Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Aardwolf on October 19, 2008, 01:43:13 am
-
Unnamed Terran Battlecarrier
This ship has ~2000 polygons (including turrets), and is ~1600m long. It's currently got 11 multi-part turrets, and 4 forward-firing cannons. It could probably use some single-part ("button") turrets if it's going to have any chance against other ships in the FS universe. It has four "and a half" fighterbays (I'm not sure what the little on on the front could be used for, but it's there and without it the front is boring). The large cavity underneath could be a weakness, so I was thinking of putting some sort of invisible barrier there (possibly by means of the 'invisible' surface (like what blocks many existing capship's fighterbays), plus a few faces for a shield mesh)... As for what it's purpose is (which could help for texturing it), it could be some sort of docking area for freighters and transports (although getting them through the invisible barrier region would be tricky, and I don't know if there's room for a direct approach).
Screenshot
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l77/Aardwolf001/Misc%203D%20Models/BattlecarrierRender01.png)
360o Rotating View
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l77/Aardwolf001/Misc%203D%20Models/th_Battlecarrier.jpg) (http://s93.photobucket.com/albums/l77/Aardwolf001/Misc%203D%20Models/?action=view¤t=Battlecarrier.flv)
What about it?
If anyone is interested in finishing it, let me know.
What it still needs:
- cooler-looking multi-part turrets (and some single-part turrets, probably)
- maybe a few greebles here and there
- merging the engine block and main hull [maybe]
- uv-mapping
- textures
- conversion
- TBM file
Also, it probably will need a name at some point.
Background info, in case you care:
This wasn't originally going to be used for FS, but I figured maybe I could get somebody to uv/texture it for me, and in turn the model would be converted for FSO.
-
Why not look for turrets in the turret project (here: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,50017.0.html)?
-
Because I haven't released it: (No one has volunteered to work on it and only Trashman had any ready for FS2 - and those he released them already)...
That's why.
So until I get soem help I'm still approaching diff modelers for meshes and later on get people to get them ready for Fs2... We have quite an assortment available at the moment however...
-
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l77/Aardwolf001/SublightBattlecarrier/greebles2a-s.png)
Added some greebles to the bow section of the ship. Also I finally found a good use for GIMP's "Hard Light" blending mode.
...and since I've been told the textures are hiding a lot of the detail:
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l77/Aardwolf001/SublightBattlecarrier/G03s-Amb.png)
-
That's nice. Strikes me as a B5ish Demios type fusion? Not that you were going for it, just how it initially appeared to me. :)
-
Huh, cool. Looks like a Halo ship design.
-
If those three openings are guns, I'm not attacking that from the front.
-
Well, seeing as it is a Battlecarrier, those are probably hangar bays...though putting some massive MACs or something like in Halo might be rather awesome :P
-
Well, seeing as it is a Battlecarrier, those are probably hangar bays...though putting some massive MACs or something like in Halo might be rather awesome :P
They are hybrid hangar/gun ports! They launch aircraft normally, but in an emergency, push a MAC into position for added firepower!
-
Those are just hangars. The four main guns on the bottom are plenty big enough.
I added some more greebles, this time to the front and back of the engine pods. It now sits at 8304 polygons.
Engine pod front:
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l77/Aardwolf001/SublightBattlecarrier/G04-engine-front.png)
Engine pod rear:
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l77/Aardwolf001/SublightBattlecarrier/G04-engine-rear.png)
-
You should probably detail the big flat surfaces before greebling the minor parts, IMO.
Most of those engine greebles will be lost as they will be bathed in Engine Glow. (at least the rear ones will be)
-
Only if the engine glows are significantly wider than the thrusters.
I added some greebles around the rear hangar, and made a video of it rotating.
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l77/Aardwolf001/SublightBattlecarrier/th_Battlecarrier-g05c.jpg) (http://s93.photobucket.com/albums/l77/Aardwolf001/SublightBattlecarrier/?action=view¤t=Battlecarrier-g05c.flv)
-
Looks pretty cool. Having big flat panels and detailed "soft spots" is not a bad idea, but you should probably try to do some panelling with the textures whenever you get to that stage.
-
Looks pretty cool. Having big flat panels and detailed "soft spots" is not a bad idea, but you should probably try to do some panelling with the textures whenever you get to that stage.
Finally, someone who gets it!
I tried some things out with the flat areas, like adding a fenris/leviathan-style indentation on the side, or putting alternating raised and lowered sections in along the length (with different lengths for each section)... but I could not come up with much that was pleasing to me. I intend to do a little research (wikipedia and/or google images) looking at modern naval warships and subs, and may get some ideas from that.
I am still looking for someone to finish the model. I am beginning to suspect there are some hidden geometry problems in the model (probably near a mirror plane, as when I delete one side and mirror it again sometimes I miss geometry that needs deletion).
Please, if you like this model, and are able to help, let me know. A list of things that need to be done is in the first post (but it has not been updated).
-
Double post, yes, I know.
