Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Mr_Blastman on August 30, 2009, 01:55:55 am
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Who play FS1 or FS2 on the hardest difficulty? The best I've done is on hard but hardest is freaking nuts.
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You surely mean masochists? And yes, lots of 'em here. I think that even MOST of them play Insane.
BTW, any purpose of this topic?
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No, not really. I usually play on medium. Except in Multiplayer. Hard or Insane are standard there.
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I generally play on medium, anything else requires my joystick in fully operational condition, of which it is not. I'd say most of the people around here play on medium, with the older hands and squad war guys insane-ing it up.
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When i feel my arse hanfded to moe on medium or higher (not insane) i do ramp it up to the highest diofficulty. After five or six deaths i put he difficulty down again and it does feel easier again, by comparison :yes: I normally manage to finish whatever mission was giving me troubles that way. Especially forced entry...
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Hard is what I default to most of the time, medium if I cba to put full effort in, and insane if I want to test myself/the AI :P
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Sadists would play on easy, disable the opposition and blow them up with a Helios.
Insane is too much for me, Hard feels about right. Some campaigns seem to be balanced for medium though... depending on the capital ships involved, some missions might be unplayable on anything harder.
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Well, I like insane, but most custom campaigns are unfortunately unplayable on insane.
So most of the time I stick to medium when I play custom campaigns, but insane while playing the main campaign.
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Every now and then I give insane a shot but I can never defeat the 3rd mission of FS2 retail campaign... then I just go back to medium and stay there cuddling myself till I fall asleep in my tear soaked bed :(
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I hate the third mission. You can't kill the Lokis without getting roasted by AAAf beams. :mad:
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I tend to ignore the harder settings in single player to enjoy the story. In Multi player though it's only worth it to do it at harder settings.
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I hate the third mission. You can't kill the Lokis without getting roasted by AAAf beams. :mad:
ding ding ding ding ding!
so you died too? man I'm not alone in the suckyness corner!
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Uhm.
Guys.
Rockeyes have about a 1.9k range.
Beams have about a 1.5k range.
Beams die to about 7 rockeyes.
>.>
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Myrms mount a total of 10 rockeyes for that mission, and you have to destroy all the Lokis before the cruisers get to the node. One of those cruisers is a Leviathan with FOUR AAAf beams on it. We're talking 42 Rockeyes BEFORE you start targeting fighters. That mission doesn't end well for me above Medium difficulty.
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You don't need to disarm them all, just two, and you can do that by spamming the rockeyes just as a support ship docks with you (which you called prior to their arrival because you know both their spawn point and the time it takes for them to arrive), you also can at this point order the AI to attack a singular fighter if you're lazy or micro them out onto multiple opponents whilst you continue to take out a second and potentially a 3rd beam before you have to move (depending on how truly fast and organised you are), that means you've taken out the nearside fenris beam, and the two nearside leviathan beams.
Problem solved.
The /other/ trick is to gib the lokis with your wing mates faster than the beams can kill you all (whilst still having nailed the fenris beam I find this way easiest)
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Once I chanced upon a disabled shivian dragon. And I was in a bomber. Shivian had slow and terrible death watching the approaching bomb the size of his own ship.
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Once I chanced upon a disabled shivian dragon. And I was in a bomber. Shivian had slow and terrible death watching the approaching bomb the size of his own ship.
LOL poor little shivan.
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FUBAR likes hosting on Insane. I think Galemp hosts on Hard.
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I prefer to host on insane but got a lot of complaints when I got back so I mostly host on hard now :beamz:
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Well, because you get to respawn in multiplayer, isn't it only fun if it's on insane? If you only got one respawn, then maybe Hard would cut it for making the game decently challenging.
And I try to play on insane for all missions. Usually works okay until things like Bearbaiting come up. (Mind you, I don't care about dying a ton per mission)
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Missions are balanced around you having more respawns (if indeed you do, not all missions do have respawns).
Multi missions (well, community validated pack 3) are generally considered to be significantly harder than single player missions, but that's to be expected.
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Really? A friend and I tried a few of the mutliplayer missions on insane. Found it a joke. Maybe we were playing some badly balanced missions from an early version of the MP pack? (this was a while ago)
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The [v] and first mission pack contains missions which really aren't as hard at all.
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I play the regular campaign on Insane, except for a few missions. The 3rd mission is one of them. Other than that, the first Ravana mission is another. Beyond that, the TAG missions are really difficult on Insane, as is the Asteroid mission. That entire loop is nearly impossible to do on Insane. Other than those missions, I almost always play on Insane. I've actually had an easier time on quite a few missions; friendly fighters become smarter, friendly beams become more deadly. Just develop an evasion tactic and you'll be fine. Mine is to run at 2/3 engines and use the afterburners instead of countermeasures.
