Buyable Ships

I think a lot of people (including perhaps the devs) have missed the point of a beta.. it is where we try things out. Coming in with preemptive edicts about how we must do this and don't dare do that is not constructive. Try the beta, let us know what could be better. I know you already feel strongly about the stiletto, but try the game first before starting a crusade.

I for one would be a lot more open to feedback after someone has actually experienced the game. But I am beholden to no one. The date I registered for this forum (mid 2001) is about the time I started working on this mod; If you haven't helped me during those years I don't owe you anything.** Nonetheless, I will certainly listen to your suggestions, and in a way it is a relief that people actually care enough to get seriously worked up over this. Honestly, even if I think some of it is misguided I really do appreciate what you are trying to do with your criticisms, and I will give them a good listen, especially after you have tried the beta.

Thanks.

** LOAF, I know you have helped indirectly in a lot of ways, don't feel you need to list them :)

oh, and the stiletto really shouldn't have a cargo hold at all.
Click to expand...
I agree with that. I'm trying to picture it with an huge luggage rack or something and it isn't working :D
 
MamiyaOtaru said:
I for one would be a lot more open to feedback after someone has actually experienced the game. But I am beholden to no one. The date I registered for this forum (mid 2001) is about the time I started working on this mod; If you haven't helped me during those years I don't owe you anything.** Nonetheless, I will certainly listen to your suggestions, and in a way it is a relief that people actually care enough to get seriously worked up over this. Honestly, even if I think some of it is misguided I really do appreciate what you are trying to do with your criticisms, and I will give them a good listen, especially after you have tried the beta.
Click to expand...

I downloaded it not long ago. And have some suggestion.

1. I was figthing a kamekh. After a while i saw that my tiny particle guns couldnt penetrate its massive armor while my own armor fell victim to its particle gun array. In the middle of the fight, i landed on the HOSTILE kamekh; Of course the helpful little kittens repaired my ship for a few thousand credits, and let me leave alive. I assume this
is a bug.

2. If i save my game and quit(We all need a brake from time to time) and then reload it, i find myself in space. I also lose all active missions.

3.As for the stilletto problem. What about "improved internal systems" like in "big 5x5 meters PC->laptop"?

4.Some ships(especially retro's) seem to "bob" during battle. I also saw a militia talon getting its nose stuck i some poor retro's ass. Some gladius figthers also tried to "cluster", nephilim style. I suspect that these are bugs as well.

Also, when ships take damage, they start to roll faster and faster while using autoslide, is this evasive patterns or is it just hysteria, or simply a bug?

5.There is ships buyable from the trade exchange ting.
Brownhair: Ha, ha, ha, those stupid confeds will never know that those food crates contained a broadsword, ha, ha, ha, ha. :p

6. will you add the beloved talking heads later?

7. When will the com menu be online? It would be incredibly cool to actually see what you tell people before you tell them.

8. Listen to Loaf when it comes to "wc canon". He can be quite mean sometimes, but he knows more about the wc universe than we can ever comprehend. (So arguing with him about canon is a bit like heresy.)
 
as for
1) we don't quite know what to do about it...
we don't want to prevent players from completing a mission because they are hostile to a given target. On the other hand common sense requires we do something...we'll have to think about this one.

2) Unless you land and save on one of the main bases or planets, you'll end up in space. Only campaign cargo missions are presistent...

4) We tried to fix this in priv_008.exe I think it's better,... though they still do evade (and that means barrel roll, afterburn, hold right arrow, and hold roll key)

5) Drayman can hold ships as cargo, yes...

6) those talking heads are fiendishly difficult to extract--and the extraction team has gotten rather tired... it's easily doable, but the time required is rather prohibitive

7) Fixed on download page

8) Yes...but public opinion and developer opinions are also important.
WC is not a religion...it's a game... there's no such thing as WC Heresy. But there are opinions, and we've run up against a crowd with a lot of varied opinions. Let them speak... and let the project fork if necessary..we'll help with the logistics if needed.
 
Dyret said:
1. I was figthing a kamekh. After a while i saw that my tiny particle guns couldnt penetrate its massive armor while my own armor fell victim to its particle gun array. In the middle of the fight, i landed on the HOSTILE kamekh; Of course the helpful little kittens repaired my ship for a few thousand credits, and let me leave alive. I assume this
is a bug.
Click to expand...

