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Author Topic: 2.2 Demo Feedback  (Read 35146 times)

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March 20, 2017, 01:54:18 PM

Offline etra_kurdaj

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2.2 Demo Feedback
« on: March 20, 2017, 01:54:18 PM »
Love the game, put in about 8 hours over the weekend. Played as the Empire.

Allegiance battlecruisers are far too week. Their shields pop waay too easily and they're extremely vulnerable to fighter craft. For their cost, they aren't worth it. They need anti-fighter guns and ~ double their current shield strength. I understand the point - they should be vulnerable to fighter craft for the rock/paper/scissors balance, but you need to keep in mind the Allegiance is a ISD replacement in fleet composition, and I would rather have the ISD over the Allegiance for the strike craft. That decision needs to be reversed. Even in a fleet of 5 ISDs with an Allegiance to supplement, with that many ISDs I already have all the firepower I want, and the swarm of fighters will by themselves take out an enemy's Allegiance.

Gladiators - I understand they fill an intermediate role, but they feel useless. Aquitaines kill fighters better and ISD's kill everything-not-a-fighter quicker. And ISD's easily handle Gladiators. I don't know what the solution is, but I almost always just save the money to build ISDs instead of Gladiators. Also, Gladiators are slow. Whatever is done with them, they need a speed boost.

ARC-170s - for some reason, these launch with my ISDs. Sure, whatever. The problem is, when I CTRL+A to select my fleet, my TIE Fighters/Interceptors are lumped in with the TIE Bombers and Skiprays, and the ARCs are their own category. Please reassign strike craft type so TIE Fighters roll with TIE Interceptors, and the bombers (Skiprays, TIE Bombers, ARCs) roll with the bombers. Right now they're mixed and its very sub-optimal.

Thanks for all the work thats been done! The game is great!


March 20, 2017, 02:01:01 PMReply #1

Offline Bucman55

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2017, 02:01:01 PM »
1. Allegiances are much better at fighting frigates-capital ships than smaller craft. They are not (and never have been) an ISD replacment.

2. I agree for the most part. The Gladiator is best used in large numbers due to the torpedo launchers and don't forget they deploy Skiprays which is one of the best bombers in the mod.

3. The game groups units by what abilities they have. The only way to make it show up with the TIEs would be to take away the S-Foils ability and instead give it the Hunt for Enemies ability.

March 20, 2017, 02:23:40 PMReply #2

Offline Corey

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #2 on: March 20, 2017, 02:23:40 PM »
Allegiance battlecruisers are far too week. Their shields pop waay too easily and they're extremely vulnerable to fighter craft. For their cost, they aren't worth it. They need anti-fighter guns and ~ double their current shield strength. I understand the point - they should be vulnerable to fighter craft for the rock/paper/scissors balance, but you need to keep in mind the Allegiance is a ISD replacement in fleet composition, and I would rather have the ISD over the Allegiance for the strike craft. That decision needs to be reversed. Even in a fleet of 5 ISDs with an Allegiance to supplement, with that many ISDs I already have all the firepower I want, and the swarm of fighters will by themselves take out an enemy's Allegiance.

They have a shield strength of 8700, ISD is 5000. The difference is that the Allegiance has a damage modifier specifically from bombers, similar to SSDs, that makes them particularly (and really, only) vulnerable to bombers. Even having a tiny amount of dedicated anti-fighter craft with them makes it pretty safe. They're also not ISD replacements, they're ISD supplements that require the use of anti-fighter support. The ISD is meant as a sort of jack-of-all-trades, the Allegiance is dedicated anti-ship. If you're taking out a few heavier targets, the Allegiance will always outperform.

Quote
ARC-170s - for some reason, these launch with my ISDs. Sure, whatever. The problem is, when I CTRL+A to select my fleet, my TIE Fighters/Interceptors are lumped in with the TIE Bombers and Skiprays, and the ARCs are their own category. Please reassign strike craft type so TIE Fighters roll with TIE Interceptors, and the bombers (Skiprays, TIE Bombers, ARCs) roll with the bombers. Right now they're mixed and its very sub-optimal.

