The so called persistence EAW

alfredo_p87 · 01-31-2006, 08:27 PM

From the very beginning Petro and all the previews I read said that one of the main virtues of this game was the persistent characteristic of the engine. If well used, our units could survive entire battles and live to fight another day. I was really happy with their statement but i thought that persistence also include PERSISTENt DAMAGE and PERSISTENt NAMES as well as other minor persistences.

For example, if a fleet of 6 ISD are pulling out from hyperspace into a enemy controlled planet to start a massive assault in the area. 6 ISD is what I consider a horrible scene for almost any rebel pilot. Maybe the rebel player already knows that the battle is lost and a rather than run they decide to engage the imperial fleet hoping to slow down their offensive. This could be done, for example, if the rebel Y-wings are capable to destroy some of the ISD engines in order to prevent this ships to go deeper in the sector. Maybe the rest of the fleet can use their hyperspace but the strategy is done: 1 or maybe more ISD would have to stay in a planet until imperial engineers arrive to repair the ship. The empire would have two thing twice if going deeper in the rebel controlled planets and the alliance gain more time to gather ships, reforcing the planet, etc.

As far as I know (i have being here for a long time but just as a observer) there is no persistent damage and that is traduced in the decrease of the number of strategies that the player can use. I love SW and EAW (is like the rebellion 2 that i always want) and that is why I do this thread. I consider it like a positive feedback because even with EAW finished PETRO could use the critics to improve the game if an expansion would be made (I am 99% sure there would be one but thats another story)

again sorry for the bad spelling

xhh2a · 01-31-2006, 08:40 PM

Yea, That was part of my stratagy in the beginning but after the demo, well...

Iamme · 01-31-2006, 08:46 PM

It will persistent. The repair speeds were instantanious for the demo. At least that's what we've been told.

endurell · 02-01-2006, 12:25 AM

Um I think that's wrong actually. I'm pretty sure a dev said that repairs would be instantaneous after a battle. Anyone want to back me up/refute me on this one?

boc120 · 02-01-2006, 01:05 AM

I believe that the devs did say that repair would be instant after a battle.

**Jan Gaarni** · 02-01-2006, 02:56 AM

As far as I understand, the repairs will be instantanous in the release aswell, not just the demo.

shadowsfm · 02-01-2006, 09:04 AM

becouse it would be harder to program, having the game remember every single unit in the galaxy's health. but if they can program that some day, then they can program multable battles at once. funny how a wined about this so long time ago.

Goldenshadow · 02-01-2006, 12:12 PM

Its that your reason, because it would be harder to program? Give the developers some credit here. If they wanted persistent damage, they are fully capable of adding it. It is obvious that they didn't include it for another reason

Orao · 02-01-2006, 01:32 PM

Well in that case they should have given us an option to turn it on or off.

I don't care about fast paced strategy game wher clicks matters otherwise I would be playing Blizzard's Warcraft.

**Prime** · 02-01-2006, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Goldenshadow

Its that your reason, because it would be harder to program? Give the developers some credit here. If they wanted persistent damage, they are fully capable of adding it. It is obvious that they didn't include it for another reason

Sure they are capable, but is the investment worth the reward? Probably not, IMO.

wedge2211 · 02-01-2006, 06:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadowsfm

becouse it would be harder to program, having the game remember every single unit in the galaxy's health.

Are you kidding? All the game would have to do is store one number for each active ship in the game. If Petroglyph already programmed the game to store each ship, it's no more difficult than adding another attribute to the ship objects. That's not very many extra numbers to a computer.

Swifty34 · 02-01-2006, 06:20 PM

Frist post, so forgive me if i miss something. Assuming we don't get a damage renention type system then...
Considering the wonderful modding work already being done, surely some brilliant person could mod such a system into the game? Unless it's part of the hardcoding.

Slocket · 02-01-2006, 06:55 PM

I cannot find anything on that nature. I am afraid it is hardcoded. But that is my skill limit.

The data is dynamicaly stored in RAM from the game engine itself.

Look at the savegame file. There is no data on the state of damage to a ship.

Opps..you guys do not have the savegame function enabled?

