[Stryke 9]

They need to take that friggin' rolling-eyes smiley off the server... Why don't they replace it with something like the thumbs-up thing, only with a middle finger? It captures the mood of the rolling-eyes crowd so much better.

[DragonClaw]

  You are retarded  

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    -Director of the staff of Hidden Terror.
   -Fleet Admiral of The Ancients Armada

         

The fear always controls our attitude, let us fear no more!

[Sushi]

 

Originally posted by Stryke 9:
They need to take that friggin' rolling-eyes smiley off the server... Why don't they replace it with something like the thumbs-up thing, only with a middle finger? It captures the mood of the rolling-eyes crowd so much better.

You missed my point- I was rolling my eyes at the way we couldn't change it, not the person who asked the question.  

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Sushi- the OTHER white meat!

Accelerate your game-Velocity Mod
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[Martinus]

Urrr, guys, you're going mental about a damn smiley! You're going mental about a smiley in the middle of a rather good discussion to boot.

Please chill out and contribute you fools  
You gotta have some preference, Alpha 1 hero of the universe or alpha 1 member of hard working team?

I personally go for a balanced mixture i.e. I want to see my team win but I like to feel that they might not have done it without me.

[Sushi]

Well, it all depends on the scale of the missions! If it's Alpha Wing on patrol, obviously player input will be vital, but if it's Endor syndrome, than the player better not be too important.   It's possible to be reasonable in the influence Alpha One has, it just takes a little common sense.

Most people can do the smaller missions quite well, where Alpha One is allowed to have a big impact, and there are a lot of such missions that are very good. However, making large-scale missions where the player SHOULDN'T have such a big impact, and making them fun and making them work, is a bit more touch and go...and you end up with a situation where Alpha One takes on the enemy all by himself.

My best example of this, in the main campaign, is Slaying Ravana. I hate that mission. Your dumb bomber wingmen fire off a salvo or two and then die, and Alpha is left to destroy the ship virtually on his own. At least that mission has the decency to keep it interesting by launching fighters at you, something that is noticably absent in some missions, where the destroyer happily gets shot because it forgets it has a fighterbay.

 

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Sushi- the OTHER white meat!

Accelerate your game-Velocity Mod
Sushi's Freespace Zone-Future home of loads of cool stuff.

[Sandwich]

Wow, this is great, staying on-topic and all...  

But I do want to change the direction a (very) slight bit: What kind of recognition do you think Command should have for Alpha 1's obvious skills? In other words, to what extent would you reasonably expect to see Command taking advantage (in a positive sense) of the ace material that Alpha 1 is made out of? What kind of special assignments, etc?

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"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[Nico]

SOC missions  
more chances to get kiiled, in fact.

[Stryke 9]

Split campaign at some point- If Alpha 1 sucks, suicide missions. If kicks *** , very hard suicide missions. Always flying intercept, of course, because bombers-[2-hour rant deleted].

[GrandAdmiralAbaht]

For example

in the mission that you test the Pegasus( Proving Grounds I believe) Alpha wing alone is supposed to protect the Aquitaine aginst a Moloch, bomber wings, and fighters wings.  The only reinforcement is epsilon wing, which has three fighters.  The Aquitaine is supposed to have over 150 fighter craft!  Why do they not deploy 5 more wings of 4 fighters!  It shouldn't take too long.  They were in the Shivan nebula, everyone should be on combat alert!  But... Super Hero Alpha 1 can save the day because he's the player!!!!

[Stryke 9]

Doesn't the fighterbay malfunction?

[Nephilim]

 

Originally posted by GrandAdmiralAbaht:
For example.....

The Aquitaine is supposed to have over 150 fighter craft!  Why do they not deploy 5 more wings of 4 fighters!  It shouldn't take too long.  They were in the Shivan nebula, everyone should be on combat alert!

