SGXander

So you may or may not have seen my post complaining that the campaign carrier seems to do no less than rape islands and an alarming rate. and that the only viable way to stop him without rushing to find the illusive torpedo is to ram-raid him and hope for the best. well its the 6th time if drilled him like this and now he is down to re spawning almost instantly. no sooner do i get the 10 second cut scene stating he has been blown up is he attacking an island 1-2 jumps away. im down to being just about able to repair before i have to engage again so I'm shelving the campaign as i cant play it at a pace i am comfortable with. I really should not have to loose 3-5 islands for every enemy one i capture while i find a torpedo to do battle with in my opinion it screws up the game for me so I'll wait for a fix that at least makes him fight fair... Bringing me on to my second portion: a feature request for anyone who listens. The Carrier, the most important part of the game, has very little in the way of granular control... By that i mean you can equip mantas and walrus' with many different permutations of items yet the carrier is very on-the-side by comparison. Although you can store spare carrier guns and hammerheads for example you cannot store flak and quad guns at the same time as it simply replaces with the latest weapon. I have no problem with that in itself but if you are thinking in an engagement about acceptable losses of equipment then it sucks majorly to have to open the map and go to supplies then hover over each item to discover how many you have on the carrier. In short it would be great to have an equipment window for the Carrier and a supply window for the carrier as well. I would like to add that i have not read the manual and if there is a magic "Carrier Equipment" or "Carrier Storage" button i have missed then i will eat my words with a side of humble pie. But so far i have found no such button...

amen. i would really like it if they just made it fair. enemy carrier is same speed so you can at least keep up and if you rock up at an island and he is still attacking then you should see his mantas/walrus' on the island (catch him with his pants down so to speak). gets really boring going to an island and scaring him off then doing it again and again. like i said above i have been roung the whole group of islands twice trying to catch the little sod all because he is too scared to fight and the only method of attack he knows is the magic take an island while no one is looking... ---------- Post added at 23:14 ---------- Previous post was at 23:12 ---------- yeah not sure if glitch or not. i find in skirmishes the ram-raid works on 100% of enemy carriers even though it batters yours quite bad if you can bring your main gun online quick afterward and take out his engines you end up picking him off with the bow-cannon and he cant do a thing cos he's showing his ass and at best thats flak deck guns so easy to nail. also this strategy has no walrus/manta losses...

on the contrary i skipped ahead let it capture one more then took it head on with a plasma-cannon ram-raid. worked a treat... no torps required... still 2 hours of my life i would dearly love back...

So i took fulcrum today (slow on the campeign front but i like to see everything) now that its done and i have mor islands to explore i decided to take duessa then terminus... all good so far then i heard "ISLAND UNDER ATTACK SIR, THE ENEMY ARE TRYING TO TAKE IT FROM US!" so i decided to check it out but before i can get there its gone. and the next and the next after that. im to the point now where im following this carrier? around tring to stop it taking islands but as soon as i show up at the island that is "under attack" its gone and moments later its another island. no matter how fast i shift (even anticipating the next target) i still cant catch this a**hole. anyone else got this problem? worse than skirmish since i cant actually win at the moment im now stuck unable to take any island for fear of loosing 2 or even 3 in the process... update: now caught it after 2 laps of the archapelago but each time i run into it it breezes off with uber engines...

can so relate to COH bridges. i only play maps where i can box myself in by blowing all the bridges so i gots time to build defense :D

Gotta be defence: im an old-school turtle player of rts. Nothing more amusing than mind over matter battles with good shields and armor against someone with a big army full of weak hard-hitters... ---------- Post added at 16:42 ---------- Previous post was at 16:41 ---------- motion seconded...

a more fluid waypoint system would be a start. currently you set a destination and it stages it then when you execute it creates waypoints along the most direct given path to your chosen target. when each of these waypoints is reached it creates sub-waypoints along the next few meters and that gives them all a juddering stop start effect which slows the whole thing down. also when setting a waypoint then pressing e when you know you are driving it along the correct path it has to reverse because its first sub-waypoint is already behind it. in short: they need to be able to work out if they are nearer waypoint 2 than 1 and bypass 1 if that is the case they need to be able to carry movement/speed through waypoints rather than the current; go to waypoint 1, now you are at waypoint 1 go to waypoint 2 etc also currently they only draw straight lines between waypoints and sub-waypoints this causes any cornering to be very poor and incredibly slow as a simple right hander causes the computer to create 6-8 sub-waypoints just to do it. all we do is hold down w and d :) im with tortuosit though i dont know the particulars of how the AI driving works so we may be asking too much of it... Edit: Decent explenation on creating smooth curves without creating overhead in the first half of this post; http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3217

for that I generally use: NINJA run: Works best at night take advantage of undefended CC / firewall locations by equiping a manta with: slot 1: gatling slot 2: rockets slot 3: hook slot 4: Armor MKII fit a walrus up with no armor and a hacking module then undock and pick it up using the manta. beat up any air and use rockets to soften up ground targets before dropping off the walrus for a ninja hack against the firewall unit or CC or both all the enemies converging will get there in time to bow at your feet as their new master. use afterburners on anything up to moderate defense and they wont even react. ---------- Post added at 14:58 ---------- Previous post was at 14:55 ---------- with you on that but larger islands generally cant be attacked ninja-style fast and so require a slow methodical approach. the only fast bit is the afterburners! hence the title: slowly and painfully take out the beast one limb at a time...

