Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: rbxplayer on January 14, 2008, 03:57:22 pm
-
Further to ideas submitted by Fabian...
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,47376.0.html
"It again feels strange that no bomber wings have stillettos on board. One hit and you have a ship with engines disabled, which then is an easy target, because either the whole convoy needs to stop and have one ship repair the broken one or its left behind its escort. It might be very unfair to have bombers with stillettos from a playpoint point-of-view, but it was something I ever wondered about."
Why not create more complex missions where enemy bombers have stillettos and if they manage to disable your convoy, there should be a back up plan? If you are an admiral, would you send out a huge convoy without an engine repairing ship? In the mean time, maybe an extra wing of bombers maybe sent etc... and you are able to buy yourself time, you should still make it to finish the mission... This is especially great fun for missions which need to be completed in a specific time frame.
-
I was under the impression that stillettos were only used when trying to capture craft. If a bomber wing was smart, they could target the engines with powerful bombs, thereby dealing damage AND disabling the craft. Stillettos are only useful when you're trying to do little damage to the ship.
That having been said... I've never seen Freespace AI do anything that smart, but no doubt someone somewhere is improving AI. Yes, yes... I would if I had the know-how.
-
That's actually a great plan - especially given that the enemies have at least 30 bomber in total . . .
Hard to do that in Inferno though . . . the Stellito III aren't as good ( from my point of view ) as the Stellito II's.
And modern ships are more disable-proof - there have more engines! ;)
-
Um... Stiletto III is not canon, as it's from Inferno, therefore it has no place in this discussion, unless it were broadened to include Inferno.
-
BEE TEE DUB...
Stilettos deal more damage to subsystems than bombs of comparable damage, plus they're harder to shoot down (faster, smaller)
Look at, say, the Harbinger of FS1... an Ursa could carry what... 5 of them at a time? And they took like 30 seconds to reload after you fire 2 of them?
That same Ursa could carry 50 stilettos... 10 stilettos would take out a reactor of a Lucifer (if i'm remembering right... it's been a while). and you only wait a couple of seconds between shots
Thus i agree... bombers disabling the target first is a great idea :D
-
That same Ursa could carry 50 stilettos... 10 stilettos would take out a reactor of a Lucifer (if i'm remembering right... it's been a while). and you only wait a couple of seconds between shots
Alright, that does make sense from a gameplay point of view. From what I remember though (please correct me if I'm wrong!) the Stiletto knocks a substem out, rather than destroying it outright, which is what was needed with the Lucifer's reactors, as they wanted the explosions to trigger a chain reaction which would destroy the Shivan Super Destroyer.
-
That same Ursa could carry 50 stilettos... 10 stilettos would take out a reactor of a Lucifer (if i'm remembering right... it's been a while). and you only wait a couple of seconds between shots
Alright, that does make sense from a gameplay point of view. From what I remember though (please correct me if I'm wrong!) the Stiletto knocks a substem out, rather than destroying it outright, which is what was needed with the Lucifer's reactors, as they wanted the explosions to trigger a chain reaction which would destroy the Shivan Super Destroyer.
The only weapons that knock things out rather than destroying them is the EMP and the D(isruptor)-Missile from FS1.
-
That same Ursa could carry 50 stilettos... 10 stilettos would take out a reactor of a Lucifer (if i'm remembering right... it's been a while). and you only wait a couple of seconds between shots
Alright, that does make sense from a gameplay point of view. From what I remember though (please correct me if I'm wrong!) the Stiletto knocks a substem out, rather than destroying it outright, which is what was needed with the Lucifer's reactors, as they wanted the explosions to trigger a chain reaction which would destroy the Shivan Super Destroyer.
As far as the mission triggers are concerned it doesn't matter. Subsystem = 0% really doesn't care how it got there. But fictionally...yeah the idea was to cause big booms.
