[ryuune75]

Ok, i'm trying to made a mission with a very large space battle going on, but i found out that there is a hard coded limit for how many ships i can put it, simply because any ship with a reference number above 99 is invalid...
Is there a way to overcome this problem? Was this limit changed in FSO?

[TrashMan]

99 Ships seems just fine for me....

Use them wisely!

[karajorma]

Stop trying to remake the Battle of Endor!

[MLeoDaalder]

So 99 is the max?

Pity. I would have liked to recreate the DS9 battles of Favour The Bold and Sacrifice Of The Angles and What You Leave Behind...

[ryuune75]

I'm not asking you if it's fine to have 300 ships in a mission, i just want to know if it's possible...

And beside, what's wrong in the battle of Endor??

And of course, i can use 99 capships wisely, putting them in wing and making them respawn 10 times, so a grand total of 999 ships can be blown up in a single mission

As i've already told in another thread, my goall is to recreate the feeling of a battlefield with 4 million ships (it's not my idea, it's how the show i'm basing on was made)... of course that single mission will cover only a small part of the battlefield, but still if i can put several hundred ships in it will give a sense of wonder, with tens of capship exploding every few seconds around the player.

Of course if it's impossible, well, i'll live with it....

[karajorma]

The problem with Battle of Endor Syndrome is that there is very little point in playing a mission with that many ships in it.

Either the player has no effect on the mission out come at all or there are so many ships around that the player is left simply picking a target and then watching something else blow it up before he can reach it. Either way it's suprisingly hard to make a large battle of this type fun to play.

Giving the player a specific objective (blow up the death stars core) may help that a little but it is a very hard thing to pull off successfully.

The second major problem is that more often than not an Endorian mission will slow the computer down to a crawl and won't be fun to play cause of that.

[KARMA]

talking about BOE:
http://www.bruneras.com/
http://www.theforce.net/games/apps/boendor/index.shtml

[ryuune75]

Originally posted by karajorma
The problem with Battle of Endor Syndrome is that there is very little point in playing a mission with that many ships in it.

Either the player has no effect on the mission out come at all or there are so many ships around that the player is left simply picking a target and then watching something else blow it up before he can reach it. Either way it's suprisingly hard to make a large battle of this type fun to play.

Of course i know it's no easy task to make this kind of mission, but i also don't think it's too hard too, there are so many things that can be assigned to the player to that i don't really see problems. Of course some other will blow your target up sometimes, but that's how battles work, but of course the goal of the mission is not destroy everything, the player will have a lot of specific objective that will directly influence the outcome of the battle.
And beside that, it's only one mission of this kind in the entire campaing, it's not all the maps i design are like that (mostly involve 2-3 capships)

Originally posted by karajorma
The second major problem is that more often than not an Endorian mission will slow the computer down to a crawl and won't be fun to play cause of that.

This could b a problem, but with 99 ships i have no visible slowdown (with 1000-1200 poly average ships), c'mon we are talking about a 4 years old game, right?

[IceFire]

I limit myself to a maximum of only 55 ships.  I've found that if you go over that limit you start having trouble....and generally on different peoples computers (some run it fine, others crash out to desktop).  That was with vanilla FS2 - not sure if there is greater limits on FS Open.

As already stated, making a mission with many ships in it is hard, very hard, you have to be really good at making a big mission and having it retain some level of fun.  All the power to you if you can pull it off!

[KARMA]

BTW fo a SW conversion this could be a problem, since you obviously need to have waves and waves of ties...

[ryuune75]

Originally posted by KARMA
BTW fo a SW conversion this could be a problem, since you obviously need to have waves and waves of ties...

That is NOT the problem, you can have wave of Ties, even unlimited ones, but not all at once, the limit is 99 ships at once in a mission.

[KARMA]

doh' I understood it was a total limit.
well ok then, 99 at once isn't that bad btw

[diamondgeezer]

FRED2 goes a bit funky when more than 99 ships are put in a mission. Stuff starts disappearing or... doesn't it put a random insult in to the names of cargo containers or did I imagine that one? The U R A MORON one... can't remember what you have to do to get that one now.

Perhaps the SCP coders could change this, but they don;t like touching FRED if they can help it...

[ryuune75]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Perhaps the SCP coders could change this, but they don;t like touching FRED if they can help it...

Oh well, it's not that you need Fred to edit a mission, you can just use Notepad and put all the stuff Fred don't like... if FS2 could handle it of course

[SuperCoolAl]

isn't the point of space fighter games that big ships battle it out, with little ships trying to change the outcome?

[diamondgeezer]

Well V's philosophy is that capital ship fights ought to be balanced so that the sides are equally matched - the fighters, and the player's fighter in particular should tip the scales in favour of his side. The more capitals you have fighting, the less influence the player have. He can only be defending so many warships, or bombing so many enemies. With a smaller battle, the player can have a decisive role in the outcome.

Course that's not to say that no-one should attempt to make big cap ship fights. But now you know the reason it's not done in every single mission

[Mr. Vega]

Read this.

[Baron MacDoblin]

It's a trap!

[Singh]

o_O
I cant help big cap ship fights!! Those beams look so COOL!! I Swea- Wha? Ok, no matter.

*goes off, realizing its not his mission*

[TrashMan]

Bah...I still belive one can make a good massive battle mission.
And in real life, a single pilot CAN'T have a decisive role in EVERY mission!
Alltough in the "Battle of Endor" missin the pilot can still have great effect.
Imagine 12 GTVA capships vs. 10 Shivan capships. If you manage to take out the engine/beam cannons/something on at least 2 Shivan ships (and even a mediocre pilot can do that) you have increased the chances of yozur fleets survival drasticly!

Alltough one is more than enough in a campaign. Turning all your missions into a capship slaughterfest is not good.