[nutshell42]

The Good:
I'm only registered at a few forums so the very fact that I'm here criticizing your game is a token of my appreciation 
IOW, I really love Saga, all my criticism is meant to be strictly constructive.

The Bad:
Long version:
Mission 1, I leave the carrier, fly to the transport, listen to Ninja's and Assassin's banter, fly to the first few waypoints and everything feels very cool and realistic. Then the pirates appear, I attack, and *bang* "You're dead".
Now, it *was* my fault, my wingleader did say I should stay with him and while I despise the abruptness of the ending I've read somewhere on this forum that it's going to be fixed in the next patch anyway.
The problem is playing the mission again. I leave the carrier, am bored listening to A&N being idiots, have to wait for a bunch of triggers to happen until they're finally done and I can hit Alt-N/Alt-A. Rinse, repeat for waypoint 1; rinse, repeat for waypoint 2. 

Mission 4, similar thing, I get to waypoint 4 with a structural integrity of about 30% (I missed a missile warning earlier, my fault), I've set my shields to about 50% of all power, but I've got my doubts about my chances against the cruisers, so I stay near the carrier. Then, when a Darket gets close I want to kill it, I approach with afterburner to get at its tail when suddenly at point blank range it fires a missile. This time, I launch CM's immediately, and do a turn but it's not enough and the missile hits. It goes through full shields and kills me.

Short version:

• It's great that your missions have some downtimes, it feels very real -- the first time. But if you have to repeat a mission it becomes a chore.
• Additionally, it's very easy to die due to a freak accident (once I was killed by a missile that wasn't even targeted at me) or bad luck
• Additionally, your missions are long and have many downtimes. Compared to the WC games I find myself much more unwilling to repeat a mission more than twice

Thoughts on how I'd fix it:

• Give me the possibility to cut off all that talk. I don't have to hear all that banter between A&N more than once, especially when I just heard it before I died. I just want to be able to press Alt-N/Alt-A immediately
• Give me full time acceleration immediately. No slow ramping up to and down from 64x. I certainly wouldn't complain if 128x or more was possible.
• Or give me at least some autosave points. Let's say before the pirate attack in mission one, after the asteroid shooting in mission two, after all the flying around, looking for sensor echoes in mission three and after the capship missile attack in mission four. If the engine doesn't allow saves in space you could do a workaround with an invisible carrier or something. Or in mission 4 the Wellington could rearm&refuel the Arrows one by one during the mission.
• If everything else fails you could make missiles weaker. IIRC they've been a joke in most WC games anyway. Weaker weapons means less randomness because you have to hit an enemy constantly to kill him.

The Ugly:
Well, this is minor stuff I noticed before and while playing the game:

• I had to jump through some loops to install the game because the installer automatically unzipped itself to C:\. I didn't have enough free space on C:, the installer noticed that when it ran out of space, asked for a new location, I provided one and that was it. The file never appeared there, and from looking at my disk with windirstat it doesn't exist anywhere. I finally was able to install the game by freeing up enough space on C: but it would be nice if that wasn't necessary
• Using the mouse to control the fighter sucks. It's really, really bad. Freelancer showed that good mouse controls are possible. I assume that just like the installer problem this is something you probably can't fix because it's the fault of the engine but just-in-case. I have a joystick so it's no problem for me anyway. But I know a lot of people who no longer have a joystick and any hopes of converting them to Saga died with the mouse controls 
• I don't really like the "Kilrathi fighter crashed in hangar" plot in mission 4.
  I've always thought that it doesn't make sense that it is that easy to fly in enemy hangar bays because then everyone would just use doors. Imho the force field at the ends of the bay should be a stronger phase shield, stronger because it has these blue emitter thingies around the opening.
  That way no armor would make sense; why? Because if you had an armored door and a torpedo went through the shield it would blow the armor to pieces (no armor can withstand an antimatter warhead) which then would blast at hypersonic speeds through anything in the interior. With a stronger phase shield the torpedo would fly through the shield, blow up inside the bay but it would have less dense matter that it could convert into a blast wave and a security system could automatically drop the force fields and give the explosion two large holes as a way of least resistance, therefore reducing the damage to the rest of the ship.
  This way the Midway's setup of having launch tubes and landing bays below the ship make sense, too. Make the back wall of the launch tube really weak, that way the energy of a torpedo hitting the tube will mostly go out the front and the back and only a small part of the force will affect the doors to the main hangar in the ceiling.
  Also, I've always liked to think of the Kilrathi as a less suicidal race.
  You could just say the damage in mission 4 was by a torpedo that blew up inside the hangar bay. It would still wreck half the ship and kill everyone in the hangar.
  

