[QuantumDelta]

Originally posted by karajorma


Could it be that one of the users of the amiga port of Freespace has finally appeared on this board?

*The crowd wait with baited breath*

Kara
I wonder what It plays like

[BlackDove]

I don't

[karajorma]

It plays exactly like the PC version from what I`ve heard. I`m not certain if FRED was also ported though.

[Anaz]

Originally posted by BD


I always thought that with an infinite amount of bullets, that would be possible...could be mistaken tho =)

well...theoretically yes...but there is the slight problem that bullets have very little effect on 6" (or greater...not sure) steel. Mind you they do take a few atoms off here or there, so you could eventually destroy it, but not very effective.

[QuantumDelta]

However, these are not Chaingun shells, they're lasers...
Kayser harnesses zero-point energy, that's the same stuff that the beam cannons themselves use...
You should be able to do damage.
Maybe not quickly, but it's still annoying when you've got a cap you can't kill, but you've completely disarmed and disabled it, only problem being no firepower with which to finish it off...
Jeez, I wouldn't even mind if it took AGES, I'd just set it to x4 compression, leave a shoe on the keyboard and walk off for lunch like I did with the Hades...

[CP5670]

From a storyline plausibility point of view, that makes no sense though. Why would the GTVA bother building anything other than swarms of fighters if they were that powerful?

[QuantumDelta]

Actually, they probably should, the resources spent on the collosus in ways of Helios and URSA could probably nuke a SJ a thousand times over, and in about two seconds flat...
...It's just that the Collosus looks flashier...
...And suits the plot...

[Warlock]

FS1= Big bad enemy ship
FS2 = More big bad enemy ships

GTA = We need our OWN big bad ,....what ? WTF do you mean it BLEW UP?!?!

[StratComm]

Originally posted by QuantumDelta
However, these are not Chaingun shells, they're lasers...
Kayser harnesses zero-point energy, that's the same stuff that the beam cannons themselves use...
You should be able to do damage.
Maybe not quickly, but it's still annoying when you've got a cap you can't kill, but you've completely disarmed and disabled it, only problem being no firepower with which to finish it off...
Jeez, I wouldn't even mind if it took AGES, I'd just set it to x4 compression, leave a shoe on the keyboard and walk off for lunch like I did with the Hades...

And that's precisely what made that mission so utterly stupid.  One fighter could destroy the Hades.  Now saving the cruiser, that's tough.  Good thing the Hades wasn't doing anything other than sitting there.  Perhaps corvettes shouldn't have the tag, but even if the Kayser did punch a hole through the hull of a destroyer; do you think a warship of that would be destroyed by a pinprick hole in it's hull?

[QuantumDelta]

If you were to bombard the same point on a ship for long enough, no matter what it is, you'd eventually make a very large hole in it, say you disabled something, you'd be able to bombard it, fly inside it, nuke it's generator, fly out and run away, FS isn't THAT Realistic, so you should be able to, with enough time, counter for that...

[StratComm]

Originally posted by QuantumDelta
If you were to bombard the same point on a ship for long enough, no matter what it is, you'd eventually make a very large hole in it, say you disabled something, you'd be able to bombard it, fly inside it, nuke it's generator, fly out and run away, FS isn't THAT Realistic, so you should be able to, with enough time, counter for that...

NO, shooting the same point repeatedly, even with zero-point energy, would eventually create a very small hole clean through the ship.  Yes, you might do some damage and open a number of compartments to space, but you are not (especially on a larger ship) going to necessarily take it down.  You could luck out (or if it was more realistic, aim for) and hit the reactor, but that isn't exaclty plausable either.  And besides, I doubt you could fit a fighter in a ship corridor, so you'd be doing a LOT of shooting to get to that reactor.  As for your massive-numbers-of-Ursas idea, where exactly would all these craft be staged from?  1000 bombers, and especially 1000 heavy bombers, is more than are in any battlegroup or fleet in the FS universe.  I think that the limitations on the capabilities of fighters is one of the advantages of FS2, not a shortfall.

[QuantumDelta]

...Ya know, I've only ever seen FRED users or MODDer's say that...heh...
You have your tastes, I have mine, IMHO, Massive Damage tags task enjoyment out of FS2.
Admittedly, they make it harder, however...
...I really don't need to worry about difficulty in this game, if I have trebs, even against an SJ, and a large number of fighters, I'd win eventually...
...Even with one respawn, so long as the stupid 'shoot through itself' bug doesn't come into play.
...Yeah that's another reason I hate that thing....
...Meh, bed time, functions and practicle programming in the morning...

[StratComm]

Originally posted by QuantumDelta
...Ya know, I've only ever seen FRED users or MODDer's say that...heh...

Funny, I think the majority of people on this forum (at least the active ones) would consider themselves one of the two...

EDIT: warm up the flamethrowers...  

