R.E.A.R.M. -alpha 0.0.3c

[GBscientist]

Pouk, I have two more suggestions (that you'll probably turn down) for your consideration:

1) Don't give the Vaygr a Battleship. I know you've said you want to make big ships, so you probably won't take this suggestion, but please read my reasoning before throwing out this idea. The Vaygr are more about lots of small, fast ships than they are about big ships. If the Battlecruiser is their biggest warship, then they have to build more of them to compete with a single Hiigaran Battleship. A Supercarrier is really the best big ship for the Vaygr because it fits their swarming style.

2) Make Modular Destroyer Research an upgrade of the regular Destroyer hull, rather than its own hull design. Once Modular Destroyers are researched, you can still build a regular Destroyer for the same cost as before, but it will actually be a Modular Destoryer outfitted with the same weapons as a regular Destroyer (that can be replaced if needed). Empty Modular Destroyer hulls could still be a build option, as well. This plan allows Modular Destroyers and regular Destroyers to both benefit when armour and engine research for Destroyers is done.

On another note, if you would like any help with writing build tree and reseach tree descriptions, I'd be happy to assist. I've got no modelling or scripting skills, but I'm a pretty good writer.

[Pouk]

1) Problem is that Hiigaran Battleships are so hard to design, while I can be producing decent Vaygr ones one by one...
Also yes, Hiigaran should be built around large ships and Vaygr around strikecrafts, but Vaygr BC is to me superior to the Hiigaran BC, the same goes for both destroyers, so I wouldn't say they don't know how to build large capital ships. If it will help you I can make them much harder to build on the Vaygr side, but you're missing my motivation for this. I don't know how to explain it well, but I really don't care if anyone will ever build the Vaygr Battleship, ever. What I want here is to make my designs I drew because I like them, I want to create specific ships from my sketchbook, not to make Vaygr superior to Hiigaran in large ships. I just want to model this thing and see it in game. So I'm sorry, I won't cancel something I'm really looking forward to make just for the joy of making it and which is part of my motivation to finish the mod, just because you don't want Vaygr to have heavy ships. Do you see what I'm trying to say?

2) What would be the point? I don't want subsystems when they are not necessary and on the normal DD they are definitelly not needed. What are you trying to achieve here? To make their research shared? It already is shared, once you research DD armor, the MDD armor is upgraded as well.

3) But I would still have to tell you what I want you to write, it's not much less work then. I could really need a grammar correction or possibly to say something in more normal way (like this very sentence which is said in a totally awkward way). But let me think.

[GBscientist]

1) I didn't realise that you had already designed your Vaygr Battleship. I do not want you to scrap something you're already emotionally invested in. I agree with you that the best way to keep players focused on the core play-style of the Vaygr while including your capital designs (which I do think are impressive, by the way) is to make them significantly more expensive than their Hiigaran counterparts.

2) My point is that once the Modular Destroyer is researched, the regular Destroyer is obsolete and not very useful. When I play REARM, I don't even bother building regular Destroyers and I go straight for Modular Destroyers with specialised weapon loads because the weapons of a regular Destroyer are ineffective by comparison. I realise that some people will have a use for a regular Destroyer even after the Modular is designed, so my suggestion was an attempt to create a compromise.

The other way you could do it is simply to have all Modular Destroyers come out of the factory armed with the weapons of a regular Destroyer. That way they are not defenseless when they emerge but are still flexible.

3) I see your point about having to write everything anyway. I would be happy to help by editing for spelling and grammar if that is what you want.

[Pouk]

2) I see. Yes, that is completelly true, no one has any motivation to build normal Destroyers (and the very high price of the modular destroyer components don't seem to matter). But it's like with the Artillery frigates, I had plenty of messages how painfull is to scrap all the missiles to rearm the ship, I still think that making the empty destroyer is the best solution, because no one wants to remove all the weapons so he can build their own.
I would rather find a new motivation to build the normal destroyer, to make it useful again. There will be a solution to Modular Destroyer situation: Ion destroyer which will be easy to manage and pretty strong (about 1400 damage) so people may skip the MDD if only thing they want is the firepower, but it doesn't solve the normal Destroyer situation. What I can do is to give them some upgrade MDD won't get.
For example there will be the research station and another level of research for everyone. Hiigaran will get more armor, Vaygr more firepower, it will be research for very specific abilities. I've already made level 3 armor for both DD and MDD. I could remove the MDD research so only Destroyer can be armored to level 3 (which would also make a lot of sense, because the ship is solid while MDD is universal). I would like that and I'll probably do it.

