Hardest Fight

[Vastin]

As a little aside, the end boss could afford to have a good bit less regen, and be a LOT more offensively dangerous than it is. Having it summon in some harassers would be particularly nice.

Right now the hardest fights in the game are usually the Atlantica (or the destroyers assaulting it), a Polaris, or of course that massive Hurin defense battle.

As for the ICS, in the many times I have fought it, it has not EVER dropped my shields, and I think in the last three fights, it has not once hit my ship.

It's what I'd call a 'stat check' fight. You either have weapons powerful enough to cut through its enormous shield regen - or you don't. I'm fairly certain you could beat the ICS with nothing equipped AT ALL aside from a vanilla plasma cannon and a reactor big enough to power it.

[schilcote]

If you were skilled enough, you could beat it with nothing but a enhanced blinder cannon.

[F50]

It's what I'd call a 'stat check' fight.

very good way to put it.

[Sponge]

I have long thought that the Iocrym Command ship wasn't a great end boss. Primarily because it doesn't make too much sense for a single ship to be in charge of maintaining a quarantine. A fleet of smaller ships, likely led by a larger ship would make more sense, and would make for a more tactical fight. No more matching speed and relaxing- a good, hard fleet battle would be much more rewarding.

[Aury]

I'm glad to see people have interest in a fleet battle...

[GambitDash]

Fleet battles are something that I'm definitely interested in. Summoning not so much (I /like/ genocide!), but multi-ship battles have definite interest. The only problem nowadays is that, with friendly fire on, swarms (like the miners) quite often self kill. I'm not sure what can be done about that, besides completely revamping the ship-to-ship AI.

Though, the latest round of fixes to avoid station-killing do seem to be a step in the right direction.

[Vastin]

Fleet battles are something that I'm definitely interested in. Summoning not so much (I /like/ genocide!), but multi-ship battles have definite interest. The only problem nowadays is that, with friendly fire on, swarms (like the miners) quite often self kill. I'm not sure what can be done about that, besides completely revamping the ship-to-ship AI.

Well, the obvious answer to that would to be to turn off friendly fire. Not sure if that's all that easy to do, and it would have game balance ramifications for dealing with bases and the Dwarg in particular, who's firepower is often strongly limited by FF issues.

Nevertheless, I think a lot of the game concepts would work better without Friendly Fire. Autons and Escorts would be a lot less frustrating to work with, enemy swarm attackers would be more dangerous and enemy bases would be a lot more dangerous than they are now. Oh, and I'd seriously consider bringing my escorts with me on missions rather than leaving them to fire at a crate...

If it's realism anyone is concerned about, then I would submit a guess that at the current game scale, the Wolfen would be over 50,000 kilometers in length. If it were anything close to real scale, it would probably take a few billion of them to 'obstruct' a single pixel in a single plane.

Thus the argument for turning off friendly fire is perfectly fair if one presumes that the ships and bases we see are grossly enlarged 'representations' of mostly empty space.

[schilcote]

"Friendly" fire opens up a whole new portion of the game. Really want an item from that CW station, but can't afford it? It's the pirate's life for you. Out of docking ports? Well, that station won't let you dock then, so blast it too. Plus it makes for a fun challenge in the game, trying hard not to blast your wingmen is a intergral part of the game.

[GambitDash]

I'd agree. Taking out friendly fire would be like playing doom without wall clipping. Sure, you could, but it'd be a completely different game play :)

[digdug]

it would be interesting to bring the friendly stuff in the other direction, by adding timed events for littering around stations, from shooting or other dangerous behaviours (for the friendly station).
Patrolling ships and wreck cleaners can be implemented.

This was suggested a couple of times.

[OddBob]

If it's realism anyone is concerned about, then I would submit a guess that at the current game scale, the Wolfen would be over 50,000 kilometers in length. If it were anything close to real scale, it would probably take a few billion of them to 'obstruct' a single pixel in a single plane.

1. This is irrelevant, the game is not DRAWN to scale because as you said, it would be unplayable, but it is constructed roughly so, (see the XML scale tables and compare distances between objects, the speed of light, etc).

2, Even if one was to accept that the game is actually designed with 50000 km long Wolfens in mind, is this a license to do anything at all, since the game 'is already unrealistic'? Perhaps it would benefit from laser squids, shark bazookas and Winston Churchill's giant floating robot head?


Um anyhow I don't actually mind if enemy ships in the same flight group don't shoot each other, because there is not really a large question of realism since they would likely be coordinating with each other to stagger themselves on the z-axis in order NOT to shoot each other, and give a small chance to hit perhaps to add a little bit of fun.

Yes I am aware of the minor inconsistencies in this model but I'm not too concerned about them

[Apemant]

Ahh, the friendly fire problem. I have suggested a 'solution' to this problem over at the unofficial forums Pseudo 3D - some people liked the idea, others didn't ....

I would definitely like something along those lines - because, by the very nature of the game, your autons and wingmen are always relatively close to you so there is an unpleasantly high probability of them catching your own shots and vice versa. Personally I don't see it as a 'challenge', more of an annoyance in fact, or even frustration.

Anyway, only George himself could possibly do anything about it - it's beyond modding.

[GambitDash]

Ahh, the friendly fire problem. I have suggested a 'solution' to this problem over at the unofficial forums Pseudo 3D - some people liked the idea, others didn't ....

I would definitely like something along those lines - because, by the very nature of the game, your autons and wingmen are always relatively close to you so there is an unpleasantly high probability of them catching your own shots and vice versa. Personally I don't see it as a 'challenge', more of an annoyance in fact, or even frustration.

Anyway, only George himself could possibly do anything about it - it's beyond modding.

If by "unpleasantly high" you mean "a dead certainty", then yes. I call it the Wing Commander Effect -- the first thing you do out of the hanger is shoot down your wingmen, so you get a higher score :D

[Atarlost]

I try never to shoot down wingmen. I have, however, taken to telling them to attack a crate positioned so it cannot be hit by weapons fire for some missions. They're nice for the refugee escorts, though. They can handle sandstorms but not anything tougher.

[Vastin]

To put it bluntly, friendly fire adds nothing to the game for me.

It makes enemies that operate in groups much less dangerous (they spend too much time shooting each other), it enables base camping, and it renders combat autons and wingmen useless - just look at how many of us would rather stick them to a crate than actually bring them with us on missions where they inevitably are a far greater obstacle than benefit.

From my POV it is probably the single largest negative to game play in Transcendence as it exists currently. I can't really think of a good thing to say about FF, except that it makes escort missions a bit more challenging, and that difference could be made up simply by making the attack waves sent against them a bit more powerful.

If one REALLY wanted to make a distinction, you could create two states for friendly ships - 'Friendly' and 'Allied'. The former would be friendly to you, but vulnerable to your fire, and would be applied to stations and escorts. The Allied state would only apply to ships directly assigned to you, such as autons and wingmen, and would render them FF immune.

More importantly, enemy ships and bases of the same race would automatically be allied, and permitted to fire through each other, which would make a lot of the fights - especially base sieges - more challenging and dynamic.