[Asteroth]

(You may want to open it up further and zoom in)



People always talk about this ship's primary placement being bad or this one's being good and while we all have some intuitions on the matter, I find it helps me to lay things out visually to get a real sense of it. Note that the center is the ship's eye point. Attached is a zip containing the original .xcf if you have GIMP, as well as more versions delineated by fighters/bombers/species/FS1/FS2.

Overall Terrans seem to be pretty good, Vasudans are slightly worse overall, Shivans are worse still except for the Mara, Dragon, and Shaitan (although none can touch the Athena).

EDIT: Add FS1 ships and a few from FS2 I didn't do the first time.

[attachment eaten by a Shivan]

[Assassin714]

Now imagine a ship with all of those points firing at once

[Mongoose]

Ursa being all "yeah imma hang out over here by myself"

[Nyctaeus]

When Nephilim is so obvious for you, so you don't have to zoom in to check in... But you do it anyway.

Huh, seriously. Trimurti recently made me aware how crappy shivan fighters really are. I'm not surprised that we and zods won the Great War.

[0rph3u5]

Well, you are missing a baseline for what an optimal gun placement is here - you are implying a middle step in your conclusion which you should make explicit IMO

This is esspecially appearent as you mix in bombers (where you can infer that their primaries are going to be uses against larger targets - e.g. the Ursa's "one for preciese shooting, one for just damage") with fighters (where hitting the smaller ships is an essential requirement)

On the other hand, that the Shivan fighters have rather large primary spreads (not counting the ships you actually have to fly at some point) looks to me very much like one of those quiet hacks for the benefit of the player... you know, that you are actually hit less than you are being shot at (since you can't really see being hit) in order to imply that you are in more danger than you are actually in.

EDIT: Follow-up on that: Note how this doesn't affect the performance of Shivan strike craft across the board against larger largets - esspecially with the Seraphim and Nephilim as destroyer-killers - while at the same time making them terrible at destroying point defense turrets...

[Asteroth]

Err, I'm not really trying to imply any conclusion here, just a dump of data. And the optimal primary placement, for all bombers, fighters and otherwise, is obviously all guns clustered directly on the eye point!

[0rph3u5]

Overall Terrans seem to be pretty good, Vasudans are slightly worse overall, Shivans are worse still except for the Mara and Dragon which are head and shoulders above the rest.

That is the language of a conclusion.

[Asteroth]

I'm just describing the data, I'll leave it to you how you want to interpret why it is what it is. I'd personally say that the designs from the concept art created by an artist who almost certainly had little concern for primary placement, had a far larger influence than any other factor.

[0rph3u5]

I'm just describing the data

You use "good" and "bad" which goes beyond the description of the data: that's a conclusion drawn from data by comparing it to a standard or model, which you now have outlined (incidentally, I find rather simplistic as it doesn't account for factors like e.g. player ship or non-player ship in single player)

I'd personally say that the designs from the concept art created by an artist who almost certainly had little concern for primary placement, had a far larger influence than any other factor.

You seem to be implying a certain sequence of the production process, can you make explicit what you mean please.

[Asteroth]

I'm not really sure what you're getting at. As I've said the gold standard for primary placement is trivial: all points directly on the eye point. This is always more useful than being any amount further from the eyepoint. Terran points on average, are fairly close, vasudans are farther, shivans farther still (with the exception of the mara and dragon). This is all very surface-level stuff that, I wouldn't imagine would much be challenged by anyone. There's no situation where the Seraphim is better served by its primaries than the dragon other than sheer number, regardless if its a player or non-player ship.

As far as the "production process" I again have no idea what you're getting at. Freespace 2 had some number of concept artists who designed the ships, and it's very clear from many, many designs that actual gameplay concerns were low on their priority list. I think this is pretty common knowledge. 

[0rph3u5]

You want a challange? Fine

First: You are not sperating the fire points by bank in the data, which greatly prejudices the data in favor of some craft, e.g. the Perseus, and to the disadvantage of others, e.g. the Seraphis. Some craft have clearly have their configurations to favor linked weapons, e.g Herc II, and others are desgined to switch between multiple specialized weapons, e.g. Ares.

Second: Your data doesn't correlate with secondary armament. While I am not exactly sure that there is a firm rule at play here, as secondary armanent is hard to quantify as secondaries are not created equal in either FS-game.

