Star Wolves 3: Ashes of Victory in Development
 

1C Company and Elite Games Team are glad to announce the development of Star Wolves 3: Ashes of Victory, a stand-alone expansion for the third game in the Star Wolves saga.

This original large-scale scenario, closely tied with the first part of the intergalactic epic, allows players to influence the ongoing events and experience multiple endings. Free roaming, free mission selection, free team forming – the world of Star Wolves waits for its heroes. The game is scheduled for release in Q4 2010.

I am curious as to what they plan on adding to the sequel. Alongside the stuff that was removed from SW2 like randomly-generated missions, I would like to see support for more pilots into the game. Being stuck with a six pilot cap makes it feel like I am heavily undermanned most of the game, especially since you are stuck with 2-4 pilots for most of the game.

Also, having reasons to actually assign pilots to the mothership would be good too, at the moment assigning them to the mothership is a waste because they cannot use their special abilities, and usually means you have one less fighter in space, not a good thing.

What should be done:

1. Removing six pilot cap should be a priority for new expansion.
2. Large scale battles - possibility of having more than one mothership and assigning your pilots to them.
3. Motherships having drone bays (like Eve Online) for self defense.
4. Random missions. More types of random missions. Very hard missions with good rewards like unique ships or weapons.
5. Upgrade of graphic engine - make use of more than one texture (like bump map or displacement map textures).
6. Possibility of changing mothership and other ships paintings (like Dawn of War).
7. Trade system for earning money.
8. Possibility of supporting chosen faction - conquerable structures and sectors.
9. Buyable and deployable stationary defense systems - turrets, missile lunchers.
10. Modular ships designs - highly customizable ships (diffrent engines, hulls, armors, shield generators). These mere 4-5 systems slots are not enough.

I'll be happy If anything from this list will be included in expansion. If you want more ideas - check Eve Online. It has tons of interesting features. I don't mean copying - just creative development ;).

P.S. What about english version of the expansion - will it be released the same time as russian or several moths later?

I don't think devs read this forum

Most likely both versions will be released simultaneously.

Actually, they do.

Wooow!!! Voice from the heaven;). I feel blessed now:grin:
Thanks man. Good to know that someone from "The High Council" reads your posts.

btw 1.12 patch for SW3:CW was mentioned earlier. Are you still working on it or you gave up on this idea?

sigh... does anybody know if Cenega is ever going to release SW3: Civil War?

I would like a french translation please! ;)

If they do create a patch or a patch is included with the expansion, they should do a spell check on the dialogue, some of the mistakes are just unforgivable - even if it was a Russian translation. (Like once someone said "Good uck!" - where is the L in luck?)

It will be a standalone expansion so it won't correct any Civil War bugs.
don't be so strict. It's kinda funny to see meat instead of meet :grin:

Too bad it was not as halarious as the Men of War translations.

yeaah more star wolves sounds good, but is there a german translation of SW3CW coming out and wahts with the nest is there an chance for a german version?

and whats up with the voices thats scream me that there is only one person in SW3CW who have voice (not in text only battle an command speak, what was his name ... i forget it XD), can't you mak voices they can be an extra for those who wanted them like DLC on steam ... greeting mk_sky

You are talking about Kalem... Kalem always struck me as the most pointless pilot in the entire game, I dont remember him actually having any lines beyond the point you meet him. The only thing that irritates me is that the developers could have introduced him so much earlier in the game and actually help allieviate the problem of having hardly any pilots most of the game.

Kalem is good, his skills are very useful. For me is very pointless Validol.
But i will prefer more pilots for each fraction.

There should be more MS beacuse some are good as Lion MK II and some are underestimated as MS-119.

I was talking about Story-wise, not skill-wise. You could have removed Kalem completely and the story would have not changed at all. I do not remember him doing anything remarkable except escaping and taking possession of an armed transport, something Ternie herself could have done.

The thing that Irks me is that Kalem is the big reason why you are forced to stick with an obnoxiously low number of pilots throughout the entire game. If Kalem did not exist, a character could have been added much sooner. Imagine if, for every situation in Star Wolves 3, you had an additional pilot for every situation before Kalem arrives on the team. You would start with 3 pilots on the Pirate ship and after Greyhair you would have four, and after you got Validol or Che or whoever, you would have five. For the alien missions, Six.

But, I would rather see in-game support for a far greater number of pilots. Eight would be a good starting point. The interface would only need minor modifications to handle it. You could reserve six of the slots for storyline pilots like now, and use the last two slots for hirable pilots, perhaps through the mercenary window. To be honest, it is rather bizzare to me that they kept the god-awful useless Mercenaries (Mine always got themselves killed in the first firefight I brought them into... I want a refund!) but ditched the random missions which were actually useful for getting up early money in the early stage of the game when you are too weak to fight anything.

Depends on the point of view. They draw enemy fire giving your pilots several seconds of free shooting (I use them in this role sometimes). They are meant to be killed! IMO money is not an issue. But of course I would change them for random missions at once.

Money is always an issue when you need to buy something. If you already have all of the best stuff, than money is not worth anything to you anymore. The value of mercenaries is not absolutly zero, but it is certainly lower than getting a better fighter or a better gun. Why would I throw away 200K (100K for initial purchase, 100K for the next system you expect a fight in) for some mercs who wont last 5 seconds in a real fight when I can spend it on a new fifth generation fighter that hardly costs much more.