Hmm, that was longer than I'd planned. So let me reinforce once more that I still love your game, even after all of this 

[KeldorKatarn]

Thoughts on how I'd fix it:

• Give me the possibility to cut off all that talk. I don't have to hear all that banter between A&N more than once, especially when I just heard it before I died. I just want to be able to press Alt-N/Alt-A immediately
• Give me full time acceleration immediately. No slow ramping up to and down from 64x. I certainly wouldn't complain if 128x or more was possible.
• Or give me at least some autosave points. Let's say before the pirate attack in mission one, after the asteroid shooting in mission two, after all the flying around, looking for sensor echoes in mission three and after the capship missile attack in mission four. If the engine doesn't allow saves in space you could do a workaround with an invisible carrier or something. Or in mission 4 the Wellington could rearm&refuel the Arrows one by one during the mission.
• If everything else fails you could make missiles weaker. IIRC they've been a joke in most WC games anyway. Weaker weapons means less randomness because you have to hit an enemy constantly to kill him.

I agree on cutting off the talk. But the Saga team is already trying to fix this somehow. It isn't easy because the way the missions are scripted simply skipping part of it is hard to implement.
I also agree on full acceleration. I don't know how that is scripted, but if an increase is a must then please faster. It takes too long to get to 64
Autosave points are definitely not possible at the moment and I think it is unlikely such a thing will be implemented anytime soon if at all since it is a major change to the engine. I think this isn't really necessary. The best space sims ever like all the WIng COmmanders, all the X-Wing-series Sims and the freespace series and countless others never had that feature. I think that feature makes the missions less challenging. Avoiding frustration is just a question of good mission design, and a little frustration every now and then is ok I think. It might be bad to be killed at the end of a 10 minutes mission, but it makes you stay concentrated too.
The lengths in the momentary Prologue missions will be solved one way or the other I'm sure and I'm also sure there will be a little bit more action in the upcoming main campaign missions. This is just a prologue after all.
I totally disagree with the idea of changing the weapon effects. These missiles are just right. The problem of player frustration can be solved differently. Besides, I think the missions are very very easy if played on the lowest difficulty setting.
Anyone who choses a higher setting has to live with a little frustration every now and then I think. In no way I want the WC1-3+P missile situation. This way it is just right. If you think these missiles are bad, go and try I-War 2 *g*
At medium level and flying an Arrow I always manage to evade 90% of the missiles without even using decoys, so it is not THAT bad. And head on attacks should be avoided anyway.

[AlekTrev006]

Good post - (original poster) - some good points were brought up.  I sort of agree too about the need for some "skip button" ... the talking is excellent because it adds to the story and feels very realistic - etc. - the problem is, as noted, that the Autopiloting can take close to 2-minutes at some times...AFTER a 2-minute dialogue session...the result is that missions with 3-4 Nav Points (and dialogue at some of them) ...are running close to 10+minutes of just "sitting there" ...doing nothing but listening or "autopiloting".

If there was a "Alt+N" // "Alt+A" cancels dialogue and autopilots you (at a much faster accel rate to speed up the travel - like 5-10 seconds and you're there...would be nice)...that would be ideal.

I would think you could just edit (in the game code) that when a player hits Alt+N / Alt+A  BEFORE the dialogue has all finished normally, that it simply "recognizes" the dialogue as HAVING been listened to ...and boom...you can go to the next Nav Point with everything being "okay".

Is that possible ?

---------------------------
---------------------------

About the missile strengths...well..they ARE quite powerful...but that's really very realistic... the one question I'd have is that Missiles should probably not be SO strong as to blow apart a fighter in like 2-hits, even if you had full shields prior to the impact.

