Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Hollewanderer on May 22, 2004, 11:46:24 am
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I just had an completly insane idea: Zero-G Troopers in Freespace!
So, let's talk a bit more about this idea, ok?
They could be deployed from special assault transports, for example modified Argo [just add a small tube and make it a fighterbay subsystem], and would be used in attacks on planetary bases, disabled starships etc, IOW situations when decompression and loss of artifical gravity is nearly certain, and when heavy firepower is necressary. They could also add to firepower of the transport if it is attacked, and not be forced to sit idly and get shot at.
In-game, they would be tiny, maneuverable fighters, with jet-pack on the back and with thick power armor covering the body. They would be deployed from fighter bays, either from destroyers when a boarding action is needed but marine transport is not present, or from special tubes [small fighter bays that only Zero-G Troopers could use, as nothing else can fit through] on the assault transports [anything from modified Elysium or Argo to a destroyer-sized vessel]. Standart equipment would include a missle launcher, loaded with either single Harpoon or a single Hornet salvo [4 Hornets], and a minaturized Subach [tiny damage, as it is intended for anti-personell work, not for shooting down fighers]. They would also be able to survive a single Subach or Prometheus shot, but obviously full salvo from fighter [4 shots, usually] would take them down. I think that packing such firepower in a package so small and agile would make them a challenge to a player.
They would be, obviously, unshielded, and very low-poly, so that you could have dozens of them on screen and still have acceptable framerate.
Name could be... hmmm... maybe GTZG Hoplite [Galactic Terran Zero-G; I think that GTZGT is a little too long]? Or maybe GTM Spartan [Galactic Terran Marine]?
So, what do you think? I think that it is not that bad of an idea. You could even make a mission with player begin a soldier on a battlefield.
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:nervous:
I was thinking along similar lines for the Halo mod i'm trying to start...
:nervous:
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Why not just launch them from the Argo's turret?
Or shoot them out of a torpedo tube from a Medusa/Ursa?
allot more effective.
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If you made them weapons it'd simplify alot of things. Like when their 'oxygen' runs out they explode.
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Originally posted by Darkage
Why not just launch them from the Argo's turret?
Or shoot them out of a torpedo tube from a Medusa/Ursa?
allot more effective.
Ummm... those guys are supposed to be in power armor with maneuvering thrusters. They wouldn't *fit* in a torpedo tube on Ursa.
And what would they do? Ram the enemy to death? That's one fine idea: let's ram the enemy to death with trained soldiers! Or better yet, let's give them some explosives and make live bombs out of them! Arabs in SPAAAACE!!
No, seriously, what's the point of making them weapons?! If you want to kill something, you use a missle, not a commando who is going to go *splat* on either shields of a fighter or heavy armor of a capship. The whole idea behind Zero-G soldiers is to give player additional challenge durning battle and offer additional possibilities for missions, like planetary assault with soldiers fighting it out over the surface of the planet. It adds to realism, too, as it is unlikely that police ships have many transports onboard, but could have lots of Zero-G soldiers for boarding disabled pirate ships, for example.
BTW, story-wise they could be also rationalised as something made to kill Shivans in personal combat. Makes a lot of sense, if you ask me.
Of course, weapon idea could work if we just assumed a large boarding pod, but no current GTVA bomber could fit one...
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you say they would add a challenge for the player, but they wouldn't be a threat and would be so easy to kill that you could just ignore them.
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What about shooting insane engineers at the target capship and then they rip it appart with their wrenches and cutting torches ^__^
OK bad Idea but the torpedo-marine idea mentioned somewhere above inspired me ^___°
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Originally posted by redsniper
you say they would add a challenge for the player, but they wouldn't be a threat and would be so easy to kill that you could just ignore them.
Except that they would carry Harpoons and Hornets. Individually, yes, they wouldn't be a threat, but for every fighter there would be many, many Zero-G soldiers, and they would just flood you with missles. Also consider that they would be small and maneuverable, and they might be tough to hit at all. Combined with the aforementioned missles, you would deal with enemies that outnumber you about 6:1, carry missles [maybe up the limit to three missles for a soldier, IOW three Harpoons or 12 Hornets?] and are tough to hit. When you add enemy fighters that would support Zero-G soldiers, you would be caught in a crossfire; large missle salvos from one side, coupled with weak energy fire [but not so weak that it isn't lethal in large numbers], and normal fighter weaponry from the second side. When you try to kill Zero-G soldiers, you are getting shot by enemy fighters, and you can't effectively engage enemy fighters while you need to dodge lots of missles.
They are not designed to go against fighters one-on-one, but use their numerical superiority and missles to distract and damage the player while he is busy with enemy fighters, and not be able to be just shot down like ducks without area-effect weapons.
