Gratz on new version and pitty Dragon didnt make it in yet. Will test it out as soon as I can(hopefuly no game stopers).

"history abhors a paradox"
"There’s a little going-away present, ’cause you’re going away — permanently!"
"Mess with the viper and you will get the fang"


Edited by - GreyViper on 2/23/2006 9:51:49 AM

Yeah, the Dragon really bothers me.
It looked so cool, unloaking, and fly around, but it was almost impossible to hit.
Could only hit it if it came straight at you, sometimes.
I had it for sale on the Osiris, and it kept grabbing the wing textures from the Bearcat.


Watch your 6!

So far its been playing well. Not sure what happened to liberty rogues but I was bit suprised when I had 3 deaths at 1st mission. Come to think of it I did get heat seekers up my tail pipe and mines seemed to hit pretty offten to. Hehe that certainly made the missions interesting. As how it goes for ships they could use some balancing later versions. Anyway keep up the good work.

What do you mean by, "I was bit suprised when I had 3 deaths at 1st mission?"
Are you saying that you died 3 times before completing it?
Or that you only got 3 kills?
(I got 8 kills when I ran it.)
As to what happened to them...
Brand-spanking-new AI!!!
All of the Pilots are now Aces, use Shield Batteries/Nanobots, and have their aim greatly improved.
Many of Freelancer's pilots have rather lousy aim, I assume that's to help the player survive the earlier missions while they learn combat.
I've changed the AI so that every pilot does their best to win.
I've also increased their rate of fire to come close to what a player can manage.
Except for a few really hairy battles, all of the ships use Wing Commander loadouts.
In a few places, in order to at least have a chance at survival, I've limited the number of missiles that the npc pilots carry.
A glaring example is the mission to meet Sinclair.
With the original Wing Commander loadouts, the Gothri uncloak, fire once or twice, and you're dead!

Elaborate on balancing.
What needs improving/changing?


Watch your 6!

Edited by - warzog on 2/27/2006 6:18:05 PM

---

What do you mean by, "I was bit suprised when I had 3 deaths at 1st mission?"
Are you saying that you died 3 times before completing it?
Or that you only got 3 kills?

---

Yeah usually when I regroup with transport and start to reenter tradelane I got 1 shoot by heat seeker. Hmm im on 2 difrent opinions: 1st it made mission interesting and you realy had use skills from being shoot down. 2nd was, that tough it made things interesting it was somewhat annoying. It all depended how fast the transporter reentered trade lane. My sugestion is to leave it as it is(it wasnt that much bother).

---

Except for a few really hairy battles, all of the ships use Wing Commander loadouts.
In a few places, in order to at least have a chance at survival, I've limited the number of missiles that the npc pilots carry.
A glaring example is the mission to meet Sinclair.
With the original Wing Commander loadouts, the Gothri uncloak, fire once or twice, and you're dead!

Elaborate on balancing.
What needs improving/changing?

---

I didnt mean the NPC loadouts they looked fine but you might try rise the difficulty bar bit higer or shuffel ships so that most top end fighters would apear later(bit harder to get to) or would need some rep with factions.
Another thing was that some ships are allmost identical in hardpoints but differ by 100 armor or cargospace (bearcat and panther come to my mind).
Thing is most player will go for fighters with most gun hardpoints(well I did anyway) and then kind of neglect others with less. Lets say why bother with Orion when there is Thunderbolt easily available. Personaly I loved flying Arrow when I got it but I didnt think twice when I saw Bearcat. It would be nice if there would be reason to stick with some of the earlier ships since they are actually good ships they just cant compeet with heavy fighter if both fly similary(this dosent affect all ships I noticed that some did move slugishly). For the ending I would say that its best one so far(well from previous versions Reckoning not included)) this gives hope that newer Reckoning version will be certainly something Im waiting with great anticipation.

Many Gratz to all who have put effort to this and Reckoning mod.



