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Author Topic: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines  (Read 39839 times)
Son_of_Antares
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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #75 on: February 07, 2009, 12:40:57 am »

A quick suggestion: Luki, you could add a stylized wind rose in the upper right corner of the map. I think it would look nice,  fill that gap of empty space and be somewhat useful. The art style for the rose (regular look, space age, etc) I leave for you to decide.
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Lukipela
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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #76 on: February 07, 2009, 09:17:34 am »

I'll see what I can do.
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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #77 on: February 07, 2009, 11:12:00 am »

A thing about throwing grenades: are we required to be in a straight line with the target when throwing it (like for everything else) or we can try and lob the thing diagonally?
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Lukipela
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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #78 on: February 07, 2009, 12:01:34 pm »

Striaght line, just like any directional weapon.
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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #79 on: February 08, 2009, 09:33:13 am »

You misunderstand the parry dice. You start rolling your parry dice against the first successful enemy strike. And you don't stop until you've parried the strike or run out of parry dice. So if you have 3 parry dice and the enemy manages two strikes, depending on your success in parrying you can roll three against the first strike, two against the first and one against the second, one against the first and one against the second or one against the first and two against the second.

But I see your objection, parry dice aren't that great for the enemy. You yourself have more use of them, as you don't have to worry about a bullseye you have a 1/6 to parry compared to the enemies 1/9. 

Aren't you at least going to make abilities like Never Surprised more useful? 2 parries extra doesn't make enough of a difference.
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Lukipela
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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #80 on: February 08, 2009, 11:04:19 am »

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But I see your objection, parry dice aren't that great for the enemy. You yourself have more use of them, as you don't have to worry about a bullseye you have a 1/6 to parry compared to the enemies 1/9. 

Aren't you at least going to make abilities like Never Surprised more useful? 2 parries extra doesn't make enough of a difference.

I'm considering changing the parry values for melee where you've got a better chance of dodging blows. I do think it's logical that parries don't do that much for shooting though, dodging a bullet ought to be pretty hard. I suppose I could play around with those probabilities too, or just change the bullseye into a regular hit.  Never surprised is basically just to ensure that you have less of a chance to slaughter the enemy when you surprise them.
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Lukipela
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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #81 on: February 08, 2009, 01:48:59 pm »

Hmm, unless my math is faulty somehow it looks like having 3 parry dice would normally mean a Synth had a 26.6% chance of getting hit, and five dice reduces that to around 21%. So about one in four to one in five. Likewise the probability of parrying the first shot rises from 23% to 29%. Of course it does nothing to address the 16.7% bullseye. A possible solution would be to go to 12 sided die and keep everything else in place but halve the chance of a bullseye to around 8% and add those other 8% to the hitting side. You'd still have the normal 33.3% chance of injuring your enemy, but more of it would be parriable.

I think I'll leave it the same for now. Cumulative parries don't increase the overall probability to parry that much, but they aren't supposed to. They do increase the probability of parrying that first critical hit by 6%.

Sometime in the future I'd love to implement a distance system to modify the miss probability, but right now that'd be far too demanding from my point of view.
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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #82 on: February 08, 2009, 07:09:50 pm »

Just curious: how much time does it take to perform one update?
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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #83 on: February 08, 2009, 11:03:33 pm »

Can we expect to see "the other side of the medal" in some of the upcoming missions after this one we're currently playin' (because I personally hope to see mission 2 and 3 and 4 and...  Cheesy )? What I mean is - can we (all players, current and future) hope to play as Hierarchy Spooks, not just Allied ones?
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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #84 on: February 08, 2009, 11:22:31 pm »

The Hierachy doesn't seem much like the sort of organisation to employ spooks to me. Sure, Androsynth and Ilwrath can get along well as we've seen, and Umgah are just friendly to everyone until they splice a few extra limbs on, but imagine a VUX and a Spathi meeting for the first time.

The various thralls were forced together by the simple fact that they all got their asses kicked (except the Mycon, obviously). They've got to be resenting that to some degree. With the supervision of a Lord they can work together in relative peace, but as an isolated group with no up-to-date contact with the Hierachy? They might turn traitor, attack each other, fail simply because they are unwilling to function as a unit... the Alliance doesn't have this problem as if they weren't friendly with each other already (creepiness aside) they'd have stayed at each others throats until they were overwhelmed.

