Possible to fly Kilrathi craft in Simulator?
- Thread starter Karakkaze
- Start date
Eder
Mr. Standoff
Originally we had dismissed the idea of having flyable Kilrathi craft in the simulator because we had a limited number of ship slots (and we had lots of unflyable confed ships). Even though now we could probably raise that limit, I think we have plenty of ships already, and we couldn't possibly hope to introduce any more ships while keeping the current quality standards - new ships would need new cockpits, missions would need balancing, we would need to include them in the scoreboard, etc.
How about an alswantsmoreships-style solution? Would it work to put an existing or basic cockpit on a kat fighter rather than design a whole new one?
Dundradal
Frog Blast the Vent Core!
They've already gone past that solution though. That's how you have the ability to fly so many ships in the Sim now.
The whole allure of flying a Kat ship is to be immersed in it. What will make it feel any different if you are looking at the Arrow cockpit while in a Gratha? I wish it could be as simple as it seems, but it's quite a bit of tweaking.
The whole allure of flying a Kat ship is to be immersed in it. What will make it feel any different if you are looking at the Arrow cockpit while in a Gratha? I wish it could be as simple as it seems, but it's quite a bit of tweaking.
Eder
Mr. Standoff
Yeah, the "look, this is a hidden bonus ship which is why the cockpit strut and HUD graphics don't match it at all" approach seems to me as something unimmersive and that ultimately doesn't really add that much to the game (a Sartha that uses a Ferret's cockpit is just a Ferret with slightly different stats - 3 seconds into combat, you'll forget which ship it is you're supposed to be flying).
I couldn't possibly go with that solution, considering the effort we put into making sure that Standoff is not only fun, but also *polished*. Making this thing feel like a professional game once it's finished is as high up on our priority list as making it fun or true to WC continuity.
On a more practical note, if we used something like "alswantsmoreships" to enable an alternate set of ships, these would still be left out of the scoreboards, so we'd already be cutting the fun in flying these ships short from the start. Then you could have issues, such as: some guns might show incorrect names in the HUD since Kilrathi ships use gun slots which were never meant to be used in flyable ships, the cockpit POV might seem misplaced compared to where the actual cockpit is on the ship (which would cause the guns to not align with the crosshairs from cockpit view), the ships might downright suck to fly (ie: guns might not converge properly), and then people would expect us to go and fix that, etc. These ships were made with nothing but the AI in mind - there would definitely be some work involved in getting them to be flyable (or at least in getting them to be flyable without noticeable issues)... it might take 5 minutes per ship, or it might require re-converting the ship model and coming up with a new ship file from scratch.
In short... I think having more different ship models than any other two (three?) WC games combined, and having more flyable ships than any other WC game except P2 is enough to qualify our ship selection as "not broken" - so I won't fix it, unless I could keep the same quality standard we have for the currently planned ships (which I can't - just look at how some of our current sim ships, which have been around since Ep 2, are only getting proper cockpit struts with the release of Ep 5).
Here's the really really short version, too: it's about damn time we finish this game instead of adding to it.
I couldn't possibly go with that solution, considering the effort we put into making sure that Standoff is not only fun, but also *polished*. Making this thing feel like a professional game once it's finished is as high up on our priority list as making it fun or true to WC continuity.
On a more practical note, if we used something like "alswantsmoreships" to enable an alternate set of ships, these would still be left out of the scoreboards, so we'd already be cutting the fun in flying these ships short from the start. Then you could have issues, such as: some guns might show incorrect names in the HUD since Kilrathi ships use gun slots which were never meant to be used in flyable ships, the cockpit POV might seem misplaced compared to where the actual cockpit is on the ship (which would cause the guns to not align with the crosshairs from cockpit view), the ships might downright suck to fly (ie: guns might not converge properly), and then people would expect us to go and fix that, etc. These ships were made with nothing but the AI in mind - there would definitely be some work involved in getting them to be flyable (or at least in getting them to be flyable without noticeable issues)... it might take 5 minutes per ship, or it might require re-converting the ship model and coming up with a new ship file from scratch.
In short... I think having more different ship models than any other two (three?) WC games combined, and having more flyable ships than any other WC game except P2 is enough to qualify our ship selection as "not broken" - so I won't fix it, unless I could keep the same quality standard we have for the currently planned ships (which I can't - just look at how some of our current sim ships, which have been around since Ep 2, are only getting proper cockpit struts with the release of Ep 5).
Here's the really really short version, too: it's about damn time we finish this game instead of adding to it.