[Goober5000]

Then explain to me why are Helios dealing more damage on Medium than on Very Easy ?

They don't.

They might cause more damage to YOU, if you happen to get caught in your own blast radius.

[blowfish]

I've been killed by my own Helios on Very Easy (I was a n00b and didn't know how to run away from the blast).

[Excalibur]

Then explain to me why are Helios dealing more damage on Medium than on Very Easy ?

I read once that you have to hit the turrets from the right angle - sometimes I've hit them with a Helios from what seemed to be a normal angle and only done 55% damage. As for blowing fighters up with bombs - try launching Cyclops/Helios at some slow fighter/bomber and watch it fly round for ages with the bomb so close to their engine it almost makes you crazy waiting for it to rock their ship. btw, cyclops aren't enough to kill a Basilisk with full shields.

I've been killed by my own Helios on Very Easy (I was a n00b and didn't know how to run away from the blast).

Take One:   Of course, you're in a space ship!
Take Two:   You did know how to, you just didn't know you had to.

I got killed by the unrealistic physics of getting hit by a Sath travelling at 867ms^-1
Your ship would get crushed, not dragged along while stuck to the front of the Sath and then miraculously unstick and bounce off when you lost all hull integ. like a solid metal hulk should. Then and only then blow up...

[Droid803]

btw, cyclops aren't enough to kill a Basilisk with full shields.

Cyclops barely do any shield damage at all...

[Grizzly]

Player weapons don't get stronger with difficulty.

Player ships get "weaker". (They only have the hitpoints they are "supposed" to have at Insane. Insane is the only  mode you are just as vurnrable as your wingmen, and you usually die first)

[blowfish]

Player ships get "weaker"

I know that, but someone was saying that player weapons get stronger on higher difficulties, which is not true.

[Vip]

That someone would be me. I could *swear* there was something going on with the Helios, and it wasn't definitely the case of the angle... Hmmm, after some thinking, maybe the mediavps/FSO build (???) changed some values of either the Helios or Sathanas' turret armour ?

[blowfish]

NO THEY DIDN'T

[Excalibur]

Well, mabye your bombs got killed by flak when they were 1m away and that's why they didn't do as much damage. Or else you only used one...

btw, have you tried doing that mission again?

[blowfish]

Also, make sure you don't have any weird TBMs floating around.  (For a while I had TrashMan's Archangel + weaponry floating around, without realizing that the TBM changed the damage values of the THT and other stuff, making some missions near impossible).

[Vip]

Hmmm, I tried it several times on different levels and damn, the damage looks the same everywhere. Fishy. My memory isn't *that* bad and I remember that the many times I've played the retail (I think that I flew the Bearbeating several dozen times then) and I never managed to one-hit destroy the main turret, despite using afterburners, different angles, double Helios and whatnot. Then I upgraded my FS2 to FSO (I was somewhere around Bearbeating then) and turned on Medium. Bang, now I am unable to NOT destroy a turret with one hit... Call that strange.

It was definitely not flak and not a single bomb, and at that time I had only the 3.6.7 version I believe (can be wrong) and the official mediavps. I am not capable of recreating or explaining it, but I remember very clearly that I could bring the turrets condition down only to 15% with double Helios.

Apparently one of the quirks of my old PC, hehe

[blowfish]

The change you experienced is probably your skill improving over time.

And if you have 3.6.7 you should update to 3.6.9 or even one of the 3.6.10 test builds.

[Vip]

Yeah, maybe it is the question of my skills. Or maybe it's my damn imagination

I went recently into 3.6.10 with the beta mediavps since I got that new shiny PC, works like charm. Now I'm just waiting for the 3.6.10 mediavps to go official, the beta ones have quite a few bugs.

[blowfish]

They do, but I use them anyway.

Also, the official 3.6.10 VPs will have more stuff in them, like custom shivan missiles (they behave the same as their GTVA counterparts, but they look shivan and you don't see Taruvis firing Cyclopses anymore).

[Vip]

*Finally*... I already started wondering if some strange Bosh-like people didn't supply the Shivans with our own weapons

Still, it's so damn impressive to see what the people here did to old Freespace - come on, we have even frakkin' Pixel Shader and normal maps now - the only thing that stands between FSO and perfection is a realistic damage model, however I don't think we'll be seeing that until 3.7 or even longer.

[blowfish]

Well, FSO will never be perfect (one of the limitations is our computers), but it looks cooler and cooler as more features get implemented.  Shadows are a big thing (someone started coding stencil shadows, but never finished), and reflections of ships on other ships (not just the background) too, though this would slow down performance a lot.

[Excalibur]

If we keep going like this, surely we will be able to make it just as good or better than the best games out there now that need heaps of different artists and coders - probably more than us - to make their game, and they still can look crap.

The thing I love about FS2 - well, one of - is how you can kill ships just before their subspace warp closes when they have disappeared from view - then they miraculously reappear and explode. Is quite funny.

[S-99]

It's really great to watch a vaporizing explosions warp into subspace.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

If we keep going like this, surely we will be able to make it just as good or better than the best games out there now that need heaps of different artists and coders - probably more than us - to make their game, and they still can look crap.

The thing I love about FS2 - well, one of - is how you can kill ships just before their subspace warp closes when they have disappeared from view - then they miraculously reappear and explode. Is quite funny.

I've never seen that before. However, I did manage to kill a Ravana with some debris from an SD Demon.