[Redrake]

I finished the campaign yesterday and today when I wanted to replay Storm the Castle missions I ran into the most amazing bug. All the fighters are available for selection from the early starfuries to the whitestar including narn, centauri and minbari fighters. This bug makes them available for all campaign missions, but not for single missions. I already finished some of the missions using a whitestar (and those rock, especially at taking out capital ships). Nial fighters are also amazing, they can take out zephyrs with one shot.
In now way I am removing this bug

[Prophet]

I'm betting that's not a bug, but rather another FREDing oversight. First possible explanation that comes to mind is that those ships are available for all missions by default and the FREDer didn't touch the team loadout at all but rather controlled the ship availability trough the campaign editor.

[karajorma]

Actually it's not a bug or oversight at all. It's a completely deliberate cheat mode. If you give a certain order or something in the first mission you can play the whole campaign using any ship.

Of course the drawback is that you can do the same thing in the techroom.

In post 3.6.9 builds you can get around this using Team Loadout. Simply assign the number of all unlockable ships to a persistant variable which is set to 0 by default. When the cheat activates you simply set this to another number The beauty of doing it this way is that it won't work in the techroom either. Only in campaign mode with the cheat active  

[IPAndrews]

This sounds like a nice feature to improve the replayability of the campaign. I honestly can't remember if it's intentional or not. Let's just assume it is.

[Redrake]

Actually it's not a bug or oversight at all. It's a completely deliberate cheat mode. If you give a certain order or something in the first mission you can play the whole campaign using any ship.

Actually I was not able to do it in the campaign. Only in tech room. Perhaps I should try to restart the campaign and see if its still there.
One of the most funny part is that when you are using whitestars on all of your wing, when the missions starts, collisions are going to show up (the game was set for much smaller starfuries.
I took a screenshot during Ride of the Valkyrie mission using a Whitestars with a nial fighters escort. I took out the fortress all alone, while the nials dealt with zephyrs.
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a205/Redrake/screen0040.jpg

[karajorma]

Actually I was not able to do it in the campaign. Only in tech room.

It's definitely intentional. Like I said it's a cheat mode. You have to tell one of your wingmen to guard one of the arms of the jumpgate or something to activate it. Once you do that it triggers off a whole bunch of allow-ship orders which makes all the other ships available. If you need further proof that it's deliberate, Mission 1 doesn't have the ships enabled because there is no way to activate them in campaign mode for that mission (Except again with the Team Loadout changes and a PPV).

In the techroom there is no way to deactivate the cheat so it's always active.

[Redrake]

Hmm, I don't remember giving such an order, to guard something I shouldn't have, but I might have done it without intention. OTOH, I never used cheats in the Freespace 2 game, so I'm a noob at this.

[karajorma]

You didn't give the order. So the cheat wasn't active in the campaign. However in the techroom it's always active. No way to prevent it.

[IPAndrews]

Seriously it is an intentional replayability feature... that nobody has noticed until now.

[hansioux]

Seriously it is an intentional replayability feature... that nobody has noticed until now.

i noticed but i didn't know that no one else knew about it.

the whitestar doesn't just collide with each other at the beginning.  They behave like small fighters and ram into each other all the time.

The fact is, even the enemy fighters ram others all the time.  I don't remember this in Freespace...

But it is very fun playing the missions again.

I personally feel that the beam weapon should be secondary weapon on the Whitestar.  The 2 particle weapons are rather slow to be efficient, and with the beam turned on the weapon enegy drains too quickly.  But then I guess it is not as easy as it sounds.  Anyway, the White Star probably isn't suppose to dog fight small fighters anyway. 

In the second mission you can just destroy everything on screen with a White Star, except the Madusa, since otherwise the stroy can't continue

I like to replay the missions with a PSI Thunderbolt with White Star wingmen.  Also, I love the Centari fighter.  It is not as vunerable is it seemed when the computer AI is controlling it.  The canon speed is excerlent and damage level is pretty impressive.  It is fast and manuverable (well, it doesn't strafe like the Starfuries.  But during dog fight, Strafing is too slow to be of any use (except for the AI..... they use it and the response seems pretty impressive.