You're not playing the Empire, you're playing a splinter faction with regional proximity and some political associations with pirates as well as some of the Mid-to-Outer Rim territory planets that had outdated Imperial garrisons, called the Greater Maldrood, which is why they have ARC-170s available to them. As Bucman says though, the groups in the selection box are based primarily on abilities, not identifying tags.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2017, 02:26:31 PM by Corey »
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March 20, 2017, 02:48:27 PMReply #3

Offline HobbesHurlbut

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #3 on: March 20, 2017, 02:48:27 PM »
Lemme see what's the fluff on Gladiator Class Star Destroer.
Designed (repurposed by Kuat Drive Yards) to be long range patrol ships. They have 25 light turbolasers (light is nice to have...it mean smaller damage penalty against starfighters), 10 point defense laser cannons (hey! there's one we can slap Point Defense ability on for an Imperial faction ship), and 10 (medium) concussion missile launchers. Sound like a corvette bully and can ding up starfighters some. Can carry 24 starfighters, so that's 2 squadrons.

If you include SW Armada, there are two sub classes. The first is above. The 2nd apparently has better antistarfighter capability and better range (not increased damage).

If anything, they have cheaper population costs. So you can always use them to screen your ISDs (aka soak up damage while thinning out OpFor like say starfighters and fast corvettes).
« Last Edit: March 20, 2017, 02:50:50 PM by HobbesHurlbut »

March 21, 2017, 02:20:50 PMReply #4

Offline badaeu

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #4 on: March 21, 2017, 02:20:50 PM »
Played the demo and finished the campaign as the NR.
Almost done as GM and started as Zsinj.
The grey colour for Zsinj could be changed. It is not the prettiest and it is hard on the eyes.
The Zsinj anti aircraft turret on land is not firing.
Third party attacks on space are always starting at the same point as attacking fleet and only helping defending forces.
Mc 90 and the generally all capital ships are too weak. They could be made more expensive but they should be more powerful.
Same goes fot SSDs.
With the exception of some firing fx on space, the mod is better than 2.1.
Keep up the good work.

March 21, 2017, 03:48:11 PMReply #5

Offline DarthRevansRevenge

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #5 on: March 21, 2017, 03:48:11 PM »
Zsinj is Brown
i don't think the hyperspacing thing can be changed. i think each space map as exactly 1 jump point
they are working on nerfing SSDs, but whatever. i do agree capital ships should have a pop/cost/power boost
« Last Edit: March 21, 2017, 03:50:15 PM by DarthRevansRevenge »
do you know what really makes me mad? that the NR didn't make as many different SSDs as the empire. they would have won much faster had they done so. it's just not fair. but, if their were more NR SSDs, they would be absolute SUPER-CARRIERS.

but, i'm a member of the PA at heart, and my wish here is to join the ranks of grand admirals... sorry, the elite imperial alignment

March 21, 2017, 04:02:13 PMReply #6

Offline Corey

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #6 on: March 21, 2017, 04:02:13 PM »
Quote
The grey colour for Zsinj could be changed. It is not the prettiest and it is hard on the eyes.

We're still trying to find a good colour to stick with Zsinj. It used to be a "richer brown," but colour blind people found it hard to distinguish between them, Maldrood and the New Republic. Takes a bit to find new colours we can use with how many groups we try to represent, and without introducing issues for colour blind people.

Quote
Third party attacks on space are always starting at the same point as attacking fleet and only helping defending forces.

I disagree that they only help defending forces. If you're attacking, you have a few minutes to get out of the way, and they typically prioritize the starbase as a target. Eventually we want to add a separate marker in for them, but that means going through all ~150 maps, so we're waiting until we have everything we want done as far as map markers and edits so we can do it all at once.

Quote
Mc 90 and the generally all capital ships are too weak. They could be made more expensive but they should be more powerful.

There was an issue with the New Republic in the demo release where their turbolasers didn't receive the same damage multiplier as the green turbolasers did. It's been fixed internally, and will be fixed in 2.2 (or if we decide to do another demo patch)

Quote
Same goes fot SSDs.

