Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => The Babylon Project => Topic started by: IPAndrews on January 31, 2007, 03:54:48 pm
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Another poll. This time a personally annoyance of mine. I'm of the opinion that when a destroyer fires a huge gun at you, if whatever it fires hits you, it should really, really hurt. If not destroy you outright. TBP's capship turrets on the other hand seem to be more of an irritation than anything else. Standing completely still firing at them and taking the hits from them is currently a perfectly viable option in most cases. Does anyone else agree with me here?
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I agree with u IP, but not too much. I wouldnt want to play a game where i have to go up against a cap ship and it destroys me with one shot. You know what I mean?
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i think its pretty balanced.
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more power :yes:
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It depends. The EA's little fighter defense turrets seem pretty balanced at the moment, but stuff like the Nova's heavy guns just isn't cutting it.
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My main problem with many of the weapons is that they never seem to hit anything. I know B5 seems pretty incapable of defending itself, and same with many other ships. If they can't be made more accurate, I'd increase their power.
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Actually one of the things that always struck me about TBP was the weapon accuracy. If you flew strait and level holding a speed FS caps sometimes still missed you. If you do that in TBP you go 'splodie very quickly.
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He probably means the swarming turret weapons, which still are not very accurate (although they are better nowadays than they used to be)
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This seems to be a pretty one sided poll. The interesting thing is that I don't think it's possible to just make capship weapons more powerful against fighters. If I do that then capship weapons become more powerful against other capships too, resulting in shorter capship battles. I could counter that by giving the capships more hitpoints but then fighters would be less effective against capships.
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It's possible to change this using armour and damage types. This could be done via giving two types of armour, capship and fighter. Following this, each weapon would be split into the same two categories, anti ship and anti fighter. Anti ship weapons vs. fighter armour could double damage or even higher if needed, while leaving all other damage values the same.
Though I've never played TBP so I probably can't comment
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It's possible to change this using armour and damage types. This could be done via giving two types of armour, capship and fighter. Following this, each weapon would be split into the same two categories, anti ship and anti fighter. Anti ship weapons vs. fighter armour could double damage or even higher if needed, while leaving all other damage values the same.
Though I've never played TBP so I probably can't comment
Thats assuming FreeSpace had such a system in place. I don't think the SCP guys have done that yet.
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Armor.tbl from FSwiki (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Armor.tbl)...
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I'd be careful with this. While some ships may seem pretty weak from a fighter's view, many of the capships slaughter other capships very quickly, and in some cases i would say TOO quickly. (and i am not counting firstone ships here)
I would say currently capships may be a bit weak in the point defense department, but just fine in ship to ship. Another problem is that if you make capships too good at defending themselves, fighters become pointless.
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The armour solution isn't one I particularly like. The moment you need special armour classes for when a ship is attacked by a fighter as opposed to being attacked by another capship is the moment your universe do longer adds up. I agree with Tain too. I am quite happy with the ship vs ship balance and don't want to change that. It's just the sit infront of a capship and soak up anti-fighter fire whilst stripping it of turrets gameplay I want to remove. I am going to try removing shields for small ships and see what effect that has.
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I guess it would depend on which ships and which weapons. Guns like the EA Interceptor and EA Phalanx I could see getting a damage boost but not a big one. If anti-fighter weapons on non 1st-1 ships start killing an undamaged fighter in one hit then I don't think it's unreasonable to call that too unforgiving.
Also some ships are more vulnerable to fighter attack than others. Someone mentioned the EA Nova; that ship is geared towards long range fighting against space/planetary targets. I don't think it's big guns can even target fighters as defined by the tables (?) and the smaller turrets ones I think were put there by EA designers more as an afterthought than anything.
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The beam AAA weapons are fine- very deadly and able to destroy a fighter in several hits :yes:
Single plasma/pulse AAA turrets also work correctly :D
But the phalanx ones like those on Omega and B5 are somewheat weird - they don't seem to be able to hit fighters effectively when the burst ends the fighter is already in another position and the burst misses ...
The phalanxes of ISA Victory seem more balanced...
Is there any tbl. difference between these weapons?
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Single plasma/pulse AAA turrets also work correctly :D
You think? Those are the ones that irritate me the most. They seem very ineffective. If a pulse from a capship hits you square in the face it seems to do 10% damage tops.
But the phalanx ones like those on Omega and B5 are somewheat weird - they don't seem to be able to hit fighters effectively when the burst ends the fighter is already in another position and the burst misses ...
