This will be settled once and for all,

Yesterday afternoon, or rather the wee hours of the morning my time, I was speaking to both Edwards and Guy as I often enjoy doing when I catch them in the live chat. We spoke of many things, mostly in relation to plug-ins we have used and those we are currently working on.

Ok here comes a ton and a half of back story.

Guy, in his infinite coolness, has agreed to host my "Harbinger" plug-in on a site he runs with a friend. Technical difficulties plagued us all for the duration of the night, Guy and myself especially, until it was unfortunately time for Guy to do real things. While of course saddened Edwards and I continued to chat. Edwards is likely the first person to ever actually sample my "Harbinger" and I readily accepted his compliments. He noted the strength of the ships I had created in an off hand manner, and went on to ask how they faired against the ATMOS crew. I will tell you all what I told him. With the Harbinger and her escorts one can dominate the stellar "Our Spiel" while simultaneously handling the combined ATMOS forces, this feat requires skill if not a great deal of effort.

Again, Edwards took this information in stride. He then set two challenges to me.

1. Fighting the entire ATMOS crew with their Shield, Shield Recharge, Armor, and Armor Recharge all set to 32767.

2. Fighting and defeating Hector.

I'm already working on a plug-in for the first challenge, I was working on it previously but with stats not nearly so high. The plug creates a system with no stellars that can only be reached by Hyper jumping from another system one can only get to via wormhole. The stellarless system is called the Arena of Pain, within all of the ATMOS characters will attack you on site and all will have the above stats. I felt such a thing would be a fun test of skill.

I've already tried Arena of pain with my Harbinger. After causing two of the ATMOS ships to flee, and reducing another two to giant balls of fire that my escorts pushed back and forth across the system for the better part of half an hour, I concluded that my current weapons could not destroy the ATMOS ships within a reasonable time frame. But they could likewise not destroy the Harbinger in turn, as while using the afterburner the ship was fast enough to literally fly circles around all the projectiles being shot at it (blaster fire, rail guns, missiles what have you). I thus declared the battle a draw. Since I cannot justify simple giving myself a new outfit I've downloaded ARPIA and as I progress through the missions I will reward myself with stronger weapons accordingly.

Yet there is something I must do before that. I must duel Hector. Edwards made the statement "Hectors Heavy Blasters alone would grind the Harbinger to dust." and, while I know that this was a simple statement of what he believes and in no way a slight to myself, I take great pride in what I've created and therefore Hector must be fought.

**** I need to know how to bring Hector back. I had heard of a plug, but my Internet connection went through cataclysmic failure before I could ask Edwards what it was. Needless to say I have pondered our conversation this entire time. I had always wished to fight with Hector for fun, but now I must prove something to myself. If anyone could help by telling me how to bring her back I would greatly appreciate it.****

As an aside, the Harbinger in the plug-in is slightly less powerful than the one piloted by Captain Rythan Blaze, as I believed that most people just couldn't have fun if I overpowered their ship too ridiculously. The plug-in lacks Three Fighter Bays, Four Secondary Weapons, Two Primary Weapons, One Outfit, and has One Outfit whose maximum quantity has been reduced by half. The missing fighter bays alone remove 5 ships from the Harbinger's escort fleet. Though the 10 ships in the plug-in are more than enough to handle anything you throw at them, and they are very fun to watch when they get to work. Thanks for reading my rant.

This post has been edited by Ragnar0k : 23 June 2006 - 05:35 PM

The first question is exactly what and how many of each weapon did Hector have? I know she had alot of IR Missile Launchers (enough to make a constant stream) and an endless supply of those, plus like 10+ HBTs. Thats all I can remember though.

I'd say try dominating Earth (the one with like 600 ships) and OurSpiel with my Super Defense Fleets plug, but the Harbinger probably would since it sounds quite overpowered if its swatting ATMOS ships with 32767 shield/armor recharge and taking no damage in return.

I'll look through the pers resource for Hector for you. But I warn you, your shots will go right through Hector when you fire at her.

@joshtigerheart, on Jun 23 2006, 04:57 PM, said in Capt. Rythan Blaze in... Hector! A Gauntlet Thrown.:

The first question is exactly what and how many of each weapon did Hector have? I know she had alot of IR Missile Launchers (enough to make a constant stream) and an endless supply of those, plus like 10+ HBTs. Thats all I can remember though.

I'd say try dominating Earth (the one with like 600 ships) and OurSpiel with my Super Defense Fleets plug, but the Harbinger probably would since it sounds quite overpowered if its swatting ATMOS ships with 32767 shield/armor recharge and taking no damage in return.

