Jump To Lightspeed Archive
Thread: My wishlist, and my need to rant.
Page 1 of 1
Trekkervger
Sun Aug 28, 2005 9:14 am
#1
So, I was playing X-wing Alliance the other day (strange how the X-wing Alliance Upgrade Project graphics blow JTL's out of the water without any of the terrible lag), and I realised that this much older game is just capable of so much more than Jump to Light Speed.
In my B-wing, I can dogfight against a TIE Defender if I play it right. He launches a concussion missile at me and I'm not totally dependent upon countermeasures - I can evade it at the last second with a quick turn or I can shoot it down before it reaches me or I can dive behind a capital ship and let it take the blow for me. I have to watch my flying in asteroid fields - a wrong move at high speeds can spell trouble for either myself or my opponent. I can unload my torpedoes upon an Imperial Star Destroyer with my squadron without lagging so badly that I crash to desktop - I can even have full-scale fleet on fleet engagements!
Then I go over to Jump to Lightspeed, where everything is so restricted. If I'm not lagging out, I'm hitting walls where all I see before me is empty space. Missiles ignore the laws of physics and become "I win" buttons. Capital ships are extremely rare sights and I find that I actually hope they stay that way, lest my framerate drop to unplayable levels. My enemy does not make any tactical decision. He just flies in circles, hoping that I will *let* him onto my tail. Fighting a more difficult target only means one that I have to shoot three or four more times than before.
So, in a time of terrible frustration, I wrote up what I loved about previous Star Wars flight simulators against what was wrong with Jump to Light Speed and posted it on my guild's message board. My friends offered their own opinions, and I added the ones that I liked to my own list. In my dream of what Jump to Light Speed would be like, here is what we came up with. I don't expect anyone here shall agree with anything I've said, but I've been enjoying the thrill of Star Wars space combat on my computer since the original X-wing and TIE Fighter games.
Neutral Pilot:
Add known fighters that Star Wars flight sim fans have come to know and love.
Novice - Z-95 Headhunter
Tier 1 - Pinook Fighter
Tier 2 - Preybird Fighter
Tier 3 - Authority IRD
Tier 4 - CloakShape Fighter
Master - (CorSec) Toscan Fighter, (Royal Security Force) N-1 Starfighter, (Smuggler's Alliance) Razor Fighter
Tier 1 - Pinook Fighter
Tier 2 - Preybird Fighter
Tier 3 - Authority IRD
Tier 4 - CloakShape Fighter
Master - (CorSec) Toscan Fighter, (Royal Security Force) N-1 Starfighter, (Smuggler's Alliance) Razor Fighter
While we're at it, let's give them a little love: Let them quest their way into the cockpits of Black Sun's Supa Fighters and Star Vipers
Factional Pilots:
The Empire has a maneuverability advantage - this is good and canon, but this advantage is excessively overpowering when one shot kills prevail in space pvp. In previous X-wing games, this was balanced out in that, though rebel craft were less maneuverable (with the exception of the A-wing) they could take a lot more pounding than Imperial craft. My suggestion - remove the shield hardpoint from Imperial fighters, with a few notable exceptions mentioned below.
Make shields worth something. Don't overdo it, but let us at least be able to block a shot or two with em. In pvp, even a single grazing shot takes out all your shields and armour. This does not promote exciting battles like we see at the end of RotJ.
Remove the TIE Aggressor and TIE Oppressor. Give Assault Gunboats and TIE Avengers as the Imperial "shielded" fighters. In exchange for shielding, their agility will be on par with comparable Alliance and Neutral craft.
Try This:
Novice = TIE Vanguard
Tier 1 = TIE Fighter
Tier 2 = TIE Bomber
Tier 3 = TIE Interceptor
Tier 4 = Assault Gunboat
Master = TIE Avenger/Advanced
Novice = TIE Vanguard
Tier 1 = TIE Fighter
Tier 2 = TIE Bomber
Tier 3 = TIE Interceptor
Tier 4 = Assault Gunboat
Master = TIE Avenger/Advanced
Keep our current rebel fighters, but make adjustments to them. Add hard caps to agility and speed. No matter how good the engine, a Y-wing should *never* be faster and able to evade better than than an A-wing. Similarly, a B-wing should be slightly slower than an X-wing but packing enough firepower to damage capital ships. Allow the rebel fighters to equip slightly heavier armour on their fighters so they can take a few more hits before going down, compared to the "agility first" imperial craft.
