I started playing freelancer again, and was looking up various versions to play this one sounded neat. Battleships with shields that anyone with enough credits can buy. The intent was not to have a crazy silly world, which is what mods usually turn into. I am regretfully sorry to inform you Igiss that your vision has failed. I appreciate your efforts but there is still a long way to go to make this mod work. Allow me to explain what I mean.
1. Everything costs more except it often doesn't. Huh? When Rheinland battleships had 3.5k/7k damage missiles I confess to buying a second one so that my Rheinland ship had 4 instead of 2 missile and 2 flak turrets (which I meant to test, but I think they are still crap). I was supposed to have paid 47 million at the time, but I didn't. I popped off every turret (since I had found better ones) both flak turrets and the shield since I already had a 160k shield. Instead of 47, I paid about 12 million. Interestingly enough you must have the list price before you can buy it even if you plan to customize it. With the large transport 12 million was an hour's work. With the large train you make about 5 million in 10 minutes (
2. Weapon power really really needs to be implemented for capital ships. You asked once if they had enough power to keep weapons going. The problem mainly is that none of the battleship weapons require power. The result is that you can do things which start to get out of hand. For example you can place 6 cruiser forward guns on a sabre. Why would anyone do that? to have 5/10k damage on each mount. It fires for free, and has a faster refire rate than your fighter super weapon. This brings up the next issue....
3. Newly implemented weapons need to be designated as turret or gun along with a class rating. This would prevent people from doing things like putting cruiser missile turrets on fighter gun slots. You can use battleship missile turrets but they look funny; curiser missile turrets on a fighter look intimidating. On the other hand, Osiris/battleship missile turrets on a humpback will make you fall out of your chair (it looks like a giant turtle of sorts, and you really can't see the humback, just the turrets).
4. Cruiser forward guns/Gunboat large forward guns are totally out of control at the moment. When a ship intended to have the weapon has its standard turrets and the large guns everything is fine. When you buy a gunboat over and over stripping off the forward gun and mount 3 of them along with the "hardwired" one that comes with the ship you get something utterly silly; silly is only fun for a little while. It's pretty boring that right now the perfect ship design is the Rhenland gunboat with 4 gunboat cannons. With an ounce of effort you can be dealing 20k shield and about 50k hull per shot. While the barrage of fire is incredibly beautiful, I think it starts to ruin things. My suggestion on how to fix this is covered with weapon power. Which reminds me about shields.
5. The shields you implemented should be more restrictive about which ships can equip them. Are you aware that large trains can mount 160k shields? Are you aware gunboats and cruisers can mount 160k shields? personally I see no problem here, the trade off really is the maneuverability for hull strength. Additionally larger vessels have superior firepower which makes them more attractive.
6. Yanagi Depot is incredibly broken in its lucrative trade opportunities to New Berlin. Being More specific you should change the sell price of cardimine at yanagi to 1000 credits up from 500 something. Please do not close the sigma-13 to Berlin wormhole.... changing this one commodity should fix everything. Basically you buy parts from berlin to yanagi. This exchange covers the price of the cardamine you buy, which sells to Berlin for a 5 million profit in the large train. Quite silly really as you can do 2-3 of these runs in the time it takes for 1 diamond run.
7. Talk to a guy named Dark-Cruise; he had some really great ideas about how to make a static alliance-coalition battle based on another existing mod. You blow up stations and take them over.
That's all I can think of this minute, but I'm sure there's more I've overlooked. If you would like to further discuss these issues, you can p/m me for my aim screen name.
Would it be possible to make the gun-mounts on larger ships fixed and not un-mountable? This would solve the problem right away, without fiddly energy calculations. Or is this necessary to make the ships cost more?
Also have one type of class 9 and one type of class 10 freighter shield for the larger ships. Reserve class 10 for battleships.
I also sold my Osiris recently to buy a Dreadnaught, and mounted the Osiris turrets on it. I preferred the look of the Osiris, but I couldn't resist the lure of the extra gun mounts any longer.
Good work, Wrath.
Role-played characters:
daedalus - Liberty Navy
bandersnatch - Ruthless criminal possessed by a (huge) alien
Shredder - Small-time Kusari pirate, looking to join the Blood Dragons
"Bounty Hunters. We don't need that scum." - Admiral Piett
Wrath,Aug 9 2005, 03:13 PM Wrote:On the other hand, Osiris/battleship missile turrets on a humpback will make you fall out of your chair (it looks like a giant turtle of sorts, and you really can't see the humback, just the turrets).
