That’s my feeling right now 
Was hoping for some dynamic flanking maneuvers.
Uhm - hasn’t there been multiplayer since the beginning? or were all of Stan Plush’s challenges a figment of my imagination?
Not soon enough - or realistically I think 2015?
Berny
Starting from the bottom.
Oh, 2015 alrighty then. Challenges was a cool setup but what I had in mind for mulitplayer was 2 players or more fighting each other simultaneously in one match or fighting together in a match or lobby(whatever you prefer to call it).
Hello, Testpilot6. From my vantage point, I’m truly unsure if simultaneous, realtime-over-internet multiplayer is anywhere on the developer’s radar, let alone something that’s feasible for inclusion in the sequel game. Optimism may be premature here. I agree with you, though: if it’s do-able, it would be a nice feature to have.
Broadsiding ships? What does this mean exactly?
I think this is a reference to ships deliberately turning to face specific weapons againts the enemy. I’m not ruling this out, but it would be a nightmare to code, because you have to take into account:
[]the weapon recharge rates of broadside plus forward firing weapons and their recharge rates
[]The ships currently in arc of weapons, vs their expected positions when those weapons recharge and you have turned
[*]the turn rate of your ship
I can see it becoming a mess of ships spinning seemingly randomly, never quite managing to set up a broadside. It isn’t a trivial thing for human captains, let alone AI.
Could it not be a user choice when assigning ship orders before battle? Something akin to the keep moving order. Keep driving target at X% of the starboard/port of the ship. (Or use Clock Facings). That way the AI doesn’t have to decide what to do, you assign your ship to either be a broadside ship and the AI doesn’t have to worry about changing the ships facing depending on
because you have done the decision before battle.
Admittedly if things don’t go the way you planned things probably would get messy - but that’s half the fun.
Now you can have long range bombards circling the enemy formation while fast cruisers charge straight down the middle.
Or something else…
Berny
Potentially you could have a perma coward ship keeping distance - perfect for a Carrier.
The way ships are oriented is determined by a number in the deployment file, but there’s currently no in-game way to do this. I remember coming across this and being confused about it when I first tried creating a deployment for a custom scenario by saving a deployment and copying it into the scenario file. I was surprised to see that not only does the game not automatically flip deployments, but you have full 360 degree control over the ship’s angle despite it never being used in-game.
Indeed, I coded it for deploying ships in AI mode, for me, but never implemented it in general 
Anyway, it’s in GSB 2 
Loving the look of GSB 2 so far, It looks just awesome.
One thing that would be cool if added in would be the ability for certain parts of ships to be destroyed (sort of like how the hulks break the ship up) But the rest of the ship would still be functional, just missing a part of it.
Hi. First I want to say I’m new here and I like this game very much. I’ve been playing it for months and I’m very exited about the second one!!!
I have some ideas how you can definitely improve the gameplay, keeping the original idea. I must note that I’ve played EVE Online for some years (quitting eventually).
So, the most important part of this game, which makes it original in the first place, is the ability to preset fleets that will fight for the delight of the player without having control over the ships.
But here was the flaw of the game, bringing afterwards the possibility to have certain control during battles. Ships are not doing what they are supposed to, or I don’t have the options to make them do what I want.
Therefore, I’d like to see these features in the next GSB:
1. Give up on the control option of the ships during battles. This was not the core idea of the game.
2. Orders such as Orbit around a target (setting for orbit distance), Keep the target until is finished, Change target by the priorities (ex, cruiser 60%, frigate 25%, fighters 15%) and remain on target until that target is totally destroyed (if the ship encounter cruisers and is set on higher value for frigs, when frigs approach it will change target, starting to shoot frigs until they are finished).
3. Priorities on weapons (if needed). If I have some weapons with better tracking speed I want them shoot frigates first even if the ship will encounter cruisers with the other weapons.
4. The possibility to give orders in phases, and to have 2 or 3 of those phases (maximum). This will allow the players to have a different kind of pre-control over the ships which prevents the need to rely on the Real-Time Strategy controls (see item 1 above)…
ex - Phase1. Keep formation, Phase2. (When the ship have contact) Break Formation, Orbit or Flank the target, Co-op.
(not sure if the the 3rd phase is needed. Perhaps when I want to retreat? But 2 are bare minimum.)
