[Silent Warrior]

Visible cockpit! I was thinking more like Wing Commander 3 or Prophecy. Plus-points if it moves around like in Starlancer. Come on, get to work now!

Ejection. Surely the GTVA will have invented space-parachutes by now? A credible retrieval-process, and you could possibly just use one o' them Hygeias or something. The escape-pods don't have to be big or anything. Ha, imagine the missions we could script with that!

DirectX 9 bells and whistles. Badassness.

A measure of motion blur would be nice, if it didn't eat all my resources and then some (Babylon 5: I've Found Her is REALLY nasty with motion blur enabled to my machine, which has no problem running, well, anything - so far). Snazzy, innit?

If the nebula could be made out of some kind of fog instead of these... 'poofs', I bet it would look prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrretty. If ships passing through could cause turbulence... *Continues to making completely impossible fog-related suggestions which WOULD without a doubt look awesome*

Someone spoke about perspective some time ago, hinting that ships in FS2 could look even more to scale. Well? What're you waiting for?

Also, I think the asteroids look a little funny... I can't point out anything precise, they just feel... strange. I guess I should just leave that one for Lightspeed. That's all for me for now.

[Zarax]

Persistent values at campaign level?
They would allow a new degree of continuity and logistic...
Basically it involves saving values like ship status and ammunition loadout on a file, and having FRED reading it...
Placing the ship's name as primary key will do most of the work imho...
Also, what about software trueform applied on loading (have mercy of the slow machine owners)?
Also, distance fogging may be useful in order to increase fps... just make it optional with a value... (maybe we will need a new launcher in order to support all the optional stuff).

[KARMA]

Originally posted by Zarax
Persistent values at campaign level?
They would allow a new degree of continuity and logistic...
Basically it involves saving values like ship status and ammunition loadout on a file, and having FRED reading it...

already there, althought with some limitations

[Zarax]

Karma, are you italian?

[Zarax]

Oh, can you also make fred display only the compatible weapons when you change them from ship settings?

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Silent Warrior

If the nebula could be made out of some kind of fog instead of these... 'poofs', I bet it would look prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrretty. If ships passing through could cause turbulence... *Continues to making completely impossible fog-related suggestions which WOULD without a doubt look awesome*

MMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Tachyon: The Fringe style nebula fogging.  Make the nebulas look really thick and soupy and hard to see in.

[KARMA]

Originally posted by Zarax
Karma, are you italian?

direi di si:)

[Zarax]

Bene, fa piacere trovare italiani nei forum internazionali...
Da dove più di preciso?

[Singh]

Originally posted by mikhael


MMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Tachyon: The Fringe style nebula fogging.  Make the nebulas look really thick and soupy and hard to see in.

Yup. Tachyon was a good game- had some of the best nebulas i've seen

Never knew anyone else actually played it tho

*wonders if he cant convert the claymore bomber or the warhammer into FS2* hmm...

[mikhael]

I've got a half finished Battleaxe here some where, as well as the first Bora ship you get. I've really got to finish those one day. I'd love to see them used in Freespace. Wasn't too fond of the Galspan designs though. They were lovely to look at and great to fly but you just feel kinda... you know... unmanly flying them. They're so... pretty.

As I recall, Phreak likes Tachyon too, and I think Thorn does too.

[phreak]

i never played Tachyon.  I think i was too busy with IW2 or something.  Not to mention i didn't have much money.

[SadisticSid]

Tachyon was so unfulfilling for me I took it back to EB the next day... too short, the missions were verging on the ridiculous in some cases (stealing the roof of the Sistine Chapel???), it was buggy and the endings were very, very poor.

[kasperl]

idea, a command line option to break multi and increase the tbl limit of 130 ships. this way, mod's could go OTT and multi would still work for some stuff.

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by kasperl
idea, a command line option to break multi and increase the tbl limit of 130 ships. this way, mod's could go OTT and multi would still work for some stuff.

This is an absolutely brilliant Idea.

[Goober5000]

You can't do it that way. You have to completely recompile the code whichever way you do it.

[Black Wolf]

Well...err...poo. How about a system where major releases from here on in are done in both standard 130 limit and multiplayer broken 255 limit? The Inferno build's an OK temporary measure, but it's updated infrequently compared to the standard build, and if Woo decides inferno doesn;t need a feature, it gets left out, which represents a bit of a problem for any of us others trying to use all the FS features and high numbers of ships.

[phreak]

actually the inferno build is a mirror of the SCP build with more limits

[Black Wolf]

Oh... I seem to recall discussions previously where things were being remopved and suchlike. Still, I'm more than happy to be wrong

[Flaser]

This is a concept for overhauling the damage calculation I've already posted several posts about the issue - I try to simplyfy and evolve it.

Multistage Developed -  Improoved Damage Simulation[/size]

Stage I - Improoved Damage Formulae

Damage Treshold / Damage Resistance - Damage calculation system

A basic overhaul of the current damage system and instead the exiting - and somewhat hackish- flag system.
It will use a separate armor.tbl which either contains a variety of armors or is an addenda to ships.tbl.

Damage calculation is now: (Weapon Damage - Armor Treshold)*(100% - Armor Resistance(%))

The treshold simulates the deflection power of the armor - this will put an end to all the HUGE, BIG SHIP and ect. flag frenzy that never seemed to offer a perfect solution.

Armor Resistance is not really necessary at this point since you can simply assign higher hit points to bigger capships, but if you wish you can already simulate hevier armor plating and stuff like that.

Stage II - Armor Strengh Simulation

Penetrating Damage =  (WeaponDamage -  Damage Treshold*ArmorHp(%))  (100% - Damage Resistance(%)*ArmorHp(%))

Armor Damage = (WeaponDamage - Damage Treshold * ArmorHp(%))*Damage Resistance(%) / Armor Endurance

Penetrating Damage = the old damage value aplied to the ship as usual
Armor HP = pretty self explanatory - the status of the armor
Armor Damage = this will be substracted from the ArmorHp
Armor Endurace - think of it as the armor resistance to falling apart. It simulates that even if the armor takes damage (absorbing it) it's stucture is less deformed than the interior of a ship, since the armor was designed to do so.

This advanced model introduces the wear of the armor - so the ammount of damage will gradually increase. That way a tiny fighter will be able to deal the last shot to a destroyer if the bombers already ravaged it with their heavy bombs.

This is the point where armor resistance becomes necessary - it actually simulates the ammount of damage the armor absorbs when a shot goes through it.

Stage III - Localised Armor Stats

Self Explanatory title - segments of the ship have their own armor simulation - prelude to true armor plate simulation

Stage IV - Segmented Damage Model

Once Segments are defined in Stage III - they can be used for simulating damage to individual parts of a warship.

Stage IV-2 - Complex Segmented Damage model

Segments have key components(subsystems) that dictate the segments performance.

Stage V - True Surface Damage Simulation

Development of true armorplate simulation on the surface of the ship.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stage VI-A - True Geometric Armor Plate Simulation

Armor plates have a thickness - may be impossible due computing needs
They take damage accordingly

Stage VI-B - True Geometric Damage Model

Ship sections take damage based on the penetration of projectiles into the ship's interior.

Requires advanced ship parts with varied components - uses the already suggested Reliability/Performance/Repair system with key/secondary systems in a subsystem or a ship section.

[Goober5000]

Erm.  Good concept, but we'd have to completely redesign the engine to implement it.  You'd probably see multiple docking before this.