Actually Hyperspace and Shields and Stuff like that might not be as far away as some of us think
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Actually Hyperspace and Shields and Stuff like that might not be as far away as some of us think
New website is up!
http://www.swrebellion.com/evillejedi
i looked @ the website. just a thought - if you hit backspace a few times and then take the screenie then the atats, etc.aren't visible. makes for a kewler screenshot imo.
No offense, but I don't like the look of the moncals in screenshots 50 and 51 (i think). did you design them yourself?
Secondly, are you planning on the mc75? I don't know why, but at first glance I hated it, but I think it looks cool (now, anyway)
Thirdly, where on earth can I find a copy of Dark Empire? I missed out on all the comic book sources, except for a few, and I'd like to read them. Pity the library doesn't have them.
p.s. please no one get irate, its just my opinion
Last edited by Tal Shiar; 16th Mar 04 at 11:00 PM.
#1005
HitokiriHa: not sure what you mean by that.
Tal Shiar:
they are MC-40's, but probably a lot more bulky than they are represented in XwT. I did this so that they would fit in more with the bulbousness of the rest of the MC designs and so it resembled the mon cal evacuation ships. (hard to translate 100ish poly models from a 5 year old game into a similar design style of highly detailed movie models) I picked the green color because the evacuation ships were colorized this way and just to be different (lots and lots of gray hull plating) also the MC-40 from the games looks like a 0.5 scaling of the 1300 m cruiser minus some engines. (even the hanger bay is done the same way) it looked like a halfassed job by LA/TG so I kept the overall design (engines, torp launchers) and then tweaked it to look more like a mon cal designed ship. (similar changes were made to the 1300m cruiser from the games though not as drastic)
MC-75 is a fan made ship, so no.
check in a comic/hobby store for dark empire. there's usually a copy on the shelf or in used sections and I have seen it at barnes and noble and borders, and always online.
Last edited by evillejedi; 17th Mar 04 at 1:05 AM.
If worse comes to worse, try Ebay!
A few quick things:
1) is there any way to make the colors of the lasers more distinct? Make the reds redder and the greens greener? They look to me washed out and white compared to the brilliant colors in the movies.
2) I think as a general rule fighter squadrons should be in odd numbers, since even numbers look lopsided in formation. Five, seven, or nine would be good, probably five for Rebel fighters and bombers and seven or nine for TIEs.
Oh, and I love this mod.
Squadron numbers are good, I think. In fact, I'm so used to the idea of fighter squadrons in numbers of twelve that I find it to be disorienting to have squadrons of five or seven like they did in the vanilla HW2. So I like the way EvilleJedi has set squadrons up in multiples of three.
#1009
I'll see what changing the effect colors does, besides some annoyances on importing it correctly.
squads are going to stay their current size, for one reason it allows each squad member to have a wingman. I may redo the formations eventually to make it look nicer. part of my rationale is that squads should be 12, but 12 fighters isn't flexible enough and would cost a bit much, so they are half squads of 6. some imperial fighters are full squads because they are spam. the fighters that are non combat or special purpose are in groups of 3 so that you don't have insane numbers them.
Last edited by evillejedi; 17th Mar 04 at 8:24 PM.
That would be cool, making the laser colors more vibrant. At a distance, green almost looks like white, and is hard to see somewhat. If it will slow down the game or anything like that then I don't think it's worth it, I've noticed it before too but it's certainly not a life altering problem IMO, it would be nice to have if it can be done with a minimum of effort and no loss to performance.
Would it make any sense to have tie droids and raptors come in groups of 18 or even 24 to simulate their droidness? (less independence, mass produced, more expendable). Keep the cost, just force you to build them in double batches?
It would make them have a more distinct advantage, in as much as you could then have twice as many raw fighters out there shooting than you could with the more sane designs.
The reason I bring it up is that I have the impression that once research is implemented, the droid line will no longer be starting technology--is this right?
Anyway, I'm pumped to see the next iteration.