SSDs certainly have more pronounced weaknesses, but they're still incredibly strong. SSDs have pretty much always been an instawin card for the player, which they still sort of are, but at least now it's not guaranteed.

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March 23, 2017, 12:11:14 PMReply #7

Offline badaeu

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #7 on: March 23, 2017, 12:11:14 PM »
Thank you for the reply.
Is it just me or the Zsinj anti aircraft turret on land is not firing?

March 23, 2017, 03:12:19 PMReply #8

Offline tlmiller

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #8 on: March 23, 2017, 03:12:19 PM »
Thank you for the reply.
Is it just me or the Zsinj anti aircraft turret on land is not firing?

It is not just you, it's been reported by like 4 people before you.
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March 26, 2017, 02:15:38 PMReply #9

Leebeck3

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #9 on: March 26, 2017, 02:15:38 PM »
Can you make it so the empire doesn't spam interdictors? I don't know but the zsinj's empire just spams giant fleets of immobilizers and star destroyer interdictors and are really easy to beat then until they start building allegiances.

March 28, 2017, 07:33:00 PMReply #10

Offline Revalera

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #10 on: March 28, 2017, 07:33:00 PM »
Love the mod, thanks for the demo! I've played GC on all 3 currently available factions so far ...

I agree with the issues that were mentioned before (grey colour of one imperial faction on ground makes it hard to distinguish from planetary bonus buildings, red turbolasers too weak etc.)
and I also have some suggestions

1. New Republic capital ships (home one type for example):

they should, in addition to the red turbolaser damage fix, receive better turbolasers, e.g. only heavy turbolasers on Home One Type, or even double heavy turbolasers since there aren't as many turret hardpoints - I know they are tanks, but their damage output is just really small given their size and cost. And with the exception of Admiral Ackbar himself, their Boost Shields ability is pretty useless, there's not much of a change, you might want to consider making it recharge the shields a bit more/faster.



2. New Republic Starfighters, or NPC fleets in general:

When I played as GM or Zinsj, it happened to me many times that, after a few ingame weeks (Admiral difficulty), the NR attack fleets were just massively "overcrowded" with starfighters. I had to fight fleets of 156 E-Wing squadrons *and* 120 Y-Wing Squadrons, plus Frigates etc.
Suggestion - if that's even possible, give fleet "stacks" a limit of max. 30 units of a type, e.g. max 30 squads of e-wings, y-wings, a-wings or whatever per attack fleet. It's just no fun to sit there and spam corvettes for half an hour watching one squadron after the other disappear (actually it is once or max twice but not the whole time, and yes, I love to take my time for GCs).

3. Just something I  saw, some planets (think there are two on the Hunt for Zinsj Map, I actually forogt which ones :/) do not *seem* have a direct hyperspace-route link to another but can in fact be accessed by that planet (which you can see by either being attacked from an unexpected direction or if you have a fleet on that planet and pull it to all the surrounding planets to see if there's a direct route). Think one of them was pretty much in the center of the map (close to roche asteroids or so)

Apart from these little "issues" there is actually nothing else I find bad in this mood, keep up the amazing work and the nice and entertaining vids on youtube!

PS: I really like that you made the Allegiance vulnerable to torpedos (fighter attacks) only, this stimulates strategic gameplay hehe ^^



March 28, 2017, 09:38:06 PMReply #11

Offline Lord Xizer

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #11 on: March 28, 2017, 09:38:06 PM »
Zsinj AA turrets track targets but do not shoot at them.
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March 28, 2017, 10:07:01 PMReply #12

Offline Bucman55

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #12 on: March 28, 2017, 10:07:01 PM »
Zsinj AA turrets track targets but do not shoot at them.
I think it's because the turret has not been assigned a projectile to shoot.

March 29, 2017, 12:43:45 AMReply #13

Offline the_trots

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #13 on: March 29, 2017, 12:43:45 AM »
Love the mod, thanks for the demo! I've played GC on all 3 currently available factions so far ...

