Author Topic: Icanus development  (Read 9660 times)

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Offline 0rph3u5

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The old Gigas is listed at 22k long, the kitbashed Vasudan Juggernaught is listed as 25k long in the wiki - outside of FS the largest "ship" in FSO would be the Vorlon Planetkiller (with a Max Radius of 29k in the .pof) & Drakh Mothership (with a Max Radius of 22k in the .pof) in TBP, both are more mobile scenery than ships actually (The Planetkiller has a single turret, guess what it does; the Mothership has launchbays for small capital ships)

The biggest objects I know to be in FSO would be the Gundam-inspired space colony in WoD (link) and the GTI Atlantis (link]
« Last Edit: September 25, 2020, 12:23:58 pm by 0rph3u5 »
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline starlord

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There was this peculiar ship being held in reserve by woomeister...

 
The Gargant was 37 km long or so.

  

Offline JSRNerdo

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37814m to be exact.
Former Inferno lead, BTA fredder-ish and DE fredder. Driven out by ordinary fascists the_e, aesaar and general battuta. Will return if they're ever removed.

 
 

Offline Mobius

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The main challenge when it comes to ships like the Icanus, Gigas and Gargant is the fact that FreeSpace is set to be played from the perspective of a tiny spacecraft. Any mission involving both the player and one such ship has to be set in a way that wouldn't compromise immersion. Warships of that size do make perfect sense plot-wise, because we expect space faring civilizations to push engineering that far at some point in their history -  getting them to work in a FreeSpace campaign is a nother matter, however. A proper and memorable appearance of any ship of this kind in a campaign is doable, but it has to be planned well into the details.

This "challenge" is also one of the reasons why we've never had, as far as I know, a campaign focused entirely on the GTVA Colossus. I remember trying to write a concept down for a campaign based on the Colossus itself, but I couldn't find any practical ideas that would make it peculiar in any way. If the Colossus was in place, the player wouldn't have any tangible influence on the outcome, and missions focused on escorting convoys meant to resupply the Colossus would derail from the main concept.
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Offline Zarax

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I agree on the difficulty, I also tried a few concepts featuring being chased by a Colossus-class and the main issue is avoiding to make the player feel unable to influence outcomes while trying to not make such a big ship the equivalent of an animated wallpaper...

In the end the main risk is to fall either into the "irreplaceable ship" trope or the "Battle of Endor" one. FS2 intelligently made us cripple the Sathanas before the climatic battle but that kind of cut the easiest ways to make a plot device.
Perhaps one could try a more formal military tone, where the focus is on killing enemy logistics and in the end you bleed the enemy by a thousand cuts, however I'm not sure it would fit with FS universe and it would be extremely complex to FRED.

 
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Offline JSRNerdo

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I will make an Icanus command mission.
Former Inferno lead, BTA fredder-ish and DE fredder. Driven out by ordinary fascists the_e, aesaar and general battuta. Will return if they're ever removed.

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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There are two main problems I see with large capital ship in an FS-verse setting

Number 1 is Mission Space - the standard model of FS combat designed about is around an average speed of 65 m/s and highly linear movement which means you get a mission space that is spherical from the starting point with a max radius of about 65 * t(mission time in seconds) - that's a radius of 58.500 m for max space if the player only moves linearly in one direction for 15 minutes without maxed afterburner (mission with a mission time above 15 minutes become increasingly unwieldly from a balancing standpoint, just on the ammount of time you spend running iterations to make balance solid). However, your player will not be going flying straight somewhere for 15 minutes, so the sphere generally shrinks dramatically - I usually get it down 20.000 unless something special is required, like 35.000 when reaching an point is actually a mission objective.
Having a ship that is entire lenght of that radius is means that you have going from one point to another on the ship might take up the entire space of the mission. Not to mention that the geometery of the ship might force you to fly certain paths, combat maybe forced into certain avenues by the enemy arrival positions and turret fire - which would contract the maximum space. Having the ship take up that much space also means that if it is the point of the mission to interact with that ship, you have to start to contract the space between the locations of the individual task into only a small section of the ship, which then requires a few logic pretzels to resolve (e.g. doing a "trench run"-scenario) or you wind up defeating the purpose of that ship size.

All that can be altered if you make your ships faster (higher average speed means more space), and introduce support ship hull repair or regerating health for the player (means you get to extend mission time). Another idea would do tactical jumps, but then you have to deal with the impact of the overall logic of the campaign (e.g. tactical jumps make the world of the story feel smaller because it forces the task on small group of actors).

EDIT: Note all figures are purely theoretical - most of the time (esspecially if you cut down mission time to 8-12 minutes) they tend to be much less.

Number 2 is general problem that the base model of FS capital ship interaction always has the "damage over"-trap door - because of how ship-to-ship and bomber-to-ship combat is established, it runs on a logic that shooting at thing enough will always make it explode; FS1 had introduce the Lucifer's unique plot shielding to get around that, FS2 flipped that in High Noon by making a point on how "just big guns the thing" was bearly working as a solution.
To desing the mission about a ship of large size, you have to respond to the logic of why the mission exists when the trap-door "just shoot it enough" is still existing.

While you can do some amazing solutions to that problem using SCP mechanics, e.g. armour types, and destroyable subsystems - but by the time you are finished that and implimented it across the board for consistency and training players to use it, you basically have turned the systems of ship-to-ship combat into something new.
« Last Edit: September 30, 2020, 01:09:23 pm by 0rph3u5 »
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Droid803

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There's nothing wrong with trench runs.
Change my mind.
(´・ω・`)
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Offline Nyctaeus

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There's nothing wrong with trench runs.
Change my mind.
Needs to be modelled, UVed, textured and converted.

Aka #effort
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Offline Droid803

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The NewGigas already has a convenient trench :P
(´・ω・`)
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Offline Colonol Dekker

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Nah shadows of lylat mod could do great great things with an icanus.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

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Offline Rhymes

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I will make an Icanus command mission.

You ****in' better
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Offline CT27

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Since it was brought up in this thread:

How big was the EASD Nemesis?

 
INFR1 was 3231m; Nostos (released as well as the upgraded one) is ~3680m.