Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
That's too bad - because als wants more ships.
Multiplayer WCP/SO?
- Thread starter Jason_Ryock
- Start date
Perhaps I'm simply oblivious to the trevails of the common man computer user, seeing how I'm using Linux and my computer hasn't crashed in a few years, but even Microsoft software has gotten considerably more stable over time. It's pretty hard to crash Windows 2000 or Windows XP unless you have some buggy drivers.
You might be running one of the Windows 9x series, though, in which case your frustration is understandable... but keep in mind the Windows 9x series aren't real operating systems, capable of keeping applications truly isolated from each other.
A nice sentiment, but I think it would be pretty hard to find hundreds of humans to be your bug counterpart... the Kilrathi sound a little more reasonable, but again, Confed craft can usually burn through the Kilrathi. I suppose you'd end up trying to balance things XvT-style...
I remember playing a game in XvT with 3 TIEs on 1 X-Wing. The X-Wing usually got smoked early on, but in the right hands, it could take out all 3 TIEs.
You might be running one of the Windows 9x series, though, in which case your frustration is understandable... but keep in mind the Windows 9x series aren't real operating systems, capable of keeping applications truly isolated from each other.
overmortal said:
A nice sentiment, but I think it would be pretty hard to find hundreds of humans to be your bug counterpart... the Kilrathi sound a little more reasonable, but again, Confed craft can usually burn through the Kilrathi. I suppose you'd end up trying to balance things XvT-style...
I remember playing a game in XvT with 3 TIEs on 1 X-Wing. The X-Wing usually got smoked early on, but in the right hands, it could take out all 3 TIEs.
Jason_Ryock
Vice Admiral
Well first off, I know tons of guys who swear by TIE Fighters (And please, I don't mean the standard TIE Model, that thing suck so bad I could flame three of them in a shot up Y-Wing with just my ion cannons and no shields).
Secondly, I grew up on the game X-Wing. If you haven't played, don't talk about three on one odds. Most of the campaign missions in that game were like 6-1 odds. There's a quote somewhere in the game about that. If you CAN'T Beat back Three TIE Fighters (Standard Model) in a fully operational X-Wing, you have no business playing the game to begin with.
There's a mission in the original X-Wing, one of the hardest, where your ALONE in a Y-WING covering three disabled X-Wings and Three rescue shuttles, facing endless (seemingly, there is a cap, somewhere around 150 if I recall the strategy guide correctly. You can't last that long, trust me.) waves of TIE Interceptors. 6 per wave. 3 to blast you and three to blast past you.
3 to 1 odds are nothing in X-Wing. Nor in TIE Fighter. I will say that both games give slants towards their respective factions. X-Wing, Rebels are better, TIE Fighter, Imperials are better.
X-Wing VS. TIE Fighter tried to alleviate this, but the simple fact of the matter is that for Star Wars to be what it is the bad guys HAD to have massivly cheap and expendable fighters
As for myself, I take Three to One odds in a TIE Interceptor against X-Wings regularly, and while it may not be easy, THAT'S an accomplishment.
The Bug ships aren't that well balanced. A single missile (in most cases) is enough to eliminate a target. Couple that with the fact that you hafe to have a cluster ship to do any real damage (Does anyone ELSE wonder how Origin planned to manage Cluster Ships in Multiplayer?) and most of their ships just lack any decent weaponary.
The Kilrathi, I believe, would be more on par with Confederation Forces. I would easily climb into a capship to face a Confed and feel pretty confident about my chances, depending on the ship, and the mission.
I think your right though, it would be VERY hard to get people to fly Bug ships, I mean, those things just suck. As for the Kilrathi...I just wanna get my hands on one of those stealth fighters....
As for this entire discussion, there IS a Wing Commander Mod for XWA (which has the sweetest melee mission set up controls) for anyone whose interested.
I know some guys have had some trouble getting it to work, but I've played it, and it's pretty tight.
I thought it would suck because the guns and missiles weren't the same but the ships I flew balanced that out REALLY nicly. I've had some trouble with the missions (Same problems I have with the normal game, incidently, the Kilrathi Dreadnaught [Which is so tight upclose I almost wet myself when I first saw it] likes to start 99.99 klicks away from you) mostly when the capships get involved, but it's pretty sweet.
If you want multiplayed Wing Commander I think that's definatly the route to take, as the fighters tend to be balanced out fairly well in that game.
That is, if you stick with the correct Eras.
It's entirely possible to have Vampire Fighters flaming Dralthi, and there's really no competition between the two.
Simply fact is, in the WC Games Confed had to be a bit better to give the player a "survival" chance. Same thing in X-Wing, and in TIE Fighter (Substitue Confed there for respective factions). The enemies were crappy.