I agree with the issues that were mentioned before (grey colour of one imperial faction on ground makes it hard to distinguish from planetary bonus buildings, red turbolasers too weak etc.)
and I also have some suggestions

1. New Republic capital ships (home one type for example):

they should, in addition to the red turbolaser damage fix, receive better turbolasers, e.g. only heavy turbolasers on Home One Type, or even double heavy turbolasers since there aren't as many turret hardpoints - I know they are tanks, but their damage output is just really small given their size and cost. And with the exception of Admiral Ackbar himself, their Boost Shields ability is pretty useless, there's not much of a change, you might want to consider making it recharge the shields a bit more/faster.



2. New Republic Starfighters, or NPC fleets in general:

When I played as GM or Zinsj, it happened to me many times that, after a few ingame weeks (Admiral difficulty), the NR attack fleets were just massively "overcrowded" with starfighters. I had to fight fleets of 156 E-Wing squadrons *and* 120 Y-Wing Squadrons, plus Frigates etc.
Suggestion - if that's even possible, give fleet "stacks" a limit of max. 30 units of a type, e.g. max 30 squads of e-wings, y-wings, a-wings or whatever per attack fleet. It's just no fun to sit there and spam corvettes for half an hour watching one squadron after the other disappear (actually it is once or max twice but not the whole time, and yes, I love to take my time for GCs).

3. Just something I  saw, some planets (think there are two on the Hunt for Zinsj Map, I actually forogt which ones :/) do not *seem* have a direct hyperspace-route link to another but can in fact be accessed by that planet (which you can see by either being attacked from an unexpected direction or if you have a fleet on that planet and pull it to all the surrounding planets to see if there's a direct route). Think one of them was pretty much in the center of the map (close to roche asteroids or so)

Apart from these little "issues" there is actually nothing else I find bad in this mood, keep up the amazing work and the nice and entertaining vids on youtube!

PS: I really like that you made the Allegiance vulnerable to torpedos (fighter attacks) only, this stimulates strategic gameplay hehe ^^

1.  There is a discussion about the NR frigate lineup in another thread, related to your comment.  Long story short it appears doubtful we will see changes to NR ship armament.

2.  This happens in every FOC mod I have played, and I have been at it for some years now.  I can only assume there is nothing that can be done about it because nobody has resolved this issue after all this time.

March 29, 2017, 10:30:02 PMReply #14

Offline briG

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #14 on: March 29, 2017, 10:30:02 PM »
Wall of text containing things I think should be changed in my opinion:
-NR frigates are bad excluding normal dreadnaughts and quasars. Hapan Battledragon is also pretty okay. They just don't really do anything and theres no reason to build them when you have Mon Cal ships to tank, Dreadnaughts/Hapans to deal the damage and strip the shields of frigates/capital ships. Quasars + their starfighters screen enemy starfighters and take out shields of capital ships. Main problems being: lack of armament, split armament(lasers/turbo-lasers on the same ship) and no utility abilities.
-IPVs need toning down. The range at which they can obliterate swarms of well shielded and armored NR fighters is nuts. They are quite nimble for something with that much firepower,  having a line of frigates usually just means when their shields are about to drop they turn around and run away.
-Pod Walkers need toning down. They have way too much firepower and hp to be just a light factory unit that only costs 200. Also doesn't need a dedicated anti-infantry vehicle with it since it can just squish infantry.
-Hailfire Droids are underwhelming for something that costs 1200. They have loads of HP(which out all of the units in the mod I find them having a huge health pool is strange) but they don't do all that much. Sad because I think they look great. They're not particularly good versus vehicles, and they aren't great against infantry either. Their big HP pool means they can take on turbolaser towers with some help.
I personally changed them to shoot 8 missiles at a time instead of 4 and upped their range a bit. Seemed pretty okay.
-The AT-TE's need some punch. Something so slow it should at least be able to take out T2-B tanks.
-X-wings in ground battles have comparable HP to TIEs but way less damage.
-Range on MPTL is obnoxious. SPMA range is kind of short. I think the SPMA damage seems a bit higher to compensate but it really doesn't feel much like artillery as a clunky long-range tank destroyer. You also have to be very careful with using MPTLs, because if you have one deployed and a scout trooper decides to drive into the middle of your blob of infantry you're going to have a bit of a problem on your hands. The projectiles will also collide with friendly AT-ATs if they are in the flight path.
-The sight ranges given to all artillery pieces make using other units as a spotter pointless. They're also good just to land for the basically free sensor array since it can see almost the whole map depending on where it's positioned.
-T1B hovertanks should have shields. They had them in SW:FOCOM, they die in almost one hit from a TIE Crawler or a Pod Walker even with shields. Shock troopers also tear them to pieces. Just this way normal infantry can't kill them easily.
-Luke Skywalker controlled by NR AI makes ground battles almost unresolveable. He can stay in force cloak 100% of the time. He stealths whenever he takes damage so he will just run around and stall infinitely unless you edit his ability so it doesn't have 100% uptime or auto-resolve.
-The infiltrator units seem to work a bit differently than they did in 2.1, and I'd like to see that come back. Previously you could move them and then attack-move and their shot would come out almost instantly and you could kite basic infantry around doing that. Now they seem to have picked up the bad habit of shooting at the same target that only takes 1 shot to kill.
-NR grenadiers have a habit of auto-grenading scout troopers if you forget to turn it off and kill half their own platoon. Funny, but still bothersome.'
-The Nightsister rancors are useless for almost everything except destroying buildings. The Drain life ability and its stun component is alright(it also works on vehicles for some reason).  They tend to just get chewed up by whatever anti-vehicle weapons the enemy has.
-Droidekas are also useless. They look amazing, but they're useless. Even a small infantry blob can kill them if you move them into an area where you don't have vision. It's better to just use an AT-ST or AT-PT for whatever you'd use a Droideka for. The speed isn't really needed.

