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Thread: A Complaint to LucasArts about Star Fighter Continuity
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DavidHarper
Fri Jul 01, 2005 5:54 am
#1
I have decided to write to LucasArts about the current state of Star Fighters in Jump to Light Speed. However I need help first to gather statistics on the current ships in the game and sugestions on how they should function.
Once I have statistics on all the ships I wish to compare them to the new system I propose, which I hope will make the game a lot more balanced in both the way all the ships function continuity wise (for example Episode 3 ships will not function better than Episode 4 ships) and how they function in PvE and PvP.
Please note I am using Rebel Star Fighters in this example:
I sugest for simplicitys sake that when assuming Star Fighter speed we use 100.0 kmp (thats 1000 speed to those of you who don't know how speed functions in the game) as a base and then modify it for each ship. An example of a 100 speed engine in Star Fighters:
A-Wing : 105.0
X-Wing :100.0
Z-95 : 100.0
Nova Courier : 95.0
B-Wing : 95.0
Y-Wing : 90.0
Y-Wing Longporbe : 85.0
ARC-170 : 80.0
I believe this system would make the game far more equal. Makeing all the ships a lot more eligible to use in both PvE and PvP. When I think of PvP I do not think of 1 Vs. 1 but Many Vs. Many around a Capitol Ship.
Now onto weapons. Currently the ship weapons load outs make little sence from a continuity point of view. An X-Wing has 3 weapons mounts whilst the TIE Interceptor has 1? I do not understand this at all. My sugestion currently is to half both weapons weight, I have a seperte proposal for damage. All ships should have 2 Warhead Launchers.
A-Wing (Curently has 1 Weapon): 2 Weapons
X-Wing (Curently has 1 Weapon) :4 Weapons
Z-95 (Curently has 1 Weapon) : 2 Weapons
Nova Courier (Curently has 1 Weapon) : Unknown balance concerns*
B-Wing (Curently has 1 Weapon) : 6 Weapons
Y-Wing (Curently has 1 Weapon) : 4 Weapons
Y-Wing Longporbe (Curently has 1 Weapon) : 4 Weapons
ARC-170 (Unknown as I have never used it) : Unknown as I am unsure of the continuity of this ship
*Nove Courier: In theory these ships should be able to mount "Quad Lasers" this would mean they can carry 8 Weapons in total, 4 on the top mount and 4 on the bottom mount. However I am unsure how this would affect the game.
I also propose a drastic change in the weapons and shield system for both PvE and PvP. This is because currently PvP and PvE are almost diffrent games and the ships are totaly diffrent from one and other. This needs to change so that PvE and PvP are thealmost identical. Meaning both PvE ships and PvP ships of the same tier will take the same number of hits to kill.For example if a ship has the following shields and armour.
Shields: 2000 Front/2000 Rear
Armour: 2000 Front/2000 Rear
I believe that it should take 4 hits from an X-Wing fireing all 4 guns to take down a fighter with these stats. That would mean 4 weapons hitting a ship does a total of 500 damage. This would mean that each individual weapon does125 damage. However fireing all 4 weapons at oncewould be slow compared to fireing all 4 weapons individually(Anyone who has played the X-Wing games would know this). The player would be given the option of chooseing to link the weapons or fire them individualy on a cycle. So a player could choose to fire all 4 weapons at once and cause more damageto a target with a slower fire rate and if they miss it means they do no damage, or they could choose to fire each weapon individualy meaning they do less damage with each hit but fireing there weapons more quickly. It also means that iff they miss it is not as big a deal because they will be ready to fire again straight away instead of having to wait.
Now you also have the problem of Tiers essentialy 6 of them, Tiers 0-5. Well this would be simple to solve the equipment statistics for this simply take 10 off of each stat for each tier. Engines for example:
Tier 0 : 50 Speed
Tier 1 : 60 Speed
Tier 2 : 70 Speed
Tier 3 : 80 Speed
Tier 4 : 90 Speed
Tier 5 :100 Speed
Or weapons:
Tier 0 :75 Damage
Tier 1 :85 Damage
Tier 2 :95 Damage
Tier 3 :105 Damage
Tier 4 :115 Damage
Tier 5 :125 Damage
I also believe that like engines our shields should have a modfier. It is quite hard to do this considering I can't actually go in game and testengine speed vs shields^_^; Again taking this as the basic shields rating:
Shields: 2000 Front/2000 Rear
A-Wing : x0.9 :1800 Front/1800 Rear
X-Wing : x1.0 : 2000 Front/2000 Rear
Z-95 : x0.95 :1900 Front/1900 Rear
Nova Courier : x1.5 : 2500 Front/2500 Rear
B-Wing : x1.2 : 2400 Front/2400 Rear
Y-Wing : x1.1 : 2200 Front/2200 Rear
Y-Wing Longporbe : x1.1: 2200 Front/2200 Rear
ARC-170 : Unknown
Again I am finding hard how to balance PoB ships. Note the Y-Wing's quite inferior. This is because it is quite an old ship and was replaced by the B-Wing and so no Master Pilots would really want to use this as there "Bomber" ship when they have access to the B-Wing, however it is not so inferior that it makes it an unviable ship and Tier 4 pilots and lower should still find it usefull. Also note the Y-Wing Longprobe will still be very usefull as it can fire behind it. This is why it is slower.So this is my proposal. What do people think?
