Author Topic: BP: War in Heaven discussion  (Read 907837 times)

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Offline Mars

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Part of the point of WiH is that you - a lone strike craft - have minimal chance of actually making an enormous difference. The Warhammer is intended to saturate point defenses when a wing or a squad of strike craft launch their attack.

 

Offline TwentyPercentCooler

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Part of the point of WiH is that you - a lone strike craft - have minimal chance of actually making an enormous difference. The Warhammer is intended to saturate point defenses when a wing or a squad of strike craft launch their attack.

Yeah, that's kind of why I qualified when describing my experiment that I know it was sorely lacking in variables. But I also noticed that from certain directions, especially the sides, could handle three or four simultaneous double volleys of Warhammers with very few individual warheads leaking through. Based on the low damage of those individual warheads, it would take an unacceptable amount of ordinance to saturate the defenses. I do, however, realize that the qualification of the term "unacceptable" is completely subjective. It's not my project, so I hope I'm not coming off like I'm demanding anything. Just presenting some data and offering my own conclusions.

I think it's interesting that the Chimera and Bellerophon designs have so little protection for their main firepower, and, along with the Hyperion, almost no protection for their engines. In regards to point defenses, the Deimos is actually better. It at least has two turrets in the front covering its main slash weaponry, and two AAA beams in a very unfortunate spot if you happen to be making a run at its engines. I feel like it would be remiss of the BP team to ignore the fact that these are glaring weaknesses the UEF could stand to exploit, since they seem to place a great deal of value on making the Freespace universe a little more strategically and tactically sensible. Nostalgia goggles and rule of cool aside, the vanilla FS1 and FS2 campaigns are full of shortsighted design and boneheaded tactics and one of the reasons I love BP is the attention to detail.

 

Offline -Norbert-

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
If they used Warhammers exclusively perhaps. But when you start mixing the bomb types, you start to get results. As far as I know the AI doesn't differentiate between bomb-types, so you could have half the bomber wing fire warhammers to keep the point defense busy and follow up wtih the other half of the wing firing the real killers one or two seconds later.
Or alternatively use the time the point defense is busy with shooting Warhammers to get in close enough to take out a few turrets with scalpels and/or bombs.

Also why quote a post directly in front of your own at full length?

 

Offline Firstdragon34

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Sounds like your going to need another squad because if both sides of point defenses are busy or that will be the time for a cruiser to strike. But all in all, what do I know?
A small voice in my head tells me they are have followed us here in the Milky Way. They follow us until we are dead at their feet. We are nomands of the stars, no longer the race that was loved by the Great Elders. My name is Kyral and this is my story of survival.

There is no sanctuary for us, in this Universe. We will fight the Terror for one last time on this Shining World. May the Transcendent judge us kindly in the Life Stream.

 

Offline TwentyPercentCooler

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
I wonder if there's a way to make turrets prioritize highest damage warheads first? That would really make things interesting.

Oh well. I presented some data and it's a discussion point in a discussion thread, so hey, even if no one agrees with me, it's something. I'll have to do some more testing in FRED when I get the time, maybe see if Warhammers make it so that stronger warheads can get through. The biggest problem, I think, is that there's no way to organize coordinated bombing runs with AI wingmates. You can tell them what to attack, but not when, so it's hard to come to a conclusion one way or another. Sure, 4 Durgas launching a double salvo, that's 32 warheads in space and it'll be hard to get them all, but if anyone's really curious as to how good point defenses are, it takes about 2 minutes to FRED. Slap a Hyperion 4 klicks away, arm Warhammers, fire and watch it shred them effortlessly. The three large pulse turrets on the top of the Hyperion can reliably shoot them all down before they even get in range of the AAA beams or the Terran Turret 2s.

 

Offline -Norbert-

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Sounds like your going to need another squad because if both sides of point defenses are busy or that will be the time for a cruiser to strike. But all in all, what do I know?
Why both sides? They would of course all attack from the same side, otherwise the whole manouver wouldn't make any sense. Of course it would work even better with two squads, the more the marrier, but the question is if you can muster that many and are able to commit them all, without weakening another force or leaving the reserves dangerously low.

 

Offline Qent

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
In "Collateral Damage," I just had the Treb strike jump right into the Ranvir's point defense. Nice going there, Argus. :lol:

 

Offline Scotty

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
I'm assuming you meant to say 'awesome' :P

 

Offline Qent

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
The words used to have the same meaning. :P

 

Offline Androgeos Exeunt

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Maybe he meant awe-full?
My blog

Quote: Tuesday, 3 October 2023 0133 UTC +8, #general
MP-Ryan
Oh you still believe in fairy tales like Santa, the Easter Bunny, and free market competition principles?

 
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Definition 3 is still valid, but not used very often. :p

 

Offline Qent

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Once again, the Indus fails to defeat the Valerie. Wonderful memories. :P

Throwing all fighters at the turrets worked, but seemed a little coldhearted.
« Last Edit: November 26, 2011, 12:07:14 am by Qent »

  

Offline SypheDMar

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
I never popped a review here, huh?

