Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Nikogori on June 20, 2018, 02:02:08 pm
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IIRC on higher difficulty settings both the enemy and your ally (in other words, everyone except alpha 1) will get more firepower. Is that correct?
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In general, higher difficulty levels remove bonuses applied to the player and remove penalties applied to the AI, leveling the playing field.
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Higher difficulties recudes bonuses the Player have.
In terms of ships, you have the same energy recharging rate, the same hull and shield than the AI counterpart.
Also enemy Anti-figher beams are firing much faster while friendly beams firing slower. Also there are some turrets that can fire faster on higer difficulties in general.
Also more enemies are able to target and to attack you at once and you can be attacked by more missiles at once.
And you have more Asteroids on Collision course in all escort missions through Asteroid fields.
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Higher difficulties recudes bonuses the Player have.
In terms of ships, you have the same energy recharging rate, the same hull and shield than the AI counterpart.
Also enemy Anti-figher beams are firing much faster while friendly beams firing slower. Also there are some turrets that can fire faster on higer difficulties in general.
Also more enemies are able to target and to attack you at once and you can be attacked by more missiles at once.
And you have more Asteroids on Collision course in all escort missions through Asteroid fields.
Thank you. That was a lot more complicated than I thought...
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The full list of differences is actually pretty huge, there are at least 40ish retail Ai_profiles flags with difficulty-related settings and missions can even set up events to only happen on higher difficulties(like extra fighter wings or even capships warping in), but in general everything uses "true stats"(the stats set in the ship and weapon tables) on insane with no penalties with more penalties being applied to AI ships and more bonuses being given to the player on lower difficulties.
On insane everything is "fair" except for the player having a random 50% weapon energy recharge rate increase with retail settings(though this is fixed in most modern mods).
The different penalties and bonuses have a multiplicative effect on player survivability since you take decreased damage and have higher shield regeneration while enemies have a lower rate of fire on their weapons and a lower chance to fire missiles(with lower limits on how many missiles can be locked onto the player).
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Higher difficulties recudes bonuses the Player have.
In terms of ships, you have the same energy recharging rate, the same hull and shield than the AI counterpart.
Also enemy Anti-figher beams are firing much faster while friendly beams firing slower. Also there are some turrets that can fire faster on higer difficulties in general.
Also more enemies are able to target and to attack you at once and you can be attacked by more missiles at once.
And you have more Asteroids on Collision course in all escort missions through Asteroid fields.
I wish collision damage wasn't so high in Insane. I swear these Hercs in 1st mission can bring down my hull to 10-20% just because of collisions.
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There are some very counterintuitive stuff going on with the FS2 difficulty settings. Missions, that rely heavily on friendly capship performance, can actually get easier when one plays on "insane" difficulty. The best example is the "Proving grounds", where it's almost impossible to destroy the enemy Corvette (Tiamat I think?) when playing on "very easy." However with "insane" difficulty it's a lot easier to complete all objectives (Tiamat included).
The thing is, highes difficulties increase the firing rate of all capships - both friendly and enemy. But what's the most important thing to realize, is that Destroyers and juggernauts benefit far more from increased firing rate than cruisers of corvettes because of their LBeams. That's why Aquitaine can deal with Tiamat more effectively when playing on higher difficulties.
I have wished for a long time now to have easily changeable custom difficulty settings. I would like to play with "medium" style player survivability, but with increased capship firing rates. Kinda like a combination between "medium" and "insane". One can patch a table file for each campaign separately but that's hardly an ideal solution.
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If you play FS Blue then all beam turrets should fire at max rate on all difficulties. I think.