Topic: OP Patch Status? (Read 36773 times)

Toasty0 · « **Reply #200 on:** February 28, 2003, 01:01:14 am »

Quote:

Hex interactions haven't, and won't, be fixed in the upcoming OP patch, because they are D2 issues. All D2 work has been handed off to ArticFire, who is not ready to release any fixes.

At least that's the last I heard.

I heard, sadly, that Articfire was swallowed whole by a polar bear while on a beer run...

Best,
Jerry

Khalee · « **Reply #202 on:** February 28, 2003, 01:09:48 am »

Im late in jumping in on this but I hope the supply bug has been fixed or will be.

GT-Keravnos · « **Reply #205 on:** February 28, 2003, 07:22:39 am »

Bump,

Because---we care enough for the game and have
Uber-hopes --- that in the end we will emerge victorious, therefore we
Must--- against all hopes, biases and fears, trust the Testers and Taldren to do a fine job. So, Peace Out and
Play out!

jdmckinney · « **Reply #206 on:** February 28, 2003, 07:54:57 am »

Carrie, you could remove pirate cartels through various modifications, but you can't take out the pirate map layer. In fact, it seems to do more harm when the pirate map is neutral than when it is populated.

Whoever brought up the supply issue -- what exactly are you referring to? I'm just curious. Personally, I'd like to see spare parts available in D2 go by the ship specs and not be limited to just 8 -- EAW was fixed in this way, so why isn't OP?

Mog · « **Reply #207 on:** February 28, 2003, 08:16:31 am »

Doug, the spare parts above 8 is simply crap. It penalises low crunch races - ie saber dancers; when you are fighting say a CVA with a BCH, and that CVA has 40 spare parts, it means the CVA can just repair its engines and leave, even though you may have pounded it to high heaven (been there, done that, got the t-shirt). I'd rather OP stick to 8 then go to the excessive and ridiculous amounts that appeared in EAW.

jdmckinney · « **Reply #210 on:** February 28, 2003, 09:15:27 am »

Moggy, thanks for the insight. I have to admit I haven't played EAW D2 much since the parts were "fixed." On the other hand, shouldn't a larger ship be able to repair more systems, having more capacity for repair crews and parts? Have any D2 campaigns used high-priced repair parts, so it would be costly to fly around with 20 spare parts, making pilots choose between saving prestige for new ships or spending it to keep their current one in top shape during a battle? I'd at least like the option for server admins to be able to set the parts to full or the 8-part limit. After all, 8 is pretty arbitrary, no? I mean, an FF that can only get up to 4 parts is in the same situation you describe vs. a CL that can carry 8.

FS, making the pirate layer neutral only causes empires to hurt their own defense values when running successful missions in their own hexes. Since political settings don't allow for neutral to be treated differently on the cartel map vs. the empire map, the settings tweaks available are limited. Even so, if you set neutral as allied to all empires, having the neutral cartel layer creates problems when enemies engage each other on the empire map -- if you win, you are hurting the enemy hex DV, but also "winning" for the neutral cartel underneath. It gets really confusing, because the DV effects depend upon not only the mission results and politics, but also the DV status of the cartel layer, which is invisible.

jdmckinney · « **Reply #211 on:** February 28, 2003, 09:19:27 am »

Carrie, feel free to try everything you can think of. I can only tell you what testing results I came up with in the past. If a cartel is allied to two opposing empires, in some cases it seemed as though a win for one side hurt their enemy, but also helped their allied cartel, resulting in a net change of zero. Again, combinations of settings, the missions used, and the cartel layer DV status could change things, but in the end, it is very unreliable.

We do need more people to test their ideas on this. Even if I didn't find success with some of these methods, it doesn't mean you or someone else won't find a new wrinkle that fixes some of the problems.

