[Kolgena]

1366x768 is 16:9, which is the same as 1600:900. Your computer should scale it up to fit the entire screen, so it'll be full screen but a bit blurrier. Reducing resolution will help the most, much more than playing with any launcher or shader settings.

Pretty much nothing in the launcher settings will help you with the sudden drop in performance except FXAA. Turn that off if it isn't off already. The other settings (normal, spec, glow, env) can give you a couple extra fps here or there, but are unlikely to help much with the minimum frame rates. Definitely not worth turning most of them off, except maybe bloom (add -bloom_intensity 0) and env maps as they are the least noticeable when missing.

tl;dr: keep everything on, but turn off FXAA. Turn off bloom and env if you really want to, but I don't recommend it.

The shader editing is a little trickier. You need to extract main-f.sdr out from the bp2-visuals1.vp, open it with notepad, find where it says   #define MAX_LIGHTS 8, and change the 8 to anything you want. Acceptable numbers are 1-8, probably. Mine is set to 5.

Yeah. If it wasn't obvious yet, this last hack isn't the easiest to pull off for a newcomer, so sorry about that.

[LHN91]

Also, changing the resolution the game is running at shouldn't cause the game to run on less than the full screen, unless you're choosing a resolution that isn't the same aspect ratio as your screen. It should automatically stretch the reduced pixels to fit the screen, though that will likely reduce perceived sharpness.

So, i.e. if you have a 16:9 screen, 1366x768 works well, as does 1280x720; the screen should automatically scale to full screen, or there should be an option to make that happen. Unless you've got an oddball screen.

Edit: Ninja'd due to not reading Kolgena's post carefully.

[SaltyWaffles]

Have you looked at the dialogue in that mission?  The Renjian responds to even the "Thank God we're back home!" comments with veiled hostility.  And then fires the first shots of the war mere seconds after the messages are sent.  No, the diplomatic breakdown was on both sides, at least during the initial contact.

That's a good point, actually. Though it wasn't veiled hostility so much as thinly veiled suspicion. But again, if the UEF expected an invasion to be a possibility, then the arrival of a massive battlegroup--complete with a MASSIVE destroyer--as the "first contact team" rather blatantly suggests hostile intent, or a sufficient reason to believe that an entire battlegroup was warranted for first contact.

But you're right; the UEF captain also screwed up royally by barely hesitating to charge the Oresties guns blazing. Granted, the Vice Admiral didn't leave much room for interpretation (or rather, negotiation), but still--he should have just jumped out of there instead of charging an entire battlegroup head on; it needlessly escalated the conflict, wasted an entire ship, and robbed the UEF of the opportunity to bring back thorough scans of the enemy ships/composition and get an early warning of it all.

The part where, in the singular negotiations attempt the GTVA accepted later, the baffled Elder representative refused the (obviously harsh and little more than total surrender) terms--and the negotiations broke down--represents, I think, a case where both sides failed diplomatically (though again, most of the blame falls on the GTVA in this issue).

[SaltyWaffles]

tl;dr: keep everything on, but turn off FXAA. Turn off bloom and env if you really want to, but I don't recommend it.

The shader editing is a little trickier. You need to extract main-f.sdr out from the bp2-visuals1.vp, open it with notepad, find where it says   #define MAX_LIGHTS 8, and change the 8 to anything you want. Acceptable numbers are 1-8, probably. Mine is set to 5.

Yeah. If it wasn't obvious yet, this last hack isn't the easiest to pull off for a newcomer, so sorry about that.

The "You need to extract main-f.sdr out from the bp2-visuals1.vp" is the only hard one, for me. What kind of software would I need to do that? Would WinZip happen to work? And once extracted and changed, do I need to "put it back in"? If so, then how would I do it? Changing the actual part is like editing a config or coalesced.bin file. I've done that a million times.

[LHN91]

I'm far from the defining authority, but at least until someone with more current knowledge shows up...

You'll need a VP editor/viewer; some are listed on the wiki if you look over there. That'll let you open bp2-visuals1.vp.

After that, as far as I recall files in the actual file system take precedence over files in VP files, so if you place your edited main-f.sdr file in the correct /data location in your blueplanet2 folder FSO will pick it up and use it.

[General Battuta]

VPView is all you'll need.

SaltyWaffles, have you seen this? It's a GTVI dossier prepared for the security council that outlines their rationale for the war, as well as hinting at some of the classified imperatives that have only been glimpsed in the plot so far (pay close attention during one of the early missions in WiHP1).

