Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: deep_eyes on April 29, 2002, 11:40:37 pm
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Remember how everyone thought it would be cool if FS2 randomly or even premade terrain surfaces in FS? do u think now this could become a realty? and if so, how hard would it be to code this?
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not hard if we got our hands on the code for Rogue Squadron as well, but since we dont, it can be rather painful as there would be a lot of new movement parameters to set. When is something a colision and when is it just an object traveling on another, how do you keep tanks and other ground units oriented the right way, poly limits will have to go through the roof.
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Originally posted by LtNarol
not hard if we got our hands on the code for Rogue Squadron as well, but since we dont, it can be rather painful as there would be a lot of new movement parameters to set. When is something a colision and when is it just an object traveling on another, how do you keep tanks and other ground units oriented the right way, poly limits will have to go through the roof.
well what about just terrain period? for now keep it simple. i can understand the polys and the texturing etc, which can be randomly generaded given some fine tuning to the code. but i am just saying like a recreation of a canyon or an area. obviously the land mass is going to run into infinity (freespace-infinity), so the tags i know would be, if u colide with terrain, u crash or DIE. thats somewhat common sense, but like also we already know the ships got anti grav drives so this means it might not happen.
god bless freespace physics.
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i meant ground based units, it would require some clever coding to make it so that ground unit can travel along the surface of terrain without constantly "crashing into it" and still have fighters be able to crash and die. Also, the ground units will have to stay to the terrain, more coding.
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Originally posted by LtNarol
i meant ground based units, it would require some clever coding to make it so that ground unit can travel along the surface of terrain without constantly "crashing into it" and still have fighters be able to crash and die. Also, the ground units will have to stay to the terrain, more coding.
well yes i understand this. well basically, heres what u do, u program the fs code to:
create a code entity where its similar to normal fs ships. IE movable "marines", or tanks. now, there would be a tag, assuming that the code is implemented into the core, that would allow certain "ships" or certain "players" entities in the game to not crash and burn or collide. see i would say, "ships" can colide, "gound units" dont collide.
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FS fighters wouldn't crash and die if they hit the ground. they don't blow up when you hit other things such as ships and asteroids. (and at much higher speeds than it would have while falling, i might add)
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Originally posted by Carl
FS fighters wouldn't crash and die if they hit the ground. they don't blow up when you hit other things such as ships and asteroids. (and at much higher speeds than it would have while falling, i might add)
exactly, more relife-planet-gravity physics implemented with the freespace physics.
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anyway, if you just want a land model, you can alraedy have this just make a large pof with a lot of mass and density. I've done it before, it works well. The only pb is that you'll need a lot of polys or it'll look ugly, and then, this means low end computers will suffer. Implementing landscapes requires that you improve the general performances of the engine first. I have pics of those landscapes somewhere, if someone wants, i'll post them.
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Post them.
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Originally posted by venom2506
anyway, if you just want a land model, you can alraedy have this just make a large pof with a lot of mass and density. I've done it before, it works well. The only pb is that you'll need a lot of polys or it'll look ugly, and then, this means low end computers will suffer. Implementing landscapes requires that you improve the general performances of the engine first. I have pics of those landscapes somewhere, if someone wants, i'll post them.
And unless your POF is a model of the entire planet's terrain (which would be huge, even without arbitrary poly limits), you'd be able to fly around and see the other side of it.
What do you do about that?
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Originally posted by _argv[-1]
And unless your POF is a model of the entire planet's terrain (which would be huge, even without arbitrary poly limits), you'd be able to fly around and see the other side of it.
What do you do about that?
there's a 60 km limit for the battelfield. if the model is larger, there's no way you can reach the edge.
(http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/ott/variouspics/rockf05.jpg) that's a small, quite accidented one. no smooth mapping
(http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/ott/variouspics/land02.jpg)
This one is much larger, smoothed. you can't reach the end, you'll dir before ( easier on the resources, too ). sorry if the pic is a bit darkOh, about the size:
(http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/ott/variouspics/private/earth.jpg)
real size earth :p
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Originally posted by venom2506
there's a 60 km limit for the battelfield. if the model is larger, there's no way you can reach the edge.
