[Swamp_Thing]

Ok, i just had this idea, and i wanted to run it down you guys.
What is the biggest sized object FS2 allows in the game?
The reason i´m asking this, is because it would be really awesome to have an entire modeled planet, with a huge instalation around it, making the homeplanet mobile, able to travel through space! (very slowly, of course).
The idea was this:
The shivan planet (death star?) was  small, in a planetary scale, and the shivans had sucked it dry of its resources. Plus they were now at hands with an overpopulation problem. Wich is why they would move around, like locusts, feeding off the planets and races they encounter. As soon as one planet´s resources are spent, they move along. Kind of like the aliens in Independence Day, uh?

The thing that gave me the idea was a Dyson sphere. Like in Freelancer. Only not really covering the planet. I suppose it would be like an Arthur C. Clarke creation, a circular station around the planet, with arms going down the axes into the planet surface. And in one side, you would have these HUGE engines, used to thrust the planet forward. It would have a huge shipyard too ( where would they build all those monstrous Sathanas, then?), and a shivan destroyer would look tiny in comparison!

I´m talking at least 32 km in diametre. 64km would be a lot better, but i think that´s pushing it!!
It would have to be a scary ****. Dark and gloomy, that inspires awe. It would have to be made scary, something the punny terrans would tremble at the sight of. Ooooho


Let me know what´s the maximum size an object can have in FS.
Also usefull for other, not so "planetary" stuff.

[MatthewPapa]

Ya know, I was thinking about the shivans the other day and imagined a similar object...

[karajorma]

You can have full sized planets in the game if you want. There are some problems however.

1. FS2_Open has a limit to the distance at which it will show objects in the background. Sadly planets have to be placed too far away to work in FS2_Open.

2. FS2 Retail has a problem with large, complex objects. Simple things like spheres work but anything too complex will give you problems.

So pretty much that seems to nix your plan unless you want to model it, render it and use it as a skybox/background image.

Pity cause it sounded pretty cool. Reminded me of Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear

[vyper]

[q]FS2_Open has a limit to the distance at which it will show objects in the background.[/q]

That should be fixed to recognise some "planet" flag.

[capsfan9803]

Inferno has a scale Earth model.

[Lightspeed]

Shivans are from subspace.

As for that planet thingy, bad luck. You'd need HUGE textures - not to mention insane poly counts to work all that in.

The only solution is to model and play PARTS of the whole at a time - but the FS2 engine doesnt support 'flying out of a mission area into another one' yet.

[aldo_14]

Dyson Sphere idea was mooted for 'Behind Enemy Lines', IIRC.  Albiet the idea then was that the sphere would be used to encase entire stars, using them as an energy source for the Shivans living there.

I;ve always liked the idea that the Shivans have no home world - hence why they live in space.  

(In Reci, the Nightmares destroyed it - or rather turned it into their own matter, so the Shivans adapted themselves to live solely in space)

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by karajorma
You can have full sized planets in the game if you want. There are some problems however.

1. FS2_Open has a limit to the distance at which it will show objects in the background. Sadly planets have to be placed too far away to work in FS2_Open.

2. FS2 Retail has a problem with large, complex objects. Simple things like spheres work but anything too complex will give you problems.

But what if it was made to act like a ship, and not just a background object?  Seems to me that if FS can handle a few beheamoth destroyers all at once in one scene, plus fighters, cruisers, etc etc, it would be capable of drawing this one aswell. The problem would be in the polys, right?
Maybe not for a heavy battle scene, with 50 ships flying about, but in a mission with fewer objects it could work. ::me thinks::

It wouldn´t have to be a full sized planet. Could be that their homeworld exploded, and they carved up an asteroid as their new mobile home (maybe there´s a celestial trailer park up there).

[Hippo]

I think its easier to lean twards the 'Shivans have no home' idea... It'd be an interesting mod and set of missions, but more on the non-cannon end of them...

[aldo_14]

I think the Shivans would need something larger than an asteroid for a home planet, otherwise they may as well stick with the Sathani fleet.

[Hippo]

or gigas fleet

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Swamp_Thing
But what if it was made to act like a ship, and not just a background object?  Seems to me that if FS can handle a few beheamoth destroyers all at once in one scene, plus fighters, cruisers, etc etc, it would be capable of drawing this one aswell. The problem would be in the polys, right?
Maybe not for a heavy battle scene, with 50 ships flying about, but in a mission with fewer objects it could work. ::me thinks::

It wouldn´t have to be a full sized planet. Could be that their homeworld exploded, and they carved up an asteroid as their new mobile home (maybe there´s a celestial trailer park up there).

From what I've heard the problem is not the type of object just the size and complexity. You can have big object or you can have complex objects but you can't have big complex objects. Apparently the TBP found that out when trying to make the vorlon planet killer.

That said FS2_Open may have sorted that problem out.

[Turambar]

i was thinking the shivan home base should have lots of arms and it should be called simply Shiva

[Swamp_Thing]

Originally posted by aldo_14
I think the Shivans would need something larger than an asteroid for a home planet, otherwise they may as well stick with the Sathani fleet.

Well, they do need a place where to build a Sathanas, they don´t just sprout out of thin space...
And asteroids can be pretty big. Just look at the moons of Jupiter.

Another idea would be for them to have a base like Inependence Day  , wich then breaks apart in smaller pieces where each piece is a Sathanas, or a Giga. In Independence Day, there was a huge space ship, that broke into smaller bits, yet each bit was the size of a city!
Just thinking out loud, here...

Or, the shivans could have built a whole world around a terran probe from the 70´s, like in Startrek´s  V´ger (Voyager). Meaning the shivans were the creation of the evil Doctor No!