Washell
Fri Jul 01, 2005 7:48 am
#2
We've got a pilot correspondent who volunteered to take input from the community, see if a majority of the community supports it and then passes it on to the devs. You're proposal has no chance to get past this because
- It killsthe RE game
- It killsthe SW's experimentation
Your letter will be read somewhere between the mailroom and the devs and immediately discarded since it didn't came through the proper channels (forum -> correspondent -> correspondent forum -> Tiggs/TH -> Dev team managers -> JTL dev). If you still want to persist in this, the stats you need are in the pilot forum FAQ.
P.S.: Why don't you just say you don't like JTL and wish that they change it to Alliance? Would have saved you a lot of typing.
Doofius
Fri Jul 01, 2005 7:56 am
#3
I also have a complaint towards LucasArts about the lack of true physics in spaceflight. I demand that JTL content be more like Asteroids with a z-axis!
Salco
Fri Jul 01, 2005 11:23 am
#4
LA doesn't have any control over JTL or SWG anyways, afaik. The game is fine the way it is now anyways.
KJFett3
Fri Jul 01, 2005 1:02 pm
#5
I didnt see anything in those stats that I liked. These ships are supposed to be different. As in an XWing is much faster than a Ywing....not just 150. Etc etc etc.....Go pull the old West End Game Source books and get comparisons from them to go to LA with. Those are better balanced.
!
Attacca
Fri Jul 01, 2005 1:13 pm
#6
Lucas and crew have full say over what happensin SWG/JTL/RotW. During and after beta there were lots of dev logs mentioning meetings with them.
Doofius
Fri Jul 01, 2005 1:34 pm
#8
Physics doesn't exist in his galaxy far far away, but humans do? I demand that Han Solo be blue-skinned with gills!!
Corran950
Fri Jul 01, 2005 3:04 pm
#9
KJFett3 wrote:
I didnt see anything in those stats that I liked. These ships are supposed to be different. As in an XWing is much faster than a Ywing....not just 150. Etc etc etc.....Go pull the old West End Game Source books and get comparisons from them to go to LA with. Those are better balanced.
/agree
Here you go if you dont have them:
Rebel
A-Wing : 12
X-Wing : 8
Z-95 : 7
B-Wing : 6
Y-Wing : 7
Y-Wing Longprobe : 7
Imperial
TIE: 10
Interceptor: 11
Bomber: 6
To make them Galaxyied multiply the numbers by 100.
- Rebel Pilot 4/4/4/3
Halyn
Fri Jul 01, 2005 3:18 pm
#10
Ducimus wrote:
Oh this should be good.
/popcorn
Pass me some of that, will you?
"--Michael Stackpole, RS IRC
Ducimus
Fri Jul 01, 2005 3:38 pm
#11
Halyn wrote:
Ducimus wrote:
Oh this should be good.
/popcorn
Pass me some of that, will you?
/passes the popcorn
Good stuff.
DavidHarper
Fri Jul 01, 2005 3:53 pm
#12
Well if we REALLY want to get technical and 100% continuity I can pull out the Industrial Lights and Magic speed chart for craft speeds when the movies were made but that is not what this is about.
This is about trying to balance all craft so that they are viable in PvP combat. With the current system if we were going to have a 12 Vs. 12 battle all the Rebels would use an A-Wing and all the Imps would use the JSF and everyone would fly around in little circles untill one player lucks out and 1 hit kills the other player. WOW! What great fun that is.
I wan't to try and balnce all the ships so they are viable in largePvP battles. It would be nice to see say 6 X-Wings, 3 A-Wings and 3 Bwings Vs. 6 TIE Fighters, 3 TIE Interceptors and 3 TIE Bombers.
Also note the figures I gave were just examples. If people would like to come up with there own sugestions then I don't mind. What I would like to do is get a comunity effort together to try and balance ships out so that they areALL viable and then get the sugestions to the Dev's (Not that they ever listen to people on the forums, thats why I was thinking about sending a letter to LucasArts).
Now for Shipwright experimentation this shouldn't really affect them as they will still be able to experiment. The figures I sugested were not hard set values. An idea would be able to allow a 10% variation on the speeds, 5% either side of 100, so a theortical max of 105 and min of 95. Also people may not like the speeds I sugest and think there to low but we have to consider lag and the rubber banding issues.
As for looting I had the idea that eachcomponent is modifiable after it has been built.A player could thenloot "Upgrades". You could then take these upgrades to a shipwright aswell as youcomponenet and he could attach them to the component. A Tier 5 Engine upgrade for example could bost the speed of an engine from 100 to 105.
Anyways this is just a quick reply. I shall write more later. I don't see why people are being so hostile to this lol It is just an idea to try and improve the game. I am hoping that once Capitol Ships come out we will have something really decent that will get lots of people into space but don't just wanna see everyone in A-Wing's or JSF because there the only ships you will last for more than2 seconds in.
Ducimus
Fri Jul 01, 2005 4:39 pm
#13
Hayln, you about done with that popcorn? Pass it over, this is getting good. Ill go get us some soda's.
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