Original Weberverse-inspired mod

[Norsehound]

Good lord Archangel!
>>IP SEIZED!!!<<

So what I'd like to see in a mod/Origional star sim is a wide range of diverse technologies and existances. Not EVERYONE uses the same kind of star drive or weapons system, not EVERYONE has ships that are constructed the same way, or operate the same way. WE ARE DIFFERENT from everone else because we are inferior in the galaxy, and it's an unfreindly place unless we can learn to cooperate with beings like ourselves.

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Edit @ loc:

The Goa'uld? Good God man, are you trying to turn into another Tel'Quessir? Is that the reason behind this mod?

I want to see something origional, not just a 'redressed' version of something else. And if it has to be redressed, let's go OUTSIDE of U.S. Television influences.

I also want the villian to be interesting enough to play. Notice how I never mentioned the reason for the adversarie's attack... perhaps they have a good reason to fear our use of nuclear weaponry among the stars. "Forbidden Planet" anyone?

I'll re-design the aliens if I have to, and I'll provide more examples of the ships I'd like to see for the human race, and I'll even draw up some starship examples if I have to

I'm so up in arms because I don't want this to turn into an 'average' homeworld mod with an 'average' story. I shouldn't be trying to commandeer the mod, but I see so much potential here that I think is being squandered on 'another homeworld clone'.

[dacis2]

Sorry, but I feel that I *MUST* correct this terrible mistake.

Good Lord! 200 nuclear missiles causing the death of Earth!

Sheesh, where do I start?

Okay, first is how are the technically deficient MidEast nations going to make a *clandestine* nuclear program without anyone knowing it? Do you realise how difficult it is to make a nuclear weapon? And to do so, and hope that they work without even testing them? The Indians, with their technological prowess, can't even produce a nuke on their first try, it fizzled. And they've been working with nuclear power for decades.

To smuggle weapons-grade plutonium you have to first *aquire* it. Where exactly are you going to find enough to produce 200 nuclear warheads, especially without experience in the production of nuclear warheads? You can't make them without anyone suspecting, because to make plutonium, you need a nuclear power plant, and who would build one if there's the much cheaper and better and safer and cannot-be-used-to-make-plutonium-or-use-uranium Fusion Power Plants?

Okay, ignoring that point, how are they going to produce ICBMs? Making an ICBM is no joke you know, and unless they have a space program that I didn't hear about they're going to have to develop the rockets for it.

Ignoring that point, they now have to build the silos for their nuclear weapons, move their new ICBMs into the silos, and hide them from the ever present U.S. Photorecon/Radarrecon satellites, and keep the whole program under wraps from western intelligence agencies and Mossad.

So they have to somehow find enough plutonium to make nukes, make ICBMs, make silos, put the nukes in silos all without anyone even suspecting it, and somehow *AFFORD* it, since we don't need petrol for transport anymore.

I don't think so.

Also, by the year 2010, the U.S. will still have its 500 Minuteman III single warhead ICBMs ready, plus at least 10 SSBNs carrying around 400 SLBMs with around 3000 warheads, enough to turn the Middle East into a giant parking lot. This is just ballistic missiles, not counting bombers and so on.

Finally, I don't think the MidEasterns will launch on anyone but Israel, and Israel will launch back, turning Mecca, Medina and lots of holy places into huge parking lots. I don't think they'll risk that either.

I really don't think so.

Okay, by now, we've established that the MidEast guys are really suicidal, and do launch their ICBMs they made with Magical Pixie Dust. The 200 are detected first by Israel, who, just in case the MidEast dudes launched a few at them, fire back.
The United States, thanks to its hyper-mega missile shield that they haven't even started building yet, and which is not designed to withstand a massive strike like this, manages to shoot down all the Pixie Dust Missiles (which probably suck), with barely as many interceptors as incoming missiles, and the President, who if he's Republican, will show an amazing act of restraint, and not order massive retaliation on the people who nearly *annihilated* his country.

I *really* *really* don't think so.

And finally, these missiles which were destroyed, either magically detonated, or were laden with such gigantic amounts of plutonium, that they managed to blanket the entire Earth with enough of it to cause severe radiation damage to the biosphere. From just 200 missiles, even though such a scenario was not possible even during the height of the Cold War, when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were pointing tens of thousands of warheads at each other.

I *really* *really* *really* don't think so.

Other than that, your story's fine.

[JRL3001]

Thank you for the reply.

The Pioneer fleet is the main power in the sector at this time. Though the Varautian and NTC fleets are pretty close.

