for pilots allowing them to essentially "see through" the aircraft and have full 360 vision. There's no reason they can't implement that into SC, allowing them to design crew position's around aesthetics without compromising practicality.
As a modern attack helicopter pilot with a fair amount of time played in SC, all I can say is: you are dead on with your analysis. The fact that many SC ships were designed for an entirely different "atmospheric" style of combat has always been completely baffling to me. Keep up the insightful commentary, it's quality stuff.
Do tell more: I'm not a helicopter pilot. I also don't assume helicopters engage in gun to gun fights, I assume they engage with missile armaments first. But if they do train, I'd like to think they train for similar front-to-front engagements.
@@birthdaytruck In fairness, the vast majority of (western) countries train attack helicopter pilots for air-to-ground engagements. Air-to-air is an afterthought, if it's even addressed at all, and that doctrine is exclusively focused on usage of missiles, either Stinger or Hellfire-L. Most of us spend plenty of free time thinking and debating the subject for amusement, though. And as you've guessed, the tactics revolve around using maneuverability in 6dof to gain and maintain favorable gun angles in strafing fights. For a helicopter the best place to be is above your opponent, as no one is able to fire up through their own rotor system and current missiles don't have the off-boresight performance for such shots either. All of this is best done while keeping your nose pointed towards the enemy as much as possible, as the traditional fast-jet concepts of the "merge" and energy-management are not applicable in the same ways to rotorcraft.
@@kirinyardberry1324 Not that I am personally aware of, no. Although the Iran-Iraq war of the 80's was poorly covered in the Western world and featured some absolutely insane military stunts, so there could very well have been some wild helicopter dogfighting that went down there. If such a thing ever did happen, my money is that it went down during that conflict.
@@kirinyardberry1324The Iran-Iraq war has the only credited air to air kills between helicopters. No verified details of the specific engagements are available in English, and I have no idea if they exist in Arabic.
I'm glad to see someone tackle this! I've also always anticipated a conflict between Star Citizen's multi-crew focused game design and Star Citizen players themselves. No one wants to cough to SC levels of money in order to crew their friends' ships; everyone is going to want to pilot their own. We'll see how that tension gets resolved - but making "non-pilot" roles more viable is absolutely where they need to start.
I think there are enough people who want to crew friends ships, there just needs to be engaging gameplay for them rather than just sitting there for a couple of minutes of struggling to get the turret on target. Once there are more things to do in terms of maintenance and axillary controls, and if they improve turret gameplay, I don't think people will struggle to find players as crew. If not, there is always the option of AI gunners.
I agree whole heartedly, its why more often than not a group will opt to take out 2 fighters vs just a fighter and a manned turret ship, its just better in game to have more pilots than a gunner who will sometimes contribute to combat under ideal circumstances, but once you spend a lot of time in a turret you'll see that the pilot doesnt have the same perspective you the gunner has, and your arcs of fire like video mentioned will more often not overlap, because of the design of the turret.
The Corsair would also be perfect for that copilot weapons transfer - they sit up front, below the pilot, surrounded by four gimbaled or fixed guns with decent travel range. I assume this sort of weapon or flight control transfer will be possible in the future. Can't wait :)
Would be nice if you could lower the displays in the rear seat to get a better view forwards though. or at least add some extra displays on the ceiling so you aren't losing so many displays by taking the rear seat as pilot instead of the front one.
I haven't played star citizen, but as a fan of military equipment and sci-fi, I agree with everything you just said. Being able to move without facing the direction of travel really makes starfighter combat more similar to helicopters than anything else. In addition to fighters based on the attack helicopter model you've given, I'd also add the concept of a fighter based on the "scout helicopter" model. Small, quick, highly maneuverable, 1 pilot (more or less 1 pilot controlling it) with mainly forward facing weapons. It relies on maneuverability and its small silhouette to stay alive. Something like a modern MH-6 little bird helicopter or Gazelle
Worth noting that helicopters aren't designed to dogfight. They have chin mounted guns because they're designed for use against ground targets. There is certainly merit to what he said in the video, but there is also an argument to be made for the kind of turrets we have currently, especially if we end up with things like attack drones in game. As for your fighter concept we have plenty in game already, like the arrow and mustang, or going even smaller M50 and new Fury, even the Pisces which also has the littlebirds ability to carry some troops or cargo in the back.
The Redeemer is my fave ship for this reason, the remote chin gun and 2 manned turrets top and bottom make the Redeemer the best ship in the game for what it is, a gunship, in my opinion
If the Redeemer, or the Valkyrie, had a co-pilot in charge of the chin guns, I'd be more interested. But you're right, the Redeemer is the closest thing to a space HI-24. It's a shame I find it so ugly :(
The harsh reality of SC's current flight model and weapon balance sadly don't support the redeemer. The size five weapons have projectiles that move at half the speed of weapons size 4 and below. This combined with the redeemers slow nature renders it completely combat ineffective vs fighters. They will corkscrew at 1k away and slowly eat you while being completely immune to return fire. You really don't bring a redeemer to any sort of skilled combat.
@@birthdaytruck The Redeemer actually has a seated station for each remote turret. The front turret can already be taken from the pilot by its dedicated station, last I checked. This is by design. I completely understand that you don't like it, as I can't stand the look of the Cutlass but really like the Redeemer. I was hoping to see you evaluate it in the video though. I think you would have something interesting to say about it.
@@dddj158 well it is an escort gunship not really a lone fighter supposed to be on battle lines with hammerheads and polaris and this is where it really shines being almost as tanky as hammer head but a much smaller target. Yes fighters will be lighting the ship up but this allows time for larger ships to react and position where they get shots or you get shots cause they cabt avoid both targets coming at them completely. I do have allot of gripes about sc combat but i personally didnt get the game for the combat even though i love warthunder and dcs. How limiting they make everything and how much they keep slowing things down just shows this game probably will not have these battles they invision and the fact combat is going to get even slower instead of just making the weapons and missles better and the ships more durable they want to make it where your face to face to slow to dodge anything so it becomes a dps/durability ratio war and well these huge ass ships the size of a ship of the sea getting completely demolished in 15 seconds by a light aircraft shows that they only care about that starwars xwing style of gameplay currently like never in any reality should an arrow be able to so easily take down a reclaimer wich is a literal brick of armor and shields. Those rounds shouldnt damage anything but unarmored vital areas. But we will see whenever theu come out with armor and ballistic calculations. But i have a feeling nothing much will change tbh its going to be more the same but maybe add 5 seconds of kill time
@@makoshark40 Nearly every single pvp pilot (youtubers included) is excited for the new flight model because the current one has large glaring issues. There is still lots of room for evasive flying at speeds below 1300m/s. Time to kill is already very high between most fighters. Disengagements are extremely easy to pull off due to the extreme top speeds and high acceleration values paired with shields coming up quick. It's not going to be a dps race, ships will still be plenty agile. The previous flight model had lower speeds and there was still lots of nuance.
So technically the scorpius antares (Which is the scorpius, but has no turret and the copilot instead has control over a emp and interdiction tech) makes sense, because the copilot is only there to use electronic weapon systems and not to shoot at the enemy (even though the visibility is still shitty and needs to be improved)
I wonder if it’s a valid tactic to purposely try to get on the defence, that way the turret can shoot the target, and then try to make them overshoot so that the pilot can finish them off. Loved the video - informative and entertaining!
I think these are some good points, but they are only thinking about 1 on 1 engagements, as if you have a turret capable of rotating to a ship that the pilot is not engaged with then you be able to fight off more than 1 fighter.
also weaponry designed to exploit blind spots such as drones and possibly smart missiles, both of which may end up in game and are being developed in real life.
I *expected* another rant about how a turret operator is almost always less valuable then just bringing another ship in Star Citizen. What I got was a detailed look at why SC turrets just don't work period that just implies that in the current state it is just better to bring another ship. Cheers. I hope CIG watches this. The meta-problem I see with this is that everyone will just want to slave that front turret to the pilot anyway like the hornet example the redeemer rather than having that huge frontal cone that you advocate for. That would mean that, on paper, adding a gunner to control a turret the pilot already has access to doesn't increase on-paper DPS, even if actual applied damage goes up dramatically. SC has a lot of work to do to figure out multicrew. Turrets and missiles have been available the longest, and turrets are getting better, but they ain't ready yet. Meaner missiles and better turrets will help kill the light fighter meta, but I expect that instead CIG will take an easier route and just make medium ships and larger too tanky to be threatened by any light fighters.
I've always felt something didn't add up to fighters in SC, too many feels like planes in space, and i agree completely with you. Aestetic was always on point, functionality not so much
Beautifully explained. I always felt like the fighters looked cool in the hanger, but didn't feel right in the air/space. This felt like a lightbulb going off in my head. Well done!
Wow I really wish they would implement some of these changes. It’s sad though because I don’t think they want to rework all these ships to that degree.
To be fair, it may very well change if they add drones and things like AR so gunners can "look through" the ship to track targets. That would both solve the issue of visibility and create a reason to have turrets that can cover the rear.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this video. i think CIG/Chris Roberts is so focussed on "World War II dogfighting in space" that they designed too much to the look and feel of aircraft of those times than realize why those were designed the way they were and why they won't work in a space, non-newtonian setting.
False...why are so many of you so ignorant of what CIG plans and has already said? For one, no one said that ship combat was going to be fully realistic...if we had realistic space combat then we'd have boring battles where you wouldn't see the enemy and would just be firing missiles into the black and waiting for radar pings to avoid enemy missiles yourself. That may be realistic, but for a game that's a big no no on the "fun" front, especially when this isn't supposed to be a space sim anyway. Secondly, you seem to be ignorant of some things they're adding: Master Modes, resource management, and physicalised damage. MM is basically heavily reducing the combat speeds to where the whole WWII combat scheme actually ends up working. Resource management makes the internals of ships physical and realistic, meaning there's skill involved in taking down a ship's components and component connections. Then you have physicalised damage, which makes each millimeter by millimeter part of a ship have its own damage values based on the material it's made of and needs to be chipped away with projectiles in order to punch through to damage a component. No more general HP bar and boom...no, instead you'll have to punch through the hull to damage components or component connections to then disable a ship. These things will not only make the ship experience so much better, but also make sense for how they've done things. Instead of battles lasting five seconds, fights will last for a very long time and ALL ships will have their strengths and weaknesses and there won't be a meta (small ships, especially light fighters, will be glass cannons and not be able to take as much damage in general due to smaller hulls, BUT they'll generally be faster and more nimble whereas larger ships could get shot like Swiss cheese and keep on moving but in general be slower), and out of combat it just makes things more survivable as well...crashing into something (depending on the speed, of course) could mean merely denting or crumpling up a part of the ship instead of exploding and dying. Anyways, do your research before making dumb comments
@@tevarinvagabond1192 You literaly provided no argument against his comment. Nothing of what you said relates to the in-game flight model physics simulation, wether fights will be long or short is irrelevant and secondary to the flight model which is being discussed. Physicalised damage, MM and resource managament won't change the basic behaviour of ships in terms of each other. Watch the video before writing dumb comments.
@@aleksanderolbrych9157 He wasn't really talking about things as in-depth as all of that, lmao. Also, even if he was it's a moot point...this isn't a space sim, we don't need realism we just need enough realistic things to give immersion. Combat is more fun if it's in your face, which is why they chose the WWII style mechanics. Slowing things down works better for that as it gets rid of "jousting" and encourages sticking to close formations. Besides, the game isn't about combat... eventually less then 25% of the game will be about combat as it's meant to be a life simulator set in a sci-fi galaxy...not a space sim, not a flight sim...a life sim. Chris Roberts used those exact words in 2014, and he said it again last year's CitizenCon, so this isn't some arcane, old ideas here.
@@tevarinvagabond1192 You’re completely missing the point. Nobody is saying that Star Citizen shouldn’t be unrealistic or arguing about the game’s vision. The topic of discussion (which you completely missed multiple times by now) is wether CIG can actually implement their WW2-style combat *at all* given how the flight physics and mechanics are currently implemented without drastically changing the flight model. Long story short the argument is that you *can’t* have Newtonian physics and WW2 style combat as they are mutually exclusive (if you don’t understand why watch the video you are commenting).
That's the ship I wanted to test out for this video, but could not get access to. Honestly - if they add HMTD, this ship probably nails the formula I'm advocating.
I agree with what is said in this video. However, my hopes are that the new master modes and flight changes in atmosphere will bring back some of the functionality of the top mounted turrets. Some of the more aerodynamic ships might not be able to turn and burn for a joust style fight without losing speed to atmosphere. Master modes and atmosphere probably wont change the orbiting dogfights very much, though. And I agree that the vanguard turret blocks way to much of what the pilot can attack. More visibility for co-pilots / turret operators is much needed in current star citizen.
I realized master modes is "soon" while editing this video. And to be fair, top mounted turrets in atmospheric operations - where the ship's belly is towards the ground and enemy approaches are likely to come from above - are more useful. I cut out a section acknowledging that missile boats - the gladiator, vanguard harbinger, retaliator, etc - actually benefit from top mounted turrets because they will probably have to hold radar locks or operate more often in atmospheric air to ground missions. Those make sense. But for, specifically, space superiority fighters, it still doesn't. I'm also not sure how willing players will be to take a dogfight into atmo. I imagine most would prefer dogfights in open space: the SC equivalent of super smash brothers, final destination, no items, no platforms.
Master Modes doesn't fix any of the issues brought up in this video. All it does is remove "boom and zoom" tactics by making guns and shields inoperable (without any logical reason for this). It's basically CIG saying "we don't like that you can do this, so the hand of God will stop you".
While I agree with you on many of your points, all your examples appear to show a one V one dogfight scenario, or at the most 2-3 opponents per side. I've partaken in many large scale battles. (Most of these fights take up an entire server with a combined total sometimes up to 100 players) When you have 20-30 fighters on each side I can tell you through personal experience that the front hemisphere-fighting is not always the case. In large engagements with 20-30 enemy fighters buzzing around your ship, as the turret gunner you are firing behind you, above you, off to the side, etc... at least the same amount you are firing forward. At this point in the development, IMHO the Hurricane is the best two-man heavy fighter. A mix of light fighters, like the Gladius, and heavy fighters, like the Hurricane, are very good compliment to each other along with one or two larger gun ships, like a Hammerhead, Redeemer, and Andromeda. But in my opinion, you focus way to much on the chin turret as a function of the the secondary crewman / gunner. I completely agree that relocating many of the dorsal turrets on heavy fighters and gun ships (Like the Freelancer MIS... all Freelancers have HORRIBLE turret locations) For medium and heavy two-man fighters, moving a dorsal turret closer to the front, or redesigning the hull or the turret itself so I can have a better angle of depression would be a better solution than changing everything to chin turrets. As long as a top turret can target something 100-200 meters in front of the pilot would be more than enough in most dog fights. Plus if a turret can target something that close, the line of sight will allow you to target something in the lower half between 15 and 20 degrees. But with a dorsal turret that can target an enemy in front, you have the added benefit of firing throughout the entire upper hemisphere of the ship. Something a chin turret can never do. If you take your example with the cross section of a modern attack helicopter, and you replace the rotor hub with a remote dorsal turret, you have the similar effect. For medium and Heavy 2-seat fighters, I do agree that most of the time a simple remote turret can work just as well, if not better, than a manned turret. Less room is needed in the turret itself, easier to place the turret mount anywhere it is needed, less complicated engineering and machinery (Like sliding/telescoping seats from the ground to the top turret). Anyway, I agree with the all your points on energy fighting vs Newtonian fighting. I agree that ALL single seat light fighters are always jousting or orbiting duels. I just disagree with your assumption that all dog fighting in heavy two-man fighters happens from the front hemisphere. After being involved in dozens of major fights as part of the Star Citizen community, I can tell you that is not always the case. Everything else in your video is spot on.
Feel like you've missed a large section for this which is multiple ships in one fight. The turret isn't just to support thr pilots dogfight. Its also to deal with anyone getting your weakside. If you're only considering one ship vs one ship then you're missing a large part of the conversation
For a larger slower vehicle I could see this case being made but I don’t think it applies as well to the medium fighter model being discussed here. Maneuvering is still to quick to get solid shots off to dissuade engagement from other ships and if the pilot were to slow to allow the gunner to get shots off easier they’d just be leaving themselves more open. Would rather all guns focused on current target
@@_zkv_5503 sure the preference is all guns focused on a target but it can also be a terrible choice in multiship situations. What's suggested in this video would completely limit it to guns forward which is essentially making the turret just extra pilot guns. And that is going to lose against more maneuverable ships everytime.
I've basically just written an essay supporting this and other counter points to this video in the comments lmao good to see someone understanding the importance of defence in larger, slower ships.
Yeah I've been shaking my head to this entire video. The circle strafing is only guns forward when you have two ships of relatively equal agility, and there is nothing preventing the turret gunner for shooting the target if the pilot is rolling to maintain the target for them. A good Arrow pilot will be looking to manage their energy, close distance in a rate fight and get behind a heavy fighter like a Vanguard. In that scenario the Vanguard pilot can only break out of the rate fight and extend the circle because he will never get guns back on otherwise. The turret gunner is the only thing that can threaten that Arrow, that's what its their for. It's also good in a joust if the pilot is turning and leading the target that is going to over shoot him, so you can catch them when the stall their energy, the turret can put fire on the target while the nose is turned away. None of this is covered.
