What do you think about differed prices for ships and weapons?
For example each faction can sell its own ships and weapons 15% cheaper than everyone else in the universe.

Ooo, I like that idea And what about this: some factions, like Junkers, Rogues, and Xenos for example, could sometimes sell you kinda crappy versions of weapons/equip. ("junk" stats look pretty good and low price, but when you start taking too much hull damage, those weapons/equipment are the first to go (maybe after taking only 5 shots, or 175 to 200 damage). Hey, you get what you pay for :p )
I think - I am not positive - but I think that I might have read about this idea from anothre mod, so don't anyone flame me for propsing htis (" Hey, he's copying us! He stole our idea!" ). I just think this IS a cool idea - after all, what else would Junkers do with scrap metal? Why would they go to all that trouble to shoot you for Scrap Metal if they weren't going to turn it into something they could get some greenbacks for?

Edited by - Ro9ue on 4/18/2004 4:17:43 PM

I think the shock wave missles from the 1.3 wep pack are great. Also I think the high ship prices are fine. (had to say that) I would also like to see better AI, and if you added a little shine to it. (Fixed all infocards to be acurate, TL and jump holes and what not.) that would rock 2.

I haven't tried those, but I'll take some more missile/Torp weapons in exchange for Rocket Pods

Also, I have always thought a Railgun-type of weapon, pretty similar to Gauss Rifles in MechWarrior4 and MechAssault, would be just so bad-@$$. They would have pretty decent range (maybe 1500 m or so), travel pretty quickly (1000 m/s), and do pretty nasty damage (perhaps much more Hull than Shield). The only catch is that they take a good 3 or 4 (or maybe more, depending on damage) seconds to reload and they use a lot of power - maybe even ammo.
I tried but failed to make one of these, with a really cool tail like a cross between a Plasma cannon and a Liberty Cruiser Main cannon: kinda smokey/misty-looking but also with Matrix-style compression-rings right behind it The powered-up Gauss Rifles in MechAssault are pretty close to what I had in mind, if anyone here has ever played it: here's a link. It's not exactly the best pic (it's only the very end-tails of them), but it is the only one I could find :/

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/mec ... ml?page=34

Just another little wish-list item

I'll start by saying that I love the reballance mod. Well done! I actually only recently purchased this game (Was afraid of it forever ruining my love of "Wing Commander: Privateer" play style). I had just finished exploration of the galaxy in the origional game when I found your mod, and I got to re-explore everything again (still haven't found a couple of the new systems, but hey, I'll get them).

K, that being said, there ARE a few thing that I'd love to see in the next mod release.

- ROLL, ROLL, ROLL! I don't know if it's possible with the play control style, but making it possible for the ships to roll (wingover turns and spins) would add so much to the playability. I can go without pitch, but, roll would be nice.

- Swarm missiles. This is more for a friend of mine that I play the rebalance mod with who loves missiles. He'd love to use a macross/gundam style missile launcher. I'd love to see it.

- The capitol class ships should not get sent flying by a tie fighter nudging them. As it is, I can take down a cap ship just by slowly flying in a circle along his hull, he never stops spinning and he's utterly at my mercy. As a long-time WC ace, I like cap ships to be near impossibly for me to take down.

- Less bouncing in general, and more impact damage. Instead of ricochetting through known space, you should either die or at least pay dearly for trying to fly through an asteroid feild when you don't have the skill to. This would make ramming among cap ships a viable tactic, and dogfights in a dense asteroid field (although none of the asteroid fields can really be called dense by WC standards) truely lethal.

- If there's any way for factions that hate you to put a 'bounty' on your head (iow, at their bases, missions to take you out become available to people with better faction towards them. I think that'd be cool.