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The 3rd mission is one of them.
This mission is damn hard for a beginner. Can't pass it on hard.
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Try playing Into the Lions' Den in multi. ZERO respawns for continuity reasons. :drevil:
I played it once and ended up with the least amount of hull (6%) by the 12th minute. I really thought the Nebiros would screw me over (it didn't).
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On retail campaigns? Insane all the time.
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Oh yeah, I remember reading your review of the main FS2 campaign on Insane before. Very informational. :)
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I also finished Blue Planet on Insane. Not actually that bad given the excellent point defenses on the post-Capella warships.
However the prospect of attempting ST:R or PI on Insane makes me shiver.
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I also finished Blue Planet on Insane. Not actually that bad given the excellent point defenses on the post-Capella warships.
However the prospect of attempting ST:R or PI on Insane makes me shiver.
Ironic I struggled a little bit with BP on Insane(which is a good thing :P) but ST:R (apart from the damned escape pod mission) wasn't that bad at all for me oO
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I started to play main FS campaign on Insane, but I got bored after entering the nebula, as I played it before and knew the storyline.
For user-made campaigns I use Medium, just to avoid balance issues.
The main campaign on Insane was challenging, but not impossible (I had no problem with mission 3), I liked the fact that it was playing completely different from lower difficulties.
Especially I liked the AI weapons ROF increase, Shivan beams looked just awesome (they were still annoying, but they continous fire made me overhaul the beam cannons used in my mod).
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Try playing Into the Lions' Den in multi. ZERO respawns for continuity reasons. :drevil:
I played it once and ended up with the least amount of hull (6%) by the 12th minute. I really thought the Nebiros would screw me over (it didn't).
That was a fun time.
I usully play on hard-insane, I turn it down to hard if it's ABSOLUTELY impossible to beat the mission, never before. Multi is always insane, and I find people only notice if I tell them.
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I automatically assume that it's on Hard or Insane the moment my shots don't seem to do anything.
Unfortunately, I can't really do much on either difficulty level except being cannon fodder.
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I also finished Blue Planet on Insane. Not actually that bad given the excellent point defenses on the post-Capella warships.
However the prospect of attempting ST:R or PI on Insane makes me shiver.
Ironic I struggled a little bit with BP on Insane(which is a good thing :P) but ST:R (apart from the damned escape pod mission) wasn't that bad at all for me oO
To be honest I haven't actually tried ST:R on Insane; it might be just fine. I'm just remembering 'Return to Ross 128' and how hard it was to get all the bonus objectives.
Procyon Insurgency would probably be doable too since most of the missions can be solved with Stiletto spam.
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Procyon Insurgency would probably be doable too since most of the missions can be solved with Stiletto spam.
:wtf:
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Just started the retail campaign on insane :D It doesn't seem as hard as I was expecting. But at the same time I am having to be more careful about playing chicken with the enemy fighters. They never get out of the way and then I'm left floating there with 50% hull and no nav or comms :sigh:
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I'm still content with keeping my butt firmly planted on Easy. I don't need even more of a reason to have to keep restarting missions in order to accomplish some objective or other when I already get that at this difficulty. :p
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I'm still content with keeping my butt firmly planted on Easy. I don't need even more of a reason to have to keep restarting missions in order to accomplish some objective or other when I already get that at this difficulty. :p
But surely you get a warm fuzzy feeling when you pull off a really hard mission on insane and have to sit there for a few minutes while you realise what you've done?? Or is that just me :D
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I also finished Blue Planet on Insane. Not actually that bad given the excellent point defenses on the post-Capella warships.
However the prospect of attempting ST:R or PI on Insane makes me shiver.
Ironic I struggled a little bit with BP on Insane(which is a good thing :P) but ST:R (apart from the damned escape pod mission) wasn't that bad at all for me oO
To be honest I haven't actually tried ST:R on Insane; it might be just fine. I'm just remembering 'Return to Ross 128' and how hard it was to get all the bonus objectives.
Procyon Insurgency would probably be doable too since most of the missions can be solved with Stiletto spam.
I played through most of the damn campaign until I realized that Stilettos were untargettable. I used Trebs the whole time. It got so much easier.
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Insane can be done, but I don't find it very "comfortable" at all.
By "comfortable", I mean that some of the missions really don't feel right with it, they feel kind of awkward.
