Star Wars: Imperial R&D

[AsterXiphos]

Um, sorry, that doesn't look like a warship to me . . . more like a modular conveyor from XWA . . .

The modular weaponry is novel, though . . . interesting concept.

[evillejedi]

heh the original ship isn't a warship :-p
It is a converted super frieghter, so why not make it look like one?
Anyway when you see lances of death coming from any ship, it always looks like a warship. :-p

hopefully this will also fit into my eventual goal of neutral traffic on some maps to simulate shipping lanes, many of the rebel ships look like freighters and this could be used as an advantage.

[AsterXiphos]

right. So I'm assuming you're planning a sp campaign (or two, or three?)? how/when is that coming about?

[spacemoose]

Rebels posing as neutrals...Now thats a damn fine idea.

I guess this would have to be just a SP feature or what would you implement to keep the Imperial player from just blasting all the neutral ships just to be safe?

[AsterXiphos]

now wouldn't it be cool . . . k, this is going to be complicated to explain, much less implement - so it's just a daydream, really

. . . so there's this option on the build menu, we'll call it "Ship Incognito," that builds a ship. Not just any ship . . . just any of the ship types considered "neutral." So you don't know exactly what it'll look like (have say, five ships for the computer to randomly choose), and it doesn't appear to have any armament. On the map the blip is neutral, and the Imps wouldn't recognize it as hostile unless there were something akin to a proximity sensor nearby. And there you go . . . true to rebel covert hit and run style

K, so I know it's prolly not possible, and extremely complicated if it is . . . excuse the bs

[Evenflow]

Looks.... different than I imagined atleast. Does look more like a cargo ship or frieghter than a battlecruiser, but it'll do. And, if the speed/damage/hull ratings are accurate in your MOD, it's going to be one tough ship to beat.

[Deathbunny]

I like it.

As for the modules, try setting up 3 different modules with identical functions that require the previous to operate.

For example, the Hiigs have research and advanced research. They're basically the same, but one requires the previous. Say 'Turbo Laser battery level 1' and then 2 and so forth. Draw yourself a diagram of what is supposed to go where, and then figure out what you have to deny when the player chooses to build certain things. They'd all be unique systems, but they'd be functionally identical.

[thrawn]

That's one cool looking ship!
But how will it behave in a combat situation. Say you have a hangar, a grav well and anti-fighter modules starboard and heavy weapons port-sided. Will the ship know which side to turn towards the enemy? And do you have control about where goes what, or might you end up having combat and non-combat modules mixed on both sides (won't be good for your fighters when the hangar-bay is in the enemy's line of fire)?

[General Veers]

I seriously love your mod, because I am a huge Star Wars fan, and I also love Homeworld, so it makes sense that the two could be combined. That's where you come in. Thanks btw. There are a few things that you could add in to make the game waaay cooler, and more realistic, if that is possible. I have a bunch of suggestions, that might be able to add in that extra bit of coolness. I have every volume of the Essetial Guide to Vehicles and Vessels, which might be able to help as well.
You should add in ships like the V-Wing, and maybe you could add in special units like Red 5, which was Luke's X-Wing at the battle of Yavin, or the Tantive 4, which was Leia's modified Corellian Corvette. A ship like that could be faster, or more powerful, or something like that. You should be able to research improved capitans, or gunner research so you could increase the effectiveness of your ships in combat. There are many more things that you could be able to research in the mod.

[evillejedi]

no SP plans, though if relic ever releases the BTG editor expect a few historic battle missions

as far as I can tell the module placment is going to be in order starting from the stern and it alternates so you will have to plan a little. the AI will probably just broadside whichever side has more guns.


5 6
3 4
1 2


the incognito idea would be nice, but anything moving outside a trade route is going to get blasted by a human player

as for the neutral traffic it will be capturable as salvage, so blasting it would reduce your RU influx.

[General Veers]

That's a cool idea.

[Vyaschlofisc]

The download link isn't working for me. Is it just my computer or is there a problem with the link?

[Evaders99]

Its there and working just fine.

http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/download/HW2SWMOD-BETA-V0.20.zip

Download page is here
http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/Download.html

[NonameXK5]

J/W but have u dealt with the lag issues yet cause i dont like playing mods that give alot of lag.

[spacemoose]

It isn't too laggy for me, and I'm not running a top-notch system by any means.

There are still new units with each update and those can lag a little, but overall its pretty smooth.

[BrettMan]

I don't know if its your mod or all HW2 mods in general, but for some odd reason, the game always locks up for no apperant reason after playing for a little while. Its really pissing me off. It works fine and then it just stops. I don't get it. All HW2 mods I have tried do the same thing. Anyone else having this problem?

[Evenflow]

Well, as for the lag issue, every release the Evillejedi has made up to the one that includes the Rebel ships has gotten less and less laggy. Like he said, the Rebel ships use unoptimized textures (whether you zoom in or zoom out the same high quality texture is used, which explained a lot to me actually), so I hope it wouldn't be laggy when the final version comes out!

[Evenflow]

Brettman:

That used to happen to me with the first release of the MOD. Evillejedi told me to put down the resolution and some details and that made it better, not perfect, but better. Give that a try.

EDIT: Sorry about the double post, forget to edit last post.

[Deathbunny]

when I max out my units it always slows to a crawl. I've reset my stuff down low, and there's no excuse for my comp to be slow when running it. how many ships do you deal with on average?

[Aerykh]

Evillejedi:
Any plans to include the Star Defender ( from the New Jedi Order series ) ?

[MitchMeister-]

Hi.. i'm tryin the mod here.. and everytime i load the game it runs so slow it basically freezes. I've turned everything down as far as they can go and it barely helps. When i am in the hyperspace/nav menu away from any models it runs fine.. but when i get near any ship it freezes.

Comp. Specs.
p4 1.7 ghz
512mb RD-RAM
gf4ti-4800 128mb.

The regular game runs fine.. i dont get it. Tell me what im doin wrong! thanks

[evillejedi]

I do have to say that the machine I do all my testing on is a 1.3 ghz athlon with 512 DDR ram and a 64(!) meg geforce 4200

I do experience lag, but it usually is during only very large battles.

I have all settings on high @ 1024 x768 with NO Antialiasing or ansiotropic filtering on (I know a lot of drivers leave these on by default, YOU MUST DISABLE THESE IF YOU WANT ANYSORT OF FRAME RATE ON AN OLDER MACHINE)

and I often leave photoshop and maya 5 open while testing also.

[Sortsiam]

Evillejedi - What new Rebel ships are you planning to include in your next release?

[NonameXK5]

Well i have a P41.9GHZ
Radeon 9200 128mbs
758megs ram
but i still cant find whats laggin it cause my machine is pretty good.

[Evenflow]

This is stupid, but did you try putting the unit caps to "normal" or less? From experience, if you put it on large or unlimited, it becomes almost unplayable, especially when you put in a Rebel player.

[evillejedi]

yeah rebel ships are laggy, this will slowly get fixed, try playing on the normal unit cap or lower or frigates only (which is a lot of fun, actually)

with radeon cards, but in general try turning off shadows, my laptop runs much faster with the setting disabled and it has a 9200.

ships for the next release (besides what I posted about earlier, IE bulwark)
the main rebel fighters (a-wing, y-wing, b-wing)
mc-40
mc-80
Mc-80a
at least one type of mining ship, maybe both (resource controller)
a few smaller corellian ships, IE modified corvette, heavy gunship
probably the XQ-1 starfighter base.


also check the website gallery because I may update that and not post here (for example the a-wing and dreadnaught)

I'm not going to commit to a new release date quite yet, but most probably within the next two weeks, with a release going out to the testers a few days before that. This is mainly because I want to get icons and engine glows in the new release and both are proving irritating.

[General Veers]

Some of the "blisters" on the Mon Cal cruisers are booby-trapped, when they are shot, could you possibly add that in?

[Swiftiee]

Sounds great Eville.

One question. Have you considered my idea on balancing the two sides in terms of hyperspace capabilities?

You've been doing a great job so far. Keep it up. And also give yourself a break by hiring more members to the dev team. :claw:

[NonameXK5]

I see ok ill do that

[NonameXK5]

Are u gonna make the E wing or V wing?

[spacemoose]

I've noticed that if you try to dock, and keep docked, the mole-miners (haven't tried anything else yet) in the Mothership, say to hyper off somewhere, they get eaten up. Kinda perturbing.

[HitokiriHa]

hey i am on a high-end comp on a low-end bandwith (free aol) and i'm dLing your patch. i've skimmed a few pages of this thread and perhaps this is in the mod or whatever, but anyways... i think it'd be kewl if mole miners were the resource gatherers and you could research an upgrade that lets them capture enemy ships.

[evillejedi]

General veers, it's possible, but I don't know how much it would add, since the AI tends to stay at near max range it would require some extensive scripting.

Swiftiee : hyperspace isn't going to be balanced unless it becomes a problem, ships that have HS will have it and ships that are slow in HS will be slow. I'm hoping the game balances itself out in this regard

NonameXK5: E-wing yes, Vwing no, as far as I know it's atomospheric only and requires the speeder transport to get it in from orbit.

spacemoose: oooh that is bad, I'll look into it.

HitokiriHa: mole miners are the resource gathers, but I dunno about a capture upgrade, from what I remember all the ore seperating stuff had to be pulled out of the modified ones, they just left the plasma torches and the grinders in to eat ship hull. It also seems like a balance issue, you need a lot of mole miners to gather resources since they are small, and a lot would be a lot of capture ability...

[Evenflow]

Evillejedi:

This isn't really about the MOD perse, but just general questions, so if you don't want to answer them I'd understand.

But how hard is this stuff? I've checked out your concept art on the webpage, and I can't even DRAW that well, let alone put polygons together to come up with a 3D model. Is this your job? Are you a programmer/3D modeler/concept artist/designer or a combination of those things?

The reason I ask is because I've been interested in programing and computer science, infact it was my major for almost two years in college, but I changed to business instead because of all the math involved with anything that deals with computers.

Again, nothing much to do with the MOD and it's progress exactly, just curiosity really.

[AsterXiphos]

soo . . . about capturing . . . Page's Commandos in a shuttle?

[Interviglium]

eville, I just played a skirmish almost all the way to the end. I played 3 alliance players (including me) vs 3 empire players. My alliance allies combatwise built nothing but MC-80's, except for a single squad of x-wings first up, which they both did. Late game they began to build turrets and a few gunships. The imperials mainly built ISD I's, and VSD II's, along with TIE bombers and scimitars. The game crashed as I went to kill the last empire player, I hypered to his factory ship, and he had atleast 50 squads of assorted bombers sitting there, it crashed as soon as I exited hyperspace, so I think the crash was related to my computer dying.

I really like the look of the Bulwark cruiser, to, gives it that utilitarian feel that I like about the alliance ships so far.

btw, good job on the assault frigate! first game I've been able to tell that it really is a modified Dreadnaught, the assault frigate is my favourite ship :)

edit:
Are you planning on/thinking of including any of these ship?

modified Quasa Fire bulk cruiser, say as the alliances light carrier, although I understand if not as the only one of these was the Flurry, which was destroyed.

Xiytiar transport? Hyperspace marauder, maybe as a ship just below the bulk cruiser?

Marauder corvettes?
edit 2: eck, yes, the 90's, the Defiance.
Yeah, the AI likes to build large amounts of enforcers aswell.

[Evenflow]

Actually, I noticed that hyperspacing crash too. I think it's collision detection or something related, every time I hyperspace a big ship like the Vengeance or Executor anywhere remotely close to a group of enemies or other ships, I cross my fingers because there's a 50/50 chance it will crash. It happens too if I jump a huge fleet of large ships (ISD's and such) to a crowded area. Sometimes they pull out early, other times they make it through when they shouldn't and the game dies.

Yeah, the Rebels LOVE the MC90's (I think that's what you meant, the dark colored ones called Defiance), they occasionaly build the Liberty one (the one with wings), but it's very rare. Never seen them build the Mon Remonda, not even once. On mine though they build HORDES of X-wings, along with some Assault (Escort?)shuttles.

Imperials build only ISD1's on mine, but in the last version of the MOD they build some Victories and LOTS of Enforcer ships, which they never used to attack but put them in thier base. Now they don't build those anymore, only ISD1's and frigates/corvettes.

Evillejedi mentioned before something about "attack value" or something like that that causes the CPU to build so much of a certain thing. My guess is that the CPU looks at the unit's hull/firepower/speed ratings and uses that with the unit's price to determine the "best value" or something. I don't know really why it does that.

[evillejedi]

Evenflow: heh, I started using max when it was still DOS, so I've had a long time playing with it. It's just a hobby, not a job, I'm not good enough to get a job doing this. and yes it is hard. the software usually is evil and confusing and takes forever to learn. I am currently getting two degrees, one in computer architecture and another in solid state design. So that usually keeps me busy. (if you want to see evil math I could put some of the problems from my logic synthesis class that I am currently failing :-p)



AsterXiphos: no hero units, sorry. If I ever get around to SP missions then there may be.

Triumvir: I found a pretty big bug in the AI, seems like the AI would only build a few ships, after fixing it the AI builds a very good variety.

the assault frigate is from SWNR and done by zeelich and gank, though I may change a few things to make it match my dreadnaught a little better.

[AsterXiphos]

No no, I meant Page's Commando's like Hig Marines, not as hero units. Just a capture unit.

[Swiftiee]

Originally posted by evillejedi
Swiftiee : hyperspace isn't going to be balanced unless it becomes a problem, ships that have HS will have it and ships that are slow in HS will be slow. I'm hoping the game balances itself out in this regardMakes sense.

If there is a problem in balancing the two sides, remember the hyperspace idea! :catpilot:

[General Veers]

Evillejedi, I had the same problem as Triumvir, and i don't think it is a problem with the hyperspace, but the bombers. Whenever I use scimter assault bombers, or regular tie bombers my game crashes. I think it might be a problem with the collision meshes for their missles.

[General Veers]

About the capture idea, could you capure ships using the tractor beam, like the devestator capturing leia's correllian corvette or something?

[Interviglium]

I don't think a tractor beam like that would be too hard to make the weapon itself, just have a 0 damage continous fire weapon which adds 'pull' to target on hit.

the problem would be making it so its only used when wanting to capture a ship, and not fired all the time, although I guess you could just make a capturer weapon which captures the ship while it drags it in *shrugs*

[Aerykh]

Interesting little problem: mole miners will "dance" around the smaller pieces of debris from destroyed ships if the debris isn't very big (usually I've seen this happen with pieces worth less than 200 RU's). Instead of latching on to the debris to reclaim it, the mole miner will simply orbit the piece of debris endlessly until it is told specifically to harvest something else.

[Evenflow]

Evillejedi:

This is a simple suggestion really, but I do think we need to have the MonCalamari cruisers and Rebel ships in general to have strong shields to go up against the SSD, but I think you should dramatically increase the ISDs shields as well, you might even want to double them.

Just a suggestion.

[evillejedi]

Triumvir: I have a working tractor beam, but it is complex and I shelved it in order to get other things done, given time it will be put back in. also you can hold in once place and damage ships with a tractor beam, so it is useful for combat (big ships vs little ships).

Aerykh: in this case did larger salvage work? I noticed that salvage behavior is really odd if there is nothing capable of recieving the salvage. I plan to overhall the whole debris system. THe current one introduces so much lag because tons of debris gets thrown every where.

General Veers: hmm tie bombers got redone, but scimitars are old code, try not building scimitars at all and play against a rebel AI and see if the crash occurs.

Evenflow: heh yeah I noticed how pitifully weak ISDs seem now, but you have to remember that a MC-90 or the mon remonda should just slice through them like butter. smaller rebel ships should have a tough go... along that lines I'm going to fix up the weapon stats again and possibly half weapon damage again because stuff seems to blow up too fast still.

[SvK]

Tractor beam? Did you use an invisible, negative-mass bullet?

[Evenflow]

Yeah, MC90 and Mon Remonda should be much stronger, since they're much newer and more advanced, but it should be to a point where an ISD gives a Mon Remonda or an MC90 a good, solid fight. Right now, when I'm playing as Rebels and see a fleet of ISDs come out, I'm like "Pffft...", and just send in a couple of Mon Remondas to clean house. I don't think you should lower weapon damage still, since it takes FOREVER to blow up MonCals and especially shipyards, instead I think you should just double or even triple the hull for ISDs and equivalent capital ships, to make them more menacing like they should be.

Oh BTW, I checked out your concept art and I REALLY like the Titan ship, looks like a bigger Dark Empire-esque era Star Destroyer. Do you plan in including that again for the next release? What about the Sovereign, are they shelved for good or what?

EDIT: Forgot something. I never really played original HW2 so I wonder what the Interdictor ships like Dominant and Immobilizer 418 are supposed to do. What are their gravity wells supposed to do in the game exactly?

[Sortsiam]

Gravity wells serve as hyperspace inhibitors, preventing ships from going to hyperspace. The Imperial factory ship also has a built-in gravity well generator.

[Evenflow]

And these work in the game already? Do you have to trigger them or are automatically one? So ships can exit hyperspace inside your base, but then they can't hyperspace out correct? That's strange really, because I often hyper into an enemies base, destroy some stuff except the Factory ship, and then hyper out again just fine. How do you use it?

[Assassin X]

My friend, he has a high iq and no life when it comes to star wars said:

-The ships move to fast and to tight of turns. Personally i like them the way they are.

He had like a millin other whiney comments about ships being to big or to small or not enough lasers or crap like that but since there so pathetic of tiny deatils that no one really cares about i wont psot them.

[Evenflow]

Well, I'm the biggest Star Wars nerd of all time, read all the books/comics/RPG sourcebooks and anything else you can imagine, and even I am amazed at the level of detail in this MOD. An Allegiance Star Destroyer? the Vengeance? Dominator? You've got to be relatively hardcore to recognize half the ships in this game.

[DarthFelth]

*raises hand*

me me i do :p

[evillejedi]

SvK: it's tricky, but here's the process:

1.make a invisible ion beam with a strong pull attribute (stronger than the thruster values on the ship you will be usually tractoring, but less than the main engine speed of the average target), set the tracking speed, range, accuracy and stuff to appropriate values for the type of tractor beam you want.

2. make another beam with a push value equal to the first one pull and make the range on it the minimum range you want a tractored ship to be held at. everything else can be identical, you can also make it do damage if you want.

3.assign the first beam to a fully turreted hardpoint.

4. assign the second beam to a hardpoint that is slaved to the first.

sometimes you get weird sliding behavior, but that could be interpreted as an attempt to escape (if it can move faster than the tracking)

another thing is the beam duration, I haven't decided whether a rapidly pulsed beam is more effective than an always on beam other than that the rapid beam my change targets.

Evenflow: yeah ISD's will be made much more fearsome, I definately agree on the 'a fleet of ISD's... So what' comment.

The bigger imperial cruisers are around, just not ready to get released at this point.

gravwells are always on,but their range is small, though still greater than the max weapons range for balance reasons. in the case of future releases they will only shut down if the subsystem is destroyed. Unfortunately I can't figure out a way to block friendly ships from HS too, so the grav wells are a little more advanced as they can be selectivly focused :-p

Assassin X: heh post the comments, i'd be interested.

[spacemoose]

Dude. You are insane. Or brilliant, or something.

[Sortsiam]

Spacemoose, I agree.

¡Loco! You work like a maniac, and the models you've made are beautiful. Evillejedi, you're my hero!

:bow::bow:

[SvK]

In HW1, you could give a beam weapon a large mass, and it would spin a ship in place.

[kenobi's blade]

I think that there should be some more new powerful Reb ships cuz i mean, look at the Executor! It's practically invincible. I encourage giving the Rebs the Star Defender and the Mon Remonda 90 and 80a. By the way, I'm new to this site but I know virtually everything about Star Wars.

[Kinjiss]

MC-90 is already in game, and 80a will be in next release, as well as several other ships too. Can't remember if Star Defender is in or not, but im sure it will be.

PS The Mon Remonda is the MC-80c(I think) so I dont think there are Mon Remonda 90's. Maybe you meant Mon Cal?

--Kinjiss

[Evenflow]

!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, I'm pretty confused about something...

I was flipping through my sourcebooks last night looking for some ships to suggest to Evillejedi and I ran across a Defender-class Star Destroyer. Then in another chronology book it mentioned the Star Defender.... same ship?

Apparently I made a mistake when I called the Defender Class Star Destroyer a "Republic" class Star Destroyer. Sorry for that.
Anyway, the Defender Star Destroyer is smaller than an ISD but with five times the weapons and shields. That seems like a good Rebel super ship to counter the SSD to me....

[nickersonm]

The Republic Star Defender is also known as Viscount-class. It is very large, on the scale of an SSD, and was not constructed until just before the NJO series. It is first seen in Vector Prime, the first NJO book. You can get a good description of it in one of the first pages in the book.

- nickersonm

[evillejedi]

I'm actually worried the imps will be out gunned now :-p they still have the super cap and cruiser advantage, since most of the rebel cruisers are really weak.

but just to compare the strong ships

IMP destroyers that are powerful
ISD I
ISD II

REB destroyers that are powerful
MC-90
Defender SD
Republic SD


the Imps have a huge advantage once you get to cruisers and super caps, but the mon remonda, MC-104 Mediator and strident/viscount are really tough ships. Expect them to cost a bundle.

Defender SD's aren't 5x as strong as an ISD II, I'd say more like 2-2.5x but they are certianly nasty.

the strident/viscount seems to be about 6-8km long according to technical commentaries so I'll go with something around that number, I managed to track down some artwork from WOTC of it, but then lost the link, so if anyone has the image (black and white 3/4ths hand drawing of the bow from crackens threat dossier I believe) can you please post it.

also since there is no official rendering of a MC-104 Mediator as of yet do people mind if this LF concept art is used for the design? http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/books/sw2ij/mcold3.jpg personally I think it is pretty cool.

[AsterXiphos]

Oooh, purty . . . I vote for that

[Kinjiss]

I second that motion!

[AsterXiphos]

Ok, so I've done some looking around, and I've found some concept pics of what is presumed to be a Defender-class destroyer (or whatever you want to call it). It all seems quite disorganized after you get past the Mon Remonda . . .

http://www.wizards.com/starwars/images/sotg_gallery/40153_GS.jpg

Someone on the "Jedi Council Forums" on TheForce.net said that was a Defender SD.

http://alliance.galaxy-force.com/warships/pics/a-destroyer.jpg

Ugly, but someone said that was the pic for the Republic Star Destroyer from Craken's Threat Dossier. Ugh! :omg:


This battle ship was a smaller version of the Imperial-class Star Destroyer, and was designed for use by the New Republic. It first saw duty during the latter stages of the Black Fleet Crisis and the battle against the Yevetha, although production was limited to a few ships. The Republic-class was designed to be the follow-up to the Victory-class destroyer, and was developed by Walex Blissex himself. They were designed to be cost-efficient replacements for the Imperial-class destroyer - two Republics could be manufactured for the cost of one Imperial, with twenty percent of the crew complement and twenty percent more firepower than the Imperial-I class destroyer. The Republic-class ship measured 1,250 meters in length, and was crewed by 8,168 crewers with 260 gunners and up to 3,200 troops. They were armed with 40 heavy turbolaser batteries, 40 heavy turbolaser cannons, 20 ion cannons, and 10 tractor beam projectors. It also transported a full wing of starfighters.

I also found a couple other pics presumed to be the "Viscount" and "Mediator" (looks suspiciously like the Mon Remonda), I'll post 'em if you want 'em.

[evillejedi]

the viscount picture I am looking for is quite distictive from mon remonda.

the pics you posted are from WOTC source material.

anyway, I got through the Mon cal destroyers, still needs some texturing but here's some comparison.http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/concept/moncalcompare.jpg

some other shots have been put into the concept gallery

I need to finish up the mining ship and a few rebel fighters. once this is done I'm going to overhaul the armor system, do icons and then work on performance and balance for the next release.




for icons, do you guys want: (all from the side)

A) simple outlines (relativly easy)
B) HW2 style schematics (lots of work)
C) full color renders (really easy)
D) something else

[Turgidson]

> Evillejedi

I've sent you a (long) ranting by email, have you checked it ?

For MonCal lengths, I remember they are supposed to be 1200 meters long for all MC80 series (MC80, MC80A, MC80B). I also remember the Mon Remonda is a MC80B, as SWTC says :
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/mcc.html#monremonda

Republic class SD is supposed to be shorter than the ISD, but pack sensibly the same weaponry than ISD MkI.
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/dagger.html#republic
SWTC says the picture is probably inaccurate, so feel free to design a dagger design of your own. If it's from Rendili, it's probably quite close to VSD design.

MC90 Defiance is purple.

The Star Defender ("Viscount" class, it's a MonCalamri design, so certainly not a "Defender Star Destroyer") is supposed to be huge, as Nickersonm said. I'd say approx 12-15 kms long. Perhaps slightly better shielding than Executor, but less weaponry.
I suggest using the MC104 Model that JM made, and scale it up :
http://www.btinternet.com/~jmdare/xwaegdown.htm
Anyway, there's no canon picture of the MonCalamari Star Defender that I know of (and beware, some EU sources ain't that accurate, remember the 8kms long Executor ? :D ).

Note that the "MC104" itself is a fan-made ship, it's not canon at all.

For Mediator, I'd suggest using the model from the NJO Project : http://njoproject.skywalkeronline.net/ns/s_mediator.shtml
(fan-made model)
I don't like their Viscount (which is also fanmade design anyway), cuz too bulky. Their Mediator looks very fine, very sleek, really in the lines of the Defiance's design, and not of the "ugly organic mess" from older ships.

(and check your mail, unless you've already read it and found it useless ;) )

[vandem]

Turgidson already mentioned some of this, but here's a interesting URL (http://www1.theforce.net/cuswe/categories.asp?category=7&type=55) concerning all the different types of Star Destroyers - including the New Republic versions.
I don't agree with the "Imperial" and "Super" designations, but the site does give an idea of the size & firepower of the NR "Defender" & "Republic" class Star Destroyers. It also mentions another uber NR SD called the "Rejuvenator".
The following excerpt is notable (URL (http://www1.theforce.net/cuswe/categories.asp?category=7&type=6&qualifier=0)) :
"Mon Calamari Star Defender -
the largest starship ever produced by the Mon Calamari, the Star Defender was created for use by the New Republic Navy some twenty years after the Battle of Endor. Nearly twice a long as a standard Mon Cal cruiser, the Star Defender was also the largest ship bult for the New Republic fleet. (VP)"
The "Defender" SD and "Star Defender" Cruiser is 2 different ships designs.

I might be stating the obvious... just my 1/2 cent of input.

[Turgidson]

From what I remember, the Star Defender is only said to be at least twice longer than former battlecruisers (and that's only a visual impression/description in a novel, not a tech spec - and visual impressions can be quite wrong at times).
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/mcc.html#defender

I'd go approx 4 kms- for Mediator, and 10 kms++ for the Star Defender.

[Swiftiee]

I think for now simple outlines will do. But then I think schematics should be a goal.

If you want, I can do schematics. Maybe I can use Adobe Illustrator and some creativity to do so.

[Turgidson]

Fo the icons : just have text, and it's fine to me. Easy to check, no risk of mistakes, quick to do.

BTW, has anyone been able to revert back to HW1's style interface for ship groups ? (that is, a text listing)

[Dragon45]

Text groupings! That would own... please eville, please?

[spacemoose]

Outlines or text would be fine as far as I'm concerned. At this stage in development all I think that is necessary is some way to know which ships you've selected, no need for aesthetics yet.

[evillejedi]

Turgidson:

I believe the 1200m number was an average simply because at least in the movies nothing standardized to this number and I try to go off the movies when references are available. the liberty class is obviously 1.5 km and the rest vary.

