balancing

Black-Wulf

Rear Admiral
May I start a thread to give you some of my impressions of the balancing in standoff? or won't there be any balance patches?
 
Of course, we always welcome every comment you may have toward Standoff... just don't expect us to actually implement them, though. As for a "balance" patch, we're constantly re-touching old stuff at every episode release, so it's always possible to retroactively fix something; if you can prove our design choices wrong, that is :p

Oh, and while we'll gladly listen, please don't argue/debate for too long afterwards ;)
 
kk well there is something I really dislike in the game.
looking at other WC games e.g. prophecy, I noticed that the ships have much more missiles. in wc1/2 there aren't as much misilles as in proph. I know, and I also understand that you want to make standoff wc2-like.
but for the hot dogfights in standoff especially in the gauntlet sim missions I really miss the bigger amount of missiles from prophecy.
 
The missile loadout is determined by the number of hardpoints a ship has. There's no way around that.
 
Black-Wulf said:
but for the hot dogfights in standoff especially in the gauntlet sim missions I really miss the bigger amount of missiles from prophecy.
Well... too bad for you :p. This is definitely not going to change - as you said, we're trying to make Standoff WC2-like.
 
KrisV said:
The missile loadout is determined by the number of hardpoints a ship has. There's no way around that.

Actually this isn't quite it. Hardpoints do limit the amount of missile variants (you can't heat-seakers and dumbfires at the same hardpoint). However you can still get 800 dumbfires in one hardpoint.
I agree with Q. There would have no sense to have a wc2 timeline mod, with a prophecy style loadout.
Makes me believe wcp designers gave the player such big missiles loadout because the AI wasn't good enough to pose a threat on a small number basis.
 
KillerWave said:
Makes me believe wcp designers gave the player such big missiles loadout because the AI wasn't good enough to pose a threat on a small number basis.
The large amount of missiles was to match the swarming amount of enemies in WCP, but more importantly I believe it was done with MP in mind; in a deathmatch you can waste lots of missiles trying to hit another player. Everytime we test HCl's MP patch for WCP it hits me how the confed ships were designed and balanced for deathmatch. I appreciate the ship's design choices much more when play MP than the solo campaing.
 
Actually this isn't quite it. Hardpoints do limit the amount of missile variants (you can't heat-seakers and dumbfires at the same hardpoint). However you can still get 800 dumbfires in one hardpoint.

I'm pretty sure Kris is speaking literally (as in, if an Epee were real...) and not in terms of how the game design works.
 
This is probably the thread where I should point out that the Wraith, as a super ship, really should have 2 dust cannons, 2 plasma guns, and 40 ELRIR's. For the sake of game balance, of course.:p
 
PopsiclePete said:
but more importantly I believe it was done with MP in mind; in a deathmatch you can waste lots of missiles trying to hit another player. Everytime we test HCl's MP patch for WCP it hits me how the confed ships were designed and balanced for deathmatch. I appreciate the ship's design choices much more when play MP than the solo campaing.

Well, thats something I haven't had the pleasure to try yet.
 
Dyret said:
This is probably the thread where I should point out that the Wraith, as a super ship, really should have 2 dust cannons, 2 plasma guns, and 40 ELRIR's. For the sake of game balance, of course.:p
Oh, we can't do that - the dust cannons and plasma guns are reserved for the secret unlockable Dragon :p.
 
Black-Wulf said:
rofl...ok so my dream of a bigger missile loadout has been blasted to pieces, thx Quarto...TT :)

Well, they've already said there will be no changes such as this because it would invalidate all the scores on the scoreboard.

KillerWave said:
Makes me believe wcp designers gave the player such big missiles loadout because the AI wasn't good enough to pose a threat on a small number basis.

That doesn't really hold up. The Prophecy AI is plenty advanced. You have to look at what people were asking for. Fans were demanding more and more ships on screen at the same time. Massive swarms of fighters were just what people wanted, and an increased missile loadout is appropriate to counter that.
 
Oh, I know that. I love big battles too.

I just don't think the AI is too bright when:

The cerberus plasma gun kill you accidentally;
A fighter barely moves to avoid colision with a capship or asteroid in front of it;
The nemy ship just flies straight when you're chasing and shoting at it;
The fact the enemy gets tougher instead of smarter in a higher difficult setting.
 
I think You forgot somethink.

They are Bugs.

And in the first mission you can hear, that the Pilots say, that the Nephilen do not fly as good as the Kilrathi.

There are many bugs, but no bugs with flying skills.



But it is sad. I do not like these one against 100. I would love to fly real hard balances Mission.

20 against 20. I like to be the Hero, but it is always this, One Pilot kill a hole Fleet.
 
I would like it more if they used the fact that there's more of them to cooperate and take you down. For example all the bugs focus on one ship at a time, making it much harder to dodge all the shots.
 
Sternenwind said:
but it is always this, One Pilot kill a hole Fleet.

that's wing commander...

but there is another point which I can't agree with.
some ships really have not enough afterburner energy. when every enemy ship boosts around me and I see my energy is empty and so I can't really dodge them or anything like this I coul bit into my joystick...But I know...No balance patches like that TT :)
 
KillerWave said:
I just don't think the AI is too bright when:

The cerberus plasma gun kill you accidentally;

I never had that happen to me, but I did used to get beat from behind by my wingmen in Wing Commander 2 occasionally.

KillerWave said:
A fighter barely moves to avoid colision with a capship or asteroid in front of it;

How often did this ever actually happen? If the point here is to claim Prophecy had a less advanced AI than other WC games, then this isn't a valid point. In older games you could have your wingmen form up and then kill them by running parallel to your carrier.

KillerWave said:
The nemy ship just flies straight when you're chasing and shoting at it;

Again, I don't think this is really an issue. Anyone here can just start up the game and launch the first mission and see this isn't the case. Sometimes they fly straight, and sometimes they jink around. When playing against human players, sometimes they flight straight, and sometimes they jink around too.

KillerWave said:
The fact the enemy gets tougher instead of smarter in a higher difficult setting.

This is another case of not being unique to Prophecy at all. Prophecy uses pretty much the same Rookie-Nightmare system as Wing Commander 3 and on. As far back as the first Wing Commander, elite Drakhai pilots simply had more shields. I just don't think you can make a case here that Prophecy has bad AI relative to the things we're talking about.
 
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