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Oh no. I bet I made a really stupid mistake. Working on it now. (This is all my fault for pushing through the patch without a proper test cycle). In the meantime, do you guys have any thoughts on TAG balance? Too good? Too bad?
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Nov 11, 2015 20:00
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General Battuta posted:Oh no. I bet I made a really stupid mistake. Working on it now. (This is all my fault for pushing through the patch without a proper test cycle). I think the TAGs are a little too good. While it's cathartic to see your ships take down cruisers and destroyers in a matter of seconds, it sometimes leads to situations where you're just twiddling your thumbs in silence waiting for the scripting to catch up. I don't see much of a reason to use TAG-Bs over TAG-As, either, but that might be due to personal preference. I think the TAG-As are plenty fast enough to make it easy to hit even fighter-sized targets so a version that comes with (slow) lock-on ability but lower ammo capacity isn't that attractive. I'm really enjoying playing the Freespace 2 campaign again. Thanks a lot for putting the mod together, and I can't wait to get into the Blue Planet stuff! Tiny Timbs fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Nov 11, 2015 |
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Nov 11, 2015 20:12
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I might do an ammo capacity nerf so you can't carry as many of the critters. Found the issue you hit, patching now. I'll let you know when you can download the fix, should just be a couple minutes.
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Nov 11, 2015 20:19
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Patch is live. Either redownload the core VP here, or run the FreeSpace Open Installer and select only Blue Planet to download. Let me know if that fixes things!
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Nov 11, 2015 20:39
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General Battuta posted:Patch is live. Either redownload the core VP here, or run the FreeSpace Open Installer and select only Blue Planet to download. That fixed it! Thanks for the quick turnaround, I didn't want to spend Veteran's Day doing anything besides marathoning Freespace 2.
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Nov 11, 2015 20:56
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General Battuta posted:Oh no. I bet I made a really stupid mistake. Working on it now. (This is all my fault for pushing through the patch without a proper test cycle). TAGs are so good that there's basically no reason not to carry them whenever they're available. They're limited to a certain range of your support ships, but you're rarely outside of that range anyway in most missions, and within that range, they are master of all they survey. I've been putting them on all my wingmen too and it just makes missions trivial. They've got enough of them to last just about any engagement with some left over, and enemy fighters just get tagged and tagged and tagged again until they evaporate. And so do the bombers. And the cruisers. And the corvettes. It makes me wonder why the Blue Planet-era GTVA even uses fighters for anything except as bomb interceptors and fire-directors for the capship beams. They're awesome, they're just so amazingly fun to use. It's hilarious and cool to hit an enemy fighter and see it get suddenly speared by six laser beams from different directions and wiped from existence. From a balance standpoint, though, I do kind of feel like they make the game too easy. They also render most other weapons redundant, because between you and your wingmates you can just tag everything on the battlefield, then tag it again three or four times for good measure, and anything that's still alive after that is probably scripted to be immortal. I'm torn because I want a tough, challenging (but not bullshit-hard) game, which would pretty much require a TAG nerf, but I also love obliterating everything in the immediate area with the lightning of Zeus.
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Nov 12, 2015 00:31
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I completely agree. I think what I'll do is...well, there are a few options: 1) Increase the interval on the TAG handler event, so it can only service a target every few seconds. 2) Nerf TAG capacity very sharply, or increase the refire delay, or otherwise nerf the actual TAG missiles themselves. 3) Nerf TAG availability so you've only got enough to fill about one bank on one fighter per mission. This is the easiest solution. 4) Create a more range-limited AAA beam to hit TAGged targets, or otherwise nerf the beam being used. This is perhaps the most 'realistic' option. It could, for example, simply be an extended-range version of a standard AAA beam, instead of the hyper-damaging Ultra AAA. Or we could make a beam with sharp damage falloff as you move farther away from the firing ship. Still, I've got to say, 'TAG is way too good' is a nice problem to have.
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Nov 12, 2015 00:42
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My vote is for #1. Especially if the delay is on the order of 20 or 30 seconds between uses for major beams. AAA beams a delay of five or six seconds. That'd keep it powerful, and useful in many situations, while hopefully keeping it from being "haha you're dead" every time you switch targets.
