Just a thing for you guys to think about (about Orion,again)

Fireskull · Post by **Fireskull** » Sat Feb 11, 2006 9:43 pm

I was reading the PR forums, and came upon this post, by Wraith.

"Orion: Easiest ship to beat the campaigns with in the original (seriously-- load up Dosbox & try it). In the original Priv, you never really fought more than 3 hostile craft at once, so the Orion's heavy shields had time to recharge during the quieter moments of firefights. Now that you can get pounded on by 10 hostiles at once, the additional defense just isn't enough to cut it. Basically a "broken" ship in this remake (though still fine for trade, exploration, and non-campaign missions). "

This was the best post I have heard about why the Orion just doesnt cuts it in a long time. I was going to talk about the way I would go about this, but then I realised my way would unbalance other things about the game, so I will just leave you guys with the post above.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:01 am

Great point actually.... how'd you deal with it?

Fireskull · Post by **Fireskull** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 2:40 pm

Dunno.

I thought about making it so shields up to level 7 ( which are shields that starfighters use ) all recharge the same % per second, instead of using an absolute number.

Yet, on another hand, this could possibly weaken guns, and we know they are a bit weak as they are.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:58 pm

Thing is, also, in the original game, even if you were attacked by a whole bunch of ships, only 2, maybe 3 were actually fighting you. In the remake, they all fight with you at the same time. More realistic, but then the numbers of enemies should be cut back. Or else we should go the canon way and change the AI so you're only fighting 2.5 ships at a time. The rest can fly around for decoration, as they did in the original, and only start shooting at you when their turn comes. Technically, this could be done easily by having ships fly larger loops around, the greater their number. If they fly further out before they come for a pass at you, you'd end up with just a couple to deal with at a time.
Another thing with the AI is when you enter a system and there are like 20 bogies forming around the jump point and start shooting at you at the same time. Maybe they should start more spread-out; or to be more consistent with canon, when you come out of a jump-point it shouldn't happen inside the bubble but at some random location within a kilometer of the center of the bubble. After all, WC canon says that the accuracy of where you come out when you cross a jump point is not very high.

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Tue Feb 14, 2006 6:57 pm

Fully agree on the exit-point thing, not sure on the rest... if you're facing 20 ships, well, you should've thought better of it

This said, we DO need to clamp down on "The ship in question is part of a 1222-ship flightgroup" thing.

Fireskull · Post by **Fireskull** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 2:20 am

You see.

Myself, I have similiar results with both a Orion and a Centurion, with a Orion being much better against capital ships.

The problem is, I have to put much more effort when fighting in a Orion than when fighting in a Centurion. With a Orion I cant miss that missile shoot, because otherwise I wont have enough time to take down those 3 other Gothri.A Centurion, on another hand, can always resort to fighter style maneuvers if you make a mistake. Which is just fine since... Centurions ARE fighters.

But you cant dodge around a lot when a capital ship has 20 turrets aiming at you right? You just have to take the hits, or launch missiles from a distance.

So instead of fooling around with game mechanics, in a so far unsucessful atempt of making the Orion a gunship, why dont we add Torpedo runs/Capital Ship Bombardment/you name it type of missions? The Orion can do it, its clearly a bomber. If those missions have a high enough payment ( if you are going to go up against something larger than a corvette, you SURE will be well paid for it. Destroying a capital ship IS a big thing ) the player could even hire some demons to escort him, and still make a very large profit.

rockstar · Post by **rockstar** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 6:04 pm

hell yeah, fireskull... that's a good idea. this would bring more variety to the game's missions at all. the only thing an orion would need then is an evil amount of missile/torpedo rounds onboard - while "evil" is quite an undefined number 'cause i've actually no idea how much missile/torpedos it takes to bring down a capital ship.
when thinking about other space simulators i remember torpedos beeing very slow but very dangerous to capital ships. in certain missions you have to bring down incoming torpedos only to protect your carrier or cargo convois.
anyways i guess this idea should be something to work on... adding different mission styles and making the orion a real torpedo bomber.