Other than those things the mod is great. Maldrood is fantastic, Zsinj has a bit of trouble with ground combat but is quite doable. NR has problems all around but with fixed turbolasers they can manage. Most of the ground forces they can build are quite usable, can't say the same about their space lineup.
« Last Edit: March 29, 2017, 10:39:21 PM by briG »

March 30, 2017, 03:14:37 PMReply #15

Offline HobbesHurlbut

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #15 on: March 30, 2017, 03:14:37 PM »
Have the Enforcer Picket Cruiser received a boost to the Quad laser cannon pulse count? (2.1; it's only 2 pulses that I can see, whereas the normal loadout is 10 quad laser cannons) If so, scaling down the firepower of IPV can be justified.

March 30, 2017, 03:40:06 PMReply #16

Offline tlmiller

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #16 on: March 30, 2017, 03:40:06 PM »
Wall of text containing things I think should be changed in my opinion:
-NR frigates are bad excluding normal dreadnaughts and quasars. Hapan Battledragon is also pretty okay. They just don't really do anything and theres no reason to build them when you have Mon Cal ships to tank, Dreadnaughts/Hapans to deal the damage and strip the shields of frigates/capital ships. Quasars + their starfighters screen enemy starfighters and take out shields of capital ships. Main problems being: lack of armament, split armament(lasers/turbo-lasers on the same ship) and no utility abilities.
While I agree, some of that will be mitigated when the red TL's are equaled to green TL's.

Quote
-IPVs need toning down. The range at which they can obliterate swarms of well shielded and armored NR fighters is nuts. They are quite nimble for something with that much firepower,  having a line of frigates usually just means when their shields are about to drop they turn around and run away.
Given that in my testing a single IPV can kill 3 CR90's, I have to agree

Quote
-Pod Walkers need toning down. They have way too much firepower and hp to be just a light factory unit that only costs 200. Also doesn't need a dedicated anti-infantry vehicle with it since it can just squish infantry.

Tone down or make more expensive.  I'd like to see them a little toned down, right now they are instadeath for entire squadrons of turbo tanks/m2 repulsor tanks.
Quote
-Hailfire Droids are underwhelming for something that costs 1200. They have loads of HP(which out all of the units in the mod I find them having a huge health pool is strange) but they don't do all that much. Sad because I think they look great. They're not particularly good versus vehicles, and they aren't great against infantry either. Their big HP pool means they can take on turbolaser towers with some help.
I personally changed them to shoot 8 missiles at a time instead of 4 and upped their range a bit. Seemed pretty okay.

