[Mobius]

I remember a Star Wars based sci-fi for PS2 in which the player could use the force.

You could slow down everything for a while(in order to represent fast reflexes), for example.

[chief1983]

Ah yes, The Force == Bullettime.

[Turambar]

lol

read I, Jedi.

[brandx0]

You are the one, luke.  Wait, that doesn't work, you can't rearrange Luke into one like you can with Neo...

You are the Klue, Luke.

Ah whatever, just run around in slow motion yelling "I know saber-fu"

[chief1983]

Ok, we're totally gonna have to have a pirate in the game now saying something like "I know Cloakshape-Fu" or something.

[aRaven]

what i'd like to have ingame is a sense of realism and authenticity in the missions...

in all space combat simulators the player is often the 'one man army' that destroys whole fleets is the only one surviving.. the most obvious example is the "alpha one" from the freespace games.

What i'd like to see is that the AI is as capable as the player, where both share the same abilities. For example, I don't want to have the "glide" ability like that in the BSG TC simply because the AI isn't able to use it.
The X-Wing series did a good job in that aspect, weapons did a constat damage independent from the difficulty setting, unlike the freespace games.

The AI should be able to elude the player's lasers and missiles and the player should have a hard time killing veteran ai pilots. This holds true especially considering the unshielded TIE crafts...where sometimes only one hit is enough to destroy a TIE, I want them to evade the player's gunfire as well as possible, thus having a more difficult time to rack up kills and rejoice for every kill I get.

So I think that is a good start to balance things out

Tweaking the ai_profiles.tbl and ai.tbl I achieved to modify the "insane difficulty" for my tastes...for example the AI having the same weapon and shield regen ratio as the player and weapons doing the same damage, and making the AI more intelligent in terms of evading and firing.

[chief1983]

We're definitely aiming for a bit more realism, and one of the areas it's going to show is in player vs capship.  For us, that's really going to translate to dead player vs capship, since it's going to be virtually impossible to 1v1 most of the capital ships in the game.  But yes, we're doing what we can as far as fighter AI goes.

[jr2]

Did we ever see the Rebels take down a capship in the movies?  I mean, besides the two Death Stars and taking out the bridge of the SSD.  I don't think so.  In the newer SW movies, you see them going down, but that's as  result of both capship vs capship weaps + maybe a little tipping the balance with fighters.

[brandx0]

In the original trilogy the Rebels blow up one imperial star destroyer on screen, during the battle of endor, that's it.

[Acin]

Well a littel note on realism... It might be a good idea to actually include the consequences of damage on a spacecraft, i.e. if you bang your Xwing with backboard against a capship or an object, one should then have trouble firing the 2 lasers on this side. Or if one of the 4 engines is down then your speed should be reduced somewhat and the steering should become a bit more difficult (force feedback??? ). I imagine if one vectors the engine thrust and arranges it in such a way that the sum vector = the flight direction * -1, then you should automatically get a drag if you get an engine knocked out. Lucky for you if you could turn off the diagonally opposite engine then and make the craft flyable again. Do you think it is programable?
However I would not go so far with realism. The loss of cabin pressure should not suck you into the pc-monitor and thus into the emptiness of space 
 In case of capships, especially in transport ships, that might be also an interesting option. I imagine you could reek havoc in a convoy if you manage to bust 1 or 2 engines of the lead ship and see it spin out of controll slowly and possibly crash into following transporters or at least buy time in this way because they'd have to evade and loosen the formation.
So, functions like these (just like when taking out the shields of the ISD by firing on the generators, or on it's turrets to "silence the fire",) would certainly add to the flavour of the game. Consequently it would be cool to have the possibility to destroy the bridges or engines of other ships (but you would need torpedoes for that not just mere lasers) and thus bringing them to a halt or derailing them form their previous course (no bridge) The FREDers would have then much more options for their mission design and teamwork would play a much bigger role.
What do you think? would it be possible?

[aRaven]

that is sadly not possible...but weapons doing general damage to subsystem should be implemented...the AI is able to damage and destroy you subsystems and vice versa...

i remember when player TBP i destroyed the engines of an enemy fighter several times with normal laser weapons, rendering him unable to flee ^^

[Scourge of Ages]

Also I noticed when playing FS2, if your engine subsystem is damaged, your top speed is decreased proportionately. And if your weapon subsystem is damaged, your guns stutter and charge slower.
Yeah, you've all probably noticed too, but it's a pretty simple system and already in place.

