Pilot Archive
Thread: 10 Ways to make PvE less dull in Space.
2 Tricks- Code in the use of a few pilot specials and droid commands, mix up the things they do in a fight.
6 Turrets! Why should the Rebels get all the fun with Aggressors? Every class of NPC should have a turreted fighter for pilots to face, and the AI for these should be changed, and the exposure to turreted ships should come sooner. Ywings with turrets, and for gosh sake, give us Krayt NPCs!! Turret accuracy and the NPC "pilot's" desire to get a player in the turrets arc of fire should start low in low tier NPCs, and progress up to a level slightly tougher than it is now, in tier5s. The reason the Aggie gets such fear is that it is kinda dumped on rebel pilots sorta sudden like. Nice surprise I think, but I'd rather see easier turret fighters earlier on in the learning curve and progress them up to more difficult later.
edit- I realized I had dumped a godawful chunk o text. Broke it up to make it more readable.
Message Edited by psikobunny on 07-13-2005 11:51 AM
Message Edited by psikobunny on 07-13-2005 11:59 AM
#10 borks the canon even further to hell. Han used Jumps almost every time he had an encounter with the imperials to get away. Take it away and he would have been dead.
If you want to make space interesting, Those Stealth Tie Fighters in Dantooine need to start dropping Cloaking Devices. That Witch Clan in Dath space need to start dropping pearls. And their needs to be more epic AI events to keep people interested in the scenery.
Space is empty. really. the quests are extremely pedestrian (course, so are the ground quests too.) there's really not a whole lot to keep people interested.
Mostly they need to fix the bugs. Fix the bugs and people will be more interested in everything. But yeah, space is empty right now. It's basically a totally different game. I do not feel the connection at all between the ground and space.
And yeah, JTL isn't the best design I've seen, though I don't expect it to be on par with Wing Commander (Not one of Lucas Arts space games have EVER matched up to Wing Commander. hehe.) There's a lot of room for improvement, and I don't think Capital ships is it. I think Capital ships is a waste of time right now.
#10 doesn't break canon in the least. There are several missions where the Objective of the mission is to hyper from pursuit. And any of you who are reading what I'm writing carefully, will see that my least favored option is to remove the concept of a truly tactical jump. What I want to get rid of is the fact that doing so now breaks the AI. If you look at the whole of what I recommend, its a push to make the game smarter, as well as add variety. I want enemies who are smart enough to track people down within the same sytem, because a microjump can and should be totally trackable.
Sure as shooting those imperials Han jumped away from didn't just sit there frozen. They commed out the description and information on the Falcon to all other Imperials in the region, and if Han had been tricksy enough to microjump a fe thousand kilometers, they wouldn't have sat there frozen and not known what to do. #10 is about fixing a bug, that's all.
psikobunny wrote:
#10 doesn't break canon in the least. There are several missions where the Objective of the mission is to hyper from pursuit. And any of you who are reading what I'm writing carefully, will see that my least favored option is to remove the concept of a truly tactical jump. What I want to get rid of is the fact that doing so now breaks the AI. If you look at the whole of what I recommend, its a push to make the game smarter, as well as add variety. I want enemies who are smart enough to track people down within the same sytem, because a microjump can and should be totally trackable.
Sure as shooting those imperials Han jumped away from didn't just sit there frozen. They commed out the description and information on the Falcon to all other Imperials in the region, and if Han had been tricksy enough to microjump a fe thousand kilometers, they wouldn't have sat there frozen and not known what to do. #10 is about fixing a bug, that's all.
The man makes a point. I have been pursued from a mission point to a jump point several kilometers away, but some systems have 13km or more between jump points. Thats a LOT of room to spoof pursuers. Plus it should NOT shut the AI down.
Frankly, some variation of the escort distance routine used in space to fail pilots who get too far from their escort missions should come into play. Maybe not a failure outcome, but a despawn of the swarm and a new one pops up after a short amount of time.
He's right, its not appropriate to have it short circuit the mission to effortlessness, but it should still a valuable tactic.
My way to make PvE less dull in space:
Have NPC's fire ordnance more, and for more damage.
I love ordnance. It's damaging, you can customize it to your own use (ie. what type you want), and it adds a sense of urgency when you get locked on.
Not only that, but Countermeasures are desperately underutilized, simply because you don't need to use them, and even if you do you just use the most basic version: the Chaff launcher. There are 4 more versions, each with its own beautiful effects and different pro's and con's (just like the ordnance), that are never used.
Lastly, it just looks awesome. It really adds feel to the game when you see a fighter in hot pursuit of another and launching ordnance at it.
Not only is it rarely fired by NPC's right now, but it rarely doesa significant amount of damage. They all seem to use the same kind too.
Make NPC's use Countermeasures more while we're at it (or at all, I've never seen them use it).
/agree JanuHull
While it might be nice to see the sparkle show, there were very good reasons why the rate of missile fire and amounts of damage were cut back during beta. My point about rocket ships was mainly to make them perform differently than light fighters, and to make them do things that would encourage a few more missile locks. A blanket increase in fire rate and damage would punish new pilots, and effect experienced ones almost not at all.
Now, while thinking on this I just had a thought im gonna suppress and post in another thread. It's OT here.
Hope that made sense.
One of my most memorable moments was as a 4333 rebel pilot and i had the 'kill the imperialinquisitor' mission. This is basically 8 t4 ties and a t5 inquistor in a tight formation, i hit hyperspace at 800 and unloaded into the inquisitor killing him in a few seconds/ Then i just dodged the few bolts that came my way and got outta there quickly.
Was an exremely successful hit and run mission, or assassination 