(serious mod redesign) "Homeworld Advanced Combat Simulation *H*A*C*S"

[Moleman]

Alright here we go

Links
Facebook H.A.C.S. Page
Moddb H.A.C.S. Page

I have recently revisited my old mod the Serious mod ( http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=196244 ) and i realized exactly what a crap job it was, so in sense i am here to make up for it.

This is complete overhaul and redesign of the Serious Mod, Everything is being started over from scratch and new ideas are being implemented.

Main ideas:
Planetary War Fare
New Units
New forms of strategy
larger maps
different types of resources
manpower
mining bases
resource convoys
superships

So far this are looking quite well, planets have been implimented with simulated atmosphere, still working on gravity. This has been done without the need to resize ships or anything else.

Planets

Planets and moon's are big enough to hide behind giving more strategic value and allowing a player to in a sense surprise the enemy. Maps are quite large and can easily be expanded.

Plans are also underway for planet and moon capturing which shouldnt be too hard to impliment, if this is found to be possible, man power will be implimented and fleets split up into sections.
Resourcing, military, and research.

Current memebers:
Moleman
Whisper2me

I will continue to post updates and images. ~enjoy

Current Moddb page, both this thread and the Moddb page will be updated regularly http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-serious-mod-re-invented

[NumberZero]

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA They did it! Those glorious bastards finally went and did it!

Finally, a proper scale to allow full solar system combat. Hopefully the problem of maxpeed 2km/s will be resloved or fixed with hyperspace jumps.

Really looking foward to this.

[Moleman]

i would also like to mention that no ships have been scaled at all, and it still works =D

infact i stumbled uppon this whden i was trying scaling

[NumberZero]

wait, you got around the mapsize limit?

[Moleman]

yes, o.o didnt even know there was one lol but current map size for the planets shown in the first post are as follows

Average 4 player map :
setWorldBoundsInner({0, 0, 0}, {50000, 50000, 50000})

This map :
setWorldBoundsInner({0, 0, 0}, {120000000, 120000000, 120000000})

[Overmind5000]

Sweet mother of all that exists, that is big!

[MelvinVM]

I like the planets, I don't like the kitbashed higaran BC/destroyer ship however.

[Moleman]

yea i agree about that part, originals only, the destroyer was just something i whipped up to refresh my hoding skill, whisper2me will be making the ship models and texturing them

[doci7]

Um, as cool as this is, I find it difficult to differentiate from Eagle1_Division's Scale Mod. Maybe the two of you should combine forces???

[Moleman]

it could be a possobility, however collision detection is something that i've been working with for ages attempting with things such as super stations and planets, there might not be a difference between out ideas and there might be but i would be willing to colaberate with eagle1 if he is up for it

[Pouk]

MelvinVM: I agree, but with this team I wouldn't be afraid about ship originality.

So what kind of ship will you have? Homeworld Vgr/Hgn or something completelly new?

[Moleman]

For right now we are going to focus on existing races, we dont want to get too ahead of our selves, whisper2me might have an idea for anotherone if he so pleases, he has the option, he has opted to throw in the materials from Sands of Time for this mod so at the moment anything could happen. (mod name was whisper2me's idea lol)

~Small Update~
Several more screen shots, these are of a rather sizeable expert settings vaygr fleet mopping me up near a moon

Vaygr Fleet Size Comparison

As well as a video comparison and small overview of what has been implimented so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4A6MSGMHPo

[Djodar]

this will be great

[doci7]

That video was awesome, sir.

[Moleman]

i am wanting to relsease a small alpha version showcasing the work so far. Reasons being is i need to be critiqued on the work, things that that players would like to see improved among other thing

edit: alpha test release http://www.filefront.com/15533297/SM_B1.3.rar

It's not much but it's what we have so far, and for the likeing of the other players, the kitbashed ship has not been included

As well after several play tests with various players and various settings, the game gets extremely sluggish, this is mostly due to the amount of small asteroids in the map so far, work is now under way to create larger asteroids with capabilites to accomidate anywhere between 8 to 12 collectors, thus also reducing the amount of asteroids in the map.

