Are EVO ships balanced?

in 1.00 you could have all the guns and turrets - in 1.0.1 it is as you said. Still though, blaze turrets are more powerful than blaze cannons... and the destroyer can fit tons of rockets. 3 kraits won't harm you if u are in a tough vessel like an igazra.. a second of phase turret fire reduces them to burnt out wrecks.. anyway, are you suggesting 3 kraits shouldn't deal any damage to slow vessels? I found that fighters can deal damage in EV as well as EVO.. Although fighters are certainly quickest overall in EVO out of all the games. To the people who've completed EVO in a krait well thats great, but its not the same as a standard AI krait is it? I imagine your playing 1.0.0 to do this, and have used the mass manipulation bug to get extra space and then added dospect armour and swivel phase cannons.

Also, consider this: The 3 main warships in EVO are the Igazra, the UE cruiser and the Voinian Cruiser - and they are balanced! If you pair AI ships in battle you would get: the UE cruiser beats the Voinian Cruiser, the Voinian cruiser beats the Igazra, and the Igazra beats the UE cruiser. In EVN the Raven will stuff any other ship. In EV the rebel cruiser will stuff any other ship.

This post has been edited by Pad of Heck : 14 March 2005 - 07:17 AM

I, personally, am a capital ship man and a great fan of the UE Destroyer. The silly thing never really has let me down completely, and it's just versatile enough for me to do everything that I like to do, while being somewhat inexpensive (in capital starship terms) to acquire and operate.

There isn't really anything more fun, in my opinion, than charging straight at a Voinian Frigate, turrets and missiles blazing.

(Seeing as how I stole a disabled one from the UE goverment before I was even allowed to purchase the vessel, you can see just how cheap it can be to acquire when you lurk among the ashes of a space battle. 🙂 )

Out of the three main capital ships mentioned above, I would take the Igazara above the UE/Voinian Cruiser. It just looks cooler.

Fighters in EVO can't be ignored, and they aren't a nuisance--they've got teeth and should be respected.

Pad of Heck, on Mar 14 2005, 07:13 AM, said:

in 1.00 you could have all the guns and turrets - in 1.0.1 it is as you said. Still though, blaze turrets are more powerful than blaze cannons... and the destroyer can fit tons of rockets. 3 kraits won't harm you if u are in a tough vessel like an igazra.. a second of phase turret fire reduces them to burnt out wrecks.. anyway, are you suggesting 3 kraits shouldn't deal any damage to slow vessels? I found that fighters can deal damage in EV as well as EVO.. Although fighters are certainly quickest overall in EVO out of all the games. To the people who've completed EVO in a krait well thats great, but its not the same as a standard AI krait is it? I imagine your playing 1.0.0 to do this, and have used the mass manipulation bug to get extra space and then added dospect armour and swivel phase cannons.

Also, consider this: The 3 main warships in EVO are the Igazra, the UE cruiser and the Voinian Cruiser - and they are balanced! If you pair AI ships in battle you would get: the UE cruiser beats the Voinian Cruiser, the Voinian cruiser beats the Igazra, and the Igazra beats the UE cruiser. In EVN the Raven will stuff any other ship. In EV the rebel cruiser will stuff any other ship.
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Not true. in EVC, the Alien fighter kills everything.... except player ships with tractor beams.

At least EVN lost the forklift... not that I'm saying it isn't the most amusing weapon ever. 🙂

Pad of Heck, on Mar 14 2005, 12:13 PM, said:

Also, consider this: The 3 main warships in EVO are the Igazra, the UE cruiser and the Voinian Cruiser - and they are balanced! If you pair AI ships in battle you would get: the UE cruiser beats the Voinian Cruiser, the Voinian cruiser beats the Igazra, and the Igazra beats the UE cruiser. In EVN the Raven will stuff any other ship. In EV the rebel cruiser will stuff any other ship.
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I concur.

I could destroy a whole fleet of vonians in a UE fighter if there was 1 vonian cruiser (no more. no less) in it. I would do that by disabling the heavy fighters with rockets, board one of them, get the rockets, attack the Frigates with the rockets, get more rockets from another dissabled hev fighter, attack the frigates with the rockets, keep on doing this until I can't board the fighters any more, make the cruiser pick up a fighter and send it after me, dissable it, get its rockets and so-on.

Don't you think the AI doesn't take advantage of the range of their weapons.