-
Stiletto destroys subsystems
-
Yes its true that Stiletto IIs can dish out subsystem damage faster than any other weapon in FS2. But you can do more subsystem damage for the same amount of sbank capacity (albeit over a longer period of time) with Trebuchets, Helios, or even Cyclopses (the #short version). Most people won't take stilettos when there are Trebuchets to be had unless their mission is specifically to disable and not destroy a certain ship. (And even then, many would use trebs).
But this is getting somewhat off topic.
-
I'll still say that unless you are attacking a heavy cruiser or a corvette, just load the bombers up with hornets and trebs and swarm
the freighters < poor suckers > in one go!
HORnETS ArE UNSToPPABLE!!
-
I love stilletos, i remember back in the good 'ol days of two weeks ago, i used paired stilleto IIs to knock out every beam cannon on every ship i encountered. And i honestly didn't care about damaging these ships, my cap ships could do it. but they wouldn't have been able to if i hadn't fragged the enemy's beamz.
-
I love stilletos, i remember back in the good 'ol days of two weeks ago, i used paired stilleto IIs to knock out every beam cannon on every ship i encountered. And i honestly didn't care about damaging these ships, my cap ships could do it. but they wouldn't have been able to if i hadn't fragged the enemy's beamz.
But if you don't care about damaging those ships, you could have just used Trebuchets. They have more range, do more subsystem damage, and can't be shot down.
-
I personally hated them and the Athena when they fist came out to get the Taranis as I felt useless after the Halkins had docked with the Cain. However, I loved them when I needed them when escorting the Galatea against kamikaze HoL fighters and that blasted Aten cruiser! The only time I was able to beat that mission was when I used Stilettos to disable the Aten.
-
Tho i didnt like Steleiots (Sp?) they were great in taking out subsystems, especialy with the Aketon SGD (Sp?).
-
Look at, say, the Harbinger of FS1... an Ursa could carry what... 5 of them at a time? And they took like 30 seconds to reload after you fire 2 of them?
That same Ursa could carry 50 stilettos... 10 stilettos would take out a reactor of a Lucifer (if i'm remembering right... it's been a while). and you only wait a couple of seconds between shots
Except-
A Harbinger has a ridiculous subsystem damage value increase, which means that while it does 1600 raw damage, it does 64000 subsystem damage, meaning that a single Harbinger would be sufficent for the task of taking out any subsystem on any ship in the game. If it's economy of effort you're looking for, then the Harbinger wins at that particular task.
-
*grammar inquisition*
Though I didn't like Stilettos, they were great in taking out subsystems, especially with the Akethon SDG.
:nervous: *runs*
-
First of all, it's spelling, not grammar, and second, you couldn't spell "Akheton" right either.
-
Yeah, well I reject your reality and substitute my own!
-
Further to ideas submitted by Fabian...
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,47376.0.html
"It again feels strange that no bomber wings have stillettos on board. One hit and you have a ship with engines disabled, which then is an easy target, because either the whole convoy needs to stop and have one ship repair the broken one or its left behind its escort. It might be very unfair to have bombers with stillettos from a playpoint point-of-view, but it was something I ever wondered about."
Why not create more complex missions where enemy bombers have stillettos and if they manage to disable your convoy, there should be a back up plan? If you are an admiral, would you send out a huge convoy without an engine repairing ship? In the mean time, maybe an extra wing of bombers maybe sent etc... and you are able to buy yourself time, you should still make it to finish the mission... This is especially great fun for missions which need to be completed in a specific time frame.
In my opinion custom made(and :v:'s) convoy protection missions have other problems.
They're the most boring missions in existance and many of them are badly FREDded. Only a few of them have interesting features and I have amazingly noticed that people start using cheats(:ick:) mostly "thanks" to escort missions. Replaying a LONG mission only because 1-2 torpedoes passed through a fire barrage isn't cool.
-
I enjoy "eventful" convoy missions, not missions where 2 wings of Hercules fighters just jump in with a wave repeat count of 99. By eventful I mean, an enemy cruiser jumps in or there are different stages to the mission.
-
That's not enough. You need more than a cruiser(what an original idea, *Maelstrom* :P) to make a boring escort mission an enjoyable one. First of all it shouldn't last 10 or more minutes.