I also reclassified the mon remonda because given its battle history, it had to be more powerful than a destroyer and was more near the cruiser size. if anything it might be classified as a MC-90A

Republic class was built/designed by mon cals and by the VSD designer, so it would have mon cal design elements, I will change it from the picture, but probably make it look similar ( I promise it will look a lot cooler)

in dark empire the MC-90 is blue, but since NOTHING in dark empire seems to be true color I made it grey with blue tint, if you can find a reference that superceeds dark empire then I'll conceed. (btw I scanned the pictures in DE and the color is significantly blue. :-p)

According to SWTC the viscount may be that big, but reading through it a few times it seems like it probably isn't over 10km, and yes there is a picture floating around which I thought was a good design. I understand the 'inaccuracy' of EU sources, but sometimes they have good art that can be used :-p

hmmm I thought I saw MC-104 tagged on the mediator somewhere. heh that ship looks pretty bulky to me and not sleek at all :-p the LF concept looks much cooler IMO and is in the right size range 2000m-2500m which makes the mediator about 2x a destroyer. the star defender could be 2x the largest known mon cal ship before it, the independance at 4.3, so maybe 8.6 km?

so on that note I need some class designations for these ships.


hmmm for icons I've had a lot of people tell me they couldn't visually link what they were building to the text. I think I will do the renders for now because it is extremely quick and obvious what you are building, the text will be overlayed on the ship image. text groupings would involve a bunch of UI modifications

[AsterXiphos]

Here's a pic I found that claims to be a Mediator Star Destroyer:

http://www.yodasyarns.0catch.com/mediator.jpg

And this claims to be the Viscount:

http://www.yodasyarns.0catch.com/defender.gif

Whatever . . . just render some cool looking ships, and I think people will be happy. What little canon there is on these ships all disagrees anyway.

[kenobi's blade]

Actually, there is a such thing as the Mc90. I read up on it in the Essential guides to Vehicles and Vessels.... I still think that it's a good idea to give both sides a few new cap ships. BTW, after this mod is under control and complete, are you going to consider adding in the Chiss, Yuuzhan Vong? I think it could be like and expansion pack to the mod and the alliance would become the New Republic while the Empire becomes the Imperial Remnant.

[kenobi's blade]

I am not much of a programmer but I can give lots of stats on any vessel!

[kenobi's blade]

Stats of the MC90 are:

75 turbolasers
35 ion cannons
6 proton torp. tubes The MC90 was the first Mon Cal ship designed specifically to be a battlecruiser.

[evillejedi]

AsterXiphos: first one is the mon remonda, second pic is what I was looking for. It is very similar to what I came up with in my inital massing diagrams, except mine was more slender.

kenobi's blade: MC-90 is in the current version (read before posting :-p) also the chiss and the vong are very vaguely described and have very few known ships. The vong would require WAY too much time to do (organic + animations are out of the question in any reasonable time frame) however many of the NJO ships will be included.

[kenobi's blade]

Thanks, as long as the Star Defender and some NJO ships are in I'm happy. Sorry about the MC90, I was talking to some other guys who said it didn't exist. Bye.

[AsterXiphos]

Yeah, as I said . . . looked suspiciously like the Mon Remonda . . .

[General Veers]

You should add in the Eclipse-class command ship, it would be SWEET!!!!! Info at URL.|
|
\/
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/dagger.html#eclipse

[Swiftiee]

Well, here's a schematic of a Mon Calimari cruiser that I made.

I used Photoshop. Using one of those Mon Calimari cruiser comparison sheets as the source, I turned it into grayscale, turned it back to RGB color, used the "Find Edges" filter, and did some layer magic on the cruiser. Voila, here is your Homeworld2 schematic. If this is something you wish to do for the Star Wars HW2 mod, I'll continue to do more.

I think this one is the Liberty:

http://www.geocities.com/ashpffa/pictures/mon_cal_schematic_hw2.txt

[evillejedi]

hmmm that does look good, however I think I'm going to do the renders without textures. Doing so seems to give it a much more schematic like look.Swiftiee, If you know how to set up the lua image maps for icons I'll send you the renders. Otherwise I'll do the icons myself since there will be a lot of files. anyway thanks for the inspiration.

http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/concept/ISDII_icon.jpg

as an example it looks cleaner without texturing.

[Evenflow]

Yeah, I don't think textures on the icons are neccessary. Looks great so far!

[Swiftiee]

Originally posted by evillejedi
hmmm that does look good, however I think I'm going to do the renders without textures. Doing so seems to give it a much more schematic like look.Swiftiee, If you know how to set up the lua image maps for icons I'll send you the renders. Otherwise I'll do the icons myself since there will be a lot of files. anyway thanks for the inspiration.

http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/concept/ISDII_icon.jpg

as an example it looks cleaner without texturing. Yeah, glad to be of some help. Once I learn about HW2's file formats, I'll try to help out.

Looks better than mine. Good job.

[evillejedi]

heh photoshop batch scripting is excellent :-p if you want I can send you the action script, it probably needs some tweaking

[Turgidson]

> Evillejedi

Sorry for the quoting, but I feel it adds to clarity/ease of reading, since your post is long and mine will be too. BTW, did you read the email I sent you a few days ago ?

> "I believe the 1200m number was an average simply because at least in the movies nothing standardized to this number and I try to go off the movies when references are available. the liberty class is obviously 1.5 km and the rest vary."
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/mcc.html#liberty
Actually, a game (X-Wing Alliance) references its length to 1.5 kms, but without the ship's name and with different engine configuration. Also, note that the Lucasart games were not always of high accuracy.

> "I also reclassified the mon remonda because given its battle history, it had to be more powerful than a destroyer and was more near the cruiser size. if anything it might be classified as a MC-90A"

Actually, I think the battle history might be explanable by shields alone. They would be enough to explain a high survivability, while assault fighters cripple the enemy.

Completely disgaree about the "MC-90A" classification, since its an older design than the MC-90 Defiance class. From what I've read, Mon Remonda was still an "intermediary" design between civilian ships and "pure" military designs.

IMHO, the Mediator class battleship should be approximatively of similar power to the current Mon Remonda.

> "Republic class was built/designed by mon cals and by the VSD designer, so it would have mon cal design elements, I will change it from the picture, but probably make it look similar ( I promise it will look a lot cooler)"

SWTC states a Rendilli design, so merely a "dagger"-style ship. What is the source for MonCals associated design ?

IMHO, perhaps add a few "bulbs" to represent MonCal shielding technologies (the ship would look close to an interdictor, perhaps with a few small, elongated bulbs instead of spheres - perhaps 4 bulbs only, it's enough IMHO). Don't forget the big advantage of the "dagger" design is that all guns can point towards the front.

> "in dark empire the MC-90 is blue, but since NOTHING in dark empire seems to be true color I made it grey with blue tint, if you can find a reference that superceeds dark empire then I'll conceed. (btw I scanned the pictures in DE and the color is significantly blue. :-p)"

Well... OK, but the ISDs in DE don't look as blue. :D

I like the dark blue design (saw JM's model ?) because it makes this ship something "special". With the sleeker design and the colour, it really looks like a break from previous MonCal ships, which is what the ship really was.

> "According to SWTC the viscount may be that big, but reading through it a few times it seems like it probably isn't over 10km, and yes there is a picture floating around which I thought was a good design. I understand the 'inaccuracy' of EU sources, but sometimes they have good art that can be used :-p "

Actually, I didn't find that art that good (unless MonCals = ugly mess of bulbs blocking the firing line of the weapons). I know this is purely subjective. ;)

For the length, I honestly think this ship is really massive and in excess of 10 kms. It would also be logical from a military point of view : NR had difficulties against Executor class SSDs, and refitted the Lusankya for their own use. I suppose the NR would then try to build a ship able to fill the role of these mighty command ships.

Note that a ~1300 m long MC90 can beat a 1600 m long ISD, and Executor is an old design. So, I assume the Viscount's shielding would certainly at least compare with Executor's.

> "hmmm I thought I saw MC-104 tagged on the mediator somewhere."

Source ? Actually, the MC-104 Odysseus was a fan-made design of JM. I guess someone assumed that, given the length of the Odysseus, Odysseus would be the Mediator. But that's not the case.

> "heh that ship looks pretty bulky to me and not sleek at all :-p"

Looks fine to me, because :
- curves allowing good fire concetration in the front
- relatively low number of bulbs (doesn't look too messy with bulbs)
- engines don't seem underpowered, given the size of the ship

OK, ain't as sleek as a dagger design, but looks much sleeker and "military-oriented" than most MonCal designs (only Defiance and Mon Remonda look quite military).

> "the LF concept looks much cooler IMO and is in the right size range 2000m-2500m which makes the mediator about 2x a destroyer."

Can you post that picture again ?
Quite OK for a 2500 meters ship. This would make it just above the Allegiance SD.

> "the star defender could be 2x the largest known mon cal ship before it, the independance at 4.3, so maybe 8.6 km?"

Independance = Home One ? Cuz the only "Independance" I saw was in Lucasarts XWing game.

> "so on that note I need some class designations for these ships."

Will be hard to find EU sources. Feel free to use your imagination. ;)

> "hmmm for icons I've had a lot of people tell me they couldn't visually link what they were building to the text. I think I will do the renders for now because it is extremely quick and obvious what you are building, the text will be overlayed on the ship image. text groupings would involve a bunch of UI modifications"

Ermm... how to quickly distinguish ISD MkI and ISD MkII in the pics, or VSD MkI and VSD MkII ? Not forgetting that most MonCals look similar when sighted from the side. :D
Perhaps mix pictures and text, then.


> AsterXiphos

Can you give me the source for this picture of the Viscount class MonCal Star Defender ? Thanks.
SWTC doesn't give any picture reference, and this website is probably the most accurate SW source on the web.
And I find the design quite ugly anyway. :D

[kenobi's blade]

Judging by how things r going, how long do you think it'll take before the new mod is out. And, in the new mod, will most of the ships on the rebel side be comparable to the imperial ones. I stand by what I said before: if the Rebs dont get something as good as the Executor (Viscount -class posiibly) then all the Empire player(s) has to do is pool their resources and get an executor. Just my opinion.

[AsterXiphos]

Turgidson: My computer went down last night, and I'm on a roommate's this morning. I've got it bookmarked on my other computer, and will get you the source as soon as I have it up and running again. Depends on how fast I can get a CPU . . .

May I just offer my opinion as well . . . that the Viscount isn't the purtiest of ships . . . and "not very purty" translates to "oh yuck" when a ship is made bigger. The pic I posted makes it look small (yes, I know it's bigger), and it looks bad enough!

kenobi's blade: I <almost> think it'd be fun to not have anything as big as the Executor . . . it makes it more fearsome. If you're a good strategist, you shouldn't have much of a problem denying your opponent of an SSD. Just hassle resource ops, destroy shipyards, etc. It would take a heck of a long time to pool resources if they're constantly rebuilding defense forces. So I don't think it'd be that easy for them to "pool their resources."

[evillejedi]

Turgidson: I got your email, except you posted here before I answered it, and public discussion is more fun :-p

I guess on mon cal destroyers there just needs to be some variety in sizing to make it feel like you are actually building different ships.


As a design note on mon cal ships:
generally mon cal ships have a dagger shape, it's just less defined and doesn't have the continuous rise to the stern.

However, this highlights a critical weakness of Imperial designs. on a ISD, at most 8 medium guns can hit anything in a significant cone behind the engines, if you believe the weaponry numbers, (but logically place the guns for maximum coverage, and assuming that the engines produce crap loads of radiation that prevent guns mounted near, there which seems very reasonable), and none of the heavy batteries (unless they are mounted on at least 30m towers, which all evidence is to the contrary).

An Imperial captian would be wise to pay close attention that something doesn't bite him in the ass, lest he lose his engines and take significant structural damage while being able to do nearly nothing to the attackers. The sloped aft of mon cals allows weapons placment there. (granted they have sucky guns anyway,but that's my next point)

in a large fleet engagment, manuvering room is limited and once you close to weapons range, fire will be coming from all sides. unless you can disengage and rejoin the battle from outside, having equal fire arc coverage of defensive weaponry is essential. This way you can orient the ships main batteries at a target and not risk having a significant blind spot the enemy can attack. Also in a fleet engagement directional manevurability is no where near important as lateral manuvering, unless your heavy weapons depend on it.

the next point to make is that mon cal bumps are where the weapons are placed. Since rebel engineers just hacksawed their way through the ships, hopefully they would place weaponry in logical spots. The bumps don't impeed weaponry, they allow it to be off the hull and have a larger fire arc. most weapons on an ISD are limited to a 100 degree / 180 degree firing arc (except for the spine mounted guns. which aproach 200/270-360) if guns are mounted on the bumps, most mon cal guns have a 200/360 arc. If you have limited weapons this is ideal. This is exploited on the later designs like the MC-90 because you have a dagger shaped hull with weapons blisters. There still is a blind spot, but since the stern is less angular and the weapons are raised, more guns can cover. symmetry is more a concern for ease of construction, operation and repair with generic parts than it is for firepower. There is also the fallacy that sleek and cool looking = good warship ;) ( modern day example A-10 warthog)

This starts to explain my reasoning behind the mon remonda. If it was a converted liner and we know that mon cals have built stuff up to the home one in size and it is a powerful enough ship to scare a lone SSD (let alone survive a few passes and multiple battles without refitting) it has to be siginificantly better than an MC-90. an MC-90 wouldn't scare a SSD, in fact technically its weapons bounce off they are so crappy (SSD armor quality is almost 2.5 times higher than the penetrating power of MC-90 guns).

It also seems that mon cal generators are not nearly as powerful as imperial ones, given the smaller and weaker armament on equivalent sized ships. (most of the power is shunted to shields, and fleet tactics indicate reluctance to engage large imperial warships unless a significant force can be assembled, thus gauranteeing that the ship will be availble to do suprise raids). ALso the mon remonda was commisioned shortly after endor compared to the MC-90 final design. It seems logical that the mon cals took one of their larger liners, slapped on as much imperial weapons technology as they could their hands on and sent it off to the NR as quickly as possible and said give us a few more years and we'll build an actual warship. Since the design was converted, there would be limited weapons placment area, necessitating a larger ship, also larger power gens would have to be installed also necessitating more open hull area.

I agree with you on the two other points though. the mon remonda was survivable because of insane shields. and the mediator should be roughly equivalent to it, but a better warship. However if the mon remonda was = MC-90 in general terms I wouldn't flinch as an SSD commander (remember during ship trials a few ISDs hyperspaced into! the executor and it just didn't care)

as for the viscount size and power, I agree on the SSD shielding equivalency. However, there is tons of evidence that the NR senate was strictly opposed to big warships lest the NR just become another empire. The new-class ships were designed so that they were flexible and could respond to small sector conflicts. they were smaller but better armed. The lusankya, Intimidator, Guardian and possibly the Aggressor (unless it was lost during DE) were used sparingly and usually for defense and in some cases mothballed. Only when the black fleet crisis occured did anyone bring up the idea of actually constructing bigger ships, but it wouldn't make sense to build something as long as an SSD, mon cal ships are much bulkier and could feasibly mount a significant weapons percentage of an SSD on a much shorter hull. the NR was also extremely cash strapped and its fleets relied on mobility to support other fleet actions. They didn't have the money or the political backing to build another SSD, but you could easily slip one or two ships that were much less intimidating through the budget. that way you have have more distributed firepower, but it can be combined rather quickly (better to have 3 weaker ships than 1 uber ship when trying to keep the peace, not fight a war)

the viscount was probably the answer to any emerging threat. remember it was designed and commisioned before the vong invasion so there was only a need to put down the occasional megalomanic, not entire fleets.

the executor will still be the most powerful unit in the game for many reasons. I assure you that it won't be some pitiful leviathan that falls to a single a-wing and ewok sorcery. The NR was scared of SSDs even when they had more modern ships in significant numbers.

icons will still have text, but it will speed identification to have an idea of what you clicked on without trying to remember what the ship does everytime.

I'm just kidding about this, but I should remove resource injections and starting RUs for everyone that says 'just build one executor and you are set' I'd like to see you build one from scratch and survive (try to figure out if you can sustain 500 RU's per second for 4 minutes while still fighting off anyone else) when anyone can build an SSD you better be scared off your ass. Also it is designed such that it can be completly pummeled, withdrawn and repaired :-p

whew, that was a long post, if you don't read it, don't complain if I say 'go read it' when you ask a question who's answer is in there. :D

[Evenflow]

I really do hope you're kidding about the RU injections being taken out. I play against the CPU anyway and have an extremely limited time per day to play. Usually less than 1 hour.

[evillejedi]

heh I am joking , but it's tempting to threaten people who don't have self control :-p

also I completly overhauled every single weapon and ship file last night. this implements the new armor system, cleaned up a lot of stuff and should also eliminate the 'ships concentrating fire on one spot all the time' issue. Ship hulls values have been recalculated to include shields (will be redone when shields are implemented.) I was an organizational step I needed to do anyway.

[spacemoose]

I hope you don't make some uber Rebel ship to be a direct counter to the SSD. Such tit for tat balancing is so banal.

But in a similar vein: I was confused by your comment that the MC-90s weapons not being able to penetrate the Executors armor. Does that mean that the MC90s and other rebel cruisers are wholly ineffective against the SSD?

[evillejedi]

not ineffective, just that the SSD armor is much superior, so the damage they do is reduced by a percentage. each weapon class can do max damage to the equal armor class and lower, on armor values higher than the weapons class the damaged is reduced between 0-50%

[The5thElephant]

While MC ships may not have as powerful generators, they have much better shielding than Impstars and have back-up shield generators incase the main ones get taken down. So make sure my moncals have good defence! Also I don't see what you mean by MC ships having sucky guns. They have pretty equivalent turbolasers to an impstar, but just less of them. In damage they are about equal for each turbolaser.

Also another weaponry system MC ships have are bomb-blisters. Some of the bumps on MC ships' hulls can detach and detonate in a large explosion of energy and shrapnel that can wipe out quite a few fighters or corvettes, so that may be an interesting short range flak type weapon to put on MC ships (of course you wouldn't be able to simulate the blister popping off but it could be just really short range powerful flak.

[evillejedi]

hmmm good point on making the blisters a flak weapon, it was mentioned before but it sounded hard to implement, now it will be much easier.

as for MC ship guns, in Role playing terms the ISD II has 50 7D guns and 50 10D guns with 20 4D ion cannons

the MC-90 has 75 4D guns and 30 3D ion cannons.

effectivly in the game 2 4D = 1 5D, I'm a lot nicer than that in my scaling, but ISD's have significantly more powerful weaponry

as for shielding the MC ships will have between 5 and 9 times the shielding, so it seems to work out pretty well. the only thing I keep running into is the ion cannons, if I raise them too much stuff gets disabled too much, but too little and nothing gets disabled ever. I'm having a hard time trying to find the right balance.

[Sortsiam]

Could you possibly script the AI so that ships in defensive mode will only fire ion cannons, and ships in aggressive mode will only fire their turbolasers and missiles? That would present some interesting options - if a player could afford to take the time, they would simply disable the enemy ship and capture it, but if they were desperate, they would have to use their lasers and missiles to remove the threat faster.

[The5thElephant]

evil, another solution to the blister weapon is a very fast and short range missile (set it to shoot only at things that are within a very small area nearby) where the missile model is one of the blisters. Its explosion could have area damage.

[evillejedi]

aSortsiam: s far as everyone can tell you cannot script stances to anything. It looks like an engine limitation and it really hurts to not have that functionality.

The5thElephant: actually that's exactly how I implemented it:-p

[squish2944]

Man this is far and away the coolest mod ever.....or well at least ever for an RTS. Anyway I am looking forward to the next release and I sure hope the Dreadnaughts will be in that release they are my favorite ship ever since I read Dark Force Rising. Also are the K-wings desribed in the black fleet crisis gonna be added oh and the Z-95 would be hella cool too any way keep up the good work man this rocks!:bow:

[The5thElephant]

Well evil I was simply reading your mind with my force pow........ok ill shut up now.

[evillejedi]

refinery ship progress, only Y-wing and texturing on this and B-wing to go. I'll probably have a test release out sometime this week, with beta v.25 next weekend. However I ran into some scripting errors that may delay it. (more on that later)

the refinery ship is around 600 meters long and can simultaneously dock 12 mole miners :-p


http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/concept/refinery_ship_top.jpg

http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/concept/refinery_ship_bottom.jpg

http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/concept/refinery_ship_rear.jpg


here's some dreadnaught images from the gallery :-p
no K-wings or Z-95's this release, but they both should be on the way for Beta v.30


http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/albums/Screenshots/ss00073.sized.jpg

http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/albums/Screenshots/ss00074.sized.jpg

http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/albums/Screenshots/ss00080.sized.jpg

P0WNZERD

[AsterXiphos]

Turgidson: Here is the source (http://www.yodasyarns.0catch.com/capitalstarships.htm) you wanted.

[evillejedi]

hmm I think what was meant was which WOTC book was it out of. does anyone have lengths of CC-9600 and CC-7700 frigates? the ones I can find show lengths of 200m and around 165m, however this is rather short for a frigate and definately too small to mount grav wells of any utility.

[Turgidson]

> AsterXiphos

Since that source lists fan-made ships, and uses a Mon Remonda picture for the Mediator (for example), I'd say the accuracy of its Viscount picture is more than questionnable. :p

[the_llama]

is there going to be a rebel ship that can go toe to toe with a SSD? I just think that the Rebels have weak ships, thier Destroyers are a bit weak against a ISD, sorry if I'm beating a Dead horse with this post.

[Aerykh]

Hmm... methinks there might be a bit of confusion regarding Mon Calamari Star Cruiser designations. Here's what I've read (both in EU books and ship guides):

Home One: MC90a, retrofitted to carry MASSIVE fighter complement. Weapons weren't horribly impressive, but there

Liberty: MC80, definitely weaker than an ImpStar Deuce, primarily because these ships were refitted as warships during the cash-strapped days of the Rebellion. Later, these became rather formidable warships after the Mon Cal warship industry became "legit" (i.e. things were being funded by New Republic).

MC80a: one of the aformentioned improved warships, basically a MC80 designed as a flat-out warship, not a converted luxury liner like the MC's seen at the Battle of Endor. Able to give an ImpStar II a run for it's money due to impressive redundant shielding and a larger (than the original retrofitted MC80's, that is) amount of weaponry that was comparable to Imperial weapons. Not quite as many guns as Imps, but commanders of these ships were definitely more willing to go toe-to-toe with their Imperial analogs.

Mon Remonda, aka MC80b: This ship was NOT a converted luxury liner like the rest, being one of the first MC80b's built. This line was designed to hunt Imperial ships, namely being relatively fast (for a cap ship), well-shielded, and powerful. Re-read any book concerning Warlord Zsinj to get a better idea of how capable the Mon Remonda was at surviving encounters with SSD's.

Star Defender: approx 2/3rds the size of the SSD, primarily because the New Republic noticed the limitations of such a huge and unwieldy ship, but needed something with comparable firepower. As such, Star Defenders are capable of defending a system largely unaided by support ships or additional warships. The NR needed a ship that could hyper into a besieged system and turn the tide of a battle immediately, or squelch any irritating political brushfires that had the potential of turning into a civil war, and in regards to this role the SSD was too bloody expensive to maintain in terms of crew, raw materials, and replacement parts. Ship names such as "Mediator" also hint at the "U.N.-peacekeeper" type missions these ships were often sent on.

Sorry to post so much, I was merely trying to convey what I've read in regards to the massive amount of contradictory ship descriptions out there. The LucasArts games have done more than their fair share of contributing to this muddle, as have SW:RPG sourcebooks which are for the most part strangely innaccurate.

--Love, Truth, and Honor.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
edit: anyone responding to this post, please cite any legit source material you use (fanfics, though wonderful, are not legit) in rebuttal, so I can change my views on this subject as appropriate.

[AsterXiphos]

Turgidson: I'd agree, except that eville seemed to indicate that he knew that the picture was a Viscount. Just because the "Mediator" isn't a Mediator doesn't mean that the Nebulan-B isn't a Nebulan-B. Mistakes don't have to come in sets.

When it comes to these "newer" ships, there just seems to be too much confusion. I don't think I could care less which model is used for the Viscount, Mediator, etc; especially when there is always going to be at least one person who is going to question any model that is made. I'm just interested in the mod for the base ships anyways, any of the other more questionable ones are just extras. So whatever.

[Evenflow]

Well, Evillejedi, that link AterXiphos posted should give you lots of inspiration. I also tend to agree that it doesn't really MATTER how MonCals look like per se, since there's so little actual info on them that people will dispute them anyway. Just make them cool looking ;)

If you need more Rebel ships, might I suggest the Dauntless and Liberator cruisers? They look pretty cool.

Anyway, you look like you have a craploads of ships besides the Dreadnaught and A-Wing..... pictures??:D

[Turgidson]

> Aerykh

Well, I'd also ask you (as you wrote) to give us the source you used, especially for Home One as a "MC-90A".

Personally, I haven't read many SW books, I'm merely using SWTC (Star Wars Technical Commentaries : http://www.theforce.net/swtc ) as my main source, because they are well documented and usually write their sources, and also analyze what they read/see. Some other sources, like the CUSWE, are also quite good.

> Evillejedi

It's a long post that I've read, but I'll need a bit more time to answer you. As well as some other points from Aerykh.

BTW, does your Dreadnaught come from SWNR 8.0 ? Their model looks really good.

[evillejedi]

Aerykh: every mon cal ship before the MC-90 is a conversion. the mon remonda may be an exception, a liner that was converted during construction instead of after. this makes only the MC-90, mediator and strident/viscout designed for combat. also the weaponry on all mon cal ships until the mediator, INCLUDING the MC-90, are significantly less powerful than imperial weapons probably by a factor of 5. the reason MC class ships are survivable is the redundant shielding and the hull construction. all ships before mon remonda are less than an ISD I in terms of weaponry also.

as far as sources for mon cal ships. the movies show 3 dratically different classes,
1.liberty,
2.home one
3.wingless liberty.

the computer games show at least 5 different classes
1.original Xwing mon cal ship (given crappy geometry will be the 1300m cruiser)
2.scaled down homeone
3.liberty-ish ship ( will be classified as a crappy rendition of liberty)
4.MC-40
5.1300 m cruiser

dark empire shows 1 combat ship
1.mc-90

NJO mentions 2 distinct classes
1.mediator
2.viscount/strident

some roleplaying references designate an MC-80a which is distinct from the other MC-80 ships

also there is a different rendition of an MC-90 and various concept artworks that have never been described in any literature.

barring the MC-90 'different rendition' and the concept work I will be including all the other ships.

the MC-80a from RP sources will be absorbed by the 1300m class since they are similar, but continuity says they have to exist at different times, luckily since the ships included in the mod range from ANH to pre NJO I don't have to worry about temporal continuity :p

home one is definately not a MC-90a, it was probably constucted during the rise of the new order pre ANH and it has nearly no weapons comparativly. it is possibly has a sister ship called independance that is different from the independance used in the games.

'MC-80' describes a bunch of ships in the same class. In fact I have decided to drop the 'a' 'b' designations because it annoys me. (it seems like mc-80b was just because of the hideously erroneous vehicle guide needed something to label it)

in the MC-80 class there are at least 4 distinct ships that show minor variations

liberty: 1.2-1.5 km long winged cruiser

wingless liberty: shorter than liberty and lacking wings, has an extra thruster and a larger middle bulge

1300m cruiser from XWvT: flatter with engine mountings on the middle of the hull. large torpedo launchers attached to outside hull and a large hanger.

rounded stern cruiser: shorter than other MC-80 class ships, has middle bulge with small hangers and four cylindrical engines mounted in the rear.

the first ship is going to be called MC-80 liberty
now I need class names for the other 3

I am not including the mon remonda in the MC-80 class, based on its battle history it cannot be anything like the MC-80's and it is significantly more powerful than even an MC-90.


mediator is a seperate class than viscount/strident and is significantly smaller.

As far as I am concerned SWTC is gospel and is only overridden by movie evidence (which is what it is based off of mostly) also since it does a very good job of analyzing multiple 'official' sources. The only problem is that it is not as frequently updated anymore. If you don't beleive it is a valid source then tough :p

dauntless will be going in. however I am undecided about the liberator, it will be one of the last ships I will add if I do.

the dread is mine, some of the SWNR stuff is darksaber's so it is not possible to use it in HW2.

[evillejedi]

Once more the rebels WILL NOT have anything even close to the firepower of the executor, or sovreign, or corellian battleship, or the vengence!

the viscount/strident will have equivalent shielding to the executor class ships, but about 1/3 the firepower. it will have about 3/4 the turbolaser armament of the executor, but it won't have the concussion missiles that the executor has. if you are thinking 'phht concussion missiles', think more along the lines of 250 1 megaton ICBMs firing every 30 seconds at point blank range, not pissy little anti starfighter weapons.

more on the refinery ship. the intent was to make a ship that looked like a commerical mining operation. a large hanger for prospecting scouts, mole miner repair and long range shuttles. a processing machine that seperates minerals and dumps them into detachable containers. detachable storage tanks for liquids and gases recovered during processing and multiple dock capability for the miners with an overseer tower for docking. also large tractor beam projectors for manuvering in dense asteroid fields

http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/concept/refinery_ship_tex_top.jpg

[Talonpest]

I just downloaded the mod and have been playing it. Damn is it pretty- this is the first semi-complete HW2 mod I've seen, and as long in coming as they've been, this one seems well worth the wait.