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Caution: link may be offensive to those without a sense of humor.
http://www.tshirthell.com/shirts/tshirt.php?sku=a276
#1012
correct on the droid not being starting tech however large groups get to be very weird when docking (half the ships dock the others stall the dock path, not to mention the extra overhead for fighter AI) so 12 is a realistic max, they are just dirt cheap.
heh visibility testing and odd effects :-p
don't worry it's fixed now. One odd side effect is that the game LOOKs like it lags more, however it seems to just be how it renders it since it is now crisper, the images are 1/3 the file size they were before. Now it has very distinct coloration, maybe too much IMO, but it will be obvious who is firing (I'll edit in a sec with an updated screen.
as far as progress I just have a few more ship files to update, then try realigning the icons. everythign that needs to be imported has been, I'm just trying to track down bad dock paths and tweak accuracy a bit. I'll probably push out the test release without the 'no build' and 'limited build' option and throw it in the tested release. I'm actually debating if I should skip the test release and just make a general release, but I know feedback will be horrible if I don't get the kinks worked out.
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http://warlords.swrebellion.com/
Much better! Looking at the movies, I don't think you have to worry about the weapon colors being too bright. They were VERY green and VERY red.
And skipping the test release phase has my vote- either that or adding me to the testers
actually they had the whole screen flash white every time a shot was fired. it was only one frame but it was enough to be painful for epileptics
First of all: cool mod! (must have been said by a thousand newbies before me)
Secondly, I noticed a BIIIIIIG slowdown when going into the sensor mode, even a couple of hangs during large engagements. Any way around this yet, or is this a known bug?
i noticed that too, and to decrease the lag, maybe you shouldn't even show the lasers flying through the air. just have a little shoot and hit effect like the hull defence guns in homeworld 2.
I don't think that would look very star-warsish, and that's what this mod is all about.Originally posted by atomiccow
i noticed that too, and to decrease the lag, maybe you shouldn't even show the lasers flying through the air. just have a little shoot and hit effect like the hull defence guns in homeworld 2.
No no, I like the lasers, but like I said, it's only in the sensors manager, then there's a HUUUGE slowdown. My guess is that it's because the amount of ships actually being drawn compared to what it was in the original HW2. Perhaps some of the medium ships which are currently being drawn in the sensor manager, could be reduced to just big green dots or something...
eviljedi how long will it take to do the final 17% ?
and does Falleen9 get a prize for being the 1000th post?
Last edited by wookieman; 18th Mar 04 at 8:09 AM.
I think you must add hit effects for all lasers/missles.
Just like it already present for some of the lasers.
I don't have any problems switching to sensor mode at all. I'm using a GeForce4ti4400, are you guys using something lower than that?
I got 1000th post YAY! Anyway how are people supossed to beta test like are we gonna get pm'ed a password or something? ps: I finally know what was causing me to crash! when i enter the sensor mode and select for ships to go to hyperspace and it CTDs! thats what has been happening geez and it took me 1000 posts to figure that out!
Not in Return of the Jedi they didn't- I just watched the Battle of Endor scenes, and there were no white frames or even muzzle flashes.Originally posted by wookieman
actually they had the whole screen flash white every time a shot was fired. it was only one frame but it was enough to be painful for epileptics
I personally would reather have a little lag if it meant giving up visible lasers, because it wouldn't look like Star Wars at all without them.Originally posted by wookieman
i noticed that too, and to decrease the lag, maybe you shouldn't even show the lasers flying through the air. just have a little shoot and hit effect like the hull defence guns in homeworld 2.
Oh, and Evillejedi, have you given any thought to making missiles targetable by fighters? I'm not sure if you answered this question before- you said something about PDS being hard to implement, but I don't know what that is or if it relates at all to making missiles targetable.
If you can't do that, I'd suggest making the range of missiles and torpedos pretty short so that you don't have bombers launching salvos and then retreating before you even have a chance to respond with fighters. I'd also reduce the amount of time missiles home in on a target by half to two thirds- it wouldn't affect their accuracy against large targets, but fighters would have a much better chance of avoiding them instead of being essentially automatically killed.
what edition do you have? I have the special edition widescreen digitally remastered series video boxed set and it does have flashes although it may be for the shields and not the guns.
Oh yeah, the dreaded sensor mode lag, ever notice how that only happens when there is too much debris floating around (i.e, later on in the game?) I seem to be able to build a billion ships and get no lag in sensor mode, but after a few battles it kicks in. That's my theory anyway....
TESTING STARTS TONITE YAY! Now only to figure out how us testers are supposed to test it.