[adamstrange]

This mod is similar to the EV mod that I'm working on when it comes to map size.

Though it doesn't have planets the mod is based on long range real life battle engagements.

In the video some of the planets turn red so is this because of the size of the map causing this or is it because you zoomed out into the SM?

Also is the music to the video an original composition just for the video or does it belong to another artist ?

I'm going to DL this to check it out.

Your BC though looks really wierd...but yet...somehow,I like it.

[Moleman]

the music is a remix by basshunter of krenkrat's zombie nation, i placed a title scene in the video to credit the artist and the BC was removed as it was not fully intended to be part of the mod. although if you want a copy of it i can send you the files. I am still looking into why they turn red although at the moment i rather preffer it, some of the planets are hard to see in the blackness of space and the red seems to act as a sort of highlight.


The mod can now be found on facebook
Facebook H.A.C.S. Page

my friends and family have been wanting to support me in my modding efforts so i thought, eh what the heck, it couldnt hurt.

[The KC]

Are you going to implement realistic warfare with real physics?
-unlimited weaponrange
-relativly slow projectiles with low power for short range combat (fighters -> cruiser?)
-really fast projectiles (2-3% of the speed of light? with huge impact, you know newton, don't you? )
Combat is based more around movement to avoid "sniperattacks" from battleships and the like and for sure about finding the enemy out there)
Everything smaller than a cruiser should be a real danger to a battleship, because it can't target those fast and maneuverable ships, so they need an escort fleet.

Well just some ideas coming to my mind I'd like to see in such a mod

[adamstrange]

Yes send me the files to that BC.

Hey Moleman,do your planets rotate ?

I noticed that I can get my planets to rotate but the game seems not to allow the planets to rotate the normal way,you know like the way a top spins.

This..
addSquadron("WaterPlanet", "WaterPlanet", {-4120000, 1200000, 9200000}, -1, {0, 0, 90}, 0, 0)

Or this...addSquadron("WaterPlanet", "WaterPlanet", {-4120000, 1200000, 9200000}, -1, {90, 0, 0}, 0, 0)

will rotate them but if you have it set it to this
addSquadron("WaterPlanet", "WaterPlanet", {-4120000, 1200000, 9200000}, -1, {0, 90, 0}, 0, 0) the planet will not rotate.

[Moleman]

adamstrange my planets do not rotate but if possible i would like them to that line of code goes into the .level file correct?

The KC, i would love to hear more detail about your idea it sounds rather intrigueing

[The KC]

Well, after all, it's just about physics, mass and speed and of course the limiting speed of light. Don't forget, that a creditcard accelerated to maybe 3% of light's speed has an impactpower of some nuclear bombs. The only problem is targeting, try to hit a 300m ship with a 20kg projectile on a distance of 300.000km, even passive sensors would have a delay of 1s at this range, so you do not really know were the target is at the moment you fire the massdriver.

To bad you can't simulate "detectionspeed", can you? This would make movement on the map really interesting, you would need to move your ships unpredictable to avoid enemy fire, because highend sensors would detect the ship at any range, just limited by the speed of light. Let's pretend you have the possibility to move faster than light (for example by reducing the mass of the object relativly to the normal space-time), you can't be detected directly, just indirectly.
But I believe this would go way to far for this game

However, important is newtonian weapon and shipbehavior and of course recon to setup attackplans with several fleets etc and of course to fire heavy massdrivers at targets far away and if you do not hit something directly, well, the projectile could hit the planet behind and somehow destroy some infrastructure? or it hits some other ship 200km behind the targeted ship?
After all it's how real space warfare would work at the current level of knowledge.

Edit: If you need some shipideas, i still have all my 3d models open to use for everyone, but they are not textured. I'll see if I can create some more in the near future, but I can't promise anything due to limited time.