- More cap ships, maybe make each of the four nations' cap ships availably in their capitol system, but only if you have max friendly faction with them. Also, a lot of really cool cap ships were available to destroy in the missions, but you can't buy them anywhere (that I've found). If I need to look harder, let me know, if they are not in 3.4 I'd love to see them in 3.5

- There seemed to be a bug with the Tie Bomber, a friend of mine was going to purchase one (We were taking on EFA as unsheilded base TIE types, lotsa fun if you haven't done it), and each time he tried to buy it, the server booted him for cheating.

- 3-D systems. Makes it feel more like space, and then cap ships can't simply 'jump' over a system that has a lot of asteroids.

Keep up the good work. A realize that some of this stuff has to do with the basic engine, but what can be done would be cool to see.

Great! I'm a million miles from nowhere with a gung-ho iguana!
-Alex Rogan, The Last Starfighter

Edited by - Alex Rogan on 4/20/2004 7:22:05 PM

I'd agree with the possibility of factions putting bounties on a player's head. That would be pretty cool and realistic - after all, if (for example) I preyed on Kruger and Daumman convoys on a regular basis, I would be a pretty pesky thorn in the sides of those factions. It would be conceivable that they would put a bounty on my head, just to get rid of that nuisance who cuts into their profits.

- And what about larger planets? Most planets are several thousand kilometers in diameter - the Earth is about 12,000 Km in diameter, and it's kinda on hte small scale, compared to Jupiter, Saturn, Nuptune, and Uranus.
Most of the FL planets are only 1 Km across; I can travel from one side to the other very shortly (only 10 seconds in Cruise speed!) Could these perhaps be made larger so that there is only one or two in a system, or would that be way too hard?

- What about changing Nanobots and Shield Batteries to this: each one would restore 400 or 500 hull/shield points (a little more powerful), but they's cost $400 to $600. That way a ship could hold the same number of them, but they would be a bit more useful in repairing your ship - but that increased utility comes at a higher monetary price, too

Hey there's some great ideas here but I'd have to agree about the Cap ships, they do need to be more nasty and a little brighter (AI wise I mean) and that be fiddled with?

Replying as I see em, gonna be a long one

There is already a Gundam-style swarming missile launcher mod, I think it even comes with the default install of the latest FLMM.

Yes, I do not use rockets either. Personally, I hardly use ammo-based weapons in general, except for the high-end torpedoes. Instead of having competing types of ammo shouldn't they complement each other? So instead of rockets and missiles of each class, we could start with lowly rockets, then missiles, then mid-range rockets, then slightly more powerful missiles, and then finally torpedoes. There are also way too many mines. They're not all bad, in fact the NPCs tend to use more mines against me rather than missiles (perhaps because I'm chasing them?).

The Power Capacitor thingy (restore on demand) might be undoable, perhaps we should tweak the powerplants a little bit, after all, those have upgrades already. We could stagger the upgrades some more, like having two different kinds of upgrade styles: one with high output but slower regeneration, one with normal output but souped-up regeneration.

Presumeably for exploring you'd already have access to ships that can reach tradelane speeds by using the engine-kill hotkey. I don't have any problems with the current 300kps cruise limit because if I remember correctly fiddling with it used to screw up some of the SP mission triggers. Heck I just did that today, by using engine-kill to speed up to some waypoints, the SP mission where two Rhinelanders help you escape to Leeds... the scene where they do their attack run was messed up.

I don't really agree with having yet more different weapon types ("junk" weapons), because all they'll ever be good for is for selling besides adding more clutter to the infocards. On the other hand, factions selling their own goods at a discount is a neat idea.

Yes, the game rolls you automatically when you switch movement modes, but I don't think giving you manual control over that is do-able via .ini editing. It would absolutely rock, though, but I'm more comfortable with rolling if you can fly with the keyboard like in Privateer, not the mouse. Btw in Privateer 2 -- which used the mouse for flight compared to the first Privateer, if I'm not mistaken -- could you roll your ship?

Yep, collisions need to have less effect on you the higher your ship mass is. I didn't know you could nudge a capship like that, I mean, don't you also go into a spin? Hmm... but you'd recover faster, I see. Haha, that's cheap, I might try that the next run.

