Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Meatball on September 13, 2010, 10:47:09 am
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I just wonder if anyone tries that or plays on insane.
I find Normal way to easy. Hard is pretty good, but the challenge is mild and sometimes just on the edge of to hard. Insane difficult level, so fun! and so hard!
But it's so annoyingly hard. Luckily enemies go for all targets or nearest and not the actual player like some annoying games do.
The experience is so much greater and realistic when the enemies actual feel a bit more like real qualified pilots.
Except that they still don't care about there own survival, like ourselves it's first priority.
I'm at mission 'The sixth wonder' on insane level. Which is pretty hard to complete without loosing a single Convoy ship. But I did 'Slaying Ravana' on hard, because Insane... Sheesh, impossible. I hate the vasudans Serapis, they are lamely weak. Beta wind die within a minute. And I cant change beta wings fighters on that mission.
So its only a bomber wing (alpha) against the Ravana. And you can only choose bomber fighters. And its not gonna work fighting the fighters :P
I really would like to see someone do that mission on insane, even though I'm only at the beginning at insane, so i got a lot more missions to look forward to, lol.
I bet there is someone here that rule on insane
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Many of us play on Insane. It's the only difficulty level that doesn't give the player artificial damage resistance and special protections.
For an added rush I suggest trying out campaigns that use the Fury AI, which makes the enemy pilots a bit more human-like.
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How do I know it uses Fury AI on a campaign?
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How do I know it uses Fury AI on a campaign?
Vassago's Dirge and Blue Planet: War in Heaven both use Fury AI. Wings of Dawn uses a custom AI by Spoon that is, I believe, similar in its asskicking capabilities.
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I believe it should be possible to add blueplanet as a secondary mod in any FS2-based mod.ini, and that will upgrade everything to Fury AI.
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I believe it should be possible to add blueplanet as a secondary mod in any FS2-based mod.ini, and that will upgrade everything to Fury AI.
Why not merely make a separate mod with just Fury AI for that?
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Actually...see, the issue is, you need to select the AI Profile and set the AI classes in-mission. So I'm not totally sure it's portable like that...
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Actually...see, the issue is, you need to select the AI Profile and set the AI classes in-mission. So I'm not totally sure it's portable like that...
Unless you simply renamed Fury AI "FS2 Retail" or whatever and had it override (possibly breaking things...yeah). I don't know anything about Fury's classes though, so I don't know if there's a similar workaround there.
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Actually...see, the issue is, you need to select the AI Profile and set the AI classes in-mission. So I'm not totally sure it's portable like that...
Unless you simply renamed Fury AI "FS2 Retail" or whatever and had it override (possibly breaking things...yeah). I don't know anything about Fury's classes though, so I don't know if there's a similar workaround there.
You could do that, and very easily.
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Note, that unless something's been changed, Fury AI(i.e. smart weapon selection) will override the flag hangup that prevents Basilisks, Aeshmas, Maras, and any unmodified loadout Shivan bombers from using the bank(s) of Trebuchets they carry by default, possibly seriously breaking some missions(the NTC Trinity dies from Basilisk Treb spam before the Dragons can even show up, and prepare to really love any missions that put you in a bomber :P).
That also effects the Horus(the only other retail ship that carries Trebs by default, IIRC), but that would/could probably only seriously affect Vasudan-centric campaigns, I think.
For the most part, you could probably just include a TBM to substitute all those default Trebs for something else, but that could still leave/cause balance issues in some situations.
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Insane seems like "storyline difficulty", that is to say, everything "fights/works like it really would".
Which somewhat puts into perspective the GLARING deficiencies in certain fields of some/most Allied ships (I'm looking at your ludicrously weak shielding and armor, Serapis).
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Actually...see, the issue is, you need to select the AI Profile and set the AI classes in-mission. So I'm not totally sure it's portable like that...
Unless you simply renamed Fury AI "FS2 Retail" or whatever and had it override (possibly breaking things...yeah). I don't know anything about Fury's classes though, so I don't know if there's a similar workaround there.
You could do that, and very easily.
I'm pretty sure that it will not work that way. (I believe) The FS2 retail profile is hardcode and *needs* to be present
Also, even if that is not the case. You very much need to have the default (coward, captain -> general etc) classes present or you'll get a bunch of errors.
So you'd have to change the missions to change the a.i. classes of each ship anyway, or change the ships.tbl and change the default a.i. class that a ship class uses.
Either way, it requires a bit more effort then "Change one line = instant magic" :p
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I believe fury's AI tables also modified the retail AI performance so that even if you didn't use the custom AI classifications you still got a change in AI behavior if you used the table. Here are the last tables he created before doing the BP WIH mod.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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So its only a bomber wing (alpha) against the Ravana. And you can only choose bomber fighters. And its not gonna work fighting the fighters :P
I really would like to see someone do that mission on insane, even though I'm only at the beginning at insane, so i got a lot more missions to look forward to, lol.