It would start taking damage if I just let it sit there, and be destroyed not long after, but with it's speed it can dodge and outrun everything, while staying out of beam range. I will definitely be getting the super defense fleet plug now. No ideas on how to summon Hector? I've been told that she is hard coded in there. Thank you though.

"I'll look through the pers resource for Hector for you. But I warn you, your shots will go right through Hector when you fire at her." - JacaByte

Thanks, but I'm pretty sure she isn't there as that was the first place I checked. And the shots go through her? Odd that. I guess they really wanted her to be invulnerable. If so it will be a survival match, I'll stay in the fight long enough to know that I "could" destroy her if my shots were allowed to connect.

This post has been edited by Ragnar0k : 23 June 2006 - 05:32 PM

I've looked though the pers resouce 3 times and couldn't find Hector. Must be hidden somewhere to evade shareware pirates. But yes, I'm pretty sure that your shots go through her.

I fired an IR missle at her by accident once and she started attacking me. I fired a few more missles at her when I was close enough to see her ship and the missles passed through her at when it should have been a bull's-eye.

There is no pers resource for Hector. She is hardcoded into the game, and the longer you remain unregistered, the stronger she gets. She also gets stronger when you get a better ship and stuff.

And yes, she is invulnerable. The idea is that it's hard to so much as take off without dying. It's an incentive to buy the game. If you can destroy her, it doesn't work nearly as well.

Also, it's possible she had unlimited ammo.

@ragnar0k, on Jun 23 2006, 02:27 PM, said in Capt. Rythan Blaze in... Hector! A Gauntlet Thrown.:

1. Fighting the entire ATMOS crew with their Shield, Shield Recharge, Armor, and Armor Recharge all set to 32767.

Technically, I said "A Shield value of -32768 and a ShieldMod of 32767", but I suspect that that would overflow the in-game shield variable.

@ragnar0k, on Jun 23 2006, 02:27 PM, said in Capt. Rythan Blaze in... Hector! A Gauntlet Thrown.:

Edwards made the statement "Hectors Heavy Blasters alone would grind the Harbinger to dust." and, while I know that this was a simple statement of what he believes and in no way a slight to myself, I take great pride in what I've created and therefore Hector must be fought.

It wasn't a statement of belief, it was a statement of fact. After sitting on top of Hector for a few seconds, the Harbinger had no shields left. If you dodge most of her shots, Hector won't be able to inflict enough damage-per-second to take down your shields.

@joshtigerheart, on Jun 23 2006, 02:57 PM, said in Capt. Rythan Blaze in... Hector! A Gauntlet Thrown.:

(The Harbinger) sounds quite overpowered if its swatting ATMOS ships with 32767 shield/armor recharge and taking no damage in return.

It is. Mostly it's because of the insane speed and manuverability (remember outrunning Missiles in a Kestrel in EVC?), but it also has more shields than anyone else in the game (except Paul Pentecost, who beats it by 150), and weapons that can take out any ship in just a few frames. The shield recharge rate isn't too extreme, though. I think it's only about 70 points per frame, so a massive fleet battle could do enough damage to destroy it.

@jacabyte, on Jun 23 2006, 03:25 PM, said in Capt. Rythan Blaze in... Hector! A Gauntlet Thrown.:

I'll look through the pers resource for Hector for you.

You won't find one. përs 1151 may be reserved for Hector, but it will never appear in-game, and it doesn't have any effect on her. As for shots passing through her, she seems to use the same code as gövts that "can't be hit by player", so beams will hit her.

Edwards

Okay. Now, where is the Bring Back Hector plug? I can't seem to find it on the add-ons page.

@orcaloverbri9, on Jun 23 2006, 04:03 PM, said in Capt. Rythan Blaze in... Hector! A Gauntlet Thrown.:

And yes, she is invulnerable.

To weapons. There are a couple of other methods, but they both require plug-ins.

@jacabyte, on Jun 23 2006, 04:16 PM, said in Capt. Rythan Blaze in... Hector! A Gauntlet Thrown.:

Okay. Now, where is the Bring Back Hector plug? I can't seem to find it on the add-ons page.

Are you looking for this?
It does add a character named "Cap'n Hector", but I suspect that the Harbinger would kill it without too much difficulty. It's just an invincible përs with a Starbridge, after all. All you need to do is inflict 430 energy damage and 135 mass damage per frame, and that përs isn't even immune to projectile weapons.

Edwards

" It wasn't a statement of belief, it was a statement of fact. After sitting on top of Hector for a few seconds, the Harbinger had no shields left. If you dodge most of her shots, Hector won't be able to inflict enough damage-per-second to take down your shields." - Edwards

I stand corrected and did not mean to imply you didn't know what you were talking about, I agree fully with your current statement. To maybe shine a better light on what I had said previously I should say that the words were affected by my mood, in that moment when you described what Hector's shots would do I imagined Hector actually saying that in game in a manner that suggested my own skills coupled with the Harbinger were still inferior to her. Silly and childish I know, but getting immersed into the game in such ways keeps me playing, I enjoy creating my own persona for the game, Captain Rythan in this case, and probably should have made the sentiment that was attached to my earlier words much clearer.