Should be addressed - somewhat - in the 3.4 beta.
The phalanxes of ISA Victory seem more balanced...
Is there any tbl. difference between these weapons?
Not really no. I think it's just a case of the Victory putting more firepower in the air from more different directions than an enemy can effectively avoid.
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If you want it to be like it really is in Babylon 5...sure they are weak when they fire at you. But do you really want to die just from a single glancing hit from a capital ship every time they fire at you? Even BABYLON 5: I've Found Her which operates a little closer to the real deal isnt quite a 1 hit-kill ordeal. That reminds me....its been a long while since I checked up on that game.
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Well, first of all they should be more accurate. Some of the weapons could be a little stronger, or should have at least a greater range (Phalanx!!!).
That brings me to another question:
Why are there no muzzle flashs (is this the correct word anyway? :confused:)?? I dont know if its possible anyway because in FS2 were no muzzle flashs, but the beam weapons have at least a "glow" at the firing point of the turret. It would be a great boost for the atmosphere.
And why are the pulseweapons (for example EA_Heavy Pulse) look like "balls" and not like "pulses"?? I mean EA Heavy Fusion looks right (like in the show) and some of the other weapons do, but most of them are "spheric".
thx in advance^^
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The armour solution isn't one I particularly like. The moment you need special armour classes for when a ship is attacked by a fighter as opposed to being attacked by another capship is the moment your universe do longer adds up. I agree with Tain too. I am quite happy with the ship vs ship balance and don't want to change that. It's just the sit infront of a capship and soak up anti-fighter fire whilst stripping it of turrets gameplay I want to remove. I am going to try removing shields for small ships and see what effect that has.
I thought there were not shields in B5...
First thing I do when playing is drop the shields to zero on the power distribution grid.
Any shots seem to go straight to the hull.
If this is correct, you should add "no shields" flags to your missions/ships/whatever; this will remove the shield column from the energy distribution control panel.
EDIT: someone welcome our new friend... If no-one does, I'll do it! ;7 :drevil:
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If I remember right, the shields were put in to absorb giant shockwaves and thus must be kept in.
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..So they do have shield, even though they are not visible and there are no shield meshes on the ships? To fix this, there should be a "reduce shockwave damage x.xx" SEXP or something to set a ratio of shockwave damage recieved by all players. Possibly split into "reduce shockwave damage fighter/bomber x.xx" and "reduce shockwave damage capship x.xx" or something. Ideas? I'm not a coder...
EDIT:
Gunnery Control, target Sktich and Tain. Begin plasma core insertion. Sensor lock aquired, commence firing sequence...
:welcome:
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Why are there no muzzle flashs (is this the correct word anyway? :confused:)?? I dont know if its possible anyway because in FS2 were no muzzle flashs, but the beam weapons have at least a "glow" at the firing point of the turret. It would be a great boost for the atmosphere.
Muzzleflashes for other than flak turrets were not possible in FS2 but currently - at least when using HEAD branch builds - they function quite nicely.
Other than that i would like to see capships shoot more.. That is increase the rate of fire a bit.. Perhaps just by removing the 'random turret fire delay' or something.
..So they do have shield, even though they are not visible and there are no shield meshes on the ships? To fix this, there should be a "reduce shockwave damage x.xx" SEXP or something to set a ratio of shockwave damage recieved by all players. Possibly split into "reduce shockwave damage fighter/bomber x.xx" and "reduce shockwave damage capship x.xx" or something. Ideas? I'm not a coder...
Yes, that is all doable already now. Using armor.tbl and
$Damage:
$Damage Type:
$Shockwave damage:
$Shockwave Damage Type:and
$Armor Type:
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... When I get home from work, I'll try to see if I can post a link to a Military.com video of the Phalanx ship defense gun firing off... now that's a decent rate of fire!
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I agree with Wanderer. They should fire faster...well some of them should(EA Heavy Pulse, EA Advanced Plasma etc.).
And whats about the form of the shots??^^ (It would be great if it would look like this: http://www.babtech-onthe.net/avi/hfirefast.avi )
EDIT: Thanks for the welcome jr2 :)
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... When I get home from work, I'll try to see if I can post a link to a Military.com video of the Phalanx ship defense gun firing off... now that's a decent rate of fire!