You need a few tricks to do that mission on insane, and often it's just you and the Vasudan Corvette that are left alive on the battlefield.
The main trick is to fly around the Ravana, keeping it at least 1,5 km away, to get to the Corvette. Then you need to keep your wing near it, you need to escort the ship (it's an easy job), and do bombing runs against the Ravana. You can also disarm it's rear left side for easier bombarding.
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So its only a bomber wing (alpha) against the Ravana. And you can only choose bomber fighters. And its not gonna work fighting the fighters :P
I really would like to see someone do that mission on insane, even though I'm only at the beginning at insane, so i got a lot more missions to look forward to, lol.
You need a few tricks to do that mission on insane, and often it's just you and the Vasudan Corvette that are left alive on the battlefield.
The main trick is to fly around the Ravana, keeping it at least 1,5 km away, to get to the Corvette. Then you need to keep your wing near it, you need to escort the ship (it's an easy job), and do bombing runs against the Ravana. You can also disarm it's rear left side for easier bombarding.
Ehh..
I just kill two basilisks, fly into it and drop a bunch of bombs, and it dies... :<
Though Slaying Ravana is one of those missions that V made that is similar to some off the less awesome campaigns the HLP has put out- obviously, not balanced for insane.
SR was designed by someone who had medium at most in mind, and like campaigns that are the same (or worse, very easy..) should burn in hell.
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SR was designed by someone who had medium at most in mind, and like campaigns that are the same (or worse, very easy..) should burn in hell.
:rolleyes:
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It's true! If you spare no thought for the people who don't like 'being invulnerable and good at the game', and therefore don't play on the 2 year old difficulty, then you just shouldn't release campaigns :P
Also! Why aren't you on IRC, cuz that would have been an IRC comment rather than a forum post otherwise :<!
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inb4troll
QD is well known for his god-hatred of anything slightly close to be campaign-related, aside from BP. To the original poster of this thread : do not take his comments into consideration about this subject.
<3 QD
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Such lies, ST:R is brilliant too, and Spoons near-TC is excellent, VD too! :<
....And then I start to struggle... :p
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It's true! If you spare no thought for the people who don't like 'being invulnerable and good at the game', and therefore don't play on the 2 year old difficulty, then you just shouldn't release campaigns :P
Yeah, we're all complete n00bs unworthy of our Wings badge unless we cater to your 1337 sk1llz of killing Shivans while bragging like a prepubescent Halo gamer.
I think I'll copy this over here:
(http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/8626/vennx.png)
As someone who plays on Medium at most, you're honestly acting like that guy I played against in UT3, whose nickname was something involving farting, who always yelled in all caps and who spent more time complaining about his team being morons than playing UT3.
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heat seekers are great on insane because you don't have to wait for them to
LOCK ;7 ;7 ;7
inb4 this thread didn't need to be locked
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okay I unlocked it because it felt a little hasty
Everyone be cool now, okay? Be cooool.
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heat seekers are great on insane because you don't have to wait for them to
LOCK ;7 ;7 ;7
inb4 this thread didn't need to be locked
I see what you did there...
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*Sighs*.
You are not the only person that gets that impression from me Shivan Hunter, however, people who know me realise it's not really true.
My complaint, argument, and connotation simply goes as far as to be frustrated by fredders who ruin insane game play in favour of 'fun' very easy game play.
There is so very rarely any effort on behalf of the fredders to use difficulty-based sexps to address this either, and typically insane ends up being task-overload for what is a self-playing mission on very easy.
Hense, the complaint, because 80% plus HLP campaigns fall into this category, it's nothing to do with elitism, it's simply that people who enjoy fighting the AI on fair-terms get almost completely ignored by the majority of the community.
If this occurred in reverse there would be a god damn riot.
This leaves us "leet" people understandably slightly miffed, sarcy, and particularly unforgiving of **** -very easy players.
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The thing is, though, it's all a question of audience. How many of you "leet" players are out there in the first place? You're certainly a small minority compared to those who generally play on Very Easy through Medium. Hell, I'd be willing to bet that the majority of campaign authors don't ply on Insane, which would sort of explain why they don't balance for it...it's hard to test missions that you yourself can't complete. I know I didn't move up from Easy to Medium until fairly recently, since I didn't want to subject myself to more mission failures than I already had to deal with. It may be frustrating to someone of your skill level to play certain campaigns, but you have to keep in mind that you don't represent the general target player for campaign releases.
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Aye, there's the rub.
You can't balance a campaign/mission for insane if you can't play on insane. How will you know if is something is balanced for insane or just impossible?
Get QD to beta test everything?
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Even if QD can beat it, it doesn't mean the rest of the community can. I've never seen videos of him playing seriously, but if the legends are true, his skillz are near-game breaking.
