Dralthi's are impossible to hit

M

MatrixCL

Spaceman
Has anyone ever killed a dralthi when it's not firing at you? The only way I can hit a dralthi is to wait until it flies directly towards me and shoot, preferably with a photon torpedo, even when flying in a Centurion with multi-thrust enhancer. But this vessel makes so many impossible manouvres! It's like there are two pilots in there: one decides on the direction it flies and the other decides on the direction it shoots.

Gothri's are also horrible to encounter, but that's just because of their weapons and armor. At least they are hittable.

I've been playing this game the last few days and it's really beautiful! But I never fly on missions where I have to encounter kilrathi, because the difference in difficulty is too big. I flew a mission and received 50,000 credits for wacking retro's, but a mission for 2,500 with kilrathi is harder.
 
well, you say dralthis are impossible to hit? nice a real target for me, i played the original privateer version and even there they were a big prob. with a centurion it has been easier, i just downloaded the gemini gold edition, i'll tell you if i killed one and how.

p.s. ever tried to ramm it?
 
I did. Not a good idea.
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I found pretty much the same problems. Around Oxford / New Detroit there are lots of Kilrathi and usually at least 2 or 3 of them. I was getting getting badly killed without hardly scratching their paint.

Even with Centurion, B&S Omni radar, 2 x FF, 3 Tachyon + Plasma and lvl 3 reactor/sheilds I get smacked. They move around too quickly to get any fire on them and they seem to dodge missiles and repair themselves.

One thing I noticed was that even when I had them on the ropes, they rammed my ship which then is a sitting duck.

This following technique worked - but cost me about 15000 in repairs afterwards :-

1. Instead of AUTO-ing into the location of Kilrathi, find the closest navpoint and head to target using afterburners (about 2mins).

2. As soon as radar shows red dots cut speed to ZERO and open up with all cannons and FF missiles. The AI seems to behave differently if you are stopped - they head straight straight at you and don't jump around so much.

3. Any suvivors that make it to you should be pretty shot up, so track them as they veer off and finish them off with a FF missile - or get the hell out of there!
 
I've had the very same trouble with the Dralthi fighters. Got me so pissed off that I had to stop playing the game before I broke something out of anger...
 
I rather like having the Kilrathi be a bit harder to tangle with than pirates. Nonetheless, they are a bit too hard. Now that the artwork and campaigns are pretty well solid (close anyway) I'm looking forward to rebalancing things a little. Toning down the maneuverability for stuff like dralthi and demons, and upping it for the player ships, some of which are real pigs in flight.

I don't want to make them all the same, but I'd like to reduce some of the extremes. Perhaps make the ai a bit more stupid in places, it will take a lot of experimentation. I'd like to get it to where it is possible to hit things without autotrackers, which I'd then be happy to remove. Since Gemini Gold has already removed them, getting things better balanced would certainly be good for them too. PR 1.3 should have these changes, and I'd image GG will too at some point.
 
I gave up playing the remake because it was too hard to hit anything.
Maybe it's only playable with an expensive joystick, I don't know.
In comparison, I don't have any problems playing all the other WC games & mods.
For example, I finished Standoff in 2 hours on my first try, so I don't think I'm useless.
MamiyaOtaru said:
... PR 1.3 should have these changes, and I'd image GG will too at some point.
Click to expand...
I hope so, if some people post that it's gotten more playable when 1.3 comes out, I will give it another try, but until then I'm not gonna my time on it anymore.
 
I think getting the balance right will be a big step forward. For example, if the target constantly moves at 2 or 3 times the roll rate of you ship, lightning fast reflexes won't help. Even if you ultimately lose the fight, it should be a fun experience.

The other thing needing balance (IMHO) is the damage and repair settings. In PRGG a brief skirmish can result in massive damage to critical systems. The Repair droid really is ineffective. After about 30mins, it might fix something - which is not fun if you get shot up in 30 seconds. If a couple of shots can cripple your radar (essential) you should see this repaired in a minuite or less. This would allow you to try and get out of range then rejoin the fight. This would prolong a battle and give the player a second chance.

The missiles are pretty effective, but with only a handfull of them, you really need to be able to back them up with the guns (as above). Also, it seems like enemy ships only suffer shield damage - they never become easier to hit. They repair too quickly.
 
The roll rate is the same as it was in the original, but the addition of rotational inertia means it takes some time to get up to that rate. That will obviously be looked at.

Enemies' shields do recharge faster than they did in the original. This is because they use the same shields as the player. In the original NPCs had narfed shields (among other things, like AI). I rather like not giving the player artificial advantages by making th NPCs suck, but if it becomes necessary, it is doable. It's a weird line to walk, ont he one hand I wouldn't want it to be a Diablo like kill-everything-with-ease fest, on the other, it needs to be possible to survive.

Feedback is welcome on the developer board, and well thought out suggestions that take into account how the rest of the game would be affected.

As far as massive damage in GG, I wonder if it isn't a bit much sometimes, but that's not in my hands.
 
Thin red line...

Well, it's nice to make the NPCs have the same hardware the player has... but I'm currently playing the second mission for Lynch, and this used to be a simple task in the original privateer (I finished it without trouble)... but now, I have several militias, 2 bounty hunters and this guy that tries to stop the shipment waiting at the jump point in Rikel. Now... if you make them have the same equipment, I wonder why 8 ships are shooting at you, while militia seems to be ignoring the other pirates... this is 8 vs. 1, and damn hard to survive.

I like challenges myself, but after I realized now that I have to hit the afterburners and flee as soon as there are more than two ships targetting me, and only stand a change against a Dralthi and with a lot of luck against some other kilrathi ships using torpedos, I'm at the point of severe frustration. This is definitely a lot harder than the original Privateer. And to be honest, if I can't even stand a chance against Kilrathi fighters, what about the Steltek drone? That was almost impossible to kill in the original version, so in Gemini... wow.

I'm not sure if I'll continue playing Privateer Gemini Gold either... you did a great job, but it's simply too hard :-) Now that the militia and confed have turned against me as well, I have 4+ enemies attacking me at each jump point, which hasen't been a prob in the original Privateer, but now is impossible to do, at least for me.
 
Actually the remake has been fine, it was Gemni Gold that's been giving me a headache (I played both just to get a taste of what they were like).

Which brings me to another thing I experienced in Vegastrike. I was in the Sol/Alpha Centauri systems looking at everything (except Earth which was inside the sun) and suddenly for no apparent reason the confed started to hate me (-100 almost automatically). I think I ran away from one or fifty of the dozens of contraband searches I was subjected to...:p Although it was neat to see almost a hundred fighters scramble from some of those military bases. :D
 
What really pisses me off about the dralthi fighters is that they fire their cannons at you and hit you, the second that they make a target lock on you, when they are approx 2000m away according to the radar screen.

In Gemini Gold I've only managed to destroy one of them in my Galaxy.
The game was set to Medium and it was pure luck that he didn't veer away from the last 2 torpedoes. I had 2 tachyon mil spec cannons and FF missiles and torpedoes.
The dralthi was making jousting runs at me as I moved straight forward. He flew straight at me then did a u-turn at flew forward away from me allowing me to fire repeatedly at his front and rear shields. Just luck as my shields and armour were almost depleted.
 
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