[jr2]

Not to mention Goober's shield subsytem adds a similar effect to your shields...

In the original trilogy the Rebels blow up one imperial star destroyer on screen, during the battle of endor, that's it.

Did we ever see the Rebels take down a capship in the movies?  I mean, besides the two Death Stars and taking out the bridge of the SSD.  I don't think so.  In the newer SW movies, you see them going down, but that's as  result of both capship vs capship weaps + maybe a little tipping the balance with fighters.

[IcyScythe]

What I'd like from this project:

Immersion. Immersion. Immersion. This is one of the primary reasons that I believe FS2 is/was the best space sim ever made (don't get me wrong I loved Tie Fighter but FS2 upped the ante ). It's immersive. Part of this has to do with the beautiful scenery (the nebula missions were some of my favorites), and the awesome, and well developed story line. The briefings were also very well done. Part of it was also just from the incredibly awesome ship designs and HUGE capital ships. And of course the fast paced, frantic gameplay. And keep in mind this is all from a "universe" not nearly as developed as that of Star Wars (obviously).


I really don't want to see a re-hash of the LucasArts games (though I wouldn't mind seeing a port of Tie Fighter's campaign somewhere down the road), but rather something new and different, something that gives this project the chance to be creative.

The Star Wars universe really is incredibly broad in scope which means if the dev team behind this project wants to, they can come up with something completely new and amazing (story/setting wise), which will help contribute to amazing gameplay. Off the top of my head, I'd like to see combat in some unusual environments, like I said before, nebulas are all around awesome. Perhaps battles around, even INSIDE asteroids? Black holes? Maybe something somehow involving what scientists call "dark matter" (some enormous majority of our universe is made up of matter than can't even be detected or measured, but we know it's there because of the way "normal matter" reacts to its presence)... read: alternate universes? The sky really is the limit here and I encourage you guys to be as creative as possible.

That said, I still would like it to have that Star Wars "feel" but have it coupled with FS2's general all around brilliance in all aspects. The classic ships are of course a must (Tie fighter, x-wing, y-wing, a-wing, tie bomber, star destroyer etc...), and while I'm on that I'd really like to see the ships act completely differently. Tie fighters of course don't have shields, but they should be VASTLY more maneuvarable and faster than the rebellion ships.

I do want it to be in either the episodes 4-6 era or the EU universe though (but like I said the campaign doesn't need to, and even shouldn't copy the main story of the movies/lucasarts games)

Oh and if there's to be only one campaign (initially), make us play as the Imps! Playing as the bad guys always lends games that extra edge

[brandx0]

Your post almost exactly echoes precisely what we've discussed about this project and our goals, especially in the realm of immersion.  When reading your post I almost thought I was reading my own words.

[jr2]

Careful on going too creative, though.  You do want it to be recognizable as a Star Wars game.  I don't remember anything about black holes, dark matter, or nebulae in Star Wars.  Are you sure you aren't mixing it up with Star Trek?  (I'd love to see that come through, too, but this is Star Wars.)

[brandx0]

Yeah, I kinda skipped by that part of the post =)

[chief1983]

Black holes?  The Kessel Run did have some black holes, did it not?

[IcyScythe]

Black holes?  The Kessel Run did have some black holes, did it not?

If my memory serves me correctly that's what made it so dangerous. I know for sure it was right next to some "large body", but I'm guessing a black hole because obviously you couldn't get close to a star period.

And no I'm not confusing Star Wars and Star Trek. I've only actually seen a couple of the ST shows and maybe two of the movies so I don't much about it.

But the EU universe books are testament to the fact that you can greatly expand what is Star Wars, but still have it be Star Wars, complete with Stormtroopers, jedi, and everything else.

I'd love to see some really complex plot deep within the bowels of the Imperial war machine... (I think it'd be awesome to be an imperial pilot under some special "intelligence" branch of the navy)

[jr2]

Hmm, yeah, IIRC it was between two black holes or somesuch.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kessel_run

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Maw

I'd love to see some really complex plot deep within the bowels of the Imperial war machine... (I think it'd be awesome to be an imperial pilot under some special "intelligence" branch of the navy)

Who would you be fighting?  Rebel operatives deep inside Imperial territory?