I still thing a Kilrathi Fighter has an even odds chance against a Confed one, assuming that the pilots are of equal skill and neither starts at a disadvantage (Minus the fighters of course).
Secondly, I grew up on the game X-Wing. If you haven't played, don't talk about three on one odds. Most of the campaign missions in that game were like 6-1 odds. There's a quote somewhere in the game about that. If you CAN'T Beat back Three TIE Fighters (Standard Model) in a fully operational X-Wing, you have no business playing the game to begin with.
There's a mission in the original X-Wing, one of the hardest, where your ALONE in a Y-WING covering three disabled X-Wings and Three rescue shuttles, facing endless (seemingly, there is a cap, somewhere around 150 if I recall the strategy guide correctly. You can't last that long, trust me.) waves of TIE Interceptors. 6 per wave. 3 to blast you and three to blast past you.
3 to 1 odds are nothing in X-Wing. Nor in TIE Fighter. I will say that both games give slants towards their respective factions. X-Wing, Rebels are better, TIE Fighter, Imperials are better.
X-Wing VS. TIE Fighter tried to alleviate this, but the simple fact of the matter is that for Star Wars to be what it is the bad guys HAD to have massivly cheap and expendable fighters
As for myself, I take Three to One odds in a TIE Interceptor against X-Wings regularly, and while it may not be easy, THAT'S an accomplishment.
The Bug ships aren't that well balanced. A single missile (in most cases) is enough to eliminate a target. Couple that with the fact that you hafe to have a cluster ship to do any real damage (Does anyone ELSE wonder how Origin planned to manage Cluster Ships in Multiplayer?) and most of their ships just lack any decent weaponary.
The Kilrathi, I believe, would be more on par with Confederation Forces. I would easily climb into a capship to face a Confed and feel pretty confident about my chances, depending on the ship, and the mission.
I think your right though, it would be VERY hard to get people to fly Bug ships, I mean, those things just suck. As for the Kilrathi...I just wanna get my hands on one of those stealth fighters....
As for this entire discussion, there IS a Wing Commander Mod for XWA (which has the sweetest melee mission set up controls) for anyone whose interested.
I know some guys have had some trouble getting it to work, but I've played it, and it's pretty tight.
I thought it would suck because the guns and missiles weren't the same but the ships I flew balanced that out REALLY nicly. I've had some trouble with the missions (Same problems I have with the normal game, incidently, the Kilrathi Dreadnaught [Which is so tight upclose I almost wet myself when I first saw it] likes to start 99.99 klicks away from you) mostly when the capships get involved, but it's pretty sweet.
If you want multiplayed Wing Commander I think that's definatly the route to take, as the fighters tend to be balanced out fairly well in that game.
That is, if you stick with the correct Eras.
It's entirely possible to have Vampire Fighters flaming Dralthi, and there's really no competition between the two.
Simply fact is, in the WC Games Confed had to be a bit better to give the player a "survival" chance. Same thing in X-Wing, and in TIE Fighter (Substitue Confed there for respective factions). The enemies were crappy.
I still thing a Kilrathi Fighter has an even odds chance against a Confed one, assuming that the pilots are of equal skill and neither starts at a disadvantage (Minus the fighters of course).
overmortal
Bearded Person
I've said it before, but I think the ultimate WC multi-player would be a combination of Academy and Armada. It'd contain all ships from all WC games, and you could choose to either fly without regards to era or with . . . and, just for the heck of it, there'd be a mini-campagne (not even ten missions or so) for each era, just so you can enjoy flying the ships. And, for multiplayer options, there'd be the capability to have either small-scale skirtmishes, one-on-one dogfights, some sort of non-combat competing mode (capture the flag, perhaps . . even though that'd add combat back into it, but with a twist), and, of course, the capability for a huge melee, with one or more capital ships per side (with humans in control of the cap-ships, too), and real battle plans thought out by team leaders . . . mmm . . .
Can you imagine having one hundred fighters on the field at once, plus corvettes, destroyers, and carriers (for both sides), and each "wing" having a specific duty to perform? We'd see eight Broadswords making their way around the ouside of an asteroid cluster to sneak up behind a Ralatha, with Ferrets hugging their backs to keep the Sartha and Drakhri away. We'd see Rapiers and Raptors (leftover Raptors, obviously) in the midst of the frey, harrassing a wing of Grikath, and trying to hold their own against the new Dralthi IVs (if they were in service by then) and Jalkehi. Finally, we'd have a wing of Sabres, with Epees for backup, pounding the defenses around Fralthra or an old Snakier, trying to break through the fighter cover to unload a spread of torpedos . . . oh man . . . I won't get a wink of sleep tonight . . .
