Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Inferno => Topic started by: CT27 on September 09, 2020, 06:46:01 pm
-
Plot-wise, at the time of Inferno: Nostos, how close is the Icanus to completion?
-
Icanus is not confirmed in new Nostos continuity so far. If it appear, it's unlikely to be somekind of insane warship but perhaps something more sophisticated.
-
Does that mean the original Gigas plans for Inferno could get changed too? IIRC the original plan was for a superjuggernaut Icanus to be used a response to a superjuggernaut Gigas.
-
We certainly don't want stupid superjugg vs superjugg battle as old Inferno was supposed to portray. Future of Icanus is uncertain at this point, but Gigas is more likely to happen. If we decide to introduce Gigas, it will be something more then just oversized warship hellbent on destroying Earth.
Let me say it this way: High-poly asset for Gigas exist and it's even textured. At this point we're debating how to introduce this thing to Nostos timeline, but plans are loose. We're focused on upgrading Nostos R1 and upcoming Nostos R2.
-
Well, supercaps are interesting when properly used as plot devices.
One could envision a mission arc where you slowly "starve the beast" by cutting its logistics and depleting its fighter and bomber wings, so that you can finally strike at some subsystem that would enable your fleet a chance...
Rather than sending capital ship after capital ship dragonball-style (or your 21st century equivalent), fabian tactics applied to space war could make for a decent story.
I agree that old inf storyline that consumed more capital ships than pop-corn at a movie theater was over the top (but hey, we were all younger back then!) but Volition made two stellar games with the "big bad ship" theme...
-
We have nothing against "big bad ships". Inferno already introduced one of them in form of Vidyadhar superdestroyer. Gigas is likely to appear, but it won't be just ridiculously large warship designed to engage enemy fleets. It's sheer size must have some point, but being just a giant warships for being giant warship is wasting resources for something, that is in turn also logistics nightmare. Gigas is already shortened from 22 to about 11km. It's real purpose, probably associated with some strange, subspace magic is being debated inside our team.
As for Icanus, this thing is ridiculous especially for terran usage. As we slowly rework EA from "generic space nazist" faction to more intelligent and cunning enemy, we also drop ridiculous things. EA proved that they can build smaller warships [Nemesis] capable of engaging much larger targets, like Sathanas. They really don't need such a thing. Instead they can maintain balanced fleet of high tonnage, full of specialized capitalship designs and easily roll out new forces to the frontline as situation change.
-
A pity for the change as it reduces the fear factor of the gigas, but I suppose it’s understandable given how hard it would be to get from point a to point b on this ship.
-
I, C, Anus development...
I had to.
-
Someone misspelt Icaunis (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icaunis) maybe.
-
"...shortened to 11KM". Damn, I wanna see that now. :nod: Also wanna see the 22k version. ;)
Just a thought - would a 22k ship be the largest ship in a space game?
-
"...shortened to 11KM". Damn, I wanna see that now. :nod: Also wanna see the 22k version. ;)
I know I know... :( It's at best twice as long as a Sath, pretty big but not overwhelming. :sigh:
Just a thought - would a 22k ship be the largest ship in a space game?
Neither in FS nor in scifi games in general.
-
I'm still arguing for a Gigas-Icanus supercap duel, even if the both the Gigas and Icanus are reduced in size. We've also floated ideas of the "Icanus" being...something else entirely ;7
The main argument has been that it's incredibly difficult to make a mission around something of that scale that is meaningful.
"...shortened to 11KM". Damn, I wanna see that now. :nod: Also wanna see the 22k version. ;)
You can see the 22km version in INFR1 (and in the FS wiki (https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/SSJ_Gigas))
-
I'm still arguing for a Gigas-Icanus supercap duel, even if the both the Gigas and Icanus are reduced in size.
Personally I'd like to see a 22km Gigas vs a 11km Icanus, but that's just my personal opinion~
-
I’d be curious to know what its sub space weapon looks like (or that of the Sathanas for that matter).
Also, I tend to agree with nightmare, but I’d understand if it was impossible.
