Curious for ideas, expectations, hopes for what a pvE GSF map should entail. and if you can see the future maps not just being exclusively pvp, but pvp updates like space combat had before 2.0, and mixed pvE/Pvp where there are both AI controlled opposition and player opposition to deal with.

what are you looking for or hoping for?

For me:

I feel, we definitely need some PvE maps, wouldd seriously help learning and playing curve - it's a great system, but you have to learn to use it, it is almost as detailed as the ground game, which is not a bad thing if new players have an encouraging environment to learn.

I can see it been really good if you tie the pvE maps into daily missions or planet stories that can involve a space battle or atmosphere battle, and even make some group ones that require working as a team to complete the objective, for e.g. we could have a group map of the korriban incursion flashpoint space game, which is the space fight that opens the way for the ground force. it could be in the orbit of Korriban or in the atmosphere. Ord Mantel is another one that could have a space pvE map as part of the planetary storyline and I've always thought a battle in Aldearran's atmosphere, not orbit would be cool.

You can do for single player and for groups, if very well received it could lead to additional pvE and pvp maps --- especially maps that are tuned such that players need to recognize you need all types of ships to finish successfully - i.e. you need some scouts, some fighters, some bombers, some gunships (it's not hard to design a map that needs some people in very fast ships, some mine layers, some stealth ships and your regular fighters). eventually i'd even love to see maps where your guild ship can play a part... either the AI controls the guild ship based on how the guild has upgraded their ship, or the guildmaster or designated person or even a group of people can assist in controlling the guild ship by monitoring systems, reparigin breaches while the rest of the team is out in fighters.

Bringing Huge Ships into GSF (incl Guild Ships)

• You have your single fighters, and 4 classes - Scout, Strike Fighter, Gunship and Bomber.
  
• You have bigger ships too: smaller class like the one Esseles and Black Talon look like, and larger ones that the likes of Telos/Gav Daragon and White Nova/Ziost Shadow look like. The idea of the bigger vessels is both an alternative less demanding part for players, but also those who just can't be bothered or even like the single fighter complexity but still want to take part in the fun can be a part of the multi-roled team that controls a bigger ship.
  

Would be nice if guild ships started of witht eh smaller ones like the Esseles/BT and you could upgrade to bigger ones like the Gav Daragon. These big ships can also play a part in the newer maps designed to have them. Where either the AI controls them as part of a fleet response, or players can form a team to control them manually. Guilds can use their ship instead of a standard republic/empire ship, - which I can imagine a guild upgrading their ship would have a more powerful one than the standard republic/empire version. So if you've upgraded your ship as a guild well enough it would help your faction to actually use the guild ship instead of a standard rep/imp ship in these situations.

How Bigger Ships Can Work in Such Settings

• Large Ships incl Guild ships can control how many respawns you can get in pvE/Pvp maps, how many extra ships you can add to the fight (basically large ships come in Grade 1 to Grade 5 and if bioware are smart, each grade would have a fancier and deadlier arsenal visible on the model) - it can determine how fast you can repair as well, when your hull is damage fly back to the ship quick repair - the repair time can be improved if the guild ship is updated, also guild ship can provide shielding boosts to your fighter. - This is the function it can server to single fighters - like a huge buff bot
   
  
• They could also design a way to control the Large ships incl guild ship by players, so ships like the Talos/Gav Daragon, Nova/Ziost and your guild ships are cruiser ships that work differently from normal one-man fighters, and a system can be written for them, 1 player in propulsion, 1 player in engineering, 1 player in tactical, 1 player on weapons. Smaller Esseles/BT ships (entry level guild ships too would be like that) - can be manned by 4-man or 8-man, bigger vessels Gav Daragaon/Ziost Shadow level up to 16 players. Each position has different things they can do. Weapons would simply be manning guns, you go into the turret - think of Chewbacca or Leia that were manning the guns on Han Solo ship, and you have a simple control that zaps fighters you can. Tactical would involve determing where to focus your scanners, which fighters to help boost scanners, eliminating blind spots, managing repair droids well to repair damaged sensors/scanners or protect them, the larger the ship, the more activity and may involve one of you sometimes actually helping them out. Engineering is propulsion, so managing fuel flow, energy to main thrusters, side ones, you determine the large ship/guild ship's speed to move. Energy to shields or weapons or boosters is controlled by engineering and you can make a simple fun game out of doing for two players including challenges they may encounter. Piloting could be part of tactical, and propulsion part of engeineering, piloting determines where you go, evasive maneouvers in addition.
   
