[Sandwich]

Morris, I agree 100%

------------------
"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[Stryke 9]

Hmmm... Can you use .ani backgrounds? I was thiking, just having all the capships duke it out in back and savin the polys for lots of fighters... But generally lots of fighters ends up being 400 enemy fighters and you very fast if you try ordering your wingmen around... which is never fun...

[Vertigo1]

 

Originally posted by Nephilim:
That is beyond true, i mean in missions there you have to defend a destoryer, and there is only 3 other craft out there....   also what pissed me off the most is that mission where the colossus gets blasted by the sathanas, now i know they had a ton of bombers in that thing, why only launch dealta wing, i mean,  10 wings of bomber armed with helios, along with  C's beams could have taken that sathanas out easy. but then i agin i do reamber sor some reason colossus stoped firing it's beams...   i know the game has limitaions but still, a front line battle should really be, a front line battle  

It just sat there because it was crippled.  The fighterbays were a wreck, the engines down...etc.

------------------
- Too lazy for a siggy at the moment -

[^Graff]

I'm guessing that with the Collossus, you were just there to reinforce it, but Command didn't want to tell you how bad it was.  There is a mission out there somewhere that tells the story about how the Big C was disabled.  The diversion at the Gamma Draconis node was already going on, and they pulled a couple of extra warships away from convoy duty to replace the ships in C's task force.

As for Slaying Ravana, Command didn't really expect you to kill the destroyer.  They didn't even expect you to survive.  Given how quickly the bomber wings get destroyed when the NTF or Shivans send them after whatever you have to protect, you were just the first wave.  They expected you to damage the Ravana just enough so that it would withdraw, and then the remainder of the Delacroix's task force could regroup and kill it.

I love the .ani background idea, BTW.

[Carl]

.ani weapons would be better. photon torpedo, anyone?

[Nico]

ani don't work. neither for background, neither for weapons   Explosions and thrusters, that's it  

[Raven2001]

Well, I personaly like like to flye missions where I make part of a team... you see, the team can't do the job without me, but I can't do the job without them... you see, makes me feel like I contribute for the cause...

of course I hate those missions when Alpha 1 is the goddamn GTVA slave.... and the hero!!! that simply sucks... for me, a good mission has to be one where everybody has an important role... and that's it... sometimes it is Alpha who takes out that destroyer, but Alpha can't do it without Beta watching its back, and the reverse of coure...

About those battle of Endor syndromes.... It's cool to have a fireworks battle  , but all fighter craft has a pivotal role in it, either is defending this ship/wing, or criple another ship... anything that keeps us ocupied...

YOU THINK FS AI IS DULL???? PLAY STARLANCER!!!!

And... that's all  

[Slasher]

I kinda got irritated at how I was such a big hero in so many of the latter missions (debrief voice: thanks to your valiant, (insert more suck-up, admiring, you are A-1 SUPAR comments here) efforts, you have once....heh, again....saved the GTVA....heh).  You save the GTVA so many times yet went through the game as an unnamed hero.  But the slight miss on the realism scale was a small price to pay, at least in my opinion.

[jonskowitz]

 

Originally posted by Stryke 9:
Good point, that does boil down to the poly count, but why couldn't they make the capships themselves tougher? Save a lot of polys wasted on fighters and bombers...

I think you're missing the point of capital class ships entirely.

First, with small, portable, and (most importantly) realatively inexpensive weapons available (such as the Harbinger bomb, and other, more powererful ones found in FS2) it would be litteral suicide to use Capships in an entirely anti-shipping role.  These things are expensive both in terms of dollars and in manpower, why risk one in a direct confrontation when you can send a handful of small, cheap bombers loaded with the aforementioned weapons to do your dirty work instead.  See any WWII reference on 'Battle of the Coral Sea', 'Midway', or 'Guadalcanal' for realworld examples.  Also take a peak at what happened to the real-world HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales when they tried to hit Japanese shipping near China without aircover.

Now that we've eliminated the 'Battle-wagon' as a viable weapon of war, why even build them.  As it has been stated so many times before, they really do suck in battle compared to the costs of building and maintaining them.  To answer that lets stop and consider a fighter's limitations.  First and foremost RANGE (and LOITER ABILITY).  Even with fighter-mounted intersystem jumpdrives a fighter still has a very limited deployment range.  Besides, our pilots have to LIVE somewhere.  So we build giant hangers to fly them around in (aka Destroyers).

  Destroyers are great, they can house thousands of personelle and maintain hundreds of fighters.  But they can't be everywhere at once, and fighters can't really remain 'on-station' for long periods of time.  So we build small ships that can house thier crews for extended voyages and keep an eye on things.  If bad stuff shows up, all they need to do is call the nearest destroyer and *poof* a dozen fighters warp in, equipped with the latest death dealing hardware.

