So we had a very interesting discovery when looking into target locking behaviour. Although we've known about this little nuance for a while, its only now after I requested control of the mechanic, did we come to truly understand how it works - because it seems this has caused either a bug starting all the way back to the original TIE Fighter and all subsequent games since - or it was overlooked or even intentional. As you know, you target something with your warheads, it takes about 5 second to get a solid red lock and audio tone. For the Missile Boat, this is three seconds. So naturally you'd assume once you have that solid red lock, you're golden. Nope. There are actually two variables that control this function. The first controls how fast the UI will appear to lock onto a target (yellow to solid red). The second controls the ACTUAL locking speed. It turns out that this 2nd variable has been at 6 seconds the whole time. So every single craft is essentially lying to you (especially the Missile Boat) when it says it has a solid red tone. For the Missile Boat you have to wait an additional 3 seconds to get that full strength lock, despite being visually told otherwise. For all other craft, you need to hold just that one extra second before a full lock is achieved. So there you go, we found a 30+ year old bug and fixed it. At least we assume its a bug or at least, an unintended consequence that got forgotten about because as far as you're being told visually, you are locking at the speed being displayed. I certainly could not see a gameplay reason for doing it this way intentionally. Anyway, the TL:DR is, we fixed this bug and I now have fine control of it, though I will only really be using this on the Missile Boat as demonstrated here 🙁
I had another (or additional) issue with the missle boat back then. The secondary launchers (the top pair) seemed way more unreliable to hit fast moving target than missles fired from the primary (lower pair). I don't think this was just this no full-strengh lock yet issue, they seemed to follow a strange path to the target, which made them outmaneuvered more easily by enemy fighters. I got so annoyed at this that I often used the secondary launcher without trying to lock-in at all in dogfights.
@@guilhermebalz6851 Unfortunately it wouldn't work for that. However it would work if applied to TIE98 as it uses the XvT engine, which XWA is quite similar to in its base code.
Oh... this is a game changer. Those Brand X pirates and their TIE Defender factory are going to be mutilated by the "Almost Macross Missile Massacre". Is the M. Boat's laser cannon still going to be a dinky pea shooter?
The Laser will not do much more damage than a TIE Fighter laser but fires even faster, will be relatively short range. However it has a very large energy reserve so it can fire 128 shots without any recharge being set. This is tied with the SLAM system since it uses the same energy as lasers.
Was expecting SPAMRAAMing, if one knows enough of their Ace Combat, Project Wingman, and a little bit of the TIE Fighter short film's Ada's TIE Bomber antics.
Just want to say the little tweaks you’ve made to the various fighters in speed, durability, ranges are really nice. Lorewise, the Imperial fighters were superior to the Rebels in most respects except durability and it’s nice to finally see that reflected.
0:46 But sir! The odds of successfully landing an advanced missile in a head on attack against an X-Wing is... NEVER TELL ME THE ODD... oh wait, you're right. Ah well, plenty more missiles where that came from!
This is a really cool enhancement, but I have to admit watching this felt like the MB is going to be a little OP. I mean, the AI isn’t smart enough to shoot down your missiles when it’s coming right for their face so this just turns into Star Wars Instagib and takes away from immersion and realism. I think making the firing range for missiles shorter would at least add more of a fighting chance and realism especially if facing a group of fighters where at least a couple of them could get shots at you even if you can take out 2-3 before the merge. Or give the AI chaff or flares to add to the challenge and excitement. Amazing work - as always.
I supposed technically yes I can use clicks, but I'm not convinced people will immediately understand this terminology unless you're already familiar with flight combat jargon. The game frontend uses the metric system visually to determine distances, so I used meter/kilometer as descriptors for distance so its clear. Interestingly in the backend, the game uses the imperial (no pun intended) measurement system so there are calculations you have to do to convert this to Metric when I factor in any changes to things like range or speed.
@@ange1uk For me the metric system is absolutely fine. I was just wondering if its harmonized troughout the game. Using different measurement types in back- and frontend sounds terribly overcomplicated.
Honestly I'm curious if there ever will be a "final" product. Passion-projects like this tends to keep on going seemingly forever. There's always something to add, change or remove.