Very solid points made, i agree with everything said in this video. The only thing id like to add is a scenario in which a top mounted 360° turret actually makes a lot of sense. And that is if you are faced with a ship that is more agile than your own one. Sure the point of a superiority fighter is to be the most agile thing in the room so the statement holds true for those. But if im in a cutlass and need to defend myself against something more agile that turret comes in really handy. Plus i personally like the added challenge of taking all turrets on your own ship into consideration and basically never letting the bottom of the ship face the enemy
The turrets do help in this instance, yes, but I'm also arguing that they're not as effective as they should be. Lots of the turrets are top mounted but exhibit very low gun depression -- there are still plenty of angles light fights can exploit. If we're keeping top mounted turrets, they need greater depression and windshield visibility. In atmosphere, looking up is appropriate. In Space, you really need as clear of a "bubble" canopy as you can get.
@@birthdaytruck for the full bubble youd need 2 turrets in most cases, and to maximize the angles on a single turret it would have to stick out quite a bit, i think in this case its aesthetics over functionality for the designers at CIG. And since the Roll axis is typically the fastest axis a skilled player may manage to keep the enemy in the turrets hemisphere even if it is not optimal. Maybe its also a game balancing thing so that the attacking player is rewarded for staying out of turret hemispheres wich is actually quite difficult in PVP. And if you are up against a light fighter maybe that just means its time to retreat and jump away since imo its their purpose to outmatch slower ships in 1v1s Fully agree on the visibility thing tho like god damn and dont even get me started on how the freelancer turret only pitches up by like 45° thats just so dumb in the context of space combat
As someone who has thousands of hours in helo's in Arma...you've kinda connected a thread of what bothered me about SC's turret design and turret placement. Funnily enough the game has a ship with the sort of correct design choices you are talking about, but it was technically not designed by CIG and it's not a two-seater and sadly it didn't inspire CIG to follow it's design choices. The Redeemer is such a ship. It's got a front mounted chin turret (that's is in pilot control when he doesn't have someone operating it). It still suffers a bit from the kinda of turret placement you talked about in that it has two very big manned turrets at the top and bottom and another remote at the rear. But since it's not an agile two-seat fighter that's not a big problem. The two manned turrets are more ideal to be outfitted with high damage low-rate of fire capital killer omnisky's and allow a large volume of fire at all angles while still allowing the highest volume of fire in the front if all turrets are operated. When it comes to slower less agile ships, some conventional dogfighting tactics still make sense. A less agile ship will still take some time to turn it's front around if it's being attacked from the rear. Therefore if you're in a fighter it still makes sense to exploit real and perceived weak spots of coverage of large ships. Often this would be the rear and the rear-bottom. As it currently stands people don't expect the redeemer which does turn slowly to have all turrets be manned. So the amount of times the conventional thinking of attacking it from the rear only to get blasted by the rear turret has gotten fighters killed when I ran a session in the redeemer recently has been many. The redeemer was built by backers in that competition they had many years ago, I just wish CIG had taken some more inspiration from it in other Aegis ships.
This! Thank you. I have been struggling with the idea of 2-seater craft in this game. My friend and I (upon restarting the game after a wipe) enjoy travelling around in my Origi85X. He takes control of the under-turret and has reasonable firing arcs. The same cannot be said once the upgrade to larger ships occurs. This video places it into much greater perspective for me.
I agree with all your arguments, especially on turret placement, allowing more options for gun control transfer to copilot, and copilot HMTD support. But atmospheric flight with a conventionnal flight model is intended when flying planetside ; with aerodynamic simulation, staling and everything it entices. And many of the spacecrafts you reviewed are actually also aircrafts, especially the Vanguard series, its variants having the following designated roles : Fighter-bomber for the Harbinger, squad transport and fire support for the Hoplite, and electronic warfare support for the Sentinel ; each operating in atmospere and/or in non-dogfight combat situations.
One of the best analysis I've came across on the topic. Understandable, well-presented, constructive, and non-ranty. Kudos to the author! (Also, I'm crying a bit on the inside, Van was the ship I pledged with, but how CIG treated it afterwards made me to melt and swap it for Eclipse. I still root for Van, but I agree, the turret gunner's job is just ..not ..fun. And it could use a 3rd crewmember, being a long-range ship with loitering capability. Would make a great hunter-seeker, but as of now... not).
Boom and zoom kind of works in reverse, I was dogfighting an AI bounty that I think was in a M-50 while I was in a cutlass. He couldn't really hurt my shields significantly and I couldn't keep him in the crosshairs for more than one or two shots to land, so neither of us was doing lasting damage. Then I thought to climb and take thr fight out of atmosphere where engines matter more than aerodynamics. The Cutlass became much faster and more maneuverable without atmosphere in the way and I was able keep him in the crosshairs for a devastating barrage from all barrels which took care of them in two passes. This was the most "sci-fi" experience I ever had in Star Citizen.
I've been using manual gimbals for awhile and I feel like it would need aim assist similar to that of turrets for a second person to be able to use effectively. With the pitching/rolling and strafing of your ship the aim point can rapidly shift. Even as a solo player where I can predict the movement based on the inputs I'm giving it can be very hard keeping the crosshair on the pip. One interesting thing with some ships, most notably the P-72, is that it can fire practically 180 degrees sideways. It's possible to get your engine perpendicular to the target. This allows you to circle around them much faster. Other ships with a pilot controlled turret can have similar results like the hornet series with the double turret configuration. Something I wanted to add was something I noticed when using the Scorpius. The top turret aim assist firing arc was similar to that of the pilot's gimbal arc. I used a desktop and laptop to crew both positions and I didn't even need to move the turret. I just locked on the target and maneuvered in such a way to keep the pip within the gimbal zone of the pilot and the turret could engage at the same time.
Phenomenal and well thought out. However one thing I think , is that if these fighters are engaged in full battles with tons of wing-men and bogies flying around, it would make sense for some of these upper/lower/ rear facing turrets to exist as they are so that the copilot can fend off a second or third bogie while the pilot aggressively engages with their primary target or focus. in addition, they allow the fighters to apply supporting fire against weak points and hard points of larger capitol/sub capitol size ships while keeping their full maneuverability and strengths. As Star Citizen is, these designs don't quite fit, that is true, but they make sense to a certain extent from an in-universe design view if you consider these extra factors, in my opinion.
Some interesting points, giving my gimbaled guns to a copilot would be nice but i do have some issue. 1. You point out some well known issues with he current flight model. In space lots of front facing fighting, but thats not the case in atmo. In daymar youll see a lot more intersting turn fights akin to irl and in microtech its extremely different than space fights many are used to, the turret of the cane is insanely powerful in both places. 2. You miss out on the most important maneuver in sc, the merge. In an environment where someone can be casually flying as fast as mach 4, merging onto fast target, slow targets, distracted targets is very important. And requires taking your nose guns way off target. The hurricane turret provides a fantastic chance for the pilot to get a perfect merge while the gunner can shred them from each of the merging angles. 3.none of this matters in a year. The next flight model is designed to be a lot closer to irl dogfighting, and be much more about positional combat than aim duels... so sooner than later this wont be a problem.
To your 3rd point - this still will be an issue. The master modules, (the proposed flight model changes as I understand it) largely pertains to atmospheric combat. I imagine that atmospheric combat will more likely mimic conventional dogfights. But these ships can leave orbit fairly easily, and I don't imagine pilots will continue to fight in atmosphere if they don't have to: newtonian flight models in open space offer far more manueverability options than remaining in-atmo. Ships will vary so drastically in atmo that not every ship/pilot will prefer atmospheric operations, either. An arrow might, yes, but larger heavy two-seater fighters will probably want to drag fights into open space. And in open space, these points matter more. You're probably right about the merges - but I also want to stress how wide-ranging chin mounted gimbals can be. It's not hard to imagine 270 horizontal degrees of coverage with + or _ 20 degrees of elevation: I still think that's more important. Some two seater fighters benefit from a top mounted turret, yes, but CIG seems intent in *only* producing two seater fighters with a top mounted turret. I still think that a chin mount, HMTD controls, and a tandem seating arrangement is more useful to two-seater dogfighters. The hurricane, regardless of it's king PVP position, needs better turret depression.
@@birthdaytruck In the next Flight model, atmo or space is irrelevant. Its a rework of the entire flight model, not just select parts. Combat Speeds will be limited to 300ish Regardless of atmo or space. Thats why good pvp orgs spend so much time training pilots at low altitude's on Daymar. Its as close as we can get to that Flight model, turn fights, Position combat, more difficult disengages ect. Again the Flight model Changes are NOT Control Surfaces, That is a long way off. That said I cant imagine a future where The cane isnt the deadliest fighter in atmo. It has a better thrust ratio than any light, letting it outrun even arrows in atmo, Plus since position combat is that much more important when you fly in soup, A turret that can get into a circle strafe and rain death, Will always be some degree of absurd. Sure there is some Merit to a chin mounted turret with that degree of Aim, But you miss 2 huge problems with it. 1. Chin mounted turrets dont cover the most important firing angle for gunners, About 20-30 degrees above the ship. when you do merge or get a positional Fight onto a target you want to Be able to Watch their movements, and use your Up thrusters to Maintain Circle Strafes, This keeps your target in a deadly low relative speed to you, while allowing you to prenose into chasing when they inevitable run after losing shields in 2 seconds. I cant emphasis Enough the Power of the Hurricane. I've soldem lost a fight in it with trained gunners ( and I almost exclusively fly 6v6+ squadron fights.) Its kind of a no brainer its nigh un-killable (in the right hands) agianst solo light fighter. 2. Youll want to cover the rear. Having 4 panthers capable of covering my own tail and peeling for me is a godsend in hectic fights. Plus it helps with mergering on targets I cant not Emphasis to you enough, Merging is the most important skill for a pilot. If you cant merge onto teammates and primary targets in a Squadron fight, I can literally Ignore you completely. Any team mate of mine that cant merge, may as well not be there. And the Hurricane Turret is in the optimal arc to cover that (the golden zone for the hurricane is a doughnut about 30 degrees wide in a 360 circle.) Turret depressing is fine. Because of the aim assist of The turret its capable of hitting even lower below the nose than Fixed guns. Ofc once the shitty worthless aim assist is gone we will see.
This is a more detailed explanation of a complaint I’ve heard over the years: Roberts is obsessed with WWII bomber designs that don’t make much sense in space. Personally, I’ve always thought it weird that a dedicated AI core isn’t controlling the weapons system.
I think one possible 2 seat fighter design would be designed with a sort of strafe/roll dodge doctrine in mind, shaped similar to other scifi ships like the droid trifighter from Star Wars, covered in positional thrusters, and with the Pilot and CoPilot "upside-down" compared to each other.
100% agree with everything you've said, so many turrets in strange places. The Freelancer/F-L-MAX for example, despite not being dedicated to combat, still has a turret on the polar opposite of its chin, buried on top of its tail tip... The gunner can't even get an angle on anything unless the target's above you... And the turrets bulky internals massively impact/obstruct the Freelancers/F-L-MAXs primary purpose, cargo space. xD
Yeah, they could really do with making that turret a remote one. As a manned turret it either blocks access for cargo or get's blocked by the cargo. As for a rear turret, it kind of makes sense on larger ships like that as a fighter will easily be able to keep out of the frontal arc of fire, especially if we end up getting attack drones that you can order to attack from particular angles.
Excellent break down. I've wanted to explain exactly this phenomena for a long time but didn't really know what language to effectively use to describe the nuances presented here. Your visual aids and how you used them were perfect. Awesome video. On another note, I think CIG is attempting to think about this but I don't know if even they have necessarily broken it down this well to address how they want their flight models (2) to function. They seem to instinctually know that slowing ships down will help with this, but the dynamics of energy transfer from one direction to another is going to be tricky in space if they are attempting to make dogfighting feel like combat in the WW2/Korean War Era which I believe is what they communicated as their goal. This will probably be easier to achieve within their atmo flight model, but we will see. I hope someone on their dev team sees this video, it might help them better use language and theory to break it all down and communicate it.
This is a very well thought out video, but with one aspect that was missed with heavy fighters is the ships ability to use veto thrusters to maneuver in combat instead of strafing sided to side, this would help keep the target in the gunner’s firing arc for longer times, though it does create more drag in atmosphere, and exposes more of your ship to enemy fire
I pretty much agree with all you said, especially with them having better frontal coverage, and with HMT as an option (remote control would still be useful for blind spot coverage, or maybe the use of VR to "see through" the aircraft like they're starting to add in next generation jet's?) but maybe drones drones could justify them further down the line? In theory they would use unmatchable maneuverability due to their size and automation to sit in a ships blind spot and attack weaker shields and components whilst avoiding return fire, to stop a ship from putting all it's power into their forward shields. In this case you'd want some form of point defense system or turret covering at angles to the top or bottom and rear that you could use to fend them off whilst the pilot maintains fire on the primary ship they're fighting, rolling the craft to allow the turret any angle of fire without compromising the frontal targeting. A chin turret would create a blind spot at the crafts rear that a drone could sit in, forcing the pilot to break contact with the primary target to deal with the drone or drain power to the rear shield. Of course drones aren't in the game, and they may never be that capable, but just though it was worth consideration.
Really great video This is the kind of deeper look content SC needs! -CIG has *said* they want to limit jousting and front hemisphere fighting styles which could mean the conventional design will *someday* fit with the game. -depending on the speed and weightiness of the ship determines whether I (pilot) fly for my turret Gunner to support me or if I fly it to support my turret Gunner. For example: --Redeemer pilot should fly FOR the gunners. --Scorpius pilot should fly FOR itself with support from the gunners. That's at least how I balance it out and adjust my flight behavior. In the redeemer I am a facilitator and supporter of engagement while my gunners are the real engagers. In a Scorpius I am the engager and my gunner supports me. Vanguard it's a switch tactic wherein against faster targets I support my gunner and against slower targets my gunner supports me. If that makes sense.
This is a well-produced video, and you are right that fun needs to be prioritized. We also need to consider it won't be fun for the defender if it's impossible to escape from turrets, though. At that point, it becomes more like an RPG, where whoever has the longest health bar wins. And I think the point you are not mentioning here is that maximizing effectiveness is not a path to a fun video game. CIG wants different craft to have different advantages and disadvantages, wants the player to manage risk vs reward, and wants the player to have a visceral experience (all of which are why manned turrets are common, rather than remotely controlling all weapon systems from an armored pod in the center of the ship). Also, the Vanguard has two beds so that all the players can log out at the same time. This issue with gunnery is something I have considered for a Star Wars flight sim. Being a gunner in most Star Wars ships is not enjoyable. This is especially true for the YT-1300. Lessons learned from XWA, Star Citizen, and the history of gunnery made me realize that if you want player skill to be the determining factor for the efficacy of gunnery, and you want a solution that matches with the overall tech level of the universe, and you want it to be fun to play, you need an innovative mechanical solution. I think I came up with just such a solution, which I can use on the H-Wing because nobody cares about that ship's appearance staying exactly the same. The sad part is that said solution wouldn't be employable on iconic designs like the Y-Wing. At some point, I want to model my version of the H-Wing and show off my solution to the world. I just don't have the time right now. :-/ By the way, I was just thinking about Rogue Squadron today and even kind of missing the music, so it was a bit of a shock that you chose that for the BGM.
Honestly, even without all the in depth analysis multi crew mechanics are the biggest problem with games like Star Citizen. You will never ever make managing shields or manning the turrets on a ship more fun than piloting it. If you could we would already have games where that's all you do. So the multi-crew ship experience will always be a novelty. It will never be a superior gameplay experience to games that just let you control the whole vehicle by yourself. That doesn't mean people can't have fun, but if there are no single player games where all you do is fill that role on the ship then you are committing to an inferior gameplay experience purely for the roleplaying aspect of manning those stations.
An interesting proposal but a bit misguided I'm afraid. While no doubt such a fighter would make a very solid duelist, though the current models already do, they would lose their ability to ward off fighters that get close to them and deviate from their cone of fire. Worse the nose mounted guns would not afford the pilot the ability to shoot at the heavy fighter's greatest weakness, a second player. Heavy fighters struggle in this situation more than any other when to pilots of equal or greater skill pounce on them and begin picking they apart from various angles, usually the rear and sides. For all two seaters this gets far worse if they were to lose their omni-directional top mounted turrets. They would have no option for a light fighter hopping on top of them attacking their weakness of worse maneuverability and speed. This is specifically because both ships are usually pitching up at one another and as a result having the gun on top allows it to get on target and stay their as soon as possible in alignment with where the pilot is attempting to point. I say this as someone who does not oppose your idea, frankly it would make my life as a LF pilot a lot easier. However, the other stuff about HMDs is solid to me, although in practice the hornet in particular was kind of disappointing. Also I do need to stress how incorrect it is to frame heavy fighters as any but super strong in SC. They are very powerful vehicles and only the VERY BEST fighter pilots flying a Gladius can take them on 1v1 if the HF pilot and gunner possess even a modicum of competence and frankly it's still gonna be close. If they're of equal skill however it's never happening. Missiles can tip the scales HFs have huge EM signatures.
You linked a lot of footage from Avenger One, who actually answers a lot of the questions you pose and illustrates how they work (usually pretty well) in the current game model. Beds are used for logging out safely. When a player logs out in a bed, it remains shuttered until they log back in. Much of the remaining points you raise are addressed in the upcoming atmospheric flight rework, and "master modes" combat/transit flight reworks. The bulk of the firepower resting in the hands of a turret under control of a gunner is reserved for vessels in SC's "gunship" category. After the atmospheric flight rework, most fighter class vessels are intended to have very limited VTOL capability and will need to make attack runs like conventional aircraft, rather than hovering in place. Having a better interface for the copilot controlling their turret with freelook would definitely be cool though.