#1027
correct on the debris in sensor manager, new version should have that cleaned up. btw I'm running a 4200
missile accuracy has been tweaked so that fighters will avoid and missiles can actually miss now.
better effects are next release :-p
as for testing please PM me and I'll PM back a link and I will PM the people that got it before, I'm pretty sure that I will need a test to get some kinks out.
prize for 1000th post = :turtle:
prize for 2000th post = :sadpanda:
prize for 5000th post = :Panda:
the 83% was rather arbitrary, dragon45 asked and I sorta rattled off things that needed to get done :-p
Last edited by evillejedi; 18th Mar 04 at 4:21 PM.
evillejedi your pm is full!
Falleen9:
I accidently PMd you instead of Evillejedi. It's propably the drugs man. Sorry.
Evillejedi:
You're PM box is full!! Can you just pretend I sent you a PM and send the link to me?
i sent PMs like six times but all the time pm box full i sent him a mail earlier today!
ARRGGGGHHHHH! HULK ANGRY ME WANT PM FOR TEST!
#1032
"i sent PMs like six times but all the time pm box full i sent him a mail earlier today!"
heh maybe that's why it's full :-p heh I didn't get a warning so I just emptied the old messages now. the reason I want to use the PM list is then it is easy to keep track of who wanted to test.
Last edited by evillejedi; 18th Mar 04 at 5:50 PM.
So did anyone get it yet? How is it so far? Give us some feedback for those that are still waiting!
are there star destroyers?
j/k
#1035
heh I haven't bigged it up yet, calm down :-p
I just want to know one thing: Are the backwards firing capships fixed in 2.5? Currently some of the capships (ISD II and a couple others) always turn around and attack with their rear-ends to the enemy. Great for retreating, bad for advancing.
Oops, I thought you said you did, and were going in order. Sorry.
How's the testing phase going?
> Eville
Answer is a bit late... and I'll lose my internet connection soon. Offline for undetermined time.
> "I'd like to add that I believe that the weapons damage should be different from how you described EvR, I don't see an advantage of having bigger guns that over time do the same amount of damage as smaller guns. granted range makes it more effective, but why would you trade in 2 medium TL's for 1 Heavy TL?"
First, this "equivalence" is mostly for easier comparisons. As I said, rate of fire could be changed (depending on "single" batteries,"double" batteries, "quad batteries", etc...). A "trade" of gun types has no direct meaning, since EvR's weaponry statistics were not taken directly from RPG statistics (or any other stat book) at all. Thus, there's no point in reasoning with "equivalences", because if the ship didn't have a single TL battery, it wouldn't mean it would have had a single HTL battery. IBEcause if you replace a "single TL battery" by a "dual HTL battery", you increase the damage per time, too, and at the end, it's just words and a way to use them. ;-p
Second, range difference is far from negligible. When you add ships, a few more volleys can be extremely deadly. With 9 ISDs in wall, it means a few dead ships already. If campaign 6 had been played, the range increase would have had even more meaning.
True, "normal" TLs would be more effective against smaller crafts (although EvR's weaponry had globally the same "accuracy" in terms of angle precision, the differences were the bullet speeds and the rate of fire, hits being sometimes more of a statistical feature). But still much less effective than "lasers".
Besides, when I see which units were used, I could say that most people took HTL powered units rather than TL-only units.
> "In big ship vs small ship you are more concerned about accuracy than getting a one shot kill so more guns effectivly improves accuracy by giving you more chances to hit per unit time. in large ship combat where hits are much more frequent, using the energy is energy model that you promote, having equvalent smaller gun damage vs fewer large gun damage makes the large guns even more pointless if they do the same amount of damage over time."
Yes and no, because it also depends a lot on the weapon ranges. In the model you're describing, you merely suppose that the range advantage doesn't mean much (which is coherent, since battles are supposed to be close-range slugfests in your mod). However, if range is really an issue, then a fleet of long-range cruiser will smoke a few low-range cruisers before these can even retaliate.
> "My view is that larger guns are used because they do more damage per shot AND they do more damage per unit time than small guns. the limitation being hull space, power generation and fire control."
As I said above, EvR's damage per unit time was depending on the fire rate, which was just a matter of word use.
IMHO, it is more interesting to compare each weapon class, given the same damage per unit time (that is, by adjusting the "number" of guns to get that same amount per unit time, and make efficiency comparisons).
> "I still believe a continuous spectrum of damage, range and fire rate is infinitely more balancable than trying to change the weapons count on each ship because you are only scaling the weapons as a whole (IE +50 to damage for all of them), not trying to nitpick balance."
