[zonination]

Basically title. I want to play the OG Freespace 1 and Freespace 2 with Fury AI, but I don't know how to do that in Knossos.

Is there some sort of flag setting?

[General Battuta]

No. You could play FreeSpace Blue (included with Blue Planet) to get FS2 with some of the Fury AI features, but you'd need to edit the actual ships in the missions to get them to use Fury AI classes.

This might be an interesting and easy mod to make!

[zonination]

Does this need to be added to ships.tbl, or does this have to be added to every single mission?

Side note: h*ck it, let's do it live. Why not glide, strafe, and reverse thrust capabilities for every ship? (I find that Fury AI is most satisfying to beat while in reverse-afterburner, and putting a missile right up my opponent's cockpit—so I'm the last thing they see before they die. )

[General Battuta]

The first step would be to include an AI table and AI profiles table that add the Fury AI.

The second step would be to open all the missions and change the ship AI classes to use Fury AI classes. OR to edit ships.tbl to alter the default AI classes of various ships to use Fury AI classes by default.

The third step would probably be to alter some weapon loadouts in the mission files. Fury AI will use Trebuchets, which for some reason are in the default loadout of a lot of Shivan ships. And Fury AI removes the random turret refire delay, which means beam and flak weapons will shoot MUCH faster; so you might have to swap out or modify some of these weapons to fire more slowly.

[0rph3u5]

The following Shivan ships also use fighter guns for (some of) their laser turrets - which causes them to get a significant boost from the removal of the random turret fire delay:

SB Nephilim
SB Seraphim
ST Azrael
SFr Dis
SFr Mephisto
SFr Asmodeus
SC Rakshasa
SC Cain
SSG Trident
SSG Belial
SSG Rahu

some GTVA ships have the Subach HL-7 randomly in thier turret loadouts, e.g. the Mentu

You might want to adress that with a -shp.tbm and -wep.tbm.

[manwiththemachinegun]

Perhaps as an option for FS2 blue?

[zonination]

Okay: a minor update for Freespace 1:

• I added Fury's ai.tbl, ai-aip.tbm, and ai-obt.tbm found here into /fsport-3.6.8/data/tables
• I modified a ships.tbl, so I can glide and reverse-afterburn with Apollos. I did the same with Seths and Anubises. (Might mod the whole thing later.) Same folder: /fsport-3.6.8/data/tables
• I inspected the Fury AI classes: Coward, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Colonel, General—the same ones as the defaults in FRED so I didn't mess with 'em.
• I fired up the first and second mission on Medium difficulty to test.

The ship table worked!
But... is there any way to find out if my AI brothers are... "Furious"? Are there any behavioral qualities that I should look into?

[General Battuta]

Well they won't really be Furious until you start giving them BP2 AI classes. I don't know what those are called in the FSP table.

[Iain Baker]

If this was made as a full mod that would be awesome. Throw in 'check hull to everything except VLS' to stop ships beaming through themselves and the new HUD icons, wingman gauge etc. and we would have the ultimate FS experience (from my perspective anyway, but then I'm a video game masochist  )

[zonination]

Well they won't really be Furious until you start giving them BP2 AI classes. I don't know what those are called in the FSP table.

Well, I renamed the BP2 AI classes to the default FS AI classes in the ai.tbl file, so this shouldn't be a problem. Just doing the same thing in reverse, eh?

So, reporting back on the results:

The thing is... obviously first few missions are meant to be easy, so I didn't notice a difference. But when I played "First Strike" on Medium... HOLY CRAP. I have a hard time winning. I must have played this mission a million times on Insane, and I keep losing my meat shields wingmen (which are set to Lieutenant while the Shivan ships are set to Captain?). Not to mention the turret refresh rate on the Taranis. (Although the Glide and Reverse-Thrust feature I built into the Athena is cool!)

I guess I have some rebalancing to do after I fully modify ships.tbl. (Figure only some ships should get reverse-afterburn, only some should get strafe, the Apollo and Anubis should get neither because they're deathboxes... but all of them should get glide since this is, you know, S P A C E and all...)

[QuakeIV]

I for one would totally be down for furious space 2.

[zonination]

I for one would totally be down for furious space 2.

That's a good one. I had Freespace Fury in mind when (1) I modify all the ships in the table (2) I alter and test individual missions with AI rebalance (a la Freespace Blue). Now that I know how to overwrite ai.tbl and ships.tbl (to allow for some _{S P A C E   G L I D E}), it's only a matter of surgically editing the mission files' AI profiles and seeing what works—so ya don't get kilt right dead when ya warp in.