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Nov 12, 2015 01:04
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There are only a couple missions where your TAGs can spot for warship main beams, right? You should only be seeing that ability in, I think, Proving Grounds, Argonautica, and High Noon...and it should take 20-30 seconds to recharge there...
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Nov 12, 2015 01:15
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I see pros and cons to reducing the damage of the TAG AAA beam. Damaging, jostling, and disorienting an enemy fighter is admittedly pretty cool, and could give the TAG missile a useful secondary role as a support weapon instead of its current job as a fighter-killer - allowing you to use the TAG beams in conjunction with other weapons to reliably get kills, without it being a super-weapon all by itself. That said, the counter-argument is that it's metal as gently caress to get into your enemy's killbox, yell 'TAG, YOU'RE IT!' and watch them get immediately smacked down by the hand of God.
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Nov 12, 2015 06:28
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From an in-game perspective, I guess it would make most sense to limit the availability of the ordinance and/or reduce the number of targets that can be fired upon at long range as well as making the beams less effective at longer ranges. Because it's an experimental weapon, it would take a while to get production up to speed. And while there are long range sensors, it would probably require all kinds of computing power and techno babble to hit something so small at so far away. So, far away you smack them around a bit. Around the distance where bombers get a lock, instant death. Unrelated, but is there any ordinance apart from bombs which can be destroyed by flak?
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Nov 12, 2015 09:01
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My current plan is to nerf the TAG-A and TAG-B missiles slightly towards their original performance (long fire wait between shots), creating incentive to swap between TAGs and some other kind of missile as you fight. Then I'll cause the TAG to invoke standard AAA beam fire at extended range, instead of the current ultra AAA beam, which is more powerful than some anti-warship weapons.
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Nov 12, 2015 23:47
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Her Finest Hour is a great mission except that if I look at the Carthage during the final attack by the fleet it consistently crashes the game. I've actually never seen the post-mission debrief even though I've reached that point three times now. Going to go ahead and put WiH 2 on the shelf until it's a bit more stable.
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Nov 13, 2015 05:06
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Okay, I've heard enough people say this to actually get me worried. We've never ever run into this before, and the mission hasn't been changed recently, so I don't know what could be happening. Can you try running the mission with the -no_glsl flag enabled? Turning all your graphics down all the way, disabling launcher options and cranking down the in-game settings? See if that makes any difference? Also, do you still get the crash if you don't call in any ships from the Toutatis air wing? General Battuta fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Nov 13, 2015 |
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Nov 13, 2015 05:20
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I can't reproduce the error locally. Can you try removing the 'advanced' VPs from your Blue Planet install?
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Nov 13, 2015 05:35
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I can't tonight but I'll give it a try tomorrow and report back.
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Nov 13, 2015 05:36
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I think I had one crash running that mission, and as I recall it happened shortly after I called in my first wave of Toutatis fighters. I didn't call everything in, just subsystem-disabling gunships and some interceptors. I do remember that when it happened I was flying away from the Carthage to drop off it's radar, and wasn't looking at the battle at all, which struck me as odd. The crash also didn't generate the usual error message, just straight to desktop. That was the only issue I hit throughout the release, though.
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Nov 13, 2015 11:24
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I have some problems in the Post Meridian mission on hard difficulty. I'm supposed to let the Delta wing gunships destroy the Meridian's beams, however they reliably fail to do so. Doing it myself means flying into the flak envelope of the Meridian where I get killed 9 out of 10 times. Everybody is telling me to stay with the frigates and not to try being a hero, but the only way to succeed with the mission ist doing exactly that. Later in the mission (after the Maxim-armed Hercs arrive), there's a bunch of HUD-messages (Countdowns, "Press 1 to target" etc.) which are never explained. What am I supposed to do here? Situations like this, where the player has to learn a rapidly introduced feature while dogfighting, commanding his squads and watching his capships simultaneously are probably my only criticism of Blue Planet. Sometimes there is just too much going on to be able (at least for me) keep my priorities straight. I guess this is a feature of real warfare, so in this aspect Blue Planet succeeds admirably, but as a player I just feel overwhelmed and confused.
