Comments - Mechanis

It took me almost twenty minutes to see the difference. >< Y U SO AWESOME?!

O.O
"Now Dat's alotta Dakka...."

it's a suicidal ramming ship the explodes violently if sufficiently damaged. now do you get it?

The HW2 engine is actually very robust, It's more your hardware when rendering hooj amounts of polys. I seem to recall getting a ~12k ship to 'work,' in that it worked fine until you build a second one, multiples would drastically reduce my framerates...
but then, I'm on a nearly nine-year-old single-core windows XP box, so I'm hardly the best baseline for what the HW2 engine is capable of on modern hardware ;)

sooo....
we gon see some of the local nebula-dwelling religious fanatics at some point?
I noticed the glaring purple/pinkish region...

O.O
how'd you get the MS to do that? I musst knooow!!

Youtube.com
I made a youtube playlist. you're welcome to it.

me and a few friends have been LAN-ing alot, and we noticed the AI for certain races can't handle itself against certain kinds of attacks, because of holes in the fleet. the Turanics, for example, no longer have a 'light' capital ship, and with the two-only limit on
enforcers it's all too easy to draw them off and hit the unprotected Lords.
regarding research- I love the random research, but frigate, or at least capship HS is a must. without one of those, the raiders have real trouble on bigger maps. also, sometimes (usually late-game) only about 1 in 5 frigates notice the HS beacons, making raids damn-near impossible.
and for sajuk's sake put Morgan in something tougher than a frigate! he blows up too easily. (1x torp and 2 flak vs solo morgan= two dead flack figs and one dead morgan, and a torp frig limping home at 20% health. This is the dreaded morgan?)

and the ONLY thing you have to do to trounce the Vaygr AI is pour XUs into cruisers or harbingers and screen 'em with expendable fighters. it really shouldn't be that easy.
other than that, everything else has a good, polished feel to it. though, if the teamcolor areas on the Kadeshi were a bit more present, that would be helpful.

ummm....
why can't I find things? there seems to be some stuff missing in my buildlists.
these are what I've found so far:
vaygr pulse destroyer-MIA <puts a pretty big crimp in the overall vaygr strategy. need this on smaller maps where BCs/DCs aren't cost-effective.
vaygr bombardment frig-where'd it go? this is a real blow, as between this and the pulse desse, the sons of Vay don't have anything short of a BC that can dual with higgy cruisers or turan Enforcers. and it shows, especially on the harder AIs.
Turanic Raider destroyer-MIA <major hurt on that one, turanic AIs get DESTROYED by any other race now
subsystems- fire-control, cloak, HS, etc are all MIA. considering how integral these are in MP, it somewhat surprised me a bit.
also alot of things seem to be missing disableable subsystems, engines, big missile racks, things of that sort.

Cont'

ahh, you misunderstand. I lack the skill to duplicate the work already done, and it offends my sense of right to simply outright copy, instead I prefer to pave the roads where others have leveled the mountains. and kindly don't lump me in with Cerberus, as I'm reasonably sure at this point that he's trolling, as several of the issues he mentions are from .95 and not 1.1, so ignoring it seems prudent. I'm thinking less 'controll all mods blaagghh' and more 'unofficial patch' kinda thing. add features in separate, interlocking packages so you can pick and choose what you want to have, so not one iota of content you don't want need to be in the mod. essentially, while the main 'shockwave team' has focused on Multiplayer, and more content, My primary focus will be singleplayer, like missing general challenges (deathstrike, Fai, and Ironside,) as well as an alternate version with my envisioned 'mini-campaign' style, each challange mad being different depending on your general (IE dr. Thrax vs Kwai is on a differned map han Alexander Vs Kwai and so forth) all the way to bugfixing the single-player campaign and/or making more of it.

Hey! I'm not trollen'!
dunno about ceb tho, I can't make out 1/2 of what he's saying...
I am making a genuine offer of 'pick up the torch' somewhat and fix what I can, and maybe add more content if I can get someone who can model and tex, etc. etc, purely because I like the mod but think that it cold still use a bit of work. now, obviously Hunter doesn't plan on doing more work on this, so I am putting forth my half-decent skills to continue to improve this already outstanding mod. I hardly think that counts as trollin'

hey, what's that sizzling noise? and look, there's a light in the sky! hmm, I wonder...

*OMGWTFTROLOLOLBBQ BEAMS FROM SPACE*
in short: Youtube.com

oh, and have regular GLA, USA, and china as options for the General challenge.

*Tech lab: gives access to three flavors of special units: USA gets Disintegrators, teliporting shock troops armed with slow-firing Disintegrator rifles (think Chrono trooper) and the Chimera attack heli, a shapeshifting, cloaked little beaste that mounts twin Vulcan cannon and heavy missile racks while airborn, and deploys into a land-based artillery cannon when deployed, the Chinese get sha ji hai, elite ninja-like warriors with advanced technical skills, stealth, and a number of special powers (disabling attacks, sabotage, and suchlike,) as well as siau mie nan, armored warriors that are about as subtle as a chainsaw, wrecking havoc wherever the go. The GLA get Nuke trucks, as well as Propagandists, a light vehicle that has support abilities and a light MG (dual when salvaged once, turns into an armored car with turreted minigun when at salvage three. would look different depending on who controls it.

