S
Starcrunch
Guest
First post here.
So far I've been really impressed with the missions (I've just destroyed the Snakeir in ep 3). Thought I'd give a rundown of my impressions of the various parts of the game, thorough the eyes of someone who hasn't play a WC game in years.
The textures and models are quite good, and the overall visual quality is probably the best I've seen from a mod effort. Even the blocky old Confed cap ships from WC1 look good while retaining their overall shape (mostly due to good texturing). The models for the Confed carriers (both fleet and escort) look very nice and are well textured.
FIGHTERS: The fighters have excellent models and are mostly fun to fly. I haven't logged much sim time but have taken out the Epee and Hornet. The Epee was still every bit as blissful to fly as I remember (one of my favorite ships of all time) and the centerline mounted particle cannons make it a great dog fighter since they are forgiving if the pilot doesn't role to align his guns. The Hornet was fun but I think I'm glad I'm not flying one of those anymore, the change in guns seems like a decent idea, since it's so hard to aim the cannons due to their placement on the wings. Those are the only two non-campaign fighters I've played with.
For the campaign, I've thus far flown the Stiletto, Galdius, and Rapier (I took a Gladius on the mission to nail Sparrow so haven't flown a Saber yet). The Stiletto appears to have been knocked around quite a bit on the boards so I think I should say some nice things about it, because I actually thought it was a pretty good fighter. It's a joy to fly and it's speed and maneuverability make it one of the best pure dog fighting fighters I've flown. For the most part I'll trade armor and shields for speed and maneuverability any day since Standoff returns us to the era when defensive technology on fighters was much less powerful than it is in later WC games. The Gladius is a piece of shit. It can do a little bit of everything but is good at almost nothing. The only positive thing I can say for it is that it's guns are quite powerful. In other words it's perfect; exactly what one expects from a ship that tries to do too much with too little. The Rapier is fun to fly, fast powerful, and agile. It may not be a top of the line fighter anymore but it's still solid in a fire fight. It's biggest weakness is it's poor missile armament (though that's to be expected from a fighter of this era).
DESIGN: Love that keeping my folks alive is rewarded and expected, I've always tried to keep my people alive but it's nice to see it matter. It's a bit tougher now than it was when we had more control over our wingmen, but you can't have everything. I've enjoyed most of the battles a lot, and it's nice to see that the first few seconds are so important in combat (a few quick kills early can tilt the scales in your favor and keep your wingmen alive, they do fine as long as they don't have unmolested enemies on them). In many of the missions when things go right it snow balls into a great success with few losses, but when they go wrong... well then it gets rough on you friends in a hurry even if you're still able to get things done fine.
INDIVIDUAL MISSIONS: Early pirate missions were fun because it let us do some of the what we see Confed doing in Privateer. Scanning for contraband, blowing up Talons (boy is the Stiletto born to kill Talons), fighting some old Tarsus, ect. E1 mission 5 was probably the hardest mission I've played, the bloody Galdius just doesn't fight well enough against Talons (though it's fine for killing Saber's IMO). The trouble is it's low speed and maneuverability coupled to weak armor/shields make it fodder for the Talon's decent armament and numbers. To make matters worse, only I'm capable of killing the turrets, they frag my wings fighters in a hurry, and the battles long running time make fuel management in the gas guzzling Gladius a major priority (i.e. I can't chase Talons using AB). I won by taking care of fighters and holding missiles in reserve for the end when things are rough. Being able to frag the last wing of Talon's by shooting them down with missiles got me out of trouble since I was down to almost no fuel (just tiny bursts to change speed).
The restart of the War was great, taking on Gothri's with Stilettos was a lot easier than I had thought it would be and I saved our whole wing (at each nav point with Gothris I'd engage one immediately dropping on its six, downing the shields and ramming a HS missile up its ass (takes only a few seconds). Then I'd save my remaining missiles for future Nav points and let out numbers wash over the remaining Gothri privateers. My favorite part was killing the Retros though. It was pathetically easy, sense Talons are no match for a Stiletto (get on his six hit him with mass drivers until he's dead, rinse and repeat). Th dialog for this part of the mission is priceless (Squealer's voice talent and lines are really good, and they shine in this part of the mission). It took me a few tries to take out the destroyer in the last mission, I just wasn't ready for the power of it's guns, and crappy flying on my part in a crappy Gladius didn't help.
I'm not finished with ep3 but the Snakeir mission was bloody awesome. The design was cool, the whole initial assault being a ruse, I just loved the way it was designed. I tried it with a Rapier the first time, and got very good results except nobody seemed able to be able to deliver torpedos to the Snakeir, despite arriving essentially with the entire complement intact. I think we only lost one Epee fighter in the battle at the destroyer, but when we got to the carrier, slowly but surely casualties mounted (worst of all the Broadswords were almost the sole target of all enemy attacks and eventually we got the orders to fall back). I saved this game and will play through having retreated later, but I replayed the mission with a Galdius a couple times (dying a few times). Finally the strategy that worked was to stay home during the destroyer assault and simply defend the Broadswords, conserving afterburner power. The destroyer went down in short order, and we fought our way through the fighters, losing only one Gladius and one Broadsword. We moved onto the Snakeir and I helped with the fighters bringing them down to reasonable numbers to protect the Broadswords (we lost one badly damaged Broadswrod almost instantly but that was the last fighter lost the whole mission). Once fighters were down to about 3 (we had enough confed fighters around to keep Kilrathi fighters down to 1-3 fighters at any given time). Then I started my bombing run, taking both engines. Shortly after a Broadsword torpedoed the bridge ending the affair. No need to mop up it, no fighters were alive when the dust cleared. We went home and celebrated. The key was our low losses and rapidly getting the enemy fighters killed so we could always keep on top of newly launched fighters.