[Singh]

Omniscaper has an Earth pof that worked pretty well in game actually. It was around 65Km across and had rotating clouds on it as well - you can see some of the pics in this thread too

[Getter Robo G]

last year I made a mistake and converted a SSD from WXA stock file (my installation). Well I got teh scale wrong and teh first attemp worked in game, however it was like 115km long!

   Of course it was warped and looked ridiculous (with some serious clippage) but it didn't crash vanilla FS2 then

   I like your idea of a kinda "Magog-esque" world ship. Just don't go nuts and it should be ok. How about instead of something HUGE, that they saved a chunk of their world and now have that piece augmented by frameworks that contain more living areas, docks and shipyards, defenses, ect..

  Think of FF Spirits within, remember that piece of planetoid crashed on Earth and that's how the ghost aliens invaded.. Figure that the Shivans were fine and alone till some other race (like the nightmares maybe) destroyed THEIR homeworld. Now the Shivans do unto others... All they got left of Shiva is their little chunk of heaven LOL!

   That would work under 64K cause of the mission limit. OR did SCP people listen to me and double the range we can fly like I begged for?

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Swamp_Thing


Well, they do need a place where to build a Sathanas, they don´t just sprout out of thin space...

Well, not necessarily.  I mean, the GTVA didn't need an artificial planet to build the Colossus, just 4(?) Ganymede rings.

I think.... if you do this, you need to make it the most ****ed up planet imaginable.  i.e. it should look evil, warped, almost gothic.... not just round with little bits sticking up, but like some nightmare of a homeworld - cracking in places, giant tectonic plates sticking out sharply at angles, giant spikey bits, etc.

(I always felt the Shivans should be scarier than they are)

Incidentally, the Reci story for the pseudo origin of the Shivans was;

The Nightmares originated in a small, low atmosphere moon in a system on the edge of the galaxy.  The extraordinarily harsh conditions forced the early Nightmare cells to rapidly evolve - helped by high radiation levels from the nearby binary suns.  They rapidly evolved into forms which were capable of traversing space to more hospitable environments, where the Nightmares could colonise and consume the resources there - including any other living form.  By the time the dinosaurs were becoming extinct on Earth, the Nightmares had started to move into other systems.

The Nightmares rapidly progressed, as a matter of necessity, into subspace.  Having consumed all life in their own system, the Nightmares moved to others, and travelled throughout the galaxy, destroying and consuming whatever life they encountered - all of which was too primitive to offer a defense against them.

The Shivan - Nightmare War

The Nightmares encountered the Shivan approximately 750,000 years ago.  Both species were xenophobic, and waging war on the rest of the galaxy as a result.  Neither had encountered an enemy able to stand up to them before, and were somewhat surprised to find one. The resulting war waged devastation amongst over half the galaxy, as both sides attacked relentlessly.  At some point, the Nightmares were able to find the Shivans home planet, and destroyed it.  This forced the Shivans to abandon their planet-side colonies, and they began to move into subspace, where they held an advantage over the Nightmares.  Part of this long process forced the Shivans to begin to refine themselves through cybernetic components, eventually reaching a hybrid form which was more technological than organic.

At the same time, the Nightmares were learning more and more about subspace, and struck out.  Both sides attacked and counterattacked each other, waging war both in normal space and in the alternated dimension of subspace.  By this point, the 2 sides had lost any trace emotions, and were relentless killing machines.  The Shivans destroyed any living thing they encountered to stop the Nightmares from 'feeding' off them, but left the younger races alone as they could not detect their subspace signals.  Similarly, the Nightmares now track potential targets through subspace, having become attuned to sense in that dimension in order to hunt & defend from the Shivans - and hence they also only actively seek out subspace capable species (although they kill & feed off of any life they happen to encounter accidentally)

Around 8,000 years ago,  the war moved to what is now the GTVA and what was then the empire of the ancients.  The Shivans sent a Lucifer to exterminate the ancients (cleansing the system), and fought a rearguard action all the way to the Sol system. The Nightmare pressed as far as Mars, where they were able to 'sow' a juggernaut, before being forced out the system - as life on Egyptian era life continued unawares, bar a mysterious white light in the sky in 5BC*.

At the time of FS1, the Shivans were gradually gaining the upper hand over the Nightmares, and had forced them out of that part of the galaxy since the destruction of the ancients.  However, the Nightmares were also pushing back, and the Shivans sent a fleet of Lucifers to actively seek out and remove any potential fodder for the Nightmares - including the attack on the GTVA (which focused on the key population centers).  By FS2, the Nightmares had recovered substantial territory, and the Sathanas fleet had been moved to counteract that - hence its appearance in GTVa space, as the frontlines moved closer.  At some point, the Shivans had learned of the Progenitor derelict, and were aware that it may have contained something of use to them, as the Progenitors were the only species to have been able to put up a fight and evade (through their 'legacy' ships) the Nightmares for a prolonged period.  As the Shivans were embroiled in a major fight against the Nightmares, and had suffered surprising losses to the GTVA, they sealed off the Capella node by supernova-ing the star, attempting prevent the derelict from falling into Nightmare hands.  The Nightmares were also aware of the derelicts importance, but not its location.

By the time of Reciprocity, the Shivans have lost further ground, and their only access to GTVA space is through the Capella node - now permanently sealed by a GTVA constructed 'knossos' type device.  The Nightmares hold the other nodes - which are too unstable for them to travel through.

*The star of bethlehem - actually the result of a prolonged battle in mars orbit, and formed from multiple explosions.  It's a nice thought....... sort of

(NB: you'll have to ignore the various Reci-related guff and note the stuff in italics RE: what i thought should happen to the Shivans.  I always felt the Shivans may be refugees, but they're not innocents)

[magatsu1]

hard to imagine Shivans having colonies