I have only posted in here a couple of times but I much enjoyed the prologue.
Now that my classes for the semester are done I have been going back over some projects that I have not been following in awhile. I am glad to see that the project it nearing completion.
I have a few questions to ask about the armaments of some of the ships in the game. First, did you manage to develop a Leech Missile? I experimented with this and got a semi-effective device but it did not do exactly what a wanted because I could not link the disrupt effect to the damage multiplier in the weapons.tbl file.
Next, I was going over the armaments of some of the ships listed in your site's database section and I noticed what looked like discrepancy when I compared them with my own analysis I did a number of years ago of WC3. These apparent discrepancy are,
Confed, 1. The C-36 Alpha Type series shuttle in WC4 has 2 Lasers on ether side cockpit. I caught a brief glimpse of one firing them in a WC4 mission but I might be mistaken. 2. Southampton class destroyer had Anti-Matter guns in both forward turrets for a total armament of 2 Anti-Matter and 7 Laser turrets as observed in WC3's "Escort the Fleet" mission.
Kilrathi, 1. The Sorthak's armaments is 8 ion/reaper cannons fixed 4 forward and 4 aft and 8 meson blasters in 4 turrets, fore dorsal, aft dorsal, fore ventral, aft ventral. 2.The Bloodfang was armed with 5 Tachyon Cannons. Were these changes made for game-play balance or some other reason?
Now a couple of things that I noticed in game-play. The Ranger/Yorktown-class CVL has only 10 turrets in game play not 11 as in WC3 although I do think the turret atop the dorsal engine makes sense. Also the Lexington class I noticed is completely open to attack from 0 elevation at all vectors, its flanks might need more protection as a single Longbow can destroy it.
Three final questions that have been nagging me. Is there a way to make it so only friendly ships can enter a hanger/flight deck? That is if the shields are up a fighter/bomber cannot enter an enemy ships hanger until the shield covering one of the hanger entrances is collapsed.
My next question is more complicated and is related to the fact that in WC3 and WC4 Anti-Matter guns could target fighters. Now I have read that the reason they do not in Saga is because of ether the "Big Ship" or "huge" tag in the weapons TBL. Would it not be possible to have two versions of the anti-matter gun, one with and one with out the tag and use SEXP's to change which weapon was in the turrets in mission. For example, your SAG or CVBG is under fighter/bomber attack at a jump point and an enemy Heavy Cruiser jumps in. Its arrival would trigger a SEXP that would immediately cause all AMG turret in the fleet to switch from the one without the tag to one with the tag resulting in concentration of fire on the Cruiser until it is destroyed at which point another SEXP triggers the reverse action and the AMGs go back to swatting bombers. Would such a system be too difficult to implement?
Did you ever resolve the size of the Kilrathi Dreadnought? My analysis of the MVF scenes in WC3 pointed to 2200m. I could post it with the highlighted screen caps I made if anyone is interested.
Thank you for your time. Last time I looked I could not find any hard answers to these question. I they have come out since then would you point me in the direction of the right thread.
