Beta 0.8 initial impressions

Floater

Spaceman
To the development team,

I'm very impressed. Privateer was one of my favourite games and you have improved on it dramatically.

I only started playing it last night but it appears to be very stable. I have two suggestions so far:
1) on the initial splash screen, the one with the Centurion firing on the Gladius, you might want to indicate that the game is loading and that the options shown at the bottom of the screen are not accessible. My first impression when loading the game was that it had crashed...
2) It would be nice if you could provide a text message to indicate why something is not purchasable instead of just showing it in red. This would eliminate some confusion I had upgrading reactors and shields.

I like to congratulate you on staying consistent with the original but adding things where they were sorely needed. Specifically, I say a Paradigm fire on a pirate in a Talon. The Paradigm seems to have recieved some much needed upgrades...

I like the notion of designating the canons as light, medium or heavy. One of my (few) dislikes about the original Privateer was that the fusion canon really didn't give you a benefit over the tachyon canon. (Sure it did more damage but when you consider the refire delay, the damage was actually less. In other words, if you held the fire button down the tachyon canon would do more damage over time and consume less power... Ever try taking out a Kilrathi cap ship using a Centurion with four fusion canons? Good luck, in comparison it was easy with four tachyon guns...) If fact, the tachyon canon was better than everything else. Even all of the pricier canons... Anyway, I'm ranting... Can you tell that I downloaded it last night and lost some sleep?!? I'll give you more feedback on this when I've played some more...

So far I'm very impressed! I'm also looking forward to flying the demon... Kudos to you!

Floater
 
i believe you're thinking of the plasma cun.

priv's max gun was plasma
then righteous fire's max gun was fusion

the order of damage/second is :

fusion > tachyon > plasma

though slower refire rate, and higher energy need for the fusion made it about as good as the tachyon when put into a fight.

-scheherazade
 
Well I think the manual had the wrong value for the tachyon gun--we used the actual values from within the game--I think it's a bit less than before--
here's the order of punch:
Ion: 5.4 damage in .65 seconds
Tach: 3.7 damage in .4 seconds
Plasma: 7.2 damage in .72 seconds
fusion: 10 damage in .75 seconds
 
Hellcatv: Thanks for the clarification on the numbers. The guns seem pretty balanced now.

I've had some time to play the game and it is great! The cloaking device is lots of fun and makes the "destroy the dralthi with 20 wingmen" missions possible.

A couple of bugs:
First, it seems that when you select "repair" in the ship upgrade area of the ship dealer (any ship dealer) the armor on the ship is only repaired if something else is damaged. I have gotten around this by selling the armor and repurchasing it.

Second, I have seen a mathematical error that somehow gave me roughly 600k of credits. It occurred in the ship upgrade screen but beyond that I don't remember the specifics.

Also, during a mission to rescue a confed pilot, my thrust enhancers failed to operate for no reason. I don't have a savegame for it. After docking and taking off again it was fine and has been since.

Destroying Kilrathi capships is very tough now. I unloaded a full set of torpedoes from a Centurion (2X22 per launcher) at one and I had to land at a base, reload the torps and do it again. (It worked fine with the target already softenned up...) Cap ships should be tough so I think that changes are great.

One problem I have had with the Centurion having Torpedo launchers is an inability to select all of the guns without the torpedo launchers being active. When the torpedo launchers are active they fire with the same trigger as the guns (instead of the "enter" key).

Also, I recieved a mission to provide cargo to Eden. I was unable to locate a jump point to Eden although Eden (a new system) is clearly shown on the map.

As a suggestion, when something can't be purchased (ie shown in red) could you provide a message somewhere on the screen indicating why it cannot be purchased? I think that would be very helpful.

cheers,
Floater
 
I'm worried about the "mathematical error" that caused you to receive so many credits

can you give just a few more details--I can't hope to reproduce it with such scant info
 
Hellcatv:

I'm worried about the "mathematical error" that caused you to receive so many credits

can you give just a few more details--I can't hope to reproduce it with such scant info


I can't give you anything specific. I remember it was shortly after buying a demon and giving it standard equipment to get going. If I see such an error again I'll get a savegame and provide some specifics.

