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Yeah, i was like "What?" before that edit XD(edit) And with that last line, I mean our original plan was clear up a harvester and a carrier for the Higaaran faction and get them into play. Not that I was suddenly and dramatically changing ship styles. (/edit)
I wonder what's next then! I really wanted to play around with a production ship, but whatever comes from you guys is welcome^^
Greetings folks. We're not dead, we've just had a setback or two, and gone back to school for the year. No, that doesn't mean we're not getting anything done.
Far from it! Let's get to the goodies and the general status update. General Vaygr Showcase
First off, we have the almost functional LOD0 of the Vaygr Gunship made by the equally talented and opinionated Kaelis, who unfortunately will be unable to finish the rest of the LODs.
Also, we've run into a rather odd and horrific snag. Siber has been literally smashing his head against the engine textures for days on end, they utterly refuse to function properly. The technical details are more of his forte than mine, so if anyone's curious I'll leave it to him.
Ahem. The Gunship. We haven't got the in-universe description really ready to rock yet. The gist of it is that it is unique compared to the standard corvette-class vessels in the Homeworld paradigm; as you can see the majority of its weaponry is concentrated to the front. The twin heavy centerline fixed cannon are railguns. They don't have quite the accuracy of the familiar turreted cannons of the Higaaran corvettes, but they'll get the job done. The smaller turrets are short ranged autocannon instead of electromagnetic cannon and while they are inaccurate, they are sufficient for creating a large amount of fire. Gunship swarms will put up quite an impressive amount of flak.
Additionally, the Gunships are not quite as heavily armored as the Corvettes on the Higaaran side. Where Higaaran corvettes are a balance of speed, maneuverability, firepower, and durability, Vaygr gunships focus on speed and firepower with their maneuverability and armor suffering somewhat. The rear turret helps alleviate this somewhat, but not entirely. Seriously, I want you guys to marvel at the insanely good job Kaelis did. Here's my original concepts:
glide view, side view, and top view.
Here's the current concepts I have ready for the vaygr. You'll note the bigger ships and WIPs are all linework instead of hand-drawn images. That's for a multitude of reasons; I don't own a scanner so any concepts I do over the summer I need to hand draw in photoshop and also because as I've learned in the modelling phase it helps if they have images detailing the geometry and the geometry alone. We decided early on to make a break from the HW2 vaygr almost completely and try and use some less common themes to flesh out this new race. We're hoping to try and work a lot with radial symmetry and cylinders, two things that saw relatively limited use in the HW1 lineup and would ideally make the Vaygr a distinctive and aesthetically striking new species to play with in our project. But enough jibber-jabber. On with the pictures!
Vaygr Assault Shuttle, side and top. Sorry for the wierdness in the image. You can see the heavy ram prow for crashing into the ship to be captured.
Vaygr Flare Gunship, side and top. As I finish the Heavy Gunship concepts, the engines on the Flare Gunship will be redone to fit in. A specialist assault ship focusing on a pair of powerful, unique projectile weapons.
Vaygr Ion Array Frigate, side and top lines. Built with captured pirate technology. There will eventually also be a Vaygr Ion Cannon Frigate.
Vaygr Destroyer, side, top, and bottom lines.
And some shots showing how these designs evolve:
Vaygr Destroyer mid version and early version. You can see that the frigate design spun off from the destroyer about there in the design process. The very first iteration looked like this, which returned for the finished IAF.
Stay tuned next (while) for some more goodies, though you may have noticed a few of our other projects showing up in the gunship screenies. Maybe next week. Probably next week. But I make no promises. Our hopes of getting production and fighter-class units ingame for the Higaarans are still priority numero uno, we just went through some design... hiccups. And also, physics homework. Hope you've enjoyed what you've seen so far!
Wow... That's a really cool looking / designed ship. I like it!
I also see the Bridge of Sigh's Gravity Well generator there in the background of one of the shots - also very cool.
I hope to be privileged enough to see more from you soon!
A Brave New Homeworld. (◔ ◡ ◔ )
Awesome! So that's how curvy surfaces get shaded in homeworld2! I knew you guys would suddenly jump out one day with more great works...i like the assault shuttle especially^^
The front-rear weapon setup on the Vaygr gunship is intriguing too, i wanna see how effective planned strikes will be on their weak points XP
Siber finally got the gunship's engines up and running. Now all that's left is LODding, which is ... as usual going to take a while. Here's some eye candy.
and another: dogfight!
