Wish list for Star Wolves 4 or expansion/dlc for 3

[Goblin Wizard]

Originally Posted by altean

Yes , but half of them are broken, with lot of scripting errors

AFAIK only InoCo path is really broken (3-4 script errors). Other paths are fully playable. Here you can find fix for InoCo path.

[lamorta]

I love Star Wolves 3 Civil War and look foward to a expansion or another game in the series. I would like too see it where whe you win the story line you can continue playing like in 3 it would have been nice to run mission delivering supplys or trading and hunting down more pirates the game may not have continued the story line but you could free play and explore.

Thanks
Lam

[Namsum]

Hello Poeple!

A lot of my wishes are mentioned before... MS-Chars - Better Sidequests - more open World / less travel.... and so on.

But what i would love is a "Starbase". Did somebody play IWar2 - Edge of Chaos? At the start of the Game you got a old pirate Base hidden in an nebula. You could take your loot to there and sell or recycle to get money or create new items.

You could it use also as a storrage for Pilots. I can take 6 with me and leave the rest an the Base - but they should level up also.

Thats a way to get sidequests to the story - every Char has his own past and future - maybe they need assistence of me? (Yes - like Mass Effect 2

Also Motherships - Ships with more cargo to stay longer away from Base or a Tank to do a critical fight. It should be possible to keep them in Base....

And finaly - think about Starbases (NPC). I newer had the feeling to "dock" somewhere. If there is a way to do it like Privateer (Hangar/Bar/Mission Terminal/Stores) you should thin about it. I loved Privateer because of every Planet had his own "Skin" when you docked - it made the universe more "different" and createt an "universe" this way. New Oxford is still in my mind!

Sorry for my poor English...

Namsum (A huge Star Wolves Fan)

[JaM]

hey guys, i'm new here, but i would like to add few my ideas i would like to see in next game:

- active (long range)/passive(short range) radars and ability to detect active radars easily
- specialized ships - would be good to see clear distinction between classes - light vs heavy (good maneurability and speed vs armor and shields), interceptor (gunship destroyers) vs gunship etc...
-

[ChronoDome]

1. Bring Back The Bridge Crew. Why???

Two Reasons:
1st... I Was Almost Happy About The Firmwares
(I Got Firmware MK III Weapons)
So... I Thought If I Have Lasers It Would Always Be A Sure Hit
But No, Sometimes Its A Miss

2nd...Its Much More Better If Humans Are Piloting The MotherShip
Because Of The Perk From The Pilots
AI's... I Hate Them (I'm Kind Of Selfish, Ain't I???) LuL :3

2. The Mothership (This Is Important For Me)
Change The Size Make It Bigger ,I Would Like 4 To 5 Turrents
(Like Ramadanta) ,4 To 5 Systems Also And High HP And Shield
The 2 Cannons Are Already Good. Last One Thing New Motherships,
YES Motherships Not Mothership

Two Reasons:
1st...I Used Logic For This One
It's About The Fighters And The MotherShip
How Would The Fighters Fit Inside The MotherShip
I Always Notice This When My Fighters Dock
Makes Me Laugh, Sorry ,Can't Help It

2nd...I Hope For Some New Classes Of MotherShip
I Liked The Lion MK II
It Was A Beauty HaHa

3. Owning A System
Its Pretty Much De Same To Previous Post

4. I Don't Want To Fight The Old Team (Except For Viper And Heretic)
Makes Me Feel Sorry And I Kinda Miss Ace And Astra

5. When The Final Mission Ends
I Want To Play It Some More Or To Put It In Simple Words FREEPLAY

6. New Enemies
I Liked The Angorians WOW They Were Just WOW

Aliens I Like Them Green Makes Them Really Look Like Aliens HaHaHa

The Precursors
Uhhm.....
I Don't Care What They Look Like But Don't Make Them Strong
Its Name Is Already Scary (Please Don't Make Them Dead)