[KwirkyJ]

@The KC:
As intriguing (and near-realistic) as your idea is, I don't believe that the game engine supports it. I want to say this was recently discussed in another mod thread but, the way a bullet (or any weapon) is given to hit or miss is determined as it is fired within the game itself. If it 'misses', it'll fly past. If it 'hits', the game slightly alters the projectile's path to make the visual intercept.
++++++++++++++++++++
However, to legitimate this post as not an attack (which was not my intent), I am would posit an idea of my own, for any large-scale environment mod. In concept, the move order would be altered. everything that follows depends on this.

Instead of a point-to-point movement system, you would instead issue move orders that would give the selected ship(s) a new velocity to to a set maximum (be it 2Km/sec, whatever). The ship would then rotate itself to align to the new velocity (or correctional vector, should it be moving already) before accelerating.

Additionally, this direct implementation holds only for orders outside of the sensors manager. From the manager, point-to-point would still hold, but with the ship accelerating roughly halfway, rotating (to present maximum thrust to decelerate), and then coming to 'full stop' at the destination.

I cannot emphasize enough that I simply do not know if the movement methods are hard-coded in the engine or not. However, I have given decent thought to implementation should it be possible (on a high level, mind you). PM me if you* wish, and/or think it worth exploring further.

[Moleman]

I am liking your ideak KwirkyJ, i will PM you with more questions.

As for the rest of you, i know some people preffer .big versions of files over unpackaged ones so here you go

http://www.filefront.com/15538945/HACS013.rar

[scarbrow]

will the planets work in osx?

I remember there was a size limitation of something like 20km or 40km for length.

[The KC]

@KwirkyJ
It's true how the engine handles simple projectiles, but if you use unguidedmissile-projectiles instead of tracers your fire is directional, the weapon firing those longrange kinetics also could have a missrate of 0.01% (because of some small errors during calculating the firesolution), but there is one problem, if the target moves enough after firing you won't hit it. To avoid this you could scatter salvos at the target with some calculated miss.
Believe me, this is possible, because I've done it once for fun with one weapon of the pds mod. It was real fun, you could attack everything from everywhere, but the longer the range the higher the missrate. This way there will be an optimal range for weapons were the accuracy is high enough and the tracking of the turret ( or maneuverability of the ship if the weapon is hardmounted) fits the speed of moving targets (do not forget at what velocity those projectiles would fly through space). This way it gets harder to hit fast ships at long range ( dependent on projectile-velocity) and it gets harder to hit fast ships at short range (because of the tracking). This should be the concept for all projectile oriented weapons, then you just need to tweak the numbers for each type. Shortrange weapons use relativly slow projectiles with low energy so it's fearly easy to hit targets in a range of about 10-50km, those weapons should be mounted on everything smaller than a cruiser. This way those ships could stil attack everything on the map, but they are not likely to hit something 20.000km away because of the low projectile-velocity, but these ships are highly maneuverability, so they can react better on fast targets.

One example: a fleet combat begins at 100.000km range, some scouts have found the position of the enemyfleet.
Your heavy massdrivers align and fire,shortly after the first hits the enemy reacts and moves his ships, he splits up and sends his carriers, frigs and some cruisers out to you, but you lose the contact to this part of the fleet because there aren't enough scouts out there. So he sneaks up and avoids your heavy fire through movement (as long as he moves, his battlecruisers can't fire back). Suddenly a huge wave of fighters and bombers attacks one of your BC's and destroys it with some torpedoes, now you are under heavy pressure. You need to setup a defensive against those small ships, you start your own fighters, but at this moment some fast frigs are incoming, some of them are reconnaissancefrigates. Now you have a problem, the enemy knows were you are, he attacks you with small ships and if he gets a small window to align his heavy massdrivers you will be obliterated.
So, what was the fail in there? Not enough reconnaissance and of course some really bad tactics.

Edit: Another idea, somewhere on the forums was a way to create a "gravity"weapon, which attracts everything in it's eventsphere. Something like this for each planetoid whould be great. The sphere needs to be larger than the atmosphere (and don't forget, some planets do hot have a real atmosphere) and attract everything around slowly towards the surface.
Just imagine if you then use ships there and after the combat the wrecks slowly tend to collide with the surface.
This would also limit the range were you can use ships near planetoids, you can move them through the gravityfield, but you can't position them there. If projectiles are affected, too, well, then you need to alter your tactics, because you need to get closer, otherwise you will only hit the planet somewhere or the projectile is distracted enough, that you can't hit anything from longrange.