-
Well a good escort mission IMO is something with plot, storyline and different parts to the mission. So it starts off normally, but then, maybe a cruiser jumps in 4,000 clicks out and the player is sent to intercept it. Then enemy bombers come and try to destroy the convoy ships while the player is away. When the player gets back, another interesting thing happens, like enemy transports jump in. This way you can maintain the "oooh, this is a new type of challenge" atmosphere for longer than 10 minutes.
"Into the Maelstrom" was good because it wasn't just loads and loads of Hercules wings jumping in one after another (Surrender Belisaurius was okay because it was relatively short, and it had an interesting bit at the end). Into the Maelstrom wasn't only an escort mission, you needed tactics to destroy the Maelstrom's beam cannon as well as stop the Medusae from killing off your ships.
Additonally, PI's first mission was good because we could see a lot of new stuff, despite it being uneventful in comparison to the other missions of the campaign. Like the Aten actually doing something, and the Vulcan primaries.
-
I agree with you but cruisers aren't original. I don't want to see more copies of Into the Maelstrom - people should find more original things to make escort missions better.
On a side note, there's a 15-20 minutes escort mission in Steadfast(cutscenes included) with thousands of original ideas on it.
-
You got that right! The only time i would wanna escort a convoy for ten minutes+ is if it's ferrying solid gold millionaire strippers! Nothing bores like a wing of Loki on repeat x infinity.
-
Convoy missions with chatter are good too. IMO, of course.
-
I noticed a problem in designing such missions. Events should be well coordinate, I must be sure, for example, that wing x is destroyed before mission-time = y and other minor things. Disabled bombers that remain behind make everything more complicate... :blah:
-
Disabled enemy ships are destroyed after x amount of time passes. Automatically, I believe.
Might only be on Very Easy though.
-
Look at, say, the Harbinger of FS1... an Ursa could carry what... 5 of them at a time? And they took like 30 seconds to reload after you fire 2 of them?
That same Ursa could carry 50 stilettos... 10 stilettos would take out a reactor of a Lucifer (if i'm remembering right... it's been a while). and you only wait a couple of seconds between shots
Except-
A Harbinger has a ridiculous subsystem damage value increase, which means that while it does 1600 raw damage, it does 64000 subsystem damage, meaning that a single Harbinger would be sufficent for the task of taking out any subsystem on any ship in the game. If it's economy of effort you're looking for, then the Harbinger wins at that particular task.
BUT, now you're forgetting that
a) A harbinger can only be carried by one ship in the game; a Stiletto by multiple
b) The aspect lock for a harbinger would take even an experienced pilot a good 10 seconds, and that's for a capital ship, let alone for a fast moving cruiser/freighter/convoy
c) The harbinger is much, much slower moving... thus
c1) it can be shot down
c2) even if it doesn't get shot down, you're looking at a 30 second rearm time
-
C and C1 - release close to target. C2 - Switch banks and come around to reaquire lock. :) fire in dual mode also.
-
BUT, now you're forgetting that
a) A harbinger can only be carried by one ship in the game; a Stiletto by multiple
b) The aspect lock for a harbinger would take even an experienced pilot a good 10 seconds, and that's for a capital ship, let alone for a fast moving cruiser/freighter/convoy
c) The harbinger is much, much slower moving... thus
c1) it can be shot down
c2) even if it doesn't get shot down, you're looking at a 30 second rearm time
You gave a particular example, i.e. taking out the Lucy's reactors, so...
A: There are Ursas available for the task, or should be if anyone's trying it.
B: The time it takes to ripple off ten Stilletos is about the same as it does to lock a single Harbinger.
C1: At any reasonable range at which you could expect a ripple of 10 un-pilot-guided Stilletos to engage the same subsystem on a Lucifer, a Harbinger being shot down is very unlikely
C2: You have three banks, which is 3 within slightly more than thirty seconds, and then your first bank will be ready to go again by the time you cycle back to it.