[Blue Haired Maniac]

I finally decided to save a copy of the mission to figure out why Volition decided to disable the Colossus. So I give the Colossus her engines back so that she would run her waypoints (since they are still in the events).

I figured out why.

It wasn't so much the Sathanas, but it was the Ravana. When the Beast jumped in, it wasn't able to fire a salvo as she was behind the Colossus and out of range. But then the Colossus doesn't turn to engage the Beast, so it takes a good 5-7 minutes for the Ravana to get into a firing position. Then she's able to fire a couple salvos before she gets into the Colossus' ventral firing arcs and gets overpowered.

However, the dual between the Colossus and the Sathanas was in my opinion, much more satisfying than the default version where the Sathanas just comes in and rapes the Colossus. The Sathanas comes in and fires one salvo, but then has to turn to avoid hitting the Colossus. The Colossus fires up her engines and travels alongside the Sathanas and broadsides the juggernaught. But, the Colossus isn't at full strength and she's in the firing arc of that rear LRed. I kept my fighters back to watch the action, and after dueling for about 3-4 minutes, the Colossus finally succumbed to its fate.

Like I said, it was much more satisfying. But then I like slow paced battles so maybe my opinion is biased.

[Dark Hunter]

A decent Collossus vs Sathanas battle? This I have to see!

I wonder that they didn't just move the Beast when they figured out it wouldn't work?
Make it closer so that whole "5-7 minutes to get into firing range" thing could be avoided?


*Dark Hunter gets an idea for an 'alternate' version of Their Finest Hour...*

[Blue Haired Maniac]

The problem is trying to track the problem down. The Colossus has so many waypoint orders that its mindblowing to say the least.

The other problem is trying to get the other Allied capital ships to fire their beams more.

[ShivanSpS]

Yeah, I just wondering why beam locked the Aeolus, Sobek, etc.

And I have a theory about the Colossus and its waypoints...

I think that the original idea was that is the Ravana who disable the Colossus.

So the Colossus starts normal, using its waypoints, then the Ravana jump in and disable it, the Ravana blow up, the Sathanas jumps in and finish the Colossus.

Remember the, -The Ravana is going down, but we sustained critical damage..."

I think that is what planed for that mission...

[karajorma]

They beam locked the ships cause they ****ed up the timings most likely

There are beam-free-all commands in there but they trigger before the ships are around to be freed.

[Iron Wolf]

I finally decided to save a copy of the mission to figure out why Volition decided to disable the Colossus.

Well, I always figured that they disabled the Colossus to fit in with the briefing right after the Colossus destroyed the Sathanas. It went (off by memory, so not exactly) "The Colossus sustained moderate damage, which will take months to repair."

Seeing as how I had finished that mission without the "Big C" losing a single percent of health, I simply assumed it had to do with the beams being overpowered, which fried the ship’s subsystems. Later seeing the "Big C" disabled in Their Finest Hour, I simply assumed the engines got fried for the most part as well.

[StratComm]

We are also talking about the most retarded mission in either Freespace.  There are so many things wrong with "Their Finest Hour" that they can't possibly all be listed here, to the point of the mission literally changing if it's filename is changed.  So while much can be discussed about it and how it came to be, unless we have the guys who wrote it come in, sit down, and tell us why it ended up the way it did, I doubt anyone will ever dissect it correctly.

Oh, and I will point out though that the waypoints may have been disabled because the colossus has that baseball bat effect when it turns that plays havoc with anything around it.  So it may just be something as simple as a playtester getting knocked out of bounds on the mission and forcing a rework.

[Iron Wolf]

We are also talking about the most retarded mission in either Freespace.  There are so many things wrong with "Their Finest Hour" that they can't possibly all be listed here, to the point of the mission literally changing if it's filename is changed.  So while much can be discussed about it and how it came to be, unless we have the guys who wrote it come in, sit down, and tell us why it ended up the way it did, I doubt anyone will ever dissect it correctly.

Not arguing that fact, just coming up with a possible explaination.

[karajorma]

We are also talking about the most retarded mission in either Freespace.  There are so many things wrong with "Their Finest Hour" that they can't possibly all be listed here, to the point of the mission literally changing if it's filename is changed.

Code: [Select]

00736: * 106 9/15/99 3:28a Jimb
00737: * Make all big ships in sm3-08 not do cruiser chase code when attacking
00738: * Colossus. Added so Beast doesn't swerve away from Colossus.
00739: *
00740: * 105 9/14/99 4:18p Andsager
00741: * hack for mission sm3-08 to abort cruiser_chase as sathanas is about to
00742: * begin circling colossus.[/quote]

Even the coders knew it was a hack at the time. This should all have been done in the mission file anyway. The second one for instance could have been achieved with a distance check and an ai-clear-goals. Which in fact is pretty much what the hack does anyway.

I can only assume is that the problems with the mission were discovered an hour before before going gold and needed to be fixed quickly.

[Roanoke]

yeah, I figured they just ran out of time too.