What one thing do you want to see most in UE2?

[Quarto]

No, KW... what Eder and I meant is a capship with no actual hull - instead, the entire mesh would be, for example, the bridge component.

Originally posted by Wedge009
You sure that wasn't their original intent? I think it makes sense for only a few gun shots to overload and 'kill' a cooling tower, since the wormhole itself already generated a massive amount of heat.

Err... I didn't say it wasn't their original intent. In fact, considering that the player flies a Vampire for the wormhole mission, the only way the towers can be taken out is with guns. What I said is that the AI programmers didn't take it into account - only the player will ever attack the towers. This is fine for the wormhole mission, since that's supposed to be all up to the player, but it's annoying if you want to use the towers as components in other capships.

Michael, what you're talking about is pretty much standard procedure - any time capships are supposed to do more than fire potshots at each other, the encounter is strictly scripted (check, for example, UE2B). However, since this doesn't always work well, and is always difficult to implement, it's a good idea to keep such events to a minimum.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Oh, you just said "guide", so I thought you were talking about a third party one.

It'd be an odd claim for an unofficial guide to make It's actually an interesting piece of post-WCP fiction... and, of course, it was written by the same guys who did the ICIS manual.

(Incidentally, there's only one English Prophecy guide... the official one. There's an unofficial 'Wing Commander 5' guide in German, but that's all.)

 

[Pedro]

If we had a way of referencing individual turrets then we could really do some clever things by checking what they are targetting and when they hit it, hitting the hull could gradually cause small amounts of damage to both bridge and engines, but alas, a pipe dream.

Qs scripted capship battles look somewhat spectacular anyway but if we wanted the guns to do some damage it would take some work from HCl and hes got enough on his plate.

 

[jammyo2k]

As caphip design currently stands, isn't it slightly unfair on the nephilim? There are several human/confed capships with very powerful anti-capship weapons (hades Mark IV plasma cannon and the plunkett triple plasma turrets). However, no nephilim destroyers or cruisers have weapons with similar abilities (apart from the kraken ship killer although it is not fully implemented in the game itself). I read on the main forum once that the nephilim capships have weapons that are not simualted in the game. If capship engagements are going to be used it seems unfair that the nephilim have this disadantage. Would it be possible to include the unsimulated weapons in the game? Would it be as simple as making changes using the ship editor and adding a gun with suitably high-powered statistics?

 

[Needaham45]

I don't think this would be a problem for UE. UE takes place in the BW, where they still don't have the Plunkett or Hades class. I would imagine it would probably cost the BW roughly a planet to buy one Plunkett Class Crusier. If the Nephlim were going up against Confed, I agree, changes would have to be made, but as long as it's still BW, the fight would be pretty fair.

And in response to Quarto - I didn't know that was how it was normally done. And while it would be a programming nightmare, at least we know it is possible to simulate a giant capship battle. For UE2... could come in handy.

 

[jammyo2k]

The UBW couldn't afford the newer capships but there were capships before that (which confed phased out a while ago) which sport big guns. Would AMGs and PTCs still be effective despite being considered by confed to be obsolete (like everything else the UBW has)

 

[Quarto]

Well.. the UBW never had PTCs as far as we know (they only appeared on the Confederation class, and if any of these survived the war, they're not likely to be sold). As for AMGs, it's possible they have an effect on WCP-era capships, but we don't know for sure.

As for the bugs, it would indeed help if all their weaponry was simulated in-game, but we can always make do with torpedoes, which both sides use.

 

[jammyo2k]

I suppose. Torpedoes are functional and not too controversial but they do lack the fun and spectacle that would be created by capships slugging it out with everything they have (like the secret ops cutscenes).
Are capships able to fire torpedoes at one another? Or did you mean those carried by fighters and corvettes? If capships are able to fire torpedoes then it suggests they are able to target components.

 

[Quarto]

Oh, torpedoes aren't necessarily boring at all, if they're used right .

Capships can fire torpedoes, but they're stupid - they fire them at anything, just like an ordinary missile. I suppose that if there was another capship nearby, the torpedo might get a lock on a component (once it's in flight), but most of the time they just work like very powerful dumbfires. But there are ways around that, too...

 

[KillerWave]

Originally posted by Quarto
No, KW... what Eder and I meant is a capship with no actual hull - instead, the entire mesh would be, for example, the bridge component.

You NEED to have a hull mesh for a capship, but i believe you could have a hull type mesh hidden inside the bridge mesh. Just would be a bit strange to fire at what would be the hull and do damage to the bridge, or destroy an engine, and see damage on the half of the ship, or even the entire ship
The best think, i think, would be if we could have damaged versions of the hull, like in the components.

 

[Quarto]

Yeah, you need a hull mesh, but it could be anything, even an empty box mesh . And the component names could of course be changed, so that you would be aiming at the "Hull" instead of the "Bridge". At any rate, this isn't an especially useful technique for UE, since we're in the WCP era, but I can certainly see why Eder is interested in this .

 

[KillerWave]

I know, but that still would be...strange .

 

[Eder]

If this works, I could make entire capships into a single component and make them be destroyed with a single torpedo hit anywhere on the hull, and I could also spread damaged textures all over the ship.... WC2 style.

--Eder

 

[jammyo2k]

Is it possible to effectively have one rule for the capships and another for the fighters? As bombers are reasonably smart and manuverable it is fair to allow them to target and destroy individual componenets. As capships are slow and stupid it would be easier for them to target a hull (which they are just about able to do anyway). A torpedo or gunshot from a capship could be distributed over all of the compnents (i.e. one hit from another capship could cause a reasonable amount of damage over the bridge, launchers and engines). Fighters could continue to target and destroy individual components as normal. Would it be possible for this to be implemnted in the game?

 

[I'm thinkin...]

New ships would be cool. Some capship battles intermixed with the standard dogfights and what not. What I'd like to see is a mission where you and wingmen escort a battle gruop to engage an enemy battle group. I have no idea how difficult that would be to construct but still it would be cool to see.

 

[Quarto]

Interesting idea. It might be possible, provided the capships used different weapons than the fighters (ie., even if a capship's laser turret has the same stats as an ordinary laser, it would still have to have a separate gun entry). Assuming the game considers a hull hit to actually be a hit, we could then use the HCl's leech gun patch to cause something to happen to the ship in question if it had been hit enough times by the opposing capship's weapon.

Note, however, that in 99% of all capship battles, such solutions are pointless, because you want to pre-determine the result of the battle anyway.

 

[TC]

Originally posted by Quarto

Note, however, that in 99% of all capship battles, such solutions are pointless, because you want to pre-determine the result of the battle anyway.

Even then it could be useful, you just script it so only one ship can be damaged. Of course, just using a timer would be easier...

 

[Wedge009]

But would that idea still apply even if you didn't care about which ship won? Y'know, a proper, straight out capship battle?

 

[TC]

But why would you want a proper straight out capship battle? It could be useful if you had the player in the same area and he could effect the amount of 'leech' damage done to the enemy ship, I guess... But it would make more sense to do that by using the recently discussed method of making the entire ship a component and allowing the capital ships to both have guns that can damage capship components... Otherwise a timer would, once again, be easier (eg: you have x minutes to torp the enemy ship before your capship explodes.)

If, for some reason, you want one ship to explode but don't care which, randomize which ship explodes after x period of time... Which, I think, would also be easier than the leech method.

That was a pretty rambling post. If I didn't make sense, let me know.

 

[TC]

Hmm... brain thinking... can you assign object properties as a variable and have them change after they've been activated? For example, the ship obj? It would be odd if you could, but I've never actually tried, and you could do some interesting things...