I'm going to put up a list of suggestions, many of which have been mentioned before (it's a loooong thread) which I think would make it play a bit better. I'm sure I'll get shouted down, but what the hell.

First of all, while they are all very pretty, I think there are way too many types of ships to ever hope to balance the gameplay in any meaningful way. There are ships in here I've never even seen in the Vehical Guide. If it were me (and I'm sure you're all grateful it's not) I'd cut out most, if not all of the fighters not seen in the movies, and only use expanded universe stuff when there's a role to be filled that isn't met by a movie ship.

There are several reasons for this: One, it's confusing to have so many types of fighters to choose from, and they're either going to be basically the same or else ridiculously specialized. Two, since fighters are so small, it's nearly difficult to tell exactly what's coming at you and respond with an appropriate counter. And Three, it's less work for you, the modder, to have to fine-tune maybe six fighters per side rather than a dozen.

The same thing applies to capital ships. I mean, do we really need like eight types of Star Destroyer? I'd think a single type of VSD and ISD, (since they seemed to be the bulk of the Imperial fleet) plus an Interdictor Cruiser would be plenty. All of those wacky Alligence and Tyrant and whatever things are just a bit excessive, I think.

For weaponry and ship power, there's a big balance problem. It would take litterally a fleet of frigates to take down a VSD. While a destroyer should be significantly more powerful than a frigate, the disparity is huge right now.

Also, due the the huge number of fast-firing weapon emplacements all over every type of Star Destroyer, fighters and bombers are nearly useless against them. I think you'd be better off halving either the number of weapons or the rate of fire and doubling the power to better represent the role of a turbolaser and let bombers represent a significant threat to destroyers. This would also make the Super Star Destroyer vulnerable to fighters while still kicking the snot out of anything that holds still, and because of the Rebel fighter advantage it could be somewhat balanced.

Also a problem is the fact that the VSD's missiles can slaughter huge numbers of fighters. Is it possible to make the missiles have a shorter range, and be less accurate, so that they're less of an anti-fighter weapon? I mean, a few times I went in with my X-Wings for a quick attack and then retreated, only to have the missiles follow me litterally half way across the entire map and destroy a few fighters when they stopped.

Oh, and I think that, just for the sake of asthetics, you should remove the ion cannons from the SDs and devote one of the frigates them. It just makes the barrage of fire look like christmas lights when you've got red, green, and blue flying everywhere intermingled.

The only technical bugs I've had trouble with are things like rallypoints not working and mole miners having trouble collecting debris. Minor stuff.

[Evenflow]

Heh, I personally like this MOD because it has so many of the lesser known ships like the Allegiance and the Tyrant. Hell, the Allegiance is propably my favorite SD variant so far.

More is better, IMO.

[rgreat]

I agree with Talonpest.

[spacemoose]

I agree that balancing gameplay with this many types of units could be really difficult and that gameplay may end up being extremely confusing and complicated with such a range of possible foes.

I don't really think that capital ships are such a concern, since they basically all do the same thing and once you are familiar with their relative strengths, they would no longer really be confusing to confront. Balancing an ISD and an Allegiance should be relatively easy: just define costs based on relative firepower/armor and there ya go.

The fighters could be more complicated. Since they are difficult to identify, it can be hard to respond effectively (especially w/ TIEs, since there are so many variants that look so similar). I would say that when there are 2 fighter units that essentially perform the same role, one can be eliminated. Or for TIEs at least, perhaps research can simply replace outdated variants. IE: say the initial units are TIE, TIE interceptor & TIE bomber. Research replaces Interceptor with Avenger which is then replaced by Defender, bomber with Scimitar, regular TIE with Interceptor. I don't know if thats possible, but it might clean things up a little bit.

[Reignfire]

You could always talk to the guys working on Star Wars: New Rebellion HW1 mod about balancing issues. http://swnr.themaw.net

[squish2944]

Wow i think i need to change my pants those Dreads are just too cool...What kind of role will they fill? In the Zahn books it implies that like 3 might be able to kill an ISD and four definatly would will this be reflected in the mod? Anyway keep up the good work. Its too bad I think my dog knows more about modding or I would offer to help.

[Talonpest]

So here's another thing I don't really get: Why does anyone need anything bigger and badder than an Imperial Star Destroyer? I mean, this is a gigantic warship close to a mile long with a mass in the millions of tons. The standard version is close to overkill. The only time we see anything bigger is when it's a personalized flagship for someone- IE the Executor for Vader.

I don't know the history of the Allegience, the Tyrant or the Vengence, but I'm going to go ahead and assume they're the same kind of thing, where some poser villian of the week is overcompensating for erectile disfunction and pretending to hold a candle to Vader. Grand Admiral Thrawn, on the other hand, ran his show from the bridge of the Chimera, an ISD, because barring some absurd ubership (which Thrawn didn't need because he was SMART), it's the meanest kid on the block.

I guess I just don't like all these super star destroyers flying around because it makes me look at an ISD and think, "So what?" That just ain't right. You should crap your pants when you see an Imperial Star Destroyer bearing down on you with a compliment of TIE fighters. They should be able to stand toe-to-toe with any single ship out there with confidence, even arrogance. And you should feel pretty damn good about yourself when you're sending one into battle.

As for the wide variety of destroyers available, it's kind of annoying to me that when I go to build a warship I feel like I've just stepped into 31 Flavors. I think once the tech tree is in place especially there will be no need to have two types of ISD and VSD, since you'd just be able to upgrade from type I to type II. And the Dominator? Why? An Interdictor Cruiser does the same thing, why double up the function?

I've never actually tried any Homeworld modding... would it be relatively simple for someone to do a remix of sorts (for personal use only, of course) where ships can be moved/removed and stats can be tweaked, or is there a lot of importing/exporting/converting that needs to be done for that kind of thing?

[Kinjiss]

talopest: stop complaining, if you don't like the mod, don't play it. The big ships are sweet, also, I would crap my pants if I saw a ISD bearing down on me, but I would crap my pants twice over if I saw an Allegiance bearing down at me. The mod is here for us to play with ships that we never had a chance to in any other SW games(more importantley have fun). I personally think this is better than any other Star Wars game out there(cept maybe KOTOR, but completely diff. game) and the loads of ships are AWSOME! More ships the better, I say.

Anyways,

eviljedi: About hero ships. I was thinking what if you had special maps where the hero ships would start at a fixed starting point where they would belong to player 1/player2. This would require fixed star positions and have player(rebel hero's) to be the Alliance, and player 2(empire hero's) to be the Empire.

Some hero ships could be
Millenium Falcon
Outrider
Red Squadron(lukes x-wing squadron)
Vaders Tie Fighter(with tie interceptors as wingmen)
Flurry
Home One
Lady Luck
Slave I/II
and other various unique hero ships.

Just a thought, lemme know what ya think.

--Kinjiss

[evillejedi]

heh I've got a solution, a reduced build list option.

Personally I really liked total annihilation and in any given game I would use around 75% of the units avialable. I don't like games with 3 different units. (exageratting), but I will provide the option for others. so if someone wants to take the existing ship list (http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/ships2.xls on the website) and make a reduced list, I'll implement it. However I will not rebalance ships to accomodate a reduced build list because it will cause needless duplication of assets.


the reason why the majority of the imperial capital ships aren't used in the movies or EU books is simple. First most people don't care to see more than a few different ships, it is confusing even if they are distinctive.

Second, most of the stories take place away from the core on stupid little backwater worlds. Rebel attacks were at strategic weak points. and most destroyer captians were reduced to hunting smugglers and pirates, hardly glorious work i'd say.
Yes, a star destroyer should be fearsome, but the empire had tens of thousands of them. having even 100 larger ships would be an understatment. (approximately 10 standard SSD's were build as sector command ships during the empire, it seems practicaly obvious that you'd have increasing numbers of smaller ships.) also remember, Han solo sorta laughed when he saw an ISD and commented about 'the big corellian ships' Considering that he was corellian and KDY contracted to CEC a lot of the standard designs, this is more evidence for many cruisers.
ships like the allegiance and larger were dedicated to protecting core worlds and held in reserve. BTW the allegiance class was extremely prevalent in dark empire and most of the other large ships are seen at multiple times. (only the vengence is a villian of the week ship, but its similarity to large imperial cruisers implies that it was a design on the shelf)

Lastly, many of these ships were ground to dust when the empire fell and rival warlords started fighting. Even more were lost during DE (a.k.a. "I sunk your battleship"). These ships were expensive to build and maintain, so the imperial remanant would probably strip them for parts to refit other smaller ships.

Thrawn had trouble getting his hands on corvettes, let alone anything big. the exisitng warlords were too suspicious and the NR controlled the major shipyards to an extent that he was forced to pirate vessels and search for a long lost rumored battlefleet. Imagine what thrawn could have done with a few battlecruisers? His intelligance intead was in NOT going after the prize ships that would attract attention and atrophy his fleet. He simply ignored the warlords in the core.
Admiral Daala witnessed whole fleets of ships get rubblized when she tried unifying the warlords.


as for balancing overall, heh we'll see what happens. I determined long ago that the rebels lost nearly instantaneuosly in the balancing department. Even the NJO ships, while nothing to sneeze at, aren't as powerful. In fact I actually put the ISD II guns back to where they should be because it seems to work better.

Even lucas arts went overboard in the Xwing series with ships, and I can still instruct you on all the blind spots, tactics and approach vectors for each ship :p ( probably not, but I tend to be a completist and I definately don't want to turn this into rebellion/supremacy's RTS component)

no hero units, sorry, I just don't like the concept unless it is Single player.

[Turgidson]

Some quick thoughts :

- I saw "Hull regen" on your Excel sheet. Sorry, but I don't think that "Hull regen" is appropriate, because I haven't seen any ship get auto-repaired during a battle. Logically, hull repairs would take place in shipyards, after a battle. IMHO, only shields should regenerate.

- Agree on large shiplist. And it can be made interesting if most ships ain't just scaled up/scaled down versions of another ships, and each unit has "something particular" in it.

- As far as I know, SWNR's dread is a work from the SWNR team (and only the SWNR team), and it is a very impressive model (especially the texturing). You seem to be a very good modeler anyway, but, IMHO, more communication between the different SW teams (not only SWNR, but also the XWAU, the teams that work on Haegemonia, or some good modelers like JM) could spare a lot of work as well as allow better model quality overall.

- Agree with SWTC as "most" accurate source (well, it's nearly my only source :p )

- Don't agree with Mon Remonda as "better" than an MC90. I still feel it isn't bigger than approx 1500 meters (and don't forget it's quite wider compared to other MonCal ships), and that most of its combat history comes from extremely good shielding, and not from impressive weaponry. IMHO, it is currently overpowered.


More to come... later.

[Destraex]

Sounds right to me EvilJedi. In fact very similar to Napoleonic Battlefleets

You have ships of the line and the Frigates and smaller.
Frigates were the equivalent of ISDs in the British fleet. While not as big as Ships of the line they were much bigger than anything they would encounter on their own short of the enemy ships of the line AND very fast.
Ships of the line were used in reserve or to Blockade over long periods. Similar to the roles of the ww1 Jutland fleet, there roles were to engage the enemy fleet, they would never be frttered away on missions to single planets on particular missions, way too much money and far too much firepower.

THe thing I see about the ISDs though is that they seekm to be in between the frigate and the ship of the line, big enough to take their place in a major battle yet being insignificant when compared to the key ships of the line. You really do not see much of the Imperial battlefleet in the movies apart from at Endor. THen you realise they cannot hide that many ships behind the planet

I really do not know how many more larger ships and classes and numbers of them that the empire had is this never seems to have been made clear. However it is understood that Star Destroyers are both numerous and deadly to most opponents 1 on one. It is also obvious that when an operation employed a ISD that it was a very important mission indeed. Obviously as EvilJedi said after the fall of the empire Star Destroyers were used for everything and seem to be used as a symbol of power and fear. A ISD always enerate a holy #@%# they got Star Destroyers remark from me. However I will not be as awed once playing this mod becomes finished. THere will be too many ISDs but this is realistic. Major battles would have had oodles of em. The perspective is from a commander of a very important battlefleet not a driver of small freight A/C or a corellian corvette.
If the game involved a campaign where you had to collect and hoard ISDs like HW2 Destroyers/Carriers and SSDs like HW2 battlecruisers then this would show their true value.

As for fighter killing them too easily well I really think that like attacking a WW2 carrier group that LOSSES would be very high indeed before the XWing heroes would make a breakthrough. There still always exists that lucky hit b the lone fighter though. But not before the shields go down.

Another thing I was thinking is that it would be great to be able to use Star Wars tactics and 3d formations if anyone know them.
anyone remember that in one of the thrawn books there was a race that could only think 2D and therefore were not capable of 3d formations. That rebel frigate squadron could not understand the Imperial tactics.

BTW I love remembering the ships from the original XWing game and all the ones after it. I played Tie Fighter and Xwing but not much of XW VS Tie OR XWing Alliance.
Always wanted a game that did massive Star Wars fleet battles

I will always remember the AWE that went with attacking an Imperial capital ship and the safety I felt under the wing of a Calamari Cruiser when they finally turned up to turn the tide. capital ships were certainly deadly to fighters in the original XWING. I finished that game with no joystick!! as I am sure many did.

Must say I went right OFF star wars since the new KIDDY flicks George Lucas made. Would have preferred a movie about admiral thrawn or something but do not see how this will happen while George is alive. To think he always wanted Star wars to be like htat!!!! YUK

Will have to be content with SCI FI Channels BattleStar Galactica 2003 for no. IS that any good you Americans??

Anyhow I am looking forward to seeing this MOD finished. Hope somebody will make a campaign for it after its done.

Just think if their were 10 standard sector command ships that means their must have been about 200 star destroyers to go with each and an attachment of ships both larger and smaller than the relatively new star destroyers. somebdy correct me who has proper fleet numbers and compositions??

[evillejedi]

hull regen is in seconds, this is currently to simulate shields until they are implemented.

I do work with SWNR ( worked on mole miner, research base and ravager, will eventually do their imp mothership if it isn't already done), most of their fighters and the dread are from XWA, however the XWA team has made a very clear position on how they work with others.

in the case of mon remonda, 'currently overpowered' makes it survivable agaisnt an SSD :-p anything less gets vaped pretty quick. :-p

X-wing with no joystick! heh I went through 3 of them I played it so much.

people seem to keep forgetting the fighter salvo ability, it is EXTREMELY lethal against one target as long as it is sufficiently large and slow.

[wookieman]

I just checked out the screen shots. good rebel ships.

will the next version be 2.5 with the alternate capital ship deaths or will we see a 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 version before then?

[Turgidson]

I know you're partly with SWNR (saw your thread on TGU), but I remember their Dread was their own job. And since EvR (a mod of SWNR) got JM's models for the MonCal ships, I suppose you could also ask him for these models. ;)

> "in the case of mon remonda, 'currently overpowered' makes it survivable agaisnt an SSD :-p anything less gets vaped pretty quick. :-p"

I meant : currently overpowered in terms of firepower. IMHO, Mon Remonda's weaponry is weak (like all previous MonCals), and I guess the super-shielding would come at one cost too, which would mean relatively low speed for its size class (but probably still quite faster than a SSD).

About fighters : has anyone been able to implement limited supply of warheads (missiles/torps/rockets) ? And, especially warheads that would reload upon docking ?
Also, similar question about fighter squads that do not regenerate automatically.

[Destraex]

THe second time I went through Xwing I used a Suncom Joystick and realised how hard I had really done it. Do you remember how accurate a shot you had to be to hit a Tie Fighter. Mind you I was very young then with no simulator experience so maybe if I played it today I would find I was just turning lots of big circles LOL

Twas fun though. Thing I like about this HW2 mod is that really for me I have never played with the big ships before.

As I remember it even with fighter missile slavos a lot of them get shot down (ever do this in tie fighter, shooting protons down will this be in the mod as an extra fighter defense pirk) by the ships lasers and the fighters. Advanced Concussion Missiles do not pack much punch but are the only things fast enough to avoid ldefensive laser fire. Otherwise you need at least two squadrons of fighters to even consider taking down a Star Destroyer (I am not talking heros here) thats about 6 flights of 4 ships in the star wars world??

[evillejedi]

actually the dread is darksabers, I found out the hard way.


About fighters : has anyone been able to implement limited supply of warheads (missiles/torps/rockets) ? And, especially warheads that would reload upon docking ?


heh that's what the salvo feature is :-p

GAH I think I broke docking, nothing new seems to want to have the dock ability.

[Turgidson]

Ah, cool, I guess I should have read the readme. ;-o

However, still curious to know if someone has implemented fighter squads that do not autorebuild. It is important for those who want to simulate "battles" (units are fixed at battle start, no reinforcements, no building) and not the current "harvest, build and conquer" gameplay.

[evillejedi]

you can make it so all dock-capable-non-repair ships have a zero repair rate

[Turgidson]

In that case, would the fighter squads be "relaunchable", or are they blocked in the hangars ?

If you allow it, I would then like to have a "mod" of you mod for battle-only games (dock and reload for fighters/bombers, but no rebuild, all cruisers can dock fighters, etc...). Goal would be to help make a game that would use turn by turn for strategy on a galactic map, and a version of your mod for the tactical battles. I guess you've already heard of EvR (Empire vs Republic, quite dead), GCO (Galactic Conquest Online, sleeping undead) and such... ;-)

[Turgidson]

About the Dread :
http://www.thegamingunion.co.uk/Forum/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=26;t=001514
http://www.thegamingunion.co.uk/Forum/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=26;t=001557

From these threads, it seems that at least one version was 100% done by the SWNR team, but maybe a later version was based on Darksaber's job (who modified a version that had been done by JM - XWAU uses JM's version).

[Turgidson]

> Evillejedi

Sorry for this relatively late answer, and for debating over Mon Remonda again. ;-p


> "I got your email, except you posted here before I answered it, and public discussion is more fun :-p"

There was actually some stuff in the email that wasn't posted here. Also, for stuff like pricing equations, I'd prefer to have it stay in private. :-p

> "I guess on mon cal destroyers there just needs to be some variety in sizing to make it feel like you are actually building different ships."

... and I don't agree. What's the use of a small ship, if a bigger ship does exactly the same job (but a bit better since harder to kill) ? If you can replace one ship's role easily, you just have unneeded redundancies, and units that no one will build.

At the contrary, if you have ships of similar size that fill different roles, you might see all of these in battle. This means more variety, more room for strategy, and a more interesting shiplist. Particularly since many MonCals are in the 1200 meters category.

Note : I've played a SW mod for HW1 (EvR, mostly based on SWNR ships, but with turn by turn strategy app quite like Total War, and HW for the tactical battles).
Too many ships were too close to each other in terms of use, but not in terms of size. As a result, once bigger ships were available, smaller ships completely disappeared.

> "As a design note on mon cal ships:
generally mon cal ships have a dagger shape, it's just less defined and doesn't have the continuous rise to the stern."

A ship like Home One has merely an ellipsoidal shape, and the maximal width is obtained at mid-ship. "Dagger" shape means that most points on the hull can target forward.

> "However, this highlights a critical weakness of Imperial designs. on a ISD, at most 8 medium guns can hit anything in a significant cone behind the engines, if you believe the weaponry numbers, (but logically place the guns for maximum coverage, and assuming that the engines produce crap loads of radiation that prevent guns mounted near, there which seems very reasonable), and none of the heavy batteries (unless they are mounted on at least 30m towers, which all evidence is to the contrary)."

IMHO, when a ship is turning its back towards the main enemy fleet, it means that this ship is fleeing and thus is in a bad situation already. I don't really call this a "major weakness". If the ship is surrounded by two enemy fleets, I suppose another ship could face the opposite direction, thus cancelling the dead angle.

> "An Imperial captian would be wise to pay close attention that something doesn't bite him in the ass, lest he lose his engines and take significant structural damage while being able to do nearly nothing to the attackers. The sloped aft of mon cals allows weapons placment there. (granted they have sucky guns anyway,but that's my next point)"

This is rather an "individualist" thinking, from a captain's point of view. From a "teamwork" sight from an admiral, other ships could cover the dead angle (as I wrote above), and the fleet could split to face threats coming from different directions.

The next question is about "full guns firing when closing the gap/'merging' fleets" vs "fewer guns firing first, but a few ones firing after ships have crossed" (and is what you're writing next, so I'll comment it in the next paragraph).

> "in a large fleet engagment, manuvering room is limited and once you close to weapons range, fire will be coming from all sides. unless you can disengage and rejoin the battle from outside, having equal fire arc coverage of defensive weaponry is essential. This way you can orient the ships main batteries at a target and not risk having a significant blind spot the enemy can attack. Also in a fleet engagement directional manevurability is no where near important as lateral manuvering, unless your heavy weapons depend on it."

This supposes that both fleets have already "merged". The problem is : how long does it take for two fleets to "merge", and how many casualties will there be before we get in that configuration.

While the two fleets get close to each other, the one that can point all its guns towards the front will have more firepower than the one whose ships have guns that are unable to fire forward. If the FirepowerSum/(Shield+Hull per unit) ratio is such that casualties would occur, then the first fleet would already have won an advantage. Considering that the bigger the fleets, the higher the combined firepower (whereas shielding/hull stays the same for each unit), the advantage would increase for the fleet with higher frontal firepower when numbers increase.

At Endor, the Rebel fleet was able to get into such a configuration, but it was also because the Imperial fleet was given orders not to fire (and only started when the Rebels were already at point blank).


The other problem with a ship that can fire weapons in all directions is that, in Homeworld2, it would be quite hard (because of interface problems) to concentrate fire of one side towards a single target, and fire of the other side towards another single target (fire concentration is always more effective than spreading, especially with regenerating shields).

Note : IMHO, the real flaw of the ISD is merely its lack of large turrets on the bottom part of the hull. This is NOT a flaw when considering that the ISD could "roll" (around the longitudinal axis) so that its "top" side is facing the "bottom" (after all, we're in space), but might be a flaw in HW2 because capships don't seem to roll.


> "the next point to make is that mon cal bumps are where the weapons are placed. Since rebel engineers just hacksawed their way through the ships, hopefully they would place weaponry in logical spots. The bumps don't impeed weaponry, they allow it to be off the hull and have a larger fire arc. most weapons on an ISD are limited to a 100 degree / 180 degree firing arc (except for the spine mounted guns. which aproach 200/270-360) if guns are mounted on the bumps, most mon cal guns have a 200/360 arc."

Hmmm... which value for declination ("vertical angle" : -90 to 90 degrees), and which value is for bearing ("horizontal angle" : 0 to 360 degrees) ?

The horizontal bearing on ISDs is limited because the turrets are next to the superstrucutre (which is a relativeley bad design), however the declination is 0->90 degrees (which is "normal").


On a ship with a curved hull, the declination is limited by the tangent to the hull. If the battery is small in comparison to the curve, it's pretty much at 0 degrees, thus without negative values possible. If the battery is big in comparison to the curve, then it might be somewhat more in the negatives (perhaps -30 -> 90°), but mostly because the gun's line is ABOVE the curve.

Back to our blisters, there are two possible cases :
- the guns are inside the blisters, with an aperture mechanism
- the guns are on the top of the blisters

In the first case, the blisters would protect the guns, which is good. Alas, the blisters are not circular, thus don't rotate like a turret, which is bad for bearing angle. Unless the blisters "open" when the ship fires.

In the second case, either the guns are "small" compared to the blister, or they are relatively big. In the first case, the blister acts as the limitating curve, so the lowest declination stays close to 0 degrees. In the second case, I agree the blister would make the gun higher than the hull without the blister's tangent acting as limit, but in most pictures, we do NOT see gun turrets placed on top of blisters (which means the turrets are relatively small).

The "small" blisters of the MonCal ships don't seem high enough to really increase the fire arc significantly IMHO. The bigger ones are too large in comparison to the guns we might spot, thus do not increase the fire arc.

And according to SWTC, the early MonCals that were used in the movies had very limited fire arc, and the gun's axis even seems to be inside the surface (thus, with bearing less than 180° total).
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/mcc.html#weaponry

> "If you have limited weapons this is ideal. This is exploited on the later designs like the MC-90 because you have a dagger shaped hull with weapons blisters."

So, you admit that later designs are more dagger-shaped, and thus that the dagger-shape is more interesting for combat. ;-)

And that's why, IMHO, later MonCal designs should share a more dagger-style shape (that is : more parabolic, and less ellipsoïdal).

> "There still is a blind spot, but since the stern is less angular and the weapons are raised, more guns can cover. symmetry is more a concern for ease of construction, operation and repair with generic parts than it is for firepower."

Not necessarily, since you'll still have a geometrical mirror. ;-)
I was merely talking of global weapons orientation, not of symmetry.

> "There is also the fallacy that sleek and cool looking = good warship ( modern day example A-10 warthog)"

Well, A-10 is extremely specialised to a tank buster job. A-10 vs F-22 -> F-22 wins. ;-)

In terms of stealth, sleeker units would have less radar reflection (additional blisters, right angles etc... are bad for stealth). 'course, SW sensors might be using a fully different technology than radars.

> "This starts to explain my reasoning behind the mon remonda. If it was a converted liner and we know that mon cals have built stuff up to the home one in size and it is a powerful enough ship to scare a lone SSD (let alone survive a few passes and multiple battles without refitting) it has to be siginificantly better than an MC-90. an MC-90 wouldn't scare a SSD, in fact technically its weapons bounce off they are so crappy (SSD armor quality is almost 2.5 times higher than the penetrating power of MC-90 guns)."

I haven't read the novel anyway (but, IMHO, most Fantasy novels (and this includes Space-Fantasy like Star Wars) are crappy from a logical/military point of view, because of the need for thrilling plots - that's how an outgunned fleet can destroy a mighty empire).

However : I think a commander could be scared if he knows he'll have a hard time destroying a ship that can't harm him, but can support fighters and bombers that can deal a lot of damage to him.

The other problem with the Mon Remonda is that, if this ship was better than the MC-90 class on all aspects, then the MonCals would have had merely little need to build the MC-90 class at all (they'd better have to improve what they did with their Mon Remonda class).
Mon Remonda doesn't make sense if it isn't at least flawed somewhere. Could be cost effectiveness, true (but cost effectiveness isn't something good in a space sim, because it means an unit that would never be built). That's why, IMHO, Mon Remonda could be OK as a medium ship (1500 meters) with supershields, but average weaponry (not much more than other MonCals - perhaps a few heavy TL turrets instead of normal TL, though - globally less total fire than the MC-90 but more piercing), and relatively low speed (compared to ISDs and other MCs).


> "It also seems that mon cal generators are not nearly as powerful as imperial ones, given the smaller and weaker armament on equivalent sized ships. (most of the power is shunted to shields, and fleet tactics indicate reluctance to engage large imperial warships unless a significant force can be assembled, thus gauranteeing that the ship will be availble to do suprise raids)."

Disagree there : IMHO, shields also need a significant power source. I think that the relatively low weaponry of the MonCal designs merely comes from their pacifistic philosophy. They would favour survivability rather than raw firepower, and thus allow their fighters and bombers to dock and reload. Also, don't forget it's much easier to add shielding and plating to a civilian ship, than to fit heavy guns.

> "ALso the mon remonda was commisioned shortly after endor compared to the MC-90 final design. It seems logical that the mon cals took one of their larger liners, slapped on as much imperial weapons technology as they could their hands on and sent it off to the NR as quickly as possible and said give us a few more years and we'll build an actual warship. Since the design was converted, there would be limited weapons placment area, necessitating a larger ship, also larger power gens would have to be installed also necessitating more open hull area."

Still, it would come from semi-civilian designs, which would be against the idea of powerful weaponry.

You wrote :
mc-90 defiance = ISD II+ (2.5x - 3x shields, guns ~= ISD I)
mon remonda = (3x allegiance shields, 1.5x allegiance guns)

With that scaling, MC-90 (military design) has ~3 times the shielding of ISD II, and less than 1 time the firepower of ISD II (since having the firepower of ISD I).
Mon Remonda (transition design) has 3 times the shielding of Allegiance (which is a dedicated battleship), and 1.5 times the firepower of the Allegiance.

Thus, with this comparison against "average Imperial ships" (that would follow similar concepts), Mon Remonda would have a higher firepower/shielding ratio than the Defiance, although the latter is a more modern, dedicated military design.

