11 replies to this topic

[Ghostrider]

If you want to fight more space battles that feature this type of nervous bridge report, then try the revised Galaxy Far, Far Away-series campaign files. The feedback on the forums has been excellent, and it appears that I neglected to give many of the fleets, especially those in the Core, sufficient destroyers and capitals. The result was that many of the Core fleets were too easy to destroy once you had built up your first fleet, making the campaigns less interesting than intended.

Fleets have now been augmented with a considerable amount of Venators, Victorys and Imperial-class Star Destroyers to make you think twice before picking on an invasion target. We also fixed one glaring omission from the films. Victor-class star destroyers were as prevalent as the Ventors in the Clone Wars era, and you will find a LOT more here. Kuat, Brentaal IV, Corellia and Munnilinst in particular are now very challenging. One of the most popular comments was how the AI dumps an entire armada in behind you, just as you think you are mopping up the last stragglers. This will happen a lot more now. I have also improved the fixed defenses, and you will find many space stations and Golans have got a bit bigger since the last version.

(Thanks to Tropical Bob for providing this excellent screenshot)

All versions have been based on the Slim files, and are no bigger than before (I have cut other content to make room for the capitals), and please note that from now on, only the Slim versions will be part of the release. Please also note that if anyone downloaded the draft versions on the forum last week, we have made some minor tweaks to increase the AI challenge, so please download final versons from the website.

I must say, however, how valuable and important the feedback from the forums has been. Since only recently jumping from a forum contributor of random scribblings to a part of the Modding Team, I never realised how valuable good contribution really is. A big thanks to the community, and especially this thread for giving such helpful and informative advice.

As an update, the Thrawn Campaign revisions are also progressing well, so expect more news soon.

Edited by Phoenix Rising, 11 March 2009 - 02:58 PM.

[keraunos]

Great news indeed, can't wait for new computer to try them

What changes are you gonna put into TC? Are you gonna increase number of capitals for both sides? And what about squadrons of fighters? I'd prefer to see many more on Rebel side, probably in tens. Have you considered including some more squadrons (say 6) per 'production' squadron?

[Ghostrider]

Great news indeed, can't wait for new computer to try them

What changes are you gonna put into TC? Are you gonna increase number of capitals for both sides? And what about squadrons of fighters? I'd prefer to see many more on Rebel side, probably in tens. Have you considered including some more squadrons (say 6) per 'production' squadron?

Partly it's a case of making sure the upgrade levels for each class of ship are set correctly, and balancing the fighter mix. For example, the shielded Tie x 3's are brand new in TC, and Thrawn has just introduced the Defender x2, so it's a case of getting the balance of old and new designs of fighters in the right place. Certainly the Imperial class has become more ubiquitous, in terms of player setups. There will also be more 'clash zones' where Imperial and Rebel forces are butting heads in close proximity.
For the player forces, it's mostly rebalancing the tech to be correct at the start, as per the literature, so we are reasonably limited there. Eg. if the literature says the rebels started with 4 Assault Frigates and 3 squadrons of X-wings, I can't put much else there. The mix will be more detailed and variable - so headhunters range from the I3 to the A4, for example. Much of the work is in the detail - placing the historically accurate upgrades in the right places.

I have done drafts for rebs and Imps and am in the process for balancing the whole.

The big change will be in the independent forces. They get a full overhaul, including lots more capitals and dreadnaughts - and a new set of illegal nasties, from the small and irritating to the terrifying pirate specials (worse than the illegal dreadnaught).
I have learned a lot from the forums (which is why i upgraded the GFFA forces) - and these lessons won't be forgotten. The independents will be much, much tougher.

Once Thrawn is done, I redo Operation Shadow Hands - with the same tech tree as TC.

[keraunos]

Partly it's a case of making sure the upgrade levels for each class of ship are set correctly, and balancing the fighter mix. For example, the shielded Tie x 3's are brand new in TC, and Thrawn has just introduced the Defender x2, so it's a case of getting the balance of old and new designs of fighters in the right place. Certainly the Imperial class has become more ubiquitous, in terms of player setups. There will also be more 'clash zones' where Imperial and Rebel forces are butting heads in close proximity.

The big change will be in the independent forces. They get a full overhaul, including lots more capitals and dreadnaughts - and a new set of illegal nasties, from the small and irritating to the terrifying pirate specials (worse than the illegal dreadnaught).
I have learned a lot from the forums (which is why i upgraded the GFFA forces) - and these lessons won't be forgotten. The independents will be much, much tougher.

Excellent I especially like more clash zone. I've played original TC multiple times (no such luck with PR 1.1), and I must admit after a while the game became more and more linear (until I started modyfying it ) In 1.0 there's essentially big clash zone (Coruscant-Yaga Minor), small clash zone (east) and expansion region (south for NR and north for Thrawn). What about adding Mon Calamari (NR) and giving Carida to Empire? then we'll have another clash region in NE, and a nice what-if scenario Empire could also use a fleet in the south; both sides could be stronger in the east, but that's probably already done in 1.1...

Again, I'd suggest to give independents some ships after a while (by trigger). This will force player to move faster, not turtle for too long The point is, you'll conquer those planets anyway (as you need the money), but their forces are only decreasing - this would make them even tougher. Alternatively, you could create unit "Brentaal IV Fleet" and make it invisible, not-targettable, victory irrelevant - and make it spawn all the forces we need With bigger fleets it would make independents more persistent. With house rule (always fight space battles) it could also help AI to expand (giving it less combat power it would be easier to combat via autoresolve).

For the player forces, it's mostly rebalancing the tech to be correct at the start, as per the literature, so we are reasonably limited there. Eg. if the literature says the rebels started with 4 Assault Frigates and 3 squadrons of X-wings, I can't put much else there. The mix will be more detailed and variable - so headhunters range from the I3 to the A4, for example. Much of the work is in the detail - placing the historically accurate upgrades in the right places.

The problem is, we don't have to assume the forces mentioned are always 'full' Except for few battles (Obroa Skai, Katana) we don't have full forces described for both sides. We only know what each side had (Chimerae, Home One, Mil Falcon, Rogue Squadron, Interdictors, ISDs, Dreadnoughts etc.). Even though I like the touches (especially Obroa Skai, this was a briliant move), I'd go into fanon. TC is unique, as it gives us two developped, warring sides. I'd love to see:
-many more units (I'm thinking about tens of fighters squadrons & more capitals - again, probably through larger 'squadrons' to limit lag; or maybe attach additional fighter group to each capship?)
-Rebels capitalizing on their strenght - proportionally more highly developped fighters, supported by corvettes, frigates and MC-80 cruisers
-Imperials capitalizing on their strenght as well - proportionally more ISDs and VSDs, and Dreadnoughts as significant, but not dominant force in the campaign
-AI player given much stronger, but also better balanced force. AI can't use dreadnoughts properly (they often end up beeing out of range & an easy target for bombers), so I'd prefer to give them more capships. Its also Empire vs NR balance - in original 1.0 I could win TC as Empire without building anything - most likely due to huge number of all-around Dreadnoughts involved...
-fleets more spread out. I don't know about 1.1, but in 1.0 you had RepublicSD in one fleet, Bulwark in the other. It would be nice to spread them more evenly.
Ok, that's my ideas for TC

Once Thrawn is done, I redo Operation Shadow Hands - with the same tech tree as TC.

That's not really my sandbox, but I'll give it a try as well

[Tropical Bob]

Glad to see my screeny got used.

As for getting an exception, I believe it boils down to something I did at some point. I put the new GFFA Slim file into my stock version of v1.1 and was able to load it no problem. Now the question is "WTF DID I DO!?"

[Ghostrider]

Glad to see my screeny got used.

As for getting an exception, I believe it boils down to something I did at some point. I put the new GFFA Slim file into my stock version of v1.1 and was able to load it no problem. Now the question is "WTF DID I DO!?"

Does it matter now that the latest version works?

[Tropical Bob]

Hm? It works on my stock version of PR, but not my modified copy.

[Phoenix Rising]

keranos, I believe we've touched on nearly all of your suggestions already, if only behind the scenes . I've been spending most of my time lately coordinating with Ghostrider on this stuff and we have quite a lot of detail and research put into the design of the historical campaigns, so they'll be sure to include their share of retcons and revelations to make the campaigns all the more compelling.

One example from Shadow Hand involves the battle dubbed "Siege of an Imperial Galactic Rim shipyard" by Wookieepedia. In 14 years, it's never been stated just where the Pelagia was headed when it was destroyed by the Galaxy Gun. Thanks to sources that didn't even exist at the time (AotC supplementary material), I've been able to determine it by process of elimination: there is only one Imperial shipyard in the Rim that can be classified as "great" and that's Rothana Heavy Engineering. Thus it was Rothana that was under siege near the conclusion of the campaign, which is further supported by evidence of their designs that we curiously see in orbit around Byss.

So these are the sorts of conclusions I'm trying to draw from the source material to make people think a little when they play PR. Yes, we're trying to represent the original as authentically as possible, but that certainly does not mean we've just rehashed the books (or whatever media). On the contrary, I find that you never realize just how much you didn't know about something until it's represented in a different way, like we've done here. I can only hope the official publications pick up on some of our better retcons, such as the Rothana example. Barring that, I'd love to find a modeler willing to join so we can bring things like that big RHE destroyer to life.

[keraunos]

Yeah, glad to hear that Pity that I'm mostly referring to PR 1.0 with TC, and this is most likely obsolete :( Great work, PR & Ghost

What about fleet concept? I must admit I've been going around this idea for quite a long time now. It would be especially challenging for PR - many updates, so we would have to connect some upgrades to get more balanced forces.

My idea is, say, link TIE Fighters with TIE Bombers (1 upgrade for both) - and you have a wing of 4 TIE Fighters & 2 TIE Bombers. Similar thing for alliance - say X & Y Wings and A and B Wings. Going up, we would have to assume that some ships classes in a fleet are obsolete: you won't get last upgrade of corvette with ISD-IV, you'll have to research it on your own. Obviously, I know it's against PRs' design - you can't build all-bomber fleet, you have to pay a lot more to that many bombers. However, it's the only solution I can see, to really playable singleplayer PR...

Another thing - technical implementation. Single squadron/capital ship could be too vulnerable, and cause certain exploits (destroy spawning ship & escape). However, it's also the only possible solution I can see - non-targettable, victory irrelevant fleet i proposed earlier would give automatic victory to the side that starts spawning first. One could argue that spawning ship can also help to represent morale - destroy strongest unit, and the rest of the fleet will disperse.

[Phoenix Rising]

The upgrades were a massive enough undertaking as it is; I wouldn't want to change them now unless they were really broken.

[Digz]

I think, your doing a fantastic job with the mod, the screenshots look great and the changes you've made are brilliant! This is what probably most EaW:FoC fans want! The new campaigns are brilliant, I'll be watching this mod very closely from now so keep up the hard work everyone!

[cpl0311]

you will have to forgive my absence, but work has been quite busy. did we ever figure out what the problem was with the AI not upgrading space stations? I know it's been a while, but I'm curious.