Bouncing is pretty annoying, especially flying at trade lane speeds through a debris field -- although I do realize we're not meant to do that :p But you're right, impact should count for more.

Bounty on your head, I take it you're referring to MP?

I think I read somewhere that Dan wasn't gonna put in the original faction's capships. Dunno why. I don't really like capships, although I have flown a few (the firepower is stupendous), so no comment.

Planet sizes are fine with me, I mean, if they were anything near to scale Jupiter would absolutely tower over the Earth, and I have a headache just imagining what a bunch of stars in a system would do.

Better AI, yeah. Wasn't an AI mod released recently? Just giving NPCs better loadouts doesn't really qualify as "difficult"

" In Defeat, Malice; In Victory, Revenge! "

Now that I think about it and read your post, I have changed my mind about a few of ythose things.
Rockets, missiles, and torps in an ascending manner would be pretty neat. Start with a cheap but effective rocket/missile (like Javelin, but maybe better speed - like 300-400 m/s?), then higher level ones do more damage at a slightly increased range, but in exhange for maybe refire rate, cost, and velocity.

Yeah, junk weaopns wouldn't be quite as cool as I'd originally thought. I just figured you could buy them when you first start out (when you need some effective weapons for cheap, b/c you don't have much $), or when you finish a HARD mission where you lose most of your weapons :/ But you're right, they would probably end up being like Rockets - take up a bunch of room/infocards.

I am an ardent fan of double-engine ships (I almost can't play without them, I have become so addicted to them!), but there are only so many of those ships. I've flown all of them now, and they get a little .. well, boring after a while.
Maybe if we couild make it so that ALL (or at least most )ships had the capabilty to mount 2 engines, making many more ships capable of Independent Tradelane Speed (i abbreviate it "ITS" for short :p). You would have the option (not obligation) to mount another engine on more ships, but to balance that wide accessibilty, maybe make the extra engine take up 10 to 15 cargo. That way, "original" -ship/speed fans could use the regular sublight and cruise speeds, but also ITS fans could mount a second engine and fly the original FL ships (like the Defender, Dragon, Legionnare, etc.) while having their beloved ITS, too. It would just mean sacrificing some cargo capacity.
This is just something I would think would be totally cool, because it would not change "original" fans' experience, but would also allow people who love the 2- or 3- engined ships to experience that in comfort of their favorite orgianl FL ships (like Dragon, Drake, Valkyrie) and other new ships that don't have them (Star Viper, Whale, etc.).

And maybe add that AI mod (I want to say it is by warzog, but I'm not certain) to v3.5? If warzog doesn;t mind, that is.
The enhanced payloads do make it a little harder when fighting at higher levels, like hte Corsairs (with their 2 Tizona del Cids per ship :p) and Outcasts (with those vicious Wyrm 3's). But you're right: that doesn't really translate directly into "smarter."

Edited by - Ro9ue on 4/22/2004 2:26:05 PM

The 'tradelane speed' flight thingy (ITS, heh heh) is a direct consequence of having more than one engine? I see. Actually, although it's very useful, it's somewhat imbalancing, because when you need to run you can do it any time without worrying about being hit by cruise disruptors. I hardly bottom out my afterburners nowadays, whereas on a ship without that feature it'd quickly go down to zero during any prolonged fight. Perhaps if we could add a delay to it, like the cruise activation delay, and make it vulnerable to cruise interruption? Only problem with that is to get NPCs to recognize that as a signal to start firing cruise disruptors.

Engine mounting is kinda tricky, no? In multiple-engined ships basically you can't upgrade. I mean, if you do remove an engine you can't remount it unless you've removed them all. Which means byebye ITS. Too bad that feature can't be built into a single engine, in which case we could have several different types of upgrades again, with some offering higher speeds but no ITS, and others with regular speeds plus ITS.