Can you imagine having one hundred fighters on the field at once, plus corvettes, destroyers, and carriers (for both sides), and each "wing" having a specific duty to perform? We'd see eight Broadswords making their way around the ouside of an asteroid cluster to sneak up behind a Ralatha, with Ferrets hugging their backs to keep the Sartha and Drakhri away. We'd see Rapiers and Raptors (leftover Raptors, obviously) in the midst of the frey, harrassing a wing of Grikath, and trying to hold their own against the new Dralthi IVs (if they were in service by then) and Jalkehi. Finally, we'd have a wing of Sabres, with Epees for backup, pounding the defenses around Fralthra or an old Snakier, trying to break through the fighter cover to unload a spread of torpedos . . . oh man . . . I won't get a wink of sleep tonight . . .
Jason_Ryock
Vice Admiral
*Clears his throat* Most of what your suggesting is actually possible with the X-Wing Alliance Mod.
I haven't looked at it for a /long/ time but I believe it has ships from all eras. There are race missions (You get points for shooting your opponent and if you kill him I think he has to re-start), including what they call the "Yard Fly-Through". If you haven't flown it ever, it's pretty hot. Through a series of docking rings and then inside of an Asteroid that's been converting into a Smeltering Plant...two such asteroids I belive. Very nasty. Lots of sharp turns. And of course, the idea is speed.
I didn't remember that part of X-Wing Alliance until you just mentioned it to me. I'll have to go try that with the WC Mod.
BTW it's entirely possible to replace ALL the ships in the Single Player X-Wing Alliance campaign with Confederation/Enemy vessels (Just by overwriting their Opt files, kind of an intersting side not, if you overwrite the x-wing opt with the laserbolt opt you look like a laser bolt).
I hadn't thought of that either but I think I might go look at it now.
The beauty of the X-Wing Alliance Multiplayer is the ease of setup. Basically, you have 8 "groups" on each side (assuming you play with two teams, you can play with four or eight, or even just a general melee) and you pick which ships are assigned there, how many there are, and how many waves, as well as missile/decoy/beam weapon loadout. Then you specifiy which ships (Or ship, you can only have 6 fighters in a group or 1 capital ship) are your "Primary" targets. Once that's set you control their orders. Escort (Defend Primary Targets) Strike (Attack Primary Targets) Superiorty (Attack fighters) Nothing (Sits still, good for cargo containers and if you wanted to simulate a shipyard with empty ships).
The range of control you have is more limited then if there was a simple mission editor (There ARE Mission editors, but they are NOT simple) but it still gives a good balance. You can set it to start in a minefield, asteroid belt, or deep space. You can control the start distances of the ships (Though, pity, not their locations).
In Multiplayer you can assign differant people to differant groups, and they in affect control the groups in terms of formations, targets, etc.
It's really just what your looking for...except that it's not Wing Commander. A Total-Conversion for X-Wing Alliance would be a worthwhile investment for the WC Community. It's fully possible to create your own campaigns with your own ships, and the game is highly moddable. When it was released it was released with several "empty" shipset locations, to allow the installation of fan-made ships. The tools are easy to learn with a good graphic interface (for installing ships I mean, not for making your own. I have no doubt that process is similar to what the fan projects here do, but it's never been my specality).
So far I've only seen the primary ships modded into the game, but X-Wing Alliance allows you to fly a number of tranports (leaving room for Privateer-esque ships) and handles turrets fairly well (Allowing ships like the Broadsword and Sabre to be utilized to their full potential). In fact, I even found a patch for the game that let's one person fly a ship...and the other man the turret! Imagine taking a Broadsword out against several Dralthi, with your buddies in the turrets to pick them off!
Wow, now I'M not going to get any sleep tonight!
In fact, everything you want out of Wing Commander multiplayer could be obtained through a total conversion for X-Wing Alliance.
The only real downside is that it IS slightly tricky to install (The first time I installed a fan-ship into XWA it was an E-Wing, and I accidently over-wrote the X-Wing slot with it first. I couldn't get it to work in skirmish mode, so I gave up. A few minutes later I got to the first appearance of the X-Wing in the campaign mode, I just about had a heart attack!) and that it doesn't exist. Also, the weapons don't look the same (I believe this could be tweaked some using existing tools, but I have neither the talent nor the inclination to do such). The last downside is that your version (Everything you've modded) has to match up EXACTLY with whoever you are playing with. This is actually not to difficult to accomplish IF you know what your doing. You just swap a few files.
All in all, I'd say if there WAS a Total Conversion for XWA (It's been talked about on these forums, but I think they are confused, I do not believe it is a TOTAL Conversion) it would be worth buying X-Wing Alliance just to play it.
