sainta117
-
Posts
44 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Never
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Calendar
Posts posted by sainta117
-
-
I see; thanks for the clarification. I can see how that would make a difference in how they behave following jumps. In this case, however, I've observed fighter assets to expend reserve missiles trying to knock down a fleeing enemy unit (usually a shuttle), so this particular phenomenon might have more to do with range and direction of heading, and/or what the AI fragment governing the FC perceives that the AI fragment governing the target is trying to do. Or it could be something entirely different that just looks like one of these explanations. I hate having to engage in observational learning, it just too damn ambiguous. And yes, I appreciate the irony of a professional scientist disliking empirical research (I thought I'd add that before technocack pointed that out).
-
Hey, I don't know if anyone is still following this thread, but I'm testing DF and BA training strategies in UC 2.30 at this thread (I apologize for the long link, I'm not sure how to present it as a single word).
Edit:Okay, I decided to look up how to do it and save everybodys' eyes. The link is here.
-
HAH! I knew there had to be some Firefly fans playing UC. Isn't there a movie coming out soon?
-
I'm not sure I understood that, could you elaborate? It sounds like you think that they're changing their assigned targets during jump, but I'm not sure what difference that would make.
-
Hmm. Has ANYONE increased their pilots' DF or BA skills in UC? I'm starting to wonder how difficult it really is. After almost a week of testing and dozens of dogfights I haven't been able to gain a single point of either for my pilots.
-
Actually, I have found that it is fairly easy to take down a starbase (at least in a megaron class carrier). The key is to hyperjump to the starbase's supply station rather than to the station itself. Due to the way that the game appears to calculate how close to an object a jump takes you, you can get to knife range on a station immediately while using this trick. Then you hammer the station with main guns while jamming every time they launch one of these unholy SDM missiles (I'm really pissed that cap ships can't mount something comparable). The hardest part that I've found is not destroying it too quickly, but leaving it time to put out an SOS so it can be boarded. I've captured two stations and taken out a half-dozen more and I've never bothered with cloak at all. To my mind, it's only really useful for multiplayer (which I don't generally play), which is why I support an emcon system in the game (as per my post above) which would be more tactically flexible and useful to players.
-
I'm not going to defend the man, but it should be pointed out that the majority of gamers do not like games like UC or BC. The majority of gamers do not like in-depth simulations of complex and interactive environments. The majority of gamers are drooling idiots.
He is absolutely correct, in that the majority of his readers WON'T like this game, because it exceeds their attention span. That does not mean that it's a bad game, merely that it is a type of game that appeals to a specific market to which he does not belong and does not review for. The review I saw at SciFi.com was quite good, and that should be a much more important recommendation to your target demographic than the commentary of a Doom or wing commander player. If you're going to keep making the kind of deep, intricate simulations that you're known for, you're going to keep getting lousy reviews from mainstream reviewers. The kind of people who will continue to buy and enjoy your games in the future are the kind of people who don't rely on game reviews from mainstream mags anyway.
-
I sent the PM you asked for; don't worry, my work isn't secret. At least, not anymore.
Anyway, thanks for pointing out that gap in my profile. I'm not as technically proficient as my profession would suggest, so if I couldn't find out the answer to the profile questions I just left them blank. Actually, though, I did just update my drivers, so I know the answer to that one now. Guess I'll go change my profile.
-
Glad to have been of service. By the way, please excuse the flurry of new topics. I just got around to joining the boards, so I have over a year's worth of unanswered questions that I've been saving up. These boards have an enormous amount of knowledge stored on them, if you just look carefully enough. There are a few things, though, that no one seems to have gotten around to asking about, so I figured I'd try to fill the gap.
-
Since we're posting wish lists, would it be possible to reexamine the missile - pta - IOD speed and power balance issue? Based on modern naval combat and the works of a number of Sci Fi writers (Cherryh, Weber, stirling, etc) it would seem logical that missiles would be powerful enough to cause significant damage against cap ship shields and armor, but would be vulnerable to point defense systems (like the PTA system). Currently, small numbers of missiles are too weak to do significant damage to cap ship shields, but have such strong armor that they don't ever seem to be knocked down by PTA fire. While it is possible to do severe damage by salvoing twenty missiles at once, the economic cost of such a tactic is prohibitive. Additionally, missiles are extremely vulnerable to electronic jamming, which almost always works (and even if it doesn't, missiles don't do appreciable damage to cap ship shields).
