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No Hardpoints balance issue


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#1 The Maw 28

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Posted 06 August 2007 - 02:06 PM

Dear Phoenix,
I started playing your mod yesterday and was surprised to find that ships no longer have hardpoints.

Does this mean that their combat ability remains at 100% until destroyed?

If so this would mean that the larger ships have an unfair advantage. How can you possibly destroy the Eclipse if you can't slowly nibble away at its guns, or at least have a go at smashing it's superlaser.

This also allows you to adjust tactics to suit the ships you have, eg. if you are heavy in bombers, then you could direct your cruisers to take out the laser turrets (to keep the bombers alive), while the bombers do the damage, or do you want to just knock out the gravity well generators so that you can retreat?

Secondly, it's nice to see bits of ships blow up.


Would you consider giving capitals and dreadnoughts shields in different sections so that you can, say destroy the bow shields and blow the nose of an SSD (as per Rogue Squadron/Booster Terrik vs Lusyanka) in some of the books).

#2 Phoenix Rising

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Posted 07 August 2007 - 04:57 AM

I always thought that destroyable hardpoints gave fighters an unfair advantage over capitals. Anyways, it may not stay that way in the long term, but at least for the next version, it will; however, shield generators will never show up. They're just way too unbalancing, not to mention non-canonical (shields are produced by rods on the hull, not domes).

#3 The Maw 28

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Posted 07 August 2007 - 08:12 AM

Fair comment on the fighters, but being able to target different parts of large ships can have a big impact on tactics.

I love your revised system but please could you explain to us mortals what the difference between a heavy turbolaser, dual/triple/quad turbolasers, laser cannons etc. For example does a dual heavy turbolaser have twice the firepower than a heavy turbolaser, or do the guns get a bit smaller to fit on the turret!
THe ISD now has 6 different armaments and it's a bit confusing. I would like to know what each type of weapon is best at shooting! :p

I also assume hou have removed the spawing ability of the empire capitals, but could you at least modify the bigger ships so that they can only carry a limited number of squadrons. I.E. ISD's only carry 6 squadrons, SSD's 12 squadrons etc.

This also means that the rebels have a slight fighter advantage - as they should - as they can bring hyperspace capable support fighters in addition. Otherwise what's the point of spending all that money on a hyperdrive. The empire benefits because it's fighters are cheaper.

Finally, the one aspect I never liked about the original EAW was that all your troops have to be carried in puny transports that are easily destroyed. Would you ever give cruisers and above a troop carrying capacity?

PS. Are we going to see the tatty old bulk cruiser? Cheap box with tubolasers, low firepower, but that's all the reb's had at the beginning?

#4 Decay

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Posted 07 August 2007 - 09:17 AM

Well, another problem with hardpoints is that now there are WAY more guns on the ships. Imagine the PR ISD with a hardpoint for everything. You'd mouse over the ship and just see a bunch of green.

#5 The Maw 28

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Posted 07 August 2007 - 09:29 AM

OK. Fair comment. Maybe not a hardpoint for each firing node, but you should be able to try and hit things like tractor beam generators, concussion missile launchers, gravity well generators, engines.

But surely if your Y-wing squadrons fire a torpedo barrage and you see explosions, then some of those firing nodes should go silent otherwise the super-capitals are on full firing power until they die.

You now have the added potential to have DAMAGED ships in the fleet. Now the impact of fleet and wing commanders becomes more critical as they should increase the chance of firing nodes being destroyed due to better coordination and better commands/tactics.

Imagine how much tougher a battle would be if your capital only fired on one side, as the other side was a mass of mangled durasteel.

Admiral Thrawn's tactic of tractor beams becomes better. Stop a ship, blow up it's lateral guns, and the tractored vessel is now useless as all it's firepower is pointing the wrong way. It might even absorb friendly fire as an extra shield!

Now the superb concept of Fleet tenders becomes more interesting... (and in a prolonged fight some ships should have a very slow self-repair ability as battle damage teams do a bit of spot welding and re-route power to undamaged guns.)