We'll have this bad boy in action as soon as we can. Which is actually a lie, as we've got another little project going into action, namely, the hybrid interceptor. This one took quite a bit of designing, I have a couple of pages of horrific little sketched concepts you can look through if you so desire. But here's the finished concept.
The hybrid interceptor is designed to be compatible with carrier groups from the UNH and from the Republic of Taiidan, and was a joint project of the two. Of course, since the Triikor was such a sexy design, we'll be seeing some derivatives of it (such a widely used and effective fighter wouldn't simply disappear, after all). This ship, though, will be the mainstay of the Higaaran fighter force. Depending on how inspiration takes me, I may still decide we should scrap the offset cannon and have a thicker triple-gun along the centreline. The biggest threat in the first game to interceptors, past corvettes, were missile destroyers. These new hybrid interceptors will feature greater maneuverability and acceleration than the first generation of craft to help offset their deadly accuracy and prolong combat lifetime. The ability for allied fighter groups to dock for repairs and rearmaments at carriers of either nationality is a significant advantage and allows for much greater flexibility.
Unfortunately, we're a little short handed on the modelling side of things, so Siber's been dividing his attentions between fixing Kaelis's work with the gunship (and doing the LODs he refused to do) as well as getting started on the interceptor. Here's the current WIP, and we'll keep you posted on the progress.
Till we get the LODs on the gunship worked out, still no download link. But don't worry! It's coming soon.
Last edited by Avatar II; 5th Oct 08 at 8:46 PM.
Looking, amazing guys!
Whoopsie! Fixed the link to the interceptor WIP.
An addendum: Sexy-ass new higher resolution.
Very cool.. All the ships definitely have the "Homeworld 1" feel I think you were going for.
Can't wait for the next playable release!
hey guys i was woundeirng if i might use the frigate in post 1 and the destroyer in post 26 in my mod the Beast evolution mod as a singleplayer only element of coarse all credit will be given to this mod team if you choosed to allow it heres the mod thread http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=204422 thansk again
-moleman
Yup, you can. As outlined in our policy elsewhere in this thread, you're free to use and modify our stuff. We appreciate you letting us know and giving us credit. Good luck if you plan to put beast textures on there, the UVs are sometimes strange
More generally, here's your weekly weekend update.
Still heavily in progress, of course.
Co-founder of Homeworld:@
Open to new members
alright thanks again
im really hoping for a higaran or taiidan carrier to come out soon, id love to see a remake of the original Kushan turtle carrier
#64
Oh god, intie love.
Fuckin' gansta.
I'd like to see the Somtaaw Carrier...
10% of life is what happens to you and 90% is what you DO about it
Man id like to see all your work once your done! =P any ETA on the final batch?
Moleman and gthompsn: Carriers aren't too far off. We've got a mockup for the Higaarans more or less ready to rock, and I had a brainwave that I'm going to turn into some larger sketches for an upgraded "turtle" carrier more in line with the other planned new Higaaran capital ships. The Taiidani carrier has unfortunately not piqued my inspiration as of yet, but it's only a matter of time before I get to it.
I've focused my creative direction almost exclusively on the Higaarans and the Vaygr, so I'm afraid I have no ideas for a somtaaw carrier at the moment. I've seen some really excellent artwork by Riess (at least... I believe) that I quite like. I personally felt that the Somtaaw capital ships were a bit too boxy in Cataclysm so any redesigns I do will probably be significant departures from the originals.
CloudAge: That of course depends on your definition of "final batch". The easiest answer is "when it's done". The final Vaygr gunship... well, who knows. Kaelis has restarted work on LODs after some pretty intense heckling and cajoling. After that I'm probably going to go over it with a fine tooth comb statwise and FXwise; the Vaygr use cruder weapons than the others, so I'm going to try for some SFX and visuals that will help distinguish them. ETA on that is probably a week at least. I'm in the middle of a hellish semester of college, Kaelis has his own other projects, and Siber is pretty busy at times too.
The final batch of Higaaran ships... well, we've got quite a bit planned for 'em. We're hoping to have at least as many ships that are as unique and interesting as was in the Kushan fleet in Homeworld 1, along with a few newcomers. Definately no ETA there, I'm afraid. As soon as we humanly can deliver for certain.