Corvettes I have a hard time figuring out, except that they can haul hardware that fighters can't, and thy're cheaper and better protected than cruisers.  I guess they would work well as escorts as well, capable of moving around the Destroyer they are protecting to increase firepower in a local area.  Anyone with anything to add on corvettes feel free to do so.

That's my thoughts on the whole capital ship controversy.

[Taristin]

Am I the only one her who wonders how the GTVA got such powerful weaponry in 32 years?

And why Alpha 1 is allowed to use it al just by being in the wing that destroyed a Ravana?

I liked FS1 so much better, in the missions like the one where you escort the Galatea through the asteroid feild, and there are shivans who cannot be seen on sensors... You can either chose to leave Alpha 2 to fight them, and you deal with the asteroids, which eventually pummel the ship to critical, or fight the bastards, and still have the ship go to critical, or worse...

I think that in FS2 they were more interested in giving you hella fast ships, and hella powerful weapons. They lost grasp of the integrity of the story...

The shivans were not super powerful death machines bent on destroying our homeworlds, like they were in FS1...

In FS1, they set traps, ambushes, and the like... They blew up cargo containers when the Elysiums docked to them... They made fake cargo dumps to lure us out into the open, and then smash us with teir hella powerful weaponry...

They had an bloodlust. They wanted us dead. And they stopped at nothing. Once the Lucifer was destroyed, they continued attacking. Like a chicken with it's head cut off, but they still attacked...(I read that somewhere... forget where tho)

I miss the days of the Avenger Cannon. The slow and not-so powerful ships. The futile fleeing from the shivan's dark grasp.

What happened to that? Huh?! What?! We get one dumbass in a custom ship, who opens a portal to 'Shivan infested space', like he knew for sure Shivans were there... And then he sends some stupid signal to them.

Then they kidnap him?! WTF? I mean c'mon... What the hell would they want with him? He was the G.W. Bush of the GTVA...(It'll happen soon, watch...)

And why would the shivans ignore us this time around? Us and our 'Flying Ray gun' the colossus... What a hunk of scrap that was... A waste of 20 years... If you ever want to blame the Vasudans for something, blame them for that... Stupid ship...

Koth was gonna ram it (Which would have killed it), but alpha 1 saves the day, and disables the sucker...(Or atleast I did) and I had to sit there for 20 minutes listening to the Coll tell it's decks to close off... I finally entered the cheat and killed the Orion, only because I got tired of sitting there...

What the... what the hell was the original subject of this topic anyway...?! Ah spoot! I went OT again... crap!

------------------
Sie ist der hellste Stern von allen, und wird nie vom Himmel fallen.

[Sandwich]

 

Originally posted by Raa Tor'h:
What the... what the hell was the original subject of this topic anyway...?! Ah spoot! I went OT again... crap!

No comment.    



------------------
"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[jonskowitz]

 

Originally posted by Raa Tor'h:
I liked FS1 so much better,
[snip]
I think that in FS2 they were more interested in giving you hella fast ships, and hella powerful weapons. They lost grasp of the integrity of the story...

Ranting aside, I have to agree with Raa.  FS1 captivated and held my attention far better than FS2 ever could.  The missions were far more beleivable, the enemy was dark and enigmatic, the ships you were in were outclassed (everywhere except subspace! Shivans do ohh soo poorly once you take away thier shields).

I finished FS1 within a week, most of that on the last two nights of that week.  Each mission made me want to see more, I wanted to see where they were heading with this.  The beloved Galatea gets nuked, Vasuda prime is leveled,  but we keep fighting (the 'three jumpoints' scenario, one of my favorite missions ever).  The story didn't revolve around Alpha 1, but he was very much a part of it.  There wasn't a single trace of 'Wingcommander' syndrome to be found...

Then they made FS2, and like a child greedy for more, I raced out and laid out 50 bucks (US) for the damn thing... and I haven't finished it yet.  I got as far as Admiral nutball getting kidnapped, played one mission more and finally quit.  It seemed that in FS2 all they were interested in was giving the player more toys to play with and puff up his ego in one 'Startrek' movie mission after another.  I haven't been this dissapointed with a sequel since... ever.  To be honest, FS2 bored me.  I've been far more interested in most people's mods of it than the actual game.

[Setekh]

 

Originally posted by Raa Tor'h:
Ah spoot! I went OT again... crap!

     

Jon, very well said, I can't help but see, in this light, that you have a very very valid point of view - I think a lot of it was the desperation of being right next to the core populated systems and afraid of the Shivans.

