Tie Fighter, woes

Good point, MT. I was thinking of the flyby sound and not the internal sound audible from within the cockpit. I wasn't much of a fan of episode 1, but maybe some of the sounds used for the podracer sequence might work as internal sounds for the TIE. As I recall, there were quite a variety of noisy engine sounds for those things. Then again, this raises the whole legal permission thing, too. At least it might serve as a source of ideas.

btw Computer voice files coming this weekend! She rolled her eyes a little, but there was a hint of a flattered smile in there, too. She agreed to do it without any grovelling at all on my part!

I'll make a sci-fi nerd out of her yet.

--
Hot4Darmat

The nexus of the balancing problem seems to be the stats provided by the Lucas Arts materials. Those stats were made as a guide for balancing ship combat in a movie. A game requires a different balance. MajorTom's right... who would willingly choose the weakest ship... especially when bragging rights are on the line.

In the movies the Tie Fighter never took more than one direct hit to destroy. And, like Roi said in another thread, there seems something wrong about pounding a Tie with bolt after bolt before it explodes. It is, after all, not a heavy corvette. So beefing up the shields and hull aren't the solution.

Judging from the length of the battle when the Falcon escapes the DS, ties are pretty hard to hit. (And those were trying to let our heroes escape!) So make the Tie very, very maneauverable. Able to turn on a dime. Weak shields, light weapons, but agile as hell.

Also, the Tie had one advantage in the movies that it does not currently have in the game... large numbers. Can this not be factored into the game? Is it possible for the player using the tie to respawn much quicker than a player using an A-Wing? That might add an advantage to the Tie... the ability to recover quickly from a mistake and get back out into the action. While the pilot of the A-Wing, after being vaporised, has to wait 10 seconds or so before respawning.

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

Sorry, if I gave the impression that the Tie fighter should be like a Tank, it wasn't intended. The Tie has no shields at all, but we can reduce the armor value a bit.
How about the goal: 3 hits from a distance and 1 (full blast quad lasers) hit at short range?

Increasing manouverability is a two sided sword. It makes the ship harder to hit but it also makes it harder for the pilot to hit his target too. (That will seperate the men from the boys)

We can delay respawning for the other ships a bit and let the Tie fighter just run on through. That would give the Tie fighter pilot a few seconds extra to get into a good position. (Though it may not be too valuable in games with only 2 or 3 players)
I dunno how that will pan out but it is certainly worth a try!
Btw, thats a interesting new idea for game balancing: we can/could easily make the respawn time dependent on the ship typ.

We could also give a Tie fighter a little more health when he respawns? Say give it 65% while the others only get 35%?
(That way, if we stick to the 3 hit goal you would still have to hit it twice instead of just once.)

On the sound issue, What do you think of the internal sound in the Tie/Int? Maybe we should switch sounds between the Fighter and the Int?

Iwar2 Multiplayer Fan Site

For some strange reason, the scene (in the first SW movie... A New Hope I think) where the Imperial pilot was turning the dial (wierd... the ties were flown by a rotary knob ) always stuck in my head. I can still, to this day, remember the sound very clearly.

It was obviously the cockpit sound of a plane in flight. I think that works well. For me, at least, it's a well-established background sound.

I could lie and say I haven't yet had time to download the SW mod releases... but the truth is I have no idea how to set them up so I can play them on my computer. I've never played an online game... at all. This is the main reason for my procrastination.

It's probably pretty silly (I used to loopback digital group multiplexing communications equipment in the military in the wink of an eye - you'd think looping back a computer wouldn't scare me off). []

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

QUOTING MAJORTOM FROM ANOTHER THREAD. But it fits better in this thread.

Originally posted by MajorTom

The Tie Interceptor is roughly equal to an A-Wing not the Tie Fighter.

(As a result: it can/will only be used as a bot ship, because no one will fly it in a multiplayer game)

Yes, exactly that I meant just in a different way. We have to make the TIE Fighter strong like the A-Wing, otherwise this ship would be unpopular. Or we invent another advantage for this ship than the combat abilities what I meant with the point advantage for TIE Fighters

When do you have time for a balancing test? We can arrange to meet with Tarcoon online.

It would be good if we could communicate with a messenger to make such tests spontaneous (btw, tomorrow I have no time) b/c my free time is very variable (and limited).

The real art/goal of balancing is:
The ships need to have different handling charachteristics and weapon combinations so that a given player can be most sucessfull in the ship that fits to his own "combat style" best.

Of course, thats the reason that in every multiplayer game are different weapons, vehicles, etc. But we have the problem that the StarWars models are predefined in their strenght. So a TIE Fighter can't be so strong that it will attractive to fly b/c then the Mod won't be reliable.

For example Söldner solves this so: For every weapon/vehicle/helicopter/aircraft/tool you must pay. The better the weapon is the more expensive it is. You get money for fullfilling team goals or for frags.

Options for the TF:
That would be too too much work. So I mentioned that TIE Fighter pilots get more points for one frag.

Another option would be to remove this ship. (I doubt that good pilots choose the TIE Fighter due to the existence of the TIE Interceptor) Just leave the TIE Interceptor, including the TIE Bomber etc.

EDIT: The Option with the health is a very good idea.


Ship List:
I don't if there is a complete ship list but regarding the balancing I would add just these fighters (besides CUV):

Rebels: Fighters: A-Wing, X-Wing, Bomber: B-Wing
Imps: Fighters: TIE Interceptor, TIE Avenger (should be slower than Interceptor); Bomber: Assault Gunboat, (TIE Bomber)

A weaker ship fraction would be:
Rebels: Fighters: Z-95 Headhunter, z.B. Firespray (Boba Fetts ship) Bomber: Y-Wing
Imps: Fighters: TIE Fighter, TIE Interceptor; Bomber: TIE Bomber

The CUV could be a Corellian YT-1300 Transport.

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~Buda5 Designer & Scripter
buda5.firstones.com

Edit: Removed the contents of this reply and put it in a new thread called:
"Issues with Starting/playing the Game"

/Edit