Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => Topic started by: Marcov on October 14, 2009, 08:07:11 am
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For seeing the awesome power of the NTD Repulse in the FS2 campaign, I basically think the Orion is simply an overkill ship.
However, just one thing.
I tried testing the Orion against a Ravana. The Ravana totally toasted the Orion up with its 2 SReds and LReds, with the Orion firing with only 1 TerSlash! How can this be??
Another testing mission. I placed a Ravana quite a distance off the Orion (about 3 clicks), and two Lilith cruisers 3000 metres either side of the Orion. However, again, it fires the TerSlash! I find this quite annoying, and replace the TerSlash beams with BGreens via Weapons editor. Still, nothing happens; the Orion fires no beams!
Is this a common problem?
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Not a problem.
Let me guess, you just placed the ships in the mission and gave them orders to attack each other?
If so, the standard FS2 capship behaviour favours the Lilith and Ravana with their massive forward firepower heavily. The Orions big guns, which are placed on its broadside, simply don't have the field of fire to engage those ships head-on, not to mention that the LRed fires a lot faster than the BGreen. Capship duels like this have to be FREDed carefully, with Waypoints and everything to simulate an exciting battle.
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I've noticed that nearly ALL Terran capships can't fire properly. In fact, I think they can't fire at all. While look at the Shivans. They have no problems in launching beams!
Besides, I didn't really give any attack orders. I rely on the ship to fire its beam. And I didn't forget the beam-free-all SEXP.
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Well, there's the "All ships beam-freed by default" option in mission specs, which is probably a better option. And Terran beams have high recharge rates, which in turn are dependent on the difficulty setting. Beams on Insane fire much faster than on Easy.
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The E's right, you really need to FRED the thing some waypoints so it has opportunities to use its broadside armament, even then, Shivan Capships generally outperform the Terrans'. The saving grace really is coordinated fighter-large ship operations by the GTVA, since in the right hands, Terran ships have the capacity to outperform the Shivans. But toe-to-toe, I'd say the GTVA is on the backfoot without smart strategical planning and deployment etc.
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Seeing as in the FreeSpace universe bombers are probably the most powerful anti capship weapon (apart from maybe the Santhanas) and the Terran's bombers and fighters IMO are better than the Shivan's it makes sense that the Shivan capships are better than the GTVA's
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The Ravana is briefed in game as a cap ship killer, basically a Ravana is to a Destroyer what a Corvette is to a cruiser. The Orion though armed towards cap ship warfare side suffers from having to be broadside to its target to get the maximum effect where as the Ravana toasts its target on approach
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Shivans ships have only one advantage - beam power.
Equip an Orion with shivan beams and THEN do the test. :pimp:
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Hm... the Moloch can be a menace to fighters (especially on harder difficulties) because of its missiles and flak... and the Orion has no missile launchers at all.
As far as warships versus warships, beams are the way to go, but when you consider the fighter complements, or fighters called in as reinforcements from elsewhere, the Shivans have a bit of an advantage there.
Really the Orion just has a pathetic anti-fighter armament for a ship of its size.
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Shivans ships have only one advantage - beam power.
Equip an Orion with shivan beams and THEN do the test. :pimp:
The Ravana still seems to pulverize it...
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Make a beam with a huge radius and huge subsystem damage?
Speaking of which, has anyone ever made area-of-effect subsystem damage weapons?
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Shivans ships have only one advantage - beam power.
Equip an Orion with shivan beams and THEN do the test. :pimp:
The Ravana still seems to pulverize it...
Start them both in optimal fireing positions. Orion wins or both die.
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How's that possible? A Ravana has significantly more total firepower.
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The Orion is capable of putting three BGreens and two TerSlashes if you put it on its strongest side, if it had Shivan beams then it would be outpowering the Ravana three LReds to two plus whatever Shivan beam replacing the TerSlashes.
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Oh whoops I didn't realize you still had Shivan beams on it.
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It's the Port-side of the Orion that has more beam coverage right?
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How's that possible? A Ravana has significantly more total firepower.
its all about weapons layout, the Ravana has all its nastiest guns strapped to the front of the ship pointing forwards, the Orion on the other hand has most of its firepower strapped to the sides facing sideways. TerSlas turret does more damage to the target if it hits for the full duration than Sred so under.
though blob turrets have an effect on destroyers its like a mosquito to an elephant, enough will kill it but the big guns tend to do the job before there is any significant effect on a strait fight but even then terrans have the advantage of range and depending on comparison have the edge on refire or damage
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When you play to an orion's strengths and bring its flank beams to bear, its nearly undefeatable in the realm of Capship combat. It has that many cannons. Only ship ive seen take down an orion at its best position is a Demon, and it owes that to the 60K HP it has more than the Old rustbucket Orions.
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Just looking at the numbers though, those two LReds are the equivalent of five BGreens. Also, in optimal firing positions, the Ravana would be firing all of it beams while the Orion would not.
