Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: TrashMan on October 02, 2005, 03:46:38 pm

Title: Should I do this?
Post by: TrashMan on October 02, 2005, 03:46:38 pm: It's a matter of balance, realism and dificulty.

You see, since the AI is crappy the only way to make mission difficult is to:
- give enemy ship uber shieldz and weaponz (allrady did, the game is still to easy)

- increase the AI (works but only relativly. The AI is still to dumb)

- throw redocolous number of opponents at the player (works, but is stupid for multiple reasons)

While playing I noticed that fighting is mostly easy becoause of one thing - missiles. You have loads and load of them.

So for Chapter 3 of my campaign I was thinking to perhaps double, or even triple the missile sizes - that way each fighter will carry less. obviously some tweaking into their homing abilities, speed and power must be made, so missiels as a consequence would be somewhat more powerfull, but you would carry only a few of them.

combine this ida with increased AI and you can have a rather challenging mission with only several opponents.

Well, your thoughts?
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: FireCrack on October 02, 2005, 04:45:32 pm: What about those of us who promarily use guns?
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: TrashMan on October 02, 2005, 04:59:51 pm: I guess you would be perfectly OK with it...
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: BlackDove on October 02, 2005, 05:37:05 pm: Yes we would.
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: mikhael on October 03, 2005, 08:41:48 am: Missiles only exist to make the target juke left into your guns, so who cares how many you can carry? ;)
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: Martinus on October 03, 2005, 08:45:50 am: [color=66ff00]Dumbfires are lethal at close range in conjunction with primaries.

Tears fighters to bits very quickly. :nod:
[/color]
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: T-Man on October 03, 2005, 09:38:03 am: I'm in with the primary-only lot. I've gone through some missions without touching the spacebar. Usually reserve missiles for dire emergancies, so this probably wouldn't effect me too much. Still, sounds like it might work.
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: Prophet on October 03, 2005, 10:21:08 am: I usually use missiles on that last pesky astaroth flying around...
It often goes like this:
"HA! Insignificant little Shivan."
(Orders wingmen to ingnore target)
"Take THIS!"
(Fires Harpoon, pulls throttle down to zero and look how the little bastard runs)
(Harpoon misses)
"WHAT? You miserable little ****!"
(Full afterburners, launch two wolleys of tornado)
(Astaroth manages to fool the missiles with countermeasures)
(Finish off the fella with guns)
"What? Run out of afterburner fuel?"
(Mission complete)

But yes, I'm definatley for less missiles. Dead weight anyway.
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: Unknown Target on October 03, 2005, 10:22:12 am: I'm a missile whore - I usually call for a support ship right when the mission starts, and just let it follow me around until I finally run out and let it dock with me. I use primaries, it's just easier to fill an enemy fighter full of Rockeye :D
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: TrashMan on October 03, 2005, 10:38:45 am: Missiles are useful lagainst those fast moving bastards - Astaroth, Dragon, Ulysses and Pegasus and for intercepting bombers at long range.

One of hte reson why I opt for that is that mission simply turn into a missle fest and player gets hoards of easy kills. A little bit of realism wouldn't hurt.. let's the player actually work for hte kills insted of just sitting there and pressing spacebar...

and I am zhinking of making shivans more dangerous in any possible way - faster, more manuverable, more powerful lweapons...
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: mikhael on October 03, 2005, 10:50:59 am: Quote
Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]Dumbfires are lethal at close range in conjunction with primaries.

Tears fighters to bits very quickly. :nod:
[/color]

At close range, dumbfires ARE primaries.

Screamers in Starlancer were just... lovely. :)
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: Sesquipedalian on October 03, 2005, 11:19:35 am: Change it if you want. I won't be using your tables anyway, so it doesn't matter to me.

As for "realistic," these are ships the size of a small house. It is quite conceivable that they could carry a large number of missiles.
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: Prophet on October 03, 2005, 12:13:00 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
As for "realistic," these are ships the size of a small house. It is quite conceivable that they could carry a large number of missiles.

As for "realistic," these are missiles the size of a large motorcycle, at least. Compare the size of tornado and Hercules mk2. Then try to fit even 20 tornados inside it still leaving space to all the other stuff you might find inside a spacecraft.
I have always thought the amout of hardware those ships can carry is ridiculous, but didn't really mind. Since it's game...
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: aldo_14 on October 03, 2005, 12:26:00 pm: The missiles are built from self assembling nanomachines. There you go, some sci-fi codswallop to explain it all :D
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: WMCoolmon on October 03, 2005, 01:15:23 pm: Quote
Originally posted by Prophet

As for "realistic," these are missiles the size of a large motorcycle, at least. Compare the size of tornado and Hercules mk2. Then try to fit even 20 tornados inside it still leaving space to all the other stuff you might find inside a spacecraft.
I have always thought the amout of hardware those ships can carry is ridiculous, but didn't really mind. Since it's game...

Science invented magic, allowing GTVA engineers to double the missile bank capacity of many ships.
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: Prophet on October 03, 2005, 02:41:08 pm: I always thought there were these little gremlings in the fighter making missiles from the dust they collect using a toothbrush.

I really don't care. As long as there is less of them. Missiles I mean. Not the gremlings...
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: TrashMan on October 03, 2005, 04:41:07 pm: If only the AI was better at evading missiles it wouldn't be as much of a problem...

Meh..I'll turn my shivans into death machines. You'll be running from several basilisks when I'm trough with this.. MWAHAHAHAH
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: mikhael on October 03, 2005, 05:09:15 pm: Why would anyone run? All your guns point forward. Stack with weapons, make them smarter, they're still a machine and we're still human and we can still out think the AI. ;)
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: TrashMan on October 03, 2005, 05:52:00 pm: What if I make the basilisks move like Dragons and what if hte shivan laser did 100 damage?

you would actually try evading the shots for a change insted of just pressing Q ou up or down and continuing after your current target.

The weapons are mostly pathetic.

I charged at a flak gun on an Orion with a Loki, parked infront of it and shot it with a subach. Didn't use missiles. Destroyed the gun witout any problems, my shields didn't even go down..and all the time it was shooting at me.

where's the challenge in that?
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: Sheepy on October 03, 2005, 06:04:58 pm: ... try playing on a dificulty level higher than easy? ;)
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: TrashMan on October 03, 2005, 06:17:56 pm: I did...
Title: Should I do this?
Post by: Vengence on October 03, 2005, 09:05:01 pm: I don't know about you guys but I like my missiles. Too bad I use them too close to my target, I get too much blast warnings these days.