Here ya go:
phalanx.flv (http://files.filefront.com/phalanxflv/;6857520;;/fileinfo.html)
-Remember, don't use Download accelerators with FileFront (or tell the accelerator to only download using one connection).
-If your media player can't play this file, use VLC Media Player (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/). (You may have to associate .flv files with VLC.)
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I agree with Wanderer. They should fire faster...well some of them should(EA Heavy Pulse, EA Advanced Plasma etc.).
And whats about the form of the shots??^^ (It would be great if it would look like this: http://www.babtech-onthe.net/avi/hfirefast.avi )
EDIT: Thanks for the welcome jr2 :)
At least some of the weapon graphics have been changed since the last non-beta release, but I myself haven't seen the new ones. The impression I got is that they are more true to the series, so maybe the glowing energy ball effect has been replaced.
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Yes Fishguts went back to the slightly elongated weapon effects. Which give you more of a sense of speed and direction with weapons fire, and look closer to the originals too. An inspired move all round I thought.
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Sorry for :bump: but has anyone tried making the turret weapons look like real B5 guns (mainly referring to blob velocity), but lovering their accuracy? That shouldn't chance the balance much, IIRC from my demented experience couple of years back.
It's just when playing Supreme Commander and Starshatter, and then returning to TBP it struck me how laughable these turrets really are...
And I like to voice out my displeasure to everyone, hence this post. :nervous:
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lowering their accuracy?
You can't.
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I thought all turrets had an AI entry in the tables, that also could be modified in FRED? What would happen if one would assign inaccurate AI on them?
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When they say accuracy... they actually mean rate of fire.
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What? You have got to be kidding me! So it only takes the firing rate from the assigned AI class, but accuracy cannot be modified in any way?
How ****ed up is that! :hopping:
Are coders aware of this? Not that I'm suggesting anyone affiliated with TBP should mention this to them! But just seems pretty dumb to me. You really sure this is the case?
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It's been mentioned and yes.
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*slits wrists*
Edit: While bleeding, I did remember taking part in a discussion about this in the SCP forums... :doubt:
It is a painful memory. And I need an axe...
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You sure are a tough cracker. Bleeding dry and still looking for an axe.
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The use of red font made me laugh.
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Well I agree with most of you. If we make them stronger the player will be dead too quick making cap ship missions almost unplayble as they would be to irritating. On the other hand like in the show one hit should take down a fighter. Some races ships have 1 shot kill weapons and missions involving those ships dont last very long.
So for the sake of gameplay I think it is balanced enough :)
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Well, I suppose since there's no way to adjust the accuracy of shots, it's balanced. If the shots were a little inaccurate (ie, they didn't bang you on the nose every single time), then maybe it should be more lethal.
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I`m sure capital ships will be balanced nicely, once its all said ans done.. :D
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You could use $fof: with turret weapons to cause the shots to disperse a bit.. and so to 'simulate' accuracy
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This seems to be a pretty one sided poll. The interesting thing is that I don't think it's possible to just make capship weapons more powerful against fighters. If I do that then capship weapons become more powerful against other capships too, resulting in shorter capship battles. I could counter that by giving the capships more hitpoints but then fighters would be less effective against capships.
Can be solved:
a) Anti-cap torpedos have more power
b) subsystems and turrets have a smaller hull percentage (less HP)
P.S. - about Earth-Mimbari wars demo - not a sigle minbari warship was destroyed suring hte (short) campaign. What gives? Yeah they are more powerfull (as they should be) but this is redicolous. What happened to the good ol swarming method?
and Omega sucks mind you.. I pitted it against all other capships in the game and it cna barely beat a Nova... gets toasted BADLY (barely scratches them) by other ships
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Apparently you're not very familiar with B5 universe.
Only one Sharlin warcruiser was confirmed to be killed during the Earth-Minbari war, but there have been a few loose references to smaller victories in the show but nothing more really. The only confirmed kill was achieved by mining an asteroid field and luring the warcruiser to middle of it. During the first engagement, quite a large number of EA ships fired at a Minbari warcruiser before the Minbari had fired a shot, they failed to destroy the warcruiser and fled quickly.
Omega is a good vessel, it was designed to replace both Nova and Hyperion and in that job it performs well. It's anti-capital ship firepower is in front and that firepower is equivalent or better than other younger race's ships of equivalent class, except for the Minbari. Omega's top and bottom turret's are strictly anti-fighter, it won't beat a Nova or Primus if they're able to flank it but it should be able to take on all equivalent ships head on.
