Author Topic: Problems in Drums of War 2  (Read 3780 times)

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Offline wesp5

  • 29
Problems in Drums of War 2
I don't know if this is caused by the 3.6.12INF engine, but I couldn't get all the fighters scanned successfully in the mission with the crippled Narn cruiser. The last one in the list could actually be scanned, but the mission didn't continue. I then updated to Zathras 2.0 and tried again, scanning him last and it worked! So now I don't know if Zathras fixed the problem or the order of scanning was important which it shouldn't be. Maybe one of you gurus could look into this ;)...

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: Problems in Drums of War 2
As creator of the campaign I can asure you two things:

a) There is no such things as a deliberate order to scan the fighters in that mission ...
technically there should be no problem; the event only checks if all 15 fighters have been scanned... (in earlier versions there was a bug that prevented one fighter from becoming visible so it could not be scanned)

b)
Spoiler:
You can always skip scanning the fighters ... the mission will continue once you've scanned any subsystem on the C'Tan
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline wesp5

  • 29
Re: Problems in Drums of War 2
a) There is no such things as a deliberate order to scan the fighters in that mission ...

Then it must have been a bug caused by using 3.6.12INF without Zathras. I tried it several times and the dead Gorith 5 never triggered the mission update although it was scanned.

I continued with this otherwise excellent campaign and found some more issues that may be worth looking into:

In the mission in which one needs to defend the two Narn cruisers against a Centauri cruiser with Drakh fighters I never could keep the cruisers alive on very easy, even when I destroyed the Primus' laser turrets myself. I set the health of the damaged Narn cruiser to 100 in the mission file and still barely managed to do it. So either I'm really bad or this mission is too difficult with the new engine and patch features!

I'm now near the end of part 3 in which I only found some minor stuff. In the first mission the starting location and default speed of your fighter has it ending up in the docking bay if you don't at once fly away which looks strange ;)! Also in some of the mission descriptions and subtitles there are a lot of typos and spelling errors, much more than in the earlier mission texts. This is true BTW for a lot of campaigns.

On the whole though, my compliments on a great campaign pack :)! I liked the story and especially the short non-fighting missions that kept it going on. I hope the ending is satisfying although looking at the way the Drakh cruisers are using their powerbeams with the Narn and EA cruisers ignoring their own, I fear the mission in which the station is destroyed maybe another candidate for engine and patch tweaking...
« Last Edit: June 08, 2011, 04:12:14 pm by wesp5 »

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: Problems in Drums of War 2
Added it all to my to do-list(s) ... sadly there is so much to do and so little time...
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline wesp5

  • 29
Re: Problems in Drums of War 2
Added it all to my to do-list(s) ... sadly there is so much to do and so little time...

Great to hear that you plan to look into it :)! I fear the new engines and Zathras versions unbalance a lot of the old campaigns. I also noticed white flashes on models when they were damaged with those flashes crackling over their hull, but I suspect that this is either a engine problem or I need to play around with the launcher settings a bit more ;).

BTW, what are the projects you are working on right now? More cool The Babylon Project stuff or something else?

 

Offline wesp5

  • 29
Re: Problems in Drums of War 2
Update:

Okay, I have to give up the last mission :banghead:! I don't see a way that it can be won on very easy with 3.6.12INF and Zathras 2.0 :confused:. The worst case scenario is the station dies too late so your Narn cruiser will be much too close to it and then be killed in seconds. Sometimes this happens even before the EA ships are engaging and once it happened already before the station itself blew up! The best case scenario isn't much better. The first EA ship appears and is destroyed like it's probably intended. But before the other EA ship can help your Narn cruiser dies too. Of course the latter never ever uses its powerbeams while the Drakh cruisers use them all the time. This is critical and overall the scripting seems to be completely off...