Why ?  Because if you followed the listed Penetration values for the missiles in Wing-III's original guide...it listed them like Dumbfire - 800 ...I think.... this translated to 80-actual Centimeters/equivalent of penetration.

Since a Longbow Bomber has 300-cm equivalent of shields (I am not sure if they meant this to be the total value of all 4-quadrants added together...or if each quadrant has a deflection value / strength of 300-cm ???) ... it should (according to the Dumbfire values given) ...be able to withstand about 3-Dumbfire Missiles to its heavy shields without them going down (they would be down to like 15% ...but they would still be up).

The 4th Dumbfire would blow out the shields and damage the armor by about 50%

The 5th Dumbfire should blow up a Longbow.


The way it is currently...it's almost like 2-missiles destroy almost any fighter.... while this is okay / accurate for Arrow's and Darkets...it should be a bit tougher to waste a ship with stronger Shields and Armor than those light craft.



While I'm on this topic...I should note that the Wing-III manual also listed Torpedoes as having a Penetration of 8000 ... this value, they explain, when converted to Centimeters-equivalent of Durasteel (what everything is rated in) ... comes to 800 cm of "damage" / penetration per Torp-hit.

This is important because if you take the Capital ships listed Shield strengths and Hull Armor ratings ...they actually were quite reasonable and made a lot of sense.


A Kilrathi Heavy Cruiser, for example, was given a Shield Value of 3000 centimeters equivalent... 30 Meters "Thick" !!!  ... and a Hull Armor Value of 1000 centimeters (If my memory is correct).


If you add them up, it would mean 4000 cm of total defensive strength.   Since a Torpedo does around 800 cm of damage per hit...a strong capital ship like the Heavy Cruiser should be able to withstand 4-5 Torpedoes before going down.


This is out the window though, if you correctly apply the Phase-Shield Technology and interaction with Torpedoes which the Wing Fiction / Universe follows, instead of just using the Game-Manual Values....

Since Phase Shields are actually "penetrated" by Torpedoes once they have acquired the correct shield-frequencies..... the damage REALLY goes straight to the hull armor...which is part of the reason why Torpedoes are so powerful in the game / universe.

When you consider THAT...a Torpedo hit to a Cruiser would REALLY be impacting on the hull armor...and dealing "800 cm" of damage directly to the 1000 cm total armor.   Thus ONE hit would reduce a heavy cruisers hull armor to around 20%  (200 cm left) ... a second detonation on the same armor facing would / should penetrate the hull and completely destroy the vessel.

That's how it SHOULD be ...and I think that's how the Saga team is representing it ...so good job to them.


One think to keep in mind though is that EACH quadrant / facing of the ship is armored with the same thickness of armor - going by the books.

So the Cruiser has 1000 cm FORE  ... 1000 cm PORT.... 1000 cm STARBOARD.... 1000 cm AFT / REAR

Going by that...if a Player was REALLY stupid...he could PURPOSEFULLY target each quadrant of a cap-ship with a single torpedo each...dealing 800 cm. of damage to them ....and NOT destroy the ship...because each side would be down to 200 cm.  LEFT...but NO side would have been completely penetrated by the blasts.


I wonder if Saga allows for that bit of realism ? (IE - each quadrant you target has a separate Armor value that is tracked during the battle) ?



-----------

FINAL thought on this...the Crashed Fighter into the Hanger... the one way this would be perfectly reasonable is ... NOT that the Fighter just flew right through the Shields (this would be impossible) ...but rather...if the shields were momentarily down / disabled...and by sheer bad luck (or Kilrathi Kamikaze attack - and don't doubt that the Cats were very "death before dishonorish !" - they are modeled after Samurai warriors to some extent in the Code of Honor they follow in battle) ... a plane flew in and crashed into the flight deck.

What the dialogue MIGHT have been worded to say to fit this would be:

"During the battle, Wellington sustained multiple missile hits and a couple of torpedoes....the second one crippled our shield generators for the forward arc and though we got them up and running again in a few minutes, while they were out a Kilrathi fighter that was hit and out of control, veered right into the flight deck before our turret gunners could blast it.  The resulting explosion...... (follow the rest of the dialogue as its said in the actual mission)"


That is pretty much what I imagine happened anyways.