That is beyond true, i mean in missions there you have to defend a destoryer, and there is only 3 other craft out there....   also what pissed me off the most is that mission where the colossus gets blasted by the sathanas, now i know they had a ton of bombers in that thing, why only launch dealta wing, i mean,  10 wings of bomber armed with helios, along with  C's beams could have taken that sathanas out easy. but then i agin i do reamber sor some reason colossus stoped firing it's beams...   i know the game has limitaions but still, a front line battle should really be, a front line battle  

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[Sandwich]

 

Originally posted by Nephilim:
i know the game has limitaions but still, a front line battle should really be, a front line battle  

I agree 100% -   just wanted to show off the Big C...   "Wow, lookie at the big explosion it makes! Yay!"  

However, realistic frontline battles in a single mission can very easily border on BoE syndrome, as well as drag down the framerate. Both of which are no-no's.

Also, consider this: Aside from the bottlenecks of jump nodes and the strategic installations/cargo depots/disabled ships/planets/convoys/etc, there is absolutely no way for a fleet to block the passage of another fleet. This was mentioned in the game a number of times, with Admiral Koth's Orion and even the with Iceni, I believe. So unless a battle took place at one of those locations, I find it highly unlikely that it would be a large battle at all.
Forces would either be spread out over the whole system (dumb), or concentrated at jump nodes.


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"He who laughs last thinks slowest."
"Just becase you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
"To err is human; to really screw up you need a computer."
Creator of the Sandvich Bar, the CapShip Turret Upgrade, the Complete FS2 Ship List and the System Backgrounds List (all available from the site)

[Stryke 9]

What I wanna know is, why is a billion-ton hulk covered with weapons, roughly the size of a city and containing thousands of soldiers, so damn frail? A couple of bomber could take down the Colossus in under 5 minutes, a single bomber wipe out a Hecate in about one... These ships are useless in combat! The only exception are the corvettes, which are fairly tough for the size, but seriously: wouldn't you want your army in something that isn't constantly getting taken down by, say, three Nephilims? (see Argonautica). At least they wouldn't need such an enormous crew...

Oh, and Sandwich, I did a mission a while back for PA, shows you what a REAL blockade is like. Very cool. Get it when it comes out.

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[Setekh]

I think one of the reasons   held off of having more realistic (I use the word lightly) battles in terms of ship numbers is that perhaps the computers of the day simply could not handle them. However we now know that we can handle objects of 13k polys, never before dreamed of, so obviously the engine is capable of stretching. But how far, before the hardware just completely outruns the engine? FS2 is showing its age.

[Nico]

 

Originally posted by sandwich:
However, realistic frontline battles in a single mission can very easily border on BoE syndrome, as well as drag down the framerate. Both of which are no-no's.

Why? I do like BoE like missions...

Otherwise, about the colo vs sath. The pb is really tyhe power of player comps, I think: if the colo can send I don't know how many bomber wings, well, the sathanas can do it too  it also have a fighter bay, and for what I know, it could house ten times the number of bombers onboard the colo. So basically, bombers would be only there to show off, and we're talking of a game 2 or 3 years old, right? So that many bombers would have drained down the resources of any computer then. Sad but true, I think  

[Stryke 9]

Good point, that does boil down to the poly count, but why couldn't they make the capships themselves tougher? Save a lot of polys wasted on fighters and bombers...

[Sandwich]

You're all missing something. The capital ships in FS2 are tough. Very tough. Bombers can take them out easily? Yeah, they can. But look at what they throw at them:

 

From the Freespace 1 WEAPONS.TBL:
GTM-3 Tsunami

Intelligent tracking similar to GTA targeting system - prior to launch, communicates with ship computer, gathering data about enemy target types and whereabouts - slow, low maneuverability - antimatter warhead (500 tonne3 mass-to-energy conversion) - due to instability of antimatter, no more than 10 may be carried on board a GTA bomber at any given time, unless pilot is granted a special permit by an appropriate governing body.

GTM-N1 Harbinger

Fusion bomb surrounded by 3 salted fission bombs - propulsion unit is a half-size version of a regulation GTA fighter thruster (Class II) - given the weight of the payloads, the missile is slow despite the power of the thruster - as the Harbinger is exceptionally large, GTA bombers are limited to carrying 6 of these weapons at any given time - the resultant shock wave from this weapon is potentially deadly, due to the size of the payloads (5000 Mt in total) - use near allied installations or allied ship groupings is strongly discouraged by the GTA - most effective when used in preemptive defensive strike against non-military installations.