#6 Decay

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Posted 07 August 2007 - 07:45 PM

Good point, and if that could be done correctly with proper balancing that'd be pretty wicked.

#7 Imrix

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Posted 08 August 2007 - 07:12 PM

Well, I DO remember in skirmish maps damaged hardpoints on a station would go grey at 0% instead of disappearing, meaning you could conceivably repair them, so it SHOULD be possible.

The question is whether you can set hardpoints for some systems and not others, without the ship blowing up when the hardpoints that ARE there get destroyed.

#8 Phoenix Rising

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Posted 10 August 2007 - 02:32 AM

I love your revised system but please could you explain to us mortals what the difference between a heavy turbolaser, dual/triple/quad turbolasers, laser cannons etc. For example does a dual heavy turbolaser have twice the firepower than a heavy turbolaser, or do the guns get a bit smaller to fit on the turret!

Yeah, sure. Let's start with basics.

Lasers are good against fighters; turbolasers are good against capitals. As ships get increasingly larger or smaller respectively, accuracy worsens.

A "light" qualifier means the gun is smaller than average, and vice versa for "heavy." Both of these affect the damage and range of the gun.

A "dual" qualifier means the turret mounts two cannons that are fire linked and more capable of piercing armor (it doesn't actually do this now, but I'm hoping to once we have an ALO importer). Same for "triple," but "quad" is the exception. Quad cannons trade cannon size for rate of fire, so a standard quad laser cannon is actually four light laser cannons that fire blazingly fast (damage and range of the light cannons applies).

Finally, an "advanced" qualifier for warheads indicates better speed and rate of turn and slightly more damage.

I also assume hou have removed the spawing ability of the empire capitals

I'm still trying to work something out for this.

Finally, the one aspect I never liked about the original EAW was that all your troops have to be carried in puny transports that are easily destroyed. Would you ever give cruisers and above a troop carrying capacity?

I certainly would like to, but I'm afraid that's just something that isn't possible to mod into EaW.

PS. Are we going to see the tatty old bulk cruiser?

I just checked my models and I don't see that EvilleJedi has one for either the Battle Horn-class or Neutron Star-class, so my hands are kind of tied :umad:.

#9 sideshow_bob

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Posted 13 October 2007 - 02:27 PM

i also notuice that in the mini-mod the Victory is available at the start, the Venator is reaserchable, yet weaker.

will the Victory be a branch of venator development?

IE a level 2 ventador the Victory is available, yet Victory-1 could be weaker than Venator 3-4?

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#10 Phoenix Rising

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Posted 13 October 2007 - 03:34 PM

No, they've since been reversed. I ended up putting the Victory-class first to compete with the Rebellion's Republic-class in the mini-mod, but now they have the Recusant.

Edited by Phoenix Rising, 13 October 2007 - 03:34 PM.


#11 Dr. Nick

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Posted 13 October 2007 - 04:02 PM

I'm pretty sure SirRethcir got the carrying capacity for the capital ships working.

http://pff.swrebelli...g63747#msg63747
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#12 Phoenix Rising

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Posted 13 October 2007 - 04:10 PM

Yeah, but Mike said it was "hacky." I don't know. I haven't had a chance to look at his stuff yet, but I will at some point. If it's clean enough, I might try to implement it. But I am pretty happy with how complements are handled now, even if it's imperfect.

#13 Guest_StarWars_*

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Posted 14 October 2007 - 03:07 AM

When did Grand Admiral Thrawn use that tactic, I don't remember that in the mains books and the books that I'm reading now.

Also I think hardpoints would be a good idea, if you make fighters and bombers be destroyed by one lighturbo laser and above hit. :crazed:

#14 Guest_StarWars_*

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Posted 14 October 2007 - 03:08 AM

Edit: Should be that a fighter or bomber gets destroyed by one shot of alight turbo laser or a more powerful turbo laser hit.

#15 Guest_Guest_*

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Posted 14 October 2007 - 09:26 AM

When did Grand Admiral Thrawn use that tactic, I don't remember that in the mains books and the books that I'm reading now.


