Star Wolves 3: Ashes of Victory in Development

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.

[Nanaki]

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.

[Goblin Wizard]

Originally Posted by Trucidation

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.

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.

[Rastix]

Originally Posted by Goblin Wizard

Rastix please let me know if there will be any new ships in the addon.

I don't have any interesting information May be later

[Rastix]

Originally Posted by Trucidation

I hope the FILETYPE MODDING does something useful.

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

[Rastix]

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.