penyuan: Hello,
I really love X-Wing Alliance except that fact that I think it's capital ships are overpowered. For example, if I set up a custom skirmish missions with a ton of B-Wings attacking an Imperial Star Destroyer with advanced torpedoes, they would hardly make a scratch since all the torpedoes would be shot down.
I like capital ships in Tie Fighter a lot more since even though they are formidable and powerful, it is possible to destroy them if you try hard. But in X-Wing Alliance trying to take down a major capital ship is just not practical.
I know there are several X-Wing Alliance mods out there, are they any that make the capital ships *weaker*? Thanks.
P.S. BTW, in general, are there some "definitive" X-Wing Alliance mods worth checking out?
Det_Bullock: Always dumbfire your torpedoes against capital ships, ALWAYS (make sure your CMD is blank or points to an out of view target, and that you are in warhead range since they selfdestruct after a while), also in certain missions you can land on a capital ship and reload, exit, dumbfire, rinse and repeat until.
On medium and easy you can shoot down the deflector shield emitters with hit an run laser attacks, which is how it is intended.
Keep in mind that shooting off the engines before dropping the shields is often necessary otherwise they will hyper out.
In X-wing Alliance you often get bonus points for dropping capital ships (sometimes even just to make them retreat) and you get an extra medal (the Kalidor Crescent and its variants) when you get enough of them so it's more of a challenge than in Tie Fighter.
To get the highest Kalidor Crescent variant you need a total above 20.000/21.000 bonus points (I got it at 21.835 points, I have found nothing on the internet to get the exact amount of points needed) and because bonus points are awarded leass on easy and on hard you cannot shoot off the engines and shields off Star Destroyers the best way to obtain them is on medium.
Note, I got the impression that the game was intended to be played on medium, since the easy dfficulty if sometimes bugged (some missions are more difficult on easy than on medium for some reason, and at launch there were some game breaking bugs on easy that had to be patched out) and hard is often ridiculous to the point I doubt they ever tested it thoroughly. One of the parameters the difficulty level alters is the AI ballance between the enemy and your wingmen, on medium the sclaes are more or less balanced but on hard your wingmen are as dumb as rocks and the enemy is a fleet of super aces that will make mince-meat of them and will then gang-up on you often with superior ships like Tie Advanceds.
THE mod for X-wing Alliance is this:
http://www.xwaupgrade.com/
It does not only upgrade the ship models but also gives the option during installation to restore some capital ships (basically Ackbar's Home One Calamari cruiser and Vader's Executor) to movie size with missions altered accordingly. I suspect this also makes a couple of missions easier but I'm not sure, take note however that because the modded Falcon is slightly bigger the last mission will be a pain in the arse.
Thanks for your detailed response!! :D I guess your point is that the capital ships in XWA are indeed destructible by the player.
Regarding "dumbfiring" torpedoes, I guess you mean firing them without a lock. But I don't understand how that makes them harder for a capital ship to shoot down? I feel like whenever I fire warheads at a capital ship, the ships "sheet" of lasers just blast all my warheads long before they get close to the ship. Are dumb-fired warheads not treated that way?
On a related note, in custom/skirmish missions, bombers (like B-wings or Missile Boats, etc.) controlled by the computer (even when set to Super Ace) can barely scratch capital ships because their warheads always get shot down. I'm guessing the AI pilots always get a lock first and never dumb-fires. Does this mean there is basically no good way to set up skirmish missions where AI-controlled bomber-type fighters pose a real threat to capital ships? (unless I put myself in their slot and dumb-fire?)
And THANKS for the link to the mod, it looks incredible. Does it substantially increase the game's hardware requirements?
