Author Topic: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships  (Read 8132 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
If I understand correctly, between The Great War and the Second Shivan Incursion the Vasudans found it difficult to refit older warships with new beam technology. So they often built entirely new designs. The opposite was true for the Terrans, who were generally successful in retrofitting beams and other newer systems on older ship classes. Between the Capella and the war with the UEF, it was the opposite. Terrans built new classes of warships to take advantage of new meson technologies, while the Vasudans were mostly able to take advantage of their powerful and modular reactor designs to refit existing classes to the modern standard. Looking through the wiki, there are very few references to Vasudan capital ships outside the Capella-era Hatshepsut, Sobek, and Mentu classes.

But there are a few fleeting references to the names of some new fighter classes. In particular, the Serekh Taa space dominance fighter, the Maa-kheru siege fighter, and the Abatos (unknown type). Is there any other information about them?

 
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
It looks like there are a few references for new Vasudan capital ship designs.

Akhenaten cruiser
Aaru heavy corvette
iKhemu-Sek (heavy combatant)

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
Exactly what the next-gen Zods could do would depend on the design we ended up finding fun, but it would probably be all about player power and getting rid of gameplay annoyances. Very fast resupply, onboard self-repair and self-regen, maybe some kind of 'supermaneuverability' (glide, blink, I dunno). Maybe some Gundam bull**** like armed drones you could deploy and recall. Systems that rewarded getting in close and mixing it up, Doom 4 style — man, a ship that rewarded ramming would be SO cool.

If the Terran GTVA's 'color pie' (their slice of gameplay mechanics, their design theme) is TAG, drones, small fighters and beam-armed warships, and the UEF's color pie is superfighters, missiles, and projectile weapons, then the Vasudan color pie would need to bring something new. A big theme was/is going to be the divide between Imperial Vasudan Navy line units and the 'royal guard' Medjai.

Fighter models would probably come from Inferno/Earth Defense.

There would also definitely be next-gen Zod capships. We talked about using Esarai's ships if we didn't find anything better.

 
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
man, a ship that rewarded ramming would be SO cool.

I'll see your beam-heavy alpha strike, and raise you a swarm of Hiigaran salvage corvettes.

  

Offline starlord

  • 210
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
might any mechanic similar to I-war's aggressor shield be doable in FS2? That could introduce the idea of ramming...

 

Offline Buckshee Rounds

  • 29
  • Lord Defecator
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
Could do a few interesting things for the Zods, but I'm not sure how Vasudanesque they'd be. Did BP use emps much? How about a long-range emp weapon? Shield dampeners? Rapid fire beams in the vein of the mekhu hl-7? How about a fighter beam that's ineffective against shields but can lance subsystems off capships?

Really what we need is some good old fashioned Headz. Vasudan marines ftw!

EDIT: How about a troopship that launches shielded pods for troop insertion, like odsts but in space?

 

Offline crizza

  • 210
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
In one BP mission we have GEFs boarding a zod ship, only to scream "They have freaking power swords" or something along the line.
Afterwards I always picture vasudan marines in power armor :D

 
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
"A wild gameplay speculation thread appears !"
[...]

Let's see, historically Vasudan strikecrafts tended to have a mobility advantage over their Terran counterparts, so that's one thing that might be interesting to push further. In the context of BP, the Tevs have SSMs as their fancy subspace tech, I'd love to see zod fighters & bombers zip around the battlespace using short distance subspace jumps (and that's totally not because I've had that kind of ability on my TODO list for ages).

Self-regen would be an interesting way to deal the Vasudan's "trademark" fragility. Another thing I had in mind would be some kind of adaptive armor or shield, the more you get hit with certain types of weapons, the more resilient you are to them until you get hit by something else (do we have scripting hooks into the "apply-damage" methods ?).

Finding a way to get the player to be DOOM-style hyper aggressive would certainly be something ^^. A close-range shield-drain might be interesting, a Mass Effect Vanguard charge (including the extra shield) would be fun and tie into the whole "let's ram stuff" thing :).

As for capships... a ramming frigate would be cool ? :D

 
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
As for capships... a ramming frigate would be cool ? :D

I already made one! :mad2:

 

Offline Aesaar

  • 210
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
The Colossus got rammed by an Orion and the Hades by a Typhon and neither caused meaningful damage.  Ramming is not a viable tactic for capital ships in FS.