I haven't looked at it for a /long/ time but I believe it has ships from all eras. There are race missions (You get points for shooting your opponent and if you kill him I think he has to re-start), including what they call the "Yard Fly-Through". If you haven't flown it ever, it's pretty hot. Through a series of docking rings and then inside of an Asteroid that's been converting into a Smeltering Plant...two such asteroids I belive. Very nasty. Lots of sharp turns. And of course, the idea is speed.
I didn't remember that part of X-Wing Alliance until you just mentioned it to me. I'll have to go try that with the WC Mod.
BTW it's entirely possible to replace ALL the ships in the Single Player X-Wing Alliance campaign with Confederation/Enemy vessels (Just by overwriting their Opt files, kind of an intersting side not, if you overwrite the x-wing opt with the laserbolt opt you look like a laser bolt).
I hadn't thought of that either but I think I might go look at it now.
The beauty of the X-Wing Alliance Multiplayer is the ease of setup. Basically, you have 8 "groups" on each side (assuming you play with two teams, you can play with four or eight, or even just a general melee) and you pick which ships are assigned there, how many there are, and how many waves, as well as missile/decoy/beam weapon loadout. Then you specifiy which ships (Or ship, you can only have 6 fighters in a group or 1 capital ship) are your "Primary" targets. Once that's set you control their orders. Escort (Defend Primary Targets) Strike (Attack Primary Targets) Superiorty (Attack fighters) Nothing (Sits still, good for cargo containers and if you wanted to simulate a shipyard with empty ships).
The range of control you have is more limited then if there was a simple mission editor (There ARE Mission editors, but they are NOT simple) but it still gives a good balance. You can set it to start in a minefield, asteroid belt, or deep space. You can control the start distances of the ships (Though, pity, not their locations).
In Multiplayer you can assign differant people to differant groups, and they in affect control the groups in terms of formations, targets, etc.
It's really just what your looking for...except that it's not Wing Commander. A Total-Conversion for X-Wing Alliance would be a worthwhile investment for the WC Community. It's fully possible to create your own campaigns with your own ships, and the game is highly moddable. When it was released it was released with several "empty" shipset locations, to allow the installation of fan-made ships. The tools are easy to learn with a good graphic interface (for installing ships I mean, not for making your own. I have no doubt that process is similar to what the fan projects here do, but it's never been my specality).
So far I've only seen the primary ships modded into the game, but X-Wing Alliance allows you to fly a number of tranports (leaving room for Privateer-esque ships) and handles turrets fairly well (Allowing ships like the Broadsword and Sabre to be utilized to their full potential). In fact, I even found a patch for the game that let's one person fly a ship...and the other man the turret! Imagine taking a Broadsword out against several Dralthi, with your buddies in the turrets to pick them off!
Wow, now I'M not going to get any sleep tonight!
In fact, everything you want out of Wing Commander multiplayer could be obtained through a total conversion for X-Wing Alliance.
The only real downside is that it IS slightly tricky to install (The first time I installed a fan-ship into XWA it was an E-Wing, and I accidently over-wrote the X-Wing slot with it first. I couldn't get it to work in skirmish mode, so I gave up. A few minutes later I got to the first appearance of the X-Wing in the campaign mode, I just about had a heart attack!) and that it doesn't exist. Also, the weapons don't look the same (I believe this could be tweaked some using existing tools, but I have neither the talent nor the inclination to do such). The last downside is that your version (Everything you've modded) has to match up EXACTLY with whoever you are playing with. This is actually not to difficult to accomplish IF you know what your doing. You just swap a few files.
All in all, I'd say if there WAS a Total Conversion for XWA (It's been talked about on these forums, but I think they are confused, I do not believe it is a TOTAL Conversion) it would be worth buying X-Wing Alliance just to play it.
overmortal
Bearded Person
Hmm . . . sounds good . . . I would say that, what one would do is create an executable package that performs the total conversion for you. I'm not skilled (at all) in making ships or even trying to draw (take a look at my "sketches" of the ship from my Privateer stories - www.overmortal.com/literature.htm), but if I were, I would convert every aspect that I could. Starting with ships, of course. Then guns. Then missiles.
Does it have comm capabilities? The multiplayer I had in mind would have "generic" comm faces, which would loop while players were communicating. Of course, all human communication would be real-time and live, not pre-recorded "Break and Attack" stuff. That way, if you needed something specific, you could just call out to your wingman/ wingleader/ other wings/ cap ship, etc etc. I've never plaid X-Wing Alliance, so I wouldn't know.
