Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: FrikgFeek on November 29, 2015, 02:39:57 pm
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There have been a few complaints about BPC being inappropriately difficult on the lower difficulties so I'm wondering what anyone who has played(or even better, completed) the campaigns thinks about it.
This is generally aimed at the people who played on the easier than insane difficulties(very easy, easy, medium, or hard) but feel free to post your thoughts if you thought some missions were imbalanced on insane/reality as well.
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We tested a ton, but tested mostly on insane: it's possible that there was some difficulty creep on the lower settings we didn't catch.
We're also thinking about normalizing weapon recharge to always behave like Insane. Any strong objections to that?
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To a certain extent I think it's working out what tactics will work for the particular mission people are struggling with. For example Her Finest Hour in WiH seems to require doing all the objectives in a certain order in order to succeed. (PS I mainly play on the easier difficulties)
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HFH definitely has a certain 'flow' with objectives but there's no real set order. Obviously it's better to complete objectives closer to your starting point first and saving the Serenity is a no-brainer as it's on your way to any other objective you might want to do.
I've talked with several other people who played it on insane and there are different viable styles. Some like taking the Grimmlers with an Ammo pack and sniping the Mjolnirs/Auroras with Grimmlers before going for Neptune while I personally like taking the UX+Gattler and dealing with the miners while I send my wingmen for the Mjolnirs, then just dogfighting the Auroras instead of sniping them.
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This is generally aimed at the people who played on the easy difficulties(very easy, easy, medium, or hard)
Two of these are not easy.
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as a below average FS - Pilot i say:
WiH is completely different to AoA in Missiondesign.
In AoA or Vanilla Freespace if you suc*, your Mission objective will fail (iE some ship is going to blow).
The player can survive way easyer than WiH.
In WiH. if you are a bad pilot you'll die in the first minute of the mission.
If you are a bad and refuse to die (constant evading whatever is shoot at you) AoA or Vanilla logic will apply (some Ship is going to blow).
The overall difficulty is higher than AoA / Vanilla - but so far i've not noticed anything particular strange.
Alsow the enemy (fleet com) behaves way smarter in WiH, than AoA. Attacks are carried out from multiple directions and distances in short order. So you spend most of the time beeing at the wrong place. The lack of a Treb-like missle makes it hard to assist friendly warships against newer GTVA Corvettes.
If you needed to assist whatsoever because a beam turret in AoA is killing a friendlie? Double treb it - done. Try that on a Modern GTVA corvette in the Ulahn with Hellfires :lol:
The last point is a little bitter, for example:
If you save the vatician (vatican?) light cruiser from the Deimos.... you won't be able to save it from the second corvette as you have absolutely nothing to pull her teeth.... (those turrets seem to be armored way better than on the "old" ships).
To sum things up,
i do think "medium" on WiH is already pretty challenging if you are not practicing Missions in simulator (or by dieing multiple times till it works) to perfectionize it...
If this would be real life (only 1 try). Medium would already be impossible.
.. keep in mind if you play it first time you won't know where the enemy is.
Granted the Captials will screem for help but as they don't give any hint where it's coming from it doesn't help.
There is no target acquisition:
Nothing like - "Attention! Maxim Strike 3 o'clock high! Going after the Churchill."
So if you are in the middle of meele with some strike craft you will need time to:
- orient yourself (where am i - where is my Capital)
- you'll need to scan the void to eventually see the enemy (it could be everywhere as you have no hint)
- afterburn towards them and - if you did not kill it shortly after the message - evade the enemy fighter wich is after you
Add this to the Problem of hitting anything with tracking missles (as AI is better), the inability to destroy beem weapons of most modern ships if you don't carry specific ordonance (which you can't on ulahn) and even Medium is next to impossible there is ZERO margin in the Mission design, they are unforgiving, make the slightest mistake (wich you will as you don't know the missions befor you have flown them at least once) - you'll fail.
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This is generally aimed at the people who played on the easy difficulties(very easy, easy, medium, or hard)
Two of these are not easy.
(http://i68.tinypic.com/90actf.jpg)
Ugh, edited the OP, hope you're happy.
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I'm currently on mission 9 of WIH (The Plunder, where you have to capture the logistics ship) and it's kicking my ass. This is on medium.
There are three main objectives: Stay alive, destroy the Aurora wing, and prevent the frigates from dying. So far I've managed to do that once, and then I didn't have any paveways left to disable the Anemoi's engines.
I don't remember if I thought this mission was terribly difficult or not when I played it before in the old version. My current problem is that while I think that taking out the Auroras will let my frigates win the capship engagement, I can't kill them quickly enough to matter because the cruisers and/or the other fighters will completely wreck me if I take my attention off of them long enough to smack the Auroras.
I did a couple of tries where I tried to help the frigates by trying to disable the cruisers' beam cannons, but I can't line up a Paveway shot quick enough to not get whacked. If I ignore the cruisers and Auroras and defend myself against the enemy fighters I won't be done quickly enough to affect the capship battle and I'll lose a frigate.
Now, I'm probably not playing the mission entirely to my strengths with regards to giving wingman orders and the like, but I feel like unless I get really lucky with the AI doing their job really well I can't win the battle without getting killed. The previous missions of WIH have felt right on. Even My Brother My Enemy wasn't too bad, but if those were SOC pilots then now I must be facing SOC2: The SOCkening pilots.
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(http://i1054.photobucket.com/albums/s490/kingspoon/Junk/holycrackas_zpsxyry03eh.jpg~original)
I never realized that pointing out the obvious made me macho. :lol:
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AI classes in The Plunder are mostly Major, Captain, and a few Colonels.
The SOC Pilots are Generals and Colonels. The AI classes go: Liutenant->Captain->Major->Colonel->General
Maybe you're straying too close to the cruisers and getting killed by their point defences in addition to the enemy fighters? Are you having trouble with disabling the Siren's(The Chimera corvette) main beams before she opens fire?
This could be one of those things that pops up on the lower difficulties due to both friendly and enemy AI being worse.
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I think there are several missions that suffer from spike of difficulty(at least on Insane).I will start with those that i don't think it's really an issue for them to be harder than others:
Her Finest Hour - It's difficulty comes from extreme complexity of mission. Player has to learn a lot, and possible replay few times, to chose best course of action. Last update made it even more difficult, with 2 extra corvettes, Fighter Sweep, and ability for enemy pilots to detect you if you get to close. Player has lot's of tools, and overall missions is very fun, and getting killed feels like you really made some mistake, instead of feeling cheap. I think i won this one over 50 times (not even kidding), and overall for me it's the most fun mission i ever played in any freespace mod. Becouse of that and becouse of grandeour of mission i feel difficulty spike is appropriate.
Delenta Est - Similiar case to above. Biggest problem is that mission is really long, and getting killed near the end really sucks. But ability to load game really helps a lot.
Darkest Hour - My only problem is with last part, when Diomedes arives. To be fair I guess i got used to, that in other version(before diomedes update) Indus could handle it alone. On insane on the other hand, if you at this point of the mission lost most of your wingmans, or need repair, it puts you in really bad spot. Since you need to kill at least one beam to get Indus to win, and you don't have access to grimmers/archers, you have to get really close to it which can be very problemtic :D. I guess i'm very salty about this one just becouse I lost multiple times there just becouse i couldn't pull away fast enough/unlucky beam slashed me from far, and saves were kind of broken at first (upon loading the Base would just explode). This problem was fixed when i restarted game though.
One Future - This one feels really like it's impossible one insane(at least if you try to kill this capship). Even if i manage to kill it before it kills me, shortly after wing of fighter/bomber kills me of almost instantly. But than i guess i didn't get used to custos, and didn't try that much.
The Plunder - This is only mission that feels really unfair. If I get even close those cruisers and CV they just shred me with their turrets, since rest of friendly fighters just charge strike into them and enemy stick close to cruisers at start, you can't really pull enemy craft away from them. Also gamma is doing terrible job at disarming Siren so it's your priority to do it for them. I finaly found a way to easily beat this mission just by charging at Siren, disarming him, and than keep away from fight for the rest of mission(Aside from disabling logistic ship ofcource). Also since you don't have access to uriel yet, you really need to take paveways, instead of Slammers and Grimmers (not even sure if grimmers are aviable in this mission)-> so you can't really play as sniper here :D
Why i think difficulty is a problem here? I don't think you can really win here on Insane by actively participate in battle. In most missions you are discouraged from just jumping happy into formation of enemy ships, but here exactly this happens. I have to watch, how my wingmates are having fun, while I have to stay really far away to not almost instantly gimped by cruisers, which feels very anticlimatic.
For some reason, this mission seemed way easier before this update. (I guess too easy, since i remember you didn't have to do almost anything to win).
I really hope that my post doesn't look like rant :D
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Can someone tell me what the actual difficulty order is? It seems like higher difficulties might actually be easier sometimes. I played BP on medium, and I thought it was generally balanced although the big fight missions with capital ships tend to be harder. I also noticed First Run and Second Run replacing Very Easy and Easy respectively. Is there a significance to that?
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The difficulty order is as shown in the game, the renames have no extra signifigance. First run(very easy)->second run(easy)-medium-hard-reality(insane).
I guess this just shows how different styles can make the same mission harder/easier on the same difficulty level. I thought Delenda Est was a complete Turkey Shoot on insane, but I did it in a Kent. I can imagine having difficulties if I used the default Uriel as it's slow and likes to explode anywhere near a Nyx.
The Plunder mainly comes down to disabling those MBlues and pulling back to the frigates. As the tev battlegroup closes in to engage with their pulse weapons their fighter screen will follow so you can dogfight them once they're nearby. You can also try throwing some dirks their way and see if that causes them to attack you to draw them away from the flak jacket.
One Future can be hard, but it's totally possible on insane. Just get yourself in a good position where you can kill the reactor and are hidden from most of the mass drivers, set ETS to full shields and keep using the 'shield boost' power and engage with your railgun. You should be able to kill that reactor before your weapon energy/shields run out.
Just make sure you position yourself so that your turrets can effectively engage enemy fighters and don't try to take both the Morena and the fighters on at once. Using padlock or external view might make this easier. You are completely right about the mission requiring knowledge of the Custos. You need to somewhat accurately judge how fast you can turn and know where your turrets are to effectively engage fighters/bombers.
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I would like a bit more consistant armor types for turrets and in some cases more vulnerable. You can take out double digits worth of hull trying to kill the AAA BEAM on the valerie but the main beams are pretty vulnerable. I imagine this is mainly due to mission balance, yet there is nothing wrong with the player deciding he wants to first kill some AAA because he is low on hull, but did a good job at keeping the station High on hp.
The medea could move a little slower to allow a surviving gamma wing to hit the beams with its archers. Currently the AI can't do this as the 28 m/s is too much for the dumb AI to compensate for, and for paveways to turn (lol)
The plunder is the main offender in the lower difficulty setting because of how bad paveways are, specially when there's a networked array of turrets ready to kill anything that even resembles an interceptable missile. At some point you are told that killing comm subsystems is good, but how the **** do you do that with the armor values of those cruisers and paveways that get shot down?
Helping with defanging is not only pointless it is also detrimental, your uriel wing will do fine without you and it will take away from time you could be spending hunting nyx and auroras. Your corvettes launching missiles makes more of a difference than anything else you could do.
Everything else I find challenging but well balanced and fun to try and improve on.
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Don't forget Scalpels!
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And hey at least I put a dialog skip into The Plunder!
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Don't forget Scalpels!
But that's the problem, getting within Scalpel range means getting inside the pulse and AAA envelope, and in practical terms, at my skill level at least, that means a substantial risk of death. So I don't try to use Scalpels, I run the **** away from the cruisers and let my immortal or disposable wingmates deal with it. This only really got annoying in The Plunder, as far as I recall.
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Scalpels work once the cruisers are in range of the UEF capital ships. Before that you are dead if you try to face a cruiser for more than half a second.
My criticism of this mission is not in its design which is good, its the way the player is presented with several options that in practice are horrible. Clearing the fighters should always be your top priority while letting gamma do the thing they are good at. If the player is not gonna have the option to fly a uriel might as well just tell him to go lure and kill the escorts.
On a positive note, no matter how many times I've restarted this mission trying out different things, the principal Simms line never gets old!
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Huh — in testing I never ever got a good result on the mission unless I helped Gamma take out those forward beams, to be sure the Siren didn't get even one shot off.
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AI classes in The Plunder are mostly Major, Captain, and a few Colonels.
The SOC Pilots are Generals and Colonels. The AI classes go: Liutenant->Captain->Major->Colonel->General
Maybe you're straying too close to the cruisers and getting killed by their point defences in addition to the enemy fighters? Are you having trouble with disabling the Siren's(The Chimera corvette) main beams before she opens fire?
This could be one of those things that pops up on the lower difficulties due to both friendly and enemy AI being worse.
I haven't had any problems with the corvette's beams. I usually pop a couple of paveways over to take out the one or two beams that the AI missed, no issues there. My problem is that if I then do nothing to not get killed the frigates die. I'm honestly not entirely sure what they die to, though, but I assume it's just massed fire from the cruisers.
The criusers are definitely kicking my ass if I get too close. I didn't quite feel that the non-beam point defence has ever been this potent in previous versions of the game. And while disarming the corvette is easy, disarming just the beams on the cruisers is next to impossible. Not really because they intercept them too well, but because the time it takes to wait for an aspect lock is time that the enemy fighters use to shred you.
And hey at least I put a dialog skip into The Plunder!
And thank you so much for that!
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Okay I got through The Plunder when I realized that Gamma 2 was invulnerable and I could send him into the cruiser fire to kill the auroras. Even then the Yangtze ended the mission with 4% health.
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Huh — in testing I never ever got a good result on the mission unless I helped Gamma take out those forward beams, to be sure the Siren didn't get even one shot off.
Player's and Simms's wing (alpha) does the beam killing, gunships (gamma) goes straight for the Elissa if not managed by the player and does 15-25% of its health which is really not that useful.
I always micro gamma at the start of the mission and send em to kill beams while I clear fighters, and if on insane I'll usually go around the right hand side by the Utica and pick off auroras and nyx as they attack me while avoiding the cruisers as much as possible.
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I consider myself a generally average player, not a great one. I think the missions themselves are reasonably well-balanced, though I may be missing a couple of minor issues. I'm just repeating something stated elsewhere: Both AoA and WiH have a bit steeper of a learning curve compared to FS1/2; where you got used to having to do almost everything yourself, and it takes some time to get rid of that "reflex." Learning how to effectively delegate your wingmen (and learning to trust them) requires some replays.
While I have no specific gripes, the missions where there is A LOT going on at once just seem overwhelming on the first couple playthroughs. (Keepers of Hell, Universal Truth, Post Meridian, to name a few.)
Overwhelming--but not impossible.
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Don't forget Scalpels!
