Finally, a news update

Quarto

Unknown Enemy
After a few dismal months of virtually no progress, we've finally done enough to put up another news update:

Eder said:
Well, as you can see, our efforts to turn Standstill back into Standoff continue. As I'm sure is fairly obvious from the lack of updates, we haven't been doing too well in the progress department lately :-P. However - fingers crossed - things are now starting to pick up once again. It's clear enough by now that we won't be able to release even Episode 4 this year. Still, we're more or less certain that at least next year, you will see both remaining episodes before Christmas.

Anyway, one very neat bit of progress to report is a new capship - a frigate, no less. This actually posed something of a problem, since there's no visual references for the frigates in Fleet Action. Still, Quarto kept on whining about how they have frigates in Fleet Action and we don't, and besides that, we could use a light capship that only takes a single torpedo to kill, so finally I had to make something :-P. The ship is based on the Kilrathi transport from Armada - as anyone who's watched Academy knows, the Kilrathi are big fans of using the same basic shape for multiple different ship classes, and we figured this would work better than pulling a completely new ship model out of thin air. Anyway, we've added five new screenshots showing off the frigate, and we've also added its profile to the ships page.

Finally, we've added a new character profile to the characters page - it's everything you wanted to know about Trigger, but were afraid to... well,actually I suppose nobody really wanted to know anything about Trigger. Still, he's up there :-P.


BTW, even though we only talk about the new frigate in the update, that doesn't mean this is the only progress we've made. Missions are also advancing (...slowly. Exruciatingly slowly). Above all, though, we're making progress with episode 5 - that's what I personally am currently focussed on. It seems that with the previous episodes, the thing that always held us up at the end was the voiceover recording. So, what I'm trying to do right now is to prepare everything so that the episode 4 and 5 voiceovers can be all recorded at the same time, to reduce the time gap between the last two episodes. Now, of course the main reason for ep.4 taking so long isn't the fact that we're doing ep.5 pre-production stuff at the moment, but rather the fact that we've simply had far too little time for Standoff this year - but hopefully it'll be some small comfort for everyone to know that waiting longer for episode 4 will at least allow episode 5 to come out much faster.
 
God damn that fleet looks impressive. I think we will know what it was like at BoT a little better after facing something like that.
 
We had to come up with at least one good reason for people to choose flying a Crossbow. :p
 
I have a lots of good reasons to fly a Crossbow,I love that ship,
to bad that confed abandoned it.

Anyway pretty good job Eder and team,as always.I expect to see huge battles in the last episode!



P.S. put a Hellcat in Standoff and all your sins will be forgiven

TCSTigersClaw:D
 
I have a lots of good reasons to fly a Crossbow,I love that ship,
to bad that confed abandoned it.

I don't think we can say that -- as of Academy (the game), the Crossbow was in regular service. It was only entering production at the end of the war, presumably they were going to more important front line units (versus the Victory, which had much older Longbows).
 
Yeah, and if Confed was still using Longbows on WC4, they might still have Crossbows on other locations.
 
I have a lots of good reasons to fly a Crossbow,I love that ship,
to bad that confed abandoned it.

P.S. put a Hellcat in Standoff and all your sins will be forgiven

TCSTigersClaw:D

I agree with you if you´re talking about the WC2 Crossbow. The Standoff Crossbow (due to the Vision engine love for afterburners) is scary rather than fun to fly... Unless you think flying a huge sitting duck is fun.

About the Hellcat, I haven´t sinned that much in my lifetime.
 
I agree with you if you´re talking about the WC2 Crossbow. The Standoff Crossbow (due to the Vision engine love for afterburners) is scary rather than fun to fly... Unless you think flying a huge sitting duck is fun.

Psycology, its all about psycology (aka - Taunt at the right time and let the enemy come to you. Your shields can handle that). You just have to think about your ship more like of a corvette then of a fighter. While I am an AB junkie I find the Crossbow remarkably useful.
 
Psycology, its all about psycology (aka - Taunt at the right time and let the enemy come to you. Your shields can handle that). You just have to think about your ship more like of a corvette then of a fighter. While I am an AB junkie I find the Crossbow remarkably useful.

I really like the Crossbow too. Shield management can be very useful in this fighter. If you put all of the energy into the front shields you can take many flak hits without a problem. Having great shields rocks. And one of the things I also like about the Crossbow is that it's flyable without afterburners. Sure, it has no afterburner, but it's so tough it doesn't need it that badly. :p
 
Yeah, which doesn't have that often....except for that last mission in SO (if you try to kill off the transports that is)
 
Psycology, its all about psycology (aka - Taunt at the right time and let the enemy come to you. Your shields can handle that). You just have to think about your ship more like of a corvette then of a fighter. While I am an AB junkie I find the Crossbow remarkably useful.

While trying to fly the Crossbow in that last mission trying to kill the Fralthi (?)...I couldn't get anywhere close to my target. I kept having swarms of Sartha and Dralthi blast my tail. Good shields or not, if you can't maneuver or turn with your attacker, much less have a decent speed ratio, it doesn't take an ace pilot to just sit there out of sight of your guns and maul you to death. And if you happen to get in range, all your opponent needs to do is afterburn away out of the range of your guns, let his shields puff back up, then turn around and try again. Sure, you can go head-on with a light fighter, but what's their favorite tactic? Using a dumbfire bolt...and flying something that's slow as a turtle doesn't exactly give you the speed to dodge a dumbfire if you can't blow it away as it speeds towards you. And anyone who's flown the Confed gauntlet in an Arrow and blasted away at the Broadsword might know what I'm talking about. Sure, it takes a LOT of passes to kill a Broadsword. But speed and maneuverability is a huge advantage, and eventually the Broadsword will fall because it can't turn with you, turrets or not.

I'm not so sure that having a corvette for a fighter/bomber is all that useful, as my personal theory is to take down even the small ships first. Even small ships have guns on them, plus they're easier to kill...therefore, the less guns in the air, the less guns to shoot at you. Even in Prophecy, I always have my wing go after the Barracudas first. It makes taking down any capship they're escorting a whole lot easier.

The only way I could clear that stage was by flying a Sabre, and after I was done waxing the capship, I was literally the only ship left in the air. I attribute that to the dogfighting, afterburning, maneuvering, killing ability that the TRUE fighter/bomber has, which the Sabre certainly is during that timeframe.

Sorry, guys...this is just me, but I'll take a Sabre over a Crossbow any day of the week and thrice on Sunday.
 
On an unrelated note: Is there any chance you guys can build a mission creator for this game?
A mission creator? All the tools we use to create Standoff missions are freely available, so there's really no point in making a mission creator.
 
Yup, the mission creator is already available, as are all the other tools we use to make Standoff... and nobody else has ever really used them to release anything else.
 
I can't wait for more Standoff episodes. They were great games. I hope they come out soon. I understand you're all busy, which I am too. Good luck! :cool:
 
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