1

The Modding Workshop / Re: Ship Interiors Project

« Last post by knight26 on May 18, 2024, 03:08:34 pm »

Ok, for those of us who are terrible at programming, how do we do that?  I tried adding it's flags to the FSO settings, but that didn't do it.

2

FreeSpace Discussion / Re: Ordering support ship to repair and rearm wingmen?

« Last post by BengalTiger on May 18, 2024, 01:28:18 pm »

There is a SEXP called "good-rearm-time" that overrides the AI's reluctance to rearm for any reason.

You could tie an events that uses it to a button press for an immediate fix. I would also recommend to increase the number of support ships at the same time if you do that.

It could get tied to an event triggered by a wingman having low health.

Some sort of IF Alpha 2 has less than 30% HP, then trigger the rearm.

3

FreeSpace Discussion / Re: Should the GTVA build a new frigate class of ships?

« Last post by BengalTiger on May 18, 2024, 01:24:57 pm »

I don't think that's a niche that really needs filling.  The Hecate packs enough of a punch to deal with anything smaller than a destroyer, and its firepower is diffuse enough that it can deal with several ships of that size at once.  Where the GTVA is weak is dealing with other capital ships.

If you could build several frigates for the cost of one Hecate, sure, but that's a very difficult question to answer since our information on the engineering and economics of shipbuilding in FreeSpace is extremely limited.  Off the top of my head we know that

• The Orion costs more to build that it costs to pay its crew of 10,000 for 3 years
• The Aelous was too expensive
• The Colossus took 20 years to build
• The NTF managed to build the Iceni in 18 months or less

If they could pump out Icenis they'd be very useful, they have as much firepower as a destroyer, are more manoeuvrable, are considerably smaller and therefore easier to defend and have 90% of the armour of the Terran destroyers, but who knows how replicable that design is.  Maybe it uses loads of rare materials.

A couple ships (this is canon, not mods) use the Subach HL-7, so fighter guns do exist in turrets.
If a Deimos was rearmed from THT to Prometheus S, and from the standard Terran Turrets to the HL-7, it would have a great increase in its damage delivery capability, at the cost of some range.
The longer range of the normal turret guns in FS 2 does not really mean much at all. The capital ships get zapped by beams and the small ships avoid the blobs mostly anyways (especially the huge turret).

Thus I postulate to replace the THT's with Prometheus S. The THT's are good in FS 1 era because they have lots of range, but the Prom reaches 1.5 km, so it's going to be better than any non-THT guns. Not to mention high velocity and good accuracy.

Now when it comes to dealing with destroyers and above, the Vasudans are good in the capital ship department.

Those who do not believe, set up a test mission - a duel of a Big Hat vs an Orion. Just make sure the Hat has the Orion above it (as there is no up or down in space, only where the guns can point or can't). The Orion gets spanked.
At close range when secondary guns and fusion mortars can reach, the Orion gets spanked bigly.

The Hat can also use all main guns while orbiting around a large ship, so in theory these can defeat a Sathanas if they are allowed to exit hyperspace and survive till they are in orbit. The Big Hat is a proper battleship.
I don't think that the GTVA fleet really needs frigates. The all around combatants are there - corvettes, and the carriers and battleships are also there.

Maybe a miniature Hatshepsut in the role of a frigate, so it would keep the firepower but lose the big hangar for some small docking bay (so it could have a few fighters for escort and scouting, but not a fleet of bombers). At about 1200-1500 meters this ship would fit in the frigate class, and it would be very dedicated to punching above its own weight...

But wait, there's more...
FS and FS 2 does not really explore much that happens beyond the front lines. Alpha 1 rarely escorts anything - there is the rare science ship, freighter or gas miner, but we just never get to see the behind friendly lines stuff too much.

This is where an Aeolus type B would be nice to have. Again, replace the THT with Prometheus, and up the AAA beams from 2 to 4 (so the belt turrets would be a 2-pack of AAA per side).
Regarding the cost of these ships - I have a strange feeling that a couple things happened.
First - the Aeolus was a testbed for new weapons and technologies. It's a very capable ship for its size.
Second - when the Aeolus entered production  the GTVA figured that let's go for bigger ships and it will be worth the cost. Thus the Deimos exists, and as I wrote above it's a good ship.
Third - the Aeolus gets cancelled after a short run due to not being able to compete with Deimos, so the unit cost will be high.
Fourth - the Deimos uses the tech pioneered on the Aeolus, and so the initial R&D is relatively small, and with it becoming the standard combat ship of the fleet, this cost gets distributed over a large quantity produced.

