[swashmebuckle]

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Engine_Limitations

400 ships max, but I suspect you'd probably hit other limits before getting there.

Dammit, I just remembered a sweet diorama from one of the open competitions of an imperial atmospheric fighter in its hangar bay and now I have to dig through a stack of old magazines to find it.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Meh.

As long as any mod emulates the FEEL of the given universe, it's worth while I think. You don't need a gazillion fighters and a fleet of ships to make it BFG. Large battles like that are often not good in Freespace no matter what universe they're portraying.

[Ziame]

Excuse me? HLP ships are pretty darn good!

meant the battlefleet gothic ships. HLP ships are awesome.

[lostllama]

There was a BFG mod in progress for Homeworld 2 a few years ago; I used to check up on it but I think it might be dead (I can't quite find the thread on their forums). There were some sweet looking Eldar ships and some Imperial ones in it if IIRC.

HW2 would probably be a better platform for a BFG mod, considering the number of ships required (but if FSO in future could handle the numbers and distances involved I'd certainly give it a look).

[Akalabeth Angel]

HW2 would probably be a better platform for a BFG mod, considering the number of ships required (but if FSO in future could handle the numbers and distances involved I'd certainly give it a look).

Uh . . . couldn't the same be said for Star Wars? But we have Fate of the Galaxy in the works.
Same could also be said for the Babylon Project and the Robotech mod.

ie all of those universes have battles that include more ships than the freespace engine could possibly handle. But people have worked on them regardless. So how is it any different with BFG????

[The E]

Model detail, for one. Second, all those universes have an established track record of Starfighters being important parts of any battle, thus giving us an easy entry point. BFG (Gotta love that acronym), on the other hand, seems to concentrate mainly on big ships, duking it out over vast distances, something that does not translate all that well to the basic concepts the FS2 engine was built on.

That being said, engines like Homeworld, or Nexus, which allow for a better control over capital ships, are probably better suited for a BFG mod.

[lostllama]

Uh . . . couldn't the same be said for Star Wars? But we have Fate of the Galaxy in the works.
Same could also be said for the Babylon Project and the Robotech mod.

ie all of those universes have battles that include more ships than the freespace engine could possibly handle. But people have worked on them regardless. So how is it any different with BFG????

That's true. I don't want to disparage anyone going ahead and trying to emulate a pilot's (or whoever's) perspective of BFG using FS2, even if the scale of the battles wouldn't be like it is in the 40k universe. It would still be cool.

[Colonol Dekker]

The best-known game for that would be Independence War, I think, in which you pilot a "Corvette" class space ship, which falls in between smaller special-purpose designs, and full-size capital vessels.  The only drawback I know of for that game may be its dependence on 3dFX's alternative graphics standard, "Glide".  

It's a Dreadnought class corvette, and it doesn't fail, Patcoms fail


CNV-301 is the sexy


I-War and Defience run fine, the briefings are a bit jittery but in software they're fine.. . . . . . windowed.

[lostllama]

I don't want to detract from the topic too much, but for those interested here is the link to the thread about the HW2-BFG mod I mentioned above. http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=73395

[Akalabeth Angel]

Model detail, for one. Second, all those universes have an established track record of Starfighters being important parts of any battle, thus giving us an easy entry point. BFG (Gotta love that acronym), on the other hand, seems to concentrate mainly on big ships, duking it out over vast distances, something that does not translate all that well to the basic concepts the FS2 engine was built on.

That being said, engines like Homeworld, or Nexus, which allow for a better control over capital ships, are probably better suited for a BFG mod.

Easy entry point? I would say constrained entry point myself. As in, there's no room to be creative. BFG is a boardgame which concentrates on fleet action. If Games Workshop published a game which concentrated on fighter squadrons would a mod suddenly be more desirable??? The fact that fighters are entirely abstract gives anyone working on the mod a lot of creative control (ie they can do whatever the hell they want).

I mean if the guy's talking about a BFG mod, obviously he's looking for a mod from the perspective of a fighter pilot. You don't go to Homeworld or Nexus to do fighter combat games do you?? Instead of everyone talking about how it's a bad idea. Why not talk about how it's an interesting idea, and what might need to be changed universe-wise to make it work.

IGNORE the fact that BFG is a fleet combat game. Instead focus on how to create a fighter combat game within the 40K universe.

[SpardaSon21]

Well, it would probably end up similar to the BattleTech mod that's in the works, in that it would mostly be atmospheric combat.  Fighters don't do that much in fleet battles in 40K.  However, in ground battles, gunships and drop ships are often used, and the Tau are big fans of air support.

[Kiwi]

The best-known game for that would be Independence War, I think, in which you pilot a "Corvette" class space ship, which falls in between smaller special-purpose designs, and full-size capital vessels.  The only drawback I know of for that game may be its dependence on 3dFX's alternative graphics standard, "Glide". 