Yes i understand, its hard to fight with only 2 pilots I think there should be option when you leave Elio.
If player decide go to Gredos, he should meet again Nataly and he will join team.
If player decide go to Hespatus, he will rescue Kalem.

And not go to rescue Ternie with only 3 pilots (except one path there are 4) and disabled MS.

Nice points raised.

1. Removal of pilot cap. Well, not too big a deal for me because I treated it as a limitation challenge of the storyline, but yes I can see where you guys are coming from: it would be nice to not fly with only half a crew for most of the game.

2. Large scale battles. My only problem is the graphics engine. For most of the time it's fine. But when there's a map with fog particles the framerate just dies. I know I'm playing on an older machine (I sneak my laptop to work), but it handles the rest of the game just fine, so the drop in framerate shouldn't be THAT bad.

3. Random missions. I didn't play SW2 as I heard it was bugged to hell (sorry 1C, but after decades of buying unfinished games I refuse to be a beta test guinea pig anymore). A working random mission board would be nice. Especially if the missions are actually varied, and not simply different ways of saying "kill X for $Y dollars".

4. More mothership freedom. We can buy fighters, so why not motherships? Expensive as hell, by all means. But don't force us to depend on storyline trigger changes. That's unfun, bro.

5. Modular ship design. I agree with Goblin Wizard, the current system is nice but not enough. Ya I know it's easy to force players to choose whether to boost engines or firing rate in that one system slot, but the problem is there aren't enough ship designs to make this viable. Let's face it, everyone flies around in Gunslinger Ts or something at the endgame. The ships are pretty much a "big, bigger, biggest" kind of deal. Let's make them more varied and useful.

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I'm not too hot on the trade / other structures thing. I mean, yeah, those would be absolutely awesome, but they're quite large addition to enter into the game as it is. The other additions however can be made rather painlessly.

Hell, allow us to slap custom textures on our motherships and fighters (maintenance station "paint job" option), that alone would be fun while only incurring minimal effort on the dev's part (just check that the texture the player selects meets certain size and format criteria). Let's see how badass the pirates feel while getting shot out space by someone flying a neon pink ship, rofl.

Which brings me to another thing: Game Over screens suck. We should be able to play around and wander around the universe after beating the final mission.

Thats pretty much what the SW2 mission board amounted to, although there were some delivery missions and such too. The fact we are begging even for a return to THAT functionality shows how little there actually is to do in the game.

This is more an issue with the fact the Templar ships are massively overpowered. Why get a Dragon when a Gunslinger T has all that and an additional system slot to boot. The Templars are the only ones with fifth generation missile ships (Hrimthurs T) and fifth generation support ships (Trident T)...

Which brings me to another thing: Support ships are massively underpowered. Rather than having one Trident T that can only repair one ship in the fleet (and not itself, nope) for 10 HP/sec, and cannot even engage enemy ships while it is repairing, or I could have a bunch of Gunslinger Ts whom are all firing and attacking, each individually armed with a Nannite that does insane HP regeneration.

But than im getting into balance, and thats a whole different ballgame. Admittingly, Star Wolves 3 does have improved balance compared to Star Wolves 1 and 2 pretty much being all about the pulse lasers.

In addition to More Mothership Variety. There are only five motherships in the game, Mastiff, Astarte, Lion, Manticore, and Star Wolf. Everything else is either a variation of the Lion (Lion MK2, Lion MK3), or a variation of the Star Wolf (Rhino, Supply Ship)

It also kinda sucks even more when you finally get that ultimate mothership, and you only get to use it on the final mission. You cant even wander around anymore since you will get a 'GAME OVER' screen.

I agree.

From the threads I've read, it seems like they can easily do some things. Easily as in it mostly involves just script editing or minor code additions.

- more & larger encounters
It's been mentioned that space feels too empty. It's true. It doesn't feel like there's a war going on. There's that contacts mod (I haven't time to try it out yet) shows that it's already doable.

- weapon fixes
Light guns are screwed, RoF is not much of an advantage when the range blows and the crap accuracy just makes it worse. There should be perks for their dispersion as well.

- detailed pilot info
Even with just these few pilots available, they feel more like faceless bunches of stats: "this is my missile guy, this is the systems guy" etc. It would help if they had a proper bio screen with additional stats showing things like the breakdown of their perk bonuses on each weapon type. Stuff like shots:hits ratio (how often they hit/miss), number of kills, how many times they triggered the 50% armor loss warning, etc.

Some of us love stats, the more the better. Those who don't can simply ignore this screen, no big deal - it's just a stats screen, I don't think it's much work to add.

There could be an additional stats screen for the mothership as well. Btw I think the firmware for System Mk 3 display is bugged, it shows correct stats but is listed as Mk 2.

- item variety
Sure there's plenty of stuff, but most of each type is simply big-bigger-biggest. Like, who cares about Mistrals when you have Cyclones? Weapons already have some contrasts like type, RoF, and damage, but everything else only has 1 stat. Also, the "best" stuff should not be on sale everywhere imo, it reduces the necessity of having to actually hunt down for good loot.

- mercenaries
Frankly, their upkeep costs are huge, they leech from the exp you desperately need, and they die so fast. Like many others, I mostly use them for predicted large encounters or for the endgame final mission, where it only matters to throw more bodies at the enemy.

