[Mobius]

Quite strangely, there are no fan wishlists here. I guess this thread would be a nice way to throw in ideas the Diaspora team might even consider.

Please keep this thread clean and don't post impossible/exaggerate/weird requests.

How to write wishes:

[size=10pt][b]- <insert your request here>[/b][/size]

<describe your request>



- The Cylons' experience improves

Every time a Cylon spacecraft is destroyed(and a Resurrection Ship is supposed to be close enough) a dedicated Campaign Variable will be increased by 1. Whenever a new wing of Cylons arrives, the FS Engine will pick up a random number. If the value of the variable is equal to or greater than the random number, the AI level of the Cylon(s) will be increased.

Please note that the number of kills and the probability of facing pseudo-Scars increase in conjunction.

Ex.

Max number of "recordable"(Resurrection Ship or anything similar in range) kills during the campaign:  40
Random number range: 130-150


- Take distance from the show (kinda)

IMO, it would be nice to focus everything on the military experience rather than "losing time" with certain aspects of the show, like the religious ones.

It'd be great to have some divine influence during the game, but it should be limited. 


- Alternate endings

Self explanatory. It'd be nice to have 2 or even more alternate endings so that players will be strongly encouraged to play through the campaigns again and again. 


- Different dogfights

I read somewhere that dogfights in Diaspora are going to be very similar to the ones seen in BtRL, but is it possible to make changes to the code to improve them?

In BtRL, dogfights were more a matter of circles and all-around maneuvers while in the show there are more pursuits(mixed with circles). Also, the distance between fighters is IMO a bit exaggerate in BtRL - this doesn't happen in the show, where most enemies are adeguately close. I know it's mostly a matter of ship velocity, so I'm also hoping that the differences between combat spacecraft(in terms of speed) will be limited as well. 

[FraktuRe]

Release.

Also, this thread is going places. (not good places, I'd say)

[Mobius]

What do you mean...?

[Narvi]

I assume he means that people are going to come in and make unreasonable demands on the development team.

I'd say what I want is a release before I start whining for extras. It's always a bad idea for devs to listen too closely to threads like these; that way lies feature creep and fanwank. I'm sure the developers have their own ideas on what they want to release.

[karajorma]

We had a suggestions thread before the relase of the BtRL demo and the result of that was a lot of talk, several calls to do stuff we were already doing, an occasional good idea, a near psychotic break from me when I once again had to explain that since a Newtonian flight model wasn't used in the show it wouldn't appear in our game and one or two coded features.

So about the average for a HLP suggestions thread.

Carry on.

[Mobius]

Out of the four proposals I posted above, only one might ask for coding - the others are relatively simple to do and might even be in the team's plans already.

I hope people will throw in well thought ideas, I dislike impossible/exaggerate requests as much as anyone does.


EDIT:


- Spash Screen Script

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Script_-_Splash_Screen

Very nice script to randomize Preload pictures. 

[Dilmah G]

I think you should rework your cylons script so if the number is below the randomly generated number the Cylons get smarter. Otherwise you'd have a lot of n00bs complaining the game got way too difficult in the space of about 30 seconds. If I understood your point correctly.

[Mobius]

I'm afraid you didn't understand what I posted above. According to my example, even at the end of the campaign the probability of facing experienced Cylons would be 30-40%.

Also, "experienced" may be only one step ahead in terms of AI - it isn't enough to make a mission too difficult.

[Narvi]

That "pseudo-Scar" thing sounds like something that might potentially unbalance a campaign.

[Mobius]

1) Since Cylon brains resurrect, there's no need. Maybe you prefer a killing spree, even if it's not a wishful tactical choice?

2) Improving by one or two levels the AI of a very limited number of Cylons doesn't really compromise balance.

[The E]

I agree with Mobius here. Something like that wouldn't unbalance missions too much, and it would give you some of those nasty surprises that BSG's famous for.

[General Battuta]

I want the base ships to fire huge numbers of missiles with plump, lovable contrails.

And if we could get the Pegasus-style ECM seen in 'Resurrection Ship Pt 2' that'd be awesome. Missiles curving off into nothingness! (It's really subtle, but you can see it during the battle scenes.)

[Axem]

Given the current state of the AI, do you really want them to die so much they'll rez into Scars by mission 4?

It seems raiders in general are less skilled than viper pilots, in nearly every case they have always gone with a large numerical superiority and yet the Colonials still seem to have relatively low losses. Scar would appear to be the exception in this, not the rule.

Also if you say it doesn't compromise balance, then who's to say you would even notice? Back in BtRL we had a lua script where you could theoretically shoot down bullets. It never got added because no one would notice the effects.

[General Battuta]

Given the current state of the AI, do you really want them to die so much they'll rez into Scars by mission 4?

It seems raiders in general are less skilled than viper pilots, in nearly every case they have always gone with a large numerical superiority and yet the Colonials still seem to have relatively low losses. Scar would appear to be the exception in this, not the rule.

Also if you say it doesn't compromise balance, then who's to say you would even notice? Back in BtRL we had a lua script where you could theoretically shoot down bullets. It never got added because no one would notice the effects.