I'd also change the Detention Center to something else for Ironside, and give him a storm-based weapon instead of the particle cannon. and let the reg USA use Cluster missiles (after all, isn't the PC supposed to be top secret? you really think they'd let any old commander us it? it'd also further diversify the US generals from baseline (always like that,) and it can tie in better with RA)

If the original creator doesn't mind, I've got a few ideas that could be implemented by me, and some that someone out there could do (namely models, as I kinda suck at present)
this is a few things I can do:
-challenge maps; namely turning each general challenge into a mini-campaign. essentially, instead of say, Kwai's farmland map every time you face him, it'd be a different map depending on which general you play. naturally, this would necessitate a S*#$-ton of maps, and someone who and tell the AI to do stuff and work with triggers (Read: not me) to do, but I've already got two maps drawn up for Kwai (vs Thrax and Towns)
-a few more tech building ideas:
*Tech Reactor: Big ol' power plant, with three distinct flavors: nuke generator (30 power) Cold fusion (40 power) and a generic (gla themed) one that spits out 20 power.
*tech Fort: halfway between the war fortress and the firebase, provides a medium-threat defensive position.
*tech computer center:
gives a spysat power, as well as calling in a flavorful variety of sat-based weapons (yes, dropping sats on people will be one of them...)

*sees REARM 3c*
*while running through the house:*
JOY! JUBILATION! CELEBRATION! HOORAY! HOORAH! CALLOO! CALLAY!

Hmm...
I'm a small modder myself (mainly adjusting balance so things are actually worth what you pay for them) and I seem to remember trying something with ambient glows way back in the misty veils of Generals, and I found the best solution was teamcolored units and glows under buildings. so for this, having the rings appear on units all the time (definitely with a transparency for non-selected stuff) but only appear on structures when selected, with a slight ambient light under in teamcolor would be best. also, I would suggest several settings for the rings, something along the lines of this:

Full integration: interface will display the most data, with strong rings on everything, while useful for tactical maneuvers within dense terrain (such as cities,) may affect immersion factor

Standard integration: Displays strong rings on units and selected buildings, and faint rings on unselected buildings. default setting.

Partial integration: displays faint rings on unselected units and structures, and strong rings on selected stuff.

Minimal integration: building rings are faint and only display on mouseover/selection, unit rings are faint always.

No Integration: no rings at all.

Same! I suggest hunting up your CD-key and changing the registry entry (USE A TUTORIAL FOR THAT!) or if you have that one crack that gives you a pop-up window, uninstall it and go DL the DRUNK crack off gamecopyworld or summut. otherwise I have no idea.

suggestion: have the rings appear on selection/mouseover, but also have a small ambient 'glow' under each structure for quick visual reference. that way you can keep picky peeps form getting annoyed by the rings, but also have an easy way of differentiating between players.

on an unrelated note, once you get all of the core faction stuff done, perhaps consider remaking some of the old civvie buildings? I liked the visual style of the yellow-zone buildings in sun, and you guys are awesome, so I figured I'd ask.

0.o
You have my attention.
about 1/2 those screens look strait out of TS...
until you notice the 3d.
color me highly interested.

I'd say one on the Enforcers and 2-3 on the Lords. just make the Lord ones not be bigger then one of the three 'sections' and the aesthetic will work.
can't wait for new release, that Templar is a beast....
cant wait to steal a few >:3

I was very sad to see this when I bought it, as it seemed like a very solid concept. I can even narrow down the things that killed it: REALLY bad pathing engine, slow resource harvesting with high resource cost for everything, and dumb-as-toast AI. other than that, it played very well, with a number of interesting ideas. I love the destructible battlefield, walling off your base to create artificial choke-points is wicked awesome. the ability to manually control hero units is both well-implemented and fun, the main problem is the vehicles lack the good turning expected by veteran FPS players, leading to collision issues. all-in-all, this is an interesting, if occasionally frustrating, game, and well worth the $4.99 I paid for it on steam.

Rainbow!
Wewt!

also keep in mind that the Tiidani fleet that hit Kharak at the beginning of HW BURNED THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE PLANET OFF WITH ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT MISSILES. given the desert environment, without terraforming later (and I would assume that the Higgarins would put an outpost of some kind out here) it would take a good number of millennia for the atmosphere to rebuild from intersteller gas accretion. so it actually makes some sense if you assume it's been recolonized, otherwise, the thing'ed be indistinguishable from every other dead world, with the exseption of the scaffold wreck and debris ring...

Here's a thought: flack-and-pulsar arrays* on the forward pair of slots, and a anti-frig system on the asymmetrical one.

*like this:

pulsar
[][][][][] flack
||||||||||||

well if it holds to the original design of the Ringworlds (On which the HALO is based,) there's a couple-thousand-foot-high wall around the outer edges to keep the atmosphere from bleeding out.

It looks very waspish. this is good

or perhaps it's simply a non-satellite-based system, given that sats have a few-second transmission delay that could be fatal for tank commanders.

or it could be because it's cool-looking. and for game-balance, some of Ironside's stuff can go toe-to-toe with Chinese tank battalions in even numbers (ie 10 units vs 10 units) an WIN, so the extra cost for him makes some sense.