[Androgeos Exeunt]

Their beams were also quite dangerous if left unchecked.

[Grante]

I come up with the following two errors.


Could not load in main hall mask 'MainScreen-M'!

(This error most likely means that you are missing required 640x480 interface art.)
<no module>! KiFastSystemCallRet
<no module>! WaitForSingleObject + 18 bytes
<no module>! <no symbol>
<no module>! <no symbol>


Verify failure: Vbuf0 != NULL

<no module>! KiFastSystemCallRet
<no module>! WaitForSingleObject + 18 bytes
<no module>! <no symbol>
<no module>! <no symbol>


I have the updated Oct 2010 version.

[The E]

Set your resolution higher than 640x480.

[Jerac]

Fantastic capmaign. I just can't wait to see Act II (and more later). If only I was a bit better with writing praise comments And the Akrotiri is beautiful. Aesherdesherdehsehrdersherherherians' tactics are cool. Especially suicide attacks performed by remnains of their capital ships over their homeworld.

I also had the "invisible ship in ship selection menu" bug, along with many problems with launching the game, buut I think it is related more to my butchered polish-localized copy of FS2 (which was then patched with english voicepack).

Btw, Akrotiri is beatufil. Really!.

As for the game itself - I think the gameplay is better than in previous version. No more instagibbing missiles of unevitable and extremely quick death. That was... annoying And no more space shuriken. But if we are on that - the slow pace of most projectiles, especially the huge Akrotiri one, does not help to convey the sense of power of these weapons. They just do not look dangerous. In my opinion, speeding all capship only weapons up by a very large margin would not cause any balance or gameplay issues, but would look just so much cooler. Just try it, increase the speeds 5x, and watch how cool the FS1-type capship fight now is (and ensure they can't target fighters with these weapons ).

(did I mention that the Akrotiri is beautiful? And Kato, too).

The Pharnec (and to lesser extent Quasar, too) suffers from the same problem as well - it does not look powerful. Crete is like a machinegun, has proper sound, proper projectile speed, proper rate of fire and proper effect on the target. Simply - a good weapon. Pharnec on the other hand, performs badly and looks sadly. A laser type weapon with such slow projectile, with toy-like space sound. Meh, simply said. Again, I'd increase projectile speed considerably, make the trail shorter but much brighter, and most importantly, it needs a loud BANG when shooting, and equally loud HIT-BANG (also with a bright flash) when it hits.

Just in case I forgot - good job on the Akrotiri. Looks really nice.

One more thing - Ae(...)rians primary weapons are so much a joke... maybe entirely remove them? Make the entire species use only secondaries? Come on, I could throw stones with more precision than these guns can shoot

[TopAce]

The Aesdherians aren't meant to be an advanced race. They're well behind the Ancients in most respects, with the exception of their secondaries.

[Jerac]

I understand the design goal behind that. But remember that they are also a potent spacefaring race - in comparision to us right now. And they have probably won a war before. I wonder how could they win a war with a weapon that cannot hit a ~20m-long target from 50 meters distance? Seriously, that is like shooting to a neighbour's house! How can you miss? Cavemen with stones would not, certainly. Nor bowmen, musketeers, riflemen, modern artillery, tanks or guided missiles. Yet Aesdherians can.

Again, this is only a matter of looks. What if their weapon was deadly accurate and caused some (little) shake, on top of that it looked powerful and more importantly, sounded powerful... yet its damage was close to none, like now? That would be in my opinion, a sign of Ancients being more advanced and better: Shoot at us with everything you have, and see how it harmlessly bounces off my glass cockpit.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Well, we're glad you liked it anyway Agreed, the main weapons would look more impressive with a higher speed - it's something we'll take into consideration. The Pharnec is not supposed to be that powerful; it's like the Ancient Subach, or Prom R. Don't worry, you'll be getting some better guns later on.
As for the Aesdherians' aiming, well that's what they got guided missiles for Their anti-fighter primaries work more like shotguns, effective at close range but not so much at longer ranges, indeed. Given that their fighters are very fast and nimble, they could easily get close up to a slower opponent and blast them to bits, which is presumably how they won the first war.

[Jerac]

Liked? I LOVED it! That is why I am apparently nitpicking, because I do care! If that was just another nice but well, play'n'forget campaign, I'd just shrug such little nuisances off.

Sooo, I just don't like the fact Aesdherians can't aim at all, even though the shotgun explanation is so-so. Of course, that is just my opinion

Similarly - I don't see a problem with Pharnec being weak (altough to be honest, it is very high on my personal Weakest SpaceSim Weapon list),  see a problem with it not feeling like a weapon at all. Look at movies, both sci-fi and war reports. What do you see? LOUD booms, BRIGHT flashes, HUGE explosions and so on. That is not just a "cool" factor, that is a sense of power, which in fact so many games lack. It is not ASW's fault only - the same problem exists in games like WoW where a dragon-killing fireball is essentially a reddish brown orb with some trail, with silent "poof" launch sound and hit effect being equally silent "omph" + few sparks. That just does not look powerful. This is not scary.
(And when we are on "scary", Dart-fighter missiles pre-patch were exactly the definition of "scary"... omg, how I learned to hate them!)

Another example, this time of a well-done weapon: Aesdherians' beams. At first when I saw them - OW, thats going to hurt. Yet my fighter literally flew through one and I survived. THAT was an experience which proved that Ancients are advanced, showing that their armor is capable of easily withstanding blasts from (seemingly) very powerful weapon.

[TopAce]

For reference, what difficulty did you play on? I don't think you're supposed to survive any kind of anti-capship beam hit.

[Jerac]

Sssssshhhhaaaaammmme!

Damn. I did not realize that after resetting pilot setting was back to easy. Argh. I guess I have a campaign to fly.
But tbh, it is possible even in normal FS2 when you have a glancing hit from say, a L-terslash or whatever it is called

[Androgeos Exeunt]

For reference, what difficulty did you play on? I don't think you're supposed to survive any kind of anti-capship beam hit.

On the lowest difficulty and in some special occasions on multiplayer regardless of difficulty, you CAN survive a scrape with a beam like the TerSlash. Emphasis on "survive", because you'll be quite dead after that.

[Droid803]

Since you get up to 5x the HP (or damage is reduced to 20%), you can actually survive beam hits on lower difficulties, doesn't save you from losing a number of your subsystems though

[ssmit132]

If you attempt to jump out in the forth mission, the Akrotiri will endlessly scold you:

[Commander Zane]

Woha that's awesome, I didn't know that message could be changed.

[General Battuta]

Woha that's awesome, I didn't know that message could be changed.

I'm pretty sure it's just FREDded, therefore ezpz. Looks like someone forgot to put in a key-reset though?

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Good catch

[PeterX]

The Aeshdarian fleet looks very familiar to the Nightmare (Negator) fleet if the Fang bomber not here.
Was they the gate to good and evil ?  Does ASW also develop the Nightmarers out of the Aeshdarians?
Theorie only.....
Peter

[TopAce]

They just happen to use the same models. There's no bigger mystery behind it. At least I hope the ASW team doesn't want to include the Nightmares as developed and vengeance-seeking Aesdherians.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

They just happen to use the same models. There's no bigger mystery behind it. At least I hope the ASW team doesn't want to include the Nightmares as developed and vengeance-seeking Aesdherians.

Heh, no, don't worry

[starbug]

If you attempt to jump out in the forth mission, the Akrotiri will endlessly scold you:

I can't get past that mission, i do everything in the directives, complete the objectives yet i always always get the failed mission brief and have to keep replaying it no matter what i do a end up failing, even the failed 5 times proceed to next level doesn't come up.