We have two situations: nano ships or not. For the nano ships these options are essential, because they cannot behave effectively otherwise. If I have a block formation (not nano), I want the ships from the back which sometimes they are not in range because of that, to go around and Flank the target. Of cource I may have also the strategy as the first line to be tankers and second line long range damage dealers. But If I not, the Flank option would be great.
5. Ships should have a bigger detection range than the highest weapon range. This can be implemented as a stat of the ship. (sensors, radar). In this way the ships will start the second order-giving Phase, or simply pick target, a little bit before the weapon range is reached.
I hope for this, because I don’t know how this part of the game can be improved without it. However I don’t know what’s planed for GSB2 regarding this issue so I hope I’m not totally off the track here.
6. Cruisers should not change their course because of enemy fighters. It doesn’t make sense for a large but slow cruiser to chase, orbit or go in range from fighters.
There’s a problem when my cruisers encounter fighters long before other ships and they are spreading around. So ignoring fighters as something that could make cruisers change course should be set by default.
I saw this idea on the forum. It is already mentioned, but I’d like to add sugestions about how it might be implemented more effectively.
Fighters can be brought into battles not just aboard carriers, but also inside other bigger ships’ cargo spaces, because fighter range is small and they need fuel, ammunition and repair in case the battle is taking too long. They cannot fly to the battleground alone.
Fighters have limit of fuel and ammunition, so they must dock on carriers or cruisers for resupply and repair. Docking with a ship thats not a carrier makes resupply and repair to be 3X-5X slower.
Carriers are cruiser sized ships with special role of defence and to bring a large amount of fighters into the battle (16x8-16x12-more? per carrier). They have much less offensive capabilities, but they can provide assistance, are harder to kill and will keep the fighters online.
Carriers may bring 2-5 frigates in their cargo space instead fighters if wanted (?). Those frigates will still cost you money but wont count against pilot limits (?). Frigates can dock to carriers for repair during battle (?).
Cruisers can carry fighters also inside the cargo space (now they have to borrow supplies from other ships - no room), so the number of fighters they can bring is very much smaller (3-6?) than what carriers can bring. Have to make sure that this cant be abused easily. It is a good way to let cruisers help add to carrier strength without making fights too easy.
Smaller ship sizes below cruisers don’t have enough cargo space to do this.
Cruisers can fill their cargo space with a small number (1-2?) of other types of modules (specially made for this use) instead, that are intended more for support - like boosting capabilities for shields, extra ammunition for the fleet, target detection processors, etc.
Including more race-specific modules and weapons than GSB1 had would make GSB2 more interesting. I really dont want GSB2 to go live without this. Currently it feels like no matter which GSB1 race you pick, you actually play the same race with extremely small differences except the look of the ships. That’s actually pretty boring, I hate to admit it but thats true for me. It’ll add more work on balancing the game, but each race will have a more distinct and more interesting design and strategy of fighting.
The more that the races are distinct from each other the harder it becomes to balance them, but it will add more playabilty and versatilty also. More fun! 
So its worth the effort. In this area we cant have the second game be too much like the first one.
So basically the races can be more distinctive from each other according certain characteristics: types of attack systems, types of defence systems, different speed/tank balance or even different price structures.
In EVE Online there are also Logistic ships with specific capabilities for each race, also different types of electronic warfare modules like jamming systems, targeting disruptors or sensor dampening systems.
Each race have also its own story, character and war background. This deserves a good effort.
I’m not for logistic ships or electronic warfare ships, as they can be frustrating and hard to ballance, but there could be additional smaller fun things added to each race. Not just fun things, but also functional at same time.
I’d like to discuss some topics about the game further (beware, long post, but interesting).
These are some ideas I created some time ago and I wanted, but I didn’t have the chance, to develop a game or to work on one in order to implement them.
[size=150]TANKING, DAMAGE & BALANCE[/size]
TANKING
So we have two types of tanking. In fact 3 if we count the hull.
1.Armors
The armor should not use the slots from the interior of the ship because it’s an…armor (?). Of course the armor is applied on the body the ship or it’s the body(carcass) of the ship itself.
The armor can influence 2 stats of the ship: price and weight. (and look maybe).
Each ship should have a limited number of armor slots which will limit accordingly the maximum amount of thickness.
The armor can be made out of different types of materials, each of it having a different resistance against Kinetic, Thermal and Energy (particles) type of damage.