General Space Changes:
Add player-controlled capital ships, but make a decently large crew (somehow) a necessity. If SOE makes it so a player can fly a Nebulon-B frigate single-handedly I will throw up. Also, some Level of Detail and newly reduced polygon models are a *must* if capital ships are going to become even slightly less rare than they are now.
Up the damage on warheads, but give us a better chance to evade them in a fighter. Proton torpedos are meant for attacking capital ships.
Increase the size of the space sectors and spread stuff out more so we have room to move our starships. Take away some of the heavily graphics intense stuff (nebulae should never be forming so close to the gravity of a planet and what on earth is space lightning doing in a vacuum? Isn't lightning generated by warm air causing friction when it encounters cold air?) to reduce lag. Hitting walls all the time isn't that much fun.
Get rid of the lame freighters we see flying around. Add in Bulk Freighters, Escort Transports, Modular Conveyors, Mobquet Medium Transports, Xiytiar Transports, Action VI Transports, Star Galleons, Gallofree Medium Transports, Container transports, and YT-series craft.
Can we please have some collision coding in this game? If I ram full speed into a giant asteroid, I'm pretty sure that would completely destroy my ship. I would at least like to see some damage caused to me from reckless flying...
Change the Hyperspace system. Keep that you use the hyperspace menu to choose a planetary sector to travel to, but at the end of the "calculations," the game should provide a random waypoint where you have to travel to activate an X-wing Alliance style "hyperbouy." Likewise, you will hyper into the system at a semi-random point (based on faction but still discouraging hyperpoint camping). This will allow for more chase scenes in the space sectors and to promote immersion ("We can't hyperspace in this asteroid field. We'd enter light speed in pieces!").
There should be vessels that anyone can use irrespective of the piloting career they choose, i.e. the YT-1300. All the fighters and shuttles of X-wing Alliance should be able to be made by shipwrights and used by pilots. However, if they are on the above list then only the pilots of those professions can use those fighters. Any that are not on the list can be used by anyone. Maybe a good privateer-only ship would be a Muurian Transport?
Adjust the "Tier" system to be based on AI and not HP/damage. I loved X-wing Alliance's AI in that it actually improved its flying when they got harder instead of just getting stronger shields and weapons. Also, the AI acted like humans and didn't hit 99% of the time.
Tailors should be able to make a much larger range of space based garments including helmets. The flightsuits, helmets and jackets given as rewards in the current piloting professions should be buyable from tailors and no longer given as rewards. The current Rebel helmets should be edited so the face is visible. We don't want a repainted USAF helmet.
Due to TIEs no longer having shields in my dream JTL give Imperial pilots the ability to go to an Imperial space station and get up to 4 NPC pilots flying identical ships to the player. That way, due to the Rebel players outnumbering Imperial players on the majority of servers, they can do the Imperial strength in numbers tactic.
Merchant/Smuggler Revamp utilising Jump to Lightspeed:
First, take the previously mentioned new freighters and certify them for Master Merchant. Add a system of "Market Terminals" in major spaceports. At these terminals, a Merchant should be able to purchase goods labelled things like "Medical supplies" or "Foodstuffs" or "Luxury Goods" or such and check the demand for those goods across the galaxy - though demand won't *always* perfectly coincide with the market price when you arrive. If any of you have played "Gazillionaire", you'll kinda know what I mean.
To transport these goods, you *have* to use the launch to space command - the "Travel" button will be disabled for any ship with cargo in its hold. Once in space, you and any other ships grouped with you are TEF'd to a new player profession - Pirates. If the pirates destroy you, they get the credit value you paid for the cargo. If you destroy them, they suffer starship decay and you get a random payout from "looting" the pirates' horde!
I believe this will encourage merchants to hire other pilots to fly cover for their new shiny freighters and allow them to make a profit, feeling like true merchants instead of store managers. When the Merchant sells his cargo, 10% is skimmed off the top for the Imperial government's tax collectors, putting a feeling that the Empire is at least slightly oppressive in this Star Wars recreated universe.
As outlined above, Smugglers will collect goods, including some contraband goods from a "special" merchant terminal in Jabba's Palace. From "Jabba's Terminal," players can purchase crates of contraband (labelled things like "glitterstim" or "Assault weaponry") for low prices. These goods conversely, will sell for high prices on Corellia, Talus, Naboo, and Rori, assuming the smuggler can get them that far.
When Smugglers deliver their goods to the merchant terminal, whether contraband or not, the Empire's taxes are not deducted from the Smuggler's profits since the Empire "doesn't know" that the goods have made it onto the planet. However, this bonus comes at an increased risk. In addition to pirates, Smugglers are TEF'd to both NPC and declared player factional craft. If a TIE fighter player patrol stumbles across a YT-2400 stuffed to the brim with Glitterstim, of course they're going to stop the smuggler from fulfilling his evil desire!
