Whoa, pirates got one hell of a ship upgrade!

U

Unregistered

Guest
This is a great remake, and while the pseudo-Newtonian physics threw me off at first, I'm back to tearing Talons to shreds with my tricked out Tarsus. Which brings me to the bug(?) I think I've found.

I docked on a Paradigm in the XXN-1974 system, and took some missions. I saved before I did them, as I had some work to do. When I come back into the game, it respawns me near Jolson, saying I died. As my ship was intact, and I wasn't poorer, I ignored it and landed on Jolson to get some missions (the ones I took disappeared, along with the Paradigm). I took a pirate sweep, and go after the Talons. Now, one Talon is flying around, shooting dual lasers at nothing. I try to get him, when he flips around and hits me with either a faceful of tachyon and fusion gun fire, or tachyon and mass driver fire. Since when can Talons mount 2 lasers, a tachyon gun, and two Fusion cannons (didn't sound like Mass Drivers)?
 
non military ships have random loadouts.
they are weaker early in the game (to let you get started)
but eventually just become whatever.
you can run into some very tough enemies, and some real pansies... the ship itself won't guarantee any loadout.

-scheherazade
 
scheherazade is correct; however, the engine allows us to limit various ships to any combination of light/medium/heavy/tractor guns per mount.

So I could allow the talon to have 2 light/medium mounts and 1 light/medium/heavy

or even 2 light's and 1 medium/heavy

whatever suits people...

I'm willing to take suggestions, particularly from those more familiar with the canon :)
 
Suggestion?
Here I am!
::D

In the Old Privateer the Talon was rather an ineffective ship: a Tarsus well equipped was more than a match for a lonely Talon.
For a lonely Talon.
But, I think, the Talon was not intended for the solitary attack...
For the solitary recon mission yes, but for the solitary attack no.
In fact the Talon usually was not alone: wings of 3 (or more) Talons was a common sight, even in the more guarded sectors.
Thus, maybe, we should increase the number of Talon and reduce their armaments...
A Talon with a firepower of a Centurion? Oh my God!
 
we strove for a long time to reduce the # talons in a pack--now for 009 you want it back up? hmmm

more definitely start to pack as the difficulty goes up--but we could theoretically change the gun types one is allowed to carry
 
Unregistered said:
I docked on a Paradigm in the XXN-1974 system, and took some missions. I saved before I did them, as I had some work to do. When I come back into the game, it respawns me near Jolson, saying I died. As my ship was intact, and I wasn't poorer, I ignored it and landed on Jolson to get some missions (the ones I took disappeared, along with the Paradigm).
NPC ships and non-campaign missions are not stored int he savegame file. Any missions you had will be gone when you load, as will any ships that had been flying around (such as the Paradigm). The message about you being dead seems to be the standard message you get when you respawn (when you load a game within the game interface, you get that messasge for a second before it loads the game). I assume that loading a game that had you on a ship that no longer existed prompted that message.. nothing to worry about.

Talons are still easier to take out than other ships.. they have weaker shields, and their pilots are less skilled. It is a bit frightful to run across one with big guns, but I find it hard to imagine that pirates all have exactly the same loadouts.. they are like the player, individuals, cobbling stuff together as best they can. We could prevent them from carrying the best guns, but I don't mind getting a nasty surprise now and then

They never have 5guns though, it simply isn't possible. Sometimes the bolts look a little different against different color backgrounds.. either there were two of them (one with lasers) or the bolts looked different when they were headed towards you. I am curious about one of them shooting at nothing though.. you're sure there wasn't a merchant around or something? That's something I've never seen.
 
Hellcatv you are right: the mass attack of the Talons was a problem, but yesterday a lonley Talon attacked me with 2 lasers (no problem) and 2 plasma (I think: the projectile was a green sphere, like the Steltek gun... Anyway, these spheres was VERY effective, trust me)...
 
I'm pretty sure we took care of NPCs being able to randomly mount steltek guns. Note that tachyons against a blue background tend to look green sometimes. Still, we'll look into that for sure.

However, it simply isn't possible for a talon to have two lasers and two plasma guns, they only have 3 mounts. The program shouldn't be able to just create an extra one out of thin air.

But if two people have reported it (unless you were that unregistered fellow earlier) it should be looked at. I just wonder if people are counting the shots wrong?

stderr and stdout could be useful here, though it would be a heck of a lot to look through :D If you see something like that again, send stderr and stdout to privater at gmail.com

anyway, if we decide to limit the types of guns they can have we can do so fairly easily.. change the entries in talon.blank from {;;;Light Medium Heavy Special; etc etc to {;;;Light Medium Special; etc et. Or maybe it's talon.template. whatever.
 
Well, the problem seems to have gone away, but I'm certain that I counted the mounts right. First randomly firing dual lasers, then a tachyon/dual fusion burst. Oh well, if it surfaces again I will let you guys know.
 
well, the truth is, the AI has flawless aim when shooting at you.
so even 1 talon with 1 laser will seriously rape you if you're just starting out with your 1-laser tarsus.

and a flight of 4 3-lasered talons are enough to bring a player with a fully upgraded centurion down to no armour and some decent damage by the time the talons are dead.

they're simply relentless.... which is why we could _really_ use that gunnery-skill attribute (fubar) for the AI... daniel :).

(please consider it... having hte AI fly off only does so much, when they dessimate you once htey do fire).

it's also not an armour or shields issue. any gun if left to place a ton of hits, will whipe out the shileds of even the toughest fighter in no time. let alone a goup going at it...