Exactly! I say ditch the newtonian flight model and lets do planes in space. I LIKE conventionally placed turrets and want them usable. Make thrust from all angles except rear extremely weak so that if you are side strafing, you are moving very slow and make an easy target.
The moment I started hearing Rogue Squadron OST I knew I was watching an expert on this subject. Jokes aside - this is a great breakpoint and delivery. Big thanks
Great video, my only comment is that two seater ships in Star Citizen don't normally need to contend with gravity so much (and don't appear to have the air-to-ground requirements of an attack helicopter) so have the option of rolling the ship to keep targets in LOS of a top mounted turret. Agree completely about the co-pilot taking more gunnery responsibility from the pilot as I think this is a great tradeoff and would work really well on a three crew Cutlass for example.
The redeemer is actually an odd mix of perpetuating the issue you highlighted, and including some of the features you mentioned. It has 2 big manned turrets with very limited overlapping arcs, which makes it hard to keep most weapons firing, no tandem copilot seating, and a rear mounted remote turret that is nearly worthless in air combat. It does, however, have a chin mounted remote turret, which the pilot usually controls gimbled. When you have a gunner, they are able to use the gun in a wider arc of fire. Unfortunately, it's just 2 size 3s, and if you are piloting the ship in a way that both s5 turrets are able to fire, odds are your gimbleis enough to get that turret on target as well. Not to mention when it launched it wasnt working right and the pilot still had control of the trigger for the guns, and I'm not sure if that has been fixed... In summation, it is more likely the choice to include a chin mounted turret was more a style based decision than a recognition of an issue.
One thing i will say in counter is this. Extremely top tier pilots in extremely manueverable light fighters can orbit in a way that sits them out of your front firing arc, some of the best may even be able to loiter on your 6 even in a space game. Having a turret capability means that light fighters, no matter how good the pilot, do not have the option of simply outmanuevering you and sitting in the blindspot. My source of this knowledge is around 1000 hours in various space flight sims including both elite and of course star citizen. In elite the meta is also pretty heavily based around jousting, however in certain matchups where a ship is simultaneously faster and more maneuverable than its opponent you can achieve that orbiting in the blindspot type of victory. That is the reason the bigger ships do not rule the meta, sure they can decouple and point where they want but light fighters and even some of the medium ships are fast and maneuverable enough to sit behind them pretty much no matter what they try. 1 or 2 turrets on a ship prevent light fighters from doing this because although they still output more damage on the larger ship they cannot afford to take that amount of damage in return. Also the rear facing turret concept allows for the pilot to attack larger ships with torpedos, missiles etc while his co pilot can output enough pressure to prevent enemies from simply following and killing them. But yeah the main point being, on a heavy fighter a rear facing turret combined with your hull/shield strength can be enough of a mismatch to prevent any light fighter from attacking you, regardless of position manueverability or speed.
Chris is obsessed with the WW2 combat dynamics and his ego won't allow him to listen to reason. Ship combat in Star Citizen is going to remain handicapped forever.
You are partly right... In dogfighting, you usually reinforce the front shields and all the firepower is directed forward. If it was all about that, ships like Constellation and Corsair would be the dominant ships. However, you very quickly forget that you're fighting in space and although you use space as a reason even at the beginning, where you can fly/punish in all directions, you also forget that the fights are very unbalanced like heavy fighter against light fighter or even bigger ship like the Connie and Corsair against a light fighter. Larger ships that don't have all-round protection (Connie and Corsair) suffer a lot because the light fighters simply fly around the ship and attack from behind and from the sides where there is no or only weak opposition. That's why ships like the one you want are only useful in direct 1 vs 1 with the same weight class, which as I said is not always the case. I like the fact that you even want to promote crew gameplay in your ideas instead of a solo player orientation and you are absolutely right that in Star Citizen the ships should not be compared with the old fighter planes, but much more with modern combat helicopters. But also combat helicopters are much more 2D oriented... at eye level, so to speak, whereas in Star Citizen you can be attacked from all directions, even from above or even below, because there is no ground. That's why I personally think that ships like the Redeemer will dominate much more in the sparser combat system. A rather sluggish ship where the pilot can of course never keep a fighter in his sights, but with the help of the turrets covering all sides of the ship, the fighter pilot will have a hard time finding a blind spot on the Redeemer and holding position. Now here's something you've completely ignored, and that is that in space you're not just fighting one target, so you can always have one on your backside. Then it's practical if the top gunner can also shoot backwards, for example. I know you want more focused firepower to the front so that you can shoot down the opponent faster. However, CIG is also trying to artificially make this a bit longer so that dogfights are not over within seconds. You should circle around a bit longer to keep the adrenaline pumping for longer and have more fun, which also increases the challenge because the risk of making mistakes in a longer fight is also increased. I hope you see my comment as just another way of looking at things and don't take offence. You really made a great video and put a lot of effort into it, which I actually really liked :)
Two beds make sense from a hygiene standpoint. It´s not good for two different people sleeping in the same bed, even though it´s done even today, i think it´s called hot-bunking. Now, the time in which SC plays certainly would have tech that allows for one bed and still offer sufficient hygiene, but it still make sense so each has their personal area. A little bit of privacy on a crowded vessel, so to speak. About the turrets and the staggered two-seat cockpit, that makes perfectly sense the way you laid it out, great thinking with the helicopter analogy.
More importantly, the beds are the escape pods and due to the long range nature of the ship, there will be times when the crew has nothing to do and so can both sleep. Hot swapping makes sense on larger ships of around 20+ people as you tend to have enough crew to run all normal functions with only a fraction of them, only needing all hands for emergencies and combat, and it would take up a tonne of space to provide individual beds for everyone when they'll never all be used at the same time.
Not going to see any major changes to any of these ships but even as a Vanguard fanboy I like your suggestions. It would be really interesting to remove the top turret, take the S4 away from the pilot, give them a couple fixed S3s (or 2s) as a replacement and give the copilot the nose gimbal -- maybe go dual S3s again (S4s?). I will say as the pilot, flying so that your turret gunner as a clear shot up front is such a pain in the butt You're either sacrificing your own solution or your gunner's
I think long term we'd really regret that decision as it would create massive blind spots on a heavy ship that small nimble fighters and drones can just sit in unopposed. The three crew members makes sense to me though. However they'd need to fit an extra bed in, as they are both the escape pods and the place where players can log out.
Light fighter won't be sitting infront of heavy fighter's attack cone like you described. It will use it's speed and agility to get to your blind side. And the moment you turn to catch it, it's already flying by you and attacking from behind again. Turret is there to counter that tactic so you can continue firing even if target is out of your main gun's cone and prevent it's shield from regenerating. If all guns are moved up front, heavy fighters will be more vulnerable to light fighters. Similarly, when facig a medium/large ship, you don't want to face it's main guns, you'll try to maneuver around it, target it's engines. And while you move around, turret can continue shooting and prevent shield regeneration.
There is a good way to fix this, and that is to simply make turrets remote controlled, give the gunners a VR set ( to the PC not the player) to "wall hack" their ship out of their vision and allow them to control multiple turrets at the same time. On fighters, the gunner would control an additional turret on the opposite side to keep the target on sight at all times with at least one turret and focus both when possible. This would be even more useful for bigger ships, a centralized control room would provide an easier access, less casualties, better turret placement, less labyrinthy insides... if the crew is small a single gunner could control every thing to avoid empty turrets. They could also just allow the pilot to lock the turrets in a forward direction for him to use if he as no fri... gunner, or set them to automatic PD. The VR set could also be given to the pilot for greater vision and to cover the "structural weak point" with a sliding armor plate to avoid even more casualties.
4:12 energy fighting very much still exists but it’s a factor of momentum and relative thrust versus the RL limitation of aerodynamics and gravity. I found EVE illuminating in terms of space combat partially because of the third person view as orbital speeds and the ability to out-turn enemy guns or outrun the very explosions caused by some inbound missiles became the backbone of many combat strays/fits. In any game with “healing”, defence hardening and effectively limitless ammo while performing a positioning battle it’s the person that lands the hits that wins not the one with the highest energy output.
Space Engineers is honestly a great way to see what works in newtonian flight. We can do anything, and make ships to better do those things. For example, orbit fighting is one of the most effective moves Star Citizen seems to be ignoring a lot of those things, even from the outside. As much as ED has disintegrated itself, they still have an excellent space combat system
I would argue that the turret gameplay is quite effective and entertaining as-is. The goal behind them is to improve weapon coverage to harass tailing fighters and, in the case of the Hurricane and Scorpius, allow the pilot to focus more on big-picture engagements and prevent target fixation. Heavy fighters, like the ones you mentioned, also have poor turn rates compared to light fighters like the Gladius, Arrow, and Talon, and the additional turret coverage is designed to help fight off those kinds of enemies, who (in the hands of a decent pilot) can get in the blind spot below the heavy fighter and stay there. And there's nothing stopping you from having 3 crew in a Vanguard and hot-bunking. Just that during space combat, there's nothing for the 3rd person to do.
I'd argue theres a problem here born out the fact that these space dogfights appear to be DPS races, you arent really trying to avoid getting hit, just trying to kill them before they kill you
@@aceambling7685 Well the ships themselves kind of do. The spanner in the works for that are energy shields, which by their very nature are basically health bars.
You've hit a big point I struck from the video. This *does* change with physicalized damage. A single bullet/laser bolt from a badly placed turret might knock out a manuevering thruster. But - even then - the turrets would be better if chin mounts.
I hope the helmet HUD changes comes in at some point soon, for things like the lack of vision due to the turret covering the line of fire. I think the Reliant series already allows the copilot to assume control of the tip-mounted turrets when they're equipped and it does go to show that it would be very useful and doable for other gimbal mounted weapons. I feel like manned turrets are just silly at this point in space though. There isn't really any gained advantage, and don't get me started on the double-turret design of the Javelin. The desire to put players in physical turrets and aversion of manning a station that gives them remote control of any kind really dampens the 'space ship' feel of things. The Connie has 3 seats and the Freelancer has 4 yet neither ship has remote access to their turret or even any function for more than one copilot as only one can really be the missile monkey. Being a physical chair turret on the Freelancer makes it obstruct your precious cargo space, the whole point of the ship, and the Connie honestly feels like it could have bigger and more powerful turrets if so much space wasn't dedicated to fitting a fleshbag in it. Delegating gimbal gun control to copilots would help in either case and would be a fantastic addition, especially because not having your guns always point the direction you're flying is especially valuable on a slow moving ship, but the turrets are still so lack luster due to their constraints and small weapon loadouts. I think the Vanguard is the best example of 'rule of cool' as you mentioned. I think these smaller, top mounted turrets where the ship isn't focused on turret firepower were designed more like point defense for shooting down missiles. The Vanguard is 90% pilot firepower it's not relying on that turret for any punch really. Why then, is it a static, man-operated turret? The Scorpius is a great example of moving turret design (though I don't disagree that the turret could be placed better) and shows it's possible to begin with. If the Vanguard turret must exist put it on rails and let it get full 360 coverage of the ship. Let it actually provide some utility to the ship. Ultimately though, we know they're trying to squash jousting and push flight models specific for combat so they're probably gonna make it work because mobility is gonna plummet anyway, making the turrets have a much easier time staying on target and applying damage. It's a shame because the more actual sci-fi elements of ship design that would be really cool will likely just be swapped out for conventional rule of cool. Unrelated but who decided the weapon mount for the Nomad on the top, and nose for that matter, should be these tiny stiff metal bars? Why aren't those turrets, CNOU make those kind of things we've seen it on the Mustang, have it not look like the weapons will rip themselves off after shooting for a second damn son. I like the ship but those weapons just look really awkward for no reason.
I've heard in other videos about SC's combat, that Chris Roberts wants the game to have WW2 style dogfights in this game, which is fine as its fun and more engaging than jousting at 2000m/s.
Yeah, actual dog fights because even in current era, dogfights aren't really a thing. Military technology moves in a direction that is about removing fighting and is just pure elimination of targets.
You're totally right. The problem is Chris Roberts himself. Chris has stated multiple times that he wants world War II style dog fights between ships, especially in atmosphere. I find ironic that a guy known for space games really wants to just make a world War II game. Though I will argue the turrets aren't useless as circle fighting only applies when the two ships are of similar maneuverability. I can't tell you how many times my turret has saved me from a light fighter that was dancing well outside my arc of fire. Or staved off light fighters as I tried to get my bigger ship to run out of the area and jump.
Worth noting this isn't a him issue, but a sci fi issue in general. Realistic space combat is boring and would consist purely of automated systems firing off guided and light based munitions at targets thousands of kilometers away you can't even see whilst point defense systems try to stop as much of it getting through as possible with little to no space for fighters, which would just be swatted out of space before they can even get close enough for their low powered munitions to do nothing to the larger ships. Even if you forced a fighter battle at close range with manually controlled weaponry it would largely just be two ships circling each other and unloading with the result almost always being the one with more firepower wins. That's what they're trying to find a way around, and if you look at most sci fi that has fighter based combat they tend to try and blend in atmospheric type maneuvers to make things more interesting. The issue in star citizen is they also want to maintain a clear difference between atmospheric and space combat, and there is a massive range of ships that need to feel balanced, meaning it needs a lot of fine tweaking based on player feedback so that it feels fun whilst keeping the feel of being in space.
CIGs response. So weve taken some time to review youre video, you raise some excellent points that we're surprised weren't obvious to us and to make up for our mistakes we have nerfed the Ares Ion again.
I think that rather than having front hemisphere turrets, the actual use case for these weapons is more practical. The turrets can allow the ship to have coverage over multiple hemispheres for non-1v1 engagements. You're looking at this from a 1v1 perspective, and ignoring the myriad situations where 2 hostiles may engage the same vehicle.
Given how all sc space craft spin in an outer axis circle, like a helicopter. Compared to an aircraft's inner center axis spin. Yeah the video makes sense. SC is helicopter combat not plane. Feels like you uncovered a secret.
The issue is there's no real comparison there as helicopters aren't designed to dogfight. They have a chin mounted gun because they are designed to attack ground targets, not because it's better for attacking other helicopters. As it happens they have massive blind spots to the top and rear that can be easily exploited by other aircraft if they where to get into an air to air fight.
I haven't used these ships since I liie the medical and transport gameplay more than combat... BUT I feel like the seating can be overcome with having cams on the guns and using a monitor or similar interface for the copilot to see. The limit of just havint a top gun has resulted in VERY derpy looking inverted overwatch attampts for ground units so having a chin gun would be very aesthetically improved lol. Though, personally, I'd think in the future like this the copilot would instead be running stuff like power management, comms, missile assistance, and mainly data like hacking or scanning. Let the pilot worry about flying and shooting. The copilot can mess with the systems of both your ship and try the enemies. To avoid complete tunnel vision they can check the scans or comms for potential threats or weapons fire that the pilot might've missed etc. Basically a dedicated support rather than an additional gun. We're already more information based now so I imagine that the copilots of the future would be.
I find the for the lighter two-seaters, having enemy ships move out of the turret firing arcs can be circumvented by having the pilot execute a roll towards the enemy, enabling the turret gunner to remain weapons hot after the pilot can pitch to re-engage themselves. Of course, chin weapons wouldn't need this manoeuvre as it's the superior design, but there are ways around everything lol.
Particularly for the hurricane, having the turret gunner remain on target is an absolute must as the primary DPS of the ship comes from that quad turret.
I do agree with a lot of what you said. One thing to remember is that they are changing the flight model to get closer to the WW II feel. I personally don't think forcing ships to go slower is the way to go but that is not what they want. I do think if everyone looked at the model as attack Helicopters people would be more engaged with it. Most people are hooked on the Star Wars feel of space combat.
Because real space combat would be quite frankly boring. It would consist of launching long range missiles to targets you can't see. Granted, I wouldn't mind seeing a game like that.
i wont argue that star citizens copilots sould see massive improvement, but ive always had the impression that the turreted fighters are meant to be involved in multiple ship engagements. the reason these turrets dont cover the same hemisphere is because its really easy for a second attacker to simply avoid the front hemisphere, and freely attack you while their partner evades, whereas covering the top hemisphere means you can consistently engage a second fighter thats trying to avoid the front facing weapons, simply by asking the pilot to incorporate some roll into their fighting. this design is reminiscent of tanks, where the commander controls a remote mg on the top, to deal with infantry and light vehicles that would try to flank, while the driver/gunner focus their attention on the main threats. in this scenario the top hemisphere weapon is not meant to be firing on the same target as the front facing weapon. obviously this does get muddied a little by star citizens current setup, where some of the gunners have more firepower than the pilot, and thus are meant to be the one engaging the primary threat, but thats a much more localized problem that can easily be fixed with a missile buff.. i will also dispute the idea that ships should be based on helicopter dogfights, because helicopters werent meant to dogfight, the front turret is gimballed not because the gunner is meant to get air to air kills, but because a helicopter cant point its nose at a target without moving. i do definitely agree that we should steal their tandem seats, though it is worth mentioning that traditional seats offer a lower profile, aiding in avoiding shots, and the visibility disadvantage can be heavily negated if that seating arrangement includes remote cameras.
