Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Fate of the Galaxy => Topic started by: assasing123 on July 03, 2014, 10:19:24 am
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the point... thing is, if every mission is just about taking down fighters and escorts because your fighter weapons cannot harm capital ships at all, then no matter the quality of the models and mission design, it will become sorta stale, maybe not being able to do it solo, but it would be nice if say for example... 4 x-wings were able to destroy a star destroyer shield generators with their blue proton torpedos or orange heavy rockets, and then proceed to shred it to smithereens with their laser cannons.
Standard strategy, this assuming of course they were able to disable the ship engines and comms to prevent it from using its hyperdrive, and to get rid of the escort Ties (which shouldn't be too hard given tie fighters literally die from 3 laser shoots).
Its true the rebels didn't have the economic power of the empire, but it was well known rebel fighters were well above the specs of almost any imperial fighter, excluding the tie Advance/defender and prototype series, and that they didn't usually commit capital ships, except the usual spam of nebulon Bs (as some empire general said, it would be nice if we could shoot ships we didn't pay for), and the rebels did use to take down empire capital ships using just strike wings (without necessarily using bombers).
I mention this because having to rely always on your own capital ships to deal with other capital ships gets boring, not to mention it isn't very rebel like tactically wise, they always encouraged surgical strikes.
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I wouldn't jump to any assumptions. Just because we've said fighters won't be singlehandedly taking down a capital ship doesn't mean they won't have any involvement with them. Also, there are smaller, more approachable capital ships than Star Destroyers. But as you mention surgical strikes, I highly doubt many surgical strikes intended on confronting a Star Destroyer, unless the rebels had some capital firepower of their own. The point of a surgical strike is to go in with enough equipment and preparation that you have very high chances of success with limited casualties.
I'd expect to find many missions where you get to blow up a wide variety of capital ships, not promising anything in the first official campaign, but either in subsequent campaigns or fan-made missions I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunity for mission design revolving around what you mention. But I really wouldn't expect to see a single wing of X-wings taking down a Star Destroyer unless it is already severely crippled. Capturing one, on the other hand...totally possible.
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Gotta love capture missions!!! ... except the part where you have to protect the DX-9 transports... those things are sooooo slow!
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Even if a wing of fighters can't destroy the bigger capships alone, they can still contribute by taking out turrets, subsystems, and dealing part of the total damage.
I can't say I recall how all our current engagements tend to go in this regard, but I believe that when engaging enemy capships, friendly capships tend to deal most of the bulk damage to shields and hull, but the player still plays an important role in taking out specific targets and hastening the enemy ships' demise. Even if your fighter wing only does 20% of the damage needed to destroy an enemy ship, it still means it'll be destroyed 20% sooner, potentially saving objective-critical friendlies.
Besides, there's plenty of smaller capships (pretty much anything smaller than an ISD) that can be engaged by fighters alone, although anything beefier than a Corellian Corvette would require more than 4 X-wings.
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And I'd like to point out that you were barely able to destroy an ISD alone in the X-Wing games.
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In XWA SD's were super easy to take down, though obviously time consuming, not so much in the original.
From the sounds of it, I'm liking how the project is going to handle these engagements.
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Balance? FotG's focus is about authenticity. It still is, right? :nervous:
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Primary focus is on authenticity, but not at the complete expense of playability. We're striving to make something that feels as much like the movie battles as possible while still being fun to play. From what I've experienced so far, we're absolutely succeeding at that goal.
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Yeah, this is still a game so like any game of course it needs to be balanced. Balance just doesn't mean that 10 rebel ships vs 10 imperial ships needs to be an even matchup, or that the player needs to be able to blow up any ship they come across, or that any fighter needs to realistically be able to take on any other fighter, or any other criteria lifted from another game with different requirements. It just means that when gameplay presents you with choices, none of them should make the mission too easy or too hard.
And yes, while we of course strive for authenticity, in some cases authenticity would just make the gameplay crappy (like dying from one hit if you're flying a TIE), so naturally we have to compromise and authenticity cannot trump everything. I think that between playability and authenticity, we're going to be striking a pretty good... balance.
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Primary focus is on authenticity, but not at the complete expense of playability. We're striving to make something that feels as much like the movie battles as possible while still being fun to play. From what I've experienced so far, we're absolutely succeeding at that goal.
Well, naturally. lol I just didn't want to see it turned into "Ace Combat in space". :p I wasn't sure how far the OP was implying 'balance' be taken, either. :yes:
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TIEs die with one hit? I thought that was only if you got caught by 3 or more X-Wing class laser bolts? Or am I wrong?
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TIEs die with one hit? I thought that was only if you got caught by 3 or more X-Wing class laser bolts? Or am I wrong?
Yeah, one solid hit is usually enough to destroy a TIE Fighter. They're exceptionally fast and nimble craft, but the lack of deflector shields and armor make them extremely vulnerable to laser fire. Which is why the typically attack en masse.
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TIEs die with one hit? I thought that was only if you got caught by 3 or more X-Wing class laser bolts? Or am I wrong?
They die from single hits all the time in the movies.