To be honest, they would make Infyrno very useful, as it has a sizeable blast radius.
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Um. Hate to say this but both the Harpoon and the Hornet are bigger than a human being. This would look ridiculous until there is some sort of external weapon mount code in FS2.
Unless you make a smaller missile of course :)
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X-Wing Alliance did zeroG stormtroopers... sort of.
They were more annoying than anything else.
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Yeah, they wouldn't be of any realistic use in a combat capacity, remember that FS fighters are fast, maneuverable and have fusion reactors powering their weapons. Could you fit all that in a spacesuit? No. Perhaps they could be used for invading a ship through the fighterbays though.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Um. Hate to say this but both the Harpoon and the Hornet are bigger than a human being. This would look ridiculous until there is some sort of external weapon mount code in FS2.
Unless you make a smaller missile of course :)
Heh, I know that. That's why they aren't in space suits, but in large power armor.:p
I thought of Zero-G soldier as about 4-5 [maybe 5-6] meter tall soldier with huge-ass jetpack on his back, enormous missle tube on the shoulder and holding a large rifle. Quite reasonable, I would say.
I thought of guided Tempest missles at first, but then I recalled that I wanted them to be at least a small threat, and not something that is so bloody useless that the mass spent on it would be better used as an ablative armour on a destroyer.
Originally posted by SadisticSid
Yeah, they wouldn't be of any realistic use in a combat capacity, remember that FS fighters are fast, maneuverable and have fusion reactors powering their weapons. Could you fit all that in a spacesuit? No. Perhaps they could be used for invading a ship through the fighterbays though.
That's why they are not armed with heavy energy weapons, only a single rifle that works on clips and missles that do not use energy; they do not *have* fusion reactor, only batteries that give them power for about 12 hours of combat [or something like that, as no mission would be that long anyways].
And Zero-G Troopers can be made as maneuverable and fast as I want, considering that FS is governed by Laws of Gameplay, and only Laws of Gameplay.:p Call that vectored thrust and high efficency thrusters, if you want.
They are used for short range combat anyway, as they do not have space for any amount of fuel worth mentioning, and they use it up quickly. IOW, Zero-G Troopers can easily outperform a fighter up close, but they just lack ability to do any sort of long-range flight [they, of course, have no subspace drive]. This might be represented by powerful afterburners, but not so good conventional engines. Good for short bursts, but on the long run the fighter is better and faster.
That, and as I said, they are used mostly in assaults on static targets, capships, in police actions against pirates and to support defence forces of their mothership when it is attacked. Using them for assault without support would be asking for horrible defeat.
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so they're more like elementals or small mechs
I suppose you could also do some cool situational stuff with this. You could have the player shoot Zero-g guys off the surface of a capship before they attach a bomb or something, or you could have your wingmen eject and have one of these models appear when their ship dies.
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Why would you want to put a bunch of marines versus fighters, when you can have fighteres versus fighters, instead?
Maybe they could be used as cap ship boarders, but that's it, and that would require lots of recoding
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
Why would you want to put a bunch of marines versus fighters, when you can have fighteres versus fighters, instead?
Maybe they could be used as cap ship boarders, but that's it, and that would require lots of recoding
Because when a ship or installation carrying Zero-G soldiers is getting attacked, it is always good to have some additional missle platforms to serve as a distraction and allow the fighter cover to do it's work, and hopefully shot down a fighter or two by themselfes. And when assault ship is attacking, they, again, provide distraction and act as missle platforms until they get into the position to board the target.
They are not a replacement for fighters, but they can support them when they aren't busy with something else, like tearing the enemy ship from inside with dozens of kilotons of thermonuclear goodness or kicking the **** out of pirates.
Basically, I thought them up as a cheap way to give player feeling of begin hopelessly outnumbered, and do it in a slightly cool and colourful way. IOW, to make the missions seem larger, with all those explosions, shots and missles flying around, without killing the framerate with masses of polygons. And to make planetary base assault missions in Red Tide look more real, of course.
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Yea, I can see it now...a whole platoon of marines dropping into the atmosphere, dressed in spacesuits, and burning up :p
Seriously, I really don't think there's a viable reason as to why the GTVA might want to put a crapload of people out in space on a garaunteed suicide mission (on purpose, I mean :D).
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It would be great if there were some way you could have on foot battles on the exterior hull of capships. Elite Force2 had such a level and it kicked majorly. Shoot borg with a grenade launcher and watch them float away to their deaths.
I doubt such code could be implemented, But the spacetrooper combat sounds excellent. Fighters are faster, but the troopers are so small, they are hard to target. I recall Xwing Alliance's level where I was swamped with troopers trying to disable a craft I'm supposed to defend. It took me awhile to realize why my object of protection was losing hull strength.