I decided to redo the bow and stern of the ship. They now have been simplified down to 1 or 2 quads each. This decision was made upon realizing that if my ship had both forward-firing main guns and forward-facing fighterbays, whenever it lined up to fire its guns at an enemy, it lined the enemy up to fire its guns down its own fighterbay... which is a bad idea. Sure, in FS2 shooting the fighterbay doesn't (usually) do anything, but it would make a stupid design in real life. I removed the stern bay (and nearby greebles) because I am planning on placing the fighterbays in the previously useless ventral cavity.
Suggestions for what to do with the bow and stern, as well as with what is still boring polygons, would be useful.
Also, I would really like to see this finished! Post/PM/otherwise contact me if you are willing and able to assist.
-
I think you have a workable design I like. :)
Just a thought, I would move the top two engine pods to the rear and leave the bottom two where they are. You should have more room on the sides to add your fighter bays and even more guns. Maybe even add some new design elements.
-
These are the areas that will be affected by the change (shown stripped down as I mentioned above).
I need ideas for them, as well as the flat areas of the main shape. They should still be armored (not exposed internal stuff), but I agree that they should not be quite so plain.
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l77/Aardwolf001/SublightBattlecarrier/rev-a-affectedareas.gif)
-
Put it massive spinal gun in addition to its quad cannon?
-
MAC GUN.
That would be pretty neat!
-
Mac guns don't fit in the FS universe.
-
That's why I just said a big spinal gun...possibly a big beam cannon.
At which point, it would be easy to change it to whatever you want.
-
a) MACs can exist wherever I want them
b) I don't want them, because to fill something the size of those fighterbays with a solid steel projectile only as long as it is tall, the projectile would be about 4 times the mass of the ship (assuming the ship has a net density comparable to that of water). Fired at typical earth-impacting asteroid speed, that would have the explosive force of a rather large nuke upon entering the atmosphere. That is significantly more powerful than I need, especially since I already have my main guns in place.
Other suggestions, please.
-
How about a tactical control center? A heavily armored viewport with a few radars/scanners.
Or maybe a heavy physical shield? Like, a giant block of steel that prevents damage from being done to the front of the ship? It could be done by adding an extra submodel, called "Shield", and assign it a subsystem. This subsystem would have an armor.tbl value that allows it to absorb large amounts of damage. Additionally, it would have the "carry no damage" flag also. When all this is combined, the subsystem would absorb all damage done to the submodel, and the attacks to the front of the ship would hurt only the Shield submodel/subsystem, not the ship(until the shield submodel/subsystem is finally destroyed).
-
Mac guns don't fit in the FS universe.
You're definitely right. Suggestion withdrawn.
-
How about a tactical control center? A heavily armored viewport with a few radars/scanners.
Or maybe a heavy physical shield? Like, a giant block of steel that prevents damage from being done to the front of the ship? It could be done by adding an extra submodel, called "Shield", and assign it a subsystem. This subsystem would have an armor.tbl value that allows it to absorb large amounts of damage. Additionally, it would have the "carry no damage" flag also. When all this is combined, the subsystem would absorb all damage done to the submodel, and the attacks to the front of the ship would hurt only the Shield submodel/subsystem, not the ship(until the shield submodel/subsystem is finally destroyed).
Ooh...massive hunk of armor sounds interesting.
-
Humm, sounds like this could be called an Assault Battlecarrier? or ship of some sort with that huge armor thingy. If so, then would be able to absorb a full frontal blast or two or three or? from the SD Sathanas? Imagine that, a ship that was designed to take on this Shivan bad boy's main guns. Then deliver several squadrons of bombers to disable the same guns so the other ships can finish it off. Cool! I like it. ;7
OK, just an idea ;)
-
I don't like the shield idea much.
I want something that looks good, isn't a gun or bunch of guns, and isn't a fighterbay.
-
Hrm. Well, that leaves sensor array, missile pod...uh...
-
Cloaking array, gravity well generator, ecm center ...
-
Cloaking array, gravity well generator, ecm center ...
Possibly also outside the FSverse, I'm afraid. Except for the ECM, but how would that work in-game?
-
Matrix-style EMP? Disables the user, but fries the enemies as well?
Cool, but no.
-
Nonono, an ECM suite. In other words, it functions as an AWACS, but also scrambles enemy systems, creating a sphere of electronic interferance for the enemies, like a permanent stealth field around it, also preventing aspect lock by virtue of being untargetable, at least until they destroy the suite.
-
Ugh, an untargetable system that prevents targeting? That'd be a real pain, especially cause most good anti-subsystem missiles require aspect lock, and primaries are just not a good tool for that job.
-
Here's something I've been toying with for a bit... why not make the player able to enter the superstructure of the ship? Those openings could be a service-way or such. Like a hall with crap loads of greeble on the sides for flythroughs. Might not make the AI to happy, but it would make for an interesting mission, 'specially if there was an objective inside it.
