Balance and ideas

[Sirocco]

I was thinking of something similar.

 

So, you've built up a goodly sized fleet, say 10 destroyers; the default max fleet size (it doesn't matter, for the sake of this discussion, if you play with more than that). Your enemy has the same.

 

As the game currently stands, any ships 'captured' when your fleet size is at its maximum are disabled. Big whoop. But if you could still capture them and add them to your fleet, then capturing ships would suddenly become a major part of Warlords. It's probably a simple coding change to make it so that ships can be captured, but not built, when the particular class is maxed out.

 

Opinions?

[Evaders99]

Unfortunately, this seems to be a hard-coded thing in Homeworld 2. In the original game, you cannot capture above your ship limit. Edited September 15, 2005 by Evaders99

[Sirocco]

And I'm assuming that Eville can't change the hardcoding, since it's provided by the user's machine rather than his mod, right? Oh, well. It was a thought.

[stormfury_2]

No what evaders means is that Relic wont release the actual code of HW2 for modders so Eville can only use the mod tools provided which means he can't change much of the original code e.g. AI, so until they release the source code it's unlikely Eville can do anything

[TFR-Ghost]

Hmm, that's unfortunate. Now that I think of it, this may mean that he cant go over 6 fighters in a squad if they wont allow that. Am I correct?

[Sirocco]

Okay, so I realize that Clonewars is still very much in progress, but will the sepratists ever get some sort of decent scout? It makes the game hell to play.

[Naga]

Just my opinion, but the CC-9600 frigates seem a bit overpowered... One of them can take on a Victory II and have a decent chance of winning... 2 Would have almost no problem winning, and they're pretty cheap too.

[MightyTribble]

Hi,

 

I'm playing around with SP and I think it'd be neat to re-create the capture of Leia's Rebel Blockade Runner over Tatooine.

 

Here's what I think is needed:

 

A new .ship for a special Reb_Corellian_Corvette, perhaps called Reb_Corvette_Leia, that is identical to the regular Corvette except that it's DockFamily is changed to Corvette:

 

NewShipType.DockFamily = "Corvette"

 

This lets it dock with Star Destroyers. This I've done with my own \data\ship\reb_corvette_leia directory and -overridebigfile, but obviously it'd be nice to have it in the main distribution.

 

For bonus points you could add an Engine subsystem, so it could be targetted by attacks and disabled. At the moment I'm using a script - get health below 25% and it's movement is disabled and it auto-magically switches to the Imperial side (to represent its surrender).

 

The real big work, though, is a new Dock Path for Imperator SD (it was an Imperator, right?) for Corvettes that lets them use the main hanger bay. At the moment, the Corvette docks by going 'nose first' into the TIE bay. Not elegant. I also don't know if you can define two ShipHolds - one for fighters, one for Corvettes.

 

Another way to get around it might be to script the ISD maneuvering to a point above the disabled corvette, and turning to face the same orientation. Might at least be able to get the iconic shot from below of the ISD dropping down on the Corvette in a cut scene.

 

In any case, the stuff I'm *really* in the dark over are the dock paths - I don't have access to Maya and don't know if you can have multiple Dock Paths per ship... but it'd be cool if you could.

[Evaders99]

Don't quote me on this, but I believe even with another docking path, the ships will still only use the first one.

 

The blockade runner scene would be very cool to script. Hope it works for you

[MightyTribble]

Don't quote me on this, but I believe even with another docking path, the ships will still only use the first one.

 

The blockade runner scene would be very cool to script. Hope it works for you

 

dammit, I just quoted you!

 

I'm hoping that te whole 'only using 1 Docking Path' thing is just because there's only 1 instance of DockPath in the .ship file. I hope that on a model with two docking paths set up, it'll be possible to define two DockPath values in the .ship file : one for each. Then hopefully you can just name one DockPath for Corvette use only, and have it go to your new Docking Path to the main hangar.

 

...but to test that out, I need a model that I *know* has two docking paths set up.

 

EDIT: I just thought - are launch paths different from dock paths? Because if so, the problem solves itself! TIE Fighters are meant to *launch* from the front bay, but there's no reason why they should dock there, too. So if models are confined to only having 1 Dock Path, may as well have it use the main hangar bay... of course, this means the Corvette would still launch from the front bay, which'd look a bit silly, but since it's not meant to be there that shouldn't be a problem, as this is all to facilitate a script event anyway, and regular corvette-size stuff will look just fine launching from the front bay.[/b]

[Sirocco]

OR, you could just change all ISD family ships to use the main docking bay. Which, by the way, I think Eville should.

