306 replies to this topic

[Phoenix Rising]

The AI is capable of making its own selections for stations, so that's not the issue. You'll have to ask Ghost about it when he's through working double shifts.

8 slots, yes.

There's a distinction between civilian and military yards. The Koornacht Cluster repair yards were put in by the Empire, so they're special structures rather than planetary advantages.

Trying to stick to photo-realism for icons. We're also down an icon artist.

[Darth Stalin]

Trying to stick to photo-realism for icons. We're also down an icon artist.

1. Well, the Mulchive's and Tion's icons that could be available from these comic-view would be at least acceptable, I presume, given that MOST of PR heroes have NO "photo" icons (as taken from comic series etc.).

2. What should be done to make an icon? I believe I could cut the image from larger one, resize it and possibly also save the view in proper format... but I'm not sure how to add them in proper place in that large file that contains all the in-game icons...

[evilbobthebob]

Putting the icon in the command bar image is the easy part, there is software available for that.

[P.O._210877]

8 slots, yes.

I built 15 around Kuat, does that mean the last 7 won't affect the production time, tax collection,etc.? Or if Kuat is attacked will going to tactical crash the game?

I'm experimenting at the moment...

[Darth Stalin]

Have you altered the planetary characteristics in the appropriate XML file? (IIRC that was "Planets.xml", but I may be wrong...).

[evilbobthebob]

8 slots, yes.

I built 15 around Kuat, does that mean the last 7 won't affect the production time, tax collection,etc.? Or if Kuat is attacked will going to tactical crash the game?

I'm experimenting at the moment...

It may well crash the game. Our maps don't have more than 8 markers for space special structures,

[Phoenix Rising]

Yeah, P.O., I would not want to be you when the AI starts a tactical battle at Kuat. Having not enough special structure markers is one of the surest guarantees of a crash. Interestingly, if there aren't enough garrison markers, the units will just overlap on load without crashing. Probably something to do with special structures being a late change in development and the code not being quite as rigorous.

[P.O._210877]

Well you know what they say about breaking eggs and omelettes... But, in this case, I'll defer to the greater knowledge of my esteemed colleagues and avoid a sure spill.

Any chance I could add markers?

Have you altered the planetary characteristics in the appropriate XML file? (IIRC that was "Planets.xml", but I may be wrong...).

You're wright and I, indeed, did.

[Henry X]

Could we get e webs? Give them a good range but make them lose accuracy rapidly, but getting close (or within range of infantry, if I'm making sense that is) would be certain death. It would make vehicles extremely important.

And is there an in-universe artillery? I know we had the SPHA-T during the Clone Wars, but what happened to the idea of artillery in general? It'd be highly useful.

Perhaps you could do what Command and Conquer 3 does with artillery, make snipers (or something similar) have to be in spotting distance. It would keep artillery from being overpowered, and further increase the importance of infantry.

A null point, but an interesting thing to do would be in the next version to increase the size of the maps you guys create just a little bit and make the environments even more varied. Perhaps a couple of maps that are primarily fought by infantry, as in vehicles wouldn't be able to go through areas. I don't mean make the maps only infantry, but make it where infantry are necessary.

Hold on I'm going to edit this post in a minute with a post I made earlier.

EDIT:

I had a couple of thoughts though regarding fighters. Is there any record of adjusting fighters for atmospheric combat? You could then make them buildable. on the ground.

Or if it's possible, make them immobile except for a strafing run ability which let's them attack and then return to there location. It would also make them vulnerable to ground attack when they are resting from an attack.

Also, perhaps increasing bombing run throttle to 1/3?

Edited by Henry X, 26 May 2012 - 08:09 AM.

[Chih]

I'm a bit worried if e-webs were added, at least if it was as you explained Henry. They'd be on top of the food chain for infantry and vehicles are already very important compared to infantry. Right now, even when using just infiltrators/vanguards or scout troopers/shock infantry a battle is a lot faster and easier if using vehicles in their place. Infantry is decent and cheap though, and effective in defensive roles and when used together with vehicles. Few vehicles can kill a lot of infantry at once, and if nothing else the army troopers/secforce units do at least make for good cannon fodder while getting own vehicles into position. E-webs as described would make using infantry futile if vehicles were available though. Purely thinking from a gameplay perspective, if e-webs do not hamper recruitment of other units I'm all in for it.

I agree artillery could be nice. I've played around with the MPTL and SPHA-T units that are as starter units in some campaigns, and added a handful of them to my GFFA campaign as starter units. They're not very overpowered, and could probably be implemented as they are with some upgrades.

I'd support maps that are entirely infantry based, or at least limits the use of some vehicles. Would be nice if say, an AT-AT was too large to be used, and AT-ST's would find themselves on top of the food chain. We've seen maps where certain types of units are limited, would it be possible with maps where certain sized units are limited as well? Maps where vehicles have to circle a long way around to get to the enemy base, while infantry can attack right from the landing point would be a nice idea as well. That said, I'm pretty sure making new maps or even to resize some will take loads of work compared to a lot of other stuff so no priority here.

As for atmospheric fighters, I recall reading somewhere that these would not be added.

