Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MShadowy]

Yeah, I'm hoping for them to more than just look like fun.  Glad you're looking forward to it.

[MShadowy]

Well, ended up adding one last ship to this release; the Inanna, somewhat redesigned.



This hardy little frigate has a mean left; there's a lot in the air for her right now, but one things for sure: the AI seems unable to pilot a ship who guns can only give a 90 degree broadside.  I think I've somehow hit a bit of an edge case.  Well, honestly its kind of a pain to fly with this limited of a fire arc anyway, so there's a fairly high chance I'll give her guns a rather broader arc than a measly 5 degrees.



Anyway, I'll do up a dev version and add it to my dropbox after I throw together a couple missions to demo the new ships, with the caveat that some systems are not yet fully implemented, in particular the Elysiums main gun.  For now, that is all.

[phyrex]

weird that you would say that about the innana, neutrino corps has this ship (the nirvash its calle di think ?) that basicly is one big broadside that cant turn for even an inch and the AI isint too shabby at piloting those

[Wyvern]

Quoth Alex, the broadside AI isn't meant to work with arcs less than roughly 90 degrees in width.  So, there's your suggested starting point.

...And that's odd - I've seen the Nirvash in play, and it doesn't seem to use the broadside except by accident.

[phyrex]

Quoth Alex, the broadside AI isn't meant to work with arcs less than roughly 90 degrees in width.  So, there's your suggested starting point.

...And that's odd - I've seen the Nirvash in play, and it doesn't seem to use the broadside except by accident.

oh really ? well maybe my view's distorted by the circumstances. i was whooping space-butts at the time

[EnderNerdcore]

This hardy little frigate has a mean left; there's a lot in the air for her right now, but one things for sure: the AI seems unable to pilot a ship who guns can only give a 90 degree broadside.  I think I've somehow hit a bit of an edge case.  Well, honestly its kind of a pain to fly with this limited of a fire arc anyway, so there's a fairly high chance I'll give her guns a rather broader arc than a measly 5 degrees.

I ran into this same problem with one of the capital ships in my FS2 mod. :/

The AI seems determined to try to always face the enemy head-on, so even though it will briefly swing around to fire a broadside, it will usually swing back, mid-broadside, doing very little damage.

[MShadowy]

Yeah, the AI behavior is a bit strange sometimes, but I fixed it by giving the guns a 90 degree range of fire.  Anyway, dev build is up on dropbox nao; please be aware that things are unbalanced and unfinished.  I've probably forgotten to go over obvious things.  Also, the current Pandora shot effect is a bug.  Not "is bugged" but "is probably a bug because I listed the graphic as a sprite rather than a bulletSprite and got something fitting but unexpected" so I'm not sure if it'll go for everyone.  It is also not even close to representative of the Pandora as intended in the final version.

Changelog?

Uh, added the Elsyium (Light Cruiser), Shamash (Phase Frigate), Sargasso (Light/Escort Carrier) and Inanna (Frigate) classes.
Added the variant selection method from arciblade's excellent Vanilla Addon mod and implemented it in campaign.
Cycerin was nice enough to do up some new sounds for the CEPC's so they now sound different and cooler.
Played around with prices and balance and stuff.
Added three missions that have not at all been playtested: Drums in the Deep, a mission featuring the Cult of Lud and the angry end of the Shamash; They Might Be Giants, a probably very difficult mission with a pair of Elysiums and a Sargasso and some fighters versus a lot of very unhappy Hegemony ships; Misdirected, another probably not easy mission in which you control an Onslaught with no sense of direction in an engagement against a befuddled SHI task force.
I'm sure there's at least a few other things I'm forgetting.  I'm kinda tired.

Download is here.

For now, thats all I can think of.  Excuse me while I fall down for a little while.

[Wyvern]

org.codehaus.commons.compiler.CompileException: File data/missions/misdirected/MissionDefinition.java, Line 16, Column 0: ')' expected instead of ';'

Just a missing ')'; easy enough for me to fix since I know what I'm doing, but I imagine others might appreciate the original not throwing exceptions at them.

[Wyvern]

First thoughts: The Elysium's gun does look kinda neat, but needs a better charge-up effect.  Dps, firing arc, and the two shot limit are all obviously subject to change, but even without that main gun it makes a pretty solid broadside destroyer if you mount heavy blasters.  The AI fairly obviously has no idea what to do with the ship system... but with its main firepower in the broadsides, it actually kinda sorta almost works anyway.  Amusing to watch, at least.

The Sargasso is, compared to other destroyer scale carriers, surprisingly capable.  ...Which means it can maybe fend off a frigate long enough for reinforcements to arrive.  But it's also decently zippy; it'd get a place in any fighter-based fleet I put together on that alone.  Haven't tested the ship system out much; can't comment on that yet.

The Inanna is interesting, fairly powerful, and most effective if you just rotate your keybinds and think of its left side as the "front" - bind strafe left to 'w', forward thrust to 'e', etc.  And remember to never, ever, use shift-to-aim.

The Shamash is a surprisingly potent ship; it's no Hyperion, but it's not too far behind.  Wasn't able to get much use out of the ship system, but it hardly needed the help.

[MShadowy]

org.codehaus.commons.compiler.CompileException: File data/missions/misdirected/MissionDefinition.java, Line 16, Column 0: ')' expected instead of ';'

Just a missing ')'; easy enough for me to fix since I know what I'm doing, but I imagine others might appreciate the original not throwing exceptions at them.