Kij0t · 02-16-2006, 08:21 AM

All damage to land/space units is instantly recovered if a unit survives the battle, no matter how damaged.

ghost665_uk · 02-16-2006, 09:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kij0t

All damage to land/space units is instantly recovered if a unit survives the battle, no matter how damaged.

which means that the rebels only tactic hit and run is useless

Darth_Extas · 02-16-2006, 09:24 AM

not nessesarily because if you can kill most of the ships or a hero, you can regroup and strike with a larger force.

Nakatomi2010 · 02-16-2006, 09:40 AM

Hit and runs still work, you just have to go in and destroy ships to be able to do anything....

If damage was persistant we'd run into issues in multiplayer, for example, where people would send in say 5 squads of Y-Wings and tell them all to destroy hard points on ships and let them die or retreat... Then send in the SAME Y-Wings, or less, and do the same thing, then fade... You could have 10 attacks on the same damn planet in the span of just a few minutes of nothing more than "Hit and run attacks" which can become frustrating to some people... I mean really... If they come in to do damage, I'd just as soon they destroy a ship then weaken everything...

Orao · 02-16-2006, 10:44 AM

Dear Nakatomi don't try to defend undefendable. If you want to prevent rebels from doing such kind of tactics all you have to do is to group your fleet with the interdictor cruiser and few patrol ships. This will prevent Y-wings from jumping into the hyperspace and the patrol ships will kill them very easily.

Darth_Extas · 02-16-2006, 10:52 AM

Or have a gravity well genorator add-on to your star base/space station to prevent the y-wings form hyperspacing, another thing to do is similar to what sithman said, but you could, if your fleet is big enough, counter-attack at the planet the Y-Wings came from. Each auto-resolve, both forces get healed after a retreat or something like that, so you would have to destroy the capitol ship your attacking.

Nakatomi2010 · 02-16-2006, 11:54 AM

Whoopie if you have an Interdictor, if the enemy is an ass in multiplayer they could build a bunch of Y-Wings and send in a few squads at a time, even if they're Kamikaze squads if he sent them endlessly it would get annoying, even if all they did was destroy one hard point on one ship, it has the potential to get old really fast...

It's not that I wouldn't mind it, it's that it leaves the door open to asshat tactics....

Spaxspore · 02-16-2006, 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadowsfm

becouse it would be harder to program, having the game remember every single unit in the galaxy's health. but if they can program that some day, then they can program multable battles at once. funny how a wined about this so long time ago.

They did it easily enough in rebellion, (you could build unlimited ships to.. just took awhile depending on how many yards u had on a planet) and it worked well, if a SD was heavily damaged IE-Shields and hyperdrive knocked out.. it took at lest a week to repair, and would only repair if it was in orbit over a friendly planet that had a yard in orbit. Which to me was brilliant, espeically if u r doin hit and runs attacks with the rebellion

ghost665_uk · 02-16-2006, 12:50 PM

oh well sure it will be a great game anyway, though for future games exapansions i hope they have persistent damage. Adds more strategic depth to a game.

wedge2211 · 02-16-2006, 12:58 PM

Sigh...here we go again. Now that the game's out, though, you can all try it and see if not having persistent damage really does, in fact, ruin your whole gaming experience.

Orao · 02-16-2006, 02:02 PM

Sure it's what I was doing last 3 hours since I've picked it up from my local store in France.

thon77 · 02-18-2006, 03:40 AM

fleets can traverse an entire galaxy within minutes. it takes 5 minutes to make a death star, start to finish. how long do you want your ships sitting around helpless in drydock for?

you make the trade off of hit and runs in the battles. you could go for the engines right away to cripple the ship, and lead the fleet off elsewhere. or you could de-claw enemy cap ships and immediately focus firepower on other ships w/o finishing the engines/shields/lasers. the downside being if you don't win the battle your opponent will have that ship fresh. however if you finish every single ship you lose precious seconds while the enemy's intact ships keep on broadsiding you.

Lord Pickle · 02-18-2006, 05:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wedge2211

Sigh...here we go again. Now that the game's out, though, you can all try it and see if not having persistent damage really does, in fact, ruin your whole gaming experience.