About the ECM, it kinda doesn't make sense for a ship to jam yet still be stealthy. It may be untargetable to a ship's sensors, but that doesn't mean weapons cannot passively acquire the target. There are weapons out there called "Anti-Radiation Missiles," designed for tracking and destroying a hostile ECM transmitter based on it's jamming signals. The missiles do not rely on a control transmitter for guidance, instead tracking their targets autonomously. But that is assuming that ECM means conventional form of an Electronic Countermeasure, something that broadcasts craploads of noise on datalink and missile guidance frequencies.
-
The Raynor and Titan classes featured in Blue Planet have that ability. You can fly into their hangars and explore.
-
"Featured in", not "from" Blue Planet.
EMP is an electronic countermeasure... sort of. It's electronic and a countermeasure, anyway.
Anyway, I'm going to change what I want from you guys so I can get what I really want done with the ship:
I would like to request a modeler who is not too busy to take a look at the ship, greeble up the spots that are uber-plain now, and touch up some of the somewhat but not quite so much plain spots. Also this person could help out by optimizing some of my greebles--many of them have polygons that are entirely inside the hull of the ship, which is pointless because they are invisible and add nothing good to the model (but they did make it easier to make those greebles). I imagine whoever ends up doing this would have some creative freedom, but I would ultimately prefer to have control over the design (if I say it looks stupid, it looks stupid, etc.).
I am going to install fighterbays in the lower cavity, and will upload a screenshot of that area when I have finished doing so.
-
Mac guns don't fit in the FS universe.
The Rakvere will now kill you.
-
Hellstryker you bum!
I warned you there were some geometry issues that might need cleaning up!
-
The Raynor and Titan classes from Blue Planet have that ability. You can fly into their hangars and explore.
I've seen the Raynor. It's internal sections were unimpressive. You basically flew in one side of the fighter cavern and flew out the other, through a very very very boxy tunnel. I'm saying that there should be actual paths through the ship, not just a single flyable figherbay that has no greeb or coolness in it. In my idea you'd be able to fly in one end of the ship and exit at the other, and there'd be obstacles and stuff, some subsystems, something else maybe... not just boxyness.
Note: make sure the ship you're in is pathed, so it won't suddenly smash you up inside it...
-
Well, the high poly Raynor and Titan do have greebles in their hangar.
Another ship would be the FTFg Hyperion (UEFg Karuna for people who don't know of its true origins). That has a fighter bay complete with fighters hanging on racks :nod:
-
The issue is that you'll be spending a lot of polys on a part of the model that's useful only in very specific and rare situations.
-
That's why there are detail boxes.
Also, how rare the situations are completely depends on mission design. If you have to fly in a blow up a few reactors or something in a mission, or if every mission ends with you flying back into the detailed hangar, it would not be wasteful.
-
That's a good point.
-
making all the ships with hangars would seriously increase a noticeable error on freespace....you can see this on cap ships or fighters depending on how you want to see this point, the problem is that either the fighters are too big or the cap ships are too small.
Taking in consideration the size of an Orion against the size of any fighter I would say that no more that 3 wings could fit in it, but cannon data from :v: would suggest that more than 3 wings are hosted inside an orion.
Also making the hagars would greatly increase the poly count of a model... I guess
-
Not if it was one large rectangle...surely it doesn't need to be that complicated.
-
I made a turret. It was originally based on the HTL Aeolus' main beam cannons, but I made it double-barreled and turret-mounted. It can aim anywhere from about 13 degrees down from level (as if you'd ever want to do that) to about 60 degrees up from level.
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l77/Aardwolf001/SublightBattlecarrier/th_UberTurretA.jpg) (http://s93.photobucket.com/albums/l77/Aardwolf001/SublightBattlecarrier/?action=view¤t=UberTurretA.flv)
Click to view.
Edit: added a ring-thing so that it looks like it could actually rotate (instead of being welded to its spot on the hull)
(http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l77/Aardwolf001/SublightBattlecarrier/a02-turret-withbase.gif)
-
Nice. It also looks a good model for ground-based AAA. Both pictures make it look like that.
-
look at that, good...could you add a cockpit to the back maybe? that would certanly be a change from FS-like turrets.
-
I'd imagine the turrets aren't manually operated.
-
I'd imagine the turrets aren't manually operated.
no??
but isn't track_ir build to make the player use the turrets??
-
I suppose that's one function, but, still, the turret operator would likely be in a safe armored location deep within the hull of the ship, not in the turret itself.
-
The guns are 50 meters long. The thing is large enough to have a bridge. A cockpit would be nothing more than a small area with a slightly brighter specular map on this scale.
-
still, the turret operator would likely be in a safe armored location deep within the hull of the ship
True, forget what I said, it was a rushed idea jeje
-
By the way -- awesome turret, Aardwolf!
-
I suppose that's one function, but, still, the turret operator would likely be in a safe armored location deep within the hull of the ship, not in the turret itself.
Most likely so... However one would thing that unless designer was overconfident in his ability to keep the ship intact there would be secondary station to allow local operations should coms or the actual operator be gone.
-
Hmm, possibly, but I still bet it'd be in the hull directly beneath the turret.