I'll take some inspiration from Freespace Blue but with FSPort. A one-person show for now, but I might ask for testers for Act 1.

[Iain Baker]

If you need testers count me in, I’ looking forward to playing this and getting my ass handed to me 😂

[QuakeIV]

I'd be down as well.

[Colonol Dekker]

Is it the sort of thing that could be done with a batch "find>replace"?

[zonination]

Is it the sort of thing that could be done with a batch "find>replace"?

Well I did something a lot simpler:

Instead of swapping out the BP AI classes with "Find > Replace" in every mission file, I simply renamed classes already tabled in the default BP2-AIs, and dropped them into %DIRECTORY%/data/tables/ai.tbl:

• None
• Coward
• BP2-Lieutenant --> Lieutenant
• BP2-Captain --> Captain
• BP2-Major --> Major
• BP2-Colonel --> Colonel
• BP2-General --> General
• BALLS OF STEELE --> Ace

Nice. All of them are now default FS1/FS2 classes except for Ace. Which I can manually edit in the mission file. We can now ship the campaign, right?

HOLD THE PHONE. Now comes the issue of rebalancing the missions. Fury AI is such a powerful dynamic, it changes things. (Like, imagine if you suddenly turned on your VCR—because people still totally have those now right?—and watched Big Trouble in Little China, and it was different because Jack Burton didn't "NO U" the knife in time, or Lo Pan wasn't able to survive the truck crash because he ran out of magic, or Miao Yin was able to karate chop the Lords of Death and everyone sat and drank and partied for 90 minutes on screen instead... it's the same concept. Insert favorite action movie here.)

Remember, I want things to be more intense. But the initial issues I'm dealing with:

• Your wingmen getting all the kills? I don't think so.
• Escort missions where the cargo go kablooey, because wing after wing of shivans. You know the one I'm talking about.
• Training missions where the instructor is so smart and overpowered, he destroys a drone instead of injuring it and fails you for not following instructions.
• Long-ass missions where you just end up defending yourself after yer winkmen get kilt

Oh. Did I mention that there's no check for cheating in the most recent iteration of FSO? That's right. I don't know how, but you can cheat your way through a campaign. Any campaign. Any mod. Just type www.freespace2.com, slap BFReds (or equivalent) on your puny little interceptor, and send a beam straight through the spine of a capship—not even kidding. (I'm going to add an event called "PUMPKINEATER --> while --> player-is-cheating" to check for cheating and set conditions "and --> is-event-incomplete" for every mission in order to advance through a campaign, in my FSO campaign. Possibly also send a message from command about what a loser the cheater is.)

By the way: I'm also working on a combat training mission where you learn the basics of glide, reverse thrust, reverse afterburn, and strafe. That's some delay but it's gonna look snazzy.

[Strygon]

wasn't the part about cheating essentially widespread public knowledge and also how people usually skip through missions that are too difficult?

i think the reason no one does any cheat events is because there's just no point to it

[Iain Baker]

Superb! I am seriously looking forward to playing this on hard or insane and having my a$$ handed to me.

If you want to make it even more intense try implementing whatever Blaise Russel did to make Bem Cavalgar so 'challenging'. Shivan fighters that can circle strafe and flip on their axis like a starfury, shivan shields about three times stronger than normal, shivan primaries as deadly as balors, shivan missiles that can wreck pretty much all of your fighter's subsystems in a single hit even if you were at full shields, and all this on NORMAL difficulty setting. Any of these take your fancy  ?

[Iain Baker]

wasn't the part about cheating essentially widespread public knowledge and also how people usually skip through missions that are too difficult?

i think the reason no one does any cheat events is because there's just no point to it

Yup, its what I did once or twice back when I was a crap pilot  Its easy to find - just google FSOpen cheats and it comes up.

[zonination]

If you want to make it even more intense try implementing whatever Blaise Russel did to make Bem Cavalgar so 'challenging'. Shivan fighters that can circle strafe and flip on their axis like a starfury, shivan shields about three times stronger than normal, shivan primaries as deadly as balors, shivan missiles that can wreck pretty much all of your fighter's subsystems in a single hit even if you were at full shields, and all this on NORMAL difficulty setting. Any of these take your fancy  ?

I'm not that cruel—but let's just say I'm definitely going to make the player think twice about engaging the Vasudan Ace.