[KARMA]

1-
what's the max n° of polys of debris created by a single explosion in FSO? It was IIRC around 100 in vanilla fs2: has it been upgraded with HTL?
I'd like to have as a debris a derelict version of the bigger ships: can you enable lods for debris? (I never tested but as far as I know they only work with lod0)

2-
I still have to understand this....
How many lods can FSO use? You can convert up to 6 lods, but kazan said that only the first 4 will be used, and the don't use more than 4 of em.
Can someone check this and possibly enable the additional lods, if not already enabled?

[StratComm]

IMHO derelict ships as debris is a BAD idea.  The way a debris chunk is treated in game, each piece starts out where it should and is "released" by the explosion.  However, the debris usually travel in excess of 100m/s, usually much faster, so you wouldn't want to have an entire hull in there.

[KARMA]

yes, you are right, but it would be also extremely cool to see a derelict ship, maybe cutted in 2 or 3 big pieces, with smaller standard debris around.
It would be cool and more more realistic for the big ships.
So it may be worth some coding where necessary, if not too long/difficult

and about the other questions....

bump:p

[Goober5000]

So just use LOD 0 for that.  Debris can be whatever you want, from small chunks to large ship sections.  You can create a mix if that's what you like.

[KARMA]

excuse me as I should have express this better.
What I want, for ships like Stardestroyers and similars, is an effect like when in starshiptroopers the rodger young is destroyed.
After the explosion I'd like to see the ship cutted in 2-3 big wrekage pieces wich remain there.
Problem is that I don't know if in FSO you can have high pcounts for debris (I may check but I'm lazy and you should know this...).
Second, I'm aware of the possible performance hit, so having LODS for debris too could be necessary. Wich isn't possible now.
Third there is the problem of speed of the debris.

I may obviously create a second "derelict" pof, with many rotating subobjects for the different pieces, but I'm not sure if you can load in a realistic way with sexps the derelict pof as soon as the ship is exploding.  But it could be much easyer to have this all in a single pof, if it doesn't require too much work for coders.

and....
"How many lods can FSO use? You can convert up to 6 lods, but kazan said that only the first 4 will be used, and the don't use more than 4 of em."

[Goober5000]

Sounds like you want Geomod. We've said repeatedly that it's not going to happen.  Do your best with the existing system.

If Kazan said that only the first 4 LODs are used, then it sounds like only the first 4 LODs will be used.

[Unknown Target]

No, he wants it to be that when the ship is destroyed, it has two large debris, each one being a half of the ship.

He's asking what the poly limit is for the debris.

[KARMA]

actually I asked more for lods for the debris. As far as I know, they are only on lod0.
And the possibility to edit debris speed/persistancy (debris exploding after defined time) could be nice too.

and I also asked if it is possible to have the engine start using 6 lods instead of only 4 (if not already enabled)
modelview show 6 levels of detail (iirc if converted)
pcs can convert 6 lods
and many modders have ships with 6 lods, they used 6 when pcount was high, but if freespace use only 4, then making 6, instead of increasing performances, will sort out the opposite effect.