random suggestions that will never probably get implemented

[shadowlegion421]

why doesnt the oldships.big still have the shields then?

[greendayman84]

Does anyone think my option above is a good idea?

[overeditor]

I've been looking at the sub files and the shp files, and was wondering if it would work if I do some copy-paste work from the older versions to add shields to the ships in oldships.big?  If so, It would be a simple (but long) task to add them back to their respective ships.

[dojoyoda_warlords]

nice idea greendayman. I like it.

[shadowlegion421]

I've been looking at the sub files and the shp files, and was wondering if it would work if I do some copy-paste work from the older versions to add shields to the ships in oldships.big?  If so, It would be a simple (but long) task to add them back to their respective ships.

 

if its eay enough, id be willing to go through and add them to all of the ships, old and new. i could send it to people afterwards if they wanted, assuming thats cool with EJ and co.

[EvilleJedi]

shields were actually removed in the 0.5 releases, so the hod files aren't avaialble in the lastest version I believe

[overeditor]

That may be the case, but I was going to use the old hods from the .45 incremental versions.  Since the oldships.big havent been reworked too much, I was guessing it might work.  I know the few ships you've completely remade would have to have the shields remade from scratch (something I don't know how to do).

[OOM-911]

when i suggested sheilds i meant like just a recharging status bar that would keep the ships hull at full strength prrotected untill it droped all the way ;D

 

but then again since i never noticed them before. i don't know. i guess its becase i really came here after 5.0 came out.

 

none the less if you can make it work that would be cool

Edited June 30, 2007 by OOM-911

[shadowlegion421]

they were just a regular subsyste before, but whenever anything hit the ship, the shields subsystem would take damage instead of the ship itself or other systems, until the shields sub system was gone, then other parts would start to take damage. there was no visual for them though. each individual weapon used to be its own sub system as well, which was very nice, because you could use ships with AOE weapons, sich as missiles, to hit them and take them out. for example, playing against rebs, they used fighters/bombers a lot. you'd be pounding away on an mc-80 with your ISD, and while everyone was taking damage to the shields, your weapons remained functional until your shields went down.  shields would go down, bombers would hammer the port side of the isd, and then all the weaps are out over there, so you had to re-orient or retreat. the new .6 ships dont have shields OR weapon sub systems, which is ok, a little annoying, but playable. the pobelms is that most of the ships from previous versions arent converted over yet, hence the oldships.big file. for some reason, the time was taken to remove the shields from these old ships, but not to remove the weapons as destroyable. so the effect is that an ISD III, more powerful than an ISD I by a lot, is useless because all it weapons are destroyable. 1 b-wing squad renders it an expensive pile of floating crap, because all the systems get taken out with 1 or 2 missile salvos. the effect is that, even is you have the oldships.big, you would be dumb to use the ships from it anyway, because any .6 converted ships are far superior. Try is, 3 ISD III's vs 1 VSD I. used to be a no brainer, but now, if you switch your targets to hit each ISD with a missile salvo, you can take all day to kill them, because they cant do anything. all the systems are fried immediately.

 

The whole mods is about as being as close to official star wars as possible. shields are a required part of that, so if someone would be willing to make up a tutorial on how, or to poit me towards one, i would love to go through every ship and add them back in for people that want them. I understand the lag issues, but not having them destroys the tactics used not only in previous versions of the mod, but official star wars sources, such as the books. kind fo the same deal as in EaW, missiles and (ugh) mass drivers ignoring shields. thats crap. and its why i hate EaW, and FoC specifically (along with the absolutely retarded and un-canon Zann faction)

[OOM-911]

i don't mind eaw and foc to much i hope some day we get back the weapons hard points and shields.  hopefully if warlords jumps to sins there will be enough of a performance boost from the engine and the new hardware to get them back.

 

Oh and i would also like to be on that list of yours if you ever do that

[shadowlegion421]

I still need an idea of what tools i would need to do so. i never modded hw2

[EvilleJedi]

you would need to have the old .45 shield subsystems, each shield was a custom mesh object. you can use CFhod if you need to import custom meshes, but you'll run into lots of weapon issues with the weapons shooting the inside of the shields.

 

after that you can pretty much extract the files using a hod extractor and use notepad to uncomment the old shield lines

[harvey032186]

  By and large I consider this mod to be extremely high quality. It is beyond any commercial game, especially in the realms of detail and care (maybe cause companies DON'T care). There is very little "wrong" with this thing, and what little is appears to be on the to do list. I've watched the mod closely for years and this is the first time I've joined the forums. Especially considering how few people have worked on Warlords, its progress is remarkable.

  My only suggestions are...

 

1. Ion Cannons- Not how they work, but their effect. Some seem over powered somewhat (I think this is on your to-do list actually) but regardless of how quickly a ship goes down, my complaint is the length of the downtime. I don't know how long it is, in excess of 20 or 30 minutes at least (waiting long enough I actually had a ship comeback up when I wasn't looking, so don't know how long it was). The result is, even if you win the battle, the ship is still down indefinitely. Repairing it with droids or MSH doesn't seem to do anything. Perhaps you could reduce the downtime, 5 or 10 minutes maybe. Definitely out of the battle, but not the war. Or make the MSH fire the ship back up after a few minutes.

