One way to find how fast Cruise Speed is is to activate Cruise, get up to full speed, and then press Engine Kill (in a non-warp-capable ship, of course). Your speed will begin to decrease pretty soon, and usually it will be between 395 and 398 right after you press EngineKill.

While the significantly increased number of weapons per ship initially surprised me very much when I first played the Mod (in regular FL, I was amazed at the Sabre having a 6/1/1 config *rolls eyes selfconsciously*), I will admit that the souped-up configs of the ships now is more fun, if not necessary. With only 6 weapons on a VHF, it could be pretty dang annoying and hard to take down 4 or 5 capships in Random Missions. And there does meed to be something that distances VHFs from their little brethren HFs besides drastically higher cost and crappier maneuverability.

I would agree wholeheartedly that the improved AI loadouts are significantly stepped-up: Tizona del Cids are VICIOUS (especially 2 or 3 per ship .. ouch) when a wing of 6 to 8 Titans open up their 1st salvo, concentrating on you. Outcast Wyrm 3's are decidedly nasty - I was fighting some Outcast Sabres and Thunderbolts the other day, and when my lvl10 shield augmented with 2 Powercell5's dipped to 25% in about 2 seconds, I was quite surprised. I had never fought any Outcasts since the earlier versions of the Mod, but now I have felt the wrath of criminal VHF weapons.

And MD, have you ever played the game Freespace2? There is one other weapon (besides a Gauss Rifle/Railgun, of course) in that game that holds one of hte top places in my Best Weapons Book - the Maxim Cannon. I take it that if you've played it, you'll know what it is, but if you haven't, it's a kick@$$ Gatling-gun type.
It has a very high ROF (probably 12-15/sec), very nice range (3.5 km) and velocity (probably close to 1500 m/s), and horrendous Hull damage. It's actually similar to the Venom series, only the Maxim uses more power, does virtually 0 shield damage, longer range, and has an awesome sound effect that makes guys who love huge, pounding, and insanely-powerful sounding things just grin uncontrollably when they hear it (I know, that's not something you would be able to change/add, but just thought I'd throw it in there 'cause it's cool). The gun actually shakes your ship, making your view get a little distorted; and that's just with one mounted - with 2 to 4 of those suckers mounted, your HUD and ship are rocking and vibrating so much you can hardly aim until you stop firing But it's still great.
So to balance such a weapon, maybe it would cost a lot, have a moderate to high power drain, maybe use ammo, and HAVE to be couple with a pulse weapon to have any use in dogfights.
I know you said you'd work on the Railgun (which I really appreciate), but if you do remove Rocket Pods, maybe one other weapon such as this one could take their place? If it's too much work, I'll understand, but I just wanted to propose another idea for consideration.

Edited by - Ro9ue on 4/24/2004 2:20:55 PM

Oh I see, that '300' thingy is just a display bug? I did think it felt like the ship was going faster, lol. Okay, my bad, didn't realize that.

Cruise distrupting in MP, yeah, I forgot about that. I play almost exclusively in SP, forgot to think about the effects in MP. I guess there's not really much more we can do to help the poor AI

If you put it that way, I suppose VHFs deserve all those gun slots... although I do think they aren't as sluggish as they ought to be. Why, I can almost dogfight like a slow LF in some of the custom VHFs

Yes I did notice the high level Corsair and Outcast loadouts (after a large fight I almost always have at least one Tizona/Salamanca/Wyrm). I think the problem lies in the ship I was flying... the Hawkeye MKII (*ducks thrown vegetables*). LOL yeah that ship is way overpowered. Some people were saying Titans and Sabres rule, yeah, but if I'm not mistaken last I checked only the Hawkeye let you mount 3 (THREE!) class 10 capital shields. So that probably explains my bias.

I'm pretty sure when I was flying in one of the earlier ships I used (even that lovely Hydra Corvette) I could hardly stay long near a fleet, and if they were actively going after me I was pretty much toast unless I could lure and take out the escourts one by one. My earlier stand was biased, when I think about the other ships I guess you've got the difficulty balanced just right. Thumbs up!