[KeldorKatarn]

I must say again that I agree with most points, but that I am COMPLETELY AGAINST changing anything about the missile strength or other weapon impacts.
Wing Commander manuals fine (those never really reflected the final values that appeared in-game anyway) but having 2 missiles not destroy a light and medium fighter is the worst thing of implementing those I can imagine. Right now the missiles are pretty much the only thing that really brings you in trouble. Imagine a bombing run of the player and two other Longbows and each of them takes up to 6 missiles to be destroyed. That the missile loadout of an entire fighter wing. And that means every enemy missile is a hit. THat would make bombing runs incredibly easy and would leave the capital ships completely defenseless.
As I see it this game is the best balanced MOD I've ever seen, in fact more balanced than any of the Wing Commander games.
I personally could not be more dissapointed if that was changed in any way in the final campaign.
My opinion still is, that if the dialogues weren't such a problem in the missions, as they are right now, nobody would complain about the missiles. So please try to fix the origin of the problem, not the symptom.
Trying to be close to the Wing Commander games is one thing, but I think that should be limited to the overall feel and atmosphere. Please don't think about making this game as infantile easy as the Wing Commander games were. WC Saga's dogfights beat the original ones by length so please keep it that way and fix the REAL problems.

Just my 2 cents.

[AlekTrev006]

Hmm...I'm not saying I'm suggesting a Missile - Strength change...and you are right...the biggest problem is having to sit through the long interludes and THEN getting blown away by 1-2 missile hits...THAT's the part that is most annoying to everyone, I believe.

However...your point about a heavy bomber taking 5-6 missile hits to blow up being unrealistic is only sort-of true...I mean...the Longbow is LITERALLY (going off it's listed Shields / Armor stats) ...about 2.2 times STRONGER than an Arrow .... so if an Arrow takes 2 Missiles to blow up ...a Longbow SHOULD take about 4-5 missiles to take down.

Now...your issue about bombing runs being too easy ...well...this brings us back to my other post where I mention the need for:


A) Cap-Ship Anti-Matter Gun turrets to open fire on Fighters that are attacking them...instead of JUST using their Laser Turrets as they currently do in the Prologue.  .  .


B)  ALL Cap-Ship weapons (mainly the Laser Turrets) to do MUCH more damage to the Fighter-scale craft than they currently do.

For an example of how "weak" they are right now ...fly the "Defend the Ticonderoga" Sim-Mission... play on Medium or Easy (just so you can survive long enough to see what I am talking about).  Fly your fighter inside the Ticonderoga so enemy craft don't target you. Then full-stop in the flight-bay.   Now use button "*" on your keyboard to go to an external view...then hit the "/" key to go into the other external view...then use "T" to switch "views" from Cap-Ship to Cap-Ship to Fighter...both friendly and enemy...you can watch from a "behind the fighter view" an enemy Gothri Bomber go into an attack run on one of the Cap-Ships there... watch the shields of the Bomber.

It gets hit by Laser Turret fire, eventually....but you'll notice it's taking maybe 6-8 hits before the shields are going "down" in a given quadrant and it starts to take hull armor damage.  Even then...it seems that Laser Turret bolts are ONLY inflicting 3% Damage per hit...to the hull armor of a Gothri.... I watched as it goes (example) 70% ...67%...64% ...61%....etc. etc.

This is, frankly, pretty ridiculous....  these are huge Laser Turret assemblies that are LARGER than your starfighters with Gun-Barrels that are almost half the total length of your craft.... these are HUGE guns (think the Battleships of the Iowa-class in WW-II and those huge 16-inch guns).

But these massive Capital-Ship gun batteries are only capable of inflicting 3% damage per shot to a "lowly" Kilrathi fighter-bomber ?

I'm not saying they should blow it away with one hit like in Star Wars, mind you....but clearly they should not require 30+ hits from their Turrets to blow up ONE single Gothri....that's crazy.


You can talk about missiles being "just right" as they are...but if they are okay....then the Energy Guns of the Cap-Ships are what needs some modification !

[nutshell42]

My suggestions were meant to be "or" suggestions (well, and/or), so no one has to touch your beloved missiles. That said, I wouldn't mind if Longbows could take lots of punishment as long as cap-ships are made immune to anything but torpedoes and get longer range, more powerful turrets. Missions should be hard because enemy fighters are glued to your six, blasting away, not because there's a 10% chance your evasive actions are useless and you get hit by a uber-missile.