The Raiders probably have trouble because they're packing FTL drives on those tiny little frames.

[Narvi]

Given the current state of the AI, do you really want them to die so much they'll rez into Scars by mission 4?

It seems raiders in general are less skilled than viper pilots, in nearly every case they have always gone with a large numerical superiority and yet the Colonials still seem to have relatively low losses. Scar would appear to be the exception in this, not the rule.

Also if you say it doesn't compromise balance, then who's to say you would even notice? Back in BtRL we had a lua script where you could theoretically shoot down bullets. It never got added because no one would notice the effects.

The Raiders probably have trouble because they're packing FTL drives on those tiny little frames.

More likely to do with the dog-level sentience.

[karajorma]

Lobotomised dog-level sentience thanks to Cavil.

[Mobius]

Given the current state of the AI, do you really want them to die so much they'll rez into Scars by mission 4?

It seems raiders in general are less skilled than viper pilots, in nearly every case they have always gone with a large numerical superiority and yet the Colonials still seem to have relatively low losses. Scar would appear to be the exception in this, not the rule.

That's more a ridiculous mistake by BSG's creators a mod based on the show should take care of. Also, increasing a Cylon Raider's AI from Captain to Major(or whatever alternate versions of AI levels) would not really turn those Raiders into Scars, since representing the Scar asks for a separate table entry, with separate stats...and separate textures this time. 

Back in the miniseries Cylon Raiders were potent foes. During the first engagement between Viper IIs launched from the Galactica and incoming Cylon Raiders(2 of them, if I remember well) Colonial pilots weren't able to take them down until Kara joined the fight.

In the last battle of the miniseries, Galactica pilots suffered severe casualties even if their skills were quite higher than those of the pilots who served the Galactica later(starting from Season 1, "Act of Contrition"), with minimal training.

One of the most shocking errors occured in "The Captain's Hand"(Season 2). The Pegasus fell under heavy attack and none of its Mk VII was downed during the engagement - the number of survivors we can all read in the following episode didn't show any casualties related to the previous battle. Either that or the Cylons managed to take down several Mk VIIs whose pilots survived the destruction of their Vipers and were amazingly recovered(in a pure hostile environment) before the Pegasus jumped out.

I still have to watch Season 4 but I'm pretty sure I'll be finding a lot of similar situations, possibly starting from the opening battle.


In other words, the Cylons might be better-than-average opponents...

Also if you say it doesn't compromise balance, then who's to say you would even notice?

There are many things the player isn't supposed to notice. Back in FS1, if the Vasudan Ace in "The Field of Battle" is destroyed, certain timings in "Small Deadly Space" change. Does the player notice it? No.

Also, no one said that you couldn't add messages like "Their maneuvers... are quite good for Cylons standards..." and such to emphasize the AI's improvements.

[Morwen]

I don't think the levelled AI system is worth the effort to implement, nor would it necessarily improve gameplay at the slightest. As someone else mentioned, if the AI experience gain is significant, it can easily unbalance the campaign. On the other hand, if the change is subtle, chances are that it will not make any difference to the gameplay. In addition, it should be safe to say that even in the series, the probability of meeting an experienced raider is close to none, given the sheer number of raiders and the limited engagement after the fall of the colonies.

The viper/raider speeds are quite fine in BTRL, anything less and the game will become slow and less exciting. One thing that would be awesome to have is the viper backflip maneuvers shown in the series. I know I can just activate glide and turn around but it doesn't feel as agile. Not sure if this is possible at all but still, it could add some variety to the circle chases.

[Axem]

The experience I have with playtesting can be quite different everytime I play. Sometimes I nail a raider within 5 seconds, sometimes its a 30 second duel. I can escape with 25% hull or 99%. That in itself would make it extremely difficult to tell if any AI changes are happening.

Staying behind in the asteroid belt is easy to do and see for yourself. Changing the AI is a ton more subtle and can be overwhelmed by anything else.

[Rainman]

- HARDCORE Mode

I'm pretty sure most people are familiar with Call of Duty 4's Hardcore mode, but for those who aren't, its a more realistic mode where bullets do realistic damage (a headshot will kill no matter the bullet size, 2 bullets take down a person, etc. Also, the HUD becomes completely emtpy, you can't tell ammo, location, or anything at that. Its just you and your gun with iron sights only. There is friendly fire as well.

I want something like that in Diaspora (Not necessarily first release), where in this mode usually 1 or 2 machine gun bullets will tear apart an enemy/friendly fighter like in the show. Also, there will be no crosshairs, and friendly fire. Missiles should take out a ship in one hit, but should also be limited to the number seen in the show. I noticed that not all fighters have missiles either, so that might be taken into consideration. Finally, if the "critical hit zones" are already implemented in Diaspora (cockpit hit does a lot of damage, engine hit reduces speed, etc) it should be exaggerated slightly.

This idea might need a little programming but I think its only Table Value editing, so I hope they can implement it. What do you guys think? Any improvements?