Vega 2

Easy one here. Just tell us what you felt during this mission.

Enjoyed the mission though 1 quick thought: When engaging the fighter/bomber wings I felt no pressure, knowing that the next wave will not spawn till every ship in the current wave is killed. Perhaps when the current wave is down to 25% have the next wave spawn? This will add pressure to the player making them desperate to kill the final stragglers of the current wing before they can race to intercept the already inbound next wing?

radarhead wrote:Enjoyed the mission though 1 quick thought: When engaging the fighter/bomber wings I felt no pressure, knowing that the next wave will not spawn till every ship in the current wave is killed. Perhaps when the current wave is down to 25% have the next wave spawn? This will add pressure to the player making them desperate to kill the final stragglers of the current wing before they can race to intercept the already inbound next wing?

Does anyone agree with this? Would be easy enough to implement.

More importantly does anyone disagree?

Also another side query on Vega 2, did anyone find the ISS pilot lines right before the 30 capship missiles show yup a little confusing? To me it seemed like they were taunting kilrathi that i couldnt see (thus phalanx saying somethings up and pulling the wing out of autopilot). Though on replay at this point the radar images are't in focus, so maybe they are just celebrating, though odd lines for celebrating. Thoughts?

radarhead wrote:Also another side query on Vega 2, did anyone find the ISS pilot lines right before the 30 capship missiles show yup a little confusing? To me it seemed like they were taunting kilrathi that i couldnt see (thus phalanx saying somethings up and pulling the wing out of autopilot). Though on replay at this point the radar images are't in focus, so maybe they are just celebrating, though odd lines for celebrating. Thoughts?

My thoughts exactly. I brought this up in one of our meetings but I wanted to see if anybody else finds this bit of dialogue as confusing as I do before we take any actions...

KeldorKatarn"]

If done properly with good balancing it would make the mission more dynamic, after all we're here for testing don't we 😉

About the attack waves: I'm not so sure but I recommend to try it out and decide afterwards.

KeldorKatarn"] Missed this part of the conversation before.

I like that idea. It does add to the frenetic nature of the mission. Just a suggestion but set it up so that after 25% of the wave is down then set the timer for 10 seconds or 15 seconds or whatever works right in practice and then the next wave arrives. If the first wave is down quickly then there is a reward of a brief pause... but if it takes a long time then there will be another wave inbound.

Ice wrote: KeldorKatarn hat geschrieben:

radarhead hat geschrieben:Enjoyed the mission though 1 quick thought: When engaging the fighter/bomber wings I felt no pressure, knowing that the next wave will not spawn till every ship in the current wave is killed. Perhaps when the current wave is down to 25% have the next wave spawn? This will add pressure to the player making them desperate to kill the final stragglers of the current wing before they can race to intercept the already inbound next wing?

Does anyone agree with this? Would be easy enough to implement.

Missed this part of the conversation before.

I like that idea. It does add to the frenetic nature of the mission. Just a suggestion but set it up so that after 25% of the wave is down then set the timer for 10 seconds or 15 seconds or whatever works right in practice and then the next wave arrives. If the first wave is down quickly then there is a reward of a brief pause... but if it takes a long time then there will be another wave inbound.

I'm a bit doubtful about this. It might add some tension but you have to see this from two sides. If you are a good pilot and easily kill off wave after wave the mission will stay easy. But if you are just an average skilled pilot you might get desperate. I think it is a good idea to reward good players, but I doubt it is usefull to build up even higher pressure for those who already got trouble beating the mission.

It's a fair point to be sure. If the Saga mission builders feel like they want to build that much tension in they could trigger things that way on the higher difficulty levels... if I remember my FREDing days right that was a distinct possibility.

Samheyn wrote: I'm a bit doubtful about this. It might add some tension but you have to see this from two sides. If you are a good pilot and easily kill off wave after wave the mission will stay easy. But if you are just an average skilled pilot you might get desperate. I think it is a good idea to reward good players, but I doubt it is usefull to build up even higher pressure for those who already got trouble beating the mission.

Maybe there is a way to link the pressure with the skill levels?

- According to the difficulty level, the waves could appear in shorter intervals - The percentage of ships that need to be destroyed before a new wave jumps in could be increased with every level

Stinger"]

That is not possible.

We totally missed my original question here btw. What were your emotions during this mission?