Hahahahahahahaha. I'll have to laugh at that one for a while yet.
 
i do have to say though, personally i'm all about making things as 100% canon as possible. i don't like changing original stuff 'because i think this works better, or because i think it's cooler' the original developers designed the game and set it up the way they did for a reason, and emulating that is a very very good idea IMO. simply because i am a purist, however....i am given to a little bit o' leeway too. making a ship flyable, hell, making all the ships flyable, that's fine. adding in actual career choices thus allowing the universe to be further expanded on, sure, that's cool to. WC is freaking huge. Yes, this can and is obviously starting out as a privateer remake, who's to say a few years down the road it doesn't become that privateer online that everyone swooned over back in the day? so, putting in certain features now would go a long way towards creating something like that later. not saying that will ever happen, but....you never know. vega strike looks like it's ever growing and won't stop, daniel loves that thing like crazy, with the fan base and fan help going into it as well, it'll only get better. playing through the game what little i have, or the beta anyway, i am impressed. there are a few things i'd like to see come to be, full 3d enviroments (which i'm modeling those now) and 3d cockpits (i'll model those sometime soon) etc...etc....etc. will that freak the community out? hell, the way some people talk the game is 'heresy' for being 3d....well, that's what happens when technology meets ambition and whatever else....god, i'm tired, and i'm rambling....gleen what you will from that, i'm going to bed.

Brad Mick
 
Yeah I agree with LOAF. The gameplay choice of Privateer was brilliant. Each ship had personality. Who even remembers all those Priv2 ships?
 
Fixed the problem with being able to land on a kamekh--whoops ;-)
guess this release candidate won't be the candidate that's released.

PS Delance, it says your post was edited by me... but that must have been a bug with the forum. Ignore it please: your text is unchanged ;-) And while I agree about priv2 having dozens of unmemorable ships, everyone knows the few ships seen in priv ;-) and 99% of the time ppl will fly the big 4. (which is why they have the greatest models and in-game capability)
 
BradMick said:
hmm....i gotta say that it's amazing that people bitch and moan about a project never happening, but yet one a project actually does happen and begins to show remarkable progress, they bitch and moan even more about it. gotta love those people.
Click to expand...
Well, this little point is worth responding to, even if it's not exactly on-topic ;).

Firstly - people bitch and moan (or, rather, laugh and mock) about a project never happening because... well, because most projects never do happen. Please, understand, it's not that people here hate fan projects or think that they are a waste of time. It's just that they've been around for a while, and experience has taught them that most fan projects aren't worthy of any attention. It's par for the course - if you want people to respect what you're doing, you gotta prove that you deserve it first. So, regard this kind of attitude as an additional motivator - certainly, when we were working on UE, all those "haha, UE's stil going after fifty years" comments simply made us work even harder.

Secondly, when people bitch and moan about the contents of your project, that should be regarded as a compliment - it means that in their eyes, you've gone beyond the stage where you're not even worth talking about (come on, why do you think we're making so much fuss about the Stiletto in this Priv remake, while comments like "Wait for WC:Universe to buy the other ships.... it's coming" don't even get a reply? :) ). Of course, if people only complain about your project, that might also mean that you're heading in the wrong direction and should seriously reconsider everything... but when they latch onto just a few aspects, like the Stiletto in this case, that means you're probably doing something right. Obviously not everything, but something ;).

Finally, a little word of warning, as a side-note. I keep hearing in this thread about the joys of open-source, how if users don't like something, they can change it, and how this supposedly frees you from having to make tough decisions (like the Stiletto one - although I'm making a more general point here, so treat the Stiletto thing only as an example, not as something I'm still whining about ;) ). Wrong. Game design is about making decisions. It's not about giving the users the means to make the decisions for you. Don't get into the habit of assuming that you can do anything you like just because the end users will be able to undo your decisions - the whole idea of designing a game is to create something that users will want to play exactly as is.
 
To be honest there are better Confed & civilian ships to chose from then stiletto. Besides I think I would go for Centurion anyway.
Who even remembers all those Priv2 ships?
Click to expand...
I do, but the thing is some of the ships I would have liked to fly I could not because they were pirate only ships.
 
thanks for the kind words Quarto.

Well I certainly like playing the remake exactly as is :) We'll see how many of the other people on the forum agree at least with most of the decisions we've made.

Ya! that skull ship! Who has ever played a game as a flying skull!
 
hellcatv said:
as for
1) we don't quite know what to do about it...
we don't want to prevent players from completing a mission because they are hostile to a given target. On the other hand common sense requires we do something...we'll have to think about this one.
Click to expand...
There's only one way to fix this: Wing Commander Marines!
 
