Firing Arcs?

Fire arcs only affect the graphical display of weapons fire in the tactical combat engine. There is no "gameplay" effect; all ships effectively have 360-degree fire arcs. I'd also like to see fire arc limitations, as well as specific weapon and engine hardpoints instead of the simple inner/outer hull arrangement we have now.

The main problem is how do you balance all the shipsets? How do you stop players from making new shipsets with optimized arcs or slots? You can argue the same for the current sets and implementation - but with only inner/outer having any effect the impact is marginalized.

If you add a default template for each ship size so that all shipsets share the same arcs and slots based on 4 facings that might work ok for balance and fairness. To be honest though I think it would only ever show up in small battles with just a couple of ships. Once you get more ships together, it tends to break down into a melee anyways.

The Balance Mod for SE:V at least makes inner and outer slots a bit distinct by making the player use outer slots for weapons and engines and a few other components so it's likely they'll be taken out a bit earlier than internals. It's only a minor effect though...

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

Well if you have a ship style with wide arcs, you could do things like restrict the # of other slots on the ships to compensate. They'll never be perfectly balanced but I would just encourage players to come up with ways to overcome the shortcomings of their favorite style.

Careful use of strategies and fleet/task force formations is probably one way. If you chose a shipset that has predominantly broadside fire arcs (classic Napoleonic ship-of-the-line) you would almost always deploy your fleet in line ahead or line abreast. With line abreast, just turn your flagship to port and start moving. All the other ships will
also turn to port to stay in formation, and now you are presenting your guns to an approaching enemy.

The whole point of having formations (IRL) is to maximize all-around weapons coverage. With no fire arcs its really a non-issue. Imagine if you had two ship types, one with most of its weapon arcs pointing forward, and another with broadside arcs. You would organize your formations with the "guns front" ships in the center (the core, line abreast or arrowhead) and the "broadside" ships on either side (the escort or picket, line astern or echeloned right/left). This would give you coverage of 3 of the 4 directions. It matters if someone breaks through a flank and gets behind your "guns front" ships. With the current system is doesn't matter which direction the enemy approaches from, they are going to get shot.

Hmmm, that's also worrying but not surprising. Slowing the speed of ships, and reducing turn rates might help, but then again with no fire arcs there is no incentive to keep your fleet in formation, so why bother?

That's why most strategies in SE:IV almost always broke formation and allowed ships to follow their own strategy. I suppose the usefullness of formations was/is during the initial contact phase of the battle...

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

Is the AI used for managing them. In SEV as in SEIV, you can select the other ships but they simply ignore your orders; there's no indication as to which ship is the leader.

Worse, when a formation turns all the ships try to stay in formations throughout, which can lead to some pretty nasty tangling. Not as much of an issue in SE5, but its still awkward.

Have firing arcs be a parameter of weapon mounts, and the wider the arc, the larger the mount. ("none" would become a default 'normal' mount with maybe a 120 forward arc).

Also, anything over 120 degrees could require an Outer hull position, while smaller arcs could be internal.

Mounted Arcs were mentioned early on but were never adopted. I suppose you can continue to lobby MM about it though.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

As much as I liked the directional damage and weapons arcs system in Starfury, I believe that the effort and problems you would create in a game like SE V with this are not worth it.
So I would plead in the contrary to abolish directional damage, which would allow a much more simpler design creation.

Directional damage although not super can be made a bit better but making better restrictions for where components can be placed - like weapons and engines on outer hull etc. It also works ok for potential mods that will use leaky shields/armors - where damage can slip past the shields/armors without them being all destroyed first.

I'd lobby for keeping the current UI arrangement as it would be easier in the future for modding lobbyists to secure the possibility of adding directional damage for shields/armor, and perhaps arcs or other features like custom slots via mods.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

Gah.. Master of Orion 2 had fireing arc and it's a long game.

The way you do it is simple - by weapon mounts.

A fixed mount can fire only forward but has increased range and damage.
A 180° mount requires more space but can fire everywhere except in the rear.
A 360° mount requires the most space, but cna fire in every direction.

To further balance it out, ship turns rate and size have to be considered. Big ships are more ponderous and take longer to turn.
Manuvering thrusters as a (large) component to increase turn rate would alos be nice.

If you add the posssibilty for a single ship to attack multiple targets you can add a broadside mount (left and right), so your ship just passes between two enemy ships and let's loose a volley.

I don't think so. I think the best way to implement firing arcs is to restrict the certain weapons themselves. Such as since torpedo's need torpedo tubes, you place the tubes facing where you want them to shot from, be it front, back, port or starboard. Smaller weapons, like meson blasters and anti-proton beams, "could" be fitted onto turrets, which would allow 360° fire arcs (since space combat in SEV is only 2D, we only need to worry about 360°)

Heavier weapons, such as wave motion guns and such, would need to be quite big, therefore probably mounted on the 'spine' of the ship, making them either forward or aft facing. Missiles are tracking, and therefore their placement anywhere will not hinder their ability to fire on a ship anywhere in the 360° field, you'd just slow their rate of fire to balance them out.

This would make tactics and such far more interesting. IE you have a ship with low armour but decked out with torpedos that only fire from port and starboard (Age of Sail style, with cannons) but the ship you're facing has two wave motion guns mounted on the front. You have to somehow get your broadside along her while trying to avoid her big guns. All about jockeying for position.

I too would like to see firing arcs implemented, it would make formations more practical rather than the huge mess when you get large fleets into one.

I always use formations, but that's because I play with modded missiles that are alot meaner than standard ones. Joint TF PD is necessary to stop the larger salvos or they kill ships very quickly.

It's like that with the Devnull mod I help test. In the last game I had to stick to a formation very close together so combined PD stopped mass missile volleys.

The AI would have to be dramatically revamped to be able to use firing arcs. Getting into positon and such? Easy enough for a human... with a pause button. But the AI wouldn't be able to use it... and it would be useless in multiplayer where you don't get to control your ships in combat.
Don't think it should even be a consideration for SEV
Maybe in 6... where hopefully the Combat map will be 3D and the AI usefull.