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TIEs die with one hit? I thought that was only if you got caught by 3 or more X-Wing class laser bolts? Or am I wrong?
They die from single hits all the time in the movies.
To be fair, I think in the movies all fighters except those piloted by main characters die in one hit.
Even if a wing of fighters can't destroy the bigger capships alone, they can still contribute by taking out turrets, subsystems, and dealing part of the total damage.
I can't say I recall how all our current engagements tend to go in this regard, but I believe that when engaging enemy capships, friendly capships tend to deal most of the bulk damage to shields and hull, but the player still plays an important role in taking out specific targets and hastening the enemy ships' demise. Even if your fighter wing only does 20% of the damage needed to destroy an enemy ship, it still means it'll be destroyed 20% sooner, potentially saving objective-critical friendlies.
Besides, there's plenty of smaller capships (pretty much anything smaller than an ISD) that can be engaged by fighters alone, although anything beefier than a Corellian Corvette would require more than 4 X-wings.
As long as it doesn't turn out like some mods, where I often felt like spectator to capital ship battles, while occasionally having to take out turrets..
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Umm, I think the scenes in the movies where they die in one hit they usually spin out of control before exploding, so that *may* have been the result of exceptional aiming skills (targeting a critical system) rather than general annihilation by brute laser force. If,, that is, anywhere near that amount of thought was put into the scenes in the first place. :rolleyes:
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actually in the original gamex, tie fighters did die to 1 heavy laser shoot or 2 normal shoots... they were pretty much made of paper...
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Umm, I think the scenes in the movies where they die in one hit they usually spin out of control before exploding, so that *may* have been the result of exceptional aiming skills (targeting a critical system) rather than general annihilation by brute laser force. If,, that is, anywhere near that amount of thought was put into the scenes in the first place. :rolleyes:
Exceptional skills or just blind luck. A TIE fighter doesn't have much surface area from the back, so I'd imagine that if you hit at all, a critical hit is more likely than on other, larger fighters. TIEs aren't made for surviving hits, but rather for avoiding them (which they're very good at).
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Sounds like an A6M Zero.
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I don't really care enough about Star Wars anymore buuuuut
IIRC Lucas basically mentioned that TIEs were inspired somewhat by the Zero
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Sounds like an A6M Zero.
Except for the mass-produced detail :)
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Seeing as the movie had a lot of WWII inspiration in it's fighter scenes, it's pretty likely. The Empire is something vaguely between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, while the Rebels are "The Allies" in general (they're even called "The Alliance" at times), with the emphasis on Americans (and a touch of RAF). The Trench Run idea was originally from the Dambusters, and the Death Star is somewhat reminiscent of Yamato. Similarly, fighter doctrines resemble US/Japan dynamic in Pacific theater. Star Wars owes a lot to WWII.
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The Trench Run idea was originally from the Dambusters
633 Squadron (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/633_Squadron) actually :)
(sorry, I'm obviously in a nitpicky mood today :p)
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Wikipedia (and TVTropes) also list The Dam Busters as an inspiration. Though it seems Lucas officially acknowledged the 633 Squadron influence, at least. Those scenes had a lot in common, TBH, so he could'be been thinking of both. The Dam Busters came earlier, so it's also possible 633 Squadron was inspired by them, too.
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IIRC Lucas basically mentioned that TIEs were inspired somewhat by the Zero
[Blue Harvest Quote]
Luke: 'Hey Han, why do they call them "Tie" fighters?'
Han: 'No idea'
[/Blue Harvest Quote]
Link To YouTube Clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EH5oRJKTWuc)
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Wikipedia (and TVTropes) also list The Dam Busters as an inspiration. Though it seems Lucas officially acknowledged the 633 Squadron influence, at least. Those scenes had a lot in common, TBH, so he could'be been thinking of both. The Dam Busters came earlier, so it's also possible 633 Squadron was inspired by them, too.
"The Dam Busters" also has a line regarding the guns, which is similar to that one during the Battle of Yavin. ("[...], some on the fields, some on the towers")
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Will there be something playable this year?
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Will there be something playable this year?
Well, I can tell you that the game is already VERY playable right now. However, there's still some work to be done to finish up the campaign and missions (as well as final balancing) before we're ready to release to the general public. I REALLY hope we're able to do so this year, but as always with this kind of thing, it's done when it's done.
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Yeah. The campaign is great, but there are bugs (at least one of them game-crashing) and there's still work to be done. Also, the ISD is still untextured (though amazingly, AO-only temp texture could've fooled you if it wasn't for the standard the rest of our models set :) ). R1 isn't far from complete, but it's not quite ready for beta yet. I can't really say how long will it take to finish it up.
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Wait, why is it you saying this when FotG is one of the few badges you don't have.
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Dragon said he left the badge in his other pocket and someone (not saying it was chief, but it was chief) gave him SVN access. Sometimes you just gotta tip your cap.
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You could say that. :) I'm some sort of early tester, I guess. I think I was originally doing some glowpoints for FoTG, but the model ended up being replaced later on. Anyway, I just kind of stuck around, occasionally playtesting missions. I'm not deeply involved in their development, so this position does have it's advantages.
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I am looking forward to something playable :)