And the missions absolutely don't have to become easier or really shorter if you just talk about actual fights. I just want some way to cut - in case I have to repeat a mission, I agree that pacing and balancing are perfect the first time - the time I have to wait for the enemies to appear so I can start blasting away. I'd be happy with any solution the devs come up with (and if as you said there's already talk on how to change this it just shows that I should spend more time reading posts and less writing multi-page drivel  ).

[Tolwyn]

You missed one important point:

the Prologue is ment as a tutorial - it has some lengths, it has tons of dialogue - this will ensure that you know how thuings work in the Wing Commander universe and also know fighter controls. The main campaign will have less dialogue and, probably, flyby animations.

[AlekTrev006]

Good point Tolwyn....I think that's important to remember - the Prologue is meant to bring you into the Story, Characters and Universe a bit - so naturally there's going to be more talk about the basics, flying, things about the enemy ships, etc.

It's very well done - don't get us wrong !  I love it !

I think people are just doing what you probably expected them to...giving feedback that you can use to refine and final product over the next year or so.


*and one of those things I think people are mentioning often is that Cap-Ship gun batteries do pretty weak damage, compared to what you'd expect from a massive turret*

AND

*that the Cap-Ships refuse to fire their heavy weapons at fighters for some reason...*

(both these things I tried to mention in the previous post above)

[Tolwyn]

Yeah, we carefully evaluate all the feedback we receive and try to implement it into the game. For instance, in the full game, Sandman will be able to give orders to some of his wingmates.

Criticism is a good thing. The main reason behind the prologue development was to bring out a small bit of the game, see what parts people like/dislike. Like many things in game development, we often don't see the problems until we get feedback from an "outsider"

[nutshell42]

You missed one important point:

the Prologue is ment as a tutorial - it has some lengths, it has tons of dialogue - this will ensure that you know how thuings work in the Wing Commander universe and also know fighter controls. The main campaign will have less dialogue and, probably, flyby animations.

Don't get me wrong, I love the lengths, I love the dialogue, it gives the game character. I just don't want to be forced to enjoy it twice within half an hour. 

Also, if someone actually needs it as a tutorial for these kinds of games (instead of just as a tutorial for the WC universe -- with space-sims no longer being what they once were there are lots of people out there who never really got into this genre) the mandatory time between mission start and combat in mission 1 is even worse. If you die a few times in battle you're really gonna hate the Aurora.
Now, of course they could train combat in the simulator but then the missions aren't really a tutorial any more (and btw. the simulator is kinda hard to find if you don't know what you're looking for).
I'd say the prologue missions - in terms of length and pacing - would be better as missions ~4,5,10,20 in a (hypothetical) 30 mission game.

[Scooby_Doo]

*that the Cap-Ships refuse to fire their heavy weapons at fighters for some reason...*

That's a SCP request.

[IceFire]

*that the Cap-Ships refuse to fire their heavy weapons at fighters for some reason...*

That's a SCP request.

Why would that be?  Its just a tag in the tables that we've had since the retail game?

The heavy weapons not firing at fighters was probably dual purpose to make it possible to attack capital ships at all (the hitpoint damage caused by a AMG would destroy a fighter right off the bat) as well as force the cap ships to prioritize enemy cap ships with their heavy weapons while the lighter stuff dealt with the fighters.  Thats how I've balanced ships for other MOD's in the past anyways.

[Scooby_Doo]

Cap ships are marked as big ships...
Big turrets are marked with big guns

big guns flag doesn't target fighters

[Mongoose]

I think there's an element of realism and practicality involved there, as well.  For example, you wouldn't see a WWII Iowa-class battleship using its main 12" turrets to shoot at incoming fighters, would you?

[AlekTrev006]

But there is a BIG Apples and Oranges comparison between an Iowa-Class BB from WWII and a massive capital ship from Wing Commander in the 2660's ....

It's not even close ... the technological / targeting / sensors / etc. improvements of those MANY centuries should EASILY enable a cap-ship to fire on a fighter-scale target with pretty much any gun it wants to. 