And the final version of HW@? Whoo... well, we intend to replace every feature of the game with our own content, and tons of it. Animatics, voice acting, music, FX, total UI and AI overhaul, a really silly amount of ships, and single player campaign. This project is to make a worthy second Homeworld game, so just imagine everything that a Homeworld game should have. That's what we're planning to do.
Why dream small? We started with nothing and then with nothing but copious time and patience have gotten this far. Whose to say we can't go all the way?
In general: Thank you all for your comments! I can't tell you how motivating and wonderful it is to see people taking interest in what used to be (and still for the most part is) a crazy pipedream.
I just want to second that. Seeing that people here are genuinely interested in seeing where this goes has really helped me gain some traction with the project again.In general: Thank you all for your comments! I can't tell you how motivating and wonderful it is to see people taking interest in what used to be (and still for the most part is) a crazy pipedream.
And remember, if you have skills and want to pitch in, just let us know.
Avatar II and Siber : glad to see you still plugging away at things. I have some ideas for the carriers, but will PM you about them.
WORDSTORM
Gthompsn: Thanks for your PM! However, I would prefer suggestions being posted in the thread for a couple of reasons. One, it makes one fewer place I need to check for feedback and suggestions. And two, my inbox is of limited size, this thread is of a practically unlimited size. Plus it avoids the paradox of posting in the thread saying that you aren't posting your suggestions in the thread.
ON SUBSYSTEMS:
We're going to be avoiding subsystems as much as possible; Homeworld 2 doesn't support subsystem destruction. Nor can we do even the most basic building animations. It amuses me that in HW:C, a game that is heinously awful to try and modify, "subsystems" (module-class ships) at least had death events. The lack of death and damage events is going to dramatically limit our usage of them. It's quite possible to have seamless integration of subsystems into a ship, but it still poses some issues. One thing we want to avoid is achilles's heels for the big ships (with potential exceptions for single player campaigns).
This seems like an illogical thing to do. The thought of weak points the underdog can exploit to win in a stacked fight sounds good initially, but I'm convinced that it's no good. Adding destroyable weapons subsystems or damageable engines amounts to reducing the aggregate hit points of their parent ship. Let 's look at an example. My Higaaran Cruiser's packing 90,000 hit points. Let's say you can target the ion turrets and energy turrets. Using the logical gameplay rules that 1) the turrets have significantly less hit points than the ship they're mounted on and 2) turret armor shouldn't be massively more effective than hull armor, we reduce the damage required to remove the cruiser from the fight from 90,000 hit points to the combined hit points of its subsystems (which is probably closer to 15,000). Additionally, we've made the number of mouse-clicks the player attacking the cruiser has to make (number of weapons subsystems) times larger, as before he only needed assign an attack order against the cruiser. Never mind there now is NO REASON to attack cruiser directly. Potentially you could be clever and balance the accuracy of weapons against subsystems so that the damage over time ((damage * normalized accuracy) / rate of fire in seconds) is identical for subsystem attacks as it is in direct attacks against the ship. This still makes subsystem attacks better, because as you blow away subsystems the cruiser's ability to fight back decreases. We could overcompensate, and make accuracy so low that it takes LESS time to drain the 90,000 hit points than it does to pick off the turrets, but now it's more efficient to attack the ship directly and in competitive play nobody will attack the subsystems that have been painstakingly placed.
Combine this with salvage mechanics (it's a lot easier to steal a toothless cruiser) and any other special mechanics we have and balancing becomes A LOT less fun.
While I'm not averse to the concept of subsystems in general, we're going to proceed by FIRST sticking as close to the functional HW1 gameplay model as possible, and THEN doing controlled, small deviations from it. While HW1 was simplistic, it was also quite consistent. HW2 was massively inconsistent in its treatment of subsystems (WHY GOD CAN'T I DISABLE THE DAMN TRINITY CANNON ON THE VAYGR BATTLECRUISER?!!) and instead of adding a new tactical element, it just added another layer of micro for players to worry about. As another aside, I'm quite disappointed that HW2 only allows one dock path per shipclass on a ship. One idea I really wanted to have is that larger carriers (motherships) would be preferable as they could have more docking bays and thus launch or recover their fighter wing faster. Unless a magical gremlin gives us access to the HW2 source code, it looks like this (along with exploding subsystems and time compression) is completely unpossible.