3) If this is enought for you, I'll finish some lines and I'll send you the text files together with testing version of 0.0.3c. I would really be glad for such help, because there was no grammar correction yet and I feel that the mod is full of awkward english which I want to awoid.

[Kalamain]

Give the basic DD more speed.

The MDD is going to be much heavier and loaded out...So it will be slower because more power from the engines is being used to power the guns.

The edge the DD can have is the basic one....It can get into the fight with the rest of the much faster fleet. I tend to find that my DDs (And MDD's) lag behind my fighter/corvette screen. And if I try using the formation to keep my ships in tight it takes an age to move the group and it can be out manoeuvred or out flanked.

So...Speed.

[Pouk]

Macmodder suggested to give certain modules the speed penalty, which I think is a great idea. So the heavier loadout you have, the slower you are.

But in general I agree, speed is a good factor.

[MacModder]

Just remember: if you are targeting a mothership (which, in the end, is the goal of the game) it doesn't matter how fast you are above 75 m/s or so. The mothership will still be there.

Pouk, is it at all possible to make it cost efficient to take down a mothership without super capital vessels?

[Pouk]

Cost efficient? Not really not yet. You can avoid building large ships by attacking with bunch of Artillery frigates spawning minetraps, but that's anything but cost efficient.
Hiigaran can attack with cloaked bombers, which is surprisingly efficient and it doesn't cost that much, so maybe this.

[GBscientist]

I have a small criticism regarding the Armed Refinery. The two double ion turrets feel too big for the ship to me. If you think about it, the Mobile Refinery hull is just big enough to fit all of the equipment for refining, so where does the Armed Refinery, which uses exactly the same hull, get the extra space to hold and power those ion cannons? To remedy the small logical disconnect here, you could either stretch the Armed Refinery to make it a bit bigger, or scale down the gun turrets to single ion cannons or pulsars.

I've also been giving some thought to the whole carrier issue and I've come to agree with you, Pouk. When I play Hiigarans, I don't want a small carrier in with my fighting fleet because I want my interceptors and bombers to completely disengage from the fight when they go to dock, so using a larger carrier further from the fighting works better.

On the other hand, I do have an idea for a Hiigaran Support Frigate that' completely different from the Vaygr one. Since the Hiigarans are mostly about big ships, their Support Frigate should focus on assisting big ships, not fighters. So, my idea for a Hiigaran Support Frigate is a lightly-armed and thinly armoured frigate with one sensor slot, one module slot, and possibly a small hangar for making probes (and platforms if the module slot is filled with a Platform Control Module). That would give the Hiigarans access to abilities that they would normally have to bring in a Carrier or Battlecruiser to access, but at the cost of using a vulnerable, fragile ship.

[MacModder]

Amusing idea: Gravwell fighters.
If you think this sounds weird, just consider the scouts. They are basically flying advanced sensor modules.
Needless to say, a gravwell fighter would be cheaper, vulnerabler, and less powerful than a gravity well module. But think of the tactical aspect of it!

By the way, is it possible to bring back the ability to harvest nebulae (see Homeworld 1 and Cataclysm) or is that impossible with HW2 code? If it is possible, that might be an interesting thing to see in REARM

[Pouk]

GBscientist:
Double Ions. Similar to the topic MacModder just said, that is unrealistic ability given to way too small vessel. True is that this is again one of my oldest ships, so it didn't make that much sense yet, but I'm not really planning to change it. Basically there are some ships and thing which just don't deserve it. For example when I was making the Defense field module for MDD, at first I didn't make it animated, the only reason I changed it was the very high demand for it. I'm glad I did it now, but I still feel like I was wasting my time, the module just didn't deserve that level of attention.
Now the refinery. They are all weaker then they could be, but their statistics and weapon damage fits, they are not made to be looked at. And to be honest, I've seen much worse, I won't name but I did.
I'm not saying I don't care, I'm saying I'm one man and I need to be realistic, there must be certain level of detail and care. And the line can't be crossed not only on the low level, but also on the high level (if that's make sense).

OK.

My plan with them (which I almost forget to be honest) was to make two variations (again). One Repair and one Cloaked. Now I don't know if I wanted the repair one to be modular, I've managed to forget that detail, but it should repair capital ships. I'm not sure how I'll do it. But then there was something else I need to remember about, I think was about to give this ability to the Drone frigate as well.
BTW are you talking about all these subsystem on a frigate size ship with hangar (which is ridiculously small ship for this job already) at the same time? Never happen. One maybe, I was thinking about one subsystem except I don't remember what conclusion I got to, but two or three are insane.

MacModder:
Gravwell fighter? Well, I honestly don't see the logic, but it is something which would work on races as Turanic or Kadeshi. It could be on Kadeshi.

