Honest impressions from a mod junkie (HW2Warlords)

[EvilleJedi]

These impressions are based on playing the demo through, modding it and settling on values that fixed what I felt could be fixed with very little effort and a lot of gain to both visual elements and general playability

 

 

 

 

fx

get rid of the flat shockwave effects in space, you should be doing everything possible to make space combat look 3d, make them spherical or something, but don't make it look like saranwrap over a toilet

 

ditch the blue explosions for ship death, they can be used for missiles (like the baradium charges)

 

when a ship blows up, don't make the chunks fall down always, make them float randomly in any direction, if it will impact the camera, then blow the piece up early, this will heighten the 3d effect that is lacking

 

hopefully the current explosions are placeholders, they don't have the awesome chunkyness that we see in the movies (ISD blowing up in ROTJ, TF DCS in TPM) nor do they glow like in other scifi games, honestly the effect needs transition work into the heat effect (which should be more subtle, it will look better if its subdued)

the effecct just feels incomplete and needs more bulk and glow along with better timing with the smoke, debris and heat effect

 

the sprites generated during explosions for small debris at first glance look like people, make the pieces darker so they stand out against the bright explosion, it will make the exploision feel like it is more powerful

 

make lasers skinnier (0.8 wide by 24 long for large laser) and give them a velocity of around 100, this looks much much closer to the movies, where the projectiles cross kms in a few frames, it shouldn't effect balance at all and  it was excellent seeing an AT-AT peg tanks and they occasionally instantly explode (it almost feels like the movies were the scene jumps to cut in the pyrotechnics reel)

 

consider a hi res texture pack and uncompressed normal maps for those with more texture memory (if nothing else, pimp the ISD and mon cal with high res textures) there is not a lot of depth in the crenulations on the ISD, it needs more

 

camera/interface

 

do anything you can to reduce the clunkyness of the interface art (shave pixels), make parts of it collapsible or something, I find myself toggling it/zooming out just to see what is on the bottom of the screen alot

 

returning to the close in camera always seems to reset the angle, its confusing, save the angle when the overview map is entered and return to it, i've consistantly ordered my units off screen and had to start issuing move orders strictly through the minimap or zoomed out view (kudos on that large scale view)

 

there is a player driven problem with the cinematic camera, usually when a player would want to watch, they are too busy giving orders, it is easy to remedy this by lengthening the battles, giving players time to watch the results (making the cinematic camera something they will more likely use)

 

make alt-click focus/ track on a target for rotation and recenter the camera, easy fix, makes it infinately more controlable  instead of rotating around a void and missing your target and having to scroll

 

combine that with the cinematic camera (move the camera view point to different views around the user specified target, keeping the target at least partially in the frame)

 

provide a way to cancel a fleet move or a invasion order (especially a orbit to ground action, that should be more easily recallable, I sent the wrong army and then had to enter in and retreat, wasting time)

 

the subsystem targetting icons are too easily clicked, it is hard to simply tell a ship to attack a star destroyer, instead they try to hit a subsystem, I would say make subsystem targetting automatic in the AI

 

 

 

balance and gameplay

 

slow space unit speeds down when not in boost, ships have no feeling of mass to them, placing an ISD at a speed of .8 and a 50% lower turn rate and acceleration gives it a greater presence, smaller craft like gunships can retain thier relative speed and manuverability

and boost can remain high for straight line runs

 

smooth out turning and slow it down for bigger ships, they have turrets for a reason, right now a ship jerks slightly when it turns or paths (not sure which) put a rotational acceleration on to smooth out any movements

 

make torpedos effect shields, but able to hit subsystems through shields, right now torpedos are infinately powerful and there is no point in building capital ships, make them devastating with shields down though.

 

 

increase range as much as possible, turbolaser ranges of 10000 , medium lasers of 7000 and light of 5000 with AI tweaks works well, ships should still manuver close, but open up at long range initially

 

 

increase shielding 6x or 7x, and ISD with 35000 shields (recharge of 500 a second) and 20000 hull was very imposing, subsystem damage was necessary and strategy was needed to manuver around its damaged flanks (coupled with the longer weapons range) mon cals get more sheilding and less hull.

 

obviously damage rates have to be adjusted, 50 for a turbolaser, 25 for a heavy laser, 17 for medium and 10 for light worked

 

no real changes need to be made to hull values, though boosting them on larger ships helps

 

 

land unit speeds and health seem fine

 

speeder bikes need to zip around more and troops need to actively move around rather than act like they are at waterloo (think endor with the rebels, imps can have lines, rebels need to visually move around)

 

vehicle ranges should be increased a bit, probably 2x, while also moving the camera out about 25% at max zoom before moving to the first overhead stage, in staging areas the camera is too tight and I found myself not using the close camera much (again not watching the battle because I was playing it) units won't pile up as much either, making battles easier to contol

 

abilities like overcharge weapons, boost, concentrate fire feel like they should be on all ships

 

 

modding support issues:

 

need luac for 5.1 (though it may be 5.0, I know a decompiler is an issue because of chunks)

 

XML needs to be broken up better, there are files like constants xml and hardpoints xml that have so many different values that debugging is going to be an absolute nightmare. one file per unit/clones, with folders seperating them by category would be fine

 

how are glow/emission calculated, the diffuse map only has a stripe channel in alpha for skirmish I believe (unless you are masking and doing additive blending?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

net result? battles take a bit longer, positioning plays a more important role as does taking out subsystems and more importantly the player will watch the battle unfold

Edited January 21, 2006 by EvilleJedi

[Darthscharnhorst2]

Looking over the files, do you think it will be possible for modders to ditch the free unit spawns in favor or realism? 

[Deadeye31_pff]

the subsystem targetting icons are too easily clicked, it is hard to simply tell a ship to attack a star destroyer, instead they try to hit a subsystem, I would say make subsystem targetting automatic in the AI

 

This is a bit sublte but to actually destroy ships in EAW you have to blow up all the hardpoints. It's like the squads on the ground have a certain number of troops and you have to kill them all to get rid of the squad. In space, you have to destroy all the hardpoints for the ship to finally die, unlike other RTSs.