Note : OK, Remonda is bigger than Allegiance, and Defiance is smaller than ISD II, but I still think that from Remonda to Defiance, shields would increase less than global firepower (without penetration values). It would make more sense, anyway, from a purely logical point of view.

> "I agree with you on the two other points though. the mon remonda was survivable because of insane shields. and the mediator should be roughly equivalent to it, but a better warship. However if the mon remonda was = MC-90 in general terms I wouldn't flinch as an SSD commander (remember during ship trials a few ISDs hyperspaced into! the executor and it just didn't care)"

As an SSD commander, I still wouldn't flinch when I see the current Mon Remonda (the one I find overpowered). I would flinch when seeing the rebel fighters firing walls of warheads, but I guess this applies too if they're supported by a MC-90.


In fact, I just think that the EU sometimes is sucky. :-p

> "as for the viscount size and power, I agree on the SSD shielding equivalency. However, there is tons of evidence that the NR senate was strictly opposed to big warships lest the NR just become another empire. The new-class ships were designed so that they were flexible and could respond to small sector conflicts. they were smaller but better armed. The lusankya, Intimidator, Guardian and possibly the Aggressor (unless it was lost during DE) were used sparingly and usually for defense and in some cases mothballed."

Maybe mothballed because of lack of spare parts ? Would be quite logical IMHO. Intensive use would be impossible without the required support, and I don't think the NR was able to manufacture these parts (ain't their tech).

> "Only when the black fleet crisis occured did anyone bring up the idea of actually constructing bigger ships, but it wouldn't make sense to build something as long as an SSD, mon cal ships are much bulkier and could feasibly mount a significant weapons percentage of an SSD on a much shorter hull. the NR was also extremely cash strapped and its fleets relied on mobility to support other fleet actions. They didn't have the money or the political backing to build another SSD, but you could easily slip one or two ships that were much less intimidating through the budget. that way you have have more distributed firepower, but it can be combined rather quickly (better to have 3 weaker ships than 1 uber ship when trying to keep the peace, not fight a war)"

OK on that part. IMHO, Viscount would be more oriented at supporting fighters, and would have the necessary speed to evade ships like the Executor, the Sovereign, or even the Eclipse. If it stays out of range, it's hard to hit. ;-p

> "the viscount was probably the answer to any emerging threat. remember it was designed and commisioned before the vong invasion so there was only a need to put down the occasional megalomanic, not entire fleets."

In fact, the current question is this one : what do "we" really want to simulate. The basic problem is that the NR at its peak didn't face the GE at its peak. GE was defeated by a small bunch of rebels and divided itself into more or less independant warlords without enough coordination, and without the organisation that is needed to support giant fleets and advanced technologies. Basically, there's no confrontation like WWII or the Cold War. But what we play puts the NR against the GE, a duel that never really occured. And thus, the different units were not designed to face that specific threat (especially NR ones, since GE is a military-oriented government type).

> "the executor will still be the most powerful unit in the game for many reasons. I assure you that it won't be some pitiful leviathan that falls to a single a-wing and ewok sorcery. The NR was scared of SSDs even when they had more modern ships in significant numbers."

Sovereign could/should be more powerful than the Executor IMHO. Much heavier, and superlaser-powered. Unless Sovereign isn't in your list anymore. Anyway, Eclipse beats both.

> "whew, that was a long post, if you don't read it, don't complain if I say 'go read it' when you ask a question who's answer is in there."

I've read it, now I've answered it. :p


Note about "canon/gospel" : AFAIK, the Ravager is a fan-made design, as well as the Tyrant. Also, a lot of SW sources contradict other sources (remember Executor's length), and I still think that some parts are here for storytelling more than for military logics and realism (most superweapons - need a big enough enemy to scare the NR, so that there's suspense). If the good guy is supposed to win right at the beginning of a fantasy novel, no one will read it.


Note about hull penetration : IMHO, hull penetration should also vary with increasing damage. One round of 30 mm cannon won't kill a armored vehicle (contrarily to one 120 AP shell), a salvo surely will. Thus, a bunch of normal turbolasers concentrated on the same spot could have the same penetration than a few heavy turbolasers.

IMHO, shields rely on energy, thus every weapon should have 100% shield penetration (full damage). For hull damage, penetration differences are OK. But I don't think we need a lot of weapon differences, or even the "Rep weapons suck, Imp weapons rule". IMHO, these categories (exclusing warheads and ions) could be enough :
- fighter blasters : weak against strong and medium hulls, short range
- ship-mounted "laser" guns : weak against strong hull, short-medium range, flak effect
- special antifighter guns : fast rate of fire, short range, weak against strong hull
- turbolasers : medium against strong hull, good against any other hull, long range
- heavy turbolasers : good against strong hull, very long range

Both NR and GE would have access to these categories on their ships. ISD I = normal TLs, ISD II has heavies, MC-90 would only have normal TLs.


Note about fan-made designs : if you include some of these on one side, the other side might have some too. It also means that the "gospel supergun" argument won't apply as much as the logical point of view/analysis.


Note about "logical analysis vs EU stats" : you're already doing this for Mon Remonda. So, don't be scared of doing it for other ships too, if they don't make sense. ;-p
(that is : if a ship seems useless because of a description somewhere, make it useful and trash that description !)


Note about Vengeance, "Corellian cruiser" and Viscount : Vengeance is supposed to be a bit more than 10 kms long according to SWTC http://www.theforce.net/swtc/dagger.html#vengeance . However, it is extremely narrow. Thus, I'm not sure that Vengeance would overpower the Viscount (which might be less than 10 kms as you said, but probably has more volume than the Vengeance).
What is the "Corellian cruiser" ? Giel's flagship ?
In that case, it is probably around 7 kms to 13 kms big, and SWTC says the lower limit is more probable. In that case, too, it wouldn't overpower the Viscount.
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/dagger.html#giel

[Evenflow]

I can't believe people are complaining about there being "too many ships". Did it ever occur to you that a GALACTIC Empire is likely to have an incredible amount of warships, and that those warships likely come in countless shapes and sizes? Look at the U.S army, how many different types of tanks and ships do we have? Now imagine a GALACTIC government, and a dictatorial one at that. You'll have your standard destroyer, your bigger variation, you interdictor version for when dealing with fringe pirates and other outlaws that run rather than fight, your command ships, your siege ships, your uber weapons platforms, etc...

I don't really get it. ISDII is the best in the destroyer class, no doubt about it, and if your playing with unit caps (which you have to unless you like 2fps) you have a limited number of cruisers (Allegiance, Tyrant) to build. Seems like a game balanced to me.

In short : More IS better.

Evillejedi: don't take anything out man, it will only make your MOD worse!

[AsterXiphos]

Ho-ly flip . . .

Turgidson, I read every word of your post and found it very interesting and informative . . . but do you think we might be taking the fun out of the game by trying to get so technical? It is, after all, just a fantasy universe in a fantasy game. Certain realism is absolutely necessary, but I think I'd rather just play the game. No dig on you, though, I'm impressed with your knowledge and insight. There just seems to be a lot of reasoning with few clear conclusions. I've been following every post on this thread, and I'm not sure what exactly you want to happen. Maybe I'm out of line though; I just finished a huge paper and came here to relax a bit before I start on another huge paper. So I'm a little frazzled, and in a critical mood. Sorry.

Evillejedi, I'm all for accuracy and realism in the game, and would love to have a "nearly official" mod. Thanks for taking the time to make it a little "more" than other cheap mods that are out there. It's looking to be a real classy mod.

[spacemoose]

Turgidson: I have two quick comments on your armor/shield penetration comments.

Heavy armor is heavy because it is essentially invulnerable to light weapons. In the case of a main battle tank, if one 30mm shell doesn't do anything, then 100 won't do anything (unless they can somehow constantly strike the same spot and gradually wear their way through, but now we're talking along the lines of water making the Grand Canyon). (To scale further, imagine machine gun bullets.) If the energy of the shell isn't sufficient to have the possibility to penetrate the armor, then thats it. If anything, the current scaling where at most only 50% of damage is lost to heavier armor (If I'm understanding eville here) is too forgiving to light weaponry.

As far as shields, well yes they are all made up of energy, but that doesn't mean they are all equivalent. Perhaps "heavy" shields are run on a different frequency that is more effective at dissipating attacks, yet is less energy efficient, thus requiring a larger ship with larger power generators.

------

I agree that one must recognize that the primary drive of this "universe" is aesthetics, and for this mod its fun.

Many things about the tech and design of these ships doesn't make perfect sense as we expect at least, but given that this takes place in a reality far removed from our own, the poetic license allows great leeway.'

Bottom line, this mod is a lot of fun, and eville is just getting started. I'd wait until he gets things a little more fleshed out before analyzing too deeply.

[Turgidson]

> AsterXiphos

I'll explain later "what I want to happen". Later, cuz it's prolly gonna be long. :D

> spacemoose

> "Heavy armor is heavy because it is essentially invulnerable to light weapons. In the case of a main battle tank, if one 30mm shell doesn't do anything, then 100 won't do anything (unless they can somehow constantly strike the same spot and gradually wear their way through, but now we're talking along the lines of water making the Grand Canyon). (To scale further, imagine machine gun bullets.) If the energy of the shell isn't sufficient to have the possibility to penetrate the armor, then thats it."

It depends on how close to the limit the shell is. Take 30 mm piercing (what the A-10 is firing), and reactive armour. A lone round might not do much, because the reactive armour is able to protect the vehicle. If you fire a big burst like the A-10 does, the reactive armour won't be able to protect the vehicle, and the vehicle gets blasted.

> "If anything, the current scaling where at most only 50% of damage is lost to heavier armor (If I'm understanding eville here) is too forgiving to light weaponry."

Now that we're talking about SW, the problem is that there can be three types of damage :
- physical piercing damage
- blast damage
- heat

Assuming the nature of SW weaponry, I guess that most of the effect is blast, and especially HEAT.

And, contrarily to a piercing ammo, these effects do add when many munitions hit the same spot (or, at least, quite close).

Note that hot plasma is mostly heat damage, not piercing damage (and heat does make holes).

Anyway, no ship has the same armour on every part. Executor's armour is strong on the main hull, but very weak on the superstructure (any comments, Admiral Piett ? :-p ).

> "As far as shields, well yes they are all made up of energy, but that doesn't mean they are all equivalent. Perhaps "heavy" shields are run on a different frequency that is more effective at dissipating attacks, yet is less energy efficient, thus requiring a larger ship with larger power generators."

I meant "similar" in that any energy weapon would do the same ratio of damage (that is, 100%), whether big or not. No reason for an energy shield to be more effective against a heavy TL than a normal fighter blaster.

> "Bottom line, this mod is a lot of fun, and eville is just getting started. I'd wait until he gets things a little more fleshed out before analyzing too deeply."

I prefer early analysis, because the later it is, the harder it is to change.

From what I learnt in university : in a project, early errors are the hardest ones to correct. ;-p

[kenobi's blade]

I think it would be a good idea to have heroes, but mostly for the Rebel Alliance as the Empire already has a lot of the most powerful ships. In the saga, it was the millenium falcon and Wedge's X-Wing that blew up the second death star which means they should kind of be like the Rebels super unit that you can only build one of and that cost 100 000 RUs to produce. Think Executor with a bit less atk and shield but a lot faster. Now that's just my opinion and I know you probably won't agree : p

[spacemoose]

I'm not entirely familiar with either reactive armor or the particulars of the A-10 AP round, but I'm not sure that they work exactly as you're saying they do. From what I've gathered, reactive armor responds to incoming warheads, causing them to detonate before they contact the tank itself (the first "reactive" armor were mattresses the Soviets strapped to their tanks to counter Panzerfausts). Detonate being the key word there, because it refers to explosive weapons like anti-tank rockets, etc. they don't do much to counter a KE AP round like the A-10 fires.

From what I understand about the A-10 round, one can penetrate by itself, but since the round is so small, it may not cause enough damage to knock out the tank. So generally, several hits are needed. (In either case, A-10s and reactive armor don't have much to do w/ SW, so methinks this was a lil tangential :))

However, you're right as far as kinetic and heat weapons being different as far as cumulative effects are concerned. BUT, even with heat being the source from which damage results, you'd need to precisely hit the same spot at precisely the same time. This would be rather difficult, perhaps prohibitively so. (Remember, in the movies, the Death Stars superlaser ability to destroy a planet was almost inconceivable to Han, yet its power was not more than the cumulative power of the TL batteries of the combined Imperial fleet Perhaps SW TL tech is such a way that combined firepower is not as effective as that from a singular source.)

Regardless, if smaller guns could be made as effective as heavy ones against larger targets, then why EVER have large guns? You need the small ones to take out multiple small threats like fighters and such, so limiting your ability to target threats for no benefit doesn't make any sense.

(Remember aesthetic considerations...historical naval precendents perhaps?)

What I was saying about shields was that perhaps "heavy" shields which can only be generated from large ships with large generators have the ability to dissipate energy better for some reason, which would mean that smaller weapons would be less effective since they could not overload the shields capacity to dissipate the energy (unless of course they all hit simultaneously in the same place). If a large shield is generated by many small generators (think integrated not singular) then as long as each generators portion of shield is not overwhelmed, the overall reduction in shield capacity will be less.

Basically, when given an imaginary framework, one can find arguments either way, but, if we stick to the concepts of the movies, then large TLs have a greater ability to damage large targets.

True, early analysis is generally more "efficient", yet here you don't even really have anything to analyze, eville hasn't even implemented shields like he wants to yet. Give the guy the chance to get the things in before you start telling him how he's doing it wrong.

[Sortsiam]

You know, I think you guys are going into far more detail than was ever even thought of by the creators of the SW universe.

[Evenflow]

head spinning.....:gonemad:

You guys are looking at this waaaaaaay to hard. All we have to go with are the Star Wars movies and the EU, naturally, the EU is the best bet because it goes into the detail on space warfare better than the movies ever could.

I personally think that what we have had in the MOD so far is perfect, just needs a bit of fine tuning. The ship selection is excellent, and appeals to the more hardcore fans who have read all the books/comics and own all the sourcebooks and such. You may think that an Imperial Star Destroyer is the only ship the main ship the Empire has, the strongest after the Executor, but the truth is, for all thier power and size, ISDs are actually run of the mill average as far as the Imperial Navy is concerned. In some the books they drop like flies in the middle of medium sized battles. Granted, that doesn't mean that the MonCals should be more powerfull, I understand the need to have them have uber shields to be able to atleast get CLOSE to the SSD, but if that is the case then ISDs should be increased in hull/sheilds as well.

But that's about it really with the MOD up to version 2.0

Personally I can't wait to see the Tyrant and the Soveriegn. I can understand why some people would be worried about unit balancing but taking out units is just the lazy way to do it, IMO.

[evillejedi]

I'll admit some of my intial balancing ideas were off base. we'll see how the new system works.

I'll agree that the current mon remonda has too much firepower, it should be rebalanced in the new version.

with the firing arcs I refering more to the amount of suprstructure blocking the weapon and not the actual hull bulk in this case an ISD is at an disadvantage.

Also in there is a problem with unit control in the game. trying to get ships to effectivly cover each other is nigh impossible. when I release the new test version I will be implementing things similar the dynamic capital ships mod and one of the biggest things is that when cap ships engage they will attempt to manuver, sitting still is a death wish now. All destroyers will perform slashing attacks once they close. and frigates/corvettes will survive based on their manuverability.

In the game weapon penetration is a percentage modifier to the damage. but I am trying to use it to represent whether a shot will do damage or not. this simulates the deflection aspect of armor and shielding.

weapon penetration basically can only be modelled in the game one way. if all guns of a specific class have the same accuracy for arguement then only the weapon damage, % vs armor, and the targets armor matter. using the projectile example used earlier the real world equivalent is energy of the weapon and energy absorbtion of the armor. A smaller round has less energy, so only the amount of energy above the armor's absorbtion will deal damage to the armor and this value would scale with the size of the round. Realistically you would have all of the effects of heat and vibration from the weapon that would damage stuff beyond the armor. however the game is limited in it's ability to do damage modeling (though I do have ideas, but they would be difficult) By making weapons unable to damage heavier armor you would never build lighter ships once your enemy has heavier armor. What I am trying to simulate is combined fire by making the armor more forgiving. Also like what was mentioned earlier heating effects do stack, and laser energy gets converted to a lot of heat concentrated in a very small spot. Even if we go with the idea of TL's being plasma weapons there is still tremendous heat deleivered to the target. (though I don;t know why they don't just throw super luminal bricks at each other.)

as for shields the 'quality' value is a guidline for the total shield points. maybe weapon power should be a factor, I will look into it. However, shields are a pain in the ass to do and that is for the future. since they aren't implemented yet it can basically be ignored for now.

the final issue is weapon range. TL's are supposed to at least have a range of 300km and it is probably substantially more (they can do planetry bombardments without much trouble with gravity so the range should be longer) the weapon range in game has to be significantly reduced because of the map size and for playability (you wouldn't be able to see what was shooting at you) so realism has to get axed here. the longes ranged weapon that is practical for the interface is around 20km with a more realitic value around 10km. this makes the intial engament phase of a battle VERY quick unless you want extremely slow ships. so that game has to be more balanced towards the close in slugfests. Its an engine and playability limitation, if I was able I would make accuract weapon ranges, and make the game more strategic in nature IE bigger maps and supply lines.

I will make support for a no-build option, however I need to have ideas for starting fleets since you cannot dynamically, on ship by ship basis, decide once the game is started.


btw 1 penetrating A-10 round is enough to liquify the crew with shrapnel and ricochet. but in effect the gun is effective because it chips the armor away and the vibration and distortion cause by many small rounds weakens the metal to a point that later round penetrate.

unless they have some really good advanced metals that keep their strength when rapidly heated and cooled, the armor should get weaker. effectivly the rapid heating liquifies/sublimates the surface and turns the underlying layers amorphous. repeated strikes spread the liquifying/sublimation and this material is lost. the extreme cold of space then cools the remaining metal rapidly causing it to form large crystals and imperfections and become brittle. there are some other chemical changes depending on the composition that would also contribute to the metal weakening because as it cools non-uniformly the continuity of the original armor molecular structure is lost. granted their material science is much better, but heat will still do this to any material eventually.

[Evenflow]

Hmmmmm.... this is interesting about how certain weapons are too weak to penetrate certain armor. But in all the books I've read even X-wing lasers were sufficient to weaken shields on SSDs and blow out chunks of the hull once they were depleted. (Solo Command is a great example of this). I think making certain weapons completely ineffective to some shields/hull maybe too extreme IMO.

And starting fleet? The way it is now, the Mother ship, a rescource collector, and about 10 or so mole miners. I don't think you need any military ships because since everyone starts with the same stuff, theoritically you won't need them. Maybe.

[evillejedi]

the military starting fleets option is a valid one. it would be an option as part of a no build game type.

all wepons will be able to do damage to any armor in the game, however their effectivness will be reduced.

as for the sovereign and the eclipse class ships, while they have about twice the number of TL as the executor they are of the same power as the ISD I, the executor has guns similar to the ISD II, this means that their TL's are about 90% of the excutor total. they are extremely poorly armed with ion cannons and they lack the huge concussion missiles. Also the superlaser in ship to ship combat is only good enough to cripple an ISD every minute or two. However they do have substaintally better hulls making them more survivable.


the reason I have more weapons classes than it is obvious to have is that I did have 3 classes per weapon and it didn't work at all. stuff like strike cruisers dominated the game because they quaify to have 'heavy' guns, but were fast and cheap and givng some ships light guns made them worthless. also ISDI ='d mon cal effectivly and ISD II dominated them significantly.

[Calavan]

Hey Turg, havn't seen you in a while :D

Yeah, I know what he's talking about with small ships being virtually useless in EVR, and I really hope that doesn't happen here. I'm not huge on EU stuff either, mainly because I've gotten so disgusted with the 'hero shields' everybody has. The only EU i've ready was the Thrawn Trilogy, and while I thought it was good even there you had the good guys getting thrust into situation after situation of 'dire peril' and it seemed like every time they just brushed it off like it was nothing. I guess I just didn't like pulling for the bad guy, which is something I do alot in Star Wars. IMO you should hate the bad guy, and with the way the trilogy has evolved, its hard (not reading any NJO i can't comment on hating the Vong)...

But anyway, yeah: Mod looks great, I like the huge ship selection. Still lookin for my Modified Corvette ;). I think the SSD probably should be stronger then the SOV in fleet situations, but in 1 on 1 a SOV should be able to win, and uh...thats about it. I didn't have anything really meaningfull to add, but I just felt like stickin my head in :)

[varis]

Is there a simple, quick way to implement a no-build game other than disallowing resource operations?

You could simulate shields with armor classes too, eg. HeavyShield or LightShield. Or with the defense field maybe... Those are a bit unintuitive for most sci-fi universes though :-,

Additional damage effects could be made with EMP, like in PDS or SSM...

[Interviglium]

Two quick things,

1.) There is something wrong with the modular vessel, when I build mole miners from it, they sit outside of it and jerk up and down. They can't be given orders, and the only thing the modular ship can do is move, in which case the mole miner follows it. The modular ship can't exit any units until the mole miner is scuttled.

2.) There is a problem with the MC-90's rear fire arcs, if you position a ship behind and just below of the 90, it won't be able to hit you with its guns, even though it shoots them. Is this intentional or a bug, because I was able to take out four mc-90's using a VSD I by jumping behind them and firing away.

[Evenflow]

Really? If that's not a bug then its actually pretty cool. Blind spots. Makes sense that given the size of the engines and the limited arc turbolasers can mauneuver, that the rear end right behind the engines would be a blind spot. Might make some interesting tactical strategies, assuming it's not a bug.

[The5thElephant]

Woah lots of opinions here, I would just like to state that I know far too much about Star Wars than is mentally healthy so if you have any questions just ask me.

A point I noticed earlier about Mon Cal weaponry, it is NOT so much weaker than imperial turbolasers. In fact a New Republic and Imperial turbolaser is about equal in terms of power. The only galactic civilization with really different turbolasers are the hapans whos lasers overheat really fast so they set them up in a really cool rotating disk formation that allows for a continuous stream of concentrated fire. But ignoring that don't think an MC-90 couldn't hurt an SSD cause it definitely could. The way shields work in Star Wars isn't just an on off system. If you concentrate fire on one place the shields were partially open there from the overload and weapon fire can get through. That is how fighter squads take out cap ships, one salvo of torps followed quickly by another which enters through the hole the first caused and blows the Impstar to shit.

[Interviglium]

Evenflow; the problem is that the MC-90 doesn't maneuver to bring the VSD into its fire arcs, it sits there firing away with every gun it can bring to bear, and every gun misses. The VSD does, however, sometimes move into the stream of fire lol.

[Evenflow]

Ah, I see what you mean. So the MC90 can't hit it's target, but it doesn't know that it can't. Well, that's not good. If Evillejedi can give all destroyer class ships a blind spot directly behind them, but lets them automatically move to get a clear shot at the enemy, that would be pretty cool IMO, don't know if that's possible though.

I'm thinking that you could hyper in a whole squadron of frigates right behind an enemy destroyer, fire away, and then retreat, doing a lot of damage with very little, if any, losses.

[Apan Bosse]

I have a problem with the sound in this mod :(

I dont have any sound at all. Not in the menus and not in game. And also I downloaded the latest verision from the webpage (0.20), but when im about to start a skirmish game it says 0.17 in the "choose type" menu. And there seems to be some texturing problems on some of the ships.

Other that its a great mod, keep up the good work :D

//Apan Bosse

[Interviglium]

Evenflow; yeah, it would be good if destroyer and up sized vessels had blind spots, but I think maybe the hyperspace settings would have to tweaked so ships have to point at the destination before they jump, like they should, but I don't think it can be done with the hw2 engine. That would stop people hypering in groups of Tyrants/VSD I's, letting off a single salvo of missiles and then jumping straight back out before any damage to themselves could be accrued. It would also mean that attacks like that would be better suited to things like fighters corvettes and frigates, as ships like Destroyers etc should use a tactic like that to get themselves into the enemies blindzones, and try to stick there, because pinhead turns wouldn't be to fast with a mile long ship I would think. Careful manuevring in small battles could mean that you could keep a smaller ship in the area of the targets blindzone, like maneuvering original HW2 destroyers directly above/below the hiigi BC's ion turrets, meaning they couldn't fire at you.

Would also prompt people to keep escorts with their larger ships. Would be something to think about.

[edit]
making it so that the ships have to point at their destination before jumping would also mean you could do emergency jumps if, for example, your coming about to jump back to base after attacking a ISD's engines, but suddenly find a a group of bombers appraoching quickly, you could hit space bar, select a destination on the ships current vector, and jump off target, hoping that your emergence zone is safe.

[The5thElephant]

This makes me think that they definitely need a large scale Star Wars RTS that is actually well done with good graphics. And without all these engine limitations that HW2 has.

[Apan Bosse]

Hi there :)

have been playing this mod for a while now and I think I have some C&C on the mod.

First of all I would just like to say that I dont feel like reading through all 60 pages so if this have been brought up before, im sorry =)

Well I still doesnt have any sound in this mod.I dont know what the problem is because I have sound in regular HW2. Anyone who know what to do please help :)

Secondly I think that all the "small arms" is a big problem for this mod. I know it probably is that way they the ships are in the movies but in this game it causes lots and lots of lag and FPS drops. I can have a big armada of some 10 or so destroyer-class ships and the FPS is good. But when all those ships + all the enemys ships opens fire at eachother, I get some serious FPS drops (which I dont encounter in regular HW2, I have an AMD 2500+, radeon 9700 and 512 ddr ram). Also it makes it very hard to attack capital-ships with fighters.

Also the textures seems kinda messy on some of the ships.

Anyways GREAT mod you guys have mad I really enjoy playing it :)

//Apan Bosse

[Talonpest]

Quick question: Is the Imperium Star Destroyer the same thing as an Imperial Star Destroyer? I've done a google search and the only thing that comes up for Imperium Star Destroyer is some wacky fanfic or something with a ship 3x the size of a Super Star Destroyer. I'm just wondering if it's supposed to be a different ship than the ISD's from the movies, because that would explain the darker textures.

[evillejedi]

I try to avoid any fan created ships.However, I have taken a lot of the concepts from official materials like Dark Empire and named them. the only ships that I currently include that could be considered mostly made up are some of the utility, the revised bulwark (because the original design was so hideous) and the tyrant (loosely based on one of the DE ships around byss, but pretty much a design I came up with a long time ago) the tyrant is not like the SWNR tyrant, I would consider their tyrant to be a scaled version of my implacable class (another DE design with no name) with a large hanger.

performance will improve eventually :-p I am going to do a similar solution that SWNR has by making lasers at long range a single color line, this improved framerate and visibility.

I really need people with the sound issue to speak up, please tell me what type of sound card, direct x version, windows version, what country/region you are in. ANYTHING that would isolate why the sound doesn't work for some people.

I agree with the engine limitations crippling the ideal mod, however nothing on the horizon that is currrently anounced would do as good a job as HW2 does. Its major lack is in collision modelling and AI.

I wrote up an abridged build list option, please post comments on what should be added or removed from this mode. It will simply be a subset of the existing ships called by a script.

FIghters ==============================
Rebel+++++++++++++Imperial
A-wing+++++++++++++TIE interceptor
X-wing+++++++++++++TIE Fighter
Y-wing+++++++++++++TIE Bomber
B-wing+++++++++++++TIE Defender

corvettes==============================
Gunship+++++++++++++System Patrol Craft
Corvette+++++++++++++Modified Corvette
(capture)
Assault Transport+++++++++++++Delta DX-9
(scout)
Action IV+++++++++++++Lambda Shuttle

Frigates==============================
Nebulon B+++++++++++++Nebulon B-2
Assault Frigate+++++++++++++Carrack Cruiser
Bulk Cruiser+++++++++++++Strike Cruiser
+++++++++++++Lancer
Destroyers==============================
MC-80 Liberty+++++++++++++VSD I
MC-90+++++++++++++ISD II

(grav well)
Grav well mine+++++++++++++Interdictor

I have not yet decided about if cruisers or super caps should be included. I think this list gives a good balance.

remember this is a reduced build list MODE and all the ships will be able to be built in the normal mode ( so making the reduced mode have too many ships makes it redundant). I am providing this as an OPTION for those that wanted it. I am also working on a no build OPTION with various starting fleets.


also I am delaying this release by a few days, I still haven't finished enough to call it ready for testing.

[HitokiriHa]

imo the hulls of all cap ships should be increased drastically. that way fights can be longer like in books/movies. with more time more strategy can be used. also, do you think you could implement homing beacons that could be attatched to enemy ships? that'd rule. and could you plz change the name of the imperators to imperial? please? btw i love ur mod.