I was mostly seeing your point until you got to the Vanguard. The turret placement isn’t necessarily there to allow it to replicate the pilot’s range of fire, but rather to cover more vulnerable space on the ship when a more nimble ship slips above/behind it, which isn’t super hard to do for a good pilot. Ships like the Hurricane, Super Hornet, and Scorpius all have the same benefit, but need it a little less. Additionally, this entire video presumes a 1 v 1 dogfight, without any other hostile coming from different vectors. In larger scale fights, having the turret possess a different field of fire can actually be very beneficial, especially for things like higher speed fly-bys that allow the gunner to have a max time on target that after the pilot loses the target picture. Overall, I get your point and think it’s relatively valid for the smaller ships, but think that in more complex and crowded areas, it can make sense to leave it as is. Also, bigger ships end up needing turrets for weak spots, and the vanguard can start to fall into that when facing a light fighter like the arrow or khart-ul.
I havent watched the full video yet but wanted to point out a couple things. dogfights here are rarely 1 on 1 so the turrets help with additional coverage, that being said you could counter well a top turret cant cover the bottom, or other angles. well in space there is no up or down, rotate the ship, its easy enough to do. Furthermore while jousting, there is time when the opponent is behind you, a turret would be able to maintain fire on them even once they have passed you. Again at some point you may say this but as of half way through i have not heard it.
Great video! I agree that a lot of the ships are simply poorly designed for 6dof combat. My only real counter point is that off bore firing solutions are more often than not a waste of time. Compared to the speeds that ships can move and accelerate at projectile speeds are woefully inadequate. Rounds move at either 700m/s (slower than 5.56) or 1400 m/s meaning it can take up to a full second between firing and impact at common combat ranges. Fights need to be knife close to land shots and relative velocities of the craft need to be in near alignment. The pilot is best positioned to know when fire will actually be effective (and it's almost exclusively directly in front), meaning giving gimbals to a co-pilot is making your platform less effective (the banu defender can do this right now!). The auto gimbal system for example is Completely WORTHLESS as skilfull flying will confound it's targeting 100% of the time.
My suggestion to change this would be to make career specific helmets You could have pilot and copilot helmets that make the hull invisible with a toggle, and let people on mfd turrets swap turrets instantly You could also have combat focused helmets that could assist in finding targets Mining helmets could also provide recommended safe power settings for different rocks This would also force fighter pilots who are going to be boarding or landing for fps to pick between pilot AR or combat sense unless their fighter had at least enough storage to get changed
This is what I was thinking. We're already developing such technology in real life so it should be standard by the time of Star Citizen. I'd say all should have the ability to see though the hull of the ship, as it would be useful for gunners to track targets too. And it could maybe have different quality levels based either on the ship manufacturer or upgrades, ranging from set camera positions to full 360. They could also maintain the 3rd person camera by having it done by drone for low speed maneuvering and landing.
Ohh i loved this video, the problem goes further then fighters. And the problem has always been rule of cool, ships looks familiar and cool from what we seen in 20th century movies. It would be nice if it where an easy fix, its not, and that is the problem with 100s of unique ships. Really good video though, and well explained
Veery good video. I loved the tone set by the music, the preparation to the subject, knowledge and all of that with very good editing. But as with every source we learn from there is a chance for errors and ONE that I will inform You is that all of the conventional flight tactics ARE energy fighting tactics, for some reason troughout the time people wanted the "energy fighting" to be seperate form while all of the forms use the energy states and abilities of certain airframes to abuse them. Yak3 will conjure the fuckload of energy while turning at optimal speeds when his chosen opponent loses the energy in the same turn, effectively winning the energy advantage by simply doing nothing fancy but just a turn. If You could make some suggestion thread, poll or any media that CiG is using to communicate design choices with community and link it under Your video I and hopefull many other people could back up Your observation. Lets say we start with Vanguard and all the points that You have adressed at it in the video.
You put your finger on EXACTLY WHAT I WAS FEELING, but I didnt know what it was or how to articulate it. I was just feeling "Meh" about a bunch of this and that is why.
This compliment means a lot to me. I've gotten similar comments from other videos, and it reinforces the *heavy* writing, research, and editing I put into them. My 15 minute videos still take months to make. Thank you for the kind words.
Every game I have played is a game you have made a video expressing my exact concerns and pain from the games, you definitely deserve more viewers. Keep up the incredible work :D
I'm pretty sure the f35 has a helmet mounted display that allows the pilot to actually see through the plane. If you don't want to change the copilot's position, you could just give them one of those, it'll also help a lot with the ship's situational awareness and encourage the copilot to call out bad guys to their pilot.
I like everything you're saying. Making the two seater heavy fighters a two man job, One guy has the weapons and the other has flying would ALSO help make less skilled pilots more effective. They can focus on learning and mastering the flight tactics without needing to also try and hit the target. More forgiving gimbals or having weapons on turret banks controlled by the gunner would then also mean the pilots less skillful positioning can still score hits. If you dont have a second player, you can force the guns to be fixed for one person use, thus maintaining balance. Balance brings me to one of the issues this game has. Chris stated from the start he wanted newtonian physics. He wanted space fights. The problem is he designed it like if ww2 naval fighting is how that would work. Newtonian physics means that combat would never work like that. EVER. Poorly skilled players complained about jousting so much they slowed down the top speeds and the new concept for the future flight modes will FURTHER slow down ships. He has to move further and further away from newtonian physics because they cleave so heavily to the WW2, visual range only combat. These two concepts are completely opposed.
Time of engagement will prove you wrong. Remove the shields, add in the need to worry about heat dissipation on your ship since it doesn't happen naturally in a vacuum, and have to deal with realistic detection ranges on stealth coated ships... Watch all of your arguments just vanish. If your ship can be blown away in a single hit, you will do everything in your power to not get targeted, in order to not get targeted orbiting will fail. Boom and zoom allows you to accelerate outside of a combat area, get into the combat area detect the enemy, release a volley, and get the hell back out and under one or two seconds without even changing your course. Turrets are required to allow you to not change your course and just keep accelerating along a linear path. The key to good combat is reducing engagement time.
certainly explains why the Redeemer is considered so strong, the overlapping guns in the front hemisphere makes it actually fit into its role very well for its designed maneuver envelope
While designed well a number of other factors (weapon projectile speed, acceleration values, and general combat mechanics) make the redeemer little more than a punching bag in pvp They can and often do lose to single fighters.
You make some good points, but there are many problems with moving a defensive turret on a heavy slow turning fighter to an offensive position. Master modes supposedly coming soon, we will need to see how that changes game play, as well as rumored atmospheric flight changes. Main issues to worry about with your proposed changes as the game sits now would be, most encounters are not 1v1 and heavy fighter vs light fighter it is extremely difficult for the much slower heavy to obtain or maintain a firing solution on a ship that can turn circles around you all while staying nose on.
You can still use the classic dogfighting in atmo. Many ships do not have the lateral thrust to orbit while in atmosphere. Turrets also have much better capacitors for energy weapons, meaning they can put more damage out than pilot guns.
I definitely think they plan on adding copilot gun delegation in the future. The reason I think this? The design of the Corsair. Go look at the pilot-copilot staggered arrangement, and tell me they don't plan on letting the Copilot take control of those front guns.
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Spot on. I think sometimes (often) the game has done something just for the look when it is not practical and would have never evolved that way, followed by stating that bigger ships can't become a "one ship to get to beat everyone" and to make smaller ships useful (which is a dumb way of saying it isn't going to be as fun because someone will whine when their single seat is not able to take out a capital ship). There is the one big thing: Turrets need to be fun, and without the HMD and better range of control, that'll never happen.
I'm pinning this comment, in particular, because your last sentence emphasizes the point I'm trying to make: "Turrets need to be fun, and without the HMD and better range of control [e.g. better turret positioning], that'll never happen".
Yes: turrets are useful in big swarms of dogfights. But, big swarms of dogfights don't happen all that often. and there are other ships more dedicated to big swarms of dogfights--the hammerhead, for example; TTK is still relatively high and SC requires more "time on target" than others - because it requires more "time on target", turrets ought to exhibit better positioning and range of controls.
Heavy fighters are trading maneuverability for firepower, and that's been a role observed in historical WW2 designs, too. The ultimate problem is that the extra firepower - often bigger guns or additional turretry, aren't positioned well enough to make that trade off worth it. Hence the several comments pointing out the superiority of light fighters.
Yeah and on top of that most CIG designs ignore about 80 years worth of fighter design lessons. Look at the horrid rearward visibility in the Gladius for example. All Fighters designed after 1942 had either a bubble canopy or one giving close all round vision to it. Even the 109 got much improved visibility with the "Erla-haube". Despite their popularity, both the Corsair and the Hellcat were outliers when it comes to canopy design. And the Corsair especially should not be taken as a design study for any fighter, it has godawful visibility in every direction. Just try landing that sucker on an aircraft carrier.....admittedly unlike the Seafire, not every landing is a throw of the dice on wether the landing gear holds or not.
Hell some fighters were redesigned to have Bubble canopies, like the Spitfire, P-51, P-47, The Typhoon (Tempest got it from the get go). Then look at more modern fighters and the types of canopys favoured in SC are pretty much gone. And as much as I love the P-38.....I would love it even more if the struts in the canopy were gone! As for those whining that the Bubble Canopy spoils the lines of a Spitfire.....I don't care, I care about effectiveness and Situational awareness. And so did the real life pilots whose life was on the line.
Same goes for the seating position, which is low compared to all late war fighters which had high or higher seating positions. Even modern Attack helos have higher seat positions than SC. Even an AH-64D Apache Longbow has better rearward visiblity than Varius fighters in SC. If you use the Co-Pilot as a gunner, he needs a good seating position, high and unobstructed.
Never even mind some of the more modern tech that @OminousPineapple was talking about.
I think the best example of how not to design a fighter, despite it's optics rather fitting SC, was the Porsche Starfighter for Star Wars. Awful cockpit design.
Although the Arrow is one in how to screw up details....who the hell decided to to put a bright red light right into your vision when you look at your deep six?
@@LupusAries The Andromeda is worse: Bad vision dead center and everywhere else too. CIG is trying to be "artsy" and lost the concept that this is supposed to be about a 1000 years into the future. The transparency on MFDs is terrible, you can't read them most of the time unless the outside star is positioned right. Transparency is great for a HUD, but it is terrible when done to be artsy by people who don't actually have to use the MFDs. Myself and many others have complained about visibility in the Constellation series for years, and nobody has bothered to remake those in the gold standard. Better yet, also make all MFDs so they are useful in any light (transparency on those is for artsy effect, and not reality of using them).
In general, someone from the 1950s would reject much of the visibility and HUD design. I really want a game that feels a thousand years into the future, not an art deco monstrosity.
The turret design is a huge problem because nobody wants to use turrets. The fear that these big ships would become OP is baseless, and they thought that would happen before they ever had players to test. Every turret player needs a HUD that lets him/her view a line art drawing of the enemies even through the ship; one has to anticipate when the enemy is coming into the correct angle before they actually get there. I'd love an F35 helmet in this game. Imagine someone a thousand years from now finding a working F35 helmet; they'd have to ask "what extraordinary advanced civilization built this? This civilization must have moved somewhere else and no longer be here...how did they know the English language??".
I would love it if every ship designer at CIG had to have lessons in a real world simulator with an actual CFI or ATP training them. They wouldn't have to be proficient, but I would like if nobody could design MFDs or HUDs without first having basic instrument flight training and navigation training.
Incidentally, I've heard other people say the same thing about the helicopter. Often the needs in game are closer to what a helicopter needs. On the other hand, if the gunner had a valid HUD which allowed an X-Ray view of his target even through the ship, then all seating positions could be left as is.
But there is nobody to tell this to at CIG. They're so overwhelmed with negative talk and overwhelmed with developing that there is no way to catch the ear of whoever makes these higher level decisions. There are people from CIG going through the forums, but this particular topic will never become an "epiphany". The only way this causes a truly high awareness to the guys at the top is if hundreds of people vote it up on a forum thread. Hundreds or thousands of people may agree, but perhaps 5 or 6 people will ever vote up the thread.
@@starcitizenhumor1260 I wouldnt mind the bad vision if they actually build combat more around paying attention to sensor readouts. You know, like IRL air combat does. This would also fix the copilot fun factor.
@@Justowner Yes. 100% agreed. I'd like to be able to fly on instruments when there is little visibility. I don't mean to necessarily have all the instruments to fight that way, but to do basic navigation at night near the surface of a planet, or in a field of asteroids. To be able to tell a friend to go to a coordinate, then head in a certain direction for a distance, so on, and find me. There is "sort of" a bad compass that has been added, but without true waypoints, it isn't much good. The existing instruments are more or less useless for real flight.
It really seems like a futuristic space game should have helmets with better augmented reality that can "see-through" the ship with a heads up display like.. oh wait, current military fighter jet pilots have this.
Access to current military technology? Yeah right. Next you'll be asking for night vision.
@@the_omg3242 where the price of a helmet can buy you a tank xD
Just 2 words... "Night Vision" Cya xD
my iphone is more powerful than the cig game tech
@@the_omg3242 we have night vision... It called sonar. Just ping bro /s
I used to rail about this kind of stuff on the old CIG forums. They were designing spacecraft like airplanes, with combat paradigms from airplanes, and assumed that with the right "tweaks" they could be made to work like airplanes (but in space). CR had a very romantic idea of space fighter combat that was based in Star Wars and WWII/Cold War air combat, but with the ability to do additional cool "space moves" like flipping a 180 or strafing around a target (but only sometimes!). Lots of people on the old forums were asking how this was supposed to actually play out given the "Fully Newtonian Physics" but really "sci-fantasy" look of the proposed spacecraft. References to Atomic Rockets were frequent, and just as frequently shot down because they did not "fit the ethos of the design principles".
But at some point the "ethos of the design principle" has to mesh with the physics engine you are building, and since they are trying to keep that as real world as feasible for a game (velocity limitations, human processing limitations, hardware limitations etc.) that inevitably meant a clash with how things were intended to work with how the player base made them actually work.
Now we see how this has to turn out and that you cannot have old fashioned aircraft style paradigms no matter how much you want to make "WWII fighters in space." That kind of combat simply will not work with any kind of Newtonian flight model that decouples movement with orientation, removes directional energy (altitude) and in general removes all the limits that made the old paradigm possible and necessary in the first place. A turning gun battle with "bogies on your six!" is never going to be a thing when you can just decouple and turn your six into the business end with all the firepower and there is zero consequences for doing so.
I simply do not understand how the combat in SC is supposed to evolve into something more fun while still keeping to the old promises of "dogfights in space" (where "dogfights" retains all the old romantic notions it is supposed to have). Either CIG actually wanders off to read a good chunk of Atomic Rockets to understand how the gameplay loop *must* evolve, or they need to seriously start changing the parameters of the physics engine to start adding back in most of the "atmospheric limitations" that makes aircraft style combat paradigms *actually work.* If you want something that people will actually play this simply needs to happen.
Imo the way to get best from both worlds is if CIG properly models atmospheric flight model and give emphasis on it as well as adding purely space fighters.
Ironically, I feel like Star Wars Squadrons got this idea of "dogfights in space but with cool space moves" better. the speed of fighters are kind of glacial compared to those of Star Citizen, but there are mechanics built into the game that prevent front hemisphere fights from becoming the dominant method by which fighters engage each other. 1) there are clear trade-offs between prioritizing speed and maneuverability that you must carefully consider. You choose to prioritize maneuverability you sacrifice your ability to disengage once your committed, you choose to spec engines speed, you can boom and zoom and limit return fire, but you will also have a more limited window of engagement and your plane will be less responsive to angle of attack changes, so you have to time your maneuvers around objects and predicting your enemy's positioning more carefully. 2) You can drift to any pitch or yaw you want, but you can't strafe your fighter craft at whim, and because it requires time/charges to your engines systems to perform such maneuvers, they are usually a last ditch to shake an opponent quickly or a means to close that last bit of rate needed for a firing solution. I'm sure there is some irony to appreciate in Squadrons being made by EA, and the complicated history of that company with Roberts, but I'll leave that for someone else to discuss.
The current designs only make sense if future heavy fighters are primarily going after medium to large ships, or some kind of station. Where the pilot is mostly shooting at something big in front of them, and the turret gunner is supposed to be keeping light fighters busy long enough for the main target to be hit. But there isn't much gameplay like that. I hope that CIG actually delivers that, so these designs make sense. Or that they redesign the heavy fighters as this video suggests.
Yes, decoupling allows the pilot to bring the main weapons to bear on an attacker while traveling in a different direction, but what percentage of the player base is going to be good enough at that?
Solid, well-thought-out and explained video. As a super early backer who originally backed the Super Hornet and then upgraded to the Aegis Redeemer (the fan-made multi-role gunship, before it got nerfed) - I realise now that I've always been buying ships with what I thought was a capable co-pilot-gunner role - But after seeing your correct conclusion about front-hemisphere weaponry, unless CIG make changes to how weaponry delegation works, I might have burnt myself on my choice of ships...
You are not alone.
I keept thinking oh wow the redeemer seems like it figured this out by pure luck
Can't you always trade your ships in for other ships?
Turreted fighters are literally the meta. And as the flight model slows they are only going to get better. There's nothing wrong with your choice of ship.
Yup me too, still got the SH and a Cutty....
If you use head tracking and manual gimbals, the weapons track where you are looking. The arc on the MSR chin weapons is phenomenal
I've only tried head tracking with FOIP, and there's a significant delay in it. I don't have TOBII or Track IR, and I know lots of other players don't either. It's a solution, yes, but not one universally afforded to all :\
@@birthdaytruck Well Headtracking isn't needed - the Gimbal can be slaved to mouse free look. I've had that for the Vultures Salvaging Beams, but .18.1 reset a setting which i'm unable to find again.
