[IPAndrews]

I thought I'd start a thread to see if anyone has modded some of the more unusual ships I would have liked to have seen in the Freespace universe. The kind of ships I would have modelled myself except I've always been a bit poor at emulating the Freespace ship stylings. So that in mind has anyone ever modded a....

Beam bomber.

A large, probably elongated bomber designed for one purpose. Carrying and anti-cap ship beam weapon. You would have thought that once beam weapons were developed in the Freespace 2 era someone would have tried to adapt the technology for bombers. Especially since they have the beam armed sentry guns already.

Drone carrier/

A carrier that can eject a large quantity of remote controlled drone ships to swarm enemy fighters and bombers. I've always thought this is a great idea. Drone ships don't have to set aside space for a passenger, life support, worry about G forces etc... They could be small, fast, and you could pack a lot of them into a carrier. Such a ship could spit them out quickly and in large numbers. It'd be pretty cool to see.

[Wanderer]

Yes to both.. Though unreleased and low poly...

Bomber actually uses turret instead of fighterbeams... and drones are resized & painted & tabled amazons flown from a light carrier

[asyikarea51]

Beam bomber reminds me of the Vindhyacal.

Probably unrelated, but the drone part reminds me of X2:TT/X3:TR. Crap as they were, but good enough in messing up the AI (and lagging the game )...

Then again, there is a drone model available somewhere for FS2 in Vas colours... but low poly...

[IPAndrews]

I never really liked the FS2 drone. Looked like a bad implementation of a cool concept to me. I didn't know X2 had them but for me that game is always laggy.

[asyikarea51]

Lol, this thread just gave me the idea to try and do an MW4 and/or X2/X3-styled fighterbeam. (Khaak anyone? Bangwal) So far my cheapo attempt at a Small Laser rips through a Basilisk in a few moments even with the damage set to 1... lol...

Though one will probably need to do a feature request for them to work properly on fighters... especially when it comes to getting the weapons to obey the refire rate, range and energy consumption levels... Maybe a new weapon tag "fighterbeam" perhaps?



X2 and X3 both lag like nuts on my computer, and I never liked the combat either. Especially when one talks about missiles that are close to useless, because of the back turrets on fighters and whatnot. Worse still, I find X2 and X3 considerably harder to mod compared to FS. But I'm still envious at what the modmakers there have managed to do with those games... insane capships with ultra detail...

(goes off to look up "no pierce shields" on the wiki)

[Wanderer]

Fighterbeams can be done and also in such a manner that they will be rather well balanced... Like TBP Minbari beams.

Beam weapons obey just the same refire rates as the other weapons.

Here is a tutorial (still WIP) for making beams...

[IPAndrews]

You can make them wimpy too if that's what you want to do. Our Brakiri fighters have a hilariously ineffective x-ray laser weapon. It doesn't so much damage enemy vessels as gently warm them.

[asyikarea51]

@Wanderer

I still have gripes on energy consumption with fighterbeams, but thanks for that. I'll go take a look. 

Lol, a Small Laser is supposed to be wimpy. X3 Khaak beam weapons, on the other hand...

[IPAndrews]

X3 Khaak beam weapons, on the other hand...

Are cack?

[asyikarea51]

Will tear anything small to bits...

[aldo_14]

I thought I'd start a thread to see if anyone has modded some of the more unusual ships I would have liked to have seen in the Freespace universe. The kind of ships I would have modelled myself except I've always been a bit poor at emulating the Freespace ship stylings. So that in mind has anyone ever modded a....

Beam bomber.

A large, probably elongated bomber designed for one purpose. Carrying and anti-cap ship beam weapon. You would have thought that once beam weapons were developed in the Freespace 2 era someone would have tried to adapt the technology for bombers. Especially since they have the beam armed sentry guns already.

Drone carrier/

A carrier that can eject a large quantity of remote controlled drone ships to swarm enemy fighters and bombers. I've always thought this is a great idea. Drone ships don't have to set aside space for a passenger, life support, worry about G forces etc... They could be small, fast, and you could pack a lot of them into a carrier. Such a ship could spit them out quickly and in large numbers. It'd be pretty cool to see.

Yes, and yes.

No, you can't see them.

[IPAndrews]

Oh har, har . Anyway I don't believe you modelled a drone carrier for one second. Beam bomber, yeah you probably did. Sounds your style.

[aldo_14]

Oh har, har . Anyway I don't believe you modelled a drone carrier for one second. Beam bomber, yeah you probably did. Sounds your style.

Well, you'll just have to take my word for it.  I have fiddled with multiple drone-carrier concepts, none of them T/V/S, over the years.  And made one.

[Colonol Dekker]

Bah, at the time cataclysm was released the community went Drone mad for a whole two weeks.......

[Wanderer]

Hmmm... some links to pics of my models (all are as of now untextured)

Heavy Beam Fighter
Beam Bomber
Beam Turreted 'Gunboat'
Light/Drone Carrier

[asyikarea51]

Eeeeentehresting...

[Colonol Dekker]

I like the rendered MS Paint writing effect 

[Nuke]

the maelstrom was originally a beam bomber, but because i was having problems with the beams, i quickly replaced them with big honking gatling guns, now i think i like that idea better.

[Colonol Dekker]

With real honk sound? That i need to DL 

That beam ginboat would be cool in the SCP..........

[Col. Fishguts]

Trashman made a rather neat looking beam bomber and released it IIRC.