A smuggler about to be caught can eject his cargo, removing the TEF and granting any factional players engaged in combat with the smuggler will receive a bonus of faction points from their command chain for stopping the "evil smuggling" in the sector. However, if a smuggler does eject a cargo he picked up at Jabba's Palace, he is not safe for long. Every time he dumps his cargo, he accumulates one "deadbeat point." At three deadbeat points, NPC bounty hunters will track and attempt to kill the Smuggler. At five, "elite" NPC bounty hunters will track the smuggler, and at 10 deadbeat points the smuggler will appear on the Bounty Hunter terminals to be hunted in pvp engagements. As he accumulates deadbeat points, it also becomes more expensive to purchase goods from Jabba's special terminal. To remove deadbeat points, the smuggler must successfully complete the lesser-paying runs from Jabba's Palace to re-earn the Hutt's trust and thus the lower prices.
Nearro
Sun Aug 28, 2005 3:45 pm
#2
Extremely well thought-out and put-together comments. /salute for a good read.
Odds of anything like that happening, though, are slim to none. JTL has forever been the "can we forget about it some more" project of SWG. It was initially released simply because they needed an expansion and promised us space flight. Ever since then, it's been mostly forgotten, having served it's purpose of being "just another expansion". IMO, if it doesn't relate to jedi/the ground game, it's not going to get much detail thrown at it.
Possibly, sometime in the hopefully near future, more attention will be given to it, especially considering everyone that got the TE now has JTL, whereas before, not a lot of people upgraded to it as it wasn't required to do 85% of the game.
Granted, now that I've said that, I will also add in that it doesn't look hopefull, with no mention of space in the newest expansion announced.
But, again, /salute on that well thought-out ideas.
Odds of anything like that happening, though, are slim to none. JTL has forever been the "can we forget about it some more" project of SWG. It was initially released simply because they needed an expansion and promised us space flight. Ever since then, it's been mostly forgotten, having served it's purpose of being "just another expansion". IMO, if it doesn't relate to jedi/the ground game, it's not going to get much detail thrown at it.
Possibly, sometime in the hopefully near future, more attention will be given to it, especially considering everyone that got the TE now has JTL, whereas before, not a lot of people upgraded to it as it wasn't required to do 85% of the game.
Granted, now that I've said that, I will also add in that it doesn't look hopefull, with no mention of space in the newest expansion announced.
But, again, /salute on that well thought-out ideas.
Nidarrock
Sun Aug 28, 2005 11:35 pm
#3
Very well thought out. Overall I like it, and do feel that the space portion of the game is severly lacking. I mean does every space sector HAVE to have an asteroid field? Granted what else can go there... but perhaps certainsectors could have more space stations and capital ships of some sort. Being able to a small ship yard would be awesome, but very unlikely. Some sort of damage from collisions would be nice and improved AI would come a long way to helping the game. I prefer to play the game in space than on the ground, if that means anything. However I fear Nearro is dead on with his comments about JtL's viewpoint from the devs. However, the next thing SWG needs is a complete bug overhaul.
Washell
Thu Sep 01, 2005 5:57 am
#6
Alliance caters to the space sim player, JTL caters to the space arcade shooter. Keep ideas limited to arcade shooter and they'll have a shot at making it live.
Collision damage was taken out to prevent griefing.
BadMedic
Thu Sep 01, 2005 6:47 am
#7
As it was said, unlikely to happen, they could make JTL open source and let us program it 
Trekkervger
Sun Sep 04, 2005 1:25 pm
#8
Well, I never said it was likely. I never even expected anyone to agree with anything I wrote down. As I said, this was an image of my "Dream" Jump To Lightspeed. I would personally be thrilled if even one of these ideas was implemented, but I know that JTLS is very low on the devs' priority list, especially in light of the recent expansion. I just wanted to vent some frustration at what JTLS could be. Right now I feel JTLS is the closest part of SWG to what I remember ofStar Wars, but is still a good long ways off...
Also, when did I say allow player collisions? I can see that being a grief tool, but I specifically used the example of asteroid fields. I have a friend who deliberately crashes into those flying rocks because it "helps him turn better." Han got closer to the rocks in TESB, but I don't think he intended to ram them.
Message Edited by Trekkervger on 09-04-2005 02:27 PM
Page 1 of 1