[KwirkyJ]

@The KC
That approach might work. However, I see a couple possible snags. Firstly, is there a limiting factor on the speed of the missile/projectile, as there is with ships (and can this be overcome?) To get an appropriate engagement envelope that is 1) as realistic as you are proposing and 2) feasible given the expected distances involved, they would have to move absurdly fast (up to .1C). Secondly, there is an issue of how targeting works within the game engine. As far as I know, the game does not interpolate the intercept points (that is, determine how the target is moving, how the weapon is moving, and how quickly the projectile will cross the distance), and instead fires at the current location of the target. While your weapon in PDS may have worked satisfactorily, I express concern that with the change in scale it may not play out as expected (as nearly any cross-motion will result in clean misses). If the target-interpolation and speed problems can be overcome, I would be most interested to see the results, however.

[Whisper2Me]

I am working on the 15th fleet, I will try to stick as much as possible to the HW universe. I will start working on ships in order of importance. The first will be the MS.

MS-Redesign.

When you look at the pride of Higara, it is a very flawed design, and not battle oriented. I wanted to created a MS that had the feel and look of the HW1 MS, the armor of the HW2 MS, and higher power then the BC.

After drawing dozens of concepts, I couldn't make anything that I was satisfied with. So, I went back to basics. I litteraly, took the Pride and flipped it on its side. I liked the curved surface. So I ran with it. And here it is after 7hours of meshing. Remember it is not polished, and it doesn't have goblins as of yet.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a09YJr6SvTQ



Top top rear turret is based on the hw:c Seige cannon. Slow rate of fire, and needs to be really far, along with a 10minute cooldown.


Red-Turrets
Green-Turret Base-
Yellow-SubSystems

[Moleman]

i am loving this concept and cant wait to get this in game

[Destraex]

very interesting concept for a mod...... have u ever played nexus the jupiter incident?

[mololu]

Concerning target prediction:

There is to my knowledge a flag in the weapon config that tells the weapon to aim at the predicted/projected target location (lead target).

I can't confirm if it really works as intended though but will test this if I have time later.

[aquemnun]

Concerning target prediction:

There is to my knowledge a flag in the weapon config that tells the weapon to aim at the predicted/projected target location (lead target).

I can't confirm if it really works as intended though but will test this if I have time later.

as far as I was aware making the guns fire "ahead" of the moving target was as simple as increasing the bullet speed and accuracy, making a stream of bullets move in an arc as the turret keeps firing ahead of the target, and the bullets hit the moving ship.



great model whisper, the only negative thing I can think about it is that the turrets look a little meh (like scaled up destroyer turrets). In my opinion turrets with some similarity to the rear seige cannon turret would look awesome (say, either a single heavy ion laser, a bit like the hgn_BC turrets, or a dual barreled kinteic turret with the barrels in a vertical arrangement).

But that's just me talking, what will you do?

[mololu]

The problem is however having shots that 'miss' their target also lead the target, meaning accuracy has to be pretty low or the shots will 'track' the target.

[aquemnun]

or the shots will 'track' the target

loved that bug, the bullets chase me! D=

and yes that is an interesting point, with high accuracy they'll do that if the target ship is moving fast enough..... hmmmmm....

[Whisper2Me]

the turrets are just placeholders, they actually are the destroyer turrets. They will be replaced with something more fitting once i complete the textures.

[aquemnun]

ah awesome. that makes sense, and keeps the suspense up :P

[mololu]

Concerning target prediction:

There is to my knowledge a flag in the weapon config that tells the weapon to aim at the predicted/projected target location (lead target).

I can't confirm if it really works as intended though but will test this if I have time later.

I tested this. First off, test parameters:

Two Higgy destroyers broadsiding each other.

- I gave the ship fairly high acceleration, rotation and move speeds to simulate the targets moving 'away' from where they were last seen.