And Forms Of Monster
Like A Squid In Outer Space

And Maybe Some Other Form Of New Races

7. We Love Fighters
So... New Ones Would Really Make Me Happy
Like Those Fighter T, I Mean When Did They Have Their On Production
It Was Cool That The Templars Have Some Of Their On Holy Fighters

8. Lots Of Treasure Hunting
Always Makes Me Intrigued To Find Those Caches

9. EPIC BATTLES Like The Cache In The Precursor System
Inside A Globe That Star Hammer Memorial

10. Side Quests
Lots Of Lots Of Side Quest
Like In StarWolves 2

Thank You,

[Knave]

I've played all 3 games to some extent and joined to add my 2 creds.

Mothership improvements:
1) A system or turret that streams repair nanites to friendly units. You could limit it to your squads, but why not let it repair any Green allied unit in range? How many times have you wished you could repair your AI backup?
Limitations include range and that players can not directly control which ship gets repaired. Perhaps it will repair a guard bot while letting your own craft explode?

2) Salvage!!! Give us a system to actually recycle some of those dead ships. If you can stream nanites to assemble a ship, why can't you stream nanites to disconnect systems and cut the ship up into cargo sized pieces? The amount you get from a dead ship could be determined by the size. Low level salvage systems pull mostly intact armor plates and once in a while a broken system/weapon. Higher level salvage systems search for the mostly intact system components. The better the system, the better the extracted material. "Space junk", is always an option it means a salvage roll failed and as you can guess is worth only a few credits. More on repair below.

Disclaimer 1: Due to the energy required to operate to a salvage system, the mothership can not power its weapons or engines at the same time. Only the salvage and tractor beam can work together.

Disclaimer 2: I believe SW3 refers to salvage operations as illegal in some regions. Best not to get caught hacksawing that Stone Arrow by the patrol!

Salvage chart example:
L1 system does: 50 dmg and gets 1 small roll, every 10 seconds (until target explodes from damage)
L2 system does: 100 dmg and gets 1 moderate roll, every 8 seconds...
L3 system does: 200 dmg and gets 1 medium roll, every 6 seconds...
L4 system does: 500 dmg and gets 1 large roll, every 5 seconds...
L5 system does: 750 dmg and gets 1 massive roll, every 4 seconds...

Roll Chart: On a 1-1000 roll scale, wide range to minimize lucky hits.
FOR L1 Roll;
000-250: Nothing
251-600: Space Junk sells at about $4 a unit
601-900: "Like New" Armor plates worth about $11 a unit
901-975: Systems/Weapons components, worth $25 or used in repairing gear.
976-998: Heavily damaged system/weapon, needs multiple parts & skill.
999+: Intact component, lets face it they probably cheated to get this.
...
FOR a L5 Roll:
000-040: Sucks to be you, nothing.
041-060: Reroll as a L1 roll.
061-080: Reroll as a L2 roll.
080-100: Reroll as 2x L1 rolls.
101-125: Reroll as 2x L2 rolls.
126-150: Reroll as a L3 roll.
150-175: Reroll as 3x L1 rolls.
176-210: Reroll as 3x L2 rolls.
211-250: Reroll as 2x L3 rolls.
251-300: Reroll as a L4 roll.
301-350: Reroll as 2x L4 rolls.
351-480: 1-3 lengths of power conduit, resale at $215 or so
481-630: 1-3 intact circutry components, resale at $260 or so
631-790: Heavily damaged system\weapon, ship dependant
791-900: Moderately damaged system\weapon, ship dependant
901-960: Lightly damaged system\weapon, ship dependant
961-980: Intact system\weapon, ship dependant
981-999: 5x L4 Rolls (motherload of lesser parts)
1000+: An odd item, they probably cheated to get it, but it sells decently

Disclaimer 3: All parts heavily, moderately, lightly damaged or intact are relitive to the ship type that dropped them. This could reference into the original loot charts if they exist. IE only fighter parts on fighters, a walrus will not have heavy calabur cannons, dead stations are mostly armor and systems. Alien ships tend to have alien gear, berzerks, etc.