Hey All, Since this is general discussion around the game i thought I'd post a bit more of a discussion as my first and many other posts seem to be about the horrific AI or other bugs (ok got it in now i won't mention it again). This may be a bit of a flop thread but who knows it may also end up as a sticky ;) Here's how; post a normal reply with a quote to comment on someone's strategy/tactic and/or offer advice or improvements post a comment all in bold outlining your strategy/tactic and when it can/should be used hopefully we get a nice list of ways to kick the AI to bits so that you don't get bored spending units and ordinance when there is an easier way. I'll start one in a reply: ---------- Post added at 14:32 ---------- Previous post was at 14:26 ---------- Death by a thousand cuts: This is a simple but effective way of beating the shield-covered CC islands simply; Set up your 4 walrus' however you see fit with some cannon fodder and at least one hack module Set up a manta with the following loadout: Slot 1: Gatling Slot 2: Rockets Slot 3: Shield Slot 4: Armor MKII How to: Use the manta manually to dive-bomb the shield relays and once all are destroyed do the same to take out any AA around the CC so you can keep an eye on your walrus as they approach it. Afterburners make getaways really easy so just full throttle towards your target 3 rockets will do the trick but 4 for good measure and then pull up and after-burn away. The shields teamed up with MKII armor makes the manta invincible for long enough to do this until you run out of rockets then just return to carrier reload and do it again until the CC is unprotected. Pros: keeps you in the action and on your feet gives a great sense of satisfaction when successful Cons: only uses 1 manta and relies on the (piss-poor) AI of the Walrus' to be a success Enjoy!

agreed. makes the manta an amazingly effective offense craft leaving the walrus as either cannon fodder or filling the MBT role when you stick plasma/heat and mkii armor on it...

oh hell yeah. my thought on that (cos i did yesterday while looking for the co-op button) is that the islands would need to be really close together else we would have to have joint custody of the time-warp feature... two-pronged attacks against larger islands like fulcrum would prove to tip the balance and as i posted above I'm sure the engine can handle it.

heh wish there was co-op too :( is there a tactics and strategy thread? if not i may make one for bouncing ideas around

Yeah My favourite setups so far that work great for smash and grab/get in get the cc get out/wham bam thank you ma'am are: Walrus1: plasma, ammo box,armour mkii walrus2: flak, ammo box, armour mkii walrus3: repairgun, armour mki walrus4: gatling, hack module, armour mki AND WATCH THEM LIKE HAWKs incase they decide to do something daft like sit there doing 360s headbutting each other while nasties laser the hell out of them bbq style... (has happened to me) all manta's: gatling, rockets, shield, armour mkii swap shield for ammo or hook depending on requirements... tomahawks for taking out enemy carrier engines/main gun/quads works real well and leaves him sitting pretty for bow-shots from your carrier-plasma fyi mantas set up like this are filthy in air to air as they are almost invincible if you keep strafing. it takes heavy prolonged fire (2-3 gatlings on constant hits) to take it out so if ou got 4 and use them manually 1 at a time it really makes for a sky-king...

it's got to be said: with the opening FPS scenes and the tremendous wait times between fuel runs i was actually looking for a button to get out of the helm-chair... it definately doesnt break the game, not by miles and the FPS bit is not (in my opinion) what this game is about but i get some satisfaction sailing the carrier into a snow island dock during a blizzard and just sitting in the map view looking at how bad the weather is outside via the PIP picture :) just want to look out the window instead... ---------- Post added at 12:24 ---------- Previous post was at 12:22 ---------- have to disagree with you there mate (again if you know better I'm sorry for being rude) but in my time playing even skirmish's there seems to be nothing for use in walrus slot 2. mantas definately benefit from rockets and missiles but the missiles on the walrus are a turret/back option replacing slot 1...

literally taking the words from my head. a chillout walk onto the deck or the cargo bay to look at the stored walrus'/mantas or guns/equipment? can't be too hard since most of it was in that first mission anyway... yeah mass effect star trek online etc but none with the orgasmicly (it's a word i just invented it...) good HDR of this game agreed though those two fixes would straight away make this the only game i play for a long time (and i have been playing eve for 8 years...)