[Nico]

lol raa tof'h, I just sat down to watch the colo get ramed the first time I played the mission. It is not rammed   Koth death is scripted I suppose...
About the shivans not wanting our destruction or bosh stuff, I don't know what Volition wanted to do, so I can't criticize that (in fact I kindda liked it, for once humans feel a little dumb at the end: "heh! you forgot me!" we're not the center of the universe and that's not that bad)
For the feeling, now, you're right. In FS1 (at the begining, coz at the end nothing could stand before my herc or my valk), shivans were frightening, in fs2 they were cannon fodder.
oh, one thing I loved in FS1 was the last mission, for once, we don't have to kill the lucifer, yeah! You can't imagine how happy I was when I was expecting to fly a dumb bomber for the last mission of the game...

[Raven2001]

Yes, I must say that FS1 was FAR more credible and interesting in story and such than FS2.... The only good thing that I can forward in FS2 is the fireworks that beams make  

FS1 was GREAT... right from the intro were we could see poor Lt. Ash running away and shouting "...they weren't goddamn *******  vasudans!!! They were these death black ships!!!!!! I know they are following me!"... but they were'nt folowing him 'cause the big L jumped in front of him  

Now, frankly, FS1 had that spirit of rush, enigma and inferiority that FS2 couldn't ever had... shame...  

Not even the Sath's scared me like the poor Scorpions did.... And of course, in FS1 we contributed for something, but we weren't GTA's BIG BOY SUPER-ACE HERO!!!!

[Slasher]

Yeah, I couldn't really understand how so many pilots could die while fighting the Shivans because, as stated above, the Shivees' fighters were really just cannon fodder, even on Medium or Hard.  Just about the only advantage they had over the GTVA's craft were numbers, and when it comes to Alpha 1 against the odds, the player usually prevails for some reason.    Anyways, the only time I got the feeling of the Shivans being utter destroyers or a xenophobic species to the extreme was when I looked at their capships or saw them take down one or our capships, because their fighters just didn't give you the feeling of fear or lethal superiority they did in FreeSpace 1.

[jonskowitz]

 

Originally posted by venom2506:
ani don't work. neither for background, neither for weapons   Explosions and thrusters, that's it  

Hmmm, couldn't you model a LARGE (I mean REALLY large) plane, paint the surface with your ANI, and then place the object a LONG distance away?  (I mean the plane would have to be REALLY, REALLY big).

[Setekh]

 

Originally posted by Raven2001:
Yes, I must say that FS1 was FAR more credible and interesting in story and such than FS2.... The only good thing that I can forward in FS2 is the fireworks that beams make  

Heheh, that's true. Flak, beams, nebulae; the FS2 engine just added so much more to FS. And the infamous Big Damage™ tag! That surely added a new depth into gameplay, you could no longer tape down the fire button on your ML-16 and come back a few hours later to a debris field.   But this is why the FS1->FS2 conversion would be so cool - it would take all the cool story, atmosphere and mood bits from FS1 and put them into the 0wning engine of FS2. Booyah.  

[jonskowitz]

 

But this is why the FS1->FS2 conversion would be so cool - it would take all the cool story, atmosphere and mood bits from FS1 and put them into the 0wning engine of FS2. Booyah.   [/B]

NOW you're cooking with gas!  Who are the people working on this project?  Or am I speaking with thier mighty god already  

One thing though, although we all agree that the campaign in FS was cool as hell it has one insurmountable problem...  We've all done it already (some of us more than once  ).
Maybe some minor adjustments?  I had an idea for an FS1 campaign that parralelled the main FS campaign, but it was from the point of view of the fifth fleet, not the third (aka the players were going to be stationed on the GTD Intrepid instead of the GTD Galatea).  The end of the story was a bit of a bummer (from what I can tell the Intrepid went down with all hands defending Vasuda Prime) but I had some neat missions planned (McCarthy after all was from the Intrepid, and it was fighters off of the Intrepid that recovered the Shivan shield technology AND staged the phoney convoy to draw the Shivans away from the real one  )  Never finished it though (while doing online research into the full timeling of Freespace I bumped into the Freespace developer's network, discovered this intruiging set of files called the Freespace SDK and the rest is history!)  If anyone's interested I might be persuaded to remake the campaign for FS2 standard for the FS1->FS2 people.  

[Nico]

 

Originally posted by jonskowitz:
Hmmm, couldn't you model a LARGE (I mean REALLY large) plane, paint the surface with your ANI, and then place the object a LONG distance away?  (I mean the plane would have to be REALLY, REALLY big).

No, as I said there's you have only ani for explosions and thrusters (and the warp ani, forgot this one). You can't give any to anything else. the only object you can have with an ani is basically a model mapped with the thruster ani (tho it could make some nice effects if done well, I have several ideas but I can't make thrusters to work so...)