[Vengence]

I'm workin me creative mind juices of late and this idea has been in my mind for a while  .
To help with visualization, I made a little GIF anim!


This is a Siege Ship, as you can tell it relies on, drumroll, animation  . Obviously animation in the FSO isn't a totally perfect, and I am pretty sure this thing can't be done eh? Not only does it rely on opening those flaps to bring those huge naughty beam guns up, but it also relies on turret objects actually moving with those flaps, and still being good shots.

Thoughts? I could live with the thing having basically two model versions for missions. One undeployed, one deployed and I'd be perfectly fine. Just call me insane for wanting some of the craziest things to go into the game  .

[headdie]

The only aspect of that ship that cant be done already with one model  is moving the fire points with the rotating subobjects of the wings

[Nohiki]

Correct me if i'm wrong, the way i get it, the firepoints are not slaved to the end of the barrel, but rather to relative position to the mesh, right? Then you can have them in the "unfolded" position and 3, 2, 1, beam-free-all the ship only after it's transformed. It won't need to fire the beams in subspace when it's folded, because it's not recomended to blow up something you can hit with a beam inside a subspace node. And while in normal space, it could move unfolded.

[bobbtmann]

The firepoints could be static. If the model can only fire when the wings are open, then it'll look convincing.

edit: what Nohiki said

[Galemp]

Well... if the guns can't fire when the arms are closed, couldn't you just place them where you want them when the arms are open, and lock them until the animation is finished?

EDIT: Damn you guys are fast.

[BengalTiger]

Could dock points rotate along with a rotating subsystem?

If so, than create the hull, make rotating dock points and dock the wings as separate ships armed with beam cannons, and this should work perfectly.

[Vengence]

Could dock points rotate along with a rotating subsystem?

If so, than create the hull, make rotating dock points and dock the wings as separate ships armed with beam cannons, and this should work perfectly.

Well that is quite an elaborate method! 

I'll be half honest, I -do- kinda want it to be able to fire in its undeployed state but really... lets not kid ourselves, it'd create more annoyances than good. As for the fixed firepoint, just to absolutely clarify: Even if the firepoint is a singlepoint button turret parented to the wing subobject (if possible) the firepoint will NOT move with the button turret?

In short the whole wing flap thing is so that the ship doesn't create a 20km wide subspace portal (that'd be an eyesore eh?) so when it enters the field it will come through a small portal then unfold into battlemode. Well folks as long as the epic FREDers keep their hats on I suppose the static firepoint idea will work . Unless of course.... the SCP team suddenly decides to code in support for translating firepoints. That'd most certainly be epic.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Dock points don't rotate either so that's out. 

[varsaigen]

Interesting design on the seige ship. While I do not have an answer for you, I can't help but imagine a fleet of these warping in, deploying, and forming a wall.

...
I think you just created a new form of hell for your enemies. XD It just puts "blockade" to a whole new level XD

[Vengence]

There WOULD be a lot of hell.... had the race that owns these ships had not converted them to super cap trade ships  . And what I showed is their default trade ship armament. Who KNOWS what the original military siege ships were like 

[DarthWang]

Looks like a wristwatch

[Nohiki]

In short the whole wing flap thing is so that the ship doesn't create a 20km wide subspace portal

Would this be a solution to that?

[Stormkeeper]

Well, before worrying about the 20km large subspace portal, I think he's more concerned about the unfolding.

[Vengence]

I'm pretty sure the whole static firepoints would suffice. Might even add two points so players can still fred the thing firing undeployed.

[Black Wolf]

Of course, the turrets will need to be invisible, untargettable and thus undestroyable...

[Vengence]

I'm pretty sure that can be explained as the weapons being mounted deeply internally. Maybe even simply refraction/reflection ports that draw from inside the ship. In any case taking out the weapons subsystem should stop the beamspam.

[Droid803]

Or you could just put two of the same turret on top of each other, and rig it in fred to destroy the other one when one is destroyed

Might take a bit of when-argument'ing but should be fairly doable (and copypastable)

[Kusanagi]

You could always make two versions - one for folding and one unfolded and use the change-ship-class SEXP.

Either way, your subspace portal is going to be as large as it would be were the arms completely unfolded. The bounding box of the main model has to be large enough to include these arms or else collision detection breaks.

[Commander Zane]

There WOULD be a lot of hell.... had the race that owns these ships had not converted them to super cap trade ships  . And what I showed is their default trade ship armament. Who KNOWS what the original military siege ships were like 

I seriously can't help but think of the Bentusi when you say this.

[Kusanagi]

There WOULD be a lot of hell.... had the race that owns these ships had not converted them to super cap trade ships  . And what I showed is their default trade ship armament. Who KNOWS what the original military siege ships were like 

I seriously can't help but think of the Bentusi when you say this.

T-mat, baby