[Vengence]

...Who can model too! I have a friend next door who owns Maya 6 and is quite adept at it too. We talk together about my storyline and add to it with new models and details. For those who haven't found out yet I AM making a sort of mod and it will go on until something in the FS2 engine doesn't support our concepts. So far its working out well. Ok, to the sweet stuff, my friend and I agreed on a new race for our unique storyline called the Jha 'Oull (I can never spell it right for some reason). They are known for their mastery of constructing very large (lengthwise) ships and possessing a huge trade empire and are allies (currently) with the Homeworld Republic (the Human faction, just don't call them Terran, it offends them because they are also not Terran. Just Human. And live on another planet, but ARE indeed from Earth but that was many years ago). Thats as much as I will tell for now until I can document EVERYTHING.

Long ago I added a ship called the 'Malak' to FS2. It was the first Jha 'Oull ship put into FS2. The second was the 'SerDek' recently. For those who remember those two fighters had similar cross stripe paint. That was their fighter scheme, but now... we have a newcommer:

The Jha 'Oull Inecitoruas Battleship (I have yet to tell him that name yet )
It is a 17km long battleship with a notorious reputation as being one of the outright most powerful warships in the Galaxy and only four are in existance. These massive ships are litterally lined with beam cannons and giant particle cannons. However, recently, the Inecitoruas has been topped by the Homeworlder Meteor -class Battleship. The Meteor is shorter at 14km long, however the Meteor has more than 3x the mass and seemingly equivalent firepower. It's a good thing that these two factions are allied...

[aldo_14]

Pretty.

[Janos]

why don't you shorten their lenghts by 10kms

seriously

17km long starships

dude

[Vengence]

We're talkin interstellar empires with dozens to hundreds of planet resources and thousands of asteroids as well as many giant shipyards. In this universe, to stay on top you must think big. If you thought that was large enough, we have one thats 60km long. But that 60km is really a loner, no other ship of its type. Besides look at Inferno. If I remember right they had a few 50kms maybe. Also the Phoenix mod wants me to make a 50km too so don't complain about the lenghths of my ships.

[Qwer]

Inferno R1 had only Gigas, which was 20km long. Inferno R2 has got Gargant which is 50km. Also that large ship from Phoenix will be owned by veeeeeeeeeeery powerfull race. >D

[Colonol Dekker]

If people can make and model 17K star-smack-thing-uppers. Let em, 

[Vengence]

Inferno R1 had only Gigas, which was 20km long. Inferno R2 has got Gargant which is 50km. Also that large ship from Phoenix will be owned by veeeeeeeeeeery powerfull race. >D

I stand corrected. I only looked at the ship profiles.

[Colonol Dekker]

The one on the left looks like a cross between a Mobile Infantry rife (film universe) and a Black & Decker Alligator (google it)

 

[Black Wolf]

The problem with immense ships like that isn't really the size in and of itself. I mean, there may well be important reasons to have big ships - I mean, the Sathannas fleet in FS2 would have been effective if it was made of, say, Ravanas, but is much, much more effective when it's made of the biggest ships in the FS universe. However, the FS engine isn't really conducive to making really mammoth ships for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the texturing. for a 17 km ship, you either have to
a) Use tile texturing - very hard to do well enough to make a high poly ship look good and generaly requires masses of texs, which is the number one cause of slowdon in FS2's HTL engine,
b) Use an absolutely mammoth UV Map with huge memory requirements, or
c) Use a normal size map that won't suck up most of the memory of the average PC, but will be ultra blurry when you're at all close to the ship.

Admittedly, it can be done well and efficiently - a small number of textures combinging tiles and multiple UV Maps, or a large number of detail boxes, but that's a lot more work and you still have to solve other technical problems like the fact that FS still (AFAIK) limits turret numbers to around 120, making it rather difficult to get any kind of decent coverage on a ship more than about the size of the Collosus (as it is there are massive areas in the collosus where taking out 1 or 2 turrets opens up massive blind spots). That kind of problem is only going to get worse as you get up to a sixty km ship (I mean, even if it was a 60 km long box you'd not be able to have more than 1 turret every 2000m on each side - less in fact if you wanted to have turrets at the front and back and even less if you wanted to use subobjects for anything else (rotating bits, destroyable bits etc. etc.)

Also, look at those fighterbays - If that ship is 17 km long, then those fighterbays would have to be at least, what, 400 - 500m across? A small opening is one thing, but a half kilometer opening in the hull armour of a ship basically screams "Put a torpedo here! It's impossible to miss!"

There are gameplay problems too. There's an old HLP quote (If SMF's search wasn't complete crap I'd be able to find the author of it - I'm thinking either Karajorma or mikhael, but I'm not 100%):

If I can't blow it up, I'm not interested."

In essence, it seems very unlikely that a fleet of ships of 17kms, with juggernauts of up to 60 kms would have an awful lot to fear from fighters. And nobody really wants to play Freespace to be a total spectator, with every mission involving capships being a complete BoE. Now, admittely again, these problems can be gotten around by making a lot of missions designed around specific objectives fighters are good at (taking out turrets etc.) but eventually, unless you have  a lot of very unique model infrastructure and a really good imagination/FREDder, even those kinds of missions are going to get repetetive.