No one said the lack of persistent damage ruined the game experience. As the post starter said persistent battles means persistent damage to. I agree it limits what the Rebellion can do since now you have to destory a ship.

mikemil828 · 02-19-2006, 06:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wedge2211

Are you kidding? All the game would have to do is store one number for each active ship in the game. If Petroglyph already programmed the game to store each ship, it's no more difficult than adding another attribute to the ship objects. That's not very many extra numbers to a computer.

Wrong, not only it have to store the hull integrety of each ship in the universe, it also will have to store whether or not a hardpoint is destroyed, how much integrety if left on every single hardpoint on a particular ship, how many fighers are left in a squadron, the hull integrety of each of the surviving fighters, how many squadrons are left on a particular star destroyer, etc. etc.

and that's just space

Anyway its probable that your computer can still handle do all this, but the question is, can you? Making you have to repair each and everyone of your fleets after a battle adds a extreme amount of tediousness and micromanagement to the game, especially end game where you will have to deal with hundreds of ships, and eventually the game will wind down to sending suicide squadrons to blow as many capital ship engines as possible so the enemy would be incapable of moving the fleet anywhere until they repair them, thus making capital ships pointless because their engines will be blown most of the game. Also it puts the empire at a major disadvantage because if you send a suicide squadron of Y-Wings, to destroy as many Star Destroyer Hangers as possible, then send your fleet in, many of the Star Destroyers will be nearly helpless because of the lack of TIE bombers to help them. The forums will be flooded with complaints saying that the Empire is ganked because of this, with further proclaimations that the game is a inferior product and 'Plz Fixxx' will be the most said statement around here.

If you want to play Rebellion, play Rebellion and leave Empire at War to those that dislike micromanagement

Slocket · 02-20-2006, 12:19 AM

You could make a simple one. Any ship, fighter group or unit less than say 25% health is simply removed from the game at the end of the battle. The rest get the instant repair.

I think I can write a LUA script to do this upon right before game ends screen.

smoger · 02-20-2006, 11:28 AM

Quote:

Wrong, not only it have to store the hull integrety of each ship in the universe, it also will have to store whether or not a hardpoint is destroyed, how much integrety if left on every single hardpoint on a particular ship, how many fighers are left in a squadron, the hull integrety of each of the surviving fighters, how many squadrons are left on a particular star destroyer, etc. etc.

its just another number. a destroyed hardpoint gets a value of 0, anything higher represents the health. this is simple stuff.

AFAIK the # of TIE's coming from hangars is unlimited until the hangar is destroyed, isnt it? so no need to save that info.

the game already keeps all this data in memory! it just needs to retain it between battles, making small increments based on time passed.

for fighters its not as big a deal, they can simply insta-heal(consider the fact theyd be easier/quicker to fix)

Quote:

Anyway its probable that your computer can still handle do all this, but the question is, can you? Making you have to repair each and everyone of your fleets after a battle adds a extreme amount of tediousness and micromanagement to the game, especially end game where you will have to deal with hundreds of ships, and eventually the game will wind down to sending suicide squadrons to blow as many capital ship engines as possible so the enemy would be incapable of moving the fleet anywhere until they repair them, thus making capital ships pointless because their engines will be blown most of the game. Also it puts the empire at a major disadvantage because if you send a suicide squadron of Y-Wings, to destroy as many Star Destroyer Hangers as possible, then send your fleet in, many of the Star Destroyers will be nearly helpless because of the lack of TIE bombers to help them. The forums will be flooded with complaints saying that the Empire is ganked because of this, with further proclaimations that the game is a inferior product and 'Plz Fixxx' will be the most said statement around here.

it doesnt even have to be that you have to do ANYTHING to fix the ships, they can auto repair, just take some time to do it.

saberhagen · 02-25-2006, 07:03 AM

I suspect that all that is kept in memory between battles is the number of ships of each type in a fleet, and that when the battle starts, the engine just creates a new object of that type. In that case it would need a major change to the engine to keep those instances in existence between battles and reuse them for another battle. I'm sure it would have been possible, but the devs probably decided they couldn't justify the extra work as their time and budget were limited.