Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Ryan on March 07, 2008, 10:31:49 am
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I was in science class yesterday and we were learning about the titanic, it was over 200 meters long apparently. Pictures of it really show that the ship is HUGE.
But the titanic is not 1/10th the size of the 6-kilometer long collosus. In the game, i should be TINY. I already am, but i tihnk i still look to big for that to really house 60 fighter/bomber wings, or around 180 fighters around the entire ship, let alone just the hanger.
Also, the guns. How many does it have? 60? 70? if all were broad side weapons, that would be 200-500 meters of space between each gun. And it has MANY other arcs to fill. And it has those slow fireing, wimpy laser cannons. a ship of this scale needs HUNDREDS of guns, with dozens of beams.
anybody else agree?
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game balance and capabilities. the end.
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This is purely speculation, but I think that freespace weapons that we think of as "weak" like blob turrets might actually be pretty powerful, eg one or two blob turrets could sink a present-day ship, but compared to the armor and shields they have in FS, they are weak.
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Lack of size reference, mostly because the detail on the ships is limited. High poly models do look bigger to me, as well as those enhanced with normal/height maps.
Another thing is the choice of static field of view that is, IMHO a bit too wide... 0.75 radians (~43 degrees) horizontally, while in reality - if your monitor is 40 cm wide and you're looking at it from 60 cm distance, the monitor's apparent size is 37 degrees. Granted, six degrees of separation isn't too much on paper, but it's still 16% bigger than the "should-be" field of view, and it affects the perspective accordingly, which means that things pretty much look by default approximately 16% smaller than you'd normally interpret them.
Thus, -fov 0.65 looks better in my opinion as far as ship sizes are concerned.
EDIT: Actually, this issue is even bigger than I thought, since it appears that the angle given in radians is actually just half of the field of view, which means the default field of view is horizontally about 86 degrees wide, and thus -fov 0.35 may be more accurate in terms of using the monitor as a "window" to the FreeSpace simulation, but obviously this will stretch the backgrounds BADLY (especially DDS textures) and will reduce situational awareness pretty badly, so perhaps a compromise would be somewhere between -fov 0.45 and 0.65... dpending on your monitor size and viewing distance, obviously.
Also, FS2 playable ships are huge, especially the bombers, but the fighters aren't midgets either.
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The ship is too big, if i walk the movie would be over. ;7 anyways the Collosus is about 3 miles long and bout what a mile wide at least. To see it for real, yeah thats a big ship.
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(http://www.freespacegalaxy.de/forum/upload/lucy_comp1.jpg)
Credit for the image goes to IceyJones (copied it from a scale comparision thread).
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And just think - the Lucifer is less than half the length of the Colossus.
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(http://www.freespacegalaxy.de/forum/upload/lucy_comp1.jpg)
Credit for the image goes to IceyJones (copied it from a scale comparision thread).
Awesome picture.
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Even those space cruisers look gigantic next to that aircraft carrier!
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I know I'd crap my pants if there was such a fleet approaching our coast.
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...things really look different with -fov 0.35. Even the fighters feel big... capital ships are massive... and the Colossus feels like a frakking mountain. :nervous:
(http://i28.tinypic.com/bikwtd.png)
(http://i28.tinypic.com/nwy4iu.png)
(http://i25.tinypic.com/1zbwdtu.png)
(http://i32.tinypic.com/2eukfiu.png)
(http://i28.tinypic.com/2lddafp.png)
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that deimos is sweeeeeeet...
lol @ the lucifer picture. :lol:
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(http://www.freespacegalaxy.de/forum/upload/lucy_comp1.jpg)
Credit for the image goes to IceyJones (copied it from a scale comparision thread).
Metal-Lobster!
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...things really look different with -fov 0.35. Even the fighters feel big... capital ships are massive... and the Colossus feels like a frakking mountain. :nervous:
Can you please tell me how to change the -fov?
Oh, and i would be scared to see a sath in that picture...
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-fov 0.35
Inserted into the Custom flags field under the Features tab in the Launcher. Though from personal experience I must say that with a 1280x800 laptop screen 0.45 is a bit nicer, since 0.35 caused the planets to go somewhat oval.
And a picture of a Sath is nothing. Play Bearbaiting with a lower fov. The Sath is huuge.
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I have seen a picture somewhere comparing an Orion to some Ursas, but I can't find it anymore.
I do think that the Colossus is big enough. Because we look at it on a computer screen, I bet there's a lot of optical illusion involved, which makes it seem smaller.
Great pic, BTW. I don't know if the sizes are correct (American aircraft carriers are twice as long as the Fenris), but that's probably because it's taken from the front. It looks kewl anyway.