IMHO, the TWO elements need to be balanced : weapon types to each other, and ships/crafts to each other.
> "(Intially I wasn't going to balance at all. I love highly asymetrical gameplay 'within reason', but since other people are going to play this I have to adjust a bit. :-p )"
Depends on the type of game you want to play. If you want an "equal chance game", you need to balance. Note that, IMHO, the SW universe isn't "balanced" at all - but that would make a game no one could play.
> "I see the Imperials as having a 1960's MAD style approach to warfare with the philosophy of don't use a hammer when you can use a 25 megaton thermonuclear device."
IMHO, the symbols of this philosophy are merely the Death Star, the Eclipse, the Sovereign (and perhaps the Executor) than the ISD II.
> "with the initial alliance responce of hiding in holes and only doing guerilla raids when something is weak and eventually as the NR simply out innovating the remnant because they have the majority of resources."
True, the Rebels were merely using guerilla tactics. However, guerilla tactics have never been able to kill a huge battleship. I believe the NR still had to outgun the Remnant's fleets, which would eventually mean "heavier" units, or at least units that are designed to battle with heavy imperial weaponry (MC-90, Mediator, Star Defender, Republic SD, etc...).
> "basically my point is that when my ISD II volleys off it's big guns I want to see the enemies health bar go down appreciably."
Mine is that an ISD II volley should deal heavy damage to smaller ships and old tech, but not necessarily to very modern MonCal designs (which should have very good shielding). And don't forget that firepower add with ship numbers, whereas shields don't.
IMHO, the ISD II is a very good battleship, but maybe not as efficient as Allegiance in terms of pure battleship use. Remember, ISDs also have good hangar facilities.
> "I am using the RP stats not as converted values but rather as relative measurements of how much better one ships weaponry is compared to anothers."
IMHO, numbers only make sense IF we use the meaning of the units themselves, as they were designed. If I read "size : 10 U" and U is in fact a volume (that is : cubic), I won't say that for my calculations, U is a length (linear).
So, basically : either we use WEG stats as WEG rules use them (that is : exponentially), or we don't use WEG stats/don't consider them as gospel accurate sources.
BTW, note that "other" SW sources made their own stats, and their own "fanships" to make balanced games. Name : Lucasarts. Games : Rebellion, but also most spacefighter games (remember the possibility to change the ordinance for AWs, XWs, YWs... whereas "other" sources gave them either concussion missiles, OR torpedoes, without switch ability ?).
> "The averge damage per time of each TL increases by around 200 damage per class, but this is offset that since fewer rounds are being fired and larger guns have less accuracy vs small targets. so when two destroyers open up at each other they are going to kick the crap out of each other. However a corvette vs a destroyer will be a much differnt fight. the corvette will do nearly continuous small amounts of damage and the destroyer is trying to get the one or two lucky shots that vaporize the corvette."
IMHO, "small" ships aren't supposed to go toe to toe against a battleship. They're supposed to be used as raider, attacking weak points in the economic system.
BTW, I've looked a bit more in HW2's weapon system. Basically, the automatic hits with the "offset" really seem lame to me. And because of the automatic random offset angle in case a weapon "misses" the rand check, it seems hard to model "real" bullet behaviour with a collision check.
Note : not sure I've really understood the weapons thread. If the random angle is less than the cone angle, it means that turrets and fixed guns don't have random angle offsets when the "cheating hit" check misses - and means we would have to use "virtual turrets" (invisible mesh) instead of gimbles. But Mecha said "the random offset for inaccurate shots is not data driven", so I guess the cone angle has nothing to do with it. Any info on this ?
> "another thing that seems to be wrong with EvR's balance (when I was talking with Rgreat yesterday) was that no one built medium sized ships. Everythign was fighters and capital. This to me seems like the fighters were grossly overpowered vs capital and and capital dominate frigates and corvettes."
Actually, that's wrong. Medium sized ships were built in Campaign 3 - I guess Rgreat was merely talking of Campaign 4. In fact, there are a lot more parameters than only balance.