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Speaking honestly, if you can complete WiH on medium you can probably manage most other campaigns that are balanced for insane - on insane, 'cept maybe WoD.
The only reason I might be any better than your typical insane player on HLP is because of multi, even very-easy players on single player tend to play multi on insane, and after a few tvts your skills go far beyond the AIs even on insane (though WiHs' AI with all the hard work by Fury and the others brings that back a bit).
Generally speaking I doubt the group of people who do play on insane is a statistically insignificant number on here but I sincerely doubt it's anything mindblowing.
Maybe a poll should be posted ;o
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QD, you're wrong. You know that, right ?
I managed to complete WiH, in Medium, with less than 5 fps, and I can't even go close to complete the retail FS2 campaign in Insane.
On the other hand, you can't really compare insane in campaigns with insane in multi because the lag makes for a totally different gameplay experience. You just can't play single the same way you play multi in FS, that just doesn't seem physically possible.
it's simply that people who enjoy fighting the AI on fair-terms get almost completely ignored by the majority of the community.
This leaves us "leet" people understandably slightly miffed, sarcy, and particularly unforgiving of **** -very easy players.
I love how you say "us" to talk about only one guy : yourself :p.
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I've tried hard and insane before but gave up almost instantly. Highest level AI I can fight and not get frustrated is medium. I've been playing this game since 2000-2001 too lol.
I use keyboard btw...numpad, a, z, tab etc... I'm aware this is not the best way to play games like this (Descent too) but I don't care.
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I've tried hard and insane before but gave up almost instantly. Highest level AI I can fight and not get frustrated is medium. I've been playing this game since 2000-2001 too lol.
I use keyboard btw...numpad, a, z, tab etc... I'm aware this is not the best way to play games like this (Descent too) but I don't care.
No, keyboard is actually (in terms of raw performance, some would argue not immersion) the best way to fly. Good for turning.
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I love how you say "us" to talk about only one guy : yourself :p.
QD isn't actually the only person around who enjoys playing on Insane, you know. I certainly don't play on it all the time (Hard tends to be my regular difficulty as Insane does tend to own my ass with alarming regularity), but I play it enough to see where he's coming from.
And he's right - Campaigns really should be balanced so as to be at least reasonably playable on all difficulties. And it isn't really that hard a thing to do, either. The difficulty based conditional SEXPs give a FREDder an amazing amount of control about how a mission will play on each difficulty, and even if you don't play on Insane yourself, it should still be possible to tell if the difficulty is completely over the top... usually from you getting blown out of the sky before the mission even starts to pick up its pace.
Finally, keep in mind that QD's original complaint was not against people who play on easier difficulties, but against those who release campaigns which are only playable on those difficulties. Admittedly he seems to have branched out a bit since then, but a page 1 misunderstanding on that particular bit seems to have caused the whole discussion that's now taking place.
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I play on insane a lot of the time too. It does mean that sometimes I die more than 5 times before beating the mission, but that's the kind of gameplay I'm looking for.
Basically, if I want a fluid experience or just care about the story, I'll play at medium or hard. If I'm going through for an additional run, it's almost always on insane for shiz and gigz.
Oh, and I'm 100% mouse here for two reasons: My keyboard lacks a numpad (laptop) and I can't aim worth anything without the mouse. A full sweep gives me an arc of almost 180 degrees in a perseus, so turning rates are not a problem when I get a feel for the maximum speed you can move the mouse without "wasting" table space (this depends on what fighter you're flying, of course).
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Insane is like Haloverse's Legendary. You'll die 1000* times before completing a mission.
I generally stick to normal - challenging yet but not too easy
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I use keyboard btw...numpad, a, z, tab etc... I'm aware this is not the best way to play games like this (Descent too) but I don't care.
I tried that, then I switched to the mouse, it felt closer to a joystick.
More in relation to the topic : increasing the difficulty level was what kept me playing before I found HLP & FSO.
It takes a little time to get used to dodging missiles & canons, but once this is done, it is actually quite fun to play on insane.
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I prefer Insane, for challenge and realism.
On the other hand, I play most custom campaigns on Medium, because they are may not be balanced for Insane and have some sequences that rely on Medium difficulty level (beam refire rates are the usual cause).
When campaign is stated to work on Insane, I play it on Insane.
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Yeah, we're all complete n00bs unworthy of our Wings badge unless we cater to your 1337 sk1llz of killing Shivans while bragging like a prepubescent Halo gamer.
I think I'll copy this over here:
(http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/8626/vennx.png)
As someone who plays on Medium at most, you're honestly acting like that guy I played against in UT3, whose nickname was something involving farting, who always yelled in all caps and who spent more time complaining about his team being morons than playing UT3.
This post made my day.
This is Shivan Hunter to QD:
(http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/1160/1280019466747.gif)
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Anymore of your little clique want to try again? :rolleyes:
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Why didn't I lock this before....