The Ur-Quan also aren't much for sneaky stuff. Tactics sure, striking at the weak points fine, but placing a group of untrustworthy people who hate their masters into unfamiliar territory filled, let's not forget, with psychics? That just smacks of stupid. Like trying to get a VUX commando to disable a Syreen's psychic amplifiers on his own. Oh, and the ships have to dock to transfer. That stupid. The only way a commando operation could work for the Hierachy is if a Quan personally accompanied the team at all times, and they hang from the goddamn ceiling! Also even with a Quan watching there's a very real risk of backstabbing, and how would it carry its talking pet without it possibly being stolen if its master was killed?

Bottom line, the Hierachy isn't designed to have spies, so it's a good thing that their military is so strong. The Dreadnought is a prime example of their mindset - don't dodge around and be tricky, just shoot things with a big gun.
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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #85 on: February 09, 2009, 01:08:34 am »

You may be right, but from a tactical standpoint it sounds reasnoable that the Hierarchy would at least try to counter Alliances spies to a certain degree. Because if they would leave them all to roam their territory unchecked that all powerful military ceases to be useful do to one simple fact - sabotage. What's the use of a Dreadnaught if it explodes in your starbase when you press "ignite thrusters" button? If that was the case, Alliance would beat the cr** out of Ur-Quan forces even before they could get deep into the alliance space; just deploy few thousand spook teams far into the enemy's area of control and they can start collecting their fleets debris all over the TrueSpace  Tongue even if they would try to counter this with higher alert levels, more guards, more defensive systems and such, it would eventually prove fruitless and quite expensive, because - any lock can be opened/computer hacked/data or item stolen/leader assassinated given time and will to perform such an act. Even the VUX could start closing their eye in the presence of an Andro or Umgah and cooperate if that would make their trade routes/facilities safe once again. So, I'm prone to believe that even some spy team made by force (and let us not forget that FORCE is the base of all relations between the slave races and the UQ) is better than none - for the greater and common good of all Hierarchy races.
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I even like that idea of forced cooperation, reminds me much of the "Munchkin" card game; while the team pushes to their mission goal you can trust no one, every step that you make is a possible opportunity that someone can abuse for their own gain, backstabbing and plotting is common as is cooperation in Alliance...I think that the game would be hellowa lot different if (role) played from this angle, and would offer tons and tons of fun and funny situations  Cheesy I would really like to see this one happen  Grin

EDIT: I'm just curious: what program have you and Dabir used when creating unit sprites? I need sprites for a project I'm developing and trying to put under way, but I know next to nothing about "sprite art" (not even sure that this is the name they use for it Tongue ), yet would very much like to try it out and give it a shot.
« Last Edit: February 09, 2009, 01:24:03 pm by Son_of_Antares » Logged
Dabir
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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #86 on: February 09, 2009, 07:30:09 pm »

I use MSPaint for spriting - whilst a lot of people use Photoshop, you don't need anything especially powerful. Photoshop's really for if you want resizing that doesn't look like ass.
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Lukipela
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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #87 on: February 09, 2009, 07:53:50 pm »

Just curious: how much time does it take to perform one update?

It varies. I've gotten just moving you and writing some flavour text down to 5-10 mins. Bigger descriptions and battles add maybe 5-10 minutes more to that. Having to paint some new scenery adds about 5 minutes more again. So between 5 and 25 minutes. In the beginning it usually took around 25 -30 minutes, but I've gotten the copying, pasting, uploading and so on down to a routine by now.


EDIT: Also SC:BEL:Opposing Force won't be seen for a while. It's certainly not planned for the near future.
« Last Edit: February 09, 2009, 08:55:01 pm by Lukipela » Logged

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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #88 on: February 11, 2009, 08:52:48 pm »

A thing about smoke and char sprites in smoke: you could at least put some sort of markers on the cloud (red letter for example; S - Sukuzu, W - Wubula etc.) so we don't have to backtrack to previous map updates to pinpoint our exact location.
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Re: StarControl: Behind Enemy lines
« Reply #89 on: February 12, 2009, 05:54:50 am »

The in-game reason for this is that you seriously can't see a thing. the same would be true if you threw it at enemies, they wouldn't become visible until at melee range. But I'll try to work out some better smoke that you can partly see through.
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