And significant engine limitations stand in the way of making ramming look good.

 
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
A ramming corvette or cruiser looks good IMO; anything bigger is meh. You'll run into balancing issues as well if you can take out a Sath with a Orion ramming at jump speed (not that awkward slowbot that tried to ram the Colossus).

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
Fighters though. Normally collisions are really bad for you, it'd be interesting to mix that up.

 
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
Forget about damage, ramming will point those frontal beams somewhere else.

 
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
Yeah, that's kinda what ramming frigates were all about in HW:Cataclysm.

As for fighters, I'm guessing you could try to mess things up via scripting ($On Ship Collision).
- You could make a ship with a dedicated ram bow, and reduce the amount of damage you take when hitting another fighter with it, while dealing extra damage to the poor chap and/or stun it.
- You could try to make a space bumper car :)
- It could be cool if you could latch onto your target then do stuff to it - shred it, wollolo it, throw it at something gravity-gun-style, subspace it away, life/shield/weapon-drain it, etc.
- You could ghost into it and *assume direct control*
- You could steal something from it like that asshole bot from Descent 2

 

Offline Bryan See

  • Has anyone really been far as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
  • 210
  • Trying to redeem, but under Tiger Parents
    • Skype
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
I came across this thread, so I decided to opine in.

The GVF Serekh Taa could be based on the GVF Corybant because the tech room description for that model says it's a successor to the Serapis.

The Maa-kheru and Abatos seemed new to me, as with the GVC Akhenaten, GVCv Aaru and the GVD iKhemu-Sek. For their designs as to how they look like, I would suggest you could steal something like the models from Starblade, Galaxian 3 and Star Ixiom, as I did before.
Bryan See - My FreeSpace Wiki User Page (Talk, Contributions)

Full Projects:
Shattered Stars

Campaigns:
Lost in the Mist - Cyrene vs. Psamtik
FreeSpace: Reunited

Ships:
GTS Hygeia, GTT Argo, SC Raguel

Tools:
FSO TC/Game template

I've been under attack by Tiger Parents like Jennifer Pan...

 

Offline Nyctaeus

  • The Slavic Engineer
  • 212
  • My "FS Ships" folder is 582gb.
    • Minecraft
    • Exile
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
The Maa-kheru and Abatos seemed new to me, as with the GVC Akhenaten, GVCv Aaru and the GVD iKhemu-Sek. For their designs as to how they look like, I would suggest you could steal something like the models from Starblade, Galaxian 3 and Star Ixiom, as I did before.
What about big, freaking NO for stealing copyrighted models from other games and entire franchises? What about big, freaking NO for stealing anything?

Besides, if anyone is looking for zod ships, Inferno offer whatever people may need from our model pool.
Exile | Shadow Genesis | Inferno | Series Resurrecta  | DA Profile | P3D Profile

Proud owner of NyctiShipyards. Remember - Nyx will fix it!

All of my assets including models, textures, skyboxes, effects may be used under standard CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

 
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
I don't see how the stuff Bryan posted is related to BP in any form.

 

Offline Bryan See

  • Has anyone really been far as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
  • 210
  • Trying to redeem, but under Tiger Parents
    • Skype
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
I wanted to see how the next-gen Vasudan ships in BP look like.
Bryan See - My FreeSpace Wiki User Page (Talk, Contributions)

Full Projects:
Shattered Stars

Campaigns:
Lost in the Mist - Cyrene vs. Psamtik
FreeSpace: Reunited

Ships:
GTS Hygeia, GTT Argo, SC Raguel

Tools:
FSO TC/Game template

I've been under attack by Tiger Parents like Jennifer Pan...

 

Offline Mito [PL]

  • 210
  • Proud Member of Slavicus Mechanicus
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
They'll look just as the current-gen ships with the difference of being much more beefy and stuff.
How do you kill a hydra?

You starve it to death.

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: Next-Gen Vasudan Ships
They'll look just as the current-gen ships with the difference of being much more beefy and stuff.

There'll be new models used (eventually). We talked about using some of Esarai's ships if we could make them look Vasudan enough. Not sure that'll pan out.