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Actually, the Orion might win in broadside-vs.-nose.
Canonically Shivan AI levels are higher, but that's usually on fighters rather than warships. I dunno if that'd make a big difference.
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Canonically Shivan AI levels are higher, but that's usually on fighters rather than warships. I dunno if that'd make a big difference.
I think it does, high AI levels have less fire wait time and I think that applies to turrets as well
aaand instead of doing a random assumption I decided as I was typing this to do an actually test between a captain and a general capship.
And yeah, the general capship fired its forward main beam cannong 5 times on the target dummy whereas the captain ai class only fired it once.
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Wow, crap, that's a big difference.
I'm not sure that the Shivans canonically have better warship AI, though.
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All ships seem to start off with the same AI in FRED, although I believe Fury once said that the AI class popup selection box is bogus.
The Orion lacks severely in terms of forward firepower. The only turret on it ideally placed for a toe-to-toe engagement is that laser turret mounted on the underside of the nose. In Derelict, I think, the MTD Orion has a BFGreen mounted on that triple turret.
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Yeah, I also recall Fury saying AI on capship turrets wasn't affected by the selection box setting.
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Hrmmm, you summoned me?
All ships seem to start off with the same AI in FRED, although I believe Fury once said that the AI class popup selection box is bogus.
I think you're referring to Sushi's AI bug which has been fixed in newer 3.6.11 nightlies.
Yeah, I also recall Fury saying AI on capship turrets wasn't affected by the selection box setting.
Everything I've seen indicates turret AI is not affected by pilot AI in the slightest, these are two different things. That's what I meant. However, it is possible that Sushi's AI bug may also affect turret AI. If it does, it is currently unknown whether Sushi's fix also fixes turret AI.
And by AI bug I am referring to the bug where FS2 ignored AI class selected in fred and used default AI class instead.
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You did take into account hostile AI being gimped on lower difficulty settings, right? Put two identical capships against one another and the friendly one will win every time on Medium and below I think, assuming no obvious advantages (like one hiding in the other's blind spot or something.
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Yeah, I also recall Fury saying AI on capship turrets wasn't affected by the selection box setting.
Putting a turret's AI setting to General will increase its rate of fire. As you should well know. :p
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Yeah, I also recall Fury saying AI on capship turrets wasn't affected by the selection box setting.
Putting a turret's AI setting to General will increase its rate of fire. As you should well know. :p
Coming from someone who wanted to put ULTRA Anti-Fighter beams on all turrets of all hostile ships in a certain mission. :P
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Not all hostile ships, and not all the turrets.
Wait, which mission was that anyway? bp2-02? Or was this for ED?
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Wait, there's so many you have to ask? :nervous: What's with you and ULTRA's? :lol:
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Not all hostile ships, and not all the turrets.
Oh come on, I know it wasn't 100% true but a bit of healthy exaggeration can't hurt. :P
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Wait, there's so many you have to ask? :nervous: What's with you and ULTRA's? :lol:
ULTRAs are the strongest AAA beams in FS2 canon and has almost no recharge delay.
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Well thank you Captain Oblivious, I didn't know that.
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Wait, there's so many you have to ask? :nervous: What's with you and ULTRA's? :lol:
ULTRAs are the strongest AAA beams in FS2 canon and has almost no recharge delay.
Trust me, Fury's aware.
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Yeah but seriously what is up with Dekker and ULTRA's?
He frakking loves them
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Wait, there's so many you have to ask? :nervous: What's with you and ULTRA's? :lol:
ULTRAs are the strongest AAA beams in FS2 canon and has almost no recharge delay.
Trust me, Fury's aware.
Fury is an admin and he has admin powers.
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Yeah but seriously what is up with Dekker and ULTRA's?
He frakking loves them
How can you not love something that's even more powerful than the SAAA?
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oddly, those terslashes are a big variable. I've done a fair amount of capital ship cage matches just to test them, and the terslashes have about a 1/5 odds of hacking the forward beams off of the ravanna before they destroy the orion.
on a side note, a deimos approaching a ship at a 45 degree angle and at close range can get 3 terslashes on one target. it often wins battles it shouldn't through subsystem and turret rape with those beams.
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I think it's also dependent on the direction that the beams slash. If you have a nice long target (i.e. any destroyer) and the TerSlash goes along the length of it, the target will take quite a lot of damage.
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I think it's also dependent on the direction that the beams slash. If you have a nice long target (i.e. any destroyer) and the TerSlash goes along the length of it, the target will take quite a lot of damage.
And if it goes vertically, the target will take virtually no damage.
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So, so true. :nod:
Maybe that's why a Deimos takes quite a while to cream an Arcadia. :drevil:
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Is there some kind of editor?
Where can I find it?
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Editor for...?
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/me almost gave RedBaron the directions to find FRED2.
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So, so true. :nod:
Maybe that's why a Deimos takes quite a while to cream an Arcadia. :drevil:
Sometimes slash beams do the daftest things, like *just* slice the bottom tower of the Arcadia. Sure, you'll destroy the random subsystem there but the Arcadia will probably take, what, 1-2% damage at most.