I use TrackIR. It is an advantage, but turrets are still a failure. The reason being that once an enemy leaves over that tiny horizon (the ship's hull), we also lose visibility. We can't pick up and track visually in time. A real horizon that is miles away isn't a problem since the approach and attack doesn't last only a few seconds. If and only if the turret gunner knew where the enemy is even when not able to shoot at the enemy would turrets be fixed. The alternative is to give turrets far more range of motion, but then that's really because we could then see the enemy.
Perhaps a bigger reason why we need more visibility is that the pilot of the ship we operate a turret from also randomly puts the enemy in and out of angle for firing on them. The time when we can hit is so brief it isn't fun. If we could see where the enemy is, and track them as they go into and out of angle, then even the short time at a valid angle would still be fun.
The whole reply thread is losing part of its original meaning. It's about whether it is fun to gun a turret. It isn't. CIG made a mistake that we'd need to artificially limit those angles so a turret wouldn't be "too powerful". Instead they broke the effectiveness and fun. Adding visibility or improving range of motion would fix the FUN.
Some will say it is "already fun". Well, yes, but it is so far less fun than piloting. It's more fun and effective to have two fighters with one crew member each than it is to have one fighter with two crew members. Far more fun and far more effective to leave out the gunner and just fly separate ships. I'd like to see the gunner fun go up enough that people WANT to fly the gun seat.
@@starcitizenhumor1260 The turret gunner interface really needs free look with the turret AI doing what it can to get a firing solution at where you're looking.
@@starcitizenhumor1260 A solution to visibility without compromising design would be VR helmets like they're designing for next generation jet's. They can link to cameras on the outside essentially letting the wearer look through the aircraft. This would allow a gunner to aim into blind spots without locking into a gun camera that greatly restricts their field of view making it hard to track targets.
great video, but I would like to point out that the majority of fights i've been in are not 1v1, and having a turret that can shoot behind or above the ship has come in useful in many situations with smaller ships buzzing past while the pilot is focused on a ship he can rotate fast enough to hit. in the smaller ships such as the hornet, i would definitely like to see a turret that can cover more of the pilots view, if not more than the pilots view. however i think on ships warden sized and larger, having independent ball style turrets can be pretty useful, and the better designed ships have a turret that can cover enough of the pilots vision to be effective against the larger targets that you'd both want to be focused on at the same time anyways.
I agree, turrets on a smaller craft are there to protect the vulnerable areas of the ship while the pilot fixes on his own seperate target. Take the gladiator for example, a light torpedo bomber with 2 fixed forward and a single twin gun turret on top. While the Gladiator is lining up for a torpedo run, turret protects the top and rear of the fighter while it has to maintain a relatively straight line. Once done and if it is engaged in a dogfight. The turret still works to protect the fighter as smaller more manoeuvrable craft try to get around and behind it to avoid its pilot controlled guns. Relying on the turret itself to take out another ship is in my mind, a useless exercise. pilot and gunner should be working in tandem to control the fight and keep a line of fire on the enemy at all times
I think that player skill does factor into this. A lot of people don't know how to optimally use HFs. At 10:29 the Hurricane doesn't lose his solution because of poor design he loses it because he doesn't know how to roll.
Another example is the vanguard. Good point about the seats. However, the Vanny rn is a strange case it's often varied in preferred config and adding another pilot to use the gimbal isn't a bad idea at all. Although I turn it on, since gimbals basically work like auto aim it just makes you more accurate anyway.
The hurricane the hurricane IS badly designed though.. it's a ww2 fighter bomber designed for 2dimensional operation first &foremost which will always limit it in 3 dimensional spacial warfare
Very interesting and well thought out video, completely agree that they should add a helmet mounted targeting display to operate independent of remote camera for gunners and 2nd seaters.
Tobii allows this. Makes PvP way more spicy when that arrows turret works like a turret
The only problem I see in this explanation is the assumption that fighter combat will always be one on one duels as opposed to mass fighter skirmishes, where an additional weapon system such as a turret could be used to assist in the overall engagement rather than just the individual fight of its craft. This would be especially important if said turret were equipped with larger guns to be used against say corvettes or gunships.
Yeah but the problem with your assumption is that you assume your copilot would be able to find effective firing solution to either engage other threat or significantly contribute to the battle despite not having the ability to significantly orient itself to create those solution. When you start talking about multiple ship vs multiple ship, you also need to start talking about tactic and formation. And it wouldn't surprise me the for organised group having a fighter focusing on single task at hand would be more effective than having a fighter trying to do two things at once. If another threat show up on another hemisphere it is probably better than another ship engage it instead of a turret. And if you are outnumbered, well you probably either picked a fight you shouldn't have or got outmaneuvered.
@@benjaminparent4115 Given that the craft we're discussing are turreted fighters, I would think that the fact they have an entire dome of an arc of fire should allow any competent player to at least make an attempt on effectively firing on or at least harassing primary, secondary or tertiary targets. Furthermore we're also discussing the use of these craft in verse in general, but realistically when in the hands of players, notions such as tactics and formation typically tend to fall flat other than as an escort flight. Also, whilst you are correct that having 1 to 1 fighter parity would make the use of turrets semi redundant in such an engagement, historically such an assumption doesn't tend to pan out well, and after all it's the fights you don't want you should be most prepared for, not the fights you do.
@@archaean2331 problem with your comment is that you forget any competent player would just get a second one seated fighter instead of wasting their time in a turret.
which is exactly how things play out.
@@the_babbleboom which is why when we are eventually able to hire npc crews that point will mostly become a non-issue, to say nothing of npc navy and pirate elements in verse. There is also the fact that as you may have noticed, there are a not insignificant number of various multi crewed ships in game.... crewed by multiple players. So your point really only makes a difference when discussing lone wolf style players, as opposed to actual team players.
In regards to the bed situation that kind of bed is also meant to function as an escape pod on these smaller ships. That is why they have one bed per crew instead of hotbunking. When and how exactly that will be implemented is still to be seen
Also 1 bed per crew because you use them to safely log out, and when a player is logged out in a bed, that bed remains shuttered.
That and from a purely lore perspective there would be downtime when doing things like long quantum jumps where automated systems can do the job and there may be a few hours before any action is required, so it would benefit both crew getting their heads down. Although I do agree it should be a three crewed ship.
What SC really needs is have people in charge of ship development to rework a lot of busted ships from the old days.
Believe SC answer to that was "If you think you can do better then come and do it better, we recruiting"
Yawn 🥱...another ignorant comment. If you knew about what they're working on then you'd know that there's an order of things they're working on before that happens. Also, first things first...you act like they're unaware that old ships need a rework...except...they ARE aware and have stated this fact many times.
Anyways, for one they are working on resource management. What's this? Well, think of the skin and shell of a ship as a living being...resource management essentially is putting in the veins, vital connections, and organs into the ship (completely physicalised components, component connections/wires, life support, internal ship atmosphere/gaseous environment, temperature control, etc). This is the first step towards engineering and multi-crew gameplay where people will have more to do then manning a turret, plus...the whole deal about resource management is to not only make things realistic and more immersive, but also make ships FEEL better and be more survivable.
Connecting off of that is physicalised damage, the star of the show... eventually, each millimeter by millimeter piece of a ship will have their own damage values based on the material it's made of and will need to be chipped away with projectiles to then damage/disable a component or component connection to then disable the ship. No more ticking down of a general HP pool and then boom...no, ships will actually be much more survivable and have a LOT of longevity, more so the bigger and/or the more armored hull it has.
Anyways, resource management is the main thing holding back reworks, but once that's done and they start implementing physicalised damage after they can then start with those reworks. Like I said before, there's an order to things that actually makes sense, there's no point doing a rework for a ship and then having to do another rework again...
@@tevarinvagabond1192 thanks for the essay, dude, as for that block by block damage model, that functionality is already present in indie games like Highfleet, Scrap Mechanic, Space Engineers, and Terratech, where if you punch through the armor of one of those block-based creations or techs or cars or giant rusty shitcans or whatever you call them, all that's left between bullets and essential subsystems is the hull plating equivalent of tissue paper. I'd like to call this the Crustacean Damage Model. I'd really like to see such a system implemented in Star Citizen once it becomes more stable (if the devs even bother).
@@engineer84-w8x Except, for the exception of Space Engineers, those are small games that don't have to render much and not as complex as what Star Citizen is doing...also, come on "if the devs bother with it"? They're literally working on it right now, it's part of resource management. Tired of toxic, negative people like you that don't even keep up with development of the game yet act like you know what you're talking about
I've gotten a bit jaded with all of the Star Citizen content floating around these days, so when I saw the title of this video, I assumed it would be some typical complaining about the state of heavy vs. light fighters. I'm really glad I clicked through though, because this was incredibly interesting material and super thorough, and you make some fantastic points I never even considered!
On seating arrangements: The Tandem Staggered setup with the pilot in the rear should be _standard_ on two-seaters, at least on non-alien ships
I don't see seating being an issue as long as they add the technology that negates it. Even in current times they are developing VR helmets for pilots allowing them to essentially "see through" the aircraft and have full 360 vision. There's no reason they can't implement that into SC, allowing them to design crew position's around aesthetics without compromising practicality.
As a modern attack helicopter pilot with a fair amount of time played in SC, all I can say is: you are dead on with your analysis. The fact that many SC ships were designed for an entirely different "atmospheric" style of combat has always been completely baffling to me.
Keep up the insightful commentary, it's quality stuff.
Do tell more: I'm not a helicopter pilot. I also don't assume helicopters engage in gun to gun fights, I assume they engage with missile armaments first. But if they do train, I'd like to think they train for similar front-to-front engagements.
@@birthdaytruck In fairness, the vast majority of (western) countries train attack helicopter pilots for air-to-ground engagements. Air-to-air is an afterthought, if it's even addressed at all, and that doctrine is exclusively focused on usage of missiles, either Stinger or Hellfire-L.
Most of us spend plenty of free time thinking and debating the subject for amusement, though. And as you've guessed, the tactics revolve around using maneuverability in 6dof to gain and maintain favorable gun angles in strafing fights. For a helicopter the best place to be is above your opponent, as no one is able to fire up through their own rotor system and current missiles don't have the off-boresight performance for such shots either. All of this is best done while keeping your nose pointed towards the enemy as much as possible, as the traditional fast-jet concepts of the "merge" and energy-management are not applicable in the same ways to rotorcraft.
@@Lleandryn really interesting input, to your knowledge as there ever been an engagement in real life like the one you have described?
@@kirinyardberry1324 Not that I am personally aware of, no. Although the Iran-Iraq war of the 80's was poorly covered in the Western world and featured some absolutely insane military stunts, so there could very well have been some wild helicopter dogfighting that went down there. If such a thing ever did happen, my money is that it went down during that conflict.
@@kirinyardberry1324The Iran-Iraq war has the only credited air to air kills between helicopters.
No verified details of the specific engagements are available in English, and I have no idea if they exist in Arabic.
I'm glad to see someone tackle this! I've also always anticipated a conflict between Star Citizen's multi-crew focused game design and Star Citizen players themselves. No one wants to cough to SC levels of money in order to crew their friends' ships; everyone is going to want to pilot their own. We'll see how that tension gets resolved - but making "non-pilot" roles more viable is absolutely where they need to start.
I absolutely want to crew my friends' ships. What are you on about?
I think there are enough people who want to crew friends ships, there just needs to be engaging gameplay for them rather than just sitting there for a couple of minutes of struggling to get the turret on target. Once there are more things to do in terms of maintenance and axillary controls, and if they improve turret gameplay, I don't think people will struggle to find players as crew. If not, there is always the option of AI gunners.
I agree whole heartedly, its why more often than not a group will opt to take out 2 fighters vs just a fighter and a manned turret ship, its just better in game to have more pilots than a gunner who will sometimes contribute to combat under ideal circumstances, but once you spend a lot of time in a turret you'll see that the pilot doesnt have the same perspective you the gunner has, and your arcs of fire like video mentioned will more often not overlap, because of the design of the turret.
The Corsair would also be perfect for that copilot weapons transfer - they sit up front, below the pilot, surrounded by four gimbaled or fixed guns with decent travel range. I assume this sort of weapon or flight control transfer will be possible in the future. Can't wait :)
Would be nice if you could lower the displays in the rear seat to get a better view forwards though. or at least add some extra displays on the ceiling so you aren't losing so many displays by taking the rear seat as pilot instead of the front one.
I haven't played star citizen, but as a fan of military equipment and sci-fi, I agree with everything you just said.
Being able to move without facing the direction of travel really makes starfighter combat more similar to helicopters than anything else.
In addition to fighters based on the attack helicopter model you've given, I'd also add the concept of a fighter based on the "scout helicopter" model.
Small, quick, highly maneuverable, 1 pilot (more or less 1 pilot controlling it) with mainly forward facing weapons. It relies on maneuverability and its small silhouette to stay alive.
Something like a modern MH-6 little bird helicopter or Gazelle
Worth noting that helicopters aren't designed to dogfight. They have chin mounted guns because they're designed for use against ground targets. There is certainly merit to what he said in the video, but there is also an argument to be made for the kind of turrets we have currently, especially if we end up with things like attack drones in game.
As for your fighter concept we have plenty in game already, like the arrow and mustang, or going even smaller M50 and new Fury, even the Pisces which also has the littlebirds ability to carry some troops or cargo in the back.
The Redeemer is my fave ship for this reason, the remote chin gun and 2 manned turrets top and bottom make the Redeemer the best ship in the game for what it is, a gunship, in my opinion
If the Redeemer, or the Valkyrie, had a co-pilot in charge of the chin guns, I'd be more interested. But you're right, the Redeemer is the closest thing to a space HI-24. It's a shame I find it so ugly :(
The harsh reality of SC's current flight model and weapon balance sadly don't support the redeemer. The size five weapons have projectiles that move at half the speed of weapons size 4 and below. This combined with the redeemers slow nature renders it completely combat ineffective vs fighters. They will corkscrew at 1k away and slowly eat you while being completely immune to return fire. You really don't bring a redeemer to any sort of skilled combat.
@@birthdaytruck The Redeemer actually has a seated station for each remote turret. The front turret can already be taken from the pilot by its dedicated station, last I checked. This is by design.
I completely understand that you don't like it, as I can't stand the look of the Cutlass but really like the Redeemer. I was hoping to see you evaluate it in the video though. I think you would have something interesting to say about it.
@@dddj158 well it is an escort gunship not really a lone fighter supposed to be on battle lines with hammerheads and polaris and this is where it really shines being almost as tanky as hammer head but a much smaller target. Yes fighters will be lighting the ship up but this allows time for larger ships to react and position where they get shots or you get shots cause they cabt avoid both targets coming at them completely. I do have allot of gripes about sc combat but i personally didnt get the game for the combat even though i love warthunder and dcs. How limiting they make everything and how much they keep slowing things down just shows this game probably will not have these battles they invision and the fact combat is going to get even slower instead of just making the weapons and missles better and the ships more durable they want to make it where your face to face to slow to dodge anything so it becomes a dps/durability ratio war and well these huge ass ships the size of a ship of the sea getting completely demolished in 15 seconds by a light aircraft shows that they only care about that starwars xwing style of gameplay currently like never in any reality should an arrow be able to so easily take down a reclaimer wich is a literal brick of armor and shields. Those rounds shouldnt damage anything but unarmored vital areas. But we will see whenever theu come out with armor and ballistic calculations. But i have a feeling nothing much will change tbh its going to be more the same but maybe add 5 seconds of kill time
@@makoshark40 Nearly every single pvp pilot (youtubers included) is excited for the new flight model because the current one has large glaring issues. There is still lots of room for evasive flying at speeds below 1300m/s.
Time to kill is already very high between most fighters. Disengagements are extremely easy to pull off due to the extreme top speeds and high acceleration values paired with shields coming up quick.
It's not going to be a dps race, ships will still be plenty agile. The previous flight model had lower speeds and there was still lots of nuance.
So technically the scorpius antares (Which is the scorpius, but has no turret and the copilot instead has control over a emp and interdiction tech) makes sense, because the copilot is only there to use electronic weapon systems and not to shoot at the enemy (even though the visibility is still shitty and needs to be improved)
I wonder if it’s a valid tactic to purposely try to get on the defence, that way the turret can shoot the target, and then try to make them overshoot so that the pilot can finish them off. Loved the video - informative and entertaining!
“On the defence” usually means eating missiles up the tailpipe.
I think these are some good points, but they are only thinking about 1 on 1 engagements, as if you have a turret capable of rotating to a ship that the pilot is not engaged with then you be able to fight off more than 1 fighter.
also weaponry designed to exploit blind spots such as drones and possibly smart missiles, both of which may end up in game and are being developed in real life.
I *expected* another rant about how a turret operator is almost always less valuable then just bringing another ship in Star Citizen. What I got was a detailed look at why SC turrets just don't work period that just implies that in the current state it is just better to bring another ship.
Cheers. I hope CIG watches this. The meta-problem I see with this is that everyone will just want to slave that front turret to the pilot anyway like the hornet example the redeemer rather than having that huge frontal cone that you advocate for. That would mean that, on paper, adding a gunner to control a turret the pilot already has access to doesn't increase on-paper DPS, even if actual applied damage goes up dramatically.
SC has a lot of work to do to figure out multicrew. Turrets and missiles have been available the longest, and turrets are getting better, but they ain't ready yet. Meaner missiles and better turrets will help kill the light fighter meta, but I expect that instead CIG will take an easier route and just make medium ships and larger too tanky to be threatened by any light fighters.
