[Tempest]

Guys, about making a burst weapon, I tried really hard about a year ago and couldn't do it. This solution is just as good, if not better, for freespace style combat. The way the burst needs to work is to fire just a few shots, and then recharge. It's not a shotgun. I can simulate this by looping the effect once, and using the energy value to make you wait before firing again. However, anyone know of a looping flag, in the works or operational? I don't want to make a new sound effect .

I think there are seven or eight shots in the sound effect, but six would make more sense. This is going to be SO sick. I've ALWAYS wanted to fly a Homeworld fighter, especially the Triikor, and now I get to do it. It's funny, there's also a Freespace mod for homeworld 2. It looks pretty cool.

Just a question for any Homeworld fans out there, do you think Cataclysm should be included in the final release? I like cataclysm personally, but I know a lot of people don't. I want to fly a super acolyte. Certainly, though, there's enough to work with in just homeworld.

[Vengence]

Yeah, I like it too though I get the strange feeling that some people would pound you for not including combinable acolytes. I would love to see a dreadnought in this mod but a homeworld mod is enough for now.

[Tempest]

It's not incredibly difficult to get the homeworld backgrounds ingame. The skybox system is very similar, just Homeworld decided to use a very unique way of gnerating the background bitmap, and you can't just rip it from the game files. Instead, you have to stitch it together. Very very time consuming. The end product is very, very rewarding, though, because it's very cool to fly around in such amazingly detailed, varied, and beautiful space.

Factoring in all ships that will be eventually included, the current list of ships stands at about 100 ships. A lot of progress is being made, and the mod will be pretty amazing, graphically. Since it's from a fighter's perspective, the battles will be fleshed out a lot more, and require specific ships to be disabled, etc. We're looking right now at a 60-odd ship, 7 mission demo release that will finish up with Diamond Shoals. The nice thing is, that even though we're remaking almost every ship, and so it will look fresh, yet true to the origional.

Also, I've gone over the Homeworld data files, and have ripped pretty much everything out that I need. This means we're going to have a balance that homeworld itself had, which is pretty exiting. It will be very authentic, and very fun.

[Vengence]

Cool and awesome. But *sniff* I would be too devastated again to witness Kharac burning again if I would have to play that mission! Jk, I would avenge the many Kiiths and save those 600,000 still in orbit. Indeed that WOULD be an interesting mission. In fact, it is absolutely perfect for FS2 I imagine. Destroy fighters, destroy and capture a frigate or more if you disable them, and oversee rescue of cryo pods.

[Tempest]

Yeah, we'll be using FREDED cutscenes to show the burning of Kharak. It is going to be a very, very important mission, as it's really the turning point, as there's no reason to go back.

Flare isn't back yet, but when he is we can merge his models with my table and background data and start playtesting. Wohoo!

[G0atmaster]

One thing I sort of worry about in regards to balance though.  Obviously, the player's ship won't be as expendable as the average scout is.  I'm not saying you need to be able to take out a dozen heavy cruisers with Assault Frigate and Multi-Gun corvette escort in a scout with no wingmen (Wait a sec, alpha 1 could do it!), but I hope missions are realistically survivable.  Finding that balance is hard to do, so good luck.

[Vengence]

True... true. Very true... Perhaps early ingame we will be doing lots of dogfighting while later on we will be defending bombers or doing bombers. But corvettes aren't THAT big so we could fly as those later on... Just to say the extreme, perhaps very late ingame we will pilot capital ships. For instance, since the Kushan Destroyer has fixed beam cannons we could pilot the destroyer and control only the beams. Dismiss this if you like, but I would nearly do anything to pilot a capital ship. Even if it has to be an ion cannon frigate!

[chief1983]

I find this mod particularly awesome, because I'm one of the people who used to use the cockpit view option in HW1, the one that required enabling a command line option just to use it.  I loved to feel like I was one of the little buggers flying around strafing frigates

[Tempest]

I can actually see the player flying capital ships more than I can see them flying corvettes. Frigates, in paticular, are perfect. The Firelance and Vengeance class frigates are both perfect, because they have fixed-firing weapons that are powerful. On the Firelance you'd be using the Ion Beam, and in the vengeance you'd be using the fixed plasma bombs. Corvettes, on the other hand, have all of their turrets rotating, and that won't really be usable. You might be able to fly them, as only the pilot, since they normally have crews of 3. It'd be boring, though.

Actually, the Kushan Revelation class destroyer has rotating ion beams, which gives it an edge in destroyer combat. The obvious counter is that the Skaal-Tel has double-barreled mass drivers, so while the Skaal-Tel is more adaptable overall, the Revelation has an accuracy edge in capital ship combat.

As far as balance goes, the player will get promoted to bigger and bigger ships the whole game, to maintain scale. By the end mission, you'll be flying (and at that point, have to fly) Firelances or Vengeances. The Demo release will be fighter-only, though. Dogfighting is going to be very, very tense and exiting because there will be a lot more ships then you see in Freespace, in general.