The turrets are outside of the armor and they are exposed to damage. They have a default armor, but that can be improved (if the game allows you to customize the turrets). Adding a heavier armor on turrets will influence the tracking speed and the price of it.
The armors can be repaired by nanobots provided from modules situated inside the ship (the armor repair systems), so protected by the armor. This can makes the difference between a passive and an active armor.
The modules inside the ship should not take damage if the armor is not penetrated.
2.Shields
The shields are actually particle fields, generated to deflect other particles or matter.
Now-days scientists are working on fields that can isolate the antimatter for instance. The only field we know today is the electromagnetic field. Other types of particles exist but who knows, one day…
The device that generates the shield is a Particle Generator or Shield Generator. It can generate a field with a certain Size/Thickness which in GBS is defined as Shield Strength and a certain Intensity, which in GBS is defined as Shield Resistance.
So far, so good. Now there are different types of damage which can be applied on shields (Kinetic, Thermal, Energy). Any type of damage which will be deflected or absorb by the shield, will destabilize it for a short period (which in game is represented by the shield bar). The particles are diminished and the generator will replace, and concentrate them to run it back on 100%.
Maybe there are weapons specially made to neutralize (transform) these particles (anti-shield weapons). So the shield generator must replace more particles in the field. (if the shield cannot be regenerated, the shield bar will not go back on full).
Here comes the Particle Capacitor (battery) or Shield Capacitor. These modules can make the difference between a shield which can resist better on short period and a shield made for a long run. So we have sort of active and passive shields also.
DAMAGE
There can be 3 types of damage as I mentioned above: Kinetic, Thermal, Energy (emp & other utopic particles for the sake of SF genre. lol)
(in EVE online there are 4 types for example: kinetic, thermal, explosive and electromagnetic. Well explosions create a kinetic force so it doesn’t make sense to me. There should be just 3 in fact).
All the damage will be taken firstly by the shield (of course except when the ship is designed without) and then will hit the armor.
If supposingly the shield is hit by a projectile, will act like a barrier that can absorb a certain amount of potential energy. If the kinetic energy of the projectile is smaller or equal with the energy that can be absorbed by the shield, it will not pass through. If it’s higher, the amount of kinetic energy absorbed by the shield will absorb that part of kinetic energy and will hit the armor with a smaller force.
As an example, if we have Shield Resistance 27, and the projectile has a damage of 57, but shield penetration 54, 50% from the damage will be absorbed so the damage received by the armor will be 28.5 (57/2) in this case.
Having a shield that can absorb more damage would allow players to set a lighter armor, to get the ship faster.
A wise tank can be more efficient against a certain type of ships, weapons and situation.
Types of ammunition can be suggested, but this can be replaced by the types of weapons which have different ammunition and not complicate the game more if you don’t want.
Projectiles with plasma charge can pass through the shield and melt an armor which cannot face high thermal values in some cases.
Projectiles with antimatter can also create explosions which can be very dangerous. As we know antimatter inside a projectile is hard to contain, maybe there are complex projectiles used by dreads instead. Or maybe would be easier to load antimatter on torpedos, Etc.
The rockets can be even more complex as they can have double projectiles which penetrate on impact and will explode inside the ship destroying the modules, or different tactical missiles like the EMP, but for different purposes, etc.
For a great depth it can be made a system to create your own custom missiles, for example.
BALANCE
This is the trickiest part and allot of games fail on it because once you find the best method there is no reason to use another and like this ppl are quitting. When they found the combination/weapon/ship/ that beat the game, it becomes boring. GBS managed to have a decent balance, but in some cases not so good tough.
Balancing the damage in a game like this depends mostly on 3 things:
DPS, Range and Tracking Speed.
DPS&RANGE
From the experience with EVE Online and Freelancer (I’ve worked for balancing an online mod for this one) I can say the damage must necessarily decrease proportionally with the increasing of range.
On top of that, it must decrease proportionally with the increasing of tracking speed.
A weapon with 2x range and 2x tracking speed may have ¼ dps.
I was not sure at the beginning how to calculate the dps in GBS. It would be nice if the 2.0 will have more explicit stats on ships and modules. It would be nice if some stats will be displayed automatically as the dps. It’s very confusing for a new player and players usually make use of other tools to calculate these things so why not having them in the game?