If the Aeolus gets restarted it could come at a lower price tag on its second run, even with some slight upgrades. Then it would be the cheaper of the two compared to the corvette, and would be a very welcome replacement for the FS 1 era cruisers in escort duties.

Now final note - regarding the NTF frigate - that was this one admiral's pet project. We know it was built quick, but who knows, they may have built a flotilla of corvettes for its price instead.

The GTVA should just build a bunch of maxim and trebuchet wielding gunboats that leave any larger ship drifting helplessly through space.

Those were rarely available, so it might be an indicator of the price.
There's also somewhat of a game balance and AI business here, as these weapons were more effective when Alpha 1 was using them than when the other pilots did.

4

FreeSpace Discussion / Re: Homeworld 3 is out, so I wrote a thing about FreeSpace.

« Last post by BengalTiger on May 18, 2024, 12:17:37 pm »

Good article.

I haven't played HW 3 yet, I'll wait for a sale.
The Steam reviews are mixed, and the negative ones have some very valid points (not even with much spoilers to the plot, but the gameplay and other non-story related).
Seems like the campaign is short, the ships are not intelligent (they forget orders, don't prioritize the right targets). Ship speed is out of whack to the point that fighters are slow, and I read the support frigate cannot keep up with the larger ships it's meant to support. That's not to mention they have some intrusive DRM thing that is not only intrusive to the player, but also to the PC resources...

That said, Cyberpunk was famous for being a disaster and then it evolved so much, so there is hope.

5

Series Resurrecta / Re: Series Resurrecta Eyecandy Thread

« Last post by Mobius on May 18, 2024, 06:19:29 am »

A sneak peek at the new version of "Raise Thy Sword", a challenging battle in Gehenna's Gate players keep talking about.

The next update will provide a revamped version of this mission, featuring more balance, a new planetary background (which is based on the original draft of this mission, but wasn't included in the 2020 release), and a new warship assisting the GTD Veritas against hordes of Shivan craft.

6

The Modding Workshop / Re: Ship Interiors Project

« Last post by Colonol Dekker on May 18, 2024, 06:12:41 am »

IS there a way to get this mod to work with other mods?  Or will those mod authors have to add it first?

It's ll modular and should just require small changes to an ini file as long as core functionality and values aren't changed.

7

FreeSpace Discussion / Re: Homeworld 3 is out, so I wrote a thing about FreeSpace.

« Last post by Mobius on May 18, 2024, 06:11:34 am »

Awesome, it's always encourage to spread the word about the numerous achievements of FreeSpace modders. Perhaps you could provide more direct links over there that would allow readers to access our channels, the website, the Wiki, and so on.

8

Nightly Builds / Nightly: 18 May 2024 - Revision 24e9a3a0c

« Last post by SirKnightly on May 18, 2024, 01:30:50 am »

Here is the nightly for 18 May 2024 - Revision 24e9a3a0c



Group: Linux
nightly_20240518_24e9a3a0c-builds-Linux.tar.gz (Mirror)


Group: MacOSX-arm64
nightly_20240518_24e9a3a0c-builds-Mac-arm64.tar.gz (Mirror)


Group: MacOSX-x86_64
nightly_20240518_24e9a3a0c-builds-Mac-x86_64.tar.gz (Mirror)


Group: Win32-SSE2
nightly_20240518_24e9a3a0c-builds-Win32-SSE2.zip (Mirror)


Group: Win64-SSE2
nightly_20240518_24e9a3a0c-builds-x64-SSE2.zip (Mirror)

Code: [Select]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
commit 03311c152
Author: BMagnu
Commit: GitHub