Yeah I'd like to base a big part of Kadeshi on Nebula or Dust cloud mining, that was an actual plan. Except I'm not capable of doing it myself. I guess you could script such this, gaining resources while standing in the cloud or something (not sure about actually telling AI that such activity is resourcing), but I'd like to have that.

[droideka95]

Hey Pouk, it is Indeed Droideka95 from Moddb. Just a question, what's the latest release, is the file on Moddb the latest one?

[Pouk]

It is the newest one, but it's pretty old. I'm working on the next release.

[GBscientist]

Pouk, my idea was to have 1 sensor, 1 module, and the hangar all on the Support Frigate at the same time so that it could be a multi-purpose utility support vessel. To counter that massive amount of abilities, it would be as weak as the Defence Field Frigate.

If sensors, modules, and a hangar is too much, I suppose you could put the sensors and modules on separate ships. From my point of view, sensor subsystems and module subsystems are not very big. A frigate could easily carry one of each and a probe hangar if it was stripped of almost all weapons. If you remain convinced that my idea shoves too many things onto a frigate hull, my idea could be used as a Support Destroyer instead.

In your idea of Cloaked and Repair support frigates, what would the Cloaked Frigate do besides cloak, and what would the Repair Frigate do besides repair? If you wanted to make a cloaked sneak-attack frigate, like the Turanic Assassin ion frigates from Cataclysm, that would be cool, but it's not really a support frigate role. A Repair frigate might be interesting, but the simple repair role is already held by Resource Collectors, so a Repair Support Frigate would have to do something else, as well.

Giving the Drone Frigate the ability to deploy repair drones to fix other ships would be a very cool idea. As you might guess, I'm really a fan of multi-purpose ships.

[Pouk]

Aren't you forgetting that I'm not gonna take the figter repair ability away from them? Original Supposrt frigates were repairing fighters as well, so I don't see a problem.

[GBscientist]

Oh. I thought from your dislike of Hiigaran Light Carriers that you were going to remove fighter repair from the Hiigaran Support Frigate's tasks. My mistake.

[Pouk]

I do dislike light Carrier for Hiigarans, that's 100% true. But from totally different reasons, I just don't want to give them the cheap production, I want keep cheap carriers as a Vaygr thing, that's it.
I want similar designs to old Support frigate only with internal hangar, if nothing else then at least from the nostalgic reasons.

[tadamir]

-just want to quickly comment on an old subject a few posts up;

-The MDD may make the regular DD obsolete, but the AI still builds regular DD's.
-I like playing an AI that actually builds ships that can fight.
-At this stage it seems getting the AI to build all these wonderful subsystems Pouk's made for various ships is a little tricky.

Leaving the stock Hgn DD's as they are means we get to fight them, not blank MDDs'.

[GBscientist]

I hadn't realised that was a problem, tadamir, because I always play as Hiigarans against a Vaygr AI. Thanks for explaining it to me.

Pouk, I have an idea to help with your Support Frigate planning. Put the fighter repair hangar on the capital repair frigate so that you can have a dedicated Repair Frigate.

I'm confused by your plan for a Cloaked Support Frigate. A Cloaked Frigate with a couple of short-range, really powerful weapons would be interesting, though, because it could act like a submarine.

A second idea for a Support Frigate that could fit the requirement for a Cloaked Support Frigate would be to make a frigate with a module slot. That would be a pretty limited frigate, so I suggest also adding a sensor slot to create a Modular Support Frigate. In this plan, the Modular Support Frigate would not have a fighter repair hangar because that role would be filled by the Repair Frigate I described above.

[Pouk]

GBscientist:
You: "Put the fighter repair hangar on the capital repair frigate so that you can have a dedicated Repair Frigate."

Me several posts above:
"One Repair and one Cloaked. ...but it should repair capital ships."
"Aren't you forgetting that I'm not gonna take the figter repair ability away from them? Original Support frigates were repairing fighters as well, so I don't see a problem."
You're completelly forgeting what I said, beacause otherwise you wouldn't come repeating me back the concept I told you a few posts before.

Cloaked Support frigate was meant to be a support for Cloaked Fighters. That's it.

You're keep pushing your modular Support Frigate. Just stop. I've already told you that it was possible to have one module for it, once I remember what I actually wanted to do with then and if that was the plan. Or just think about the whole matter again.
But what makes you think that I already haven't plans for modular special purpose or electronic warfare frigate/s? Why do you think there won't be any more frigates in the frigate heavy race?

[GBscientist]

Sorry, Pouk. I got carried away. I won't make any more suggestions.