-
We have nothing against "big bad ships". Inferno already introduced one of them in form of Vidyadhar superdestroyer. Gigas is likely to appear, but it won't be just ridiculously large warship designed to engage enemy fleets. It's sheer size must have some point, but being just a giant warships for being giant warship is wasting resources for something, that is in turn also logistics nightmare. Gigas is already shortened from 22 to about 11km. It's real purpose, probably associated with some strange, subspace magic is being debated inside our team.
As for Icanus, this thing is ridiculous especially for terran usage. As we slowly rework EA from "generic space nazist" faction to more intelligent and cunning enemy, we also drop ridiculous things. EA proved that they can build smaller warships [Nemesis] capable of engaging much larger targets, like Sathanas. They really don't need such a thing. Instead they can maintain balanced fleet of high tonnage, full of specialized capitalship designs and easily roll out new forces to the frontline as situation change.
I fully agree with adding more depth to EA and move away from capships as main measurement stick for campaign progress.
If anything, in my personal speculation an isolated EA would have gone in a completely different path technology-wise, especially as an isolated system would lack the resources available to GTVA.
I definitely wouldn't see them as space nazis, more like a culture shaped by its isolation and fear of annihilation, with every single scarce resource dedicated to looking for an escape from the solar system and watching for any sign of Shivan activity, possibly with the assumption that what was left of GTA and Vasudans have been exterminated already.
Something like the Icanus could be seen as a project to grant humanity a last chance to escape, basically attempting to replicate Shivan ability to navigate unstable nodes and possibly the Lucifer's capital ship shielding. More an ark than a juggernaught in concept, its size being more about preserving a self-sustainable population than to fight capital ships.
-
I'd hope their land armies/marines/conventional forces would be absolutely razor sharp.
-
I'd hope their land armies/marines/conventional forces would be absolutely razor sharp.
Honestly I suspect they would get as much priority as the Italian army in WWII: given that Shivans prefer to glass planets from space, they would get the scraps.
-
I imagine a **** load of civil unrest post node collapse, maybe even civil war? If it's the only planet in the solar system with a natural ecosystem it'd make sense to not nuke it into oblivion leaving conventional war to decide victors.
-
We recently managed to obtain old INFA:SA files, and made some general upgrade. There is still a chance for the "EA history campaign" to happen.
-
"...shortened to 11KM". Damn, I wanna see that now. :nod: Also wanna see the 22k version. ;)
I know I know... :( It's at best twice as long as a Sath, pretty big but not overwhelming. :sigh:
Just a thought - would a 22k ship be the largest ship in a space game?
Neither in FS nor in scifi games in general.
There is a ship in FS larger than 22k? Now that I have to see :-)
-
The old Gigas is listed at 22k long, the kitbashed Vasudan Juggernaught is listed as 25k long in the wiki - outside of FS the largest "ship" in FSO would be the Vorlon Planetkiller (with a Max Radius of 29k in the .pof) & Drakh Mothership (with a Max Radius of 22k in the .pof) in TBP, both are more mobile scenery than ships actually (The Planetkiller has a single turret, guess what it does; the Mothership has launchbays for small capital ships)
The biggest objects I know to be in FSO would be the Gundam-inspired space colony in WoD (link (https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Space_Colony)) and the GTI Atlantis (link (https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/GTI_Atlantis)]
-
There was this peculiar ship being held in reserve by woomeister...
-
The Gargant was 37 km long or so.
-
37814m to be exact.
-
37814m to be exact.
So smol :(
-
The main challenge when it comes to ships like the Icanus, Gigas and Gargant is the fact that FreeSpace is set to be played from the perspective of a tiny spacecraft. Any mission involving both the player and one such ship has to be set in a way that wouldn't compromise immersion. Warships of that size do make perfect sense plot-wise, because we expect space faring civilizations to push engineering that far at some point in their history - getting them to work in a FreeSpace campaign is a nother matter, however. A proper and memorable appearance of any ship of this kind in a campaign is doable, but it has to be planned well into the details.