Plus, I'd probably wanna mod it to make room for more players in the big melee mode. And, as long as I'm dreaming, I also think it'd be awesome to use that patch so that there was absolutely NO AI in the whole thing. Every ship has a pilot, every turret has a gunner. You remember how deadly Broadsword turrets were? Imagine all three of them having real, skilled gunners. Mmmm . . .
Btw, I did end up falling asleep, but I kept on having this dream about flying an Epee that looked like a yellow fish . . doing a bombing run on a jet-black Ralatha with a bunch of Broadswords, which later turned into Dragons. I ended up firing my one little torpedo with the main group. When the Ralatha blew up, there was birthday cake everywhere. And everyone kept calling me "Octopus". Then we all got out cans of silly-string (made of super polymers) and had a silly-string war with George Washington and his army of unfurlable screens fueled by blackfuel. (No, I didn't actually have this dream)
Does it have comm capabilities? The multiplayer I had in mind would have "generic" comm faces, which would loop while players were communicating. Of course, all human communication would be real-time and live, not pre-recorded "Break and Attack" stuff. That way, if you needed something specific, you could just call out to your wingman/ wingleader/ other wings/ cap ship, etc etc. I've never plaid X-Wing Alliance, so I wouldn't know.
Plus, I'd probably wanna mod it to make room for more players in the big melee mode. And, as long as I'm dreaming, I also think it'd be awesome to use that patch so that there was absolutely NO AI in the whole thing. Every ship has a pilot, every turret has a gunner. You remember how deadly Broadsword turrets were? Imagine all three of them having real, skilled gunners. Mmmm . . .
Btw, I did end up falling asleep, but I kept on having this dream about flying an Epee that looked like a yellow fish . . doing a bombing run on a jet-black Ralatha with a bunch of Broadswords, which later turned into Dragons. I ended up firing my one little torpedo with the main group. When the Ralatha blew up, there was birthday cake everywhere. And everyone kept calling me "Octopus". Then we all got out cans of silly-string (made of super polymers) and had a silly-string war with George Washington and his army of unfurlable screens fueled by blackfuel. (No, I didn't actually have this dream)
Jason_Ryock
Vice Admiral
There are no comm "faces" in X-Wing Alliance. The Wing Commander and X-Wing Alliance comm controls, however, are set up much the same way with a few serious differances.
I think the new items implemented in XWA over the WC comms are quite nice, and override the fact that there is no inflight video (Hmmm...it might be possible to bring some in, but that would require alot of programming power...) I'll detail some of them below:
Formations:
There's a list of between 6-8 formations you can put your fighters into to fly (And, by the way, it doesn't have to be fighters, if you had a formation of Transports it would accomplish the same thing). The pilots act as they would normally in that formation (Put them in a line, they fly straight and keep shooting, put them in a differant one and they cover each other slightly better)
Capital Ships:
Another Grand feature of XWA that I'm not going to get into is the ability to destroy capital ships with a single fighter. As it pertains to comms, however: You can order your flight to specifically target components of capital ships. You can say, attack this one, or attack ones like it (for things like guns, they will proceed until all the guns have been destroyed, or they are dead).
Fighters:
You can order them to attack targets of a certain type. For example, if your flying out to engage a group of transports, and they engaged the fighters first, you can engage the fighters and order them to attack all transports in the area. You can also order them to engage a specific target.
Defensifvly:
You can order them to cover another target, cover yourself, go evasive, or scatted the squadron. It takes a bit of getting used to, it's all in a tiered menu sort of thing, with 1-9 giving you options, and each option you select taking you to another menu until you get to the actual message you want to send.
The level of control you're given over the AI is extremly high, though it's difficult to keep track of in the heat of battle.
Capital ships do indeed seem to die much easier in XWA then in Wing Commander. The simple fact of the matters is that EVERY weapon in XWA can damage a capital ship. This can be adjusted if someone ever took the time to do it.
I went poking around the X-Wing Legacy project, and it does indeed appear to be a Total Conversion Mod for X-Wing Alliance (Their website is down right now, by the way). I had forgotten until I went looking that there ARE multiple ways to install new ships into XWA (They call them "ShipSets" and there are "ShipSet" managers that let you easily swap between differant kinds of ships, for example, Episode 1 Shipset, Wing Commander Shipset, and the Standard XWA shipset could call be installed at teh same time).