The Marine Cruiser is ment more to carry troops for assaulting enemy space staions and planets. So it has a massive troop carrying capacity and a large number of carried vehicles and landing craft. So think more like the WWII troop carriers than the Marine ships from HW2

The Atanyi are the anchient race in my universe. Their empire dominated the galaxe thousands of years ago untill several rival empires conspired agenst them. Needless to say the Atanyi Empire fell and they were driven back to their home systems. Now they tend to be fairly isolationist and wary of anyone wo manages to find their space. They are very advanced. Their ships are mainly armed with energy weopons and can generally outrun anything else in local space.

I will post more tomorrow. It's getting late and my brain is tired

[Norsehound]

>>IP SEIZED<<

[Locutus]

The Goa'uld? Good God man, are you trying to turn into another Tel'Quessir? Is that the reason behind this mod?

Perish the thought. No, I was thinking more along the lines of how fancy and dressed up their technology is. Any ancient, stagnant empire (such as the Goa'uld) would probably no longer be concerned with having sleek new-looking tech, but be buried in tradition, which might go along with dressed-up tech. Gold-plated replicaters inset with religious words of prayer to avoid bit-errors in the food, a grand staircase of polished wood between different decks of the ship, etc. That stuff might be on the inside, do you think that it would be appropriate to apply the same sort of look to the outside? Ceremonial starships or something. The Goa'uld were simply an analogy for dressed up technology

Ceade: as to the reason that the humans were attacked, how about the Empire saw the rapid technological growth of earth, and decided that any race that advanced that quickly was bound to make rash errors, possibly leading to the destruction of innocent Imperial Citizens? Thus they come in with massive force and utterly smash the potential threat Earth could have been in another century or two. (very brief timescale by Imperial standards)

Here is an idea to acomodate a wide range of techs: Maybe have two distinct periods, one where the Alliance is in its infancy, but is only faced with scouting patrols. The second period gives the Alliance all the advanced tech ideas like Retro has discussed. (take place a couple centureis later, after the politicians of the Empire have finally made up their minds to go to war)

It would seem forced to go from weak tech to advanced gravitonics in the course of a single game, which is why I'm suggesting different time periods.

OT question: everyone does know they can set the forum to display from 10 to 50 posts per page, right? Done through the user CP. Saying this because JRL mentioned something about "on the first page..."

EDIT: With regards to the below post by Dacis2 I really think that we need to come to some sort of conclusion regarding what we are going to do. Do we have the type of universe Ceade is suggesting with very different sides or do we have two sides that are more like the Vagyr and the Hiigarans, with both sides having the same tech but different approaches to using that tech?

[dacis2]

thing is, that practically all of Weber's work includes sides which are extremely close to each other in terms of military technology. In the Honorverse, everyone's building Superdreadnoughts and using Laserhead missiles, Lasers and Grasers. In Starfireverse, they use Monitors and Superdreadnoughts, Space Bombardment Missiles, Force Beams and Hetlasers, and shields.

That's what made it fun for me. It was balanced. Neither side has a serious advantage in technology, that is, everyone was using the same kind of tech.

[Norsehound]

>>IP SEIZED!!<<

http://www.dendezyn.net/afforum/viewforum.php?f=25

[DatonKallandor]

Going back to the gameplay discussion a bit:

On the slowly upgrade the weaponry bit - how about having a constant number of chassis (Id say about 50% of them pre-research) and adding new weapons to existing ships - without new research options.

Example:

Chassis 1, built at the very beginning, has 1 mass driver. We research short range fusion guns and our built ship is automatically updated with a additional spinal fusion gun.

To make it even more complex and player designed:

Scenario as above:

We research short range fusion guns - but instead of automatically updating our ship, it gets a list of fusion gun modules in its build list (limit 1 module). Each module represents a different location and/or strength of the new weaponry.


Daton

[Retroboy]

I agree with Dacis, at least to start. There can and should be some differences in basic 'tech, but I think you could get completely lost trying to balance a gravity-based 'tech against a forcefield-based 'tech against a hyperdrive-based 'tech against an ECM-based 'tech against a... you get the idea.

We research short range fusion guns - but instead of automatically updating our ship, it gets a list of fusion gun modules in its build list (limit 1 module). Each module represents a different location and/or strength of the new weaponry.