"history abhors a paradox"
"There’s a little going-away present, ’cause you’re going away — permanently!"
"Mess with the viper and you will get the fang"


Edited by - GreyViper on 3/2/2006 12:41:46 PM

Well, one problem, as far as the AI, and ship selection is concerned, most of the ships were placed according to function.
That is, patrol ships, like the Arrow, were given to the police.
Fighters, like the Hellcat, Thunderbolt, and the like, were given to navy's.
The Bearcat, which was an experimental ship, was given to the Order, who has nothing but experimental ships.
The Centurion and Demon have always been Merc ships, only ones I know of 'sides the Orion.
The Orion, Tarsus, and Galaxy, are the only WC freighters we have.
The lighter ships, like the Hornet, Epee, and Ferret, are to light for heavy combat, but are perfect as transport escorts.
The Kilrathi ships were given to the "Bad-Guys" the Rheinlanders.
As I wanted to get feedback on the new ships, I made them more accessible than they probably should have been.

And my goal with the Ai has always been to make it as realistic as possible.
Freelancer's AI was dummied up in quite a few places.
Besides, some of the early pilots are encountered later, and if you explore enough, some of the later pilots are encountered earlier.
But...
Wing Commander FL v2.7 is actually just a test bed for ideas, and ships.
The primary goal was to get the ships ready to repair Reckoning, and as a stepping-stone to Wing Commander FL-Epsilon.
Epsilon is going to be similar to Reckoning, except that it will be in the Epsilon Sector.
If you're unfamiliar with Epsilon, it has 10 Confed systems, 23 Border World Systems, 2 Firekkan Systems, and 39 Kilrathi Systems.
Dividing the Kilrathi into 4 factions will make gameplay more interesting, too.
I'm trying to get someone, ANYONE, to make, or convert models for it, but I'm having dismal luck in that regard.

Oh, and not to sound like I'm tooting my own horn, but, except for models, and a few small mods like Xerxes' OpenSP, or the menu mod, all of the programming has been done by me, myself, and I.
But thanks for the grats, from all of us.

Watch your 6!

I noticed the AI improvements straight away Warzog. Those Rogue bastards kept firing missiles at me when my shields were down and killing me. After that of course, I had to change my tactics .

Esquilax:
I'm one of those folks that hates being "led around by the nose."
Hence, the mods, the new AI, the Hovis Race Bypass, etcetera.
A lot of the new games take you from beginner to expert, step-by-step, often with "expert" lasting only a mission or two, and they wonder why they can't sell new stuff?
One of the things that made the original Privateer, and the Wing Commander games, so much fun, was that the AI was butt-kickingly good!
You had none of the pirates fly in front of you, pause so you could fire, and then spin & fly off.
They just came at you with guns ablaze, and missiles afiring!
In Freelancer, almost every combat has some idotic NPC fly in front of you, pause so you can fire, and then spin and fly off again.
I still can recall the first few times that I played Freelancer...
Whenever an enemy showed up, I'd simply kill my engines, and wait for them to pause in front of me.
Rather than making a butt-kickingly-good-game, they dummy them up with lousy AI's, or make missions to "tough" (read to many ships to go up against by yourself,) or slow them down with "Hovis Race's."
Wanna know why the Nomads are so "bad?"
Their SUR files, "Hit Zones," are 1/10th the size of their ships, unlike every other ship in the game.

Bored yet?

I love the gameplay of the older games, and I'm trying to recreate their feeling, in my mods.
Not just in the ships, or the sector, systems, or bases, but in the basic gameplay, too!

Which, is why I'm planning on Wing Commander FL-Epsilon.
The Privateer mod was fun, but there are other, better projects based on Privateer.
I want to do something fresh, that can't really be compared with much of anything else.
And the AI is at the very core of that goal.

Watch your 6!

---

Well, one problem, as far as the AI, and ship selection is concerned, most of the ships were placed according to function.
That is, patrol ships, like the Arrow, were given to the police.
Fighters, like the Hellcat, Thunderbolt, and the like, were given to navy's.
The Bearcat, which was an experimental ship, was given to the Order, who has nothing but experimental ships.
The Centurion and Demon have always been Merc ships, only ones I know of 'sides the Orion.
The Orion, Tarsus, and Galaxy, are the only WC freighters we have.
The lighter ships, like the Hornet, Epee, and Ferret, are to light for heavy combat, but are perfect as transport escorts.
The Kilrathi ships were given to the "Bad-Guys" the Rheinlanders.
As I wanted to get feedback on the new ships, I made them more accessible than they probably should have been.