I still don't see the point of a cloaked support frigate, though, even if it is to support cloaked fighters. A support frigate has up until now been too slow to make good use of a cloak because the cloak would run out of energy while the frigate is still too close to the enemy. I would probably just use a regular support frigate positioned well away from the enemy.

[Pouk]

Sorry for my reaction if it was too strong, I was tired.

That point doesn't work, because the support frigate can serve only a single fighter squadron and for reasonable use you would need at least a pair of them. It's a lot of micro (which is with cloaked bombers anyway), but those two would cloak each other.

Anyway, I don't care, if you people don't want cloaked support frigates, less work work me. One support frigate and that's it, I can live with it and I don't actually mind you telling me at all, you at least saved me a work on a ship no one would use (at least so it seems, no one else said otherwise). If it was something I would care about, I wouldn't let go of it, but this ship is just a minor detail I thought would be nice.
If you're just trying to make some place for the modular support frigate, then sorry it won't work. As I said, It is sitll possible (for example if the capship repairing would be an ability activated by subsystem), but probably not. Note that the final decision will be unbiassed on any outside influences and based only on my subjective point of view.

[tadamir]

@ GBscientist;
aha, playing only as Hgn you probably never come across that then, fair enough.

Sorry if my tone was a little.. harsh? I can only post from net-cafes lately;
Rushed posting = less tact, for me anyway, didn't mean to discourage or anything.

@Pouk; I care!

Plus, you were talking about Platforms and what to do with them a while ago, have you seen this?
It could suggest a solution?



I can't recall where I found the image or who to credit it to, sorry.
It's obviously a Platform Carrier, that can transport 9 Platforms to a dispersal point.

What do you think of it?

I always liked the idea and wish I could credit it to whomever did it, anyone know?

[Pouk]

You care so you want Cloaked Support Frigates or... ? you just care.

Oh yeah, I remember that! I think the concept was a little different, I think it was supposed to have platforms as a part of its armament. What I mean is that the primary role was carrier with detachable modular weapons, not the platform carrier for platforms ...if that makes any kind of sense at all.
But it could work either way, it probably doesn't even matter.

I like the idea. I don't like the idea of stealing the idea, but I like it.
Problem is that I have no idea how could it work with the given platform system. With this concept, they would probably have to definitelly lose the one-shot move, so they can latch on the carrier. I also don't know how to make them stay after latching or if to use some different method. I really don't know how would it work.

[mololu]

You'd have to script it or animate the main ship but it's definitly possible to implement something like that.

[Pouk]

I can animate, alhough I don't know what would it do. I can't script. In any case I can't imagine how would you achieve it.

[mololu]

Scripting would be:

If platform docked, platform stays docked until overriden manually or some ability is called (say defense field) after which they would then undock and be usable as individual platforms.

Animation would simple be launching the platforms and 'arraying' them around the ship - but this wouldn't look quite as good ingame.

[ajlsunrise]

Or perhaps this:

You build Platform Carrier (PFC).
You tell platforms to dock with PFC, the platforms latch.
You move the carrier.
You 'undock' the platforms.
etc etc etc...

[Pouk]

Mololu:
Now I'm seriously interested. This would definitely make me to consider Hiigaran platforms to be mobile. And I wouldn't mind, it could actually be fitting just right. Hiigaran, slow platforms, but in fact used because they can be transported (so not wasted RU), the REARM filosophy of Hiigaran modular ships, on the other hand Vaygr would keep the platforms faster, but for single use. Suddenly it all works to me.

I want that system. Would it be hard to make? I can imagine you personally wouldn't have time for it (although it would be nice), but can you at least guarantee that when I make the "carrier", some one could make it work? That it surely will be possible?

Oh my God... Battlecruisers could take two platforms with them, larger stations could have a few platforms on them, there could be a whole platform system.

ajlsunrise:
I understood it as latching from the beginning, did I miss something?

[ajlsunrise]

hmmm... now that I think about it more... How many dockpaths are actually used by the HW2 engine? is it only one? if it is, then you're screwed...

*has an idea while writing... brb*

[mololu]

It would work over latching. There would be some minor bugs (such as hyperspacing makes all the platforms fall off x_x this happens with my keeper capital ships when power generators are attached to them) but nothing game breaking.

You'd have to trigger the launch over something (I personally would use the defense field ability as it's the simplest to script) though you *may* be able to fudge the launch command to make it work - but I doubt it.

Essentially you'd dock all the platforms, then activate the defense fields - and all the platforms would undock. Or you could force them to undock by hyperspacing as they do that anyways.

It can be made to work (my keeper ships use docked ships to provide powerups) but it has a few minor hiccups we'd have to smooth over somehow.