But that's the problem, getting within Scalpel range means getting inside the pulse and AAA envelope, and in practical terms, at my skill level at least, that means a substantial risk of death. So I don't try to use Scalpels, I run the **** away from the cruisers and let my immortal or disposable wingmates deal with it. This only really got annoying in The Plunder, as far as I recall.
This. Even if Scalpels could kill TEI warship hardpoints in an arbitrary ten seconds of sustained fire (they can't), it's meaningless when the player can't survive half a second of that warship's return fire. There's a reason everyone sniped subsystems with Paveways in previous releases, and it isn't repetitive motion injury from pumping afterburners in every campaign ever.
The Diomedes is an excellent case study. It's always been a monster of a ship, even before Paveways could be shot down, and even before getting its new model. I genuinely thought the intended tactic for taking one out was "keep clear and let the warships do their job," that charging the Vilnius was meant to be avoided by defanging the Redoubtable at the start of the mission, and that saving the Dea Bricta and the Auxerre was your reward for completing the mission up to that point with Paveways instead of Slammers; apparently that isn't the case, and I'm just a bad player for dying more to the Medea on Normal in this release than in entire playthroughs on Insane in the past. Oh well.
On a different note, I don't know what the hell happened to My Brother, My Enemy. I almost came here immediately to ask if your wingmen had been buffed, since even on Reality they casually made it through the first half of the mission with 100% and 60%. Before I usually ended up screaming internally at their flying straight into trebs.
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as to my brother my enemy.
my wingmen tend to die about 10seconds after fighting starts.
only once one survivd (i ordered both to go for the atalanta class fighter, and throw as many missles as i could on the enrys...).
however the perseus managed to kill one of my wingmen as i was taking on Zero...
this was the best try, in all others both die - me folling shortly afterwards (as i am not smart enough to take out 4 enemy fighters at once ^^)
EDIT: playing on medium,
but i always found this mission verry challanging (never managed to keep my wing alive... so far)
As for the Post-capella GTVA Ships,
they realy **** up the UEF Fighter wings now.
I find it hard to believe the UEF managed to stay that long in the fight - as even the decent fightercorps won't make a difference to a capship engagement (as it is now).
GTVA has - BEAM anti-Cap-Ship power like always PLUS Striking AAA weaponry comparable to the UEF vessles, able to shot down almost everyone and everything going for them (starting from the Torpedos..., fighter, bombers and javalins...). It made me lough as the mission briefing of post meridian Told Delta Wing (Ulahns) will be used as Fighter-Supression and Space superiority - i mean it's an ulahn right? But the better half was that those guys flew straight into the AAA fire of the Meridian and died faster than i could get in Range to engage anything....
Furthermore the UEF's long range fighting advantage (on the Karunas or Narayanas) is nullified as not a single warhead will make it to it's target - at least it seems that way.
while it's nice to have challanging missions,
your balance seems a little too far off right now. I mean - how in hell could the UEF possible survive till now in this war? Nearly every fightercraft must have been shot down by the AAA Beams and Pulse weaponry... the capships tend to go susicide afterall so.... ? please explain how this is supposed to work out?
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I think staying alive in my brother my enemy is actually a "bonus objective" even though the game says otherwise. I'm personally fine with that. I do agree with your view of the GTVA though, they seem too good for the UEF to not have been annihilated by now.
I voiced this in #bp the other day and the answer was because basically of the UEF bomber squadrons. While I had my issues with how little they are showcased as the beasts they trully are, I think matt made a good point in that bombers will be the main course in act 4 where I imagine we are gonna be the **** that hits the GTVA's fan and goes directly into Steele's face. (Ricardo is rubbing off on me sorry!)
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Unless there's a bug at work I just don't think most of your observations are factually correct. UEF torps will brutalize GTVA ships at range, and pulse weapon balance hasn't changed since the last release as far as I know.
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Unless there's a bug at work I just don't think most of your observations are factually correct. UEF torps will brutalize GTVA ships at range, and pulse weapon balance hasn't changed since the last release as far as I know.
Pulse weapon is waaay flashier now and looks deadly as **** :D
But i did notice even in Meridian, surviving AA seems much harder for some reason. I thought that Aoeulus cruisers were closer to Meridian main beam, so they could fire at player/incoming fighters.
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I'm currently stuck at Plunder on Medium but I think the balance is fair. I had to retry Post Meridian a bunch of times because I didn't back off quickly enough after the Meridian's beams got destroyed. I also got rekt a few times because of the TAG missiles connected to the aeolus' beams though I only figured that out later. Are the TAG's supposed to be a 1 hit kill? If that's the case, it would be nice to have some kind of info beforehand that the GTVA aeolus has this weapon since I started to get pissed after getting sniped by the aeolus for the 3rd time without knowing where it got the range or accuracy to hit me with that beam.
As far as Plunder is concerned, I managed to destroy the escort by following the mission objectives, kill the beams with paveway's and after that focus on the aurora's. It seems the UEF frigates get tangled up with the escort rather fast though. I'd expect them to stay back a little more because of their advantage in long ranged combat.
Actually, how do the UEF frigates fare when in an up close fight? I'd think they'd be easy picking not being able to use all their forward guns, though the apocalypse missiles might have less of a chance of being intercepted because of the close range.
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Making the frigates approach more slowly is actually a great idea.
We had to do a lot of balance work to give GTVA ships a prayer up close. Point Defense Turrets on UEF ships tend to disarm GTVA ships really fast.
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Well, if you want to keep your wing alive in My Brother, My Enemy you can just order your wing to depart and solo the mission. It's totally doable even on insane.
Pulses will murderize kents due to their huge top profile(that thing is almost 70% bigger than a Myrmidon!) but they won't be as effective against Uhlans if you keep dodging. They'll still kill you if you stay in there too long but you can actaully go in, scalpel a beam, and get out alive.
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In case someone is having trouble with plunder, steps to sucess (realism, but should work for any other difficulty I would asume)
Start mission!
Target the top beam on the siren
- c114 (gamma 1 destroy subsystem)
Target middle
- c124
Target bottom
- c134
Form up right behind beta wing, target Elisa's left main beam (middle cruiser), stay below the cruisers nose and aproach directly from the front where the turret coverage is minimal. As soon as you have range to drop paveways launch 2 of them at this beam, target the right beam and when you are at about 700-500 metters (about to collide) launch your other 2 paveways and kill this beam.
Immediately turn back towards the indus and dodge incoming turret fire and 0 to 2 perseus which are now chasing you. Let the corvettes kill them.
Around this time you'll see the directive to kill the siren's beams complete. C-3-9 to order gamma to attack anything, press E and C-3-6 (ignore ship) to tell them to ignore the cruisers and siren.
Lean back on your chair and about 4:30 minutes into the mission go towards the Agincourt, sit on his ass and launch your 2 remaining paveways. Move away from turret range and resume leaning on your chair until the end of the mission where the pods escape.
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To battuta's comment about slowing the UEF ships, That might help, but the main issue is that right now the cruisers are hardly ever in the gauss cannon cone of fire. Sit back and count how many times the frigates actually fire, it sure ain't much.
Another thing I noticed once I sat back and watched everything that is going on is that once there's no fighters left, alpha wing just sits there and won't even try to fire at the cruisers or siren.
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If the mission is self playing like that on Realism then I need to redesign it again. The whole point was to require player engagement after the beam disarm.
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I don't think you need to honestly. You can easily break this by not lettign the player control gamma at all (which would make sense considering she's not running the show) In which case the player will have to assist in killing the siren's beams. Less paveways and no beta's charge to distract turrets and fighters covering the cruisers.
And to help tune the difficulty at lower settings you can always beam and or turret protect the player a bit if distance from cruiser > 1000 or somethnig around those values. Let it play out more like a dogfight mission with some obstacles but not as brutally zoning as realism is.
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Yeah, idk about even having to kill the beams on the cruisers. I just banzai the Siren and kill those MBlues before she gets a single shot off. If she does one of your frigates will lose like 50% hp instantly and you'll have to work overtime on the cruisers to save them.
After the Siren is defanged you can go back to the frigates and pick off a few fighters. Once the cruisers are close go in for the merge and clear out the Auroras to achieve ECM superiority. Once you have that and if your frigates are at 30%+ you've basically won.
Maybe buff up the damage values on those pulses against capships so the player has to snipe them off too once the Siren goes for guns? Or FRED them so they attack specific subsystems and stuff.
It's also somewhat possible to fight near the cruisers if you do boom and zoom. Full burners with slight movement will evade most pulse shots so you can get near your target, snap off a 150m 6maul+hellfires shot and burn away from there. If you get hit by beam you'll get knocked around and almost certainly die unless it punts you out of pulse range.
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Based on flying the mission quite a few times on Medium, I'd suggest the following to require Plunder to have a little more player involvement:
1. I'd have the GTVA fighters intercept the Wargods sooner. To let the dialogue finish you just let the Wargods jump in a few clicks further from the escort so when the dialogue ends the Wargods have extra distance to cover which gives the GTVA fighters ample opportunity to intercept. This makes taking out the beams on the Siren and getting back out more of a challenge because right now taking out the beams on the Siren (on Medium) is incredibly easy.
2. Have the frigates move close enough to fire their mass drivers and then stop. As soon as the GTVA escort gets close enough have them start moving forward again to get the feeling of 2 fleets crashing into each other.
3. To make the outcome of the close up fight less certain, I'd just have 1-2 GTVA wings with the capability to seriously harm the frigates launch from the Agincourt when the close up fight has started. Explanation would be that they just finished resupplying. Now you need to go and kill those wings between the mess of fighting capitals in order to succeed. (kinda like you do with the aurora's now but something that poses a little more danger to the frigates)
Of course, I've never created or balanced a mission before so I could be totally wrong with my suggestions.
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I do appreciate the thoughts! In general feedback on the missions as they are is more useful than ideas for how the missions could be, just because BP mission design operates under some fictional and logistical constraints.
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Alright, if I spot any more stuff that seems off I'll let you know.
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Figured I would drop my thoughts in here as well.
First and foremost, in a world where "difficult" single player games involves spamming single or combo key strokes to trigger a character action, BP's level of complexity and real difficulty is refreshing.
From my experience with BP complete, if this were real life and run at medium difficulty, winning would be impossible. The UEF would have simply lost. The player is privileged to both information and a skillset that allows for mission completion beyond "normal" human capability (not to mention AI enemies).
However, this is not real life (or a book for that matter). This is a video game, where mission design strives to give the player options. Options, whether they be in the difficulty of the opponent or in how they go about achieving a victory scenario.
I think mission difficulty should be left as is, for all missions, across the board. If a mission is too difficult, play it at a lower difficulty and then turn the difficulty back up afterwards.
Or be like me and play it 10-15 times over until you get it right (looking at you, The Plunder)
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Not sure what you mean, but I could probably oneshot medium or maybe even hard without using any of my prophetic prescience. I'd bet most of the people who regularly play on insane could oneshot most campaigns on medium or below. And it's not like our 'skillset' is above what a real combat pilot should have. It's probably below that.
Then again, even furyAI isn't good enough to give the player a real challenge even on insane. You still have to use superior numbers and conlifcting objectives.
Though if this was 'real life' the only difficulty option would be insane, as that's the only difficulty that doesn't give the player artificial damage reduction and magic reactors that refill your shields and guns 2 times faster.
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This mod is hard and I like it that way, every victory feels earned and I have been playing Freespace for 15 years now.
There are some cheap deaths that occur regularly because the battlespace is so lethal but this is as it must be when the battlespace is lethal :-) Hoping I do not start the flamewar now, it actually reminds me a lot of military FPS games like Call of Duty where the game is fast, you kill fast and you die fast. The only difference is that in BP, the respawn is not 2 seconds away.
In the end, I have voted for 'generally balanced' as I like the difficulty.
Also thinking "The Plunder!" is the most difficult mission in the game.
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I didn´t play through the whole WiH campaign yet but it´s definitely much harder than the previous ones.
My best example so far is "Post Meridian". In all other releases I played before I could just stop at the starting point and watch the show if I want. My wingmen could do the job alone. Without cheating away Delta Wing I would´t even have seen the Meridian firing her main beam cannon.
In the actual version even on the lowest difficulty the Uriels simply didn´t get the job done no matter how fast I take the Aries Wing and all other fighters out :mad:. There was no playthrough where I don´t had to take out the Crypt Hammer myself.
And after that I regularly found my frigates gutted by I don´t know what. The Eos torpedoes, the Juarez, ???. Simply said I needed 5 attempts to succeed the mission (on lowest difficulty :nono:) and I still haven´d figured out what I did right the last time ... or wrong the other times :banghead:.
I don´t mind hard missions but the actual "Post Meridian" is in my opinion not a mission anymore where you can "learn to trust your wingmen" (Batutta in developers commentary :P).
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The Maxim strike will really hurt the frigates; make sure you break it up quickly.
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It might've been more keeping with the mission theme if you just said 'Epsilon, go kill that wing!' and they murderated the whole thing for you.
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Yeah, it seems the weird difficulty scaling in Freespace strikes again! As all AI scales with difficulty your wingmen are just too **** on very easy to do anything, ever. Post Meridian used to have some issues with that damn LRBGreen but on insane it was because delta sometimes took out the TerSlash first, not because they forgot how2disarm or completely borked like AI tends to do on the lower difficulties.
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Upwards of 40+ tries attempting to save the Dea Bricta on Normal.
Aristeia has been ruined as an experience. In previous releases, it was my favorite mission; in the Director's Cut it's become horrible.
The Tev fighters, already superior in number, each have enough firepower to kill the player in seconds or less; often they're able to deal 50%+ before the pursuer warning beep goes off. They have enough health to shrug off not just the player, but the frigates' fire for an extended amount of time, while unloading a steady stream of missiles at the player. It's the first time in any Freespace mission ever that I've died because I ran out of countermeasures; I've died repeatedly.
There's no window to rearm or rearmor until the mission is already more or less complete. Attempting to rearm and rearmor anyway is a free kill for the Tevs.
What the hell happened to the UEF's superior fighter fleet that has kept the war going for so long, that massacred all non-Warship assets the Tevs sent at Neptune? It sure ain't here. I was willing to tolerate the "engage=death" philosophy in Tenebrae because you were a stealth fighter and not supposed to engage, but it doesn't work in the other chapters.
The new Diomedes model has even less vulnerabilities than its predecessor. Engaging directly is suicide, yet Paveways are now useless and seem to be shot down, if not by point defense, then by the tail end of the very anti-warship beam you're trying to disarm.
There's no fun in it anymore, only endless loops of "give orders while dodging! press hotkeys while dodging! lure into warship flak while dodging!" If I wanted to play an RTS I'd have joined the command crew, not the fighter jocks, but apparently I'm stuck being command crew in a squishy fighter anyway.