[evilbobthebob]

From a mapping standpoint, it is difficult to find the small vehicle/infantry squad balance. They are usually comparable in power and size, but I can completely stop a vehicle from entering an area using infantry-only passability on the ground. The problems come when I might want to allow light vehicles through an area (e.g. AT-STs going down a narrow street). If I make the terrain passable for any unit, there will almost certainly be passability issues as larger vehicles attempt to move down the narrow corridor. So in those situations I tend to err on the side of caution and use infantry-only passability.

There is a great example of this on my map of Lianna (you're getting a sneak peek):



You can see that the path around the building can easily take a full infantry squad or an AT-ST; but an AT-AT could never realistically walk around that area. I could have made it completely impassable, but I like to give options for infantry so I made it infantry-only. As a result, the AT-ST cannot access the area even though intuitively it ought to use its small footprint to its advantage. From a balance perspective, it's a good thing that the AT-ST cannot access the area, since it is already a powerful infantry-killing machine.

[Kitkun]

Infantry really require transport to be effective, which is fine with me. Makes heavy vehicles even more powerful, though.

Do like more map variety!

Edited by Kitkun, 26 May 2012 - 04:04 PM.

[Henry X]

I'll agree, e webs would be tricky to implement. However, in the very early game they'd be almost crucial as many maps seem to have hordes of infantry units on them.

[Phoenix Rising]

Unfortunately, it's not possible to set accuracy differently by range; for example, making sniper rifles inaccurate at close range. Think of it as a cone.

I don't see foresee a balance issue with E-webs. The side guns on the AT-AT x3 are effectively E-webs. So you give that to infantry and force it to be deployable to fire. They should be like the heavy machine guns in Company of Heroes - great at support, but vulnerable alone. And unlike CoH, they wouldn't offer suppression, so a rifleman squad should beat a single E-web team.

Artillery was "fixed" very late in v1.2 development. For the first year and change of the new land combat, the AI wouldn't deploy it properly, the MPTL didn't fire, their guns didn't used to be fire-linked. Added a 1.5x range boost for deployed artillery and changed a few other XML properties and it seems to be fixed. So there's really no reason for artillery not to be buildable now; it was just a matter of time.

I don't want something like X-wing (space) and X-wing (land) on the build bar... stuff like that is why the Holocron Database doesn't take game mechanics seriously.

[Henry X]

Holocron Database?

And could we use the Mobile Artillery from (I think - I could be wrong on this) Forces of Darkness. I was on the Star Wars wiki and I did see that the Republic did use artillery during Christophsis (sp?) and didn't see a mention if it going out of service. Perhaps the Rebellion could start using some of those.

And I know that you guys don't use fanon units but perhaps a non mobile artillery? Sort of like what the US military uses with it's howitzers?



I mean, why wouldn't anyone use something similar during a siege type battle? Of course, it would look a bit more modern than that (you know what I mean).

I remember hearing and seeing other mods using units like the TIE Crawler and XR-85 tank droids.

Now that I'm done raving about things, what is the general direction for 1.3? I'm guessing that you'll put a good bit of time into ground combat on that one? Or will you start branching out into the post civil war?

Not saying that you guys didn't put some time into ground combat already.

[Phoenix Rising]

The master database of canon.

I've come to the conclusion that easily-constructable towers, like the P-Tower, are the galactic equivalent of contemporary towed guns (in my example, a 37 mm anti-tank). That's not to say towed guns aren't used somewhere, but they're probably second-rate.

The main goals of v1.3 are Atlas conformity and optimization. I'm purposely trying to be more agile - keeping the mod in a perpetually polished state now, rather than going off in a dozen directions at once. As soon as we have a feature done, I want to release it. Less checking, less testing... unfortunately for you guys, less self-advertising. More planning and development. I really haven't slowed down from the release crunch yet.

[Henry X]

So this is more on the level of tinkering with what you already have for the most part? Sounds good to me.

Well, just updates on statistics would be interesting to me.

Do you guys give yourself time off after each release? Or do you just dive right in to the next update?

EDIT: There is the M102 Fire Arc. Originally designed for the Empire, it ended up being extensively used by the Rebellion.

http://starwars.wiki...i/M102_Fire_Arc

And this.

http://starwars.wiki...erial_towed_gun

I don't mean to come across as a smart aleck or anything, but I do love to find things out.

Edited by Henry X, 28 May 2012 - 03:40 AM.

[Kitkun]

Unfortunately, need models. Not sure if towed guns can be done in the engine anyways.

[Phoenix Rising]

"Tinkering" isn't how I'd describe it. More of a focus on one area. Development is messy - things inevitably get out of sync. Instead of breaking half a dozen aspects of the game for months or years, I'd rather take one feature start to finish, then do a release. We probably could've gotten at least four releases out of v1.3 if it was done this way. Then again, I'm not sure it could've been, given the scope of land and AI.

I normally take time off after a release, I just haven't done it yet.

The Fire Arc is drawn on a repulsorlift chassis, similar to the SP.9. It could probably work in a similar fashion as the E-web though. As for the second one, I'm always a little skeptical of Marvel.

[Henry X]

Understandable.

Though if you ever feel like doing excessively picky fan service, that would be the unit to make. I'd imagine with the towed one you could, actually, I'm not sure how this would work.

The fire arc could be done in a similar fashion to the MDU for set up. And I'm thinking something similar to that for the towed gun. though the animation would be different of course.