Pad of Heck, on Mar 14 2005, 07:13 AM, said:

Also, consider this: The 3 main warships in EVO are the Igazra, the UE cruiser and the Voinian Cruiser - and they are balanced! If you pair AI ships in battle you would get: the UE cruiser beats the Voinian Cruiser, the Voinian cruiser beats the Igazra, and the Igazra beats the UE cruiser. In EVN the Raven will stuff any other ship. In EV the rebel cruiser will stuff any other ship.
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Are you forgeting the all-mighty Vonian Dreadnaught

In EVO, the closest thing to a middle-class ship is a Zidara

Valence, on Mar 14 2005, 02:28 AM, said:

I personally havent played the Nova engine port because i dont have the patience to wait for my 56k modem to dowload such big files.
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You know that the ported files themselves are only 4.7 and 6.0 megs, right? That's 10.7 megs - mmmk - I have 56k and that would take something near an hour.

If it's Nova that you don't want to download then there's a few things you could do... Get a friend to download it for you (always good), buy the game disk from Ambrosia ($5), get a download manager and start the download when you go to sleep or get a flash drive and head the library to use their connection.

The cool thing about getting Nova is that you get all 3 games for the price of one - can't beat that.

MartiNZ, on Mar 11 2005, 02:28 AM, said:

I've never been that big a fan of Nova itself - story and missions were much less exciting and it felt more like a book than a game ... I think I'll always just keep coming back to Override.

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You've just taken the words right out of my mouth. Nova always seemed too concerned on petty details and read like Lord of the Rings, and EV of course was just a little bland without the plug-ins (despite getting us all hooked in the first place). I still continue to make innovative plug-ins for both EV and Override (such as EVO:Exodus) although I haven't released anything for ages.

As far as EVO's ship balance is concerned, I've always found it to be highly unfair. Playing for the Voinians can be very frustrating as any UE ships facing a Voinian ship of similar size will win hands down, often with over half of their shields remaining. Plus the fact that when you are attacking there are less on your side that the enemy, AND you get pounded by hunters before you even begin. The amount of keyboards that went out the window over that attack Verril mission....

--gav

I guess I need to play that again. I don't think I've ever done that mission on a computer that was really meant to run EVO (an LCIII with 8MB RAM and then under emulation on Windows!) and I never had any trouble with Hunters - in fact I don't even remember any being fired.... But now that I think about it, that does seem very strange - maybe it was just the monty python ;).

MartiNZ, on Apr 15 2005, 01:31 AM, said:

I guess I need to play that again. I don't think I've ever done that mission on a computer that was really meant to run EVO (an LCIII with 8MB RAM and then under emulation on Windows!) and I never had any trouble with Hunters - in fact I don't even remember any being fired.... But now that I think about it, that does seem very strange - maybe it was just the monty python ;).
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Hunter missile = heat seeking missile used by UE destroyer, carrier & cruiser that damages armour more than shields, is fairly slow and sluggish but travels for a long time

I think the reason why you weren't fired at was because of (lucky) glitch on your emulation mate. EVERY mission I've gone on as a Voinian resulted in getting pounded by countless hunter missiles until they ran out of ammo, resulting often in death or at least in being severely crippled and making me stay on the outside of the battle, milling about like a twat waiting for my (slllloooowwww) armour regeneration to complete.
The reason for this is because auxillery (friendly Voinian) ships don't come into the system until a second or two after you, making you the first target for all the UE ships = hunter missiles galore and some UE fighters aimed at you for good luck.
I have to say I've never heard of the monty python manouver being referred to a weapon. The only way I've ever been able to avoid the damage from hunters is to hide behind an asteroid and wait for about 80 missiles to crash into it, then join the battle. As Voinian ships are very slow and sluggish, it's virtually impossible to avoid them any other way. It's not that I object to the challenge, it's just that getting destroyed time after time by missiles gets very boring, and getting so badly damaged straight away in a fight can be pretty off-putting.

I usually make small plug-ins to fix things like this and make things easier. Generally playing for the Voinians is a never ending struggle against the UE, hence my plug-in EVO:Exodus which involved the Voinians moving into the Crescent is a lot more fun, let me tell you. (hint hint download it and rate it hint hint)

--gav

pistgavin, on Apr 15 2005, 12:22 PM, said:

(hint hint download it and rate it hint hint)

Will do. Now get out of here, you're too old for this place 🙂

This post has been edited by Opalius : 15 April 2005 - 12:58 PM

pistgavin, on Apr 15 2005, 11:22 AM, said:

Hunter missile = heat seeking missile used by UE destroyer, carrier & cruiser that damages armour more than shields, is fairly slow and sluggish but travels for a long time