ON AESTHETICS:
Your aesthetic ideas do sound very similar to my own in many respects. The Higaaran carrier is going to incorporate some of the changes planned for the Higaaran cruiser, and will be appreciably larger than the HW1 original. It will also feature something sorely lacking from the original; namely weapons that do not suck. Cruiser-class Carriers are not front line battleships, though, and weapons will always be secondary on them. Enough of their interior is taken up by construction equipment and fighter bays that instead of scaling up the ship to arm it heavily, it's more economical to simply have the carrier build mobile defenses on site. Now, as we get to larger construction ships, that may change. For example, you can bet that the Higaaran mothership will be able to fend off some fighters.
We'll see how the Taiidani and Somtaaw carriers proceed.
hey guys jsut wanted to show off some of your work if ya dont mind i slapeed the frigate and destroyer int my mod like you guys said i could and took them fro a test run with my new race the Kushan, this is an image of the fleet the next release will feature the kushan as a singleplayer race and as a multiplayer reace fro demonstration purposes, the new race consists of the ships below:
kus_interecptor
kus_attackbomber
kus_assaultcorvette
kus_assaultfrigate(yours)
kus_destroyer(yours)
kus_carrier
kus_battlecruiser
kus_resourcecollector
kus_probe
heres a pic of the fleet in mission 1/ mulltiplayermission:resurection
and heres a pic of them wiping the floor with normal hiigaran ships
just a little thing i found dont know itf its a bug or not, but when the frigate and/or destroyer go to make a sudden turn they tend to turn on their side and then come back up to normal position is there a way to fix this or waas it supposed to be that way? also no infection will be applied to these bad boys their too pretty to modify
It is always nice to see those red ions laying about in a fight. As to the maneuvering question, I don't remember if that behavior was a goal or not, but I don't consider it a problem that needs fixing.
it just looks kinda awkward with a destroyer thats fallen over ya know
You guys are simply amazing. I only wish I could offer more than moral support. (curse not paying attention in my 3d modeling classes.)
Best of luck to you though. and I look forward to the day (whenever it may be) that I can play through the HW2 campaign with an awesome looking Kushan Navy.
Avatar II : I understand. I didn't want to clutter the discussion boards with something that may or may not have been of any relevence. As I mentioned in the PM, I think there is a way to make subsystems behave as if they are part of the ship (using key words like "Innate" and "Indestructable"). I don't remember exactly where I saw that being done (probably EvilleJedi's StarWars:Rebellion mod), but if you do find the right parameters to use, then there is no way to tell that those are subsystems.
I detest targetable subsystems myself, but if you can do the above, the job of making models for each of the different variants becomes a lot easier.
Cool, the fighter up here looks really cool.
In regards to the ships having only one dock point per shipclass, i didnt think this over carefully, but couldnt you make every ship to have its own class, while still keeping the groups in the UI menu? (depends how hardcoded that is)
I didn't know the docking paths were so limited and it's indeed disappointing...i will never see gargantuan transport ships with seas of fighters...
About your dreams for the project, if i can say it, i would like more to see your project be completed than an eventual HW3.
Reading Moleman's post i thought that, as soon as the next ships' pack and/or a production ship are out, you could make a single multiplayer mission as a show-off, with bits of story for a possible future campaign, like a prologue^^ (it could also be a good training for the overmentioned campaign)
One of those in a while after that would be awesome~
Lastly, why don't you put up a rooster with the different tasks or jobs you would like applicants for?
Adhira: You seriously read our minds.
The first mission doesn't require very many ship types, and if you've payed attention to stuff in the backgrounds of these screenshots you might figure out some details of it. I have a friend here at school I'd like to tag in with to do some of the drawings for the intro animatics, but we can definately get started on the actual mission fairly soon.
Multiple classes are sadly not going to fix the dock/launchpath issue. See, let's say we have a shipclass for interceptors, for scouts, for bombers, etc., each with their own launch and dockpath. If you have equal amounts of inties scouts and bombers they all launch simultaneously. But if you have tons of one shipclass, they still only launch one at a time, cause they're all interceptors.
ROSTER OF OPEN POSITIONS:
*Somebody who knows how to make animations that actually fecking work
*Somebody with mission editor experience (although given enough time I can do that). Making NIS go is a priority.
*Hundreds of modelers and texturers. We have a few texture touchup projects, but I'm busy concepting and will switch back to full time texturing once Siber finishes the interceptor. We have a large number of concepts that could be modeled. Literally, almost any number of texturers or modelers would be great.