Also, there is a giant balance change from Freespace that I'd like to now bring up. In freespace, bombers are VERY slow and VERY armored, and rape capital ships. In homeworld, they're pretty speedy (150m/s, interceptor is 165, scout is 200) and they're the most fragile strike craft. This balances the ship out, in a way. You just can't ever beat dedicated strike craft in a bomber. Also, plasma bombs require, in the canon fiction, to shunt drive plasma from the engines. Therefore, part of flying a bomber is energy management; you give engines your all when approaching, then bring gun energy back to fire bombs. You can only fire two shots before you have to recharge (from 0%). Recharging takes from two seconds at max energy to more like twenty seconds at little energy. Your speed also decreases a lot. I can see the defender being abused pretty heavily, though, as three rotating turrets can be pretty fun.

[Cobra]

But see, the problem is that what you're suggesting means that a lot of coding will have to be done to achieve that.

Why can't we just wait for TAP?

[chief1983]

What coding?  Capships can already be flyable I think, and I think there was discussion on scripting the ability to control turrets.  It was already underway, so I don't see much else being needed.

[Vengence]

I can actually see the player flying capital ships more than I can see them flying corvettes. Frigates, in paticular, are perfect. The Firelance and Vengeance class frigates are both perfect, because they have fixed-firing weapons that are powerful. On the Firelance you'd be using the Ion Beam, and in the vengeance you'd be using the fixed plasma bombs. Corvettes, on the other hand, have all of their turrets rotating, and that won't really be usable. You might be able to fly them, as only the pilot, since they normally have crews of 3. It'd be boring, though.

Actually, the Kushan Revelation class destroyer has rotating ion beams, which gives it an edge in destroyer combat. The obvious counter is that the Skaal-Tel has double-barreled mass drivers, so while the Skaal-Tel is more adaptable overall, the Revelation has an accuracy edge in capital ship combat.

As far as balance goes, the player will get promoted to bigger and bigger ships the whole game, to maintain scale. By the end mission, you'll be flying (and at that point, have to fly) Firelances or Vengeances. The Demo release will be fighter-only, though. Dogfighting is going to be very, very tense and exiting because there will be a lot more ships then you see in Freespace, in general.

Also, there is a giant balance change from Freespace that I'd like to now bring up. In freespace, bombers are VERY slow and VERY armored, and rape capital ships. In homeworld, they're pretty speedy (150m/s, interceptor is 165, scout is 200) and they're the most fragile strike craft. This balances the ship out, in a way. You just can't ever beat dedicated strike craft in a bomber. Also, plasma bombs require, in the canon fiction, to shunt drive plasma from the engines. Therefore, part of flying a bomber is energy management; you give engines your all when approaching, then bring gun energy back to fire bombs. You can only fire two shots before you have to recharge (from 0%). Recharging takes from two seconds at max energy to more like twenty seconds at little energy. Your speed also decreases a lot. I can see the defender being abused pretty heavily, though, as three rotating turrets can be pretty fun.

  Really now, FS2 doesn't support swiveling turrets like that. Unless a turret limiter is scripted it really can't be done... still I would love to someday fly those ships. Um, btw if the controllable turret thing happens will we THEN get to do cap ships?

[Tempest]

Yeah, I wouldn't see why not. Especially because it's stupid to limit player options if the engine supports them. I think it's only a matter of time, given nuke's scripting work.

Here's what I've been working on.




This is the look we're going for, authentic yet higher poly. Comments? Questions? I want as much community feedback as possible to make this mod as fun as possible!

[chief1983]

Wow.  Looking nice.  I wish I could give more comments, but I haven't played in a while, all I know is that they look very nice.  Nice enough to make me wish you were interested in Star Wars modeling too.

[takashi]

one word: nice

[Cobra]

What coding?  Capships can already be flyable I think, and I think there was discussion on scripting the ability to control turrets.  It was already underway, so I don't see much else being needed.

I meant the power to engines then power to weapons when you fire the bombs.

[Tempest]

That's just achieved by using the energy transfer system...nothing more. The bombs are magnetically capsuled plasma, and when the plasma connects with a target, the forward part of the bottle collapses, venting the rest of it onto the hull. That plasma comes from the engines, and the energy is managed with the Guns Shields Energy thing at the bottom. Of course, there aren't any shields, and most dogfights will not really have energy as an issue.

I'm interested in star wars, but it will be a while before I can produce anything for you guys. I've seen videos, though, and i'm really impressed. I've made a bunch of non-universe specific ships, if you're interested, I could show them to you. They could definatly work in star wars.

[chief1983]

We're trying to go for canon stuff right now, but if you've ever made anything that looks like a star wars-ish space station, we might be able to put it to use.  There's really no such thing as a canon space station to my knowledge, so who's to argue with what it should look like?

[Vengence]

Goodness Tempest! What are you using to model those!?

[G0atmaster]

wasn't the Death Star classified as a space station?  Also, there was Nar Shaddaa, and I think one or two others from various books.  They don't give very good discriptions, though.