New X-Wing/Tie Fighter **RUMORS**

[Darksider]

I seriously don't even remember it. I'm all about 1-3-7 form on my wing from Freespace.

you forgot C to open your communications menu.

Alliance's communication system was kinda like that, except slightly more cluttered and you had to switch over to it on your secondary information display instead of just hitting a hotkey to open it up.

[Vympel]

The command system for your wingmates in the games was pretty basic. They weren't based on the Numpad as far as I can remember, they were Shift + [insert key] commands, like Shift + A to tell your wingman to attack your target, etc.

Used with the Z key (introduced in TIE Fighter) to see what your enemy was doing, it worked pretty well. I think, but can't remember, that X-Wing Alliance improved this by putting all the information on the 'Z' screen on your main targeting screen instead, so you didn't need to leave the cockpit for any reason.

Based on one or two lines of dialogue, and not in the context of actual combat (it's mentioned only when they pass through the death star's magnetic field, when they're not actually fighting).

As noted, it's mentioned more than once, and in combat as well. It is obviously important to SW space combat.

And in X-Wing there was only one tactically sensible option anyway, full charge all around with energy pumped into them from your lasers. Having lots of different apparent options when none of them are any good so you always do the one same thing is not depth, it's a whole chunk of fiddly crap that can be completely excised without affecting the player experience in any way at all. It's a darling that needs to be murdered before you can start producing space shooty games again.

That's just flat untrue. There are plenty of times in the games where, for example, you're pursuing a target in front of you or something and you're under heavy fire from behind and you just don't have the time to turn around and take out your attackers - putting the deflectors to double-back so that your weakened arc goes to the front keeps you alive. It's a cool mechanic, it's part of SW space combat, it should stay.

A really obvious one is strafing capital ships - deflectors double front whilst strafing, turn around and fly away, deflectors double back. Did it all the time.

As for laser single/ dual fire, this was also useful - you use single fire for long range work so you can adjust your fire as the enemy approaches easier, and quad or dual fire close-in where it's more important to get one big hit.

[Darth Yoshi]

The only command that was ever any good was the cover command, and even that was iffy, since the AI had a tendency to tear right through allied fighters.

[Vympel]

Just a general post.

"More differences between craft" is a difference I just don't get. They have very different maneuverability, speed, shield, and hull strength. I don't get where this stuff about 'they're all the same' comes from but it's just nonsense. Aren't those the most obvious differences between combat spacecraft anyway? What 'perks' would you add in for each fighter that wouldn't be retarded?

They way to set up meaningful differences would be as follows:-

* Cockpit quality. It's easier to know what's going on in the cockpit of an A-Wing than it is in the cockpit of a Y-Wing;
* Whether it has an astro-mech droid - you have more options (getting extra boosts of speed, etc) and can repair your craft if you have an astromech;
* Targeting computer accuracy/ burning through ECM. The OT ICS refers to the Y-Wing having a better targeting capability than the X-Wing, and all Imperial TIEs having really good targeting systems. Implement stuff like this!

I'm sure people can think of others.

The only command that was ever any good was the cover command, and even that was iffy, since the AI had a tendency to tear right through allied fighters.

Yeah friendly wingman AI was always rubbish.

[Darksider]

except in Alliance on easy and medium.

Then they tore through TIEs like shit through a goose. I could hardly get any kills in.

AI was always either shitty or godlike, depending on the difficulty.

[Vendetta]

That's just flat untrue. There are plenty of times in the games where, for example, you're pursuing a target in front of you or something and you're under heavy fire from behind and you just don't have the time to turn around and take out your attackers - putting the deflectors to double-back so that your weakened arc goes to the front keeps you alive. It's a cool mechanic, it's part of SW space combat, it should stay.

A really obvious one is strafing capital ships - deflectors double front whilst strafing, turn around and fly away, deflectors double back. Did it all the time.

Except you always made sure your shields were double charge all around, and eventually they made the shields auto-balance, so they took damage evenly front and back no matter where you got hit, making the actual shield arcs completely cosmetic. And even when they didn't do that (which, IIRC, was only the first X-Wing), it was rare that you'd stay in anything's line of fire long enough to cut through 200% shields front and back without throwing it off or breaking off a capship assault to pump more laser power to shields.