[HitokiriHa]

oh. another balance issue. i think the rebs need to start off with just as much stuff as imperials. and i've noticed that if i destroy the reb resourcing ops that they do not rebuild and they just sit there, regardless of difficulty setting.

[AsterXiphos]

Evillejedi, that build list looks very good for a "Basic" build option. I'm a little jealous that the Imps get the B-2, but such it is - no probs (that's "no problems," not "no probes" . . .). It looks good.

Just a really random and somewhat dumb question . . . but will there be badges and team colors? I know that's a finishing touch issue, but I was wondering. It may already be there and on your beta's, but my copy of HW2 is at home, and I'm at school. Gotta get it up here . . .

[evillejedi]

rebs = not finished, therefore I cannot comment on their balance.
the imperator name superceeds the incorrect imperial designation, I will call it that in the mod, end of discussion. (this was rehashed many times earlier in the thread) homing beacons would be very hard to do and I don't really see the point. As this is something that would get detected and burned off of a ship very quickly. (plot device and not a military device)


I would like to do badges and team colors, however I don't know how to do it properly yet (comes out corrupted) and some ships don't have a good place to identify (ISD's for example) but fighters and corvettes should have at least team colors in the next version. (badges are tougher)

[kenobi's blade]

I want to know when the new mod will be comin out. It might be somewhere in the thread but I dont reallly want to read thruu 60+ pages.

[rgreat]

Originally posted by evillejedi
I really need people with the sound issue to speak up, please tell me what type of sound card, direct x version, windows version, what country/region you are in. ANYTHING that would isolate why the sound doesn't work for some people.
I have that problem once.
Fixed that by editing .lnk file.
I guess all trick is to set correct startup directory for HW.
(Not exe path, but startup directory)

[dude]

I don't know if this any of you have seen this site, but it is pretty good on giving info about some various ships. It might help you with the balancing issues, costs (well, maybe just when ships are compared to each other) etc...
star wars site (http://www.galacticempiredatabank.com)

[Talonpest]

Ah ha, finally found the Imperator explaination. Man this is a long thread! Fine by me, as long as I get to call it an ISD. I am a little curious though about the dark and irregular textures... shouldn't they be a light, uniform grey? Maybe they are and it's just the shadows acting all funky.

I like the idea of the optional simplified build list- everybody's happy that way, and it's an easy thing to do. I've actually figured out how to do it myself, so I'm already happy :).

Have you given any thought to the idea of decreasing the rate of fire on the capital ships' turbolasers and increasing the power? That would help a bit with the slowdown in large battles, and also give fighters and bombers more of a chance when approaching targets. It's pretty hard on them right now- they just run into a huge wall of turbolaser fire and get cut to shreds.

Oh, another thing: is it possible to make missiles targetable? It'd be nice to be able to have a squad of TIEs thin out the cloud of missiles as it streams towards a destroyer, rather than just sitting back and waiting for the inevitable impact.

And I'd like to reiterate my request for seperating ion cannons and turbo lasers onto different ships. Reason 1, as I stated before, is that it looks funny to see blue mixed in with the green and red bolts.

Reason 2 is that ion cannons are built to disable a ship, so having them fire at the same time as a torrent of lethal turbolaser fire is a little pointless, since the target is going to be destroyed by the turbolasers before it's crippled by the ion cannons (I've had rare cases where a picket ship is disabled before being destroyed, but they were purely unintentional).

And reason 3 is that I'd like to see a dedicated ion cannon frigate that can move in ahead of boarding parties to disable a target.

[Kinjiss]

I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but recently I noticed that the TIE bomber is partially untextured, and looks quiet ugly like it is now. Also I found the the System Patrol Craft is completely untextured. I saw in some screenshots of previous wersions that it was textured, so I was wondering if this was just me or if anyone else has the same problem.

Also, after your done with all the Imperial and Alliance ships are you going to add any of the ships from the prequels? I just think some of them are cool looking.

Anyways, can't wait for the next version!

--kinjiss

[Sortsiam]

Kinjiss: I've noticed that too. Apparently what happens is that when too many units are created, the fighters automatically switch to the lowest LOD to prevent system lag. Try zooming in on them before the game fills up with tons of ships.

[evillejedi]

kenobi's blade: next version should be early next week.

rgreat: thanks for the info. does correcting the shortcut help people?

dude: I have looked over that site, but most of the info is repeated or from the computer games.

Talonpest: yeah it's lighting issues, I figured out how to fix some of the problems, but goblins and less detailed lods still look like ass for some reason.

ion cannons provide an alternative way to knock out ships. this is why ISD I's are important, they have tons of ion cannons. since you don't need to disable a ship to capture it there is no reason to seperate the weapons. ALso most space battles have seen ion cannons being used in parallel with conventional weapons.

I will slow down the rate of fire a little bit for many reasons, but primarily the new armor system and the dynamic capital ship like enhancments.

PDS is sorta hard to implement. I'll look into it as I think it should be in any mod, but it isn't a big thing in SW so we'll see.

the LODs for many ships are just to reduce poly count and look pretty nasty, it is getting worked on.

probably no prequal ships for the same reason as no vong or chiss or hapans or whatever.

[rgreat]

ETA for 0.25 ?;)

[Evenflow]

Evillejedi: have you figured out what the Rebel mothership will be based on or look like?

[evillejedi]

heh .25 ETA looks like monday or tuesday next week depending on how school stuff goes.

reb mothership? what mothership? heh I have no idea. I sorta dislike the concept of a mothership, but for right now nothing.

[rgreat]

Yes. I think its better without mothership.

[Interviglium]

Speaking LOD's, anyone zoomed in on the I-7's when there are lots of ships around? I dunno if this has been brought up before, but the I-7's turn into sunshatter missiles (the atmospheric deprivation missiles fired by the planet killers)...very...disconcerting.

Also, I think the Enforcer needs to be tweaked slightly, a VSD I is cheaper than it and tons stronger, unless I'm using them the wrong way. I don't know if it was just the way I was doing it, either, but none of my cap ships wanted to jump anywhere near my Strike Cruisers, either.

TIE/D's are incredibly durable and quite powerful. I had 5 squads take down an Enforcer, although a Tyrant was firing intermitent turbolasers on them (like 1 shot every two seconds or so, the Enforcers where miles behind it). That same 5 squads survived for a good 3 minutes in the midst of two ISD II's and 3 VSD II's and a couple of Enforcers.

yep, the modular cruiser is certainly broken lol.

[evillejedi]

yay I finally fixed the issue that prevented all docking. now I can import things again. I'm only a few days behind schedule now :-p
now I can work on icons, new modes, and importing and finishing up the Y-wing and b-wing.

heh ignore all the old balancing, whole new system coming. I've been playing with weapon strength again and an ISD II should be pretty nasty, it may not last incredibly long, but it should be able to massacre anything that isn't moving. right now an MC-90 vs an ISD II is a matter of positioning if the MC -90 can get below or behind the ISD II then it will probably win, if the ISD II can get below or point at the MC-90 it's big guns will tear into the other ship. (YAY STRATEGY that actually works in the HW2 engine.)

[Evenflow]

Yesssss..... ISD's will kick ass again!!

Evillejedi, just PLEASE make sure you fix the texturing problem for the ISDII, it just looked HORRIBLE in the last release, pretty much unplayable!

[Talonpest]

Sounds great- does this mean that you've fixed the problem where 90% of the shots fired at a Star Destroyer miss because it's targeted above and in front of the actual ship?

Oh, and I've been toying around with the fighters, and I've found that if you slow them down by about 25% the dogfights look a whole lot better. Right now they're like gnats moving around so fast you can't even really see them when you zoom in.

[the_musketeer]

well, evilljedi, I like what you've done. nice models, excellent work. one thing I noticed is kinda weird though. when you zoom out, the enforcer actually gets bigger instead of smaller. I placed it next to an imperator to compare and when fully zoomed in, the enforcer is noticably smaller than the imperator (as it should be) but when I zoomed out fully, it was actually BIGGER. weird, could you fix that?

and what is really annoying is the way the various star destroyers move sometimes. I had them attack a stationary target when they still had to move into range and they started to make all sorts of moves around the thing rendering much of their weapons useless because they got themselves in an angle to the target in which they couldn't shoot.

I won't comment on balance and and stuff like that since not all ships are in the game. I simply trust in your excellent judgement and talent to get the job done correct when it's all finished (what, a little but-kissing to make the work go faster is ok ;) )

PS.
don't know what of this has been discussed before but I'm new to this mod (read about it in the SWNR forum) and I didn't feel like reading 60 pages to find out. If it has been brought up before, sorry.

[Turgidson]

> Spacemoose

Reactive armour actually explodes upon contact by a a warhead, thus attempting to deflect the damage from the warhead (it's the armour that detonates, not the warhead that detonates earlier). However, it is mostly effective against shaped charges, like High Explosive Anti-Tank warheads. So, I guess I was wrong with my 30mm AP example.

> "However, you're right as far as kinetic and heat weapons being different as far as cumulative effects are concerned. BUT, even with heat being the source from which damage results, you'd need to precisely hit the same spot at precisely the same time. This would be rather difficult, perhaps prohibitively so. (Remember, in the movies, the Death Stars superlaser ability to destroy a planet was almost inconceivable to Han, yet its power was not more than the cumulative power of the TL batteries of the combined Imperial fleet Perhaps SW TL tech is such a way that combined firepower is not as effective as that from a singular source.)"

Han was referring to the whole Imperial Starfleet, if I'm not wrong, which means all ships of the Imperial Nay.
The power of the Death Star seems to be much more than the combined power of a single fleet (which, by definition, is much smaller than the whole Starfleet).

> "Regardless, if smaller guns could be made as effective as heavy ones against larger targets, then why EVER have large guns? You need the small ones to take out multiple small threats like fighters and such, so limiting your ability to target threats for no benefit doesn't make any sense."

Bigger guns might have longer range, for example, or be more effective in terms of power cost.
I do admit that concentrating fire requires good targeting devices, but theoretically, it is possible (set fire delay so that all guns meet the pre-calculated target at the same moment, and we're not talking about a few guns, but 30-40 at least if the target is withing the firing arc of a cruiser). Don't forget that TLs move straight, and are not influenced by the atmosphere during space combat, contrarily to "our" shells on earth.

> "What I was saying about shields was that perhaps "heavy" shields which can only be generated from large ships with large generators have the ability to dissipate energy better for some reason, which would mean that smaller weapons would be less effective since they could not overload the shields capacity to dissipate the energy (unless of course they all hit simultaneously in the same place). If a large shield is generated by many small generators (think integrated not singular) then as long as each generators portion of shield is not overwhelmed, the overall reduction in shield capacity will be less."

Actually, I rather think that "heavy" shields are just bulkier, that is : they can resist longer. Unless you consider shield penetration (that is : an amount of damage could get through, without the shield being completely depleted yet), or extremely local generators, heavy weapons wouldn't be more efficient than lighter weapons against a shield, since it would be energy (weapon) vs energy (shield).

> "True, early analysis is generally more "efficient", yet here you don't even really have anything to analyze, eville hasn't even implemented shields like he wants to yet. Give the guy the chance to get the things in before you start telling him how he's doing it wrong."

Calm down please, I'm not bashing anyone, nor telling that the current shield model is wrong (since there's no shield model posted yet, AFAIK). We're only discussing theoretical concepts, before Evillejedi (or someone else) implements them. Better, IMHO, to debate before acting.

[Turgidson]

> Evenflow

> "You guys are looking at this waaaaaaay to hard. All we have to go with are the Star Wars movies and the EU, naturally, the EU is the best bet because it goes into the detail on space warfare better than the movies ever could."

Actually, each book is usually written by a single person who most of the case isn't a military specialist, but merely a storyteller. Thus, IMHO, blindly believing EU sources isn't the best thing to do. I'm more in favour of critical analysis, an thrusting logical arguments rather than "it was written there or there". Anyway, more to come on that subject later.

IMHO, the best part of EU is that it gives us new designs and names that can be implemented. But I think we could implement it in such a way that these elements make the game better, and not only "because the EU said so". Remember what Lucasarts did... (ship creations for their games, new devices added like chaffs, flares, weapon flexibility on every fighter, different targeting than in the movies...).

> Cal

Hi Cal. Still on Felthy's team ? :D



> Evillejedi

> "I'll admit some of my intial balancing ideas were off base. we'll see how the new system works.
I'll agree that the current mon remonda has too much firepower, it should be rebalanced in the new version."

OK.

> "with the firing arcs I refering more to the amount of suprstructure blocking the weapon and not the actual hull bulk in this case an ISD is at an disadvantage."

Yes, but only once ships get very close, thus implying broadsides. The ISD is still at (huge) advantage during the long range part of the battle.

> "Also in there is a problem with unit control in the game. trying to get ships to effectivly cover each other is nigh impossible. when I release the new test version I will be implementing things similar the dynamic capital ships mod and one of the biggest things is that when cap ships engage they will attempt to manuver, sitting still is a death wish now. All destroyers will perform slashing attacks once they close. and frigates/corvettes will survive based on their manuverability."

IMHO, ships should manoeuver if and only if this manoeuvering makes sense. For small ships like frigates, or ships with poor weapon placement, manoeuvering does make sense. For a design like the ISD, sitting still and firing (until the enemy gets close) is what makes the most sense. An ISD captain who would turn his ship very early to broadside is a dumb captain, because he'll just be reducing his firepower - it's more logical that he would start manoeuvering only quite late, when the enemy is coming at point blank.

By the way, the current HW2 stances (F2-F3-F4) are far from optimal for capital ships. On aggressive, for example, the ships will try to engage any enemy and get out of their formation. In addition, they will spread fire instead of concentrating it on a single target (you have to target by hand to avoid that). So, basically, it'd be good to change this a bit : there are cases in which player control is much better than automatic behaviour (especially when this behaviour is sucky), and targeting is IMHO a player task.
Perhaps implement this "dynamic capital ships" behaviour for only one of the stances (logically, F4 - aggressive).

I admit I might be paranoid, and that I'm merely seeing the bad sides of these lines, without even knowing what it will exactly be. But I don't like the idea of early maneouvers for ISDs, because it doesn't look like their best tactic.

> "In the game weapon penetration is a percentage modifier to the damage. but I am trying to use it to represent whether a shot will do damage or not. this simulates the deflection aspect of armor and shielding."

I'm OK about different hull damage depending on the weapon type, as long as it can include the idea that lots of mediums weapons still do damage. For shielding, however, I think the damage is 100% for each type - when supposing that shields are a (invisible) subcomponent all around the unit (maybe even 2-3 shield layers).

> "weapon penetration basically can only be modelled in the game one way. if all guns of a specific class have the same accuracy for arguement then only the weapon damage, % vs armor, and the targets armor matter. using the projectile example used earlier the real world equivalent is energy of the weapon and energy absorbtion of the armor. A smaller round has less energy, so only the amount of energy above the armor's absorbtion will deal damage to the armor and this value would scale with the size of the round. Realistically you would have all of the effects of heat and vibration from the weapon that would damage stuff beyond the armor. however the game is limited in it's ability to do damage modeling (though I do have ideas, but they would be difficult) By making weapons unable to damage heavier armor you would never build lighter ships once your enemy has heavier armor. What I am trying to simulate is combined fire by making the armor more forgiving. Also like what was mentioned earlier heating effects do stack, and laser energy gets converted to a lot of heat concentrated in a very small spot. Even if we go with the idea of TL's being plasma weapons there is still tremendous heat deleivered to the target."

Fully agreed on that point.

Actually, a realistic damage model would be very hard to implement, after all a "critical" hit (like on the bridge) is enough to kill a ship. BTW, the hull plating is only a protective layer, it's the stuff inside that counts. And, logically, spreading fire all over the hull plating and concentrating it on one spot should have very different effects - in the current game model, it isn't the case. A more "realistic" model could use subcomponents for each hull plating area. Once the plating is gone, the weapons would directly hit the internal structures and systems, thus crippling the ship more quickly (the root component would have relatively low hitpoints). This would need a lot of subcompontents, though, thus maybe more memory/comp power.

> "(though I don;t know why they don't just throw super luminal bricks at each other.)"

Maybe cuz the brick would need an hyperdrive itself ?

> "as for shields the 'quality' value is a guidline for the total shield points. maybe weapon power should be a factor, I will look into it. However, shields are a pain in the ass to do and that is for the future. since they aren't implemented yet it can basically be ignored for now."

As I said, weapon power should be a factor since it's energy vs energy.

However, there are two important values : total points, and recharge. A shield with low total, but high recharge, would behave completely differently than a shield with much higher total, but sensibly lower recharge. And you could make layers too.

Note that IMHO, once shields are implemented, hull should not regenerate.


> "the final issue is weapon range. TL's are supposed to at least have a range of 300km and it is probably substantially more (they can do planetry bombardments without much trouble with gravity so the range should be longer) the weapon range in game has to be significantly reduced because of the map size and for playability (you wouldn't be able to see what was shooting at you) so realism has to get axed here. the longes ranged weapon that is practical for the interface is around 20km with a more realitic value around 10km."

10 kms aren't enough IMHO, remember that an Executor SSD is 17.6 kms long, and I do hope all its weapons are within range. Approx 30 kms range (for the heavy TLs) would be OK for me, and perhaps approx 20-25 kms for normal TLs (and both HTLs and TLs very effective against any armour, maybe 90% penetration for HTLs and 75% for "normal" TLs).

> "this makes the intial engament phase of a battle VERY quick unless you want extremely slow ships."

These ships aren't that fast anyway.

> "so that game has to be more balanced towards the close in slugfests. Its an engine and playability limitation, if I was able I would make accuract weapon ranges, and make the game more strategic in nature IE bigger maps and supply lines."

Disagree about the close range slugfests. As you said, SW weapon ranges are long, which means SW battles would logically have a long range part. If the Rebels were able to get close at Endor, it was because the Imperials were given orders NOT to fire. This close slugfest was exceptional as far as I've understood. So, I guess it should be avoided in the mod, at least if possible.

> "I will make support for a no-build option, however I need to have ideas for starting fleets since you cannot dynamically, on ship by ship basis, decide once the game is started."

Either an external editor generating battle files (you'd know what your opponent chose, though). Or maybe this :
- no harvesting at all
- starting money stays the same (like one time lump sum, and no periodic reinjections)
- ships are built instantly by a structure that can build everything

So, both players would quickly have their fleet ready, and won't be able to build ANY reinforcements. Of coruse, disable auto-rebuilt squadrons.


> "btw 1 penetrating A-10 round is enough to liquify the crew with shrapnel and ricochet. but in effect the gun is effective because it chips the armor away and the vibration and distortion cause by many small rounds weakens the metal to a point that later round penetrate."

Agreed.

> "unless they have some really good advanced metals that keep their strength when rapidly heated and cooled, the armor should get weaker. effectivly the rapid heating liquifies/sublimates the surface and turns the underlying layers amorphous. repeated strikes spread the liquifying/sublimation and this material is lost. the extreme cold of space then cools the remaining metal rapidly causing it to form large crystals and imperfections and become brittle. there are some other chemical changes depending on the composition that would also contribute to the metal weakening because as it cools non-uniformly the continuity of the original armor molecular structure is lost. granted their material science is much better, but heat will still do this to any material eventually."

Also agreed on that part. ;-)


> "all weapons will be able to do damage to any armor in the game, however their effectivness will be reduced."

OK.

> "as for the sovereign and the eclipse class ships, while they have about twice the number of TL as the executor they are of the same power as the ISD I, the executor has guns similar to the ISD II, this means that their TL's are about 90% of the excutor total. they are extremely poorly armed with ion cannons and they lack the huge concussion missiles. Also the superlaser in ship to ship combat is only good enough to cripple an ISD every minute or two. However they do have substaintally better hulls making them more survivable."

I agree about them not being made into superkillers. However, I still think this superlaser would be very effective against any ship. Basically, as Calavan said, they'd be better than Executor against "superships", but worse against a "normal" fleet.


> "the reason I have more weapons classes than it is obvious to have is that I did have 3 classes per weapon and it didn't work at all. stuff like strike cruisers dominated the game because they quaify to have 'heavy' guns, but were fast and cheap and givng some ships light guns made them worthless. also ISDI ='d mon cal effectivly and ISD II dominated them significantly."

IMHO, less gun classes still work if every class does make sense, AND if there's no superclass (excepted superlaser). And actually, I don't believe the RPG stats that much. Their ISD II is overpowered when I compare it with Executor.

Don't forget that Executor is 17.6 kms long, and NOT 8 kms as the EU said at that time. An Executor should cost 15-20 times more than an ISD II, and thus have somewhat scaled raw combat value (raw combat value = combination of hull, shielding, and firepower).


> "performance will improve eventually :-p I am going to do a similar solution that SWNR has by making lasers at long range a single color line, this improved framerate and visibility."

In EvR, small bullets (fighter lasers, and normal lasers) were simply made invisible, only the TLs and HTLs were drawn. ;-) This was necessary, since some battles saw 1000 fighters on screen (500 on each side).


> "I will slow down the rate of fire a little bit for many reasons, but primarily the new armor system and the dynamic capital ship like enhancments."

Any description of that new armour system, before we see it in action ? ;-p


> "heh ignore all the old balancing, whole new system coming. I've been playing with weapon strength again and an ISD II should be pretty nasty, it may not last incredibly long, but it should be able to massacre anything that isn't moving. right now an MC-90 vs an ISD II is a matter of positioning if the MC -90 can get below or behind the ISD II then it will probably win, if the ISD II can get below or point at the MC-90 it's big guns will tear into the other ship. (YAY STRATEGY that actually works in the HW2 engine.)"

I don't call that part "strategy". I rather believe it is merely described as "manoeuvering" (thus, a matter of dexterity). Strategy means planning, and placing a ship in the opponent's blind spot doesn't look like "planning", especially since the opponent already knows the method.

What you describe might be called tactics in the best case, since there could be a scheme to make the enemy turn his weak spot towards your guns. However, I fear it is merely be a matter of dexterity at giving orders to a ship with the interface, once the ships are very close to each other. This is still an important skill, but I don't describe it as a "strategy".

IMHO, "strategy" would be to choose a specific fleet composition, and send specific units in a specific pattern at a specific time to achieve a specific goal.




Still have to explain what my "goals" are, with all these "realism" considerations and hardcore "head spinning", as well as my position towards the EU, and especially some parts of the EU. Means more to come, but prolly later ;)

[AsterXiphos]

Hmm . . . strategy: An MC-90 dancing with an ISD while another cruiser sneaks up behind to deliver some killing blows . . .

I'm not sure I understand your position on energy weapons and shielding:

Actually, I rather think that "heavy" shields are just bulkier, that is : they can resist longer. Unless you consider shield penetration (that is : an amount of damage could get through, without the shield being completely depleted yet), or extremely local generators, heavy weapons wouldn't be more efficient than lighter weapons against a shield, since it would be energy (weapon) vs energy (shield).

and

As I said, weapon power should be a factor since it's energy vs energy.

Don't know, maybe you were speaking categorically - so that light weapons could have the same power as heavy weapons, just with different attributes (like range).

I'm not sure I agree with your first statement (the first I quoted), as it seems to me that a superlaser from an Eclipse will do greater damage to shields than a X-wing's lasers. I've always seen it this way: If the weapon energy is greater than the shield energy, the shield energy will deplete. The greater the difference between the weapon and shield energy, the faster the shield energy depletes. Also, the term "energy" is a little ambiguous, and must be because we don't know how shields work (though I'm sure that statement will send dozens of people scurrying to encyclopedias and sci-fi sites!). This may be in a different context altogether, but if a vehicle with certain energy is travelling on a head-on collision course with a vehicle with less energy, the vehicle with less energy will be pushed in the same direction as the vehicle with greater energy. So, if the same applies with weapons and shielding in the Star Wars universe, weapons with greater energy than shields (and it would be easier than first thought, as the TL bolt concentrates a lot of energy on one spot), then the greater the energy of the weapon, the greater the damage done to the shielding. Make sense?


By the way, the current HW2 stances (F2-F3-F4) are far from optimal for capital ships. On aggressive, for example, the ships will try to engage any enemy and get out of their formation. In addition, they will spread fire instead of concentrating it on a single target (you have to target by hand to avoid that). So, basically, it'd be good to change this a bit : there are cases in which player control is much better than automatic behaviour (especially when this behaviour is sucky), and targeting is IMHO a player task. Perhaps implement this "dynamic capital ships" behaviour for only one of the stances (logically, F4 - aggressive).

My assumption of the dynamic cap mod was that it made targeting AI more intelligent. Targeting as a player task depends on the style of game you want to play. You could play Admiral by issuing orders that your "Captains" could carry out as the AI thinks is best, or you could play Captain of many ships and micro everything. As for me, I like a little of both. "Admiral" is exciting to watch, and little adjustments can still be made here and there. Unless you have the multi-tasking abilities of a mother of five, micro-ing a large fleet (or multiple strike groups) can be really difficult.
I like the idea of dynamic capital ships, it makes sense that I'd flip around as soon as I could if I had someone pounding on my rear. You want to present your strength to your enemy, and keep your weakness where it can be protected. Maneuvering tactics are important in any warfare, even with long range strikes. Long range units are also often vulnerable to heavy short range attacks, so maneuverability becomes important when short range units close.

As for weapon ranges, I like the idea of shorter distances. It keeps battles close so they can fit in one screen. Although the SSD is very long, that length can be used to broadside (even though optimal distance for broadsiding would be around 4.75km - to bring all of the guns to bear). Here again maneuvering would be important (as well as planning, due to her speed). In that case, it would also be useful for the SSD to be able to target more than one ship (but no more than two or three).

Those are my opinions, anyways . . .

[spacemoose]

Turgidson:

OK, I'm coming up with two ways to interpret shields:

1: A big singular radiatorish semi-conductor band gap; which has a certain power dissipation. So, as long as the incident power does not exceed its dissipation rating, then there would essentially be no loss in shield capacity. (Each light blaster may be 1000 J, but if it can only fire once every 2 seconds, it will never cause a 1000 J/s shield to fail) Its only when the incident power exceeds its ability to dissipate that the shield will eventually pushed past its failure point.

But, if smaller guns are able to fire at a rate that delivers greater power than the shield can dissipate, then it could eventually wear the shield down. However, so long as the guns fire at the same rate, then a larger gun would wear down a shield quicker.

If the shield has a limit to the energy it can absorb in a given impact (like the band gap), then penetrating damage would be proportionally greater for larger weapons since they would have a larger percentage of their energy that would penetrate.

2: Shield as an integrated barrier comprised of fields generated from many projectors, functioning much like described in 1.

However, incident power generally affects only one of these contributing "mini-shields" so that the effects of larger weapons are amplified. For if one blast has enough energy to completely overwhelm that particular projector, then that portion of the shield is now "dead" and no longer contributing to overall shield strength. As the surviving projectors now had to spread out to cover the area covered by the now "dead" projector, the overall shield density was now lowered.

Any blast with energy less than the failure point of any particular projector would not "kill" it but instead just push it closer to its failure point, only with additional strikes that could overwhelm the power dissipation could the projector be "killed."

So, larger weapons, whose power exceeded the power dissipation of each shield projector would more quickly reduce the overall shield strength. And "heavy" shields, which would have more powerful individual projectors would be less succeptable to weaker weapons.

So, if there is any difference between "heavy" shields and "light" shields other than overall energy (which is my understanding) then there would need to be a difference along a similar vein to #2. Which would lead me to conclude that #2 is a more correct interpretation of shielding.

By the way, I'm not upset (don't even see where you got that), I'm just questioning how much effort should be put into debating the ins and outs of things eville hasn't even gotten to when there is so much that he is currently tweaking.

[evillejedi]

shields = very hard (basically you have to precision tweak a mesh around EACH weapon emplacement, for EVERY single ship. Since the shield acts as a collision mesh weapons won't fire through it except if at least the muzzle node is allowed to exist outside the shield, which is impossible for turrets with any degree of fire arc so the weapon has to exist outside of the shield to even fire)

multiple layered shields = practically impossible

evidence from most sources indicates that the shields are distributed and in a more grid like pattern (forget the ISD shield gen bubble crap) with critical sections recieving more grid coverage. it also seems that shields fail because they are taken off line in order to not overload the generators, when shields fail because of excessive fire power usually the 'generator' fails and power has to be rerouted to another area. so this would be more like shield type 2. so concentrated firepower is a plus.

there would be another reason the #2 shield would fail. as the energy delivered to it increases the semiconductor would eventually avalanche causing it to become a regular conductor, tremendous heat would build up, so it would have to be quickly taken offline or it melts. SImilarly a sustained medium powered input would cause heating that would make the device less efficient and would also heat the 'wires' that feed it, it would have to be taken offline to cool otherwise it would also burn off its heatsink.

however in the game shields will have to be implemented on a recharge + hitpoints fashion, so combined fire just takes away more HP. Sectored shields would require way to much work.