  
• the added perk of manning a guild ship is that you occassionally get boarded, which involves some ground fighting, while one partner continues to mann things, the other has to ward of a wave of attackers. choosing the best time to do so is critical too,
   
  
• expand to a huge ship can require 16 guildies to man the ship or if it is a Faction ship, GF will find 16 players from the queue, so you have 8 on guns, 3 on tactical, 3 on engineering, 2 on propulsion. Each ship type works differently in that smaller ones have less things to deal with but obviously impact the map less, they're more maneouverable than the biggers ships, but less fire power, they can help hold off fighters and smaller ships, and can launch ships, but not as much as the big ones. and depends on the map, some maps can require different numbers of each type, and the AI can control what players do not have enough of.
  

example: Map requires 2 Esseles/BT class ships, 1 large Gav/Ziost type ship and 24 fighters. only 8 queue up..all as fighters, the AI managers the larger ships, and the 16 fighters, whiles the players are on 8. or it could be fixed play, the pvE maps could be huge planet battles, that players can join in the fun as they log when they log, and in an on-going fight, they simply replace one of the AI controlled fighters if they one go single fighter or if as a team to control a large ship, they would control a large ship OR if it is a guild the guild can use their ship.

GSF Is not just single fighter although that's the biggest part, you can have maps/games where the big cruisers join the fight, either the AI is controlling them or a guild ship can replace one of the AI controlled ships. So bigger guilds can have the 8 or 16 players manning the main ship, while the rest go out in their starfighters.

Guild Ship Improvements

Guilds can expand to have more than one type of ship, so for different maps, depending on how many players are online or wanna play, they can go with their smaller esseles/BT type ship or the larger Gav/Ziost type if enough peeps are around.

Appearance:

Guild ships have hangar bays where the guild players' fighters are packed, everyone can see them. and you can unlock more hangar bays when you have more guild members who want to have their fighters in display. Guild ships can take ships to Group finder battles that involve such ships or also in planetary invasions. Using your guild ship to aid the republic or Empire? Sure, the AI will use players upgraded ships with their upgraded weapons instead of standard strikers if a guild ship is involved. e.g, guild member enters the fight as a guild ship of the Gav Daragon class of ship, this would replace the bog standard republic ship of a similar class - this is a good thing cos player ships/ guild ships are customised improved above the standard ship, he doesn't have to have guildies with him, the AI will use the guild ship's fighters which in this case are the parked player fighters in the fight.. any guildie can step in and use his own ship if he joins in later as a single fighter or he can join in as one of the crew controlling the guild ship in any of Guns/Engineering/Tactical/propulsion as he chooses.

New maps add space fights to planetary invasions, where you can opt, for much bigger rewards, to fight in the air space against enemy forces to begin an invasion. once successful, you can then do the ground missions that complete invasion with a huge boost.

GSF Cinematics, models, travel :

Whether entering a GSF standard map, or the new pvE maps, or great space battle fights happening over planets that you can join whenever you want, every time you join up, you see instead of a loading screen, a cinematic of your character your logged on as, going into the fleet hangar or the guild ship hangar (if guild ship is being used), jumping into his fighter and taking off to join the fight - there is a cinematic if you're going as one of the crew manning a guild ship or large ship or going as a fighter individually from the fleet's GSF hangar or from a guild ship

that's 3 types of cinematics - one as fighter by yourself, as fighter from a large ship, or as crew of a large ship. it's the same scene with the appropriate character and ship used being show.

it would be awesome. They would do well to really update the models for shops like the Esseles/Black Talon and the larger ones like White Nova/Ziost or Telos/Gav Daragon - to higher rez versions... and the planet models too that you see in cinamatics could use serious improvments.

