Matrix Games Forums

Edited my previous message.

You can easily tell the type of target it is by targetting it. I know the logical defense to that is "Well, what if you're in a dogfight and don't have the liberty of just turning to it and targetting it?" Well, if you're in a dogfight then you know any blip close to you is a fighter. The only other option is it being a capital ship, and if you're dogfighting near a capital ship you deserve to be shot down.

Ceyan,

I concur with your assessment of dogfighting a capship. However, the point of the snap views to sort targets (especially based on flight vector) is to avoid a dogfight in the first place.

If there is an element of fighters coming at me with a high rate of closure, it will be much harder to pick out with the radar, especially if they are still mixed with the capships. However, with the 3d snap view you can pick out a fighter element by seeing a 1 or 2 behind the callsign, and you can key on those to see the closure rate. At this point, I'd prefer to engage them BVR to avoid a dogfight altogether.

My philosophy is, with some exceptions, if you're in a heavy dogfight and you still have MRMs on the wings, you've done something wrong.

Again, to emphasize, I realize that this can be done with the F4 view. Often, though, it is nice just to be able to look over your shoulder without completely switching views and cycling targets. For example, a glance to ensure that your wingmen are in position just before bustering in to engage your target is invaluable, whereas a separate view takes too long, and targeting them and/or turning to make sure they are there is counterproductive to your mission goals.

ORIGINAL: TheDeadlyShoe

Life support systems are very mass-intensive for little practical combat purpose. Addt'l, people cannot withstand the high grav stresses nearly as well as a robotic fighter could (maybe with water pods or the ilk, but then they'll have kind of a tough time controlling the ship), nor do they have the reaction time. One primary vulnerablity of computers, radiation, is also quite capable of cooking an organic crew.

Yes I suspect futuristic space combat may be more like that in Ian M. Banks Culture novels with extremely advanced AIs making decisions in nanoseconds and fleet battles lasting less than a second. I can't see how this could be simulated in a computer game though. If the speed of light is an absolute limit, all interstellar travel and exploration will be carried out by computers and robots.

Sorry, getting a bit off topic there.

Milo, If you link it directly to mouse movement with a toggle (so we dont have to hold the right mouse button) those of us with a trackir can use it to pan our views while still keeping both hands on the keyboard/joystick.