X-wing alliance main campaign missions bugged - fix it?

Here we can have in-depth discussions about which missions need to be adjusted because they are broken either by original design or by XWA models.
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X-wing alliance main campaign missions bugged - fix it?

Mrowaksu
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Post by Mrowaksu » Sun Sep 13, 2020 5:27 pm

Hi all. I just registered on this forum. First I wanted to express my gratitude for this project.

Second, for the matter at hand: I noticed that many missions in the campaign are more difficult then they were used to back in the days.

There are multiple reasons for this:
1. Firing rate of all starships seems to have improved which means the do more damage per second, and that means key targets may be destroyed sooner than expected. This is especially painful during 'sitting duck missions', when you are supposed to be still in the turret when enemies pound at you wihout mercy.
2. Some missions have incorrect orders or order dependencies for units. This causes some missions to be compleatable only in very specific circumstances, or not at all. In the worst case your allies have orders to destroy targets you disabled for boarding (mission 1b5m7). =_=
3. Rate of fire means also that Proton torpetoes and other missiles are usually shot down before they reach their destinations. I could understand Cargo transport being able to shoot down 2-3 torpedos, but whole 3 volleys of 5 torpedoes coming from 3 starcraft, at once?
4. Some AI behaviour is downright bugged, especially on new PCs. For example in mission 1b1m6 after hypering to regiod 3, your allies, instead of following assigned orders, may immediately try to hyper out which leavers you to deal with second part of the mission yourself (70% for that bug to happen).
5. Due to all of the above some flight groups have become much more dangerous than before - TIE fighters while squishy can pull down shields on X-Wing in seconds. Not that I mind giving more power to those machines...

I am currently working on 'fixing' the camapign missions - removing artificial difficulty spikes due to bugs by e.g.

1). Lowering A.I. of battleships so they don't shoot down every torpedo targeted at them.
2). Changing orders of primary targets - so they don't 'derp' around the battlefield and do something stupid, like withdraw, but proceed to another order in the sequence and continue with the mission.
3). Increasing shields of Primary target vessels, so that they are no shot down immediately due to higher rate of fire.
4). Messing with triggers so e.g. when your enemies defect you can target and destroy them before they destroy first primary target you are supposed to protect.
5). Adding extra enemies with better AI if the mission gets too easy due to changes above.
6). And other similar changes...

The idea is to make missions FAIR again, without losing the challenge, The question is, is this something you guys would condone and find useful enough to test yourself and give feedback on? Or should I keep this little project of mine to myself?

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Ace Antilles
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Post by Ace Antilles » Sun Sep 13, 2020 5:46 pm

You must have missed the Mission Balancing section. I will move the post to there.
https://www.xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=35

The XWAU team is working on editing and balancing the missions. They are pretty much done I believe but still need some testing.
So they will come out at a later date.

EDIT: That's not to say we will get everything right so we will be open to feedback and possible changes after release.
I don't believe we are going as far as altering shield strengths or other major changes.
Chief XWAU Team annoying nitpicker.
Ace Antilles - The X-Wing Outpost
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Mrowaksu
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Post by Mrowaksu » Sun Sep 13, 2020 5:59 pm

Hey, thanks for moving this post here. Need some testers maybe? ;)

I do think that some missions are bugged beyond the problems the guys discussed in other threads.

Could you elaborate how you normally deal with such problems as highlighted above?

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Jaeven
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Post by Jaeven » Mon Sep 14, 2020 5:07 am

The last year or so there have been a lot of advancements to XWA. Thanks to people like Jeremy and blue_max, we're able to do things with the game we never thought were possible. But those have happened at a pace the game didn't keep up with, and some of them affected missions in a way that was not foreseeable.

But what Ace said is correct. We've tested every single mission in the game, took note of the issues, and fixed them. Then we tested those fixed missions, and they're virtually done, although we may take advantage of some of the new features by making some cosmetic changes (which will not affect gameplay). The fixed missions will be included in the next major patch, which the team is work incredibly hard on to get right before pushing it out.

As for how we deal with these problems, if we get a report that there is an issue in a mission, we investigate, try to reproduce it on our end, and then fix it.

Mrowaksu
Cadet 4th Class
Posts: 17
Joined: Sun Sep 13, 2020 5:00 pm

Post by Mrowaksu » Mon Sep 14, 2020 9:18 am

That's great to hear you are so advanced in your work. Is there any specific ETA on this patch? If it would take 2-3 months or more maybe it would be worth it to publish those mission files as an extra download and mark it as BETA? Then you could collect feedback from higher number of players and fix remaining niggles. Just a suggestion.

From personal experience, I must say it was very annoying to keep losing some missions - I really thought I got too old and decrepit for this game. Then I realised some stuff acted fishy and started fixing it myself.

So maybe some sort of information that X-wing upgrade influences some missions and renders at least some of them very difficult to completed should be posted (or did I miss it?).

I am writing all this because due to hype surrounding SW: Squadrons a number of YouTubers took up X-Wing alliance upgrade... and they seem to be lost. And it is hard top blame them.

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