Well the first time I flew the mission I actually failed it because I disobeyed my orders and went at full afterburner to save Fort Crocket from annihilation. It was sad to lose so many souls to the Kilrathi. And the noble attitude of the Ferret's pilots who stayed to defend their home in the face of certain doom... well I felt great sorrow for them (after all I fought with them side by side few minutes back). May they rest in peace 😭

damson wrote:Well the first time I flew the mission I actually failed it because I disobeyed my orders and went at full afterburner to save Fort Crocket from annihilation. It was sad to lose so many souls to the Kilrathi. And the noble attitude of the Ferret's pilots who stayed to defend their home in the face of certain doom... well I felt great sorrow for them (after all I fought with them side by side few minutes back). May they rest in peace 😭

I tried to fly back on full afterburners, too. The feelings that came up during that mission were shame and anger. Shame because you couldn't do anything but run away, anger because of the growing wish for revenge.

After replaying the mission during the beta 4 re-run I can add another feeling to the list : thank god I wasn't there when the kilrathi arrived. A couple of minutes earlier sandmans wing would have been in the middle of the action and most probably they wouldn't have enough fuel to leave the area with afterburners.... and don't forget some of the cats fighters are faster than the hellcats...

Where is colonel blair when you need him ? 😂 Two heavy carriers, dozens of fighters, 30 cap missiles ? no problem for the heart of the tiger :geek: He would have done it in an arrow! at least if duke nukem was his wingman...

Samheyn wrote:He would have done it in an arrow! at least if duke nukem was his wingman...

Don't insult Duke Nukem - he would kick those furry asses all by himself 😂

The Duke also isn't what he used to be anymore 😛

Am I imagining it or did many lines indeed disappear before the destruction of F.C.?

We removed the lines that didn't fit and only caused confusion like the ISS taunts. Yes

KeldorKatarn wrote:The Duke also isn't what he used to be anymore 😛

Are there less Kilrathi bombers and more fighters in the waves compared to eariler Beta iterations, or I'm just imaging it? Uninstalled Beta3 so can't confirm.

Overall mission plays fine. No bugs sighted.

You are imagining things.

I don't know why buut somehow I don't feel sad to watch the destruction of F.C. Perhabs it's because the people on board are like Redshirts for me. But if a main Character dies, then perhabs I would feel sad. I did feel sad to watch the deaths of Spock, Kirk, Tasha Yar, Jadzia Dax and Data in Star Trek. Same with Padme's and Darth Vader's death in Star Wars.

It made me sad. I was bummed out man. You guys really pull a number on the player here. You destroy the last of the bombers, that perky "mission complete!" voice is heard, happy cheerful music is playing, and then you get to sit and watch the station you just spent 8 - 12 minutes defending get blown to bits anyway.

Nicely done ➡️

An oddity that stood out to me is that the Lightspeed character changes sex between his/her first and second line (pictured here from the messages window). One's a male voice actor and then the second is female.

[Image: http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/6514/wcsagasse22011062313080.jpg]

Btw a question: Is this supposed to be the same Lightspeed/Litespeed from WC Academy and WC Armada?

Anjelus wrote:An oddity that stood out to me is that the Lightspeed character changes sex between his/her first and second line (pictured here from the messages window). One's a male voice actor and then the second is female.

That's normal at this stage of development.

beadvised that plot specific voices are mission dependent and assigned by the designer. Any automatic messages including death messages are persona depenent. The latter are not final yet, so it can happen that pilots speac their genric stuff with the wrong persona.

Uhmm when I defeated the first wave of attackers I found one more target: a Zartoth in a distance of 60000 from the fort! It didnt even use its afterburners to engage, so I had to go there, using half my fuel. After killing it Another attack wing in a distance of 50000 at the fort. And all the way back... X_X It was really annoying. Is it supposed to be this way?

thanks for spotting this, please open a ticket for this one with reproduction steps

TParis wrote:Uhmm when I defeated the first wave of attackers I found one more target: a Zartoth in a distance of 60000 from the fort! It didnt even use its afterburners to engage, so I had to go there, using half my fuel. After killing it Another attack wing in a distance of 50000 at the fort. And all the way back... X_X It was really annoying. Is it supposed to be this way?

It happened to me once during Beta1, but I couldn't reproduce it. Played that mission few times after that and thought that in newer Beta versions it was corrected... apparently it wasn't. So I also confirm this issue.

It seems logical to me that the Zartoth stays this far away from the battle. Afterall, it's not really meant to participate in fights, except in that way to confuse the enemy and to keep them silent.

damson"]

That is... strange. The arrival cue for this ship is set to "in front of" - Front Crockett - 4000 clicks. I can't see what could possibly go wrong.

I changed its orders slightly. Should stick closer to the action now.

FekLeyrTarg wrote:It seems logical to me that the Zartoth stays this far away from the battle. Afterall, it's not really meant to participate in fights, except in that way to confuse the enemy and to keep them silent.

Also, it would be great if one of the pilots would inform you about additional bomber wings approaching the the fort - adds to the atmosphere & "realism" and giving you a hint what to take care of next.

