Author Topic: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot  (Read 162956 times)

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Offline CT27

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Did you have a good Christmas Herkie?

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Happy New Year Everyone. Well, I was off for a time there because I was busy. My Ex-wife came to visit the kids and she stayed the whole Christmas season. I hate her guts! but I figured it's the season of giving. Now, I am back to update work. I am checking those grammar errors and I will take Erebus Alpha's comment as a suggestion and make some mission improvements---He is right about the "Royal Fleet." HINT (or SPOILER): The "Blue Guardian" is the name of the sequel I will be working on in the future. I will release the second update soon...
« Last Edit: January 04, 2017, 03:05:59 am by herkie423 »

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Did you have a good Christmas Herkie?

Yeah, I did. Thanks. The kids were enjoying themselves with their mother. I enjoyed seeing my grocery stores having a blast. Their were full and gave me a great sense of achievement. I hope you had a great time too.

 

Offline CT27

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Can I make a minor suggestion Herkie?

I love the new Widowmaker missile you created.  The first mission you get to use that was I believe when the new Diablo corvettes single out the Titan for attack and ignore the Hercules.  If I'm remembering things wrong please correct me but I believe you got to carry more Widowmakers in a secondary bank than you would Trebuchets in the same bank.  Since Widowmakers are supposed to be basically better versions of the Treb (less recharge time than the Treb and more subsystem damage than even a Stiletto), shouldn't there be less WMs than Trebs in one secondary bank?

It's a very minor point but I was curious about that.


Overall I really like the new weapons you came up with (I'm not even done with the campaign yet since I just got to the "Order 66" mission that took place outside some big command station).  I like the Devastator cannon...for just slightly less damage than the Kayser you get improved range and rate of fire.

 
Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
I think the Widowmakers are supposed to be next-generation super-missiles, basically pure nightmare fuel for anyone the GTVA wants to kill. It is an antimatter missile after all. Antimatter weapons are almost always going to outperform non-antimatter weapons by a pretty huge margin. It's difficult to beat E=MC^2, especially when it operates at 100% efficiency.

Heck, the Widowmaker might even be using a matter-antimatter reaction along with some plain old reaction mass to produce thrust - which might explain why it has such awesome range and maneuverability. There are very few things that can theoretically be as deadly as an antimatter warhead propelled by an antimatter rocket.

In regard to "The Royal Fleet" balancing, I am not sure if it is possible to have different weapon quantities available for different difficulty settings. But if it is, I would give the player 100/90/85/80/75 widowmakers, for very easy/easy/medium/hard/insane, respectively. Or something like that.

This way, playing on Insane, the player will still have to fight 25 dragons with 'conventional' weapons, after expending all their Widowmakers. That will even the odds a bit, but it will still be a ludicrously challenging fight.
« Last Edit: January 07, 2017, 03:50:39 pm by Erebus Alpha »
"Obviously the meson bomb is a form of cat-toast-device, with the buttered toast inverted, so that the cat and toast both fly in the direction of gravity much faster than expected. By introducing artificial gravity, a pair of cat-toast perpetual motion accelerator units can be made to collide with one another, and they produce an unimaginably devastating explosion. Both cats are named 'Meson'."

 - Wikileaks 2383

 

Offline Mito [PL]

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Basically Trebs on steroids. Since in this campaign most of the times the player can have them equipped when there's a capship battle somewhere, I'd say that their primary usage is defanging any capship short of a juggernaut from extreme distance, then fighter/bomber kills as secondary.

Plus, I think that in "The Royal Fleet" the player can call in a support ship.

By the way, I finished the campaign about yesterday. What can I say: it's awesome. The first two acts were a bit... unpolished. Maybe even more than a bit. But when it started with the Shivans, missions got really interesting. Some of them are so great, that I will replay the whole thing mostly for them. And it seems you did an insane amount of work regarding visuals there.
Well, more feedback sometime later.
How do you kill a hydra?

You starve it to death.

 

Offline CT27

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Which new primary weapons do you guys like (since the consensus for favorite secondary appears to be the Widowmaker)?

Like I said before, I like the Devastator cannon and the new 'shotgun' blaster.

 
Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
I made text file for FSO Installer if you are interested.

[attachment deleted by admin]

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
I made text file for FSO Installer if you are interested.

Thanks , Tomi. It saved me a lot. Downloading now.

EDIT:
I compare your file with one i made. Mine is far from the truth. I did not understand the HASH part and your file is much more complete. Thank you very much.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2017, 12:54:33 am by herkie423 »

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Regarding the Windowmaker. The size of this missile is significantly smaller. The anti-matter payload is only 0.20 grams (theoretically, this quantity is equivalent to 20 times a nuclear explosion, more powerful than the widowmaker. I somewhat downgrade this part of realism --- what is the opposite of exaggerate? It is mentioned in the techroom that this weapon has less payload weight so you can carry more. Despite of the speck-size of the explosive, the missile housing is still big (Hornet size) because of the antimatter containment mechanism. Hey, I like the idea of the antimatter rocket propellant. In AF, the missile has the same engine of the Harpoon with more fuel for longer range. But I and neither did Freespace mentioned the type of thruster used.

