Gisteren heeft First Strike een in-game video gepost van hun spacecombat, plus een nieuw (lang) stuk over de gameplay. Klik hier voor de Youtube link of hieronder voor een van de mirrrors.

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Well its the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars and what better way than to release our Space "Escape from Hoth" Teaser Trailer!
We hope you enjoy this sneak peek and will endeavour to bring you some more developments and videos in the coming weeks. The team is working tirelessly to bring you what we believe is a quality balanced and lore accurate Star Wars game in both Land and Space scenarios! MTFBWY FS Team.
Withering Fire Part 2:

The Worst of both worlds

As far as modding is concerned, BF2142's customization system is nearly broken. It allows only three weapon choices per class. That's far short of the full kit customization of seven items and three weapons to choose from per kit in vanilla 2142. What's more, when we started we were limited to only four kits as well, rather than BF2's system of six kits. It was literally the worst of both worlds.

Fortunately though, we were not to be deterred. To combat this problem we've instead put together a complete redesign of the kit layout structure. To start with, we combined all the major combat class functions into the first two kits. The keystone of each is the weapon selection. Each of the first two kits has three very different weapons to choose from. We specifically engineered the choices so that each weapon drastically changes the style of play for that kit. For example, the anti-infantry class has a choice of short, medium, and long range weapons. The heavy weapons class is the same in offering three different weapons for three different purposes; a heavy repeating rifle, a long range grenade launcher, and an anti-vehicle missile launcher. For gear we were sure to provide the equipment that best benefited the task of the anti-infantry or anti-vehicle trooper in their respective classes, so no matter which weapon you choose you will still have appropriate equipment for your role.

We’re All Special

By making each weapon so uniquely suited for different roles we gained three advantages. First of all, it’s guaranteed that all of the weapons within each kit will find a specific usage. If the weapons were similar then it’s likely that players would just choose the best of the three and ignore the others, which would diminish the amount of diversity and reduce the replay value.

Secondly, this system allows the standard kit layouts to automatically balance themselves towards the map being played, without creating specialty kit setups on a per-map basis. Again, as mentioned in the first part of this gameplay analysis, we are strong proponents for subconscious setups in our gameplay, and this is another great example. Each of our weapons has its own niche and style of play, with certain being weapons more useful than others in different situations. We have already seen our alpha testers naturally evolve their weapon and kit selections based on the environment of the map they’re playing. For our close-combat, city environments, our heavy machineguns, carbines and shotguns are king. In mixed environments, there's been an even spread of weapons based on the areas the player intends to fight over. And in our long-range, open maps, and trench warfare maps, the assault and sniper rifles rule the day, along with grenade launchers used to break fortified enemy positions.

Thirdly, and probably most importantly, having the gameplay change dramatically because of a simple choice within the customization system has given our mod the illusion of having more kits than it really does. By choosing a different weapon you are basically choosing a new playstyle each time, which has the effect of making it seem like an entirely different class. This strategy has replaced the previously limited system with a system that seems like it has even more variety than BF2 or 2142, and all within two kits and three options per kit.

Once we were able to combine the various combat kits without losing anything from our gameplay, we were left with two open slots. We chose to fill the open slots with specialist support kits to further increase the amount of teamplay and variety. After all, we're trying to create a group-on-group combat system rather than a series of individual skirmishes, and a great way to do that is to provide lots of avenues for team members to support one another. What's more, this also goes well with the concept of individual weakness, as we are now able to separate gear that would otherwise overpower the combat classes if they had it. The medic has received his own class as a specialist of biological warfare (both able to heal his team and damage the others), and we have introduced a new class called “logistics”, a departure from vanilla 2142. ((Though note that it is a working title. He may appear as "engineer" by release wink ))

Logically…

The logistics class provides technical support in the heat of battle. He provides ammunition, vehicle repairs, EMP, and explosives…lots of explosives. He’s not a frontline fighter like the other classes. While he has a burst-fire rifle, he can't go toe-to-toe with regular combat classes. He’s able to take out important targets, and with enough cunning, vehicles and players as well. He's also the lynchpin in the setup of other important equipment; his ammo box is required to replenish the deployable E-Web or Mk-2 blaster cannons and the weapons of the anti-vehicle class.

Help From Above

Fortunately we've received some help and some breaks since the original design of our class system. A few months ago an outside developer named FFOLKES came to give us a hand. His work in HUD design gave us the ability to introduce a 5th class into our system. The process also taught us a lot about modding the HUD system itself, and has opened up doors for many potential possibilities in the future. For this effort I have to send out a special thanks to him and provide some recognition.

How he helped was in giving us the option of a 5th kit. We already achieved a better lineup with more dynamic gameplay than the original systems, so we had to ask ourselves what we could do with the opportunity for an additional class. Slowly an idea evolved about creating a teamwork support class. A class that’s sole purpose would be to support his squad and push his troops forward. Thus the Squad Leader, or "Officer" class, was born. Selectable only by those that are squad leaders, the Officer class has gear suited towards leading a team. He has his own UAV ability, healing, enemy netbatting, squad spawning, and also the ability to deploy a fixed weapon emplacement (our E-Web and Mk-2 blaster cannons for the imperials and rebels respectively). This class is still evolving, so we hope to see even greater teambuilding abilities by the time the mod is released.

Less Rambo, More Team

So that's where we stand with our design. We're not just taking all this on a leap of faith either, we've been testing these kits, weapons, and layouts now for several months and the results have been amazing. The game is well balanced, dynamically self-adjusting, and really fun to play. All the classes have their own strong points and functions, and all the weapons within the classes have their own niche places also. Combining our unique class system with withering fire, everyone has some degree of functionality in almost every situation, while making sure that no single class had the ability to take on everything at once. The teams are no longer an army of Rambos fighting against another army of Rambos, they are now interdependent. Can't ask for much more than that, can ya?