[Meatball]

I just wonder if anyone tries that or plays on insane.

I find Normal way to easy. Hard is pretty good, but the challenge is mild and sometimes just on the edge of to hard. Insane difficult level, so fun! and so hard!
But it's so annoyingly hard. Luckily enemies go for all targets or nearest and not the actual player like some annoying games do.

The experience is so much greater and realistic when the enemies actual feel a bit more like real qualified pilots.
Except that they still don't care about there own survival, like ourselves it's first priority.

I'm at mission 'The sixth wonder' on insane level. Which is pretty hard to complete without loosing a single Convoy ship. But I did 'Slaying Ravana' on hard, because Insane... Sheesh, impossible. I hate the vasudans Serapis, they are lamely weak. Beta wind die within a minute. And I cant change beta wings fighters on that mission.
So its only a bomber wing (alpha) against the Ravana. And you can only choose bomber fighters. And its not gonna work fighting the fighters
I really would like to see someone do that mission on insane, even though I'm only at the beginning at insane, so i got a lot more missions to look forward to, lol.

I bet there is someone here that rule on insane

[General Battuta]

Many of us play on Insane. It's the only difficulty level that doesn't give the player artificial damage resistance and special protections.

For an added rush I suggest trying out campaigns that use the Fury AI, which makes the enemy pilots a bit more human-like.

[Meatball]

How do I know it uses Fury AI on a campaign?

[General Battuta]

How do I know it uses Fury AI on a campaign?

Vassago's Dirge and Blue Planet: War in Heaven both use Fury AI. Wings of Dawn uses a custom AI by Spoon that is, I believe, similar in its asskicking capabilities.

[Scourge of Ages]

I believe it should be possible to add blueplanet as a secondary mod in any FS2-based mod.ini, and that will upgrade everything to Fury AI.

[FelixJim]

I believe it should be possible to add blueplanet as a secondary mod in any FS2-based mod.ini, and that will upgrade everything to Fury AI.

Why not merely make a separate mod with just Fury AI for that?

[General Battuta]

Actually...see, the issue is, you need to select the AI Profile and set the AI classes in-mission. So I'm not totally sure it's portable like that...

[FelixJim]

Actually...see, the issue is, you need to select the AI Profile and set the AI classes in-mission. So I'm not totally sure it's portable like that...

Unless you simply renamed Fury AI "FS2 Retail" or whatever and had it override (possibly breaking things...yeah). I don't know anything about Fury's classes though, so I don't know if there's a similar workaround there.

[General Battuta]

Actually...see, the issue is, you need to select the AI Profile and set the AI classes in-mission. So I'm not totally sure it's portable like that...

Unless you simply renamed Fury AI "FS2 Retail" or whatever and had it override (possibly breaking things...yeah). I don't know anything about Fury's classes though, so I don't know if there's a similar workaround there.

You could do that, and very easily.

[Timerlane]

Note, that unless something's been changed, Fury AI(i.e. smart weapon selection) will override the flag hangup that prevents Basilisks, Aeshmas, Maras, and any unmodified loadout Shivan bombers from using the bank(s) of Trebuchets they carry by default, possibly seriously breaking some missions(the NTC Trinity dies from Basilisk Treb spam before the Dragons can even show up, and prepare to really love any missions that put you in a bomber ).

That also effects the Horus(the only other retail ship that carries Trebs by default, IIRC), but that would/could probably only seriously affect Vasudan-centric campaigns, I think.

For the most part, you could probably just include a TBM to substitute all those default Trebs for something else, but that could still leave/cause balance issues in some situations.

[wtf_cl0vvn]

Insane seems like "storyline difficulty", that is to say, everything "fights/works like it really would".

Which somewhat puts into perspective the GLARING deficiencies in certain fields of some/most Allied ships (I'm looking at your ludicrously weak shielding and armor, Serapis).

[Spoon]

Actually...see, the issue is, you need to select the AI Profile and set the AI classes in-mission. So I'm not totally sure it's portable like that...

