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| Withering Fire - Part 1 |
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| Apologies to all for lack of updates recently, the team have been incredibly busy with tweaking gameplay, maps, texturing and coding.
Today's update centres around some upcoming models soon to be ingame and an insight int our gameplay.
So onto the models! Firstly we have renders of the Imperial Class Star Destroyer as superbly modelled by FSDev| Luuri.
Synonomous with the opening credits in A New Hope this will be the Imperial Flagship and once complete will contain hangars, forward bridge and other bonus features!
  
Next we have the Gallofree Cargo Transport. You are probably familiar with this Ship being seen escaping Hoth in the Empire Strike Back.
Crafted by FSDev| HaVoC and sweetly textured by our very own FSDev| Rybot.
Withering fire - Part 1
The premise is simple. Instead of being totally useless against almost everything except for the one or two things you're specialised in, it is our desire for the player to have a basic utility in almost all situations. Specialization is still important because that determines the style of gameplay and the strengths in a particular situation, however it is important not to make them totally useless in most situations because then they have to run and hide. And if they're running and hiding they're not playing.
To accomplish this we've invented a style of gamebalancing called "Withering Fire". Withering Fire basically involves the concept that everything can damage almost everything else. This mainly comes into effect with player-on-vehicle encounters (because if you shoot a player with anything it's generally expected you'll damage them). Within our mod all of our weapons have some base ability to damage vehicles. From the basic pistol to the shoulder mounted torpedo launcher, everyone can do their part to bring down a tank.
But exactly how much they do is what makes specialization so important. While a pistol can damage a tank, it obviously won't do very much. It'll take quite a few pistols and rifles to bring down the average tank. Our current average is 1 anti-tank weapon is the equivilent of 3 rifles in terms of the amount of time it takes to bring down a vehicle. However, what stops everyone from taking anti-tank weapons is their inneffectiveness against anti-infantry. Imagine the weapons as a spectrum of effectiveness, with anti-infantry on one extreme and anti-vehicle on the other extreme. The better you are at one of these, the less useful you are at the other. For Firststrike the sniper rifle represents the endpoint in anti-infantry, while the torpedo launcher represents the anti-vehicle extreme. All other weapons are a blend of various levels between the two.
Withering fire also brings about another important concept, and that is Subconcious Teamwork. While we'll go into detail on this later on, it's important to note how withering fire bolsters it. The concept of Subconcious Teamwork is the game is designed so that teamwork happens naturally and without concious effort by the players. Everyone does their part and the game is built to funnel that effort into single focuses, thus giving the allusion that people are fighting as a cohesive team. Withering fire is a core component of this. Instead of forcing people to rely on specialized individuals to take care of each problem, everyone can now contribute little parts. The more people firing on a target the faster it will go down. This even works in conjunction with other vehicle support. Aircraft, anti-vehicle turrets, other tanks. All of these things can contribute towards bringing down an enemy target. Combined force operations become second nature, because people will naturally try to focus on the same things in an effort to kill it.
Now, this brings about a dilemma in terms of vehicle surviveability. If everything can kill your tank then you're probably saying at this point that they sound like nothing more than high-profile deathtraps. This is where we throw a new spin on vehicle balance. Instead of building them to be realistically armed and armoured we have instead pushed the vehicle balance to be thicker and tougher, yet not as devistating damage-wise. They're still quite deadly, but they aren't a points-mill because they are more like defensive-structures rather than offensive vehicles. You bring the tank or transport up on a location and it becomes a mini defensive base that the rest of the players on the team can rely on to provide cover fire, suppress enemy movements, and give them protection.
Making them overly tough also has the benefit of turning them into mini objectives. ((*Editing note: aircraft replace toughness with maneuverability for the same effect)) No longer is the main purpose of the map just hopping from flag to flag. Here you now have dynamic objectives that appear at the enemy's whim that you must deal with. Your team's battle plans need to change to adjust to the movements of the enemy vehicles, because those movements are the backbone of your enemy's strategy.
Again, it has to be mentioned how subconcious teamwork starts coming in to play. You are perfectly right in saying "well what happens if the player just drives off with a vehicle and leaves his team?" What happens is that player will die, pure and simple. the premise of the tough vehicles is support, not offense. If a player finds himself alone with the vehicle facing down the enemy then he's going to be that high profile deathtrap. The entire enemy is going to light up his vehicle alone and obviously everyone can do a chunk of damage.
It doesn't take long for people to learn and realise that if they move alone then they'll die. However, if they move around with the rest of their team then their odds of survival improve greatly. And that again becomes another part of the concept of Subconcious Teamwork. Now we have teams moving around to the same places and fighting against the same targets. Sure, it isn't actual teamplay, and there aren't plans being discussed, but it seems like teamwork. It looks like teamwork. It instills the actually feels like you're fighting for the first time in a full-scale war, and not just flag hopping and little player-on-player skirmishes.
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Closed Alpha Test & Deth..