-Starcrunch
So far I've been really impressed with the missions (I've just destroyed the Snakeir in ep 3). Thought I'd give a rundown of my impressions of the various parts of the game, thorough the eyes of someone who hasn't play a WC game in years.
The textures and models are quite good, and the overall visual quality is probably the best I've seen from a mod effort. Even the blocky old Confed cap ships from WC1 look good while retaining their overall shape (mostly due to good texturing). The models for the Confed carriers (both fleet and escort) look very nice and are well textured.
FIGHTERS: The fighters have excellent models and are mostly fun to fly. I haven't logged much sim time but have taken out the Epee and Hornet. The Epee was still every bit as blissful to fly as I remember (one of my favorite ships of all time) and the centerline mounted particle cannons make it a great dog fighter since they are forgiving if the pilot doesn't role to align his guns. The Hornet was fun but I think I'm glad I'm not flying one of those anymore, the change in guns seems like a decent idea, since it's so hard to aim the cannons due to their placement on the wings. Those are the only two non-campaign fighters I've played with.
For the campaign, I've thus far flown the Stiletto, Galdius, and Rapier (I took a Gladius on the mission to nail Sparrow so haven't flown a Saber yet). The Stiletto appears to have been knocked around quite a bit on the boards so I think I should say some nice things about it, because I actually thought it was a pretty good fighter. It's a joy to fly and it's speed and maneuverability make it one of the best pure dog fighting fighters I've flown. For the most part I'll trade armor and shields for speed and maneuverability any day since Standoff returns us to the era when defensive technology on fighters was much less powerful than it is in later WC games. The Gladius is a piece of shit. It can do a little bit of everything but is good at almost nothing. The only positive thing I can say for it is that it's guns are quite powerful. In other words it's perfect; exactly what one expects from a ship that tries to do too much with too little. The Rapier is fun to fly, fast powerful, and agile. It may not be a top of the line fighter anymore but it's still solid in a fire fight. It's biggest weakness is it's poor missile armament (though that's to be expected from a fighter of this era).
DESIGN: Love that keeping my folks alive is rewarded and expected, I've always tried to keep my people alive but it's nice to see it matter. It's a bit tougher now than it was when we had more control over our wingmen, but you can't have everything. I've enjoyed most of the battles a lot, and it's nice to see that the first few seconds are so important in combat (a few quick kills early can tilt the scales in your favor and keep your wingmen alive, they do fine as long as they don't have unmolested enemies on them). In many of the missions when things go right it snow balls into a great success with few losses, but when they go wrong... well then it gets rough on you friends in a hurry even if you're still able to get things done fine.
INDIVIDUAL MISSIONS: Early pirate missions were fun because it let us do some of the what we see Confed doing in Privateer. Scanning for contraband, blowing up Talons (boy is the Stiletto born to kill Talons), fighting some old Tarsus, ect. E1 mission 5 was probably the hardest mission I've played, the bloody Galdius just doesn't fight well enough against Talons (though it's fine for killing Saber's IMO). The trouble is it's low speed and maneuverability coupled to weak armor/shields make it fodder for the Talon's decent armament and numbers. To make matters worse, only I'm capable of killing the turrets, they frag my wings fighters in a hurry, and the battles long running time make fuel management in the gas guzzling Gladius a major priority (i.e. I can't chase Talons using AB). I won by taking care of fighters and holding missiles in reserve for the end when things are rough. Being able to frag the last wing of Talon's by shooting them down with missiles got me out of trouble since I was down to almost no fuel (just tiny bursts to change speed).
The restart of the War was great, taking on Gothri's with Stilettos was a lot easier than I had thought it would be and I saved our whole wing (at each nav point with Gothris I'd engage one immediately dropping on its six, downing the shields and ramming a HS missile up its ass (takes only a few seconds). Then I'd save my remaining missiles for future Nav points and let out numbers wash over the remaining Gothri privateers. My favorite part was killing the Retros though. It was pathetically easy, sense Talons are no match for a Stiletto (get on his six hit him with mass drivers until he's dead, rinse and repeat). Th dialog for this part of the mission is priceless (Squealer's voice talent and lines are really good, and they shine in this part of the mission). It took me a few tries to take out the destroyer in the last mission, I just wasn't ready for the power of it's guns, and crappy flying on my part in a crappy Gladius didn't help.
I'm not finished with ep3 but the Snakeir mission was bloody awesome. The design was cool, the whole initial assault being a ruse, I just loved the way it was designed. I tried it with a Rapier the first time, and got very good results except nobody seemed able to be able to deliver torpedos to the Snakeir, despite arriving essentially with the entire complement intact. I think we only lost one Epee fighter in the battle at the destroyer, but when we got to the carrier, slowly but surely casualties mounted (worst of all the Broadswords were almost the sole target of all enemy attacks and eventually we got the orders to fall back). I saved this game and will play through having retreated later, but I replayed the mission with a Galdius a couple times (dying a few times). Finally the strategy that worked was to stay home during the destroyer assault and simply defend the Broadswords, conserving afterburner power. The destroyer went down in short order, and we fought our way through the fighters, losing only one Gladius and one Broadsword. We moved onto the Snakeir and I helped with the fighters bringing them down to reasonable numbers to protect the Broadswords (we lost one badly damaged Broadswrod almost instantly but that was the last fighter lost the whole mission). Once fighters were down to about 3 (we had enough confed fighters around to keep Kilrathi fighters down to 1-3 fighters at any given time). Then I started my bombing run, taking both engines. Shortly after a Broadsword torpedoed the bridge ending the affair. No need to mop up it, no fighters were alive when the dust cleared. We went home and celebrated. The key was our low losses and rapidly getting the enemy fighters killed so we could always keep on top of newly launched fighters.
-Starcrunch