This "challenge" is also one of the reasons why we've never had, as far as I know, a campaign focused entirely on the GTVA Colossus. I remember trying to write a concept down for a campaign based on the Colossus itself, but I couldn't find any practical ideas that would make it peculiar in any way. If the Colossus was in place, the player wouldn't have any tangible influence on the outcome, and missions focused on escorting convoys meant to resupply the Colossus would derail from the main concept.
-
I agree on the difficulty, I also tried a few concepts featuring being chased by a Colossus-class and the main issue is avoiding to make the player feel unable to influence outcomes while trying to not make such a big ship the equivalent of an animated wallpaper...
In the end the main risk is to fall either into the "irreplaceable ship" trope or the "Battle of Endor" one. FS2 intelligently made us cripple the Sathanas before the climatic battle but that kind of cut the easiest ways to make a plot device.
Perhaps one could try a more formal military tone, where the focus is on killing enemy logistics and in the end you bleed the enemy by a thousand cuts, however I'm not sure it would fit with FS universe and it would be extremely complex to FRED.
-
I will make an Icanus command mission.
-
There are two main problems I see with large capital ship in an FS-verse setting
Number 1 is Mission Space - the standard model of FS combat designed about is around an average speed of 65 m/s and highly linear movement which means you get a mission space that is spherical from the starting point with a max radius of about 65 * t(mission time in seconds) - that's a radius of 58.500 m for max space if the player only moves linearly in one direction for 15 minutes without maxed afterburner (mission with a mission time above 15 minutes become increasingly unwieldly from a balancing standpoint, just on the ammount of time you spend running iterations to make balance solid). However, your player will not be going flying straight somewhere for 15 minutes, so the sphere generally shrinks dramatically - I usually get it down 20.000 unless something special is required, like 35.000 when reaching an point is actually a mission objective.
Having a ship that is entire lenght of that radius is means that you have going from one point to another on the ship might take up the entire space of the mission. Not to mention that the geometery of the ship might force you to fly certain paths, combat maybe forced into certain avenues by the enemy arrival positions and turret fire - which would contract the maximum space. Having the ship take up that much space also means that if it is the point of the mission to interact with that ship, you have to start to contract the space between the locations of the individual task into only a small section of the ship, which then requires a few logic pretzels to resolve (e.g. doing a "trench run"-scenario) or you wind up defeating the purpose of that ship size.
All that can be altered if you make your ships faster (higher average speed means more space), and introduce support ship hull repair or regerating health for the player (means you get to extend mission time). Another idea would do tactical jumps, but then you have to deal with the impact of the overall logic of the campaign (e.g. tactical jumps make the world of the story feel smaller because it forces the task on small group of actors).
EDIT: Note all figures are purely theoretical - most of the time (esspecially if you cut down mission time to 8-12 minutes) they tend to be much less.
Number 2 is general problem that the base model of FS capital ship interaction always has the "damage over"-trap door - because of how ship-to-ship and bomber-to-ship combat is established, it runs on a logic that shooting at thing enough will always make it explode; FS1 had introduce the Lucifer's unique plot shielding to get around that, FS2 flipped that in High Noon by making a point on how "just big guns the thing" was bearly working as a solution.
To desing the mission about a ship of large size, you have to respond to the logic of why the mission exists when the trap-door "just shoot it enough" is still existing.
While you can do some amazing solutions to that problem using SCP mechanics, e.g. armour types, and destroyable subsystems - but by the time you are finished that and implimented it across the board for consistency and training players to use it, you basically have turned the systems of ship-to-ship combat into something new.
-
There's nothing wrong with trench runs.
Change my mind.
-
There's nothing wrong with trench runs.
Change my mind.
Needs to be modelled, UVed, textured and converted.
Aka #effort
-
The NewGigas already has a convenient trench :P
-
Nah shadows of lylat mod could do great great things with an icanus.
-
I will make an Icanus command mission.
You ****in' better
-
Since it was brought up in this thread:
How big was the EASD Nemesis?
-
INFR1 was 3231m; Nostos (released as well as the upgraded one) is ~3680m.