Make the merc teams smaller but more skillful. Like maybe 2-3 ace pilots with active skills. I wouldn't mind so much if they were expensive and leeched my exp if they actually helped my team survive tough fights instead of being the first ones to die.

These guys should be 1st grade pilots, minimum, and with nearly-best gear (doesn't have to be overall good of course, there can be good offense or good defence types, speed types, etc). There should be no reason for allowing crap mercs to be hired, that is a pointless waste of money and only makes players nerdrage. Money is already tight so why waste it on mediocre pilots?

I don't care if they are "super unbalanced", there are two big reasons this is not a problem: (1) upkeep costs, and (2) they leech exp. Players only hire mercs when they are in dire straits, so why mock them some more by giving mediocre merc teams? Any sane player would rather NOT hire mercs because we all want every bit of exp we can get, even if money isn't a concern (which it usually is).

My dream is to have a coop mode where you can play with a friend :grin:

Like DOW2...

For example, increase difficulty (more hit points) when you play with 2 motherships ;)

Somebody announced SW4 ? :lol:

Two players sharing the same mothership would be so much better. One Lion MK2 with 12 fighters is a hell of a lot better than Two Lion MK2s with 6 fighters each.

Coop mode would be orgasmtastic, but multiplayer is generally a bitch to add in? I mean, if the devs want to, then fantastic. The only problem is controls. Like Nanaki pointed out, 2 squads sharing 1 mothership would rock, but how'd you determine who controls the mothership? Assuming player one (the host) does, then how do we fix the mothership interface to show the other pilots? It'll be far easier to just let each player control their own mothership/fighters.

Then you run into the problem of pausing multiplayer games. Unless you let everyone pause everything at any time they wish. May not be a problem with friends, but might be a problem with internet games especially if one guy pauses and then gets disconnected for whatever reason, leaving the other player stuck in a frozen game. This also applies to all the various speed modifiers (2x, 4x, 8x). The only way I see it working for the majority of people is if you disable pausing and speed changing in multiplayer games.

Sorry, I don't see this working out well. It'll be fantastic in normal space sims where each player generally directly controls one ship and leaves the others to the AI (which other players can substitute for in multiplayer), but Star Wolves' design isn't the same.

I was going through some of the Russian forums, and they pretty much said Multiplayer is out of the picture for now, precisely because adding multiplayer would require redoing the entire game's engine, something that the developers feel they are not quite up to task for yet.

Each player has their own 6-slot mothership interface, just that one can control the mothership and the other cannot. Very simple.

I think it would be a challenge just getting 2 player coop, and I think if the developers ever decide to add multiplayer, they should start off with that and then work their way up.

As far as multipliers and pausing, thats easy, Host determines.

Ya, force control to host, eliminates arguing. Good idea on the interface share thing, I forgot each player obviously only needs to see his own fighters :) Actually if you do it like that, then any number of players can coop with 1 mothership. It might look ridiculous though - imagine an 8-player game, 8x6 = 48 fighters all queuing up to dock with the mothership... LOL. Game engine lag might be a problem with so many people around unless we limit it to 2-player coop.

Sharing mothership may also mean arguing over loot though :p

With only 1 mothership also most scripts should work without needing changes.

Edit: Forgot to mention, one thing that really really bugs me - new mail / journal / news entries that are displayed to you right before you jump out of a system. I don't know how the script triggers, but can you guys find a better way of sending these notices? Perhaps send them to the player AFTER he arrives at the new system? Sometimes I don't even realise I had new missions / mail because the notices are only visible for like 1 second before the screen changes to show loading the new system.

1. i wud really love to see a battleship hull as mothership, like "Deimos" of X3:TC
2. n i dnt get the pt y id have to wait till a trade st. for spendin exp pts., illogical
3. battleship hull will be more than ready to suffice extra slots compared to all cruiser hulls v had so far.bigger n better.
4. plasma cannon are as good as not installed , so y not get rid of it totally , n use sumthin like plasma arc dat jumps 4m enemy ships, DEVASTATING.
5. PROTECT ST. / CONVOY , DELIVERY etc. missions
6. n a bit longer story line.
thats all folks!
make good use of brain cells as long as they r alive.

Yeah, there's not enough ship "grades". It would be nice to have different classes of capital ships.

...but let's not get sucked into a spiraling arms race of "bigger bigger BIGGER". If battleships are so powerful that they invalidate smaller capships then what's the freaking point of having the others? Everything should have pros/cons. I could live with godly armed battleships if they had a top speed of 50 and a maneuverability rating of like 5 or something, though.

We need more roles as well, missiles need to be improved so that heavy bombers are actually a menace. 4-slot missile ships come close, but their payload (again) needs to be improved. If they didn't suck so much then we could have wings of bombers which pose a REAL threat. Right now I just slap on a cyclone in a system slot and pretty much ignore those Bidents and Hrimthurs flying around unless they get close to the mothership. That shouldn't be the case. We should be peeing our pants when we see a flight of bombers.

Speaking of which, it's kinda odd missile defence occupies a system slot. We should be using turret-slotted flak guns. That would make things more interesting because you'd have to factor in the firing arcs etc. Plus it'd give incentive to use different motherships (assuming they're made available properly and not simply via story script...).

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What's the problem with plasmas, they don't hit often enough? Laser defense doesn't stop them unlike particle guns (and of course lasers), so other than kinetics plasmas are pretty much our only other option. The refire rate may be slow but that's the point, if they're as fast as pulse lasers then you might as well not use anything else.