What happens if you try?
that's a small, quite accidented one. no smooth mapping
Looks nice to me. Like fighting in a cave, like inside a big asteroid or something. Cool...
Oh, about the size:
real size earth :p
Dear lord, it's huge!!! But you don't actually model all of the planet's terrain, just wrap a texture on a spheroid... Sigh. If only 3D engines could model the terrain of an entire planet in view at one time, *drool*
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Well, you can do like flight sims do, make it low level of detail and handle the detail with good textures. Unless you plan on getting out of the ship, should be ok.
As for implementing a terrain engine, I can point to some sample code, but that could be complicated to integrate ;)
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Yeah but the planet is the scale, which is something in itself in a way.
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Originally posted by _argv[-1]
--What happens if you try?
you'll die by a collision with yourself lol ( no, it's not a joke )
--Looks nice to me. Like fighting in a cave, like inside a big asteroid or something. Cool...
that's the idea, in fact :) there's two models there, first, I tried with only one, it runed smoothly ( I put a huge asteroid field max settings) moving at full speed, it made a very cool looking asteroid shower :)
--Dear lord, it's huge!!! But you don't actually model all of the planet's terrain, just wrap a texture on a spheroid... Sigh. If only 3D engines could model the terrain of an entire planet in view at one time, *drool*
I dunno if 3D engines could handle that, but your computer sure wouldn't ;)
The only thing, imho, that needs to be done for realistic landscape simulation in FS2, is "in air" physics ( nothing fancy, just that if you lower your throttle at 0, you fall to the ground, and the possibility, in Fred2, to switch the background to a blue gradient rather than a starfield. Hmm, no, not blue, RGB values, so you can simulate any planet you want.
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Originally posted by venom2506
. Hmm, no, not blue, RGB values, so you can simulate any planet you want.
If Star Trek can paint a sky orange, yellow, green, pink, or red and call it another planet - so can we! (-:
Good looking stuff, Venom. Cool Earth model - does it rotate once every 24 hours perchance? (-:
--TurboNed
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Originally posted by TurboNed
Good looking stuff, Venom. Cool Earth model - does it rotate once every 24 hours perchance? (-:
lol, I thought about it, and figured: who would be crazy enough to wait in the mission just to notice the rotation?
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:nervous:
I might just be that stubborn :D
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ok... we need to do several things:
better asteroid fields, and make capships automatically defend themselves against asteroids [they have guns, they can shoot their own way through asteroid fields with primary non-beam weapons [or fighter particle beams]]
celestial objects - like planets, stars, black holes, etc which would have gravity wells and certain physics alterations as you get near them... ie a planet would have a set of distances MaxAtmosphere and StartAtmosphere - the distances at which the Atmosphere becomes it's "thickest" and the distance at which it begins - if you go past MaxAtmosphere the game momentarily pauses and switches from Space-flight mode to Terrain-Skimming mode, or with Stars if you get so close you burn up, or black holes you get pulled in [all celestial objects will have a $gravity coefficient.. earth being g=9.81m/(s*s) would be 1, something that's 19.62m/(s*s) would be 2, etc
Terrain-Skimming mode for skimming planets, some format for expressing permanant terrain features would have to be created.. i leave implementation to the terrain-experts
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Originally posted by Kazan
better asteroid fields, and make capships automatically defend themselves against asteroids [they have guns, they can shoot their own way through asteroid fields with primary non-beam weapons [or fighter particle beams]]
They already do that. The only reason they can't get through an asteroid field on their own is that their weapons suck. Their flak guns do hardly any damage and have short range; their anti-fighter beams can only fire on one asteroid at a time per gun (and they do pretty lousy damage too -- it takes much more hull damage to blow up an asteroid than it does to blow up a fighter); they can't fire their big beams at asteroids; and their lasers are weak and slow. If you improve their weapons (by making flak guns do some appreciable damage, and by making laser pulses fly fast and hit hard), they will plow through asteroid fields with no problem.