3) Repair. (Told ya!) The ability to take damaged components you have gathered and return them to a working state. An extra tab on the mother ship may be required to handle this. Perhaps an extra option while at a maintenance station? To repair it you would need a systems tech with training at that level or higher. Additionally you would need x number of spare parts or components, possibly based on the rarity of the device. It would also be nice to have the options to sell the component damaged for a lot less or to gut it for components. After all, who needs 14 storm ECM units?

4) The ability to upgrade basic mothership components. IE an Engine slot, a Shield Generator slot and maybe an "universal" slot. For the right price at the right location you can purchase an upgraded engine. You know, for the right price you can swap out that old 2 stroke engine for a V8. A core shield slot would be nice. Sure you could remove it but then you'd have NO default shields. Or you could upgrade it with a Kali from the original 500 point shield, without chewing up a precious systems slot. Higher end mother ships may have more than 1 shield slot, IE mantacore could have 2x 2500 shields.

5) Large Calibur rapid fire guns! GRRR! You have no idea how bad I want a 80 dmg, 150 speed chain gun for my main gun! Sure 800 dmg and 15 speed is nice, but in one game when a butcher came at me loaded with a slew of rapid fire guns... I went "I want THAT for my Big Guns!" Seriously, I'm not alone in that am I?

6) Factions, clans and small companies. Someone suggested starting an empire, that gets unrealistic. But it would not be unreasonable to side with a pirate clan or one of the smaller factions and assist them in caputing a system or sector. They become Green allies to you and offer better prices or more options. Their enemies most likely start to hate you and unless mission specific they become Red. Maybe I'll help one of the dinky outpost stations in a lawless sector reclaim the sector. Perhaps I can help them repair and reclaim a patrol station, thus starting to send out their patrols in the sector. Maybe they want to seize the local smuggler's station, if they take it pirates are reduced but a "legalized" smugglers market becomes available. Etc. While I know some parts would be a simple flip of a switch code wise, others would be a complete pain. So I understand if this doesn't make it in.

7) Stations. For @$%& sake, there have been how many years of brutal war and chaos now? Why are military stations and patrol stations unarmed? They should ATLEAST have low grade turrets and maybe even low end capital ship shields! Their armor is rediculously high, as their should be several hull breaches by then...but they should be treated essentially as non-moving motherships. All stations should have at least 1hp/s regen systems.

Mining, LOX and misc stations might have minimal shields.

Repair stations should have a turret, minimal shields and Good repair rates.

Commerce stations should have light shields a turret or two and maybe a low level anti-missile system.

Patrol stations should have moderate shields and 3 turrets or so around the upper edge, that would give them huge arcs of fire for defense.

Pirate stations should be somewhere near the rate of their comperable station. Maybe with more shields and less HP since they could be under maintained.

Military stations should be heavily armed, shielded and armored. These are intended to with-stand enemy assults and clean up the mess afterwards.
...
If factions are enabled then stations should be able to offer to surrender. A surrendering station switches to the alignment and faction it yeilds to. If you happen to be allied with that faction, you may get better rates, etc.

(Yielding not absolute, only possible to occur)
Commerce stations yield at 40% hull.
Patrol and pirate stations yield at 25% hull.
Military stations yield at 10% hull.
Repair yields at 20% hull.
Misc others at 35% hull.

---

Okay that about sums up anything I can think of just now. Sorry if it seems like a bit of a rant. I don't know how many times I was floating past a 'debris', 'ship carcass' or 'dead ship' and thought it was a waste to leave perfectly good salvage there!
-Knave

[Goumindong]

A X^3 style game world would be nice (as in, a real working space economy). But i think that the primary motivation in Star Wolves is making the combat good.

