Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Diaspora => Topic started by: mightyjoe83 on October 16, 2012, 04:16:17 pm
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I was wondering is it Possible to Command a Battlestar in Diaspora, I think that would be cool, and I also wanted to know is it possible to land On Planets in this game? or other types of atmospheric environments?
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there are scripts to help with this, Blue Planet's "The Blade Itself" is an often quoted example of capship control in FSO, but it will be a significant amount of work to adapt these to work with Diaspore. Having said that the existence of the scripts means that for someone prepared to put the work in it is very much possible.
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The answer is no to both questions. We concentrated on things the engine does well rather than try to force things. While it's possible to fly a capship through some heavy scripting, it's not really something that works out that great, gameplay-wise, and it's definitely nothing like commanding a battlestar from a CIC like you've seen in the show. While it's possible someone is going to mod that in, the team won't be doing anything like that; it's simply not that sort of a game.
Planets you've seen so far are just part of the background, actually landing on one isn't going to happen I'm afraid.
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While it's possible to fly a capship through some heavy scripting, it's not really something that works out that great, gameplay-wise
I bet you didn't even play it :(
e: I honestly think it's a great mission
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Not that I think it would be possible to do in Diaspora with any kind of lore-sensible explanation, nor at the production standards expected of an official release.
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Not that I think it would be possible to do in Diaspora with any kind of lore-sensible explanation
Yeah, that's the issue I'm running into when I think about making a battlestar command mission. Capital ship combat in BSG is a very straightforward matter of throwing powerful but simple weapons at your enemy until whatever you're shooting at explodes. There aren't really analogues to the beam jamming or reactive armor that would make sense for a non-CNP battlestar to have. Damage control would still make sense, though, and I'll have to keep thinking about what else is possible. Maybe say that the battlestar is undercrewed (several plausible ways this could happen surrounding the fall of the colonies) and fluff the special abilities as splitting limited manpower and computational resources between various normal ship functions? Implementation would probably seem a little forced, but the idea wouldn't be completely out of left field.
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Yeah, that's the issue I'm running into when I think about making a battlestar command mission. Capital ship combat in BSG is a very straightforward matter of throwing powerful but simple weapons at your enemy until whatever you're shooting at explodes. There aren't really analogues to the beam jamming or reactive armor that would make sense for a non-CNP battlestar to have. Damage control would still make sense, though, and I'll have to keep thinking about what else is possible. Maybe say that the battlestar is undercrewed (several plausible ways this could happen surrounding the fall of the colonies) and fluff the special abilities as splitting limited manpower and computational resources between various normal ship functions? Implementation would probably seem a little forced, but the idea wouldn't be completely out of left field.
The implementation I am picturing is a text-based version of FTL happening on the corner of the screen as your crew scurries around doing tasks like operating systems, damage control, putting out fires, and repairing/rearming vipers.
You would have different types of crewmemebers - pilots, engineers, officers, marines, deckhands, exc. and the # of remaining crewmembers would be a resource just as important as your remaining hull integrity. Keeping track of the health of individual crewmembers isn't really necessary when you have hundreds or thousands of redshirts aboard your ship.
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Hmm. I could actually...make that happen.
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I was wondering is it Possible to Command a Battlestar in Diaspora, I think that would be cool, and I also wanted to know is it possible to land On Planets in this game? or other types of atmospheric environments?
Planets you've seen so far are just part of the background, actually landing on one isn't going to happen I'm afraid.
@mightyjoe83 you can try but you'll probably sooner die from loneliness, reality-bending or an emergency-programmed-self-destruct instead of atmospheric decay or extreme crashing :P
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If the Diaspora team were willing, I'd love to see assets ported over to Starshatter to make a new BSG mod for that sim. Capship combat is native to SS, after all.
FS-wise, destructible armor subsystems would be pretty cool. You may not have the level of reactive armor and damage control stuff that BP might be able to swing, but this would let you balance what section of the ship was taking fire as well as what weapons would be able to fire. If your forward armor plating was destroyed, you'd take a lot of damage if you make a head-on pass at an enemy ship. Thus, you'd need to make for a broadside attack, where your weapons may not be quite as potent as the forward fixed guns, but at least now you won't be destroyed, etc.