I believe the confusion is that should heavier weapons have a different shield penetration rate? Shields will have fixed HP and a regen rate, but should shields have a quality rating that allows them to dissiapate energy more effectively in parallel with thier HP? for example a TL hits and does 1000 damage to the shield should all shields be the same in terms of absorbing this (-1000 HP) or should thier be higher quality shields that would provide form of damage reduction (-750 HP for example for an ISD, but -1000 for a VSD I)

I guess I have to explain the manuvering a little better. all ships try to approach their target with optimal gun count. For instance the ISD will plow towards a target head on with nearly all guns firing, perform a shallow dive so that all of it's heavy guns are still on the target. because of a crappy AI engine it will then continue moving to it's maximum weapons range while making an arcing turn and then the attack by performing the manuver again. there is no way to bind attack styles to attack stances the only binding on attack styles is to target classes (ie corvette, destroyer) . this is an incredible ommision on relic's part but there is no way around it, though it may be possible to change the formation break distance, it is not possible to make the attack stance change the targetting priority. Also because of how the targetting works in the game you either have two chioces.
1) make hitting a target very hard when it is moving, but very easy to hit when it is not.
2) make the hit chance uniform regardless of manuvering.

in general the targetting is calculated as follows
1) can I see the target?
2) is the target in range?
3) is the target in my fire arc?
==weapon fires===
4) does the interpolated point of my projectile connect with the target's new position?
5) if no, does the point of taget + % offset hit the target?

what is strange is that if this offser value is 1 then the projectiles will follow the target exactly as long as it is in range (even if it jumps into hyperspace and reemerges while the projectiles are in flight)

if the offset value is set to near zero (0.00000000001) then it will alomst never hit a moving target unless it is huge (bigger than 2km) but will almost 100% hit when the target is stationary.
effectivly the guns have a randomization to their muzzle direction that creates a cone of fire and the offset is more of a "if I miss by less than this percentage of my total fire cone, then I hit"

this causes a problem. for fighters and strike craft, even frigates, you want manuverability and not armor to keep the ship alive. this requires a very low offset value (ISD II vs a strike with an offset of 0.1 vs frigates means the strike lives for less than one second at max range.) This is why I kept lowering the weapons damage because things were getting killed so fast because for capital wepons to even hope to damage a capital ship they had to do tremendous damage, but a single salvo would annihilate most smaller ships with ease.

so the new system makes the offset much lower than before so that a hit is less likely at least for smaller ships, but reverted back to the original weapons damage so that when a hit does occur it is significant. this also resolves the problems with ships targetting a single point and also the lasers chasing things through HS. THe one down side to this is that now anything that is stationary gets pummled (because a stationary target basically has a 100% hit rate regardless of offset) so large ships have to manuver on their own. the other option would be to increase thier health values. however if we want to keep the fact that x # of gunships or fighters can kill a big ship we have to boost their weapons damage rate. but if we boost this damage then small ships die faster, and we would need to seperate weapons into classes per ship class along with thier damage values. we could also give ship a higher deflection rate armor to compensate, but then the small ships won't be able to do damage again. this just gets hopelessly complicated and spirals out of control.

there is a reason why there are so many gun classes. because of how the targetting works you need to spread out the damage values. trust me I really tried to get a blaster class, 2 laser classes and 3 TL classes to work and it failed miserably.there are tons of other game specific considerations that force this issue also.

Turgidson, basically so you can shape your commentary a little better for your eventual goals I need to explain what is impossible to do in the engine or requires so much work as to be impossible.

orientation based attacks (there are ways to do this but it is a genuine hack)

making attack styles do ANYTHING (there is no connection between attack styles, all they do is enable/disable automatic firing, this has been repeatedly confirmed by relic.)

linking one units behavior to another (cover me or such)

linking damage to ships ability to fight (can be done with subsystems, but requires excessive work, will only be used on super caps) so this rules out 'realistic' damage on almost all ships ( IE destroyable armor plating, to hit critical stuff underneath)

have anythign close to realistic weapons ranges (this an interface problem, you would hate playing it because of lag and visibility issues) you're just going to have to accept that the game is going to be played out in slugfests (<15km IMO) I hate it too but I tried and it was abysmal on the UI side.

making units 'react' to the same thing differently (IE any intelligent behavior) there are very few places that we have access to what a unit does and these are set in stone once the mod is loaded, you cannot make a ship change how it attacks a destroyer for example, it has ONE script that can do ONE type of attack per target class.

I'm sure there are more things, but It seems like a lot of the conflict between what we are discussing is because of hard coded engine limitations and not 'ideal mod' behavior.

[The5thElephant]

X-wing lasers or the lasers of any other fighter will do damage to any shield or hull (well it will do almost no damage to a molecularly bonded hull like on the sun crusher) but in comparison to a turbolaser will do nothing. So one x-wing couldn't do anything to an impstar because the impstars generators would easily make up for any shield energy lost from the attack. But many many xwings would eventually over time bleed off enough energy to make a difference.

[Jewegee]

Someone earlier was talkign about concentrated fire, and I could be mistaken, but I think I remember a key reason why MonCals could stand up to ISD's. (read in The Essential Guide to Ships and Vehicles I think) Linkage of TL's. The original MonCal, the MC-80 had 48 turbolaser batteries, while the standard ISD had 60. The advantage for the rebels came in two ways. First, as someone mentioned earlier, the rounded shape of the Mon Cal hulls meant that many guns could fire on a single target. This brings me to my second point. MonCal's fired their turbo-lasers in volleys, in linked shots of 12 turbolasers. It is entirely possible therefore that they even slaved all the targetting to one central gun, so that they would have 12 turbolasers focusing on one point, greatly increasing the penetration. This would account for a smaller ship being able to stand up to a tried and true warship.
-Just my two cents-

[spacemoose]

Ahh, c'mon eville, I've never heard anything sound so simple. :)

Jeez, its easy to be fanciful when ignorant iddn't it?

So are you saying that attack patterns are hardcoded into the engine, so we're stuck with whatever HW2's already got?

It kind of sounds like the AI is using the standard strafe the fighters in HW2 use for the ISD attack run. That seems weird. Is there some way to use the HW2 destroyer broadside attack or one of the other capital patterns instead?

[Turgidson]

> AsterXiphos (and, in fact, anyone interested by my rants about shielding)

I feel there's been some misunderstanding about this "energy vs energy" model. I was speaking of "penetration rate", which is in fact the relative efficiency of the warhead against the shield. Of course, a heavier warhead will do more damage than a light warhead.

To make it easier, here's an example with numbers :
Suppose an heavy TL does 500 base damage, and a fighter laser does 50 base damage. What I meant was that the HTL would do 500 "damage" to the shield, which is 100%, and the fighter laser would do 50 "damage" to the shield, which is 100% too. Which means the shield would be as efficient against heavy weapons than lighter weapons.



I guess I shall develop my shield concept a bit more : basically, each time a warhead attack the target, the same amount of energy is depleted from the shield's accumulator to cancel the damage. This accumulator recharges slowly (this is the shield's recharge rate). The accumulator's size is the shield's hitpoints. In fact, this concept is extremely simple.

The main idea is : shields can deflect a lot of damage (whatever the direction and the concetration), but need accumulated energy to do so. When the accumulator(s) is(are) emptying, it is (they are) being recharged by the power generator. An empty accumulator means the failure of one shield layer. Very simple in fact.

It can also be seen a "reverted" way : say that the shield is like a water tank, with a pump emptying it. Water would represent the damage absorbed by the shield, instead of damaging the ship. If you drop water too fast, the pump is not able to maintain a low level, and at the end the tank will be full (which means shield failure). Whether you drop water with 1 L bottles every second or with 5 glasses of 20 cL every second, the effect is the same. In that analogy, the tank's size are the shield's total hitpoints, and the pump capacity is the recharge rate.

> AsterXiphos

For the "Admirals vs Captains" thing, IMHO the admirals are still the ones who tell which targets to attack, and in which (global) direction to manoeuver, split groups, etc...
If captains decide alone which target they pick and where they manoeuver their ship, independantly from the admiral's decisions, it would merely look like a lack of coordination IMHO.

The current targeting AI is quite bad (no fire concentration for example, and targeting priorities sometimes suck a lot), so I don't think a "sleepy admiral" vision would work/make sense. Actually, unless you are considering headquarters admirals, I think admirals have more to do that just watch their captains carrying orders that would be no more than "attack this fleet". ;-p

[Turgidson]

> Evillejedi

> "shields = very hard (basically you have to precision tweak a mesh around EACH weapon emplacement, for EVERY single ship. Since the shield acts as a collision mesh weapons won't fire through it except if at least the muzzle node is allowed to exist outside the shield, which is impossible for turrets with any degree of fire arc so the weapon has to exist outside of the shield to even fire)"

First question : did you test with single-sided polygons, or double-sided ?

Second question : I guess you are talking about an invisible subcomponent/subsystem that is surrounding the ship, right ?

If my supposition for that second question is correct :

Actually, I still think there's a "not too hard" possibility to implement these shields. The idea would be to place the weapons hardpoints outside the ship's surface, a few meters away from it (is it allowed ?). Thus allowing a shield mesh to exist between the ship's mesh, and the gun point. If the shield mesh is like a "skin", perhaps 1 meter away from the ship, then a weapon hardpoint that is 2 meters away from the ship's surface (and 1 meter away from the shield) will nearly be unnoticed by the players.

Of course, problems occur with rotating elements, and especially rotating turrets (and you seem to have a lot of these). One possibility could be to make a "sphere" around the turret, and place the turret's gun point a few meters away from the gun exhaust - thus outside the mesh. There's still a problem with very low angles, though, unless the skin can be very close to the hull (a few centimeters maybe ?).

The problem is still to make this mesh, and it seems to be a lot of work (as well as changing all gun points).

There could be a simple way to do it, though, but I dunno if 3D applications allow that idea : use the ship's mesh, move it 1 meter to one direction, save. Take a copy, move it 1 meter to the opposite direction. Do the same for the four other directions (total directions are : forwards, backwards, upwards, downwards, to the left, to the right). "Merge" the six meshes, and you have something that encloses the initial mesh (but without the spheres needed for rotating objects).
This would be quite hi-poly for the collision engine, but should not be graphically rendered anyway.


> "multiple layered shields = practically impossible"

If the method I've just described works, then I don't see why it would be impossible. That's "just" a new mesh to do. Of course, it's a lot of work, but IMHO it is possible.


> "however in the game shields will have to be implemented on a recharge + hitpoints fashion, so combined fire just takes away more HP. Sectored shields would require way to much work."

Agreed. It's my concept anyway, or rather, I made a concept that met the game's concept. :D

> "I believe the confusion is that should heavier weapons have a different shield penetration rate? Shields will have fixed HP and a regen rate, but should shields have a quality rating that allows them to dissiapate energy more effectively in parallel with thier HP? for example a TL hits and does 1000 damage to the shield should all shields be the same in terms of absorbing this (-1000 HP) or should thier be higher quality shields that would provide form of damage reduction (-750 HP for example for an ISD, but -1000 for a VSD I)"

From what I understand of what you wrote, you are just making a scaling.

Example : suppose it would do -500 for shield A, but -1000 for shield B (I use 500 cuz easier to calculate). It just means that shield A would take twice the time to deplete the same amount, supposing similar recharge. However, if it does -1000 to C, and C is twice bigger than A and with twice the recharge, C and A just do the same.

So basically : if the damage reduction of one shield is the same for every weapon type (as it should, since it's a matter of energy), you'd get exactly the same effect and the same behaviour with a rescale (increase shield size + recharge). Better quality would just translate in bigger numbers and higher recharge.

Reduction of the damage percentage is only needed if it's different for each weapon/shield (example : 50% damage for TLs, 75% for HTLs with shield A, 65% damage for TLs and 70% damage for HTLs with shield B), but as I said I didn't like that model (IMHO, similar shield effect for every weapon).


> "I guess I have to explain the manuvering a little better. all ships try to approach their target with optimal gun count. For instance the ISD will plow towards a target head on with nearly all guns firing, perform a shallow dive so that all of it's heavy guns are still on the target. because of a crappy AI engine it will then continue moving to it's maximum weapons range while making an arcing turn and then the attack by performing the manuver again. there is no way to bind attack styles to attack stances the only binding on attack styles is to target classes (ie corvette, destroyer) . this is an incredible ommision on relic's part but there is no way around it, though it may be possible to change the formation break distance, it is not possible to make the attack stance change the targetting priority."

OK. Quite sad, makes F3-F4 with little use for capships (I hate it when a lone ship breaks his formation and attacks the enemy).


Also because of how the targetting works in the game you either have two chioces.
> "1) make hitting a target very hard when it is moving, but very easy to hit when it is not.
2) make the hit chance uniform regardless of manuvering.

in general the targetting is calculated as follows
1) can I see the target?
2) is the target in range?
3) is the target in my fire arc?
==weapon fires===
4) does the interpolated point of my projectile connect with the target's new position?
5) if no, does the point of taget + % offset hit the target?

what is strange is that if this offser value is 1 then the projectiles will follow the target exactly as long as it is in range (even if it jumps into hyperspace and reemerges while the projectiles are in flight)

if the offset value is set to near zero (0.00000000001) then it will alomst never hit a moving target unless it is huge (bigger than 2km) but will almost 100% hit when the target is stationary.
effectivly the guns have a randomization to their muzzle direction that creates a cone of fire and the offset is more of a "if I miss by less than this percentage of my total fire cone, then I hit" "

Question : if offset is 1, does the weapon "follow" the target as an homing warhead would ? Or do you just mean the (virtual) turret is tracking the target ? (we're talking of TLs and blasters, I guess, and not of missiles)

Other question : have you played with the speed of the projectiles ? Basically : if projectiles are made slower, will they still always hit a moving target ?

> "this causes a problem. for fighters and strike craft, even frigates, you want manuverability and not armor to keep the ship alive. this requires a very low offset value (ISD II vs a strike with an offset of 0.1 vs frigates means the strike lives for less than one second at max range.) This is why I kept lowering the weapons damage because things were getting killed so fast because for capital wepons to even hope to damage a capital ship they had to do tremendous damage, but a single salvo would annihilate most smaller ships with ease."

Maybe use a high offset value for antifighter guns and fighter blasters (actually, we want them to be effective against fighters, thus track moving targets well), and lower offset value for heavier weapons (TLs, heavy TLs), so they won't always hit a frigate.
At least, if the offset can be set for each weapon independantly (no idea of it, was away from internet for quite a long time).

Perhaps also use higher speed for antifighter weapons/light weapons, and slower speed for the big TL guns.

> "so the new system makes the offset much lower than before so that a hit is less likely at least for smaller ships, but reverted back to the original weapons damage so that when a hit does occur it is significant. this also resolves the problems with ships targetting a single point and also the lasers chasing things through HS. THe one down side to this is that now anything that is stationary gets pummled (because a stationary target basically has a 100% hit rate regardless of offset) so large ships have to manuver on their own. the other option would be to increase thier health values. however if we want to keep the fact that x # of gunships or fighters can kill a big ship we have to boost their weapons damage rate. but if we boost this damage then small ships die faster, and we would need to seperate weapons into classes per ship class along with thier damage values. we could also give ship a higher deflection rate armor to compensate, but then the small ships won't be able to do damage again. this just gets hopelessly complicated and spirals out of control."

OK. Still, small ships are not supposed to survive a very long time IMHO, at least compared to big fleets. IMHO, these smaller vessels should use speed to their advantage, avoiding combat when it's a lost cause, and raiding at weak spots. Basically, as a support role, and not as a main unit.


> "there is a reason why there are so many gun classes. because of how the targetting works you need to spread out the damage values. trust me I really tried to get a blaster class, 2 laser classes and 3 TL classes to work and it failed miserably.there are tons of other game specific considerations that force this issue also."

OK, I guess you know more than me on this. I was just surprised, because in HW1, we didn't need that many weapon classes in terms of damage, and it still worked quite OK.


> "Turgidson, basically so you can shape your commentary a little better for your eventual goals I need to explain what is impossible to do in the engine or requires so much work as to be impossible."

OK, thanks a lot. :)

> "linking damage to ships ability to fight (can be done with subsystems, but requires excessive work, will only be used on super caps) so this rules out 'realistic' damage on almost all ships ( IE destroyable armor plating, to hit critical stuff underneath)"

OK. Quick question : are you going to use destroyable turrets as subsystems ? The main problem is that some ships visibly have them (ISDs, Corellian Corvette), whereas they are not really visible on other ships (most MonCals for example) - which would disadvantage some units.

> "have anythign close to realistic weapons ranges (this an interface problem, you would hate playing it because of lag and visibility issues) you're just going to have to accept that the game is going to be played out in slugfests (<15km IMO) I hate it too but I tried and it was abysmal on the UI side."

Maybe (artificially) scale all the objects a little down ? For example, the ISD would be 800 meters (or even 400 meters) long for the game engine, but since everything would be scaled the same way, the proportions would be kept, and it would still "mean" 1.6 kms for us ?

Of course, there could be problems with collision behaviour, missile homing/explosion, etc... especially for small objects like fighters. But maybe it could work, so I dunno.


In HW1 (EvR C3-C4-C5), anyway, we had 12 kms range for the TLs, and 15 kms range for the HTLs, and it was OK. We tried up to 22.5 kms for EvR C6, and it was still OK (campaign was never played because of the galaxy map not being completed, and global lack of interest, but this weapon range wasn't a problem).

> "making units 'react' to the same thing differently (IE any intelligent behavior) there are very few places that we have access to what a unit does and these are set in stone once the mod is loaded, you cannot make a ship change how it attacks a destroyer for example, it has ONE script that can do ONE type of attack per target class."

Can we create more classes ? If yes, then perhaps we could use this for specific attack types. Example : have a class for destroyers with strong frontal weaponry, and another class for destroyers with spread weaponry. Maybe even something like : "weak bottom", "weak top", "weak rear", "weak sides", "balanced"... well, I guess you get the idea.

> "I'm sure there are more things, but It seems like a lot of the conflict between what we are discussing is because of hard coded engine limitations and not 'ideal mod' behavior."

Actually, I don't call this a "conflict", just different opinions. And I'm aware that we're only modding a game, not actually implementing one, so everything is (alas) not possible. ;-)

I'm not trying to bash anyone, just trying to exchange/give ideas. Eville, you're doing an excellent job, especially considering the short time and the small team. If you felt aggressed by my behaviour, let me say that it was certainly not my intention.



Dunno if you have it, but if yes : can you email me a file (or files) with all capital ships, with their weapons, the damage each weapon does, the hull's hitpoints + recharge, the damage penetration for each, ship speed, etc... If I find the time, I might try to calculate some values, and would like to help you with pricing/balancing.

[spacemoose]

I'm not really thrilled with the concept of all energy weapons affecting shields the same way. For both gameplay and conceptual reasons.

For gameplay, I like the idea that certain weapons are strong against certain things. If every beam weapon affects shields the same, that muddles things. Of course, this has yet to be observed.

Conceptually, I still would think that heavy weapons would be more "efficient" at wearing down heavy shields. I dunno how many movies I've seen with lines like "Their weapons are ineffective against our shields." and such; which I always took to mean they were not strong enough to pose a threat, not that there weren't enough or not fast enough. I imagined shields as a sort of energy armor, which for whatever reason (I've stated a few) was able to deflect energy up until certain point (just like standard armor) so that weapons below this point were less effective than those above it.

Although perhaps simply allowing greater penetration damage to heavier weapons would suffice.

In the end, I'd like to go down the path that leads to better gameplay, which I don't think we'll be able to determine until later in development.

[Turgidson]

> Spacemoose

> "I'm not really thrilled with the concept of all energy weapons affecting shields the same way. For both gameplay and conceptual reasons.

For gameplay, I like the idea that certain weapons are strong against certain things. If every beam weapon affects shields the same, that muddles things. Of course, this has yet to be observed."

Actually, the weapons would have different effects on the hull. But the shield isn't the hull. Contrarily to you, I like the idea of shields that can be affected by any weapon, whereas the hull underneath would have another behaviour towards these weapons.

I'm not that much into an extreme "paper-rock-scissors" balance style, because whereas I do think some units/weapons are more effective against some targets, I do not think there are weapon types that are fully ineffective against a specific target. The partial loss of efficiency should be enough to make a difference.

> "Conceptually, I still would think that heavy weapons would be more "efficient" at wearing down heavy shields."

Conceptually, when taking an energy vs counternergy concept, and assuming that all weapons are energy weapons, there is no reason for shields to be affected a different way depending on the round's size. Excepted by supposing a grid of generators on the hull and local overload effects, AND supposing the small rounds ain't concentrated but spread. This makes two big assumptions.

> "I dunno how many movies I've seen with lines like "Their weapons are ineffective against our shields." and such; which I always took to mean they were not strong enough to pose a threat, not that there weren't enough or not fast enough."

First, I don't like that line very much. Second, I think it's merely in relation with the size of the threat, and not the type of the weapon.

> "I imagined shields as a sort of energy armor, which for whatever reason (I've stated a few) was able to deflect energy up until certain point (just like standard armor) so that weapons below this point were less effective than those above it."

You are considering single rounds, and not their combined effect. In my concept, it takes as much (counter)energy to counter 10 rounds of 10 MJ fired at the same spot and the same moment, than to counter a single round of 100 MJ.

For me, it's like matter-antimatter annihilation. If you have more antimatter, you'll need more matter to annihilate it. Whether it is in small packs or in bigger packs doesn't change the total amount.

Small note : I wonder if you're not mixing "energy" with "power". Energy = integration of power over time. What you mean is perhaps that heavier rounds would overrun the power the shield can dissipate at one time more easily than one single, smaller rounds (however, with concentrated fire it would still be the same power : 10*10W = 100 W).

Second note : many real-world weapons are either blast effect, or mechanical damage effect (piercing). When we're talking about armour, we're often thinking of these two types - which influence our "oncepts". But shields are not mechanical armour, and energy weapons mostly translate into heat, not into the other two damage types.

> "Although perhaps simply allowing greater penetration damage to heavier weapons would suffice."

Penetration = damage percentage = efficiency of the weapon, in HW2 (as I've understood).

So, basically, I don't like that idea, since it's pretty much the same.


> "In the end, I'd like to go down the path that leads to better gameplay, which I don't think we'll be able to determine until later in development."

We can still try to theorize/modelize it a bit. ;-p

[evillejedi]

shields are hard because of a PRECISION and TIME issue, maultiple layer shields basically make this that much harder ( I refuse to do the work is a better answer :-p)

everything is one sided poly in terms of rendering, everything is two sided in terms of anything else.

invisible subsystem is correct and yes that is how they work, but they have to be EXTREMELY PRECISE (<1m) which means lots of TIME per ship.

the suggested solution yeilds extremly horrific geometry, better to do it vertice by vertice then try to fix boolean unions

as for shield penetration, should the major categories have different penetration (blaster, laser, TL, ion, warhead)

for example blasters and lasers are considered low energy weapons and would get deflected more often,

TL's are highly concentrated so they would penetrate easier,

ions work by overloading the system so they are more effective,

warheads are rapidly dispersed so they deal less damage (but more to hulls where concussion becomes a factor. )

I don't like the energy vs energy modelling of shields (sorta like saying 'lets throw thermonuclear weapons at the sun to cool it down') in my opinion shields are energy vs energy dissipation (implying power). the energy that contacts the shield has to get dispersed and transmitted away. on a localized level this would mean that the heatsinks have some of their capacity (before melting) filled until it can be bled away. Also I think the more energy you hit the shield with the more the 'dissipation transmission field' gets distorted, thereby weakening its abilty to transmit energy to more remote heatsinks (overloading the local ones). this allows for a HP value for shields while still keeping the concepts of capacity.

there is a possibility to change the formation behavior for a class of ships (IE fighter break easily, corvettes and frigates keep formation for a bit, destroyers stay in formation unless indivdally told) I'll look into it.

for weapon targetting

yes 1 acts like a perfect homing projectile

the speed should be #3.5 (can I reach the target in time (weapon lifetime and interpolated fire point distance)

the issue with the offset is problematic for balance reasons, it just seems that it requires a per weapon tweaking (IE TL's should nearly always miss because their damage gaurantees a kill on nearly anything smaller than a heavy corvette) there is some extremly substantial weapon damage ranges

blasters range from 5-50 damage (an X wings hull is around 55 a TIE around 14) the heavier blasters are mounted on turrets on transports and lighter ones for star fighters.

lasers range from 50 - 300 damage

TL's range from 250-4000 damage (ISD's have hulls around 280000)

this seems to give a good sense of scale when playing the games and really what needs to be tweaked now is the accuracy of the weapons.

agreed on the small ships not surviving that long, but you shouldn't lose all your frigates and corvettes in the first 5 seconds. My assumption is that jamming technology and ECM are balanced with targetting systems (such that the targetting computer is just providing enough information through the jamming that a human or droid operator can just barely score a hit) this makes small ships survivable in long term battles.

In real life a few missiles and a failure of PDS systems would level a fleet because the guidance is so good that it is only possible to intercept it with blanket defenses, so we have to assume that their is tremendous ECM going on in SW to explain the poor accuracy of weapons and that shields and advanced armor sucks up insane amounts of damage when weapons do hit.

another reason for the gun classes is that with so many ships it is hard to differentiate stuff if it has a few weapons classes. this allows otherwise strong ships to have weak guns for thier class but still be better than the next class down.

no targetable turrets except the case where they are a significant force (VSDI missile launchers, ISD II heavy batteries)

scaling things would compound the weapon targetting offset problem immensly and yes other things would break too. perosnally if it was possible to scale by 1/10th I would do it in a second, but it introduces many complications. (dock paths for one) I probably can push the max range up to 20 km but anything more just gets messy.

as for targetting classes it is possible, except a ships attack class defines how enemies handle it not how it actually handles enemies. the attack scripts for a ship allow it to respond to the different target types, and defualts are allowed. this would require an in depth comparison of tactics and weaknesses on a ship by ship basis (at least for large ones) this probably needs to get done to some degree anyway so help with it would be appreciated. (a list of tactics with application to targetting classes, such as circling_frigate_vs_strong_top_destroyer)

the mod files are rather large even when zipped, the ships2.xls defines the current game values and are adjusted by play testing. since I am in the process of redoing every unit it is not complete, but it should be fully updated for v.25 when it is released. so if you wan tto go off that and try some balancing go ahead. I'd be interested in seeing what you come up with (I'd like a slight price increase for imperial ships to simulate the rebels 'acquiring' ships and use build cost and build time for balancing the stats.) for example fighters that have salvo ability should take longer to build to prevent rushing. call it pilot training time or something :-p

[spacemoose]

Actually, power is energy per unit time, not the other way around. :)

I get what you're saying about energy = energy and the equivalence of 10 10s and 1 100 in terms of a simultaneous localized strike. But this is idealized, and given the physical quirks of the machinery and methods used to generate shields, (mentioned by eville and myself) I'd say it would be likely that weapons of different strengths would have different effects. Not to mention the difficulty of linking multiple smaller guns on the offensive side of this equation. AND the gameplay consideration that such a scheme gives essentially no advantage to having heavy TLs, which would severely hamper the Imperial player against heavily shielded MC cruisers among other things.

I'm imagining that effectiveness against shields themselves and penetration damage is related. I'd say this is caused more by flux than overall energy.

In respect to penetration, the incident energy from a strike cannot be absorbed by the entire shield at once, so there will be a higher flux at the point of impact. So, even while a single blast might not cause the entire shield to fail, it may conceivably overpower the shield locally by exceeding the flux capacity (back to the FUTURE!!! :)) at the impact point. And, as eville said, if TLs are designed for penetration and have a higher energy density than blasters, then TLs could very well have higher shield penetration damage than a comparable focused strike from the less dense weaker weapons.

Also, as eville mentioned, I think that concussion missles and such should not affect shields the same as energy weapons, causing much less damage than they would to the hull.

Eville: couldn't you just make the salvo attack researchable so that its not available in the beginning of the game?

