Freeworlds: Tides of War mod for Freelancer

Thanks for the kind words :)

This may happen if the base is neutral, particularly if you're using missiles. However, if the base, or whatever NPC, is friendly, he'll understand that you're not a threat and he'll not open fire on you.

Well I can't speak for the Dev team, I am just a tester, but there ARE currently Tie Fighter models that are void of shields (Fighter, Interceptor, Bomber) and have a stronger hull to compensate. They are tougher to kill then being simply unshielded. Contrary to popular belief (set by the X-wing series of games), Tie Fighters didn't die in 2 shots in the actual movies or original lore. As a matter of fact, in ANH, during the escape from the Death Star, you can see Tie Fighters having the same shielding effects the X-wings have (the white flashes to either side of the ship when it is being shot.) So Ties wont die in 2 hits in this game. That is if the dev's leave them in.

Short answer, there are unshielded Ties present.

Slyder is right : there are still unshielded TIE Fighters, don't worry. The fact is that it's quite hard to balance them, because the shield account for 66% of the total resistance of an average fighter... and the hull doesn't reload. So, in order to balance them, we've made them faster, more powerful and more responsive than the default light fighters (such as the Z-95). But this isn't wasn't enough, so we've been forced to increase their hull so that they're balance perfectly.

This result in TIE Fighters having slightly more hull hitpoints than X-wing : this isn't as realistic as it should be, but it's the only way to balance unshielded TIE Fighters. You'll not notice it too much anyway, as they're really weak ships that (paradoxically) are much harder to pilot than TIE Defenders or TIE Avengers... because any error result in immediate destruction. Same goes for TIE Interceptors and TIE Bombers.

Eventually, as you've noted, it is still possible to buy shielded TIE Fighters / Interceptors / Bombers. They'll be very uncommon, as no NPC is going to use them. If you've played X-Wing vs TIE Fighter, you've already had the chance the pilot such ships in the Avenger squadron. In Fw:ToW, these shielded versions are heavier and have less hull than the default version. Furthermore, shield drains energy, resulting in less firepower.

Ahh that makes a lot of sense. I think that's a good solution. I was wondering how a TIE pilot would like his ship (however adjusted for balance) when exploring or flying through asteroids where each little bit of damage is cumulative and means he has to quit exploring and find a dock. Just some details like that could have been annoying. But then in PvP I'd definitely use the unshielded version.

Great compromise imo. Thanks for the response.

also i would like to know if there is going to be spaceship parts when a capital ship explodes or if its just the FX and then the model dissapears? or death animations like empire at war or star wars galaxies?

Have a look at some of our videos, it shows that we already make use of debries and stuff. As regards more advanced graphics with shaders and so on, stay tuned :)