I did not understand what the fire interval means for example. No explanation.
If the fire interval is 2700 and that means 2700miliseconds (correct me if I’m wrong) than we have 0.37shots/second (1000/2700). So the dps of a Cruiser Beam Laser is 21 (57x0.37).
In other games there are also other tradeoffs for getting a better range, like the tank, movability, tracking speed.
The DPS, Range and Speed of the missiles are the same. If you’re using more space for the rocket engine, you have less for the offensive system on board so the rocket travels farther but will inflict a smaller damage.
TRACKING SPEED
The tracking speed of a turret is measured in ‘rad/sec’ (radians per second). It measures the maximum speed that the turret can turn as it tries to track your target.
1rad=57.295°
To complete a whole 360% in a second, a turret must turn with 6.28rad/sec.
In other words, if a fighter orbit around a cruiser as fast as it makes a whole round in one second, the turrets of the cruiser must have the tracking speed at least 6.28.
However, if the fighter makes a complete round in one second on 5km for ex. (the angular speed), it will travel 31.4km so when orbiting on 10km, it will travel 62.8km. A gun with the half of the tracking speed can hit the fighter in this case.
For extremely long range cases it must be added another factor: anticipation (which depends on the signature of the ship also). The chance to hit a fighter at 1000km is smaller than on 100km. Maybe so small, is not even worth to waste the effort shooting it.
In reality a target is hit or not, there is no middle, but in games is better to have a chance of hit or a penalty of the dps in %, even if the tracking speed or the rocket speed is overpassed in order to make it enjoyable and avoid no win/loose frustrating situations or in other words not making fights decisive and boring.
For example if the angular velocity of the fighter is higher with 50% rad/sec than the tracking speed, the turrets will inflict half of the damage on the fighter. Therefore, on 100% will inflict no damage. This is a simple graphic, but it can be even more complex if gameplay tests prove the necessity.
NOTE: I wanted to post these ideas, maybe some of them are even good for GBS 2.0. They are not so detailed, is more about the concept and some already exist maybe. Since is a new game, probably is not so hard to implement them or change the mechanics from GBS 1 into a better one.
It would be easy to have the mechanics that can provide further balancing of the game even after the release with patches.
Weapon Modules: better support for multi-gunned turrets such as the ability to stagger fire, damage reflective of the number of guns on the turret. Akin to battleships, with multiple guns per turret, as they can fire singly, staggered or simultaneously.
Also, pulse weapon interceptors that can intercept pulse blast?
Decoys/countermeasures that draw enemy fire, ala chaff.
These would be really cool mod tools for storyline ships that do not natively have shielding.
Particle dispersion weapons? Similar to the nuke decay effect, except instead of firing at ships this is fired into space in front of the enemy and forms a cloud that disperses/weakens enemy energy based weapons fire. Projectiles and ships could pass right through, but energy beams/pulses would be broken up or severely weakened by it.
I would like a few things in Campaign mode:
Actual fleets that exist in game (Not the ships stationed at a planet an just staying there) it would make for tactical gameplay to have to hunt or evade fleets.
Planetary defenses, things like lasers that we could place that will fire on ships while fighting, it would be fun.
Flagships, a mobile fighter bay or class of ship.
Planetary battles lasting weeks with cool battle scenes happening below on the planet while ships battle above.
Loyalty should be a commodity, not a benefit.
Persistence, if I start a new game I would like the idea of being a new rebel faction against the currently controlling faction (Me in the previous game).
Or if I complete a game I could make a mega death fleet and in my new game I could open a wormhole to summon it to fight for me. This should be disable-able though.
What do you think?
Hi all, this is my first time commenting, was a big fan off GSB though and am hugely excited about GSB2. So I had just a few things to contribute.
First I really just wanted to mention something about broadsides, if you add firing arcs into the game broadsides naturally become the most efficient way of maximising fire-power. Take a simple scenario with two swivel mounted guns, on fore, one aft, that can turn in 180 degree arcs. All of a sudden turning to be perpendicular to the target allows you to “cross the T” in naval terms and double your fire-power against a target.
So if you add in firing arcs, maybe there needs to be a command about whether a ship will use this sort of tactic and attempt to maximise the number of guns that can fire at a given target, maybe if default AI does this, then AI broadsides might occur anyway.