*Female voice actors (voice actresses?)
Hey look! Files! But first, incoming fluff.
(CTL) Javelin-class Light Gunship
A light craft spotted first by our Republican allies to the far galactic south. The Republican pilots that faced the craft dubbed it Javelin-class after its long and narrow central hull and sharp features. The Javelin is one of the first craft fielded by a previously unknown species calling itself the Vaygr and typifies their design philosophy.
An unconventional craft, the Javelin is smaller and faster than any known Corvette-class vessel while significantly outmassing any known Fighter. Like a Fighter it has heavy spinal electromagnetic cannon, these configured like the turreted cannon on the Spirit to propel heavy slugs accurately. These twin spinal guns are quite lethal against any fighter in its path, and can deliver considerable damage to other corvettes or capital ships. These heavy, but primitive guns are supplemented by a trio of turreted vulcan cannon.
The vulcan turrets on the Javelin are inaccurate and short-ranged, but quite deadly to small craft. Two are positioned on either side of the main weapons array and one guards the rear of the craft from pursuers. It is suspected that the Vaygr must have a large number of craft with such short ranged armaments if they consider one of these rear turrets to be adequate defense, and cautions pilots to maintain maximum effective range in combat against all Vaygr ships. Javelins are highly vulnerable to rear attacks by large squadrons of interceptors, and standard Corvettes are quite effective against them.
end story!
Made by the indomitable and mysterious Kaelis, from concepts by Talhydras, you've already seen pictures of this lovely beast here. It is available for download, along with the previous ships and our selection of CnlPepper's shaders, here, on our new modDB page. Also included in the packages is the story pieces attached to our ships, and several other pieces of our backstory. Subject to change as we move forward, of course.
Enjoy!
Oh joy~
Downloading now!
I like the new Vaygr gunship a lot, the way that rear gun mows interceptors is hilarious and the rounded design is refreshing!
My favorite ships are still the spirit-class corvette and the assault frigate though^^
I noticed the new damage effects, they are pretty good and I found them useful for identifying damaged ships in the bunch without having to select all the fleet 30 times per minute...regardless of this, perhaps they are a bit too frequent (it's scary to see my poor corvettes produce so much smoke while still having half hull-integrity-bar.)
I also liked the documentation included in the package, even if I believe I found few little mistakes (being the canon fanatic I am) in the Homeworld history part.
If I manage to get the tools I'm looking for, I'll apply as animator.. (I can't really use MadEd and CfHoded properly v_v...)
Continue the great job^^~
Last edited by Adhira; 22nd Oct 08 at 2:04 PM.
Glad you enjoyed it! I'm curious about the canon errors. Please, let's hear them so we can fix them, or at least sufficently rationalize them.
I hope you figure out the animations, because boy do I have no idea what else to try with them on my end.
What's exactly your problem with animations then? :o On my side, i miss tools for maya 6.0, which i own, or to figure out which version of milkshape works correctly with the .hod/.mad exporter plugin.
Now to canon:
(i may be well wrong on these, so if you know better or have doubts, ill go read the original documentation again XP)
1) The name "Kushan" appears to have been born on Kharak and not in the ancient Hiigaran Empire. They supposedly forgot everything but primitive familiar bonds about they past. (the kiithid)
2) There is no direct information about the balance of power when the ancient empire of Hiigara existed. Apparently they always held a noticeably smaller region than the Taiidan, although a far richer one.
3) The Hiigarans didn't really get pushed back by the Taiidan. Their fleet was detroyed by the Bentusi when they attempted to take them over, so they couldn't stop the Taiidan after. (this is in HW2 documentation, which was supposed to be canon, but wasn't 100% coherent in the end, since it talks about unique hyperspace cores, while in HW1 a cutscene clearly says that the hyperspace core in the Mothership was back-engineered)
4) Apparently the exiles didn't search for Hiigara, they were directly sent to it by the Council, so the Taiidan always knew where they were exiled. (but it could be just misinterpretation from my side)
Aha! I have perfectly good explanations for that. Point 1 is something that I don't think is supported in Homeworld 1 or Cata anywhere(see points 3 and 4 below for more on that), but if you can show me where I'm wrong in that, I'll listen. I will say though that it's a rare thing to have Earthan Empires, for good reason.
