What Should be Changed in Starshatter 4.5?

[Kuokkanen]

So milo wouldn't repeat same mistakes with future versions of Starshatter (like Gathering Storm), let's point him out all the faults of most recent public version (4.5 that is).

Explosion radius of large objects. Seriously guys! When I had disabled carrier's all five PDBs (with Thunderbolt), reduced its hull to 2% and backed off to over 10 km to give it final blow just to get blown myself by ship's explosion!

What was that carrier doing there anyways (Shining Fortress, Silessia system)? Out of fighters and out of escorts it should had leave or surrender. Instead it just sat there, blew up five attacking Thunderbolts and lost yet another Thunderbolt while damn thing itself blew up. And on another sector of Silessia (outermost planet) were Force cruisers and destroyers doing nothing. How about jump to other sector and concentrated attack against enemy carrier group?

When shooting that carrier, I found out that its turrets were not protected by shield. So I targeted PDB 5 and kept shooting at it regularly firing at other PDBs too in order to keep repair crews busy. That way I got carrier's hull down pretty fast compared to what it would took to fire shielded areas. Is this silly or is it just me? I mean in Star Wars sims (TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance) when unshielded starship turret is destroyed, it blows up. Oh, ship's hull don't take much damage (if anything at all) when shooting at its turret. This is more like the way it should be.

In first mission of Firestorm there was fighting all over system's single sector. While I was hunting down fighters and Zodiacs, three cruisers attacked enemy station. Funny though, station didn't return fire even though one of attacking cruisers fired with PDBs at it. At least station launched few fighters but those fighters just made zig-zaging around and didn't seem to make any attacks against cruisers. How about launching all fighters and bombers as fast as possible with concentrated attack? Artificial Insanity is in need of overhaul.

When all enemy starships, stations and airfields have been destroyed, there shouldn't be any fighters left. Yeah, right. Second mission of Firestorm was patrol on same sector. On patrol route me and my wingman got attacked by eight (8) enemy fighters! Where did they came from? I mean on whole star system is only one single sector on orbit of single deserted planet without any operational fighter base (carrier or otherwise)! This really eats credibility [:-]

Some ship designs suck. Carrier I mentioned earlier misses PDBs underneath it. So all single fighter would need to do is attack from below its belly and shoot all the day so few percents of damage goes through shield.

Yesterday I started read manual too and got almost halfway with it. Found few useful things what I didn't learn by experience but which I have already forgotten. Anways along with grammar errors there are some other errors too. Like installation instructions where it says to insert disk into CD-ROM drive. First off word should had been disc and second off most of new computers (and many new computers of time game's release) don't include CD-ROM drive but CD-RW and various DVD drives instead. Also I and search function didn't found explanation for COMMIT button in navigation map ('n' key on game). What does it do anyway?

Did I miss anything? Feel free to fill in.

[Adonnay]

I would love an easily moddable campaign to replace stock ships with your own creations and change global goals and such... and a better AI of course. I hate it when most of my fighters are spinning around somewhere becuause the AI thinks they are beeing targeted/chased. Or they just don't follow your orders. Badly damaged ships should back off and retreat. No suicide runs (single frigate going head on with a cruiser).

- My other issues were mostly with modding as well... like missiles that could not be intercepted/evaded .Fighters with torpedoes were just overpowered, why even buy a frigate if a wing of bombers can take it out in one run.
- Or even if you set the shields to be non-penetrable and to capacitor use (X-Wing/Star Wars like), ships still took hull damage through the shields.
- GUI based deffing ftw!
- When you set the speed of projectiles very high they tend to just pass through ships (I suppose because they actually hit the object between two frames and are therefore not calculated as a hit)

I'm pretty sure it's too late now for any changes (or at least I hope so *g* and GS is almost done) but I hope development on SS will never end

[Code Crank Call]

"Vulcan 1 quantumed into Korius" that has to be my least favorite showstopper, because it strikes without warning (gasp) and you find yourself sitting in a space that's SUPPOSED to be occupied by a carrier's launch bay (the carrier's even there) but it's not, and just about everything else is broken for some reason, I think it's the alert mechanic or something.
As for modding in your own ships, thatwould be easily di-able if you could replace the Alliance Order of Battle (http://72.38.179.74/wikistar/CampaignModInfo.html) but i'm pretty sure the mod loading system doesn't account for alike-named objects very well, so m'eh.

[Kuokkanen]

ORIGINAL: Code Crank Call

"Vulcan 1 quantumed into Korius" that has to be my least favorite showstopper, because it strikes without warning (gasp) and you find yourself sitting in a space that's SUPPOSED to be occupied by a carrier's launch bay (the carrier's even there) but it's not

Sounds like bug where player's fighter goes different sector than carrier. From my personal experience it is player who ends up on wrong sector while carrier and nav points are on correct sector (hit 'n' key and check out different sectors). It is well known and will be fixed... I hope.