@@Calindar Well I certainly want there to be one. The Rebalance is something I've always wanted to do for years but never had the ability to do so until the very start of this year. This prompted me to go all in on rebuilding the game balance from the ground up. That was completed months ago and well documented. Now with the Missile Boat training, all the tutorial missions have been completey remade and are implemented. The current Reimagined campaign missions are now about 50% balanced I'd say, still some work and re-writes to be done, but with the tutorials out of the way, I can concentrate on getting that balanced and then I can complete the remaining Reimagined missions (again this section is about 40-50% completed or functional). The new intro from Otaking is approaching completion as well. My motivation is high and progress is steady, as long as I have the spare time to do so (which can be challenging as a family man with a full time job). So yeah, I get it. But technically the original TFTC is 'completed' if all you want to do is play the original Classic campaign, then you can, its all there. All my work is focused on completing the Reimagined campaign :)
Totally picturing AI spamming dual missiles every three seconds and no fighting hope other than to skip out and stay at range until they go winchester.
The AI (probably thankfully) can't do that. It only ever fires one missile at a time at you (and usually no more than is needed to kill you). AI behaviour does not launch two missiles at a time unless heavily damaged.
@@ange1ukit’s always fun identifying sound samples in mods. Some old Freespace mods used laser sounds from Descent, so I like how you’re continuing a storied tradition.
So we had a very interesting discovery when looking into target locking behaviour. Although we've known about this little nuance for a while, its only now after I requested control of the mechanic, did we come to truly understand how it works - because it seems this has caused either a bug starting all the way back to the original TIE Fighter and all subsequent games since - or it was overlooked or even intentional.
As you know, you target something with your warheads, it takes about 5 second to get a solid red lock and audio tone. For the Missile Boat, this is three seconds. So naturally you'd assume once you have that solid red lock, you're golden.
Nope.
There are actually two variables that control this function. The first controls how fast the UI will appear to lock onto a target (yellow to solid red). The second controls the ACTUAL locking speed. It turns out that this 2nd variable has been at 6 seconds the whole time. So every single craft is essentially lying to you (especially the Missile Boat) when it says it has a solid red tone. For the Missile Boat you have to wait an additional 3 seconds to get that full strength lock, despite being visually told otherwise. For all other craft, you need to hold just that one extra second before a full lock is achieved.
So there you go, we found a 30+ year old bug and fixed it. At least we assume its a bug or at least, an unintended consequence that got forgotten about because as far as you're being told visually, you are locking at the speed being displayed. I certainly could not see a gameplay reason for doing it this way intentionally.
Anyway, the TL:DR is, we fixed this bug and I now have fine control of it, though I will only really be using this on the Missile Boat as demonstrated here 🙁
@ange1uk oh wow. I remember pissing missles away and wondering why they wouldn't hit... even with a tractor lock.
30 year old bug indeed. Lpl
Wow! Well done!
Wow nice! Will you release a patch for the 94 Tie? 😅
I had another (or additional) issue with the missle boat back then. The secondary launchers (the top pair) seemed way more unreliable to hit fast moving target than missles fired from the primary (lower pair). I don't think this was just this no full-strengh lock yet issue, they seemed to follow a strange path to the target, which made them outmaneuvered more easily by enemy fighters. I got so annoyed at this that I often used the secondary launcher without trying to lock-in at all in dogfights.
@@guilhermebalz6851 Unfortunately it wouldn't work for that. However it would work if applied to TIE98 as it uses the XvT engine, which XWA is quite similar to in its base code.
Love that bird in tie 95. My favorite
OMG, that thing looks like a beast! Which is about right for an advanced Imperial craft.
"Fox Two, Fox Two!!"
Been enjoying the TFTC, the enhancement tweaks have been excellent.
Oh... this is a game changer. Those Brand X pirates and their TIE Defender factory are going to be mutilated by the "Almost Macross Missile Massacre". Is the M. Boat's laser cannon still going to be a dinky pea shooter?
The Laser will not do much more damage than a TIE Fighter laser but fires even faster, will be relatively short range. However it has a very large energy reserve so it can fire 128 shots without any recharge being set. This is tied with the SLAM system since it uses the same energy as lasers.
