How can you guys call this easy?

Disco Boy

Spaceman
I'd say that this is harder than any other WC or Mod I've played.

I can't even beat the second mission and in the first the frieghter gets killed in about 20 seconds. Is there something I'm just not getting?
 
Play it like Wing Commander 2. But you have to be quite skilled to get through it anyway. Afterburning alot is also smart in the stiletto.
 
Yes, the easy part was a joke. And yes, it's easier than UE... so far. :p

In all fairness, if you just forget that it's related to WCP/SO at all and try a different approach, you're likely to get it right sometime. And once you do, you'll find that the really hard missions are the exception rather than the rule (beware: mission 5 in the first episode is one of these exceptionally hard missions, and it's not a miscalculation of any kind... it's meant to be hard).

Basically, be cautious and aware. Avoid head-on encounters, try not to leave yourself open to more than one enemy at a time, take evasive maneuvers when you start getting shot... Check the nav map (CTRL+N) once in a while and figure out who's attacking you or the ship you have to protect. That kind of thing.
 
Eder said:
And yes, it's easier than UE... so far. :p

UE really isnt too hard once you learn the basic tricks like not playing chicken with baracudas and shooting down torpedos. My only real problem the last time i played through it (i finished two days ago) was the scimtar's extreme lack of agility. I was virtually untouchable in the epee though. :)

Any chance you'll release a better models/textures patch for UE later? That would indeed be great!

...Or that Eder will fix the standoff gratha's cockpit area back to how it appeared in wc1? :eek:
 
Dyret said:
Play it like Wing Commander 2. But you have to be quite skilled to get through it anyway. Afterburning alot is also smart in the stiletto.
I agree with that.
Even playing UE I had to adapt my tactics somewhat. Although, whereas UE was set in Prophecy era I really had to regress to WC2 style for Standoff. But hey, even if Episode 2 is tougher it does have the sim which should help to polish up your skills before jumping into the storyline. :)
 
ludicrously difficult

Okay, so is there any reason for that insane difficulty level (other than bragging rights, that is)?

I have no problem with tough dogfights, but having to protect the cruiser from the sabres while AT THE SAME TIME having to deal with a freaking dozen fighters because my retarded wingmen didn't make it past basic flight school really gets on my nerves. Why the hell do I have to be responsible for the crappy AI getting raped?

I can understand that you want to make a credible campaign in which too much attrition will result in a failed mission, but following that reasoning, is it credible that a bunch of sorry ass pirates would have an armada at their disposal AT EVERY FREAKING NAV POINT?

I have beaten all of the WCs (in the default difficulty), and I don't remember my shields and half my armor being blown to hell at the first direct hit. I cringe when I try to imagine what a Jalthi can do.

Great models, great music, great feeling, great story. But making it a 1337-only mod really hurts the overall result.
 
not1337enough said:
Okay, so is there any reason for that insane difficulty level (other than bragging rights, that is)?
Yes.

not1337enough said:
Why the hell do I have to be responsible for the crappy AI getting raped?
We'd improve the AI if we could, because it needs improvement badly - you're right on that. It's worth pointing out that the enemy AI works the same way as the friendly AI, though. :p

not1337enough said:
is it credible that a bunch of sorry ass pirates would have an armada at their disposal AT EVERY FREAKING NAV POINT?
The Sabres you face are the ones which were captured and which were all acounted for since the first mission. The amounts of Talons and Tarsuses is canon as per Privateer's random-enemy-generator (which in practice makes anything canon :p).

not1337enough said:
But making it a 1337-only mod really hurts the overall result.
Maybe for an individual, yes. But me, I think there's too many easy WC games out there already. When I sat down to think about what I was going to do with my mod, I figured the community would benefit from having *one* challenging WC game (UE doesn't count in this sense - its only as difficult as WCP/SO pushed to more extreme limits) more than from having *yet another* easy one. There's the reason for our insane difficulty when compared to official WC games. So yes, I guess you can say this is aimed at a bit of a different audience (which I wouldn't define as "leet", but that's another matter).
 
Well, most people were complaining they had to play WCP/SO on nightmare to have a slight challenge... so the general consensus was to make Standoff harder so it really is a nightmare to use that difficulty setting.

I just don't get it. Why are people so reluctant to lower the difficulty setting below the default setting ? I never heard or anyone who complained of Standoff or Unknown Enemy being too hard on rookie. What are you affraid of ? To fall in dishonor ? Then prepare for mine: although I've been on both development teams and build missions for both, I play UE and Standoff on rookie.

Just lower the difficulty setting until you get the hang of it (you gotta adapt your flying style, and avoid frontal attack at all cost), and when you finish it then re-play it on a higher setting. Then you'll have fun ! ;)
 
Eder said:
We'd improve the AI if we could, because it needs improvement badly - you're right on that. It's worth pointing out that the enemy AI works the same way as the friendly AI, though. :p
Yeah, I know. Only the friendly AI is heavily outnumbered and/or outgunned.


Eder said:
The amounts of Talons and Tarsuses is canon as per Privateer's random-enemy-generator (which in practice makes anything canon :p).
Well, okay. But beating Confed by means of attrition? The cats would have a hard time trying to take over Gemini with that kind of pirate density!