Working from the multiple-hull paradigm so convincingly argued by Lobo (using evidence from the Colossus cutscene) I don't imagine they'd so casually put crew members so far out from the safe areas of the ship.
-
I'd imagine the turrets aren't manually operated.
no??
but isn't track_ir build to make the player use the turrets??
That happens for gaming reasons(it would be nice to use turrets) but manually operated turrets should be unexistant in a few centuries...I admit that FS oftentimes mentions "gunners".
-
I've seen the Raynor. It's internal sections were unimpressive. You basically flew in one side of the fighter cavern and flew out the other, through a very very very boxy tunnel. I'm saying that there should be actual paths through the ship, not just a single flyable figherbay that has no greeb or coolness in it. In my idea you'd be able to fly in one end of the ship and exit at the other, and there'd be obstacles and stuff, some subsystems, something else maybe... not just boxyness.
It better have detail boxes or my graphics card will eat your brain.
-
I see one big problem with hangars you can fly into. The player will fly into them. That's the problem. They'll fly into them and blast the ships apart from the outside while nothing can touch him. Which is pretty lame imo.
-
Very very nice turret.
-
I see one big problem with hangars you can fly into. The player will fly into them. That's the problem. They'll fly into them and blast the ships apart from the outside while nothing can touch him. Which is pretty lame imo.
Well, why not follow Star Wars' example? They have point defense turrets all over the insides of their ships (remember the Jedi transport in Ep. I? Got shot to hell by in-ship guns), and they seem to have one hell of an anti-fighter screen for the docking bays (look at the Battle Over Coruscant ending. Only a Jedi could have gotten past that much AAA).
Perhaps use a very short-ranged yet powerful beam laser or pulse laser for defense. It'd be in a heavily armored turret, have a high rate of fire and a high damage capacity. Make it hard for the player to get in.
-
Why put turrets inside when you can put them on the outside and shut the doors?
-
someone proposed that already, a door for the hangars with an animation, it was a good idea but I dont remember if it got done at some point.
-
If you don't want a turret in there, you could try the armour plate thing they suggested a few pages ago. Have the fighterbay interior as a separate submodel, give it armour that makes it indestructible, and make sure the damage doesn't carry. Also, if you want a seperate 'fighterbay' subsystem from the interior, make it untargetable too. (I don't know if this'll work, it's just theory.)
Hang on, would making the fighterbay interior indestructible in the table (no armor.tbl) and having no carried damage have the same effect?
-
I always thought that the Edjo looked like a turret that you would put inside of a ship. I mean its got those window thingies...
-
Why put turrets inside when you can put them on the outside and shut the doors?
Well... these ships are large enough to have one **** of a battle inside them. I could imagine a need for internal defense systems--ones that can't be picked off by skilled gunnery crews in preparation for a boarding.
Also, who said all the guns are going to be on the absolute inside of the ship? Some could be mounted at the entrance to the superstructure and used as an anti-spacecraft screen.
-
Doesn't this seem somehow...silly?
All the scenarios that would justify this kind of combat seem like they could be terminated by a big hangar door.
-
Doesn't this seem somehow...silly?
All the scenarios that would justify this kind of combat seem like they could be terminated by a big hangar door.
Tell that to George Lucas.
-
Tell that to George Lucas.
QFT.
-
You c an blast open a door...its generally easier than punching through hull armor.
-
If the ship started maneuvering while you were inside, that wouldn't go well.
-
If the ship started maneuvering while you were inside, that wouldn't go well.
I did that with TrashMan's asteroid base thing. It was a copied Fenris table so it moved pretty damn fast...
-
If the ship started maneuvering while you were inside, that wouldn't go well.
Yeah. Kinda like getting smashed up when a ship does the jumpy-jumpy thing... That's why you make sure the ship has a path. Has anyone else noticed that a lot of the capships in FS have turning times that are incredibly unrealistic?
Doesn't this seem somehow...silly?
All the scenarios that would justify this kind of combat seem like they could be terminated by a big hangar door.
Well, remember, the door does have to open, so it can't be as heavily armored as the ship's hull. If I remember correctly, the terrans have systems they can use to drill through ships' hulls, so a less-armored door would be no exception, and easy prey.
Also, the systems required to make a door as powerful as the hull would be abominably large and require lots and lots of energy, else they would move unbelievably slowly. In Star Wars III, those emergency doors on General Grievous' Command Ship were either extremely thin, or the rails used to close them took most of the ship's reactor output and stopped all the guns.
-
That all seems based rather heavily on speculation. (And as for the Star Wars example -- I doubt that closing some doors would really tax a Star Wars reactor, those things are crazy.)
-
No. Doors are generally weaker than the walls.
They have to move, and if you're moving the whole armor plate out of the way, its hardly efficient. Even if you do, the door will still only be held in place by relatively weak supports compared to solid hull. Its not worth it. Just put a damn gun turret inside the hangar.
It also makes it faster to scramble against an ambush. When you've got a wing of bombers unloading Helios onto your destroyer, you don't have time to open a damn hangar door. You want to shove the pilots into the fighters and launch them ASAP.