More examples of artificial insanity:
In Operation Firestorm carrier Atlas gets attacked by couple DD Broadswords. Torps they are firing and most of them hit Atlas. What is PDB doing? NOTHING! Eventually Atlas makes quantum jump. Anyways me and my Stormhawk (loaded with ASMs) softened up other destroyer by shooting at its fusion right between engine ports. This Broadsword got killed by friendly fire of other Broadsword's PDBs which missed my Stormhawk. My Stormhawk got destroyed by explosion even though it was almost five clicks away.

For next mission I got Thunderbolt with mix of ASMs and SRMs. Mission is sweep with several nav points but I go after enemy carrier instead. It quantum jumps out before I reach it though so I attack enemy fighters which are after another Thunderbolt group. Then I decide kill frigate and did that too with ease, though explosion reduces T-bolt's hull strength considerably (about klik or two when frigate blew up). Wingman seems to have full load of ASMs left so I order him against other frigate which got softed up by other pair of Thunderbolts. Wingman don't seem to do anything: its engines are off! I tell him return to base and this time engines light up. I try get him again after frigate and this time he complies. I'm heading to Atlas.

Meanwhile enemy bombers came through quantum gate and are heading towards Atlas. Atlas lights up its engines and after short while it makes jump - after incoming enemies had been destroyed! I go through sectors with nav map and found Atlas. Heading towards proper quantum gate while ordering wingman to stick with me. On the way happens to be enemy carrier but I got past it. I got to gate with my wingman but he goes around the gate! I made successful jump, looked around and found out that Atlas is heading towards gate and is very near of it! Carrier rams to gate, blows up and my Thunderbolt with it.

[InfernO83]

The internet multiplayer game physics are messed up. Not even since 4.5.0 ...

[smaff]

What bugs me:
 
No real capital ship formations. I *can* get my ships to follow me in the current starshatter, though it does involve a certain degree of tedious clickery.
 
Frigates are too easy to mug - I think they should fit the current Navy role of the destroyer/frigate which is fast torpedo boat (fighters with Anti-ship) screen. Missions would be similar to fighter sweeps, and escorting destroyers on "assault" missions (which would be fun) ie. you'd get a mission failed if the protecting destroyer died or bugged out due to attacks from fighters. Frigates should be something fighters want to try and avoid (and the fighter AI should know that too).
 
Monolithic campaign structure. So much else is so moddable, it kind of sticks out.
 
No capacity for things like: fighter/shuttle recovery, scans, or indeed anything useful to do with the Shuttle type craft you have cluttering up your Carrier...
 
Collisions tend to blow stuff up, rather than perhaps "dent'n'disable", which I think would be more realistic. Given that fighters occasionally miss the landing (and go pop), it'd nice to be able to recover the damaged ship, and repair it (though that would take some time, and indeed, it might be beyond repair - put you could also have a nice mission where you (in an essentially empty and hence pointless carrier) go to the scene of an oldish big battle, collect a load of damaged fighters, repair them, and become a stealth asset...
 
The AI is occasionally buggy. I've yet to actually meet one that isn't, it is true, but a good AI is worthy of real note. Starshatter's is "getting there".
 
Combat AI - Is utterly limited to "point nose at target, shoot availiable weapons". As such, implimentations of the concept of the "Broadside" is impossible. Requires a bit more sophisticated AI, but it is do-able.
 
(there's probably more but I'll think of them later :>)
 
Some notes on other's complaints though:
 
All CD-RW / DVD drives (etc) also act as CD-ROM drives. They can do other things as well, but they as will act as a CD-ROM drive so its not actually inaccurate to refer to them as one.
 
Speed of projectiles - Its actually pretty simple. Make your projectiles rather long. They'll tend to blur into lines anyway...
 
Torps/weapons penetrating shields - there is indeed an option that you can set on a weapon .def that allows some fraction of the damage through to the hull regardless of your shield .def config. Not sure where that's applied in the damage calculations, but if you put "penetration: 0" in the weapon's .def, it will no longer penetrate.
 
Being attacked when you'd cleared out the area - well, perhaps they were still in the factory/trainstation/whatever and a few of the locals banded together to fight the evil enemy (that'd be you then :> ). This would probably be simulated by "region" level assets rather than ones allocated to a specific base. Never really looked at the whole Order of Battle thing, to be honest, so it could be a bug too :>
 
Carrier not leaving? Well, John added some code to increase the chances of carriers bugging out when attacked (as they're essentially defenseless really). Carriers became unkillable for as soon as you turned up, they'd leave.
To prevent this quantum tail-chase, he added the fact that the more ships around a ship trying to quantum, the longer it takes - remove those ships (by destroying them) and it gets quicker... it was probably on the verge of leaving when you destroyed them :> I think its quite a good system - as a destroyer group capt, I've had some tense moments when I've ordered all of my squad out of the way as some fighters approached, and the accelleration of the time-to-jump as the rest of them jump out is most pleasant :>
 

[Kuokkanen]

Frigates should be something fighters want to try and avoid (and the fighter AI should know that too).