A large part of the GTVA's decision to go to war can be derived from their memory of the Neo-Terran rebellion, a mutiny that sprang up under harsh economic conditions and built itself around the promise of a return to Terra. With the GTVA now in harsh economic conditions, and the UEF actually available as a return to Terra, the GTVA fears that it would face an impossible choice: prevent a mass exodus to Sol, and risk rebellion, or allow a mass exodus to Sol, and witness the effective collapse of both Sol's economy and the GTVA's political and military might.

As for the cluster**** at the node, it was a cluster****. The UEF was keyed up from all the bizarre probe sightings, and Vice Admiral Morian not only just witnessed his beloved Admiral Bei defect, but he had some severe and pretty well undetected PTSD regarding the Shivans which had him on edge.

Super good thread, quality posts.

[Scotty]

Worth noting, I think, is that the trip to the alternate universe might actually have caused the real cluster**** at the node.  Imagine, for a moment, that the 14th Battlegroup arrived through the node completely unharmed and undiverted.  The UEF has not been put quite as much on edge from an additional several days' worth of probes arriving and departing without communication.  The 14th is still 100% effective, and has no huge ethical split over their orders (to be sure there would be some anxiety and dissent, but not near enough to the level of ships flat out defecting).  The Renjian sees an entire full strength battlegroup of sleek, impressive new vessels who's combat capabilities are completely unknown.  Instead of charging into the teeth of the battlegroup, it withdraws without engaging any more than halfheartedly.  The 16th Battlegroup doesn't immediately relieve the 14th, and the abortive First Battle of Neptune never happens, but the 14th instead jumps in around Earth and Lunar orbit relatively uncontested and with the strength of nearly an entire fleet of UEF frigates.  Neither side wants to actually fight this close to the planet, where falling debris would kill potentially millions.  Talks between the two sides commence, this time without the lives of several thousand dead naval personnel on both sides and with the GTVA in a hugely superior position.  If the UEF fails to surrender, the 14th takes Earth effectively hostage.  If they do, the GTVA has acheived all strategic goals going into the situation.

Instead, the Renjian saw a battered flotilla of disfigured and maimed ships.  Her captain liked his chances based on the damage already sustained, and the order to stand down and prepare to be boarded could easily be a bluff from this so-called GTVA.  If this ragged battlegroup is the pride of the GTVA navy, on the first re-contact with Earth, then it stands to reason that the GTVA could clearly be only months or years from complete and utter collapse.  Against such decrepit ships, especially if they are of comparable firepower with his own Karuna, the Renjian's captain believes he can either stunt the invasion here, and return to Jupiter and the UEF a bona-fide war hero in an age where there are no real war heroes left, as well as bloodying the nose of the obviously already clearly shambled enemy, or he can hold them off long enough for the other ships of his squadron to arrive and finish off the crippled ships.  Either way, by all appearances, the captain of the Renjian is poised to become the most famous man in the Sol system.

Appearances can be deceiving.

[General Battuta]

Yes, that's very true, and one of the big arguments behind the 'Vishnans kidnapped the 14th' theory. Without the 14th's disappearance the GTVA executes its original plan and the UEF basically starts the war in a state of checkmate.

[Kolgena]

VPView -> "extract to directory" will spit out the file for you.

Edit the file, don't pack it back into the VP. Instead, put it into *\blueplanet2\data\effects. Loose files in the \data\ directory override files of the same name in the VP.

Hopefully that should work and win back a few fps for you.

[qwadtep]

Regarding the Raynor, I'd like to point out that the Orestes, despite being stranded in hostile territory with only a fraction of its escorting battlegroup, was able to force the Lucifer to retreat and repair in several direct engagements before Sam's return. Add to that the SSM capabilities and sprint drives of the Atreus and you've got an absolute monster of a ship.

[SaltyWaffles]

Regarding the Raynor, I'd like to point out that the Orestes, despite being stranded in hostile territory with only a fraction of its escorting battlegroup, was able to force the Lucifer to retreat and repair in several direct engagements before Sam's return. Add to that the SSM capabilities and sprint drives of the Atreus and you've got an absolute monster of a ship.

I'll give that technical suggestion a shot. Lowering the resolution definitely helped, but there are still many cases where it's a huge problem, like Delenda Est--why beam cannons looks exactly the same as laser turrets and missile launchers is beyond me. But that's for another thread...