In regards to the trooper torpedoe launches, I believe that would be hilarious. If you can't hurt the enemy, messup their capship's paint job with trooper SPLATS. Fire POW's at an enemy capship to demoralize them.
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Originally posted by Hollewanderer
Or better yet, let's give them some explosives and make live bombs out of them! Arabs in SPAAAACE!!
Was that really necessary?
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My concerns are that a laser shot is about three times bigger than a human. You'd ram more than you shot, you'd need loads of them to be effective, which would reduce the number of other ships available.
Since most capital ships have several thousand crew, you'd need at least around 150-200 Marines to secure an area aboard and start operations, and this is whilst the ship is being pounded by cannon and beams. It's a nice idea for space combat, but I don't think it would work in FS2 :(
It might be useful as a one off, where you have to get aboard a vessel to plant a bomb or tracking device, but you'd have to do it like a stealth mission, where you had to stay away from the escorts, but it seems like an awful lot of effort just for a single specialised mission.
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you could use 'em as debris
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Originally posted by Unknown Target
Yea, I can see it now...a whole platoon of marines dropping into the atmosphere, dressed in spacesuits, and burning up :p
Seriously, I really don't think there's a viable reason as to why the GTVA might want to put a crapload of people out in space on a garaunteed suicide mission (on purpose, I mean :D).
Why would that be a suicide mission? Fighters have enough problems with hitting targets of their size, such small soldiers armed with missles should have excellent surviveability, at least when compared to their durability. And they would certainly distract enemy pilots from the real threats: fighters, because if they do not pay attention to Zero-G soldiers, they are going to be ripped to pieces with missles. And as I said, they would be *still* better off than Marines, who can't help their mothership in *any* way when it is attacked.
Besides, that's why transports go into atmosphere first.:p And in case of asteroid bases, you do not have that problem.
Originally posted by mikhael
Was that really necessary?
Sorry, I was a little pissed off. No offence was intended for anyone concerned, other than Arabs that blow themselfes up, of course.
Consider this "Al-Quaeda in SPAAAACE!!" then.
Originally posted by Flipside
My concerns are that a laser shot is about three times bigger than a human. You'd ram more than you shot, you'd need loads of them to be effective, which would reduce the number of other ships available.
Since most capital ships have several thousand crew, you'd need at least around 150-200 Marines to secure an area aboard and start operations, and this is whilst the ship is being pounded by cannon and beams. It's a nice idea for space combat, but I don't think it would work in FS2 :(
It might be useful as a one off, where you have to get aboard a vessel to plant a bomb or tracking device, but you'd have to do it like a stealth mission, where you had to stay away from the escorts, but it seems like an awful lot of effort just for a single specialised mission.
I am not so sure about the ramming. They aren't your wingmen, after all.:D And, again, they are not *designed* to be fighter killers. They are used as additional missle platforms and as a distraction to support their own fighters. With good agility and small size, you'd need a limited number of soldiers for that, and for ground combat work, well... you need troop transports for that anyway, and with Zero-G soldiers, you will have advantage when figthing inside asteroid bases and in boarding actions.
Actually, you would need very few Zero-G Troopers to secure the ship, as only anti-tank and anti-fighter weapons carried by Marines on-board the ship could really hurt them. There is just too much armor for shrapnels and conventional firearms. Think "Shivan boarding action" for effects.
They might be also useful as deep-space S&R teams, for example a team that goes to check a wrecked Orion destroyer for survivors, like GTD Legion from OTT ship pack. Docking bays are too damaged for transports, so Zero-G units are deployed in the big hole in the side of the ship.
And I plan to make a mission showing them off when I make the model and get it into Freespace. It would be, basically, a boarding action against a disabled GTD Orion with soldiers deployed from enemy destroyer's fighter bay, with player protecting the Orion. That should show me just how well the Zero-G Troopers fare when put against fighters.
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Ummm if they were 5-6m tall due to power armour, how would they be effective INSIDE a ship?
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Hunched over - they are 2-3 meters tall. If you kill the artificial gravity all the corridors do fine since I dount their "upward" crossection would be bigger than 2meters x 2meters.
...and you had to move all that material inside the ship.
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Originally posted by SadisticSid
Ummm if they were 5-6m tall due to power armour, how would they be effective INSIDE a ship?
I said *maybe* 5-6 meters. 4 or 4.5 meters is much more likely, and this is acceptable size.
BTW, in case anyone wonder, the missle tubes are designed to fold on their back above the jetpack when inside a ship, so it doesn't impede them.