Technically by doing Insane, you're not cheating anymore, as your ship will be the way it should and not made better than it should be. However, when you look at what you're often up against, it starts to sound just downright "Insane" in a lot of cases.
That being said, I always thought it would be interesting to have an alternative "balanced" difficulty, where your ship would not be given any advantages but at the same time the amount of enemies would be reduced somewhat to more reasonable levels, making individual confrontations more exciting without cranking overall the difficulty up by such a large degree, like a sort of step sideways rather than a step up from Hard.
Though maybe someone has already made a mod for that but I never heard of it.
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Eh I usually just play medium or sometimes I play Hard. Insane might be doable but I've never bothered.
I'm less concerned about "achieving all the objectives" or getting a good score than simply playing through the story.
Freespace is first and foremost a story to me, not a point total.
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The argument can be made, however, that the story can only fully be experienced when the player isn't cushioned by unrealistic damage buffers and AI handicaps. The Shivans in FS2, for example, seem much more formidable on Insane, and it kinda demolishes the 'zomg Alpha 1 is teh jesus' syndrome.
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The argument can be made, however, that the story can only fully be experienced when the player isn't cushioned by unrealistic damage buffers and AI handicaps. The Shivans in FS2, for example, seem much more formidable on Insane, and it kinda demolishes the 'zomg Alpha 1 is teh jesus' syndrome.
Alpha 1 is the jesus syndrome is due to the incompetence of the wingman moreso than the lethality of the Shivans.
He's only remarkable because all of his friends keep dying when he does not. If a person actually finished a mission with more friends in tow it wouldn't seem that remarkable (ie see Into the Lions Den for competent wingmen who make A1 feel like a regular bloke).
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Exactly the point: on Insane, your wingmates will save your life and you'll probably end up dying nearly as much as them.
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Exactly the point: on Insane, your wingmates will save your life and you'll probably end up dying nearly as much as them.
I usually die faster on Insane than any of my wingmen. It happened once, when I forgot to type www.freespace2.com.
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Okay--lets try this. Anyone beat the FS 2 vanilla campaign on Hard or Insane in one life?
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Never dying?
Hrm. I didn't die for a while, but it would take QuantumDelta-level skillz to pull it off. I believe it has been done more than once, though.
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Lets up the ante even further--using a joystick, NOT a mouse to aim.
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**** that. I play keyboard only!
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I once found the ease of keyboard-only play dubious, but after a few key binds, it's an interesting change from a keyboard-mouse combination. :nod:
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**** that. I play keyboard only!
/me salutes General Battuta.
AYE SIR!!! :yes2::nod::yes:
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I use the keyboard as well.. my only complain is not being able to asign the roll left-right commands to the 1 and 3 keys on the numpad.
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**** that. I play keyboard only!
A Keyboard??? Urrrrgh *shivers*
How can you use a keyboard, the only way to do it is with a joystick. :D :D
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Never needed a joystick. Had one back home, but it just felt kind of imprecise.
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I only play in Insane / Joystick now. Even User-made campaigns.
It takes me, sometimes, an awful number of tries. Retail is not so hard, FS 1 as seen by SF-Junky was a tad (a lot) harder.
I have just finished the ST:R level in which you escort a group of 3 Science Vessels. I also finished PI like this, except I only had a mouse back then, and that I had to lower the difficulty (to hard or average, can't remember) on 2 levels (the one where you must take as much guns as possible on some big thing, and the final one.)
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Same here. I've spent so much time on keyboard to bother with a joystick already.
As for the thread: I play the main campaign and playtest on Medium, but I play user-made campaigns on Easy or Very Easy. I'm playing to have fun, not to get humiliated by dozens of faceless computer-controlled enemies who hit me whenever some mathematical probability calculation called "Accuracy" in the ai.tbl returns a sufficiently high number. The AI can afford to die in lots of the cases, but it's enough for the player to die once for the AI players to win. Then it starts all over again. It's inherently unfair.
So in a word: I'm not a masochist, and I don't understand those players who love virtual humiliation by multiple infallible computerized opponents.
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Two reasons for high difficulty :
i. Immersion. I am frustratred to see that I am so better than other pilots in "normal", so I feel like i am cheating, AND I breaks my suspension of belief. Arguably, I should stop at "Hard" on User Made campaigns, since at this level I pass with some ease but I still feel there is a resistance in front of me. But for some reason, I don't do it.
ii. Duration. Without Insane difficulty, I would finish most campaigns in a couple days.
