[Aardwolf]

Last night Nuke and I decided to open up the RTS mod to outside testing.

To check it out, the 'demo' link can be found here:

(Edit: the above image is a link, please click it)

The file fart.pl2 should be moved to <your fs2 root directory>/data/players/single ; use or clone this pilot or we won't be able to help much if your controls don't match nicely.

Place the folder contained in the zip in your FS2 directory as you would any other mod, and select it with the launcher (or manually if you're crazy like that).

Immediately after opening this up to outside viewers we noticed a problem with the mission "****ed.fs2", and you should probably avoid playing that one. Also it seems the mod isn't as feature-rich as people were expecting (read: we hyped it too much).

[watsisname]

This thing is the thing where it's like FS2 except you're a superawesome pseudo-omniscient person, right?

[Aardwolf]

This thing is the thing where it's like FS2 except you're a superawesome pseudo-omniscient person, right?

Precisely.

[Polpolion]

Is there any chance of getting any documentation for this? Like what controls do what? Past that, it's actually looking pretty good so far.

[Nuke]

are you volunteering to write it?

[Titan]

Is there any way to ORDER ships to do anything besides jump through subspace?

[Polpolion]

are you volunteering to write it?

I'd be more than happy to if I knew what the controls were. Unfortunately...

[ShadowGorrath]

Wouldn't they be in the options menu?

[SypheDMar]

Wouldn't they be in the options menu?

It doesn't tell you much, unfortunately.

EDIT: How do you order ships to even jump out of/into subspace?

[Titan]

mouse wheel. Hold down and drag for the direction they'll jump out towards.

[Kiloku]

Controls I found out:
A: Zoom In
Z: Zoom Out
Drag Mouse: Select ship (or group of ships)
Click and Drag Middle Mouse: Order Subspace jump. Only works if the ship has enough energy (The blue bar under the health)

Simple.
Sure, it's an alpha, so we can't expect advanced stuff.
What I'd like to see soon: Using Chase Cam (good for watching fighters battling, as they are too smal, compared to the bigger ships), ordering normal moves (without resorting to subspace), Ordering attack.
But we must all be patient.

Things I noticed: Ordering jumps for bigger ships is hard, in all of my tries, the Colossus appeared a lot ahead of where I wanted it. It's not a bug, as far as I can tell, just a problem. Also, there is no collision. And once, a GTD Orion I had was inside a Sathanas, and when I ordered the jump, it jumped and appeared somewhere else, but a "ghost" of it was stuck on the Sathanas, for around 5 seconds, before disappearing.

For the RTS Mod to work, I guess it would need new AI, instead of the basic AI that FS2 Offers, which is made for Space Sims, not for RTS .

[Solatar]

I'd call this a proof of concept, and I really do like it. Even with some simple additions like ordering attacks and waypoints (I know they're not real simple to implement, obviously, or they'd be there) it could be really cool.

[Dilmah G]

Hmmmm, Sounds interesting, I'll try it out.

[SypheDMar]

I'd call this a proof of concept, and I really do like it. Even with some simple additions like ordering attacks and waypoints (I know they're not real simple to implement, obviously, or they'd be there) it could be really cool.

I concur. The view is excellent, too.

[Kiloku]

Today, with more testing, I found something that is really annoying: The ships might try to change altitude a lot, and when you order a subspace jump for your ships, they will always be on the same altitude. The problem is that this can (and usually does) result in the ships being far below the enemy ships.

Again, I know it's a Pre-Alpha, but I'm just giving my 2 cents.

[Aardwolf]

I posted some of the controls I remembered were working semi-properly in the other thread (on the mod forum, on fsmods; there's a link to it on the site page). I'd post it here too but the bbcode is oddly different and it'd be too much work to fix it.

[Nuke]

heres the complete breakdown from memory
note that the mouse control must be disabled in options and mouse one must be unbound
note that the actual freespace function that the fsrts hijacks are in ()

np4 and 6 or joy yaw (ship yaw) - scroll left-right
np2 and 8 or joy pitch (ship pitch) - scroll up-down
np7 and 9 or joy roll (ship roll) - rotate view left-right
a and z (inc, dec throttle) - zoom in and out
ctrl(fire) - select modifier, hold to add/remove ships from selection
x(countermeasures) - move (buggy)
space or mouse 2 (missiles) - warp

[Titan]

I think you should do It the EAW way, just have different ship classes keep the same alttude (IE, every deimos stays at X height, every orion stays at y height, and so on). The only problem is that some ships might have some of their turrets blocked most of the time.

Anyway, it's an idea.

[Aardwolf]

The following post is (mostly) copied from my forum

Unfortunately, I've got to admit that not much has been done since the preliminary release. However, I have made modifications to the warp command which make it now require a full gauge to activate, and which removes the minimum distance requirement. I am hoping some of Nuke's recent (unless he's quit for some reason) work on the engine will give us more powerful control over the ship AI, allowing more RTS-like behavior, particularly in warships. Some comments we received seem to indicate that people would greatly prefer a more homeworld-like 3d experience over what we've got now, especially considering that the way the AI and warp command currently interact can cause for some undesirable subspace exit positions.

On another subject, I am considering making a more organized (think 'blog'-format) topic to track what we've been working on, and possibly help avoid the sort of 'over-hype' that I think may have contributed to the 'yawn' reaction we got when we released.