[Vympel]

Except you always made sure your shields were double charge all around, and eventually they made the shields auto-balance, so they took damage evenly front and back no matter where you got hit, making the actual shield arcs completely cosmetic. And even when they didn't do that (which, IIRC, was only the first X-Wing), it was rare that you'd stay in anything's line of fire long enough to cut through 200% shields front and back without throwing it off or breaking off a capship assault to pump more laser power to shields.

I don't remember them doing auto-balance - that would have been damn annoying. TIE Fighter and X-Wing, I'm pretty sure they didn't have it ....

Besides, I *would* take a battering on my double front shields, that's the whole reason i liked it, I'd go berserk trying to destroy all the turrets on a cap ship before breaking off.

That's one thing that should be eliminated in any remake, btw. No way a single fighter should be able to disarm fuck all. The only turrets you should be able to see are the main ones.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Except you always made sure your shields were double charge all around, and eventually they made the shields auto-balance, so they took damage evenly front and back no matter where you got hit, making the actual shield arcs completely cosmetic. And even when they didn't do that (which, IIRC, was only the first X-Wing), it was rare that you'd stay in anything's line of fire long enough to cut through 200% shields front and back without throwing it off or breaking off a capship assault to pump more laser power to shields.

I don't remember them doing auto-balance - that would have been damn annoying. TIE Fighter and X-Wing, I'm pretty sure they didn't have it ....

Besides, I *would* take a battering on my double front shields, that's the whole reason i liked it, I'd go berserk trying to destroy all the turrets on a cap ship before breaking off.

That's one thing that should be eliminated in any remake, btw. No way a single fighter should be able to disarm fuck all. The only turrets you should be able to see are the main ones.

Yeah, and disabling the turrets through the shields was b/s too. Hopefully, that will go away.

[Thanas]

Actually, with shield breaching torpedoes, it should be possible to destroy single turrets. But only with that, not with lasers.

[Stofsk]

You know what would be great, if battles also involved capships - which, for a breath of fresh air, aren't completely useless and torpedo magnets for enemy fighters.

That whole Fighter vs Capship thing might make sense if your attack on the ISD's turrets coincides with a MonCal bombardment (which brings the shields down for a brief window). It would give you an important role to play in the battle without cheapening the role of the big ships in it. Maybe you don't have to target the turrets, maybe you have to take out one of the SENSOR globes, because doing that will give your flagship a fighting change against the ISD's firepower (none of which would be useful if they can't aim the guns). Stuff like that could really make a mission hair-raising.

[Steel]

You know what would be great, if battles also involved capships - which, for a breath of fresh air, aren't completely useless and torpedo magnets for enemy fighters.

That whole Fighter vs Capship thing might make sense if your attack on the ISD's turrets coincides with a MonCal bombardment (which brings the shields down for a brief window). It would give you an important role to play in the battle without cheapening the role of the big ships in it. Maybe you don't have to target the turrets, maybe you have to take out one of the SENSOR globes, because doing that will give your flagship a fighting change against the ISD's firepower (none of which would be useful if they can't aim the guns). Stuff like that could really make a mission hair-raising.

Indeed. It would be great if it wasnt possible to destroy a capital ship with a tie fighter. Freespace 2 took a step in the right direction with capital ships having their larger guns which couldnt hit you unless you were braindead, and then anti fighter beams and flak that was actually threatening to smaller ships. The only effective thing capital ships could do in X-Wing/Tie fighter was if you looked at them funny (cycle past them in the targeting dispaly, not even being near them or attacking them they would then prioritise you over any other craft in the mission regardless of the situation) then they would fire a missile at you once every 30 seconds for the rest of time, which was incredibly frustrating.

I experimented in the mission editor and found why you rarely saw capital ships going up against each other directly: if you place a couple of capital ships near each other then the battle lasts about 1 minute, as they have a dozen(!) fighter guns which can fire continuously and as they're so ridiculously weak so that you with your 2 guns can destroy them in 5 minutes they go poof in short order.