To produce capships capable of defending themselves, the laser turrets should fire at least as fast as the Kayser and do at least twice as much damage. Flak guns should do 4 times the damage. Anti-fighter beams are fine, since they're just not designed for shooting at rocks anyways, and they're quite effective against fighters, so don't bother with them. Big beams they only fire at big ships, so don't bother with them, either. Once these modifications are made, sit back and enjoy the show!
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Surely that would mean all those damage factors wouldapply to other ships too - including poor old Alpha 1. :eek:
Why not just weaken the strength of an asteroid, instead? :rolleyes:
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Originally posted by Kellan
Surely that would mean all those damage factors wouldapply to other ships too - including poor old Alpha 1. :eek:
Why not just weaken the strength of an asteroid, instead? :rolleyes:
Actually, in FreeSpace 1, I did just that. It actually made the game more fun, since the caps were actually a challenging target. It was still quite possible to win, though.
In FreeSpace 2, however, the missions make lots of assumptions about the relative strength of capship weapons. As a result, some missions are trivial jokes, and others are impossible. :(
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Originally posted by _argv[-1]
If you improve their weapons (by making flak guns do some appreciable damage, and by making laser pulses fly fast and hit hard), they will plow through asteroid fields with no problem.
Look in my siggy - the CapShip Turet Upgrade. :D
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Originally posted by sandwich
Look in my siggy - the CapShip Turet Upgrade. :D
I was looking just for this one post to come :lol:
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Originally posted by sandwich
Look in my siggy - the CapShip Turet Upgrade. :D
I wondered if anyone else thought the cap weapons were exceedingly weak...
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Originally posted by _argv[-1]
I wondered if anyone else thought the cap weapons were exceedingly weak...
Flak isn't, beams aren't, but turrets are.
Also, in FS2 at least, capships don't shoot asteroids.
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Originally posted by Redfang
Flak isn't, beams aren't, but turrets are.
Also, in FS2 at least, capships don't shoot asteroids.
Are you sure?! I could have sworn I saw the caps shooting at rocks... Could you make a quick mission with an asteroid field and see?
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Originally posted by venom2506
there's a 60 km limit for the battelfield. if the model is larger, there's no way you can reach the edge.
(http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/ott/variouspics/rockf05.jpg) that's a small, quite accidented one. no smooth mapping
(http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/ott/variouspics/private/earth.jpg)
real size earth :p
See, Venom got the right idea. its posisble. with a lil tweaking. BTW venom, can i have that wonderful land mass u created? would love to go shivan bashing in there!
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Originally posted by deep_eyes
See, Venom got the right idea. its posisble. with a lil tweaking. BTW venom, can i have that wonderful land mass u created? would love to go shivan bashing in there!
I'm not even sure I have it anymore, besides, shivan tends to crash into it rather than fight you :p
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Originally posted by venom2506
I'm not even sure I have it anymore, besides, shivan tends to crash into it rather than fight you :p
Such are the limitations of the AI.
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Originally posted by _argv[-1]
I wondered if anyone else thought the cap weapons were exceedingly weak...
Let me just say this: Turbolasers r00l. ;)
ISD: 3 Ravana: 1
;7
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Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
Let me just say this: Turbolasers r00l. ;)
ISD: 3 Ravana: 1
;7
her... BFRed rules:
Sathanas:4
ISD:0
:p
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Also a trick Dark and I talked about back in the "good old days" was for .pof terrain like Venom's setting a waypoint far away and giving the model orders to move there. (and set the speed)
The end result is that the player is constantly "falling" (the problem with this is that if a mission lasts a few hours, it might push the player out of the mission zone boundary vertically, however in the experiments with it, this problem never occured and changes in mission boundary couldn't be detected)
It's actually a good effect to do gravity.