I will use the plug you've supplied and probably mod it so that my shots cannot connect, this way I can fight Hector using only beams as intended. There is an appropriate weapon on my Harbinger which is not in the plug-in, it's too strong to really be fun in most situations. Thank you again for all the help Edwards.

" I'd say try dominating Earth (the one with like 600 ships) and OurSpiel with my Super Defense Fleets plug, but the Harbinger probably would since it sounds quite overpowered if its swatting ATMOS ships with 32767 shield/armor recharge and taking no damage in return." - JoshTigerHeart

I don't know what I've been doing without the Super Defense Fleet plug, it's wonderful thanks Josh. Shortly after reading your post I downloaded it and did as you suggested, dominating first Earth and the OurSpiel. I like the addition of high powered Javelins to the Earth Defense Fleet, and the wide variety of the OurSpiel defense was much more fun than the previous all Polaris fleet.

Since I forgot to remove the Arena of Pain plug I actually had to fight the Super ATMOS group at the same time as the OurSpiel defense, which was crazy indeed. I took a little while but I prevailed and dominated the planet, still fighting the ATMOS group. When I declared my second draw against them I found an interesting glitch that seems to happen only around them:

If you command all of the Harbinger's escorts to dock without first telling them to get into formation your Phantom Phoenixes that are escorts of one of your escorts (and in my case also the Dark Hounds) never dock with their ships and are removed from your control. The very interesting thing is that after a few seconds they side with the ATMOS group and attempt to take you down. In my recent case it was 4 Phantom Phoenixes and 2 Dark Hounds that chased me across the system, best fight the Harbinger had ever been through as I was forced to use the afterburner almost the entire time to stay ahead of a literal cloud of deadly enemy fire. Each one of those ships is extremely powerful so taking them down was pretty intense. Had I stood still the hail of fire could have torn through the Harbinger like a wet paper bag.

This post has been edited by Ragnar0k : 23 June 2006 - 07:29 PM

Now try dominating the two in a stock ship with stock weapons.

Believe it or not, one of the things I did with most of the new ships (aside from other modifications) was remove "Prefer's standoff combat". Its fun trying to fend off absurdly quick Valkrye's using thier afterburners pummeling you with Ion Cannons, HBTs, and Hellhounds at close range with no regard to thier survival.

@joshtigerheart, on Jun 24 2006, 12:04 AM, said in Capt. Rythan Blaze in... Hector! A Gauntlet Thrown.:

Now try dominating the two in a stock ship with stock weapons.

Believe it or not, one of the things I did with most of the new ships (aside from other modifications) was remove "Prefer's standoff combat". Its fun trying to fend off absurdly quick Valkrye's using thier afterburners pummeling you with Ion Cannons, HBTs, and Hellhounds at close range with no regard to thier survival.

I understand the reasons behind wanting to use stock items for the challenge, but personally I prefer to only use stock equipment my first time through a game, after that all bets are off lol. I imagine beating OurSpiel's super defense fleet and the super ATMOS crew at once in a stock ship is virtually impossible, or and the least would take a ridiculous amount of time to pull off. Anyone capable of the feat deserves a medal though.

Also the stats on the ATMOS fleet I posted are off. Yes I've modded the ships damage settings to be a ridiculous 32767, but I also modded their pers resources by setting all of their shield mods to 32767.

What is 32767% of 32767? What ever it is it makes the ships unbelievabely strong, which explains why I couldn't destroy them.

Since I actually changed the ship resources for the ATMOS group in my Arena of Pain plug-in I've accidentily given every ship of those types the ridiculous stats, minus the pers boost of course. That actually adds a fun challenge to the game and I may decide to set the Shields, shield rec, Armor, and armor rec of every ship in the game besides my own to 32767. That would be a blast.

32767% of 32767 is... uh... 10,736,762.89. Or ten million, seven hundred and thirty six thousand, seven hundred and sixty two and eighty nine one-hundredths.