Alliance made the captial ships tougher and gave them more guns and better guns which made them much more threatening, but still not all that tough. I tried 12 waves of 72 TIE fighters vs 6 ISDs and the fighters can win. Its an awesome sight seeing the capital ships scythe through the first couple of waves before the TIEs get in close enough to start dodging the lasers.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

I personally didn't mind the energy management system other than the fact that the starfighters flew so god damned slow! There should be consequences for "playing safe" by diverting thruster power to both weapons and shields but for heaven sakes, don't make it so your ship crawls like a freakin' tugboat. Your ship should be slower and easier to hit relative to other starfighters that aren't playing safe but I would have preferred it if the starfighters could at least travel at speeds that could mimic some of the maneuvers we see in the movies. Less hull HP and faster laser cannons would make the games a lot closer to the movies as well.

[Nephtys]

Speed in space flight sims is pretty funny. I think XWA was about average, along with the later Wing Commander games. Freespace was the slowest flight sim game in existance otherwise, where it took two minutes to fly over your Carrie--- I mean, 'Destroyer'.. But do you know what was fast as hell? X-Com Interceptor. That game was so blazingly fast that the ships would do insane spin fly around maneuvers, and your Wingmen would put you to shame in their killscores. It had other issues, but being slow sure wasn't one of them.

[Alan Bolte]

Yeah, speed in a Star Wars space sim is a funny thing. On the one hand, head-to-head relative speeds of 200m/s (or even less) is entirely typical of the movies, so ships with a top speed of 100m/s aren't all that unreasonable. On the other hand, some of the combat maneuvers occur at greater speeds, and it's obviously quite possible to cross a space of light seconds in just a minute or two. So either you arbitrarily limit speeds during normal gameplay and then have the ships move much faster in cutscenes, or on autopilot, or whatever, or you find some way to make the player want to move at a tiny fraction of his possible top speed. Since acceleration is high enough that you can simplify the flight model by having the ships always fly in the direction they're facing, the player doesn't have to worry about over-accelerating and overshooting the target, so that's out. Even if it wasn't, I've played space sims where the ships are limited to 10g, and 3-400 m/s is a perfectly reasonable dogfighting speed.

Another weird thing in this sort of game is gun targeting. In X-Wing your ship would compute where you needed to aim to hit the target, but then instead of telling you where to aim, it would just tell you if you were aiming correctly. In Freespace, there would be a circle on your HUD -the lead indicator- telling you where to point your nose to hit the target. It wasn't perfect, but it gave you a nice starting point. In the Wing Commander games, some ships had lead indicators and some didn't. None of the most popular games ever had gun targeting systems resembling aircraft of any era I'm aware of. Actually, as far as I know Wing Commander invented that style of lead indicator.

[Stark]

Did Vymp just say perks were retarded and then list some he wants? Does he know what is being discussed? Ps: Ace Combat has speed, turn, hitpoints too. No dumbing down required! Lol

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Yeah, speed in a Star Wars space sim is a funny thing. On the one hand, head-to-head relative speeds of 200m/s (or even less) is entirely typical of the movies, so ships with a top speed of 100m/s aren't all that unreasonable. On the other hand, some of the combat maneuvers occur at greater speeds, and it's obviously quite possible to cross a space of light seconds in just a minute or two. So either you arbitrarily limit speeds during normal gameplay and then have the ships move much faster in cutscenes, or on autopilot, or whatever, or you find some way to make the player want to move at a tiny fraction of his possible top speed. Since acceleration is high enough that you can simplify the flight model by having the ships always fly in the direction they're facing, the player doesn't have to worry about over-accelerating and overshooting the target, so that's out. Even if it wasn't, I've played space sims where the ships are limited to 10g, and 3-400 m/s is a perfectly reasonable dogfighting speed.

Remember, it's not m/s but MGLT. I think top speeds of 200 would just be fine. 100 as a top speed is just too slow!

[Stark]

That's just perception. There's nothing to measure speed against but other cap ships (which sims like XWing limit to laughably low speeds). It's the same in any sim where you're really high. Personally I think this plays together with the 1000hp thing to make it seem like you're in a tank (ramming TIEs to death etc).

The exact numbers are pretty meaningless.

[Darksider]

I really don't get where Stark's coming from on the whole "ZOMG over 9000 HP" shit.

I don't recall the shields functioning in HP, just an alternate display you could switch to that showed the percentage. It's not like it was some japanese game where there's a giant exact number at the top of the screen at all times.

