Original Carrier Command

[VFRHawk]

Just got through a strategy game of the original CC using Dosbox, and I have to say I enjoyed it just as much now as I did 20-odd years ago.

Caught the enemy carrier attacking one of my islands and nailed the b*****d with a load of laser fire from my carrier and then unloaded a pile of missiles from a Walrus as he tried to run for it. Punched the air when he blew up!

Question though, I guess mostly for GadgetMind, but if anyone else knows the answer. The enemy carrier always was able to move far faster than your carrier, and I believe it had a lot less "hitpoints", so it was easier to kill if you did catch it. Has anyone ever tried to mod the game to change that and even the two carriers out? I guess the enemy carriers repair rate would need to be lowered, but I'm thinking it would make a much longer and more strategic game.

Graham

[gadgetmind]

Question though, I guess mostly for GadgetMind, but if anyone else knows the answer. The enemy carrier always was able to move far faster than your carrier, and I believe it had a lot less "hitpoints", so it was easier to kill if you did catch it. Has anyone ever tried to mod the game to change that and even the two carriers out?

I'd have to read the code to answer this in detail, but it's worth noting that battles where the player is present are conducted in 3D with collision detection and flying objects, whereas not present battles were handled more like dungeons and dragons with "hit points" and the computer equivalent of multi-sided dice.

When the player arrives at an island (during a battle or otherwise), everything gets "unpacked", and an island model etc. is created, then when you leave, it all gets "put away" again and is just a bunch of compact numbers.

A whole load of this stuff, and in particular the enemy carrier's attack strategy (when choosing targets, during "dice" battles and in 3D) changed greatly between the 68k versions and PC version, with the better stuff being back-ported to the Mac 68k version.

[VFRHawk]

Ah, not as easy to do as I'd hoped then. Never mind, was just a thought!

[BFCrusader]

Caught the enemy carrier attacking one of my islands and nailed the b*****d with a load of laser fire from my carrier and then unloaded a pile of missiles from a Walrus as he tried to run for it. Punched the air when he blew up!

My tactic was to load every Manta I had available with missiles and then send them all to an area a good distance behind the enemy carrier, so they already were in a good intercept spot when it starts to retreat. Almost invariably the carrier would retreat towards the direction it came from, assuming its facing towards the island when attacking is an indication of its origin, hence this tactic.

When they are in position, I start to advance the Mantas towards the carrier, one at a time, but so they all were heading towards it. Then I unload all missiles at it till it is destroyed.

I am curious about one other thing. I was playing the game again, in an emulator for Atari ST, a while ago and after a certain point it seemed as if the enemy's attacks stopped altogether.

I'm wondering, Gadgetmind, was it possible to cut off the enemy carrier's supply lines to the point that it got stuck in the middle of the ocean or on a "dry island" with no fuel and no munitions? Or was it a glitch of some sort?

I'm asking since it was part of my strategy, to cut him off while protecting my own islands, but I also had this lingering suspicion that you had programmed the enemy carrier to not run out of stuff.

[gadgetmind]

I'm wondering, Gadgetmind, was it possible to cut off the enemy carrier's supply lines to the point that it got stuck in the middle of the ocean or on a "dry island" with no fuel and no munitions?

Yes, the supply lines worked for the enemy's islands and carrier in just the same way as for yours. This was the primary strategy element of the game.

[BFCrusader]

Cool. I was afraid that it had this semi-god mode where it wasn't able to run out of anything. But this totally completes the strategy experience. As a kid I never thought of this, just to capture islands and to kill the enemy carrier if/when I encounter it. Today, especially after playing many strategy games, I implemented said strategy and it worked wonders

The game just got more awesome than I have ever viewed it.

[gadgetmind]

Cool. I was afraid that it had this semi-god mode where it wasn't able to run out of anything.

I'd have to check the code to make sure, but Graeme was a bit of a purist (versus my "bash it until it works" pragmatism!) so I doubt he'd have let it cheat.

[Tortoise]

I think it was possible to run the enemy carrier dry because if I remember correctly I used this tactic back then.
That reminds me I had a game where the enemy carrier stopped its progress too. I knew why once I approached an enemy island finding the carrier sitting, unable to move, in the middle of it.

[gadgetmind]

Yup, 1st release on the ST had a variety of bugs, including the enemy carrier driving onto islands. As we'd been grabbing a few hours of sleep under our desks every now and then for several weeks, our coding wasn't quite as precise as it could be.

Rainbird wouldn't let us change the version number when we fixed that one as they didn't want to give people new disks, but we sneakily added an extra space!

[Timusius]

I'm happy to read that it was actually possible to win the good old Carrier Command.

I played it on the Amiga back in 1990 and I had a seriously hard time getting anywhere in the game.

I was only 14 back then... but I'm pretty sure I played it enough to know all controls, the way the weapons worked, etc, in it.

I remember that it was incredibly hard. In strategy mode I would rush towards the first two islands, get them under control.. and then look at the map, only to realise that the AI already owned almost half the map.
At that point I would probably be without fuel... (I remember something about setting up supply routes between the islands)... and unable to do much for a while, until suddenly being hit by the AI ship.


Your posts indicate that one would need to hunt down the AIcarrier directly, and then kill it to win.
Was it even possible to win the game in a more strategic manner? Eg. taking over lots of islands and preparing for a huge fight?

I also remember the game for being difficult in other ways:

The radio range was not long, and Mantas could not stay in the air for very long without extra fuel. I lost loads of them because they would just hang around and do nothing since they were not able to attack on their own.

Also.. controlling 8 vehicles at once + the carrier... That was a huge mess :-)

I felt like there were lots of posibilities but the game was way too difficult to really play around with them.


Perhaps games were just different then... I remember the same problem with the game Armour-Geddon. Planes, tanks, research, lots of weapons... but I never came close to even driving the tank near anything that looked like an enemy.