I get the feeling that the BP team has gotten so used to playing their own missions that they've lost sight of how other players might behave and have put everything but their own actions into a failstate.
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Please don't turn feedback into attacks. It makes your input no fun to work with and discourages people from touching it.
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And this release had (as usual) a group of new testers.
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Please don't turn feedback into attacks. It makes your input no fun to work with and discourages people from touching it.
It wasn't an attack but a conjecture. There's something wrong when a mission that formerly exemplified player agency is suddenly so restrictive.
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That might be true! Reporting on the mission is useful, reporting on the team is not.
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It takes a nyx 1.44 seconds to 100-0 a Kentauroi with a balor-balor loadout without any missiles hitting, on insane with the player managing shields perfectly. Before the Balor buff this number was 1.53 seconds. For an Atalanta or Kulas it takes 1.9 seconds, compared to 2.03 seconds pre balor buff. Multiply these numbers by 1.66 if you are playing on Medium. Though it actually may take longer than that due to increased shield recharge times on the lower difficulties.
In terms of toughness the Nyx is still at 350hp + 650 shields like in the last release but the Rapier has been nerfed to deal less hull damage so with 4 of them it will take you an extra 0.15 seconds to kill it.
Your problem seems to be trying to dogfight in a Kent which isn't suited for it. It's an interceptor, not a space superiority fighter. The huge top profile is a big disadvantage in furballs. Either play to the Kentauroi's strenghts or pick the Atalanta for dogfighting in Aristeia.
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What the hell happened to the UEF's superior fighter fleet that has kept the war going for so long, that massacred all non-Warship assets the Tevs sent at Neptune? It sure ain't here. I was willing to tolerate the "engage=death" philosophy in Tenebrae because you were a stealth fighter and not supposed to engage, but it doesn't work in the other chapters.
TEI wave 2 fighters have been comparable to high-end UEF ones since WiH was released. The UEF has never had superfighters.
And like FrikgFeek explained above, the Balor buff is tiny. You don't die noticeably faster than you did pre-DC. If you're still trying to go head-on with a Nyx, the reason it doesn't end as well as it used to is because the Rapier has been nerfed and doesn't have Kayser DPS anymore.
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Well, it is possible that AI using afterburners more makes them close the gap faster so you get less time to spend(like 0.15 seconds less) in the 1500m-1110m range where you can shoot rapiers at them but they can't shoot balors at you.
Or if you were abusing the Kent's insane reverse burners to keep them there forever. Since those have been nerfed the Nyxes will catch up and own you with their superior shielding and firepower that they've always had.
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And yet there's a definite, unaccounted-for jump in difficulty in the mission.
Could wingmen be being knocked out as they charge into a two-on-one brawl in front of the frigates?
Could the frigates be failing to provide a sufficient anti-fighter screen due to their close-range nerf?
Could loadouts be screwed up somehow? (I noticed that a lot of FS:Blue missions had Tempest loadouts instead of Trebs/Hornets/Tornadoes for some reason)
But don't tell me it's always been that way when half of the initial Nyx wave is still buzzing around the Indus by the time the ECM ship arrives.
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That shouldn't be happening. You should be able to kill all the nyxes before the ECM ship arrives. You should have around 30 seconds to rearm before the heavy fighters jump in.
Since I've never had that happen to me I have to assume that you're either taking too long to kill the Nyxes or that something bugged out and Anjaneya came in earlier.
If you don't want your AI to get knocked out you have to charge into the furball when the nyxes are around 3000m from you, don't just wait at the frigates!
I didn't feel a jump in difficulty pre-Medea aside from that stupid support ship bug and the Atalanta having weapons on the nose(which doesn't apply if you fly the Kent). I have died a few times to friendly slammer fire, are you sure that's not what's killing you? If you're in Gamma's way as they engage they will heavily damage your shields/outright kill you.
Saving Dea Bricta is a lot more difficult now but that's how it should be. Those cruisers are supposed to die as soon as the Medea gets past Calder, the player needs to pull off a miracle to save them.
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Wingmen won't get knocked out on difficulties below Hard, I think.
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@Battuta,
what do you mean?
mine die frequently on medium?
BTW: i realy enjoy your game -it's just too hard for a dumbass like me ;)
another thing.... do you think it's possible to have Destroyers and Cruisers fight in Multiplayer?
Right now i am playing a lot War of Warships and it's a joy to use the speed of the light cruisers against heavyer units :) wouldn't mind having that experiance in a Karuna or Nara(whatever the name of this artillery frigate is)....
regards
BS
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He means the plot-critical wingmen that can't die. Wouldn't make much sense if Brie ate a treb and exploded in 1 mission and was just fine in the next. The redshirts will die on all difficulties.
On hard/insane they will simply be knocked out of action for some time, on lower difficulties they are effectively invincible.
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On the lower difficulties the wingmen appear to be far too stupid to be useful. This can make things rather difficult in the missions where multiple things need to happen at more or less the same time. (post meridian, the agincourt capture op, etc). I'd personally refer to it as "Ramirez" mode.
As an aside, that can be kindof entertaining in its own way. Results in a lot of dying for me though.
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I finally managed to play the new version of the mod over the Christmas days. First of all, amazing job once again to the whole team and all voice actors :)
Concerning the difficulty of the mod, I played on "normal" (with the exception of Aristeia). I used to play on hard, but I haven't been able to play for some time and used to play with a joystick which unfortunately doesn't work any more.
The difficulty is from my point of view on the spot for basically every mission. The exceptions for me are Universal Truth (Tenebra) and Aristeia. For some reason (probably Windows 10) I couldn't play Universal Truth and therefore cannot comment on the difficulty.
I could play Aristeia though, which turned out to be the only mission I couldn't beat on normal difficulty. My problem is disarming the Medea. I never managed to destroy more than one of the two main beams and even that happened very rarely. Compared to previous versions of the mod when using paveways was the trick while trying not to get shot down by enemy fighters, paveways nearly never worked this time or did too little damage. I also tried Stilettos, Scalpell and other weapons, sending in my wingmen, nothing seemed to work.
Nonetheless, every other mission was nearly perfectly tuned and I enjoyed playing blue planet again vey much!
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The Plunder is extremely difficult to complete, at least at 'insane' difficulty, which I am told this was tested for. (its similarly unpleasant on lower difficulties generally, but tends to not be as bad due to the limits on how many turrets can lock on to you and the relative incompetence of the enemy AI) I almost did it once but have yet to get through it after dozens of tries every day for the past week or so.
The wingmen around 20% of the time dont manage to take out even one beam on the siren, followed promptly by my own failure to do so, due to the fact that paveways are getting shot down by enemy fighters in their terminal attack phase.
Frequently (its been about 50/50 so far) it isn't possible to make the Siren disarm happen before the Yangtze has taken too much damage to survive the ensuing secondary fight. Even when the Siren's beams are taken care of frequently it isn't possible to get rid of the ECM assets to make that fight winnable. And the way you have to get rid of the auroras quickly is by sending your invulnerable wingmen into the cruiser fire pocket where the auroras are hiding to start taking them out early on. It is a bit immersion breaking for me to have to rely on that sort of thing.
Finally, the re-arm ship tends to wander off when it isn't getting shot down, frequently causing me to get shot down waiting for it to start trying to dock. (I have in the past had to chase it down, get in front of it, stop, then I get taken apart by a balor before I can burn up to a high enough speed to start evading with any effect)
Sorry if I seem a little flustered, its because I am, but I did try to make this somewhat coherent.
e: slowly picking away at the angry bits via consecutive edits
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The Plunder is probably slightly overtuned. It's very hard to prevent it from becoming self-playing, but it may need some nerfs.
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I played through Darkest Hour the other day on normal. The mission plays pretty well until the Diomedes shows up. I had managed to save most of wingmen, but it seems most of the UEF fighters just drop like flies when engaging the Diomedes. I had to load a checkpoint a few times and even with every single fighter alive, the Diomedes would end up butchering everyone. It feels like the players and friendly fighters are grossly ill-prepared to take on the Diomedes. Maybe if the Indus deploys a couple of bombers or gunships, it would make it less of a wall slam for all the surviving fighters.
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For what its worth that added to the moment for me somewhat. It seemed like some kind of frantic suicide assault to try to weaken it enough to allow the Indus to do its thing.
I die there a LOT though, since I tend to view myself as expendable compared to a frigate. Would be nice if you had a brief chance to eject or something. Frequently I do enough damage to totally screw over the Valerie and then my ship disintegrates.
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If you have most of your wingmen alive when the valerie arrives all you need to do is c-3-7 all fighters, position yourself at a good angle to attack, split the wings to attack each beam emiter while you take out the ridiculously armored port AAA, after that you can do whatever.
If not a lot of fighters are left alive forget the AAA and focus on the beams.I personally find the idea of AAA beams ****ing stupid outside of TAG as a game mechanic and always kill them when possible.
The AI is completely useless when it comes to targeting subsystems or turrets because it first has to fly to the end of the turret normal path and only then will it start doing its thing, asuming the path is valid and not obstructed by something in the model. Playing this mission a while back by some miracle every single allied ship, including the vatican, was still alive when the valerie arrived. By the time the indus started shooting, the valerie was almost dead from fighters just shooting it.
The diomedes is an amazing warship, but in the BP missions the turrets get some insane armor values and what makes them ridiculous in my eyes is the fact that they have a fighter bay capable of launching so many fighters as it can in aristeia.
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. . . it only ever launches 24 fighters iirc.
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Huh, I thought it capped out at 12.
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Wait, isn't 24 practically a whole wing?
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I believe Battuta is right, it was twelve, and twelve is one whole squadron.
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Some missions ARE too hard.
I don't see how the majority voted "generally balanced", maybe you didn't play on 'Reality' difficulty, the hardest.
I haven't completed my re-run of the completed Blue Planet, right now I'm playing War in Heaven Act 1. The mission I've encountered that I still have not beaten on 'Reality' difficulty is 'The Plunder'.
This mission, is absolutely ridiculously hard difficulty, and I'm not a fan of lowering the difficulty level just because one mission was to hard.
If some missions are to hard, that should be a pointer to that some ships, mechanics are unbalanced or the mission itself unbalanced. All missions should be a winnable scenario even if it seems impossible at first, otherwise it would seem weird the story would even progress.
Regarding the mission 'The Plunder', I've had over 50 retries and still not beaten it. There are several factors I've noticed that makes this mission incredible hard.
On 'Reality' difficulty, the cruisers and corvettes are packed with AAA beams, lasers and all kinds of **** to rain hell down on figher squadrons. Your chances of survival are near zero if you try to get close, which you have to in this mission, to 2 cruisers and 1 corvette. I think the corvettes and cruisers have to many guns fitted on their hull, and their aim way to good.
You need to disarm the beam cannons, and shoot down the Aurora fighters (all close to the cruisers) and disable the communcations on the cruisers and corvette, while the game also has events where several fighters will chase you down, instead of randomly targeting different ships.
Or maybe that's just how if feels, but I'm consistently killed by Scorpio wing when trying to disarm the beam cannons on the Siren ship.
I mean there is much more to it than this that makes this mission ridiculously hard.
Come on, can someone just record playing this mission on reality? I bet you won't be able to beat in one go, and if you do I wanna see what tricks you used.
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Well I saved myself the trouble waiting for someone to complete this mission for me to see.
I finally beat The Plunder on 'Reality' (Insane) difficulty.
Still needs to be balanced tho.
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You didn't really need to. I've already recorded all the missions on insane way back in November.
Here's the playlist for WiH part 1 if you're interested
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC89WYnIXtfVb-8Avd7LAgX21tTRMKmz2
Have others for AoA and Tenebra. The plan was for tutta to use them for dev commentary but he's been kinda busy I guess.
The Plunder has apparently been made a lot easier since the beta though, you should've played that monster if you think the current one is hard :P
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Yeah The Plunder got nerfed a lot. Might need more. It's hard to make it easier without making it self-playing.
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I watched the plunder and I'm not sure we played the same version of the mission, you managed to get rid of the Siren beams by just firing a couple of paveways at each beam and then the rest got taken care of by your wingmates. That is extremely rare, usually you have to wait for them to complete their run or some beams will be left over.
e: I also didn't see tev fighters shooting the paveways down with pinpoint accuracy during their terminal phase.
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Because I fired them exactly head-on so the Siren's turrets can't shoot them down and only after beta wing went to distract the tev fighters. I also waited for my wingmates to be in range before firing so we all fire a huge swarm of paveways at once. If you fire them alone they're almost guaranteed to get shot down.
And yes, this was the live version of the mission, the same one the rest of you played.
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only after beta wing went to distract the tev fighters.
Hadn't thought of that, it looked like they were engaging other fighters, so I had (incorrectly) assumed I would just get trouble from them instead. Thinking back, the other fighters were much further away, so that makes sense.
I also waited for my wingmates to be in range before firing so we all fire a huge swarm of paveways at once.
I thought of that, but I didn't think it was doable since I saw the wingmen launching at what looked like some arbitrary number that was closer than maximum range. How did you figure which range the wingmen launch at? I'm pretty sure they got a lot closer than maximum. I'm also pretty sure you'd need to launch at the same range since paveways are so slow in non-terminal phase (then just hang around the general viscinity of that range with a lock and wait for them to fire).
The best I managed salvo wise was to fly alongside my already launched missiles while firing and have them all land simultaneously, but that wasn't really adequate.
e: Alright now I'm done editing...
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Age of Aquarius became far too easy in my opinion. Forced Entry, a great challenging mission of the old AoA, having almost Shadow Genesis style, is now short, poses no challenge at all and... is simply boring. Generally missions in AoA are too short, as you guys play a bit too much with manipulating armour classes. Sathanas beaten by Orestes fleet in 2-3 minutes was not epic at all. Mission where we defend against 3 Shivan destroyers and Vishnan come help us is almost self-playable after you destroy first Ravana's beams. The only missions in AoA I found challenging were breaking a two-Ravana blockade in a Vishnan craft and battling Sathanas (I kept being about 15 seconds too slow to destroy the last cannon before it destroys Orestes).
War in Heaven I, on the other hand, is very well-balanced. It's already been before. Challenging but not frustrating. Dogfights, sniper strikes, GTVA warships unleashing AAAf hell on you... it was great.
I can't say much about Tenebra though, as I'm now on second mission, but the training part before a mission (I assume there is one before most of them) is a brilliant idea. It fixed the most irritating issue in first Tenebra - that in most missions there is a complex mini-game you need to learn to win. You try, you fail, you get angry, but you keep playing, you learn by your mistakes, you finally make it to the next mission... and there you have another mini-game. That was bad and it's great you did sth with it. Anyway, I think Tenebra would be much better if there were only two or three minigames reflecting Fedayeen's unconventional warfare, but they repeat throughout the missions. Just like system cracking (going through labirynth) in Mass Effect 1.