I have noticed that when I purchase a fusion gun it will only let me do so if I have enough credits. When I buy it subtracts far less than the price shown. Unlike the other error I referred to above this one appears to be consistent.

Also, I have a ship with a cloaking device. I pressed control-c and nothing happenned... Also, in a later game I sold the cloaking device and could not buy it back for the same ship... I created a save file for it. To whom should I mail?

Floater
(unofficial beta tester)
 
well I think you may have to wait a while with control c

there have been some cloaking device bugs with respect to buying and selling--luckily they have been corrected for 009...we're waiting on steltek ship art for 009--because for 1.0 we wish to only do bug fixes and no new features
 
hellcatv said:
or was cloak alt-c

From svn source .config file CloakKey = alt+c OR cntl+c

I think for 0.8 though, cloak was just c (haven't got .8 handy).

@ Floater
Please check by opening and viewing vegastrike.config and looking under bindings section. Look for the key(s) referring to CloakKey.
 
Dire Wolf here.

<i>One of my (few) dislikes about the original Privateer was that the fusion canon really didn't give you a benefit over the tachyon canon.</i> -- that is a common misconception.

The published statistics for the Tachyon Cannon were wrong. Not to mention, there were different breakage rates for the different types of cannons.
 
Unregistered said:
Dire Wolf here.

<i>One of my (few) dislikes about the original Privateer was that the fusion canon really didn't give you a benefit over the tachyon canon.</i> -- that is a common misconception.

The published statistics for the Tachyon Cannon were wrong. Not to mention, there were different breakage rates for the different types of cannons.

Well -- and this is NOT aimed at any one individual, Dire, I dare say you prolly know it better than I -- if you aren't dead set against it, all the above were adjustable in the TRE files. If you had the floppy disk version, you had to adjust their records in the files OBJECTS.TRE for Privateer and PRSO.TRE for Righteous Fire. If You had the CD version I did, you had to adjust PRIV.TRE and PRSO.TRE.

If you still want advice on how to do it, I DO have a cheat sheet on how to go about it. You'll need a hex editor. I use Ultra Edit 32. but there is a rudementary one in the hack file, PREDIT.EXE, which I also have.

AND unless I miss my guess, the Fusion Cannon was in the sequel, RF, not PRIV.

There are oodles of things you can adjust, but the more you do, the easier and less fun the game gets.

Since I've played the game to death -- quite literally to my game game-disk's demise -- I don't think it's so horrendous that I hack at the programme these days. I sort of earned the right to do it, if you ask me. I swear there's a section of my brain that -- if a surgeon were to look at it during an autopsy -- resembles the star map of the Gemini system's four quadrants.

If you want a cheat file for editing the original versions of Priv and RF, send me an e-mail wendy atsign* kimem dot net. But be advised, you'll kill the fun of the game if you hack too hard.

Wendy
 
ya I remember when HCl added the stiletto into the game for me...it just wasn't *right* when I had a tarsus cockpit and saw a tarsus on the ground... and whenever I clicked a few upgrades it'd get all messed up--no hope to repair stuff ;-)
so I guess I just lived with what I had because of the lack of corresponding artwork... though I think the most fun ship had to be the galaxy--flying around with twin fusions, taking cargo left and right...
 
Do you remember when. . .

hellcatv said:
so I guess I just lived with what I had because of the lack of corresponding artwork... though I think the most fun ship had to be the galaxy--flying around with twin fusions, taking cargo left and right...

Too right.
Now it really WOULD be Privateer if the warring factions had cargo ships on cargo runs and you picked a side and. . .There goes my imagination again. Disregard. Or not.
Your choice.

Though MY Galaxy eventually handled like a Centurion for me. =) With one MAJOR change. Afterburners to 2000. Talk about a fast closing speed in a dog-fight!

But it gets old fast. I eventually tired of the "easy pickings" with tricked-out ships and actually hobbled the Tarsus for an interesting game.

Although, I do have to say, I LOVED it when I was in the Tarsus and did the asteroid fields at full Centurion Paced afterburners. I can give you the hex codes to do up to 2000, if you want, I think I have a saved TRE file with it set up like that.

If you want a fun time, go up against the drone in a Tarsus. You'll need Type I stelteks to get it to Nav Point 1 at the start of the game, though.

<grin>

Wendy
 
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