Finally, there's speed to consider. IIRC, the FS AI struggles to handle speds of over 200m/s. For a sixty km ship, it's going to take five minutes at maximum speed to get from one end to the other, and presumably you'd want to keep that top speed for interceptor style fighters, meaning that ships of average or less than average speed (i.e. heavy assault ships and bombers - the kind that you'd want to have attacking capships) are going to take even longer. Plus, unless you're making a 60 km needle, the travel time along any axis of the ship is going to be excessive - I mean, if You wanted to get from one side of the ship to the other it'd probably take several minutes of doing nothing but holding down the "a" key. And that's not even considering flying between ships.

All of these problems, however, would be solved in one simple move by simply having smaller ships. Assuming the 17km ships are the equivalent of FS destroyers, then reducing all your models to a quarter of their current size would still have them at 4.25 km long - far more massive than the FS destroyers and therefore giving the look that you're presumably after (i.e. that all the ships are big) but eliminating almost all the annoying  and wortk intensive problems of super massive ships.

That said, they are well designed ships - they look unlike anything in the FS universe, and the two different species seem to follow a clearly distinct design ethic, which is good.

[Colonol Dekker]

I agree with that, All games need some sort of intrinsic grab factor that can only be achieved with in-game story, But you also need to feel you contribute.
Kudos to the ships, now make a .75k fighter to chase it......

[Vengence]

I never said the 60km is movable. In my story the 60km ship is more like a stationary background object that is mostly inactive and will be featured mostly in rendered cinematics. Unfortunately to explain it better I will elaborate on one of the last missions I have planned. My 60km ship (the Guardian) is far in the background with a huge fleet of ships between the Meteor and the Guardian. The Meteor is attempting to reach the Guardian and use it's main cannon to devestate a continent on a nearby planet. The Guardian, in a cinematic, was disabled and left drifting in the orbit of the planet. So anything larger than the Battleship class (7-20km) is going to be a stationary decoration to the map.

My story is quite cinematic in style so unfortunately you WILL become a spectator on the more breath taking moments (though you can still fight during the scenes) but I'll try to keep the gameplay moving and not distract the player.

About the Battleships (Meteor and Inecitoruas), there are very few of them like I said before: 1 Meteor and 4 Inecitoruas'. It is rare to even see one of them at all.

Indeed, the textures will be a big problem. Either I 1) Make some seriously detailed and large skins 2) Be very creative with the tile textures or 3) Simply keep the object far away enough that you can't see the blurrs.

And those bays arent just for fighters. My friend said that those are frigate bays (which I feel is unusual but interesting). My Meteor has something similar in that there is one large opening but it is closed. There are 4 other, smaller, bays mounted in the two large... wing things on the inside edge facing each other.

About turrets, the real problem on the Inecitor' is that my friend described it as being lined with numerous beam points. My Meteor will feature much less turrets that the other but considering its huge size and armor a fighter really can't kill it alone. Then again, a torpedo will do the job well but it will have to get inside first .

Ah, the post is getting too long. All I can say now is that you have plenty of points and thanks for pointing that out. It makes some things easier now. Just remember everyone, my story is UNIQUE. It is NOT based on FS at ALL. It is a completely different universe that me and a friend worked on. Btw, I like that quote. And everything can be blown up, just not by you.

And your right about the repetitiveness so I'll think of a way to get past that.

[Getter Robo G]

All I got to say is , "The bigger they are, the easier it will be for me to score hits!" 

[Scooby_Doo]

How about this? 

I thinks it's either 80 or 100km in length. haven't touched it in ages LOL

[Vengence]

Thats what I call going too far. I was pushing it when I was going 14km, but 60km is the absolute max on my stuff.

[Scooby_Doo]

Hehe, you can dock a orion inside the front bays, turn the collosius on it's side and it should fit.

[Colonol Dekker]

Maybe if you re-scaled everything to your own scale,, and changed the FOV and etc *waffles on for a bit- omitted for your listening pleasure* then you could make it a bit more acceptable.

[Vengence]

Sorry but I'm too obstinant, stubborn, and lazy to rescale all my models . Don't know why, but I like everything life sized.

[karajorma]

There are gameplay problems too. There's an old HLP quote (If SMF's search wasn't complete crap I'd be able to find the author of it - I'm thinking either Karajorma or mikhael, but I'm not 100%):

If I can't blow it up, I'm not interested."

That's actually a comment Geezer made to me once in the internal or an IM when MG was in its early stages. I'm merely reponsible for publicising it.

[Gregster2k]

Sorry but I'm too obstinant, stubborn, and lazy to rescale all my models . Don't know why, but I like everything life sized.

Life sized for the win :3

Just be careful. If you are gonna make things this big, I think Black Wolf made some good points on how to avoid slowdown problems. It would kinda suck to have such awesome ships throw a standard video card into oblivion.

Regarding the whole speed issue, how fast moving are your capital ships going to be? I always hated how capships in FS2 were so...slow. Somehow, I think when a capital ship as big as yours turns its mammoth engines to full blast, there better not be any fighters in the way or they are gonna get a severe case of DIVE DIVE DIVE HIT YOUR BURNERS PILOT >.>

[Vengence]

It actually depends on when they're being used. Since they're so big and powerful the battle would really be a one sider so they are really just for cinematic impact for just being there at all.