Y'know, combat is just as fun, even more so, when everything is set to be ridiculously IN proportion instead of ridiculously out of proportion. You're setting everything to 32767, but with everything at that level, you might as well set everything to 3 because the proportions will be the same. That's just an example, it won't hold up exactly, but it makes the point. And what's the fun in not using stock weapons? How can one enjoy the in-game plot, or enjoy seeing the game universe as if they were a pilot within it, when they can just go play God if they decide that a fight is too hard? It's pretty easy to type in a bunch of 32767's and watch the fireworks, but it's a hell of a lot more fun to save up for a ship that you can capture a Rebel Valk V in, outfit it as perfectly as you can with STOCK WEAPONS, and go try and kick arse on some Feds. There's more strategy in it than, for example, quitting, opening up MC or EVNEW, changing the fusion pulse cannons max outfit number to 32767, make it weigh nothing, cost nothing, and giving the Valk a maximum of 32767 guns, then destroying ANYTHING in a thirtieth of a second. Just examples, but geez.

Edit: No offense of course, just an opinion.

This post has been edited by Crusader Alpha : 24 June 2006 - 01:18 PM

@crusader-alpha, on Jun 24 2006, 11:11 AM, said in Capt. Rythan Blaze in... Hector! A Gauntlet Thrown.:

You're setting everything to 32767, but with everything at that level, you might as well set everything to 3 because the proportions will be the same.

I agree with your general statement, but I'd like to point out a couple of cases where it doesn't apply:

1. Cap'n Hector. She is coded into the game as an entity far too powerful to take on with any stock ship. If you want to duel with her, you really need to use a bigger, nastier ship than anything that exists in Nova. Besides, I don't think she'll use any ship more powerful than an IDA Frigate if you're in one of Nova's ships, and seeing an angry Shareware Enforcer coming after you in a Raven is half the fun.

2. Manuverability. Yes, the proportional manuverabilities of a Terapin and a Fed Destroyer are about equivalent to those of a PVIV and a Nil'kimas Manta, but would anyone argue that flying those pairs of ships is the same experience? For any values that are affected by time, you will need to take into account the human reaction speed. I will admit that this doesn't have any bearing on Ragnar0k's super-shields and -weapons, but the relative speeds of his superships would make a battle between them a very interesting experience, especially if he were to up the weapon speeds as well.

Edwards

@ragnar0k, on Jun 24 2006, 09:27 AM, said in Capt. Rythan Blaze in... Hector! A Gauntlet Thrown.:

Guy, in his infinite coolness, has agreed to host my "Harbinger" plug-in on a site he runs with a friend.

Why thank you
For those that don't know, the site is here.

@edwards, on Jun 24 2006, 04:34 PM, said in Capt. Rythan Blaze in... Hector! A Gauntlet Thrown.:

I agree with your general statement, but I'd like to point out a couple of cases where it doesn't apply:

1. Cap'n Hector. She is coded into the game as an entity far too powerful to take on with any stock ship. If you want to duel with her, you really need to use a bigger, nastier ship than anything that exists in Nova. Besides, I don't think she'll use any ship more powerful than an IDA Frigate if you're in one of Nova's ships, and seeing an angry Shareware Enforcer coming after you in a Raven is half the fun.

2. Manuverability. Yes, the proportional manuverabilities of a Terapin and a Fed Destroyer are about equivalent to those of a PVIV and a Nil'kimas Manta, but would anyone argue that flying those pairs of ships is the same experience? For any values that are affected by time, you will need to take into account the human reaction speed. I will admit that this doesn't have any bearing on Ragnar0k's super-shields and -weapons, but the relative speeds of his superships would make a battle between them a very interesting experience, especially if he were to up the weapon speeds as well.

Edwards

Indeed. These are certainly exeptions, and I have to apologize because I was too harsh to begin with. Sure, I rarely like working with extremely powerful non-stock weaponry, including ships, but it is just in fun, so I shouldn't overextend my opinion.

Agh! More than seven months without a double post, and I blew it.

This post has been edited by Crusader Alpha : 25 June 2006 - 01:58 AM

I'd just like to add that, while the Shields and armor of the enemy ships is probably over a hundred times stronger than they should be, my weapons are at most between 5 and 10 times stronger than their stock cousins (though they have infinite ammo and very fast rates of fire). I do not benefit in these battles as I have intentionally stacked the odds against myself. Fighting the super ATMOS ships using the Harbinger's weapons is like fighting a Raven with only a stock light cannon. It is immensely fun doing battle with something so much stronger than you. All that being said I'm still probably going to have to up the anti if I want to actually destroy them, as it stands I would need around an hour of concentrated fire to destroy a single ship.

I've been playing with the idea of giving all the other ships stats of 32767, just to see if I could get through such a difficult game. Keep in mind that the absolute maximum Shield power of the Harbinger would be only 20,000 (if I give myself every outfit I've made). Imagine having to fight an entire planetary defense fleet like that o.0!

Also I didn't start modding the game until after beating it a few times. I believe that a game must first be played as intended so that you can enjoy it properly. After that though, all bets are off.