I like this, with a caveat that it might require micromanagement in late-game so automatic upgrades might be better. To avoid this, I would suggest that we require a visit to an upgrade point such as a shipyard to add certain types of big upgrades, and small ones happen automatically once you get the big ones. For example and discussion, see the following model approach: the fab plants would require research, blue text indicates a resource cost AND time to build, and red text indicates automatic build with zero resource cost but a certain amount of time to complete:

Destroyer Mk1 chassis
|..+ (free) engine class 3
|..+ (free) main gun 3 - top mount
|..+ (free) main gun 3 - bottom mount
|..+ (free) missile class 2 - top
+-- small onboard destroyer fabrication plant
........(in flight upgrade)
|....+ add point defense laser 1 - top
|....+ add point defense laser 1 - bottom
|....+ missile class 2 - bottom
|....+ electronic countermeasures 1
+-- medium onboard destroyer fabrication plant
........(requires docking to an upgrade vessel or main shipyard for all pre-built vessels)
|......+ electronic countermeasures 2
|......+ replace <main gun 3 top> with main gun 4
|......+ replace <main gun 3> bottom with main gun 4
|......+ missile class 2 - bottom
+-- large onboard destroyer fabrication plant
........(requires docking to main shipyard for all pre-built vessels)
|........+ replace <missile 2 top> with <missile 3>
|........+ replace <missile 2 bottom> with <missile 3>
|........+ replace <engine class 3> with engine <engine class 4>

Note that the above is completely moot if this is not going to be an RTS with research and/or resource models.

=========================================
Now, something important to consider.


There are many people that are capable and willing to generate story ideas, sketch ships, and supply universe fluffground. However, these ideas are useless if the HW2 engine can't be made to function with them, or if they don't lead to a fun game, and they can always be changed later.

So I have the following questions, and please feel free to add more.

CAN THE HOMEWORLD 2 ENGINE SUPPORT THE FOLLOWING?
- positional shielding, with fore/aft/port/starboard shield components?
- positioned shielding (like in Honorverse), where the player has indestructable shielding at certain points and can rotate ships to bring them to bear against attackers?
- general single-unit slow-recharge shields with a certain number of hitpoints?
- an upgrade model similar to those discussed above?
- laserhead missiles that detonate at a range from a vessel and fire at it?
- momentum-based standard Newtonian physics (and the problems it causes) including a restriction that you can only accelerate (or decelerate) in the direction that faces away from your engines??
- ship rolling?
- intelligent bandbox-selecting upgrades, so you can grab a fleet and order it to upgrade itself, and all vessels not performing resource-costing upgrades will then start?

Got any other important non-fluff questions that will influence or restrict what can be done for gameplay?

-- Retro

[dacis2]

Man, modding is fun. I switched out the Peep BB's Vaygr BC lasers for Ion Cannon Turrets, and dropped all the missiles. It was cool, but killed my compy.

I guess 60 Ions firing at once does that.

[BitchX]

Retro: While antimatter is the best possible source of energy as it does convert matter to energy at an extremely high efficiency, for reasons most obvious it would be extremely dangerous and tactically unsound to use it in a ship of war. High-efficiency fusion, while not as good as antimatter, would suffice in my opinion. It's far more reliable to use than AM and less prone to blowing up.

Ah! So essentially by "organics" you simply meant certain base elements? Non-metallic base elements however are not called organics afaik. But if those were what you meant then no problem.

About the expensiveness of nukes, considering that this would take place in a society that is technologically hundreds if not thousands of years more advanced than ours, constructing nukes shouldnt be much more difficult than building regular gravity bomb is for us today.

[DatonKallandor]

Retro, the research and build models I mentioned, were specifically chosen because they WORK in HW2. Both ways have been done before (although not to that extent).

So, yes, upgrades can be done in a modular and auto-upgrade fashion.


Daton

[Retroboy]

BitchX - the problem with nuclear fission apparati is raw materials. I don't think too many asteroids, at least in our solar system, have given off signatures that include uranium, plutonium, or other transuranics that are highly fissile. Depending on how accurate you want to get with the game's science model and how much resourcing you'd want to include in a game, some purists might object to turning an asteroid into an atomic bomb...

Nuclear fusion, otoh - well, there's tons of free hydrogen in space, and from what I understand, our moon's standard lunar regolith and Jupiter's atmosphere are both lousy with Helium-3, so there's lots of believability about using it as an energy source by mining asteroids.

Perhaps antimatter could be included but only as a late-game low-volume powersource for the most exotic of weapons, after you've researched and built a supercollider or other device to create and supply the fuel. This could create a whole slew of additional upgrades as a new tier of weapons for ships that are still basically powered by the less dangerous fusion alternative? Further, because supercolliders could only create a small amount of fuel and would be intensely expensive in resources to build, you could use antimatter as something like the equivalent of a fleet cap?

If you go with something like the tech model I've mentioned earlier, the only place antimatter would be a real danger would be at the supercollider site where it would be stored. Then it would be fed on an as-needed basis to the ship's weapon systems through a pinhole, so you wouldn't have that much kicking around in the midst of battle.

I've also always thought it was extremely goofy to have a starship the size of a city blow up and not inflict collateral damage anyway. When a destroyer detonates and leaves pretty much nothing but atoms and a couple chunks of debris, odds aren't that great that a fighter in the vicinity will survive the experience.