Unless you simply renamed Fury AI "FS2 Retail" or whatever and had it override (possibly breaking things...yeah). I don't know anything about Fury's classes though, so I don't know if there's a similar workaround there.

You could do that, and very easily.

I'm pretty sure that it will not work that way. (I believe) The FS2 retail profile is hardcode and *needs* to be present
Also, even if that is not the case. You very much need to have the default (coward, captain -> general etc) classes present or you'll get a bunch of errors.
So you'd have to change the missions to change the a.i. classes of each ship anyway, or change the ships.tbl and change the default a.i. class that a ship class uses.

Either way, it requires a bit more effort then "Change one line = instant magic" 

[Macfie]

I believe fury's AI tables also modified the retail AI performance so that even if you didn't use the custom AI classifications you still got a change in AI behavior if you used the table.  Here are the last tables he created before doing the BP WIH mod.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[BengalTiger]

So its only a bomber wing (alpha) against the Ravana. And you can only choose bomber fighters. And its not gonna work fighting the fighters
I really would like to see someone do that mission on insane, even though I'm only at the beginning at insane, so i got a lot more missions to look forward to, lol.

You need a few tricks to do that mission on insane, and often it's just you and the Vasudan Corvette that are left alive on the battlefield.
The main trick is to fly around the Ravana, keeping it at least 1,5 km away, to get to the Corvette. Then you need to keep your wing near it, you need to escort the ship (it's an easy job), and do bombing runs against the Ravana. You can also disarm it's rear left side for easier bombarding.

[QuantumDelta]

So its only a bomber wing (alpha) against the Ravana. And you can only choose bomber fighters. And its not gonna work fighting the fighters
I really would like to see someone do that mission on insane, even though I'm only at the beginning at insane, so i got a lot more missions to look forward to, lol.

You need a few tricks to do that mission on insane, and often it's just you and the Vasudan Corvette that are left alive on the battlefield.
The main trick is to fly around the Ravana, keeping it at least 1,5 km away, to get to the Corvette. Then you need to keep your wing near it, you need to escort the ship (it's an easy job), and do bombing runs against the Ravana. You can also disarm it's rear left side for easier bombarding.

Ehh..
I just kill two basilisks, fly into it and drop a bunch of bombs, and it dies... :<

Though Slaying Ravana is one of those missions that V made that is similar to some off the less awesome campaigns the HLP has put out- obviously, not balanced for insane.
SR was designed by someone who had medium at most in mind, and like campaigns that are the same (or worse, very easy..) should burn in hell.

[Spoon]

SR was designed by someone who had medium at most in mind, and like campaigns that are the same (or worse, very easy..) should burn in hell.

[QuantumDelta]

It's true! If you spare no thought for the people who don't like 'being invulnerable and good at the game', and therefore don't play on the 2 year old difficulty, then you just shouldn't release campaigns

Also! Why aren't you on IRC, cuz that would have been an IRC comment rather than a forum post otherwise :<!

[MatthTheGeek]

inb4troll

QD is well known for his god-hatred of anything slightly close to be campaign-related, aside from BP. To the original poster of this thread : do not take his comments into consideration about this subject.

<3 QD

[QuantumDelta]

Such lies, ST:R is brilliant too, and Spoons near-TC is excellent, VD too! :<
....And then I start to struggle...

[Shivan Hunter]

It's true! If you spare no thought for the people who don't like 'being invulnerable and good at the game', and therefore don't play on the 2 year old difficulty, then you just shouldn't release campaigns

Yeah, we're all complete n00bs unworthy of our Wings badge unless we cater to your 1337 sk1llz of killing Shivans while bragging like a prepubescent Halo gamer.

I think I'll copy this over here:


As someone who plays on Medium at most, you're honestly acting like that guy I played against in UT3, whose nickname was something involving farting, who always yelled in all caps and who spent more time complaining about his team being morons than playing UT3.