It's a Dreadnought class corvette, and it doesn't fail, Patcoms fail

I-War and Defience run fine, the briefings are a bit jittery but in software they're fine.. . . . . . windowed.

I'm afraid you lost me with the "Patcom" ? 

http://www.acronymfinder.com/PatCom.html

Patent Committee? 

    

[General Battuta]

Patrol Combatant.

[headdie]

there was a thread along similar lines about a month ago and the summery is that FS engine dont support player controlled capships well as it is a fighter based game i think it came down to things like turret control and mobility. so to make it work with minimal modification to the game physics the game would have to be fighter based and its a little hard to believe that 12 fighters including 4 bombers could kill a 30k ship

[Thaeris]

In terms of graphics and greebles, am I correct in citing that FSO tends not to do so well because of these reasons?:

(a) I've heard FSO is only capable of using one processor.

(b) I've heard the biggest killer of performance is the outdated collision model.

(c) I get the general impression from reading various threads that the rendering engine is a bit outdated and also gets a little bogged down with the high levels of detail.

Are these assumptions true or partially true? If so, a BFG mod (or any other concievable thing to throw into FS... and FS itself) may not handle as well with the graphical requirements of such projects until the FSCRP manages to get around these issues.

-Thaeris

[Scotty]

My framerate always goes to **** in an asteroid field on high detail.

[Stormkeeper]

I recall someone asking this before. A few reasons that a BFG mod won't work well.

1)The thing is any Warhammer 40K ship, be it a Cobra escort or a Retribution battlecruiser has many, many greebles and polygons. The FS engine will die if any of those ships is modelled to all its cathedral-like glory. Normal-mapping can only do so much for the details; some of the protrusions and like on the ships house cannons or launch bays.

2)All 40K ships have void shields. It's a minor issue, but you'd have to make a shield mesh for each and every ship.

3)Because of the void shield, fighters would be hard-pressed to do any damage to a ship with its shield up. They're not even fighters; they're more like gunships, with multiple turrets and pilots. For them to be of danger, the ship's shields would have to be down, and only another capital ship would be able to do that. The focus of the game would then shift from the fighters to the capital ships, and FS is a fighter game to begin with.

Of course, when all's said and done, if you wanna go ahead and model a BFG ship, go ahead. It'd be nice to have in game(assuming my CPU doesn't die).

[Akalabeth Angel]

3)Because of the void shield, fighters would be hard-pressed to do any damage to a ship with its shield up. They're not even fighters; they're more like gunships, with multiple turrets and pilots. For them to be of danger, the ship's shields would have to be down, and only another capital ship would be able to do that. The focus of the game would then shift from the fighters to the capital ships, and FS is a fighter game to begin with.

Um. Dead wrong. Read the rules.
Bombers and Assault Craft IGNORE ship shields (as do ship to ship torpedoes)


And people saying that a bomber can't damage a ship are wrong as well.
An average cruiser, take the Imperial Lunar Class Cruiser. Or the Armageddon Class Battlecruiser. Both such cruisers have 8 "hitpoints"

Now each flight of bombers can do up to 6 hits (presumably one hit per bomber). So 12 bombers, can kill a cruiser. Is this ANY different from freespace whatsoever????? No. It's not. And one of these days people in this thread will wake up and realize that. (accounting for the fact that a BFG cruiser is a proper cruiser so probably somewhere between corvette and destroyer class)

A BFG escort-sized ship, used for patrolling and convoy duties has only 1 hitpoint. So it's probably as weak as a Cain or a Fenris in those terms. While the largest ships have only 12 hit points making them compartively weaker than Freespace super-capital ships. Even this dreaded blackstone fortress thing is only 16 hit points.


And of course fighters can't destroy capital ships. They can't destroy them in freespace either. They're designed to take out turrets and protect allied bombers. Just like in Freespace.


As for the models themselves. Yeah some of them have a lot of detail. Big deal, abstract it. Deal with it. Detail can be sacrificed for the sake of modding it in the first place. Hell Space Marine power armour has a lot of detail. But there are two games where you can have dozens of the things onscreen, so what's the difference.

[Droid803]

1)The thing is any Warhammer 40K ship, be it a Cobra escort or a Retribution battlecruiser has many, many greebles and polygons. The FS engine will die if any of those ships is modelled to all its cathedral-like glory. Normal-mapping can only do so much for the details; some of the protrusions and like on the ships house cannons or launch bays.

Look at the HTL Hades, then tell me why if something like that can be in-game, why space cathedrals can't, with proper detail boxing it should be feasible. True, that is the cutscene model, but if it can be optimized, so can these ships.

However, you'd have to throw away any dreams of BoEs and limit missions to 2-3 capships in existence at a time like the retail campaigns do. While apparently that's not quite true to the universe, it's just up to the mission designer to make it believable.

[Insomniac34]

These ships look lame AND ugly...what a combination. I hope the SCP engine is not infected with this ugly universe's crap. A metallic eagle headpiece...SERIOUSLY??? Give me FS and BSG ships any day over this lameness...