Point 2, we did a degree of invention here. Some of our storyline relates to past events that aren't explored in detail in existing material, so we made stuff up. With our position ourselves as a replacement sequel, I think if we didn't invent anything new, it'd be fairly bland, yes?
Points 3 and 4 can be covered also under the replacement sequel clause. The information that backs you up on both those points comes, and correct me if I'm wrong here, exclusively from Homeworld 2 and attached materials. We're ignoring those. We don't like really anything about Homeworld 2's story or what it added to the backstory, so we're doing all that over.
Any comentary on structure or tone are also welcome.
On to animations! In short, what's wrong with them is that I can't find anything wrong with them and they don't work. It's quite frustrating. I use MadEd.
I'll look into MadEd later then...by the way, your turn animation for the assault frigate works properly, no?
About the questions, i see what you mean and its satisfying like this, i just didn't think you would also ignore the background in the HW2 attached documents^^
I didn't say anything about the structure because it really reminds me of the original Homeworld manuals, so it's pretty good like this. (lol the [silly tv movie name])
Doh. I knew I should have looked over the readme for stuff I needed to polish/finish. Glad you were amused, though.(lol the [silly tv movie name])
Yes, the frigate and destroyer have animations when they turn. Funny story, so does the Vaygr battlecruiser. In completely unrelated news if you copy the .mad and .madstate files, rename them, edit the .madstate with a different ships name, and make sure this hypothetical new ship has the right joints present, the animation will work. Handy, that.
Hmm, how fares the new ships guys?
Still working on the mesh for the interceptor. We're in the stage where we're close to a usable ship, but two perfectionists get together and it takes a while to get through to the next stage. Also, both those perfectionists have school eating up time and energy.
That's where the interceptor is at.
One thing I would like to announce, though, is the arrival of Adhira on the team. In his short tenure he has made the frigate launch animation go, and has started cutting his teeth on our resource collector concept. His work is relatively preliminary, so I'm going to leave it up to him to decide if he wants to share it, but in the mean time I have been authorized to reveal this
The front view is a bit crooked, in that the sides aren't supposed to be slopped, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
Very nice, Indeed. The things you guys are doing, get better everyday! Adhira looks to have quite some talent and a worthy edition to your team! As always I'm looking forward to see your ships in action!
Not to steal Adhira's thunder, but credit where credit is due, the concept art for the resourcer is, as always, the work of the eminent Talhydras/Avatar. Adhira is working at translating it from pencil to verticies, as I have done in previous ships so far. Thanks for your enthusiasm, though.
Indeed, Siber is correct.
The harvester (internally dubbed "the Penguin" by the team for its characteristic flippers) features a number of significant improvements over the first generation Providence class collector. Instead of an integrated cargo bay, the new generation ship is two pieces: an adaptable "tug" frame like the old-style Taiidani ship, and a modular cargo pod. The pod is typically loaded with a supply of liquid water to serve as a coolant for the superhot plasma jet.
The tug frame is designed to directly combat a number of issues with the Providence class. The newer, more efficient fusion engines are on turrets which allows the craft unprecedented docking control when coupling with cargo modules or other objects, as well as better ability to orbit a target asteroid. The fins, far from being decorative, serve as enormous radiators to help dissipate waste heat from the fusion jets at the heart of the phased disassembler array. Harvesting efficiency is at 150% the Providence's rate, and an incredible 250% better than the Somtaaw "Worker". As the PDA's jet reduces asteroids and debris to their component elements, the water stored in the resource tank is pumped past the PDA and down through armored hoses to be vented as superheated steam.
In many respects the modern resource collector was a direct response to the Somtaaw "Worker" class. While fleet commanders were initially enamored of a one-size-fits-all utility craft, the harsh reality of things was that the "Worker" tried very hard to be good at nothing but passable at everything, and fell dramatically short. The armor density was critically low and there were no redundant systems to speak of in order to free up internal space, giving the Worker well under a third the combat durability of the original Providence. Internal space wasn't sufficient for a light strike team, a repair crew, and harvesting technicians so when pressed into duty as a combat salvage ship, the Worker had to rely exclusively on electronics warfare. Finally, the craft's undersized engines performed abysmally when pressed into the role of tug. Somtaaw fleets often had to employ dozens of the craft merely to eke by where Kiith Nabaal could field a pair of support frigates, a pair of Providence-class resource collectors, and a wing of salvage corvettes and have significantly better performance across the board.