-- Retro

[Mr. Pete]

Retro You can't reliably rotate HW2 ships. Just thought i'd point that out. However sectioned shielding is supported, but induces lag. E.g. Warlords

Also I just want to take a leaf out of I-War's book rather than standard Sci-Fi Bubble / Wall shields:

In I-War the shield system is in fact a gun, designed to create a small focused blast of energy to dissipate & destroy incoming projectiles / plasma. Aggressive defence system if you will. Larger ships mount One upper & one lower LDA, and some have special modules allowing the chaining of two LDAs together to provide better protection.

Whilst ships of the size your on about wouldn't be fazed by two LDA's if you were to use HW2's bubble shield system (new fx of course), but have it intercept only projectiles & have say a 40% success rate, it'd come to the same kinda deal. *

Two things here though that link in:

If you were to implement a system where all weapons were infact missiles, thus bringing the game back to HW1 style gameplay (to a point), then all projectiles could be shootable by the ships defenses, although the limitations of this style of defence are of course recognized (Difficult to control), and better LDA simulation could be achieved. Dunno up to you guys really.

*One cool thing about LDA's is the ALDA - aka Aggressor Shields. These are used to ram enemy vessels, imparting large amounts of damage & kinetic force on the enemy ship, whilst using the activated shield to keep the collision from being fatal to the rammer.

This is quite easily do-able with the effect being tied to a special key & the ship having the aggressor shield at a range of say 5 m from the bow, using a beam effect. So long as the shield has enough time to ensure the enemy ship is hit, and the ships tactics dictate that it will close to firing range. Also a small push modifier could be used to make sure the ships did not 'latch on' to the enemy & quickly destroy the vessel.

*Deep breath*

[Norsehound]

Is there a way to render explosion damage in a given area?

I know this is possible in Starfleet command, but I haven't seen anything like debris damage in HW2. Could it be possible to span 'debris missiles' on the death of a ship, so they collide and damage fighters/capital craft when destroyed?

And how many different ways can we handle a hyperspace effect?

Would it be possible also to create an invisible missile so that only it's engine trail appears? I mentioned 'curving lasers' earlier in my proposal and this is one way I can see it happening.

And do code red animations allow for ship animation? Cata does it, does HW2?

[Mr. Pete]

Was gonna edit but i may aswell aswer this...

The texture of the HS can be changed. That's it.

Damage wise best we can do is add subsystems and they don't explode...

I think the missiles idea is unwise. A.) the debris would die B.) the debris would follow the ships around...

Bit odd :P

Sorry to piss on your bonfire... It'd be nice but it's not gonna happen nicely...

- positional shielding, with fore/aft/port/starboard shield components? Answered 2 posts ago

- positioned shielding (like in Honorverse), where the player has indestructable shielding at certain points and can rotate ships to bring them to bear against attackers? Similar to last question, but some of the subsystem 'shields' would be undamageable.

- general single-unit slow-recharge shields with a certain number of hitpoints? They're subsystems. Yes.

- an upgrade model similar to those discussed above? With a very messy build menu yes, or quite neatly across the board i should think... Although it's better to have the weapon change e.g. fire 3 missiles in a salvo instead of two, as this is the method used in stock HW2 (torpedo frigate)

- laserhead missiles that detonate at a range from a vessel and fire at it? Yes But it's kinda messy. The missile would die & the beam would fire from nothing. Also the beam may have to be the trail of a missile which isn't quite as good. Also the beam may seek out new targets based on range.

- momentum-based standard Newtonian physics (and the problems it causes) including a restriction that you can only accelerate (or decelerate) in the direction that faces away from your engines?? By making the acceleration & decceleration speeds lower & topspeeds higher, yes. However all ships have thrusters else they couldn't turn anyhow. HW2 can handle thrusters & main engine speeds seperately very easily so thats kinda no problem.

- ship rolling? Fraid not.

- intelligent bandbox-selecting upgrades, so you can grab a fleet and order it to upgrade itself, and all vessels not performing resource-costing upgrades will then start? Fraid not.

Concise enough?

[DatonKallandor]

Pete I wouldnt be too sure of that last one. I think Sheridan's hotkey hacks would come in handy on it.


Daton

[Sastrei]

Isn't there a sphereburst value for collateral damage?

-Stefan-

[DatonKallandor]

I think that would only affect enemy ships.
Edit: Speaking of which: If it is possible to spawn missiles in case of destruction of a ship - how about a kind of missile carrier, commandable like a standard ship (frigate?) and in-case of destruction (stupid enemy, scuttling) would spawn a bunch of missiles.


Daton

[Norsehound]

Then what's to stop players from intentionally scuttling thier ships as gigantic scatterpacks?

[DatonKallandor]

THATS their entire purpose. They are scatterpack ships.


