Game Guides Archive

Well it's a dilemma isn't it? an ISD can hold 30K+ STs/pilots, space fighters, it's basically a moving flag ship! This is why I had the idea of a FP guild pool... 1 MILLION FPs is definitely a LOT , even for a big guild to assemble alltogether...

As for controlling it, there needs to be a "permission" system. If you've ever played Planetside, i think we could work out somethign similar to their vehicle permissions system... You select wich spots can be manned by whom, guild only, anyone onboard...

The ship itself would be piloted by a single person. Should he go LD, he will automatically be kicked out and replaced by the backup pilot who HAS to be present.

The minimum PC crew required to move the ISD is: 3 pilots. One current, 2 backups, in case the first fails. The 2 backups can man turrets until they are needed (if ever...)6 turret gunners. 2 top, 2 under , One back, One front. The rest of the turrets can be manned by AI.

A Regulator. Oversees the main ship systems, allocates power where needed, plots and activates hyperdrive, oversees evental repairs.

If these minimum of 10 people are not present, the ship cannot move for safety reasons. It will stay on spot acting as a base, with Tie fighters patrolling around it.

When a ship is moving, it's escort still exists, and AI can fire turrets. Before it goes to hyperdrive, it needs a warmup time, to concentrate all that power drawn from all other systems. For 1 minute before the jump, the ISD will loose: All turrets firing abilities. All radar. All communications to AI ships guarding it (that's why you need them to come back in ebforehand or you'll need to buy new ships to replace them). You will stop moving. You will loose shields.

During that minute (or 2, or 3...) the ship is vulnerable, and can only be defended by PC ships that can hyper-jump on their own right after the ISD...

After the jump, there is a 3 minute cooldown period, same as the warmup period, you loose everything for X minutes... Has to be defended by PC ships...

The rebel side has much higher costs for these bigs cap ships (because they are harder to make without being discovered...)

As for ships themselves... I like the system of :

You buy a hull, and fit it with engines, weapons, a generator, shields, cloaking, missile bays, repair droids...

Each component is made by a different professions.

It's alot better than having crafter themselves do the "final combine" by buying stuff from their collegues. I'd like the ability to change stuff on my ship, and eventually when my hull becomes too small for all the stuff i want, i buy a bigger one...

Ok for ppl that asked for the link to the celebration video footage of the SE

http://swg.stratics.com/content/gallery/videos/

Excuse me if someone posted this already

For landing from orbit down onto a planet, a while back i had posted a message on atmospheric flights, here's my take on it:

Atmospheric flight is not possible from a programming view. It is too complicated, would lag down servers too much and would probably be overpowered (Imagine a tie fighter pummeling a jedi from above, no way to deflect those blaster bolts!) So instead, here's my take on it:

To land somewhere on a planet, you must first enter a low orbit around it. You then select on that planet's map where you want to land (either by entering X,Y coordinates, selecting a waypoint or a city or directly picking by hand where to land.

The game checks to see if you can land there:

If it is a municipal or no-build zone, you can't land there.

If it is a city, and it is not equipped with a starport/landing pad, you can't land there.

If it is a city and it IS equipped with a starport/landing pad, you CAN land there, and your ship will be stored in the landing pad's facilities. You will load, and you will see your ship Land on the pad (without controlling it) much like when you see a shuttle land to a shuttleport, except you will have that shuttle's Point of view. Others around the pad might see your ship land and be docked into a garage of some sort. You will see your ship open and your character walk out to a designated spot, at wich time you regain CONTROL of him.

If it is not a city, not a no-build zone, not water, etc... The gamee will flatten the land around where you want to land (Much like it does for a camp) and you will go through the animation. Your ship will then Stay there until you store it in your datapad. Others will see you land. You have NO COINTROL AT ALL during these landing animation sequences. They are automatic and you cannot control your ship. You cannot shoot, you cannot be shot at until you have regained control of your avatar fully.

If you decide to store your ship, you will have to improvise a small "takeoff" camp similar to a camp to recall it and take-off. You will take off by doing another animation and end up back in orbit after a loading screen.

This offers many advantages:

You cannot crash. You can safely land pretty much anywhere in the wild. You can land in cities. Ships are not overpowered versus land fights. Land fighting stays on land and space fighting stays in space. The coding of it is relatively easy compared to atmospheric flight. You can use your to move quickly from one spot to another by going back to orbit and dropping somewhere else. You can deploy reinforcements fast where needed (to take a small base for example). You can Taxi people... etc etc...

