[jdjtcagle]

Originally posted by IceFire
No time right now to get into it but to loosely quote Dave Baranec on two points:

1) Shivans are only part of a much greater problem
2) Ships so big that they affect gameplay like a planetary surface

Thats what he was thinking was in store for FS3.

1.  Agree, really help the story!

2. If you have ships that big, Extremely Expensive, so it would be unrealistic and fighters  and bombers are usless. BYE BYE freespace.  Get diversity in ships so they can be plentiful and the gameplay will live on. And I love Flaser Ideas.

[Gloriano]

Originally posted by jdjtcagle


1.  Agree, really help the story!

2. If you have ships that big, Extremely Expensive, so it would be unrealistic and fighters  and bombers are usless. BYE BYE freespace.  Get diversity in ships so they can be plentiful and the gameplay will live on. And I love Flaser Ideas.

what if those are Shivan's or that bigger proplem ships

[jdjtcagle]

not really sure what you are trying to say. but homeworld 2 had excellent tatics without size.

[Flaser]

Having that huge ships may not kill the gameplay, for the Death Star effect starts to take place - instead a big ship it will be a scenery where the battle takes place.
Smaller ships - especially bombers and fighters are not the ships a monstrosity like this was designed to take down - even some cruisers may slip through.

Watch some anime where they go against a fortress ship - it's like conquering a planet, except there's no atmosphere.

[Ashrak]

MOTION BLUR!

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Ashrak
MOTION BLUR!

No thanks.

[Flaser]

karojama Motion Blur can be really good if correctly applied - see it in Quake 3.
It smoothes the imperfection of a raster monitor.
Tweaking or implementing it could be a pain in the afterburner though.

[TopAce]

I forgot to mention one thing:

!!!! GTC Big Cube !!!!

[Atalhlla]

Is cross-archetecture/cross-platform out of the question?

Oh, and hiyas, just signed up, here.  How y'all doin?

~Atal

Edit : Thankyas for the welcome.  I feel loved already :D

[jdjtcagle]

[Ace]

Originally posted by IceFire
No time right now to get into it but to loosely quote Dave Baranec on two points:

1) Shivans are only part of a much greater problem
2) Ships so big that they affect gameplay like a planetary surface

Thats what he was thinking was in store for FS3.

On that note, if I was making FS3:

*Massive derelicts. The Ancients and the species before them that they based their technologies on had great empires, this would be seen as the massive hulks of ships seen that the GTVA and Shivans battle over. Similar to the 'megaliths' promised for in Homeworld 2. Plus the Shivans would have some constructs that would add a whole new meaning to the word terrifying.

*Hardpoint system. Similar to the hardpoint system used in Mechwarrior 4, ships would have different mount sizes and slots. Different take different numbers of slots and can be mounted in different mount sizes. It would be a visually-oriented loadout interface true to the spirit of FS1/2 that is easy to use and allows for a great deal of customization.

*Weapon specialization. FreeSpace 1 and 2 have some weapons with special characteristics such as the Disruptor/Akheton, Flail/Morningstar, Leech/Lamprey, S-Breaker/Circe, and Maxim. However, every weapon would have its own strengths and none would be rendered obsolete. For example, a Prometheus based weapon might envelop all shield facings on a ship, while the next generation of Circe might disrupt capitalship shields on a certain segment.

*More capitalship interaction. Subsystems having more of an effect on gameplay, in FS1/2 this has been limited to the engine and weapons subsystems unless scripted. Shield generators protecting ship segments from oncoming fire, ships loosing power when a reactor subsystem has been destroyed until weaker backups can be used, all are examples of how ships should be more interactive.

*Sliding. Being able to vertically and horizontally slide like in Descent, and use a "Rotational Slide" such as the slide in Tachyon: The Fringe and Wing Commander's "Shelton Slide" would add mobility to dogfights.

*Tactical AI. Wingmen using formations and manuvers to accomplish goals. The AI also makes full use of ship systems to increase survivability, adjusting power levels, shield facings, or weapons used when necessary.

