A little update of some of the many models currently being worked on for FirstStrike. FSDev| Chai had been making some excellent progress with our new characters and for your viewing pleasure we can proudly show you two of these. Firstly we have the X-Wing Pilot known too many as the elite Rebel StarFighter Pilot and next to him we have the Rebel Fleet Trooper, one of the first characters seen in the Star Wars Classic Trilogy, the mainstay of the Rebel Infantry. Please bare in mind these are HIGH POLY versions of the Characters.
Next up we have one of the Mos Espa Assault LandSpeeders equipped with swivelling laser cannon. Expertly textured by FSDev| Yoshiboy and crafted by FSDev| Lafs1984. And lastly we have the newly textured Correllian Corvette or "Blockade Runner" detailed lovingly by our very own FSDev| Rybot and created by FSDev| HaVoC.
Please note some of the Lighting effects yet to be applied to the Correllian Corvette.
Well its the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars and what better way than to release our Space "Escape from Hoth" Teaser Trailer! We hope you enjoy this sneak peek and will endeavour to bring you some more developments and videos in the coming weeks. The team is working tirelessly to bring you what we believe is a quality balanced and lore accurate Star Wars game in both Land and Space scenarios! MTFBWY FS Team.
Withering Fire Part 2:
The Worst of both worlds
As far as modding is concerned, BF2142's customization system is nearly broken. It allows only three weapon choices per class. That's far short of the full kit customization of seven items and three weapons to choose from per kit in vanilla 2142. What's more, when we started we were limited to only four kits as well, rather than BF2's system of six kits. It was literally the worst of both worlds.
Fortunately though, we were not to be deterred. To combat this problem we've instead put together a complete redesign of the kit layout structure. To start with, we combined all the major combat class functions into the first two kits. The keystone of each is the weapon selection. Each of the first two kits has three very different weapons to choose from. We specifically engineered the choices so that each weapon drastically changes the style of play for that kit. For example, the anti-infantry class has a choice of short, medium, and long range weapons. The heavy weapons class is the same in offering three different weapons for three different purposes; a heavy repeating rifle, a long range grenade launcher, and an anti-vehicle missile launcher. For gear we were sure to provide the equipment that best benefited the task of the anti-infantry or anti-vehicle trooper in their respective classes, so no matter which weapon you choose you will still have appropriate equipment for your role.
We’re All Special
By making each weapon so uniquely suited for different roles we gained three advantages. First of all, it’s guaranteed that all of the weapons within each kit will find a specific usage. If the weapons were similar then it’s likely that players would just choose the best of the three and ignore the others, which would diminish the amount of diversity and reduce the replay value.
Secondly, this system allows the standard kit layouts to automatically balance themselves towards the map being played, without creating specialty kit setups on a per-map basis. Again, as mentioned in the first part of this gameplay analysis, we are strong proponents for subconscious setups in our gameplay, and this is another great example. Each of our weapons has its own niche and style of play, with certain being weapons more useful than others in different situations. We have already seen our alpha testers naturally evolve their weapon and kit selections based on the environment of the map they’re playing. For our close-combat, city environments, our heavy machineguns, carbines and shotguns are king. In mixed environments, there's been an even spread of weapons based on the areas the player intends to fight over. And in our long-range, open maps, and trench warfare maps, the assault and sniper rifles rule the day, along with grenade launchers used to break fortified enemy positions.
Thirdly, and probably most importantly, having the gameplay change dramatically because of a simple choice within the customization system has given our mod the illusion of having more kits than it really does. By choosing a different weapon you are basically choosing a new playstyle each time, which has the effect of making it seem like an entirely different class. This strategy has replaced the previously limited system with a system that seems like it has even more variety than BF2 or 2142, and all within two kits and three options per kit.
Once we were able to combine the various combat kits without losing anything from our gameplay, we were left with two open slots. We chose to fill the open slots with specialist support kits to further increase the amount of teamplay and variety. After all, we're trying to create a group-on-group combat system rather than a series of individual skirmishes, and a great way to do that is to provide lots of avenues for team members to support one another. What's more, this also goes well with the concept of individual weakness, as we are now able to separate gear that would otherwise overpower the combat classes if they had it. The medic has received his own class as a specialist of biological warfare (both able to heal his team and damage the others), and we have introduced a new class called “logistics”, a departure from vanilla 2142. ((Though note that it is a working title. He may appear as "engineer" by release wink ))
Logically…
The logistics class provides technical support in the heat of battle. He provides ammunition, vehicle repairs, EMP, and explosives…lots of explosives. He’s not a frontline fighter like the other classes. While he has a burst-fire rifle, he can't go toe-to-toe with regular combat classes. He’s able to take out important targets, and with enough cunning, vehicles and players as well. He's also the lynchpin in the setup of other important equipment; his ammo box is required to replenish the deployable E-Web or Mk-2 blaster cannons and the weapons of the anti-vehicle class.
Help From Above
Fortunately we've received some help and some breaks since the original design of our class system. A few months ago an outside developer named FFOLKES came to give us a hand. His work in HUD design gave us the ability to introduce a 5th class into our system. The process also taught us a lot about modding the HUD system itself, and has opened up doors for many potential possibilities in the future. For this effort I have to send out a special thanks to him and provide some recognition.
How he helped was in giving us the option of a 5th kit. We already achieved a better lineup with more dynamic gameplay than the original systems, so we had to ask ourselves what we could do with the opportunity for an additional class. Slowly an idea evolved about creating a teamwork support class. A class that’s sole purpose would be to support his squad and push his troops forward. Thus the Squad Leader, or "Officer" class, was born. Selectable only by those that are squad leaders, the Officer class has gear suited towards leading a team. He has his own UAV ability, healing, enemy netbatting, squad spawning, and also the ability to deploy a fixed weapon emplacement (our E-Web and Mk-2 blaster cannons for the imperials and rebels respectively). This class is still evolving, so we hope to see even greater teambuilding abilities by the time the mod is released.
Less Rambo, More Team
So that's where we stand with our design. We're not just taking all this on a leap of faith either, we've been testing these kits, weapons, and layouts now for several months and the results have been amazing. The game is well balanced, dynamically self-adjusting, and really fun to play. All the classes have their own strong points and functions, and all the weapons within the classes have their own niche places also. Combining our unique class system with withering fire, everyone has some degree of functionality in almost every situation, while making sure that no single class had the ability to take on everything at once. The teams are no longer an army of Rambos fighting against another army of Rambos, they are now interdependent. Can't ask for much more than that, can ya?
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.
Closed Alpha Test & Deth..