The first parameter is that economies are crucial. EvR wasn't a "harvest, build and conquest" RTS, it was using an external turn based app for the economy and the building parts, and HW was only for battles (no reinforcements, no building, no harvesting). In campaign 3, economies were low. It was (relatively) hard to build heavy capital ships, hard to build massive squadrons. Thus, we saw Carrack cruisers, Strike cruisers, etc... and a VSD feared by most. The economies then grew bigger, and we saw more ISDs (as survivability became a key factor). However, campaign 4 had huge economies, because we had more planets to start with. This allowed large fleets, with huge fighter groups. Homeworld doesn't allow easy handling of masses of ships, thus frigates were merely used for support (that is : antifighter defense).
In addition, most factions were small during campaign 3 (biggest ones had 3-4 players). In campaign 4, they were bigger (6 players max).
If you want a comparison : In campaign 3, a faction would usually need at least 3 turns to build an ISD. In campaign 4, a faction would usually be able to build at least 3 ISDs per turn.
The other parameter is : what are these medium ships (Star Wars "frigates", which are equivalent to real world destroyers) really supposed to do ? This has been said earlier by someone else, if I'm not wrong, but I'll repeat : smaller ships are supposed to be used for patrols, coast protection, convoy protection, raiding, and the likes. Especially when taking 16-17th century naval warfare (and their pirates and buccaneers), and WWI/WWII warfare (big guns, and aircrafts in WWII), which are closest to SW's "navies". These ships were never designed to fight the big boys. True, a modern destroyer could destroy a cruiser, but that's with long range cruise missiles, which don't exist in SW (or don't seem to exist).
If EvR had allowed "raiders" to play a role, then medium-sized ships would certainly have been built. But EvR's rules didn't really allow them to exist :
- only a fleet of more than 6000 resources as value could "blocade" a planet (an ISD was approx 1200 resources).
- if there is an Interdictor, the other fleet cannot escape a battle unless the interdicting ship(s) is(are) dead. Not even when the trapped ships are much faster in subluminal speed. A bunch of INTs in the middle of a battle fleet are already hard to kill for raiders. When the interdicting ship is an Eclipse or a Sovereign, it becomes Mission : Impossible.
- a few Neb-Bs would not have enough bombard points to destroy any planetary structure. Means planet raiding was useless.
- asteroid harvesting operations were minor (not in early campaign 2, though, but in following campaigns it usually wasn't worth the cost).
- trade routes existed, but their path was hard to predict (if the person setting the route cared, the routes would be impossible to guess). Anyway, no one tried a trade cut strategy. Maybe also because blocading planets with big fleets was "efficient enough".
It could have been possible to make raids worthy, but this had not been done. That's why these ships weren't built a lot.
And basically, for direct fire battles, big ships should be more cost-effective than smaller ships (this is pure logics - if not, no one would ever build the big ships). Which explains what has been described with EvR's balance.
Of course, a "harvest, build and conquer" RTS game is a fully different "balancing" problem.
> "I really belive that a star fighter can do nealy no damage to a larger ship with it's energy weapons alone."
Unless really massed. Seems that at Endor, there was a (small) effect.
> "Since ordinance volleys are implemented this breaks fighters into two main categories, bombers and interceptors (a few a balance) bombers can be devastating vs large ships but are really bad at defending themselves vs interceptors and their ordinance should have difficulty hitting moving targets (ie corvettes and frigates) also escort ships should be positioned to intercept bombers before they can fire their ordinance."
Quite agree. Basically, torpedoes could be efficient against most ships, but heavier rockets and bombs would only be able to track slow ships.
> "frigates and covettes should be sufficiently survivable and have sufficient firepower for a group of them to be scary to a capital ship. From Rgreats comments it seems like the weapons modelling made them too weak to be a threat to capital ships and fighters were more cost effective."
The problem is : frigates were NEVER supposed to be a big threat to capital ships, at least not in terms of cost/efficiency. Sure, a large group of frigates could be scary for a capital ship, but in terms of cost efficiency they should still lose. Hey, if frigates are supposed to cream capships in direct battles, who's gonna build capships ?
> "the solution I can see to this is that frigates get right up close to capital ships, since they are traversing the firing arcs much faster than they would be at range, if they are sufficiently close the big guns will have a very difficult time hitting them even though the accuracy at that close a range is improved. their speed will also allow them to get to this range with non-catostrophic losses to the group. Since there is an amount of friendly fire and all the weapons are set to don't fire through friendlies this makes overlapping cover of destroyers less of an effective strategy, you will be forced to have your own escorts to fend off the enemies frigates and corvettes thus making them useful for both offence and defence (other than anti star fighter platforms)"
Basically (and repeated), I don't think that frigates were ever supposed to be a cost-efficient threat against capital ships. Normally : caps own frigs, bombers own caps, frigs own fighters. This works. If frigs own both caps and fighters, caps disappear.