As a solution to some guns fire at targets they shouldn’t, add a third slider for targeting priorities per hull, which is acceptable miss chance. So if 50% is acceptable against fighters, if the Anti-fighter laser has a 80% hit chance, but the plasma launcher has only 2%, the anti fighter laser will fire, but the plasma launcher will find a better target.
Another thing I’d like tweaked is overkill, sometimes there’s just far too many weapons firing at a single target, especially when only one more shot would kill it, but an entire battery of missiles is fired. It’s a minor thing, but in close fights it annoys me a little.
Last but not least, I’m also a huge fan of kinetic weapons in space, shrapnel, artillery bombardments, area denial via flak etc etc. I’d love to see more of this in the game.
This going to be a short request, and has been requesting numerous times, if possible could you implement a type a module where a rocket or a pod is shot at the target and when it impacts it releases some marines or a boarding party and helps destroy shield or turrets.
Two suggestions:
Modules
Some hulls have the option to use weapons or defense from a smaller and larger hull type. For instance, a Destroyer has a triple hard-slot. It can hold:
3 Frigate Plasma Guns (which cannot penetrate most Cruiser shields and some Destroyer shields, or hit very quick Corvettes and Fighters)
2 Destroyer Plasma Launchers (which cannot penetrate some Dreadnought shields or hit most Corvettes).
1 Cruiser Plasma Cannon (which cannot hit very quick Frigates and most Corvettes, but is great vs large targets)
The same with Corvettes - armed with light Corvette/Gunship weaponry they can get 1.0+ speeds; while the larger Corvette hulls can have a double-Corvette-slot that enables it to use one standard (single-slot) Frigate weaponry at the cost of speed and money.
A few Cruiser hulls could even hold a triple-slot for one Dreadnought weapon. It would slow it down severely and cost the same on its own as a whole Destroyer (i.e 2000 credits) but would allow you to carry anti-Dreadnought weaponry in a more fragile but mobile package, and allow you to have 3 of those rather than 1 Dreadnought for the same price.
Game mode
Arcade. A mini-campaign of a number of pre-set battles where you progress from one to the other by beating them. Since it is easy enough to design whatever you need to win any battle, you would only be able to bring a set number of ship designs with you into the campaign. For instance 2 Fighters, 2 Corvettes, 2 Frigates, 2 Cruisers and a Dreadnought. So you could have one Laser Fighter build with armor (slower) and one Laser Fighter without armor with you into the campaign, and then lament that decision in scenario 6 where the enemy fields a large bunch of shielded Corvettes which none of your Frigates are equipped to deal with either, and you needed Rocket Fighters. Each scenario is an independent battle but if you can’t progress you’ll have to start again by bringing Rocket Fighters with you to beat that lvl 6… not knowing what awaits you on lvl 7, or the “boss fight” on lvl 10 for that matter.
Cliffski would of course balance the shipped-in-box arcade campaigns well so that it is actually possible to win (in more than one way too) and the difficulty progression is natural, and good modders would do the same. Nobody would like restrictions that make these arcade campaigns impossible frustration-hells.
Hey Cliff, hugely enjoyed GSB. Own it and all the DLC, and plan to buy GSB2, and I’ll definitely get in on any early access anything you decide to do. Anyways, didn’t realize you had a forum until you posted on QT3, so I thought I’d toss out a few thoughts about things I’d like to see in GSB2 that I don’t see listed in your “already in” post.
Weapon sizes. I know other people have mentioned it from a cursory glance at this post. I want the option to make a ship that is essentially a gigantic laser with engines. I also want the option to cover that same ship in tons of small weapons as an alternative. Small weapons could have less range, faster re-loads, greater accuracy and less damage. Large weapons would conversely have the opposite.
Anything you can do for mod-ability. The more, the better.
A seriously better campaign, if humanly possible. The last one just felt like I was arbitrarily being attacked by random fleets constantly. It’d be nice if the AI functioned by the same rules as you did and you actually fought against their empires. I realize for one man, this may be a pipe-dream. If not, oh well.
This might be a bit weird, but I’d really like the option to have hull-hugging shields instead of always giant circular shields. It’d be even more interesting if they fundamentally performed differently in some key way.
Keep up the great work!
looks like hull hugging shields are gonna be the norm in 2, not sure if giant circles are still even a thing