Last not least I can't even figure out how to increase the ships hulls in the fs2 file like I used to do with other missions that weren't winnable. Please tell me what to do to raise my chances! I suspect it has something to do with the "campaign-persistent" variables, but what should I use instead?
« Last Edit: June 10, 2011, 02:19:11 pm by wesp5 »

 

Offline ChaserR

  • 23
Re: Problems in Drums of War 2
I had the same problem as wesp5 with the final mission after Zahras2.0 and 3.6.12INF.  If i remember correctly the caps hull is set with random SEXP in the begging of the mission and the only way to win it was to tweak upper and lower limits of hull in random expression. Seemed to me to be one of those missions that lost balance due to the uppgrades. With Zathras and 3.6.10INF the missions were easely beatable on easy difficulty.

 

Offline wesp5

  • 29
Re: Problems in Drums of War 2
If i remember correctly the caps hull is set with random SEXP in the begging of the mission and the only way to win it was to tweak upper and lower limits of hull in random expression.

Could you explain to me how this is done so I can finish this campaign which is the last one of all available here that I haven't done yet?

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: Problems in Drums of War 2
The final mission is ... the final mission and as such a tad more difficult than the rest ... however what you tell me makes me things somthing has broken it along the way... I'll check it and add it to the updates list...

The worst case scenario is the station dies too late so your Narn cruiser will be much too close to it and then be killed in seconds.

Spoiler:
Is it killed by enemy fire or by the debris shower from the station? - the Debris shower is a problem that cannot be fixed by FREDing...

The first EA ship appears and is destroyed like it's probably intended.

Spoiler:
It is intended

Of course the latter never ever uses its powerbeams while the Drakh cruisers use them all the time.

Spoiler:
Acutally I should be beam-freed - but maybe I forgot to guardian those turrets ... are you sure the drakh fighters didn't kill those turrets outright?

I can't even figure out how to increase the ships hulls in the fs2 file [...] I suspect it has something to do with the "campaign-persistent" variables, but what should I use instead?

Spoiler:
For realisms sake I used "campaign persistent" variables to transfer the hull-value in percent from one mission to the other... they are transfered onto a ship with the same name in the next mission only with a slight increase in some missions

As I said before... days have only 24 houres each and I can't fit everything into those I wish I could (otherwise I would have checked, fixed and uploaded an update LONG ago)...

BTW, what are the projects you are working on right now? More cool The Babylon Project stuff or something else?

I've been interviewed on that subject by Stormkeeper more than a year ago... (although since then I've wrote one more TBP campaign outline I won't turn into working missions 'cause I will not have to time)
« Last Edit: June 15, 2011, 10:21:16 am by 0rph3u5 »
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline wesp5

  • 29
Re: Problems in Drums of War 2
Is it killed by enemy fire or by the debris shower from the station?

It is killed by the Drakh cruisers, because the EA ship is behind it and it doesn't uses it's own powerbeams on them. I'm sure the cannons were working because it used the beams on the station which on the other hand made that blow up even faster. Still even with powerbeams it would have no chance in hell against those Drakh ships. Their power beam rate is much too fast!

 

Offline Nergal

  • 24
Re: Problems in Drums of War 2
And then the station will sometimes fire on our Narn cruiser, so I am forced to destroy that beam cannon before I can even go after any Drakh fighters.

 

Offline 0rph3u5

  • 211
  • Oceans rise. Empires fall.
Re: Problems in Drums of War 2
The mission appeared to be working first go for me ... I'm unable to reproduce anything of what you are telling me....

I'm afraid I need hard evidence (screens....) to belive the mission is that broken....

EDIT: just noticed I haven't Zathras listed as secondary mod in my Drums Of War mod.ini... I gonna re-check with the Zathras-team on those issues...
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Slasher

  • 29
Re: Problems in Drums of War 2
Prior to 3.10 (?) I think there were limits on how many projectiles could be in mission at one time.  My understanding is this typically applied to action-heavy missions or ones with lots of ships.  After this limit was changed so more could be going on at once, capships were able to fire their weapons when they couldn't have before.  TBP is particularly heavy on primary weapons using the swarm tag; just think of the G'Quan, the Primus, the Omega, or any ship with weapons that fire in bursts of two or more.   

Off-topic, but I'm going to try and get muzzle flash effects for some of the capship weapons if I can get appropriate graphics and figure out how it works now that it's supported.