This ship is one of the very, very few craft to be licensed to all spaceborn kiith for free, which was a political decision dramatically opposed by the more conservative kiith.
Originally Posted by Siber
Resource Collector looks great.
By any chance is there going to be a hull defense gun of some sort armed on it? I've always hated the idea of a ship having no kind of defense.
Hath anyone verily existed a stones throw unwavering quite assured to employ thee venture yonder desireth to become appear vastly similar?
No, unfortunately, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Hardcoded into the game, harvesting uses the same logic as attacking. So any ship with the harvesting ability can't have weapons.
Resource CONTROLLERS now, are another story entirely. Never mind carriers and motherships, etc.
This looks awesome, keep up the good work!
So, Tuesday I started working on something, just to tinker with as a break from the interceptor. Early this morning, that something looked like this.
That's right, it's another frigate. An ion frigate, to be precise. The mesh is complete at this point, and I'm currently in the process of unwrapping it. Prospects of getting that done tonight are looking good, at which point it goes to Avatar for texturing.
Here's a comparison with the existing frigate, made when the model wasn't quite done, so you may see some odd looking bits.
The resourcer is still in production, of course, and as soon as I finish up here I'll be right back to the interceptor.
Edit: One additional note of trivia, this ship was the first HW@ vessel drawn, literally years ago. It feels quite nice to get it into geometry form at last.
Last edited by Siber; 8th Nov 08 at 7:59 PM.
good job. I really like your concepts. One can see that they are similar to the Kushans, but have been modified a bit (upgraded if you will :-D )
Looks awesomely good, but, I always thought an unique beam based vessel should be a lil' bit longer than a turreted one.
Dunno if I make myself clear though.
My first guess is that you mean the fixed ion cannon should be longer than the turreted ones, and I have done comparisons with the destroyer ion cannons that confirm this as true.
If you mean that it should be bigger than the assault frigate, consider this. The Ion Cannon Frigate has one gun, engines, thrusters, reactors, maneuvering, and enough sensors to be able to point that gun at large targets, and only needs to be accurate in a narrow arc to the front. The Assault frigate has engines, thrusters, reactors, maneuvering, six guns, ammo storage and feeds for those six guns, turret mechanisms for those guns, senors to target a multitude of small fast targets in a 360 degree range, and two small wide angle beam weapons with enough power and accuracy to punch out incoming missiles, with the sensor support to be able to track those missiles. Added to that, the FFI is meant to sit on the outskirts of a fight and pound a target at distance, while the FFA is by it's very nature probably going to be embedded in a furball whenever it's being used properly, and thus probably ought to have a bit more overall armor and redundancy.
Depending on your choices for the size of beam weapon tech, it's perfectly possible that the ICF still comes out the bigger ship. In our fleet, however, that is not the case.
The very first thing I'm doing after my copy of HW2 turns up is downloading and installing this mod. Only thing I'm mildly concerned about is the lack of missiles on the Hiigaran designs I've seen so far; one of the best things about the Somtaaw capital ships in my opinion was their ability to hold their own against strikecraft or corvettes with their missile batteries, and HW2 struck me as a major step back from Cataclysm in terms of ship versatility.
Hey Jake!
Thanks for the sentiment, it's great to hear that people are interested in the project. Don't worry, there ARE missiles coming.
Let's talk about ship design for a second, cause this is a really interesting and important part of setting up the mod. Siber and I have both played through all three games, and we ultimately enjoyed the Homeworld 1 gameplay experience the most. More importantly, we feel that Homeworld 1 had the richest RTS gameplay of the three, a point that I concede could be debated from some length. Regardless, HW1 possessed something really important: functional balance, and easily digestible ship mechanics. You could easily rate ship firepower relative to one another by the number of ion beams, as that weapon did relatively consistent damage. Our first drafts of the mod will feature HW1 balancing or close-to-HW1 balancing. Later on, we intend to get more dangerous with our balancing, but the key philosophy here at HW@ is: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
This is of course mitigated by the need to innovate and add new things to the gameplay. We definately intend to do this with other races, but we feel that it's deeply important for the traditional races (Taiidani, Kushan Higaarans) to have familiar playing styles, ship architecture, and fleet organization. For the newcomer species, we have a clean slate to play with once we ditch HW2 from the canon. You can expect that there will be a significantly greater degree of difference between the UNH and the Vaygr than there was between the Kushan and the Taiidani, and there will be a number of unique factions for singleplayer that will break the rules.