What I expect in terms of GSF PvE is absolutely nothing.

What I'd like (without being totally unrealistic), is a tutorial map that exposed newcomers to more of the fundamental GSF mechanics than the current one does.

So add several railgun drones and instructions on using LOS to defend against direct fire weapons.

Add a missile drone (possibly modified), so that people can practice using missile break mechanics.

Add at least one fairly fast target that follows a somewhat twisty course through at least a little bit of LOS cover, so that people can learn about shooting in a world with tracking penalties and LOS obstructions. It can be a fixed circuit, just so long as there's a target that is moving.

Adding a destructible target surrounded by a few laser cannon drones with a very slow turret tracking rate might be good practice for showing why flying in a straight line for long attack runs usually isn't a good idea.

So basically add about 5 drones (in an intelligent and educational way) to the existing tutorial map, and one moving ship on a fixed route as gunnery practice.

I'd be fully satisfied with that level of PvE development for GSF. Low expectations to be sure, but there's an excellent chance that we'll never even get that much PvE development for GSF.

If they get that done and then want to go farther that would be great, but at this point I think that, " barely adequate tutorial," is pushing into pipe-dream territory when it comes to GSF PvE development prospects.

I never got why KDY wasn't in space. I mean, it's a fight over a shipyard in space, so why is it done mostly on the ground?

The simplest way to do this would be a hybrid on-rails free-flight space mission: the AI is on rails, but you're in free flight. To make life interesting, you could throw in a few sentry drones. You could do this flashpoint-in-space style, but that wouldn't get you very much.

All the way on the other end (complicated), we could have a hybrid operation: ground team runs a flashpoint, but space team has to fly support through most stages. Think Directive 7-except, instead of painting targets for some NPC pilots, the ground team would paint targets for player pilots to take out-and these pilots would naturally have their own fight in space/low atmosphere to deal with. The pilots would also have to help deal with the bosses (i.e. take out power/shield generators which make the boss invulnerable).

I never got why KDY wasn't in space. I mean, it's a fight over a shipyard in space, so why is it done mostly on the ground?

 

The simplest way to do this would be a hybrid on-rails free-flight space mission: the AI is on rails, but you're in free flight. To make life interesting, you could throw in a few sentry drones. You could do this flashpoint-in-space style, but that wouldn't get you very much.

 

All the way on the other end (complicated), we could have a hybrid operation: ground team runs a flashpoint, but space team has to fly support through most stages. Think Directive 7-except, instead of painting targets for some NPC pilots, the ground team would paint targets for player pilots to take out-and these pilots would naturally have their own fight in space/low atmosphere to deal with. The pilots would also have to help deal with the bosses (i.e. take out power/shield generators which make the boss invulnerable).

i was a bit surprised too that KDY didn't have any space flight contingent.

Invading a planet literally, could mean you join an armada or rather you summon an armada or rep/imp fleets to a planet.

if they have an Orbital station around them, the main objective is to take control of the orbital station in a similar way that space combat does it, i.e. your fighters and ships have to take out turrets, shields, hangar bays - while fighting off enemy warships.

for planets with no orbital station then the goal is the to destroy enemy large ships, before they destroy you.

A guild or faction who currently controls the planet surface can join their faction in repelling the invaders. If it is a guild in your faction that controls the planet, then I think space invasion battle itself should not be possible at that time, but you can join the guild in defending from guilds of an opposite faction invading.

There would be random planet maps that you can do invasion battles that have nothing to do with the conquest game, well you get conquest rewards but because you can't really go to ground on those planets, they just really serve as additional maps you can do large ship conflict on when no planets are available to invade because they're all controlled by your faction, or you just want something else.