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You mean we don't play with armor classes enough?
The AoA missions mostly haven't changed since 2010.
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I thought of that, but I didn't think it was doable since I saw the wingmen launching at what looked like some arbitrary number that was closer than maximum range. How did you figure which range the wingmen launch at? I'm pretty sure they got a lot closer than maximum.
I just eyeballed it. The first time I played it I followed Simms to see when she launches, it's usually around the 'Watch the flak pocket' line.
And yeah, AoA barely changed since the DC release in 2010. And really, they weren't very challenging back then either. Forced Entry was only slightly tweaked so the Ravana dies somewhat faster since before it used to take so long to go down with nothing for the player to do, it would also sometimes catch up to the Temeraire as it reached its final waypoint and just stopped.
Only the Vishan missions were really changed
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Yeah, the Vishnan missions got some cool weapon **** and some interesting Shivan behavior on higher difficulties.
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The intron system should've had a dedicated article on the database to link with the individual ship descriptions. Maybe declassified or brought to the player's attention after the first mission where it is encounter if one is playing at the appropriate difficulty.
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Nope.
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You mean we don't play with armor classes enough?
The AoA missions mostly haven't changed since 2010.
No, I mean you play too much :).
Ok, maybe it's not this case. I don't know if Sathanas armour class in "Time for Heroes" was changed or Terran beams are just so op, but the juggernaut falls far too quickly. Colossus needed quite a lot of time to beat the first Sathanas even with its beams powered up and in AoA, after you destroy the beams, it's about 2 minutes till it blows up. I understand GTVA's technological advancement, but as for me, you made this fight too short. I didn't feel like fighting the heaviest ship (apart from Dante) in the entire Shivan armada.
And besides, if Orestes battlegroup just jumped in behind the Sathanas it would probably be able to take it down before it turns over :).
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All I have to say about that mission is for me the logistics ship escourts showed up and barely managed to fire a salvo through its burning wreckage.
I don't overall mind it being much shorter though, in fact I tend to prefer that. It was pretty... drawn out, at one point.
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You mean we don't play with armor classes enough?
The AoA missions mostly haven't changed since 2010.
No, I mean you play too much :).
Ok, maybe it's not this case. I don't know if Sathanas armour class in "Time for Heroes" was changed or Terran beams are just so op, but the juggernaut falls far too quickly. Colossus needed quite a lot of time to beat the first Sathanas even with its beams powered up and in AoA, after you destroy the beams, it's about 2 minutes till it blows up. I understand GTVA's technological advancement, but as for me, you made this fight too short. I didn't feel like fighting the heaviest ship (apart from Dante) in the entire Shivan armada.
And besides, if Orestes battlegroup just jumped in behind the Sathanas it would probably be able to take it down before it turns over :).
The entire TEI fleet doctrine is built around the manoeuvre shown in A Time For Heroes, though I don't think there's a good explanation for the Orestes' strategy being 'sit and wait to get shockjumped'; it's not surprising they take the Sathanas to pieces in seconds.
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You mean we don't play with armor classes enough?
The AoA missions mostly haven't changed since 2010.
No, I mean you play too much :).
Ok, maybe it's not this case.
I don't think it's the case, IIRC there's no armor type ****ery on the Sathanas (and it's heavily upgunned). It just gets shock jumped by a bunch of ships designed to kill a Sathanas.
What you're actually asking for is more playing with armor types.
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The Erebus and nuTitan have a more powerful weapons loadout compared to originals.
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What you're actually asking for is more playing with armor types.
Ok, my mistake, I thought some trick with armour class is used here to make Sathanas take damage faster.
The Erebus and nuTitan have a more powerful weapons loadout compared to originals.
I understand the explanation why Sathanas is destroyed so quickly, I just think it would be cool in terms of gameplay if it took much more time and effort to take down such a beast. Just my personal feeling, don't know if others would agree.
The entire TEI fleet doctrine is built around the manoeuvre shown in A Time For Heroes, though I don't think there's a good explanation for the Orestes' strategy being 'sit and wait to get shockjumped'; it's not surprising they take the Sathanas to pieces in seconds.
Well, Orestes tactics is based on an assumption that Sathanas will jump in beyond main beams' range and then approach GTVA ships to fire at them. But as we saw in Freespace 2 (Their Finest Hour, for example), Sathanas has absolutely no quarrel to jump in close enough to fire just after arrival. And the entire manoeuvre goes to hell :P.
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I guess that's why sprint drives were invented, to let the Erebus jump out if it's shockjumped and set up a more favourable engagement. The Orestes does immediately turn and run from the Sathanas, though, and it should be fast enough to stay out of beam range...
e: nope, the Erebus has the same top speed as the Sath. The TEI is a smokescreen, wake up Tev sheeple!
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I guess that's why sprint drives were invented, to let the Erebus jump out if it's shockjumped and set up a more favourable engagement.
Exactly.
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nope, the Erebus has the same top speed as the Sath.
Pretty sure that was the design requirement: if out of range, stay out of range indefinitely. If in range, jump out.
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But you assume a Terran ship will have time to turn over and run. In Time for Heroes Sathanas arrived that far for gameplay reasons, but normally it should be able to fire seconds after jumping in. So basically there are two possible outcomes when you are shock-jumped: 1) you have your drive recharged in a moment sath arrives and you jump out momentarily 2) you get smashed :P.
And jumping out is not always possible. We see jump drives in BP are not as fast-recharging as it could seem, at least ones on the destroyers. In Time for Heroes we are being told Orestes needs 10 minutes to have the drive recharged, so taking into consideration that we're launched shortly after arrival, it gives us 11-12-minute-long interval between consecutive jumps. Perhaps smaller ships have better mobility, like Serkr Team in WiH.
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The Orestes didn't have the Sprint Drive.
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But you assume a Terran ship will have time to turn over and run. In Time for Heroes Sathanas arrived that far for gameplay reasons, but normally it should be able to fire seconds after jumping in. So basically there are two possible outcomes when you are shock-jumped: 1) you have your drive recharged in a moment sath arrives and you jump out momentarily 2) you get smashed :P.
Things don't generally happen in BP 'for gameplay reasons'. That's the idea behind BP, to build fiction that works with the gameplay and vice versa.
As with most tactical-level scenarios in BP, the answer is to think about the context around the scenario. A huge chunk of the Erebus' tech description is devoted to its sensor fusion and datalink capabilities, as well as its EWAR suite.
An Erebus cannot survive being shockjumped by a Sathanas. A modern (21st century) warship can't survive a hit from a modern ASM. In both cases the combatant's defenses are built to answer the threat by never allowing it to occur.
Jump drive recharge depends on the ship's power allocation, recent action, and computational capabilities.
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The problem is that in A Time For Heroes the Orestes doesn't really seem to try any of that; it just sits in open space, waits for the Sath to come to it and gambles everything on the bomber strike. And I can't really see what the thoughtful BP strategic explanation for that is.
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Nah, it totally does. The battle group splits up to draw off the Sath's fighter complement, degrading it until a bomber attack is probably going to succeed. The Orestes launches a series of hit-and-run attacks on the Sath's systems to prep the main beams for bomber strike.
Then, when the Orestes' subspace maneuverability has been tapped out, she gets set for the killing blow by launching a strike package and waiting. The Sath arrives at a good position, the Orestes sends in the strike to disable the main beam weapons before the Sath can make range, then the Orestes closes to destroy it. It's a pretty well executed engagement, if not 100% ideal.
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Also the Orestes is a goddamn slug compared to the Atreus, since it's not as close to the 'final' Erebus capability spec.
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The problem is that in A Time For Heroes the Orestes doesn't really seem to try any of that; it just sits in open space, waits for the Sath to come to it and gambles everything on the bomber strike. And I can't really see what the thoughtful BP strategic explanation for that is.
On that I agree with Battuta. It's Sathanas' behaviour I find hard to explain, not the Orestes'.
Things don't generally happen in BP 'for gameplay reasons'. That's the idea behind BP, to build fiction that works with the gameplay and vice versa.
I appreciate and like your approach. I had (or at least did my best to have) similar in Shadow Genesis, it even went a bit too far in some missions :).
But as you state it this way, I can't see a rational explanation why the ship jumps in beyond firing range. Sathanas is not the only case - a Demon trying to destroy Duke had the same behaviour. It also arrived far away and closing, just sending fighters and bombers. Only explanation that comes to my mind is to make player have this "whoa, enemy is approaching, we're doomed!" feeling and simultaneously give him some time to take action. Three Shivan destroyers in a mission where Vishnans help us - same story again.
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You're looking at it backwards. Why would the Sathanas jump in within firing range, or the Abel, or the Demon you mentioned? When shock jumps are achieved in FS2 they're pretty generally accomplished when the Shivans already have assets on station. (Not to mention the, ah, complicated and very irrational nature of Shivan tactical behavior).
Shock jumps seem to require precision and foreplanning, even for Shivans. The Sathanas is chasing down the Orestes, but it hasn't been able to fix the Orestes to a position (whether by cornering it or deploying scouts) that would let it just pop in at killing range.
The burden of explanation would be more on the Shivans conveniently arriving at perfect firing range and angle.
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Speaking of, we tuned up the Ravana and the Allies both to be a bit less dumb in 'Slaying Ravana' in FS Blue.
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So, is it all a matter of Shivans being impossible to calculate a precise jump? Ok, in some cases this explanation fits.
But it doesn't seem Sathanas didn't know Orestes exact location if it was pursuing it. The prelude to the mission was moreless like that: Sathanas pursue Terran battlegroup, Terrans jump out in different directions. Sathanas keeps a track on Orestes trajectory and exit vector (that's why Sathanas knows where to follow Orestes).
Also, this doesn't fit the three destroyers jumping in 12 clicks away from Temeraire. Shivans have just deployed a Demon and a Ravana and Temeraire was not moving at all. So they could easily deploy those three destroyers within fire range.
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Knowing where your opponent went isn't the same as fixing their position down to a precise realspace location, then putting yourself on a small colocal jump target with a juggernaut-sized mass after your opponent has been nipping at you with a series of hit-and-run attacks.
The three destroyers you mention don't arrive at shock jump range for some of the same reasons the Atreus doesn't land on top of Rheza Station. Subspace jumps are hugely stochastic, and even if point B and point C are right next to each other, A->B might be orders of magnitude easier to compute and execute than A->C...especially if point B is farther from the dangerous ****.
More importantly, though, Shivan behavior isn't locally optimized. The AoA Shivans seem to like to use their Ravanas and Liliths for standoff attacks, maybe because the closest thing they've had to armed resistance for fifty years can't retaliate effectively at range and can't afford even the smallest strike craft attrition.
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Knowing where your opponent went isn't the same as fixing their position down to a precise realspace location, then putting yourself on a small colocal jump target with a juggernaut-sized mass after your opponent has been nipping at you with a series of hit-and-run attacks.
The three destroyers you mention don't arrive at shock jump range for some of the same reasons the Atreus doesn't land on top of Rheza Station. Subspace jumps are hugely stochastic, and even if point B and point C are right next to each other, A->B might be orders of magnitude easier to compute and execute than A->C...especially if point B is farther from the dangerous ****.
But this is something totally different to what we see in FS2. From the first mission, Psamtik vs Belisarius, through Ravana vs Actium and Lysander, Colossus vs Repulse, Nebiros vs Colossus, Sathanas vs Colossus in Their Finest Hour - both Shivan and GTVA ships were usually jumping in within firing range or just beyond it with no problems.
There are only few cases where ships start beyond each other's range. Colossus vs first Sathanas for example, but in this case Colossus was deployed further in purpose - to give bombers time to destroy the beams.
I always thought Atreus didn't land on top of Rheza Station because it went straight for an easier target first - Bretonia. Kill one target with no risk, then go for a harder one if possible.
More importantly, though, Shivan behavior isn't locally optimized. The AoA Shivans seem to like to use their Ravanas and Liliths for standoff attacks, maybe because the closest thing they've had to armed resistance for fifty years can't retaliate effectively at range and can't afford even the smallest strike craft attrition.
Well, if there were only beam-less Demons and Cains in AoA, you'd have the point. But in AoA's alternate universe we fight FS2 Shivan armada which must have joined the Lucifer armada in some moment after the GTA was destroyed. They all have beams, so it's hard to imagine they could apply FS1 tactics of standing, firing useless blobs and deploying fighters and bombers. When we first encountered Shivans in FS2, they momentarily knew how to hit us. GTC Vigilant was smashed by the Rakshasa, although they never fought GTVA ships armed with beams before.
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Knowing where your opponent went isn't the same as fixing their position down to a precise realspace location, then putting yourself on a small colocal jump target with a juggernaut-sized mass after your opponent has been nipping at you with a series of hit-and-run attacks.
The three destroyers you mention don't arrive at shock jump range for some of the same reasons the Atreus doesn't land on top of Rheza Station. Subspace jumps are hugely stochastic, and even if point B and point C are right next to each other, A->B might be orders of magnitude easier to compute and execute than A->C...especially if point B is farther from the dangerous ****.
But this is something totally different to what we see in FS2. From the first mission, Psamtik vs Belisarius, through Ravana vs Actium and Lysander, Colossus vs Repulse, Nebiros vs Colossus, Sathanas vs Colossus in Their Finest Hour - both Shivan and GTVA ships were usually jumping in within firing range or just beyond it with no problems.
There are only few cases where ships start beyond each other's range. Colossus vs first Sathanas for example, but in this case Colossus was deployed further in purpose - to give bombers time to destroy the beams.
My last post touches on this. The Psamtik intercepts the Belisarius after the Belisarius makes a clearly vectored jump, and it doesn't even have its weapons completely ready when it arrives. The Ravana jumps in after a rolling engagement that lasted quite a while. The Colossus arrived at a pre-planned ambush point. The Beast and Sathanas #?? jump the Colossus after a lengthy engagement with Shivans on the scene.
Jumps are stochastic. Subspace isn't simply connected to realspace. Depending on the configuration of mass in the system, the exact point you're departing from, the recent use history of your drive and power systems, your computational resources, the amount of hurry you're in, the precision of your observers on the far end of the jump, and a bunch of peculiar subspace factors, it may be easy to show up in a good firing position — or you may only get a satisfactory arrival solution a long ways out.
Well, if there were only beam-less Demons and Cains in AoA, you'd have the point. But in AoA's alternate universe we fight FS2 Shivan armada which must have joined the Lucifer armada in some moment after the GTA was destroyed. They all have beams, so it's hard to imagine they could apply FS1 tactics of standing, firing useless blobs and deploying fighters and bombers. When we first encountered Shivans in FS2, they momentarily knew how to hit us. GTC Vigilant was smashed by the Rakshasa, although they never fought GTVA ships armed with beams before.
Having beams is an excellent reason to use stand-off engagements against opponents who can't hit back at that range.