It's either when Thrawn attacks Coruscant in the second book, or possibly in the Bilbringi fight in the 3rd.

Chimaera loses lateral shields and he immediately orders tractor control to grab a passing Assault frigate and order Guns to shred the side facing him.

He now has a NR ship locked in place over his vulnerable flank, absorbing friendly fire and unable to dish it out. Neat !

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#16 Phoenix Rising

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Posted 14 October 2007 - 09:51 AM

Edit: Should be that a fighter or bomber gets destroyed by one shot of alight turbo laser or a more powerful turbo laser hit.

Then starfighters would be vulnerable to everything...

He now has a NR ship locked in place over his vulnerable flank, absorbing friendly fire and unable to dish it out. Neat !

Yeah, unfortunately in EaW, you can shoot through friendly ships :crazed:.

#17 jdk002

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Posted 15 October 2007 - 03:23 AM

regardless of the friendly fire issue, i agree with the hardpoint thing, you should be able at least to blow up a few things, such as turbolaser batteries that are turreted and visible outside the ship. i agree shield generators should be taken out of the game entirely as a hardpoint, but what about engines or large weapon batteries on an independence class, something tells me as it starts to get critically damaged some of its weapons are bound to fail.

i think you should try to make it so that you can blow up *some* weapons, possibly engines, i dont know if that was canonically possible, im too lazy to research if hyperdrives worked although your sublight engine drives were damaged, the problem with hardpoints in vanilla EaW was once everything was dead, you had to blow up every hardpoint, is there a way to seperate the damage between a ships actual hull rating and the amount of health a hardpoint has? such as perhaps i can blow up a ships engines but it wont do as much damage to the actual hull rating of the ship, or weapons for that matter, im sure most of the weapon batteries of an executor class or an independence class would work until death, but not all of them obviously. i think it would be a rather interesting idea and allows 2 ways to take out a ship, try to broadside it, destroy some weapons, and then blast it to bits, or just take it head on and destroy it without touching hardpoints, since it would take much less time to do so.

#18 Ghostrider

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Posted 15 October 2007 - 08:55 AM

Engines on smaller ships - yes. There are plenty of examples of capitals targetting frigate engines and smaller.

But I can't see how you plan to destroy the sublight drives on an ISD! They have to be at least 6 million cubic metres of high grade durasteel!
( I guess 300m wide x 200m high x 100m deep)

However, it would be nice if a massive overdose of ion cannon did more than knock out shields. When the KD150 hit the Avenger, it knocked out the entire power grid. Propulsion and navigation both went offline.

Dunno whether high levels of ions can reduce weapon power or alter speed/manouverability. Problably not worth the effort even IF you could even access the code, let alone write it.

#19 Phoenix Rising

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Posted 15 October 2007 - 10:35 AM

you should be able at least to blow up a few things

I have thought about it before, but it would be a major revamp at this point, so I'll have to save it. I wanted to get at least one release out without any hardpoint targeting, just to give some contrast.

Dunno whether high levels of ions can reduce weapon power or alter speed/manouverability.

Yes, they can, to some extent, but the problem I had when I tried to do this was that EaW's lovely projectile system makes it go off when it only hits shields, so you would have an entire battle with every ship ionized. I'm sure PG was aware of the bug and chose instead to design around it rather than fix it (ion torpedoes, ground ion cannon that no ship can withstand). Unfortunately, some of the PR ships can withstand the v-150, and you can see this effect happening on them.

#20 sideshow_bob

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Posted 16 October 2007 - 07:30 PM

Engines on smaller ships - yes. There are plenty of examples of capitals targetting frigate engines and smaller.

But I can't see how you plan to destroy the sublight drives on an ISD! They have to be at least 6 million cubic metres of high grade durasteel!
( I guess 300m wide x 200m high x 100m deep)


i would think that anything that can kill an ISD can kill its engines, y'know, logically.

BTW is there a way so that only hardpoints on one side are destructable, and that a ship can die with some points on it, or is that hard-coded

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