I'd actually like to see them cheaper instead of more effective.  3 squadrons are quite effective, but are just too expensive.

Quote
-The AT-TE's need some punch. Something so slow it should at least be able to take out T2-B tanks.
The AT-TE is like an SSD in space.  Even the AT-AT is faster moving and gets itself "stuck" less.

Quote
-Range on MPTL is obnoxious. SPMA range is kind of short. I think the SPMA damage seems a bit higher to compensate but it really doesn't feel much like artillery as a clunky long-range tank destroyer. You also have to be very careful with using MPTLs, because if you have one deployed and a scout trooper decides to drive into the middle of your blob of infantry you're going to have a bit of a problem on your hands. The projectiles will also collide with friendly AT-ATs if they are in the flight path.

Yeah, right now I'd agree the MPTL is simply MASSIVELY OP'd.  Can fire 1/2 the map away, and has INSANE sight range compared to anything else.
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April 01, 2017, 12:56:06 AMReply #17

Offline briG

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #17 on: April 01, 2017, 12:56:06 AM »
AT-ATs also probably need a buff. When I see an AT-AT I should think I need to throw all of my anti-vehicle forces to overcome it. However a small blob of T4-B tanks(or pod walkers) can tear them to pieces quite easily.

Even when I have the gunships from Zsinj used against me AT-ATs hardly stand a chance. Quite sad really.

Zsinj should have AT-AAs. As it stands currently the only thing that can actually deal with enemy aircraft is just ground TIE fighters.

The T3b tanks are just flat out inferior to the T4b tanks.  They are an upgrade, but the only reason to build T3Bs over T4Bs are either: nostalgic reasons or destroying a very light garrison consisting of mostly buildings because they have a better rocket armament than the T4Bs.

Possibly the T4B tanks could be faster than the T3Bs but have less firepower with similar HP?

But the only reason to actually bother with a tactical retreat with NR tanks is to repair with with specialists or repair stations. The specialists repair at a very disappointing rate. The AI doesn't tend to get that aggressive in ground combat until you destroy their buildings so I end up toggling fast forward to repair my tanks with specialists only. Perhaps they need a repair buff?
« Last Edit: April 01, 2017, 01:13:41 AM by briG »

April 01, 2017, 06:09:41 PMReply #18

Offline silvermoon88

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #18 on: April 01, 2017, 06:09:41 PM »
In terms of non-bug related feedback on the mod, so far I'm greatly enjoying it. I love the new models for some of the ships, they look incredibly nice and cleaner than 2.1's versions. The new HUD in the galactic map looks quite nice as well, and 2.2 overall feels like a huge upgrade from 2.1. There are only two things I'm not liking so much, and the big one is the new infantry setup of all the troops being individually selectable. It can have slight advantages in some rare cases, perhaps, but overall to me it's just been a burden.

Infantry are incredibly slow to deploy now, I've suffered many battles where my deploying infantry get wiped out from rockets from an artillery or from an IDT just because they take far too long to deploy. The huge amount of health bars covering up the screen when selecting them gets in the way more often than not. The fact you get only two soldiers from a barracks instead of two squads when defending is a huge nerf, especially when it takes so long for them to reappear just to be slaughtered by practically anything. I do feel like there's a slight framerate drop when there's many units of infantry down as well, but I'm not 100% certain.

Overall I just prefer the infantry squads instead of individually selectable. The only real uses I can find for the new system is just sending one or two soldiers to cap something like a radar dish or CP, but I can't see it being a huge advantage. It draws out battles more with the AI spreading them around to randomly - just not a fan of that system, maybe I'm kinda alone here - I haven't seen any discussion of the infantry thing, maybe I just haven't found it.

The other thing I haven't liked is the engine situation with some of the new SSDs and all. I feel like 1 engine on a Bellator (it is just 1, right? I'm not crazy, am I?) and only 3 on an SSD isn't right when a Praetor has 3 and it's cheaper and smaller than either. I feel like those two ships should receive at least two more engine targets. Three hardpoints being able to technically kill something (if they retreat) that cost 40k credits doesn't seem right.