[Stark]

Did you notice how 2 hits killed you?

Of course not - the better fighters appeared to have more 'SBD' (ps, hitpoints) than corvettes. You could take DOZENS of hits without even being damaged. This is NOT SW-ish; it's hitpoints. SW games should be high-lethality, not 'I'll drive through 7 TIEs because they're pilot AI is so bad and not even be damaged' like X-Wing.

Don't blame me for your lack of understanding. Freespace has the slow, tough tankship problem too, but X-Wing INVENTED it - Wing Commander is far more lethal.

[Vendetta]

I don't recall the shields functioning in HP, just an alternate display you could switch to that showed the percentage. It's not like it was some japanese game where there's a giant exact number at the top of the screen at all times.

The internal calculation was based on a HP figure. You could even change it by editing the game files with a hex editor. The actual numbers were abstracted from the player into a percentage, but there was a hitpoint value for shields and hull in there for every ship.

Speed in space flight sims is pretty funny.

The speed everything goes at is entirely arbitrary and needs to be tailored to the player experience. Don't expect everything to be as fast as it is in the movies, because it would be a royal pain in the ass to actually play the game if it was.

[Mr Bean]

Well some more nods towards the films would be nice with see speeds in the 600-900 m/s range rather than 200 m/s. It means over-flying something the size of a star destroyer would take two or three seconds. Just fast enough to give a great indication of speed(Even better if the scaling is done right) yet in deep space combat be fine.

You could do a HP model if you stole more from a good flight sim IE say your cockpit has 50 hit points, your engines 150, struts & wings can take 120 each, and subsystems like internal dampers, missile systems, weapons will suffer damage and have effects. Then toss in your basic laser does 100 points of damage. Shields would come in at much higher values but not that high, say 300 hit points and varies from ship to as well as recharge rate lets say for this example it recharges at 20 hit points a second. And lets toss in a small randomization program so that occasional shots are declaring grazes or deflections.

None of this information needs to be present to the player, not the damage model, not the shield recharge rates, or hit points or anything like that. All they know is that TIE fighter put two good shots into them and they died because a Missile cooked off in the tube and blew the up. Or next time they lived but now they are flying their X-wing without part of an S-Foil and down to three laser cannons. Meanwhile that TIE is still alive after four or five hits because nothings hit anything solid even if it is suffering engine issues. Or that TIE died in one shot because an X-Wing lucked out and managed a cock-pit shot on the initial pass and now it's going ballistic off into the distance.

Now if they want to dig down into the programing they can but the key defense is not to get hit. Things like Light Turbolasers can be the same except they do far more damage(Say 500) so even a glancing hit from them is enough to fry half your systems and leave you heading off into space with a dead-stick. With some work you can make a game complex even if what the players see is simple as any tank sim knows.

[Stark]

Yeah that's that shit - a high-lethality model with actual damage areas that is TOTALLY INVISIBLE beyond 'R2 says 'holy shit'. Don't give the player numbers; just say 'heavily armoured' or 'fragile' and tell them when things break.

[Nephtys]

XWA skirmishes where everyone flew TIEs was far more interesting than cruddy rebel fighters dueling. You went down in two hits that way, and everyone was decently fast, so it was actually more of an airplane dogfight, instead of that weird submarine thing that X-Wings do.

Wish more games could be that way. But nooo, it'd be too hard!

[VF5SS]

So either you arbitrarily limit speeds during normal gameplay and then have the ships move much faster in cutscenes, or on autopilot, or whatever, or you find some way to make the player want to move at a tiny fraction of his possible top speed.

So you want to implement Wing Commander's "cutscene to the nav point" feature? Come on man, let's think forward. We don't have to reinvent the wheel just to account for some director's use of jump cuts.

So let's talk about warheads for a minute, do we keep the old style with the countermeasures or do guns only with missiles for big targets like the movies?

[Stark]

Anyone who thinks the missiles were done properly in X-Wing is retarded.

I'd even like to see different versions of each basic type (dogfight torps, heavy torps, standoff torps, etc) instead of TORPS ARE HIGH DAMAGE and CONCUSSION MISSILES ARE SIDEWINDERS. There's plenty of scope for different and interesting missiles that make figher choice more significant without destroying canon.