And there are significant problems in that regard which ought to be fixed.

Lets break these down into weapons and maneuverability/piloting.

Maneuverability and piloting are clearly king in combat. Well, that is, until they break and your pilots get so maneuverable that they simply stop an turn in spot(where they are then murdered).

In General what this means is that people who have good piloting skills dominate people who do not until such a time as the ships they have get too maneuverable and are prone to simply being terrible.

Not the least because of this, but also because other specializations need to have oomph (we will talk about missiles later). Piloting ought to be a separate function than maneuverability(in order to rectify this I am in the process of modifying all the maneuverability values for every fighter in the game for SW 3).

I.E. piloting determines what you do with a ship, maneuverability determines how well you can do it.

To be more explicit, as a pilot gets better, he should get better at doing specific tasks such as "getting and staying behind an enemy pilot" or "keeping enemy pilots from staying behind them" or "keeping enemies off the rear ends of wing mates"

As it is, it seems pilots simply fly around randomly and take pot shots when they can, no different piloting techniques are used when you have lasers or your opponent has lasers etc. This may not be the way that things really are, but unless specific target orders are given that is certainly the way things seem. One member of the wing will catch a bogey on their tail and the other members of the wing will happily sit there trying in vain to shoot someone else while their friend gets shot up. And that friend, even though he can simply get out of the line of fire by speeding up to their max speed won't do it and will keep trying to turn into the enemy.

Either each member of the wing needs to be able to be given much more complicated orders (while still being able to maintain wing functionality), or the piloting ability needs to get a lot smarter about how pilots fly and not simply make them more maneuverable (or give them bonuses to hitting or not hitting)

The second issue that needs to be resolved is missiles.

Missiles have a large problem in that they are either ridiculous useless (enemies shoot them down easily for non-specialized pilots) and when they hit they do about as much damage as a single volley from high quality weapons (for instance a cleaner with 2 helios combat lasers does 400 damage for two hits, 440 for a laser specialist, almost as much as a torpedo).

Or, with the right "clickies" they're massive ridiculous killing machines which murder entire wings without doing much. ALRMs with the missile damage boost clicky pretty much kills any wing in the game before it can do anything. Considering you get 2-5 clickies per map and well...

Missiles either need to be treated more like regular guns (I.E. their marginal cost of use needs to be zero) or removed as specialty and given status as long range pre-engagement killers that you use when you think the resources are worth it.

They can be both but it would require a large departure from the current system. I.E. consider a system where missiles "regenerated" inside a fighter. So that you reasonably had a full load of missiles for each engagement, but only for that engagement. Use them wisely. While at the same time, your mothership could, a limited number of times per map, launch area torpedoes that did massive damage.


---

Solving these two problems are, imo, the most important aspects of making a better Star Wolves.

Excellent observations Goumindong. Yeah, there's really only "one" AI and the manueverability/speed pretty much determines how each ship flies. They all behave more or less the same. I don't hope for something as customisable as Dragon Age's combat tactics (that would be awesome gravy though), but you figure a pilot who's got a repair module equipped would at least have enough brains to use it on a damaged teammate right?

The LRM missiles do seem to be designed for pre-engagement: their range pretty much means you're invited to blow things up before they even see you. I'm... not too comfortable with this (it feels cheap :p ) but some players enjoy this. Ditto torpedoes. The other missiles - well, a "regenerating" load is an interesting idea. For my mod I simply upped the pod count and toned down the damage a lot. Mothership missile launchers are also a good idea, although it may be wise to differentiate which missiles can be used by what.

I mentioned something else in another thread I think: degradable modules. Right now a nearly-destroyed ship flies just as good as a brand-new ship. Ha. What if certain hits could cause modules to take damage? The idea is the more damage a module takes, the less efficiently it operates. Each module would have a min/max rating for what it does. For example a shield module which gives 200hp. Max would be 200hp, let's say min is 50hp. When it is intact (100% ok) it produces 200hp. The more damage% it takes, the lower the value goes, until at 1% ok it produces only 50hp. When a module reaches 0% it's considered destroyed (dock at a station to get it repaired).