The whole point of variety is to NOT have a "top tier" of equipment which everyone always uses, because this means everything else is weaker. That totally destroys the reason for having lots of items to choose from. Good gear design would provide for things which are strong in different aspects, so you'd have to USE your brain instead of simply saying "oh I'll just buy weapon X and armor Y, and my ship will be godly". No.

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The rest is the usual good stuff we all want: random mission generator, longer mission scripts, etc. Good, I hope they hear us :)

Try this on dev's forum;)

by the time the plasma projectile reaches the target the target is nowhere near.if laser defence is an issue thr is M-guns,cannons and particle acc.so a 4th gen plasma gun cant b compared with a 4th gen any other type weapon.if sum1 loves plasma so much the damage of a 4th gen plasma gun should be 3 "times" that of a 4th gen laser and not 50 extra damage, to counteract its inherent disadvantages, maybe then sum1 might use it.and this is the time wen all top tiers wud be equated.

mothership choice is solely personal.specially if u get tagged by maybe 4-5 cruisers with bad guns.

turret slotted flak guns r better,gives something to missile attack.also flares shud be bought just like missiles.u really dont expect ur ,missile defence to obtain matter 4m space and convert it into flares.

See, that's the point of plasmas being slow. They don't need to be 4x the power of lasers, they already "have" that in the form of not being affected by laser defence (which particle guns are also affected by). I do admit it's easy to watch their projectiles and it does seem that they miss a lot, but that's the point: when they hit they hit hard. If you don't like that then obviously you'd be better off with faster guns... which already exist in the form of kinetics and pulse lasers (not everything carries laser def, so it's not even a "guaranteeed" weakness whereas plasmas are always slow).

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I guess they're going with "guns don't need ammo", so flak guns don't either. Eh, I can live with that. Or force you to keep a wingman solely on anti-missile duty (that's a pretty hardcore challenge though, which I find acceptable but I think many won't).

It's just that missiles currently still suck despite being beefed up from previous Star Wolves games. A huge boost would be making them not caring about shields.

@Rastix:
The devs are Russian, right? I don't speak that, unfortunately. We can only hope that they know they have an english-speaking fanbase here.

I don't see any problems at all :) You can write on english language in english-speaking topics on thier forum - http://www.elite-games.ru/conference...750653#1750653

That topic's pretty dead, last post was about a year ago, except for Goblin Wizard's new post (no answer yet...). Ah well, I just registered and posted, nothing to lose.

I've got my questions answered by pm (don't ask.. ;)). Rastix was very helpful in this case. He seems to have some kind of connection with Elite Games team :rolleyes:

Well you were asking modding questions, heh. I was just posting feedback, they don't really need to respond.

After playing a bit of Dynasty Warriors, I had an idea. Why not instead of figuring out ways to add additional pilots, you could instead promote your pilots to Squad Leaders and have them lead a flight of allied fighters. So rather than have 3 flights with 1 fighter each (which is what I usually do), you can have 3 flights full of fighters.

Hmm.. it's interesting. Worth to check.

New screeshots on IGN

http://media.pc.ign.com/media/073/073117/imgs_1.html

It looks like they decided to overhaul the graphics.

Yesss. At last. Added bloom/hdr? Textures resolution looks the same.
I'd like to see new GUI too.

While better graphics is always a nice thing, imo that's just icing on the cake. Putting more stuff as FILETYPE STANDART instead of DYNAMIC would be nice ;) Also, I still don't know enough of LUA to suggest script improvements, but I'm sure guys like Nanaki and Goblin Wizard may have something to say about that.

Think some more screenshots http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/s...reenshots.html

Explain please

I can give only one suggestion: Release as much part of the code as you can (form the exe) and put it into editable script files. We'll take care of the rest.

I like the new light effects.

@Rastix:
DYNAMIC type seems to be some sort of encoding, for example look at the text in \Data\LocData\English\Locations\Aurora\text.loc. Line 8 is something like "#L_nav_Alex=<some numbers>".

But in STANDART type files like \Data\LocData\English\ui_windows.loc, definitions like those are in plaintext, e.g. line 11 "#UI_TradeStationWndCaption = Trade station".

I'm sure the devs have their reasons for using different types, but perhaps they can be persuaded to explain how to understand DYNAMIC type files?

The great decrease of perfomance would be as a result


They have copyrighted decoding tools

We don't need their decoding tools if they used STANDART (because the text wouldn't be encoded...). Or did you mean something else?

Btw thanks for the update, nice pictures :)

Exactly! What is the reason of encoding the dialogs? Why don't put them in plain text (like some others loc files)?

Destructible modules, or item durability. E.g. "full health", "light damage", "heavy damage", "broken". We could set items to perform less optimally at different stages of damage or even be totally inoperable if they get broken.

Set flags to allow which weapons can have a %chance of causing this damage. This also opens the possibility of repair modules that fix items instead of shield / armor. In other words, more variety.

Edit:
This can also create more perks for repair; right now we have shield repair rate and armor repair rate. This can add item repair rate.

Another idea, firmware + pilot slot. Firmwares for fighters as well, not just mothership. Nothing major of course but even modest improvements (5%-20%) can help.