Otherwise, I'm really happy with the direction 2.2 is going. Every other complaint I can make now is just the previously mentioned bugs people have posted before.

Cheers,
SM

April 01, 2017, 07:45:52 PMReply #19

Offline Corey

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Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback
« Reply #19 on: April 01, 2017, 07:45:52 PM »
A lot here, so mostly just directly responding to things that either I disagree with for a specific reason, or requires further clarification. Have read everything though:


We definitely agree on a lot of the points with the infantry, but them being individually selectable wasn't done for its own sake. If it were a question solely of individual vs squad, then I agree, squads are much better. The reason it's individual is because the infantry now fire while moving (which alone makes infantry hugely more useful) and this also requires the use of a specific locomotor type for the unit behaviour. This locomotor causes issues when garrisoning (among other things) which splits up the squad and causes problems when giving movement orders. It's possible to have units get stuck, and possible to have half the squad load into a bunker/transport while the other half gets stuck outside. Unless we're missing something big with the behaviour type, this is not soluble, and we think the benefits of soldiers that can fire while moving makes up for the drawbacks of units being separated into individuals (some of which are likely soluble, which we'll get into in a moment), where they have to stop moving and setup for a few frames before they can actually fire, making them significantly less useful and making stats between infantry matter far less, since it's basically going to come down to whomever stops moving first.

So, for the drawbacks:
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Infantry are incredibly slow to deploy now

There are ways to reduce this, but the way we were using to do it made the AI not want to use the infantry- for whatever reason, they didn't recognize them as valid units. We think we can make a workaround for this, but it'll require some work to make and test, which is why it's not in the demo. The workaround would also potentially solve the other issue which exists with squads but the individual units makes more obvious (as you mention), where the AI likes to send their infantry randomly around on the map (much like their fighters).

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The fact you get only two soldiers from a barracks instead of two squads when defending is a huge nerf

This isn't really connected, it's more related to how we were spawning them to work around the deploy times; basically, we had commander units that spawned the other parts of the squad using the fighter code. When we reverted back to full squads to stop the AI problem, we neglected to go back and revert the garrisons for barracks.

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I do feel like there's a slight framerate drop when there's many units of infantry down as well, but I'm not 100% certain.

This is a separate issue; the NR infantry in particular is way too high poly at the moment, so they can cause some frame drops.

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When I played as GM or Zinsj, it happened to me many times that, after a few ingame weeks (Admiral difficulty), the NR attack fleets were just massively "overcrowded" with starfighters. I had to fight fleets of 156 E-Wing squadrons *and* 120 Y-Wing Squadrons, plus Frigates etc.
Suggestion - if that's even possible, give fleet "stacks" a limit of max. 30 units of a type, e.g. max 30 squads of e-wings, y-wings, a-wings or whatever per attack fleet. It's just no fun to sit there and spam corvettes for half an hour watching one squadron after the other disappear (actually it is once or max twice but not the whole time, and yes, I love to take my time for GCs).

Even if we were to be more specific in what they have to use to attack, they're also only able to use what they have made, so instead of making them attack with different stuff, they'd just end up attacking with nothing. Part of this is the result of access to shipyards, though this is mitigated by AI's magic unit drops. They're fairly limited, and the AI wants to have as many units as it can get. More importantly, they only have so much pop cap, and fighters tend to make that more of a problem. Even if they build fighters at the same rate as capital ships/frigates, the AI will almost always retreat once the "actual" ships are dead, which means in any given fleet, the fighters are the most likely thing to survive. Then, if they're replacing those now-empty slots in the same proportion, losing battles, etc, they'll end up slow maxing out on fighters. This happens a lot more when people play passively, since they're attacking more and therefore more likely to retreat a lot. If we tried to do something in the script to occasionally cull the fighter numbers, then we'd be causing the selection freeze several months earlier in the game. What we're more likely to do is give fighters a max buildable count at any given time, which the player probably wouldn't ever hit but would mitigate this effect on the AI (40-50). The AI has a tendency to ignore build limits, especially for its magic spawns, but it should help a bit. It would also mean it's still possible later on, too, since they could theoretically just build 40-50 of multiple types, but it would be much later.