The Vigilant was ambushed at the Gamma Draconis jump node, which is one of two strategically interesting places in the entire system.
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Problems with calculation of precision jumps in case of the shivans seems to be noexisting, and should be especialy in BP. As far as I remember, in BPverse Ravana has somekind of semi-subspace portal onboard, and main beam of the Lilith is somehow directly linked to Sathanas juggernaut spinal beams via subspace. Not to mention Capella, shivans demonstrated extremly advanced subspace technology that is also one of their signature features in both FS games. You guys extended this even more in BP. Calculating a precision jump seems to be actually pretty trivial and basic process for Shivans, especialy compared to other examples of sophisticated usages of subspace technology.
Terrans and vasudans are a different matter.
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It's worth noting that the Shivans seem to deliberately confound prediction. They wont neccesarily achieve predictable performance, in fact I think the constant debate their behavior is driving was kindof the point for them. Who knows what the hell they are capable of, or what they will do, aside from 'lots'.
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You greatly underestimate the vastness of space if you think 10km from your target isn't an extremely precise jump. They also had nothing else in the area to vector in the Sath.
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Problems with calculation of precision jumps in case of the shivans seems to be noexisting, and should be especialy in BP. As far as I remember, in BPverse Ravana has somekind of semi-subspace portal onboard, and main beam of the Lilith is somehow directly linked to Sathanas juggernaut spinal beams via subspace. Not to mention Capella, shivans demonstrated extremly advanced subspace technology that is also one of their signature features in both FS games. You guys extended this even more in BP. Calculating a precision jump seems to be actually pretty trivial and basic process for Shivans, especialy compared to other examples of sophisticated usages of subspace technology.
Terrans and vasudans are a different matter.
BP is based on the fiction of retail FS2, where the Shivans do not repeatedly drop their destroyers in exactly optimal position.
Shivans don't use their capabilities optimally (because of the nature of how they think and their ultimate goals).
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I think it's also worth noting that BP's own canon suggests that TEI is not the end all to the Shivan threat. TEI is a response to recorded Shivan activities, which makes sense why it's evidently effective against the Shivans. In the long run, TEI will fail, which is why the UEF solution may be the better one, even if militarily, they are less adept at fighting the Shivans.
I'm kinda curious to what the Shivan response to TEI will be. Will the Shivans take on more advanced subspace vectoring to outmanuever sprint drive technology? Perhaps they will resort to improved strikecrafts that will nullify the beam advantage from TEI.
(These last set of posts seem to have gotten on a bit of a tangent with regards to the actual topic. Maybe splinter this off?)
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Maybe they will resort to psychological/electronic warfare style attacks? That seems like a relative weakpoint of the GTVA, and might be the better vector of attack at this point. Especially if they are trying to act as a fitness function that creates well rounded species and destroys whoever doesn't make the cut. (which seems to be a reasonable generalization of what they were doing in the first incursion)
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You greatly underestimate the vastness of space if you think 10km from your target isn't an extremely precise jump. They also had nothing else in the area to vector in the Sath.
This. You can know your opponent is somewhere within a 50 km radius sphere, but try to randomly pick a spot in that sphere and land within 10 km of your target. You'll miss far more often than you will hit. That doesn't mean I don't know where my opponent is (especially when I'm considering that he might be almost anywhere within a star system, or even in orbit around a planet). It just means that I can't jump within weapons range without fail.
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When considering jump precision, I think its kindof pointless to consider the vastness of space instead of things like weapon range. If you missed by ten kilometers thats pretty bad. It seems to me that regardless of how difficult it was to achieve even that accuracy, it for practical purposes is garbage and needs to be improved ASAP.
Heck, you may as well gauge processors by comparing them to people. 'this can complete computaitons thousands of times faster than a person, what do you mean two thousand operations per second is slow?'
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When considering jump precision, I think its kindof pointless to consider the vastness of space instead of things like weapon range. If you missed by ten kilometers thats pretty bad. It seems to me that regardless of how difficult it was to achieve even that accuracy, it for practical purposes is garbage and needs to be improved ASAP.
Having something to vector in a strike is important. You need a precise location to hit before you can actually hit it.
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Yes, and obviously needing subspace nodes for intersystem travel is impractical and needs to be improved ASAP. Too bad it isn't that simple.
Another way to look at it would be that Shivans might be able to jump with ludicrous precision but they can't know where the Orestes is exactly. Even with sublight speeds the Orestes could've moved ~4km in any direction in the 20 minutes it takes to recharge their jump drives. That's an 8km sphere already, factor in subspace behaviour and just how difficult it would be to track a precise point in an entire system without anything there to vector you in and 10km is extremely precise.
"Improving" that would probably only be possible with insane luck or some kind of system-wide sensor net(something we know the Shivans didn't have or didn't use in that scenario).
A better question would be why the Shivans didn't jump in a wing of fighters first to vector in the Sath for a shock-jump but that can be explained by Shivans not being locally optimized.
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Yes, and obviously needing subspace nodes for intersystem travel is impractical and needs to be improved ASAP.
Well, yeah. That would probably be pretty ideal. ;)
e: And I mean we dont really have any evidence that that isn't possible. The Shivans seem to scale their tech somewhat to the local scene, it could be entirely possible to travel without the need of nodes. Heck, probably a lot of the shivan ships are capable of it, they just dont. Its not like the Demons had beam cannons until the GTVA got them.
e2: While I'm at it, since IIRC blue planet is trying to consider Vassagos Dirge canon, the scene where it engages at extreme range seems relevant to the discussion as well.
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My last post touches on this. The Psamtik intercepts the Belisarius after the Belisarius makes a clearly vectored jump, and it doesn't even have its weapons completely ready when it arrives. The Ravana jumps in after a rolling engagement that lasted quite a while. The Colossus arrived at a pre-planned ambush point. The Beast and Sathanas #?? jump the Colossus after a lengthy engagement with Shivans on the scene.
Jumps are stochastic. Subspace isn't simply connected to realspace. Depending on the configuration of mass in the system, the exact point you're departing from, the recent use history of your drive and power systems, your computational resources, the amount of hurry you're in, the precision of your observers on the far end of the jump, and a bunch of peculiar subspace factors, it may be easy to show up in a good firing position — or you may only get a satisfactory arrival solution a long ways out.
(...)
BP is based on the fiction of retail FS2, where the Shivans do not repeatedly drop their destroyers in exactly optimal position.
Shivans don't use their capabilities optimally (because of the nature of how they think and their ultimate goals).
I don't think FS canon specifies in any point that precise jumps are easier to calculate if other ships were deployed in the area recently. It is possible and sounds realistic, but for my best knowledge it's non-canon. No ship behaviour or techroom entry in FS2 indicates that. Where the hell in FS2 are Shivans jumping in as far as Shivan capships in AoA?
Having beams is an excellent reason to use stand-off engagements against opponents who can't hit back at that range.
Exactly. And if, as a Shivan, you want to use this advantage, you have to arrive WITHIN fire range, in other case you have to hold enemy bombers until you can fire and your advantage may likely go to hell.
The Vigilant was ambushed at the Gamma Draconis jump node, which is one of two strategically interesting places in the entire system.
I know. I used this example to point out Shivans don't need time to adapt to new enemy's tactics as you suggested about the Demon.
So, let's sum up. If we assume (non-canonically, but it's ok, as you developed the FS2 lore much and added lots of new elements) that:
1) The larger the ship is, the less precise the jump will be
2) If other ships have perfomed jumps to a location recently, it is easier to calculate exact coordinates for next ones
3) There are plenty of factors difficult to foreseen that can make calculating jump coordinates more difficult
And refer this to AoA missions, then we can draw some conclusions:
1) Frankenstein's Monsters, Demon-attacking-Duke - mission can be explained with first contact with GTVA and no Shivans in the area, although the Demon could easily deploy fighters first to do the reckon and then calc more precise jump.
2) Preserving the Balance, with the three destroyers jumping in in a distance - no explanation you gave suits here. Temeraire was in a defensive position, it was not moving at all, Shivans were launching assaults against her including two destroyers and bombers, they knew their exact location. They could easily jump closer.
3) Time For Heroes - size of Sathanas and no Shivans in region is a kind of explanation here. Although basing GTVA tactics on a simple fact that this time the enemy will jump far enough so he have time to destroy the beams is risky.
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So, let's sum up. If we assume (non-canonically, but it's ok, as you developed the FS2 lore much and added lots of new elements) that:
1) The larger the ship is, the less precise the jump will be
2) If other ships have perfomed jumps to a location recently, it is easier to calculate exact coordinates for next ones
3) There are plenty of factors difficult to foreseen that can make calculating jump coordinates more difficult
I'm not sure that 1) is an absolutely necessary requirement for the rest of your conclusions.
And refer this to AoA missions, then we can draw some conclusions:
1) Frankenstein's Monsters, Demon-attacking-Duke - mission can be explained with first contact with GTVA and no Shivans in the area, although the Demon could easily deploy fighters first to do the reckon and then calc more precise jump.
2) Preserving the Balance, with the three destroyers jumping in in a distance - no explanation you gave suits here. Temeraire was in a defensive position, it was not moving at all, Shivans were launching assaults against her including two destroyers and bombers, they knew their exact location. They could easily jump closer.
3) Time For Heroes - size of Sathanas and no Shivans in region is a kind of explanation here. Although basing GTVA tactics on a simple fact that this time the enemy will jump far enough so he have time to destroy the beams is risky.
1) Yes, fighters can perform recon. But we also know that Shivans use tactics that are non-optimised for the local environment. Perhaps in the absence of any targets for many years, Shivan behavior has moved to some other set of priorities than most efficient destruction of a disabled GTVA destroyer and four escorting fighters.
2) I have no reasonable response to this example other than an appeal to Shivan non-optimised behavior that is less convincing given previous missions.
3) Yep, GTVA tactics were entirely based on hoping the Sathanas would jump in far enough away to let bomber defang her. But only because they had no choice in the matter. If you have put yourself into a position where you can be shock-jumped by a Sathanas and can't jump away immediately, then you prepare for the only possibility that gives you a chance and hope it breaks your way.
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Reread earlier posts in this thread. All your questions have been answered, in particular #2.
FS2 is full of ships, even and especially cruiser-and-corvette sized warships, popping in roughly within the engagement zone but not in any kind of optimum attack position.
The Orestes positioned itself for the engagement using its subspace agility, its sublight speed, and the advantages gained by spending a long while leading the Sath around by the nose and observing its pursuit behavior.
It's ezpz to think of this stuff using the tools the BP setting provides you. Just come at the mission with the question 'why does it work like this?' not 'why DOESN'T it work like this?' What happens in the missions by definition makes sense: it's the canonical material. If it happens, there must be a good reason for it.
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All fictional universes are ultimately built on arbitrary rules created by humans. They are not the merciless and autonomous issue of a blind tautological physics.
Understand this, and you can move from 'but this doesn't make sense' to 'what does this say, and what clues can we obtain from it?' This is how BP resolves all the weird inconsistencies between FS1 and FS2, for example. They must be true because they are present in the gameplay. What could explain them?
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Jumps don't have to be more accurate if you have assets in the area. It's just that having assets in the area helps you know where the **** you need to jump in the first place. Unless, of course, you have ridiculously powerful sensors that can poinpoint enemy locations down to the kilometre from half a system away.
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Jumps don't have to be more accurate if you have assets in the area. It's just that having assets in the area helps you know where the **** you need to jump in the first place. Unless, of course, you have ridiculously powerful sensors that can poinpoint enemy locations down to the kilometre from half a system away.
Yes, you're right, that's generally what I meant.
Reread earlier posts in this thread. All your questions have been answered, in particular #2.
FS2 is full of ships, even and especially cruiser-and-corvette sized warships, popping in roughly within the engagement zone but not in any kind of optimum attack position.
I'm not talking about a situation where a ship approaches for 15-20 seconds or turn over a bit, it's totally understandable. In AoA the distance is far bigger - so big you could repel 2-3 waves of fighters before enemy gets close enough.
Ships arriving significantly beyond fire range are a minority. I didn't count them, but the very few that come to my mind are Maelstrom and Repulse. Perhaps you'll find several more, but rather not many. Ships arriving in fire range are met almost every mission.
The Orestes positioned itself for the engagement using its subspace agility, its sublight speed, and the advantages gained by spending a long while leading the Sath around by the nose and observing its pursuit behavior.
Yes, and I'm ok with it. Orestes tactics was logical assuming it had no ability to warp out at that time.
It's ezpz to think of this stuff using the tools the BP setting provides you. Just come at the mission with the question 'why does it work like this?' not 'why DOESN'T it work like this?' What happens in the missions by definition makes sense: it's the canonical material. If it happens, there must be a good reason for it.
All fictional universes are ultimately built on arbitrary rules created by humans. They are not the merciless and autonomous issue of a blind tautological physics.
Understand this, and you can move from 'but this doesn't make sense' to 'what does this say, and what clues can we obtain from it?' This is how BP resolves all the weird inconsistencies between FS1 and FS2, for example. They must be true because they are present in the gameplay. What could explain them?
So we go back to your initial statement: things don't happen in BP for gameplay reasons. Fiction works with gameplay and vice versa.
It's your right to create lore as you wish, put things in missions in a way you wish and even not explain things accurately. It's your campaign. And AoA is a great campaign despite those small plotholes I mentioned.
It's just after you stated everything in BP has logic behind, I was curious how you would elaborate those few moments I always thought their only explanation is to make mission more attractive and deeper.
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All fictional universes are ultimately built on arbitrary rules created by humans. They are not the merciless and autonomous issue of a blind tautological physics.
Understand this, and you can move from 'but this doesn't make sense' to 'what does this say, and what clues can we obtain from it?' This is how BP resolves all the weird inconsistencies between FS1 and FS2, for example. They must be true because they are present in the gameplay. What could explain them?
Huh. I shall mull over this.
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It's just after you stated everything in BP has logic behind, I was curious how you would elaborate those few moments I always thought their only explanation is to make mission more attractive and deeper.
You can use the information presented in BP on Shivan behavior, subspace tactics, and the 'command authority' present in AoA to understand why the Shivans jump in where they do.
How does the Lucifer engage the Orestes in AoA?
How does the SD Tantalus engage the Bastion in FS1?
What can you see happening there?
We try never to do anything 'just' to make the mission better. A thoughtful player should be able to look at an enemy behavior and imagine a reason why it happened.
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How does the Lucifer engage the Orestes in AoA?
Same story - it's too far away and it's hard to explain it realistically, other than it's for gameplay reasons. But it doesn't bother me from enjoying the mission at all.
How does the SD Tantalus engage the Bastion in FS1
What can you see happening there?
Well, FS1 is a totally different story, as capships are almost defenceless there and their primary role is deploying fightercraft, so it's logical they try to remain far away from each other. Tactics of space warfare underwent a complete evolution between FS1 and FS2.