Oops.  Fixed.  Edit:  As well as some other errors in the mission definition.  Sorry, was rather tired by the time I got around to that mission.  Everything seemed to be in order, so zzzz.

As well, thank you for the comments on the ships.  Thats about what I was hoping to do with these ships, though there's still work to be done.  Also, an interesting tip with the Inanna, I'll have to keep it in mind.

[Wyvern]

Hm... with various API improvements next version, it might be possible to just rotate the Inanna 90 degrees - make the engines flare out when travelling "right" instead of forwards, hopefully adjust maneuverability so it's got better acceleration strafing that moving "front" or "back", and generally make it function like an energy-based Brawler.  Means the AI would fly it around sideways all the time, rather than putting the ship's nose towards its destination, but you'd be able to narrow the gun arcs back down to standard hardpoint levels.

I think an actual broadside ship doesn't make that much game-sense below around cruiser level, though; frigates and (arguably) destroyers can strafe well enough to just go with the rotate-keybindings trick I mentioned.  Unfortunate; it's a neat concept.

[MShadowy]

Well, I'd like the Inanna to work as is, but its pretty off kilter I'll admit.  If it becomes possible to do what you suggest I may try it, especially if there's some way to get the AI to recognize that the ship is a "sidewinder," and thus won't fly around sideways all the time/adjust speeds so that flies to the "right" faster than in other directions.  Oh well.

After doing some more observation of the AI, in regards to the Elysium I definitely think the ship systems needs some tweaking.  Well, I was planning on giving the speed boosting system a limited time to operate anyway, so thats probably a good place to start.  The 360 degree firing arc was just to try and get the ship to not just approach from head on and use its broadsides, I'll tweak it down as much as I can while still have the ship under AI control favor blazing away with its side batteries; it would be a bit odd for the ship to fire through itself.  Also the charge up time for the Pandora is probably too long for the AI to get any use out of it, so that will probably also need to be changed.

But I won't be able to really start balancing that weapons system until Lazy Wizard gets back to me with the custom weapon script.  Well, I'm in no hurry, and I may as well fix what other things I can, so...

ToDo:

• Custom glow effects for the Elysiums "Pandora Array" and the Shamashs Built-in Phasegun.
• Adjust Elysiums built-in hardpoint fire arc.
• Reduce Pandora Arrays charge time so that the AI can actually make use of it.
• Descriptions for new ships and weapons.
• Retool Neriad sprite.
• I will probably need to redo the Skinwalker sprite entirely.
• Work out an animation for the Sargasso's ship system.  Should probably also try to figure out how to add a debug system to the file so I can tell if it's actually doing anything or just taking up flux.
• Integrate Pandora script(s) upon receipt.
• Do something cool for Lazy Wizard.
• Work on sprites for Upgradecap

For now thats all I can think of so... ta for now.

[Wyvern]

On debug: I believe System.out.println( "some message goes here" ); should work just fine for getting things into the logs.  At least, it does on a mac... though, err, that may be because logging is totally broken on the mac anyway and you have to run the JavaApplicationStub from command line in order to see any logging at all...

[CopperCoyote]

I started a new game and so far i've been able to afford the shamash and the inanna.

I think the ai might fare a little better with the inanna if they were turrets instead of hardpoints. It would certainly give it even more character if you turned it sideways though. Like a perpetually CCW scuttling space crab.

I love the shamash. The built in weapon is so wonderfully flux efficient. I think it would be awesome if the projectile sprite was the same color as the green glow of the cloaked ship. The cloak is a bit strange. Because it is so cheap to activate, but is really expensive to maintain it really rewards split second dodging. I like it(despite being bad at it). I feel like the flux mines need something though. I don't think they are pointing directly forward either. They noticeably converge over a long distance.

Some suggestions for the mines:

Spoiler

Make them do more damage. I think they do 500 energy damage each, but thats hardly anything because it takes so long for them to cooldown.

Make them tougher. They make excellent PD decoys when launched slowly toward enemy ships or left as a speed bump so you can back off and vent.

Make them regen over time. Bomb weapons can be used in a variety of ways, but with a max of 10 uses i'm a little hesitant to use them much in large fights.

Make them a built in weapon. This would free up the ship system for something else like flares, and allow the mines to be buffed by ship mods.

[close]

Use any or all of these suggestions. Disregard them if the mines are working as intended. They're a little underwhelming in power but still fun to use. I sometimes found myself using them over the phase cannon because it was more amusing.

Once i can afford the other two i'll ramble some more.

[MShadowy]

Yeah, I was kinda worried about how odd it would probably end up looking with turrets on it, especially the huge SHI Medium turrets, but it would probably work better.  I do kind of like the purposeful sway of the hardpoints but its a bit slow to actually sit through.  Especially under fire.

As for the Shamash I'm definitely happy with your comment about the cloak itself; that is pretty much just the thing I was going for in terms of how it played.  I feel like the rate of flux gain for maintaining the cloak could be a bit higher but the entry cost seems just about right; its a bit harder to judge with phase ships I feel.  As for the phase gun itself I'll probably play a bit more with its efficiency, but it seems to be right-ish.

As for the phase  mines, well, I'll have to play with them.  Maybe increase their damage a bit (maybe 750 a mine? Hmmm) or increase their rate of fire.  I will probably increase the number of mines, as I think having them regenerate is a bit dubious.  Improving their toughness is probably not a bad idea.  They're kind of a utility device almost, only they explode; useful for deterring the enemy for a bit.

In any case, I await your insights on the Sargasso and rather half done Elysium.