I'd like to see some new player logos (and color - for those stripes - now it's cyan I think), which could be chosen when you choose pilot specialization (some new hero portrats to choose from would be nice too)

in my opinion, antilaser system "bubble" is ugly like hell, couldn't it be just glow effect like repair module?

also, I know that you don't need much aerodymanics in open space, but some of those fighters just looks like cut of stone brick.. I vote for more nice models like Black Stormcrow, Skolm, Trident and less stonebrick UFOs like Wyvern and all 1st and most 2nd generation fighters..

and last idea: it would be nice to add some storyline different than others, like joining Patrol to eliminate pirate gangs and such, and making system that would belong just to patrol, with trade station selling _pat0 fighters instead of _pl0)
and after ending this line Free Play, means you can start following some main storyline or just fly through the universe freely

We need more models period, most of those models were made during the development of the original game.

I don't mind the "strange" ship design, after all as you say aerodynamics means squat in space - but as Nanaki observes, we simply lack models. They just need to give us more to choose from.

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Edit:
Files in \Data\XMLSchema\ appear to be ignored; in the modding thread I tried to create a new item (game crashed), then modify an existing one (game ignored the change). If they can make these files actually be able to change things in the game then that would be fine.

Suggestions for SW3 AoV
 

Some included mod tools would be awesome, like what Elemental: War of Magic is doing.

I would also love to have the option to make your own player faction, and control your own systems. Or maybe be able to take over an existing faction and eventually create your Galactic Empire! :evil:

Hmm... to be fair, that's sort of straying into 4X territory and I never really enjoyed micromanaging certain aspects; I'm here just to blow things up ;) But, yeah, if you could purchase stations and then man them with your own crew that could effectively serve as a faction / home base.

Tools would be nice. And if they didn't obfuscate stuff *coughfiletypedynamiccough* and removed a few limits like adding perks and changing the XML definitions it'll help modders quite a lot.

I think I only mentioned this for the mothership, but if all ships could be multi-crewed (especially large ones, which makes more sense) that would be helpful. It could even open up new avenues for perks like fire control, tractor beam handling, etc. Isn't really as hard as it sounds; firmware sort of behaves like that already.

Keep the ideas coming :)

I would have to agree with Tru, Star Wolves is first and foremost a combat game, and adding X4 elements would just divert resources from the rest of the game which needs all the development resources it can get.

It's possible even now. Creating own base it's not problem. The problem is to keep it alive after you leave the sector. Taking control of enemy structures is possible too. All of these needs a lot of script work.

Edit:
About new screens. I can't see even one new ship. It worries me slightly. Will be any new ships in the expansion?

where i can find these screens??

i already found them :P

Thank you for the video update, Rastix!

...still, I can't help feel that much attention is always shown to combat. I mean, that's nice and all, but Star Wolves has strengths in many other areas too. Especially pilot development, there's no other space sim which even comes close to having anything like a skill tree as far as I can remember. Huge potential for more improvement.

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Speaking of improvements, here's another thought. You know the interface gets a little cramped, but the trade station manages that by using different "tab" pages for different types of equipment - guns, missiles, systems, all of them are in different tabs even though we are still viewing the same trade station interface, right? Well, I feel that the journal, news items, and quest display could also benefit from a similar interface.

For one thing, it's really annoying to have to scroll through all the news items, and the colour highlighting for read/unread could be distinguished a bit more (they look almost alike, need to contrast more). Quest log also simply disappears, you can't look back at your past quests and think "ahh, this is what I have achieved so far, and it feels good".

Next, it's odd that you can hire mercs but you're not "allowed" to see what equipment they have. Shouldn't this be shown? After all if I am paying someone to be my bodyguard, I would like to know how good he is @ what kind of equipment he is carrying - otherwise how can I know whether he is capable or not?

Also, hired mercenaries share same faction as "mercenary faction". This is bad because - as someone complained - if mercs hate you, when you hire some mercs they are automatically hostile. What! They take your money and then fight you, lol. This is robbery. Either make their faction separate (I prefer this way) or don't let players hire mercenaries if they are hostile.

Edit:
I almost forgot, escort formations. I've seen the vector definitions in one of the script files I think. Can we please have a hotkey to select different kinds of formations? Sometimes I don't want my fighters simply around the mothership. Also, there was one time where the formation seemed to screw up and everybody was flying in a straight column (!). If we had a hotkey to change formations it would be nice, you can put fighters in front, or behind, change the flying pattern (V shape, diamond, rectangle, etc). This is totally doable, the vector definitions are already in the script... just need ability to assign them ingame.

To be honest, I never liked the mercenary system at all. Having to pay 150-200K for a squad of mercs that cannot hold their own against a decent sized team of enemies, PER system (you have to pay them full price for each system you visit) is a complete ripoff. Especially when those mercenaries will be leeching experiance from your team as well.

The only time I hire mercs is right before the final mission, because I usually have a ton of money at that point and you typically will have top of the line gear by then, which pretty much leaves Mercs as the only option you have to improve your fighting capability.

Yeah I know but some people apparently enjoy them. So at least they should be able to see what exactly they're paying for rather than just some random flavour text and "hmm, team A is more expensive than team B, they both have 5 pilots so Team A is probably better".

That sucks.

I mean, if *I* was to be a merc, I'd be carrying a scorecard of how many kills I've made, what kind of missions I specialise in, what my skills/perks are. I'd want to show potential employers as much info as possible so they'd hire me. Right now it's just like randomly choosing which brand of canned sardines to try.

