[TrashMan]

IMHO, if your campaigns depends so much on "never before seen ships", then it's simply not that good.
A good campaign doesn't need that form of exclusivity as a selling point. It feels cheap. Like someone is desperately grabbing on to anything that can make his campaign "unique" so people will play it - are they so insecure, so desperate for attention?
Altough in retrospect, that approach does work.

I for one have always released things for public use as I made them, and I fully support the OP.

[Spicious]

Even with DAE you need to fix up the file in a modelling program before the reimport doesn't crash PCS2.

Why does no one tell me these things? It shouldn't be crashing.

Even dae looses rotation info and moi. 

No one ever seemed to care before.

I just wish glowpoints actually had a linear layout (glowpoint1, glowpoint2, glowpoint3...)  It's extremely annoy and hard to setup some complicated landing lights when the order gets scrambled up.

If you can find a nice way to do node ordering in DAE...

[Scooby_Doo]

Could you do it like pcs1 does... glowpoint01-01,glowpoint01-02, glowpoint02-01, glowpoint02-02  ?

[**Joker**]

hey guys,

first time poster, just wanted to echo Fury's initial point, a common pool where models and other assets are available to everyone I think would improve the quality of every mod throughout. Sure some assets could be held until release, but afterwards the authors could make it a point of adding the now released assets into the common pool.

In the end, I think we would see mods with newer models throughout, and would help in at least some perspectives to keep the technology in the FS universe moving forwards...

Example: how old is an argo transport? newer mods could make use of other models that other may have built but never released out... 

[Titan]

[MatthTheGeek]

Did you ever have a look here ? I think there is already enough user-made ships to have fun.

[**Joker**]

I think the thread is expanding on that, the wiki is a good place to start but I have a feeling that the wiki is missing quite a few models... and is it now the community default repository of content?

[MatthTheGeek]

There are a few others on FSMods too.

[Rga_Noris]

Considering that you cannot make anyone release anything, and that many mods and modelers have put their works up (looking at you, Scooby Doo), for download, you pretty much have what you asked for already, or at least as close as you can ever come, aside from improving methods in which people can share work. Any policy you make on how people should release mod content is completely unenforceable.

Also, I agree that in some cases, new content that is "never before seen" does add cinematic value to any given mission. It also adds gameplay; engaging a cruiser that you have engaged in other mods/missions because it comes from some 'pool' would detract from any challenge in finding weaknesses, turret locations, etc. An all new enemy will require new thinking and tactics.
 

IMHO, if your campaigns depends so much on "never before seen ships", then it's simply not that good.

This is a silly statement. As mentioned before, new ships add new gameplay. If you release your ships prior to mod release, you run the risk of losing this, because player will develop tactics to take it down. Just think about the first time you went toe to toe with an Aelous. You still get eaten alive by flak? Or do you attempt to avoid them, because you know where they are? If I play a mission where a Hecate challenges my capships, I know right where its main guns are located, and exactly how to cripple its abilities.

Yes, this effect will wear off eventually as people play your mod multiple times. But that's to be expected. The same will happen in regards to where bomber wings jump in, or when a freighter will jump out. That doesn't mean you should sabotage that first experience by copying the events of other missions to give a predictable tactic.

Keep it the same. If people want to release content will nilly, let them and embrace it. If they want to keep it and release it with a mod later, leave them alone, as there are plenty of good reasons to do it.

[MatthTheGeek]

As mentioned before, new ships add new gameplay.

Then just take old ships and table-hack them with new weapons and stats. You don't need brand new assets to have a new gameplay.

[The E]

But sometimes, you want the "Wow" effect only new ships that have never been seen before can provide. And there is nothing wrong with keeping some assets secret until your release. Speaking from the BP perspective here, releasing the Fury AI to the public had some obvious benefits for us, as we could use the feedback to make it even better, not to mention that with more people looking at it, more bugs could be found. However, there are some assets you'll get to see first on release day (like, for example, the Solaris class Destroyers), because we want you to go "Wow" when they make their first appearance. That's something you can't get with stock models, and the experience would be dulled if we released the model beforehand.

[TopAce]

I don't see why releasing assets destroys immersion. For 5-10% of your players perhaps, but only if they use that very ship with the same weapon configuration, table stats in their own mods, under the same circumstances. You're assuming that as soon as you release an asset, everyone will know that asset as well as they know V ships.

Of course if it's about the "wow" factor of its first appearance, then it's fine.

[Rga_Noris]

Table hacks will not change turret location, subsystem location, or the shape of a ship. Sure, you could make those giant beam cannons on the front of the Hecate shoot a smaller weapon, but it would look silly. You could do some less silly modifications with the tables, I know, but you will not be able to cover the dorsal side of ship that was previously left as a weak spot.

Table hacks will never provide the same "newness" as an entirely new ship. Period.

And TopAce, I agree that immersion can be left intact with stock ships. I still feel immersed playing FS/FS2 for the hundredth time. I'm never surprised. But still immersed. And I never assumed that everone would know an asset instantly upon release. What I did say is that you run that risk, and you undeniably do.