-scheherazade
 
there are already some constraints on AI aim.
I don't think the AI should aim in the wrong place, I think it should just be worse about deciding when to shoot.

so there's the aggressivity setting in the .config file -- that determines how often he shoots even if he doesn't have you quite aligned in his crosshairs.
there's also the reaction time setting...which determines how long he waits after he's obtained a reasonable shot before actually firing.

With both of these settings you can change the AI to "waiting until he has the perfect shot, then firing" or "spraying the air with bad shots" or "waiting until he has the perfect shot, then delaying a bit more cus he's got a bad reaction time"

perhaps there should be some other setting, but aside from "aiming the wrong way" it's kinda tricky to get anything worse
 
well, teh aggressivity stat is sorta whack (yo).

think about it, given:
the AI will track towards you on whatever arc it's going
it will (presumably) place a hit when a shot if sent off,w hich is alligned with you.


therefore, if it were firing sooner, (at a poorer-aim spot), those shots won't matter.
and eventually the lined-up shot will count.

with low or high aggressivity the alligned shot still will exist, so the damage will be dealt at the same time, just one will have extra gun-shots-spray going on...



the stat for 'waiting a bit after getting a good shot' is sorta useful, but only if the aggressivity stat is REALLY low. because otherwise it will just wait-before-spraying, and will be shooting by the time its tracking-arc reaches your direction.



really a better solution is to make it track to a point just around you. it would emulate a person with 'non-ideal control input to allign a shot'.

the point can float around too... at some radius distance around hte actaul target.
that radius can be adjusted to be the aim-skill of hte AI firing.

so some AI will palce shots nearer you, whole others will sorta shoot about you a bit.

also, the spot can be about a 'sphere about you'. so then it won't actually be missing always, sometimes the sphere-spot projection and your player projection will be lined up.
i.e. even a bad shot aims right time to time.

just make the AI aim at a point that randomly revolves abotu its target.
and make the radius adjustable as an AI aim-skill stat.

-scheherazade
 
good old talons, loved raming the things to death in the original, even i the tarsus and centurion (even tho they always didnt have the shields and armor to keep it up). i understand their pirates and your thought that this being a remake based on privateer, that to give it some more realisim that pirates could possibly have any kind of loadout.. but i still think they should really only slightly deviate from the way they were in the game originally, either 3 lasers or 2 lasers and 1 particle beam for weaps, and low to moderate piloting skill in the original to (as was previously posted) 2 variable light mounts and 1 variable med mount. but never a heavy, not at least for the standard pirate talons. Now if you wanna play with a modified talon, like in some other space games, there were always leaders or aces with slightly modifed ships.. then ya could say the given leader/ace might modifiy his power system to allow for 1 heavy weap and 2 lights. with above average skill and make the skin of the ship look different (and maybe even target name) so can be distinguished. (even original privateer did that in one or 2 instances i can remember thru both Priv1 and RE) that would open up your ability to play with it and periodicly in high danger areas spawn a tougher talon to combat. but other than going up against aces.. if you have a properly equiped centurion or other fighter ship, talons should be a cake walk.. period.
 
So long as they don't use torpedoes against me too much, I don't care so much what guns they're using. The torps in the remake are deadly fast (kinda like the original), deadly powerful (just like the original), and treated like guns (which makes them much easier to use than the original, since they get linked fire, rapid fire, and an ITTS diamond).

I don't think I ever saw enemies use torpedoes in the original (I think I would have noticed the sound, at least, since it is a lot different than a gun), but I'm almost 100% sure I've had demons use them against me (and at the speed at which a group of demons crushed a Kamekh and its six dralthi escorts, I'm pretty sure they must have had them then). I'm pretty sure I've seen talons with torpedoes too some of the time (either that, or talons with four guns).

Has anyone else seen this? Is it intentional? It makes the Palan missions a real pain in the butt, that's for sure, and any ship that can't dodge torpedoes is pretty much screwed by these guys. Nothing can stand up to a stream of torps for more that a couple seconds except a capital ship. Or a base.

One other thing: Any particular reason why launchers hold 1 more warhead than in the original? Just seems kinda odd.

Sorry, I've started complaining again haven't I? Still, I can't wait to see the fixes in store for the next version! *goes back to work*
 
ya...not sure why you can jam one xtra missile in there.... it had to do with the "buy 'em all at once" fix from a while back...we could just reduce the capacity by 1 I guess ;-)
 
I can confirm some pretty hefty weaponry on enemy ships. It's bad enough that i'm running up against about 12 at a time, but when i'm facing talons with fusion blasters or a demon with a steltek, it tends to make things... interesting. My roomate (an old school privateer junkie) confirmed that i was getting blown to smithereens by a steltek at least once.

Some forces you go up against probably would have some high powered weaponry, but the majority would probably not. Maybe the random layout should include a probability of the ships getting certain weapons if it already doesn't, so that fusion cannons aren't as likely as laser beams and so on and so forth. This way if you are facing a squadron of talons or stilletoes, most will be armed with lasers with maybe one or two having a heavy weapon.
 
There's one more, cuz there's one in the chamber of course!
 
re: enemies with Steltek cannons.. that shouldn't be possible. I know we fixed something at some point but now I can't remember if it was after beta 8. I'll watch for it.

Several people have expressed displeasure with talons carrying plasma cannons and the like. The easy fix is to prevent them from ever carrying heavier guns, but a probability thing sounds interesting. At any rate, tehy are bound by the same factors as players.. a talon with a weak reactor won't be able to get off many shots with the fusion gun before his energy banks have run dry, so hopefully you can dodge a few ;) All of this should be less painful now that shields are fixed.

Unregistered said:
There's one more, cuz there's one in the chamber of course!
LOL
 
Back
Top