We try never to do anything 'just' to make the mission better. A thoughtful player should be able to look at an enemy behavior and imagine a reason why it happened.
That's what I was trying to figure out here. Sure I can make up any reason to make all the pieces somehow fit together, but I was curious if an official explanation of some mission events exists. Now I know :).
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I'm trying to lead you to an answer here. What's different between the FS2 Shivans and the AoA Shivans? What's the link connecting the Tantalus engagement to the standoff attacks in AoA? How can you use what you know about Shivan totipotence and animas to explain the different Shivan behavior?
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Different animas managing the different engagements? Death of the lucifer perhaps?
e: Wait wait wait, so are you saying that the AoA shivans are being managed by the lucifer anima whereas its dead meat in the fs2 universe?
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Yeah
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That is... an interesting thought.
e: Time to replay all the FS1 and AoA stuff.
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If the Shivans use quantum pulses or/and subspace communication, why each fleet need separate anima? I was actually thinking that Shivans are acting like single mind. A single emanation of Nagari superbeing. If the communication between the shivans is happening in real time despite actual distance, there should be no need of individuality for animas for each fleet. In practice all the shivans in the universe would be able to know what happen to any other individual shivan even despite distance between them. Space in case of Nagari communication might be virtually noexisting.
And BTW. I was always wondering how you created the whole Nagari thing, guys. Is this based on some non-mainstrem science theories [like the one by dr. Ervin Laszlo] or you were inspired by older concepts? Akasha's Sphere for example? I've seen this concept many times over the years.
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I don't think the Shivans have that kind of ability to instantly communicate. We know the Lucifier guided the first Shivan incursion. We also know that in FS2, there are what seems to be Shivan comm nodes. So taking the logic that Blue Planet's lore builds on events in FS, it seems more likely that animas are necessary to coordinate Shivans.
We also know the Shivans/Vishnan have been able to communicate to select Nagari compatible individuals, but the fact that they pick a few individuals seems to suggest it's resource intensive. When the Fedayeen communicate in the Dreamscape, they seem to require specialized devices. There are in canon a lot more Nagari sensitive individuals, but only a few are ever present in the Dreamscape. The Dreamscape we see is a localized environment. We see two gates representing different segments of Nagari space. All this suggests that Nagari space does have distance in it, which means no free communication.
Another explanation might be that Nagari sensitive individuals are susceptible to manipulation, in which case, the Shivans keep the majority of their vessels insensitive in order to prevent them from being hijacked. The Lucifier and Shivan comm nodes probably serve as their Nagari interfaces. Those in turn can guide the rest of the Shivans. Rather than a single Shivan Nagari superbeing, I suspect the Shivan animas form a gestalt entity, similar to Al'Dawa.
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The Shivans are exactly the opposite of a single mind. Their architecture is actively hostile to high-level coordination and cognition. Communication is purposefully obfuscated and any higher-order movement towards efficiency and networking is jammed up by local resistance.
There are no Shivan 'individuals' in the sense of self-aware entities in a body who run around doing stuff. Or, well, there may be a few, but they are not exactly type specimens.
Nagari is inspired mostly by FreeSpace 1, digital physics, Teilhard, and transcranial magnetic stimulation.
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I see what you were saying about the Tantalus.
And now, sleep.
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Not sure what you mean, but I could probably oneshot medium or maybe even hard without using any of my prophetic prescience. I'd bet most of the people who regularly play on insane could oneshot most campaigns on medium or below. And it's not like our 'skillset' is above what a real combat pilot should have. It's probably below that.
Then again, even furyAI isn't good enough to give the player a real challenge even on insane. You still have to use superior numbers and conlifcting objectives.
Though if this was 'real life' the only difficulty option would be insane, as that's the only difficulty that doesn't give the player artificial damage reduction and magic reactors that refill your shields and guns 2 times faster.
Okay, this is feedback from a guy who's been playing Freespace 2 for quite some time, but really just pops in now and then to enjoy the new content.
It's very, very clear these mods are designed for Freespace 2, and I do mean Freespace 2, veterans.
Now that's fine, as long as you understand that for 90% of players, they are going to fail, multiple times, completing these missions. I did, and I've done Ironman runs of FS1 and FS2 on medium (death = campaign restart).
In AoA, you could complete the game without much difficulty, it was expertly crafted, and in general gave you time to react to new situations. But if you don't know that Ravana is jumping behind the Temerarie? You're going to lose, period.
WiH is generally much harder than that. You WILL fail each mission over and over. The mission to engage the Hood had so many directives, it's really not possible to defeat unless you know exactly what to do and when. Nyx fighters are tough as nails and can chew you up in seconds. Staying within a Frigate's flak cover shouldn't mean, "hiding behind a hull until half of them are dead." Failing to disarm a beam or an AWACS is a death sentence.
Now, trial and error is an acceptable way to make a game difficult. Look at Dark Souls. That requires "Edge of Tomorrow" like reflexes, planning, etc.
But it is important to state that for an average person that plays FS2, and makes the jump to WiH, the difficulty is going to be jacked. I realize this is a conscious choice. But, well, "ALPHA ONE DO EVERYTHING" is a perfectly legitimate critique of Act 3, even for it's great highs. And I played Act 3 before the training missions were added! :P
The easiest way to deal with this would be to have one or two "sub battles" within a mission. There should also be enough time to complete them, such as breaking off to deal with a large flanking bomber force with escort. Or a small cruiser group coming in from above. Crucial to the battle, but not in the middle of a meat grinder all the time.
For specifics, the Hood mission's difficulty for me was borked. Same with the platform defense mission where you had to disarm the beams of the GTVA corvette.
The end of Act 2 was great with the battle with the Carthage. Her Finest Hour and the Elder Assassination mission were fine in their polished form. Harsh, but fair.
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Staying within a Frigate's flak cover shouldn't mean, "hiding behind a hull until half of them are dead."
Several people have stated this before but it's really not necessary. It's just about how good you are at big furbally dogfights. Though with the GTVA fighters and weapons dealing much more damage than any Shivan fighter it brings the difficulties closer, at least in terms of time to kill. Medium makes the player take 66% damage but that means instead of getting killed in 2 seconds by a Nyx you get killed in 3 seconds(that's with balors only, if you get hit by Tornados you'll evaporate almost instantly). You live 50% longer, sure, but it's still quite short if you haven't mastered dogfighting against multiple opponents.
Against Shivans those numbers would probably be 6 seconds vs 9 seconds or something like that, and faster shield regeneration comes into play once you're not getting bursted so quickly. Maybe some table tweaking should be done to make Medium a bit easier.
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First Run is the difficulty to play on for your first run!
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OK, I've got some thoughts on The Plunder.
I genuinely can't figure out a way to beat this one on "higher" difficulties. I played it on I think Second Run the first time through and, while I died a few times, I did finish it. I think it's a great mission on paper, and has a lot of potential to be truly challenging and fun every single time while offering a variety of ways to succeed, but right now it's just frustrating. I'm playing WiH on Medium. I had some trouble with a few of the earlier missions, but nothing like this. The difficulty spike is extreme.
I can finish the retail FS2 campaign on Hard without much trouble except for the SOC mission where you defend the Iceni -- I found that one to be impossible to beat above Medium because the Iceni's hull goes from 100 to 0 at unimaginable speeds, and you don't have the firepower or armor to deal with the Sobek yourself directly, etc.
Firstly, general WiH game balance problems that I've noticed:
- UEF Interceptors feel like they're made of tissue paper and shielded with hopes and dreams. While this is somewhat expected for an interceptor, I've always felt a lot tougher in a Perseus every single time I've flown one compared to the Kentauroi
- Paveways are extremely difficult to use and ineffective when you do. In an interceptor, you can only carry six of them, and it takes at least two to kill a single beam cannon on a single ship (!), AND they can be shot down, making their one and only advantage -- range -- absolutely useless. Even Stiletto IIs were better since they at least didn't need a lock, had longer range, lesser refire delay, and tended to hit hard if you got them to land. The description on the weapon selection screen says Paveways have some kind of stealth, though I have never seen enemy ships struggle to shoot them down unless there's a ton of them in the air at the same time coming from multiple angles (i.e. a bunch of your wingmen open fire as a group), or you close to extremely short range
- Scalpels feel horrible at killing subsystems compared to even the retail Akheton SDG despite the high ROF
- All other early- and mid-game weapons are geared toward killing fighters. The best anti-hull weapons are mounted on Uriels which you can't enjoy until much later in the story. There is no analogue to the Prometheus S for the UEF. If the Maul is supposed to be that, it fails horribly due to its short range, and it doesn't even feel as powerful as the Prometheus
- Why does BP not show weapon ranges? This makes loadout / tactical decisions a lot harder to make and seems weird and artificial to me
My experience with the mission itself:
- If you go straight for the Siren's beams, it takes enough time to kill even one that other cruisers and fighters will be ready to shred you before you can pull out and return to the frigates. And that's if your Paveways actually manage to hit their targets
- If you go for the fighters, you'll inevitably wind up inside the AA envelope of the cruisers and get shredded
- If you go for the cruisers' subsystems or turrets, you don't have the firepower to do any significant damage to the overall threat, enemy fighters will come after you, point defenses will hammer you, and you will be shredded
- If you go for the Auroras, you'll either be drawn into the fighter / AA cluster**** and be shredded, or you'll spend too much time hunting them down to help with other critical objectives before one of your friendly ships goes kablooey
- If you try any of the above EXCEPT going straight for the Siren's beams, your wingmen will take out at most 2 of them, and one of your frigates will be pummeled. Ignoring the beams means your friendly ships will not survive long enough to take out the cruisers or the corvette, and you will fail
- I've also noticed that the Kentauroi can't carry Slammers in Bank 2, yet the AI wingmen carry them there just fine -- intended or bug?
I see these being the biggest problems with The Plunder overall:
- There are multiple Perseus and Erinyes fighters with incredibly effective anti-fighter weaponry, which while believable story-wise, makes this mission extremely hard even if you spend all your time dogfighting and try to avoid capital ships
- Your friendly ships' best long-range weapons -- the torpedoes -- are jammed by a wing of fighters that are nimble and far away from the start point of the battle, making it nearly impossible to take them out early enough for the torpedoes to start helping you -- AND on top of that, you also have to take out comm subsystems on cruisers, which is already extremely difficult
- Frigate health is far less than you'd expect for a ship of that size, meaning at least one will be below 50% hull before you even notice, even if you manage to somehow take out all three of the Siren's beams and survive long enough to avoid the cluster**** in the center of the battlefield
- Your ship is massively undergunned and underarmored for the tasks at hand. It has awful survivability, even for an interceptor, given how prevalent rapid-fire turrets and beams and enemy fighters with rapid-fire main guns are
- Your own weapon selection is limited to anti-fighter duties when you have multiple capital ships to contend with as well. There are no effective long-range weapons available for this mission despite how critical it is you remain well away from cruisers
It seems to me this is the kind of mission where a Herc II would be ideal: you've got solid armor, good shields, huge secondary weapon banks, and good weapon mounts for a Subach / Kayser paired with a Prometheus S / Maxim / even Akheton. You can then fill the secondaries with Tornadoes / Hornets and Trebuchets / Stilettos / EMPs. You'd be able to disarm capital ships from a safe range or, at the least, survive when you close in to clear out some of the anti-fighter turrets. You'd also have the survivability and firepower to contend with the fighter screen, and the maneuverability to dogfight where a strike bomber would struggle. There are no bombers to intercept, so you don't need interceptor speed and agility. You need pummeling power and a thick skin.
The UEF has no such heavy assault fighter, which makes missions like this one really hard. I get why -- ship models as high quality as what we've got in BP are not easy to make -- but there really needs to be some more ship selection. Even considering the UEF is the underdog faction here and have lost tons of ground to the GTVA, they should still have had some more variety to their navy way before the Tevs showed up. But all we have are space superiority fighters, interceptors, and gunships. Hell, I'd even take a retail Morning Star if I could. The kinetic effect of that gun is seriously underrated around here.
Some possible solution ideas:
- Increase Paveway effectiveness. This could be done in a variety of ways: give it significant splash damage, make it unshootable, increase range, decrease refire delay, increase projectile speed, increase damage, increase missile capacity, allow more weapon banks to carry them, make its movement more serpentine like a swarmer missile to dodge pulse lasers, or a combination of any of these
- Introduce a UEF heavy assault fighter before or at this mission. We need one!
- Increase the survivability of the Kentauroi: more armor and/or better shields
- Decrease the enemy presence or weaken them: fewer fighters or fighters armed with less effective weapons, or swap Erinyes with Myrmidons, etc.
- Make unjamming friendly ships' torpedo launchers easier to accomplish (i.e. just kill the Auroras, no comm subsystems) or remove the jamming altogether
- Introduce a Prometheus S analogue for the UEF: long range, solid hull damage, high energy drain... but good for hitting cruisers and beam cannons just outside the AA danger zone
- Increase effectiveness of the Scalpel: much longer range than the SDG, or comparable damage + power usage
Thoughts? Am I doin' it wrong? How do you guys manage this on Insane? The only thing I haven't tried yet is flying an Uhlan instead, but I don't get the impression that's going to help much, if at all, for this one.
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The Rapier is the UEF's Prom S "equivalent".
The Paveway can't be shot down until it goes into its terminal attack phase — it's untargetable until it gets close.
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...wait, really? I thought it became targetable a set distance from being fired, which is hugely different.
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I believe it's contingent on distance.
The Plunder is pretty hard and I will be playing through it a few times to see how it feels. I am slightly concerned there's been a crash in player TTK over the past few updates.
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I am slightly concerned there's been a crash in player TTK over the past few updates.
Woah, are you guys actually able to gather stats on that, or is this just a rough impression from player feedback? I'm assuming TTK = Time To Kill, or how long until the player dies, right?
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Correct. There are no stats or telemetry, I'm just going off mission feel.
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UEF Interceptors feel like they're made of tissue paper and shielded with hopes and dreams. While this is somewhat expected for an interceptor, I've always felt a lot tougher in a Perseus every single time I've flown one compared to the Kentauroi
This is in large part because the Kent's target profile is absolutely massive next to the Perseus, which is about the size of a Dragon.
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This is in large part because the Kent's target profile is absolutely massive next to the Perseus, which is about the size of a Dragon.
Well that explains it then -- definitely highlights how important ship dimensions are in this game! I guess the only real answer would be to boost its armor or shield strength to compensate, but you don't want to give it too much armor since its design doesn't make it look like a heavily-armored beef machine. Unless you handwave it away with carbon nanotube filaments in the armor, or something. Tougher shields would be welcome, though.
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It's fast as **** though.
