Why all must die!? ...under starships fire...

[Darksaber]

Ok sorry, my apologise, obviously you've posted before and I've never found fault with you writing, this time I just thought you were maybe tired, so the writing wasn't typed that well, I picked up on this and my first thought was "Yoda you write like" my bad

So again my apologise, it never dawned on me that English wasn't your first language

Me

[capitanguinea]

No problem pals! It is my fault after all (I was posting by smartphone and had not re-read before I submitted the text). I will try to explain better this part

Accuracy % hitting small targets are 2/3 of standard ballistic skill for AI, for Turbolaser.

standing a very old interview about the Xwing AI, Lawrence stated that for each "level" of skill (rookie, novice, veteran, and so on) the skill % charts to do basilar things (fire, evade enemy fire, maneuvre etc) would be improved by a factor (rookie has a malus of x0.33 novice has a malus of 0.66 veteran is factor 1.0 ace 1.33 topace 1.66 and so on). Each firepower weapon (all weapon which is not a warhead) has its own tabel of % to hit a target in base of range, and has a its own factor of dissipation of the hits. The same weapon does less damage at long range and increase damage at short with maximum damage at point blank range which usually is double of the standard damage at medium range. The rate of fire of each weapon is very influenced by the AI level to show greater initiative value for better ranks. If a weapon system is a dual linked fire system it makes x2 damage and has a little bonus % to hit targets and so on. They tryed to implement the octuple heavy turbolaser on the ISD Ii but it turned out so powerfull that they reduced all capital ships firepower. One last thing, weapon management from AI is connected to two factors: the max value of cpu clock on you pc and the rate of refresh on you ram. Both are drastically skyrocketed in 20 years so now we have a very aggressive capital ship even at Veteran level. If you have any problem with big crates, you should reduce their AI as first step: no mission has been playtested 2 decades ago with such cpu power and you are actually playing over Hard Level (even if the usual level triggered events are not influenced: if you state that a FG would be present only at Hard it would not show at Medium or Easy)

[Phoenix Leader]

The same weapon does less damage at long range and increase damage at short with maximum damage at point blank range which usually is double of the standard damage at medium range.

The total damage of a shot only depends on 2 factors: the weapon power (weapon base damage) and the relative speed between the shot and the target (kinetic damage).

The rate of fire of each weapon is very influenced by the AI level to show greater initiative value for better ranks.

This is only partially true because there are no rate of fire improvements for AI-controlled fighters over Ace AI.
As for AI-controlled starships and some transports, there should be no differences in rate of fire over Veteran AI.
What actually changes between Ace AI and Top Ace AI (or Super Ace) is the refresh rate of the targeting system.

[keiranhalcyon7]

capitanguinea, I'm sorry, but you're mistaken. Fire rates and other aspects of gameplay did vary with CPU speed back in the DOS era, but by the Windows era (XvT/XWA) everything was controlled with timers, so unless your CPU was too slow to keep up, there was no longer any impact. (And large capital ships tend to be constrained by the size of the projectile pool anyway.)

[Vince T]

Hmmm ok I've done some more testing on the VSD and VSD2 (yeah I'm working on it)
1 Stationary VSD(2) versus waves of STRKC's, coming in at different angles and heights and holding steady at their entry point
Distance/Height tested:
- Distance 2km, on plane
- Distance 1,5km, below plane
- Distance 1,5km, above plane
Angles tested for each disttance
- 12 o'clock
- 3 o'clock
- 6 o'clock

Versions tested:
- VSD1 vanilla
- VSD1 v1
- VSD1 v2 (tested twice)
- VSD2 vanilla
- VSD2 v1
- VSD2 v2 (tested twice)

The result was intriguing.
Generally the VSD1 and VSD2 v1 were indeed overpowered compared to the vanilla
For the v2, I ran the test twice because its results were fluctuating between below and above the vanilla's results.
All 9 rounds summed up, the the v1 of either ship is overpowered, while the v2 somewhat matches (in the second run)

Here's a shot of the results.
Green: within 5 seconds of the original
Red: More than 5 seconds faster than the original
Yellow: More than 5 Seconds slower than the original
[attachment=0]VSD_Performance.jpg[/attachment]


PS: Myeah so it turns out that the best way to attack a VSD is head-on

[capitanguinea]

capitanguinea, I'm sorry, but you're mistaken. Fire rates and other aspects of gameplay did vary with CPU speed back in the DOS era, but by the Windows era (XvT/XWA) everything was controlled with timers, so unless your CPU was too slow to keep up, there was no longer any impact. (And large capital ships tend to be constrained by the size of the projectile pool anyway.)

in fact as I stated, that interview was about the original X-Wing game, and the Capital Ships. It was used by Wiseman during one of his universitary course in Games Design, and that was the way I get it. Maybe they changed things after things in XWING.

