Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Fate of the Galaxy => Topic started by: Agent_Koopa on January 31, 2007, 07:04:13 pm
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What happens when you try to recreate the Battle of Endor? :lol:
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It makes baby jesus cry.
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I think it's safe to say that a truy faithful recreation of the battle of endor is pretty much impossible in the FS2 engine. You might - might - be able to do small parts of the battle as separate missions that are lined together via red alert, but it'd never be truly a faithful recreation. The engine simply wouldn't handle it.
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I confirm, the actual Fs2 engine can't handle more than 100 ships. It's sad but it's the reality. :(
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It's not so much the 100 ship limit that prevents a good BoE mission as it is the cap ship AI, and the control you have with FRED I believe. At least that's what I'd read before. Were there really way over 100 ships involved in the BoE?
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Capships I'd say there'd be in the vicinity of 100 - well over 50, certainly, easily, easily over 100 (probably closer to five) if you want to include fighters as well.. It's not so much the number of ships as it is the number of weapons effects, particularly in a universe where attacking another ship means firing hundreds of blob type turrets. Twould Kill FS2 for sure.
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According to Wookiepedia:
Empire: 1 Executor, 1 Communications ship, 50 Imperial Star Destroyers, 10 Victory Star Destroyers, about 5 smaller ships, and 2900+ fighters
Rebel: 20 Calamari Cruisers, 10+ Nebulon B Frigates, numerous other classes of ship (too many to list) and 500+ fighters
Though from the actual movie, I think one could achieve the same effect with a much smaller fleet on either side. Really when watching I only noticed maybe 3 calamari cruisers and perhaps 20 star destroyers. Obviously this was due to the lack of models, but even still, one gets a good sense of the size of the fleets from a couple shots of the Rebel fleet entering and exiting hyperspace, and from the long shots of the battle on the death star as Luke and the Emperor watch.
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The XWA engine can't handle more than 92 ships (the max number of ships present in the same moment, AFAIK there can be much more ships entering the missions if the previous ones depart/are destroyed), and they recreated the BoE in 4 red alert-ish missions...
That way, it could be possible also with the FS engine (I think :nervous:).
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I don't know the status of background/skybox images right now, but wouldn't one option be to simply have an image of a larger Imperial fleet in the background? That would allow you to make a fully manageable mission while still keeping the illusion of a larger battle.
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That's how XWA did it. The effect works ok, but you can definitely tell the difference if it's done poorly. However, if the fear is of the AI being too much, many of the ISDs were just sitting in the blockade with their thumbs up their bums. There'd be no AI to worry about. So if it's not too taxing to throw 30 or 40 ISDs 10 clicks from all the action, that would be much nicer than using a skybox.
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Has anyone wondered exactly why the Rebel attack fleet included a medical frigate with likely next to no firepower and a weak hull?
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And why the Rebels had also a lot of totally unarmed and extremely weak Gallofree transports in the attacking fleet? :doubt:
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The Medical Frigate was a modified Nebulon-B class frigate. The one seen in the battle is most likely a proper Nebulon-B, which is actually built as a warship, though even the medical frigate, I'm sure, could probably hold its own (considering that A: why would you strip off armour from a combat hull and B: do they even have the resources to extensively modify their ships? consider that most of the rebel fleet is from various factions which threw in with them, or gifts/stolen)
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You're right, I just looked it up. According to the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels, the frigate's anti-cap weaponry was cut in half, to only six turbolasers. It is left also with only eight laser cannons for anti-fighter or anti-bomber use, about 66% of its original weaponry. It just seems to me to be a bad idea, sending your medical ship into what may turn out to be a battle when Home One has more than four times the turbolasers. What's the point in sending your medical ship, likely with wounded aboard, and holding fifteen bacta tanks and other expensive medical equipment, if you're only adding six turbolasers to the effort?
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The battle was desperate - a single blaster could dictate its course for all they knew, let alone a batch of turbolasers.
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Also look at the rebel fleet when they enter and exit hyperspace. It's a ragtag fleet made up of whatever they could get, remember? The fleet is full of not only warships, but several types of transports, hell, even look at the Millenium Falcon, it's not a combat ship, it's a freighter, but they needed every ship they could get (Plus it's fast). Watch the scene again, and look for the various Gallofree transports, etc strewn throughout.
Remember, they're rebels, they're those guys in Afghanistan who were trying to shoot down jets with AK47s while standing on the tops of mountains while hiding in caves... They'll take anything they can get their hands on.
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Except that sometimes their AK-47s are planetary ion cannons.
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They're a Rebel Alliance, remember? Or, more formally, the Alliance to Restore the Republic? How desperate would the battle have been in the first place, when they didn't know it was an ambush or that the Death Star II had a working superlaser? (And you have to wonder, didn't the name "Death Star" raise a few eyebrows when the expenses were approved? (rhetorical question)) They had several cruisers and frigates. The construction of the Death Star II was, IIRC, believed by the Rebels to be top secret. They didn't expect to see half the Navy there.
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I guess the GR-75 transports could be used as "fireships" an old tactic of setting a ship on fire and sailing it into the opposing fleet hoping to set fire to the enemies sails and ships... for Star Wars version consider a GR-75 intentionally jumping to lightspeed with a Star Destroyer in its path... the mass times velocity would make for one heck of an impact!
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for Star Wars version consider a GR-75 intentionally jumping to lightspeed with a Star Destroyer in its path... the mass times velocity would make for one heck of an impact!
I lol'd at that. I would love to see that in a mission.
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Yeah that would be something... a transport jammed through the main hanger on a ISD.... :D
Well - perhaps the troop transports were intended to be used for boarding the
DeathStar II... If it was supposed to be a minimally guarded station
under construction - a few hundred troops could take control and plant
charges at key points like the Endor ground crew planned to do.
20 MonCal's and the others listed would certainly make a nice defense
fleet if they were only buying time for the boarding team. Instead the transports
ended up being sitting ducks needing protection.
My ten cents on the matter... :cool:
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I think that a slightly more plausible explanation is, if you don't bring them with you, where do you leave them? They may have just thought the risk of leaving them unguarded was too much, and they would fare better staying with the main battle portion of the fleet. But I think that having whatever added guns they could bring might have been part of that reasoning as well. As far as a fireship goes, I think also loading the transports with high explosives would have enchanced the effect significantly.
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*coughcoughBastioncoughcough*
Hm. The transports could also have been to pick up prisoners from Endor after the battle was done. They probably presumed that there'd be a lot of troops with some fight still in them down there, and you can't just let them stay around, now can you?