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This one?
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/Ursa-Orion%20Comparison.jpg)
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And just think - the Lucifer is less than half the length of the Colossus.
Twelve Lucifier-class destroyers can fit within it's massive hull!
I think that's how it went anyway..... :doubt:
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Maybe it meant that the collie was equal to the mass of twelve lucys?
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And just think - the Lucifer is less than half the length of the Colossus.
Twelve Lucifier-class destroyers can fit within it's massive hull!
I think that's how it went anyway..... :doubt:
Well, doesn't that equal to "less than half"?
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The cutscene is wrong, blowfish is right: Colossus 6km, Lucifer 3km. Or maybe it's volume wise. Dunno.
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Volumetrically it looks plausible.
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Well in the cutscene comparison (the one where they have the Lucy and the Colly) they supersized the Colossus anyway.
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Or they just shrank the lucifer.
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This one?
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/Misc-Pics/Ursa-Orion%20Comparison.jpg)
Yes, that one. It kinda proves that the Collie's fighterbay is big enough to carry everything it needs.
I think the cutscene was made with the original Collie design (it doesn't have all those turrets in-game, IIRC), but :v: weakened it afterwards, for gameplay purposes.
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Considering the size of the jugg's in FS2 such as the Sath and the Collie those things should in theory be able to carry at least 500 or more spacecrafts. And still have room to spare . And yeah the Collie should really have more beamm cannons and turrets . But you know the whole game ballance thing and stuff.
Also considering that the Sath has more firepower in those 4 beams then the entire broadside of the Collie is really well stupid IMO. Hell the Sath has in those 4 Beam cannons almost the firepower of the Collie. So yeah...it really is weak. At the very least 50% of the Beams should have been Mjolnir beams since thy are much better then even the BFGreen . With the reast of them beeing BFGreens of BGreens. This would made the Collie a real threat to even the mighty Sath close range or not .
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RBC's are a more recent development than the collie, they're a bit big too. Granted retrofits are probably likely i would've thought the process to be awkward. The collie took 20 years to build, maybe it's a bit incompatible with more recent tech.
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Well considering the age of the Orion we have seen that most terran ships are very suited for refits. The vasudan ones well not so much we have the example of the Typhoon. My guess is by the time the Collie was finished at least half of its sistems were no longer cutting edge tech and the most recent developments but would of become standard for almost all the ships we see in FS 2 and some of them would of become old. My guess is the Collie would of sustained upgrades to its sistems at least some of its sistems within a year or so of its depelyoment in order to keep it up to speed.
Regarding the size of the Mjolnir i agree they are a recent adition to the GTVA arsenal and as such are not fully matured tech. My guess is that withing one or 2 years of theyr development the RBC's would of evolved to the next stage which would be a more smaller version the them with the same power . Within 5 years or so we could of seen Mjolnir's mounted on warships such as the Collie.
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Sorry, but what's a Typhoon?
Anyway, I agree that some things may be out of date, and the fact that the Colossus took 20 years to build probably meant that it had to undergo a lot of refits and stuff.
However, I do not agree that the Mjolnir may be added to every ship in the fleet. Mjolnirs are only seen in ONE mission in the game, and only in small numbers. I think they would be exceedingly expensive, and every single one might need its own reactor (VERY likely since they're not connected to anything anyway). Retrofitting a ship with a load of Mjolnirs without independent reactors may cause stress on the ships reactor, and it's probably not feasible to add 20+ extra reactors on a ship.
Maybe in 20 or so years, but not in 5 years.
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I think he meant Typhon.
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Yeah thats the one! Sorry keep renaming it after the Typhoon class submarines of the Russian federation. The biggest ones in existence. Those things put to shame i believe even an aircraft carrier.
Anyway I never said that it would be feasable on all ships and all the beams to be mjolnirs. But i do believe the at least the Hecate would benefit from aMjolnir and not just the Hecate. Also with the desperation grippling the GTVA they would really invest heavely into the further development of the Mjolnir and other shivan based weapons and beam cannons and reactors etc. And if everithing goes acording to plan they might even improve on many things they learned from the shivans.
Anyway at the size of the Mjolnir the Collie could easely equip at least 6 or 8 of them beams and the added reactors for them. Just get rid of 10 or 20 bommbers.
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The biggest ones in existence. Those things put to shame i believe even an aircraft carrier.
Not even close, The Typhoon is 175m long with a maximum submerged displacement of around 48000 tons, while a nimitz class aircraft carrier is 340m long with a maximum displacement of over 100,000 tons
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Yeah thats the one! Sorry keep renaming it after the Typhoon class submarines of the Russian federation. The biggest ones in existence. Those things put to shame i believe even an aircraft carrier.