There are two types of formations:
1. Formation of a flight. You can have up to 6 ships in a flight. When you creating a flight you can choose a formation for this flight. Possible formations are defined in shipFormation.script
2. Formation of an escort. There is only one possible pattern defined in escortDispatcher.script. This pattern gives positions (around escorted ship) for all flights.

I have bad feelings about this expansion. Whole movie, hundreds of ships and not even one new model! Only old ones with improved graphics. Rastix please let me know if there will be any new ships in the addon.

Ya, I've seen the definitions of the flight vectors, which is why I suggested letting the player set flight pattern formations. No new ships is disappointing. I hope the FILETYPE MODDING does something useful.

Fix <work_sound> tag please, lol. I just tested and it seems missiles cause the game to crash as soon as they hit the target and explode if they have a <work_sound> definition.

I don't have any interesting information :( May be later

It gives you ability to create your own active and passive dialogs

A [powerplant] module type would be nice. That way you can add <power_drain> to all other modules. The idea being you shouldn't be able to install the hugest systems on small ships because they won't have enough power, and be able to upgrade your powerplant if you like the ship but don't want to upgrade ships just to use better systems. Total value of power_drain from all modules should not exceed the powerplant's power_output.

We could have an active perk that can make use of a ship's excess power to temporarily boost performance (speed, turning, shield regen, repair rate). The more excess power available the longer each activation lasts. Or have two perks that use this excess power differently, one lasts longer while the other gives better performance bonuses.

Right now systems specialists are ok but not as outstanding as other specialists. Their active skill (hacking) is nice but the target can still shoot back. This doesn't really help e.g. in the case of fighting capital ships. Sure, blowing its shields away and making it stop sounds cool... but capital ships move slowly anyway, and they generally have loads more armor than shields. It's only really useful against smaller ships, but on the other hand you can simply shoot them. Hack skill would be nice if you could mess up their targeting systems and make them fire at any target regardless of friend or foe status.

Missile turrets and availability of using active skills on mothership as well please :)

lol
I think you are expecting something comparable to SW4? ;)

Haha, why not? :) It is better to have grand dreams even if the gains will be modest, rather than only have modest dreams and gain nothing.

Besides... other than the addition of a power rating and some validations during outfitting a ship, I don't see why this would be difficult to do.

maybe for a later version a multi player system would be intresting

i agree but quite booring given with the right turrets you already over power any fighter fleet u encounter. But this is intresting if a multiplayer version comes out BTW ever played a mod on starwolves 1 where u can choose a battleship takes longer to manouver out of a portal then to play the whole game ^^

now thats a verry intresting thing but i sugest if this gets implemented to also be able to ad turret spots and not only systems (just that i like much turrets and battle ships)

As I know there are no such functionality

Watch this trailer. It's a very good example of modular ship design feature.trailer

Hey, I think I've seen that kind of module insertion into spaceships in a game (see 0:33), it was an older game sort of like Star Wolves 1 (each mission in 1 map). Damn, I don't remember the name. I just about creamed myself when I saw it again though, how the hell did I forget about that.

The mission generator (1:13) wasn't very clear though, I just saw a bunch of combat stuff. The rest of it was the usual MMO junk, pretty graphics, PvP, blah blah been there done that.

Edit:
Hell yeah, thank GameSpot for the "related games" feature lol. I looked up Star Wolves and found that old game - it's Star Fury. Too bad there's very little coverage of it, I think it was another niche space sim most people passed over. Here's a screenshot of the grid-style module placing I was talking about. Too bad they don't have any larger resolution images.

Other than that I think the game was a fairly generic 1P space sim, I can't even remember the story. Ugh, I don't like mysteries... I might go try find that game again.

Missile turrets (i.e. installed on mothership) were actually already designed (see "LRM2_GK" definition in Modules.xml) - the only thing missing is the "on/off" toggle for missiles on mothership.

Note: I haven't actually tried attaching a missile slot to big ships; I'm just taking the word of those who have.

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Active perks are also unavailable to pilot sitting in mothership slot. I suppose some of them can be ridiculous (imagine using the increased speed piloting perk while flying the Astartes...), but if they just added a tag on each perk to indicate whether the perk is allowed on mothership or not - similar to Modules_xml "attach_type" - that would solve the problem.

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Passive perk behaviour appears to be hardcoded inside perkDispatcher.script and CalculatePilotSkills.script. Would it be possible to make perk behaviour depend on the actual definitions inside an XML file, like how modules are currently defined? You would have to modify the two perk scripts extensively though, to loop through each pilot's perks and check whether it contains the tags a function is looking for instead of using hardcoded pilot:HavePerk() checks.

Currently all MultiRocket actions are saved in LOGfile.txt. I've got a sample about 1MB in size but 99% of the entries are for MultiRocket. Those can be removed to produce cleaner logs.

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It would be nice if Ashes of Victory could load from a Civil War final save and "remember" which storyline you chose. I mean, since they're all basically leading to the same thing (war with symbionts), it shouldn't be hard to do. Not really expecting much here but a simply acknowledgement from ex-teammates would be nice. E.g. if you played the MSF storyline you'd get a message from Viper, if you played the Triada storyline then Aja would mail you.

