Is it just me or is this game boring?

[Pulaski]

Mixing them anywhere on the ship or on the same side?

[Suicide Junkie]

I'm not sure as of recent patches.

I think most of us want them to be fully stackable, and have the shield bar show two different shades of green to mark phased and normal shields.

[Krsqk]

I, for one, would still like to see levels of phased shielding/phased weapons. Two possible options:

1) If weapon_phase_level > shield_phase_level, weapons pierce. Level 2 beams pierce level 1 and normal shields, level 5 pierce levels 1-4 and normal shields, etc. A similar case could be made for Skips Armor weapons and armor.

2) If weapon_phase_level = shield_phase_level, weapons pierce. More accurately, there wouldn't be phase levels, but frequencies. There could be several levels of shields, each vulnerable to a different "frequency" weapon.

Option 2 seems more quasi-realistic to me, but I think Option 1 would make for better gameplay. Option 2 would tend to limit the usefulness of phased weapons and multiply the usefulness of Skips All Shields weapons like tachyon cannons. It also brings the question of why you couldn't just "tune" your weapons to a different frequency (a la ST).

Both cases could bring up display issues, such as how many shield levels could be displayed. Maybe the best option would be to have each level displayed as a different shade of green but combined into a single bar, with the total shield points displayed.

[Baron Munchausen]

Please remember:

The whole point to this project was to develop a 3D 'real time' combat engine for SE V. The other elements of the game are just added fluff to make it worthwhile to release it as a seperate game. In another year or two maybe you'll be able to pull your SE V ships into Starfury and play 'practice battles' or even run missions on game maps from SE V. Then it will not seem so incomplete!

[Pulaski]

You know, the 2d vs 3d thing doesn't bother me as much as then endless colisions in battle, (crazy ivan tactics)the lack of trade model, or the boring differences in weapons.

I would love to have seen boarding parties carried over from SE IV, even if to not capture ships, than just kill crew.

Now that somebody mentioned it it's not that different from SFC which did have boarding parties.

[Devilsbane]

Please allow me to inform. Real space is not 3D in fact most of our own solar system is w/i a 2D plane. I think it is called the 'Elliptical Plane'. Even our own galaxy dimensions are 10000 light year spiral and 3000 light year deep at its core.
Yet I would have liked the game to have a floor and ceiling like that of air flight.

[ October 10, 2003, 17:11: Message edited by: Devilsbane ]

[Suicide Junkie]

You know, the 2d vs 3d thing doesn't bother me as much as then endless colisions in battle, (crazy ivan tactics)the lack of trade model, or the boring differences in weapons.

One of the first things I did for my mod was to diversify the weapons.

Meson bLasters have become machine gun type weapons doing 3 damage per hit (at level one, double for heavy mount) They fire 3-5x per second, too
Ripper/incinerator beams suck down your power like crazy in order to do lots of damage fast.
Wave motion guns dish out a few hundred damage points, and reload takes a minimum of 30 seconds or 5000 energy.
Torpedoes give some nice punch for breaching shields and getting kill shots, but do less damage over time than beams.

Endless collisions?
Try bumping up the scale in campaign data.txt, and see if that helps.
Once you figure out the navigation rules, you'll also find it much easier to predict what the other ships will do, and collisions will become extremely rare.

[Pulaski]

OK Junkie I'm convinced. I' m gonna restart with your mod. I had hoped to get through a plain vanilla campaign but it seems more like work at this point than play...

[milo]

Originally posted by Devilsbane:
Please allow me to inform. Real space is not 3D in fact most of our own solar system is w/i a 2D plane. I think it is called the 'Elliptical Plane'.

Well, "space" is three dimensional, but the interesting concentrations of mass are distributed in or near the plane of the ecliptic. On the other hand, real planets would not be distributed the way they are in SE:SF either.

However, all of that is beside the point.

This is a game, not an orbital mechanics class. Many people have trouble navigating true 3D environments on a computer. This is one of the reasons why Descent never caught on - people got space sick trying to figure out where they were in those mines. I think the decision to go 2D instead of 3D for movement was a good one for the kind of game this is meant to be.

[Pulaski]

Ya'know I forgot what game it was that actually got me motion sick... it was Decent. Ugh the memories.