I must prefer spearmint beams, they're much more consistent.
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I got wacked out of nowhere by a friendly terslash beam once. Instant death.
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Slash beams are wonderful at taking out enemy fighters approaching it.
...and random fighters elsewhere...
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I prefer regulr beams too.
There's a something about that big, powefull shaft of light that knows where it's going and penetrates the hull hard...I can't put my finger on it.
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In FS, I prefer regular beams, but I think using slashers helps to balance beams in custom mods, plus they look great in battle.
I'm using slashing for all beams in my mod, so they don't do as much damage as direct fire beams, which allows battles to take longer.
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One death out of every three when I play Apocalypse on medium or below were the lovely results of the Deimos' slashers. The second involves the miraculous chance of being spot on between two capital ships where the large non-slashers go through. The last is just me being stupid in most cases.
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I recall being hit by a glancing TerSlash shot from a Deimos once. I didn't die because I was playing on Very Easy.
Oh, and I believe Flaming_Sword has made some slightly better slashing beams in his Shivans! mod. I've seen them in action before, and I think they're pretty good.
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Lengthening its firing time seems to make it behave closer to a direct-fire beam, so that might be it.
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Does it make them slash slower? The Shivan slashers I saw in Shivans! seem to do that.
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Yeah. They slash slower the longer its life is set to.
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The "spearmint" beams do absurd things like -just- hit the tip of some spiky protrusion on the ship and deal the full amount of damage...
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The "spearmint" beams do absurd things like -just- hit the tip of some spiky protrusion on the ship and deal the full amount of damage...
Yep. :)
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The "spearmint" beams do absurd things like -just- hit the tip of some spiky protrusion on the ship and deal the full amount of damage...
IMO that is down to the lack of damage modelling in FS.
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Yeah. They slash slower the longer its life is set to.
In that case, if you set a slash beam to last for about 0.5s and set its recharge time to 0s... :drevil:
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Rave beam?
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Or set an "AAA" type beam with 0s recharge and 0.1s length per fire, 0s wait between volley in the 3-fire part, and you have an inescapable tracking beam, unless you get out of range...an interesting idea would be to set the damage and mass very low so that if you approach a target you slowly get damaged.
Make it invisible and you can have some interesting missions...
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That would be ... evil. Christ I cannot think of anything worse than an AAA beam with no recharge delay. Although I guess in that way it could be used as a damage sphere around the ship.
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Or set an "AAA" type beam with 0s recharge and 0.1s length per fire, 0s wait between volley in the 3-fire part, and you have an inescapable tracking beam, unless you get out of range...an interesting idea would be to set the damage and mass very low so that if you approach a target you slowly get damaged.
Make it invisible and you can have some interesting missions...
In that case, it's no longer an AAA beam, but battle aura. :drevil:
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Well, it won't be a sphere since it'll presumably have an arc so it can't shoot through the ship.
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But if the beam is invisible how can the player tell they are being shot through the hull
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Well, it won't be a sphere since it'll presumably have an arc so it can't shoot through the ship.
Yeah but seeing as most ships have all round coverage and it wouldn't take long to kill each fighter it is basically a battle sphere.
But if the beam is invisible how can the player tell they are being shot through the hull
Well technically yeah but how many people are gonna play around with the turrets if all they need to do is load up and invisible beam animation and change the timings???
Although it would still make the beam sound so it would be somewhat ... odd.
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You can make it so it doesn't have a sound though right?
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I assume it's in the .tlb file, been I haven't played around with it recently. Also you have to remember to actually do it. :D
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Well, it won't be a sphere since it'll presumably have an arc so it can't shoot through the ship.
What about the Ravana?
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What...about it?
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It routinely shoots its SAAA through its hull?
Well, so does the Rakshasa.
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It routinely shoots its SAAA through its hull?
Well, so does the Rakshasa.
Really? The only way for the Rakshasa's SAAA to clip its source is if it's fired upwards. I've never seen a Rakshasa fire it's SAAA upwards.
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I always see it fire upwards.
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It is somewhat broken, but tbh that wouldn't matter if the beam were invisible. The only thing is that it still wouldn't be a "Sphere" as it would have a limited number of targets.
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Firing through the hull can be fixed with the "check hull" (or whatever) flag right?
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Supposed to, tried it, did nothing.
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It definitely works. It's a subsystem flag.
We had to rebalance stuff in WiH when we added it because Hecates wouldn't shoot through their own hulls any more.
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That's bad for the Hecate, isn't it.
It now has even MORE blind spots.
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It definitely works. It's a subsystem flag.
I don't get it...why not make is a ship flag? Easier than setting is to every susystems and makes the ships.tbl file smaller to boot.
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I dunno, you'd have to ask a coder. You can at least specify it for individual turrets this way.
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Maybe you want some turrets to shoot through the hull and some not?