Daton

[Norsehound]

So sacrificing a frigate means you'll have the chance of destroying maybe one capital ship...or none at all...

The reason scatterpacks work in Starfleet command is because you are putting into the air antiship missiles that tie up an enemy's offensive battery compliment, as well as overhwelming him with warheads. In Hw2, this isn't a problem, as capital ships mount sufficent defense grids to counter it. In the case of stock Hw2, there is no missile defense at all. Your scatterpack ship in this case becomes a game imbalacing weapon, as anything shooting at it means instant death for the enemy in that area.

And in the case of races who don't use missiles, how is this applicable?

[Unicron]

Way too much alien stuff. I find it ridiculous that a whole alien armada would attack earth out of the blue. Lets face it, there are no aliens in and around our solar systems. So, an alien attack scenario involving earth sounds too unrealistic. Besides, it has been covered so often, it's not even interesting anymore.

Instead, how about a conflict involving mankind only? I would like to see existing nations in future conflicts. Such as China, the US, Japan, Europe and Russia. All of these are likely to emerge as super-powers in some form in the future.

[Norsehound]

If you don't like it unicron, go play Angels Fall First.

Ultimately it's Locutus and DeepChrome who decide where the mod goes. The trend now is leaning towards including an alien/ancient race component. Until they say otherwise, this is where I'm going.

Besides, in a way, none of the races I posted are 'true' aliens... unless Loc wants them that way. I'll elaborate on request.

[Retroboy]

Don't be so dismissive, Norse. Your idea hasn't been chosen yet either.

Regardless, although I don't abhor the idea of alien races, put me down for human or near-human factions. Corporation-based warfare has been done somewhat to death, so I'd prefer to see more resource-based warfare along varied political ethics (kinda like Civilization is). If there's some alien technology in there, so be it - Homeworld 2 has awesome room for big alien artifact visuals and such.
-------------------------
Possible ship explosion collateral damage approach - change the race of any ship on the event of its death to an unallied third race and spawn a honkin' flak explosion at its centre? Doable? Dunno, just a thought - I'm pretty sure Flak causes spherical damage.
-------------------------
Thanks for the answers, Pete and others.

One of the other goofy things I don't like about Homeworld 2's physics is that the ship's main engines are absolutely huge and clearly identifiable, yet the only vessels that use them in any sort of reasonably newtonian way - pointing them perpendicularly opposite of the way you want to go - are fighter classes. You've got this massive battlecruiser that slows down as fast as it starts, and yet there's no visible engine or thruster at the front. It's not so unacceptable when the ship has an artificial ceiling top speed, but it'll look a lot goofier if you have a Newtonian physics model where the top speed can be a lot higher.

Knowing how complex newtonian physics can get, I'm wondering if we shouldn't just increase the maximum capital ship speed, and substantially decrease acceleration/deceleration to simulate higher momentum. That way, you'd get more passing broadsides and raking cannon fire.

-- Retro

[Norsehound]

The way I see it, all of the proposals other than unicron's incorporate alien (or at least alien appearing) races in each of their proposals. I think this is the trend, but DC and Loc are the ultimate deciders.

Personally I see human v. human wars in space as being boring. It's one of the reasons I don't hop up and down about AFF- Alex Drake has dismissed alien technology altogether and denied the existances of other entities to his universe.

There is no room for expansion, no room for incredibly creative ideas. Weird technolgoies and alternate ways of thinking are thrown out in a man v. man model of conflict. We don't have truely strange weapons or perceptions in a war like this, it's always for power, resources, money, territory, what have you.

In an us. v. outsiders scenario though, it's the whole world at stake. In our case, it's the fate of the free human race. We can't worry about power when there's only a couple of hundred human beings left in existance. Then we run into ancient stuff that's trillions of years old, and does bizzare stuff that we could only imagine until we see it happen.

The short answer is: Against aliens, and a universe filled with diverse aliens, there's a much more colorful playground to be in instead of fighting your clone. How diverse can we get when everyone uses the same tech? Might as well be Hiigarans v. hiigarans... dull.

-----
I think somewhere in my code dabbling days there might be a spawneffect on death line somewhere in the ship files. Change the effect to a weapon explosion at range zero with a flak burst-like effect.

------
On the notion of newtonian physics... reverse engines would be nifty, but could they be coded to fire when the ship is slowing down? And for manuvering... thruster decals as a form of navlight and/or code red animation? That's the thing... can we get the detail to happen when it's supposed to?

[Mr. Pete]

Retro: this is what the seperate thurster & main engine speeds are for. Besides in the mode we can make the main engines seem a little.. less important maybe? Depending on relative thruster values of course.

Daton: True... if you could bind a flightmanouver to a hotkey... But then it'd still be quite unreliable... I'm not sure if the ship would right itself after the roll or what.