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I know there's probably nothing major they can do about the game engine at this point, but it could use some more tweaking. It's strange how the fps drops really fast when the number of ships in the system goes up. I mean, most of the time at the normal zoom range ships are only a handful of pixels across (e.g. see any of my screenshots). It's crazy if the engine is trying to render all the small details at that scale. Solution could include an option in the menu to enable a less detailed mode or something.

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Thank you for FILETYPE MODDING, but isn't this only for dialogs? What about actually adding quests? The game is already ok in this regard but some tutorials on how to actually add them would be helpful. Or maybe even a mission editor like someone mentioned earlier.

Will the game engine be better optimized in the expansion to eliminate the slowdowns and low fps with SW2 & SW3?

Secondly, when Bethesda released Fallout 3 the devs were asked what if anything they had learned from player feedback. The lead dev responded 'Don't let the game end'. What he meant of course was that players wanted to carry on in the game world after the main storyline had concluded. Will this be possible?

I would also like to see easy to use tools released so that the community can add mission arcs etc. I know the mod tools are out there but for most players these are too complicated and a simple system would be nice to have; which also of course extends the life of the game as the community create more and more content.

fallout 3 is different though. bethesda didnt just mean an opening ending, they also mean an easy modible world to let players create hundereds of hours of gameplay, new missions, new cities, design, armor, weaposn etc etc.


one very important thing is to bring back the voices in SW. the galaxy seems noiseless and boring, a personal connection is missing to the team. the new "hero" is personally about as interesting as a ship hull. "i am a trader, i am a trader, i want to find out what happened to my ships" sums up his whole character. BORING!

also, the graphic is outdated, it would be nice just to update it a little. also the missions do get boring after a while and it would be nice to see a more interactive world like systems being conquered or actually chaning sides and more events dependable on players action in the past

Hi, I'm new to the forum.

Currently mercs hate me, but when I hire mercs they are still friendly so I guess it's ok for mercs to hate you lol.

Also I think the merc system has its own uses, since I usually hire the 5k ish team with a flight of 3 men before raiding a pirate station (force shoot to a pirate station and a bunch of pirates will come out, I had 5 Mastiff shooting at me once). However I'd love to see improvements on merc system, like what they said.

I agree that the "hero" is quite boring. He doesn't appear to change throughout the game nor does he even have an interesting secret. The only thing that makes the "hero" cool is the fact that he looks uncannily like me. My mom saw me playing this game and said, "Why is your picture in the game.":cool:

Another issue I had was the possibility that not all story lines give you a character with an alien tech adaption perk. I managed to gain 35 alien missiles from the mission into the precursor sector which I was going to use on my missile boat character, but I never found a character with the alien tech adaption perk.:mad:

Also is there a place where someone can by alien or precursor weapons because what is the point of precursor tech adaption if I cannot even buy a precursor weapon?

I dont think SW needs voices. 1C hasnt shown the resources to do them correctly, and SW3 was fine without them.

What it does need is a dynamic universe, that gives the impression of actually doing stuff when you are not there. Military should react to piracy, with large escorts through certain areas. Battleships leading campaigns from system to system. Technology being released because of the sucess of a faction, not the level of the player. Trade is more than credits for player, successful trade runs are recorded and vital to a factions success.

Pilots should have salaries based on skills. Pilots can be recruited and hired at anytime, and offer special quests and bonuses for being hired over extended periods. This way the longer the pilot stays the more useful he is, but the more expensive he is. This forces the player to become more efficient and ruthless.

I really couldnt care less about new ship types. A few, sure ok, but a lot would be unrealistic. I like the ones now, if they combined the ships from all the series it would be great. I dont even think a new tier would be useful.

Naming your merc group and selecting a logo that shows up on your fighters would be cool. Changing the tint would be nice as well. So if you wanted black fighters with a skull logo, you would change the tint and change your logo to a skull.

1. Good voice over work, although the vo in sw2 was bad i didn't have to spend few minutes reading every lines like I i did in SW3.

2. A more active and robust universe more ships going about their business trading fighting etc.

3. possibility of multiplayer either co-op or faction base pvp

Hi Folks.....!

Have to jump right besides SW3 - Civil War, which I think the last for today, another story is being developed in parallel (as in SW2), which is called SW3 - Ashes of Victory ..... ?

Now to bring in something better future SW game, I think it would these features:

1. Should have some form of power to get all the equipment of each enemy fighter destroyed (arms and/or heavy missiles and systems.)

2. That game's story is based on obtaining a system for recognition of achievement and glory. To that end, the rivals (Old Empire 'n' New Empire) will ask for help to destroy any Corporation (Inoco, Triod or USS).

3. Since they are new consequences of old and dear SW1/SW2 where Astra, Phantom, Heretic, Corsair, Ace and Hero achieved great goals. Should return at the end of a new game so that will help (symbolically) destroy the enemy. So that these new players can really get the name Star Wolves Mercenary unit, the true and original players.

4. SW1 fighters were excellent, followed by SW2 (Raven, Bastard, Mataric 'n' Skolm). But in SW3 - CW, never found the previous hunts SW2, to top it all, I found new and horrible fighters are to forget (Jaguar, Cheetah, Panther 'n' Puma), except for Black Stormcrow, Eraser, Stiletto Mk 2 , Smilodon, Dragon 'n' Wyvern Mk 2. Why not continue with the previous fighters SW2? Why should you upgrade to fighters, such as the Hammerhead?