Just in case, even thouh I'm spoiling nothing.
Spoiler:
Might've been a year since I first played this, but it was amazing. Not only is it fun, but it had immersion. I was a skeptic at first because I found the Age of Aquarius (BP1) to be an above-average-but-not-the-best campaign simply because the whole magical, alternate universe and the alien war lacked the human element. There is no reason to feel sorry for the Shivan, and the deus-ex-machina Vishnans felt very cliche. War in Heaven, on the other hand, is truly a human conflict. Vishnans were retconned (or were they?) to be a species that can't be fully trusted, and everything that happened can be scientifically (in a sense) explained. Everything about it feels real, even the politics.

While some of the ships look good, the best part regarding the graphics are the effects. At the time, War in Heaven were using things never before seen. In fact, WiH helped influence the Mediavps, the community's graphical enhancement. And let's not forget about the planets. The details on the bitmaps are astounding. Mars, for example, is terraformed. Unlike other cheap scifis, Mars is "realistically" terraformed for the time, and it doesn't cover the whole planet. Also, Earth during one missions is lighted up on places that currently do not have lights but can be predicted to have lights in the future. These subtle differences make the world a much more believable place. Another bonus would be the recommended lighting. It helps establish a mood, and it works beautifully. The only thing bad about the graphics would be the unoptimized models, but we'll talk about that later.

The story (including the backstory) shines here, and I would say that it is the best in any game/mod I've played. It is very well-written, and the characters are easy to relate to. This is novel. There is no black-and-white. There's just gray, even the terrorists. Where a scifi book may have a glossary in the back of the book for special terms, the game's equivalent Techroom database entries is extremely detailed. You can tell that the BP team did their research by the way the characters speak in-game, which is a lot more than what most of Hollywood do for their movies. Oh, and anything can be an allusion to anything. Very deep.

The gameplay of the first part of War in Heaven is pretty much FreeSpace 2 with a lot of subtle-but-awesome tweaks. The AI is much smarter and does not cheat, for example. Most of the weapons and spacecrafts are useful unlike retail FS2, where you only need to reuse the same three ships to win. And the missions aren't at all repetitive. There's even a mission where you can command a frigate! This was revolutionary at the time. The only gripe that anyone might have is the long narrative, and dying before a checkpoint when that happens is very annoying. The lack of voiceovers doesn't help, either. One last problem was that the game bogged down at times because of the lack-of-optimized ships. However, these flaws may be remedied some time soon.

In summary, this is the best mod I've ever played, and I've fallen in love with the story. The graphics are above average, especially the special effects, and the gameplay is excellent. The only complaints that I have currently are the lack of voice acting and the lack of optimization, but those will eventually be fixed. All in all, a gem in the FreeSpace community along with Windmills and Vassago's Dirge.

 

Offline AtomicClucker

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
While Diaspora maybe the showstopper when it comes to pews and booms, BluePlanet has always been my favorite jawdropper for its plot and...

BALLS OF STEELE! (Delende est, still a hard romp to play and fun as heck).
Blame Blue Planet for my Freespace2 addiction.

 

Offline Deadly in a Shadow

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
While Diaspora maybe the showstopper when it comes to pews and booms, BluePlanet has always been my favorite jawdropper for its plot and...

BALLS OF STEELE! (Delende est, still a hard romp to play and fun as heck).
BOS was only used in the intro cutscene so the Atreus can pew pew the UEF-fighters. The little devil AI was used during Delenda Est.
"Ka-BOOOOOOOOM!!!!"
"Uh, Sir we can hear the explosion."
"No you can't, there is no air in space. Sound can't travel through a vacuum!"

 

Offline Qent

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Oh heh, I didn't know that. I only knew it was used in TBI and the Gef gauntlet.

 

Offline QuakeIV

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
I'm rather curious, as I was listening to some music from the game.

Some of the music files in the vps aren't even named, like 'quutamo.ogg'.  What song was that?  e: after actually searching the credits table I think I know enough about this one

There was also a series of interlocking audio clips with the prefix 'tw' such as twamb and twbattle1 and such.

Also, is Imperativa from a movie or something? I could swear I recognize it from somewhere.
« Last Edit: November 28, 2011, 01:15:49 pm by QuakeIV »

 

Offline Deadly in a Shadow

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Maybe for a trailer. Immediate Music's Music (lol :wtf:) is often used for trailers and such.
"Ka-BOOOOOOOOM!!!!"
"Uh, Sir we can hear the explosion."
"No you can't, there is no air in space. Sound can't travel through a vacuum!"

 
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
There was also a series of interlocking audio clips with the prefix 'tw' such as twamb and twbattle1 and such.

The tw prefix denotes that they're part of the table-defined "Total War" soundtrack (used in Delenda Est). The naming has nothing to do with their original source(s), as far as I know.

 

Offline QuakeIV

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Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Hm, alright.  Anyone know where it came from?