[General Battuta]

Good point, good point.

Hang on, retitling topic.

[The E]

Next point: In "A time of Heroes, would it be possible to increase the spacing between the ships of Alpha wing or adjust their initial orders? They keep ramming me while I'm holding station near the Orestes. Professional behaviour this isn't.

[General Battuta]

bahahahaha

It's a time for heroes, man. They love you.

[Rodo]

hey have you fixed the issue with the Orion not beign destroyed in the cutscene (because of using super speed up function?) that could be checked to if it wasn't already fixed.

[General Battuta]

Because of time compression? That's a fundamental issue with the engine and the way beam damage is applied, not with Blue Planet. Just don't use time compression.

[The E]

So, Universal Truth....
I believe this mission desperately needs more work. Beginning with the opening cutscene (I think it would be a good idea to split the cutscene and the mission proper into two separate missions), which apart from the sweeping camera move in the beginning, is basically a bunch of static scenes with captions (and as such, just not very interesting), continuing with the lack of music. This honestly surprised me. It's been a while since my last complete playthrough, but in a campaign renowned for its exquisite music selection, a mission with NO BGM whatsoever is a bit jarring (Apart from the bit in the beginning, before the cutscene started). Add to that the thing Fury noted in his review about the horrible quality the FS sound engine sometimes produces, and you get a mission which, for me, was more exhausting than Keepers of Hell and Forced Entry combined. It wasn't made better by the debriefing.


In the next mission, I found it a bit strange that my trusty Ares, which brought me through Universal Truth, had suddenly transformed into a Pegasus....
Also, lack of music makes me sad.

[General Battuta]

Wait, what. That wasn't how this mission worked before. It had a rockin' decent soundtrack, and it cut straight to the next mission without a debriefing.

We should polish 'er up!

I'll add a suggestion, Darius. We need to implement Shivan secondaries throughout the campaign.

[Darius]

I concur with your assessment Dr Battuta. We need to prep her for reconstructive surgery.

This thread is a gift, The_E. I haven't picked up half the things that you've mentioned so far Thanks!

EDIT: Looking at Universal Truth, I've pinpointed the lack of debriefing. In the original release, that mission finished on a red-alert so there wasn't normally any debriefing. Later versions had the red alert thing removed, and the no debriefing option wasn't set.

Music should definitely happen, however, after the camera resets onto the player.

[The E]

My usual cautiousness kicks me to remind everyone that one tester is just as bad as no tester at all. So please, test the hell out of these missions and see if what I encountered holds true for everyone, or if it's some weirdness on my end.

Oh, and just for completeness' sake, my command line (especially the custom lighting options) looked like this: -ambient_factor 0 -spec_exp 11 -spec_point .6 -spec_static .8 -spec_tube .4 -ogl_spec 80

EDIT: Surrounded by morons, Alpha 1 does the only thing he can think of to make the situation bearable:



This has been in my head ever since I played "A Time of Heroes", and I needed to let it out. Are you happy now, subconsciousness?

[CaptJosh]

Darius I know it was mentioned elsewhere that on one mission you forgot the show-hud sexp after an in mission cut scene. Is it possible you also forgot this in "...With Vast Seas"? I just played through it with your new VP from the 3.6.10 update thread, using the 3.6.10RC3 executable and had to use the Shift+O solution again.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Because of time compression? That's a fundamental issue with the engine and the way beam damage is applied, not with Blue Planet. Just don't use time compression.

How about adding a destroy-ship and fire-beam SEXP to it?

[General Battuta]

That's actually not a bad idea. (But the cutscene is all of a minute long, I don't see too much need for time compression!)

[Woolie Wool]

In my last playthrough, the Terran fleet did not fire their heavy beams at the Renjian in the final mission. I actually had to cheat and destroy the ship myself to prevent it from slowly nibbling the Orestes to death.

[General Battuta]

I believe that's a consequence of difficulty level settings. What were you on?

We should fix that by using fire-beam there.

[Woolie Wool]

I dropped down to Very Easy because I was sick to death of Universal Truth.

I suggest you edit the ai_profiles.tbl and set Max Target Turret Ownage to 999 on all skill levels.

[General Battuta]

We actually did that in the WiH AI table, so it'll also apply to the re-release. Except I think it's 20, not 999. And I think it should be 999.  

Sorry about Universal Truth. What was going wrong?

[Woolie Wool]

Because often I'd have several different capital ships being attacked by several different wings of bombers thousands of meters apart. Deal with any of them and all the the others will still be raping your other escorts. I don't recall the order in which the capital ships jumped, but it was always the last destroyer-sized ship that ended up dying and screwing me over.

Also the Ravana in Forced Entry needs to be moved back from the Temeraire to give more time to take out the LReds. Even with Trebuchets the SD Whatchamacallit gets in range too quickly. (Although I noticed I still had the glitched Ravana vp in my mediavps folder, no wonder many of my Trebs didn't seem to hit their mark).

[General Battuta]

Hurh. They should largely be able to handle themselves with their pulse weapons and stuff. That's frustrating, though, don't blame you for turning it down.

[Woolie Wool]

I thought the pulse weapons were really cool, I'm considering using their trails for my "adv turrets" in Twist of Fate and The Third War. Although the Shivans could have used some new guns of their own, but it's too late for that.

Also, I noticed that the Shivan ships haven't been changed over to the new 3.6.10 Shivan secondaries.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

In my last playthrough, the Terran fleet did not fire their heavy beams at the Renjian in the final mission. I actually had to cheat and destroy the ship myself to prevent it from slowly nibbling the Orestes to death.

Was it possible for you to order the warships around? I know the first version of AoA allowed me to do that.

...the SD Whatchamacallit...

Abel.