I'm finally at a point where I can put those ships into the midst of battle and I can happily report: everything works great! After polishing the first few cruisers, fighters and weapon systems to a nearly-finished state I decided to go ahead and just fight some bad guys while also recording the footage to have something to show around instead of the lame weapon effects video I already posted.
It should be mentioned, that no significant effort was put into balancing just yet... so weapon ranges will seem to be off, hit chances aren't at realistic levels and some weapon systems aren't yet as useful or devastating as they used to be in FS2. That being said, everything worked amazingly well almost the first try. For example fighters are seriously being hurt by the Aeolus' anti-fighter weaponry without being totally obliterated by it to make them almost useless. The Leviathan and Fenris also seem to mirror their vanilla FS2 performances with the latter at a clear disadvantage because of its weak armor. Even with the Fenris' beam cannon being significantly stronger than its FS2 version (due to not being a "slashing" beam) it doesn't really stand a chance against its bigger brother.
I suggest you watch it in HD (when it's available - youtube is still encoding right now), if your internet connection is fast enough, or else you might miss a lot of the fireworks:
Involved in this battle are two GTC Aeolus-class cruisers (one on each side), each with 3 supporting fighter wings,a GTC Fenris-class cruiser on the player's side and a GTC Leviathan-class cruiser for the enemy forces. Of course, a Leviathan is a lot better armored than a Fenris and packs more fighter defenses, so the advantage was somewhat on the AI's side. I eventually lost because of that, but it was pretty close... if my Aeolus would have lasted just a bit longer ;)
There's still lots to be done. I'm not quite happy with the current flak effect and the fighters are only able to attack capital ships instead of actually fighting other fighters. Once I have bombers in the game, I'll definitely change that.
That's it for now - see you next update! :)
PS: I'm eager to hear your comments, especially about everything I could improve on. Although it's still early in development, it's never too early to collect some feedback about what the community thinks, right?
The laser turrets and the flak turrets have a high ROF compared to FS2 ones, but that can be fixed I guess.
Aside from that the mod looks pretty well and keeps that particular FS2 feeling, good work :D
yeah... and perhaps they're a bit big... in FS2 you could barely notice them (unless when they were firing them at you... god I hated those laser turrets. In FS2, I mean. Annoying bastards)
And I think they had more like a anti-fighter, close-range weaponry role
The range for the blue anti-fighter beams and flak cannons is numerically identical to the FS2 firing range, but it's possible, that Nexus calculates things slightly different than FS2. It shouldn't differ much, though...
Regarding the thickness of the blue beams - I remembered them being pretty thin, too, but after seeing them again in FS2 a few days ago I was surprised by their actual size. Will probably need to compare them side by side to get the size just right.
no, the thickness of those is beams is right, I was meaning the slow-moving laser blobs
I used the same ROF as in vanilla FS2, actually. I suppose the beam cannons fire slightly more often due to Nexus already recharging the weapon, while it's still firing at something (I believe FS2 waits for the weapon to stop firing before recharging the beam). Should be easy to spot when measuring times in FS2, though, so that'll be adjusted.
Great man Can't wait till a release ^_^
Is there going to be any other bigger ships like the GTD Bastion and all that. Becuase those ships are beastlike lol.
Sure.
I'd tell you the ship classes I already have in the game, but then I wouldn't have much for future news updates, now would I? ;)
Well yellow lasers (small terran turret IIRC) is mainly an anti-fighter weapon, really anoying such as Mularac said, but it can be used for almost anything.
The size of the blobs seems to be correct, a little big maybe... but who's taking note of those things, for me it's just fine.
Excellent work.. the sounds and visuals bring back memories...
Can't wait to see sum Sathanas in action 8D
i missed to see the charging flash of the main beam cannons.you can remember those white circles you just noticed if you in a directly line between two capital and get blown away in the next second?:)