 

2. Attach a minimum range to hyperspacing to prevent goofy micro-jumping, such as to dodge missiles, etc. 30 or 40km minimum at least, or perhaps a warm-up period between the order and the jump (more realistic too). Maybe a warm-up for the Interdictor, too.

 

3. Larger maps. I mentioned this in my previous post on the "ships you use a lot or little". An Interdictor knocks out 100km radius? Something close to that. Many of the maps have the spawn points closer together than that.

 

4. Perhaps increase the top speeds of the ships (a given if the maps are made larger). I made a mod to the old New Rebellion for HW1 that increased the speeds (1000mglt for Carrack, same for X-Wing) Actually made for a very cool environment. Especially after I increased their braking speed. At first, those poor carracks were kamikazes coming in, they couldn't stop NEARLY fast enough... Anyway, it was cool.

 

5. Construction yards. Increase construction times, not a lot, but a little. An interesting idea for variety, is you've got the mobile construction yards, have them build at one rate. Then have larger stationary yards built by the factory ships that perhaps have a higher build rate. Also, for long term traditional RTS facilities mode, perhaps a way to repair destroyers sometime today. I noticed on the platform, frigate ships actually dock ON one of the pads to receive repairs. Something similiar like a large repair gantry for SDs that the ship actually docks in and receives repairs at a much higher rate. At present, I don't see much point in the repair droids or other "fix capable" ships, cause the difference is so minimal as to be irrelevant.

 

  None of this is crucial stuff, and if you don't want to/ can't change it it's fine. Just ideas cause this is the place for it, yes? I actually got the tools to do it myself, and started poking around in the BIG files. I've seen EJ give people permission to use his stuff with a little addendum similiar to "if you can". It is rather confusing in there

Edited October 2, 2007 by harvey032186

[Segur]

Hm, I agree with some of what you say there. But I would also like to add that the removal of the construction buoy would be nice seeing as how the AI build them and SPAM ships everywhere they possibly can.  Also, its hard to keep other players in multi-player to not use them as well.

 

 

 

Just a thought,

          Dr.Segur

[harvey032186]

Actually the Construction Buoys in Facilities mode is a bug and will be done away with later. In Reinforcements it's intended to function the way it does, as an invinicible spawn point for the players. In order to control it, you use either a build time limit, or restrict the amount of funds available. Edited October 2, 2007 by harvey032186

[shadowlegion421]

i dont see the point in it being invincible, thus making the game never ending. heavily armored and shielded maybe, but invincible just seems pointless.

[Evaders99]

It's designed to test ships vs ships battles.. not to win any games.

[harvey032186]

Yeah, that's kinda the idea. The "official" use for Reinforcements, is each side is given a set amount of money and a set time within which to purchase units. After that, they go at it. The point behind making it invincible is to keep people from cheating and knocking it out before the time limit. No, the game won't pop up "User Wins", but it's pretty obvious who won, cause one of the players doesn't have any ships, so it's irrelevant. Against, the AI, same thing. One of you runs out of money/time and can't build anymore ships. Whether the buoy is alive or not doesn't matter. You "won". As a side note, I noticed that if you set a build time limit, the buoy self-destructs when the timer is out, so after you kill everybody, it WILL say "User Wins".

The invincibility also allows players to set games up with resource injections that truly CAN'T end, allowing for hours of mayhem as opposed to 20 or 30 minutes.

Facilities mode is for more traditional RTS style play with "base building" "resourcing" "research", etc. Basically, it's a perfect system where every player's preference is covered. As Borat would say, " I like!" or Ali-G "Respect".

[Segur]

Well my only concern is that the AI seems to build the construction buoy and is very hard to beat, would be nice if it was completely removed from Facility and Construction Ship modes.

[harvey032186]

Indeed. As mentioned, that is an oversight and is on the to-do list for removal. Patience, padawan. EJ will be with us, always. Or until he dies. Or gets tired of doing this. Or perhaps gets knocked off by an associate envious of his powers (eyes warlords staff suspiciously) or perhaps by an ambitious up and coming (why's everybody looking at me?)

[EvilleJedi]

what staff? they are all an illusion  ;D

[harvey032186]

Yeah. Those vodka martinis will do that to you...

[shadowlegion421]

ive actually run across a few instances in which the ai buoy did not destruct when the build timer ran out. it was never consistently happening, and there werent any obvious common factors between matches in which it happened. and it never happened to me, just the ai.

[harvey032186]

Really? I only played with a time limit once, so I assumed that was "the way it was" Oh well, I was wrong. It was bound to happen at some point in my life. As you can tell, it's my day off and I am bored out of my freaking mind or I wouldn't be on here this much.

[EvilleJedi]

was it with more than one AI? it could be possible that it isn't processing the list correctly