But I DO agree that a "harvest, build and conquest" RTS game is very different from a "turn based economy, RT for battles only" game.
> "I think fighters should be expensive (a modern aircraft carrier carries it's dollar value in aircraft and amunition. Maintanance and training is much more expensive for the aircraft than the ship over time)"
EvR fighters were exepensive. 50 hi-tech fighters (T/A, T/D, Missile Boat) ~ 1 ISD.
> "granted we are talking about something on a order of magnitude larger but given the alliances policies on fighter survivability it makes sense that they wouldn't have copious amounts of fighters simply because of cost, (in the NR timeframe even) so having 500 alliance fighters in a battle would be a grand engagment indeed."
Not necessarily, since a single NR cruiser (MC-80 and above) can carry at least 4-6 squads. If squads are 12 units each, it already makes 48 to 72 fighters. Seems NR squads were 10 units each, though.
> "for the empire which doesn't even train its tie fighter pilots (interceptor pilots are the ones that live) it makes much more sense to have huge amounts of fighters because the investment is small."
True, but we can't forbid T/As, T/Ds, Missile Boats...
Turgidson:
I'm sort of getting the sense that the HW2 engine doesn't really provide the level of tactical gameplay you want.
I know that when I got HW2 I was imagining it being like the simulator in Ender's Game (dunno if anyone gets that reference), where the combat would actually require active tactical control at a higher level, especially when playing humans. I was so psyched at the prospect of maneuvering and strategizing in 3-D. Unfortunately, thats not really what HW2 offers. Its more of a 2-D+ engine that rewards micromanagement (all ships target that guy) far more than any involved tactics or strategy. But then again, to actually have the game I want, the engine would have to have insanely good AI and/or a multiplayer command structure with a bevy of multilayered commands. This would require an entirely different interface (likely voice commands) in order to provide the amount of control needed to disseminate such complicated commands in realtime.
So for know, I'm accepting the limitations of the HW2 engine, it still offers more than any other option I know of. I'd say eville has been pretty friggin creative given what he has to work with.
I think you might really enjoy the Combat Mission series (www.battlefront.com), its not SW (WWII actually) but it has quite realistic combat in a "we go" format, where orders are given for a 1 minute "action phase." This allows for control of your troops given the limitations of a mouse-based control interface. The graphics an such aren't the best, but as for giving a "chess on steroids" like challenge, its awesome.
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Frigates and such are gonna be a hard one to represent accurately I think. Given that much of SW combat is more based off historical naval combat (WWII and such, for dramatic opportunities I presume) than anything else, I'd say you're right that it seems incongruous to have small cap ships (naval destroyers/space frigates) engaging battleships. Small cap ships are not really used for major engagements, but rather the more peripheral tasks you outlined. I agree that any ISD should be able to handily wipe the floor with several times its cost in attacking frigates.
However, in SW we do have frigates engaging battleships in fleet engagements. In the Battle of Endor we see a Rebel fleet of mostly frigates engage at point blank range with a fleet of Imperial cap ships. Comments are made that confer that the fleet will last shorter at close range than at a distance, which would lead me to think that their maneuverability gave them an advantage over the cumbersome Imperial heavy weapons. They themselves might not do much damage if at all, but they may be able to evade most incoming fire. At the end of the conflict, there are many frigates left, I'd assume that since most Imperial fire was certainly concentrated on the MonCal cruisers, the frigates moved to positions of cover (ie: underneath ISDs) and worked to target both Imperial fighters and specific critical components of the ISDs at close range.
If we make frigates basically useless against cap ships, and only good at destroying small craft, then we have no reason to build them. If you build battleships and fighters, then that will trump all. (Again, in the movies, this is basically all we see the Imperials using.)
I'd say it would work if frigates are made to be effective against strike craft, and evasive to cap ship weaponry at range, yet also rather ineffective against cap ships at range. But, if they get sufficiently close, make them very good at taking out subsystems. The difficulty of course, is that we can't position frigates in defillade very well, so more than anything they will still get fried.
