Star Wolves 3: Ashes of Victory in Development

[Sentencer]

Some included mod tools would be awesome, like what Elemental: War of Magic is doing.

I would also love to have the option to make your own player faction, and control your own systems. Or maybe be able to take over an existing faction and eventually create your Galactic Empire!

Hmm... to be fair, that's sort of straying into 4X territory and I never really enjoyed micromanaging certain aspects; I'm here just to blow things up But, yeah, if you could purchase stations and then man them with your own crew that could effectively serve as a faction / home base.

Tools would be nice. And if they didn't obfuscate stuff *coughfiletypedynamiccough* and removed a few limits like adding perks and changing the XML definitions it'll help modders quite a lot.

I think I only mentioned this for the mothership, but if all ships could be multi-crewed (especially large ones, which makes more sense) that would be helpful. It could even open up new avenues for perks like fire control, tractor beam handling, etc. Isn't really as hard as it sounds; firmware sort of behaves like that already.

Keep the ideas coming

[Nanaki]

I would have to agree with Tru, Star Wolves is first and foremost a combat game, and adding X4 elements would just divert resources from the rest of the game which needs all the development resources it can get.

[Goblin Wizard]

Originally Posted by Sentencer

I would also love to have the option to make your own player faction, and control your own systems. Or maybe be able to take over an existing faction and eventually create your Galactic Empire!

It's possible even now. Creating own base it's not problem. The problem is to keep it alive after you leave the sector. Taking control of enemy structures is possible too. All of these needs a lot of script work.

Edit:
About new screens. I can't see even one new ship. It worries me slightly. Will be any new ships in the expansion?

[skrzacik]

Originally Posted by Goblin Wizard

About new screens. I can't see even one new ship. It worries me slightly. Will be any new ships in the expansion?

where i can find these screens??

i already found them

[Rastix]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWkbhHjhPJY

Thank you for the video update, Rastix!

...still, I can't help feel that much attention is always shown to combat. I mean, that's nice and all, but Star Wolves has strengths in many other areas too. Especially pilot development, there's no other space sim which even comes close to having anything like a skill tree as far as I can remember. Huge potential for more improvement.

-
Speaking of improvements, here's another thought. You know the interface gets a little cramped, but the trade station manages that by using different "tab" pages for different types of equipment - guns, missiles, systems, all of them are in different tabs even though we are still viewing the same trade station interface, right? Well, I feel that the journal, news items, and quest display could also benefit from a similar interface.

For one thing, it's really annoying to have to scroll through all the news items, and the colour highlighting for read/unread could be distinguished a bit more (they look almost alike, need to contrast more). Quest log also simply disappears, you can't look back at your past quests and think "ahh, this is what I have achieved so far, and it feels good".

Next, it's odd that you can hire mercs but you're not "allowed" to see what equipment they have. Shouldn't this be shown? After all if I am paying someone to be my bodyguard, I would like to know how good he is @ what kind of equipment he is carrying - otherwise how can I know whether he is capable or not?

Also, hired mercenaries share same faction as "mercenary faction". This is bad because - as someone complained - if mercs hate you, when you hire some mercs they are automatically hostile. What! They take your money and then fight you, lol. This is robbery. Either make their faction separate (I prefer this way) or don't let players hire mercenaries if they are hostile.

Edit:
I almost forgot, escort formations. I've seen the vector definitions in one of the script files I think. Can we please have a hotkey to select different kinds of formations? Sometimes I don't want my fighters simply around the mothership. Also, there was one time where the formation seemed to screw up and everybody was flying in a straight column (!). If we had a hotkey to change formations it would be nice, you can put fighters in front, or behind, change the flying pattern (V shape, diamond, rectangle, etc). This is totally doable, the vector definitions are already in the script... just need ability to assign them ingame.

[Nanaki]

To be honest, I never liked the mercenary system at all. Having to pay 150-200K for a squad of mercs that cannot hold their own against a decent sized team of enemies, PER system (you have to pay them full price for each system you visit) is a complete ripoff. Especially when those mercenaries will be leeching experiance from your team as well.

The only time I hire mercs is right before the final mission, because I usually have a ton of money at that point and you typically will have top of the line gear by then, which pretty much leaves Mercs as the only option you have to improve your fighting capability.

Yeah I know but some people apparently enjoy them. So at least they should be able to see what exactly they're paying for rather than just some random flavour text and "hmm, team A is more expensive than team B, they both have 5 pilots so Team A is probably better".

That sucks.

I mean, if *I* was to be a merc, I'd be carrying a scorecard of how many kills I've made, what kind of missions I specialise in, what my skills/perks are. I'd want to show potential employers as much info as possible so they'd hire me. Right now it's just like randomly choosing which brand of canned sardines to try.

[Goblin Wizard]

Originally Posted by Trucidation

I almost forgot, escort formations. I've seen the vector definitions in one of the script files I think. Can we please have a hotkey to select different kinds of formations? Sometimes I don't want my fighters simply around the mothership. Also, there was one time where the formation seemed to screw up and everybody was flying in a straight column (!). If we had a hotkey to change formations it would be nice, you can put fighters in front, or behind, change the flying pattern (V shape, diamond, rectangle, etc). This is totally doable, the vector definitions are already in the script... just need ability to assign them ingame.

There are two types of formations:
1. Formation of a flight. You can have up to 6 ships in a flight. When you creating a flight you can choose a formation for this flight. Possible formations are defined in shipFormation.script
2. Formation of an escort. There is only one possible pattern defined in escortDispatcher.script. This pattern gives positions (around escorted ship) for all flights.

I have bad feelings about this expansion. Whole movie, hundreds of ships and not even one new model! Only old ones with improved graphics. Rastix please let me know if there will be any new ships in the addon.