Norse: Even if it has to have a .hod, it could be the most tiny of polygons. It'd certainly be a possibility... but curving lasers is.. just... wouldn't ships be sucked into the gravity wells at that kinda strength? Kinda begs the question: Why are you using so much energy in bending light when you could just try & think of something else to hit em with?

... Although it would be funking cool

My personal method (&bit of my universe... *rolls eyes*) Is rear launched torpedos.. Dive at the enemy, ditch the torps, pull up, torps take a lazy arc around & hit the target. All the better when the torpedoes are ditched in large volumes & each takes a diffrent attack route. Circle of death ....

Anyway...

[Unk]

On the notion of newtonian physics... reverse engines would be nifty, but could they be coded to fire when the ship is slowing down? And for manuvering... thruster decals as a form of navlight and/or code red animation? That's the thing... can we get the detail to happen when it's supposed to?

Should be, it is possible to at least bind madstate animations to turns and call effects from within that madstate (the Vaygr carrier and BC spring to mind with their engine housing). Not too sure about decelerating though.

[dacis2]

Well, the solution Nexus uses is to have engines in front and behind, plus manuvering thrusters. To slow down, they cut off the main drive and fire the "secondary drive", which, can also be used if the main drive subsystem is shot, at a much slower speed of course.

And Unicron, you're right, there are no aliens in surrounding star systems, but face it, HW has some pretty impressive FTL.

[DatonKallandor]

Fully realistic Nexus style thrusters are possible. (Slowing down, banking what have you) They have been done by the Dustwars mod team.


Daton

[dacis2]

badabing badaboom, unless you want to use reactionless drives.

or inertialess drives.

[Mr. Pete]

And they're even easier

[Unicron]

Regardless, although I don't abhor the idea of alien races, put me down for human or near-human factions. Corporation-based warfare has been done somewhat to death, so I'd prefer to see more resource-based warfare along varied political ethics (kinda like Civilization is). If there's some alien technology in there, so be it - Homeworld 2 has awesome room for big alien artifact visuals and such.

Exactly my thinking too. Aliens can be done, but have to be done properly. Too often are aliens thrown into the game to spice things up; only to destroy the whole immersion. I have yet to see a good implementation of aliens without having the need to stand up and shout "yeah right".

I would love to see some kind of conflict involving current nations in the future. Between the US, China and Europe there would be alot to chose in terms of technology, combat philosophies and designs.

Europe could follow the Spartan model (i.e. few, elite forces), China would rely on outnumbering and brute force (i.e. Soviet tactics developed during WW2) and the US would lie somewhere in between.

We don't have truely strange weapons or perceptions in a war like this, it's always for power, resources, money, territory, what have you.

To quote Darwin:

"In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection"

This essentially entails every reason why we wage war. In essence, this includes economical reasons and religious beliefs. Evolution applies to all parts of the universe.

So I ask you, what else would an alien species fight for?

In an us. v. outsiders scenario though, it's the whole world at stake. In our case, it's the fate of the free human race. We can't worry about power when there's only a couple of hundred human beings left in existance. Then we run into ancient stuff that's trillions of years old, and does bizzare stuff that we could only imagine until we see it happen.

That's exactly the reason why I dislike that utopian philosophy. An alien threat will magically unite all of mankind --yeah right. The world was at stake several times throughout history and we were still fighting each other. When Stalin threatened to bomb you into stoneage, did you suddenly start loving the 1st world? --I don't think so.

[Chrome]

Greetings. I've been advised by Locutus to post this so nobody mistakes my intentions.

This mod appears to be going nowhere, and is suffering from a lack of appropriate initiative from its leadership. I've made my opinions clear to Locutus on this.

I'm going to sit this one out.

Please direct any complaints, concerns, or suggestions for this modification to Locutus, and not me. I will no longer have any part in it. I'll check the thread from time to time, but my hands remain off.

[Retroboy]

wtf?

Is there even an official mod yet, DC? I thought we were just babbling about some ideas and maybe a foundation would stick from the result...

If so, apologies if I've torn it off track somehow.

-- Retro

[Locutus]

Norsehound: I like the look of the ship in the very bottom of your last ship-pic post. You raise a good point about how the involvement of aliens in the mod allows for stuff that is really weird and far out, both in ship design and technology.

I think that since the majority of people here, with the exception of Unicorn, are proposing concepts that involve more than just the human race, that is the line I think we should run with. If a lot of people suddenly decide to change their minds, that could be accomodated I suppose.

Regarding the scatterpack ships: Very nice concept. However, I agree with Norsehound that the ships will probably have enough anti-missile defenses to prevent this from being viable in frontline combat.