I dunno. Integrating frigates is gonna be hard.
Last edited by spacemoose; 19th Mar 04 at 2:20 PM.
*not tryin to hijack the thread* but with all this talk about EVR, anybody remotely interested in playing a game similar in all things but forum name, please visit http://www.thegamingunion.co.uk/Foru...2;DaysPrune=45 thanks
Turg: shame you're about to loose your connection, was hopin you'd be able to play
#1042
I agree with both points, frigates shouldn't be used in fleet engagments to attack capital ships and it should be economically ineffecient to do so. however since strike craft and capture units are so danagerous and most capital ships are not designed to handle these threats frigates can find work there. also if attacking capital ships they target subsystems this makes them valuable since hitting a subsytem usually requires mobility to get to an undefended point. you also need frigates to kill the enemies frigates and to work as a cushion on your main forces or even as a diversion. you don't want to expend your precious capital firepower on potshotting an annoying frigate when you have something as powerful as you attacking. One thing I want to try is see if I can make guarding more effective so that the screen units around a large ship don't pull off to attack and only intercept threats that the larger ship would ignore.
one of difficulties is the wide range of frigate capabilities ranging from the uber crappyness of a neb-b to stuff as nasty as an assault frigate. It makes sense that except for specialty units that a large fleet engagment may consist of only fighters, heavy frigates, destroyers and cruisers. with the heavy frigates providing manuverability and flanking.
another issue is that usually a low priority world may only have a frigate and a few corvettes and starfighters and relies on reinfocments from the sector command. for most rim worlds to have a destroyer on station means they have something very valuable. Contrasted with the core worlds which may have a small fleet of destroyers a cruiser assigned specifically to them.
this is one of the reasons I made the frigate only mode, it allows the smaller ships to be important :-p
You have to realize the role of frigates in the complete Star Wars universe to see why they would exist in the first place. Now what are the role of frigates in the books and movies? They are used to:
[list=1][*] Transport materials (AKA Gallofrees)[*] Provide a more secure mode of transportation than fighters for important officials[*] Customs/Patrol duty[*] Repair duty and general housekeeping, on-planet and off[*] Troop carriers[*] Starfighter carriers (ala Neb-Bs and Escort Frigates)[*] Fire support for larger ships[/list=1]
Items 1, 2, and 5 are not relevant in a warfare mod. Items 3, and 4 are only somewhat applicable: Frigates may be used at some stage for scout duty, but it makes little sense based on the scale of the maps and the fact that radar-equipped starfighters can do the job so much better. As for repairs, we have repair droids built en masse to do the same job.
That leaves items 6 and 7: The role of frigates as starfighter carriers and as fire support for larger ships. No frigate can perform both these functions effectively; the Escort Carrier transports starfighters, but as no weapons. The Assault Frigate does not do a good job of transporting starfighters, although it provides excellent fire support.
So what we are left with are frigates as specialized ships that can do one of the two tasks specified above. The frigates which were meant not to fulfill one or the other of the tasks must be removed, seeing as how their inclusion only clutters the build menu.
So far, the role of frigates discussed has been in theoretical situations. It is time to discuss implementation. It was previously established that having too many ships under the "Launch" toolbar causes a weird game bug to surface. Additionally, it becomes far too cumbersome too properly select a carrier-capable unit with the HW2's interface if there are a lot of ships, so Evillejedi decided, and quite rightly, to allow a select amount of frigates that are dedicated starfighter carriers anyway to transport starfighters. These are the Escort Carrier and the Quasar-Fire. So, what we have to determine is whether or not to give all capital ships the ability to launch starfighters.
Evillejedi and myself believe the answer should be no. There should only be two or three ships on both sides with the ability to dock starfighters, including the commanders. I personally believe that the ships on both sides which should be dock-capable are the Escort Carrier (equivalent Quasar-Fire for Rebels), Imperial Factory ship (and the rebel equivalent) and the super-caps (MC-90 for rebels i think, and SSD for imps).
As for the attacking frigates, a lot of them are redundant, so it would be easily possible to create some sort of variety among the sides, with fewer, more unique ships being used, instead of more of the exact same.
Evillejedi:
On the test version fighters are still problamatic. If you try to move too many squadrons at one time, you can't. You pretty much have to move a few squadrons at a time. I tried it with TIE Defenders only so far.