    Remove illegal assignment (#6153)
 lib/discord/thirdparty/rapidjson/document.h | 3 ++-
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
commit 379077242
Author: Goober5000
Commit: Goober5000

    it's uniformly random, per Asteroth
 code/math/vecmat.cpp             | 2 +-
 code/math/vecmat.h               | 2 +-
 code/scripting/api/libs/base.cpp | 4 ++--
 3 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
commit cb4258e31
Author: Goober5000
Commit: Goober5000

    add createRandomOrientation
 code/scripting/api/libs/base.cpp | 15 +++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
commit 8ce463daf
Author: Goober5000
Commit: Goober5000

    add "cloaked" to list of flags
 code/ship/ship.cpp | 4 +++-
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)


[Hidden Text: Alternative Launchers •]

9

FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) / Release: 24.0.2

« Last post by SirKnightly on May 18, 2024, 12:10:05 am »

Change log: (chronologically ordered)
Fix a font error when running SCPUI

Deprecations:
None

Deprecations are a mechanism in FSO where a certain feature or aspect of the engine has changed or is no longer supported. Since this would normally break existing mods, we have the mod table feature "$Target Version:" with which a mod can specify what version of FSO it was developed with. Any features listed under Deprecations will be removed or changed when the target version of a mod is at least the version released in this post.

Previous 24.0.1 Release Thread

Launchers, if you don't have one already:
All platforms: For every day use, we recommend Knossos.NET, an integrated solution for downloading and launching mods.

Hidden Text: Alternative Launchers • Show

Cross-platform: wxLauncher 0.12.x Test Build (legacy project for a unified launcher)
Important: For best compatibility with FSO 3.8 and later you should use at least wxLauncher 0.12.

Windows:  Launcher 5.5g (Mirror) (Mirror) Not compatible with Windows 8+, use wxLauncher above
OS X:  Soulstorm's OS X Launcher 3.0
Linux:  YAL or by hand or whatever you can figure out.

Windows (32/64-bit)
Compiled using GitHub Actions on Windows Server 2019 (10.0.17763), Visual Studio Enterprise 2019

64-bit: fs2_open_24_0_2-builds-x64-SSE2.zip

32-bit: fs2_open_24_0_2-builds-Win32-SSE2.zip
This one is based on the SSE2 Optimizations from the MSVC Compiler.

Hidden Text: Alternative builds • Show

64-bit AVX: fs2_open_24_0_2-builds-x64-AVX.zip
This one is based on the AVX Optimizations from the MSVC Compiler (fastest build if your CPU supports AVX instructions).


32-bit AVX: fs2_open_24_0_2-builds-Win32-AVX.zip
This one is based on the AVX Optimizations from the MSVC Compiler.

What are those SSE, SSE2 and AVX builds I keep seeing everywhere?
Your answer is in this topic.
Don't want to deal with that? Use Knossos.NET and it will download the best build specifically for your PC!

Linux 64-bit
Compiled with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 64-bit, GCC 5
fs2_open_24_0_2-builds-Linux.tar.gz

These builds use a mechanism called AppImage which should allow these builds to run on most Linux distributions. However, we recommend that you compile your own builds which will result in less issues.
Alternatively, if there is a package in your software repository then you should use that. If you are the maintainer of such a package for a distribution then let us know and we will include that here.


macOS
macOS 10.9+
Intel (64-bit): fs2_open_24_0_2-builds-Mac-x86_64.tar.gz
Apple Silicon: fs2_open_24_0_2-builds-Mac-arm64.tar.gz

These builds are not signed and so by default will fail to launch. To run them simply right-click on the app, click open, then click open again on the security confirmation dialog. You should only have to do this once for each app.
If running the game through Knossos or Knossos.NET this step should not be necessary.

NOTE: macOS builds currently have limited support and may exhibit issues not present on other platforms.

Hidden Text: TrackIR Users • Show

Important!!
An external DLL is required for FSO to use TrackIR functions.  The following DLL is simply unpacked in to your main FreeSpace2 root dir.
TrackIR is only supported on Windows.
TrackIR SCP DLL (Mirror) (Mirror)

Known issues:

• Github issues and pending pull requests
• See the list of bugs ranked by priority

10

The Modding Workshop / Re: Ship Interiors Project

« Last post by knight26 on May 16, 2024, 04:22:10 pm »

IS there a way to get this mod to work with other mods?  Or will those mod authors have to add it first?