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Speed and reverse thrust are nice features, but I haven't had much luck exploiting them when the enemy sports weapons which have a high ROF (Balor) and thus can lay down enough fire to be difficult to dodge, or the cruisers' AAA beams just blast you right in the face no matter how fast you're going. :(
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I mean, I could just suck. I haven't ever played FS2 retail on Insane, and don't know if I could hack it. And retail campaigns are almost universally easier than good mods that come out later, because the mods are built by vets who want a challenge that the retail game just can't deliver anymore. So playing on a lower difficulty than usual is perfectly acceptable to me.
I just am surprised by how huge of a difference it's been from the previous mission to this one. I didn't even have that much difficulty fighting the Nyx wing (and found it really enjoyable) in the mission where you try out the Kent for the first time, even with the weapon lockup stuff.
That and there aren't as many ships / weapons for me to try out lots of combinations and approaches, so I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what I should be doing differently.
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Well, the difficulty of this mission has leaped compared to previous releases. It used to be one of the easier ones in fact. The Paveway isn't invulnerable anymore, then there's the whole jamming business... And I feel like the new Hyperions are more dangerous (better profile/turret placement maybe ?).
I think the reason the scalpel feels weaker against subsystems is that it is no longer a specialist weapon, it got retooled to be usable in dogfights as well. Also, I think turrets in WiH are generally tougher compared to retail (could be wrong, though).
As others have mentionned, the Kent isn't so much fragile as it is massive. Its greatest asset is its massive speed and afterburner reserve, which makes it great for interception or hit and run attacks. Hit and run is in fact probably the best way to use the paveway in this mission : don't shoot anyone until you get a lock, then afterburn to fire the thing point blank - as if you were firing a bomb, then run like hell. The Kent's a great ship, but it's not meant for up close dogfighting, it's more of a stand off fighter.
Reverse AB is absolutely awesome in dogfights with big fighters like the Kent or Uriel, it really adds a lot of mobility, but it takes a while to get the hang of it.
Speaking of the Uriel, for all intents and purposes, gunships are the Federation's heavy fighters. As for why you can't fly one here ? Errm, not really sure there, maybe Laporte isn't allowed to fly one, and giving one to the player would make the mission too easy or something (are there any gunships on the other wings ?).
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I completed The Plunder on insane after about 10 tries, and I thought it was one of the easier WiH missions for some reason.
I haven't played it since the update so I may have forgotten some things, but here was my approach: Ignore the Siren completely because the Uriels are able to reliably take out two beams. Devote your full attention to disarming the Hyperions with Paveway spam. Do not try to conserve ammo, just make sure the target is dead. Forward beams first, then all the point defenses along one side. Keep your wingmen on a tight leash so they can contribute to Paveway volleys from the right angle and so they don't wander into the killing fields. If an enemy fighter even glances in your direction cry for help and run back to the frigates, jinking like mad and not even attempting to fight back. You'll probably have to restock Paveways several times. After the Hyperion fire pocket is thinned out, everything else becomes easier and you can begin hunting fighters. Hopefully that helps!
The Kent can be very frustrating to use in this type of fight. You have to abuse your top speed to survive. I probably spent half of the mission running away from something.
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Good advice, thanks guys!
And yeah, Gamma wing has Uriels, though you can't swap with them (sadly :p). I can buy the argument that the Uriel is the UEF heavy assault fighter, but to me the Uriel feels much more like an upgunned Ares given it has the Gattler and Archer, firepower I'd never expect to see in a Herc.
I'll try ignoring the Siren and going for the Hyperions. Oddly, though, I can only give orders to Gamma wing in this mission, but I can probably just order one of each to take out a specific beam cannon and then focus on the dirty cruiser work.
[Edit] OK wow, one Gamma per beam cannon is a tremendous improvement so far. Siren gets defanged within a couple of minutes while I focus on the cruisers' main beams. I've still gotten plastered the few times I've made an attempt, but doing better than before!
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the Ares is a heavy assault fighter too though
e: oh technically it's strategic assault but if the ares is strategic then the uriel is downright logistic
(fs2 has too many ****ing heavy assault fighters)
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In the last (currently broken but soon to be fixed!) patch I snuck in a stealth buff to all GTVA bombers and UEF gunships. GTVA bombers regen shields more rapidly. UEF gunships regen guns more rapidly. Total energies have not changed.
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God, I am still getting my ass kicked left and right in this mission. Taking out the Siren's beams goes well, but then everything else goes to **** as soon as I try to take out the cruisers' beams or weapons subsystems or engines or anything like that. It feels like they each have more turrets than an Orion what with all the pulse lasers going off everywhere. Then every single interceptor ever gets me in their sights as soon as I start making progress.
I actually did manage to get to the stage where the Agincourt was being boarded, and then I died to the goddamn fighters that launched :banghead:
If all else fails, though, I can always count on one of my friendly frigates to go down, even if I take out every single turret I can. Crazy,
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God, I am still getting my ass kicked left and right in this mission. Taking out the Siren's beams goes well, but then everything else goes to **** as soon as I try to take out the cruisers' beams or weapons subsystems or engines or anything like that. It feels like they each have more turrets than an Orion what with all the pulse lasers going off everywhere. Then every single interceptor ever gets me in their sights as soon as I start making progress.
I actually did manage to get to the stage where the Agincourt was being boarded, and then I died to the goddamn fighters that launched :banghead:
Oof! That's bad luck. The opening is the hard part so once you're through that you should be okay.
(I think I added a skip to bring you right to the action — I should do that for Post Meridian too, if I didn't already...)
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HOLY GOD DAMN, FINALLY
Managed to keep the Yangtze alive with 9 hull and the Indus with about 20, took out the escape pods and wingmates splashed the fighters. That was one of the tensest Freespace moments in a long time.
I ended up not trying to take out the main beams at first, and instead focused on destroying each cruiser's Weapons subsystem. This doesn't stop their main beams from firing (like it should IMO), but it slows down the turrets in FS2 retail so I figured it might help here. It seems like it did, which I think is what gave my frigates a chance to survive the endless onslaught of lasers. My wingmates / frigates took out the Siren's Weapons subsystem as well. Felt like this made it a lot easier to hunt down individual turrets that were busy hammering my ships.
Those Hyperion cruisers are tougher nuts to crack than a damn Aeolus! Seriously dangerous from their weaponry and most of all, their shape. They can focus so much firepower in so many different directions. Really good design, albeit not so much for the offender :)
I definitely think this mission needs some help, though, and many of my opinions are unchanged. Also, that I have to specifically order Gamma 1 to take out Cannon 1, Gamma 2 for Cannon 2, etc. on the Siren is kinda annoying -- would be better if those gunships started with those orders. If they do, then I think something goes wrong ingame, because if I don't issue the orders myself, those turrets take a lot longer to go down and can get a couple of shots off. How quickly the Siren's beams go down makes or breaks your entire attack.
Now I'm wondering how I managed to beat this the first time, WOW. It must have been on the lowest difficulty!
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IIRC it's Simms' wing that starts out with orders to hit the beams.
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A question.
How do you guys take out that Hyperion cruiser in the Dreamscape training before One Future? (Totally not mentioning the fact that it jumps in when you still have to splash half of the remaining fighters)
My method is to glide a circle around it while trying to snipe its beams and using repair all the time - gliding sideways really helps here to reduce beam damage a lot. And when the beams are dead, I just come close enough for my brute-force primaries to be in range. But it tends to take a lot of time, so maybe someone could share their ideas? Approaching this thing closer than 2 clicks is an immediate death sentence...
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IIRC it's Simms' wing that starts out with orders to hit the beams.
Their ability to carry out those orders is rather variable though. Sometimes, their first wave of paveway's gonna hit and take two of the beams out, other times they're not gonna do jack to the beams and the it's mostly up to you to take them out, which usually attracts hostile fighters.
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I've played The Plunder a bit and the big problem, as far as I'm concerned, is still that the antifighter weapons on the Siren and cruisers can kill you within about a second of focusing fire, which makes it very tricky to do anything interesting or useful.
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It's definitely substantially harder than when I played it before. Paveways are effectively useless against anything other than the Siren's main beams; they get shot down as soon as they clear your missile tubes (this was an issue before, though; it's just exacerbated by the generally increased difficulty). Consequently the only way to hit the comms systems is to fling Gamma at them or to go in for a suicide attack with Scalpels.
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Gamma also almost never manage to take out the comms systems at all, let alone in a timely fashion. This leaves the player with almost no agency in the critical warship battle. I had a fairly good run where the frigates managed to take a cruiser out very quickly, but that was complete luck that I had no control over. I then died trying to destroy a comms system.
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As though all this wasn't bad enough, I'm also now having to deal with disabling the Agincourt while the capship battle's going on; in previous revisions I remember only having to worry about that once the escorts were down.
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I had a lot of trouble in the following mission, too, where you have to destroy the strike corvette that shows up as Serkr team departs. That thing always manages to kill the Indus, or me, or all of my wingmen. I finally got lucky by calling in Durgas which just completely annihilated the ship (by accident!) instead of going for the main beams. That seemed to work better, which seems backwards to me, but I think ordering pilots to attack the turrets just means they will be constantly repositioning while under fire instead of firing warheads. A simple destroy order means "shoot it wherever" and lands more hits, clearly.
Once I cleared those two missions, though, everything else in WiH 1 and 2 was a walk in the park by comparison. Even the showdown at Saturn against the Carthage and all those fighters and escort ships is a piece of cake when you can just Slammer entire wings out of the sky and pluck off heavy beams with impunity using the railgun. Very satisfying, especially after the nail-biting Agincourt saga. I even managed to save both civilian platforms in the previous mission! \o/
The biggest problems I have with difficulty in WiH come with escorting friendly ships. Even in the Carthage battle, all four of my ships almost died before the Imperieuse showed up. Maxim strikes are absolute hell for Karunas, and if you aren't packing an interceptor with an insane top speed (like the GTVA one you get to fly), you're not going to take out the Hercs before they do massive damage.
I think the UEF frigates need an armor overhaul, or more advanced self-repair systems (i.e. some health regen every so often). It shouldn't be possible for one wing of Hercs to take a Karuna from 100 down to 50 hull in 30 seconds. If you are caught up dealing with fighters or the Hercs spawn far from your location, you have no way to prevent them from dealing serious damage, far more damage than any bomber wing could ever hope to inflict. If I sent four Hercs to attack a Deimos with Maxims, or, hell, even a Rahu miner, I'm fairly sure they'd not drop it to 50% hull integrity that fast, even with sustained fire.
Frigates are the UEF's main workhorse, and look much bigger than Deimos and even Chimera / Bellerophon corvettes, yet they feel far, far more fragile. A frigate should be able to take on two Hyperions and a de-fanged Chimera without serious risk of destruction, let alone two frigates, but I failed The Plunder multiple times because one of the two died before we could finish cleaning up the capships (which, as Phantom Hoover noted, will totally wreck you if you stay too close). Further, when I did succeed, it was only barely. Each frigate was in critical condition when the mission ended. Same with the following mission: almost all of my failures were from the Indus going down or getting killed by the enemy corvette when attempting to prevent that outcome, rarely ever because of fighter cover.
Seems like a simple solution that would make a lot of missions much friendlier for the player would be to increase friendly ship durability. Maybe make them more resistant to Maxim rounds and lighter weapons from enemy capships, or boost health, or something. They should be most vulnerable to beams and torpedoes / bombs. Otherwise, they just feel like giant cruisers and go down nearly as fast. /2c
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No, a straight buff to frigate health would make a lot of these missions self-playing (especially as they do have limited health regen in a few spots!)
A Rahu and a Deimos will definitely go down faster than a Karuna: the Karuna is comparably well-armored to a Deimos, and benefits from an armor class (which the Rahu doesn't have).
Something I've been thinking about is giving larger ships an armor class that flat subtracts a small amount of damage from each impact. This would make big hits like torpedoes and beams more vital.
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That sounds like it would be a good way to reduce the battery they take from Maxim-toting Hercs, too. Sounds like a smart alternative.
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I played around with The Plunder a lot tonight, and made a few minor changes all over —
The Kent got a slight hull buff and a major afterburner recharge buff
I improved the agility of the Paveway's terminal stage (I guess I could also enhance its speed...)
The UEF support ship is faster
The mission seems pretty beatable on Normal, though. It's very hard on Insane but so it should be.
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Tweaks have been released in latest patch.
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Very noticeable improvement -- was able to get through the mission in one piece the first time. It felt a lot easier, almost too easy now, but still pretty intense when the capships are going at it. I'm going to give it a couple more runs to see if this was just a fluke. Indus and Yangtze both finished with >30% hull this time, one around 40-50 I think.
One thing I've noticed is the support ship acts like a complete idiot sometimes, flying way off into nowhere, then holding still for 30 or so seconds, and then finally going to dock. I've also seen the support ship just give up on me many times and go for another fighter, though I still have the "abort rearm" option in my comms. This never was complemented with a "rearming sequence aborted" message or anything, and the "Support Ship: Busy" status box disappears. I was out of the fight for a few minutes waiting on its lazy ass to come patch me up :) I had to cancel and then re-request a rearm to get it to cooperate a few times. Not sure what's up with that.
Only other issue is the escape pods aren't targetable with the "target next nearest enemy" function, which I use extensively. I keep the "target thing in your reticle" bound to my mouse wheel, though, so that worked fine, but it makes it easy to think you've mopped up when you still have stuff to destroy.
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It's a pretty old issue with the Kent's rearming path. The ss will sometimes fly off a few kilometres above you before slowly descending to dock. It shouldn't be happening with an Uhlan, Uriel, or any of the GTVA ships.
quadpost of ultimate whinery
Git gud, son :P
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No, a straight buff to frigate health would make a lot of these missions self-playing (especially as they do have limited health regen in a few spots!)
A Rahu and a Deimos will definitely go down faster than a Karuna: the Karuna is comparably well-armored to a Deimos, and benefits from an armor class (which the Rahu doesn't have).
Something I've been thinking about is giving larger ships an armor class that flat subtracts a small amount of damage from each impact. This would make big hits like torpedoes and beams more vital.
Storyline wise if the UEF ships got buffed too much, people would wonder how the UEF is militarily losing right now to the GTVA, correct?
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The Alliance does have strong weapons, but the causes of the Federation's dire military straits are manifold.
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All right, I've griped about the stuff that gave me a hard time. Now I want to call out all the good experiences I had, focusing on gameplay since this is the balance thread (though wanted to note that the technical implementation, narrative, and art direction have been consistently fantastic throughout the entire series).