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Nov 14, 2015 19:02
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Ren-dez-vous
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Nov 14, 2015 19:27
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gipskrampf posted:I have some problems in the Post Meridian mission on hard difficulty. I'm supposed to let the Delta wing gunships destroy the Meridian's beams, however they reliably fail to do so. Doing it myself means flying into the flak envelope of the Meridian where I get killed 9 out of 10 times. Everybody is telling me to stay with the frigates and not to try being a hero, but the only way to succeed with the mission ist doing exactly that. There's a wing of Ares armed with trebuchets that will wreck Delta wing if you don't deal with them, I believe they are bound to F10 so they are pretty easy to find. You have to be aggressive and boost in to kill them at the start of the mission then return to delta wing and make sure they aren't getting shot up by something else. When I played through the mission they were pretty competent at bringing down the beams but I guess that depends on how lucky you are. gipskrampf posted:Later in the mission (after the Maxim-armed Hercs arrive), there's a bunch of HUD-messages (Countdowns, "Press 1 to target" etc.) which are never explained. What am I supposed to do here? Situations like this, where the player has to learn a rapidly introduced feature while dogfighting, commanding his squads and watching his capships simultaneously are probably my only criticism of Blue Planet. Sometimes there is just too much going on to be able (at least for me) keep my priorities straight. I guess this is a feature of real warfare, so in this aspect Blue Planet succeeds admirably, but as a player I just feel overwhelmed and confused. Yeah that kinda comes out of nowhere, what you're doing with 1 is telling a group of gunships to launch grimlers at the targets you are marking, at least that's what I seem to remember. I think the incoming Hercs are bound to one of your function keys just like the Ares at the start of the mission so the easiest way to splash them is to tap the function key once to select Herc #1, wait for the countdown to complete then call in the missile strike, tap the function key again to target the next one and so on until you've made all of their lives miserable. It's usually enough to launch one volley at each Herc but you might need to pick up some stragglers.
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Nov 14, 2015 19:42
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I've actually noticed some altered AI behavior at the start of Post Meridian, where the gunships seem to go for the bottom beam first. This is stupid, I'm gonna make sure they hit the top beam first, since it's the big dangerous one. The missile spotting is pretty simple. When the Indus says 'there's a maxim strike coming, we're calling in epsilon', then epsilon says 'spot targets for our long range missiles', highlight enemies and press 1 to spot.
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Nov 14, 2015 20:01
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Sockerbagarn posted:There's a wing of Ares armed with trebuchets that will wreck Delta wing if you don't deal with them, I believe they are bound to F10 so they are pretty easy to find. You have to be aggressive and boost in to kill them at the start of the mission then return to delta wing and make sure they aren't getting shot up by something else. When I played through the mission they were pretty competent at bringing down the beams but I guess that depends on how lucky you are. Thanks for the help, defeating the Ares fighters extremely quickly was key to Deltas survial and the sucessfull disarming. I managed to drive off the Meridian but was killed shortly after. While the debriefing told me the ensign Noemi Laporte was killed, the mission still counted as a success and let me continue with the campaign.  Ghost pilot, here I come.
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Nov 14, 2015 20:33
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Death is not the end!
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Nov 14, 2015 21:11
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Got a bunch of cool stuff in the next patch, including an incremental TAG nerf, some balance and bugfix tweaks in BP2, an expanded role for the Bakha (redesigned as a fighter-bomber) in the FS2 campaigns, Sekhmets in High Noon/Bearbaiting. Also going to move all countermeasures over to the new flare graphics, and give species-specific colors. And we're closing in on standalone!
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Nov 15, 2015 23:47
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General Battuta posted:Also going to move all countermeasures over to the new flare graphics, and give species-specific colors. I love the new flare effects! That's great, although all the new fancy graphics in FS Open tend to stretch the believability that all this is happening in space more and more.
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Nov 16, 2015 00:58
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Obviously FS2 is set in a universe where the classical idea that space is filled with Aether is actually correct.
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Nov 16, 2015 11:54
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The patch is live. Let me know if you see any significant balance changes regarding countermeasures. You'll also find the Maxim slightly less effective against large targets. Check out the new Bakha, see if it's viable on the Vasudan missions!