-
It also makes it faster to scramble against an ambush. When you've got a wing of bombers unloading Helios onto your destroyer, you don't have time to open a damn hangar door. You want to shove the pilots into the fighters and launch them ASAP.
Instead you have the Helios going straight into the hanger.
-
which gets intercepted by the gun inside well before it enters the hangar bay.
-
Doors certainly are generally weaker than walls, but I hardly think that's an argument for fighter attacks on ship internals as a common combat tactic.
My comment about speculation was more on the specifics of the materials and energies in question -- as with most things regarding FS canon, we don't really have information to speculate accurately. If you wanted to pull it off in a mod, cool, but I'm not sure it fits with the FS2 'verse.
Also, um, I don't think 'a gun turret inside the hangar bay' is going to be the default defense against into-the-bay attacks when that requires putting a huge, unwieldy armored weapons system into the middle of your launch system. Easier to make the bay difficult to access and rely on some good external defenses.
-
In that case, all the torpedos get shot down and you don't need to launch fighters at all?
-
Then at the very least there should be gun turrets right outside the bay to ward off any craft that might use the opportunity that the door is open to fly inside.
Also, the reason FS caps don't have doors is because there's no way to make ships coming out or returning in to the hangar without making it look fugly. Animation doesn't handle sliding.
If something doesn't work, settle for the next best.
Its better than having nothing at all.
-
Also, um, I don't think 'a gun turret inside the hangar bay' is going to be the default defense against into-the-bay attacks when that requires putting a huge, unwieldy armored weapons system into the middle of your launch system. Easier to make the bay difficult to access and rely on some good external defenses.
Or you could just have smaller guns but more of them. This would also prevent fighters from camping the inside of the ship because there would be too many turrets to take down before you got shot up.
That way you force pilots to only make a couple of flybys in it before their hull is too weak to do it any more.
It also seems just a bit more realistic, because you wouldn't want big guns tearing up the inside of your own ship, you would use smaller ones that do less damage to the capship itself.
Also the fly in parts of the ship don't necessarily have to be hangar bays. They could be service corridors or such which brings to mind the Death Star scene with the falcon flying inside it.
-
Also, um, I don't think 'a gun turret inside the hangar bay' is going to be the default defense against into-the-bay attacks when that requires putting a huge, unwieldy armored weapons system into the middle of your launch system. Easier to make the bay difficult to access and rely on some good external defenses.
Or you could just have smaller guns but more of them. This would also prevent fighters from camping the inside of the ship because there would be too many turrets to take down before you got shot up.
That way you force pilots to only make a couple of flybys in it before their hull is too weak to do it any more.
It also seems just a bit more realistic, because you wouldn't want big guns tearing up the inside of your own ship, you would use smaller ones that do less damage to the capship itself.
Also the fly in parts of the ship don't necessarily have to be hangar bays. They could be service corridors or such which brings to mind the Death Star scene with the falcon flying inside it.
My main problem with this whole idea is that it seems consistently absurd, whether in Star Wars or in other fiction. It reeks of designer stupidity on the part of the ship being attacked. The vessels have artificial gravity -- a minor adjustment could screw up a pilot's day. I am fully in support of well-guarded hangar apertures, though.
-
My main problem with this whole idea is that it seems consistently absurd, whether in Star Wars or in other fiction. It reeks of designer stupidity on the part of the ship being attacked. The vessels have artificial gravity -- a minor adjustment could screw up a pilot's day. I am fully in support of well-guarded hangar apertures, though.
Well, from a design standpoint, non-hangar apertures might come in real handy for much larger vessels. On cruisers though, they serve no purpose. But for a juggernaut they could potentially make repairs go a lot more quickly and smoothly; they allow for subsystems to be installed in a modular manner that a hull lacking a service corridor wouldn't allow, and prevents having to dig through other systems just to reach the damaged/out-dated/whatever-happened-to-it one. And based on how fast massive amounts of cargo seem to get transferred in FS, the probability of having a corridor like this is really high. Although since most ships only dock... there might be a completely internal system, handled by internal shuttles.
Either that or they use intra-ship subspace jumps.
I will admit though that if the corridors expose vitals directly to heavy fire, the designer should be shot. Some sort of corner-entrance to buffer incoming fire would make it a lot more survivable in combat, and make the designer not a complete wanker.
Twitch out the gravity and the crew's gonna have one hell of a fun time, too.
Also, um, I don't think 'a gun turret inside the hangar bay' is going to be the default defense against into-the-bay attacks when that requires putting a huge, unwieldy armored weapons system into the middle of your launch system. Easier to make the bay difficult to access and rely on some good external defenses.
Or you could just have smaller guns but more of them. This would also prevent fighters from camping the inside of the ship because there would be too many turrets to take down before you got shot up.
That way you force pilots to only make a couple of flybys in it before their hull is too weak to do it any more.
It also seems just a bit more realistic, because you wouldn't want big guns tearing up the inside of your own ship, you would use smaller ones that do less damage to the capship itself.
