[Fineus]

I was mulling over this a long time ago.. I'm not sure bodies are good ideas as such, but if you wanted to go into (really great) detail you could get some interesting stuff being scattered around a ships debris field. I rather fancy the idea of the larger capital ships ejecting their reactors into space shortly before exploding (to try and soften the blast for any escape pods in the area)... heck you could even have small escape pods jetting out of the stricken ship and rapidly opening subspace portals in an attempt to escape...

Of course, it depends what kind of detail you want to go into

[aldo_14]

Didn't someone discuss coding an auto-launch of escape pods at some point?  Of course, in FS there's the slight problem that not many ships actually have EP launch points......

[Fineus]

That's true of course - I suppose it depends where you are when the pods launch... if you're staring straight at the launch point it'd look ****e.

Otherwise if you have them move (very) quickly and jump rapidly it'd just look really quite good. Heck you could even make the pods themselves something small like a countermeasure model and shroud it in a glow (to imply speed). It'd jump before it could be inspected closely anyway...

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
That's true of course - I suppose it depends where you are when the pods launch... if you're staring straight at the launch point it'd look ****e.

Otherwise if you have them move (very) quickly and jump rapidly it'd just look really quite good. Heck you could even make the pods themselves something small like a countermeasure model and shroud it in a glow (to imply speed). It'd jump before it could be inspected closely anyway...

Well.... I wonder if you could do it by simply making the pods emerge from a point occluded to the player -  i.e. the opposite side.  But I'm not sure that's much better or feasible.  At least you could use the fighterbays on an Orion, etc, I guess.

[comic]

I always thought the pods in game where rubbish. They are huge ie take ages to lad up so are not very practical for escape, they are way to slow to get away and they take to long to jump getting shot down.

Escape pods should be the oposite o all off these things!! Someone should definately remodel them as smaller faster podes that just burst out of a dieing ship in a flurry and are gone! Not givving you time to see where they came from  (as ship is dead) and jump out before you realise they are just capsuels with an engine glow?

[Flaser]

Originally posted by aldo_14


I read more than one source, y'know.  And I said 'more likely to freeze than explode', which is correct.  What I did not say, was 'freeze to death'.

  I am fairly confident that a body floating in space is more likely to freeze, than to explode.  I believe floating about at potential temperatures of absolute zero can do that.

Absolute zero my....whatever.

For the millionth time: There is NO TEMPERATURE IN SPACE!
Temperature is a macroscopic term to indicate the internal energy of atoms in a given space.

If there are no atoms, it's pointless to use the term temperature.

Any body in space - including drown pilots - only loose and gain heat through irradiation. Any solid object slowly radiates on the full EM spectrum - loosing heat.
Any body also recieves energy radiated.

If the pilot was on the shiny side of things and close enough to the star (Mercury through Mars distance) he could heat up and eventually evaporate.
In the shadow of something or farther from the sun he would freeze.

It's a matter of heat management or the balance of the recieved and irradiated energy - this is true for any given spacecraft.

This is the reason why the shuttle has to immediately open it's cargo bay once in orbit, since it needs the radiators inside exposed to manage its heat.

As for the boiling blood - it would boil if the it was exposed to space. However it would stay in the pilot's body and therefore remain under pressure (though the blood from his ruptured lungs may evaporate).

[Carl]

excuse me, but when a ship explodes, it explodes, as in a huge fireball of death that rips apart the super strong alloys the ship is made off like tissue paper. any bodies caught in that would be vaporized, so body debris is unrealistic.

[Unknown Target]

I think escape pods would be a good idea. Just make them launch from the dock ports + hangars if no EP launch ports are designated.

[Fineus]

I rather prefer the idea of launching them from the occluded side to the player... for instance the Fenris has no launch bay but I like to think they'd still have a couple of escape pods launch in the event of an emergency.

Plus a striken destroyer could just look damn cool with about 10 to 20 of these things launching from the far side of it as it detonates.

[Carl]

but that wouldn't  make any sense.

There's Alpha I! Launch all pods on the side OPPOSITE to him! It's standard protocol for all races.

[StratComm]

The absolute easiest way to deal with it would be to place invulnerable escape pods within the ship's volume at the moment it blows.  Then they move out radially from the center to a random distance within a set range, and engage subspace drives.  That way it looks like they come out from behind the ship's armor plating, and you don't have to worry about generating points for them to emerge from.

[Fineus]

Originally posted by Carl
but that wouldn't  make any sense.

There's Alpha I! Launch all pods on the side OPPOSITE to him! It's standard protocol for all races.

Who cares about whether it makes sense or not? It'd look cool - and lets face it - FreeSpace isn't real

[Grimloq]

i suggested once that you put in small cylinders as debris, and texture them to look like lifeboats. not escape pods, lifeboats. the escape pods in FS are more like shuttles, so lifeboats would be like in Alien: Ressurection (you know, the aliens go in it and the captain throws a grenade in it. like those), and the ones on the PoA in Halo. the escape pods get the non-essential crew out, and the lifeboats are last chances. it'd look cool, be system-efficient (low poly and a single texture map) and make ship destruction slightly more believeable.

this is all IMO, of course but i'd like to do that.

[edit] oh, yes, i know they'd go drifting off into the void of space and would never be seen again, but think about it - clear the battle area and all... they probably stop drifting after a while with maneuvering jets or something... also, the player probably won't think about that too often

[Gregster2k]

LOL @ this. To all those who were debating earlier:

Some guy asks a simple question "Can this be added" and all those "Professors" start debating whether or not it is scientifically possible.

FreeSpace is SCIENCE FICTION. We can break ALL of Newton's laws if we want to, we can say humans reproduce from eggs if we darn well please. Fiction is whatever we want it to be, so get out of the space science NONFICTION departments already.

We need human debris.

Why?

So that joke campaigns can have Vasudan transports after battles collecting Headz, of course.

[Grug]

hehe. Another Greg yeah!

Interesting suggestion with the head collection though... hmmm.

But lifepods would be interesting. Maybe you can set a random number like the wave delay for a ship.
Because there would be moments where no-one escapes such as kamikaze runs and other assorted fanatical or immediate destruction.

But if that was implemented you could make a joke mission where you jump to a mysterious point where all the lifepods ever ejected end up arriving. So theres a highly clutered asteroid field.

Ok maybe fighter pilots wouldnt last the explosion, but surely in a larger ship with propogating explosions and such there would be some bodies that arn't incinerated.
Too bad the geomod thing never took up... beam weapon cuts a ship in half and then debris and people spill out from the exposed hull.

[Carl]

Originally posted by Kalfireth

Who cares about whether it makes sense or not?

a very large number of people.

[Fineus]

Yeah?

Ah well... nuts to 'em. I'm all for being realistic where it's possible but if this is going to go the way of the whole... "could a Star Wars ship take a Star Trek ship (insert pages of arguement about energy, distance in space and the fact that Star Wars weapons ignore Star Trek shields here)..."

...and you can count on me laughing at whoever gets involved.

[Woolie Wool]

With gigaton-level beams and bombs being thrown about, the crew of a destroyed starship would be turned into quarks in the destruction of their vessel. And the idea of blood in FS is so ridiculous it shouldn't be discussed, even in a campaign like Deus Ex Machina.

[Galemp]

Well, we could potentially replace the existing glowing particle animation with a little blood poof... then have our ships bleed every time they get hit.

[Fineus]

"If it bleeds, we can kill it..."