Third: I challange the notion that there is a singular "gold standard" that can be uniformly applied to all craft in the data. The most notable dividing line is, again, between craft that player is supposed control (i.e. which are the default craft for 2+ missions) and craft the player is supposed to oppose (i.e. that are used by the "Hostile" or "Neutral" team in 2+ missions).

Ignoring any cheap design tricks for the moment, non-player caft are most likely designed to target ships other than a player ship, where as player ships are designed for a more reliable performance in the task given to the player, e.g. precision targeting.

... and then imagine further secondary concerns, such as balancing the craft against each other.

[0rph3u5]

As far as the "production process" I again have no idea what you're getting at. Freespace 2 had some number of concept artists who designed the ships, and it's very clear from many, many designs that actual gameplay concerns were low on their priority list. I think this is pretty common knowledge. 

Image the way from conept to gameplay ready to complete as a multi-stage back and forth process, instead of single production line. Help to avoid any chicken-egg problems, too.

[Asteroth]

This data isn't "prejudiced" these are the literal positions of the fire points straight from the models. Including bank data wouldn't change any positions. You can disagree that vasudan points are on the whole not great, and I would agree that the serapis is fine, much like the valkyrie the chin bank is good but the wing bank leaves a bit to be desired.

And you can draw "dividing lines" all you want, it doesn't really change the fact that any ship, whether in the hands of AI or the player, would be better served by focused primaries. You can certainly argue that mostly non-player ships are meant to be bad on purpose, but that doesn't make them not bad.

Image the way from conept to gameplay ready to complete as a multi-stage back and forth process, instead of single production line. Help to avoid any chicken-egg problems, too.

Anyone can imagine it however they want, but when you look at the hecate it's a little difficult to imagine that someone actually considered its firing lines and thought it was good!

[Rhymes]

*words*

Man, why do you feel the need to get so incredibly pedantic over this thing? Asteroth goes and puts together this graph (which has some very useful and interesting data!) and you start dumping all over him because he's not going through this data with published-paper-level rigor. What's especially frustrating is that you know damn well what he means by "good" primary bank positioning--this is something that the community reached a consensus on a long-ass time ago. If you think you can do a better job, then by all means, please do it--we could always use more data--but nitpicking at this because an informal investigative enterprise doesn't meet your exacting standards is just behaving like an entitled prick.

[0rph3u5]

This data isn't "prejudiced" these are the literal positions of the fire points straight from the models. Including bank data wouldn't change any positions.

Yes, it is. You are treating all firepoints as if they in a single bank - but most ships have two, in some cases three (the Artemis, the Bo-Bone, Toth and the Anubis being the only canon ships with only one).

First, that is not the data "as is".

Secondly, if you include bank information three archetypes for primary slots become evident in the data (precision, general purpose, damage).

The best example to show how bank information is valuable is the Ursa; its first bank can be considered precision oriented, due to the low off-set from the player eye point it is easier to aim at turrets and other fighters, and its second bank can be considered damage oriented, due to it high offset and absence of convergence it more useful against large targets.

You can also do this with e.g. the Myrmidon (2 general purpose), the Seraphis (1 precision, 1 damage) and Bo-Bone (1 precision).

It doesn't really change the fact that any ship, whether in the hands of AI or the player, would be better served by focused primaries.

Considering that by "focused primaries" you only mean low off-set from the view point, I disagree. A ship is best served by functional primary placement, which may include different banks of pimaries serving different purposes and such follow different rules as far as off-set and convergence is concerned.

[0rph3u5]

*words*

Man, why do you feel the need to get so incredibly pedantic over this thing? Asteroth goes and puts together this graph (which has some very useful and interesting data!) and you start dumping all over him because he's not going through this data with published-paper-level rigor. What's especially frustrating is that you know damn well what he means by "good" primary bank positioning--this is something that the community reached a consensus on a long-ass time ago. If you think you can do a better job, then by all means, please do it--we could always use more data--but nitpicking at this because an informal investigative enterprise doesn't meet your exacting standards is just behaving like an entitled prick.

Language matters.

[0rph3u5]

Also its not just a question of precision, I just can't stand oversimplifcation.

[Nightmare]

I always link all primary banks if possible, so having them all centered is fine.

[Mongoose]

You must be a riot at parties, Orpheus.

[Rhymes]

Language matters.

Sure. So does context. And not being an entitled prick.