Also the fly in parts of the ship don't necessarily have to be hangar bays. They could be service corridors or such which brings to mind the Death Star scene with the falcon flying inside it.
I agree with Grimper. You're not going to put an assault weapon in the fighter bay, you're most likely going to use a much smaller but still potent weapon system against landing parties. Don't want to punch out a reactor on accident, now do we?
And these corridors should go in large ships where docking bays can be obscenely large, allowing for weapons to be added without much interference with the launch system.
Albeit the turrets at the bay's mouth are probably more feasible (No chance of blasting up some friendly fighters) and more widely used, you want some backup system, just in case.
-
My main problem with this whole idea is that it seems consistently absurd, whether in Star Wars or in other fiction. It reeks of designer stupidity on the part of the ship being attacked. The vessels have artificial gravity -- a minor adjustment could screw up a pilot's day. I am fully in support of well-guarded hangar apertures, though.
Realism takes a back seat when it comes down to the fact that its just plain fun to be able to fly through a ship and let off a couple of bombs with lasers chasing after you.
Also, there wouldn't be artificial gravity in service corridors that are exposed to space. To enable that they would have to have doors over the end of it, which have already been ruled out in previous posts.
-
Realism takes a back seat when it comes down to the fact that its just plain fun to be able to fly through a ship and let off a couple of bombs with lasers chasing after you.
I'd call that realism and plausibility getting brutally mauled.
Also, there wouldn't be artificial gravity in service corridors that are exposed to space.
And you base this on what?
-
Damn the Phantom Menace. Damn it to hell.
-
My main problem with this whole idea is that it seems consistently absurd, whether in Star Wars or in other fiction. It reeks of designer stupidity on the part of the ship being attacked. The vessels have artificial gravity -- a minor adjustment could screw up a pilot's day. I am fully in support of well-guarded hangar apertures, though.
Realism takes a back seat when it comes down to the fact that its just plain fun to be able to fly through a ship and let off a couple of bombs with lasers chasing after you.
Also, there wouldn't be artificial gravity in service corridors that are exposed to space. To enable that they would have to have doors over the end of it, which have already been ruled out in previous posts.
It might work in a mod, but not in vanilla Freespace, I think. It's so contrary to the gritty, semi-realistic ethos of the setting. This isn't a place for trench runs of the DSI or DSII variety, let alone Anakin's groan-inducing attack on the droid control ship.
Nobody has 'ruled out' doors at all. Nor do we have any idea that artificial gravity requires doors, or any kind of contained continuous space -- it's not a fluid, after all. Gravity won't leak into space! This is all very specious fan-wanking.
-
I think that enclosed flying is beneficial in that it provides for a change of scenery. I've known these games for a long time, and after a while, you kinda want something new.
-
Fan wanking.... :wtf:
I was just using Star Wars as an example because everyone else was.
And as for the artificial gravity i had thought that you would need some sort of enclosed space to focus the effects of it.
It might work in a mod, but not in vanilla Freespace, I think. It's so contrary to the gritty, semi-realistic ethos of the setting. This isn't a place for trench runs of the DSI or DSII variety, let alone Anakin's groan-inducing attack on the droid control ship.
The Droid Control ship scene involved taking out a ship using its weak points on the inside, and that would be drifting far away from the Freespace universe.
But say someone made a mission where you had to take out a particular subsystem that was INSIDE the ship. This wouldn't be a mortal blow to the ship but it would add another dimension to your classic Freespace missions.
And like i said in a previous post you wouldn't be able to do this often because of the defences, but it would give you the occasional break from the norm in missions before you got too damaged to fly back in.
-
Sure, that could be cool.
-
But say someone made a mission where you had to take out a particular subsystem that was INSIDE the ship. This wouldn't be a mortal blow to the ship but it would add another dimension to your classic Freespace missions.
But realistically aren't all subsystems inside the ship?
-
Think of a subsystem as a box within a rectangle (don't quote me on this, in know there isn't any rectangular ships or square subsystems).
While most of the subsystem is inside the ship, at least one facing of the subsystem is on the outside because of the need to keep the precious crew compartments as deep inside the ship as possible.
If the ship was big enough it could have subsystems embedded deeper within the ship and so hard to damage with anything smaller than a beam cannon. But because the ship is so big, it may have some sort of service corridor which would expose one of the facings of the subsystem.
And that is why ships of destroyer class and above have such tough subsystems. They have a lot more armor between them and the outside.
/-------------------------------------------------------
/--- | | | | | <-- Subsystems
--------------------------------------------------------------
____/ | <-- Crew Compartments
\ -------------------------------------------------------------
---\ | | | | | <-- Subsystems
--\ -----------------------------------------------------
I know it looks retarded, but meh.
It might work in a mod, but not in vanilla Freespace, I think. It's so contrary to the gritty, semi-realistic ethos of the setting. This isn't a place for trench runs of the DSI or DSII variety, let alone Anakin's groan-inducing attack on the droid control ship.
Nobody has 'ruled out' doors at all. Nor do we have any idea that artificial gravity requires doors, or any kind of contained continuous space -- it's not a fluid, after all. Gravity won't leak into space! This is all very specious fan-wanking.
