Originally, I had planned a nice article with a feature from my good friend Avenger. I asked him if he would give his expertise on Capital Ships within Freeworlds: Tides of War. He sent me his thoughts, and what he wrote, and I can not add anything more. So without further waiting, I will allow you to read his work, that really does the job. A video will be at the bottom of article, showing off some amazing Capital Ship Battles.
Your fleet group - Nebulon-B's, MC-40's, interdictors - is charging through space, screaming across a system, heading for a base six hundred kilometres distant. You know that somewhere out there the enemy is waiting, perhaps ready to spring a trap. Suddenly, enemy scout fighters appear on your scanners. They disappear again almost immediately. Everyone tightens their grip on their mouse and increases their visual scanning. The mood is tense.
Then bang! The enemy - Imperial Star Destroyers (ImpStar), Strike Cruisers, Victory Star Destroyers, interdictors - is suddenly there, right in your path, ready to rumble. The Immobilisers power up their gravity well projectors, and your entire fleet drops out of sub-light acceleration, right into a perfectly sprung trap.
The 40's drive straight into the enemy formation, trading point-blank fire with the star destroyers, but it's a bad mismatch. Fighters and bombers twirl through the web of high energy plasma, trading shots. Just as the battle seems finished, your first thrust done for, you glance at your sensor display, and there, like the Rohirrim, is a MC-90 and MC-80's charging up from behind. Your accompanying interdictor powers its projectors, neatly dropping your own ships out of sub-light acceleration, right into perfect firing range.
The Star Destroyers switch targets, but they're already weakened, and don't stand up long against the combined might of the Mon Calamari Star Cruisers. As you cruise through the wreckage of the battle, you know that the fight is just beginning. You've only pricked the hide of the enemy, and right now both sides are preparing more traps, counter-traps, and counter-counter-traps.That's only the tip of the iceberg in Freeworlds: Tide of War capital combat. To describe the capital vessels and combat of Tides of War in detail would require several pages, and even then not everything would be covered. There is a single word that sums up the general feel though; tactical.
Everything requires tactics. Every ship feels different. They handle like they should. When you fly a corvette or Nebulon-B, they handle like the fast, maneuverable ships they are. When you fly an Imperial Star Destroyer or MC-80, they handle like the lumbering, giant behemoths they are. The 18.xx versions of these vessels, by comparison, handle like fighters.
No longer is a cap battle just charging straight in to point-blank range and blasting away. Every battle requires tactics now. The ImpStar concentrates most of its firepower in a long-range broadside, and excels at standing off at range. Likewise the MC-90 is a long-range powerful vessel, but its firepower is concentrated everywhere, allowing it to deliver maximum damage whether it's flying head-on, or broad-siding the enemy.
Nebulon-B's are stick-thin from all angles; MC-40's are fat but pack immense firepower; the Strike Cruiser is a jack-of-all-trades; carriers have limited firepower themselves, but can carry squadrons of bombers and fighters into combat. Each ship has a role, and every single battle requires tactical thinking.
To sum the capitals up, they are epic, plain and simple.
As always, any questions, comments or suggestions are appreciated!
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those battles looks awesome! i just suggest 2 things:
first of all adding shield effect when you hit a ship with shields on (like empire at war base shields or gungan shield in ep1)
and well adding hardpoints to the ships to make it more interesting so you can actually try to aim at parts of the ship rather than random shooting at the enemy till the hp goes down. that would add some tactics in game like taking down the engines or the shield generators and stuff like that
keep up the good work!
btw can u actually see anything flying a super star destroyer??
i dont even think that you could aim a corellian corvette
The same came to my mind, in fact! Especially hardpoints would be an improvement concerning tactics. All told, the article is very interesting and I just thought: "When do they release the next news?" and there it was :)
The Youtube video by the way is watchable in Ger.
Those shield hit effects are definitly a good idea. We'll work on those as soon as possible!
As for the hardpoints, they are already there. Actually, one of our developers, Orac, is working on adding shield generators on every ship, that's why some shields were missing in the video. You'll also be able to destroy turrets, torpedo launchers and other weapons, but even power generators, tractor beams and gravity wells.
However, destroying those require precision aiming, so it's definitly a job for bombers, patrol ships and assault shuttles, while capital ships shell their targets from several kilometers away.
That Nebulon-B looks SWEET!! And I can't wait to get my hands on that Corellian Corvette!! Awesome ISD guys!!
Is it just me or are the torpedoes missing or are they just not noticeable? I mean the MC-30c is essentially a torpedo boat, to not have them would be against what it actually is.
Those weren't torpedoes, actually. These explosions are the Mc30 special feature : cluster bombs. They're close-range weapons, used to keep bombers away, and not really an anti-fighter weapon. Although it looks cool to use them nonetheless. The bombs trails are just here for testing purpose and will be removed in the final version. As for torpedoes, you'll see them later as they're not on the ships yet.
The Capital ships as well have a cockpit view, thats a very good news for players that want to really get into the atmosphere.
Who is driving that SSD? How long will you have to play for it?
The SSD won't be flyable, to make it so would almost literally break the Freelancer engine. But you can fly normal ISD's
Did you have moments during development, when you thought: "Damn why didn't we chose a better or own built engine!?"
Nope. Freelancer does give us a lot of gameplay ability and what we can do with it cannot be done in any other engine. :)
The SSD would work, it would just cause a lot of lag which we don't want.
If I may offer some encouragement, Freelancer is certainly the best space engine I have ever come across. All others are much too inflexible. However, you really should petition Microsoft for the source code (or whatever it is you need to create your own game) and create your own game. Personally, I would be very willing to pay money for such a thing!
Actually, there would be another major problem : the SSD is so big it's impossible to fly it decently. You can certainly engage capital ships and crush them, but you are defenseless against a small group of starfighters and assault shuttles because they're so tiny that you can't see them... Those ships aren't supposed to be one-manned, afterall ;)
Everyohne has an Opinion. Mine is that is looks epic. Great Work!
Thank you :)