However with the sourcecode open, an edit in the engine wash code could lead to giving ships a gravity rating. (i.e. all ships emanate a type of "engine wash" that has a mass rating like with weapons, give a capship negative mass and it has a gravitational pull, give it positive and pushes you away) As it is I've gotten this trick to work with an engine subsystem, (ala the engine wash) with the sourcecode this could be made much easier to do.
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Originally posted by Ace
Also a trick Dark and I talked about back in the "good old days" was for .pof terrain like Venom's setting a waypoint far away and giving the model orders to move there. (and set the speed)
The end result is that the player is constantly "falling" (the problem with this is that if a mission lasts a few hours, it might push the player out of the mission zone boundary vertically, however in the experiments with it, this problem never occured and changes in mission boundary couldn't be detected)
It's actually a good effect to do gravity.
I've had this idea too, but I discarded it for one reason: when you're supposed to fly horizontaly, you're still falling. You're obliged to fly "the nose up", and this is not cool :p
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Originally posted by venom2506
her... BFRed rules:
Sathanas:4
ISD:0
:p
Her... BFGreen rules. Also, Sathanas is highly vulnerable to attacks from anywhere other than the front, where all the firepower is pointed. What a load. Even a small fleet of destroyers can take out a Sathanas with patience. (I know, I tested this.) Colossus has most of its firepower on the sides, and each main gun has a 180 degree firing angle, covering the front, rear, top, and bottom. Oh yeah, and did I mention BFGreen rules?
Colossus: 14
ISD: -1
ISD taking on the Colossus? Yeah, fat chance, captain.
The Colossus would have won Their Finest Hour, too, if it had BFGreens, engines, and full hull strength. If the Colossus had jumped out and jumped back in behind the Sathanas, it would have been a f*cking slaughter, too, since Sathanas needs to recharge its jump drives or turn around, and doesn't have nearly enough time to do either. But I digress. The point is the Colossus kicks large quantities of rear. 'Nuff said.
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for some reason, I don't like supercaps...
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Originally posted by _argv[-1]
Her... BFGreen rules. Also, Sathanas is highly vulnerable to attacks from anywhere other than the front, where all the firepower is pointed. What a load. Even a small fleet of destroyers can take out a Sathanas with patience. (I know, I tested this.) Colossus has most of its firepower on the sides, and each main gun has a 180 degree firing angle, covering the front, rear, top, and bottom. Oh yeah, and did I mention BFGreen rules?
Colossus: 14
ISD: -1
ISD taking on the Colossus? Yeah, fat chance, captain.
The Colossus would have won Their Finest Hour, too, if it had BFGreens, engines, and full hull strength. If the Colossus had jumped out and jumped back in behind the Sathanas, it would have been a f*cking slaughter, too, since Sathanas needs to recharge its jump drives or turn around, and doesn't have nearly enough time to do either. But I digress. The point is the Colossus kicks large quantities of rear. 'Nuff said.
yeah, but the colossus is meant for war, the sathanas is... "checking the tbls"... the sathanas is an awacs :ha:
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Originally posted by venom2506
yeah, but the colossus is meant for war, the sathanas is... "checking the tbls"... the sathanas is an awacs :ha:
Now that's one BIG freakin' AWACS. :eek:
BTW, shouldn't the Sathanas' AWACS hardware be in its sensor subsystem, and not in its comm subsystem?
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I'll be surprised if we can get realistic atmospheric flight working under the FS2 engine (or through an "add-on" engine but seeing those images I just had go go make my own. :D
(http://members.aol.com/EdrickV/FS2/BubbleWorld01.jpg)
http://members.aol.com/EdrickV/FS2/BubbleWorld02.jpg
http://members.aol.com/EdrickV/FS2/BubbleWorld03.jpg
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These terrain mods look awesome! :jaw: :jaw:
BTW, shouldn't the Sathanas' AWACS hardware be in its sensor subsystem, and not in its comm subsystem?
