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[Avan]

post from the other thread:

Instead of making the weapons/ships I was planning on doing today, I ended up making a new mission. It's basically an upgraded Onslaught (with about 2-3x the ordinance points of the average Onslaught, mostly due to a huge number of flux vents & capacitors, read on) and a couple of cannonfodder ships vs. a huge number of Lud ships (mostly condors and hounds, up to venture-size) - the backstory being the Cult of Lud sending a large force to destroy the Hegemony's experimental refitting of an Onslaught. At the moment I'm trying to find the right balance between impossible, hard, and unwinnable (where unwinnable is a step up from impossible, as in, literally, you can't possibly win short of the AI panicking and retreating) - originally, it was well, unwinnable for its first few iterations (at first, the new weapons overloaded the player's Onslaught very, very quickly, and the flux-raising weapons on the ventures did not help at all. So... 80 vents and 40 capacitors later, ... its still unwinnable, because you run out of ammo, long before you can even kill everyone! (And they still have more reinforcements!). Then I over-nerfed the enemy forced by getting rid of some of the buffalo 2's, condors, and ventures, to save you some ammo. Now it feels just 'hard' (harder than the Bis'mar, which is really Medium IMO)

I'm trying to get it so that victory pretty much hinges on your ability to aim with cyclones (you've got four of them, so that's 10 volleys of 8 torpedoes each, or, 40 volleys of 2 torpedoes each.)

I must say though, that doing 31182 damage to a venture in a single volley is one of the most satisfying BOOMS you will ever hear, even if it was complete overkill.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Avan]

Currently I have it at:

Enemy (Cult of Lud)

2x buffalo2 support
3x condor support (I changed one to condor strike, because I found too many condor supports actually made it EASIER because they would end up shooting eachother with their torpedoes more often then me)
5x condor strike
8x hound assault (they don't actually pose a big threat... they just sort of exist for the sake of adding some early-game excitement with stuff blowing up)
3x venture balanced (4x with fewer condors was too hard, and 4x with this or more condors was too easy as they'd end up hitting each other. It took me blowing up several times before I found a happy median.)
4x broadsword wings
2x piranha wings (I found they were ending up cannon fodder more than anything else, because they would be deployed early game and mowed down by the dual flak cannons on the Onslaught (yes, this is a beast of a battleship, but I've had it die before even killing half the Condors, so...))

vs:

Player (Hegemony)

1x Onslaught Experimental (Mission critical, Flagship)
1x Enforcer Support
1x Gemini Standard
2x broadsword wings

The Onslaught Experimental has:
1:
2x gauss (hardpoints)
2:
4x Cyclone (turreted)
3:
4x railgun
3x chaingun
6x dual flack
2x light assault gun
4:
3x heavy autocannon

30x Flux Capacitors
60x Flux Vents

What do you think of this?

[Avan]

This is the mission I was talking about in the thread "doing the impossible"

It adds a new ship variant, a version of the Onslaught that the player gets to use - this adds an additional step to the installation, as you have to add the new variant into the 'variants' folder.
I'm starting it at v0.60 because I wanted to have ample room to balance it with, and it reflects the fact its less polished than 'Holding the line' was at release.

(I ended up deciding to start a thread for the mission itself rather than the discussion of the idea behind impossible-level missions, as I wanted to keep a format that was consistent with my prior release. If one of the devs could merge that thread under this one, that would be great)

Anyways, tell me what you think: is it really impossible? Or do I just fail at aiming cyclones? [out of three playtests on this version, I managed to surrender once after running out of ammo, lose once because I got blown up, and win once) - and I have essentially been having target practice with the cyclones for the last 2 or 3 hours.
How does it compare to the current 'Impossible' mission?

This mission was inspired by the promotional video that Alex made of an Onslaught fighting off a huge number of enemies before finally succumbing. I wanted to re-create something like that.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Qloos]

Much too easy.

[Avan]

Really?
Any suggestions?

How are you doing it at the moment? What is your hit percentage with the cyclones?
(Also - how many times have you played it? I found that every so often the enemy AI will do something stupid (such as four condors blowing eachother up when they clustered together and launched torpedoes into each other at point blank) and give you a big enough advantage that the mission comes off as quite easy)
(Also, I'm basing difficulty on the ability to meet the mission objectives: I have consistently meet the mission objectives in the stock impossible mission (so a 100% win to loss ratio), but I average about 3 losses to 1 win on this mission over 12 playthrough on this version)

[Alex]

Looks interesting, I'll have to try it when I get home tonight!

Oddly enough, your Onslaught kit is very similar to its loadout in one of the new missions we're working on. The Onslaught hull is also going to get a nice boost to flux, just much too low now - hardly gets a chance to fire all its guns for a few seconds before overloading, if you fit it with heavy stuff. It's still a weaker loadout, since it follows the slot size constraints (so, no quad cyclones), but very much in the same vein.