[ajlsunrise]

Your Double Refinery uses all four slots, right?

Then it is possible.

*edit: looks like mololu ninja'd me

**edit2:

such as hyperspacing makes all the platforms fall off

dang it, that sucks! That kinda ruins one of my ideas...

[mololu]

Yeah I know it's a pain but it's some stupid engine limitation.

The only way around it would be to make an internal bay for platforms but that just kills the visual effect of all the platforms being latched.

[Pouk]

It doesn't ruin anything to me. Or I could just allow them hyperspace so I could jump them before/at the same time with their docking ship.

But the concept is beautiful, I have to use it as well, you people have great minds.

Now one more question before I'll go sleep: Is it possible to make it activated by subsystem? So it appears that the platforms dock onto the subsystem, but only in the subystem presence? From the dockpaths point of view no, but can this be coded?

[mololu]

Hmm... assuming it's a subsystem slot where you can only build that subsystem I assume yes - but I've never tried so it would be hard to say just like that.

My suggestion would be: try it for the carrier first - and then if that works well enough expand the concept.

[GBscientist]

Pouk, I only mentioned my thoughts on the Cloaked Support Frigate to save you some effort. You've said 'no' to the Modular Support Frigate quite firmly, so I won't bring it up again.

The Platform Carrier looks really cool. I really don't care if the platforms are carried internally or externally, as long as there's a way to move them significant distances without putting a standard Carrier in harm's way. To make the whole dock/undock system work, would you eliminate the Hiigaran platforms' one-shot drive limitation and just make them extremely slow instead? That would certainly simplify the scripting problem.

[Pouk]

mololu:
Yeah right. Just get this to work and then see about the rest.

GBscientist:
Getting rid off one-shot movement, well yes, that's what I said... about two times... never mind.

[GBscientist]

I thought that was what you were getting at, Pouk, but I wanted to clarify. I was concerned that what you were planning to give the Hiigarans slow one-shot movement platforms with a platform carrier and the Vaygr fast one-shot movement platforms without a carrier.

[Pouk]

Missile Battlecruiser is done. It took me a while, I know, sorry, I had other things to do.

[Tekanako]

Wow, I love it, oh man I can't wait until the next release!

[mololu]

Excellent job as ever!

There are some minor issues (most notably the high ammount of primary team color) but nothing to damage the great mode!

Keep it up

[Pouk]

Thank you.

Some other picture, a better one:

[constermonster]

wow that is badass. Original design but still fits perfectly with the original hw2 designs. looking forward to seeing it in-game well done

[tadamir]

-Hey sorry for bringing something up and then not replying for ages, it's been a crazy week or so for me.

-I care because I want Cloaked Support Frigates!
This may be a little late though so I'll be happy with whatever decision you reach.

-The MBC looks incredible Pouk, I like it more and more the more I use it.
And I liked it a lot to start with.

-About the Platform Carrier, the idea I had (inspired by this one image whose creator I still don't know who to credit), was you build the whole thing with the Platforms pre-built in-place somehow.
That way they can still use thier one-shot move when the carrier reaches the general location you want them; ie a new RU patch you want to hold, or the enemies exposed Carrier, etc.

-Being able to somehow pre-choose the combination of Platforms the Carrier comes complete with would be nice too.

-Perhaps it would have to be Hypered-in?, but I don't know if a ship with pre-loaded platforms is do-able, that's for you guys to say 'no' to!

*While I've been away playing REARM on my new lappy (which is a joy) I've had several new ideas, some rather outlandish, and I need someone to tell me what is not possible.

I'll post'em over at the REARM group though Pouk, if some of them are do-able (which is dubious), you may want to keep them secret-squirrel for now.

[Pouk]

New video about the race from Model Showroom and their muzzle flashes.

Tadamir: Sorry for a very late answer.
Pre-built? Interesting idea. Really. I don't know how to make it though. Actaully, I'm getting some interesting idea, it could actually work and I could do it myself. Edit: after some thinking probably not.

[7upMan]

Pouk, can you make those two screenshots with anti-aliasing enabled and ideally in 1920x1200, so I can use them as background? I love the first (red) one, really impressive!

[Pouk]

I have double 1680 x 1050 screens, this is the original size. If you want larger, you may scale it up in Photoshop, but I can't give you larger source images (and I really hope you're not asking me to recreate those pictures).

[tadamir]

Excellent work with those Neutral P3 ships!

I'm late with the comment I know but they are truly very interesting and incredibly good looking ships.
I like the new weapon FX a lot too; sparkly.

[carmaster]

Pouk have you read my PM?

[tadamir]

POW!



Great stuff Pouk.

(Ugh, I need to fix my screen rez though.)