I think this would be the best system for landing by far... What do you think?

• Vehicle Designers - NEW profession to build advanced land vehicles, transports, barges. And the ability to slice and repair vehicles


• Ship Builder - NEW profession to build fighers, freighters, and capital ships. Plus the ability to slice and repair ships


• Pilot - NEW profession. Anyone can pilot a ship, but someone with Novice Pilot will be much better at it. Kind of like anyone can use a CDEF pistol, but a Novice Marksman will be better at it.


• Guild owned capital ships.


• NPC's for hire on freighters and capital ships


• Faction Space missions - You're faction plans a raid where capital ships are available to park your fighters in. The capital ships take you to the location and you attack with your fighter. These missions should require around 10 grouped faction members to get this mission.


• Faction fighters can be built by a Ship Builder but the schematics must be purchased from the factions recruiter. Fighter owner must be overt to use the fighter, just like faction pets.

- Travin

Wow, this just gives me goosbumbs thinking about it. Imagine the end of The Return of The Jedi space battle sequence. Now imagine your in there, in your tie fighter or x-wing fighting it out in there. Now insert that idea into swg, where you area just going out for a jow ride, and all of a sudden you come upon a huge battle of npc fighting eachother(kinda like a land battle field in space). Now you enter it and choose a side of the battle to fight for, you then go through a intents battle until you die, or you win, if you die, you will appear right outside of the battle field unharmed but you can not inter it until the battle start again. The battle will go on for like 5-10 min. and then will reappear in another 5-10 min. Now if you win, you could get cool prizes and even fp for the victory.
Another thing I would like to see are races through asteriod field. This would put even the best piolets to there limit, but you could win new spacecrafts or money, or some other kind of reward.

Here are my thoughs and ideas:

Imperio on Atmospheric flight it is quite possible if you have the right gametools in place. Yes- from what I hear it would be complicated to do. Im no expert and dont know much about itso Im not going to comment that much about it.

I can tell you that waaaaaay back on the oldforum boardeven before the SWG beta began one of the staff members -think it was Ralph- said atmospheric flight would not be part of expansion or actually he may have been talking about the shuttle landingsand departures. Cant remember. However I am definitely not counting on it for expansion. Speeder bikes going off mountain cliffs gives me an idea of what it would be like hehe..

Heck if you cant even get into multi-story hi rise buildings (dummy buildings for show)on Coronet what makes you think atmospherics will be included.....

Yes, this is why my system would be in place, you would not fly in the atmosphere, your ship would merely load into the world, perform a generic landing animation and you'd appear next to your ship.

That is definitely possible, you'll see it with the imperial crackdown publish, if you kill the scanbot, a troop shuttle (lambda class?) lands next to you and unloads 10 STs... so this is DEFINITELY possible, and it will be what is going to happen. You cannot FLY around in the atmosphere but you can land anywhere where you could normally set up camp...

Message Edited by Imperio59 on 02-09-2004 09:55 PM

i have hope, as the Minbari say "Faith Manages" even if it does take a year or three

Actually Imperio i wouldn't get too pessimistic on Capital Ships..I think if players have the money or faction points they will be available. I cant imagine them spending a ton of time behind the scenes only to offer small ships to players and onlya bunch of static stuff like alot of the big buildings currently are.

I can't imagine that only small ships will be available for players.

I'll tell you another thing- alot of imperial players, which I am not,are going to want to serve aboard star destroyers. You can't serve aboard a star destoyer with some kind of fixed view like a cockpit or big window. There would have to space to move aroundand levels. It should be interesting though to see what they come up with in May or June when more information is released.

Actually Imperio i wouldn't get too pessimistic on Capital Ships..I think if players have the money or faction points they will be available. I cant imagine them spending a ton of time behind the scenes only to offer small ships to players and onlya bunch of static stuff like alot of the big buildings currently are.

I can't imagine that only small ships will be available for players.

I'll tell you another thing- alot of imperial players, which I am not,are going to want to serve aboard star destroyers. You can't serve aboard a star destoyer with some kind of fixed view like a cockpit or big window. There would have to space to move aroundand levels. It should be interesting though to see what they come up with in May or June when more information is released.