Instead four Thunderbolts shoot one pieces with four ASM each.

Never really looked at the whole Order of Battle thing

You should! Strikes against carrier and its escorts are a lot easier after carrier's fighters have been eliminated.

[Gordon]

There are many issues with the MP portion of the game, including ghost ships which are correctly shown as killed on the server but not to the the players involved. AAA's firing through mountains and visible through these same mountains is another problem. There are many more that I could list but what's the use which brings me to my biggest issue and that is the lack of support. Milo has all but vanished and has never answered one email regarding the problems with the game to the point that I have given up trying. My concern is that his new release is going to be more of the same and that none of the issues will be fixed, reminds me of my days testing for Derek Smart where I got the same results.

[Kuokkanen]

ORIGINAL: Gordon

Milo has all but vanished and has never answered one email regarding the problems with the game to the point that I have given up trying. My concern is that his new release is going to be more of the same and that none of the issues will be fixed

Don't paint devils on the walls, they might jump on you. I agree with you that milo most likely has his hands full with Gathering Storm where most of known problems will be fixed.

[Incendiary Lemon]

I believe Milo still has his dayjob as well.

[Master_QG]

No I agree, any info I have asked for from Damo or Milo has fallen on deaf ears.

Personally I think I don't get help because my MOD will be better than the game that was released. I don't expect to get everything that I ask for, at least a "Hey I got your email but you can go screw youself", or something.

My models are better quality. My textures are more professional. So is my imagination.

What pissed me off was I bought the game because it was advertised as a Modders dream. I have found out more on my own that with that SDK.

Also too, with the absence of Milo, Damo, and the other moderators has caused the community to all but completely dissappear.

I will still complete the mod, but not because of this, but in spite of this.

[Adonnay]

Wow, easy there... while I agree with the support issue (regarding the SDK and modding help) there's no need to bash his work here.

Without him there wouldn't be any SS at all. I too did expect more frequent updates and a more present Milo to answer our questions or guide us or even be a part of the community but this 'I'm better, my ships are cooler'-talk will get you no sympathies within the (sparse) community.

[Master_QG]

I run three businessess and if I gave service like you recieve here I'd be out real quick. He and Matrix games marketed it. They sold it to me. Now you don't support it.

I am working on my own engine anyway. So all the stuff I'm doing will just port over to that.

I tend to speak my mind and I will tell it like it is.

[Kuokkanen]

ORIGINAL: Master_QG

I tend to speak my mind and I will tell it like it is.

That might also get you out quick [:-]

"Asiakas on idiootti" (engl. "Customer is an idiot") said by one salesman and quoted on front of newspaper.

[Master_QG]

Out of what? Nothing exists here.

[Gordon]

Let me step back a bit, before the game was released Milo was extremely helpful and would always respond to questions or issues. A quick look back at his Starshatter boards will show you what I mean, matter of fact I learned much of what I know about the game and its modding capabilities by reading his boards and the answers he provided. He was always willing to share vital information and would go above and beyond to show how something could be achieved and how to do it. It was only after the game was released that it seemed like Milo became a different person. I understand he is probably very busy and may not have time to respond but that is still no excuse for ignoring his customers. If he felt he could not handle the amount of mail he was getting he could have easily asked some of the dedicated players to help out, this would have allowed him to stay focused on what he needed to do and allow his team to weed out and test any bug reports that came in. I even asked him in one of my emails if he had someone that I should send my reports to instead of sending it to him and did not get a reply.   My main concern is that a lot of the bugs that players have found in the 4.5 version and reported to Milo via email or these boards have been ignored and will show up in the Gathering Storm. If bugs are found in the new game what kind of support can we expect to get from Milo, will it be the Milo from the Starshatter boards or the one we have seen here on the Matrix boards? As a consumer the answer to this question is very important, it will mean the difference between buying the game or leaving it on the store shelf. Bugs and PC games go hand in hand, so I do not expect a bug free game the most important part is the support it gets once it hits the shelves.   I don’t want you to take my original post wrong, Milo has done a much better job than Derek Smart did in creating a good space sim and he accomplished it in much less time. Derek has been at it for over 10 years and is still no closer than his release of BCM which still had many bugs; most of these bugs can be still found in his latest releases. I have more faith in Milo getting it right so I guess that’s why I am being so harsh about the lack of support, especially after seeing the excellent support he provided when his boards were active.