[Avan]

quad cyclones don't fit the slots? 
Well, I found that pilum (Which I thought were heavy size) simply could not deal mathematically enough damage to take out all the enemy ships (30*500*4=60,000, where 20*4*2000=160,000)... OC, I could have reduced the number of enemy ships, but...
I'm experimenting with adding more piranhas and some lashers to the enemy forces. I find they are very distracting... to the point that I don't notice the ventures are practically on top of me.

Also, is there any way to force a particular number of fleet points?

[Avan]

That is strange... the old posts got merged in on top. >.<

oh well, anyways, I am uploading v.61 momentarily: added 4 wings of piranhas, replaced a strike condore with a venture, added a buffalo2, and added 3 support lashers.

I managed to beat it just now and think that it may have gotten easier because the AI kept shooting its own ships with the torpedoes: 3 of the condores were killed from friendly fire torpedoes, as was a buffalo and a lasher. Also had another lasher commit suicide by repeatedly ramming into my engines. Or it may have just been the AI having one of those days.

Try it and tell me what you think

[Alex]

I managed to beat it just now and think that it may have gotten easier because the AI kept shooting its own ships with the torpedoes: 3 of the condores were killed from friendly fire torpedoes, as was a buffalo and a lasher.

Hmm, now I'll have to check it out - the AI is usually pretty good about avoiding friendly fire, especially with torpedoes.

quad cyclones don't fit the slots? 
Well, I found that pilum (Which I thought were heavy size) simply could not deal mathematically enough damage to take out all the enemy ships

The Pilums are medium. Four large missile slots on the Onslaught would make it a decidedly missile-based ship (try quadruple Hurricanes - also large - not as much raw damage, but incredibly hard to avoid and so punishing to all sorts of ships), where the theme of the Onslaught is more about big guns.

Also, is there any way to force a particular number of fleet points?

No - the fleet points get assigned to have the initial deployment sizes reflect relative fleet strengths. What exactly are you trying to get it to do, though?

[Avan]

I just wanted to have it allow the player to deploy all at once to reduce busywork.

[Alex]

Later on, they'll be able to increase the battleSize through settings. Total starting fleet points are limited to 100 in large part for performance reasons.

If you want the player to get a bit of a relative fleet points boost, though, set their fleet goal to "DEFENDING" and the enemy goal to "ATTACKING" - that matchup gives the defending side a tactical advantage, which results in a bonus to starting fleet points. It probably won't be a lot, though - need to look again at how that's computed - I think it's a flat value that might get overshadowed by large fleet sizes. Ought to make it relative.

[Avan]

that should probably reduce it from 3 to 2 steps anyways, as only 1 command point I recall is needed to get all but the Onslaught out from the current state.

[Qloos]

Really?
Any suggestions?

How are you doing it at the moment? What is your hit percentage with the cyclones?
(Also - how many times have you played it? I found that every so often the enemy AI will do something stupid (such as four condors blowing eachother up when they clustered together and launched torpedoes into each other at point blank) and give you a big enough advantage that the mission comes off as quite easy)
(Also, I'm basing difficulty on the ability to meet the mission objectives: I have consistently meet the mission objectives in the stock impossible mission (so a 100% win to loss ratio), but I average about 3 losses to 1 win on this mission over 12 playthrough on this version)

I've played it once.

I sent the fighter waves left and right to cap objectives, (including sending them far out to contest the objectives on the other side) and the big sob up the middle.  Soon as I cap the first points, reinforce with the other two so I have a distraction meatshield and fighter docking and repairs going on.

Fire the main forward guns to disable a ship and overload his flux, immediately activate the torpedo turrets and destroy him.  Turn them off again, repeat, and keep enemies to the front.  At the end, I was out of ammo for the rail guns, out of torpedoes, out of ammo for all turrets, except for my rear.  So I ended up having to shove my ass into enemy carriers faces to fight them.

I only lost my meatshield, both figher squads and the carrier survived.

[Avan]

Hmnm... that the AI is not capturing them quickly enough is a problem... I suppose once forcing fleet points is available, I can remove the comm relays.

I also tend to lose the fighters to having them running off map and retreating.

[Alex]

Alright, finally had a chance to play it a few times.

I love it, very well done! It really captures that feel of a battleship being worn down in a bitter battle to the last. Lost the first 3-4 tries, having a ton of fun all the while. I actually really like those early piranha wings coming in against all the flak - they're not exactly effective, but it makes for a very cool battle opener.

Finally won it with 86% by doing what I'd call cheating - parked the Onslaught in the lower left corner (like a wounded, cornered animal, heh) and gradually whittled down the enemy fleet. Tricky part was timing flux venting so as to avoid getting hit by torpedoes - but otherwise, the shields are so strong there wasn't any real danger. Mostly fired torpedoes when at point-blank range to avoid the enemy dodging. Still had a few torpedoes and some rear-gun ammo left when the enemy turned tail and ran.

Thing is, I'm playing some intermediate version - not quite what shipped as 0.33a, but not the dev version either. I think the AI is a better about capping - it certainly is in the most up-to-date dev version...