PopsiclePete said:
I just don't get it. Why are people so reluctant to lower the difficulty setting below the default setting ? I never heard or anyone who complained of Standoff or Unknown Enemy being too hard on rookie. What are you affraid of ? To fall in dishonor ? Then prepare for mine: although I've been on both development teams and build missions for both, I play UE and Standoff on rookie.
No, it's not that. As I said, I actually enjoy tough dogfights and after replaying the first missions a couple of times I manage to stay in one piece on Ace. Problem is, the friendlies don't. Not in Ace, not in Rookie. And if they die, the mission fails.
I have no problem with lowering the difficulty level (provided there's no one watching :p) if I'm getting my ass handed to me. Only it's not my ass...
 
IkeepgettingOWNT said:
The cats would have a hard time trying to take over Gemini with that kind of pirate density!
Well, remember the Lionheard is chasing a bunch of organised pirates, so that "pirate density" you're talking about is not just random encounters, rather the pirates throwing everything they have at the Lionheart's crew trying to cover their base, and then their escape.
IkeepgettingOWNT said:
No, it's not that. As I said, I actually enjoy tough dogfights and after replaying the first missions a couple of times I manage to stay in one piece on Ace. Problem is, the friendlies don't. Not in Ace, not in Rookie. And if they die, the mission fails.
Part of your problem might be that Standoff keeps tracks of the ships you loose, so each time you loose a fighter, it won't be there in the next battle. Replay from the beginning paying special attention to your wingmens, and you should do fine in the last big battle (then it's not relevant to save your wingman's ships anymore, since you're gonna be re-supplied at the start of Episode 2). If you lower the difficulty a bit, it might give you the slight edge you need to save your wingman's asses. If a player as rusty as me can manage it, you can too :p

And please register, man ;)
 
not1337enough said:
Why the hell do I have to be responsible for the crappy AI getting raped?

I used to have this problem myself, but the solution is simple: Blow everything to hell before they nail your wingmen.

BTW, the Lionheart is a destroyer, not a cruiser.
 
One thing that's easy to overlook, and makes a world of a difference, is that the pirates run away. And the less of them there is left, the more likely they are to run away. So the key thing in episode one is to kill as many as you can in the crucial first seconds of the fight, and never to pursue running enemies.

That's one thing I really like about episode one. In UE, it was all about endurance - you could lose all your wingmen and still win, if you just had enough patience. Here, it's about skill. It's about how much you can do in the first thirty seconds. If you screw up, you're dead, because your ship simply doesn't have the endurance. So it's a real light fighter campaign.
 
I've mentioned it before...but I still felt the number of enemies engaged in every mission was a bit insanely unreal. WC2 missions ranged anywhere from 5 to 12 total enemies tops in a mission. Never the 12 all at once. Standoff is a little better but UE felt like nothing but a big long guantlet...wave after wave of enemies...just try to survive. Standoff is a good game but I feel the numbers get a little out of hand for the timeline. I've heard the explanation that the WCP was designed for large numbers so that why we "have" to have large battles but I think that's the kind of reasoning that birthed Freespace. Not trying to criticize harshly just stating my thoughts. I still appreciate all the work that has been and is continuing to be done.
 
Maj.Striker said:
I've heard the explanation that the WCP was designed for large numbers so that why we "have" to have large battles but I think that's the kind of reasoning that birthed Freespace.
We certainly don't have to have big battles - we could just as easily (heck, it would be a lot easier for us - much less work) to pretend that we're limited to a grand total of 16 ships per mission like in WC2. So, that's you, your capship, a wingman, and up to 13 enemies. Add a friendly capship to defend, you're down to 12. Add another friendly wing, you're down to 10. Yeah, we could do that - but then I don't think anybody would take our rendition of the Battle of Terra seriously, not when just trying to depict the a fraction of the Kilrathi fleet would leave us with no space for any Kilrathi fighters.

It's not the fact that WCP is designed for big battles that has lead us to make Standoff that way - rather, it's the fact that big battles suit perfectly the scenario we're trying to recreate. And I really don't see how you can claim that the numbers got out hand given the timeline, when even with WCP's generous ship limits, we still can't get anywhere near the real Battle of Terra ship numbers :p.
 
IkeepgettingOWNT said:
Well, okay. But beating Confed by means of attrition? The cats would have a hard time trying to take over Gemini with that kind of pirate density!
In Privateer, bartenders keep telling the player that Confed is outclassed by everyone and their mothers, losing capships left and right... and everyone seems to think Gemini will eventually fall. It never does, however, so your theory might just be correct - something clearly prevents the cats from taking over Gemini. ;)

IkeepgettingOWNT said:
...a couple of times I manage to stay in one piece on Ace. Problem is, the friendlies don't. Not in Ace, not in Rookie. And if they die, the mission fails.
Being a Wing Commander has never actually made the player feel responsible for anything in any WC game. That's another point we wanted to address. Keep your buddies alive is supposed to be rule number one, try to single-handedly accomplish the mission objectives is supposed to be rule number two (yes, Blair, I'm looking at you and your entire career). We can't make the wingmen fly better so that they are more useful, and that's too bad. We still can make you feel like you should take care of them, though, so we do. :p

Maj.Striker said:
WC2 missions ranged anywhere from 5 to 12 total enemies tops in a mission. Never the 12 all at once.
Well, what Quarto said, plus the fact that in WC2 you had one wingmen, whereas in Standoff you'll *always* have at least five (provided you're good enough a wingleader to save them from themselves :D).
 
Too hard for me...

Just gets me frustrated, and I want to have fun when I play. God job anyway, I'm sure you find more hardcore pilots that will enjoy it.

"Fumblestick"
 
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