---

I didnt have any problems with NPC ship selection, tough this mod lacks a bit capital ships and transporters(yeah getting models you want can be pain and time consuming). About Bearcat and Panther being available early I kinda figured they were there for testing. Btw I allways thought that Panther was the experimental one.
As to sugestions for end versions well some of the ship/tech distribution was nice. Backwater planets had lower lvl tech and older ships, while capital planets had most advanced civilian ships and tech. Some of the more advanced stuff could be sold only research stations(that would encourage of system exploration otherwise you could get get all the stuff from one stystem buy grinding money). Anyway thats mostly comes in later versions when most of testing is done.


"history abhors a paradox"
"There’s a little going-away present, ’cause you’re going away — permanently!"
"Mess with the viper and you will get the fang"

I don't recall if the Panther was experimental, or not, just that it was in Prophecy and Secret Ops.

I like the idea about advanced equipment at research stations only.
Only problem, which ones, besides Willard, are research stations?


Watch your 6!

---

I don't recall if the Panther was experimental, or not, just that it was in Prophecy and Secret Ops.

---

Well black panther was but thats not realy that important and as I understand Panther is a bit better a mobility then Bearcat otherwise they look similar. Anyway its not a important thing realy.

---

I like the idea about advanced equipment at research stations only.
Only problem, which ones, besides Willard, are research stations?

---

Hmm from waht I remmeber from my FL roaming days they were scatered over systems bit faar from tradelanes so you had to explore map a bit to find them. Some had tradelanes leading to them anyway there werent that much of them. I imagen that in Privateer mods you can decide yourself where to place a research stations.

By the way I have a sugestions for Privateer mods if your interested, only thing is it needs Kilrathi, Nephilm and Confed capships that your lacking at moment.
Bascily Idea was this takes place around WCP:SO timevise.
Backround story: Confed has blockaded Delta jumpoint at Rygannon since massive fleet of Kilrathi raiders and Nephilm have invaded Delta, Beta, Gamma, Delta Prime. Then there are the pirates who somehow have managed to find their way in and stealthy Black Lance black ops reacon team(btw these guys show up later and are suposed to come as surprise to player) whos there for their own reasons. What I had in mind was this that the Gamma jumpoint would be guarded by Midway and few destroyers time to time there could be random clashes with pirates who try to make their way in. As for player he would be free to travel to next sector, thing is all these other systems are considered war zones. There would be no friendly NPC or places to go(except few secret places player must find).
Events: Mostly what I had in mind for these places was random 3 way capital ship fights(similar to improved cap ship encounters). In one event player arives in time see confeds recon fleet being destroyed by Kilrathi raides(that event is meant to sugest that confed is lacking firepower to controll the situation hence the blockade), affter that randomly one of the other factions arives Nephilm/Blacklance and they go for each others throaths(btw mostly all factions are hostile to player except confed). These events usually take place near jumpoints I imagen that one system could feaure 1 space station(in 1 system) for each faction except confed.
The reason player might want go there is that even though stelteck removed 1 part of the battleship drelict the other parts might be still there(these parts act like bases for player where he can repair his ship) but to reach them he has to fight his way through lots of drones that have been activated by other factions(I imagen these would be the hardest oponents not including capital ships, allso they have small chance to drop boosted stelteck weapon wich you cant get othervise allso their shields would be resistent to allmost any weapons). The locations for these places could be gained in bars like rumors.

I understand this isnt something that can be done yet, but whats your opinion is it to worthwhile?

"history abhors a paradox"
"There’s a little going-away present, ’cause you’re going away — permanently!"
"Mess with the viper and you will get the fang"

It's similar to what I had planned for WCFL-Epsilon, except for the Nephilm.
No-one seems interested in modeling their ships, or even, considering a mod that uses them.
It's kind of like Privateer 2...
For some reason, the Wing Commander/Privateer community prefers to deny the existance of Privateer 2, or Prophecy.
I enjoyed both of them, except for Prophecy's locking you into a pre-determined loadout, really hampered things.

At the moment, future mods are on hold.
Any new mod is going to require new bases, more capships (not just Confed's,) and a wider range of player's ships.
Most of the ships we have now are from the earliest games, I'd like to have more of the WC III/IV/Prophecy ships than we have, for any new mod(s).
I'm on the lookout for a modeler who's willing to help our cause.
Until then, Wing Commander FL v2.7 may be the last of either series.
I say "may be" because there is an individual who's stated that they may be able to get us a few new ships, but their real-life obligations appear to slow things down a bit.
I've already created a few new weapons, and if I get any new ships, I may simply create an "add-on pack."

Watch your 6!