Editing the guns, however, is something you could not do. In X-Wing Alliance there are exactly two kinds of guns. Laser Cannons and Ion Cannons. Lasers deal death, Ion Cannons disable (These have evovled quite a long way, actually. It use to be that when you disabled TIE Fighters they randomly exploded, no longer, though). One is red, the other is blue. When flying, for example, the Vampire or the Hellcat (As I have had the opportunity to do both in XWA) it still manages to look and feel quite Wing Commander-ish. The real differance comes in the missiles. In the original X-Wing game there was basically the missile and the torpedo. (Concussion Missile and Proton Torpedo, obviously) This has now evovled into the Concussion Missile, Advanced Concussion Missile, Proton Torpedo, Advanced Proton Torpedo, Space Bombs (Really slow, but massivly damaging to capital ships) Heavy Rockets (Proton Torpedos but bigger and slower) and Ion Missiles (Not sure if I got the name right, they disable the target). The Concussion Missile can be used much like the missiles in the Wing Commander games, except that it requires a lock to be fired. There is nothing like the IFF Missile, where you just dump it and forget about it. I'm not sure it would be possible to edit the game enough to put that in.
It's possible in game (This is a first for Star Wars games) to link your Laser and Ion cannon systems to fire full guns all the time, much like we see in Wing Commander. Re-charge rates are handly slightly differantly, but still similar to the game concepts that you are used to. There's a quick key, the S key, that shunts sheild power back and forth from forward to rear shields (I know alot of the time in WC I don't have time to stop and adjust my shields to cover a weak spot) in XWA just tap the S key and the power moves full back, full forward, or spreads itself out easily.
There's also a host of other general options in XWA that I prefer over WC. Tap the R key and it selects the closet enemy fighter. Tap the E key and it selects the enemies targeting you (Keep tapping and it cycles). You can also transfer energy from your shields to your lasers and the otherway around, too, allowing you to boost your shields in mid-combat and transfer them to the rear where you are getting shot in a split second, instead of opening the shield console and using the mouse (or joystick) to adjust. You can target and shoot down incoming missiles, or you can try to decoy them (there are, by the way, two kinds of decoys in X-Wing Alliance, chaff and flare, chaff causes the warhead to explode prematurly and trails behind your fighter looking like damage in WCP, it runs out eventually; flares actually seek out the warhead like a mini-missile to blow it up...flares go after whatever you currently have targeted, and as we all know, TIE fighters have shields...more then one damaged TIE Fighter has lost his life to a flare.). Then there is the ability to reload missiles right in the middle of combat, land and swap ships in the middle of missions, fly transports instead of just fighters, and the ease of setting up a multiplayer skirmish game.
I think X-Wing Alliance is the perfect base for modding over a Total Conversion for Wing Commander. I can't wait until it's released.
I didn't sleep much last night. My eyes finally gave out around 5 AM and I went to bed, I re-installed XWA on my system and well, I couldn't be torn away. =P
I think the new items implemented in XWA over the WC comms are quite nice, and override the fact that there is no inflight video (Hmmm...it might be possible to bring some in, but that would require alot of programming power...) I'll detail some of them below:
Formations:
There's a list of between 6-8 formations you can put your fighters into to fly (And, by the way, it doesn't have to be fighters, if you had a formation of Transports it would accomplish the same thing). The pilots act as they would normally in that formation (Put them in a line, they fly straight and keep shooting, put them in a differant one and they cover each other slightly better)
Capital Ships:
Another Grand feature of XWA that I'm not going to get into is the ability to destroy capital ships with a single fighter. As it pertains to comms, however: You can order your flight to specifically target components of capital ships. You can say, attack this one, or attack ones like it (for things like guns, they will proceed until all the guns have been destroyed, or they are dead).
Fighters:
You can order them to attack targets of a certain type. For example, if your flying out to engage a group of transports, and they engaged the fighters first, you can engage the fighters and order them to attack all transports in the area. You can also order them to engage a specific target.
Defensifvly:
You can order them to cover another target, cover yourself, go evasive, or scatted the squadron. It takes a bit of getting used to, it's all in a tiered menu sort of thing, with 1-9 giving you options, and each option you select taking you to another menu until you get to the actual message you want to send.
The level of control you're given over the AI is extremly high, though it's difficult to keep track of in the heat of battle.
Capital ships do indeed seem to die much easier in XWA then in Wing Commander. The simple fact of the matters is that EVERY weapon in XWA can damage a capital ship. This can be adjusted if someone ever took the time to do it.
I went poking around the X-Wing Legacy project, and it does indeed appear to be a Total Conversion Mod for X-Wing Alliance (Their website is down right now, by the way). I had forgotten until I went looking that there ARE multiple ways to install new ships into XWA (They call them "ShipSets" and there are "ShipSet" managers that let you easily swap between differant kinds of ships, for example, Episode 1 Shipset, Wing Commander Shipset, and the Standard XWA shipset could call be installed at teh same time).