 

But my main idea is this: When I'm trying to capture a ship, having some kind of way to disable it would be nice indeed. And the solution that comes to mind is, obviously, ion cannons. Except that any ship armed with an appreciable amount of ion cannons is also armed with turbolasers, which will most often destroy the ship I want to capture. So here's the thought:

 

Outfit all vessels armed with ion cannons an EMP option, which causes them to exclusively fire ion cannons.

 

If Eville COULD actually do this, I'd be very, very happy indeed.

[Evaders99]

Eville's been working on way to give ships a operation mode, so you just use a hotkey to change from normal mode to disabling mode

[Sirocco]

Okay, here's the thing. Ever since some guy mentioned Torpedo Spheres here on the boards, the Empire has started building them, which is clearly unrelated, and I digress.

 

What I actually came here to say is this: Torpedo Spheres serve no purpose in this game. Once built, they are massively powerful with regards to attack, and they usually crash my computer (personal issue, I know). They have no strategic purpose, you can just drop them somewhere and watch the carnage. Since the Empire already has World Devastators and the SSD, they don't really need anything better. So I'm saying: Eville should take them out.

[Evaders99]

Well Eville really isn't so focused on balanced gameplay, rather focusing on how many high quality ships he can get running in the game

[Sirocco]

Sure, and that's fine, but at some point quality will have to take precedence over quantity if he wants to make a really good game. Now I'm not saying that Warlords is BAD, but I do think that certain compromises should be made in the name of good gameplay. Thing is, Torpedo Spheres DO NOT SERVE A VALID PURPOSE IN GAMEPLAY (see earlier post).

 

Excuse the all caps, but I thought them appropriate to make my point. Or, if Eville must include them, they should cost more than they do, and be significantly more massive and expensive to be canonical (quoting the Essential Guide to Vehicles & Vessels: "only the Death Stars and Torpedo Spheres were larger [than the Executor SSD]").

[Evaders99]

I agree. I'm just saying Eville has other priorities, so it may not make it until version 1 or so

[Sirocco]

Sounds good, then.

[shasla5]

I know this was covered on (one of) the faqs, but the thing that really bothers me about this mod is the extreme inaccuracy of your ships. Normally, I can understand, but when I unleash 12 interceptor squadrons on a mole miner, I expect to be able to kill it instantly, or at least in a timely manner. They NEVER killed it. So while I appreciate your desire to elongate the battles, could you at least make it an option in the game menu or something?

[Sirocco]

Mole Miners do seem to repair themselves unusually quickly. I'm not entirely sure why.

[Evaders99]

Err because they'll die quickly otherwise.

 

shasla5, I doubt Eville will change this. But you may want to talk to him directly

[TFR-Ghost]

AHA! I knew that name looked familiar on KoC! You attacked me like 3 times! GRRR

[TFR-Ghost]

Ok, that's off the topic there so I agree that it's fine how it is. It gets annoying after you have to rebuild little things like that over and over again when you are attacked. This way you dont have to worry about that too much.

[Evaders99]

AHA! I knew that name looked familiar on KoC! You attacked me like 3 times! GRRR

 

(off-topic: It's only a game dude I don't see you in my attack logs, so nothing recently. It's not personally or anything, you probably just had gold to take... )

[Sirocco]

Well, to take up my usual position as resident critical asshole, (if you'll pardon the language) it's not realistic to expect a civilian mining craft to be able to stand up to two fighting wings of military fighters for more than a second. On the other hand, it's highly realistic that if you're attacked, one of the first things to suffer is your nonmilitary logistics force. It's the way it is in real life and in any semi-reasonable RTS, Homeworld 2 included. In addition, having nigh-invincible miners makes commerce raiding almost impossible, whereas in the Star Wars canon universe, it's one of the main tactics of the Rebellion. I'd say that the miners are too well armoured and too quick to self-repair. No kind of vessel, no matter how highly automated, can go from nearly dead to full health in three seconds.

 

That being said, it's not a major issue. I'd axe torpedo spheres first. But that's just me.

[shasla5]

Ok, that's off the topic there so I agree that it's fine how it is. It gets annoying after you have to rebuild little things like that over and over again when you are attacked. This way you dont have to worry about that too much.

 

On the other hand, its near impossible to keep the enemy from mining your own field, unless you devote half of your fleet to eliminating resource gatherers. Its also very difficult to disrupt his production this way, making the only strategy (not tactic) the frontward smash.