I've always felt something didn't add up to fighters in SC, too many feels like planes in space, and i agree completely with you. Aestetic was always on point, functionality not so much
Beautifully explained. I always felt like the fighters looked cool in the hanger, but didn't feel right in the air/space. This felt like a lightbulb going off in my head. Well done!
Wow I really wish they would implement some of these changes. It’s sad though because I don’t think they want to rework all these ships to that degree.
specialy with still increasing years long back log of concept ships they got.
To be fair, it may very well change if they add drones and things like AR so gunners can "look through" the ship to track targets. That would both solve the issue of visibility and create a reason to have turrets that can cover the rear.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this video. i think CIG/Chris Roberts is so focussed on "World War II dogfighting in space" that they designed too much to the look and feel of aircraft of those times than realize why those were designed the way they were and why they won't work in a space, non-newtonian setting.
False...why are so many of you so ignorant of what CIG plans and has already said? For one, no one said that ship combat was going to be fully realistic...if we had realistic space combat then we'd have boring battles where you wouldn't see the enemy and would just be firing missiles into the black and waiting for radar pings to avoid enemy missiles yourself. That may be realistic, but for a game that's a big no no on the "fun" front, especially when this isn't supposed to be a space sim anyway.
Secondly, you seem to be ignorant of some things they're adding: Master Modes, resource management, and physicalised damage. MM is basically heavily reducing the combat speeds to where the whole WWII combat scheme actually ends up working. Resource management makes the internals of ships physical and realistic, meaning there's skill involved in taking down a ship's components and component connections. Then you have physicalised damage, which makes each millimeter by millimeter part of a ship have its own damage values based on the material it's made of and needs to be chipped away with projectiles in order to punch through to damage a component. No more general HP bar and boom...no, instead you'll have to punch through the hull to damage components or component connections to then disable a ship.
These things will not only make the ship experience so much better, but also make sense for how they've done things. Instead of battles lasting five seconds, fights will last for a very long time and ALL ships will have their strengths and weaknesses and there won't be a meta (small ships, especially light fighters, will be glass cannons and not be able to take as much damage in general due to smaller hulls, BUT they'll generally be faster and more nimble whereas larger ships could get shot like Swiss cheese and keep on moving but in general be slower), and out of combat it just makes things more survivable as well...crashing into something (depending on the speed, of course) could mean merely denting or crumpling up a part of the ship instead of exploding and dying. Anyways, do your research before making dumb comments
@@tevarinvagabond1192 You literaly provided no argument against his comment. Nothing of what you said relates to the in-game flight model physics simulation, wether fights will be long or short is irrelevant and secondary to the flight model which is being discussed. Physicalised damage, MM and resource managament won't change the basic behaviour of ships in terms of each other. Watch the video before writing dumb comments.
@@aleksanderolbrych9157 He wasn't really talking about things as in-depth as all of that, lmao. Also, even if he was it's a moot point...this isn't a space sim, we don't need realism we just need enough realistic things to give immersion. Combat is more fun if it's in your face, which is why they chose the WWII style mechanics. Slowing things down works better for that as it gets rid of "jousting" and encourages sticking to close formations. Besides, the game isn't about combat... eventually less then 25% of the game will be about combat as it's meant to be a life simulator set in a sci-fi galaxy...not a space sim, not a flight sim...a life sim. Chris Roberts used those exact words in 2014, and he said it again last year's CitizenCon, so this isn't some arcane, old ideas here.
@@tevarinvagabond1192 You’re completely missing the point. Nobody is saying that Star Citizen shouldn’t be unrealistic or arguing about the game’s vision. The topic of discussion (which you completely missed multiple times by now) is wether CIG can actually implement their WW2-style combat *at all* given how the flight physics and mechanics are currently implemented without drastically changing the flight model.
Long story short the argument is that you *can’t* have Newtonian physics and WW2 style combat as they are mutually exclusive (if you don’t understand why watch the video you are commenting).
You would LOVE the MISC Reliant series then! A copilot can control those wing turrets 360degrees!
That's the ship I wanted to test out for this video, but could not get access to. Honestly - if they add HMTD, this ship probably nails the formula I'm advocating.
I agree with what is said in this video. However, my hopes are that the new master modes and flight changes in atmosphere will bring back some of the functionality of the top mounted turrets. Some of the more aerodynamic ships might not be able to turn and burn for a joust style fight without losing speed to atmosphere. Master modes and atmosphere probably wont change the orbiting dogfights very much, though. And I agree that the vanguard turret blocks way to much of what the pilot can attack.
More visibility for co-pilots / turret operators is much needed in current star citizen.
I realized master modes is "soon" while editing this video. And to be fair, top mounted turrets in atmospheric operations - where the ship's belly is towards the ground and enemy approaches are likely to come from above - are more useful.
I cut out a section acknowledging that missile boats - the gladiator, vanguard harbinger, retaliator, etc - actually benefit from top mounted turrets because they will probably have to hold radar locks or operate more often in atmospheric air to ground missions. Those make sense.
But for, specifically, space superiority fighters, it still doesn't. I'm also not sure how willing players will be to take a dogfight into atmo. I imagine most would prefer dogfights in open space: the SC equivalent of super smash brothers, final destination, no items, no platforms.
Master Modes doesn't fix any of the issues brought up in this video. All it does is remove "boom and zoom" tactics by making guns and shields inoperable (without any logical reason for this). It's basically CIG saying "we don't like that you can do this, so the hand of God will stop you".
While I agree with you on many of your points, all your examples appear to show a one V one dogfight scenario, or at the most 2-3 opponents per side. I've partaken in many large scale battles. (Most of these fights take up an entire server with a combined total sometimes up to 100 players) When you have 20-30 fighters on each side I can tell you through personal experience that the front hemisphere-fighting is not always the case. In large engagements with 20-30 enemy fighters buzzing around your ship, as the turret gunner you are firing behind you, above you, off to the side, etc... at least the same amount you are firing forward. At this point in the development, IMHO the Hurricane is the best two-man heavy fighter. A mix of light fighters, like the Gladius, and heavy fighters, like the Hurricane, are very good compliment to each other along with one or two larger gun ships, like a Hammerhead, Redeemer, and Andromeda. But in my opinion, you focus way to much on the chin turret as a function of the the secondary crewman / gunner. I completely agree that relocating many of the dorsal turrets on heavy fighters and gun ships (Like the Freelancer MIS... all Freelancers have HORRIBLE turret locations) For medium and heavy two-man fighters, moving a dorsal turret closer to the front, or redesigning the hull or the turret itself so I can have a better angle of depression would be a better solution than changing everything to chin turrets. As long as a top turret can target something 100-200 meters in front of the pilot would be more than enough in most dog fights. Plus if a turret can target something that close, the line of sight will allow you to target something in the lower half between 15 and 20 degrees. But with a dorsal turret that can target an enemy in front, you have the added benefit of firing throughout the entire upper hemisphere of the ship. Something a chin turret can never do. If you take your example with the cross section of a modern attack helicopter, and you replace the rotor hub with a remote dorsal turret, you have the similar effect. For medium and Heavy 2-seat fighters, I do agree that most of the time a simple remote turret can work just as well, if not better, than a manned turret. Less room is needed in the turret itself, easier to place the turret mount anywhere it is needed, less complicated engineering and machinery (Like sliding/telescoping seats from the ground to the top turret). Anyway, I agree with the all your points on energy fighting vs Newtonian fighting. I agree that ALL single seat light fighters are always jousting or orbiting duels. I just disagree with your assumption that all dog fighting in heavy two-man fighters happens from the front hemisphere. After being involved in dozens of major fights as part of the Star Citizen community, I can tell you that is not always the case. Everything else in your video is spot on.
Feel like you've missed a large section for this which is multiple ships in one fight. The turret isn't just to support thr pilots dogfight. Its also to deal with anyone getting your weakside. If you're only considering one ship vs one ship then you're missing a large part of the conversation
yeah this
For a larger slower vehicle I could see this case being made but I don’t think it applies as well to the medium fighter model being discussed here. Maneuvering is still to quick to get solid shots off to dissuade engagement from other ships and if the pilot were to slow to allow the gunner to get shots off easier they’d just be leaving themselves more open. Would rather all guns focused on current target
@@_zkv_5503 sure the preference is all guns focused on a target but it can also be a terrible choice in multiship situations. What's suggested in this video would completely limit it to guns forward which is essentially making the turret just extra pilot guns. And that is going to lose against more maneuverable ships everytime.
I've basically just written an essay supporting this and other counter points to this video in the comments lmao good to see someone understanding the importance of defence in larger, slower ships.
Yeah I've been shaking my head to this entire video. The circle strafing is only guns forward when you have two ships of relatively equal agility, and there is nothing preventing the turret gunner for shooting the target if the pilot is rolling to maintain the target for them. A good Arrow pilot will be looking to manage their energy, close distance in a rate fight and get behind a heavy fighter like a Vanguard. In that scenario the Vanguard pilot can only break out of the rate fight and extend the circle because he will never get guns back on otherwise. The turret gunner is the only thing that can threaten that Arrow, that's what its their for. It's also good in a joust if the pilot is turning and leading the target that is going to over shoot him, so you can catch them when the stall their energy, the turret can put fire on the target while the nose is turned away. None of this is covered.
The editing in this video is absolutely superb, and the topic in question was super interesting! keep up the good work!
Very solid points made, i agree with everything said in this video. The only thing id like to add is a scenario in which a top mounted 360° turret actually makes a lot of sense. And that is if you are faced with a ship that is more agile than your own one. Sure the point of a superiority fighter is to be the most agile thing in the room so the statement holds true for those. But if im in a cutlass and need to defend myself against something more agile that turret comes in really handy.
Plus i personally like the added challenge of taking all turrets on your own ship into consideration and basically never letting the bottom of the ship face the enemy
The turrets do help in this instance, yes, but I'm also arguing that they're not as effective as they should be. Lots of the turrets are top mounted but exhibit very low gun depression -- there are still plenty of angles light fights can exploit.
If we're keeping top mounted turrets, they need greater depression and windshield visibility. In atmosphere, looking up is appropriate. In Space, you really need as clear of a "bubble" canopy as you can get.
@@birthdaytruck for the full bubble youd need 2 turrets in most cases, and to maximize the angles on a single turret it would have to stick out quite a bit, i think in this case its aesthetics over functionality for the designers at CIG.
And since the Roll axis is typically the fastest axis a skilled player may manage to keep the enemy in the turrets hemisphere even if it is not optimal.
Maybe its also a game balancing thing so that the attacking player is rewarded for staying out of turret hemispheres wich is actually quite difficult in PVP. And if you are up against a light fighter maybe that just means its time to retreat and jump away since imo its their purpose to outmatch slower ships in 1v1s
Fully agree on the visibility thing tho like god damn and dont even get me started on how the freelancer turret only pitches up by like 45° thats just so dumb in the context of space combat
I knew I recognized that background music. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron on the N64. Good soundtrack
As someone who has thousands of hours in helo's in Arma...you've kinda connected a thread of what bothered me about SC's turret design and turret placement.
Funnily enough the game has a ship with the sort of correct design choices you are talking about, but it was technically not designed by CIG and it's not a two-seater and sadly it didn't inspire CIG to follow it's design choices.
The Redeemer is such a ship. It's got a front mounted chin turret (that's is in pilot control when he doesn't have someone operating it). It still suffers a bit from the kinda of turret placement you talked about in that it has two very big manned turrets at the top and bottom and another remote at the rear. But since it's not an agile two-seat fighter that's not a big problem. The two manned turrets are more ideal to be outfitted with high damage low-rate of fire capital killer omnisky's and allow a large volume of fire at all angles while still allowing the highest volume of fire in the front if all turrets are operated.
When it comes to slower less agile ships, some conventional dogfighting tactics still make sense. A less agile ship will still take some time to turn it's front around if it's being attacked from the rear. Therefore if you're in a fighter it still makes sense to exploit real and perceived weak spots of coverage of large ships. Often this would be the rear and the rear-bottom.
As it currently stands people don't expect the redeemer which does turn slowly to have all turrets be manned. So the amount of times the conventional thinking of attacking it from the rear only to get blasted by the rear turret has gotten fighters killed when I ran a session in the redeemer recently has been many.
The redeemer was built by backers in that competition they had many years ago, I just wish CIG had taken some more inspiration from it in other Aegis ships.
Elite dangerous has turreted weapons but they are almost never used due to front facing gimbal weapons being way better
This! Thank you. I have been struggling with the idea of 2-seater craft in this game. My friend and I (upon restarting the game after a wipe) enjoy travelling around in my Origi85X. He takes control of the under-turret and has reasonable firing arcs. The same cannot be said once the upgrade to larger ships occurs. This video places it into much greater perspective for me.
I agree with all your arguments, especially on turret placement, allowing more options for gun control transfer to copilot, and copilot HMTD support.
But atmospheric flight with a conventionnal flight model is intended when flying planetside ; with aerodynamic simulation, staling and everything it entices.
And many of the spacecrafts you reviewed are actually also aircrafts, especially the Vanguard series, its variants having the following designated roles : Fighter-bomber for the Harbinger, squad transport and fire support for the Hoplite, and electronic warfare support for the Sentinel ; each operating in atmospere and/or in non-dogfight combat situations.
One of the best analysis I've came across on the topic. Understandable, well-presented, constructive, and non-ranty. Kudos to the author! (Also, I'm crying a bit on the inside, Van was the ship I pledged with, but how CIG treated it afterwards made me to melt and swap it for Eclipse. I still root for Van, but I agree, the turret gunner's job is just ..not ..fun. And it could use a 3rd crewmember, being a long-range ship with loitering capability. Would make a great hunter-seeker, but as of now... not).
Boom and zoom kind of works in reverse, I was dogfighting an AI bounty that I think was in a M-50 while I was in a cutlass. He couldn't really hurt my shields significantly and I couldn't keep him in the crosshairs for more than one or two shots to land, so neither of us was doing lasting damage. Then I thought to climb and take thr fight out of atmosphere where engines matter more than aerodynamics. The Cutlass became much faster and more maneuverable without atmosphere in the way and I was able keep him in the crosshairs for a devastating barrage from all barrels which took care of them in two passes. This was the most "sci-fi" experience I ever had in Star Citizen.
I've been using manual gimbals for awhile and I feel like it would need aim assist similar to that of turrets for a second person to be able to use effectively. With the pitching/rolling and strafing of your ship the aim point can rapidly shift. Even as a solo player where I can predict the movement based on the inputs I'm giving it can be very hard keeping the crosshair on the pip.
One interesting thing with some ships, most notably the P-72, is that it can fire practically 180 degrees sideways. It's possible to get your engine perpendicular to the target. This allows you to circle around them much faster. Other ships with a pilot controlled turret can have similar results like the hornet series with the double turret configuration.
Something I wanted to add was something I noticed when using the Scorpius. The top turret aim assist firing arc was similar to that of the pilot's gimbal arc. I used a desktop and laptop to crew both positions and I didn't even need to move the turret. I just locked on the target and maneuvered in such a way to keep the pip within the gimbal zone of the pilot and the turret could engage at the same time.
Phenomenal and well thought out. However one thing I think , is that if these fighters are engaged in full battles with tons of wing-men and bogies flying around, it would make sense for some of these upper/lower/ rear facing turrets to exist as they are so that the copilot can fend off a second or third bogie while the pilot aggressively engages with their primary target or focus. in addition, they allow the fighters to apply supporting fire against weak points and hard points of larger capitol/sub capitol size ships while keeping their full maneuverability and strengths. As Star Citizen is, these designs don't quite fit, that is true, but they make sense to a certain extent from an in-universe design view if you consider these extra factors, in my opinion.
Some interesting points, giving my gimbaled guns to a copilot would be nice but i do have some issue.
1. You point out some well known issues with he current flight model. In space lots of front facing fighting, but thats not the case in atmo. In daymar youll see a lot more intersting turn fights akin to irl and in microtech its extremely different than space fights many are used to, the turret of the cane is insanely powerful in both places.
2. You miss out on the most important maneuver in sc, the merge. In an environment where someone can be casually flying as fast as mach 4, merging onto fast target, slow targets, distracted targets is very important. And requires taking your nose guns way off target. The hurricane turret provides a fantastic chance for the pilot to get a perfect merge while the gunner can shred them from each of the merging angles.
3.none of this matters in a year. The next flight model is designed to be a lot closer to irl dogfighting, and be much more about positional combat than aim duels... so sooner than later this wont be a problem.
To your 3rd point - this still will be an issue. The master modules, (the proposed flight model changes as I understand it) largely pertains to atmospheric combat. I imagine that atmospheric combat will more likely mimic conventional dogfights.
But these ships can leave orbit fairly easily, and I don't imagine pilots will continue to fight in atmosphere if they don't have to: newtonian flight models in open space offer far more manueverability options than remaining in-atmo.
Ships will vary so drastically in atmo that not every ship/pilot will prefer atmospheric operations, either. An arrow might, yes, but larger heavy two-seater fighters will probably want to drag fights into open space. And in open space, these points matter more.
You're probably right about the merges - but I also want to stress how wide-ranging chin mounted gimbals can be. It's not hard to imagine 270 horizontal degrees of coverage with + or _ 20 degrees of elevation: I still think that's more important.
Some two seater fighters benefit from a top mounted turret, yes, but CIG seems intent in *only* producing two seater fighters with a top mounted turret. I still think that a chin mount, HMTD controls, and a tandem seating arrangement is more useful to two-seater dogfighters.