There are a lot of little bugs in the tables like this if you look carefully. ;)
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I think everyone's missing a key issue with planets: distance.
Consider the Earth model. It's 900,000m away. There is no way a ship could fly that far in a reasonable ammount of time. Therefore, flying from that high up to the surface is a non-issue.
IMO, the only way of doing the transfer from space to airspace effectively is with an actual change of map with some kind of break (probably similar to the in-flight briefing). Above all, the transfer should only happen when the mission designer wants it to.
This means that planets are still scenery from space, and when you're on the ground you don't have to worry about the whole planet, just the bit of terrain you're in.
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Originally posted by NotDefault
I think everyone's missing a key issue with planets: distance.
This means that planets are still scenery from space, and when you're on the ground you don't have to worry about the whole planet, just the bit of terrain you're in.
Soooo, implement a system like Descent 3's outside stuff where you can fly around outside, but there's an artificial "ceiling" imposed on you and rocky mountains around the border of the terrain?
That's a system I'm not wholly opposed to. It certainly seems the most do-able of anything proposed so far.
Out of curiosity - isn't Falcon 4's source code released? Just a weird little thought-like-thing that I had.
--TurboNed
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If we really want to implement a terrain system into this, it might be a good idea to simply drop in another engine and make the game kind of based on two engines. As Turboned said, there would not really be any point in the game where the player would have to switch between the terran and space engines due to the sheer vastness of each setting, so the game could simply preload the stuff for one engine into a memory at a time, depending on what the mission requires. It would take a lot of work, but this whole terrain thing is pretty ambitious in the first place. ;)
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what about having the different level of details with the distances of the switch between lods like now, but with the engine that switch not all the model but only the parts of the model that are too far?
i mean:
you have your planet, from space, at big distances, you see the low detail model, it is flat and the details are only textures
you approach the surface, you see the high detail lod with landscape modeled, mountains, buildings and so over, but only in a close range of view, outside this range of view you see only the medium level of detail, and for the parts of the model more far, the parts that you can't see o that are very far, again the low level of detail
i don't know if it would be possible to have the engine to switch the from one lod to another to render different parts of the same object...and there will be probably the problm of an enormous pof to be loaded at the begnning
an alternative may be to have the details as single objects and to set the distances of the switch for any single elment of the landscape....true pain in the ass.....and with some probs: you will have too targettable elements
second alternative may be like the first one, but instead of having different pofs for any details, the details will be subobjects of a single pof, but you must be able to set "switching distance" for any single subobjects .. in this way you don't have too things targettable
obviuosly i don't mean to model all the landscape of all the surface of a planet...eh;)
just the areas where the action will be....
imagine you have to approach the surface of a planet form space... not all the trajectoris (its the right word?) will be safe... only certain...you can set waypoints to be reached in order to enter the atmosphere, or you will explode, so you can create a situation wher a player can reach only specific areas of a planet, the areas you will have to model
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Actually the Descent 3 style can already be done, a terrain ground, then an invisible dome, or you just have the terrain so large that the 60km bounding box you can't do past.
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Originally posted by Ace
Actually the Descent 3 style can already be done, a terrain ground, then an invisible dome, or you just have the terrain so large that the 60km bounding box you can't do past.
The big problem about doing D3 style terrain (or rather what I call a "bubble world") isn't whether or not it can be done. Because I did it. My bubble world wasn't very big, but it was a 5 minute model and IIRC was about 400 polys. (And I never bothered to do very good texturing or even texture the walls/roof with a sky texture.) The pic I showed here was the bubble world with the atmospheric nebula from the Robotech MOD, which I threw in to see how it'd look. The big problem is polys. The terrain in D3 encompases a huge area with, I believe, 65278 polys. And that's just the terrain itself. Granted, we probably don't need an area quite that big, but keeping the poly count low while avoiding bad looking terrain is not easy. Exactly how high the practical limits for something like that would go, I don't know. I've expanded my bubble world and it's about 1000 polys. Haven't tested it yet 'cause the last time I put it in FRED 2 I got sharded. :) I've done some terrain fixes since then though and will need to test it again. (And with better texturing then the first time around.)