The main problem I've seen with FS2's AI is its inability to adjust shield quadrants or make on-the-fly energy level changes. Of course collision detection is also an issue

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Atalhlla
Is cross-archetecture/cross-platform out of the question?

The Source Code Project team are working on that as we speak. Have a look in their forum and you'll notice threads about the Linux and OS X work they are doing.

[Atalhlla]

Ooooh, thanks for the pointer.  Shoulda looked there.  Having this game on OSX will mean it'll be easier for me to unlease my horrors (but hopefully cool horrors) upon you all :D

[Flaser]

Ace, _avrg already submitted a code that did a marvelous job managing the shield for AI fighters - though it did by reducing their shield to unified object.
He also posted an auto ETS system I'd love to see in combat.

Sliding is already implemented in FS_Open, but so far no models / tablehacks were made centered around it.

BTW capital ship shields: I thing those things should only protect against capship weapons. Maintaining them constantly could be too expensive, so they just switch them on when the enemy is firing - so bombers can still slip uner them and 'casue havoc.

That would be better gamplay wise.

The said shields could also flicker when they want to operate them for a while (got this from Leviathan - though I didn't read the whole manual) so a well timed attack can slip through.

[Ashrak]

kara....dont tell me you dont just love the potion blur in IFH

[karajorma]

Had to turn it off. Some people with ATI cards have problems with it. Probably would have turned it off anyway though.

[Atalhlla]

9) Specialized capships. While bigger ships are not always better, you could have individual ships that function as parts of larger capital ships. Imagine things like carriers, beam frigates, torpedo cruisers, and such. In general small battle group of specialized warships would be much more effective in combat than a juggernaut or two. (This is why present-day navies don't have an aircraft carrier-battleship hybrid.) It might even make the current idea of Destroyers in FreeSpace obsolete.

It's funny, since that was (sortof) one of the first ideas I had for a ship.  The beam one, anyway.
The Smalr'ghahgd'n.  ("Smah-l-r-gha-g-d-n")




That number is the triangle count... But, this model has mucho intersections... If anything, I like the way it looks, anyway.

But the general thought behind this guy is having three or four with you (they're not that big, like corvette size, I think.... I think that's the right scale, anyway.) and blowing the ****es out of the other cap ships.  Just a few problems :
No shields - Problem against fighters and bombers, since the little buggers just hafta fly up and *boom*, and all it's reactor energy to put to the weapon and engines.
The armour leaves something to be desired, there, since much of it is exposed and it has no other defences itsef.
Gun only points in one direction - Theoretically, you could use the engines to turn the blasted thing to sweep it's beam across foes, though I'm not sure how practical this would be against fighters and bombers
The beam would prolly be slightly stronger than the standard Terran beam, though who ever's using them would have to decide that.
Oh, did I mention it's sloooow?  Well, that depends on how you put it in, but yeah...

Tell me what you think?  Built using Carrara's modeling tools, which are just a bit different from most other modelers.

Questions?  Comments?  Suggestions?  Any other ideas?

Atal

PS <- this guy is funny.

[karajorma]

Very nice I love it

[TrashMan]

*Realistic power menagment for capships
*Capships that can be really mutilated (blow really big bits off)
*Polarized hull - istead of capship shields  - doesn't require a meas, just a special effect that tis triggered when a shielded capship is hit

[Flipside]

1 ) More sensible designs on Capships, personally, I would have thought the GTVA learned their lesson from Colly. Small, fast ships with maybe one or two big guns/beams would be far more effective.
2 ) Multi-area battles, fighters have jump drives, and with the support ship, theres no reason why the player couldn't be jumping from engagement to engagement without the chance to change ships, if you are in a bomber, then you may be expected to attack 3-4 different Capships in different locations.
3 ) New GTVA technologies based on other information retrieved from Ancient dig-sites, it has already been hinted that the GTVI have got quite a lot of info from several protected Digsites, so I'd like to see what sort of stuff they are finding. Obviously, it shouldn't give them a massive advantage, since it didn't give the ancients any help.
4 ) Other than that, let's keep the Ancients out of this one a bit, I always felt as though they were a plot device in the first place.
5 ) Better AI (Obviously)

There are others, but most of them have probs been convered in this thread