On the subject of Cataclysm, I'd like to point out that far and away the best fighter-swatters in that game were ion cannons. I'm not talking about the dinky little popguns on the Somtaaw multibeam frigate, I'm talking about Taiidani cruisers. I salvaged like five or six of those and eight Taiidani destroyers and was literally immune to any scale of fighter assault. Before the missiles from my captured missile destroyer even made it to big fighter wings, the ions had accurately plucked entire fighter formations out of the sky.
Anyway, the real issue with Cataclysm was one of investment I feel. When your only options for capital ships are generalists, there's no depth to the development gameplay there. Instead of choosing between the greater firepower of a standard destroyer and the multirole effectiveness of a missile destroyer, you just get Generic Destroyer, which is decent at everything and ultimately kind of boring.
Really, the reason I zealously captured Taiidani ships instead of using their Somtaaw equivelants was not just because Taii ships cost between 1/2 to 1/3rd the SU that their Somtaaw equivelants do, but because there's only one unit of each class in the Somtaaw lineup that is effective. They only use Acolytes for fighters, only ACVs for corvettes, the only good frigate is the Hive Frigate, their only utility ship worth mass producing is the worker, and they only have one destroyer and cruiser. While HW1 had some silliness with scouts, interceptors, bombers, and defenders were all useful fighters. Heavy corvettes, salvage corvettes, repair corvettes, and minelayer corvettes were all useful without painful overlap. Ion and Assault frigates did dramatically different things, something we definately intend to develop more to make sure both are viable choices. Missile destroyer and standard destroyer do different stuff, and there's the cruiser at the top of the heap as a powerful ship that still needs support.
What we want is to make a fleet you fall in love with, not something where there's one clear "best" ship in any category. The end result is to force the player to invest wisely while still giving the player the option to specialize in his or her favorite field. There will be no one ship that when spammed is effective against everything. I'm not sure Homeworld 1 has balance that fulfills these requirements, but Siber and I feel out of the three HW games it comes the closest and makes a great jumping off point towards it.
PS: While we're on the subject of coding pie in the sky, we'd love to hear any suggestions for ship mechanics. One thing few people credit Cataclysm with is for trying new stuff. Their leech, mimic, infection, energy shields, and ship combination mechanics are all to varying degrees silly, but they're new on top of the traditional HW1 repair, salvage, lay mines, etc. We'd like to innovate in this sense too, not just with ship stats and weapons but with abilities. Any suggestions people care to submit for them would be more than welcome!
Super Double PS: Don't worry, there will be screenshots of cool new stuff soon.
I know what you mean, though I would like to see some middle way between the Jack-of-all-trades approach of Cataclysm and HW2's painfully narrow specialisation. And I must say my experience with ion cannons in Cataclysm was radically different, possibly because my strikecraft always engaged in Evasive mode; another thing that always bugged me about Taiidani and Kushan capital ships was their absolutely lousy turret coverage.
And if you get any suggestions for said game mechanics -swarmers, ramming and the Siege Cannon in particular- then do pass them on; I've been scratching my head over the same thing for my own mod.
I encourage you to try capturing a taiidani armada. After the third mission, disabling infection of Taiidani heavy cruisers helps a lot. Then the game REALLY breaks, cause you can get a heavy cruiser at the end of the nebula mission for a pittance of SU (little more than a Processor). Heck, dude, just play a skirmish and build nothing but somtaaw destroyers. If you report that the slow 600 meters/sec missiles of the Somtaaw kill more fighters than their no-miss ions, I will probably demand video evidence. Siber and I just played a coop game with nine taii cruisers, and it was RIDICULOUS.
I'm not sure I quite understand how you can criticize the taiidani and kushan turret coverage when the repulsor upgrade blocks the lower dreadnought ion turret. Dreadnought ion cannons DO have full 360 coverage, but Somtaaw Destroyer ions are fixed. Taiidani destroyer ions have something like a 70 degree arc, and kushan destroyer ions are even better.
Buuut, it's not that relevant in the long run. Like I said, we're building off of what was best in our opinion. We have no real idea what the final stats and armaments of our ships will be. If you feel truly motivated to experiment, we DO make data releases and have no problems with you experimenting on your own.
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