[Phoenix Leader]

I know it is probably too late, but I have found a way to complete B1M4 at Hard difficulty with Darksaber's Dreadnaught coming with XWAUCP v1.6.
As soon as you arrive in the last region (the one with XQ2 Platform Bundil II) order all your squadron to attack the nearest Escort Shuttle.
When it is destroyed, order to attack the other one. While your wingmates are busy with the Escort Shuttles, you need to approach the DREAD.

Shoot at the Dreadnaught to drive her firepower away from the Y-Wings, but keep an eye to what your wingmates are doing (Flight Commands).
When both the Escort Shuttles have been destroyed, they will attack the TIE Interceptors. This is definitely not what you want from them.
Order all of them to attack the Dreadnaught instead, and assist them in this task.

[Phoenix Leader]

Once the Dreadnaught's shields are down, order your squadron to attack the nearest TIE craft type (should be the TIE Interceptors) and help them in this task.
The Y-Wings will disable the Dreadnaught in no time, because they did not take any damage and the Dreadnaught is still firing on the X-Wings (and on you).
However, the X-Wings are fast enough to survive her firepower, in particular if you immediately attack the Dreadnaught to drive part of her firepower on you.

To conclude, even if the Dreadnaught in XWAUCP v1.6 has 9 Laser hardpoints more than the DREAD coming with the vanilla game, you can still "overpower" her.
The only downside to this strategy is that the fight against the TIE Interceptors will take place much closer to the Y-Wings, but you can handle it anyway.

[BattleDog]

Guys, maybe be a bit more conscious that we do actually have a lot of folks here whose first language isn't English. Any in many cases not even their second language. I know it's not meant in a mean way, but it can certainly discourage people joining the conversation.

While I agree the post is a bit hard to unpack this is what I gathered from the post:

Turbolasers do tripple damage to regular lasers, are 60% slower but have double the range. And the accuracy is different as well (I admit I don't quite get that part myself) Since ImperialLasers are turbolasers swapping those out will make it a lot harder to attack a craft for small fighters.

In addition to that starships create a bubble of flak fire around them at 2.5 km when the shots dissipate whereas turbolasers actually last for 5 km. Also apparently due to better CPUs accuracy of the AI is improved making the fire even more deadly.

All of this can of lead to even small changes in armament to result in a drastically more difficult game. (Especially since it will most likely affect player allies since they cannot adjust to the higher range and accuracy)

Not saying those are facts, but that's how I understood his posts.

I think you mean Superlasers - turbolasers are just fully powered lasers (as opposed to normal or "half" powered ones. Also, cap ship gun range is controlled directly in the exe, unlike fighter range which is controlled by the speed and duration of the bolt directly.

[keiranhalcyon7]

There are some muddied waters in the terms. Prior to XWA, "Turbolasers" referred to charged lasers, as you've said. But then XWA introduced capital ship heavy lasers (well, primarily capital ships; some fighters like the experimental TIE "big gun" also carry them), which they referred to as Turbolasers in the marketing, but in the game engine used the term superlasers since the term turbolasers was already taken.

[Det. Bullock]

I always had the impression that the AI balance on hard was borked regardless of mods, XvT: BoP has a similar problem with many missions that are next to impossible on hard because on that difficulty the allied AI is braindead with enemies being super aces so missions, mostly missions in which you need to rely more on your allies, tend to get impossible on higher difficulties.
At least in XvT the problem is less felt in coop because human allies should be able to launch their payload and evade instad of launching two salvos and then sit there while being smashed to pieces but XWA's campaign sometimes just gives the impression they never tested the hard difficulty at all, I quit and dropped down to medium for good when I hit a mission in which no matter what I did my entire squadron got throughly annihilated almost immediately and left me trying to fend off a squadron of Tie Advanced in an X-wing which wouldn't be that bad normally but it's a pain in the neck when you need to also intercept bombers.

I also remember having the same problem with the Y-wings dying almost immediately against the dreadnought on hard and I'm pretty sure that was one of the two or three missions that made me drop the difficulty as an "exception" before I decided to play on medium and be done with it.

Yoda you write like

So sorry, I am Italian. Written English is no more a skill I use abitually so is fading a bit...
Next time I will post in italian, and you could use Google Translator

Come tuo compatriota ti posso assicurare che google translate è peggio degli errori fatti in proprio. Se sei un po' arrugginito vale il consiglio della mia prof di liceo: frasi brevi e semplici rispettando sempre l'ordine Soggetto, Verbo e Complemento, l'inglese non si presta troppo a frasi complesse ed è facile sbagliare cercando di fare il calco dei giri di parole a cui siamo abituati noi italiani.

[marcop000]

As native Italian, I confirm what Det. Bullock write, reply in English, is not too complex like seem, my English is no good, but no need a mother tongue to undersdtand.

And remember that Italian language is much more complex then English.