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I wasn't refering only to the Sharlin - they have smaller capships too :D
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Which reminds me - I saw Babylon 5 some time ago.
If memory serves me right only one Sharlin was SHOWN (confirmed) to be destroyed (by Sheridan luring him in a mine field). I can't recall no official mention that none other has been destroyed during the whole war...
And the first Sharlin was engaged by several Hyperion cruisers IIRC.
P.S. - is it just me or could some EA pulse weapon use a bit more velocity? Seem a bit too slow to me.
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Not a big B5 fan (doesn't reflect on my love for TBP), but I do remember from the show that the Sharlin Sheridan nailed was the first cruiser to be destroyed but afterwards the EA changed tact and started ambushing minbari ships when possible in asteroid fields and the like to get close. Supposed to have reduced the attrition rate to something like 5-1 from 20-1 in favour of the Minbari.
Although that could be Fanon.
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Makes sense...think of the numbers of warships and especially fighters (from bases, planets, outposts) EA can throw at smalelr Minbari forces in their core systesm (Sol)
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Sheridan gets lauded as the only captain who achieved a victory against the Minbari, though it's possible that the propaganda that would've followed him kind of enhanced his image and drowned out other achievements. Still, if an entire EA fleet gets wiped out while only fragging one or two Minbari Sharlins, then while enemy capital ships were destroyed, you can't exactly call it a victory for Earth. With those kinds of losses, you couldn't really even brag about the enemy kills publicly no matter how you marginalized the enormous losses your side suffered.
"Through the brave actions of the 4th Fleet, two Minbari warcruisers were destroyed off of Orion II. Unfortunately,all seventy-four warships of the 4th were lost BUT IN OTHER NEWS Vicky Spears has shaved her head in an odd twist of rehab failureblahblahblah..."
Since that would've been the mode for the war rather than the exception, Sheridan's nukage of the Black Star and his living to actually tell about it would naturally get center stage for considerable time.
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Not only did Sheridan get the first kill in the war, it was the Minbari flagship he killed. That can be called an achievement. Furthermore, the moreale of EA had bee plummeting because of constant losses on the front.
So EA losses? Old news.
Minbari losses? WTF they lost something?
No wonder Sheridan was made a hero.
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As far as I remember from reading JMS comments, the black star wasn't the only Minbari Cap-Ship destroyed: In the first encounter when the prometheus opened fire 2 cruisers were killed, one (the one with the grey council aboard) badly damaged. But when the Minbari decided to go for war, pretty all of those ships where shot down. In other cases ramming has been a last resort - but ramming is typically fatal for both ships.
Sheridans deeds were not so heroic because he destroyed a cruiser (what happened seldom enoungh!) but because he survived, what made it a victory.
Shooting down 2 nials, and escaping while losing half a fleet is no victory
Ramming a Sharlin, destroying it and losing a whole fleet is no victory
But when one ship, badly crippeled, alone in an asteroid field takes out the enemy flagship... what would u call that?
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Indeed...another thing I recall in the EMW Demo - a Nova rams a Sharlin and it's gets barely scratched?????
Who FREDed that mission for crying out loud?
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My experiences with the Earth-Minbari war "demo"
:p I don´t know about you guys but with the assistance of an EAS Hyperion and my trusty wingmen I was albe to destroy the entire Minbari fleet at the battle of Jupiter :rolleyes:
After most of the EAS ships were destroyed and it was time to jump to Earth I decided to command my "new" army against the minbari instead! After the Nials were gone, it was an easy task to order my fleet to attack a Sharlin while I flew extremely close to it and destroyed its main turrets. Since the other Sharlins just stayed put, after about 30 minutes victory was ours :P It was a bit boring to just press mousebutton1 until I had to give the guns some time to recharge.
But my Starfury was more effective at inflicting damage than the Hyperion (it missed alot of its shots and didn´t use nearly all cannons for some reason) I´m going to experiment some more but I think that since the EA plasma cannons are seriously underpowered, slow and inaccurate, the Minbari beams are great! More power to them would make them realistic but indeed it wouldn´t be fun to get killed after 1 hit.
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WEll, my fleet got wiped out and I didn't fee like going against a Sharlin..LOL
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Well I stayed clear of the sharlins. :nervous:
The nials were another matter.. I made it through the campaign the first run, but the second, well i`m still at it. :p
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Yeah... I couldn't scratch the Sharlins, they shredded me and my fleet every time