Thanks again for the update Rastix, I look forward to seeing what those updates mean in terms of changes to the PFX folders ;)

has release been pushed back? on the 1c website it says q1 2011, start of the thread says q4 2010

sorry if its been said earlyer in the thread dident have my reading head on tonight lol

The first post here says "Last edited by Nike-it; 05-06-2010 at 05:35 PM."... so the website's info is likely more recent.

Alien Frigate

Old one

http://www.elite-games.ru/images/sta.../afregat_b.jpg

New

http://www.elite-games.ru/conference...p?pic_id=21269

One screen!? After 3 months? That's ALL?
What about some new info, details, etc.?

btw frigate looks more detailed but I don't think that adding that orange color is a good idea. Aliens were always a variation of "poison green". This gradient really suits them and make them more...terrifying...dangerous. IMO making ships more colorful doesn't always make them look better. Now it starts to look like a toy not a deadly alien vessel.

p.s. sorry about complaining everything but I've expected much more after 3 months of silence.

Huh? From what moment has it became my responsibility to inform the community??
I'm NOT Pr manager

Btw It's NY gift screen from devs not pr action

I want to apologize for my previous post. I didn't want to be so harsh. I understand that's not your fault. You always seem so well informed that I assumed you are connected with Elite Games Team.
Please, don't feel offended and keep posting any news you find.

been playing a lot of Civil War last couple of days. this series is so much fun. really looking forward to the new one. new graphical improvements look excellent.

for the next game after this I really hope they take a look at implementing some form of multiplayer. and I don't mean competitive multiplayer (would anyone want this? it would be pointless), but more than one player cruising around in the game world at the same time, co-op campaign, either with the same mothership or each player with their own. or they would both start the game, as a new character from scratch. so that if one player already had played for a bit he could hire the second player into his mothership or something like this. although I've been thinking a bit and have no idea how time acceleration and pause funtions would be solved for multiple players, maybe with an area of influence or something, or the same rules apply to both players while they are in the same system. such that if both players are in the same system if one pause or accelerate time it pauses or accelerates for both, but if they are in separate systems they can pause/accelerate without influencing each other. hm.

so seems its now been pushed back to quater 2 2011 wounder whats causing all the delays

Expecting any developer to release anything on time is an exercise in futility.:-P

That is why more and more developers are not giving any release dates until the last minute.

hi there,

ok I'ma bit late but better then never, so here are some of my ideas ;)

1. I'd like to see a simple change in the game when it's about assigning teams. As it now is you have to assign them every time again after undocking from the MS. It'd be cool to save your team-assignments permanently so you don't have to do the same drag 'n drop stuff over and over again. imagine that annoying standard procedure with a perhaps advanced player cap of 8 :lol:

2. MS docking procedure: let more then one fighter dock and/or undock at the same time. (could be MS-dependent) - there could be a carrier like in Wing Commander, where you could launch/dock all of them within seconds (not minutes) ;)

3. MS AMS: let the MS' AMS defend own and friendly fighters within a special range around it (the range also could depend on the system you use - so #1 has almost no range where #5 has a huge one)

4. A capital missile launcher for the MS would be nice. There you could launch f.e. all the rather useless unguided missiles in a hot battle or some big-ass torpedoes on other capital ships. :D

in this case a limitation of how many rockets should be used and a reloading time of some seconds would be interesting, to prevent the MS from spamming the missiles out in no time. The reloading time could be firmware and/or "capital-ship missile launcher system" dependent, too.

5. some list which shows the kills of your pilots as mentioned b4 by Trucidation. Besides the stats which would be interesting to watch at, it'd be nice if your pilots could climb up the ladder by making kills. So you don't have to use your rare xp to get this 'n that perk (see Fallout 3 FWE perks)

It could look like this:

Hero destroyed 50 ships and was promoted to pilot 3rd grade and can now use ships of the 3rd gen.

or XYZ intercepted 100 enemy missiles and became advanced AMS user. Or XYZ repaired 10k hull-points and became ... you know what I mean ;)

But you should still be given the opportunity to invest in these perks if you want to.

6. some different flight maneuvers. they all look alike. There could also be me more active perks for pilots, f.e.: Wild Ivan or whatnot xD

7. as mentioned b4: different formations. Also to make it somehow possible to assign points where pilot XYZ/rout 123
would fly f.e. in a case of an escort. Squad one flies in front of the escorted vessel and squad two covers it's six while fighter 7 and 8 secure the escorted vessel's three and nine. Would be cool in large scale battles as it'd bring some more tactics in.

8. to the "anti-laser bubbles" as mentioned b4. they could just pop up when hit or do some different graphic effect related to the hull, like f.e. the repair system does.

9. get rid of some of the exploits. f.e. that 4x phoenix repair system / 4x ghost or whatever in one ship. these things shouldn't accumulate with a hundred percent. Perhaps 20 but not a hundred.

and finally #10 ;) plz make the game somewhat more efficient and faster in large scale battles. Cool new graphics are always nice to look at but what use do I have from them while watching a true lag-orgy ;)

Greetz KrazeeXXL

release date has now been moved to September :(

I hope the main reason is to make a better game not "we have something more important to do in the meantime". I wouldn't like to see the new Star Wolves like other well-known game with the "forever" in title:rolleyes:.

Any news about the Ahses of Victory?

now moved back to October :(