[NickAragua]

Hi folks

First, I wanted to congratulate the team that developed Diaspora on a job extremely well done. I was able to get into the fight quickly, skip cutscenes I've already seen, and take out some toasters. The graphics look awesome, and I'm digging the near-newtonian flight physics.

One question: Is there a way to reload your ammo in flight? I'm on mission 2 (the one where you have to blow up the base star's missile launchers), there are 12 launchers to blow up and only 6 AGM warheads. Granted, it looks like the base star will get its clock cleaned just fine even if I just take out the six launchers, but still. Plus, I want that bonus objective.

[Scourge of Ages]

I feel ya man, I just finished that one with 3 launchers to go, and Red and Blue squadrons doing who-knows-what-but-not-taking-out-those-frakking-turrets.

But it's been asked before, and there are no mid-mission reloads.
Source: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=81859.msg1635637#msg1635637

[Ace]

It's tricky, but doable

[newman]

No in-flight reloads. In Diaspora you need to work with what you have, be careful when to squeeze that trigger, and adjust your tactics. One of the things to get over would be the leave the gamer's mindset of achieving every objective out there. In "real" war this almost never happens - but the greatest objective here is to compromise the basestar's firepower to some degree. Nobody expects you to destroy all turrets, but decreasing their number helps the Theseus take less damage. In fact, there are other targets on the basestar you could be using your ordinance on and still complete the mission just fine...

[Dragon]

Well, from what I've seen, you could complete the mission just going after Raiders and intercepting whatever nukes pop up. As mentioned in a different thread, Basestars aren't much of a threat neither in Diaspora nor in the show.
I'd say that in-mission reloads would be a good idea for R2. You could touch down in the flightpod, get rearmed, perhaps slightly patched up and take off again. This would allow much longer and more intense missions which would normally cause you to run out of ammo. Also, remember that a combat landing and rearming takes you out of battle for a while, so this wouldn't be a game breaker.

[Angelus]

I'd say that in-mission reloads would be a good idea for R2. You could touch down in the flightpod, get rearmed, perhaps slightly patched up and take off again. This would allow much longer and more intense missions which would normally cause you to run out of ammo. Also, remember that a combat landing and rearming takes you out of battle for a while, so this wouldn't be a game breaker.

...

No in-flight reloads. In Diaspora you need to work with what you have, be careful when to squeeze that trigger, and adjust your tactics.

^this.

None of the missions in Shattered Armistice is that long to require in-flight reloads.
Having such a system in each and every mission would allow player to spray and pray a la FS2 and diminish the BSG feel we were aimin' for.

[karajorma]

Indeed. Based on canon sources (David Bassom's Battlestar Galactica: The Official Companion) we're apparently being very generous in fact. The MK II is supposed to have a 800 round magazine. Even if that is per cannon, that's still only 1600 rounds. The MK VII you have carries 3000, nearly double that.

[newman]

Under special circumstances in future releases we may allow for an in-mission reload, but it will never be whenever the player feels like it. Getting used to working with what you have is part of the experience. I realize that for anyone used to regular FS2 gameplay this is a bit of a shock, and asking for a reload is the first instinct, but it's the wrong one. You have enough ammo to complete every mission thrown at you.

[crizza]

Apart from the mission where you have to disarm the basestar, I find missiles useless and the Ammo you get to work with is more then enough to accomplish your task.

[Reprobator]

Yes, the missile seems useless to me too, but that's the same for every mod/tc using the freespace engine.

[Dragon]

None of the missions in Shattered Armistice is that long to require in-flight reloads.
Having such a system in each and every mission would allow player to spray and pray a la FS2 and diminish the BSG feel we were aimin' for.

You're right, but I said "R2", not "The next patch". The next campaign could feature missions long enough to make rearming necessary.

Under special circumstances in future releases we may allow for an in-mission reload, but it will never be whenever the player feels like it. Getting used to working with what you have is part of the experience. I realize that for anyone used to regular FS2 gameplay this is a bit of a shock, and asking for a reload is the first instinct, but it's the wrong one. You have enough ammo to complete every mission thrown at you.

