Well, the development team has been working overtime on putting the new First Strike models into the game and making them come to life. A big thanks goes out to Oma and Sovereign for all their hard work in this department. What both of them have done to the ships is friggin' remarkable.
Unfortunately, my work isn't something that I can film/screen shot, it's more along the coding lines. For starters, I've made each ship have its own customizable engine, laser, shield, and thruster. What this allows for is better balancing between the ships. So, for example, if you have a Tie Defender with 6 lasers and the E-Wing with 3 lasers, I can balance the ships out by increasing the damage power on the E-wings guns to match the T/Ds damage output. Or, if we find the E-Wing isn't powerful enough with a matched damage output, T/D too for that matter, we can increase its power to be greater than the T/D. What's even better about this customizable setup is that this increase in damage output of the E-Wing's laser won't affect any other ship but the E-wing...so you can start to see the power it gives us in terms of balancing ships out.
Anywho, after getting the ship speeds developed by Sovereign, I went to the drawing board and calculated what values I needed to edit to get the speeds Sov specified and the physics I wanted. And, for the 6 different "classes", and I use that term very loosely, I think I've come up with something that all people better friggin' enjoy most people will hopefully enjoy. Basically, interceptor class vessels will have very high speed thrusters, giving them an additional 20 MGLT units. However, this high speed comes at a cost; the thruster will only run for 5 seconds. A heavy bomber, on the other side of the spectrum, has a thruster that gives them an additional 7 MGLT but lasts for 20 seconds.
In addition to all this, I've been working hard on the fighter physics. Being a big fighter jock, I wanted something that everyone would enjoy. My inspiration for this development has come from XvT/XWA - which ToW did a great job in reproducing. However, I knew some FWers out there found that style too restrictive. So, my goal was to find something "in-between". Now, this wasn't an easy task mind you; trying to bring these two universes together is like trying to meld apple and oranges together. So, I guess you can say, what I've made is, well, juice :D
Now, for the physics side of things, I've reduced engine kill significantly from FWs standards. You know how when you hit engine kill, you can drift forever? Well, that's what makes FWs, well, FWs. ToW, XvT, XWA didn't have EK at all. So, what I have done is make each ship class have its own specified time drifting. That way, it makes dogfighting quite interesting depending on what style you choose. To give you an example of the numbers, an interceptor class vessel will be able to stay drifting for 3.75 seconds. For a fast, quick ship, I figured this would give the interceptor the edge in maneuverability to make up what it lacks in hull hit points and weapon power. The heavy bomber, on the other hand, has EK that lasts for about 0.5 seconds. It allows for a bit more agility, however, bombers will be tanks in terms of defense and weapon power.
Well, that's the update on my coding world at the moment. And, since I hate posting up here without any goodies, I made a video for you guys. This video showcases the new ships Sov, Oma and I have been working on from the First Strike mod.