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Originally posted by _argv[-1]
Her... BFGreen rules. Also, Sathanas is highly vulnerable to attacks from anywhere other than the front, where all the firepower is pointed. What a load. Even a small fleet of destroyers can take out a Sathanas with patience. (I know, I tested this.)
After a while the Sathanas might just turn around. Just maybe.
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Takes quite a while. Fat ol' spacecow has the RTS jets of a brick.
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Originally posted by EdrickV
Exactly how high the practical limits for something like that would go, I don't know
you can go up to 5000, but you'll have to cut it in subobjects of 800 polys max
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Originally posted by venom2506
you can go up to 5000, but you'll have to cut it in subobjects of 800 polys max
Is that a max poly limit set by software? (including PCS/Cob2*) Or is that the max people have found to be stable?
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Originally posted by Alikchi
After a while the Sathanas might just turn around. Just maybe.
$Name: SJ Sathanas
$Rotation time: 200.0, 200.0, 200.0
And let me tell you, with a destroyer fleet on its ass, it takes a lot less than 200 seconds to take it out.
And even if it does manage to turn around, remember that the destroyers have engines, too -- they can stay behind it.
And if the 'spacecow' tries to mini-jump to turn itself around or jump in behind the destroyers, remember the destroyers can mini-jump too.
It's all about tactics. With good tactics (and enough destroyers), the GTVA can easily wipe the floor with any Shivan hardware :V: has presented us with. Ravana? Boanerges bait. Lucifer? Reactors, 'nuff said. (Take 'em out with beams if it's shielded -- remember beams are shield piercing!) Sathanas? Swarm from behind with destroyers.
Oh yeah, and you don't even need the destroyers if you swarm the juggie with bombers. 70 Sekhmets can do a number on its engines and weapons in quite a hurry, preventing it from jumping out, and finishing it off is rather a piece of cake after that. (You'd be surprised how well the AI works when it's commanding not 4 or 8 but 70 bombers...)
The Shivans should be glad for Command's inability to swarm their juggernaut fleet during the Second Great War (due to a serious resource stretch), or they and their pissy juggernaut fleet would be smoldering space debris drying out in Capella's corona right now.
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Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
Let me just say this: Turbolasers r00l. ;)
ISD: 3 Ravana: 1
;7
You go, warsie. :p
Beams have style.
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Originally posted by _argv[-1]
$Name: SJ Sathanas
$Rotation time: 200.0, 200.0, 200.0
And let me tell you, with a destroyer fleet on its ass, it takes a lot less than 200 seconds to take it out.
And even if it does manage to turn around, remember that the destroyers have engines, too -- they can stay behind it.
And if the 'spacecow' tries to mini-jump to turn itself around or jump in behind the destroyers, remember the destroyers can mini-jump too.
It's all about tactics. With good tactics (and enough destroyers), the GTVA can easily wipe the floor with any Shivan hardware :V: has presented us with. Ravana? Boanerges bait. Lucifer? Reactors, 'nuff said. (Take 'em out with beams if it's shielded -- remember beams are shield piercing!) Sathanas? Swarm from behind with destroyers.
Oh yeah, and you don't even need the destroyers if you swarm the juggie with bombers. 70 Sekhmets can do a number on its engines and weapons in quite a hurry, preventing it from jumping out, and finishing it off is rather a piece of cake after that. (You'd be surprised how well the AI works when it's commanding not 4 or 8 but 70 bombers...)