I think the reason why you weren't fired at was because of (lucky) glitch on your emulation mate. EVERY mission I've gone on as a Voinian resulted in getting pounded by countless hunter missiles until they ran out of ammo, resulting often in death or at least in being severely crippled and making me stay on the outside of the battle, milling about like a twat waiting for my (slllloooowwww) armour regeneration to complete.
The reason for this is because auxillery (friendly Voinian) ships don't come into the system until a second or two after you, making you the first target for all the UE ships = hunter missiles galore and some UE fighters aimed at you for good luck.
I have to say I've never heard of the monty python manouver being referred to a weapon. The only way I've ever been able to avoid the damage from hunters is to hide behind an asteroid and wait for about 80 missiles to crash into it, then join the battle. As Voinian ships are very slow and sluggish, it's virtually impossible to avoid them any other way. It's not that I object to the challenge, it's just that getting destroyed time after time by missiles gets very boring, and getting so badly damaged straight away in a fight can be pretty off-putting.
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure the speed it was emulating and the speed of it on such an old computer made those experiences not quite like the real thing. Ship graphics didn't display properly in rotations from 9 o'clock to 12 o'clock and I guess it just didn't quite load all the ship actions in such big battles - I'll give it a go on the Nova port soon.

As for the MP, that was just how I tended to do such missions, and at least the UE Cruisers were well slow enough to allow it - maybe that also had an effect on their firing ... maybe not. I remember doing that Verril mission once in a Zidara and once in a Voinian Frigate - that can't have been fun.

Anyway, too old for this place? Didn't think it was possible ;). I'm 24 and think I'll be coming here for a while yet - say as long as there's discussion going.

Opalius, on Apr 15 2005, 05:53 PM, said:

Will do. Now get out of here, you're too old for this place 🙂
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Old in mind friend, old in mind. While I am merely 19 in body, mentally I'm 18,318 years old (and that's young for this board). Maybe I am getting on a bit...

--gav

pistgavin, on Apr 21 2005, 10:35 AM, said:

Old in mind friend, old in mind. While I am merely 19 in body, mentally I'm 18,318 years old (and that's young for this board). Maybe I am getting on a bit...

--gav
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Woah, what's the formula for working that out ;)?

Simply put, I think that the evo ships are balanced pretty well. If you disagree, use resedit and fix the problem.

pistgavin, on Apr 14 2005, 04:41 AM, said:

As far as EVO's ship balance is concerned, I've always found it to be highly unfair. Playing for the Voinians can be very frustrating as any UE ships facing a Voinian ship of similar size will win hands down, often with over half of their shields remaining. Plus the fact that when you are attacking there are less on your side that the enemy, AND you get pounded by hunters before you even begin. The amount of keyboards that went out the window over that attack Verril mission....

--gav
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The UE ships don't fire hunters at small ships so I did most of the vonian missions in an Arada. An other annoying thing about working for the vonians is if you play on strict play and have to go on an escape pod you end up on earth and the vonians hate you again.

A very interesting thing about EVO is that weapon fire and shield regen depends on the frame rate. When I was running it on a 68040, it was good. When I was running it on a G3 my shuttlecraft could put out a solid wall of blaze fire, and a UE destroyer would cause serious aural pain. I ended up making weapon cooldown and shield recharge three times slower* to make the game playable. Before that the Azdara was ~invincible~.

That sort of thing causes serious differences in the balance of the game when played on different machines(although I've never heard anyone else mention it, ever. Maybe it's just me?), so it's hard to say anything definitive about balance except for a particular setup.

*This is a good example of bad english. It can also be a bad example of good engligh, if you lean that way.

You shouldn't be playing on strict play at your age.

--gav

Asc, on May 25 2005, 06:12 AM, said:

A very interesting thing about EVO is that weapon fire and shield regen depends on the frame rate. When I was running it on a 68040, it was good. When I was running it on a G3 my shuttlecraft could put out a solid wall of blaze fire, and a UE destroyer would cause serious aural pain. I ended up making weapon cooldown and shield recharge three times slower* to make the game playable. Before that the Azdara was ~invincible~.

That sort of thing causes serious differences in the balance of the game when played on different machines(although I've never heard anyone else mention it, ever. Maybe it's just me?), so it's hard to say anything definitive about balance except for a particular setup.
*This is a good example of bad english. It can also be a bad example of good engligh, if you lean that way.
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Another strange thing about EVO is that if you slow the game speed the range of weapons decreases. I think this is cos the game programing determines the range of weapons by the speed of them and how long they last. The speed is determined by how many frames per second so thats probably why on faster computers everything goes faster.