29 replies to this topic

[TheEmpire]

That is a good idea but the ships would be covered in green. Also do you really want to destroy 5,000 hardpoints before you destroy the ship? I think that the destroyable hardpoints could be for the engines, gravity well generators, shield generators and stuff like that. Maybe for some of the heavy guns as well. Such as the octaple turbolasers on the ISD. The other weapons could be destroyed at different anmounts of damage. But that would be a lot of work.

[Dane Kiet]

The only reason PR has eliminated hard points was because of the number of them there would be on one ship. The smallest frigate has over 20. The largest ship has over 5,000. It would be very confusing trying to target a specific system.
Edit: look above, same reasons.

Edited by Dane Kiet, 03 March 2008 - 01:56 AM.

[Dalmp]

Keep in mind that hardpoints are a defense as much as they are a tactical choice. In adding hardpoints ships become stronger because more firepower is wasted in overkill. The more numerous and weaker the hardpoints, the more firepower is wasted. When you reach a point like PRs, you would need about 20 volleys from an executor just to kill a nebulon B. Sure, your firepower should kill it 100 times over, but 99% of it just flies through the ship after the hardpoint is destroyed.

In this mod, because of the HUGE number of HPs, your best play option would be to madly click amongst all hardpoints so that you kept your firepower in use, rather than waste any destroying something specific. And that would just reduce you to putting in 10 times the work for the same result as before. You'd have to take great pains just to play exactly as if there were no hardpoints, because it's smarter.

Mind you, shield generators and engines offer great benefit at little cost when targeted. But because their easy destruction is non-canonical, and because ships would end up being 20+ times harder to kill even without shields (not even joking here) just due to the massive amounts of firepower wastage, I can't say they are worth keeping.

Edited by Dalmp, 03 March 2008 - 03:21 AM.

[Casen]

I think if we can make it possible to target hardpoints in addition to doing the classic RTS-style damage that PR has implemented, that would be swell.

I don't know if that's impossible though, somehow I think it might be, I mean I'm sure the thought passed PR's mind at some point.

[Pred the Penguin]

Hard points were amazing at first, Added a new twist to EaW, but then they became more and more annoying because they were too easily destroyed.

I'm sure theres a way to fix this, but then there's the problem of wasted firepower...

[Casen]

Theres also the fact it felt weird that you had to destroy every hardpoint to destroy a ship.

I mean, it just felt weird. I mean like having all the hardpoints destroyed on a star destroyer then having to shoot the jets just to blow it up...it's just odd.

[slornie]

I think that Phoenix was right to disable the hardpoint targeting. As the others have stated above, the problem with target-able hardpoints is that any shots that hit the ship after the targeted hardpoint is destroyed do no damage whatsoever - Which makes no sense, and is incredibly irritating.

Even though you cant target the hardpoints, they are still there. Im not sure, but i thought that the hardpoints were still destroyed individually as the ship gets damaged (rather than the health bar go down and all hardpoints remain intact, and operating until *poof* the ship explodes). [EDIT: Having looked at the xml's this might not be the case afterall, all the <Is_Destroyable> tags are set to No, if this is the case perhaps it could be altered in the next version?]

I suppose, as a compromise, Phoenix could enable the targeting for just some of the hardpoints (you could do this yourself in your version*, open the Hardpoints_PR xml file and change the <Is_Targetable> and <Is_Destroyable> tags to Yes for each hardpoint) - Engines, hangers, maybe shields, perhaps some of the weapons - But to enable all the weapons would be impractical.

*As far as i know, ive not actually tested this.

Edited by slornie, 06 March 2008 - 11:06 PM.

[sideshow_bob]

what if one could tie several guns to a single hardpoint...oir is it hard-coded?

[Casen]

I dunno the idea of a large group of guns going down from shooting a specific area is just irritating

I think that it should be coded that whenever you click an area of a ship, it fires at that area, like realistic targeting, and any gun in that area has the chance of being blown up.

Is that possible? It is in other types of non-RTS games. I mean normally in an RTS you aim at a target the ship aims for it's center, is it possible to code it so it attacks whichever area you actually target (without specific designated areas), and just any module/gun in that area will take damage?

