My C&C Thread - Freeworlds: Tides of War mod for Freelancer

Hey, just wanted to make a post here that voiced my comments about this mod. I have been looking forward to it for a while, and I gotta say ToW looks like it's coming along well. Superb job on some of the ship models there. Most of them actually. The interior cockpits look really nice too.

Anyway, down to business. I was watching several of the test videos on youtube and there are some issues in my opinion that I would like to address. First of all, right now it looks to me like there is way too much energy on ships. They are firing for a minute straight which is way too long. I'd use the movies or even the TIE Fighter games as a reference. Second, I don't think the lasers do enough damage. I saw a video of someone flying a Jedi Starfighter shooting at a TIE Interceptor which was able to take a horrendous amount of punishment, upwards of 5 salvoes onto a ship that would be lucky to survive 1. I also think deceleration should take a bit longer, but I honestly can't say for sure until I have tried the mod myself. Bigger and more realistic planets are welcome too.

Good luck with your project, I hope you will consider what I have said.

Hello Noggmoritz, and thanks for the kind words!

I've worked on the energy system so i can answer you about that : i'm glad you quoted the TIE Fighter games, because i've used them as a reference. Even if i've never had the chance to play TIE Fighter, i'm a big fan of X-wing, X-wing vs TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance, and i want Freeworlds to be as close to them as possible. Thus, the energy system in Freeworlds is similar to TIE Fighter : your shields, your engines drain energy. On the other hand, the powercell reloads quite slowly, so you'll need to make decisions : either you maximize your speed, either you fire longer... Eventually, you may fire for quite a long time, as in TIE Fighter, actually (in X-wing Alliance i was able to fire for around 20s straight. It's the same ingame), but then you'll lack energy for the rest of the battle...

As far as unshielded TIEs are concerned, I agree with you : they're more resistant than what they should be. However, making TIE Fighters, TIE Interceptors and TIE Bombers very weak means they'll not be used by players, which is not what we want as they're among the most famous ships in the Star wars universe. In order to balance them with other ships, we've made them more responsive, but this wasn't enough. Thus, we've been forced to give them a health bonus, which is still more realistic than putting a shield on them. In the end, we hope will use those ships as much as TIE Avengers, Assault Gunboats and TIE Defenders. On a side note, Jedi Starfighter is certainly the weakest ship against a TIE Fighter, as it has a rather low firepower (it's an interceptor) and its ions don't deal any damage to TIE Interceptors (but kill energy). So, these 5 salvoes were a worstcase scenario.