As it stands I dont think the AI needs much more tweeking, giveing the AI shield killing guns would be evil, that isnt to say they shouldnt be used, but within moderation (ALOT of moderation) my reasoning for this is the plight of vhf's Im finding that most of the normal vhf's (ok, the sabers and stilleto's <-yes its only a hv) can get owned badly by lighter stuff; currently my barricuda can take packs of ~3-4 stiletos/sabers with little difficulty (but send me starfliers and see me run)
2 things about ships, I finally found the raven, and man is that a nastly looking ship, that said I will definatly try it out cause its stats look rediculasly bi*chin, 50 cargo for a hv/vhf??? Crazyness I say!
also, my baby, the slipstream.. whom ever made it I love you! just, if possible, give it a matching paint job! streight dark green has next to no place in freelancer except for shading.
the cougar, hornet, and ghost look awasome
as for the phantom it seems very akin to the excalibur from WC3, that said, I MUST FLY IT!
(spoiler for those that dont want to know anything about ship stats)
Questions/Bugs: I found a referbished engine being sold at oder shipyard, I can buy it and equip it but I cant get rid of it or my original engine, I understand you dont want engine swaping between Lt and Hv fighters, but does this mean I gotta toss it into space or die with it unequiped?
also, on cap ships: if you can kill the jitter caused by armor hits it would make life little less stressful, because, to everything in the game, you are the 'the broadside of the barn' that they can not miss. I would think cap ships would be more stableised to standard weapon hits.
I just noticed that if I unmounted my Gunboat heavy gun, I could not remount it, it seems it counts as a 'turret' (as I can place it on a turret spot) and so will not fit back onto its level 10 'gun' mount.
also, are you sure a shield is out of the question? I know the big ships have caverous 600+ holds but after 1 engagment with 4 lightfighters my gunship limped home, barly with 2 bars of health left and a 37k repair bill. no matter what you do, leaving home is gonna cost you money in one of these things, which seems rather sad as a hv fighter can go through the game and with shield charges pay nothing in repairs.
This brings us to nanos. 100 is alot of repairs, BUT.. its also 20k which is going to take the entirety of your mission earnings in many cases to pay off, and after fighting 4 light fighters in a random encounter, I can see myself using every single one.. time to buy new turrets but sadly Im not loved enough by the military to buy them.
Another thing that would be nice if looked into is the camera zoom-in for turret view. Since turret view is kinda the point behind these tubs its not to helpful when all you have to aim with is the lead indicator while the rest of your view of the combat is blocked by your big-assed ship, sure it looks nice, but in the middle of a firefight I'd rather not be looking at MY ship
Is there no way to make capships effected only by torpedos? I mean a 10k shield with ~10k regneration would almost, and rightly so, make the capship immune to most single fighters (feel free to modify this number as Im sure 10k is a little over the edge but the idea of NEEDING to completely overpower the shields in 1-2 mega hits makes more sence than just having massive raw hp which the capship pilot will always have to pay for no matter what [I mean YOU are the one with the mega ship now its up to everyone else to match you, not to simply activate 'engine cut' (shelton slide for the WC3 peps
) roll around your biggness firing, emptying out their capacitors, moving off, launching a CD to keep you from going anywhere, wait to recharge, and then engage again, even if you spook them off with your big blind firing guns (what pritty windows I have, too bad I cant SEE through them!
) they still have hurt you light fighters are especially good at doing this which is just WRONG.
To make torpedos worth something make them do 15K shield damage (or enough to blow away shields in 1 hit) and say 50-100k hull damage so as to kill a gunship in 2-3 hits (bats would take obviously more), increase torpedo speed and manouverability to be able to match and catch capships, the light torp could just be a very very very heavy missile more effective against gunships than the really big stuff (you could say kill the gunship's hull to 50k from 100k and make the lighter torp do 10k to hull and the bigger one 50k.
Now if I may, I would like to make a brief rant about missiles.. OMG they are SO useless! I do not rank the Wasp CD as a missile as it actually IS effective! it hits! almost every time it HITS! the next to no warning bit is annoying but hell, but as long as your paying attention you can minimize its chances of hitting you by, A: not flying toward an nme in cruise!! Missiles are supposed to hit, more so than guns, thats why their launchers cost more than guns of their level and why you pay 500c a shot; its not for the refire people
.
Now lets all look at these 'missiles' aka disposible money, 485c gets you a moonstalker, the launcher is ~14.5k at oder shipyard. this level 5 missile has the stats of a lv8 plasma cannon hit, its got longer range, an RoF of 1 (duh) and supposidly can turn, now to counter act this engange your afterburner and you didnt even need to buy that 50c exploding monkey wrench aka chaff pod. critical flaw? I think so. rule 1, the missle MUST always go faster than the target else its not a missle its exploding money. case and point with the slipstreem, 2x pirate adv trusters means its max burn is ~325, yes faster than cruise (spoiler) since every ship is capible of engine cut (shelton slide) (ss) it stand to reason as long as your not a transport you can accellerate to top speed, engage ss and watch the missle fall behind you; or you can combine this with TURNING and watch the missle get dizzy and leave.
RECOMENDATIONS: speed of any level 6+ missle =300+ with turrning accross the board at .75+ NO MISSILE should be slower than 250 (torpedos: 200 for Lt, and 160 for Hv);
Damage, since your paying for it, uping the kick would be nice especially if your starting players in hv fighters.
People should HAVE to use that little junk dropper for more than CDs. This said, GIVE THE POOR BASTARDS THAT DRIVE CAP SHIPS SOME KIND OF DECOY LAUNCHER (yes this will piss off torpedos but killing a capship is NOT supposed to be easy)!!
So far I have noticed that there are 2 things that missiles are somewhat good a hitting: stationary targets (like CAPSHIPS), and freighters. Now how hard is it to hit a frieghter or a cap ship with your guns? Ans: EASY!! (well most freighters anyway, Im sure there are some sneeky buggers out their that are scary freighter pilots *tips hat*) in any case missiles, as I have come to respect them, are for those nasty little buggers (Lt Fighters) that can dodge your shooting or are really really tank and need to be brought down a peg or five; ever played X-Wing, taken, ehem, an X-wing and on the last nme TIE Fighter in the mission, with your wingmen order to attack the little bastard, launched your remaining proton torps at it? I always smiled when the torps hit before either me or my wingmen. this is a bad, but fun, example of my conseption of the missile, in FL you can ignore them and there is still less than a 20% chance they will hit you (and even if they do, so what? [yes those that do 1k+ to either shield, hull, or both arent fun but how often are they worth their 1.5k price tag/ea?); in X-wing, someone shoots a missile at you, you pray, you turn, you target it, you shoot dodge like mad BUT YOU DONT DARE RUN. That little indicator flashing in the top left should mean impending doom/the sound of death itself saying, "hello my name's Death, what's yours?" you know it aint going anywhere good. CD's do this, but nuttin else does.
<end of rant>
Edited by - Abacus on 21-12-2003 19:37:51
Sat Dec 20, 2003 11:09 am 
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All I do for LOVE