The hurricane, regardless of it's king PVP position, needs better turret depression.
@@birthdaytruck In the next Flight model, atmo or space is irrelevant. Its a rework of the entire flight model, not just select parts. Combat Speeds will be limited to 300ish Regardless of atmo or space. Thats why good pvp orgs spend so much time training pilots at low altitude's on Daymar. Its as close as we can get to that Flight model, turn fights, Position combat, more difficult disengages ect.
Again the Flight model Changes are NOT Control Surfaces, That is a long way off. That said I cant imagine a future where The cane isnt the deadliest fighter in atmo. It has a better thrust ratio than any light, letting it outrun even arrows in atmo, Plus since position combat is that much more important when you fly in soup, A turret that can get into a circle strafe and rain death, Will always be some degree of absurd.
Sure there is some Merit to a chin mounted turret with that degree of Aim, But you miss 2 huge problems with it.
1. Chin mounted turrets dont cover the most important firing angle for gunners, About 20-30 degrees above the ship. when you do merge or get a positional Fight onto a target you want to Be able to Watch their movements, and use your Up thrusters to Maintain Circle Strafes, This keeps your target in a deadly low relative speed to you, while allowing you to prenose into chasing when they inevitable run after losing shields in 2 seconds. I cant emphasis Enough the Power of the Hurricane. I've soldem lost a fight in it with trained gunners ( and I almost exclusively fly 6v6+ squadron fights.) Its kind of a no brainer its nigh un-killable (in the right hands) agianst solo light fighter.
2. Youll want to cover the rear. Having 4 panthers capable of covering my own tail and peeling for me is a godsend in hectic fights. Plus it helps with mergering on targets
I cant not Emphasis to you enough, Merging is the most important skill for a pilot. If you cant merge onto teammates and primary targets in a Squadron fight, I can literally Ignore you completely. Any team mate of mine that cant merge, may as well not be there. And the Hurricane Turret is in the optimal arc to cover that (the golden zone for the hurricane is a doughnut about 30 degrees wide in a 360 circle.)
Turret depressing is fine. Because of the aim assist of The turret its capable of hitting even lower below the nose than Fixed guns. Ofc once the shitty worthless aim assist is gone we will see.
This is a more detailed explanation of a complaint I’ve heard over the years: Roberts is obsessed with WWII bomber designs that don’t make much sense in space. Personally, I’ve always thought it weird that a dedicated AI core isn’t controlling the weapons system.
I think one possible 2 seat fighter design would be designed with a sort of strafe/roll dodge doctrine in mind, shaped similar to other scifi ships like the droid trifighter from Star Wars, covered in positional thrusters, and with the Pilot and CoPilot "upside-down" compared to each other.
100% agree with everything you've said, so many turrets in strange places. The Freelancer/F-L-MAX for example, despite not being dedicated to combat, still has a turret on the polar opposite of its chin, buried on top of its tail tip... The gunner can't even get an angle on anything unless the target's above you... And the turrets bulky internals massively impact/obstruct the Freelancers/F-L-MAXs primary purpose, cargo space. xD
Yeah, they could really do with making that turret a remote one. As a manned turret it either blocks access for cargo or get's blocked by the cargo. As for a rear turret, it kind of makes sense on larger ships like that as a fighter will easily be able to keep out of the frontal arc of fire, especially if we end up getting attack drones that you can order to attack from particular angles.
While I'm not playing SC, your argumentation sounds solid.
Excellent break down. I've wanted to explain exactly this phenomena for a long time but didn't really know what language to effectively use to describe the nuances presented here. Your visual aids and how you used them were perfect. Awesome video.
On another note, I think CIG is attempting to think about this but I don't know if even they have necessarily broken it down this well to address how they want their flight models (2) to function. They seem to instinctually know that slowing ships down will help with this, but the dynamics of energy transfer from one direction to another is going to be tricky in space if they are attempting to make dogfighting feel like combat in the WW2/Korean War Era which I believe is what they communicated as their goal. This will probably be easier to achieve within their atmo flight model, but we will see. I hope someone on their dev team sees this video, it might help them better use language and theory to break it all down and communicate it.
This is a very well thought out video, but with one aspect that was missed with heavy fighters is the ships ability to use veto thrusters to maneuver in combat instead of strafing sided to side, this would help keep the target in the gunner’s firing arc for longer times, though it does create more drag in atmosphere, and exposes more of your ship to enemy fire
I pretty much agree with all you said, especially with them having better frontal coverage, and with HMT as an option (remote control would still be useful for blind spot coverage, or maybe the use of VR to "see through" the aircraft like they're starting to add in next generation jet's?) but maybe drones drones could justify them further down the line?
In theory they would use unmatchable maneuverability due to their size and automation to sit in a ships blind spot and attack weaker shields and components whilst avoiding return fire, to stop a ship from putting all it's power into their forward shields. In this case you'd want some form of point defense system or turret covering at angles to the top or bottom and rear that you could use to fend them off whilst the pilot maintains fire on the primary ship they're fighting, rolling the craft to allow the turret any angle of fire without compromising the frontal targeting. A chin turret would create a blind spot at the crafts rear that a drone could sit in, forcing the pilot to break contact with the primary target to deal with the drone or drain power to the rear shield.
Of course drones aren't in the game, and they may never be that capable, but just though it was worth consideration.
Really great video
This is the kind of deeper look content SC needs!
-CIG has *said* they want to limit jousting and front hemisphere fighting styles which could mean the conventional design will *someday* fit with the game.
-depending on the speed and weightiness of the ship determines whether I (pilot) fly for my turret Gunner to support me or if I fly it to support my turret Gunner.
For example:
--Redeemer pilot should fly FOR the gunners.
--Scorpius pilot should fly FOR itself with support from the gunners.
That's at least how I balance it out and adjust my flight behavior.
In the redeemer I am a facilitator and supporter of engagement while my gunners are the real engagers.
In a Scorpius I am the engager and my gunner supports me.
Vanguard it's a switch tactic wherein against faster targets I support my gunner and against slower targets my gunner supports me.
If that makes sense.
This is a well-produced video, and you are right that fun needs to be prioritized. We also need to consider it won't be fun for the defender if it's impossible to escape from turrets, though. At that point, it becomes more like an RPG, where whoever has the longest health bar wins. And I think the point you are not mentioning here is that maximizing effectiveness is not a path to a fun video game. CIG wants different craft to have different advantages and disadvantages, wants the player to manage risk vs reward, and wants the player to have a visceral experience (all of which are why manned turrets are common, rather than remotely controlling all weapon systems from an armored pod in the center of the ship). Also, the Vanguard has two beds so that all the players can log out at the same time.
This issue with gunnery is something I have considered for a Star Wars flight sim. Being a gunner in most Star Wars ships is not enjoyable. This is especially true for the YT-1300. Lessons learned from XWA, Star Citizen, and the history of gunnery made me realize that if you want player skill to be the determining factor for the efficacy of gunnery, and you want a solution that matches with the overall tech level of the universe, and you want it to be fun to play, you need an innovative mechanical solution. I think I came up with just such a solution, which I can use on the H-Wing because nobody cares about that ship's appearance staying exactly the same. The sad part is that said solution wouldn't be employable on iconic designs like the Y-Wing. At some point, I want to model my version of the H-Wing and show off my solution to the world. I just don't have the time right now. :-/
By the way, I was just thinking about Rogue Squadron today and even kind of missing the music, so it was a bit of a shock that you chose that for the BGM.
Honestly, even without all the in depth analysis multi crew mechanics are the biggest problem with games like Star Citizen. You will never ever make managing shields or manning the turrets on a ship more fun than piloting it. If you could we would already have games where that's all you do. So the multi-crew ship experience will always be a novelty. It will never be a superior gameplay experience to games that just let you control the whole vehicle by yourself.
That doesn't mean people can't have fun, but if there are no single player games where all you do is fill that role on the ship then you are committing to an inferior gameplay experience purely for the roleplaying aspect of manning those stations.
An interesting proposal but a bit misguided I'm afraid. While no doubt such a fighter would make a very solid duelist, though the current models already do, they would lose their ability to ward off fighters that get close to them and deviate from their cone of fire. Worse the nose mounted guns would not afford the pilot the ability to shoot at the heavy fighter's greatest weakness, a second player. Heavy fighters struggle in this situation more than any other when to pilots of equal or greater skill pounce on them and begin picking they apart from various angles, usually the rear and sides. For all two seaters this gets far worse if they were to lose their omni-directional top mounted turrets. They would have no option for a light fighter hopping on top of them attacking their weakness of worse maneuverability and speed. This is specifically because both ships are usually pitching up at one another and as a result having the gun on top allows it to get on target and stay their as soon as possible in alignment with where the pilot is attempting to point. I say this as someone who does not oppose your idea, frankly it would make my life as a LF pilot a lot easier. However, the other stuff about HMDs is solid to me, although in practice the hornet in particular was kind of disappointing.
Also I do need to stress how incorrect it is to frame heavy fighters as any but super strong in SC. They are very powerful vehicles and only the VERY BEST fighter pilots flying a Gladius can take them on 1v1 if the HF pilot and gunner possess even a modicum of competence and frankly it's still gonna be close. If they're of equal skill however it's never happening. Missiles can tip the scales HFs have huge EM signatures.
You linked a lot of footage from Avenger One, who actually answers a lot of the questions you pose and illustrates how they work (usually pretty well) in the current game model.
Beds are used for logging out safely. When a player logs out in a bed, it remains shuttered until they log back in.
Much of the remaining points you raise are addressed in the upcoming atmospheric flight rework, and "master modes" combat/transit flight reworks.
The bulk of the firepower resting in the hands of a turret under control of a gunner is reserved for vessels in SC's "gunship" category.
After the atmospheric flight rework, most fighter class vessels are intended to have very limited VTOL capability and will need to make attack runs like conventional aircraft, rather than hovering in place.
Having a better interface for the copilot controlling their turret with freelook would definitely be cool though.
2:00 OMG the Rogue Squadron music playing at the background, I cant remember what mission was but oh my god the memories
2 beds = 4 man crew. 2 up 2 down for double the human endurance.
Hot bunking concept, just like in a submarine.
Exactly! I say ditch the newtonian flight model and lets do planes in space. I LIKE conventionally placed turrets and want them usable.
Make thrust from all angles except rear extremely weak so that if you are side strafing, you are moving very slow and make an easy target.
The moment I started hearing Rogue Squadron OST I knew I was watching an expert on this subject.
Jokes aside - this is a great breakpoint and delivery. Big thanks
Great video, my only comment is that two seater ships in Star Citizen don't normally need to contend with gravity so much (and don't appear to have the air-to-ground requirements of an attack helicopter) so have the option of rolling the ship to keep targets in LOS of a top mounted turret.
Agree completely about the co-pilot taking more gunnery responsibility from the pilot as I think this is a great tradeoff and would work really well on a three crew Cutlass for example.
The redeemer is actually an odd mix of perpetuating the issue you highlighted, and including some of the features you mentioned.
It has 2 big manned turrets with very limited overlapping arcs, which makes it hard to keep most weapons firing, no tandem copilot seating, and a rear mounted remote turret that is nearly worthless in air combat.
It does, however, have a chin mounted remote turret, which the pilot usually controls gimbled. When you have a gunner, they are able to use the gun in a wider arc of fire. Unfortunately, it's just 2 size 3s, and if you are piloting the ship in a way that both s5 turrets are able to fire, odds are your gimbleis enough to get that turret on target as well. Not to mention when it launched it wasnt working right and the pilot still had control of the trigger for the guns, and I'm not sure if that has been fixed...
In summation, it is more likely the choice to include a chin mounted turret was more a style based decision than a recognition of an issue.
I hope you link this video on the spectrum for the devs to watch. They need this kind of feedback.
One thing i will say in counter is this. Extremely top tier pilots in extremely manueverable light fighters can orbit in a way that sits them out of your front firing arc, some of the best may even be able to loiter on your 6 even in a space game. Having a turret capability means that light fighters, no matter how good the pilot, do not have the option of simply outmanuevering you and sitting in the blindspot.
My source of this knowledge is around 1000 hours in various space flight sims including both elite and of course star citizen. In elite the meta is also pretty heavily based around jousting, however in certain matchups where a ship is simultaneously faster and more maneuverable than its opponent you can achieve that orbiting in the blindspot type of victory. That is the reason the bigger ships do not rule the meta, sure they can decouple and point where they want but light fighters and even some of the medium ships are fast and maneuverable enough to sit behind them pretty much no matter what they try. 1 or 2 turrets on a ship prevent light fighters from doing this because although they still output more damage on the larger ship they cannot afford to take that amount of damage in return.
Also the rear facing turret concept allows for the pilot to attack larger ships with torpedos, missiles etc while his co pilot can output enough pressure to prevent enemies from simply following and killing them.
But yeah the main point being, on a heavy fighter a rear facing turret combined with your hull/shield strength can be enough of a mismatch to prevent any light fighter from attacking you, regardless of position manueverability or speed.
Chris is obsessed with the WW2 combat dynamics and his ego won't allow him to listen to reason. Ship combat in Star Citizen is going to remain handicapped forever.
You are partly right... In dogfighting, you usually reinforce the front shields and all the firepower is directed forward.
If it was all about that, ships like Constellation and Corsair would be the dominant ships.
However, you very quickly forget that you're fighting in space and although you use space as a reason even at the beginning, where you can fly/punish in all directions, you also forget that the fights are very unbalanced like heavy fighter against light fighter or even bigger ship like the Connie and Corsair against a light fighter.
Larger ships that don't have all-round protection (Connie and Corsair) suffer a lot because the light fighters simply fly around the ship and attack from behind and from the sides where there is no or only weak opposition.
That's why ships like the one you want are only useful in direct 1 vs 1 with the same weight class, which as I said is not always the case.
I like the fact that you even want to promote crew gameplay in your ideas instead of a solo player orientation and you are absolutely right that in Star Citizen the ships should not be compared with the old fighter planes, but much more with modern combat helicopters.
But also combat helicopters are much more 2D oriented... at eye level, so to speak, whereas in Star Citizen you can be attacked from all directions, even from above or even below, because there is no ground.
That's why I personally think that ships like the Redeemer will dominate much more in the sparser combat system. A rather sluggish ship where the pilot can of course never keep a fighter in his sights, but with the help of the turrets covering all sides of the ship, the fighter pilot will have a hard time finding a blind spot on the Redeemer and holding position.
Now here's something you've completely ignored, and that is that in space you're not just fighting one target, so you can always have one on your backside. Then it's practical if the top gunner can also shoot backwards, for example.
I know you want more focused firepower to the front so that you can shoot down the opponent faster. However, CIG is also trying to artificially make this a bit longer so that dogfights are not over within seconds. You should circle around a bit longer to keep the adrenaline pumping for longer and have more fun, which also increases the challenge because the risk of making mistakes in a longer fight is also increased.
I hope you see my comment as just another way of looking at things and don't take offence. You really made a great video and put a lot of effort into it, which I actually really liked :)
Two beds make sense from a hygiene standpoint. It´s not good for two different people sleeping in the same bed, even though it´s done even today, i think it´s called hot-bunking.
Now, the time in which SC plays certainly would have tech that allows for one bed and still offer sufficient hygiene, but it still make sense so each has their personal area.
A little bit of privacy on a crowded vessel, so to speak.
About the turrets and the staggered two-seat cockpit, that makes perfectly sense the way you laid it out, great thinking with the helicopter analogy.
More importantly, the beds are the escape pods and due to the long range nature of the ship, there will be times when the crew has nothing to do and so can both sleep. Hot swapping makes sense on larger ships of around 20+ people as you tend to have enough crew to run all normal functions with only a fraction of them, only needing all hands for emergencies and combat, and it would take up a tonne of space to provide individual beds for everyone when they'll never all be used at the same time.
Not going to see any major changes to any of these ships but even as a Vanguard fanboy I like your suggestions. It would be really interesting to remove the top turret, take the S4 away from the pilot, give them a couple fixed S3s (or 2s) as a replacement and give the copilot the nose gimbal -- maybe go dual S3s again (S4s?). I will say as the pilot, flying so that your turret gunner as a clear shot up front is such a pain in the butt You're either sacrificing your own solution or your gunner's
I think long term we'd really regret that decision as it would create massive blind spots on a heavy ship that small nimble fighters and drones can just sit in unopposed. The three crew members makes sense to me though. However they'd need to fit an extra bed in, as they are both the escape pods and the place where players can log out.
Light fighter won't be sitting infront of heavy fighter's attack cone like you described. It will use it's speed and agility to get to your blind side. And the moment you turn to catch it, it's already flying by you and attacking from behind again. Turret is there to counter that tactic so you can continue firing even if target is out of your main gun's cone and prevent it's shield from regenerating. If all guns are moved up front, heavy fighters will be more vulnerable to light fighters.
Similarly, when facig a medium/large ship, you don't want to face it's main guns, you'll try to maneuver around it, target it's engines. And while you move around, turret can continue shooting and prevent shield regeneration.
There is a good way to fix this, and that is to simply make turrets remote controlled, give the gunners a VR set ( to the PC not the player) to "wall hack" their ship out of their vision and allow them to control multiple turrets at the same time. On fighters, the gunner would control an additional turret on the opposite side to keep the target on sight at all times with at least one turret and focus both when possible. This would be even more useful for bigger ships, a centralized control room would provide an easier access, less casualties, better turret placement, less labyrinthy insides... if the crew is small a single gunner could control every thing to avoid empty turrets. They could also just allow the pilot to lock the turrets in a forward direction for him to use if he as no fri... gunner, or set them to automatic PD.