Everything is Permitted
Holy ****. This has got to be one of the tensest missions I've ever flown -- hell, one of the tensest experiences in a game ever. The tactical options available are fantastic, too. I didn't try all of them, but I found lots of success with a combination. The only issue I had was trying to use a Mjolnir to kill the transport -- I had one fire, but it didn't destroy (or even hit) the transport, and I think another Mjolnir actually took out my hacked one shortly after I powered it up. Then I got splashed because I was confused by the lack of transport destruction and scrambled to take it out myself, but obviously failed :p
Everything from the very beginning of the mission right to the supercharged action sequence (which only lasts about 10 seconds if you do it right) is a nail-biter beyond belief. I loved sneaking around at Artemis station and checking out things I could hack, and figuring out which transport is your target is an interesting mechanic too. All the decoy traffic chatter is believable, and I like how it's even subtly relevant. All the other ships in the area make the station feel more lifelike, too, like the drydocked Deimos and the transports and stuff.
I really like how the enemy patrols were implemented. They can see you, and if they do, the mission is over... but you get so much more warning and capability to evade than similar missions, like that goddamn scouting mission in Freespace 1 where you fly the Dragon. Ugh, I HATED that! This one takes the same style of gameplay and actually makes it a whole lot of fun instead of a frustrating scan fest where missing a single target = failure. BTW, I loved the reference to that FS1 mission later on in the Dreamscape. Got a huge laugh out of me.
Probably the best part, though, is when you know your target, you've deployed your beacon, and now are just trying to decide -- under extreme pressure -- when to open Pandora's box. Nerves, nerves, nerve, my god. As soon as you fire that EMP missile, it is ON. I end up deploying the transport just a bit before I fire, letting the escort go after the suicide, then close in and hammer the **** out of the transport before activating the sensor scrambler, burning like hell, and jumping. I never tried to power down or attack the AWACS, since I figured those would be suicidal unless you did things REALLY carefully!
Just a fantastic, well-made mission with extremely unconventional (and highly satisfying) gameplay. Solid work.
Her Finest Hour
Who hasn't raved about this one? One of the most epic engagements in Freespace by far, and there's a lot of epic battles to choose from. The mission is balls-hard if you are reckless, and yet, still offers enough wiggle room to allow for diverse tactics. Player agency is at its maximum here. Being able to control every aspect of the tactical battlescape is intimidating at first, but immensely satisfying when you start to see your decisions playing out successfully. And I loved the music choice for when you declare the attack. That + watching your artillery frigates pounding away on the damaged-but-still-formidable destroyer is one hell of an experience.
Being able to accept the Carthage's surrender was a welcome surprise, too. As a Freespace player who remembers the Carthage and Dashor mission, and who was moved by the description of Admiral Lopez' care for her crew, I never wanted to destroy it, even though I could see why the character I'm playing might. So it was nice to be able to take that route. I only wish there was more direct reference to the actual choice you made in the following narrative rather than generalized "I did what I had to do, now let's not think about it anymore" stuff, though I can imagine writing tons of branching dialogue is a giant pain in the ass and there was already a lot of good stuff for the Gef colony. Which brings me to...
One Future
When I first played BP and WiH, I was playing on Medium. It was hard, but definitely survivable. This was the first mission where I realized, OK, I need to tone things down, because I got my ASS kicked multiple times in a row. I chalk that up to unfamiliarity with the capship battle controls. I fled immediately to the reactor core, took out the colony, and bailed. The haunting debrief made me feel genuinely chilled, so I decided to refly and Do Better(TM). I also had the two Gef cruisers to deal with due to my mercy-weakness in the first Fedayeen mission :) Nice touch! I eventually managed to win the "good" way.
On my second run though WiH, I kept the difficulty at Medium, and this time, I was the one who kicked some serious ass, and it was amazing. Flying that cruiser has to be one of the coolest things I've seen done in this engine. The mission went a lot better the second time around since I'd gotten the hang of targeting, swapping missiles, gliding, and smarter tactical usage of the shield boost / self-repair system. I also didn't have the extra Gef cruisers to contend with since I'd popped off the Gef survivor in Mission 1, knowing what would happen later if I didn't. That definitely made duking it out with the MacDuff a lot less difficult, but still not a cakewalk!
Taking down the fighter wings was an interesting tactical shift, too, after the MacDuff went down. I liked being able to unload on slow bombers with CAPSHIP WEAPONS, which made me feel just immensely powerful in a hilarious kind of way. Though it was still tense clearing a path for the transport, since if you wait too long to deploy it, you're screwed. Fortunately, the enemy fighters and sentry guns seem content to focus on the big bad rather than the marine dropship sneaking in to their base.
Love, love, love this mission. Great music for it, too, as usual.
The Great Preservers and Keepers of Hell
FIGHTER-MOUNTED BEAMS AND STUPID-FAST FLAK GUNS. You had me at hello. And then we also get subspace missiles and those flechette things?! God damn, flying Vishnan fighters is satisfying as all hell. Pulping Nahemas in milliseconds is something I never expected to see in Freespace, but here we are!
This mission is no walk in the park, either. If you don't make good use of your wing...things, and take care to nullify warship beams, your Keeper is going down. Bat**** crazy powerful weapons can't be used all over the battlefield all at the same time, so you have to think and act carefully despite the overwhelming firepower and agility you're given. It's a great combination.
Universal Truth
This was one hell of an epic firestorm of a battle. Escort missions usually irk me, but the sheer amount of ordnance on display, the high-stakes narrative, the two superjuggernauts slugging it out ahead, and the massive waves of Shivan fighters and bombers made it into the best kind of escort. I didn't have a lot of trouble keeping ships alive, either. There's not a lot of complexity to this mission, but it's a blast to play through. Really makes you feel like you're fighting for something so, so much bigger than yourself.
Eyes in the Storm
Can't not mention this one for the sheer novelty of a tower defense mission in Freespace 2, of all things! It was well-executed for what could have been an unplayably buggy mess, too. It's tense at times, but compared to the other missions, felt a bit too easy, and it also seems like the turrets sometimes don't deploy reliably or open fire when you'd expect them to, and I never got the rearm to work. But otherwise, it's a hell of a great experience. The atmospheric setting looks awesome, and the inbound Supernova strike was really terrifying as well.
I only wish you had a few more waves to fight off and there was greater emphasis on the turrets you place. Being able to fly an Uriel was an immensely welcome change of pace, though. Definitely my favorite UEF ship (so far)! I also like how you can swap the Archer out for a UX Accelerator. I tried out some Warhammers last time, but it doesn't seem like they did as much damage as I thought they would. Darts seem more effective. Also, is it just me, or does anyone else think "User Experience Accelerator" when they see that weapon? :p
Pawns on a Board of Bone and Delenda Est
I really enjoyed these from a gameplay perspective mainly because they introduce the Uriel's utter badassery. Being able to snipe off capital ship turrets at long range is immensely satisfying, and then having the capability to absolutely wreck any fighters that dare close in with six (!) Rapiers is amazing, not to mention the two Gattlers which are also incredibly satisfying to fire. Having a turret seems almost like overkill on these beasts. And when you use Slammers to annihilate entire wings at long range... holy hell. Raw power.
Overall, the unconventional missions have been the most entertaining so far (i.e. pretty much all of the WiH 2 missions trump WiH 1 and AoA), though there are definitely some great brawlers in the mix with straightforward goals. I hope to see some more AoA-esque major engagements with Shivans in subsequent campaigns, especially using UEF assets. Uriels vs. Ravanas would be pretty interesting, if hilariously easy for the Uriels... unless the Shivans deploy like 10 wings, which certainly seems likely given the numbers seen in AoA. Good stuff. Can't wait to see what crazy Fredding you guys pull off for the final chapters.
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Just a very small stupid comment: the fudging in AoA's Temeraire blockade mission is too obvious, when each Rakshasa's beam turrets take all your payload to destroy, while the Ravana's main beam turrets only need two missiles and a few pew pew shots to take them down.
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Just a very small stupid comment: the fudging in AoA's Temeraire blockade mission is too obvious, when each Rakshasa's beam turrets take all your payload to destroy, while the Ravana's main beam turrets only need two missiles and a few pew pew shots to take them down.
Are they actually fudged, or is that just a side effect of how ridiculously tiny Rakshasa beam turrets are? I've always had trouble killing those, even in retail.
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Just a very small stupid comment: the fudging in AoA's Temeraire blockade mission is too obvious, when each Rakshasa's beam turrets take all your payload to destroy, while the Ravana's main beam turrets only need two missiles and a few pew pew shots to take them down.
I don't think anything is fudged there.
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I have no idea what is the problem then. The difference in how much harder to destroy the Rakshasa beam turrets compared to the Ravana ones is ridiculous, when in terms of ship lore, it should be the other way around...
I'm not complaining, it's just that I'm going through a new run and after trying to destroy those first cruiser's beams, I thought it would be near impossible to destroy the Ravana's for I had almost no missiles at that point. And then, lo and behold, I barely shot a few times plus two missiles and bam it was done. That was really odd.
Now, I'm just pissed at that Meridian mission, mostly because I'm dumb and a bad pilot. Also hilarious are the various recommendations. First I got one that told me "hey why not take that Meridian main beam first?", then another failed mission debriefing one came along with "absolutely stay the **** out of main capital ships and let gamma deal with the Meridian". Each time I read these dozen or so recommendations, they always say something different, and it pisses me off. YEAH I know, I'm doing everything wrong, just gimme a break ****ing hell.
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That is definitely a tough nut to crack. I never tried ordering Gamma to attack the main beams, but I think that may be the safest bet, since I always went in for them myself and usually took a hell of a pounding from some fighters. The wiki article on that mission suggests sending Gamma to take out the beams while you surge forward and destroy the Ares fighters, which will otherwise obliterate Gamma with Trebuchets. Sounds like a decent strategy to me, so maybe give that a shot?
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Just kill Aquarius at the start, Delta ought to get those beams 100% of the time!
You don't need to give them any orders (nor can you).
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That's the thing, I think they didn't, at least not before it was able to do some damage to the Indus and its twin. That's when I got that recommendation telling me it was perhaps, maybe, why not a good idea to take those beams out. Been doing that since then. It kinda goes downhill from there, where I do get to destroy all those maxim troublemakers and everyone else, but somehow I'm still missing something for, for some reason, either Indus or the other one always goes down. It's "git gud" time I guess. I just have to play it less haphazardly.
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If you keep Delta alive, run away until the Maxim strike shows up, and then spam "1" at them with your long range missiles, the rest of the mission should basically play itself.
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Hi all,
I played WiH on it's first release back when the Karuna was unoptimised and the Diomedes was as asymmetrical, it's interesting to see all the small changes over time. This isn't the first time I've re-played since then but it is the first re-run I've done since voice acting, playing on normal mode.
Overall I've found the missions play as they were although I've only just got through Aristeia. In act one the only real change I found was that the maxim strikes on Post Mederian seemed more potent, previously I found that after killing the Ares fighters the Meridian was de-fanged and I could just watch the fireworks. Now I have to chase down Hercs to stop them and the Juarez killing a frigate, that's not a bad thing just a bit of a surprise.
In act two so far I've found The Plunder a bit harder, perfectly doable but the frigates took more of a pounding than they used to.
Aristeia seems to have gotten much more difficult partly it seems because it takes the frigates and torpedo two, too long to drive Serkr from the battlespace. Two of those corvettes were still around when the Medea jumped in; I recall in previous versions the corvettes were critical and pulling out by the time the Medea arrives. Having Serkr around makes it much harder to save Torpedo Two as they are shooting at the cruisers while the Medea is beaming. The fact that paveways can be shot down also makes it much harder to de-beam the Medea. Strangely the Hydra was still around even after the Medea had been killed and it jumped out with most of it's health still left, which just seemed odd. I played the mission again in the tech room just to be sure it wasn't a one off and took a screen grab to illustrate. Maybe this is all working as intended but IMO the mission flowed better before.
Aside from Aristeia the difficulty of the other missions seem fine, although I haven't gotten to the end yet. I don't want to sound too gripey because the work you guys have done on Blue Planet over the years has been amazing.
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I'm having tons of trouble with AoA Fallen Angel. I've experimented a bit with different ship/weapon loadouts on insane and very easy. Either the Orestes dies, the Lucifer drops under 12%, or I die.
What am I supposed to do? On insane the Arbiters last about 30 seconds each from the Lucifer planet beam even with perfect bomb intercept, so they contribute little damage to the mission after nuking 2-3 reactors. Lucifer engines feel pointless to target, as there's two of them and each have very large health pools (Vishnan double salvo bombs deal 9% damage. Maybe vishnan bombs just suck?). Reactors are not as tanky, but it's hard to kill them with swarms of fighters all around. Usually if I spend too much time killing fighters (I'm assuming there are infinite waves of them) the Orestes either dies or drops the Lucifer under 12%. When the lucifer jumps, most of the time it has 1.5-2 reactors still up.
I'm trying to beat the mission on Very Easy, and it's still presenting a huge challenge. Any pointers?
I've also noticed that the Demon's AAA will usually fire 4-5 beams at the same instant like a shotgun. It's a bit weird, and it absolutely shreds the Orestes fighters: sometimes they fail to kill either of the Lucifer front beams.
Edit: Okay, so best I've got is to tell all wingmen to C38, let all Vishnan cap ships die as bait, and high tail it to the Lucifer. Do as much damage as I can with bombs and the mission's over. Doesn't work on insane because bomb lock is impossible with the EMP effects... Let's see if I can get wingmen to do bombing runs properly.
Edit2: So I guess Insane wasn't all that bad once I knew what I was doing. My strategy (not sure if this is what's intended): All wingmen and self in the fast/light fighter. Beeline Lucifer. Kill dragons and manticores when they engage. Ignore everything else. Friendly ships outnumber enemies, so they'll tank/evade damage while the rest help you kill reactors. Focus fire C34 down the reactors. Who knew the primaries did so much subsystem damage.
Some new impressions:
WiH is even better than I remembered. Post meridian was a glorious experience that raised the hairs on my neck. The plunder had me pulling all my hair out.
I think the new paveway design is bad. It basically introduces a dice roll into its damage. I insta restart when my first 6 paveways fail to kill the spinal beams, even though I do the exact same shots from the same spot and angle of attack. A better way to balance them may be to lower their carrying capacity from 6 to 4, forcing the player to ration subsystem sniping, but guaranteeing subsystem damage.
Additionally, the Hyperion cruisers are really tough to deal with now. They feel tankier than karunas and their turrets are placed close to ledges in the hull, severely limiting how well AI shoot them. Sniping with paveways usually fails, and getting in range makes you die from AAA spam you can't dodge. I had to beat it on very easy (feels like God mode, nothing aggros on you and nothing does damage) after 7 tries, and the Indus and Yangtze were still under 25 percent each.
Guess I will need to git gud too. I thought I might be fine given how I've played the rest of wih on insane up to this point with less than 2 tries per mission, but this one is especially hard. I actually wonder though if difficulty is tied to framerate. I got a new computer that runs wih at locked 120 fps, so maybe beams are doing more damage on my computer than on a weaker one.