Haha yes, I did get owned badly by the high-leveled Corsairs. Later on they were not too difficult, although I think that a pack of 6 Aces should realistically have a chance to cripple you, instead of just nicking your shields a bit. I do realize some people might have a problem with changing that, I mean, it's fun to go up against an entire fleet, capships and all, and imagine what those would be like with harder AI.

" In Defeat, Malice; In Victory, Revenge! "

Hey, i red your ideas today and note some of the most interesting ones.
There are some undoable ones though: there no way to make a power regen on demand ,there no such key or device and it can be made by editing the ini;s
Trucidation, believe or not, but if your hit with a cruise disruptor the warp key("Z" will not function either.... At least until you do a succesful cruise charge again...so it's not that totally unbalanced. It is though in the way that consumes nothing and gets you a speed you can never reach anywere then in a tradelane. A jump drive will be nice, able to warp your ship instantly within a system, but then again...this is only an idea for FL2.
Capships can't be made meaner or smarter in any way, i can only make their more accurate and to have faster firing rate, but remember they're a lot beefed up when compared with the orginal FL. They got a lot more firepower, very long range, and even a tough VHF can't feel too safe vs a pirate fleet...you can;t certinly do any sightseeing arround them. And if its the Corsairs ior the Outcasts we're talking about, some can be in really deep trouble when he ecounters a fleet with VHF escorts...or 2 or even 3 like is most likely in the Edge worlds or EFA.
In the AI mod warzog did what i did since 3.3, only more radically: he increased tha accuracy and the rate of fire of AI pilots, perhaps the frequence of evasing and attack manuevers they're doing.
Yes Ro9ue, a railgun type of weapon, similar with a MechWarrior Gauss rifle is a cool idea and i'll give it a , i also think i got the right graphics for that...it'll probably have 1500 m range, 1500-2000 damage, and a 500 power consumption.

That'll be cool, MD.
It stinks no Power Capacitors are possible, though. Darn you, FL code!
Do you have any idea whether there will be mostly new bases in already-existing systems, or will there be more new suystems to add new bases to in v3.5? Or maybe a little of both :p

Btw, the cruise speed is 400 at normal difficulty and 450 ad high diff. Anymore higer than that and you or Hovis won't be able to complete the ring race and some of the missions that rely on cruise timing will be messed up.

That's weird. I'm pretty sure I selected High diff, and the cruise is 300. Hmm.

Thanks for pointing out that cruise disruptors also prevent engaging warp, but like I mentioned in my post above... how do we get the NPCs to fire them when we're trying to warp? I.e., we have to find a way to make them realize trying to warp = trying to cruise, so that they fire the disruptors. Currently, even though disruptors prevent warping, they won't fire them at us when we're warping.

I don't think anybody uses plain ol' cruise anymore unless he's doing the SP campaign, or trying to fly safely through a hazard field. So you see, the scenario that: (1) player tries to cruise (2) NPCs fires disruptor (3) player tries to warp, realizes it doesn't work, gets screwed -- doesn't work... because players will always do (1) warp.

There's no immediately apparent fix for this, as NPCs don't seem to be programmed to react to engine kill, otherwise we could modify that. We can't raise the cruise speed too much either, because that would screw up some of the SP campaign missions. Lastly, I doubt players would like having that feature removed, as we don't all have all day to play, and sometimes you just don't feel like crossing 100k at cruise speed.

Anyway... the NPC capships seem to be doing okay, if you wander into a fleet without a very good ship you'll be ripped apart, and even in a totally tricked-out ship it's not a good idea to stand still. The capships also usually have several wings of escorts, I remember being mauled by 7-8 Titans while 4 cruisers were pounding me from the side.

The difficulty seems just right, but I thought the AI mod added something else. Large NPC fleets are difficult enough, but I was thinking more along the lines of the regular patrols.

Or maybe, just maybe... the player-buyable ships are too strong Look at the average VHF loadout, 6-7 front guns is a tad... plenty, isn't it?

Oh well, it's not like things are out of control. They're okay, but they could use a little tweaking

" In Defeat, Malice; In Victory, Revenge! "