Anyway I never said that it would be feasable on all ships and all the beams to be mjolnirs. But i do believe the at least the Hecate would benefit from aMjolnir and not just the Hecate. Also with the desperation grippling the GTVA they would really invest heavely into the further development of the Mjolnir and other shivan based weapons and beam cannons and reactors etc. And if everithing goes acording to plan they might even improve on many things they learned from the shivans.
Anyway at the size of the Mjolnir the Collie could easely equip at least 6 or 8 of them beams and the added reactors for them. Just get rid of 10 or 20 bommbers.
You know, a Mjolnir isn't much more powerful than an SGreen, and its no where near as powerful as a BGreen.
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But its high refire rate makes it more effective than a BGreen.
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But its high refire rate makes it more effective than a BGreen.
According to the wiki, the mjolnr#home has a damage potential for 44,000 damage per minute, as opposed to the BGreen's potential of 45,000 damage per minute. I'd favor the BGreen because it squeezes more damage in per shot, but in reality it simply depends on personal preference and/or the situation.
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But the fixed beam is the second best beam in the game. Fixed beams have their limitations though.
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But the fixed beam is the second best beam in the game. Fixed beams have their limitations though.
IIRC the fixed beam is never actually used in canon FS2.
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Looking at the mission file (the one where RBCs are used), 2 of the Mjolnirs are homing and the rest are fixed.
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Looking at the mission file (the one where RBCs are used), 2 of the Mjolnirs are homing and the rest are fixed.
And how often do they fire when you play the mission? And anyway, beams that you have to maneuver to put into use are some of the least effective weapons. It's just too impractical and over encumbering
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I love that mission nearly as much as rebel intercept. Molly is the beam cannon of choice in my view.
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And just think - the Lucifer is less than half the length of the Colossus.
Twelve Lucifier-class destroyers can fit within it's massive hull!
I think that's how it went anyway..... :doubt:
Length =/= volume! If the Colossus was shrunk to half its length, width, and height, it would be 8 times smaller than it originally was. Considering that the Lucifer was less than half the length of the Colossus and less bulky, twelve Lucifers is not unreasonable.
I have seen a picture somewhere comparing an Orion to some Ursas, but I can't find it anymore.
I do think that the Colossus is big enough. Because we look at it on a computer screen, I bet there's a lot of optical illusion involved, which makes it seem smaller.
Great pic, BTW. I don't know if the sizes are correct (American aircraft carriers are twice as long as the Fenris), but that's probably because it's taken from the front. It looks kewl anyway.
Wrong. The USS Nimitz is 333 meters long. compared to 253 for a Fenris-class cruiser. The much greater height of the Fenris gives it more volume than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. A starship could be 5 or 6 times the mass (or more) of a seagoing vessel of the same size, considering that they do not have to float. I remember making a crude calculation of an Orion-class destroyer's mass one time and getting around 2 billion tons.
Even the smallest FS warships are huge.
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This is purely speculation, but I think that freespace weapons that we think of as "weak" like blob turrets might actually be pretty powerful, eg one or two blob turrets could sink a present-day ship, but compared to the armor and shields they have in FS, they are weak.
Good notion. I think it's pretty obvious in the game that all of the ships are heavily armored. Not to mention also the fighters are sort of big. Not quite being flea sized, but more like fly or horse fly sized compared to the human sized colossus of this odd size correlation is sort of a wierd way to imagine it.
All of the weapons in fs are very powerful. While the blob turrets aren't the most powerful of them all, fighter weapons, flak, and anti-fighter beams definitely show that power. Then again, all of the ships in fs2 are in a transition phase from fs1 ships to more modern ships you see in fs2. However other technologies are still transitioning. And those also being weapons especially blob turrets. I wouldn't be surprised if an fs3 came out blob turrets would probably fully phased out in favor of subach capship turrets or some other kind of blob turret upgrade and replacement.
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here you get an impression of the scales!