EDIT:
My mistake. I did mention an "Ion based propellant" in the Windowmaker's tech description.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2017, 04:13:44 am by herkie423 »

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
There are 2 load out config that I like. The Ripper-Devastator-Screamer and the Scattergun-Blizzard-Screamer combo. I don't use the Widowmaker except when I truly need it like when Diablos will be present because it's too much plus I often kill my fellow pilots by accident (warning mentioned in the briefing). I don't even use the XJR Phantom throughout the campaign.

For greater effect, place you rapid-fire cycle weapons to the mount with more gun banks.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2017, 12:50:37 am by herkie423 »

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
I will reduce the widowmaker load out in the "Royal Fleet" mission in my next update. I may have overestimated the difficulty factor... Or should I leave it as it is?

 

Offline CT27

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Now that I think about it, the Widowmaker issue isn't a big deal.  I'd say leave it as it is and don't reduce capacity.



I do have a minor suggestion concerning a mission:  I believe it was in Act 4 when you scout out the enemy planet.  One of the missions there has you destroying a formation of enemy bombers and in the second part of that mission you have to destroy a wing of Dragons before they jump out.  Destroying the bombers went fairly smoothly but I had a problem with the Dragons...I think the mission said you had 30 seconds to destroy the Dragons when they came in.  However, they seemed to actually jump out a little quicker than that.  If you and your wingmen aren't pretty close to them when they come in it can be difficult to destroy them in time.  Even a few more seconds would be helpful.  Would it be possible to increase that particular time limit just a little to something like 40 seconds?

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
I find that mission difficult too. You may have hit the lowest random seed. Those Dragons will escape anywhere from 20 to 35 seconds to make it realistic. The 30 seconds was clearly an estimate by your wing leader. Even Snipes can make mistake. But I will adjust it to 30 to 45 seconds and I will add SEXPs to check whether you are far from your mates to adjust the random factor...Or I might as well take out the random factor and make it fixed at 40 seconds. I will get to it right now.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2017, 02:17:13 am by herkie423 »

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Now that I think about it, the Widowmaker issue isn't a big deal.  I'd say leave it as it is and don't reduce capacity.

Ok. I will leave it as it is. The mission has wide selection of arsenal. It's up to the player. Let's just say I want this sorty to be a Test-Your-Skill mission. But chosing stealth is way easier.

By the way, there is another "test" mission if you haven't encounter it already. The mission "Another Game Of Tag" to test whether you can tag all ships in the Shivan fleet.  A bonus objective. You will have a different debrief if you do tag all of them.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2017, 02:38:23 am by herkie423 »

 

Offline Mito [PL]

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
In this kind of missions, I usually do 120% of the objective, so that's scanning/TAGing ALL of the capships out there :P. And that's what I did right here (Medium). With the speed of the fighter and its ECM capabilities this is no challenge - approach a vessel, shove a TAG missile up its... something, burn away from any fighters chasing you, repeat.
How do you kill a hydra?

You starve it to death.

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Exactly the solution :) Hostile detection=Outrun them. The Shivans will return to their patrol route if you lose them. If you call in your reinforcement and sacrifice them, the debrief will state that too.

As a personal challenge, try pulling it off without a single detection

The first draft of this mission actually had an event that will cause the fleet to leave if you are detected but I took it out. I figured why would the Shivans be threatened by single fighter? They haven't the faintest idea of your purpose. They don't know this tactic. Anyway, this is one of those "story" missions and the only way fail it is to get killed.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2017, 08:08:40 am by herkie423 »

 
Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
The opposite of exaggerate is understate or downplay.
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.

 

Offline herkie423

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
I fixed the issue of getting stuck in "The Nebula Revisited". Apparently if you wait until the Ravana gets in beam range, and it blows up one of three friendly corvettes, the mission works. I managed to get the mission to finish & receive the warp-out directive like that.

You can save all of them. If all three survived you'll have good debrief and a Medal. This is a cover mission. The corvettes do the main assault. When they reach the knossos and killed all the Shivan Warships, it's done. One instance when they reach their destination, destroyed the last Ravana and the mission is not yet over it means not all enemy warships has been eliminated. There is actually a hidden Rakshasa that will stalk the group.

 

Offline CT27

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Re: RELEASE: The Aftermath Reboot
Recently I just started Act seven.

I just got done with the mission "Torpedo Chasers" (where you defend a weapons facility from a lot of Shivan bombers).  This isn't a bug report but more of a minor suggestion. The mission was defending against wave after wave of bombers for the most part.  It took about 13 minutes.  It is just my opinion but I think that mission should be cut back a few minutes or so.  The difficulty of the mission isn't the problem but doing the same thing over and over again can sometimes be tedious.  The mission is fine for the most part.


Overall I've noticed a big improvement from the first "The Aftermath."  You've done good work here with your reboot.