Star Blazers Mod

[Suicide Junkie]

Would it be possible to swap the hitpoints on shields and armor?

I don't know about the physics of the starblazers universe, but from the story in-game, it sounds like you are supposed to be taking damage in these combats.

As it is now, armor is extremely weak, and shields are very strong.
ISTM that the reverse should be true:
Shields : weak, but regenerate over time
Armor : strong, but only repairable at spacedocks.

[Campeador]

SJ can you make a new link for me on the Mod/campaign section as before? I posted the new update called StarBlazers-Campaign1_v1.1.rar (6.3MB). I deleted some of my previous posts that became obsolete.
The update will reflect bug fixes, and a few minor changes as I mentioned before. I did also beefed up a little the base at Pluto since it was a tad too easy (I added more armor to it).

There are shields on StarBlazers universe. In one of the episodes (they actually show it once) you could see a transparent shield bubble covering the bridge and part of the cannon bateries on the Yamato. Since the Earth forcess copy most of the technology from the most advanced Gamilons, it is logic to assume to the Gamilon ships also have shields.
The crew of the Yamato was continuously reparing the Yamato every chance they get. Even while traveling through the sectors (but not during space warp). This reflects nicely on the game since you can fully repair the damage every time you dock. During combat the regeneration is slow enough not to make a real difference unless there is a good amount of time to rest (At Pluto, after taking a pounding they try to hide behind a moon to make repairs, but the Reflex gun hit them there with the help of the satellites. They even went to the other side of planet Pluto to make repairs and they got hit again. They even went on water, there is the Pluto Sea, really!, to make repairs and still the Gamilons keept hitting them). They went under water to escape the Reflex gun and make repairs and they were attack by Gamilon submarines. Pluto was a real pain. (There may not always be spacedocks to make repairs, will see how it works on the second part.)

Thanks one more time for pointing out corrections and ideas. Have fun!

[Suicide Junkie]

Oh, I'm not saying that the shields should be eliminated.

Just that you should consider swapping the strength of shields and armor.
That way the shields help by blocking part of the damage as they recharge, but you are sure to take some armor damage in combat. Something with a little more tangibility than numbers on the shield bar. Busted stuff that you have to peel off the ship in spacedock and replace with new plates.
Gritty repair work, you know?


PS:
Teach a man to fish they say - All you need to do is right-click the attachment link, and copy the address.
Then paste that address into a post over here.
[ url=<destination address>] Acutal Link Text [/url]
Click Me

[Campeador]

SJ, thanks for showing me how to do the link, that was real easy.
About the armor/shield thing, point taken. Maybe I do someting about it later. By the way I do get alot of damage on my ship, sometimes my ship survive will all the systems in red, if it does not explode first(not every player is a top gun, at least not me). Anyway the first part was supposed to be easy for the Yamato, except maybe the last two missions, but it is going to get alot harder as they go into Gamilon territory.

[Q]

I look forward to see the next campaign!

The reflex cannon really got me. I was blown to pieces before I realized what was happening. To be killed by one tiny satellite was really unexpected.
Then when I learned how to kill them I thought to be very smart and picked up a reflex cannon from the debris that was floating in space. Just to learn that they could only be used in sats and bases!

Good work!

[Q]

In the last mission when you should destroy all Gamilon ships in the Pluto system I had twice the same problem:
There is a Gamilon battleship and I fired the wave motion gun at it. The game froze completely and I could not even activate the task manager (Ctrl/Alt/Del) to end Starfury. I had to switch the computer off (Windows XP Home). There was no problem when I destroyed the battleship with other weapons. Nor was there any problem when I used the wave motion gun against other ships.
Could someone try to reproduce this?

[Suicide Junkie]

I had the game freeze up on me when the battleship was down to its last 100 hitpoints or so.
I was in windowed mode, and running under win98, so I had no problem end-tasking it.

I then reloaded from the autosave, and it worked fine.

[Campeador]

The reflex cannon and its satellites were dangerous. The Gamilons are really wicked puppies!

The freezing screen of death. Yes, I have experienced the same thing during testing. Except that it happened to me in Minerva (I have never found the Battleship at Pluto it is random, but yes, you will certainly will find it at Minerva). It is random, sometimes I finish the game without incident. I have been chasing a possible cause for the problem. It has happened with the WMG and also with others weapons. It freezes exactly at the moment the ship explodes (and only with the gamilon battleship). The Gamilon battleship has more firing points than any other ship, it has 22 firing points. That is alot of "candy". I do not know if the combination of the graphics of the explosions in addition firing of the weapons of the other ship can cause an overload on the computer system ram or video. Just for testing, one time I reduced the firing points on the Gamilon Battleship from 22 to 19 and the error never happened again. Then again maybe I did not try enough times.
I also noticed that when I play the game start to finish, the game seems to slow down or becomes a little erratic by the time I reach the part of destroying the Pluto base. Ussualy I save the game at that point, quit and reload, and then it seems fine.
Yet it is still a puzzle to me, I have chech the code but I still do not see anything that may cause it. But yes it does happens the moment the ship explodes, on the last killing blast. And sometimes nothing bad happens!
If the problem persist I can always try to either reduce the firing points on the Battleship, or how long the WMG beam last, or the graphics on the explosion itself.
Can you save the game, quit, and then load the game again and then take the Gamilon battleship down to see if it still happen? Also does it happen when the ship is close or far away?

[Lancefighter]

Nice mod you have going here. i found some stuff on the internet, i was looking for bsg stuff though, i thing it is the right ships
i cant get the url thing to work so
http://www.shipschematics.net/yamato/