Originally posted by QuantumDelta
...I really don't need to worry about difficulty in this game, if I have trebs, even against an SJ, and a large number of fighters, I'd win eventually...
...Even with one respawn, so long as the stupid 'shoot through itself' bug doesn't come into play.

yeah, but there is no way to create truely infinite fighters for the enemy, so they will eventually run out and you can use the trebs' insane range to peck the sathanas to death.  What is the challenge in that?  And the shoot through bug is only a result of bad model construction, not game design (says the modder).

[CP5670]

Actually, they probably should, the resources spent on the collosus in ways of Helios and URSA could probably nuke a SJ a thousand times over, and in about two seconds flat...
...It's just that the Collosus looks flashier...
...And suits the plot...

And why would the Shivans bother building Sathanas ships then? (or anything besides fighters) Come on, it would so ridiculous if one stupid little bomber could nuke a juggernaut a thousand times its size. That is the Alpha 1 ultra elite pilot savior-of-humanity syndrome pushed to the extreme. (both FS1 and FS2, unlike other space sims tried very, very hard to avoid this crap, which is one of the reasons they got such high marks in reviews) This single-pilot madness works in some multiplayer missions, but that is usually the mission designer's fault.

I think that the limitations on the capabilities of fighters is one of the advantages of FS2, not a shortfall.

Exactly, and in fact, if you look at the reviews out there, almost all of them give the game extra points for this.

[Shiva Archon]

Agreed, QD, 30,000 bombers would be incredible.  Problem is....where do you base them?  You gotta have some kind of carrier ship (destroyers) and even then a Hecate can only hold 150 spacecraft.  Thats *200* Hecate-class destroyers, with 10,000 crew each!  2 million people, plus 30,000 bomber pilots.

[BlackDove]

I tested that about a year ago, where I took about 50-70 (if that many at all, I remember the game would crash with more than ## number of ships)  Ursa's with all helios, they nuked the SJ in the matter of...2-5 minutes I think it was.....

[karajorma]

The fact is that if you allow fighters to kill anything then very soon there isn`t any point in having ANY capships apart from carriers.

What you would end up with was a completely different game. The shivans wouldn`t send in cruisers or corvettes every fight would just be GTVA fighters vs shivan fighters. Capships wouldn`t appear except for the players own carrier which would find itself under attack all the time from hordes of shivans.

Without capships I`d find the game very boring. Basically every mission would be one of a few types

• Defeat another shivan swarm
• Escort a freighter or troop ship
• defend the carrier

That's about all you can do. Any other mission would rapidly turn into one of those.

FS2 would be a completely different game if you allowed any fighter to kill a capship (regardless of size) and then think logically about what that would mean.

[QuantumDelta]

Originally posted by CP5670


And why would the Shivans bother building Sathanas ships then? (or anything besides fighters) Come on, it would so ridiculous if one stupid little bomber could nuke a juggernaut a thousand times its size. That is the Alpha 1 ultra elite pilot savior-of-humanity syndrome pushed to the extreme. (both FS1 and FS2, unlike other space sims tried very, very hard to avoid this crap, which is one of the reasons they got such high marks in reviews) This single-pilot madness works in some multiplayer missions, but that is usually the mission designer's fault.
 

Cetanu's mission...the online one..with the SJ....name escapes me...
Two wings of pilots (...BD and I play Use two Ares the rest URSA)
A corvette, and A Hecate, can take out...

• Sathanus
• Ravana
• Demon
• Two Corvettes
• Two Rakshasa
• Two Lilith
• A LOT OF FIGHTERS

...It's pretty easy, takes 26minutes.
My point is, what's more boring....
A ship that you can kill, only takes a very long time to do.
Or a ship that you can't kill because your AI is useless, and 'command' doesn't know how to deploy corvettes and other such ships.

CP
Also, the reason "Shivan's would have these ships" would probably be something to do with the supernova.
However, you're getting a bit ahead of yourself...
..It's a game, as most of the people here said, "lots of little ships is boring."
Actually, have any of you ever tried fighting 60odd Sekhmets, armed to the teeth with good weapons on insane before?
I made a mission such as^ for training purposes.
With the right people, it's possible, but no team has ever done it to my knowledge without BD and I playing O.o...
even with 16respawns....


The big ships are there to look pretty and flag up strategic objectives, however if only 'another big ship' or a bomber can kill those things, it's fairly annoying, considering you know fully well you could take out it's compliment of X (..You name it,  we'll do it.) amount of fighters, and disable it, and disarm it, and completely nuke all of it's subsystems.
....It's kinda annoying that you have to add your own capships/bombers if you want to destroy it, especially if you're trying to use something like that for training purposes...
I do use FRED, and I can see how caps add to the game, but...geez... in FS1, I think, 2 Typhoon's are lost? The loss of an Orion was looked on as a MASSIVELY Tradegic defeat, FAR Beyond 3rd fleet HQ's loss, That stuff is stated in the tech room I think.... Why was that? Because THEY HAD TO BE PROPERLY DEFENDED. You couldn't leave them open and fend for themselves if there were 50 odd fighters around and just get the bombers.... because the fighters could kill it too, it gave you more variables to consider....

[CP5670]

karajorma: you summed up my thoughts perfectly there.