A possible alternative: have mobile refineries or resource collecters that replace the resourcing gear with large missile packs. Could add a bit more strategy to raids on resource ops.

Retro: You've got a nice point regarding how newtonian physics would give use something different from the traditional HW2 combat model of big ships staying at rest relative to one another and then slugging it out. Fleets passing next to each other exchanging broadsides and raking laser fire = cool.

If we want to have inertialess ships, maybe limiting it to fighter and corvette classes would be the way to go. Opinions?

Also regarding the include aliens vs. mainly human arguements I have a possible compromise, feel free to shoot it down though: One side is the ancient evil empire. Another is xenophobic humans, the third is composed humans who have just began an alliance with a "good guy" alien race. This would have three sides, and as such require a lot more work. Or, over the course of the campaign the humans who allied with the aliens wipe out the xenophobes, only to have their victory feasts interrupted by Imperial scout ships.

[Chrome]

Retro, just re-read my post. It's not anything to do with the posters individually, but just the entire situation as a whole.

[Sastrei]

Speaking from a similar perspective as DC, it's a problem that was occurring even in the earliest stages of the HHU mod, due to leadership initiative issues.

-Stefan-

[Locutus]

Apparently the thought is that I lack initiative in this process, and am not taking a sufficient role in brining stuff together. One thing I was trying my best not to be was a control freak, I believed that it was useful to let the creative juices flow for a while, then take stock of all the stuff that had been created.

Right now we're still brainstorming ideas. I think that if we work together over the next few days to start shaking down all this stuff into something that is a workable premise for a mod then we would be doing fairly well.

I just ask that people don't start naysaying things before this mod even gets an official start. This is going to be the work of months, not weeks. We can afford to take the time to get a good solid foundation going. From my perspective, we can't afford not to.

[Unicron]

@Loc

I'm not against aliens in general. My belief is that throwing in some general alien species is only going to kill the immersion. If you want to include aliens, no one is going to stop you, but do it right. The player should be introduced to the universe rather than being thrown in. This means, the player shouldn't know their names, nor motives, nor origin --let the player explore. If you only want two species (human and alien), then the player shouldn't be trown into a conflict, but rather be there when it kicks off. My suggestions are: 1) the whole thing should happen somewhere else than Sol 2) the humans should only represent a faction/nation not the whole of mankind.


Besides, I think you need to set up a team first, with strict role allocation. Or else you get something like this thread --the total chaos.

And please stop calling me Unicorn.

[Retroboy]

Aah. I would've loved an HH-set mod too.

Running mod projects and acting as a "leader" is pretty tricky stuff, I can tell you from experience. Knowing that all participants are essentially volunteers, there's a careful balance that's required between accepting every idea that's thrown out for consideration, and stomping hard on any deviation from one's personal vision. The former results in a haphazard melange of a mod that usually ends up trying to do way too much with competing visions and never gets to an actual release, and the latter ends up driving other mod participants away because they don't feel they are contributing to their full potential or become offended because their good ideas aren't picked for implementation.

I'm hoping a compromise can be reached that keeps everyone that truly wants to be a stakeholder both interested and happy.

-- Retro

[Magus]

One note on the whole humanity/aliens/conflict problem:

Why have humanity at all? We're not the only species to fight amongst itself, make it a war between alien nations of the same race.

[BitchX]

The problem with aliens is that they are usually created as immensely illogical or utopistic. So why not make it a bit different? Include aliens but make them their own realistic Star Nation. Since this is supposed to be a Weberverse inspired mod, take a look at the Starfire universe. Excluding the Arachnids, the alien races are nations of their own with all the worries and troubles of a real nation. Economics, politics and so forth. It's much more interesting to fight against an opponent who has logical motives. Motives other than "Im evil, xenophobic, and purely because Im those things Im going to kill you first and ask questions later". Instead, if there is a war between a certain Human Star Nation and an alien Star Nation, let it be for logical reasons. For example the political tension between both nations has been high for some time, after an incident in which a human warship engages and destroys one of the ships of the alien nation's navy, a full-scale shooting war breaks out.

But not the usual mysterious alien empire of doom with weirdo tech of doom that is weirdo tech of doom solely for the purpose of there being such tech in the mod. We've seen this already and plenty of times. The Borg in ST. The Yuuzhan Vong in SW. The Shadows and Vorlons in B5. The Covenant in Halo. And so on and so on and so on. But rather instead, an alien nation that actually makes sense. An alien nation that actually conducts warfare in a way that when considering tactics and logic actually makes sense.

[Progenitor]

you mean makes sense in a human way.

[Norsehound]

DC- I'm sorry if any impulse of mine has forced you to leave the mod. I'm personally dissapointed to see you go hands off on this.

