Will there be a system implemented that assists with formations? Like in Freelancer, you could form up and jump at the same time with other ships, and be locked into an escort position when teamed up with a capital ship.asked by FeenixRising
TL;DRA formation assist is being considered where your flight control system follows a chosen flight leader as its reference, requiring a friendly handshake, and the team wants to try it fairly soon.
This is another one of those really timely questions, I was just talking with John Pritchett a few days ago about something similar, picking a flight leader and making them your IFCS's relative point of reference. So when they move your IFCS will track that and move to accommodate. It will require a friendly IFCS handshake, so you won't be able to use this to make dogfighting disappear. What it will do though is allow you to make complicated flying formations by moving only relative to your squadmate, rather than relative to the universe. I'm sure that'll make reacting to the universe difficult, but we have a fairly broad spectrum of exactly how it's handling that frame of reference, which is something we're looking to try fairly soon to see how the game handles it.
Formations are an interesting thing, especially with something as big as SC taking into true 3D space and managing all those positions at once.
Even to the point of being able to communicate formation. We had a proposal for just having "here are my wingmen spots" so you know where to fly in order to fly with me, so you can work together a little more. It's all some the immersive things that come about because of our simulated systems. I'm all for the "just try it" attitude!