The Gauss gun sounds nice. I haven't tried any of the beam/phaser weapons yet (those with refiring rates in the 1000s), since I heard some problems with them. I like heavy guns that fire fast projectiles, i.e. I would basically take anything with (1) big damage, and (2) fast projectile speed. I don't really mind slow refiring rates, because I'm not an indiscriminate shooter who holds down the leftclick button continuously I try to line up with the target and then hit it with a 2-3 second salvo, so slow recharge guns are okay with me.

One last thing, I hope all the addons are integrated into the next release, cause I don't think I've seen a 'Troy' sistem in there. The addons listed on your site are for the Hydra and the Longsword, iirc. Other than that... good luck with the mod!

Hey all, got some more ideas and a few replies.

Replies
-On the cap ship thing. My major point was, if it's possible to introduce any kind of mass to the cap ships, it'd be great. The AI ones recover well enough, but player ships, I can clip all day and paralyze them. The physics seem to be reversed. In a tie fighter or other really small craft, getting jostled even by a high speed craft barely throws you off course by about 10-20 degrees. But the cap ships get sent into wild spins that take 15-30 seconds to recover from. Honestly, I really don't care, because I am a die-hard fighter pilot, and view hiding behind 100+k of sheilds and multi-million hull points as cowardice. But I have a friend that does it, and we play in the same room, so if there's any way you could stop his whinning. . .

-On the macross missiles, I know there's a mod out there, I have it, but my FLMM tells me its BAD to activate it with Rebalance running, and, since I don't even use missiles, it's not worth sacrificing a cool mod for flashy missiles. Can I activate that one without killing Rebalance? That'd be great.

-Point taken on the Pirate fleet thing. While I take fleets apart in a VHF(Without using the inpenetrable Capitol Class sheild), I realize that's more skill and the fact that I have played space sims since WC 1, since my friends still get cut to ribbons from time to time.

Ideas & Observations
-Light Fighters seem to have been left in the dust, so to speak in the overall progression of things. I have noticed that the 'projected' top speed for all of the engines is well above the actual speed you have when you get into it. I also noticed that some of the cruiser class(specifically the Naginata and the White Star, I haven't gone back to try the others) get less out of engines than other ships do, 10 to 20 k less. Is there any way to make the light fighters get more speed out of their engines? Or perhaps a class system could be introduced for the engines much like the current weapons and sheilds. LF could equip any class engine, while HF could only go up to about 7, VHF and FR only to 5 and Cap ships would be stuck with 3 and lower. Also, allowing the LF to strafe better than the others would make them a viable choice, instead of ending up taking up space at the ship dealerships. I like the strafing ability of the X shaped light fighter, the Tie Defender, and the Raven's Claw, but I think that if only the lighter fighters had the really sweet strafing ability, it would open them back up as playable ships.

-K, I'm pretty sure this isn't doable, but it'd be cool if you could dock with Player Cap ships in MP. If you did that, then you could make the cap ships the only ones capable of ITS, and they would serve as rapid transit and flagships (hmm...sorta what they're supposed to do). Different ship classes could even take up differing ammounts of cargo space. Possible idea would be LF = 500, HF = 750, VHF = 1000, Freighter = 1500. **As a joke, you could make tie fighters(just the basic tie) take up only 10 cargo, so a cap ship could spew loads of them, provided there were enough players**

-Is there any way to make bases more heavily armed? Not neccessarily with capitol ship weapons, but at least a collection of rapid-firing batteries? IMHO, a strafing run on a base should be hair-raising. As it is, I usually find myself using the base as cover against fighters, since it's safer there. Adding a handful of those assassin missile launchers to a base could make it interesting.

-I'm still relatively new to this site, but from reading through the archives, I gather that there was an attempt at cloaking done and that it was done so badly that there seems to be a bad taste in most player's mouths about it. but hear me out. Go off the old Klingon cloaking devices. You can equip a cloaking device, perhaps in place of a tractor beam or as an upgrade like the sheild capacitors and such (most applicable slot I can think of would be a weapon slot, simply so that it can have a button already hard-coded to activate it). When activated, it consumes all gun power (or deactivates guns, as with cruise engines), and drops your sheilds. When you de-cloak, your sheilds come back just as if they had just been deactivated by hostile fire. I think this would make cloaking plausible and cool, without unballancing the game.

