Star Wolves 3: Ashes of Victory in Development

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.

[Nanaki]

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

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).

[Gui DURANDAL]

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

Like DOW2...

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

[Rastix]

Somebody announced SW4 ?

[Nanaki]

Originally Posted by Gui DURANDAL

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

Like DOW2...

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

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.

[Nanaki]

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.

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?

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

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.

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.