CapShip Battles- How Do They Occur?

Mjr. Whoopass

<FONT color=lightblue><B>I was going to say someth
I've been loving these screen shots (I use them as desktop pictures) and dream about playing this game. I love the addition of capship battles. I was wondering though how they occur. Do the missions start with them already engaged? The capitol ships were very slow and didn't seem to be able to warp (although in WC3 Kilrathi capships would sometimes seem to warp in after you killed the first wave of enemies- prob. from jumpoints?). Do they creep towards each other while the fighters and bombers stay in escort position or do they use some sort of jump/warp system like in Starlancer?
 
Their are no jumps like in Starlancer, except that a group that just wants to make a jump through a jumpoint meets an enemy that is just comming out of the Jumppoint....like in the WC Movie.
Other thing is that we realy have the more slowly moving caps aproching each other opening fire with their longrange Capshipmissiles and then with their other weapons as theiy come in range.
When these caps meet the escortfighters and bombers will allready be fighting, trying to reduce the enemys defance and soften up the caps with torpedos.

Lets just surprise yourself how it will happen...for all I can say they look realy nice ^_^
 
Not all battles are fast-paced. Let 'em creep towards each other and start slugging it out at range, I say.
 
Every battle is different, I say. :p

They capship battles are very different if you are used too Freespace, since the WC capships are smaller and faster, and thus effectively engage each other and sometimes flying evasive maneuvers compared to FS ships just sitting around and doing nothing. And if they start at long range, it has those WCmovish touch with the ships launching torpedos and CapShip missiles at each other. Most of them usually get shot down, but particularly frigates and destroyers which lack the weaponry to shoot them down get hit, the AI turrets are quite capable of shooting down torpedos, like in Unknown Enemy.
I once made a test mission with a few Kilrathi and Terran close action groups engaging each other at long range...they were still too far away to use their guns when they started their torpedos. It was like in those WW2 movies where you see the torpedo trails running towards a ship in the water. It took some time for the missiles to reach their targets with most of them being shot down, and then, siddenly a few of the smaller capships exploded almost at the same time on both sides...that was cool.
 
Please, PLEASE tell me that there is a massive capship battle or two for us to watch (and participate in... hmm. it'll really make you get the "part of a major operation" feel more than lobbing a "targeting disc" at a fleet you could easily destroy solo)
 
Watching the battle...remeber one of the very first missions I tested and still use as testbed is quite an interesting battle...we got a complete carriergroup with destroyers, Cruisers and stuff and on the other side a Kilrathi group of Cruisers, Destroyers and these nasty corvettes.
If you go into the right position over the battle you can watch stuff blowing up on both sides and command a squad of bombers...thats what I call a WC...sitting at a save place comming his troops ^_^

PS: Thats not the way the mission is meant to be played, but sit their watch it to the end and then press replay and fly the mission as it was ment to be done.
 
Manic said:
Please, PLEASE tell me that there is a massive capship battle or two for us to watch (and participate in... hmm. it'll really make you get the "part of a major operation" feel more than lobbing a "targeting disc" at a fleet you could easily destroy solo)

Saga happens really close in time to one of the last major fleet battles during the war...I'm pretty hopefully these guys won't let us down and we'll get a peek at what let Blair get to kilrah so unmolested....
 
well i'll say it again we aim to plz and there are a few fleet battle and "we'll get a peek at what let Blair get to kilrah so unmolested" well i guess you'll have to wait and see
 
Roy fokker said:
well i'll say it again we aim to plz and there are a few fleet battle and "we'll get a peek at what let Blair get to kilrah so unmolested" well i guess you'll have to wait and see

well, I wanted to say as much :D
 
to those still confused consult your copy of HotT...it should be quite the light show...
 
Dundradal said:
to those still confused consult your copy of HotT...it should be quite the light show...
To quote Pliers, "Just thinking about it gives me the willies!"

Does the FS2 engine scale well with that many large ships in play at once, i.e. will the frame rate still be quite playable?

Cheers,


BrynS
 
BrynS said:
Does the FS2 engine scale well with that many large ships in play at once, i.e. will the frame rate still be quite playable?

Cheers,


BrynS
Well, I for one am willing to put up with a mission or two of my ship clunking and skipping around as long as I get an awesome fireworks show!! :D (not the majority of the missions though)

Also, I hope the enemy AI is decent- I'd rather have WWI style challenging dogfight scenarios then the blasteroids one fighter blows up 40 fighters type of thing.. Of course the WC allows you to go on a mission blowing up carriers cruisers dreadnoughts and dozens of fighters in one mission.. but hopefully it's not too much worse than WC.
 
Pitty that nowadays in RL most capship battles are like WCP: i.e.: they send the fighters to do the fighting :) I hope WCS is more early-WW2 like, with fighters, bombers AND big caps slugging it out.
 
I think that your computer's performance in WCS may be better than you think.

There is a mod campaign for FS2 called Boomerang which starts out with the player escorting a very, very large convoy. I can play that without any skipping at all. In the last mission, the player escorts an enormous cap ship which is ambushed by 10-15 cruisers, and then has that same large convoy jump in to offer support. The frame rate did just fine.

Also, the FS2 engine was desinged for FS2 ships, which are typically enormous. WC cap ships are typically smaller, so I believe you could render more of them than FS2 ships without performance suffering.

Even then, in FS2 you have a couple of major battles with fleets of ships (some of them kilometers in length, like the Santhanas and Colossus) duking it out with heavy beam weaponry, as well as dozens of fighters zipping around, missiles and bombs flying everywhere, and huge shockwaves jostling everbody around. I can play those without the framerate taking a dip. I have a P4 with a nVidia GeForce Ti 4200 or whatever it's called. It handles it like a dream.

So, I think that the framerate should be able to handle WCS pretty well on most fairly modern machines.
 
Looking forward to the capital ship slug fest, just wondering, in WC2 you could actually fly in between enemy capital and it was possible for them to destroy each other, will this be the same in WCS?
 
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