Editing the guns, however, is something you could not do. In X-Wing Alliance there are exactly two kinds of guns. Laser Cannons and Ion Cannons. Lasers deal death, Ion Cannons disable (These have evovled quite a long way, actually. It use to be that when you disabled TIE Fighters they randomly exploded, no longer, though). One is red, the other is blue. When flying, for example, the Vampire or the Hellcat (As I have had the opportunity to do both in XWA) it still manages to look and feel quite Wing Commander-ish. The real differance comes in the missiles. In the original X-Wing game there was basically the missile and the torpedo. (Concussion Missile and Proton Torpedo, obviously) This has now evovled into the Concussion Missile, Advanced Concussion Missile, Proton Torpedo, Advanced Proton Torpedo, Space Bombs (Really slow, but massivly damaging to capital ships) Heavy Rockets (Proton Torpedos but bigger and slower) and Ion Missiles (Not sure if I got the name right, they disable the target). The Concussion Missile can be used much like the missiles in the Wing Commander games, except that it requires a lock to be fired. There is nothing like the IFF Missile, where you just dump it and forget about it. I'm not sure it would be possible to edit the game enough to put that in.
It's possible in game (This is a first for Star Wars games) to link your Laser and Ion cannon systems to fire full guns all the time, much like we see in Wing Commander. Re-charge rates are handly slightly differantly, but still similar to the game concepts that you are used to. There's a quick key, the S key, that shunts sheild power back and forth from forward to rear shields (I know alot of the time in WC I don't have time to stop and adjust my shields to cover a weak spot) in XWA just tap the S key and the power moves full back, full forward, or spreads itself out easily.
There's also a host of other general options in XWA that I prefer over WC. Tap the R key and it selects the closet enemy fighter. Tap the E key and it selects the enemies targeting you (Keep tapping and it cycles). You can also transfer energy from your shields to your lasers and the otherway around, too, allowing you to boost your shields in mid-combat and transfer them to the rear where you are getting shot in a split second, instead of opening the shield console and using the mouse (or joystick) to adjust. You can target and shoot down incoming missiles, or you can try to decoy them (there are, by the way, two kinds of decoys in X-Wing Alliance, chaff and flare, chaff causes the warhead to explode prematurly and trails behind your fighter looking like damage in WCP, it runs out eventually; flares actually seek out the warhead like a mini-missile to blow it up...flares go after whatever you currently have targeted, and as we all know, TIE fighters have shields...more then one damaged TIE Fighter has lost his life to a flare.). Then there is the ability to reload missiles right in the middle of combat, land and swap ships in the middle of missions, fly transports instead of just fighters, and the ease of setting up a multiplayer skirmish game.
I think X-Wing Alliance is the perfect base for modding over a Total Conversion for Wing Commander. I can't wait until it's released.
I didn't sleep much last night. My eyes finally gave out around 5 AM and I went to bed, I re-installed XWA on my system and well, I couldn't be torn away. =P
Umm, I was talking about regular TIE fighters, so saying that folks swear by the more advanced models isn't saying much. The TIE Advanced in XvT pretty much owned everything. The point of the little exercise with the 3 TIEs on 1 X-Wing was to point out that with numerical superiority (which is what the Empire usually had, but even so you can have various situations with local numerical superiority in the context of a larger dogfight), a few TIEs can own any fighter. TIEs are quite fast and manueverable, and I'd like to see you line up 3 competently-piloted TIEs in your Y-Wing all at once, before they had time to get on your tail and turbolaser your lumbering fighter-bomber into scrap metal. Incidentally, in this little matchup, I was the only one who managed to wipe out all the TIEs, and mainly because I used dumbfired missiles to distract them.Jason_Ryock said:
I also wasn't referring to the ridiculous odds you get in human-AI matchups, but the challenge of going 3v1 against real humans (hence why I raised XvT as an example; I might have used XWa, but I didn't multiplay it that much). Single player games, especially older games like the original X-Wing, have laughable AI, both friendly and hostile. Just imagine if every pilot was a Blair... how would you be able to rack up your 250 kills in one campaign? It's the Lake Woebegone effect ("all the children are above average").
I suppose it's possible that Origin planned on a multiplayer coop game (a la Starlancer), and deathmatch between Confed fighters only, rather than have a Confed vs. Bug fleet game. I don't know about the coop, although it'd be cool; I'm pretty sure the design docs didn't call for anything that sophisticated.Jason_Ryock said:
Have you played on the nightmare level? All of the ships take a lot more than just one missile to blow up. Well, most of them, I suppose there are a few flimsy ones and ultramissiles that do a good job of flaming bugs.