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Shivans are one thing, but humans?
do not make them into actual fighting forces, but give them the ability to latch onto ships, like literally "stick" when they want to (think gravity boots) then you can have a mission where a marine force of a rebellion in desperation plants mines on the evil empire's carrier to destroy it...
...okay maybe that's a little too far...(Damnit, tis a shame Descent 3's source code isnt public, one could learn a lot for this kind of thing from that)...
if you REPLACED all the ships in FS2 with mechwarrior type ships, then you wouldn't have a scale problem at all, now would you? then just scale the shots down, etc.
I can see how it would work as a TC, but NOT as an addition to the FreeSpace 2 universe. Not a chance in hell.
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IF I remember correctly clan pilots are like 6-7 foot tall cause of genetic engineering... Now as they fit inside their mechs faily snug (power armor responds to the movements of the operators arms and legs NOT normal controls exclusively) Think of oversized medieval FULLPLATE. so 10 foot tall max is more realistic. These are really tiny mechs... In starship troopers (the book) the marines wore form fitting power armor with powerful jump jets who carried their main weapon (a rifle) but they would be dwarfed by an elemental by a good 2-3 feet! Different tech levels can make power armor from almost skin tight to the size of a small mecha so you have to determin what level the GTVA falls into.
I love the idea and myself had wanted to mention it before but I didn't want to be first lol. I had that model of the XWA ZGtrooper but didn't know HOW to impliment it (in fact I may have deleted it?). I can see a mission where you protect cargo ships and the marines are fighting it out inside with the crew and depending on HOW many transports you protected weither they succeed or fail in the boarding action. (two sets of coms created one showing better and better results, the other how it all goes to hell in a handbasket!).
As for the model IN game I offer an additional use, someone mentioned engineers. How about people in eva suits working on the ships in dock?(ala the opening scene in ST TMP), ALso that guy who gets whacked by the Vger cloud at that listening post as he tried to use his jets to outrun the weapon discharge (RUN RUN! Nope he died...). If you use common sense and it is done well I think these type of uses (once in a great while) can be a VERY cool thing.
One final idea, a rescue mission, remeber when Matt Shepard (from crusade) is with 2 others inspecting the outside of their Nova and a Shadow vessel whacks it so it jumps out and leaves them, the other two die and he is stranded out in space with 2 hours of air left? How about a crew recovery of that nature (this is defiantely a one shot)... Thoughts?
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After the Great War forming this kind of marine group would be logical - but due to the lack of known Shivan threat their actual presense by the Capella area would be minimal.
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I still think they would work well as a boarding party, going in through the fighter bay to capture the launch area, even if it's short term, would severely cripple a Destroyers' Anti-Bomber capabilities ;) I seem to recall from another thread people talking about the ridiculous amount of megatons blast a single Hornet missile is capable of, so I dread to think how these poor marines would cope in combat, or how big these little portable missile launchers are ;)
Anyway, as has already been said, the rules of Gameplay are the ones you choose, so, I hope it works out as planned for you, besides, the missile blast levels really are way way too big imho. :)
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LMAO, the Training Laser could kill a human in a spacesuit
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When I am planet side in the field I use the training laser to microwave my rations! (just rememebr do NOT look directly at the light) ;)
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Maybe one day i'll get round to making my Moonraker mod......
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Originally posted by Gregster2k
Shivans are one thing
"points to sig"
Meh, I've had many requests for those damn shivans, and when they're released, nobody even use them :p
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ooh, interstellar roadkill, i like. :p
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I say :D! Good idea!
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Originally posted by redsniper
you say they would add a challenge for the player, but they wouldn't be a threat and would be so easy to kill that you could just ignore them.
make Tarren, and Vasudan, and Shivan ones with one gun for each, then make them easy to blow up, and vary slow so they could do combat in space for a mini light show! cool for bording missions by shivans.
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Originally posted by Nico
"points to sig"
Meh, I've had many requests for those damn shivans, and when they're released, nobody even use them :p
Maybe because we don't have any terrans or Vasudans for them to fight.:D
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Damn, Nico release that stuff. Who cares if you don't like it, we certainly will. :D
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Uhh, you can download the files in Nicos sig by clicking on the pictures...
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Ooo... I need to look at sigs more often. :yes: this is great stuff Nico :)
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No tbl data, no pof data, it's up to the modder to do what he wants/needs.
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Originally posted by Nico
No tbl data, no pof data, it's up to the modder to do what he wants/needs.
somone make pof data, and a tbl. But I would advise that a man, or even a Shivan should not move at 60 MPH even with jet packs, make em go like 2 MPH then give em one gun each for shooting things, I could make the tarren weapon tbl! In fact I will! help me out somone!?;)