[Fury]

For long time I've wanted to re-create setting for Terran-Vasudan War. A setting in where even cruisers are a force to be reckoned with, yet balanced against unshielded fighters and bombers. Today I begun working on just that. Here I present results of measly 4 hours of work.

It's nothing stellar. Only one gameplay tech demo mission called Typhon Assault. I do intend to eventually cover wider variety of mission scenarios, but they will all be gameplay tech demos, not real missions.

The mod itself: http://www.mediafire.com/?2ngln5ugulk
Just to be on the safe side of dependencies, make sure you have fsport-mediavps, fsport and mediavps.

And executables required for AI: http://blueplanet.fsmods.net/E/FSO%206120E.7z

Basically highlights of this gameplay tech demo are as follows:
- Good AI
- Capital ships with potent weapons, yet balanced against unshielded fighters/bombers
- Fighters doing very little damage on capital ships
- Bombers easily taken out by fighters, but real terror against capital ships
- Missiles & bombs are significantly better

Challenge however, is to create gameplay that is not frustrating to player. I don't think this tech demo is anywhere near that, yet. As this focuses purely on gameplay only, tech descriptions and such are untouched.

[MatthTheGeek]

Interesting. Definitely feels more "realistic", but the Atens are way too strong. Also, it's hard to experience a real T-V War feel when you throw GW-era ships (Thoths) in it.

[Fury]

Way too strong in what way? Aten's counterpart, Fenris is pretty much on the same level.

Thoth is used because it is the only Vasudan fighter comparable to Apollo in FSPort. For a gameplay tech demo, there is zero need to get into real T-V War experience with authentic ships and weapons from the era. I could have just as well used FS2 era ships for this.

[Solatar]

Actually, the Seth is surprisingly similar to the Apollo.  </nitpick>

I liked the play style.  Not sure if I like how the ML-16 mimics a Balor, but I'll see what is done with the rest of the weapons.

 

[MatthTheGeek]

Aten's counterpart, Fenris is pretty much on the same level.

The that's were the problem lies, given that the Aten should be way weaker than the Fenris. Has always been.
And the main issue is that once you have taken all the fighter escort and a few turrets, you can just spend half an hour firing with ML-16s on it until you blast the hell out of it. I know you want to make the cruisers less vulnerable than the standard FS setting, but I think you just overdone a bit on the armor. Atens are supposed to be weak, damnit. And they don't need to be as resistant as an Hades with the new turrets you gave it.

[Fury]

Sorry but I don't intend to limit myself to existing concepts of ships and weapons. If you want to take out a warship, you need either a bomber or another warship to do it.

Aten being weak is not how I intend it to play out. Not by a long shot. Not to mention this is very early revision of what I intend to do. There will also be flaks and technically beams as well, though the beams I have in mind are very different from the beams we've seen in FS2.

[MatthTheGeek]

Hey, that's your mod, that's your balancing I just wanted to point out that it would seem logical for 2/3 wings of fighters to be able to destroy an undefended cruiser in less than half an hour, which is not possible with your current setting.

I'd be interested to see what you're gonna come up with beams.

Also, what's with those strange sounds in 3.6.13 ?

[Black Wolf]

Dammit Fury, I've been doing this exact bloody thing for awhile now Will have to give yours a play through and see where we differed.

[Sushi]

Dammit Fury, I've been doing this exact bloody thing for awhile now Will have to give yours a play through and see where we differed.

To be fair, so have I, except I'm focusing more on the Great War and fighter vs fighter dynamics.

[Fury]

I've updated Fenris, Orion, Aten and Typhon weaponry. Took me six hours and I probably won't have time to work on this tomorrow to update fighters and bombers, so I'm giving this update out now. Link in the first post has been updated.

Still far from ready but it's getting there slowly.

[Black Wolf]

Hmm... not exactly my cup of tea, but maybe it was the mission - why did the Typhon have beams BTW?

[Commander Zane]

There will also be flaks and technically beams as well, though the beams I have in mind are very different from the beams we've seen in FS2.

Just another aspect in the works.

[Black Wolf]

Ah, right. Reading the thread, good plan there.

[Fury]

The original idea I had for beams failed as it didn't work too well in practice. So instead I used beams as Vasudan CIWS-type weapon, different to Terran Phalanx or Goalkeeper style CIWS. Terran CIWS originally had missiles too for bomb interception, but turret target priorities don't work if turret has more than one weapon.

[Phaserbank]

fury. speaking of bomb interception. What do you think of including a capship laser system similar to USS Kelvin in star trek 11?

[Fury]

Vasudans already use slasher beams as point-defense, Typhon even in dual-fire mode. That's probably the closest you'll get. Too bad it's not possible to define accuracy against different object types, so the beams aren't all that accurate against bombs, especially since bombs and missiles in this mod are twice as fast as they used to.

[Phaserbank]

Ok. Keep up the work. It's modders like you and many others who keep this game alive.