Last edited:
John Cordell said:
There's only one answer: off topic and i don't like off topic posts...
Click to expand...
Oh fark, it was a joke. This thread could use a little levity
 
Jeepers, people.

I'm offering a serious, thoughtful criticism of your game - based on how I know the community will react to it based on my years of experience. Your response to my initial post was absolutely inane - "HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST WE CHANGE SOMETHING SO UNIMPORTANT? WE'RE NOT LISTENING TO YOU!" and "HAHA! WHAT IF WE ADDED AN EVEN SILIER SHIP? THEY'D HATE THAT." That's why I posted the logic behind my claim - which seems like a reasonable use of a message board (if your response to criticism, legitimate or not, is just broadly stated righteous indignance, why even have a message board?). This thread is crazy - "WHAT DID YOU EVER DO FOR WING COMMANDER?" and so forth in response to that sort of comment is a dumb waste of everyones time.

I'm not hating on your game. In all likelyhood, I won't play your game - I own Privateer and an SC-55, and I don't think the experience can possibly be improved upon. That said, I think your idea is a good one and a noble one and one that I hope is very succesful. Everyone should play Privateer, and not everyone will build an old computer to do it. Any criticism I make is based soley on how I think the community, ostensibly the people you're writing this game for, will react. It is not an attack on you personally.
 
My suggestion: Leave the Stiletto in for now. When we get around to doing some extra content, missions, ships, art, etc. on our own... we can have a Privateer+ (or something) pack, that is either opt-in or opt-out. Probably opt-out. But easy to opt-out (or in).

Because I am thinking that there are going to be more than just a few little changes to Privateer as this project goes on, most probably changing the original Privateerish experience even more than letting players buy the Stiletto.

Quarto: I agree with you on that. That part of the OS philosophy is good for avoiding flamewars and spilled milk, but it can't be an excuse for making bad design decisions.

Loaf: You're totally making a mountain out of a molehill.
 
Each of the Privateer ships fits a role:

The Tarsus is the newbie ship, cheap to repair and upgrade, but not as powerful in any area.

The Orion is the heavy gunboat, with extra shield and armor strength.

The Galaxy is the cargo hauler/jack-of-all-trades ship, fast and powerful enough to fight, but with good cargo capacity.

The Centurion is the fighter, with stronger guns and good speed/agility.

I would like to see this expanded a bit by adding the following two roles:

A fighter with more speed/agility/acceleration than the Centurion, but less firepower.

A heavy cargo hauler (like the Drayman)--basically a slow, heavily armored pig with lots of turrets.
 
The first new role can be filled pretty well by the Gladius, which, not being a top-of-the-line Confed fighter, makes sense to be sold to trustworthy Privateers (like all of us)... It's actually pretty maneuverable, though it can't carry enough missiles (surprise, surprise). Balanced and an enjoyable fighter to upgrade to if you want to do something other than cargo runs.

The decision whether or not to take it and see if you can make a living as a merc or to continue flying a Tarsus and retain the ability to fly decent cargo runs is a fun one to make.
 
Ijuin said:
I would like to see this expanded a bit by adding the following two roles:

A fighter with more speed/agility/acceleration than the Centurion, but less firepower.

A heavy cargo hauler (like the Drayman)--basically a slow, heavily armored pig with lots of turrets.
Click to expand...


that would be the stiletto....and, the latter would involve adding to the game something that didnt exist in the game...don't see that as happening.

Brad Mick
 
thanks LOAF. Hopefully you'll give it a shot someday (you did try Freelancer after all ;) ) At any rate, your observations are always welcome.
 
Quote from the manual

I've been following this game since around the 004 or 005 release after the CIC article.
Personally I've enjoyed the flexibility that choosing my ship has given me. I'm right now running cargo in a Galaxy, but I sometimes grab a stiletto to do bounty missions against Kilrathi.

I've was comparing the online manual to my hard copy manual when I came across a rather interesting sentence.
"If you are an accomplished pilot, you should be able to take out a Talon with relative ease, especially if you are flying a Stiletto or Centurion, since its armor is extremely weak. Try to avoid its particle annon, since a hit can inflict sizable damage.
Seems odd that a magazine for Privateers would mention a privateer flying a Stiletto." p54 (context of strategies against Talon)
Perhaps this is Canon after all. Did you folks ever try going up that elevator at the very rear of the original Perry--maybe it gets unlocked by some mission and lets you fly a Stiletto.
Even if not, the manual makes it seem awful likely that they were available to the general Privateering community.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top