- The guns were given a long range (12km) and a slow bullet (3500m/s). Accuracy was set to 0.6% and damage high to show impacts. <iUseVelocityPred> flag (see karos graveyard funciton reference) was set too.

I came to following results:

1) The rounds do indeed not track their target. Quickly chaning direction led to fired rounds missing their target consistently (obviously 0.6% is not never hit but enough to be represantive).

2) Even with the damage = 1 tag set in the accuracy settings, the ships rarely hit each other, leading to a pretty long and boring fight.

3) I added sphereburst damage with a 100m radus to the guns and repeated the test. The results were quite nice: When a ship moved after the other had fired, the shots would miss and do virtually no damage. When it stayed course or stood still, it took damage very quickly (desired effect).

Conclusion: An 'artillery barrage' style space battle is definitly possible but really only makes sense when using burst damage.

At any event, it makes space battles pretty interesting but you'd have to play around with it a little and form your own oppinion if this is right for this mod.

I forgot to mention this before but I like the new mothership design . Going with something actually capable of defending itself is a big plus!

[Whisper2Me]

Just finished the basic mesh of the orbital shipyard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xha5xqOq5uc

[doci7]

Nice yard! Except it made me dizzy.

[boohey]

so this lasted, you all vanished... cant even get teh alpha. this finished with now was looking so good

[I got BC'ed]

Nice
do planet's produce grav wells

[adamstrange]

Mining Bases

Does this feature replace the asteroids or is this in addition to them ?

I gather that ships enter into the Mining Bases but I wonder if you could put this idea that I have had for sometime into use for this mod as it would add an awesome level of gameplay.

Remove all Resource Controllers or turn them into defensive platforms to protect mining operations.

Create freighters that have to enter these Mining Bases and can carry more RU's but without Resource Controllers, all freighters and collectors now have to dock with their builder ships to unload.

This now means that you can have convoys of collectors and freighters that you have to protect.

[GBscientist]

Whisper, have you considered the possibility of using very large subsystems to hold the frigate and capital yards, as per HW:C? It would make sense for the 15th fleet's MS to draw inspiration from the Somtaaw's Explorer class MS in more ways than just the big gun. Speaking of which, could the big gun be made into a constructable/destroyable subsystem?

On another note, have you considered incorporating mololu's raiders or one of the 'remastered' versions of the original races into this mod? Will the regular Pride of Higaara fleet still be playable in this mod?

[Siber]

Hate to tell you this, guys, but this mod is dead as a can of spam from all appearances. The last post in this thread before the recent rez was in feb 2010, Whisper2me's last post on the forum was in june of the same year, and Moleman has been inactive for a similar length of time.

[Moleman]

@.@ oi I'm not inactive persay, just kinda behind the scenes, RL takes priority over modding. On a side not, yes Siber is correct, it is dead and has been dead for some time, although i could have sworn I or Whisper2me put a post up about that a while back.

[I got BC'ed]

can I have a copy of the .big as is then, because your link is down.

[ajlsunrise]

Shadowgaz has exceeded their stored private messages quota and cannot accept further messages until they clear some space.

Sorry to bother you, I was just wondering if you had the H.A.C.S mod lying around anywhere?

hacs? what's the acronym?

Homeworld Advanced Combat Simulation
http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-serious-mod-re-invented

I don't have it.
If you haven't tried already, you might try PMing Moleman. I believe he still hangs around these parts.

[Moleman]

Indeed I do and I am working on several things in secretz :P but as far as a link to the last version of this mod here ye be (all pirate voicy and such)

http://www.gamefront.com/files/22960831/HACS013_rar

An avid follower of the mod still had a copy so I was able to start working with the material again.

ajlsunrise I would like to talk to you about a couple of things if I could with Leviathanswrath, via google talk or Teamspeak 3

EDIT:
In the mean time I am going to request this thread be locked, the work for the large system maps and such are going to be incorporated into the Beast Evolution Mod, Progress has already been started and that thread will be updated soon.'

The mod I am referring to is located here. http://forums.relicnews.com/showthre...tion-Mod/page6

[Gorb]

Locked by request!