By the way, cheat or no cheat, you could order the G.O.D Sat. in the Spanish Inquisition mission, and it is awesome.

[Prophet]

the whitestar doesn't just collide with each other at the beginning.  They behave like small fighters and ram into each other all the time.

The fact is, even the enemy fighters ram others all the time.  I don't remember this in Freespace...

Oh yes they do. The AI code in Freespace leaves much to be desired. And there's nothing TBP can do about it.

The Whitestar (are you playing with 3.4 beta?) is a bit goofy since it's just an overgrown bomber. It should be marginally better in 3.4 thanks to some hard work by IPA in the area of gunship AI. But the code itself is still the same, and thus woefully inadequate in handling a ship as big a Whitestar.

[hansioux]

the whitestar doesn't just collide with each other at the beginning.  They behave like small fighters and ram into each other all the time.

The fact is, even the enemy fighters ram others all the time.  I don't remember this in Freespace...

Oh yes they do. The AI code in Freespace leaves much to be desired. And there's nothing TBP can do about it.

The Whitestar (are you playing with 3.4 beta?) is a bit goofy since it's just an overgrown bomber. It should be marginally better in 3.4 thanks to some hard work by IPA in the area of gunship AI. But the code itself is still the same, and thus woefully inadequate in handling a ship as big a Whitestar.

actually i like them doing that.  After collisions they leave a trail of flames when they fly around.  Reminds me of the "turkey" comment made by Bo. 

[Redrake]

Whitestar's beams are kind of tricky to use at first. You must remember that unlike the other type of cannons, you only have to click once and for a short while the beam will be activated. Continuous click will drain the energy in exchange for a much bigger punch. Single click beam is powerful enough to take out any fighter. You also must remember that the targeting system for them is different. The beam strikes wherever you ship's crosshair is.
Too bad you can't select the ship in Nightmare scenario. It would have been fun with so many capital ships around.

[hansioux]

Whitestar's beams are kind of tricky to use at first. You must remember that unlike the other type of cannons, you only have to click once and for a short while the beam will be activated. Continuous click will drain the energy in exchange for a much bigger punch. Single click beam is powerful enough to take out any fighter. You also must remember that the targeting system for them is different. The beam strikes wherever you ship's crosshair is.
Too bad you can't select the ship in Nightmare scenario. It would have been fun with so many capital ships around.

i see your point.

now that i have gotten a hang of it, it is very useful.

I guess my problem comes from wanting to create the TV feel, by shooting the 3 weapons at once.  With that even with one click firemode, twice drains the entire enegy bar.

i like to shoot at my white star wingmen after each mission just to see them in action..... those the AI just turns around and get shot at....

[stargate2008]

I have discovered the cheat as well, but I cant use the beam weapon with the whitestar. I wish that the ships also had a vorlon fighter and shadow fighter. I also wish that i could have a captial ship as a player ship and use it against other capital ships. That would be so cool nd fun!!!

[Herra Tohtori]

I wish I could magically obtain a supermaneuverable Death Star and use it to either ram everything out of battle area or destroy it outright with Super Laser.

Oh yeah, it would kinda make missions more simple to FRED. Just make the player appear and all enemies instantaneously die. The end result is the same. Saves time for both FREDders and players and allows more time to be dedicated for truly productive use of the computer.

Man that would really be a kick-ass mod!


...damn. My brand new sarcasmometer just exploded. Now I have to go to pick glass shards from my hair and eyes for the rest of the evening. Thanks a lot for making me write that.

 

[IPAndrews]

I wish I could magically obtain a supermaneuverable Death Star and use it to either ram everything out of battle area or destroy it outright with Super Laser.

A friend of mine modded one of the X Wing games to do that. Apparently it was quite funny.