***

Yeah, which is why I'm really confused as to why the UEF didn't lose wholesale during that massive assault on Earth/Luna in WiH. Only the Solaris destroyers can give a GTVA battlegroup pause. And the GTVA has something like 5 battlegroups to the UEF's 3. And shock jump hunter killer teams, which would just thrive in such a battle. All the GTVA would have to do is take out a Solaris--or its equivalent--to deal a crippling blow to the UEF. At that point, so long as it hasn't lost a lot itself, it could just back out to lick its wounds while the UEF reels from the massive and irreplaceable morale and military loss.

I'm not sure why the Atreus retreated in that mission. It was within range of the Solaris; the other UEF ships in the area were badly damaged and their air wings had already taken massive casualties. The Solaris' air wings were likely still engaged elsewhere. The Atreus could have easily won, especially with its sprint drive allowing it to disengage whenever it wanted. Then the UEF would truly have been dealt the death blow that day.

***

About the end of AoA--yeah, it makes a lot more sense now. Not that I don't think both sides are still failing diplomatically, but yeah. And the UEF can't attempt to destroy the Knossos on the other side, as any attempt would cost at least a dozen frigates and force the now-pissed-and-desperate GTVA battle groups already in Sol to essentially accept heavy losses to win the war right there. With the loss of a dozen frigates, they wouldn't stand a chance.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

I'm feeling some confusion here:

I'm not sure why the Atreus retreated in that mission. It was within range of the Solaris; the other UEF ships in the area were badly damaged and their air wings had already taken massive casualties. The Solaris' air wings were likely still engaged elsewhere. The Atreus could have easily won, especially with its sprint drive allowing it to disengage whenever it wanted. Then the UEF would truly have been dealt the death blow that day.

The Atreus and Solaris have, as far as we know, never been facing each other on the battlefield. In Darkest Hour, the only mission in which the player faces the Atreus, it is forced to retreat because of the two artillery frigates, which are capable of dealing huge damage from outside the Atreus' beam range.
Heck, we've been told that in WiH alpha, Steele was killed in its first ingame appearance, and since we know that Darkest Hour already existed at that time, I'd bet that Steele didn't retreat back then.

I also believe, iirc, that the main reason the UEF didn't lose as badly as they could during the Blitz was the swift response of the second fleet, as evidenced by the arrival of the Indus to prevent the Valerie from destroying Rheza.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, which is why I'm really confused as to why the UEF didn't lose wholesale during that massive assault on Earth/Luna in WiH. Only the Solaris destroyers can give a GTVA battlegroup pause.

Incorrect - Narayanas and the UEF bomber corps are both a nightmare for GTVA warships.

I'm not sure why the Atreus retreated in that mission. It was within range of the Solaris; the other UEF ships in the area were badly damaged and their air wings had already taken massive casualties. The Solaris' air wings were likely still engaged elsewhere. The Atreus could have easily won, especially with its sprint drive allowing it to disengage whenever it wanted. Then the UEF would truly have been dealt the death blow that day.

Erm? Maybe I'm making a huge gaffe here, but when did we ever see the Atreus in the same mission area as the Solaris? Are you thinking of Darkest Hour? That was the Indus, a Karuna frigate.

Heck, we've been told that in WiH alpha, Steele was killed in its first ingame appearance, and since we know that Darkest Hour already existed at that time, I'd bet that Steele didn't retreat back then.

ugugughhh don't remind me. But no, Steele wasn't in the alpha Darkest Hour. I think people misapprehend exactly how different the campaign was back then - it was a shadow of what it is now.

[qwadtep]

I'm not sure why the Atreus retreated in that mission. It was within range of the Solaris; the other UEF ships in the area were badly damaged and their air wings had already taken massive casualties. The Solaris' air wings were likely still engaged elsewhere. The Atreus could have easily won, especially with its sprint drive allowing it to disengage whenever it wanted. Then the UEF would truly have been dealt the death blow that day.

Erm? Maybe I'm making a huge gaffe here, but when did we ever see the Atreus in the same mission area as the Solaris? Are you thinking of Darkest Hour? That was the Indus, a Karuna frigate.

I believe he means 'in range' hyperbolically, as in, First Fleet was battered and in disarray giving Steele a chance to take the Atreus for a decapitation strike. The answer is that the objective was only to cripple Earth's logistics, the Solaris probably poses a significant threat to the Atreus in its own right, and even if the Atreus came out on top it would have just given First Fleet's remnants to the much more dangerous Calder and Netreba.