-Another that might not be possible, I know, I'm a dreamer. . .shoot me. More penalties for dying. As it is, when a player limps out of a fight, it's preferable to just fly into a star or something rather than landing. If you land, you have to fix your ship, and replace any guns that were blown off, but if you die, you are back on the landing pad you left from, and have only lost any cargo you had. While it's fun to do suicide tie runs in EFA (try to take any of those fleets with a couple friends in un-sheilded, non-upgraded tie fighters, and see how many runs it takes. . .fun and challenging), I think you should lose cash, or even get demoted back to your starting ship if you go get yourself killed. Another twist to this could be ejecting, if another player can tractor you in, then you don't lose out, but if not, then you're SOL.

-About the mines, theres like twenty types of mines, and they all suck. Mines are a cute little tactic that people pull when I'm on their tail. I find this especially humourous since they aren't worth dodging. By the time a mine comes into play, the weapons and sheilds have far surpassed them, and they are more of an atmospheric effect in the game than a real threat. Even the heaviest hitting mine won't do squat to most HF or toughter craft. Now this is the last thing you want in a mine, since, if you use it, you are in dire straits, with a blood-thirsty aggressor on your tail and your life flashing before your eyes. Mines should really be devastating, or at least worth worrying about.

-Another mine one, but much more differenter! Cap ship mines, that you can lay in the path of a capitol ship and teach it some manners. This would make bombers (the TIE bomber, the longsword) cool. Torpedoes are great for fighters, but BOMBS should be a mine-like weapon that really has no hope of hitting a fighter, and little hope of hitting a cruiser. Lastly, bomb damage should be truly devastating, we're talking easilty two or three times what an equivalent torpedo or forward gun could do. Perhaps a mine that simply keeps going in the direction the ship is flying when the mine was dropped. This would make it useless agaisnt mobile targets, but a great weapon against BS and bases.

Great! I'm a million miles from nowhere with a gung-ho iguana!
-Alex Rogan, The Last Starfighter

P.S. - For those of you who might be seeking a reliable way to bring down a pirate fleet solo in a well ballanced fighter (well ballanced meaning no overpowered stuff, but by no means weak), here's how I do it. Take out the gunships and light cap ships first. This takes out the most enemy firepower as quickly as possible. For this reason, I suggest waxing the smallest of the non-fighters first. Then, you have basically begun a divide and conquer, all that's left are the BS and the fighter escort, so it's a matter of preferance. I go for the BS next, since no AI fighter can keep up with me, and missiles have similar luck. Once the BS is out of the way, then its just a good ol'fashioned dog-fight isn't it? Number one rule is keep moving. Number B rule is don't fly predictably. Number 4 rule is use your afterburner for short bursts of speed, not for constant flight.

Edited by - Alex Rogan on 4/25/2004 3:16:26 AM

PPS - Sorry for the long posts. I'll try not to hog much space from now on.

Edited by - Alex Rogan on 4/25/2004 3:17:20 AM

ok, i am not sure whether ther was a change in 3.40 or not, i am still d/l it,
but in the 3.30 when you flied normaly it consumed weapon energy, and numerous time i found that i had to become a sittin duck cos my wep energy was gone, so i couldnt shoot/move! i found that very crap and extremely unrealistic, but ne-way, if this is still goin on in 3.40, i think it should be taken off, cos that just ruins the game for me, and i mean who in their right mind would make a ship whos power for the engine is used for the weps, it just wudnt happen.
and another thing, how cannit it use wep energy, cos as far as i kno its prolly electircal energy, and i dont think its eva gunna be possible forra electrical engine on a spce ship, and if it was electric, it wouldnt have those plasma trails or whateva they r called, but ne-way i gettin frustrated agen lol, but i think it would be nice to see that gone

Heh heh, no, I like reading long posts

I tried bumping NPC capships, they don't seem to have any problems ignoring my puny little VHF So I guess what you mean are player-controlled ones. I haven't looked at the capship settings much, but isn't there a mass variable for each ship? Besides handling, isn't it supposed to factor in collisions too? Perhaps that's our problem here, the game isn't considering ship mass when colliding with stuff.

