Flyable ships?

What's the timeframe/situation for WCU? I'm seeing Gemini sector and end-of-war ships... that seems like a bit of a jump.
 
The Rapier is already in there -- I never bothered to check flyability after completing it because well... medium fighter, four light gun mounts, no turret... go buy a demon :) seriously, at this stage there is no point in having 247 ships that mostly fly alike. If you want to fly a ship from wc2, most of them are in there already (I thought "flying a sabre would be so cool!" then i realized that we already do, it's called a centurion). Grab the wc2 screenshots in the priv_remake folder, they include EVERY cockpit in the game, and make a cockpit ^-^ i'll be happy to do the extra work of punching the other details in.
 
I'd have to agree on the desire to be able to purchase some of the Kilrathi ships. Essentially, any ship you meet in combat on a semi-regular basis should be available - produced, purchased, stolen, salvaged, gambling trophy, etc.
 
If you wanted another choice for a flyable capship, I'd say a rundown/scrapyard Venture class corvette would be a good idea, the only catch to it is the player would have to spend the money to rebuild it and recruit a crew.
 
Chicken said:
If you wanted another choice for a flyable capship, I'd say a rundown/scrapyard Venture class corvette would be a good idea, the only catch to it is the player would have to spend the money to rebuild it and recruit a crew.
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In reallity, we can extend this ...

Like in WCP, you find the old base. I always hated the fact that the base was onusable for you as a player. But, i find that we can use this now to our advantage.

Let me give a example:

Lets say, we find xxx base, a wreck, nothings working, piece of junk nobody wants. Now, let's assume there are the following items in the game: Base Plating I, II, Base Reactor I, II, III, Base Laser I, II ... Let's asume, like a fighter, we are able to rebuild the base, by buying components & transporting them to the base ( + maybe paying somebody for the install work / crewing it ). I think we can reuse part of the ship code to simulated a base & it's defence ( dont know how much is hardwired in the exe ).

Now, let's asume the base has all the components installed. It's fully functional. Now, we can trigger xxxx.py script, that activate's a scenario script's resolving around the base.

The thing is, after this code exist, it can be reused for other ships / or bases or / outpost's found in space. We find a Venture ... we fix here up, vlam, we gain specific missions. If the mission designers want to be real funky, they can place the ship, in a part of space, that has only 2 jump points. After the ship is active, for some reason, the jump point is closed ( the original one ), you are left with the ship & your fighter. The other jump point give's out to a sector with hostile's. The missions now active, are written based on this carrier/corvet, whatever ship is used. Now, we are in a situation that the player is well, playing WCIII, WCIV or whatever. Aka, very focused missions ( a campaine if you want ). End of the campaine, or somewhere else, there is a jump back to the old sector.

I hope people understand what i'm trying to say???
 
Hmm maybe this is another reason there are so many Drayman around. Parts for the bases and cap ships have to be HUGE. Easly take up 1000 units or more.
 
Does anybody else think that the TARSUS is over-powered?

Banditloaf calls it a scout merchant, so should it really have 2 x cannon and 2 x missile launchers?! That's more firepower than most confed fighters.

How about reducing it's loadout so it would be more feasible for players to replace the Tarsus early on in the game with a cheap light fighter, such as the Talon. I know that in the original privateer, I could play in the tarsus until I could afford a centurion, which is not right. If it really is an old, light scout freighter, than it should be a liability, or only good for runs away from the frontier.
 
Ships are generally classified by things like size and role, not how many guns they have.

The Tarsus is a *scout* ship that's sold to *merchants*... hence the official classification of Merchant Scout (Gemini Sector, p.43).

Seriously, though, there are few ships in the Wing Commander universe less desirable than the Tarsus -- it's slow, lightly armored, has limited capacity for upgrade... etc. The Tarsus has two guns and ten centimeters of armor, versus military fighters that have hundreds of centimeters of armor and six guns.
 
I can't think of a single confed fighter that has less than 2 cannons...
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don't forget the two missile launchers... = 40 torps or 20 missiles.

While most confed craft have more than 2 cannon, they don't carry that many missiles.

keep the cannon, but remove the launchers. Scout merchants don't need to have the same missile firepower as the centurion.
 
I'm absolutely not a canon freak, but I'd like to keep what works, if it works... and the tarsus is OK overall, I think. The worst thing about it is the low upgradeability shield and reactor wise, which forces the player to upgrade eventually.
 
If I may interject something in regards to the Tarsus?
While working on "The Reckoning" we discovered that the "Lowly" Tarsus is THE MOST POPULAR ship in Privateer.
It took us ages to get anyone to model a Galaxy, we eventually got two rather poor models, and went with the better of the two.
We had access to two Centurions, but one was so bad I wouldn't even call it a Centurion.
(A third was under construction, but we never got a finished version.)
The Orion had around 2 models available, and we went with the best that worked in the mod.
(Had one with such high polycounts it slowed the game down.)
The Tarsus, though...
We had dozens, and dozens of those things!
I think half the people who ever played Privateer has done, or tried to do a model of the Tarsus!
And even people who weren't modelers, and who hadn't played Privateer in years, nit-picked EVERY Tarsus model we tried using.
There were 7, or so, releases of the mod, and almost Every release had a different model of the Tarsus in it.
(We only had 1 Centurion, 2 Orions, and 2 Galaxy's in all that time.)

To give you an idea how popular it is...
When I ran the latest version of WCU, I had to hack the savegame to get MY Tarsus BACK!
'Tain't a Privateer game without the Tarsus!
(Yeah, I know... THIS is WCU.)
 
I'm absolutely not a canon freak, but I'd like to keep what works, if it works...
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Then I'm at a complete loss as to why you're in charge of the *Wing Commander* Universe project.
 
Then I'm at a complete loss as to why you're in charge of the *Wing Commander* Universe project.
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bandit, that is harsh and almost rude. Spirit is in charge of WCU because she has actually invested time and energy to a project that sat dead otherwise. It's great what she has done so far and we can only hope that she will continue.

So please don't piss her off! Thanks. :)
 
In my experience, harsh and rude is a good way to get to the truth of the matter.

I think it's a very valid question - what is the point of having a Wing Commander Universe mod that isn't trying to simulate the setting of Wing Commander (the "Wing Commander universe"?

Why pay lip service to Wing Commander? Just render a bunch of generic sci fi ships and ignore gameplay and balancing alltogether.

There's not the exacting requirements that something like the Remake should have held itself to... WCU shouldn't have to play just like some other game -- but on the same card, I don't see how one can ignore big elements of Wing Commander when pursuing such a project.

That's the *point* of having an existing universe to set your fan fiction in... having a framework of rules and fiction that you create within the context of.
 
She's in charge because she's doing it.

She's not getting paid, it's unfair to expect her to do work and take orders; it's her time. What we get to choose is our reaction to her work. We can denigrate, create issues, ignore, embrace and extend, help out and try to steer from within a bit, create a fork, whatever. But we cannot expect to order her to make a game to our specs.

There are some people who vocally dislike what she is doing, but it seems most are happy to try new things and let her experiment.
 
Oh, good, our anonymous Brazilian friend. Tired of trolling BradMick?

I don't think it's denigrating to try and hold a project to a standard -- doing anything *but* that is the real tragedy. "This exists, therefore it must be great" is an attitude that helps no one save the occasional designer's ego.

But if you want my money where my mouth is: if you want, I will run this project. I have some experience in game design and a working knowledge of the Wing Commander universe.
 
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