-----

Heres another thought related to my flux concept. OK, different energy particles have different properties right? I can get hit by an infinite number of IR photons and be fine, but expose me to a few gamma rays and I might be a little worse for wear (So, in this regard, 10 10s doesn't equal 1 100). And seeing as there are physical parts on the ship that process the energy absorbed by the shields, a higher fluence would likely degrade these components more significantly. Wacky quantum effects, they screw with our classical intuition I know.

[evillejedi]

plan is to have salvo researched, this will make the rebellion much more balanced early game.

[Evenflow]

C'mon evillejedi, we need more screenshots on the webpage.... please!!!! New ships, new textures, anything! ;)

[Talonpest]

Just a thought- I've noticed that at the moment fighters move almost too quickly to see. I slowed them down by around 25% (X-Wings from 400 to 300, TIEs to 325) and it's much prettier to watch.

[HitokiriHa]

this is just a thought i've had for quite a while. i've always wanted a star wars game where you can play as an independent space pirate at the height of the empire-rebellion conflict. you could take missions from either for money, attack at random, whatever. that has nothing to do with this mod, but it gave me a couple of good ideas.

one of those ideas is "what would the perfect star wars pirate ship be?"
i came up with two.

one (my favorite) is a dreadnaught with a kdy-v150 planetary ion cannon attatched to the lower bow of a dreadnaught. i think that this would make a superb ant-destroyer ship for the rebels. perfect for capturing those pesky ISDs.

the other (lamer) is a corellian corvette with a hanger bay and most of the weapons changed to ion batteries.

i just think that dreadnaught would be tight for rebels. also the marauder corvette.

also are you familliar with the "Eye of Palpatine"? I forget which book it was in, but luke was on this massive dreadnaught (bigger than ssd?) and had to destroy it or disable it or something. if forget the details. book story summary (http://www.nivan.net/r/theeyeof.html)
ship details & specs (http://212.168.23.160/creed/lex-e.shtml) the galactic empire data bank (has lots of details on ship specs)



and i looked for eye of papatine while posting this and found "farfetched ideas for rebellion 2" (http://www.geocities.com/brashin994512000/3.html) don't know if it's of any help/interest.

ooh and here's (http://www.galacticempiredatabank.com/Main.html) the "galactic empire database" lots of ship info, etc.

another idea is to put in asteroid hangers. maybe program them to be permanantly cloaked or something, anyways here's a link to asteroid hangers. http://tiger887.tripod.com/AsteroidHanger.html

and what about dropping the rapair droids for the empire and only letting the rebs have them, but on the flipside give the empire repair yards.
type 1 (http://tiger887.tripod.com/RepairYard.html) type 2 (http://www.galacticempiredatabank.com/KDYOSDockIII.html) type 3 (http://www.galacticempiredatabank.com/KDYTypeIIORY.html) thpe 4 (http://www.galacticempiredatabank.com/TypeIV-AStardock.html)

anyways those are some ideas. i'll babble forever if i don't shut up now.

love ur mod dude.

[Interviglium]

Asteroid hangars would prolly be best used as bases for neutral pirate players, I'd say, because to be honest I'd imagine a a few escort carriers impstars could do the same job cheaper and faster. Upside is he could just use the Gehenna asteroid models.

[evillejedi]

okay uploaded a bunch of screen shots to the gallery.
B-wing and Y-wing are in texturing stage and the MC-80a didn't want to load in game so I have to go figure out why. once I finish those and some scripting issues I'll have a release to send out to testers with a public release of beta 0.25 a few days after that. Hopefully the test release will be tomorrow night, but I can't garauntee it. performance seems to have improved a bit, it still lags, but not as much. (the mon cal ships have LODs now)

http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/screenshots/ss00086.jpg

yay substantially better looking Imperial ships (goblins and lods still look as like for reasons I can't figure out.)

http://www.swrebellion.net/evillejedi/screenshots/ss00094.jpg

slightly epic looking

[Talonpest]

Awesome! The lighting issues on the SDs look to have been solved, which makes them look 1000% better. And I'm anxious to see this new balancing you're talking about. I'm very much looking forward to this new release.

[Turgidson]

> spacemoose

> "Actually, power is energy per unit time, not the other way around. :)"

It's what I said : Energy = integral(power(t), t).

> "I get what you're saying about energy = energy and the equivalence of 10 10s and 1 100 in terms of a simultaneous localized strike. But this is idealized, and given the physical quirks of the machinery and methods used to generate shields, (mentioned by eville and myself) I'd say it would be likely that weapons of different strengths would have different effects. Not to mention the difficulty of linking multiple smaller guns on the offensive side of this equation."

Well, quad blasters of an XW or of an T/I, T/A would hit nearly the "same spot", thus dealing concentrated damage, to the same "heatsink". If you consider a very high density of these heatsinks (more than one per square meter), perhaps the overload could come soon, but you'd need very quick shield reconfiguration if you don't want an heavy salvo to get through. If the generator's density is much lower (say 1 every 50*50 meters), then each "heatsink" is supposed to withstand quite heavy damage, and a single heavy weapon won't harm it more than ten lighter weapons.

> "AND the gameplay consideration that such a scheme gives essentially no advantage to having heavy TLs, which would severely hamper the Imperial player against heavily shielded MC cruisers among other things."

Completely disagree. As said before, hull would behave differently depending on warhead's energy.

If your shields have a similar behaviour to every weapon (that is : more prone to damage against heavy weapons than light weapons), then you have the same glovbal behaviour of the ship all the way.

At the contrary, if shields are affected the same whatever the weapon, whereas hull isn't, then you have two very different situations depending on the ship status. Which increases tactical depth (you'd first try to weaken the shield with a set of unit, then you'd use another set of units to destroy the hull).

Note that if hull armour is not supposed to be of metallic nature, but is an excellent thermal insulator, then the heat from a single round would stay very concetrated on the impact spot, also meaning that the "concentrating" fire effect would be lower. This could explain higher penetration from heavy guns.

> "I'm imagining that effectiveness against shields themselves and penetration damage is related. I'd say this is caused more by flux than overall energy."

Not necessarily, because hull is made of atoms, and shields visibly aren't. Their nature is different, thus the bahaviour probably should, too.

> "In respect to penetration, the incident energy from a strike cannot be absorbed by the entire shield at once, so there will be a higher flux at the point of impact. So, even while a single blast might not cause the entire shield to fail, it may conceivably overpower the shield locally by exceeding the flux capacity (back to the FUTURE!!! :)) at the impact point."

The big problem here is that in your model, the excess energy would logically harm the hull itself, not the "shield" since the shield would already have been overloaded. Which cannot be done with Homeworld2.

BTW, flux = amount of a quantity getting through a surface, per surface unit, per time.

> "And, as eville said, if TLs are designed for penetration and have a higher energy density than blasters, then TLs could very well have higher shield penetration damage than a comparable focused strike from the less dense weaker weapons."

As I said a lot of time : for hulls, maybe, if they're an insulator. For shields, probably not.

Don't forget that, here, "penetration" = "percentage of damage done to the object itself". It has nothing to do with the real meaning of the word "penetration", since it doesn't go underneath ("HW2's penetration doesn't pierce at all").

> "Also, as eville mentioned, I think that concussion missles and such should not affect shields the same as energy weapons, causing much less damage than they would to the hull."

Concussion missiles maybe, since their name implies a blast/piercing effect.

However, for heavy rockets and proton torpedoes, I'm not that sure. They seem to translate into energy pretty well.

Note that if we make shields quasi immune to homing warheads, then fighters would have little use, and it'd be especially harmfull for Reps.

But a mild damage reduction is OK to me.

Example :

Against shields :
- HTLs : 100%
- TLs : 100%
- ship mounted blasters : 100%
- fighter blasters : 100%
- proton torpedoes and rockets : 60%
- concussion missiles : 30%

Against strong hulls :
- HTLs : 85%
- TLs : 70%
- ship mounted blasters : 50%
- fighter blasters : 40%
- proton torpedoes and rockets : 90%
- concussion missiles : 95%

Against weaker hulls :
- HTLs : 100%
- TLs : 95%
- ship mounted blasters : 90%
- fighter blasters : 75%
- proton torpedoes and rockets : 100%
- concussion missiles : 100%


> "Heres another thought related to my flux concept. OK, different energy particles have different properties right? I can get hit by an infinite number of IR photons and be fine,"

Wrong. If you get an infinite number of IR photons during a very short time, you get steamed.

> "but expose me to a few gamma rays and I might be a little worse for wear (So, in this regard, 10 10s doesn't equal 1 100)."

1°) You're made of atoms, thus penetration rules apply to you. Shields are not made by atoms, AFAIK.
2°) The single energy of a gamma photon is not the single energy of a IR photon. E=freq * h (Planck constant) The penetration of gamma rays is due to atomic properties.

> "And seeing as there are physical parts on the ship that process the energy absorbed by the shields, a higher fluence would likely degrade these components more significantly. Wacky quantum effects, they screw with our classical intuition I know."

Not necessarily. Don't forget your shields are supposed to resist more than a single HTL salvo, so I guess they're more than oversized enough to resist a single HTL, even a very heavy one.

[spacemoose]

Total sweetness eville. Slightly epic indeed.

Turgidson:

Yeah I read that as the integral of P divided by t. Guess thats why they have them equations :)

What I meant about the disadvantage to Imperials was, I suppose, conditional on how eville sets up shield strength. I am interpreting the survivability of MC cruisers as resulting from most of the damage they can take being absorbed by shields, so that most of the hits it would take to destroy one would actually hit the shields, not the hull. So if the Imperial weapons advantage is only evident when the shields are down that hurts the Imperial advantage in weaponry (which they are supposed to have).

I agree that the variety generated by having different properties for shields and armor will create new tactics, require a more diverse force and create for better gameplay. Thats why I think concussion missles should do less. I'm simply stating that I think more powerful TLs should be more effective proportionally against "heavy" shields than medium/light TLs (of course, I'm not even sure eville is planning different classes of shields). This is a very small portion of the weapons, considering there are still blasters, missles, rockets, bombs, ion cannons, torpedoes and such to be thrown in.

Anyway, I guess I was being confusing with my "penetration" comments, since penetration is what the game calls my "efficiency". My penetration is the energy that penetrates through to the hull (or next level of shielding) even when the shield hasn't failed, but it sounds like that isn't possible given the setup that will be used. So I guess I should drop it :)

Although, I was thinking, that many people have been clamoring for the Sovereign or Eclipse, and if the engine limits the damage done by a single shot to just the shields, even if powerful enough to completely knock them out, doesn't that make a superlaser pretty lame? If thats the only real advantage of these ships over the Executor, then I don't see them being that useful.

Also, I know what flux is (at least I hope I do) it is sort of integral in the work I do. And, yeah I suppose I would get pretty warm if struck by a zillion IR photons before I could radiate that energy away. :P I guess I should have specified a duration. What I meant was that, given quantum considerations, the effects of being hit by 10 1 MeV particles are not the same as those from 1 10 MeV particle. So the total energy = total energy concept isn't really valid.

Given a particular type of particle, the higher energy ones do more damage to matter, which while not being the "shield" itself, most certainly the physical parts of the ship that absorb this energy are. So, if the energy is transmitted to these components in the same raw form, then higher energy particles will cause greater defects and damage to these materials than a group of lower energy particles whose sum is equivalent in total energy. This would cause higher energy TLs to degrade the shield mechanisms faster than lower energy TLs.

My point here is that we don't really know the physical ins and outs of SW shielding, and so can't categorically state how it should work without canonical substantiation. In part thats what makes the material for this mod work so well, because while it gives a firm base, it allows for flexibility. I trust eville to decide however will result in the best gameplay, so since we have both voiced our opinions on this, and I'm sure eville has read it (and surely is waiting for us to shut up about it :)) we can let it go until we get a chance to play with it and see which works better.

[Evenflow]

Great! Thanks Evillejedi, glad to see the ISDII texture problem is fixed.

One other question: did you manage to fix the AI so that he builds a variety of units as opposed to just concentrating on one or two?

P.S: how can I become a tester?

[evillejedi]

well there is a way to do penetration of an object, but it relates to the current health of the object (if HP< ### then go through ship and deal max damage) and it may only work for ion beams...

the texturing issue isn't completly fixed (notice the camera is still far away :-/)

AI should be better.

for testing I want people that will be able to play at least 5 or 6 full length games in a variety of modes and settings and fully document the bugs they find in a detailed way within 2 days of recieving the link. mainly because I want to release within 2 or 3 days of sending out the test release. If you think you can honestly do this for this weekend then PM me. Some people are already on the list (mainly those that got the .20 preview)

[HitokiriHa]

another thought... could you make it so that Golan battlestations DO NOT hyperspace? it's weird, but i've used them as offensive weapons. so you think it'd be possible to make it to where whenever you build a station- ie golans, shipyards; set up to wherever the rally point for the ship manufacturing them is it'll hyperspace there. sorry for grammar :)
tx

[Calavan]

Or if its possible, you could give them a fast speed but make them only be able to have 1 move (like platforms/probes) and leave hyperspaceing off of em. (if they already are like this sorry, ive never really built any platforms before besides the shipyards)

[Evenflow]

I definately agree that Golans shouldn't hyperspace, and that they should be slow as hell, about the same speed as the Factory ship.

To offset that, the Golans should be immensly powerfull, I'm talking the equivalent of 4 or more ISDII's, both in hull/shields and weaponry. They should also cost about the same as an ISDII, maybe SLIGHTLY more, but not much. This will present the player with a difficult decision: build an extremely powerfull defensive structure that does little more than that, just defend, or opt instead to build an ISDII that is both a decent defensive and excellent offensive weapon? Atleast I can imagine myself being torn by the decision, am I playing a more defensive game or is my offense more important?

[Destraex]

Looks Brilliant, love the screenshots!!!

[evillejedi]

the golan HS was just bad bookkeeping. It will have a very slow movement (though actually it will be quite high max speed (100) with really slow acceleration so as to prevent shipyard difficulties) single shot is definatly out for valuable things because of interface difficulties in plaving them.

golans will be very strong, but offensivly they have have weaker guns than an ISD, the big power they hold is huge long range torpedos

[Aldat]

note* dreads already have ions on them, are smaller than a vic sd, and are very much not able to compete with a imp sd
as was mentioned in the thrawn trilogy: 4 dreads took on 1 imp class sd and were very much getting their asses handed to them royally until they ran away to hs

personally i would turn tale and run as well with the 100 some odd turbo laser batteries, large number of ion cannons(mounted on the sides) and the very extremely large amount of reg laser cannons mounted onto a imp sd
and YES the two large spheres on top of the bridge section of an sd are the shield gens, they contain the reactors and such required to run shields that cover a ship 1 mile in length completely in energy, as there is also a shield gen located on the bottom of the sd that looks much as you described, it's basically a small hump(by small i mean it does not extend very far from the superstructure of the ship) on the bottom of the sd
the sensors take up a much smaller area mounted on various positions
if the spheres were sensors, do you think the millenium falcon could have hid from them by attatching to the back of the bridge tower?

also mentioned in thrawn trilogy: when thrawn attacked coruscant, there was i think 4 golans orbiting the planet for defensive purposes and they were essentially only able to take on 1 or 2 sds without being reemed quite horridly, and even then, they only kept the golans on the sds because of the fact that the golans could absorb much more abuse than the meager fleet they had near coruscant

1 moooore thing: pirates are also known to use tie fighter esque technollogy for their fighters: claws, tie-dies, z-95s, skiprays, etc


p.s. for those who are very curious, a tie-die is the combination of a tie fighter and a y wing without shields: take the cockpit ball from the tie fighter and slap the y-wing engines onto the sides of it

slow, unshielded, lightly armed, unmaneuverable, DEAD

(2)p.s. if you would like more information plz buy/check out the book: "I, Jedi" for more information, it is a very well written book about the new republic jedi Corran Horn, that takes place at the time of the establishment of the new jedi academy

[rgreat]

Its not DRED's are weak, its ISD's are really strong.

[Aldat]

um did i once say dreads are weak in my post?
nope i didn't think so

[HitokiriHa]

actully a die-die is a tie cockpit wit x-wing wings, and a wishbone is a tie cockpit with y-wing engines. :P and how did you go from dreadnaught with kdy-v150 to isd sensors?

*noticed u had ur jacket on*

[evillejedi]

actually an ugly is nearly anything welded together, so a Y-tie or an x-tie or anything falls under this classification and some specific configurations are favored for performance.

an old buick, some rockets and a weasel would be considered an ugly

[AsterXiphos]

. . . I think my neighbor's got an old buick out back, anyone got rockets or weasels . . . ?

[evillejedi]

don't have a weasel, but I do have a hamster, some duct tape and a juice box to make it TWICE AS POWERFUL! TWICE AS DEADLY!!

anyway, I hate to say it but I am going to have to push back 0.25s release back by at least 2 or three days. I haven't gotten the scripting that I wanted to work out done yet and I still have bugs that would prevent testing. more tomorrow when I get a good feeling of what really needs to get done.

[Talonpest]

We will begin by fusing you to another human being.

That's no human being that's a gopher!

SILENCE!

[Turgidson]

> Evillejedi

(sorry, a bit late answer)

> "shields are hard because of a PRECISION and TIME issue, maultiple layer shields basically make this that much harder ( I refuse to do the work is a better answer :-p)"

Here's a quick idea : take the same shield mesh, move it a bit to the left, call it layer A. Move it to the right, call it layer B.

A would be the "left" shield, B would be the "right" shield, with an automatic reconfiguration.

If you attack the ship from both sides, both shields are active at the same time (maens the two recharge simultaneously). If you attack from one side, you'd deplete one shield first, the other afterwards (only one recharge at a time). Would partially simulate this "local generators" effect.

Can add more layers than that, of course (front, left, right, top, bottom, rear, middle).

Could also have a few layers with high recharge/low hitpoints (left/right, top/bottom), and others with low recharge/high hitpoints (centered).

OK, it's not like onion layers.

> "everything is one sided poly in terms of rendering, everything is two sided in terms of anything else."

OK.

> "invisible subsystem is correct and yes that is how they work, but they have to be EXTREMELY PRECISE (<1m) which means lots of TIME per ship."

The <1m precision is mostly for the graphical prettyness (that is, no gunpoints 10 meters away from the hull in empty space), right ?

> "the suggested solution yeilds extremly horrific geometry, better to do it vertice by vertice then try to fix boolean unions"

Well, in fact it can be done with only four directions (tetraedron), not six. And the geometry is merely horrific at the merging, not at the "continous" part of the mesh (well, I hope).

There's also an "easy algorithm" to do it, but I have no idea of plugin coding:

For each vertex (signle point of the mesh)
Take every polygons (triangles) that contain the vertex
Take the polygon's normal vector (I guess there's a normal, since they are single face)
Summ all these normal vectors
Rescale the final vector to 1 length
Move the vertex with this vector


Basically, you'd get an "expanded" mesh. Because of single-faced polygons, you're sure to move the vertex in the right direction.


I also wonder if there aren't tools/plugins that automatically create "thickness" to a surface. Dunno, I'm not a 3D modeler.


> "as for shield penetration, should the major categories have different penetration (blaster, laser, TL, ion, warhead)

for example blasters and lasers are considered low energy weapons and would get deflected more often,

TL's are highly concentrated so they would penetrate easier,

ions work by overloading the system so they are more effective,

warheads are rapidly dispersed so they deal less damage (but more to hulls where concussion becomes a factor. )"

Answered above.

IMHO, warheads should still have minimal efficiency, if not, Rebs will never wear down Imp shields (normal TLs, and mostly fighter-based).

> "I don't like the energy vs energy modelling of shields (sorta like saying 'lets throw thermonuclear weapons at the sun to cool it down') in my opinion shields are energy vs energy dissipation (implying power). the energy that contacts the shield has to get dispersed and transmitted away. on a localized level this would mean that the heatsinks have some of their capacity (before melting) filled until it can be bled away."

Well, the "heatsink" model is somewhat like the water tank model I gave, with is equivalent in terms of behaviour to an energy/counterenergy model.

Besides, you can use energy to cool down something, it's how air conditioning works (but you have to evacuate the extra energy somewhere else, of course). As far as I remember, it scales proportionally to the amount of energy (heat) to evacuate.

> "Also I think the more energy you hit the shield with the more the 'dissipation transmission field' gets distorted, thereby weakening its abilty to transmit energy to more remote heatsinks (overloading the local ones). this allows for a HP value for shields while still keeping the concepts of capacity."

Dunno. If the local ones are overloaded, there would be damage to the hull IMHO. I guess there are routines that "cut" a local generator to avoid overload (so the generator doesn't "fry").

IMHO, it still works well when supposing perfect transmission between all "heatsinks" (note : superconductors = resistance close to zero), and an overload would be the the whole system itself.


> "there is a possibility to change the formation behavior for a class of ships (IE fighter break easily, corvettes and frigates keep formation for a bit, destroyers stay in formation unless indivdally told) I'll look into it."

OK.

> "for weapon targetting

yes 1 acts like a perfect homing projectile"

Damn... HW1's targetting was much easier, as far as I remember.

> "the speed should be #3.5 (can I reach the target in time (weapon lifetime and interpolated fire point distance)"

I was talking about bullet speeds. If the bullet is slower, it should be more likely to miss, right ? Or is impact already pre-determined when the bullet was fired ?

> "the issue with the offset is problematic for balance reasons, it just seems that it requires a per weapon tweaking (IE TL's should nearly always miss because their damage gaurantees a kill on nearly anything smaller than a heavy corvette) there is some extremly substantial weapon damage ranges"

Agree.

> "blasters range from 5-50 damage (an X wings hull is around 55 a TIE around 14) the heavier blasters are mounted on turrets on transports and lighter ones for star fighters.

lasers range from 50 - 300 damage

TL's range from 250-4000 damage (ISD's have hulls around 280000)"


Ain't that too much difference/range between damage values, and between hulls values ?

For your info, damages and ranges in EvR :

Fighter lasers : 25-30 damage, 3000 range
Concussion Missiles : 150-200, 4000
Proton Torps : 345-400, 6000
Heavy Rockets : 550-600, 8000
Ship antifighter guns : 35-40, 4500
Ship lasers : 75-80, 4500
Ship TL : 175-200, 12000 (18000 in campaign 6)
Ship HTL : 350-400, 15000 (22500 in campaign 6)


Hulls in EvR (there were no shields, because of HW's limitations) :

XWing : 188
T/F : 40
Executor : 4400000 (campaign 6, it costs 18 ISDs to make an Executor)
ISD : 184000
Neb-B : 33000

Well, I know EvR was far from perfect, but it kinda worked.

> "this seems to give a good sense of scale when playing the games and really what needs to be tweaked now is the accuracy of the weapons."

Dunno. The higher the differences (in terms of hitpoints AND firepower) between the ship classes, the harder they are to "balance". I know that if stats get too close, redundancies might appear and the ships might lose their "taste", so I guess we have to choose a "middle way".

If differences are extreme (as it currently seems to be the case for weapons), then the lower classes are merely "small bugs" in comparison to the bigger ones. And the weapon accuracy problems you've described occur quite quickly indeed.

A Star Wars frigate is still a relatively "large" target (a few hundreds of meters wide), so they're not that hard to hit IMHO.

> "agreed on the small ships not surviving that long, but you shouldn't lose all your frigates and corvettes in the first 5 seconds."

Agree. But I somewhat feel that the seemingly huge difference between the damages of your weapons is the cause.

> "My assumption is that jamming technology and ECM are balanced with targetting systems (such that the targetting computer is just providing enough information through the jamming that a human or droid operator can just barely score a hit) this makes small ships survivable in long term battles."

Could work for guided warheads and antifighter equipement, but seems less likely for lasers and turbolasers against capital ships. These weapons are fired in a straight line and move rather fast, the ships are visible targets of relatively big size (remember RotJ, they're visible through the window of the throne room) and do not move that fast, so an optical sensor (human eye + lenses, very hard to jamm) is more than enough.

> "In real life a few missiles and a failure of PDS systems would level a fleet because the guidance is so good that it is only possible to intercept it with blanket defenses, so we have to assume that their is tremendous ECM going on in SW to explain the poor accuracy of weapons and that shields and advanced armor sucks up insane amounts of damage when weapons do hit."

Agree, for shields and advanced armour. Agree, for ECM against homing warheads. Disagree, for TLs and HTLs (see above). Unless TLs and HTLs have extremely poor aiming accuracy by nature.

> "another reason for the gun classes is that with so many ships it is hard to differentiate stuff if it has a few weapons classes. this allows otherwise strong ships to have weak guns for thier class but still be better than the next class down."

Partially agree only. Differences can be subtle, yet be known and used by a good commander.

Instead of "weak guns for their class", it could just be "few guns for their class". Still makes a difference, without needing a huge number of weapon types.

> "no targetable turrets except the case where they are a significant force (VSDI missile launchers, ISD II heavy batteries)"

OK. Still, I feel it could be quite a disadvantage for these ships. Also dunno if subsystems can get targeted through another subsystem (shields, that would be a non-destroyable subsystem, like the engines, if you wish to have shields restore time instead of destroying the shields completely).

> "scaling things would compound the weapon targetting offset problem immensly and yes other things would break too. perosnally if it was possible to scale by 1/10th I would do it in a second, but it introduces many complications. (dock paths for one) I probably can push the max range up to 20 km but anything more just gets messy."

Well, 1/10 scaling is prolly more messy than 1/2 or 1/3 scaling. And 1/2 scaling still means doubled weapon ranges, which is far from nothing.

(scaling also includes speed, thrust, etc... of course).

Dunno how dock paths are defined. Editable ?

Also note that downscaling might solve/reduce other problems, like collision behaviour with very large, elongated ships.

> "as for targetting classes it is possible, except a ships attack class defines how enemies handle it not how it actually handles enemies. the attack scripts for a ship allow it to respond to the different target types, and defualts are allowed. this would require an in depth comparison of tactics and weaknesses on a ship by ship basis (at least for large ones) this probably needs to get done to some degree anyway so help with it would be appreciated. (a list of tactics with application to targetting classes, such as circling_frigate_vs_strong_top_destroyer)"

Yeah, it's what I meant. Long term project only, I suppose.

> "the mod files are rather large even when zipped, the ships2.xls defines the current game values and are adjusted by play testing. since I am in the process of redoing every unit it is not complete, but it should be fully updated for v.25 when it is released. so if you wan tto go off that and try some balancing go ahead. I'd be interested in seeing what you come up with (I'd like a slight price increase for imperial ships to simulate the rebels 'acquiring' ships and use build cost and build time for balancing the stats.) for example fighters that have salvo ability should take longer to build to prevent rushing. call it pilot training time or something :-p"

OK. I'd need values of hull, and damage values for each weapon, if possible. Anyway, I don't think I'm gonna try this soon. ;-p








> Spacemoose

> "Yeah I read that as the integral of P divided by t. Guess thats why they have them equations :)"

Well, hard to use the integration symbol in a text document.

> "What I meant about the disadvantage to Imperials was, I suppose, conditional on how eville sets up shield strength. I am interpreting the survivability of MC cruisers as resulting from most of the damage they can take being absorbed by shields, so that most of the hits it would take to destroy one would actually hit the shields, not the hull. So if the Imperial weapons advantage is only evident when the shields are down that hurts the Imperial advantage in weaponry (which they are supposed to have)."

Imps could still have an advantage with longer range weapons, for example.

In addition, having "weaker" weapons with similar efficiency against shields doesn't mean the Imps will have it harder to knock Rep shields down, but that Reps will have it less hard to knock Imp shields down. Don't forget the Reps still have to crush the Imp's hulls, which is far from easy.

And logically, if homing warheads AND light/medium blasters/lasers/turbolasers do relatively low to very low damage to shields, then Reps are never gonna be able to knock down an Imp shield, unless Imp shields are REALLY sucky.


And IMHO, paper-rock-scissors balancing isn't a good thing when a shipset is the rock and another the scissors (and IMHO isn't a good thing at all in general when made extreme, but that's personal).

> "I agree that the variety generated by having different properties for shields and armor will create new tactics, require a more diverse force and create for better gameplay. Thats why I think concussion missles should do less. I'm simply stating that I think more powerful TLs should be more effective proportionally against "heavy" shields than medium/light TLs (of course, I'm not even sure eville is planning different classes of shields). This is a very small portion of the weapons, considering there are still blasters, missles, rockets, bombs, ion cannons, torpedoes and such to be thrown in."

IMHO, the hull is still something very important. I am OK with "acceptable" differences in hull damage depending on the weapons, but in my opinion (once again repeated), shields efficiency should be the same for all energy weapons.