No idea about the Gundam missiles mod, sorry. You can try though

Nice jab about the fleets, heh. I'm not that bad a pilot, I just get lazy. I tend to park near the centre of everything, wait for the escort wings to start swarming around, and then start torpedoing the capships and watch blast damage do the rest. In a regular ship I do pretty much what you do, pick the fastest moving buggers off first, before dealing with the big guys.

Strafing, yes. I've seen a few VHFs (Death Scythe, anyone?) with obscene strafing maneuverability. I agree that should be the province of LFs only, and maybe a few of the lower-end HFs. The VHFs that can sideways strafe do use afterburner power though, I suggest the drain should be made noticeable.

I'm sure I've read that the docking-with-player-capships-in-MP question has been answered, and unfortunately the answer is: not possible. Docking seems to be hardcoded to stationary bases/planets. Yes you can dock with the Order's capship Osiris in SP but it really doesn't move in that scene, it acts more like a base (e.g. like Battleship Hood) than a flying NPC capship.

I didn't really follow the conclusions of cloaking but iirc the way it happened was that they couldn't get it to do all that other stuff, it just made you cloak. Soon unscrupulous people were using it on servers, yadda yadda kick ban, you get the general idea.

I also remember some guy asking about dying penalties early in the modding scene, but I don't remember if that thread ever came to a conclusion. I don't remember the subject being bought up again either. Maybe it wasn't possible?

Yes! I totally agree with you about mines. They're about as effective as mosquitoes vs Yogi Bear. The lowest-class ones should at least zero your shields (maybe we could make them specifically for that), and the other ones should do sizeable damage. I don't think they should be as strong as torpedoes though, I remember NPCs rather like to spread them around liberally and during large fights I tend to plow through a dozen or so. If they hurt as much as torpedoes I'd be screwed. Of course, I think this would give more incentive for players to invest in a countermeasures.

Speaking of countermeasures, I think those are screwed too. I mean, 70%, 80%, 90%. What the hell, might as well go for 90% right away. They should be more on the order of 50% effectiveness, 70%, and 90% for the top end ones. The price difference should be increased as well. As for Radar Jammers, those shouldn't be any better than 70%, come on, energy is cheap, you can practically dump those out at will. And make them drain more energy per use. After all you don't have to buy ordnance for them, they're a buy-and-forget kind of thing.

That capship mine idea sounds great, I remember one of the earlier Wing Commander games... not from the regular series, it was either Academy or Armada... had a ship that could launch tac nukes. They launched with an awesome roaring sound and you could SEE them majestically pulling away from you (yep they were nice and slow). I remember also if you happened to accidentally fire your guns before you turned your ship clear from the nuke, you'd blow yourself to kingdom come

Y'know, some of the HFs that are described as 'bombers' launch some pretty light torpedoes that they're treated kinda like missiles. This is a good time to cull our missile/rocket/torpedo stock, imho we have waaay too many. Giving each faction it's own unique ordnance isn't necessarily a good thing

Keep the ideas rollin'!

Arr, you're cross-posting, I already replied to that in the other thread, heh.

Anyway... while I do agree with you that the ship's default powerplant should be able to handle cruising indefinitely -- an underpowered powerplant has no business being in the manufacturer specs -- I don't see your other point. If you're in the middle of a fight, your energy usage is all taken by the guns. The engine does not use any energy in that time. You can't cruise and fight at the same time, because cruising locks the guns.

Let's suppose you have a ship which has a regular powerplant, one that doesn't bottom out when you start cruising. You get into a fight, jam on those guns, and watch your energy drop. Then when you start cruising, it'll go back up. So... I don't see where the problem is. The only problem is the one you mentioned with a default powerplant that is TOO WEAK for the ship. I agree with you on that, and that should be fixed -- not by decoupling the energy usage BUT by giving the ship a better default powerplant.

Manufacturers shouldn't release underpowered ships, that doesn't quite make sense. But if they do... then why are you buying them? That's one question I want to ask you. I've only noticed this problem in a few ships. Most of the ships I've bought have decent regular powerplants.

The engine gets power from somewhere, we don't have to refuel our ships, do we? Drawing from the powerplant is a reasonable idea. Otherwise, what... we'd have to refuel regularly, and I don't think players would like that. I do understand your frustration, I've also been suckered into buying crap ships with an underpowered default system, but let's not discuss what we can't change, or advocate a scrapping something that apparently works fine with most other ships.