Good luck.

jdmckinney · « **Reply #215 on:** February 28, 2003, 10:52:25 am »

FS, if you mean the suggestion to use one cartel blanketing the map instead of all neutral, there are similar problems -- if it is allied to all, the net change of zero situation comes up. If it an enemy to all, players hurt their own empire DVs, but not until the cartel underneath is flipped neutral. What I'd like to see tried is having an all-neutral cartel layer that is actually NEUTRAL. The way the .gf settings work for politics makes this a little difficult, since all relationships are calculated as percentages. I've always said a much better political tension assignment would be strict values, so 500 is neutral, 1000 is mortal enemy, 0 is long-term ally, and anything either side of 500 is an increasing friendship or enemy relation to the extreme points of 0 and 1000. Of course, we don't have that system, and won't, so what to do? With careful manipulation, we could get truly neutral neutrals, I think, so it's at least worth a shot. I'm skeptical about how successful this would be, but at least it is something else to try.

Moggy, I totally agree with you -- the parts system should be reasonably regulated, and double the damage control rating seems fair. I was under the impression the parts ARE determined by the damage control value. If not, what IS controlling it? We all know where 8 came from (number able to be shown in the repair screen), but can someone explain to me how any given ship's parts limits are calculated?

According to my specs, a Z-CVA has a damage control of 9 in OP. Assuming that's right, how many does it get in GSA (and thus would get if OP D2 received full spares capacity)? If we doubled these figures, the CVA would end up with 18 possible spares. An L-FF with a damage control of 3 would get 6 possible spares -- what does it get now?

You're right about the costs of spares -- mission hosts would be able to "steal" spares off of AIs, but nobody else would be able to do so (or has the host-only transporter display bug been squashed?). At least if everyone could do it, it would make for an interesting little mini-game within the battle. Also, small ship captains would have less prestige to throw into buying spares.

Unfortunately, we're never going to get rid of this poor repair system, so can anyone come up with a way to improve it within the limitations? For instance, can we somehow use the ship damage control specs to force a ship size class-based stepping of spare parts? A DD could get 4, a CA 8, a BCH 12, a DN 16, a BB 20, or somesuch. I still don't like that a large ship gets penalized by the spare part limit. Still, if I had to choose between penalizing big ships and penalizing small ones, I'd choose the former -- those small ships need as much help as possible when the big-ship nutters dominate a campaign.

Mog · « **Reply #216 on:** February 28, 2003, 11:17:54 am »

Doug, there's a thread http://bozobits.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1441&highlight=spare+parts in which Chris Lee did some testing, although some anomalies were also discovered. It's something we're stuck with in EAW, and I sincerely hope that it doesn't get put into OP. If it does then it kills the saber dance as a viable tactic in OP imho. May as well fly a droner and just overload their repair ability with bucketloads of type IV drones - how varied that will be, sigh.

jdmckinney · « **Reply #217 on:** February 28, 2003, 11:22:16 am »

Moggy, thanks for the reference. I'll check it out.

A little bird tells me this fix may already be in place somewhere in testing -- you might want to petition Taldren directly for reversion or an alternate system (or fix). If it's causing that much trouble in D2 missions, it really should be examined more closely.

Mog · « **Reply #218 on:** February 28, 2003, 11:49:28 am »

Doug, if it's already in then I very much doubt that they'd take it out, especially as the player base is split between wanting low numbers and high numbers of magic screws.

Not to worry, Freelancer is proving to be an extremely enjoyable, addictive and playable experience, with continuous space, more than 6 people in battles etc.

jdmckinney · « **Reply #219 on:** February 28, 2003, 12:05:59 pm »

Well, I'm unnerved by the fact that nobody appears to be able to figure out exactly how the ships get the number of maximum spares they do. Even that SFC2.net thread didn't come up with anything difinitive. It makes it difficult to tell if a thing is working right or balanced if there is no calculation we can use to check the results.

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Topic: OP Patch Status? (Read 36773 times) var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};

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Topic: OP Patch Status? (Read 36773 times)