The VR set could also be given to the pilot for greater vision and to cover the "structural weak point" with a sliding armor plate to avoid even more casualties.
4:12 energy fighting very much still exists but it’s a factor of momentum and relative thrust versus the RL limitation of aerodynamics and gravity.
I found EVE illuminating in terms of space combat partially because of the third person view as orbital speeds and the ability to out-turn enemy guns or outrun the very explosions caused by some inbound missiles became the backbone of many combat strays/fits.
In any game with “healing”, defence hardening and effectively limitless ammo while performing a positioning battle it’s the person that lands the hits that wins not the one with the highest energy output.
Space Engineers is honestly a great way to see what works in newtonian flight. We can do anything, and make ships to better do those things. For example, orbit fighting is one of the most effective moves
Star Citizen seems to be ignoring a lot of those things, even from the outside.
As much as ED has disintegrated itself, they still have an excellent space combat system
I would argue that the turret gameplay is quite effective and entertaining as-is. The goal behind them is to improve weapon coverage to harass tailing fighters and, in the case of the Hurricane and Scorpius, allow the pilot to focus more on big-picture engagements and prevent target fixation. Heavy fighters, like the ones you mentioned, also have poor turn rates compared to light fighters like the Gladius, Arrow, and Talon, and the additional turret coverage is designed to help fight off those kinds of enemies, who (in the hands of a decent pilot) can get in the blind spot below the heavy fighter and stay there.
And there's nothing stopping you from having 3 crew in a Vanguard and hot-bunking. Just that during space combat, there's nothing for the 3rd person to do.
I'm also pretty sure those bunks are escape pods
I'd argue theres a problem here born out the fact that these space dogfights appear to be DPS races, you arent really trying to avoid getting hit, just trying to kill them before they kill you
Big problem. If your trying to create a totally immersive space sim vehicles shouldnt have health bars, they should have dynamic component damage.
@@aceambling7685 Well the ships themselves kind of do. The spanner in the works for that are energy shields, which by their very nature are basically health bars.
You've hit a big point I struck from the video. This *does* change with physicalized damage. A single bullet/laser bolt from a badly placed turret might knock out a manuevering thruster.
But - even then - the turrets would be better if chin mounts.
nice distorted battle of hoth as backtrack lol
Edit: Nevermind I just realized it's the rogue squadron OST
Argument against it being a 3 party for 2 beds.
Ai would be able to fly the ship while in warp.
I hope the helmet HUD changes comes in at some point soon, for things like the lack of vision due to the turret covering the line of fire. I think the Reliant series already allows the copilot to assume control of the tip-mounted turrets when they're equipped and it does go to show that it would be very useful and doable for other gimbal mounted weapons. I feel like manned turrets are just silly at this point in space though. There isn't really any gained advantage, and don't get me started on the double-turret design of the Javelin. The desire to put players in physical turrets and aversion of manning a station that gives them remote control of any kind really dampens the 'space ship' feel of things. The Connie has 3 seats and the Freelancer has 4 yet neither ship has remote access to their turret or even any function for more than one copilot as only one can really be the missile monkey. Being a physical chair turret on the Freelancer makes it obstruct your precious cargo space, the whole point of the ship, and the Connie honestly feels like it could have bigger and more powerful turrets if so much space wasn't dedicated to fitting a fleshbag in it. Delegating gimbal gun control to copilots would help in either case and would be a fantastic addition, especially because not having your guns always point the direction you're flying is especially valuable on a slow moving ship, but the turrets are still so lack luster due to their constraints and small weapon loadouts.
I think the Vanguard is the best example of 'rule of cool' as you mentioned. I think these smaller, top mounted turrets where the ship isn't focused on turret firepower were designed more like point defense for shooting down missiles. The Vanguard is 90% pilot firepower it's not relying on that turret for any punch really. Why then, is it a static, man-operated turret? The Scorpius is a great example of moving turret design (though I don't disagree that the turret could be placed better) and shows it's possible to begin with. If the Vanguard turret must exist put it on rails and let it get full 360 coverage of the ship. Let it actually provide some utility to the ship.
Ultimately though, we know they're trying to squash jousting and push flight models specific for combat so they're probably gonna make it work because mobility is gonna plummet anyway, making the turrets have a much easier time staying on target and applying damage. It's a shame because the more actual sci-fi elements of ship design that would be really cool will likely just be swapped out for conventional rule of cool. Unrelated but who decided the weapon mount for the Nomad on the top, and nose for that matter, should be these tiny stiff metal bars? Why aren't those turrets, CNOU make those kind of things we've seen it on the Mustang, have it not look like the weapons will rip themselves off after shooting for a second damn son. I like the ship but those weapons just look really awkward for no reason.
I've heard in other videos about SC's combat, that Chris Roberts wants the game to have WW2 style dogfights in this game, which is fine as its fun and more engaging than jousting at 2000m/s.
Yeah, actual dog fights because even in current era, dogfights aren't really a thing. Military technology moves in a direction that is about removing fighting and is just pure elimination of targets.
You're totally right. The problem is Chris Roberts himself. Chris has stated multiple times that he wants world War II style dog fights between ships, especially in atmosphere. I find ironic that a guy known for space games really wants to just make a world War II game. Though I will argue the turrets aren't useless as circle fighting only applies when the two ships are of similar maneuverability. I can't tell you how many times my turret has saved me from a light fighter that was dancing well outside my arc of fire. Or staved off light fighters as I tried to get my bigger ship to run out of the area and jump.
Worth noting this isn't a him issue, but a sci fi issue in general. Realistic space combat is boring and would consist purely of automated systems firing off guided and light based munitions at targets thousands of kilometers away you can't even see whilst point defense systems try to stop as much of it getting through as possible with little to no space for fighters, which would just be swatted out of space before they can even get close enough for their low powered munitions to do nothing to the larger ships. Even if you forced a fighter battle at close range with manually controlled weaponry it would largely just be two ships circling each other and unloading with the result almost always being the one with more firepower wins.
That's what they're trying to find a way around, and if you look at most sci fi that has fighter based combat they tend to try and blend in atmospheric type maneuvers to make things more interesting. The issue in star citizen is they also want to maintain a clear difference between atmospheric and space combat, and there is a massive range of ships that need to feel balanced, meaning it needs a lot of fine tweaking based on player feedback so that it feels fun whilst keeping the feel of being in space.
CIGs response. So weve taken some time to review youre video, you raise some excellent points that we're surprised weren't obvious to us and to make up for our mistakes we have nerfed the Ares Ion again.
I think that rather than having front hemisphere turrets, the actual use case for these weapons is more practical. The turrets can allow the ship to have coverage over multiple hemispheres for non-1v1 engagements. You're looking at this from a 1v1 perspective, and ignoring the myriad situations where 2 hostiles may engage the same vehicle.
Given how all sc space craft spin in an outer axis circle, like a helicopter. Compared to an aircraft's inner center axis spin. Yeah the video makes sense. SC is helicopter combat not plane. Feels like you uncovered a secret.
The issue is there's no real comparison there as helicopters aren't designed to dogfight. They have a chin mounted gun because they are designed to attack ground targets, not because it's better for attacking other helicopters. As it happens they have massive blind spots to the top and rear that can be easily exploited by other aircraft if they where to get into an air to air fight.
I haven't used these ships since I liie the medical and transport gameplay more than combat... BUT I feel like the seating can be overcome with having cams on the guns and using a monitor or similar interface for the copilot to see. The limit of just havint a top gun has resulted in VERY derpy looking inverted overwatch attampts for ground units so having a chin gun would be very aesthetically improved lol.
Though, personally, I'd think in the future like this the copilot would instead be running stuff like power management, comms, missile assistance, and mainly data like hacking or scanning.
Let the pilot worry about flying and shooting. The copilot can mess with the systems of both your ship and try the enemies. To avoid complete tunnel vision they can check the scans or comms for potential threats or weapons fire that the pilot might've missed etc. Basically a dedicated support rather than an additional gun.
We're already more information based now so I imagine that the copilots of the future would be.
I find the for the lighter two-seaters, having enemy ships move out of the turret firing arcs can be circumvented by having the pilot execute a roll towards the enemy, enabling the turret gunner to remain weapons hot after the pilot can pitch to re-engage themselves. Of course, chin weapons wouldn't need this manoeuvre as it's the superior design, but there are ways around everything lol.
Particularly for the hurricane, having the turret gunner remain on target is an absolute must as the primary DPS of the ship comes from that quad turret.
I do agree with a lot of what you said. One thing to remember is that they are changing the flight model to get closer to the WW II feel. I personally don't think forcing ships to go slower is the way to go but that is not what they want. I do think if everyone looked at the model as attack Helicopters people would be more engaged with it. Most people are hooked on the Star Wars feel of space combat.
Because real space combat would be quite frankly boring. It would consist of launching long range missiles to targets you can't see. Granted, I wouldn't mind seeing a game like that.
i wont argue that star citizens copilots sould see massive improvement, but ive always had the impression that the turreted fighters are meant to be involved in multiple ship engagements. the reason these turrets dont cover the same hemisphere is because its really easy for a second attacker to simply avoid the front hemisphere, and freely attack you while their partner evades, whereas covering the top hemisphere means you can consistently engage a second fighter thats trying to avoid the front facing weapons, simply by asking the pilot to incorporate some roll into their fighting.
this design is reminiscent of tanks, where the commander controls a remote mg on the top, to deal with infantry and light vehicles that would try to flank, while the driver/gunner focus their attention on the main threats. in this scenario the top hemisphere weapon is not meant to be firing on the same target as the front facing weapon. obviously this does get muddied a little by star citizens current setup, where some of the gunners have more firepower than the pilot, and thus are meant to be the one engaging the primary threat, but thats a much more localized problem that can easily be fixed with a missile buff..
i will also dispute the idea that ships should be based on helicopter dogfights, because helicopters werent meant to dogfight, the front turret is gimballed not because the gunner is meant to get air to air kills, but because a helicopter cant point its nose at a target without moving. i do definitely agree that we should steal their tandem seats, though it is worth mentioning that traditional seats offer a lower profile, aiding in avoiding shots, and the visibility disadvantage can be heavily negated if that seating arrangement includes remote cameras.
I was mostly seeing your point until you got to the Vanguard. The turret placement isn’t necessarily there to allow it to replicate the pilot’s range of fire, but rather to cover more vulnerable space on the ship when a more nimble ship slips above/behind it, which isn’t super hard to do for a good pilot.
Ships like the Hurricane, Super Hornet, and Scorpius all have the same benefit, but need it a little less.
Additionally, this entire video presumes a 1 v 1 dogfight, without any other hostile coming from different vectors. In larger scale fights, having the turret possess a different field of fire can actually be very beneficial, especially for things like higher speed fly-bys that allow the gunner to have a max time on target that after the pilot loses the target picture.
Overall, I get your point and think it’s relatively valid for the smaller ships, but think that in more complex and crowded areas, it can make sense to leave it as is. Also, bigger ships end up needing turrets for weak spots, and the vanguard can start to fall into that when facing a light fighter like the arrow or khart-ul.
I havent watched the full video yet but wanted to point out a couple things. dogfights here are rarely 1 on 1 so the turrets help with additional coverage, that being said you could counter well a top turret cant cover the bottom, or other angles. well in space there is no up or down, rotate the ship, its easy enough to do. Furthermore while jousting, there is time when the opponent is behind you, a turret would be able to maintain fire on them even once they have passed you. Again at some point you may say this but as of half way through i have not heard it.
Great video! I agree that a lot of the ships are simply poorly designed for 6dof combat. My only real counter point is that off bore firing solutions are more often than not a waste of time. Compared to the speeds that ships can move and accelerate at projectile speeds are woefully inadequate. Rounds move at either 700m/s (slower than 5.56) or 1400 m/s meaning it can take up to a full second between firing and impact at common combat ranges.
Fights need to be knife close to land shots and relative velocities of the craft need to be in near alignment. The pilot is best positioned to know when fire will actually be effective (and it's almost exclusively directly in front), meaning giving gimbals to a co-pilot is making your platform less effective (the banu defender can do this right now!). The auto gimbal system for example is Completely WORTHLESS as skilfull flying will confound it's targeting 100% of the time.
My suggestion to change this would be to make career specific helmets
You could have pilot and copilot helmets that make the hull invisible with a toggle, and let people on mfd turrets swap turrets instantly
You could also have combat focused helmets that could assist in finding targets
Mining helmets could also provide recommended safe power settings for different rocks
This would also force fighter pilots who are going to be boarding or landing for fps to pick between pilot AR or combat sense unless their fighter had at least enough storage to get changed
This is what I was thinking. We're already developing such technology in real life so it should be standard by the time of Star Citizen. I'd say all should have the ability to see though the hull of the ship, as it would be useful for gunners to track targets too. And it could maybe have different quality levels based either on the ship manufacturer or upgrades, ranging from set camera positions to full 360. They could also maintain the 3rd person camera by having it done by drone for low speed maneuvering and landing.
Ohh i loved this video, the problem goes further then fighters. And the problem has always been rule of cool, ships looks familiar and cool from what we seen in 20th century movies. It would be nice if it where an easy fix, its not, and that is the problem with 100s of unique ships. Really good video though, and well explained
Veery good video. I loved the tone set by the music, the preparation to the subject, knowledge and all of that with very good editing. But as with every source we learn from there is a chance for errors and ONE that I will inform You is that all of the conventional flight tactics ARE energy fighting tactics, for some reason troughout the time people wanted the "energy fighting" to be seperate form while all of the forms use the energy states and abilities of certain airframes to abuse them. Yak3 will conjure the fuckload of energy while turning at optimal speeds when his chosen opponent loses the energy in the same turn, effectively winning the energy advantage by simply doing nothing fancy but just a turn.
If You could make some suggestion thread, poll or any media that CiG is using to communicate design choices with community and link it under Your video I and hopefull many other people could back up Your observation. Lets say we start with Vanguard and all the points that You have adressed at it in the video.
You put your finger on EXACTLY WHAT I WAS FEELING, but I didnt know what it was or how to articulate it. I was just feeling "Meh" about a bunch of this and that is why.
This compliment means a lot to me. I've gotten similar comments from other videos, and it reinforces the *heavy* writing, research, and editing I put into them. My 15 minute videos still take months to make. Thank you for the kind words.
Every game I have played is a game you have made a video expressing my exact concerns and pain from the games, you definitely deserve more viewers. Keep up the incredible work :D
I'm pretty sure the f35 has a helmet mounted display that allows the pilot to actually see through the plane. If you don't want to change the copilot's position, you could just give them one of those, it'll also help a lot with the ship's situational awareness and encourage the copilot to call out bad guys to their pilot.
I like everything you're saying. Making the two seater heavy fighters a two man job, One guy has the weapons and the other has flying would ALSO help make less skilled pilots more effective. They can focus on learning and mastering the flight tactics without needing to also try and hit the target. More forgiving gimbals or having weapons on turret banks controlled by the gunner would then also mean the pilots less skillful positioning can still score hits. If you dont have a second player, you can force the guns to be fixed for one person use, thus maintaining balance.
Balance brings me to one of the issues this game has. Chris stated from the start he wanted newtonian physics. He wanted space fights. The problem is he designed it like if ww2 naval fighting is how that would work. Newtonian physics means that combat would never work like that. EVER. Poorly skilled players complained about jousting so much they slowed down the top speeds and the new concept for the future flight modes will FURTHER slow down ships.
He has to move further and further away from newtonian physics because they cleave so heavily to the WW2, visual range only combat.
These two concepts are completely opposed.
Time of engagement will prove you wrong.
Remove the shields, add in the need to worry about heat dissipation on your ship since it doesn't happen naturally in a vacuum, and have to deal with realistic detection ranges on stealth coated ships...
Watch all of your arguments just vanish. If your ship can be blown away in a single hit, you will do everything in your power to not get targeted, in order to not get targeted orbiting will fail.
Boom and zoom allows you to accelerate outside of a combat area, get into the combat area detect the enemy, release a volley, and get the hell back out and under one or two seconds without even changing your course.
Turrets are required to allow you to not change your course and just keep accelerating along a linear path.
The key to good combat is reducing engagement time.
certainly explains why the Redeemer is considered so strong, the overlapping guns in the front hemisphere makes it actually fit into its role very well for its designed maneuver envelope
While designed well a number of other factors (weapon projectile speed, acceleration values, and general combat mechanics) make the redeemer little more than a punching bag in pvp They can and often do lose to single fighters.
@@dddj158 yeah, it needs to be unnerfed. >:(
You make some good points, but there are many problems with moving a defensive turret on a heavy slow turning fighter to an offensive position. Master modes supposedly coming soon, we will need to see how that changes game play, as well as rumored atmospheric flight changes. Main issues to worry about with your proposed changes as the game sits now would be, most encounters are not 1v1 and heavy fighter vs light fighter it is extremely difficult for the much slower heavy to obtain or maintain a firing solution on a ship that can turn circles around you all while staying nose on.
You can still use the classic dogfighting in atmo. Many ships do not have the lateral thrust to orbit while in atmosphere. Turrets also have much better capacitors for energy weapons, meaning they can put more damage out than pilot guns.
I definitely think they plan on adding copilot gun delegation in the future. The reason I think this? The design of the Corsair. Go look at the pilot-copilot staggered arrangement, and tell me they don't plan on letting the Copilot take control of those front guns.