Cetanu's mission...the online one..with the SJ....name escapes me...
Two wings of pilots (...BD and I play Use two Ares the rest URSA)
A corvette, and A Hecate, can take out...

• Sathanus
• Ravana
• Demon
• Two Corvettes
• Two Rakshasa
• Two Lilith
• A LOT OF FIGHTERS

...It's pretty easy, takes 26minutes.
My point is, what's more boring....
A ship that you can kill, only takes a very long time to do.
Or a ship that you can't kill because your AI is useless, and 'command' doesn't know how to deploy corvettes and other such ships.[/size]

I know, and in the majority of cases that is the mission designer's fault. Now in multiplayer this is of course excusable due the fact that respawns exist, but if a single player mission did this kind of thing and pitted the super ace Alpha 1 against the entire shivan fleet, it would suck, plain and simple, regardless of whether it was easy or difficult.

Also, the reason "Shivan's would have these ships" would probably be something to do with the supernova.
However, you're getting a bit ahead of yourself...
..It's a game, as most of the people here said, "lots of little ships is boring."
Actually, have any of you ever tried fighting 60odd Sekhmets, armed to the teeth with good weapons on insane before?
I made a mission such as^ for training purposes.
With the right people, it's possible, but no team has ever done it to my knowledge without BD and I playing O.o...
even with 16respawns....

So, you are saying that you want thirty campaign missions that are all fighter gauntlets of some sort? :p I can certainly understand one or two missions like this, but if the capital ships are not powerful enough, there is no point of putting them in at all, and all of the missions would become like this. Besides, this would once again bring the "gung ho best pilot in history Alpha 1" problem.

BTW I made a mission like this once, but I gave the computers the weapons that they are the best with and they completely smashed up the rest of us. :D

The big ships are there to look pretty and flag up strategic objectives, however if only 'another big ship' or a bomber can kill those things, it's fairly annoying, considering you know fully well you could take out it's compliment of X (..You name it,  we'll do it.) amount of fighters, and disable it, and disarm it, and completely nuke all of it's subsystems.

Ah, now I see, you are pointing to a fundamental problem in the practical implementation of the game mechanics rather than what things are supposed to be like in theory. I will certainly concede that the FS2 game mechanics and AI have very big problems in them that allow such things, but things are still much, much better than they were in FS1 (and they were equally as much better in FS1 than in other previous space sims), but from what you are saying, instead of trying to fix the issue, you want the problem to be made much worse than it already is.

With some table edits and mission designing tricks however, these issues can be sort of bypassed. If everything worked perfectly as it was supposed to, at the most, you should be able to do what two or three others could do and even that is stretching it a bit, but as you said, even with the best table hacks, the enemy fighter AI is still pretty poor and this has to be compensated for by putting in a lot of them. But capital ships on the other hand, can indeed be made much more effective.

....It's kinda annoying that you have to add your own capships/bombers if you want to destroy it, especially if you're trying to use something like that for training purposes...
I do use FRED, and I can see how caps add to the game, but...geez... in FS1, I think, 2 Typhoon's are lost? The loss of an Orion was looked on as a MASSIVELY Tradegic defeat, FAR Beyond 3rd fleet HQ's loss, That stuff is stated in the tech room I think.... Why was that? Because THEY HAD TO BE PROPERLY DEFENDED. You couldn't leave them open and fend for themselves if there were 50 odd fighters around and just get the bombers.... because the fighters could kill it too, it gave you more variables to consider....

How does that have anything to do with making it a "massively tragic defeat?" (in comparison) In fact, from this information alone, it would be much less of a defeat, because the ship was pretty useless anyway and could not even take on a few fighters, so one would think that there was little point in having it around anyway. Besides, what kind of crazy GTVA training simulator would pit you up against a destroyer alone? Once again, that is really ridiculous from a story point of view. :p

[karajorma]

Originally posted by QuantumDelta
but...geez... in FS1, I think, 2 Typhoon's are lost? The loss of an Orion was looked on as a MASSIVELY Tradegic defeat, FAR Beyond 3rd fleet HQ's loss, That stuff is stated in the tech room I think.... Why was that? Because THEY HAD TO BE PROPERLY DEFENDED. You couldn't leave them open and fend for themselves if there were 50 odd fighters around and just get the bombers.... because the fighters could kill it too, it gave you more variables to consider....

The main reason for that is cause in FS1 the capships were a big threat to fighters (until they got shields but the tech stuff was from before that).
 With no shields it was pretty hard to stay close enough to a big ship for long enough to kill it. On top of that the bombs of the pre-shivan days were pretty weak so the only way to kill a capship was to put another one close to it and have them slug it out.

In FS2 you have shields making it much harder for capships to defend themselves (In fact you complain about fighter beams - the one main defense that caps have) so something has to be done to balance it out. If you removed fighter beams and made it easy to kill caps the game wouldn`t be much fun.

Command : "Sathanas 2 has made the leap to capella"
Alpha 1 : "Give me five minutes. I`ll kill it for you."

Look at FS1. How much fun would that have been if you could simply shoot the lucifer dead?