[Markus]

With my rather limited knowledge of programming, I don't think you could. The way it's rigged is ship-based targeting, meaning all your guns shoot at the ship, not a specific part of the ship. In order to fix that, you'd probably have to use something similar to the 'attack ground' sequences used in a lot of ground-based RTS games. The problem with that, as with adding all the hard points, is that you're gonna miss with a lot of your fire.

Also, you'd literally have to change the very nature of the firing protocols. As it is, the weapons fire is specific to the target the weapon fired at. For example, were I to fire a super-laser at a frigate, anything in front of or behind that frigate will not be hit. To code to allow that kind of damage, you'd have to include a series of 'if/then' statements (or the equivalent). Not only would that create problems (including potential instability and a very slow game) it'd alter the entire balance of the game. It'd actually be simpler to tie the guns to an expanded weapons hard point than it would to code for that concept.

[RyderV]

This might be a mute point, if there is a way to withdraw ships in skirmish, but I haven't figured out how to.

And if you can't withdraw ships in skirmish... Hardpoints just become annoying exploitables. Why finish off that ISD? Just strip it of it's most troublesome weapons and move on, sticking your opponent with a big wedge shaped waste of his population cap.

Does anyone know if you can suicide/withdraw ships in skirmish? I know you can't repair hardpoints in skirmish (or at least you couldn't in vanilla).

[keraunos]

I support adding hardpoints back. I really enjoy PR mechanic and balance, but original EaW battles were much more interesting in many ways: you could actually perform some tactical maneouvers, destroy hardpoints on one flank and move more ships there.. In PR whole 'building' phase is far more interesting then fighting phase - as in battles you simply move fleets a bit and target each ship that you want to destroy, and that's all.

[anakinskysolo]

Keraunos, you must understand its impossible to add them back. Not just because of the wasted firepower, but because the ships would be filled in green. I know it would be good to have hardpoints for every single gun, but imagine the Executor with 5000 hardpoints. And if you say that we could put one hardpoint every five guns, for example, that just wouldn't be realistic.

[Dalmp]

I think I did see some targeting bones on ships when looking.. I'm pretty sure there's something to that, as ships like the RSD don't seem to have many (generally every shot hits the center, or the bow). But I don't think you can rig it to do damage to weapons without actually enabling viewable hardpoints. I'm not sure though.

[hotshot389]

Thats likely because some ships are bigger than others and your ships can only target spesific bones on ships (this was origonaly hardpoints) Without points on the ship that can be targeted from different angles your ships would be forced to move within range of that one single hardpoint to shoot at it. In otherwords most ships would have to fly half way accrossed an executor class just to fire at it.

[Markus]

as a bit of a side note, I'd like to refer people looking to add specific hard points to this post: http://forums.revora...&...st&p=575291

It specifically tells you how to modify the XML files to include hard points in the game. I don't know how it'll play out, as the renders and models are much different than a lot of the original ones, but it should work pretty well.

Edited by Markus, 07 March 2008 - 08:28 PM.

[keraunos]

Keraunos, you must understand its impossible to add them back. Not just because of the wasted firepower, but because the ships would be filled in green. I know it would be good to have hardpoints for every single gun, but imagine the Executor with 5000 hardpoints. And if you say that we could put one hardpoint every five guns, for example, that just wouldn't be realistic.

Anakinskysolo, you must understand it's perfectly possible. If you know how much firepower each side of ship should have, you could make few real, targettable hardpoints that do this damage, and make all the rest of Hardpoints 'dummy', doing 0 damage. This way you'll have the same visual effects, but can still influence battle outcome

[slornie]

That isnt a good idea, its essentially the same as vanilla EAW (except for the extra effects from the "dummy" hardpoints). All the firepower originates from those few targetable hardpoints, which makes the unit easier to kill, is uncanon, and was the exact thing Phoenix was trying to eliminate by changing the hardpoint system. As well as this, when all the targetable "real" hardpoints are destroyed, you would still have your "dummy" hardpoints firing damageless lasers, etc across the map.

Edited by slornie, 06 March 2008 - 11:20 PM.

[anakinskysolo]

Exactly what I meant.