It's not like a solution doesn't exist either, in fact there are TWO: buy another ship instead, or if you just absolutely must buy that one, buy a better powerplant. It's as important an investment as your ship. When you've got a good enough one, you'll be transferring it among all your later ship purchases, whereas you'll keep changing your guns and shields to fit the situation.

You know, at the mission you were talking about (ice, that would be Williard station right?), you can still use the starting ship, the Starblazer. In fact I flew that ship until I was almost near the Kusari part of the campaign. They've souped up that baby a lot. 4 guns, class 4-5, that beats most other LFs.

Of course, you won't do any one-man-army heroics in it, those Rhineland gunboats hurt pretty bad, but that ship is way better than most of the other limited crap you can buy at that stage.

I personnaly like underpowered ships, because you can upgrade them. It is a funny thing for me. And the lot of powerplants in the Mod are here for that i guess.

Having to decrease my normal speed to 60 when i have first flyed with the Fedex in order to conserve energy has been a great experience! Without talking of the cruise drain. Lol.

Perhaps the police control the manufacturer and does not like to see all these rookies freelancers cruising around in their system!

And, the starting Starblazer ship has a very good powerplant we can transfer on the new ship if we do not have the money to buy a better on.

But i must tell that one thing embarass me : the fact you can mount a LF engine on an other type of ship. A liberty fighter engine can be mounted on a Rhino to reach a speed of 110... In spite of the mass difference...

Underpowered powerplants are okay, it achieves the effect of making you be conservative in your gun usage... but cruise imo shouldn't be affected. Btw I didn't notice that flying regularly would drain power depending on what speed you were flying at, I only thought the drain appeared when you started cruise -- in the engine specs it also states "cruise drain". Either we increase the default powerplant's output (not a very good idea, it will "help" the guns also) OR we decrease that particular engine's cruise drain. I think the latter is the best option. That way you still need to be careful how you use your guns, but you don't have to worry about being drained when you cruise.

Besides... when you cruise you can't shoot, the guns won't be using any energy. It's not like we have to balance them both, choose where we want our energy to be used: we CAN'T use the guns even if we wanted to during cruise... so making you lose power while cruising, well, that seems a bit pointless.

Plus later on, with multi-engined ships you probably won't see this problem. The whole thing is kinda buggy imo. Since I, as a player, can't fix your problems with underpowered ships, I can only repeat my earlier suggestions: either (1) get another ship that hasn't got power problems, or (2) get a better powerplant.

i only read the beginning and the end to this, so i dont know if most of this is already posted. so sorry if it is, but i personly like the laser torpedos and dragons breath cannons, and any weapon that has a speed of 1000mps or so like them. ive tryed the beam cannons but they dont seem to track to weel unless the target is directly infront of you. also i think the shockwave missles should be put back in (even though i didnt have much luck wiht them), more cap ship designs to. also were you can work out of the border woulds agian instead of getting a freken more advanced pilot crap. also ya the wing over wing and spin deal should be in, also on the cap ships that is now in the rebalance mod. they could be tweaked some more i think, lest manoverably for when your dogfighting 5 cap ships at once so that you dont go flyin past and end up 50k away from your target before you can get stoped. but the border worlds is basicly the only place you got room to fly cap ships and you cant get money, well for me that is i think right now. however i have tryed reinstalling and all that, ended up with a GB lost
and no way to figer out were it went. also i think for figters and cap ships there should be a phase clok deal like on star trek that alows you to go through astroide feilds and stuf (YES I KNOW THERE IS ALOT OF FIGHITNG GOING ON OVER THAT STUFF, but i had to say that). but going navagateing astroyeds and junk piles isnt fun in a capship getting to malta and corsars home world bites without the efa system. well i got alot more that i think should be done but i think i should stop, sorry on the leanths but i thought id just say all this also kinda got carried away. by the way i think the rebalance mod is alsome so far and keep up the great work.

If you look at engine_equip.ini, I believe, all engines drain energy both when flying at sublight/dogfighting speed and at Cruise Speed. Flying at sublight uses a lot less (i.e. 40) whereas some engines can suck up an atrocious amount in Cruise (I think the Corsair engine or some VHF/Freighter/capship engines can drain up to 950 or over 1000 per second! ouch).
I'd agree that the energy use during Cruise either should be reduced or eliminated, just b/c of the reasons mentioned in some of these previous posts.