@@ange1uk I will look forward to using my overly aggressive pea shooter then lol
A bazillion missiles and a SLAM system. Everything is gonna go BOOM 💥
Was expecting SPAMRAAMing, if one knows enough of their Ace Combat, Project Wingman, and a little bit of the TIE Fighter short film's Ada's TIE Bomber antics.
Hey this looks so cool, very nice, very nice! I was like, hey wait a minute that looks like four clicks!
Most impressive
Just want to say the little tweaks you’ve made to the various fighters in speed, durability, ranges are really nice. Lorewise, the Imperial fighters were superior to the Rebels in most respects except durability and it’s nice to finally see that reflected.
0:46 But sir! The odds of successfully landing an advanced missile in a head on attack against an X-Wing is...
NEVER TELL ME THE ODD... oh wait, you're right. Ah well, plenty more missiles where that came from!
This is a really cool enhancement, but I have to admit watching this felt like the MB is going to be a little OP. I mean, the AI isn’t smart enough to shoot down your missiles when it’s coming right for their face so this just turns into Star Wars Instagib and takes away from immersion and realism. I think making the firing range for missiles shorter would at least add more of a fighting chance and realism especially if facing a group of fighters where at least a couple of them could get shots at you even if you can take out 2-3 before the merge. Or give the AI chaff or flares to add to the challenge and excitement.
Amazing work - as always.
The Missile Boat is meant to be OP... until you run out of ammo. So the trick will be building missions around its gameplay to keep it interesting :)
Oh it’s beautiful
Nice! And a really good gamechanger.
Just one smal question: should'nt it be fur "clicks" instead of "kilometers"?
I supposed technically yes I can use clicks, but I'm not convinced people will immediately understand this terminology unless you're already familiar with flight combat jargon. The game frontend uses the metric system visually to determine distances, so I used meter/kilometer as descriptors for distance so its clear. Interestingly in the backend, the game uses the imperial (no pun intended) measurement system so there are calculations you have to do to convert this to Metric when I factor in any changes to things like range or speed.
@@ange1uk For me the metric system is absolutely fine. I was just wondering if its harmonized troughout the game. Using different measurement types in back- and frontend sounds terribly overcomplicated.
If Lucas arta Will hire you to develop a remastered versión of xwing and tiefighter i Will Buy It!
What is your projected completion, if I may ask?
I really look forward to this, but want the completed product.
Very hard to say, progress is steady, but I don't imagine v2.0 will be ready for many months yet.
Honestly I'm curious if there ever will be a "final" product. Passion-projects like this tends to keep on going seemingly forever. There's always something to add, change or remove.
@@Calindar Well I certainly want there to be one. The Rebalance is something I've always wanted to do for years but never had the ability to do so until the very start of this year. This prompted me to go all in on rebuilding the game balance from the ground up. That was completed months ago and well documented. Now with the Missile Boat training, all the tutorial missions have been completey remade and are implemented.
The current Reimagined campaign missions are now about 50% balanced I'd say, still some work and re-writes to be done, but with the tutorials out of the way, I can concentrate on getting that balanced and then I can complete the remaining Reimagined missions (again this section is about 40-50% completed or functional).
The new intro from Otaking is approaching completion as well. My motivation is high and progress is steady, as long as I have the spare time to do so (which can be challenging as a family man with a full time job).
So yeah, I get it. But technically the original TFTC is 'completed' if all you want to do is play the original Classic campaign, then you can, its all there. All my work is focused on completing the Reimagined campaign :)
Totally picturing AI spamming dual missiles every three seconds and no fighting hope other than to skip out and stay at range until they go winchester.
The AI (probably thankfully) can't do that. It only ever fires one missile at a time at you (and usually no more than is needed to kill you). AI behaviour does not launch two missiles at a time unless heavily damaged.
Is that a Freespace missile launch sound?
@@ofmanynicknames I believe it is yes
@@ange1ukit’s always fun identifying sound samples in mods. Some old Freespace mods used laser sounds from Descent, so I like how you’re continuing a storied tradition.