[Thaeris]

I'll post some new artwork by Monday. 

A TBP-style funnel warp-in/out would be cool, but you might only want to use one color. Actually, a really dark, almost black main distortion with a secondary revolving cone of bright light in the center would be pretty cool (for the dark part, consider a very dark translucent texture... like the dark tinted-glass texture that got put into... then removed from the new MediaVPs). Perhaps a simultaneous "faster-than-light-so-you-can't-see-anything" effect and the traditional bright flash from the middle would be a winner? Of course there'd be a bright flash at the end as there currently is in normal FSO anyway. 

[headdie]

I think bright flash is almost a law of sci-fi from cause everyone from star trek to star wars has it in one for or another lol but seriously I would like to go with it.  I like the black distortion idea I bet catching bg nebulae would look good.  If going with the secondary cone you thinking of having the bigger cone carry a hint of the colour from the secondary?   Having the effect rotate might be nice with the secondary cone having slight variations in colour/shading to show up a counter rotation.

how about this when the jump/warp effect collapses a ripple 90 degrees to the main effect ripples out for a second or 2

[Thaeris]

Sounds pretty neat.

I've got a simple diagram of the affect in my notebook. I'll work with that later directly in this thread. Here's a concept for the end flash:

What about a shockwave?

The problem is then, "but why would that make sense?" I suppose you could perhaps try to argue that a FTL/subspace/hyperspace/"transfoorm-portal-AWAAaaaayyy!!!" jump is fuled by antimatter/matter=pure energy reactions, thus resulting in a force eminating from the jump point once it closes. The joys of technobabble... At least it would be cool from a visual/gameplay perspective

The shockwave wouldn't hurt the non-jumping ship in the vicinity much... if at all. However, the shockwave would be proportional to the size of the distortion of the ship that just jumped. I'd like to see ships only speed up when jumping out (including fighters), so a really big ship might leave behind a big shockwave that might actually hurt you.

Furthermore, it would be pretty cool if you could get "pulled through" by a leaving ship. That would of course be unfortunate for the player, but it would add another interesting/unique dynamic.

I'll post some more concepts on this later. What do you think?

[headdie]

in universe the humans dont use antimatter, yet, without dependence on directed energy weapons it is considered an extravagance and to much of a risk but i'm sure something can be figured out.

i like the idea of the shock wave and getting drawn through but i think game engine limitations would prevent that

otherwise keep the ideas coming they are great

[Thaeris]

As promised, here is a bit of work on a fighter concept I started a few days back., when I only had a few basic design perameters. The fighter is intended to represent your "Thunderchief," which I interpereted as a heavy fighter. I've not included the prelim art, as that was just to get the design in motion. It's also a bit sloppy and breaks my current rules for concept art (limit shading and use only various line types, etc... I can discuss more on that if you're interested...), but it gets the idea to date across. I hope you like it. If you do like it, I could actually begin to model this bird.

Furthermore, I've worked out a few perameters:

- Length is approx. 23m
- Primary bank with three guns
- Primary bank with two guns
- Special primary: Gatling coil/gauss gun with 2500 rds.
- Large internal secondary bank
- Small internal secondary bank
- External secondary mount

The Terran primary weapon types, as I precieve them, would work like this:

- Rail guns are excellent all-round weapons. The tremendous velocity of the projectiles makes them hard for shields to stop, and the incredible kinetic energy possessed by the rounds deal vicious damage to ship hulls. The power required to fire a rail gun is immense, and a ship weapon capacitor at normal power settings may have a hard time keeping up with energy requirements. This, however inconveniant to combat crews, is rather helpful to the weapon itself: long-term firing may cause jamming or eventually wear the weapon's barrel out entirely.

- Coil guns, or Gauss guns, are mass dirvers just like rail guns. Although theoretically capable of similar performance to a rail gun, in practice coil guns are in fact lower-powered weapons. By design, a comparable coil gun will use less power than a rail gun. However, due to the electromagnetic accelerator stages which must be triggered in increasingly tighter time tolerances in relation to the target projectile speed, coil guns usually fire slower projectiles than rail guns. This combination of lower speeds and greater inherent energy efficiency makes them more effective for long-term firing. The design of the weapon itself is also inherently low-maintenance, and barrel changes are far less frequent for this weapon type in comparison to rail guns. Lower projectile velocities also mean specialized rounds can be fired safely from a variety of weapon types currently in service, including armor-piercing shaped-charge type munitions. Due to low projectile speeds, coil guns are often less effective against shielded targets, but due to explosive rounds, often tend to deal a great deal of hull damage.

- Lasers are rather uncommon on fighter craft. High energy usage and often less-than-stellar hull piercing capabilities tend to make them a special purpose weapon. This special purpose of course is disruption of shield systems. The laser beam's energy, when it hits, tends to be scattered about the target's shield. This will super heat and dissipate the field, eventually leaving a naked ship hull vulnerable to the slowest of projectiles.

The information on rail guns and coil guns is based on some information I picked up in the past. If somone would like to test my fiction versus current reality in regards to the two weapons, I'd appreciate that.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[headdie]

on the Thunder Chief I like the balance between sleek and bulky looks it looks good, please feel free to start work on it.