And that's just from FS1. Here's a bit from the FS2 WEAPONS.TBL:
 

FS2 weapons:
GTM-12 Cyclops

...Its payload is approximately fifty percent greater than that of the older Tsunami warheads.

GTM-13 Helios

...The most powerful warhead in the fleet's arsenal, the Helios generates a massive shockwave from the cataclysmic annihilation of matter and anti-matter...

Now, with all that, plus beam cannons, it's not surprising that capital ships can get wiped out so easily. Just imagine a "standard" nuclear bomb hitting an aircraft carrier of today. What would be left?    


[This message has been edited by sandwich (edited 08-03-2001).]

[morris13]

Thankfully, there is a balance between the Super-Alpha1 syndrome and the opposite extreme of the player not having an effect on the battle.
The problem, as has come up often in this thread, is that if you have the BoE battles, there is no defensible reason not to have absolutely no reason not to have hundreds of fighters flying in support, which will cause problems for the engine. Think about it for a minute... if you have just two destroyers facing off, what possible reason would there be for their entire fighter complements not being launched? When a US Aircraft Carrier gets ready to smack something you better believe it puts up 100% of its fighter complement, leaving behind only the ones that just aren't going to be useful. For purposes of making realistic misssions that the player can play a pivotal role in, smaller battles are pretty much the way you have to go. if you have a BoE situation, then what needs to happen is that Alpha1 has mission requirements that he has to meet that don't nessecarily determine who wins or looses the battle. Surgical strikes against subsystems, weapons, and smaller ships, as well as protecting allied ships from bomber strikes are all good, especially under circumstances where there are plenty of other fighters around that are doing their own thing. In this instance, its simple enough just to use wings that don't accept player orders and have their own missions to run. Why should alpha wing be able to order around the bomber wings that are supposed to be taking out that cruiser and make them do something else?
slightly off topic, but in the similar vein of realism, I notice so frequently that situation where all the allied forces are destroyed/have left the battle, and there's an enemy ship that just sits there forever. How many of us have stayed behind to nuke some poor hapless shivan cap after a mission has actually ended just because we have trebs and there aren't any more scripted fighter wings helping it? If all the GTVA ships are gone, there's no reason for that moloch to sit there and take your beating. Make it jump out. I've gotten solo Demon and Ravana kills that way just by being patient and nuking something that can't fight back. Its just silly =P

So, in condensed form, this is what I think mission designers should keep in mind:
1: it is possible to make the player's role pivotal without making him responsible for winning the battle singlehanded. Destroying a key beam turret or protecting a key ship from attack is good.
2: Don't leave enemy ships hanging around after a mission has ended. It just looks messy =)
3: If you have multiple destroyers/lots of caps, remember that there should be lots of fighters to go with them. For every destroyer in a battle AT LEAST 50% of its maximum fighter/bomber complement should be in the battle or you should have a really good reason. (damaged/destroyed fighters, on missions somewhere else, etc). The exception to this obviously is when the mission shouldn't require more fighters then are actually present, but if the destroyer is in any danger of being destroyed, its fighters better be out there.

[Stryke 9]

I just re-checked... In nearly every capship-under-siege level the   guys neatly avoided having to give you reinforcements by damaging the fighterbay...
And anyway, yes, big nasty bombs. But when the rifle was invented, people didn't stay sitting around in easily-penetrated suits of armor, they built heavier protection and eventually came out with flak jackets. Countless examples are similar throughout history, and anyway, when it gets to the point where I can score massive damage w/ my primaries, it's jusrt ridiculous. Build some tougher capships, at least make it interesting!

[Setekh]

But remember, for every mission designer's guideline, there is another way to implement a mission that breaks that rule and represents the mission in a completely new way. It's true, I've seen it, but hell it takes a lot of work.