Fighters, on the other hand, are all but useless against anything with a PTA system because the PTA turrets almost never miss (except when approaching from a blind spot, but the AI pilots rarely do this) and they seem to disporportionately kill pilots while leaving the ship intact.
Finally, the IOD's of many vessels (like the Megaron class carrier) are absurdly powerful, able to burn through shields and wipe out an enemy stormcarrier in under ten seconds. It would seem to me to be a reasonable choice to make missiles more powerful damage wise, but more vulnerable to point defense, IOD's less powerful, electronic jamming less effective, and PTAs less accurate. That way, any one weapon is effectve in its assigned role, but is not capable of trumping any other weapon completely.
Just some ideas I thought might be worth consideration, if there are any plans to make adjustments to the combat model in the next installment. Given this series' careful focus on creating a credible space combat simulation, I suspect that most players would welcome and could handle the additional complexity that tweaks like this would bring to the game. Also, since I've already gone and overstepped my extreme newbie status, might I suggest that a more robust EmCon system might be an interesting addition? The use of active and passive sensors and the associated ability to engage in "cat and mouse" games and lay ambushes could add a great deal to gameplay. Currently, the cloaking system fills this role, but seems to me to be too powerful, particularly when in the hands of the AI (who never seems to run out of fuel for the device or decloke to clean up radiation). I'd much rather see a system that depended on careful planning and skill to catch the enemy off guard, rather than technical superiority or a large supply of irridium. Just my two cents worth, I enjoy playing the game for what it is now, but given the rebalancing of weapons systems that I understand has historically occurred in each iteration of this series I thought I'd contribute my perspective on this issue, just in case SC was planning to revisit it again.
-
I've been testing this over the last couple of days, and I have so far been unsucessful in increasing either BA or DF skill. I've set up 1 on 1 dogfights between my fighter assets and enemy fighters by attacking starbases in invincible mode. When they scramble their alert fighters, I pair up each fighter with an opponet. So far, I've had dogfights ranging from 2 to 15 minutes in length. All of the fighters were eventually defeated, but no DF was gained. I then tried to increase BA by doing surface attack runs. I figured that the relatively weak surface targets would be more likely to die with a single shot, and would be more difficult to damage with guns, so that porportionally more kills would be gained with missiles. I was able to confirm several missile kills on ground targets (mostly SA missile batteries and SAL's of various sorts). In these cases, BA also did not increase.
This suggests a number of possible explanations: 1) there is a certain percentage chance of increasing DF or BA whenever a trigger condition is achieved by a pilot (protracted dogfight kill, missile kill),
2) there are subunits to DF and BA points, and it is necessary to acheve some number of subunits before an apparent change is seen in the associated statistic
3)some minimum AI level is required to improve these skills, or AI directly increases likelihood of skill improvement (leaving aside indirect increases due to better performance in combat) This seems a likely possiblity, due to SC's remark that it is tied to "overall AI." I'm not sure how to test this quickly, though, as I know no way to rapidly increase AI.
4) invincibility mode (being a cheat) is set up to prevent skills from accruing in pilots.
5) some other factor is at work that I have not identified.
Another issue is what is considered a "dogfight" by the program. If ship A has ship B targeted, But ship B has ship C targeted, are ships A & B in a dogfight? Also what if a ship switches targets during combat? Does this then mean that the accumulated "Dogfight time" is lost?
If anyone else has managed to gain DF and BA skill for their pilots in UC, would you mind posting anything you remember about the occasion on which they earned it, or indicate that you've never seen it happen? I'd like to get a feel for how rare the event is so that I have an estimate of how many trial repetitions are needed to test some of these hypotheses.
-
I was curious about this phenomenon, so I tried to test it. I actually found that in some cases (not all, and I'm not sure what the distinction is) fighter craft WILL use their reserve munitions if they are given a new target at a significant distance away (i.e. if they have to jump). I haven't done the work yet to isolate what factors are specifically involved though. Halting? Jumping? Selecting a new target? There could be a timer involved too, I suppose. I actually appreciate that pilots don't flush all of their racks as soon as they see a red dot, but I'd like to figure out how to reliably access the second half of their armament load on command.