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3. Just something I  saw, some planets (think there are two on the Hunt for Zinsj Map, I actually forogt which ones :/) do not *seem* have a direct hyperspace-route link to another but can in fact be accessed by that planet (which you can see by either being attacked from an unexpected direction or if you have a fleet on that planet and pull it to all the surrounding planets to see if there's a direct route). Think one of them was pretty much in the center of the map (close to roche asteroids or so)

Some of them seem to not want to render for whatever reason. We're looking into them.

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-NR frigates are bad excluding normal dreadnaughts and quasars. Hapan Battledragon is also pretty okay. They just don't really do anything and theres no reason to build them when you have Mon Cal ships to tank, Dreadnaughts/Hapans to deal the damage and strip the shields of frigates/capital ships. Quasars + their starfighters screen enemy starfighters and take out shields of capital ships. Main problems being: lack of armament, split armament(lasers/turbo-lasers on the same ship) and no utility abilities.

Yeah, the NR's unit list already tends to fill those roles and once you get up into the twenties in your available units, there's not much differentiation that's even possible, especially when we're basing it on canon stats (which is why in Ascendancy, we're quite happy the engine only allows us a significantly pared down unit list, while also allowing abilities to vary a lot more than EaW really does). They're more available in this GC for story purposes. This is part of why we don't go along with the oft-suggested "everyone should be able to build [Star Destroyers/Battle Dragons/Mon Calamari Cruisers/Bothan Assault Cruisers/etc] if they capture [Kuat/Hapes/Mon Calamari/Bothawui/etc]." Once we do get into abilities, that will help a bit, although the basic roles will still obviously be the same or similar. The Battle Dragon, specifically, will be getting its interdiction mines, which should actually make it pretty unique (especially among the New Republic, in the few places where it's available to them).

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-The infiltrator units seem to work a bit differently than they did in 2.1, and I'd like to see that come back. Previously you could move them and then attack-move and their shot would come out almost instantly and you could kite basic infantry around doing that. Now they seem to have picked up the bad habit of shooting at the same target that only takes 1 shot to kill.

Nothing has changed with them at all yet. They're still using the base game infantry logic, like they always have.


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-Range on MPTL is obnoxious. SPMA range is kind of short. I think the SPMA damage seems a bit higher to compensate but it really doesn't feel much like artillery as a clunky long-range tank destroyer. You also have to be very careful with using MPTLs, because if you have one deployed and a scout trooper decides to drive into the middle of your blob of infantry you're going to have a bit of a problem on your hands. The projectiles will also collide with friendly AT-ATs if they are in the flight path.
-The sight ranges given to all artillery pieces make using other units as a spotter pointless. They're also good just to land for the basically free sensor array since it can see almost the whole map depending on where it's positioned.
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Yeah, right now I'd agree the MPTL is simply MASSIVELY OP'd.  Can fire 1/2 the map away, and has INSANE sight range compared to anything else.

As for sight range, that's just a typo. It was meant to be 400, but instead it got an extra 0 and it's 4000. Its max range is being reduce, and its min range is being increased. We want artillery to be actual artillery, ie function at long range, not at short. The big change there will actually be recharge rate.


As for any rockets or bombs killing stuff from your own side, all of the friendlyfire scripts were meant to have been removed; I thought they were all gone (they're not in my folders), so i'll have to doublecheck ingame if there were some weapons that had it as default functionality from the base game. If it was installed over 2.1, they'd still be there, so that could be it, but I'll check again to make sure.

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AT-ATs also probably need a buff. When I see an AT-AT I should think I need to throw all of my anti-vehicle forces to overcome it. However a small blob of T4-B tanks(or pod walkers) can tear them to pieces quite easily.

This is more a problem with T3/T4-Bs being too expensive than a problem with AT-ATs not being good enough.

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Zsinj should have AT-AAs. As it stands currently the only thing that can actually deal with enemy aircraft is just ground TIE fighters.

He'll be getting them. We were hoping to turn Hailfires into AA, but it seems like that won't be possible while keeping their missile movement, so we're going back on that.
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