The details in Wikipedia would support the basis you have provided and I'm thinking of using them as follows

Coil/Gauss guns are the standard issue guns due to being cheaper to build and maintain with acceptable damage performance characteristics.  the military considers the slower muzzle velocity and associated slower rate of fire an advantage allowing novice pilot to better conserve ammo.

I was going to have the larger guns on heavy fighters and bombers just be a higher caliber coil guns and I will keep the idea to give the player options but I think providing limited/special issue Rail guns would be useful to the player providing a weapon with vastly superior capabilities but balanced with limited ammo supply which is used quickly.

For craft larger than fighter/bomber employing specialized anti-fighter armaments a rotary multi-barrel coil gun would work well for civilian operated human craft (e.g. freighters or privately operated warships) with the military especially large warships using a rail gun based system.

On warship main guns I am considering having small ships, corvettes, destroyers and the like using a coil gun, story wise this is to minimize the recoil with the associated effects it has on the ships structure and the amount of "slide" induced in addition to this it reduces maintenance costs.  Cruisers and upwards pack the railgun versions to maximize both the firepower and chance to hit at extreme ranges

[Thaeris]

I'd actually think a coil gun would have a higher rate of fire despite a lower typical muzzle velocity.

You might generally compare the weapons we're describing here in terms of FS like so:

-The coil gun is similar to the Subach... high ROF with an acceptable level of damage.

-The rail gun is more like the Prom-S, lower ROF but launches a rather damaging projectile out at very high speeds.

-The laser is thus like the S-Breaker or Banshee, damaging mostly shields but also capable of damaging hulls and subsystems (might be point to consider).

That's rather arbitrary at this point, though.  By the way, could you post a link to your forum in your sig?

[headdie]

Quick reminder on the address for everyone

http://tcmod.forumotion.com/forum.htm

and now announcing a visitors forum open for non forum members to have their say
http://tcmod.forumotion.com/visitors-forum-f13/

[Thaeris]

I'm certainly no coder at this point, but I think this would be a generally useful feature to attempt to implement into the mod:

Cockpit subsystem

This is intended for "grittier" FS mods, like Diaspora. I'm not entirely sure how you imagine the universe you're designing, but I think this could add another dimension to combat. Basically, if the "cockpit subsystem" is destroyed, you're dead. Seeing as subsytem damage rarely seems to drop to zero... resulting in some terrible consequence to you... on medium difficulty, single player, at least... before your hull is completely blown to hell, this is not unreasonable. Heavy ships with heavy cockpit armor, such as the Thunderchief, will have less to worry about (despite the canopy's position) because the subsystem value will be fairly high. A light fighter with a big bubble canopy will possibly be in trouble though...

The idea is one thing... but implementation is another. I suppose you could pull a "crystal effect"... this references the Shivan Comm Node, of course. Or... was that a SEXP?.. In this condition, the fighter would explode or explode shortly after the cockpit was destroyed and the pilot/crew was dead. Or, more interestingly, the fighter/ship would maintain whatever it was doing last... to a degree... when the pilot was killed... as it probably would if this were a realistic situation. I think this would be better, but what happens if/when this happens to the player? I'm wondering what you'd have to do to the engine to make this work...

[The E]

Well, FREDing something like that in would be easy, if you have a Cockpit subsystem in the model.
Check for the subsys strength, if == 0, self destruct or something like that. Or you could just disable that ship.

[Thaeris]

Well, FREDing something like that in would be easy, if you have a Cockpit subsystem in the model.
Check for the subsys strength, if == 0, self destruct or something like that. Or you could just disable that ship.

I'd assume such. Once more, that's how Comm Nodes work, correct? The crystal goes, the node then goes critical and explodes after a few seconds.

The thing is that has to be FREDed into every mission... for every node, correct?

[The E]

Yep.

But once you have created the event, you can copy/paste it into the mission.
Another solution would be scripting, which in this case would probably make more sense.

[Thaeris]

That's what I was thinking.  As I'm no serious coder, that's not going to happen soon. Again, neat idea.

Pulled out AC3D to do a quick test of my modeling skills... namely in terms of flat and curvy areas. The Thunderchief concept I've been working on is a great example of both. This is not an alpha, beta, or any other greek-letter-pertaining to a production/final model. Just a test... The upper surface was colored green so I could better visualize the fuselage chine. The angle selected looks deceptively good... as a test model, the proportions of the forward fuselage and canopy are not at all to scale. You can also tell I just extruded a multi-segmented cylinder to make a rough canopy... but oh well. 

Modeling shoud pose no problem. 

[attachment deleted by admin]

[headdie]

Hi

Sorry I've been absent from things had a slight problem with forgetting to pay my internet bill last month and not getting any money until today to pay them but as you can see I am on now.  The concept campaign is close to finished, probably a couple of days now, on the cockpit subsystem i remember in the wing commander games the ejection subsystem could be damaged preventing ejection thus killing you when your fighter died and i liked that feature so i like the cockpit feature, should put an interesting spin on head on tactics as well.

[Colonol Dekker]

Is that a cockpit Thaeris?

