Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: xclavex on July 19, 2011, 10:38:34 am
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It's a great mod, fantastic ship designs and mission layout. It is very engrossing, and part 2 is far superior to part one. I do have one mini-gripe though; it is quite anti-climactic that EVERY single time you are about to blow up an enemy cruiser, they conveniently manage to warp out. I mean come on...let me blow dem ships up!
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You expect the enemy to stay on field and die, when they have their jump drives ready to retreat ? Think about the cost of building a cruiser and train its crew, compared to repairing an existing damaged cruiser with intact crew.
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BUT! If you take out their engine subsystems then they're sitting ducks. :)
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You expect the enemy to stay on field and die, when they have their jump drives ready to retreat ? Think about the cost of building a cruiser and train its crew, compared to repairing an existing damaged cruiser with intact crew.
The difference being whenever a friendly vessel is about to be destroyed...it blows up, it's like friendly cap ships have no sense of value. lol
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Did you notice something about those ships though? They always jumped in previously from some other position, or were in a situation where they couldn't jump out due to their mission parameters.
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That's because friendly vessels are often defending something. They're in no position to retreat.
GTVA is on full offensive. They can run whenever they want.
Ack. Ninja.
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Aristeia would probably have been an easier mission if the Indus would jump when she's in the single digits and being beamed by the Medea, but that's really the only mission I can think of where a friendly capship sticks around and dies just for the hell of it. I'm sure we can have a stupid 3-page flamewar over this statement.
As others have said, many missions can be quite satisfying if you focus on disabling enemy ships, although they also become much harder.
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There is the Valerie, that get's blown up in Darkest Hour no matter what. Same for the Medea.
And the majority of GTVA capships can be disabled, which results in their destruction. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head that are protected from that are the two Hecates (Hood and Meridian) and the corvettes from Serkr team.
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Just keep in mind that in BPverse, jump drives need recharging after being used. Ships that don't have sprint jump drives and that get engaged minutes after arriving on theatre will likely be unable to retreat.
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There is the Valerie, that get's blown up in Darkest Hour no matter what. Same for the Medea.
And the majority of GTVA capships can be disabled, which results in their destruction. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head that are protected from that are the two Hecates (Hood and Meridian) and the corvettes from Serkr team.
Also the Atreus. Disabling her in Darkest Hour would kind of **** up the plot. :p
Not that the missions are designed so that you're likely to notice. subsys-guardian-theshhold is what Steele is talking about when he says contingencies for contingencies. :D
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You can shoot the engines of the Hood, Meridian and Serkr and would be able to destroy them, but at some point their engines just stop taking damage. That's what I was talking about.
I#m not sure if it is the same for the Atreus, but since she's only present in the mission for such a short time I doubt she needs such protective SEXPs.
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Yeah, looking through the mission file I can't find a subsys-guardian on any of the Atreus's engines. The ship itself is guardianed, however.
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Many tev ships have heavy engine armor as well, which doesn't always make it IMPOSSIBLE to disable them, but brings them pretty close (look at the Carthage escort)
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On lowest difficulty I managed to get all the Carthages escort except one Deimos (from the pair that overcharge their beams) on my best try, though most times I only get two.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the top aces out there can even get all four Corvettes and all cruisers.
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It's pretty hard to take them out on medium.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but does the Meridian have subsystem gaurdian on its engines? Or is it just armored?
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Guardian. Believe the guy who has made enough multiplayer variants of that mish to know nearly all the sexps by heart :p
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If a UEF ship is about to explode, one or two more gauss cannon rounds impacting the enemy isn't even close to the value of the crew and ship itself.
The station they are defending is lost at that point, theres no reason to lose the capitol ships as well.
Thats pretty much my only problem with the campaign at this point though.
The campaign has a surprisingly small number of problems that have any significance.
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Like they mentioned, the UEF ships tend to have longer subspace recharge times than the Tevs
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It comes down to...
in BP canon After use a subspace drive needs chance to charge/cool down/reset (I believe derived from Kings Gambit in the FS2 campaign when it is mentioned in the (command)briefing stage).
This limitation can be circumvented by having a backup drive (called a sprint drive in BP) but only GTVA ships have these sprint drives and then only on select ships due to space and cost limitations.
So if a ship jumps in and is quickly jumped by a superior force (easy to plan with subspace tracking) the ship can't jump out for a set time because the jump drive is inoperable
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It comes down to...
in BP canon After use a subspace drive needs chance to charge/cool down/reset (I believe derived from Kings Gambit in the FS2 campaign when it is mentioned in the (command)briefing stage).
This limitation can be circumvented by having a backup drive (called a sprint drive in BP) but only GTVA ships have these sprint drives and then only on select ships due to space and cost limitations.
So if a ship jumps in and is quickly jumped by a superior force (easy to plan with subspace tracking) the ship can't jump out for a set time because the jump drive is inoperable
If I recall, there were in fact cases where UEF vessels could have departed.
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It comes down to...
in BP canon After use a subspace drive needs chance to charge/cool down/reset (I believe derived from Kings Gambit in the FS2 campaign when it is mentioned in the (command)briefing stage).
This limitation can be circumvented by having a backup drive (called a sprint drive in BP) but only GTVA ships have these sprint drives and then only on select ships due to space and cost limitations.
So if a ship jumps in and is quickly jumped by a superior force (easy to plan with subspace tracking) the ship can't jump out for a set time because the jump drive is inoperable
If I recall, there were in fact cases where UEF vessels could have departed.
The first mission being a prime example, the Ironhide, I believe. The ship captain refuses to jump, even when critically damaged. I usually manage to save the ship, but if the bomber strike manages to hit, the ship just sits there and takes it. While I understand the reasoning behind the decision (Drama, consequences for failing, psychology of UEF captains, ect), it would be nice to see at least 1 UEF ship manage a tactical retreat under fire.
Granted, there is the last mission, but that isn't really under fire, but the looming threat of fire, and tactical overmatch.
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But the Ironhide only says that, when she is damaged badly enough, so some people might never have heard that comment "We are done with running" and something about Jupiter. Can't remember it exactly.
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I thought I missed the "Blue Planet Mini" release for android and iPhone :/