I'd rather restrict the number of reloads available per mission, or even better, a global restriction through the entire campaign. If you spray, launch missile massacres and reload every minute, you'd find yourself flying with a single gun (and no reloads) by 5th mission. There are variables which could be used for tracking missile supply and gun ammo on a campaign-wide scale, so if you have 50 missiles and fire 4, you have 46 missiles on the next mission. If you burn through 40 missiles though, you'd end up flying the rest of the campaign with 10 of them. The system used for guns would have to be a bit more complicated (due to how engine handles ammo), but also doable to some degree.

Yes, the missile seems useless to me too, but that's the same for every mod/tc using the freespace engine.

Not really, some TCs (DE, for example) make missiles really effective. Diaspora ones are indeed rather pathetic though.

[karajorma]

So in other words we replace a problem where people pray and spray and run out of ammo making them unable to finish the mission with a problem where people pray and spray and run out of ammo making them unable to finish the campaign?


To be honest, reloads are not going to appear on a per-mission basis with anything close to the regularity required to do something like that. Nor should they.

[Dirt McStain]

To be honest, all of that sounds awful. The only way I see how this could be believably be done is to have a munitions Raptor that'll reload your KEWs for a particularly long mission. Still, I'd rather play two shorter missions where you land to reload in the hangar. Mid-mission hangar reloads would be very unrealistic because if you would actually need to be towed to an elevator and lowered into the hangar deck, towed around, rearmed, then towed to a launch tube. That would take, what, a minimum of 10 minutes?

[Ace]

...and a Raptor really doesn't have the equipment to do reloads.

There is a plan for a Raptor like utility craft that could do the task for long missions but it wouldn't be done like FreeSpace where support is on demand. More like rearming in long Wing Commander missions.

[David cgc]

Would this be a relation of the sometimes-mentioned, never-seen "tanker bird" from the show?

[StarSlayer]

Just as a little perspective:

The Vought F4U Corsair, which is roughly the same size as a Viper carried roughly 200-450 rounds per gun depending on fuel and ordinance load out.  They basically had only 32 seconds worth of firing time.  Vipers are carrying 1000 rounds per gun with about 142 seconds worth of firing time.  The hardpoints on a VIIE are in line with modern jets that are typically three times the size of a Viper.

In short you're carrying an extremely generous amount of ammunition and external stores in Diaspora. 


Still you can always tell "Pappy" Boyington you need in flight reloads...


he looks sympathetic...


maybe

[NickAragua]

Thanks for the replies, folks. Mostly, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing some obvious "duh, this is how you rearm" feature. I'm perfectly fine with not having in-flight reloads, just means that I'll need to aim a little more carefully and be satisfied with taking down six turrets. Frankly, if two craft are more or less evenly matched, a 50% firepower reduction for one craft should be just fine - I don't really need 100% completion, I just want to win.

I'd say that in-mission reloads would be a good idea for R2. You could touch down in the flightpod, get rearmed, perhaps slightly patched up and take off again. This would allow much longer and more intense missions which would normally cause you to run out of ammo. Also, remember that a combat landing and rearming takes you out of battle for a while, so this wouldn't be a game breaker.

I'd be a fan of something like that. If you take a two-three minute time out in the middle of a mission, you're running a pretty good risk of some raiders showing up and blasting your battlestar out of existence while you're sitting in the hangar twiddling your thumbs. It seems like a pretty good tradeoff to give to a player - do I get greedy with missile-requiring objectives or do I stick it out and shoot down raiders?

[Dirt McStain]

Would this be a relation of the sometimes-mentioned, never-seen "tanker bird" from the show?

I think this was just a Raptor used for refueling. I would imagine that it would look no different than a regular Raptor, other than some sort of fueling nozzle or robotic arm with a fuel line. Fuel could just be stored inside the cockpit. External fuel tanks would just make the Raptor a very tempting (and explosive) target. Seeing as fuel is virtually unlimited in-game, there would be no need to include these other than some sort of "protect the Raptors" objective.

There's also the Mark I and II shuttles seldom used by the military onscreen but, in theory they could potentially fill a combat role of some sort.

[Colonol Dekker]

Us old school Elite/Frontier Elite 2 / Wing commander players were raised on no reloads

[Ace]

Wing Commander had infinite ammo with its energy weapons, though...