Personally, I find that XWA's network code chugs, but I suppose it might be better with more pervasive broadband these days. Simply put, though, I haven't seen many (any?) space fighter games that really have convincing netcode. Maybe that has something to do with the death of the genre... it seems like any game that puts a priority on telling a story can't sell, except for a few marquee titles.
It's sorta like the difference between watching sports and watching a movie... people are willing to watch the same game played over and over again, but a movie is only good for a few viewings before you can practically play it in your head. I guess that's what I like so much about MUDs (and to a lesser extent, MMORPGs, which I don't play but admire as exploitive business models).
Jason_Ryock
Vice Admiral
Muds rock, why isn't there a WC MUD?
Jason_Ryock
Vice Admiral
That may be true of XWA, I always LAN it, personally. But I don't see any other real options out there, maybe Freespace (Did I get that right?) I haven't played it.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
As it happens, I'm running the ever-so-stable XP. And sure, it's better than the previous Windowses, but crashes still remain. Buggy drivers? Who knows, maybe? But what the hell do I care if it's the drivers or Windows itself that's buggy? The point remains, some programmer cut a corner somewhere, and created a problem for me. It may have been out of sheer incompetence, or it may have been as a 'rational' cost-cutting measure - but either way, the user is the one that suffers, and this is not the way it should be.GeeBot said:
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Eh, I think we tend to give the past too much credit - how many times did Privateer crash our perfect 386ses? A million (G)?
cff
Kilk'dymga'qith laq Ik'vikvi
GeeBot said:
No, I am not forgetting it. It just doesn't have anything to do with my argument. question. Whether I optimize the code as a whole or only a small part of it in both cases you are taught to rather spend the money on a faster PC.
GeeBot said:
I could counter that NOBODY needs even 10% of what a current word processor can do. And that 90% of code often lead so serious problems (macro virii for example, but also stuff like "you practically cannot write a master thesis into ONE Word document - it will break the application before you finished". I had file corruptions almost daily(!) when trying that.)
GeeBot said:
Not true. It would be just as portable, maybe even better as you KNOW which commands have to be supported. Sides Privateer on XP has NOTHING to do with that.
As for more bugs, I can name at least one example that has shown the opposite (The program was first developed for a programming language that was in development as well. Then that language was scrapped and the proggy was 'ported' to assembler which in the end made it rock rock stable).
GeeBot said:
Looks like you need to upgrade your OS or your Wordprocessor. The newer ones will need that resources
GeeBot said:
If architects would build houses like programmers build programs a single woodpecker could destroy our civilisation...
Quarto said:If the Moon landing software was designed by a development company of today, it would have ended up giving the word 'crash' a whole new meaning.
Just one word: "Ariane"...
If you are too fucking stupid to check if your variables are within range for your bigger thrusters...
ALSLeHah said:
You don't know ALS? *g*
(Hint: it is a cheat code and also the initials of one Origin member)
Bandit LOAF said:
Never? At least I don't recall a crash on a proper configured PC. I recall multiples in WC1 however when ramming ships HARD (10% of cases?). Some of the enemies ship graphic would suddenly overlay the cockpit graphic. Then praying began - please don't crash (which it did around 70% of times) before I can land.
Or arou you talking the bug ridden P2? That is a different thing...
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Star Wars Galaxies
overmortal
Bearded Person
He was also a good wingman in WC4.
From this, I am thinking you do not know the meaning of the word "portable" in the computing context. Fact of the matter is, assembly language isn't much more portable than the machine language of the actual executable. It's equivalently hard to convert an assembly program to run on another hardware or software architecture as to convert an executable to run on another hardware or software architecture. This is why emulators generally suck, unless you're emulating a Game Boy on a 500 MHz computer.cff said:
I brought up Privateer because it uses an assembly hack (VMI, I think) to perform memory management. This hack doesn't work under Windows XP, for various reasons, some of which include the hack making multitasking virtually impossible. So, yes, if you want Windows XP to run only one program, DOS-style, then you could do it. Maybe it'd work on the Xbox. Privateer on the Xbox... now that would be trip'n.
I'm sorry that Microsoft has given programmers a bad reputation for you, but I'm happily using my Linux or FreeBSD box, Vim, and TeX to write my papers without problems, and I really don't see why I should downgrade my perfectly stable and functional experience by switching to the latest versions of Windows and Word. I was mainly defending Microsoft because people unthinkingly bash their products, even though they really have gotten a lot better. (They still have Rube Goldberg-like APIs, though.)cff said:
I keep a copy of Windows around to run my games, because it runs them a lot quicker than any emulator, but I'm certainly not happy about it, and spend as little time as possible before I reboot back into the comforts of the Unix operating environment. I suppose I could buy an Xbox instead.