Couple of good things to remember in this topic is that Wing Fighters are MASSIVE....much larger than any other standard Sci-Fi's fighter-craft.

Keep in mind that most standard School-Buses are about 30-ish feet long.  This equates to about 10-meters.   We all know what Buses look like and can easily get a picture of them in our heads.  Now consider that a Wing Torpedo is ALSO 10-Meters long !!!   As big as a bus !   

That seems pretty big / crazy right ?  Well you will truly be shocked when you realize that a Longbow Bomber is (IIRC) 38-meters long !!!

38 Meters !!!!

Think of that people !   That's Gi-normous !   

That's ALMOST 4-School Buses lined up in a row....end to end.


So to think that Laser Turrrets can fire on those behemoth-sized Fighter/Bombers with ease...but an Anti-Matter Gun or Tachyon gun CANNOT...seems pretty unreasonable.


Also...while the AMG's are strong...for sure...and so too Tachyon Guns...etc.... you have to remember that attacking a Capital Ship SHOULD be deadly / tough / hard.

They NEVER were very hard in the original games...which was a major flaw.


SAGA has corrected this considerably, and the cap-ships are now very durable and can withstand a large amount of damage.   HOWEVER...as noted here and in a few other threads....they seem relatively TOOTHLESS...and weak...when it comes to defending themselves against Fighter Craft to any great extent.   Oh sure, when they unload torpedoes and other heavy weapons at enemy cap-ships...they do great damage and become truly threatening (Consider the Defend the Ticonderoga mission in the simulator...the panic you feel when the Destroyer appears and starts firing long-range salvos at the Carrier is truly gripping..great mission design by the way SAGA guys...that's a VERY tough one too..even on Easy Difficulty, because it seems like you sent an entire Kilrathi fighter Wing (many squadrons) at them !   - Great challenge ...  ).

BUT...when dealing with the Fighters....as I showed from my in-game example...they are only doing 3% damage to the hull of a Gothri, per Laser hit...  That's just...well...puny !

Especially when an Arrow's Full_Guns shots do like 4-5% per hit.

Now you might say "well the Arrow is firing 4 blasters" .... TRUE....but they are FIGHTER-scale  Lasers and Ion Guns.... not exactly BRUTAL weaponry after all...


The Laser Turret is nearly as big as a starfighter (probably 15-20 meters in length, just the super-structure, and the barrels are probably another 5-8 meters outwards from the turret itself).

Yet it's blasts do LESS damage to a fighter-target than the guns of a light-fighter ?


That just (intuitively) seems odd.


Could we honestly think we'd see this dynamic at work in any other Sci-Fi ?   Imagine.......


Darth Vader: - Fire the Turbolaser cannons at that X-Wing....   

Imperial Officer:    Errr...that's not the best idea sir...

Darth:   Hoo-Paaa....What do you mean ?

Imperial Officer:   Well sir, it's much more effective if we order some TIE Fighters to fire their lasers at the X-Wing.

Darth:  . . . Hoo....Paa ?

Imperial Officer:   Umm...yes M'Lord...I realize it makes no sense whatsoever...but...umm...that's the facts !

 

[gevatter Lars]

The AMG turrets should be anti-cap only IMO. Thats just a matter of practial use. I think it we be to much of a scripting for the mission designers to extra designate targets for the AMG seperatly in every mission.
All other turrets should be aming at everything they get before their guns.

For the weapon strength I will have to look into my books to find the right values. Personaly I think the cap weapons are ok and changeing the damage values will result in quite some rebalanceing. Well we will see.

[Tolwyn]

obviously they haven't heard about the Kilrathi light cruiser, which is actually an anti-fighter craft

[gevatter Lars]

Last time I met it, it had a lot of Tachyon turrets pointing at you and do a lot of damage.

[Tolwyn]

The Kilrathi developed the light cruiser to counter the Terran’s superiority in fighter technology.  Originally designed for anti-aircraft defense of larger Kilrathi assets, it is fast and well-armed in its own right to pose a serious threat to Terran shipping. Bristling with hordes of heavy anti-fighter guns, it can lay waste to entire formations of fighters and bombers.

[gevatter Lars]

Says the book ^_^
Its kind of crazy design if you ask me but still effective.