[Thaeris]

That was a very fast preliminary modeling test to see where I was at in terms of complex organic/mechanical shapes in AC3D. It's nothing final and wasn't ever supposed to be. And it certainly was based on the cockpit/forward fuselage of a fighter... What did you think it was, Dekker? 

[Colonol Dekker]

A . . . . . . . . . . Cockpit.

[Thaeris]

...[CLASSIFIED]...

Intelligence has just issued new data to High Command pertaining to a new hostile contact encountered within this sector:

<< ORIGIN - NON-TERRAN ;
<< TYPE - LIGHT FIGHTER ;
<< LENGTH - 15-18m // Size estimate inprecise due to severly damaged flight data recorder information recovered from TF8806531-014C (Class: Dart Medium Interceptor. Last Recorded Operation: Sirius (102.00165, 123.05100, 5648.51615)x10^42mag: rel. Flight: Hammer, Op#402-C, clearance Theta.);
<< ARMAMENT - UNKNOWN ENERGY WEAPON x 2, LIGHT INTERNEAL WEAPONS BAY (LATERAL MOUNTINGS) // Cannons presumed to be short-ranged plasma-based weaponry. Weapons are fire linked and appear to inflict severe damage to shields, hull, and exposed sub-systems;

Debrief:

A flight of what appeared to be light fighters, class unknown, engaged Hammer Flight on a routine patrol within controlled Terran space, Sirius. The flight was launched from the Matheld, a Constance-Class escort carrier. The flight consisted of two elements, both Dart-Class Interceptor fighters. At 1813:56 hours, Sol standard time, Hammer 3 reported unknown contacts at a range of 15,300km. Upon clearance from the Matheld, Hammer lead ordered the flight to intercept and identify the intruding contacts. At 1821:16, Hammer 2 reported three distinct contacts, all on an intercept course to the flight's own intercept vector. At 1825:22, Hammer Flight attempted to hail the contacts with no success; note that multiple hail attempts were made. At 1828:45, a rough visual image of the approaching kette of vessels was aquired via Hammer 4's LIDAR system; due to active jamming from both sides of the engagement, only a very weak image of the approaching craft was recieved by the Matheld. At 1833:12, 21,000m to target, Hammer 1 reported visual contact with the incoming vessels. Visual and LIDAR imagery (as described by the precievable incoming messages from Hammer Flight to the Matheld) described the contacts as claw-like fighters, primarily red with black relief. At 1835:01 hours, Sol standard time, all friendly transmissions from Hammer Flight's last known position ceased...

By 1836:00 hours, the Matheld had launched both of her remaining fighter wings as well as her combat support ship. One wing, Sabre Flight, stayed behind to protect the Matheld. The support ship, Marcel, and Harpoon Flight proceeded directly to Hammer Flight's last known position. Upon arrival, no hostile contact was identified, and only sparse pieces of debris, barely recognizable as the remnants of Hammer Flight's Dart fighters, were found. Of the four fighters destroyed, only Hammer 2's (ID: TF8806531-014C) flight data recorder was found... with severe damage to the unit itself.

According to data-link transmissions recorded by the unit, it seems most of the flight was desroyed very quickly by a missile barrage; Hammer lead survived the initial onslaught with severe damage while Hammer 2 suffered moderate damage. The flanking element (Hammer 3 & 4) was destroyed almost instantaneously. After the initial barrage, Hammer 1 was quickly dispatched by energy weapon fire from short range. As no means of escape was present, Hammer 2 attempted to engage the enemy. He appears to have engaged the enemy flight for about 15 seconds after Hammer lead's destruction. The fighter itself lasted longer than that, about 22 seconds; Hammer 2, Capt. Alexander Delazario, was killed via explosive decompression - the Dart suffered a direct hit to the cockpit.

The Matheld has since been replaced on patrol duties by an investigative unit; all other information has been restriced to appropriate regional commands.

Notes on the drawing:

This is good 'ole fashion concept art: quick 'n dirty! It's a bit short and can't quite make it as 15-18m in good reason.. even after flattening the image - just the idea process going on... The color scheme would be quite vibrant and might be comparable in many ways to Warhammer 40K's Saim-Hann Eldar. In many respects, the technology is similar to Terran tech, but certainly beyond that. This is not an aerospace fighter.

The prose was just a bit of fun... What race would this best work for?

[attachment deleted by admin]

[headdie]

looks perfect for a concept I am thinking of for around campaign 3 where an unsupported advanced alien Dreadnought/Juggernaut drifts from the Andromeda cluster into Terran space and causes havoc.

Back to the fighter internal missile bays on a light fighter would be a recon-en-force type role retaining most of the speed and agility advantages of a light fighter combined with slight improvements in armor and a larger than typical missile capacity.

for patrol duty 2/3 fighters (as opposed to typical light fighter patrols operating 4-6 fighter)
Recon-en-force 5-12 fighters depending on threat level and how the species organizes its military force
Sort range rapid response would depend on availability.

[Thaeris]

Good deal. 

Thus said, I'll work on some more of these.

By the way, I'd like to throw in the fact that I've not yet officially been 'hired' for the project yet...