> "Anyway, I guess I was being confusing with my "penetration" comments, since penetration is what the game calls my "efficiency". My penetration is the energy that penetrates through to the hull (or next level of shielding) even when the shield hasn't failed, but it sounds like that isn't possible given the setup that will be used. So I guess I should drop it :)"

OK. ;-p

> "Although, I was thinking, that many people have been clamoring for the Sovereign or Eclipse, and if the engine limits the damage done by a single shot to just the shields, even if powerful enough to completely knock them out, doesn't that make a superlaser pretty lame? If thats the only real advantage of these ships over the Executor, then I don't see them being that useful."

I think a "beam" type weapon (like HW2's ion beams) that does continuous damage, can first damage a subsystem, then destroy it, then damage the (sub)system underneath.

The problem with penetration of a single round is that it doesn't seem possible to get through a subsystem, without killing the subsystem. Not too sure, though, since Eville said it can be linked with the subsystem's health.

> "Also, I know what flux is (at least I hope I do) it is sort of integral in the work I do. And, yeah I suppose I would get pretty warm if struck by a zillion IR photons before I could radiate that energy away. :P I guess I should have specified a duration. What I meant was that, given quantum considerations, the effects of being hit by 10 1 MeV particles are not the same as those from 1 10 MeV particle. So the total energy = total energy concept isn't really valid."

Because you're made of atoms (and shields obviously aren't of atomic nature), and the rays don't struck the same parts of your body (i.e. effects on DNA, and not just to the skin cell's membrane).

But in terms of energy, it's the same.

BTW, your body can take X-rays pretty well, when in relatively low quantities.

> "Given a particular type of particle, the higher energy ones do more damage to matter, which while not being the "shield" itself, most certainly the physical parts of the ship that absorb this energy are."

I remember that photons can excite/break molecules/links, but not an atomic core. Basically, photons would mostly interect with electrons (possibly with scattering, or emission of an e+/e- pair), and the final effect is heat.

And once translated into another form of "energy" (but which type : electric ?), there's a summation, meaning that 10*10=1*100.

> "So, if the energy is transmitted to these components in the same raw form, then higher energy particles will cause greater defects and damage to these materials than a group of lower energy particles whose sum is equivalent in total energy. This would cause higher energy TLs to degrade the shield mechanisms faster than lower energy TLs."

Not necessarily. See above.

> "My point here is that we don't really know the physical ins and outs of SW shielding, and so can't categorically state how it should work without canonical substantiation."

True, but honestly, I feel it hard not to sum the energy, if we're talking about energy weapons and they hit approximatively the same spot (at least, are countered by the same "shield generator").

> "In part thats what makes the material for this mod work so well, because while it gives a firm base, it allows for flexibility. I trust eville to decide however will result in the best gameplay, so since we have both voiced our opinions on this, and I'm sure eville has read it (and surely is waiting for us to shut up about it :)) we can let it go until we get a chance to play with it and see which works better."

True, but "best gameplay" is really something subjective.

[spacemoose]

Trust me, photons do more than just heat things (Gamma rays anyone?). I do research in radiation effects on semi-conductors, specifically the effects of solar radiation and the radiation belt on space-based solar cells.

As far as matter is concerned, the effects of a particular sum of energy is not equivalent throughout the energy spectrum.

[rgreat]

Originally posted by Turgidson
Fighter lasers : 25-30 damage, 3000 range
Concussion Missiles : 150-200, 4000
Proton Torps : 345-400, 6000
Heavy Rockets : 550-600, 8000
Ship antifighter guns : 35-40, 4500
Ship lasers : 75-80, 4500
Ship TL : 175-200, 12000 (18000 in campaign 6)
Ship HTL : 350-400, 15000 (22500 in campaign 6)


Hulls in EvR (there were no shields, because of HW's limitations) :

XWing : 188
T/F : 40
Executor : 4400000 (campaign 6, it costs 18 ISDs to make an Executor)
ISD : 184000
Neb-B : 33000

Well, I know EvR was far from perfect, but it kinda worked.
Yes, EVR was fine ballanced.
Btw, is anyone planning for campaign 7? With HW2 as battle engine? ;)

P.S. Hm, maybe i need to restart writing my "Republic vs Empire" turn based game shell... ;)

http://www.streamload.com/rgreat/tmp/rve01.jpg
http://www.streamload.com/rgreat/tmp/rve02.jpg

Alpha ver. archive: http://www.streamload.com/rgreat/tmp/RVE.exe
;)

[Turgidson]

> "Trust me, photons do more than just heat things (Gamma rays anyone?). I do research in radiation effects on semi-conductors, specifically the effects of solar radiation and the radiation belt on space-based solar cells."

Yes, it affects the way the atoms are ordered (means these rays can induce gaps, etc... that change the semiconductor's behaviour). But I don't remember significant changes on metal conductors, other than electromagnetic field on the surface. And there's no change in the atomic core of the atoms themselves anyway.

> "As far as matter is concerned, the effects of a particular sum of energy is not equivalent throughout the energy spectrum."

Yes, because the electon jumps between energy levels are quantified.

But penetration of photons inside metals remains low. And once translated into electo/heat, it sums.

[evillejedi]

one thing with weapon damage is you also have to figure in weapon fire rate and tracking rate. for example an MC-90 has the same TL's everywhere, they are RELATIVLY low power, short range as TL's go but have a faster fire rate and much better tracking. also their is a min and max damage, which I set to 75% and 100%, thus allowing some variation in combat. so I actually should have given average damage over time. which strangely seems to sink up with EvR's pretty well.

an ISD II has two different types of TL's one of them is RELATIVLY slower to fire and track than the MC-90 guns, but has a longer range and more damage and the other type is used almost exclusivly for other capital ships and has sick amounts of damage very long range, but wouldn't even bother shooting at anything smaller than a light destroyer unless it was sitting still.

IMO the ISD II was the fleet engagment version of the ISD I, however the increase in firepower caused it to lose its effectivness vs strike craft. hence the lancer was designed to protect it in fleet battles and so on...

older ships like the dread and VSD mount some lower power TL's and most frigates have lower power weapons

that right there is at least 5 TL classes
very heavy (very slow ROF,slow tracking , long range, huge damage)
heavy (slow ROF, sorta slow tracking, long range, large damage)
medium (decent ROF, decent tracking, sorta long range, medium damage)
light(fast ROF, good tracking, medium range, light-medium damage)
obsolete(generally relitivly poor)

the reason I would want to include an obsolete category is that in the case of a VSD I or a dread, if you gave them better weapons saying they were retrofitted, then why not give them better engines and say we upgraded the power gen too ... this completly changes the ship. my approach is to make them crappy at what they don't do well and then just make them cheap (a dread has tremendous staying power and still has decent guns, it;s just SLOW and a VSD I has the missiles )

so after taking this into account I figured that making a continuous spectrum of weapons (which isn't any work at all BTW) would actually be beneficial to balance. Every TL class is a scaling of the one before it. this allows judgments like 'oh wow the ISD II is way to powerful, instead of level 10 TL's and Level 7 TL's I'll give it level 6 TL's and level 9 TL's'. since the weapons never change relative to each other the only balancing that needs to be done is overall weapon scale vs hitpoints. IMO this is much faster to do than trying to tweak each weapon and if I don't use a weapon class it's a whole whopping cut and pasted 1kb file that got wasted.

what I find interesting is EvR's 'hull' values and weapon values are about the same as mine (shield + hull) :-p even though I arrived at my numbers through a completely different process. though I think my fighters are a little weaker.

I hope this explains how and why I did my weapons modelling.

[Talonpest]

Sounds like you've put a lot of thought into it. The one area I have an issue with is the light TLs on the MC-90. The Rebels should already have a huge advantage in fighters, and giving their capital ships turbolasers that have more than a prayer of hitting TIE fighters seems unbalanced.

Really, most capital ships (with the exception of specificly anti-fighter ships like the lancer) should have all slow, innaccurate, heavy guns, because that's what their role is in a fleet. All the smaller ships have light guns, so it's kind of a waste of space to put light guns on a ship that can carry heavy guns. Plus anti-fighter capabilty lets you send in a capital ship unescorted and still have a chance against a diverse, balanced force.

[spacemoose]

Turgidson:

I don't know what your focus on nuclear affects is about, that is hardly the only way to degrade the properties of a material. Photons displace atoms in the lattice, ionize atoms and cause a great deal of heating due to pair-production.

The first 2 screw up the properties of the material by producing irregularities in the lattice (metals are crystals just like semi-conductors), generally causing it to be less proficient at whatever it was supposed to do before being irradiated.

The 3rd makes it really hot; so if the physical parts of shields function like radiators or heat sinks this would certainly impair their functionality.

Actually, photons penetrate deeper into materials (metals included) than any other form of radiation.

Generally, the higher energy a photon (or ANY particle) is, the greater will be its radiation effects per unit energy. Period.

Regardless, this is all irrelevant since most have concluded that TLs are most likely plasma, not turbine driven coherent light (as the name implies).

[evillejedi]

Talonpest: ships like the lancer have rapid fire laser cannons not TL's. a TL has about a 1/1000 chance of hitting a fighter even on the best day. lasers are much better at tracking small ships and the lancer has specially modified fire control systems to make it even better. so the TL's on an MC-90 still can't hit fighters with any degree of reliability. I didn't even go into the laser classes that light ships use and below that are the blasters for fighters and transports.

[Talonpest]

Oh, ok good. I guess you're on top of it then!

[dude]

the reason I would want to include an obsolete category is that in the case of a VSD I or a dread, if you gave them better weapons saying they were retrofitted, then why not give them better engines and say we upgraded the power gen too ... this completly changes the ship. my approach is to make them crappy at what they don't do well and then just make them cheap (a dread has tremendous staying power and still has decent guns, it;s just SLOW and a VSD I has the missiles )

hope its not asking too much, but will you be able to research an upgrade for them?

can't wait for the new version by the way

[DarthFelth]

good to see Turg hasnt lost his abilty to type for days :p looks like you came back just as im losing me connection ahh well

[Dragon45]

Let me just state that a new website is up-and-coming... stay tuned for another week or so, people.

[Evenflow]

Evillejedi:

I have some questions for you regarding the next release, if you can answer them I'd really appreciate it.

1) Did you modify the AI in any way in regards to building a variety of units and not just concentrate on 2 or 3 different units and nothing else? For example, right now the Rebel AI seems to build all MC90's and X-wings, with Corvettes and picket ships, but not any other ships. Did you manage to improve this at all?

2) Judging by your new pictures that you posted, the ISDII texturing flicker that happens when you are zoomed far away seemed to have been fixed. You then said that it wasn't. The issue I'm talking about is how when you zoom out , ISDII's seem to turn black and just look wierd, when zoomed in all the way the shadow textures are all wrong. Did you figure it out yet?

3) In regards to the Imperial Star Destroyers.... how did you balance them exactly? As you know, they were near worthless in the last release. You'd need 3-4 of them to take out an MC90. Using an MC90 as a reference, assuming they go head to head with little other interference, who would win, and at the end of the battle, how much energy would the victor have? (just guesstimate)

4) Will the Imperials have any new ships for the next release? Did you work on any Imperial textures? Any changes at all to the Imperial side in the looks department?

5) What other tweaks did you make to the overall gameplay? You mentioned that lasers no longer converge on the same point on a target, but what about firing speed? what about range?(generally speaking, did you decrease the range ships can fire from or kept in the same?). Did you change the characteristics of certain units that change the way you played with them before?

EDIT:

6) You know how the HUD shows the speed/attack/hull ratings when you select a unit? Are those accurate? It doesn't really seem that way to me, because I had a one on one between an Allegiance and an MC90 and the MC90 looked like it was much, much better, I actually had to retreat after only talking a quarter of it's energy. Funny thing is that the Allegiance has the exact same shield rating and actually more attack rating, I don't remember the speed rating exactly but they shouldn't matter in a one on one fight, should it?



I actually have many more but that'll do for now, thanks.

[HitokiriHa]

personally i'd be happy with ship icons.

[DarthFelth]

and inproved isd's

[rgreat]

Decreased firerate of all guns.

But ISD2 fire looks nice aready.

[evillejedi]

bleh I know I've been promising 0.25 for over a week, but I sorta have an exam I didn't know about. It's not in a hard class. So, I will be able to work on the mod a little but I'm thinking the test release will go out wednesday and the release will be this coming weekend. I still have to figure out the best way to do the no build and restricted build options and the icons are as always proving frustrating.

[Talonpest]

Oh for the love of god, don't put off the release to do a restricted build list option. I have enough enemies as it is!

[AsterXiphos]

Hey, hey . . . cut the guy some slack. You'll get it when you get it.

. . . and if you did love Him, you wouldn't use His name like that.

[Turgidson]

> spacemoose

> "I don't know what your focus on nuclear affects is about, that is hardly the only way to degrade the properties of a material. Photons displace atoms in the lattice, ionize atoms and cause a great deal of heating due to pair-production."

When you wrote "matter", I first understood it as the constituants of "matter" - that is, the different elementar particles. This prolly comes from the fact that english isn't my native language. Had you written "materials" instead of matter, there wouldn't have been this first misunderstanding.

As for metals, I remember their cristal structure is strong compared to molecular links, and they have free electrons and positive gaps anyway. Pushing an electron out would merely generate local electric events, thus merely heat.

Displacing atoms by breaking the links would need very hard rays IMHO, so prolly in the very high gammas (and not the ones close to X-rays). Pair-production needs hard rays anyway.

> "The first 2 screw up the properties of the material by producing irregularities in the lattice (metals are crystals just like semi-conductors), generally causing it to be less proficient at whatever it was supposed to do before being irradiated.

The 3rd makes it really hot; so if the physical parts of shields function like radiators or heat sinks this would certainly impair their functionality."

My books and my lessons are far away, but I'd say that the heating effect is stronger than the other two. But you'd get heating effects with any electomagnetic radiation.

> "Actually, photons penetrate deeper into materials (metals included) than any other form of radiation."

Nah, neutrinos get deeper (but interect very rarely, which is of course linked to the penetration rate).

> "Generally, the higher energy a photon (or ANY particle) is, the greater will be its radiation effects per unit energy. Period."

Actually, photons are not like "any" particle, as far as I remember. You can split atomic cores with high energy neutrons (which have high speed), you can't with a high energy photon impact only (note : seems that extreme laser sources could accelerate electrons enough for them to further interact, and at the end cause core splits).

And as far as heating is concerned, the final effect is comparable. Remember, conservation of energy law.

> "Regardless, this is all irrelevant since most have concluded that TLs are most likely plasma, not turbine driven coherent light (as the name implies)."

Other note : when we speak of "heavy weapons", we have two possible differences compared to "lighter" weapons :
- a different nature (which, in fact, is what you imply when you take the example of a single high energy particle, instead of single low-energy particles)
- a different quantity (which is what you get when you drop a 1000 kg explosive bomb instead of a 50 kg explosive bomb).

I have the feeling that "heavy turbolasers" are not turbolasers using "harder" frequencies (if they were using frequencies, which doesn't seem to be the case anyway), but simply "bigger" turbolasers implying more particles of the same nature. Which makes the "gamma vs IR" debate pointless.

[Turgidson]

> "one thing with weapon damage is you also have to figure in weapon fire rate and tracking rate. for example an MC-90 has the same TL's everywhere, they are RELATIVLY low power, short range as TL's go but have a faster fire rate and much better tracking. also their is a min and max damage, which I set to 75% and 100%, thus allowing some variation in combat. so I actually should have given average damage over time. which strangely seems to sink up with EvR's pretty well."

OK. However, the maximal values you gave seem to be much higher than EvR's, especially for turbolasers (4000 for a single shot, that's really a lot). The other difference might be in the amount of guns per ship, and their average firerate, which I don't know yet (lazzy to check look in the .big, and there will be a new version anyway).

Also, it seems that there's more difference in hitpoint values in your mod between the avergae ship classes. The value I gave for the SSD was for campaign 6, with an extremely strong SSD ("Übership"). Your frigates seem to have similar hitpoints than EvR's, but your ISD is already appreciably stronger. Unless your ISD has less weaponry, I feel there's still a non negligible scale factor.

> "an ISD II has two different types of TL's one of them is RELATIVLY slower to fire and track than the MC-90 guns, but has a longer range and more damage and the other type is used almost exclusivly for other capital ships and has sick amounts of damage very long range, but wouldn't even bother shooting at anything smaller than a light destroyer unless it was sitting still."

I don't like that "sick amounts of damage" thing very much.

> "IMO the ISD II was the fleet engagment version of the ISD I, however the increase in firepower caused it to lose its effectivness vs strike craft. hence the lancer was designed to protect it in fleet battles and so on..."

Actually, I don't think the ISD I should be effective against strike crafts either. I'd rather say that the ISD II's strong weaponry would be translated into a relatively poor speed in comparison to the ISD I.

Basically, ISD I would have been used to hunt the (few) remaining enemies of the Empire. ISD II to scare any enemy to strike at all.

> "older ships like the dread and VSD mount some lower power TL's and most frigates have lower power weapons

that right there is at least 5 TL classes
very heavy (very slow ROF,slow tracking , long range, huge damage)
heavy (slow ROF, sorta slow tracking, long range, large damage)
medium (decent ROF, decent tracking, sorta long range, medium damage)
light(fast ROF, good tracking, medium range, light-medium damage)
obsolete(generally relitivly poor)"

One of the big differences with EvR is that there are many more gun classes here (the damage values I gave are min damage and max damage), AND that (from the values you gave) the "heavy" class of each type is crossing the "lightest" class of the following type.

I also feel your classes are coming from the RPG stats. Which, IMHO, are far from being extremely accurate. And also induce some insane/unrealistic weapon classes (like "10d" turbolasers against "5d", and I remember someone said that, for WEG rules, 1*6d=2*5d somewhere - basically, they're exponential).

BTW, EvR guns also had different rates of fire. For turbolasers : a normal TL had twice the rof of a heavy turbolaser, which meant both would ultimately do the same damage per time (without range considerations, range meant the HTLs had a few additional volleys at start). These base stats were adjusted for each ship by doubling, quadrupling etc... the batteries (a "dual battery" would have twice the rof of a "single battery").

> "the reason I would want to include an obsolete category is that in the case of a VSD I or a dread, if you gave them better weapons saying they were retrofitted, then why not give them better engines and say we upgraded the power gen too ... this completly changes the ship. my approach is to make them crappy at what they don't do well and then just make them cheap (a dread has tremendous staying power and still has decent guns, it's just SLOW and a VSD I has the missiles )"

Agree. There are obsolete ships in SW, and they should have obsolete equipment too.

> "so after taking this into account I figured that making a continuous spectrum of weapons (which isn't any work at all BTW) would actually be beneficial to balance. Every TL class is a scaling of the one before it. this allows judgments like 'oh wow the ISD II is way to powerful, instead of level 10 TL's and Level 7 TL's I'll give it level 6 TL's and level 9 TL's'. since the weapons never change relative to each other the only balancing that needs to be done is overall weapon scale vs hitpoints. IMO this is much faster to do than trying to tweak each weapon and if I don't use a weapon class it's a whole whopping cut and pasted 1kb file that got wasted."

I wasn't talking of tweaking each weapon independatly, for each ship. But maybe just changing the number of weapons on each ship.

> "what I find interesting is EvR's 'hull' values and weapon values are about the same as mine (shield + hull) :-p even though I arrived at my numbers through a completely different process. though I think my fighters are a little weaker."

I've commented that part above. I lack precise stats to make a direct comparison, but IMHO your values imply more differences than EvR's, and when adding hull + firepower might imply a factor 4 in value spreading (or imply... nothing at all depending on your actual scaling). Yes, your fighters are IMHO appreciably weaker, unless you're planning to add quite a lot of hitpoints in shields.

Ain't a reproach, just a statement. EvR wasn't prefectly balanced (large economies induced a reign of large cruisers (ISDs and above), and massive fighter squads (battles involving more than 500 fighters per side) - frigates (excepted antifighter specialists) and "transports" (ATR, DX9, etc...) weren't often used.

For your info, in EvR : ISD had 184000 hitpoints, and would do 166500 damage in 44 seconds (supposing all weapons hit). VSD : ~105000 hp, 112500 damage. MC80B : 170000 hp, 149000 damage. Dread : 60000 hp, 75000 damage. Neb-B : 33000 hp, 35000 damage. Neb-B2 : 28000 hp, 50000 damage (lots of antifighter). Lancer : 28000 hp, 23000 damage (antifighter only). Corellian corvette : 13000 hp, 16000 damage. Capship hull recharge rates (used to simulate shielding) were relatively slow, 900 seconds (15 minutes) needed to fully recharge the health bar for MonCal ships, 2000 seconds (more than half an hour) for other techs.

> "I hope this explains how and why I did my weapons modelling."

Yup, it does. :-)

[spacemoose]

Well, I'd say there are frequent misunderstandings when communicating through brief internet posts even between native speakers of the same language. Sides, I never would have noticed English wasn't your native tongue if you hadn't told me. (Better than I can speak any other language at least :)... 5 years of spanish did me a WORLD of good)

Don't understimate non-nuclear damage effects, they certainly can cause metals to become more brittle, less conductive; basically less good at whatever you're planning on them being good at. Yes, conservation of energy always applies, but the higher the energy particle, the more radiation damage it will cause per unit energy (due to a variety of factors).

Well, you're right about neutrinos. I ignored them because their effects are so slight that we need to build enormous detectors deep underground to detect even 1 of them. Jeez man, might as well throw gravitons into the mix. :)

Anyway, we're REALLY beginning to let our nerdy bits show here. :) As entertaining as science can be (at least for us maybe, we may have overchewed this one for everyone else) its getting a little off-topic for this thread.

You're probably right about "heavy" TLs vs "medium" TLs as far as different frequencies, but it is probably not the case across the board for all energy beam weapons like blasters and lasers. These would probably be a different frequency if not another thing entirely.

Overall you sort of seem to have something against the heavy Imperial weaponry really having much advantage over its less powerful counterparts. I suppose its all a matter of interpretation, but to me, the Imps having huge guns that would decimate stationary opponents makes sense. Such guns would be an embodiment of the intimidation that motivated the design of their fleet. In fact, such a design priority would prove to be a weakness when faced with the smaller more nimble ships that made up the bulk of the Rebel fleet. I imagine it being similar to the US Cold War weapons systems that are now largely ineffective against the elusive global terrorist organizations.

I do agree, however, that frigates and such should be an important part of a fleet. (Even though I never use them in vanilla HW2 either since they get killed too quick and I can't withdraw them for repairs.)

[Talonpest]

Originally posted by AsterXiphos
Hey, hey . . . cut the guy some slack. You'll get it when you get it.

. . . and if you did love Him, you wouldn't use His name like that.
I was just saying that he shouldn't delay anything over a feature I requested- it's not that important.

...and clearly I don't love him enough to even capitalize his name or uses of the words "him" or "he." I'm fine with using figures of speech that aren't litterally true though. Don't preach to me.

[evillejedi]

I should point out that it's getting delayed more because I don't have time to do anything until thursday than trying to implement a few features.

also I've noticed that quite a few people say eviljedi and not evillejedi... :-p

[AsterXiphos]

*looks innocent and points fingers*

[evillejedi]

I'd like to add that I believe that the weapons damage should be different from how you described EvR, I don't see an advantage of having bigger guns that over time do the same amount of damage as smaller guns. granted range makes it more effective, but why would you trade in 2 medium TL's for 1 Heavy TL? In big ship vs small ship you are more concerned about accuracy than getting a one shot kill so more guns effectivly improves accuracy by giving you more chances to hit per unit time. in large ship combat where hits are much more frequent, using the energy is energy model that you promote, having equvalent smaller gun damage vs fewer large gun damage makes the large guns even more pointless if they do the same amount of damage over time.

My view is that larger guns are used because they do more damage per shot AND they do more damage per unit time than small guns. the limitation being hull space, power generation and fire control.

I still believe a continuous spectrum of damage, range and fire rate is infinitely more balancable than trying to change the weapons count on each ship because you are only scaling the weapons as a whole (IE +50 to damage for all of them), not trying to nitpick balance (Intially I wasn't going to balance at all. I love highly asymetrical gameplay 'within reason', but since other people are going to play this I have to adjust a bit. :-p )

I see the Imperials as having a 1960's MAD style approach to warfare with the philosophy of don't use a hammer when you can use a 25 megaton thermonuclear device. with the initial alliance responce of hiding in holes and only doing guerilla raids when something is weak and eventually as the NR simply out innovating the remnant because they have the majority of resources.

basically my point is that when my ISD II volleys off it's big guns I want to see the enemies health bar go down appreciably.

I am using the RP stats not as converted values but rather as relative measurements of how much better one ships weaponry is compared to anothers. The averge damage per time of each TL increases by around 200 damage per class, but this is offset that since fewer rounds are being fired and larger guns have less accuracy vs small targets. so when two destroyers open up at each other they are going to kick the crap out of each other. However a corvette vs a destroyer will be a much differnt fight. the corvette will do nearly continuous small amounts of damage and the destroyer is trying to get the one or two lucky shots that vaporize the corvette.

another thing that seems to be wrong with EvR's balance (when I was talking with Rgreat yesterday was that no one built medium sized ships. Everythign was fighters and capital. This to me seems like the fighters were grossly overpowered vs capital and and capital dominate frigates and corvettes.

I really belive that a star fighter can do nealy no damage to a larger ship with it's energy weapons alone. Since ordinance volleys are implemented this breaks fighters into two main categories, bombers and interceptors (a few a balance) bombers can be devastating vs large ships but are really bad at defending themselves vs interceptors and their ordinance should have difficulty hitting moving targets (ie corvettes and frigates) also escort ships should be positioned to intercept bombers before they can fire their ordinance.

frigates and covettes should be sufficiently survivable and have sufficient firepower for a group of them to be scary to a capital ship. From Rgreats comments it seems like the weapons modelling made them too weak to be a threat to capital ships and fighters were more cost effective. the solution I can see to this is that frigates get right up close to capital ships, since they are traversing the firing arcs much faster than they would be at range, if they are sufficiently close the big guns will have a very difficult time hitting them even though the accuracy at that close a range is improved. their speed will also allow them to get to this range with non-catostrophic losses to the group. Since there is an amount of friendly fire and all the weapons are set to don't fire through friendlies this makes overlapping cover of destroyers less of an effective strategy, you will be forced to have your own escorts to fend off the enemies frigates and corvettes thus making them useful for both offence and defence (other than anti star fighter platforms)

I think fighters should be expensive (a modern aircraft carrier carries it's dollar value in aircraft and amunition. Maintanance and training is much more expensive for the aircraft than the ship over time)
granted we are talking about something on a order of magnitude larger but given the alliances policies on fighter survivability it makes sense that they wouldn't have copious amounts of fighters simply because of cost, (in the NR timeframe even) so having 500 alliance fighters in a battle would be a grand engagment indeed. for the empire which doesn't even train its tie fighter pilots (interceptor pilots are the ones that live) it makes much more sense to have huge amounts of fighters because the investment is small.

[Evenflow]

I agree with what he said ^^^^^

[spacemoose]

Yah, sounds good to me evilLE

[Britai]

Huge work ! :bow:
Do you know this very detailed website ?!
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/tie.html
(I havent checked in the 67 pages of the thread, sorry)

Just to say that your TIE Avenger looks as in "X-Wing vs TIE Fighter" (why such a big & distorted cockpit ? -> ugly), better looking for it there :
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/books/games/tieaveng1.gif
:mag:

... looking forward the next version of this amazing mod !

[Turgidson]

> Spacemoose

We can end this here. A bit too nerdy for other folks, I guess. ;)

> Evillejedi

Interesting, but also quite long. I'll answer you another day. ;-p

[Sortsiam]

Turgidson & Spacemoose- I find your debate very interesting, and I like the way you delved so deep into the physics of the thing, even though most information you found in books, games, or movies involved what I call "fake science", where they made up sophisticated technological jargon to explain away the impossibilities of such things as lightsabers or hyperspace travel. I suggest that if you want to continue, you should probably make a separate thread for it. I for one would like to see more of your arguments, since I am only in high school and am only right now learning basic physics, and am anxious to know as much as I can about anything I find interesting.

[wookieman]

when is the next rlease out please?

[Republic44]

I think he is waiting to be the 1000th post ;-).

[evillejedi]

nah 999 is such a cooler number, anyway I should be getting a bunch of stuff done tomorrow and thursday and thursday night the test release should be out to the testers. fighters should be less of a lag issue now that I made proper LODs for them(at least graphically, they still may cause AI slowdowns)

btw the new ninja gaiden is a great game (been playing that instead of studying) :ninja: