61 replies to this topic

[Ghostrider]

So the units that are not on the tech tree will not be in the unit encyclopedia on the site?

I suspect that this just hasn't been done yet given all the development work in the last few months that requires checking and double checking before release. We'll get round to it at some point!

Well I expecting nothing less than carnage. It is for this one small reason I consider PR best mod of all. But still are you considering bumping up Republic forces a bit, so OSH won't turn into one big battle (over Byss) which Republic can't win?

"Can't win" is a little harsh.
It shouldn't be impossible, just very hard.

As NR you get some rather nice units, including B-Wing E2's, E-Wings, CC9600 Frigates and Republic Class Star Destroyers. The CC9600's are pretty bad news. Anaxes, Brentaal IV and Kuat are pretty heavily defended and I made the mistake of ignoring them during testing and my Coruscant fleet took some heavy losses.

After all when Empire conquer pretty much everything around Core there is no hope in hell for Republic to build some much needed Capitals to destroy fleet over Byss

In fact my preference would be for CC9600, Dodonna Assault Frigate Mark II and Republic-Class SD's, and the NR fleets have a good many of these. Capitals are vulnerable to the Soverign's superlaser but if you build a fleet of frigates and cruisers, you lose less firepower each time the superlaser fires. Also the CC9600's and Republics have some pretty good ion cannon to take down large shields. Given that the NR starts with the Kuat and Bilbringi yards in addition to Mon Calamari, Hast & Krinemonen III, i'd spam CC9600's, Dodonnas, Republics and pray.

With a good starfighter force and swarms of torpedo-carrying gunships, Ardents & Valiants taken from the Outer Rim fleets, backed up with shield busting modern warships from Bilbringi & Kuat, and advanced MC80's from Hast, I think anything is possible over Byss.

K-Wings would probably help at this point.....

Edited by Ghostrider, 02 August 2010 - 12:25 PM.

[Aizen Teppa]

Looks like it will be a riot! Time to order these K-Wings right now he, he.

Ah yes... Soverign. Executor class was easier to overcome with positioning Capitals on top to avoid broadside salvos. Sov and that Super Laser Thingy is a nasty piece of very painful equipment.

[Phoenix Rising]

V.1.2 Release at X-mas/New Year? With all brand new campaigns it will be like buying 3-4 new games in one super-duper giant expansion. Oh my, can't wait to see this...

Still planning on the end of summer. I'd post more, but I'm trying to make that deadline. I might have to do a few explanatory posts after the release.

So the units that are not on the tech tree will not be in the unit encyclopedia on the site?

I tried to get the images a couple times last week, but the Map Editor assets were out of sync... missing model, missing texture, missing particle, etc. I'll get it eventually! It's just a pain to mess with that utility because, believe it or not, it has no mod support.

[anakinskysolo]

I think that you should reconsider making the Sovereign's superlaser a destroyable hardpoint... Very difficult to destroy, but destroyable anyway. This could make battling the Sovereign difficult, but not almost impossible as it is now. And where you able to fix that issue with the big SSDs that prevented their health to be shown on top of them?

[Invadious]

Nah, to me the Sovereign is fine as it is right now. It's not that hard to destroy and is at least challenging to fight . So how are the Sovereign II and the Executor II right now PR? I remember that you took them off for v1.1 because you thought the upgrades were uninspiring and dull.

[Phoenix Rising]

I think that you should reconsider making the Sovereign's superlaser a destroyable hardpoint... Very difficult to destroy, but destroyable anyway. This could make battling the Sovereign difficult, but not almost impossible as it is now.

Dreadnaughts are end-game units and there's significant time and investment involved in building one. For the same cost, you could get an entire battle group. I don't see reason to make an exception with hardpoints. Really, they shouldn't be that common. I think Petroglyph's magic AI cheat scripts were taking over and spawning them for free in v1.1, but those have been pretty well eviscerated since.

And where you able to fix that issue with the big SSDs that prevented their health to be shown on top of them?

No.

So how are the Sovereign II and the Executor II right now PR? I remember that you took them off for v1.1 because you thought the upgrades were uninspiring and dull.

They're gone and not coming back. As I said in another recent post, it's not possible to upgrade a dreadnaught. I've added a new class for battleships, which get a single upgrade, to distinguish the two.

[Tropical Bob]

And where you able to fix that issue with the big SSDs that prevented their health to be shown on top of them?

To me, it seems un-fixable, since it's a UI issue. I'm sure Petro never thought there would be units so incredibly large put into play.

[Aizen Teppa]

So how about scaling down units? Even with 30-50% size reduction every SSD will be still huge piece of metal, bigger than anything around. Maybe this will solve the problem. Lets face fact that game engine is not designed to handle such massive objects properly (maps are tiny).