A LITTLE combat awareness of your own is still necessary you know. We won't tell you EVERYTHING 😉

Of course combat awareness should be required. The bombers didn't cause too much trouble without a pilot informing me. As I said, I consider it an additition to the atmosphere if your wing leader keeps informed (at least sometimes).

I agree with TParis about this. Sometimes you are in the middle of the fight without beeing able to cycle to the possible targets all the time. I think your fighter's systems would tell you if there are new contacts on the radar if you wanted to keep it realistic. This might not be necessary or realizable at the current stage, perhaps it even would start to annoy people. But a short message from the wing leader if an enemy wing arrives that poses a threat to a mission cristical target would still be nice.

I always loved the way lucasarts integrated arrivals into the background music and pasted text messages about the status of flight groups/cap ships at the bottom of the screen. Certainly, this wouldn't fit in with the wing commander style

You guys know there is a "B" key for targetting bombers right?

Not to mention that in most cases incoming waves will trigger an "enemy arrival" message.

As I said, for me it's not really a targeting but a atmosphere & logic issue.

As Tparis said, the question is not if you can beat the mission without being noticed. It's just a feeling of "beeing on your own" where you probably shouldn't be. Perhaps it's a minor thing and it's only me and tparis who get this feeling but at least we have told you 😉

Samheyn wrote:I always loved the way lucasarts integrated arrivals into the background music and pasted text messages about the status of flight groups/cap ships at the bottom of the screen. Certainly, this wouldn't fit in with the wing commander style

You're right, the idea behind the soundsystem "imuse" used by LucasArts was quite an innovation for that time. Wing Commander later came with voice messages. I like both ideas, but I could imagine that it is too hard to implement in an FS2-Engine game that does not have a dynamic sound system...

Stinger wrote:but I could imagine that it is too hard to implement in an FS2-Engine game that does not have a dynamic sound system...

Uh.. what? We DO have a dynamic sound system. We also play arrival tracks. Just not for every single fighter wave because that simply doesn't sound good.

KeldorKatarn wrote: Uh.. what? We DO have a dynamic sound system. We also play arrival tracks. Just not for every single fighter wave because that simply doesn't sound good.

Seems like I'm just a bit deaf then :shock: Man... you're absolutely right and it seems like I should get more sleep.. shame on me!

Well it is kind of a complement. such a background feature works best when it is so natural that you are not really aware of it.

KeldorKatarn wrote:Well it is kind of a complement. such a background feature works best when it is so natural that you are not really aware of it.

Beta8 playthrough:

Now something seems to be screwed up...

When Fort Crocket gets hit by the missiles there is the following transmission:

📎 [Attachment: screen0002.jpg]

Doesn't seem like the right message, does it ?

Balancing seems ok by the way. The only thing that bugs me is the zartoth doing a head-on attack which doesn't make any sense. I always thought these ships would stay some 1000 meters away... It is always the first thing I take down as soon as I reach the fort.

That's right. When Beta 3 was there, the message was, like in the 2004 trailer: "Damn Cats! We'll see you in Hell!" It has something to do with the personas.

Might be, but doesn't it sound like there is a single guy bailing out ? 😁

Fixed already, it's a persona screwup due to an update. We're currently finalizing the Episode 1 missions in terms of messages, personas and timing. After that they should be in release ready state. We'll ask you guys to greenlight them after the next beta. After that, they won't be touched anymore.

So we better listen carefully during the next betas playthrough...

KeldorKatarn wrote:Easy one here. Just tell us what you felt during this mission.

At first I felt relief that the mission was over after successfully ordering both wings of Ferrets to go after one of the bombers each in each wave.

When Phalanx interrupts autopilot and the kilrathi arrive I was expecting us to be ordered back but when we were ordered not to I knew the base was lost and we couldn't do anything about it. I agreed entirely with the orders we were given. But it pissed me off that the base was lost, and the guy still broadcasting asking us for help was heart wrenching. It made me want to kick feline backside a lot.

If I were wearing a hat, I'd take it off for the guys behind this mission 😁

Anjelus wrote:An oddity that stood out to me is that the Lightspeed character changes sex between his/her first and second line (pictured here from the messages window). One's a male voice actor and then the second is female.

I noticed this too.

That should probably be fixed by Beta 9

I've noticed following: -Greywolf says "Great, kid" while his subtitles say "Nice shot, kid" -Roy Fokker has the word "Ranger" on his helmet while saying "New contacts. Checking IFF query... contacts read as hostile" -Hawkeye has a female voice and the word "Honeybear" on his/her helmet while saying "Incoming. Enemy fighters"

Mantis tickets have been opened.

beta9:

No errors to report.

This time I had the feeling the destruction of the station took much more time than in my previous playthroughs. There was a message pause of about 20-30 seconds before the station exploded, the stations last message arrived and my team mates finally started talking again.