Capship Strikes

is is also safeguard so ships firing the missile don't blow themselves up.

First of all, I have to say I'm really enjoying WCS and the overall quality is great. So the missile issue is a minor quibble.

I've noticed with ship-launched missiles, the invulnerability period is only about 5seconds, that makes sense if you don't want them to take out the ship that launched them.

For the segments where you need to intercept a missile barrage, if you want to keep the timer straight, why not set the closer to start? As is, (for example the TCS Simon mission) it takes roughly 10-15 seconds to intercept the missiles (impact time~30-35s) at max arrow speed, leaving me with 20 seconds of following missiles i can't hit for no apparent reason and a 10-15s engagement window. If you start them something like 20s out instead of 45 and cut the invulnerability time down, you keep roughly the same engagement window and same difficulty, but without that awkward chase. Or else maybe one could do something with multiple barrages, although i'm still only in the first third of the campaign so I don't know what's coming next.
Anyway, I'm not trying to rag on you guys, you've all done a stupendous job! I just like talking about mission design.

p.s. I hadn't realized you can't have a trigger for when all missiles are destroyed

I've had this weird idea of attaching tiny invisible/cloaked ships to the capship missiles, which are destroyed by the missile explosion to trigger a "kill" and work around the problem (if the problem actually is that capship missiles cannot be identified as destroyed or alive), but I'm not sure if that's just a wild pipe dream or may actually be useful.

sp00n wrote: I've had this weird idea of attaching tiny invisible/cloaked ships to the capship missiles, which are destroyed by the missile explosion to trigger a "kill" and work around the problem (if the problem actually is that capship missiles cannot be identified as destroyed or alive), but I'm not sure if that's just a wild pipe dream or may actually be useful.

We have source code access here. We don't need to tweak or hack, we can simply implement. However at this point such a change is simply out of the questions because of balancing reasons.

KeldorKatarn wrote: We have source code access here. We don't need to tweak or hack, we can simply implement. However at this point such a change is simply out of the questions because of balancing reasons.

Just offering the perspective of someone who loved WC1-4, and didn't know about this game until about 4 days ago, but was extremely happy to find it.

When I got to the TCS Simon mission, I would afterburner out to the missiles, and spend a lot of time taking potshots at them (didn't know about glide mode til I came to this forum). Extreme frustration ensued because I would get out to the first group and be taking many, many shots at them with no effect, then seemingly out of nowhere I'd start being able to shoot them. I assumed it was just due to my gunnery at first, but like someone else mentioned in here, the hitboxes are pretty big once they become vulnerable.

My point is, within the confines of the game, for reasons unknown to me, I would afterburner my way out to a spread of invulnerable missiles that would suddenly become vulnerable with no apparent change within the game. There was no 'shield' on them, there was no logical reason I couldn't kill them early when I got to them, and this behavior would continue seemingly halfway in to the ships under attack before I could start hitting them.

It just seems to me a better way to do it would be to set up the mission so when you're able to get to them, you can damage them. If that's too far out and makes the mission too easy, move the start point for them in closer.

It strikes me as an unnecessarily frustrating thing to seemingly do everything 'right' by getting to them asap, but not being able to damage them until the invulnerability timer wears off silently. It would even be an improvement if they had some kind of visible indicator like a shield on the way in, to show they can't be shot, that disappears when they become vulnerable.

Awesome work on the game and it's not a major gripe, I just feel it could be done better, and was worth mentioning as constructive criticism.

Wily.

Noted. But as I said, it's too late now for a change.

This is what's called Fake Difficulty .
WARNING: TVTROPES LINK

TL;DR, it's when the implementation of certain game mechanics results in a player loss rather than skill. This is a textbook example. On the mild side, it breaks the immersion; on the acute side, it defies the very spirit of the game.

Loving it! I'm only at the asteroid base mission, but other than that one minor quibble, I think it's really well done. Good variety on mission types, takes me right back to the original games.

I normally don't like to be the person whose first post on a forum is a criticism, but it just seemed like something that had a relatively simple fix might be able to be put into a patch down the road.

Overall though, great game!

Wiley.