The Shivans should be glad for Command's inability to swarm their juggernaut fleet during the Second Great War (due to a serious resource stretch), or they and their pissy juggernaut fleet would be smoldering space debris drying out in Capella's corona right now.
thats' the kind of stupid argument I hate, coz it always has the same flaw: you want to say the jugg is crap, so you add a dozen destroyers against it, blablabla. easy. Take the apocalypse, I place 20 sathanas behind, it's fried. That's such a stupid statement. Why do people ALWAYS add more and more ships to a side, and will ALWAYS let the ship they want to destroy alone? If the GTVA puts 5 hecates behind a sathanas, the shivan will pop out 5 ravana to take them down, and the hecates will be ownt. 70 sekhmet? 70 maras to face them. The shivans have more resources, so at this game, they win, period.
You're talking about tactics? In RTS, your tactic is called tank rush :p (that's why 70 sekhmet will be efficient even with a poor AI, just like 70 wraith in Starcraft will be more efficient than 4 or 8 )
This reply is not meant to be rude, but I've heard this kind of argumentation way too much...
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Originally posted by venom2506
thats' the kind of stupid argument I hate, coz it always has the same flaw: you want to say the jugg is crap, so you add a dozen destroyers against it, blablabla. easy. Take the apocalypse, I place 20 sathanas behind, it's fried. That's such a stupid statement. Why do people ALWAYS add more and more ships to a side, and will ALWAYS let the ship they want to destroy alone? If the GTVA puts 5 hecates behind a sathanas, the shivan will pop out 5 ravana to take them down, and the hecates will be ownt. 70 sekhmet? 70 maras to face them. The shivans have more resources, so at this game, they win, period.
You're talking about tactics? In RTS, your tactic is called tank rush :p (that's why 70 sekhmet will be efficient even with a poor AI, just like 70 wraith in Starcraft will be more efficient than 4 or 8 )
This reply is not meant to be rude, but I've heard this kind of argumentation way too much...
But we don't know that the Shivans have so many resources. They vaporized 80+ of their juggernauts and God knows how many destroyers, corvettes, cruisers, fighters, and whatever else they had in Capella when it blew.
Of course, the GTVA doesn't have much left either...
You're absolutely correct that this entire argument depends on the GTVA having more of fighters, bombers, destroyers, etc. I never said anything to the contrary. Actually that's why I said that the Shivans should count themselves lucky that the GTVA was so badly stretched in the Second Great War. If, say, there were no NTF, the GTVA would be much better prepared to deal with the Shivans. Considering the size of the NTF and the number of GTVA casualties they caused, I'd say the Shivans would have had a much harder time doing what they did.
As for their Ravanas etc, it takes a lot less firepower to take them down. Maybe 8 bombers and 4 fighters (or 8 fighters if the pilots are AI and not flying super-interceptors that do 200 cruising :D). So I guess it's just a matter of engaging every Shivan warship smaller than a supercap with bombers and fighters, and leaving the Shivan supercaps to bigger ships.
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Originally posted by _argv[-1]
But we don't know that the Shivans have so many resources. They vaporized 80+ of their juggernauts and God knows how many destroyers, corvettes, cruisers, fighters, and whatever else they had in Capella when it blew.
A lot of the Sathanas Fleet jumped out once they had influenced the Capella star.
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Originally posted by _argv[-1]
But we don't know that the Shivans have so many resources. They vaporized 80+ of their juggernauts and God knows how many destroyers, corvettes, cruisers, fighters, and whatever else they had in Capella when it blew.
If you think of it, you rather go my way with this statement :D if the shivans don't seem to care about sacrifying the equivallent of dunno how many times the GTVA fleet, I guess they have some serious backup waiting ;)
For the Ravan thing, it's back to the same loop: the ravana is better than an hecate. Of course it won't last long against a few bombers, but statistically speaking, if you consider that shivan and terran shiops have the same hangar capacities, the shivan fighters and bombers would be more numerous than the terran ones, coz they have more hangars ( moloch ). I have absolutly no doubt the shivans hgave limitless resources. the 80 sathanas are a perfect exemple. it took 30 years for the GTVA to build one colossus... and lmosing the colossus was a catastrophe for the GTVA. Ther shivan sacrified about 40 sathanas in one action! I know I repeat myself, but I think this is THE determinent proof that shivans have much more than the GTVA could even dream of, and whatever tactic they could use against the shivans, the bugs, if they really wanted ( or cared ) could wipe us out within a week.