-
I've noticed that when my fighter craft are loaded with missiles, they only seem to want to use the first five weapons in the racks. After that, they just fly around with 5 extra missiles hanging under the wings. Once in a great while, somebody will use an extra couple, but I would estimate that that happens less than 1% of the time. Loading them with fewer missiles doesn't seem to resolve it, nor does reordering them to attack their target. Since they can deploy those reserve munitions, and do so on occasion, and because I haven't seen any other mention of this on the forums, I'm thinking that there must be some order I'm giving or not giving that's causing it. I understand if they're trying to save me money by using guns whenever possible, but it tends to lead to long, circling dogfights (not necessarily a bad thing, but still a bit confusing) Also, it seems a bit bizarre that they make superhuman efforts to kill bogeys using their guns, while 5 unused sts missiles hang in the racks. Could this be linked to DF or BA skill? My experience suggests that it doesn't seem to be connected to AI level. Does anyone have any experience with this, or know what I'm doing wrong?
-
Thanks SC. Guess you responded while I was posting, sorry about the redundancy. I appreciate you clearing that up. Now at least I can continue to ignore the stranded survivors, secure in the knowledge that there's nothing I could do anyway. I suppose I could detonate them, though. They seem to be messing up my tidy little corner of the galaxy.
-
Actually, I'm quite familliar with the cargo pod system. No, these are quite clearly labeled "Ejection Pod," and they're all over the place. They don't look like a cargo pod either. They look like an enclosed cockpit assembly that's been blown out into space. Think typical Sci-Fi escape pod look. And as I mentioned, they're inacessible to shuttles, hence my question.
-
I didn't find any mention of this using the search system, so I thought I'd ask about it. I keep running across ejected pods in my current campaign. They look like survival pods that a pilot from a destroyed fighter might take refuge in. The problem is, I don't seem to be able to do much with them. I can't get a grip on them to tow, and I'd hate to just frag 'em, cause they're harmless, even the enemy ones. To make matters worse, one of 'em is Ter/Mil, just like me, and I can't help feeling like a crappy Commander leaving some poor downed aviator to suck vacuum out there. Anybody know what I can do with these things?
-
That's a very clear explanation. I tend to use my pilots carefully, launching them to execute quick strikes on enemy cap ships and then recovering them or bringing them into close escort ("fly to"). Usually if a dogfight becomes protracted, I bring them home and use another tool to finish the job (like the PTA system on my Carrier Asset). I figured it had to be some element of my command style that was causing the problem. Thanks for the rapid response.
-
Hi all, long time lurker, but this is my first post. I've been playing UC for about a year, and I've noticed that no matter how many kills they rack up, or how many sorties, or how much cockpit time my pilots get, they never improve their DF or BA stats. Their AI goes up just like everyone else (a bit faster, actually) but even when I got two weeks (game time) into an ACM campaign, DF and BA never improved. I've tried a number of strategies to fix this, including dropping containers for target practice and using invincibility mode to let them fight near enemy starbases. No matter what I do, it seems that they never get any better. I've done a search and only found one mention of a similarproblem, so I assume it's unusual. No one responded to the question in that post (which I seem to have lost track of), so I'm guessing either it got overlooked or no one knows the answer . I have two computers, and I've seen the same problem on both, so I assume it's my fault somehow. I'm hoping someone can tell me what I might be doing that's preventing my flyboys and -girls from improving their skills.
Training BC AI
in General Discussions
Posted
Thanks for the tip underlord, but I'm having problems getting any kind of df or ba skill increase in any fighter craft while using UC. I'm starting to suspect a... well... a-- bug.
It's obviously too early to say this with any certainty, if you follow the link I posted, you'll see that there are still a fair number of hypotheses I haven't tested yet. But the complete lack of ANY points after a week of solid testing does make me wonder if some setting didn't get accidentally changed in the transition between BCM and UC. Prior to UC, lots of people report DF and BA increases, but after UC, no one has reported such an event.
Since UC is no longer supported, it isn't something I want to pester the SC with until I'm sure it IS a problem, and moreover that the problem remains with the more recent versions of the game (which I haven't gotten yet). I assume if something got accidentally changed in UC it will stay that way in future until it gets specifically checked. So that's what I'm trying to do... check it. I'm still operating under the assumption that there's nothing wrong with the game and that it's just a matter of play style, or finding the right technique. Anyway, if anyone's interested, I'm still carrying on my hypothesis testing over in the UC gameplay forum.