Ladies and gents, I am but a fluffer with a tremendous wealth of ideas. I post here, with my ideas, hoping to get some foot in the door in what's said in the story. In the Point-Defense mod, I wished to extend my creativity in shaping the constructs of the universe (ships, in so many words). How I was going story-wise and politically was apparently frowned upon by the administration there, yet they did nothing to stop me. Tel only told the others to 'sidestep my efforts, because he isn't listening.' I left soon afterwards, because my efforts were comming into conflict with Tel's 'grand vision'.

I feel limited in Angels Fall First by story and content. I asked there about the notion of ancient alien empires- something exotic and new, or something outrageous and strange that makes space a really unknown place to explore. He said no, joking that he'd ban anyone who suggested it. Still, in the world of Angels Fall first, creativity is limited to the capabilities of man and what is feasible in the near future. There is no room for creations running on the suspension of disbeleif.

Because of my fiction-creating nature and artistic background I aspire to have some way in shaping the universe of a mod. Naturally the best course for this would be to make my own... but who would want to follow my strict visions, and who of the high quality modders and coders would want to sign up for my project? I beleive that if I posted my concepts here in Tanis, I would attract half-assed quality work and no coders whatsoever, despite my story ideas.

This is the reasoning behind my entry into this mod. I am a fluffer, that's all I can do, because I have no coding or modeling skills or equipment. I want my work to shine somewhere, anywhere, where it's given room to expand. When I first posted in this thread about my concepts, following close to everyone else's, it seemed that I had found that room to explore.

So if my ideas sound too demanding, too controversial, and against the grain of what everyone wants, feel free to contradict me. I wish only to be able to have a place where my ideas, sketches, and backstory are welcome with the least restrictions. Outside of trying to cobble together my own mod, this is it.

I still humbly submit my skills, creativity, and artistic tallent to this mod, be they welcome or not.

-----------------

>>IP SEIZED!!!<<

----
Again, I still offer my help and vast creativity. I've already churned out some in-depth material on the races I have outlined previously... the antagonists using my second concept as the race-model. If desired, I could base one off the metallic concept of my first decision... but I have not spent much thought-time on them.

+Norsehound

[dacis2]

I think its the fact that we've been throwing fluff and ship designs for seven pages now, and have yet to come up with anything concrete at all. We're still producing conflicting genres, technologies and whatnot.

In my opinion, we need to settle on several things.

Genre- Alien invasion? Colonie secession? Grand Interstellar War?
Technology level- Reaction drives or no? Beam cannons? Bomb-pumped lasers? etc.
Ship design philosophy- Standardised, specialised, etc.

With this, the fluffers can start creating coherent fluff, the scripters can start thinking of how to best replicate the effects of the technology, and the modelers can make the models.

Whaddaya say?

[Chrome]

I must repeat again that it was a combination of leadership initiative and my frustration of seeing very little progress save for a heap of ideas that can't seem to be agreed on just yet that caused me to depart. Dacis is entirely correct in his view here.

It was not any one person's actions. Please do not take it personally or think that it was you.

Perhaps if things improve later, I may come back. But right now, I see little reason for me to be here.

[dacis2]

Oh well, just to put my vote in:

Genre: Alien Invasion (sure its overdone, but perhaps we can make a little twist in...)

Technology level:
Humans far ahead in terms of technology, we have inertialess drives, "shaped charge" matter-antimatter hypermissiles, bigger sublight missiles, antimatter particle beam cannons, and shields.
The aliens have gamma ray lasers, high level thermonuclear warhead tipped sublight missiles, and use a reactionless drive, not intertialess, just reactionless.
(Summary, Humans have unstoppable light missiles, uber heavy missiles, uber beam cannons and shields. Aliens don't.)

Ship Design Philosophy:
Humans build massive, monolithic juggernauts of destruction (Sajuuk size?). Heavily armoured and shielded, with weapons and point defences everywhere. Thanks to inertialess drive, they can accelerate very quickly and are surprisingly manuverable.

Alien ships vary alot. Mainly consisting of a legion of frigate sized ships, commanded by larger destroyer sized ships. Their design is also simple and easy to build. (simple, low poly shapes.) Armed with a few grasers and missile launchers, they have reactionless drives, coupled with their small size, that permit them to remain relatively manuverable.


As you can see, I borrowed alot from the Ashes from Empire series. I don't think any of the points is particularly overdone.

[DatonKallandor]

I vote for Alien influence aswell.

Though, contrary to dacis2, Id like to see the humans vastly low-tech at the beginning - with progressing upgrades in weapons and general tech.


Daton

[dacis2]

Don't you think the Humanity has low tech and magically reverse engineers the Alien tech and builds it in large numbers before they get curbstomped a bit overdone? ID4 had it, Halo has it, SG-1 has it given to them...