Snakier mission

Thunderbolt

Rear Admiral
Whoa I just had a crazy idea for the Snakier mission. For reasons beyond my control the mission was failed in the first part against the Ralatha because the bombers failed to destroy the capship. So then when the remaining confed fighters retreat and the autonav took me first to the snakier and of course I met more cat fighters I decided to fly manually back to the Firekka and Verdun with nearly 100 kilrathi fighters pursuing my rapier and a few epee's. I was seriously hoping to be able to have a huge battle back at the confed carriers but after 15 mins of flying and I finally got back all the kilrathi fighters around me just dissapeared. I guess its due to the way the mission is scripted but wow that would have been such an amazing fight to have a few confed fighters against 100 kilrathi's.

I guess the point of this thread (if there is any;) ) is to ask will there be any missions were u have to manually fly back to your carrier without using autopilot mode because you have tens of kilrathi chasing you? I guess that would be difficult to script but that would make for an amazing fight.

I guess if a scenario like that would occur it would most likely happen in the battle of Sirius where I imagine that Tolwyn would try to counterattack the kilrathi fleet first but lose of course and the surviving confed fighters would have to retreat to the Confed fleet with hundreds of kilrathi in pursuit. But then doing that and having other fresh confed fighters move in to try to stop the kilrathi advance would make for an amazing scenario. Will Episodes 4 and 5 be more dynamic like that in any way or are battles still confined to nav points?
 
That kind of thing wouldn't be difficult to do, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as fun as you think it might - having to fly for several minutes or more is boring. It also becomes very frustrating if you do that, and wind up dying, since then you have to repeat the whole thing. I mean, we specifically go out of our way to make sure that whenever the player is ordered to retreat, he will be able to use autopilot :p.

And yeah, battles will be confined to navpoints. The thing is, WCP is really not designed to work any other way than navpoints. WC ships are supposed to have a limited radar range (around 30,000 metres), but in WCP, you can see on radar any ship from any active navpoint from any distance, and that really spoils things. Being able to track a fighter from 500,000 metres away just ain't right - so normally, all the ships are attached to a specific navpoint and disppear together with the navpoint as soon as the player leaves.
 
And yeah, battles will be confined to navpoints. The thing is, WCP is really not designed to work any other way than navpoints. WC ships are supposed to have a limited radar range (around 30,000 metres), but in WCP, you can see on radar any ship from any active navpoint from any distance, and that really spoils things. Being able to track a fighter from 500,000 metres away just ain't right - so normally, all the ships are attached to a specific navpoint and disppear together with the navpoint as soon as the player leaves.

Well that was what I was wondering and I guess that is the way that Wing Commander is programmed around nav points. But still I find it interesting in discussing ways of pushing the limits of what you can do with the code u have. And from what I've seen in Unknown Enemy and Standoff so far u guys are doing an awesome job at it.

As for being too difficult or boring I kind of see your point. It would be annoying to have to fly manually in one direction for 15 mins to get to a nav point unless maybe it was less than 100,000 which would only take a few minutes. But thanks anyway for the reply Quarto as personally I always find it interesting to hear the developers perspective on these things.
 
Yeah, that issue is kind of an official design policy on our part by now. :p It usually takes a bit of extra effort to code situations where we want retreat to be an option, because we don't want to make it too obscure nor do we want the enemies to simply disappear when they leave their nav point... so we script the enemies to break off their pursuit at some point, or something like that.

What we don't want is to force players to simply keep flying straight for a long time in order to complete a mission. We may not have perfected it, but I think Standoff's "do I retreat now or what?" situations are already better than UE's infinite-waves-of-Squids mission. :)
 
Yeah, that issue is kind of an official design policy on our part by now. :p It usually takes a bit of extra effort to code situations where we want retreat to be an option, because we don't want to make it too obscure nor do we want the enemies to simply disappear when they leave their nav point... so we script the enemies to break off their pursuit at some point, or something like that.

What we don't want is to force players to simply keep flying straight for a long time in order to complete a mission. We may not have perfected it, but I think Standoff's "do I retreat now or what?" situations are already better than UE's infinite-waves-of-Squids mission. :)

Yeah that is what was odd about that time because I notice that after about a minute of being chased the kilrathi ships always turn around but for some reason that didnt happen this time. I wasnt sure if that was scripted or not cause there are so many strange things that can happen in standoff some being twists or bugs - but either way it sure can sometimes make the missions a lot more interesting.

Yeah as for having to fly from 1 nav point to another manually it wouldnt really worry me if it was in one mission and less than 100,000 while flying something fast like a rapier. Having to retreat in a gladiator that has had its afterburners destroyed would be way too much though (knowing from experience).

Anyway thanks for the reply's and I hope you fellas can get back into the scripting to get Episode 4 and 5 out.
 
Anyway thanks for the reply's and I hope you fellas can get back into the scripting to get Episode 4 and 5 out.
Oh, you can count on that. We are very confident that 2007 will be Standoff's best year ever... and God willing, its last year ever.
 
Hehe, I've sorta been missing the Gladius in episode 4 :p.

I think the real reason that Blair didn't kill Jazz in WC2 wasn't Angel's intervention, but rather the simple fact that the Sabre's guns are far too wide apart to hit something as small as an ejected pilot.
 
I think the real reason that Blair didn't kill Jazz in WC2 wasn't Angel's intervention, but rather the simple fact that the Sabre's guns are far too wide apart to hit something as small as an ejected pilot.

Yeah, I thought about that the first time I saw that cutscene. :D
 
Hehe, I've sorta been missing the Gladius in episode 4 :p.

I think the real reason that Blair didn't kill Jazz in WC2 wasn't Angel's intervention, but rather the simple fact that the Sabre's guns are far too wide apart to hit something as small as an ejected pilot.

Funny about that, as I took a potshot or two at Sparrow just for the hell of it, and I ended up hitting her...only did the one shot, though.

That was the only part where I ever cursed Angel. I would have loved to have seen Blair blast Jazz out of the sky...but that's just me. :D
 
Oh, you can count on that. We are very confident that 2007 will be Standoff's best year ever... and God willing, its last year ever.

Haha so I'm guessing that one of Quarto's, Eder's and the dev teams New Years Resolutions will be that 2007 will be the last year for Wing commander projects?

But then again everyone gets so drunk on new years eve so who can seriously remember what resolutions they make. If your really unlucky you might end up wanting to make another project. :)
 
Haha so I'm guessing that one of Quarto's, Eder's and the dev teams New Years Resolutions will be that 2007 will be the last year for Wing commander projects?
Hehe, I don't make new year resolutions. A person can only keep his promises if he doesn't make them at every opportunity.

That having been said, even without making any such promises, I definitely want to do everything I can to finish this blasted thing in 2007. And as for future mods... I have half a dozen mod ideas a week, but mercifully most of them go as quickly as they come ;).
 
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