This way we can boost weapons indirectly as well: e.g. lasers would only produce "normal" damage and only have a very low chance of inflicting damage on modules. Kinetic guns would have a better chance of damaging modules. This would make up somewhat for their crap "normal" damage. Heck, there could be "hacking" type modules for use by system specialists which would temporarily disable a ship's modules (set them at 0% for a certain duration). And modules which prevent this kind of hacking. Repair modules would certainly be much more useful.

There's a lot which SW3 can change fairly easily - we're not talking about massive game engine changes either. I'm kinda disappointed the next installment seems to be mostly about better graphics but we'll see when it comes out. One can hope...

[ChronoDome]

I Totally Agree With Goumindong

The Pilot Should Be Aware Of Enemy Fighters In His Rear
Rather Than Making A Complete Stop And Turning For Your Death.

I Hate Those Fighters Equipped With Chain Guns And Yataghan.
These Fighters Always Manage To Destroy A Single Ship In Your Team.
Grinds Them Up When My Pilots Making A Turn.
(Even If My Pilots Are Already Fully Perked And Their Fighters Is A Wyvern Mk II)]
(I Always Say: WTF!?!?! Even With A Support From The Mothership With Top Tier They Still Manage To Destroy A Fighter!?!?!)

He/She Should Do The Best To Avoid Enemy Fire
Or He/She Should Boost The Speed To Avoid Enemy Fire
Or Maybe Don't Make A Complete Stop While Turning

And Gives Me Another Idea (Another Request)
The Pilot Should Not Only Concentrate To Its Single Target

For Example:
Your Pilot Has A Target But It Is Right Behind Him...
So He/She Would Make A Turn
But There Is An Enemy Fighter Right In Front Of Him/Her
And Should Open Fire To Take It Down As Well

I Always Order My Fighters Which To Kill First
But Always Re-Order Them
If There Are Enemy Fighters Right In Front Of Them

Its Very Stressful
Re-Ordering Them Again And Again

Edit:
When I Said Chain Gun
I Meant All Types Of Rapid Fire Like Vindicator
But Sometimes Aliens Are Causing These Troubles As Well
Because Of That Green Missile

[Goumindong]

I actually don't mind the whole "you have to give specific orders to your team mates" aspect. For instance, i love that I can have a single member of my squad on missile/repair duty and he can still attack.

All I do is pause when i hear/see a missile, turn on the anti-missile defense and when the offending missiles are no longer in the air, turn off the missile defense. (ditto repairing)

My gripe is more that when I have pilots on Defend or Attack they are incompetent. An order of defend or attack should not have the pilot do a specific simple thing (though they should focus on the target you have selected), but should influence their behavior in a very specific way.

A pilot on defend should be concentrated only on getting an enemy off his rear(or concentrated on getting enemies of his friends rear, either one), and should be fairly successful at it. All of this of course depends on whether or not the pilot is good enough and the ship is fast enough/agile enough. A slow but agile ship should attempt to out turn an enemy, a fast ship should run out of weapon range and then re-align when the enemy can't shoot at him, so that when the enemy is back in range its no longer a threat or no longer a threat anymore. Pilots on defend should still be able to shoot(as shooting is part of defending yourself), just concentrated on not dying more than making others die. If i have a pilot on defend(or attack, it doesn't matter which) and a target they should make sure that that target won't be able to get a good shot off on whatever they're trying to kill.

A pilot on attack should be concentrated on attacking the target and should be fairly successful at it. The way in which they go about it should be different for each weapon. If they have lots of lasers they should be concentrated on making passes at high speed (because all you need to do is get the enemy in your sights for a second).