And TopAce, where did you get 5-10% from? You just made it up. Can you refrain from using imaginary statistics please?

[MatthTheGeek]

And TopAce, where did you get 5-10% from? You just made it up. Can you refrain from using imaginary statistics please?

That's why he said perhaps. Reading correctly is the first step to wisdom

[TopAce]

Let me clarify:

Someone makes a new ship available to the masses, makes an HLP thread about it, and uploads it to FSMods, and maybe some other mirrors. When will you download it? Of course, if you want to use it for your own mod. For the sake of using your bandwidth, you don't download FS mods. So casual players are already out of the question because they don't have their own mods in which they plan to use the said ship. And fewer than 100% of people with their own mods in development will download a new ship.

It'd be very surprising if I knew exact statistics about the player:modder ratio in the community. If I did, I would boast with it, upload it on the wiki, and my custom title would be "Statistics Guy". That's why I'm limited to guesses. It's a guess, it's inaccurate, and I didn't say my numbers were correct. I was trying to make the point that even if the given ships are released before the campaign it's supposed to feature first, it's only a marginal number of players that will not experience the great "first encounter". (And was someone threatening you with a gun that if you won't download that ship there'll be trouble? I don't think so.) See my experience about the Ticonderoga below. Warning: I'm completely aware that it's my personal experience, so don't generalize it. It's the best I can offer to make my point. If you've got a different experience about the issue, you experienced it under different circumstances: A different ship, a different mission, a different mod.

If you're a modder, it's likely that you'll change the tables a bit to make it match your mod's weapons and style. You will ideally learn about all the turret locations, but there's no guarantee that when you encounter the said ship in someone else's mod, you'll already be able to predict how the other modder used that ship.

It happens that I have some similar experience with the Ticonderoga, Hamano's Leviathan-upgrade cruiser. I use it in my mod, and I encountered it while testing for CoW3. Of course I thought I knew the Ticonderoga, but ShadowWolf and I use the Tico under different circumstances and it's got different guns, so I had to replay the said mission three or four times to learn where the AAAs are located and which ones are the anti-warship guns. Eventually it turned out I wasn't even supposed to approach it. The mission happens to be built so. And CoW and my mod use a completely different set of weapons that the player can use. It was a different experience, and it didn't matter that I knew about the Tico's shape and had some vague idea where its more vulnerable spots are. If the mission is built in a way that you cannot exploit the ship's weakness (if there's any) then you could have spent your whole life investigating the said ship's POF file and creating missions that allowed different scenarios to play out, you just won't be able to your knowledge because the other mission designer has a different way of thinking about what any given mod can be used for.

[Rga_Noris]

You're right, that's your experience, and its a good one. I don't claim its impossible to make a new experience using table edits, I claim that it wouldn't be 'as new' as new ship, which is true. And let's face it, if all you ever needed were table edits to get what you needed, then you wouldn't need any pre-released models in the first place, as your Ticonderoga story illustrates. But we do want new models. Claiming that table edits are enough to make the experience unique puts a big dent in any argument that releasing visual assets early is needed at all. (NOTE: I did not say AI or other programming assets)

I attacked your statistic because its a pet-peeve of mine. It only makes a point to people that assume you have some sort of data backing that up. @MattTheGeek: It doesn't matter if he put "perhaps" after it. Its obviously an estimation based on the simple fact that he gave a range. The issue I have is that his obvious estimation is based on nothing but his unsupported guess. Trying to make a point with it is meaningless because its completely made up. It would be like me walking into a room and demanding we remove everything made of styrofoam because I think that perhaps 5-10% of the people in the room will die from it. If my statistic was true, then we should remove the styro. Since my statistic is made up, based entirely on what my gut says, we still don't know if the light fluffy substance should be removed. The 5-10% was totally pointless, still is, and always will be. I read it just fine, thank you.

I really doubt you can have any feel or make any prediction on how many players would see your ship prior to release of your mod. If you release the asset early and it gets plugged into a mod/mission that is released before yours, players will be able to see this ship. How many players download the mod and play it is going to be based on its quality and popularity, and little else.

I would also like to state (again-ish) that I am not opposed to releasing assets early. My original statement is still what I believe: There are benefits to releasing assets early. There are benefits to not (both gameplay and otherwise). We should embrace the free and easy sharing of these assets when people decide they want to release them, and we should not judge others mods as "simply not that good" if someone wants to keep the assets until a full release.

Regardless of what anyone thinks, there isn't much anyone can do to enforce their opinion on the topic. You cannot force anyone to release assets, and you cannot force people to keep their mods bundled up tight until release. So its a pretty lame topic of discussion anyways.

If someone wants, it wouldn't be a bad idea to organize a team with the goal of making royalty free assets for everyone to use in there mods. The team could make tons of assets that are soley for the use of the public, taking request for customizations for mod makers to the ships.