Modular design and damage question

BattleFate

Spaceman
I have a question...

The weapons are modular (like in Privateer), and the modules can be damaged individually, right?

That means that if a laser took enough hits it would get blown off and there would be no more laser there...

I have a question about the damage to missiles. Can they also get blown off (as I would imagine they would)? If they can, is there a risk that they explode doing damage to your own ship? Perhaps not as much as if you got hit by it since the warhead was not armed, but it might still exlode for some damage (maybe 25%?)...
 
Hey BattleFate,

Yep, the weapons are modular, and each can be damaged individually. So you will have to make sure you keep everything under repair.

For the ships who have their missiles out in the open that will be a risk. However, if your shields are still up, they will be protected. If you lose shields, then yeah, they will do damage to your ship.

~Joel
 
Since we're kinda on the subject here, what do you envision the combat to be like? I'm hoping you're aiming for the more tactical Privateer, Wing Commander 1 style of slower dogfights and well timed shots. Also, let me go ahead and throw this plea out there, please make a big target reticule! :) Wing Commander 1 and Privateer and others were great at giving a generously sized target reticule whereas games like Starlancer (even Privateer 2 to an extent) and Freespace had a rather narrow reticule that gave little room for misses.
 
Part of the charm of the WC1/2 combat experience comes from the unrealistically large collision maps which makes fighters easy to hit. Nothing to do with the size of the targetting reticule.

In a fully 3D game with proper collision handling you'll probably find that ships will be a lot harder to hit. Just look at Standoff for example.

Unless the pioneer developers end up scaling up the size of projectiles to "interesting" proportions... :D
 
BTW, having detonating in-situ ordnance will make ship armor redundant... might become a gameplay balance issue later?
 
Mincemeat said:
Part of the charm of the WC1/2 combat experience comes from the unrealistically large collision maps which makes fighters easy to hit. Nothing to do with the size of the targetting reticule.
Exactly. The size of the reticle has nothing to do with where the shots go. If you are flying straight in WC1/2 and shooting, the shots are still going dead center. It wouldn't matter if the reticle was a single pixel, or the whole screen. The large reticle and huge hitboxes were a technical limitation at the time. Shooting at sprites accurately is a whole lot harder than shooting at a well defined 3D model in terms of figuring out what you should aim at.

One thing I would like to see regarding combat is a good sense of speed. I think this is one of Standoff's failings. (Not their fault, since it's the same in Prophecy/Secret Ops originally.) Standoff feels too "floaty" to me. The ships and projectiles have very low forward speed and momentum. I think Starlancer, for example, did a better job of conveying speed and dogfighting. Here's something to consider. WC (and Starlancer for that matter) is basically WWII in space. If you watch gun camera footage on Google Video, you can see the kind of deflection and snap shots that make dogfighting in a game fun (and dangerous in real life). That's the kind of pace and sense of speed I would love to see.
 
Mincemeat said:
Part of the charm of the WC1/2 combat experience comes from the unrealistically large collision maps which makes fighters easy to hit. Nothing to do with the size of the targetting reticule.

In a fully 3D game with proper collision handling you'll probably find that ships will be a lot harder to hit. Just look at Standoff for example.

Unless the pioneer developers end up scaling up the size of projectiles to "interesting" proportions... :D
Harder to hit! They seem just the same to me!:D
 
Magnum said:
One thing I would like to see regarding combat is a good sense of speed. I think this is one of Standoff's failings. (Not their fault, since it's the same in Prophecy/Secret Ops originally.) Standoff feels too "floaty" to me. The ships and projectiles have very low forward speed and momentum.
Remember that Standoff's goal is to recreate a WC2 gaming feel in a 3D environment. Have you played WC1/2 ? What you described as Standoff's "failing" is a recreation of the feel of one of the most enjoyable WC game ever.



Edit: I'd like to hear about what else you'd consider as Standoff's "failing" though, as we do like to get feedback. We're improving the game at every release, and we like to hear what people have to say.
 
PopsiclePete said:
Remember that Standoff's goal is to recreate a WC2 gaming feel in a 3D environment. Have you played WC1/2 ? What you described as Standoff's "failing" is a recreation of the feel of one of the most enjoyable WC game ever.



Edit: I'd like to hear about what else you'd consider as Standoff's "failing" though, as we do like to get feedback. We're improving the game at every release, and we like to hear what people have to say.
My biggest complaint is the crappy voice-acting. But I'm sure that would be hard to fix.
 
C'mon... Lets all pitch in and get Hamill and McDowell in for cameos in Episode 5.

The voice acting isn't great, but we should concentrate on important parts of the gameplay, not voices.

Although I do love the guy who goes 'here I/we come to save the day'.... in a very weird accent. Whoever that is, I love you:)
 
PopsiclePete said:
Remember that Standoff's goal is to recreate a WC2 gaming feel in a 3D environment. Have you played WC1/2 ? What you described as Standoff's "failing" is a recreation of the feel of one of the most enjoyable WC game ever.



Edit: I'd like to hear about what else you'd consider as Standoff's "failing" though, as we do like to get feedback. We're improving the game at every release, and we like to hear what people have to say.
Yes, I have played WC1 and 2, and the fighters and projectiles in them don't float around the same way they do in Prophecy/Secret Ops/Standoff. It's a criticism of the flight model Standoff is built on more than anything you guys have done with the project. Nephilim ships act the same way in the original game. FS2 has the same problem with slow moving, floaty ships, which it appears the Saga crew has remedied, much to their credit. I can sort of see where you are coming from, but the flight models still seem quite different to me. Regardless, my point still stands that I would like to see a stronger sense of forward momentum in Pioneer, perhaps with some added effects such as blurring the screen momentarily when you hit afterburners and things of that nature.

My use of the phrase "one of" is more a function of my tendency not to write in absolutes than any specific complaint I have. Although, I do think it is flawed logic to try to duplicate a 15 year old game with current technology beyond a certain point. This isn't the place for such things, but if you would like, I can continue this topic over in the Standoff section.
 
Hehe, personally I think the best thing Pioneer could do is try to imitate WCP's combat dynamics. Of all the WC games, WCP was definitely the best in this regard.
 
Hehe, personally I think the best thing Pioneer could do is try to imitate WCP's combat dynamics. Of all the WC games, WCP was definitely the best in this regard.

I'm a sucker for flight sims, and WC3 felt the most like a flight sim to me. WCP is a close second.
I definitely prefer those games' flight dynamics to the pan&swivel sort of feel to WC1/2.

-scheherazade
 
Well, obviously the first game we're going to try and match would be Privateer. The further specifics would need to wait till we actually have the game up and running, and can actually test how it plays. Till then any other speculation is premature.
 
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