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The assets are all released under a CC licence. Port away. :p
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Much to my shame I haven't gotten around to BP, but I'd imagine it might work for some of the smaller capital ships in Diaspora. The Bolitho or Cylon Pillager are both relatively small and maneuverable ships and their firepower is mostly oriented forward so they could be provide a rather richer command experience then say "signal close action and salvo fire the batteries!" If I was going to mod Diaspora to drive caps I'd probably try with a Bolitho.
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I bet you didn't even play it :(
You know what they say about assuming, right? :D Anyway, be glad you didn't bet any money on that. I played both AoA and WiH in their entirety, including the mission where you flew a capship in WiH (the Katana, was it?) To be clear, that wasn't a jab at BP at all - I really liked BP, both chapters (especially WiH), but I don't think such a mission would work that great when you mix in fs2_open and BSG capship combat, for a multitude of reasons. At any rate, no need to take it personally, wasn't intended as such.
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Much to my shame I haven't gotten around to BP, but I'd imagine it might work for some of the smaller capital ships in Diaspora. The Bolitho or Cylon Pillager are both relatively small and maneuverable ships and their firepower is mostly oriented forward so they could be provide a rather richer command experience then say "signal close action and salvo fire the batteries!" If I was going to mod Diaspora to drive caps I'd probably try with a Bolitho.
I did actually try it with a Bolitho, but I hit a few problems. Acceleration is really low and there's no ETS in Diaspora, which means no way to trade off speed and your turret ROF. It could still work, but I think you'd need a Bolitho#player variant with some pretty notable performance departures (maybe even an afterburner).
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Ah, well the original concept was a small corvette/sloop class ship that would have carried a pair of Raptors. Since its peacetime duties also involved customs, anti piracy and SAR it would have had the umph to gitty up and go.
Sounds like the in game version won't be chasing down any Fireflies anytime soon.
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I think it can make a pretty good clip at top speed; the problem is getting there. It's not exactly quick out of the blocks.
And there might well be something fun to find in Bolitho command. I didn't poke at it for more than a couple hours.
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As there are only 2 Raptors launched from a Bolitho, would adding options to the script to streamline issuing instructions to them and add additional fighter commands such as:
* level of aggression,
* designating ships as IFF hostile or friendly for the fighters,
* if the Diaspora build supports it then using things like dynamic waypoints to make the Raptors hold preset positions relative to a target craft such as
** fly near the windows of the ships command area get the crew's attention,
** fly near the engines to threaten the ship with being disabled,
** fire warning shots,
stuff like that.
Also as the Bolitho has sluggish speed change response designing the mission to promote conserving momentum would also alleviate it's mobility issues.
edit
hope this is easier to read, sorry my enthusiasm got the better of me
@ The_E :p
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As there are only 2 Raptors launched from a Bolitho, would adding options to the script to streamline issuing instructions to them and add additional functionality to the fighter commands like level of aggression, designating ships as IFF hostile or friendly for the fighters, if the Diaspora build supports it then using things like dynamic waypoints to make the Raptors hold preset positions relative to a target craft such as fly near the windows of the ships command area get the crew's attention, fly near the engines to threaten the ship with being disabled, fire warning shots, stuff like that.
Also as the Bolitho has sluggish speed change response designing the mission to promote conserving momentum would also alleviate it's mobility issues.
You have two sentences in what should be at least a 5 sentence post. That first monster sentence is somewhat difficult to get through, you might want to break it up into something you can read without getting a headache :)
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His custom title should tell you everything you need to know.
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ok try that
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Much better, thanks :)
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Ah, well the original concept was a small corvette/sloop class ship that would have carried a pair of Raptors. Since its peacetime duties also involved customs, anti piracy and SAR it would have had the umph to gitty up and go.
Sounds like the in game version won't be chasing down any Fireflies anytime soon.
All of the civilian ships in Diaspora also move rather slowly, so the Bolitho can play chase with them pretty well despite having low acceleration.
Now a Firefly's behavior though... it'd probably need the Raptors to catch it.
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I know that this is getting further and further off-topic but I was wondering the feasibility and playability of flying one of the smaller transport ships, like the Mk. I or Mk. II. Given that they would need a cockpit, would flying one of those things make for a good mission? What is their acceleration and maneuverability? It would be interesting to see the Fall from a civilian perspective.
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They don't need cockpits to fly. And it'd all be in the mission design. You can script a number of interesting abilities for a ship - even short range FTL jumping to another point in the mission if you're so inclined.