"looking at the topic" whoa, we went seriously OT :p
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i dont recall there being many shivan vessels in Capella aside from the sathani...
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The topic is now "OT".;7
FOR REAL THOUGH, besides the interesting thoughts of u guys, what about the terrains. Now that the code is in our hands, and even DaveB, do you think it would be possible to implement these new features into the Freespace Engine. BTW i think should be either changed to the Freespace Forever engine which Kaazan is working on now that he actually has the code a week after he was gonna start on his project; or to "Freespace Prime", a supurb revamp of the FS2 Engine and enhanced to support all the features of todays games.
hint hint..............Open GL:jaw:
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Originally posted by venom2506
If you think of it, you rather go my way with this statement :D if the shivans don't seem to care about sacrifying the equivallent of dunno how many times the GTVA fleet, I guess they have some serious backup waiting ;)
For the Ravan thing, it's back to the same loop: the ravana is better than an hecate. Of course it won't last long against a few bombers, but statistically speaking, if you consider that shivan and terran shiops have the same hangar capacities, the shivan fighters and bombers would be more numerous than the terran ones, coz they have more hangars ( moloch ). I have absolutly no doubt the shivans hgave limitless resources. the 80 sathanas are a perfect exemple. it took 30 years for the GTVA to build one colossus... and lmosing the colossus was a catastrophe for the GTVA. Ther shivan sacrified about 40 sathanas in one action! I know I repeat myself, but I think this is THE determinent proof that shivans have much more than the GTVA could even dream of, and whatever tactic they could use against the shivans, the bugs, if they really wanted ( or cared ) could wipe us out within a week.
"looking at the topic" whoa, we went seriously OT :p
20 years, not 30.
The other possibility is that the Shivans destroyed Capella and sacrified 40 Sathani in order for the other 40 to jump some long distance (to another galaxy?), or perhaps to another universe. Remember how they jumped out just before Capella blew. The farthest they could have intrasystem jumped to would have been well within the blast radius of the supernova, so they were obviously using Capella for the sake of jumping some long distance.
On the subject of the supernova, there was one thing about it that was quite unrealistic. It would have taken at least 10 minutes for the shockwave to reach the player. Probably upwards 30 because of distance. Remember that the shockwave travels at a speed well below that of light. Yet the movie portrays the shockwave as having taken a matter of a few seconds to reach the player. The estimate of 10 minutes is relatively conservative, because that's what I think the difference would be between seeing the shockwave and getting hit by it.
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Originally posted by _argv[-1]
On the subject of the supernova, there was one thing about it that was quite unrealistic. It would have taken at least 10 minutes for the shockwave to reach the player. Probably upwards 30 because of distance. Remember that the shockwave travels at a speed well below that of light. Yet the movie portrays the shockwave as having taken a matter of a few seconds to reach the player. The estimate of 10 minutes is relatively conservative, because that's what I think the difference would be between seeing the shockwave and getting hit by it.
then again we dont know the actual distance from capella star to alpha 1. u also gotta remember, its in terms of "freespace". its possible that the blast coulda been hella fast, but not light speed.
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Originally posted by _argv[-1]
On the subject of the supernova, there was one thing about it that was quite unrealistic. It would have taken at least 10 minutes for the shockwave to reach the player. Probably upwards 30 because of distance. Remember that the shockwave travels at a speed well below that of light. Yet the movie portrays the shockwave as having taken a matter of a few seconds to reach the player. The estimate of 10 minutes is relatively conservative, because that's what I think the difference would be between seeing the shockwave and getting hit by it.
Two words - cinematic license. (-:
--TurboNed