Sure, that could be cool.
^^^
I converted Battuta ;7
-
No, you absolutely didn't.
But say someone made a mission where you had to take out a particular subsystem that was INSIDE the ship. This wouldn't be a mortal blow to the ship but it would add another dimension to your classic Freespace missions.
And like i said in a previous post you wouldn't be able to do this often because of the defences, but it would give you the occasional break from the norm in missions before you got too damaged to fly back in.
I agreed with that.
Outside of those specific one-time-use constraints I think it breaks suspension of disbelief.
-
Fine, partial conversion.
But this whole project isn't going anywhere until we hear back from Aardwolf. I'll PM him.
-
No 'conversion'. This is not a faith. We have reached a sensible middle ground, as one would hope from a vigorous debate.
-
Awww. :(
I wanted to start my rise to the top by toppling giants as a newb.
Meh i'll get over it.
-
Outside of those specific one-time-use constraints I think it breaks suspension of disbelief.
Well not one time. It always helps to take out subsystems......does it?
I've never really figured out what taking out sub-systems does, if anything.
Im guessing comms won't do anything. And nav doesn't effect the subspace drive.
Does taking out sensors and weapons make you harder to track and to hit?
And even if the subsystem thing doesn't make a difference except to mission objectives, it's still fun to fly inside.
-
And even if the subsystem thing doesn't make a difference except to mission objectives, it's still fun to fly inside.
And it still mauls plausibility.
Taking out weapons stops turrets targeting bombs.
-
Precisely -- it mauls plausibility. That's why I'm against its general use. You'd have to work really hard to make it credible in even just one mission, but if you did it right, then it might be cool.
Taking out engines disables the ship. Taking out nav will, on some missions -- when the designer has FREDded it -- prevent the ship from jumping out. Taking out weapons, as Spicious pointed out, prevents the targeting of bombs and makes the ship's weapons wildly inaccurate.
-
You called?
When I was talking about moving the fighter bays, that was really more about weapons than fighters going into it.
Supposing that the game engine worked basically the same way, but that the hangars were filled with subsystems that looked and took damage like (probably unshielded) fighters (and that their desctruction were somehow made significant in the mission), anti-cap beam weapons would be able to do serious damage if they hit inside. Other weapons, like the Fusion Mortar or Maxim, would also be able to cause big problems for the fighters.
The thing about sending a fighter into an enemy fighter bay is that it is full of fighters, and some of them are probably ready or very nearly ready to launch. You don't need to build a Terran Huge Turret or whatever, because you've already got a dozen or so fighters with several fighter-grade primary weapon systems (and some missiles, if the pilots don't mind a little collateral damage).
Of course, anyone who's seen that scene in Independence Day where the base gets raided (or heck, even in Tora! Tora! Tora!) knows that fighters can't respond at a moment's notice. If they got a fighter in, it would probably be able to take out a bunch of your fighters, and whatever defense you made (either with fighters or turrets) would not be able to save every last fighter. But it's probably more cost-effective to just shoot the things from a safe distance. Beams, 'lasers', and missiles--basically anything without the 'Bomb' flag--can't be shot down (although anything can be blocked by a bit of hull/asteroid/debris, in which case the beam has the slight advantage of not being an all-or-nothing weapon).
Really it's up to the person using the ship how to handle that potential vulnerability, if they even care about it. Fighter bays can be made destructible in the FSO engine, and it would definitely be possible to put little destructible fighters in the bays as well. Making the launching fighters replace the subsystem fighters, however, would be difficult. A shield mesh (or just a part of one, covering the front of the ship and any other crucial areas) could also be used to solve this problem.
As for hangar doors, I am sure they could be done. An easy way would be to just use a simple rotation (like window shutters (except just about all window shutters nowadays don't actually do anything, they just sit there and can't be closed if you wanted to)). If you're set on a translation, you could do something more like this:
|
| (hull)
|
\
\ (invisible subsystem, rotates around an axis where it touches the hull)
\
/
/ (another invisible subsystem, rotates around an axis at the end of the previous one,
/ same amount (or maybe doubled, not sure), but in the opposite direction)
|
| (hangar door)
|
-
Meh, still reckon it would be cool to fly inside, and it doesn't really seem that implausible to me to be able to fly inside a ship. Ill leave it up to the designer.
-
101 resons to post this: 1.) Being able to fly inside a ship for once would be αωε∫°√λε.
2.) Being able to fly inside a ship for once would be αωε∫°√λε..
3.) Being able to fly inside a ship for once would be αωε∫°√λε...
4.) ...
...
101.) Being able to fly inside a ship for once would be
αωε∫°√λε...
Can't wait until it's ready...
-
That expression is mathematically gibberish.
-
67.) Being able to fly inside a ship for once would be αωε∫°√λε...
You realize this can already be done in the Raynor and Titan?
-
67.) Being able to fly inside a ship for once would be αωε∫°√λε...
You realize this can already be done in the Raynor and Titan?
This has already been discussed.