[Reedek]

So how about scaling down units? Even with 30-50% size reduction every SSD will be still huge piece of metal, bigger than anything around. Maybe this will solve the problem. Lets face fact that game engine is not designed to handle such massive objects properly (maps are tiny).

But then the size is not accurate.

[Ghostrider]

So how about scaling down units? Even with 30-50% size reduction every SSD will be still huge piece of metal, bigger than anything around. Maybe this will solve the problem. Lets face fact that game engine is not designed to handle such massive objects properly (maps are tiny).

But then the size is not accurate.

You also get other problems. The gun ranges and behavior are set with absolute values. If you change the scale, you mess up all the other parameters.
It's been coverd in this thread (sort of).

[Tropical Bob]

Besides. It almost simulates how mostly un-deployable a Star Dreadnaught would be.

[SpardaSon21]

Sadly, most of the fields of engagement in EaW/FoC have all sorts of terrain features that simply aren't there in space in that density. Considering how big space is, it really isn't that hard to find a few kilometers of nothing to park an SSD in.

[Zeta1127]

So true. Definitely one of EaW/FoC failures. The cost represents how difficult to deploy Star Dreadnoughts can be.

[Kaleb Graff]

We could just make all the space maps empty and big, with nothing but maybe a few asteroids. That would be realistic.
I can't wait. When is it coming?

[Aizen Teppa]

Sadly, most of the fields of engagement in EaW/FoC have all sorts of terrain features that simply aren't there in space in that density. Considering how big space is, it really isn't that hard to find a few kilometers of nothing to park an SSD in.

Couldn't agree with you more. It is easy to park number of SSDs in empty space*. Just look (bird view perspective) at SW V when Vader approaching Hoth with the fleet. There is swarm of capitals in one place and vacuum of space everywhere around, plenty of room for - at least - few fleets. Tiny (& crowded with installations/obstacles) maps - biggest EAW problem.

* - just to give general idea how empty space is math exercise: if Executor is ~17 km long (I have that from some picture with ships sizes, if you know better please don't scream at me ) and distance between Earth and the Moon is ~384000 km how many SSDs you can park between both of them?

Cheerio.

[Reedek]

The Executor-class Star Dreadnaught is 19 km long.

But gameplay wise one Executor is enough or else lag starts to come with the other side also having ships in battle(try bombers vs. an Executor in V1.1)

Edited by Reedek, 08 August 2010 - 08:28 AM.

[Ghostrider]

Sadly, most of the fields of engagement in EaW/FoC have all sorts of terrain features that simply aren't there in space in that density. Considering how big space is, it really isn't that hard to find a few kilometers of nothing to park an SSD in.

Perhaps the EAW maps are trying to represent debis clouds and local stuff near a planet??? But yes, easy enough to aviod. I mean the only time Executor got bothered by debris was the Hoth asteroid field.
Even when Thrawn attacked Coruscant (which had a pretty damn big local debris field by then) it didn't affect tactics from either side, including the New Republic!


Perhaps we shoud have more 'mostly blank' maps, with some randomsied really cluttered ones for suitable planets like Smugglers Run.

Which ever way we do it, it will be a task for version 1.3 next year!

Edited by Ghostrider, 09 August 2010 - 07:19 AM.

[General Grievous]

These are some nice news!
Are there going to be upgradeable World Devastators in the mod...? Because in the Dark Empire comics there are also different variants with antennas or towers. This would be a great addition to not only see the "standard" variant of those giants.
But it's just a suggestion.

[Casen]

These are some nice news!
Are there going to be upgradeable World Devastators in the mod...? Because in the Dark Empire comics there are also different variants with antennas or towers. This would be a great addition to not only see the "standard" variant of those giants.
But it's just a suggestion.

No two world devastators are the same.

[Ghostrider]

These are some nice news!
Are there going to be upgradeable World Devastators in the mod...? Because in the Dark Empire comics there are also different variants with antennas or towers. This would be a great addition to not only see the "standard" variant of those giants.
But it's just a suggestion.

No two world devastators are the same.

For the current version they are all non-buildable; non-upgradeable specials. I suspect that even in future editions, we will kepp them as Operation Shadow Hand only unique units and it is highly unlikely that they wuill ever be upgradeable. They are bad enough as it is!

It might interest you to know, however that WD's are "grown" from a baby molecular furnace with basic droid components attached, so I don't see why we can't have Corvette and Frigate-sized World Devastator variants in future releases (but not in 1.2)!

We do have one different variant in version 1.2 however, the heroic Silencer-7!