Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: BengalTiger on February 25, 2011, 06:13:42 pm
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Just how Shivan are the Mephisto and the Asmodeus?
The Dis is a black, spiky ship with red glows, just like the whole species, but the other two are either gray/green with yellow glows, or purple with some blue here and there...
Could they be ships of foreign (non-Shivan) origin? Slaves?
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They're Shivans of a very early FS1 origin :) The look of the Shivans changed markedly over the course of the development of FS1 (and then, to a smaller extent, from FS1 to FS2). That's why we have the disco coloured lucifer in the cutscenes, and a few old screenshots showing green manticores and basilisks. Similar thing happened with the Uly looking almost nothing like the rest of the Terran fleet - it was designed before the look became standardized. So too, I suspect, were these two freighters. Change the green to red on the Asmodeus and it'd be much more shivany.
Oh, another line of evidence - note that both ships are clearly set up for multidocking - no doubt they were made before the dev's realized it would be too difficult to implement it in-game - all the Terran and Vasudan freighters are obviously designed around single cargo containers, and were probably developed later (or, admittedly, there may have been other reasons for that).
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Well the Ulysses was a Terran-Vasudan design. So at least there's some justification for that one.
Interesting fact - All the freighters and transports in FS1 had shield meshes but no shield HP.
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Well the Ulysses was a Terran-Vasudan design. So at least there's some justification for that one.
It's also called Fighter01.pof I'm fairly certain the Vasudan influence was an after the fact justification - that may have been mentioned somewhere, or I could be imagining that whole thing.
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lets keep in mind what Dr. Mina Hargrove says concerning the shivans, "Shivans demonstrate considerable diversity as a species, all Shivan technology possesses certain distinctive properties". so it is likely there are other similarities as well
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I'd just go ahead and say that the Asmodeus was colored green with yellow lights simply because of older design concepts, when all Shivans were going to be green. That much I do know. The lights have been changed to red in the mediaVPs, leading me to call it the Christmas ship. I will some day make a Christmas Tree out of these in FRED, with a sensor array at the top of the tree to take the place of the decorative star. Other ornaments are as of yet undecided.
TBH I think the Asmodeus should now simply have the main hullmetal color changed to black or dark grey (dark grey being SF Mara dark grey) so that its color scheme matches that of the other ships. Surely a color change wouldn't be too OMGWTF on us, it was done with the Cain and Lilith, and this would be one that kindasorta makes sense.
If not, I'd rather the glow be changed back to yellow because red and green do not compliment each other very well unless it is Christmas.
I have absolutely no idea with the coloring of the original Mephisto. The mediaVPs version looks fine, though it could just be my graphics settings.
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Haters gotta hate. Green suits the Asmodeus well, even with the red glows IMHO. Actually, especially with the red glows.
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Haters gotta hate. Green suits the Asmodeus well, even with the red glows IMHO. Actually, especially with the red glows.
This.
The Asmodeus is easily the coolest of the three shivan freighters (and probably the best performance-wise too).
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I like the Asmodeus. Shivans exhibit considerable diversity as a species.
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I like the Asmodeus. Shivans exhibit considerable diversity as a species.
...but all their technology possesses certain distinctive properties...
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So do the Terrans and Vasudans, and look how much their ships differ from one another
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There's also a lot of age difference and joint-production properties with those ships.
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Well, even the ships of each era, for example, the Fenris and Orion. Both have a similar style to them yet they are far different.