If the pilot has high RoF weapons then making high speed passes isn't valuable, the pilot should be concentrated on getting into a position where they have lots of time to make attacks.

If the pilot has SRMs active they should align themselves so that their friends won't be incidentally hit by their shots. I can't tell how many times i have blown up me entire team because i launched an SRM/LRM and had the super damage clicky on and then another team mate decided to fly right into the path of the super-missile of doom.

In addition, a pilot who has missiles active needs to have some sort of consistency of when they will use them. If missiles are active then the pilot needs to fly at a distance where the missiles will actually fire. Again, i cannot tell you how many times I have triggered SRMs for a missile pilot and had the pilot do nothing buy shoot their 2 small guns at enemies and never actually use the missile!

Pilots need to be better at running away from their wing-mates and escorts. A wing of pilots attacks my mothership which should be an easy fight considering the proximity to the laser/chaingun spewing monster... Nope, because invariably the enemy will chase one of my pilots off of the mothership and he/she will drag the others out there so that they can have a fight away from our fire support. It would make sense if it was the enemies running away, but its my own damned pilots!

For some reason i feel that these problems did not exist as much in the first game. It seems like as piloting got better my pilots were less likely to run away from the fight because they got someone on their tail and were incompetent at shaking them. That my pilots were less likely to sit and spin while enemies chewed them up and were more likely to fire their missiles.

______

That being said i want to elaborate on the LRM/SRM thing.

There isn't much of a problem with long range engagement missiles existing and being effective. The problem is that LRMs/SRMs use the same resources. I.E. LRMs and SRMs are money and purchase limited and use the same launcher.

So if you want to use SRM's because you think missiles in dog fights are cool, then you can't use LRM's. And if you want to use LRM's because you know that LRM's are awesome and pre-engagement is valuable you can't use SRMs. (and you're probably going to be flying a ship that is worthless in a dog fight anyway). Because of this you're pretty much locked into playing a certain type of way. One of those ways which is pretty clearly inferior to the other.

The second problem is that missiles both do too much damage and don't do enough damage and there can really be no middle ground with the current setup. As it is, the clickies mean that LRMs or SRMs will simply take out an entire wing in one hit but that SRMs are pretty weak otherwise.

This is good in one way as the clickies limiting LRM usefulness means that you can't just sit back and bomb every enemy you see with your 400 range radar then redock and get more(exception is berserks of course as they have so few hit points and weak ABM). But its bad in another way that SRM missiles only do about as much damage as a single high quality laser shot unless you use the clickies... and if you use the clickies then your entire wing will explode because the SRM will turn into the equivalent of a torpedo.

If SRM's are to be limited use weapons they have to do a LOT of damage, they pretty much have to take out a ship(any ship) in one hit. But at the same time, they can't be such that the explosion is able to hit multiple ships.

It is funny when the MSF stops me for being a pirate and starts to attack and a single SRM wipes out 8 of them. Its not funny when a patrol launchers a SRM at an enemy pirate I am tangling with and the explosion kills me when I am unable to shoot down the missile! (because you can only shoot down missiles that are targeted at your wing, not allies, and not enemies. So if a missile is shot at an enemy and you are too close when it goes off you get hurt)

Its funny when you can lay waste to swaths of enemies by launching 8 LRMs in quick succession that all explode in huge gigantic fireballs of wing killing death. Its not funny when those same "fast launch" clickies are useless with SRMs because they send 3 missiles at the same target before you know it and the explosion of the first one blows up the other two!

To put it in a simple way, the reason that these problems exist and cannot easily be remedied is that SRM's and LRM's use the same game resources. Think about a game as an attempt to succeed against some odds using limited resources. When two things use the same resource you will always and only use the better of the two things (unless you're masochistic). If two things use the same resource and have wildly divergent uses then balancing them becomes problematic.

If SRM's and LRM's are on different resource schedules then you can design them in such a way that each one is useful.