-
67.) Being able to fly inside a ship for once would be αωε∫°√λε...
You realize this can already be done in the Raynor and Titan?
We know, but that's only a very small space to fly in. I'm thinking bigger....say............the whole length of the ship?
Which is why i changed my thinking from just a hangar bay to a hangar bay that has service corridors attached to it. Repair drones and such would be stored in the hangar bay, so it makes sense they can fly through the ship without having to go outside it.
Of course the drones wouldn't be shown, if they even exist in the FS universe anyway.
-
Nothing beats lining up forty Arcadia in a race track and flying through them on a high time compression.
IT's αωε∫°√λε.........gad i hate this term :rolleyes:
-
Angular acceleration * angular velocity * epsilon (is this a limit?) * [the integral of the square root of lambda (wavelength? did you mean T, period?) * epsilon (that almost makes sense, since we must be dealing with limits) (from negative infinity?) to zero]
Without proper context, I cannot evaluate that expression!!!!
-
:lol: once we crack the mysteries of AWESOME; ftl and time travel, teleportation and edible pot noodles will be unlocked. :yes:
-
67.) Being able to fly inside a ship for once would be αωε∫°√λε...
You realize this can already be done in the Raynor and Titan?
We know, but that's only a very small space to fly in. I'm thinking bigger....say............the whole length of the ship?
Which is why i changed my thinking from just a hangar bay to a hangar bay that has service corridors attached to it. Repair drones and such would be stored in the hangar bay, so it makes sense they can fly through the ship without having to go outside it.
Of course the drones wouldn't be shown, if they even exist in the FS universe anyway.
Dunno about the drones ( haven't heard of any in the default FS2 campaign or BP), but the "flying through a ship thing" sounds interesting.
In BP are one or two ships that have open hangars, was nice flying through.
But for the suggestion you made, imo that would require a HUGE ship, thinking about an Juggernaut class ship with more then 12 km length.
Wouldn't fit for a warship, but more for a long range science vessel/ generation/ sleeper ship ( similar to the explorer ship from B5 ).
Dunno if or how that fit in FS2 Universe.
The ship here is way to small for that, but i like the design.
-
This ship should go back to Halo where it belongs. :P
-
This ship should go back to Halo where it belongs.
You should go back to hades, where YOU belong.
-
This ship should go back to Halo where it belongs.
You should go back to hades Hell, where YOU belong.
Fix0red. :p I just finished playing Titan Quest: Immortal Throne, so I can safely say ... I KILLED YOU HADES HUR HUR
-
The only time that I think flying in a actual ship would be if you had to go destroy a über juggernaut. Like, A HUGE (notice the caps lock) ship that is so large that a few dozen Terran destroyers could fit in it (like, not in theory, but with enough enough free space for them to go fit inside). And rather then sending in hundreds of ships to uselessly get swatted by it, rather send in a few fighters and bombers to destroy the reactor from the inside. And by scripting cause that to make the ship to go *BOOM*. Like, it would be fun to go and have a dogfight 'in' a ship, but if everything from destroyers up had these massive fighter bays that you could actually go in and be concealed, it would make everything kinda cheap.
-
I agree. Entering a destroyer where no AI can attack you or where no cannons can shoot up your bombs is unreasonable. That's why you put anti-fighter beams in the ship (or something like them, just with a short enough range to avoid damaging the ship).
-
Deliberate :bump:
I was curious to see how this model is coming along as i really liked the concept :yes:
-
Whoa...
I haven't done anything with it since whenever.
-
Why not? I want it :)
-
The few other people who had seen the actual model file were appalled by the way I had just plopped loose chunks of geometry onto the surface of the mesh. Also, I ran out of ideas for how to detail the less detail-y parts, and got side-tracked by numerous other things.
The turret, however, found its way into a handful of my other projects. It might also be a worthy entry for Getter's turret upgrade project.
-
So you've not released the model? :(
-
Well, If someone wants it, I could upload it somewhere.
-
I wants to has it, please.
-
Me too :yes: pof or source :)
-
Okay, I've found just about all the files that might be relevant. I don't know exactly which are which, but there's a handful of textures, some of the .wings files, and a couple (possibly obsolete) .3ds files.
It's uploading now, I'll link to it when the upload completes.
Edit: here ya go!
http://www.game-warden.com/masterpokey/SublightBattlecarrier/you_take_it.zip
-
Bah. . . Sublight?
Cheers dude. .appreciated :yes:
-
The "Sublight" bit in the URL comes from my original plan for how I was going to use this ship... it was originally going to be part of a Newtonian space combat game I was considering making. If you reread some of the earlier posts in the thread, I explained that I was showing it off here mainly so that I could get some help getting the model finished up.
-
Bump bump bump. . . . .
Has anyone touched this piece of Gold yet?
-
Link's dead.
-
Aard, plz reupload... it can't find the file.
-
Oh, hm... I'll have to get it off of the old lappy. I'll have it on mediafire in a jiffy.
Edit: here ya go!
http://www.mediafire.com/?nxznmdyuxgh