Hi all! I recall seeing a while back that someone was thinking of creating an updated version of Retail FS2 (presumably with the latest media VPs etc.), which would use Fury AI and equip all fighters and bombers with reverse thrust, glide etc. Has there been any news on this, as it sounded great 😊?
This brings me to ‘FS Port Recharged’, the working title for a mod concept I have knocking around my noggin. The basic premise would be to make FS1 slightly more realistic, a little more hectic, and quite a bit more challenging. I want the Shivans - ALL SHIVANS - to feel like a genuine threat, as opposed to them feeling like cannon fodder who only win due to the Lucifer’s plot armour. But I want to do so without having to make large scale changes which I wouldn’t know how to do anyway. Thus far, my initial thoughts on it, and the features it might include, are;
• All friendly and enemy fighters, bombers etc to have Fury AI.
• All fighters and bombers to have reverse thrust. (Nothing major – I’m not talking reverse afterburners like a Kentauroi.) Say 10-30M/S to avoid those “I have crashed into an Orion and now I can’t back out” woes.
• Glide for all fighters and bombers – it is space after all. It might make scanning moving targets a little easier too.
• Blanket speed increase for all fighters and bombers because FS feels painfully slow at times. I’m not sure how much of an increase – suggestions are welcome.
• Afterburners for the fighters and bombers that currently lack them – Anubis, some of the Shivan bombers etc.
• Missile speed, guns muzzle velocity etc. will need to be boosted too – at least enough to match the increase in fighter/bomber ship speed, then possibly a little extra.
• Missiles to be a genuine danger to the player instead of a minor annoyance. I recall once in Bem Cavalgar my Apollo ate a missile from a Scorpion. It severely damaged my hull, and knocked out multiple subsystems leaving me stranded. It was only due to the use of my wingmen as cover and the timely arrival of the support ship that I survived. I learnt to respect missiles from then on. (I have a suspicion the Shivan missiles in Bem Cavalgar have higher subsystem damage.)
• The rate of fire for fighter/bomber primaries increased dramatically. I would probably need to nerf the damage-per-shot to balance them out. (Thinking of BP’s Balor as a reference, or possibly even ASW’s Crete.)
• The DPS of the Avenger to be nerfed somewhat so that A – it better fits its ‘it wasn’t designed to go against shields, but it’s better than nothing and it’s all we have right now” status and B – to make the Prometheus the superior mid-to-late-game weapon it is supposed to be.
• Blob turrets to have higher projectile speeds, higher rates of fire, and somewhat longer ranges. I envision cruisers as being anti-fighter / bomber escorts that make the space within range of their guns a very hazardous place to be. A cruiser should be a dangerous foe to strike craft, not a sitting duck. The higher RoF would also increase their DPS, thus making them slightly less useless against other capital ships.
• Pheonix 5 and/or Stilettos will probably need to be introduced earlier on to give fighters a fang-pulling weapon.
• The range of the disruptor will probably need to be increased too as a stand-in for the Maxim. I’m thinking the range ‘sweet spot’ would be 100 or so meters less than the range of a cruiser’s blobs so that a player will need to dart in, fire a few shots, then dart out again before the returning blob fire crucifies them. Rinse and repeat. I imagine this ‘hit and run’ gameplay loop will be quite fun.
• Shivan primaries to be as dangerous as the briefing suggest they should be (Insert scorpion firing nerf gun meme here). Bem Cavalgar does this already – its Shivan primaries do decent damage per shot, have a very high projectile speed, and a very high RoF (They are basically packing Balors on crack.
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• The number of Shivan fighters and bombers might need to be reduced slightly to balance out the increased challenge posed by each individual ship – perhaps by reducing the numbers of fighters and bombers in a wing from four to three (A number / motif the Shivans seem to have ‘a thing’ for anyway.
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Would I be right in thinking that this could probably be achieved by changing some of the values in the files, and/or copying and pasting the values, files etc. from some other mods? Since I have next to zero experience of programming, coding, FREDing and can’t 3D model for $h1t, this would probably be the limit of my abilities (and even then, I might need some help – old dogs and new tricks and all that.
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V2.0
More ambitious plans for a notional version 2.0 might include:
• Adding more effective capital ship weapons (such as the rail guns and neutron guns from Series Resurrecta.) This should make capital ship duels a little more interesting. Also – the use of railguns as primary capital ship weapons would help to explain why Great War cap ship weapons were so ineffective against the Lucifer, since kinetic weapons are canonically largely ineffective against shields.
• ECM jamming – there is a Shivan ship model that would be ideal for this.
• TAG missiles
• Ballistic weapons with ammo counters. (I’m thinking a precursor to the Maxim, which I’m provisionally calling the ‘Browning’ hehe).
• Faster capital ships – although I can imagine this might mess up the timings of mission events – ships reaching nodes too quickly etc., so perhaps not, or only a negligible increase.
Does anyone have any thoughts, suggestions, advice etc? Is anyone interested in helping me with this? All comments welcome
If it were to get made, and proved popular, then perhaps we could make ‘Recharged’ versions of other campaigns too? (If the creator grants permission of course.)