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I would think playing keyboard only would make the game rather easy--as you don't have to fight the controls so much and you can be so precise with ease. On medium I find it well, kinda on the easy side as well, once you get to hard or higher the enemies start to get pretty crazy challenging to hit at times.
The only thing that bugs me about FS 2's campaign vs. FS 1's is the enemies are total missile whores in part two.
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Why play on Insane? It's so much more fun to dogfight in a bomber on easy. :D
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For the longest time I played only with keyboard/mouse. I've got a joystick now, but I still need the mouse for long-range shots. The problem is the stick's too noisy to be set to zero-deadzone effectively... despite the Logitech software that will let me tweak the joystick settings directly.
...If there would be one neat piece of hardware to have for FS... it would be a custom-configured external numpad. Slave all the comm functions to it and you'd have a much easier time! It would be quite cool to build a full-scale FS cockpit console; makes me think of a thread a while back where they were putting FS in a VR environment... can't remember which one it was though...
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The joystick ramping behavior in FS does leave much to be desired (though I think one or two of the coders have taken steps at fixing it up), but I could never see myself playing the game any other way. As far as I'm concerned, it's the best interface for making smooth broad motions in multiple directions, and you just can't beat the sense of immersion that it provides. Plus, given my skill level, I don't rely so much on fine aiming as getting right up in the rear of the enemy and jamming down the primary trigger. :p
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The joystick ramping behavior in FS does leave much to be desired (though I think one or two of the coders have taken steps at fixing it up), but I could never see myself playing the game any other way.
In the same way that I can't see myself playing FS2 or D3 with anything other than a keyboard. :p
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But seriously, though? Flying around a kickass interstellar spaceship with on-or-off keystrokes? Hell, the only thing worse than that are Star Trek's touchpads, which is why Tom Paris made the brilliant decision to outfit the Delta Flyer with good ol' analog controls in Voyager. :p
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I really can't think of playing any flight or space sims without a joystick. It would be like playing a race sim without a wheel.
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For the longest time I played only with keyboard/mouse. I've got a joystick now, but I still need the mouse for long-range shots. The problem is the stick's too noisy to be set to zero-deadzone effectively... despite the Logitech software that will let me tweak the joystick settings directly.
...If there would be one neat piece of hardware to have for FS... it would be a custom-configured external numpad. Slave all the comm functions to it and you'd have a much easier time! It would be quite cool to build a full-scale FS cockpit console; makes me think of a thread a while back where they were putting FS in a VR environment... can't remember which one it was though...
It's in the code forum, the guy who spoke to me about it still wants to do it but for the most part it'd be up to us(and by us, I mean the coders) to get it done I think, well, most of it anyway.
I would suggest you guys who think joysticks are superior and required come play some multi ;p
For those of you that prefer it, I've found quite a few people end up complaining (if they're not hyper competitive anyway) that they end up extremely tired after a good tvt. :P
Meanwhile us keyboard users have barely inserted any physical effort, just a lot more judgement and skill.
'Course, I similarly swap over to the mouse for extreme-range maxim de-turreting and stuff.
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Like I said, I'm not in it for the aim accuracy or mad skillz or fatigue reduction or anything like that. Spaceships should have a real control stick, and that's that. :p
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I think the topic title should replace "sadist" with "masochist".
Just saying.
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Yes that has been noted.
You surely mean masochists?
Sadists would be people who make super-hard missions.
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... or players that would disable enemy fighter before shooting them down.
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Or mod the Cyclops to be usable as a dumb-fire warhead and let it loose on fighters. :P
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Or mod the Cyclops to be usable as a dumb-fire warhead and let it loose on fighters. :P
With its nonexistent shield damage, give me a Rockeye any day against fighters.
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I only play in Insane / Joystick now. Even User-made campaigns.
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I have just finished the ST:R level in which you escort a group of 3 Science Vessels.
Oy. Well done. :) Let me know how you do when you get to Chasing Shadows. :D
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Took me 50 tries, and the final technique involve more knowing the exact spawn time and the relative spawn points of the shivans.
I should really carry on on hard. I have no played since I finished that level (MMP2 on Europa Universalis III got released in between :lol:)
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I usually start on Insane until I get tired of dying dozens of times per mission before beating them and going back to Hard (lol). However, if a campaign has a recommended difficulty level, I would start with that first.
As for the controls, I map the pitch axis to the extra buttons on my mouse so that I could DIVE DIVE DIVE when needed while maintaining the aiming precision the mouse affords. Therefore I have the capability to smoothly rotate in (arguably) the most important axis while still having minute control.