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Nov 16, 2015 22:44
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The nightly builds don't work on 10.10.5 (something about SDL)which means Blue Planet doesn't work because I can't get pass the checkpoint dialogue. Are Shadows broken or is the performance cost so high that current hardware is unable to render it(780ti)? Is the collision damage up? I swear every little scrap is knocking 5% off the hull regardless of collision speed especially when engaging something that moves at walking speed like Herc 1s while in a Perseus. The collision fur-ball hurts you more than the laser fire. oohhboy fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Nov 17, 2015 |
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Nov 17, 2015 12:11
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Well, p1 of WiH was pretty  all-around. Good job though! I especially liked the backdrop in Delenda est. Everything about that mission was epic.If I would criticize anything it would be that, just like in AoA, I sometimes have a hard time following all the dialogue. Even with VA, in the middle of fights I'm fully occupied with everything else going on and sometimes end up only glancing at the objectives list. Which is a shame, because the VA is really good. I guess it adds to the atmosphere even though I can't catch it all. Also, I used my new HOTAS joystick for this and that made it a bit akward to use the various mission unique commands (e.g. "press 1 to direct fire", "press f10 to target this wing"). Since there was usually only one special command in every mission, I would have prefered for them to rely on the same key, so that I could have bound it to the joystick. I love the function in itself though, especially being able to target mission critical ships/subsystems/turrets. It's something I would've wanted for FS2 vanilla. Captain Scandinaiva fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Nov 18, 2015 |
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Nov 18, 2015 20:04
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gipskrampf posted:Situations like this, where the player has to learn a rapidly introduced feature while dogfighting, commanding his squads and watching his capships simultaneously are probably my only criticism of Blue Planet. Sometimes there is just too much going on to be able (at least for me) keep my priorities straight. I guess this is a feature of real warfare, so in this aspect Blue Planet succeeds admirably, but as a player I just feel overwhelmed and confused. Just finished Act 3 of War in Heaven and I have to retract my previous criticism. The training missions in the Dreamscape are a welcome addition and a good way to introduce new features without overwhelming the player. All in all War in Heaven blows every other Freespace Campaign (including retail) out of the water, especially the atmosphere and story. You did a great job engaging the player. Now waiting for Act 4 ...
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Nov 21, 2015 01:22
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Yeah, Act 3 did a fantastic job at hiding a full-act-long tutorial from the players. Assuming there's carryover to Acts 4 and 5.
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Nov 21, 2015 06:46
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Is there a way to copy control configurations between profiles? I hate having to rebind all my keys when making a profile for a new campaign.
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Nov 21, 2015 16:23
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TheWhiteNightmare posted:Is there a way to copy control configurations between profiles? I hate having to rebind all my keys when making a profile for a new campaign. Trying to get the SCP to fix this right now.
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Nov 21, 2015 17:00
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General Battuta posted:Trying to get the SCP to fix this right now. That's good news, then. I just started The Blade Itself and it's incredibly frustrating. I might turn it down to Very Easy (from Normal) just to get through it, because the first mission is very long and despite trying to beat it 6 times on normal I have no idea whether or not my weapons are firing or if I'm positioning myself properly or what.
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Nov 21, 2015 23:20
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TheWhiteNightmare posted:That's good news, then. Stick to external view, point your nose at things, abuse glide mode, don't damage control in the middle of combat if you can help it.
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Nov 21, 2015 23:29
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General Battuta posted:Stick to external view, point your nose at things, abuse glide mode, don't damage control in the middle of combat if you can help it. I think part of the problem is that at 1920x1200 on a 23" screen 2 ft away from me I feel like I have to squint at everything. I can't even make out individual fighters or bombers.
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Nov 21, 2015 23:44
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What's the recommended loadout for Forced Entry? The briefing recommends the Myrmidon but I can't carry enough torpedoes and Stilettos to save everyone from the Cain AND the Ravana.
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Nov 23, 2015 05:52
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Myrmidon plus Trebs. Treb the beams, leave the hull for someone else to take care of. Load Balors in the 4 bank, shunt a tick of weapon energy to engines and shields (with the Myrm's weapon energy buff, you might even be able to get away with two) and go bomb hunting.
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Nov 23, 2015 05:56
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Just finished WiH 1.  The mission scripting and the ship designs are amazing. What a mindfuck...
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Nov 24, 2015 03:14
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I'm having a problem with BPComplete's The Great Preservers. When one of my wingmen dies, the game locks up or crashes with a Lua error that I can't copy/paste as soon as the wingman dying voice comms goes through. Is this a known problem or do I need to update my FS2Open or something?
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Nov 24, 2015 05:43
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