Or, here's an unlikely-but-interesting-to-think-about idea:
Every ship does use fuel -- H-fuel -- and after x amount of time/use, you would need to buy (or tractor in as loot ) some more at a basein order to continue flying. The bigger the ship (VHF/Freighters/Capships) and the more engines your ship has, the more H-fuel you need and use up. Since there IS a pilot in the ship, having a constant supply of Oxygen (again, either bought, looted, and/or mined) on your ship would also be needed. Maybe even some Food Rations, in case you get the munchies Like I said, this is more than likely impossible to add to the game, but it would add a much more realistic aspect to it.

Well, Well, lots of interesting ideas here(looks like a brain-storming conference, LOL), but also some not very wise ones:
For all of those who are wondering, the engines DO consume power during normal flight, but at reduced rates, while in the cruise mode they suck up al ot of power, and that isn't gonna change. Most of respectable space sims such as Freespace or XWA made the engines consume power as well as the recharging and weapons.
Cruise is a demanding mode for the engine and it has to consume something, since reactor power is the only one available...it consumes that. If you run out of energy during a cruise just stop it and use your burners to travel to allow the energy to recharge.
I agree that the LF's should strafe the most, but stop asking unmakeable things from me, i can't spread the engines in classes since all ships will be able to mount those anyway. One thing that i can do is make the default engines unmountable so if you dismount them you'll not be able to put them back again. This way i'll be able to somehow limit their spreading amount different classes of ships.
I made all the capital ships to have a mass greater than any fighter, is in the shiparch.ini file for each one of these. They also have limited maneuvrability by great angular drags.
I don't agree that mines suck Alex, they're much beefed up compared to orignal FL, the Drone makes 1500 hull damage(it was arround 400 original), and the most powerfull mine does 6000 hull damage! If this suck, how about the original ones? Also their speed is increased, an i got myself several times owned by the very smart combinations that the pirates made in dropping them(he does a head on run, drops 2 mines and turns his tail running!), also when i'm behind one pirate he drops mine constantly and some of them will probably hit since i'm concentrated on hitting him. I played all kinds of space sims including WC 1 to 5 and i can tell FL mines are way more effective that the one in Wing Commander(the Porcupine).
Trucidation, a VHF is still a fighter, not a greighter or bombber, so it must still be able to maneuver in a dogfight...and most VHF's have their manuevrability decreased compared to the original FL ones, also in 3.4 i decreased the maneuvrability of HF's too. I left the LF's untouched.
The Hawkeye was made by Augur and he put some wild stats on almost all his ships, which I of course changed, but it seems I overlooked the Hawkeye and that's why it still got 3 shield slots and 600 cargo space. 3 shields slots are too much even for a Capship.

Edited by - Michael Dan on 4/26/2004 4:27:58 AM

From my point of view, making the default engine unmountable is not a good idea to solve this problem. i still prefer to let the choice to mount or not to mount an engine to the player in last solution.

I agree with MD, 3 shields slots are too much. All those slots for shield capacitor and powercell are too much in a general way. After that leveling up, most players ask to figth better AI or well equiped foes to retrieve a good challenging leveI.
I think it could be reduced in all ships. But again, the player can do that himself... I usually just use one shield capacitor 1 coupled with a powercell 1 without a shield when i come back to liberty.

I think one shield is plenty, maby and stress maby some of the realy big fraighters could have two but even then class nine only. I just got to say i love rebalance and keep it up. but again i stress 1 shield is plenty, and leave the adon slots for more power and shields as is it is one of the reason rebalance is so good, options and more options, veriaty is the spice of life affter all. having a 6500 EXTRA shield is nothing like an additinol 50,000 cap shield or two, looking foward to the next version as always.

Edited by - Sun_Fang_One on 4/26/2004 12:25:57 PM

Cheers for the responses to some of our dreams, e-hem I mean ideas. Thanks again for giveing us such a fun MOD! Can't wait for the next installment...

Edited by - Perfecto on 4/26/2004 3:44:24 PM