The more ships the merrier. There is no reason to just out and out eliminate certain ships from the mod just because a few people dont like them. If you dont like the wide variety of ships available, then just play using the limited build option that I believe is in the next release (I think it was stated here on the board earlier).
You have to realize the role of frigates in the complete Star Wars universe to see why they would exist in the first place. Now what are the role of frigates in the books and movies? They are used to:
Transport materials (AKA Gallofrees)
Provide a more secure mode of transportation than fighters for important officials
Customs/Patrol duty
Repair duty and general housekeeping, on-planet and off
Troop carriers
Starfighter carriers (ala Neb-Bs and Escort Frigates)
Fire support for larger ships
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another role for frigates is quite often taking out fighters, actually. The Carrack Class Cruiser and Nebulon B-Frigate were both built with this in mind, to protect convoys from starfighter attacks. That's what they are really useful for, have a few carracks surrounding a Star Destroyer and it would be incredibly hard to take out, as SD takes out any other capitals and the carracks can nail the fighters. To a certain extent, this was the mistake the Empire made in the Battle of Endor (i.e. they only had SD's and a Death Star - none of them really suited to taking out fighters).
What could be useful is if you'd boost the cost of Destroyers (ISDs or MonCal types) waaaay up. In my opinion it's too cheap to build a new Stardestroyer or MonCal. If you read the books, especially the New Jedi Order series, you'll notice that most big ships are used again and again and again, probably meaning that there were not a lot of them out there. This is mostly true on MonCals. Notice that only three or four MonCals were ever identified during the Rebel era, and no more then six or seven in the New Jedi Order. Also, it is stated that a large part of the Imperial navy (mind you, the navy which guards an entire galaxy) was present at the battle of Endor. It may seemed like much, but if you consider: no more then 100 or so ISDs were present, and if that is the entire amount of ISDs in the galaxy, that would also support the fact that there weren't that much Destroyer type ships or bigger.
So if we apply this to the mod that would mean that all destroyer type ships should have their costs doubled or more, and that frigates should be made maybe a tad stronger in both raw firepower and their ability to shoot down fighters, making it more frequent to see small frigate and fighter based attacks on resource sites, and when the big push comes, it's a massive fleet of smaller ships combined with one or two victory sds and an ISD. (and of course perhaps one uber-ship).
Well, that's my two cents. If someone feels I misread the facts in the books and movies about the amount of big ships, feel free to correct and/or flame me!
Obi-Wan Potato
EDIT: Have you ever considered moving this entire thread to a messageboard all for yourself, it's getting a bit big. If needed, I can probably provide you with one under the roleplaying board I play on. The owner's a great guy and he'll probably give you some space if asked politely...
EDIT2: After doing another session today, I noticed that ion-cannons are maybe a bit overpowered? Some units don't even HAVE an EMP bar and don't get effected at all, while others who DO have an EMP bar get disabled in the splitsecond the ionblast needs to hit the target. This is especially true for fighting against the Hiigaran or the Vagyr (of course, if those races are no longer supported by your mod, please disregard latest statement)
Last edited by Obi-Wan Potato; 20th Mar 04 at 8:12 AM.
the books state that there were at least a few THOUSAND star destroyers of the imperial class (i believe pellaeon stated that in vision of the future by timothy zahn- I knw, it's sad i know this). but i agree with you. frigates are virtually useless in their current state. ISD + classes should maybe even have their costs trippled to be realistic about it. although we're playing with make-believe spaceships so i don't know how realistic we can be.
Obi Wan Potatoe, you must be playing with v .19 or earlier.
You should download .20 or wait a little while for .25 which I think is supposed to be available soon. The mod is now Empire vs Alliance with no more vaygr/Hiig.
Website's on the first post
Last edited by richieelias; 20th Mar 04 at 8:46 AM.
Nope... I'm playing version 2.0 with the supplied shortcut, and Hiigara + Vagyr are still there, but I only needed to know if they're still supported or not, and since they SHOULD be removed I suppose that's pretty clear! :hmm:Originally posted by richieelias
Obi Wan Potatoe, you must be playing with v .19 or earlier.
You should download .20 or wait a little while for .25 which I think is supposed to be available soon. The mod is now Empire vs Alliance with no more vaygr/Hiig.
Website's on the first post
As for HitokiriHa: I suppose I was pretty wrong then in my analysis! I should read the Zahn book again
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