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Can you post a screenie? Let's have a laugh.
:lol:
Role-played characters:
daedalus - Liberty Navy
bandersnatch - Ruthless criminal possessed by a (huge) alien
Shredder - Small-time Kusari pirate, looking to join the Blood Dragons
"Bounty Hunters. We don't need that scum." - Admiral Piett
I must admit that Wrath is right. However many of the things he was talking about cannot be improved alot because of modding limitations imposed by Freelancer. I may find workarounds but they will never be perfect. Things that I can improve I surely will, that's why I'm here.
Quote:Instead of 47, I paid about 12 million.
Price limit on all equipment is 10 million. No more. Ship hull cannot cost more than 10 million too. I know it's stupid but go tell this to Digital Anvil guys.
Quote:Why would anyone do that? to have 5/10k damage on each mount. It fires for free, and has a faster refire rate than your fighter super weapon.
Simple solution: good power generators on battleships, turrets eating up lots of power. Impossible to handle for a VHF, but easy for battleship.
Quote:Newly implemented weapons need to be designated as turret or gun along with a class rating.
If they will consume power, this problem will be solved automatically.
Quote:Cruiser forward guns/Gunboat large forward guns are totally out of control at the moment.
Agreed, I'll fix that.
Quote:The shields you implemented should be more restrictive about which ships can equip them.
Didn't quite understand this point.
Quote:Yanagi Depot is incredibly broken in its lucrative trade opportunities to New Berlin.
Easily fixable.
Quote:Talk to a guy named Dark-Cruise; he had some really great ideas about how to make a static alliance-coalition battle based on another existing mod. You blow up stations and take them over.
This is better to discuss on forums because here posts and pms history is easily accessible. Can you invite him here? This might be too difficult for me to script for myself, but if there's existing code... :)
Igiss,Aug 9 2005, 06:46 PM Wrote:Price limit on all equipment is 10 million. No more. Ship hull cannot cost more than 10 million too. I know it's stupid but go tell this to Digital Anvil guys.
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Maybe there's a way round this by reducing commodity prices, say dividing them by 10, so that something previously at $1600 would be $160. It would slow down trading.
10 million for an Osiris would then look expensive. Missions would be worth doing and fighters worth flying as well as trading.
Guns could be free and come fixed to the ship?
Liberty ship prices would have to be reduced so that pilots don't have to spend too long in the Starflier.
Regarding power usage: Note that some powered guns on fighters will still fire even when the energy is at zero.
Role-played characters:
daedalus - Liberty Navy
bandersnatch - Ruthless criminal possessed by a (huge) alien
Shredder - Small-time Kusari pirate, looking to join the Blood Dragons
"Bounty Hunters. We don't need that scum." - Admiral Piett
As for the gunboat/crusier weapons.... here's my suggestion: leave them as they are, but make them unmountable. Make it so that only the ship they came with has them mounted and if you sell the ship the gun becomes unequipable. Is that possible? The best gunboat has 7 guns, if you just reduce the power it will once again be a pretty worthless ship. This way you can't mount them anywhere else, and the ship has a formidable weapon.
Daedalus has a really good idea with the reduced price of commodities. The problem is that some commodities are already very very cheap. Still it might be a better solution to inflating prices of guns to artificially raise battleship costs.
Sorry , got the name wrong, but he was speaking of coding that exists but is still being finalized..... there is a problem apparently when a station is destroyed that has a character docked there.
Yes, as soup was saying... Basically I think you need to make the 160k shileld be level 10. Additionally only cruisers, gunboats and battleships should be able to mount that level 10 shield. You should be able to reduce one or two of the new freighter sheilds to 8 or 9. That would mean something like a humpback could now equip the 10k shield of the shield that comes with a large transport, but it can't put on the 40k shield or the 80k shield. This would also keep freighter shields down to 40k or 80k which is plenty. Honestly even the 20k shield is hard to lose vs fighters.
One more thing, I would really like to see battleships with faster movement.... say a battleship has base speed of 100, cruisers 120. Don't mess with gunboats much because they have the thruster.