[Trivial Psychic]

Well, maybe this will break some game ballance, but regarding the EA Skylark, I'm puzzled by the fact that it clearly has 3 engines, but only 2 engine subsystems.  I do realize that adding a 3rd engine will increase the amount of time it takes to disable one.  I would however like to suggest that at the very least, the engine subsystem that's associated with the centre engine, be moved to the right side engine so that there is at least some balance (I think the other engine subsystem is on the left side).

[Sparrow]

Yeap.. in the mission where you have to stop the raider freighters , appart from being all the first time hitting the after burner to get them the first two transports are two skylarks wich are almost impossible to disable.. the engine subsistems appears to repair itselfs almost as fast as i hit them and , no joking, hitting the ship in the engines causes the ship to be destroyed before disabling it..

[IPAndrews]

Well you'll be pleased to know that I've modified that mission so that the speed of the freighters' escape is modified by the skill level. So on very easy you have plenty of time to get there and disable the frieghters. This is something I've done with many missions. For another example, in Slipping the Noose where you have to disable the GOD sat the time you have to accomplish this task is also modified by skill level.

I also believe you both have valid points about the subsystems. Skylark should have three subsystems. They're in the .pof so it's up to Mr Fury to update the ships.tbl to include the third engine and reduce the subsystem hit points accordingly so it takes the same time to disable. I actually think the engine subsystems are already too high to start with.

In fact I believe subsystems across the board (all ships) have too many hit points. I once went to the trouble of lowering them all. I thought it made for a more interesting game. More ships getting disabled, cap ships more easily disarmed. If you went toe to toe with an enemy ship you'd frequently lose your own weapons and radar subsystems. I liked it! Unfortunately nobody else did

[Fury]

Hrrmmm... Your memory is giving out again. The lowered subsystem hitpoints are present in 3.1, not as low as you first suggested but balanced for the greater good of survival. In R2 subsystem hitpoints were bollocks.

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by Mr. Fury
Hrrmmm... Your memory is giving out again.

Not on this occasion. I still believe they're all a tad too high. It annoys me on a regular basis.

[Fury]

Oh shuddup...

[Slasher]

If we could have the SCP team modify the game so a support ship can appear without a jump point, lower subsystem hitpoints wouldn't be nearly as much a problem since the player wouldn't be forced to restart a mission when a subsystem is destroyed.

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by Mr. Fury
Oh shuddup...

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by Slasher
If we could have the SCP team modify the game so a support ship can appear without a jump point, lower subsystem hitpoints wouldn't be nearly as much a problem

This is actually supported. You can call in support in a number of the RW missions and the support ship comes from the fighter bay of another ship. Such as Hermes or Altair station. In all honesty though, it is a little buggy.

[Todo]

I'm having a problem with the mission after the one where the Evil Raiders destroy Scylla (Scyla?) with that pencil-looking-thing. Everytime I click the COMMIT button the game crashes, I get a notice of eviction and get dumped on the desktop.

The files I used to play it were the ones from the TBP website d/l section. I have also tried one other build but it has no effect.

And I'm not a goddamned fredder/programmer/super-duper-wiseguy so please could you just make a simple self-extracting exe that extracts itself into the right path so that I won't get a chance at screwing it up in anyway. Simply, please just make it work. Me want to play game further!

EDIT: This is the notice of eviction that I get:
fs2_open_r caused an Access Violation in module fs2_open_r.exe at 001b:004664a3.
Exception handler called in Freespace 2 Main Thread.
Error occurred at 4/10/2005 12:51:08.
C:\Epelit\The Babylon Project\fs2_open_r.exe, run by Johtaja Herra Vitun Iso Herra.
1 processor(s), type 586.
767 MBytes physical memory.
Read from location 0000014c caused an access violation.

Registers:
"A lot of numbers and letters"

Also uninstalling and re-installing did nothing.

[IPAndrews]

Check earlier in this thread for a work around.

[Todo]

I downloaded a file fs2_open_3_6_5_debug.exe and used it to play the game. Then when I was playing the mission where I have to protect the Evenstar and find the raider base I got an error or something like that. The raiders had destroyed the Evenstar, I had destroyed every raider Zephyr and just disabled the last turret on the base and the game jumped to desktop and there was some sort of a message. It said something about use debugger to break something and buttons 'YES', 'NO' and 'CANCEL'. I pressed the 'YES' button and the game locked up. There was some sort of a text file named debug spew and the last line said something about "message line 213 has no persona assigned". Is it just me or my stupidity that I can't never make this game work?

EDIT: Nevermind. The fifth try didn't give any errors.

[Fodder]

I tried removing some wingmen from my unit to make things harder, but this causes the game to crash apparently because of the actions/words of my wingmen are integral to the mission's plot.

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by Fodder
I tried removing some wingmen from my unit to make things harder, but this causes the game to crash apparently because of the actions/words of my wingmen are integral to the mission's plot.

So you broke my campaign and then you post the bug you yourself created in the bug reports thread. Well yes if you delete ships that messages are supposed to come from you are going to piss off the debug build. May I suggest an alternative method of increasing the difficulty. Go to the options. Go to the difficulty setting option. Turn it up. This will increase the accuracy and aggression of the enemy ships and you'll find your wingmen meet their maker with with no intervention from yourself.

[Todo]

In the mission were I patrol the space around Altair Station I get a notice like this after the Centauri Vorchans arrive and I start shooting the Morgoth with my wingmen:

Warning: Null vector in vector normalize.
Trace out of vecmat.cpp and find offending code

file:E:\Language\Visual Studio Projects\Visual C++\fs2_open\code\Math\VecMat.cpp
Line:727

Call stack:
------------------------------------------
vm_vec_normalize() vm_vec_normalized_dir() ship_subsystem_in_sight() aifft_compute_turret_dot() aifft_find_turret_subsys() ai_fire_from_turret() process_subobjects() ai_frame() ai_process() ship_process_post() obj_move_all_post() obj_move_all89 game_simulation_frame() game_frame() game_do_frame()---------------------------

[ This info is in the clipboard so you can paste it somewhere now]

Use Yes to break into Debugger, No to continue.
and Cancel to Quit

Clicking buttons YES and NO just lock the game up and pressing cancel quits the game. And in the file debug spew the last two lines are 'Loading Vorchan_Vert_wing_0-glow.pcs for the first time.
MEMLEAG DEBUG: lock pcx

I'm using a file called fs2_open_3_6_5_debug to play the game.

[Fury]

Switch back to the normal build, use of debug build is only advised in the hyperspace mission where the normal for some reason does not work in systems.

[Todo]

Do spelling errors count as bugs?

If they do, then in the debriefing of the mission Showdown at the pass has a spelling error. When you click the recommendations button and read the red text it says 'Think you could kill all the hostile fighters youreslf ?.'

Also in one of the missions in the weapon loadout section there was a weird missile/rocket. In the section in the upper right corner where's the description of the weapon the name read 'empty' and below the picture it said 'no weaponry'.

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by Todo
Do spelling errors count as bugs?

No .

[Todo]

Originally posted by IPAndrews


No .

Well good because in that case I don't have to post the rest of the typos I have found.

But even if they don't count as bugs doesn't mean that the typos aren't there.

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

Originally posted by Todo


Well good because in that case I don't have to post the rest of the typos I have found.

Go on, post all the typos you've found. More polished Raider Wars is a good thing. That, and annoying IP is fun