(http://www.freespacegalaxy.de/forum/upload/lucy_comp1.jpg)
(http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=52268.0;attach=4916;image)
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That's a nice comparison with the ursa there. These bombers and fighters are huge! Also in the game you're not looking from the perspective of the pilot, you're looking from the perspective of the fighter. If the whole game is from the perspective of a fighter or bomber itself, then stuff is going to seem smaller than it really is because then you have a different comparison going on. That comparison being fighters and bombers being compared to the huge ships, and not the pilots themselves being compared to the scale of the huge ships. **** in fs is huUUUUge :eek:
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That's a nice comparison with the ursa there. These bombers and fighters are huge! Also in the game you're not looking from the perspective of the pilot, you're looking from the perspective of the fighter. If the whole game is from the perspective of a fighter or bomber itself, then stuff is going to seem smaller than it really is because then you have a different comparison going on. That comparison being fighters and bombers being compared to the huge ships, and not the pilots themselves being compared to the scale of the huge ships. **** in fs is huUUUUge :eek:
The perspective is, by default, that of the pilot. What makes things look deceptively small is the size of the screen combined with big field of view (86 degrees by default). If you sit one metre from your screen, the screen width should be right about 187 centimetres wide to show the size-distance correctly to scale.
There's no such thing as "perspective of a fighter or bomber"... the viewpoint is in the pilot's head and the pilot remains human - and humans see sizes and distances similarly independent on whether they are flying a Piper Cherokee or a 747, though velocity can affect judgement of distances to a degree.
...might be interesting to portray playing as a Vasudan pilot with a fish-eye perspective. Pun absolutely intended. :lol:
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Whoever did those pictures must have an awesome raytracer because those ships look like part of the photographs.
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I'd like an Erinyes parked outside exchange tower e14 9fr if possibie. :) google it.
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Whoever did those pictures must have an awesome raytracer because those ships look like part of the photographs.
source of the pictures is the wiki-thread:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,52268.0.html (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,52268.0.html)
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The picture of th lucy in that ocean picture, wouldn't it's tail drag in the water that low? By the way, in the juggernaut invasion, you can see them orbiting the star, but as the star's hugmongous, wouldn't you only see a couple of dots, rather that a dozen warships that look quite close?
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To whoever said otherwise, the Mjolnir Beam is much more powerful than the SGreen.
The Mjolnir Beam (homing) does 8,800 damage per shot, and waits only 7 seconds to fire again. The SGreen does 2,888 damage per shot and waits 30 seconds to fire again. No ****ing question that the Mjolnir Beam beats the SGreen.
In fact, it beats the BGreen too. The BGreen fires twice per minute, doing 52,800 damage in total. The Mjolnir Beam (homing) does 8,800 damage per pulse, and fires 8 times per minute. That's 70,400 damage per minute.
This is all of course only if the Wiki is right. If it's wrong then **** it.
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eerr guys...the colossus is a very powerful ship for a superdestroyer
it destroyed a ravana class destroyer in a few seconds and took a damage of....eer maybe 5?
look at the mission where the colossus gets destroyed by the 2nd sathanas.There is this ravana with 100% vs. the colossus with 60%? and the colossus won this fight EASILY.
dont forget the sath is a juggernout class and the colossus is just a big destroyer. its like a cruiser vs a corvette or sth.
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I always thought the Colossus was a Juggernaught, but not as powerful as a Sathanas for the simple fact that Shivan ships are always more powerful then their GTVA equiv, take the Orion VS a Ravana, or even a Hecate VS it, the Shivan version will usually win easily in a 1v1.
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Actually I think the only decent Shivan ships in FS2 were the Sathanas, the Lilith and the Demon (maybe Rakshasa). All the other ones would usually lose to a Hatshepsut or a Orion. As for cruisers, NONE of the Shivan cruisers except the Lilith would have any chance against the good old Aeolus.
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ive never seen a orion or heceate in a serios fight against any shivan ship...
there was one heceate destroyed by a sath, it was called aquarius or sth. and it was forced by command to stay and fight against the sath
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No it was the Phoenicia.
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Actually I think the only decent Shivan ships in FS2 were the Sathanas, the Lilith and the Demon (maybe Rakshasa). All the other ones would usually lose to a Hatshepsut or a Orion. As for cruisers, NONE of the Shivan cruisers except the Lilith would have any chance against the good old Aeolus.
The Rakshasa owns an Aeolus head-on.
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Provided the Aeolus aims its shots well and destroys even one of the Rakshasa's beams, it has the advantage of extreme flak and THTs.
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Depends on the shape...the Rakshasa has considerable chances of getting the Aeolus' beam cannons.
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But the Aeolus does not rely so heavily on its beam cannons. It has flak and THTs in addition to those to Sgreens (which, BTW, suck). The Rak on the other hand, relies very heavily on its beam cannons disable those 3 you've just got to worry about 1 Shivan Turret Laser and the odd SAAA hit (from the front, that is).
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You're right only if we assume that the warships engage each other in a nice circus(ai goal = attack). In normal situations they wouldn't get close enough to use all weaponry.