Using GSF resources for racing? (re-post)

[Karaiblis]

How fast can you make the Kessel run, dodging through asteroid fields, flying down worm gullets, skirting the Maw's gravity wells, and making sharp turns through shipyards to get to the finish line?

 

Going from one section of the forums to another, reading some suggestion threads in each and thinking of the problems of implementing the poster's requests, I came up with an idea. Many posters have suggested race style events, but with speeders all being a set speed and in 2d terrain, wins would end up being mostly decided by latency, or a big investment of resources by BW to develop a racing speeder system, which also seems unlikely to be justified.

 

GSF players have asked for a better tutorial to help retain more new players, but BW has stated their metrics don't don't show an increase of players with an increase of accessibility, so the resources can't be justified. But how about using the existing GSF system to design ship races.

 

Races would be a test of precision flying and speed vs safety in a 3d environment. Competitive players would need to become skilled at swapping between shield and engine power, and maybe even ship weapons could be involved to blast away debris or clear other objectives. The current ships special moves could be used to speed up or specially maneuver through obstacles, heal, etc. choosing crew could give you bonuses to heals, or communication to see a little farther afield on a course minimap, or engine power.

 

Those that just like to race could just run race events, and maybe when some get comfortable with the controls they will add to the GSF community as well. These races can be entirely no-friendly fire for people that don't like PvP, and there could be a map version where shooting other racers is enabled, giving GSFers a new map that does double duty reaching the game consumers. This would not require AI development to create NPC enemies, it could all be terrain based, and it would also let people get used to ship controls much faster and easier and less frustratingly than dying over and over in a couple seconds when they jump new into GSF matches.

 

The race could be laid out in a 'track' so to speak, with safe vs dangerous paths through obstacles where risk vs reward is a factor, that ends at a finish line (or ring to fly through), or it could be a 'collect all these touch-points around the map in any order and the first person to get them all is the winner' type race.

 

Would current GSF players like that kind of content, would it be helpful as an accessibility tool, do you think non GSFers would find it different enough and fun enough and less frustrating enough to get more involved?

[Ryuku-sama]

No. Because one build would win every single time.

 

 

Novadive, StE, Barrel Roll double speed.

 

EDIT. At least if the race is longer than the race from spawn to B in Denon. Else it would be a Spearpoint with Tensor and Power Dive.

Edited May 20, 2015 by Ryuku-sama

[Ramalina]

Oh, depends on how you design the course. Make enough tight turns and a pure speed scout could wind up being almost impossible to win a race with.

 

A space racing mini-game drawing on GSF resources would be different and fun. In terms of easing the GSF learning curve I don't think it would be all that useful. In GSF you need to know the combat mechanics across all of the ship classes, and it would be easier to build a single general purpose tutorial than it would to build a set of space races that taught the full set of basic GSF mechanics.

 

In terms of getting someone in control of purse strings to green light the project, I don't know. Maybe space races would be easier to get through.

[Karaiblis]

I did kind of mean there would be one racer ship, with some of the most common options to choose from, that would be like a tutorial ship, but a more in depth course would allow for learning shield/weapon/power swapping, and possibly some targeting and how to shoot a missile, like say, if you hit it right for a couple seconds you open up a faster way out of an asteroid you flew into to grab a flag, but if you miss you have to fly back out the way you went into the asteroid in the first place (weapon power for shooting if you have lower damage or accuracy, or if you have different abilities you might need engine power to make the breach in time). It would use the system already developed tho for GSF, instead of needing to design a minigame from scratch, and add depth. Not saying it would be cheap or anything, the course would take resources, but if it's targeted at those wanting races, it might be worth it for BW, instead of just being for GSF enthusiasts Edited May 20, 2015 by Karaiblis

[Verain]

I think this is an amazing idea.

 

But saying that "one ship would always win" isn't right. I mean, that's like being opposed to race tracks because an F-1 car will always beat a rally car would beat a stock car. Of course that's true, but you handle that by not making them race against each other, right?

[Karaiblis]

It would also give some people wanting a PvE way to fly a ship a way to achieve that without having to develop enemy AI, and still be a fun interaction involving other players (that the original space rail-game couldn't do). Edited May 29, 2015 by Karaiblis

[zaskar]

It makes far more sense to use the class ships, they would all be the same, skill would be the determining factor not how much loot someone has. Sorta ya know like any motorsport in the civilized world. Edited May 31, 2015 by zaskar

[Verain]

The class ships vary quite widely in their performance too. They all perform identically in the star fox missions, but that's just a gimmick- the troop transport is much slower than a phantom, for instance.

 

I do agree that you'd have to keep the playing field within reason, but even in the real world, the cars are tuned aggressively within limits, and every advantage is a big deal. You could definitely use GSF ships for this as long as you made it obvious that they weren't using your battle queued components, but instead had a separate set of racing components (tuned for balance in the raceways).

[Etrii]

This concept is great.

 

Make a race ship from one of the existing with pre-defind components, add some targets to score points and it would be an optimal tool to familiarise new pilots with the "feel", controls and game mechanics(OFC except actuall dogfighting, but we cant have all, right?)