Gaging the Need

[Atrocities]

I once put a lot of effort into making a Star Wars mod only too loose all of my hard work and many months worth of dedication in a hard drive failure last june. Now I am beginning to rebuild the mod but I don't know if it is going to be worth the time investment needed to make such a mod given the pending release of Space Empires V.

Please vote.

[Atrocities]

When I play EAW I find that the game is a good game but lacking in so many ways that its really a bore after a bit. I love many of the concepts of EAW and Rebellion and really want to combine both games into a working SW Mod for SE IV.

However working out the details of such a mod, albeit I had a good start, has proven to be a major mental undertaking.

1. Hero's like Bobo Fett, Han Solo, and many others would be used for INTEL projects much like they are now in EAW. Mon Motha, the Emperor, Vader, and others would be deployed to cause uprisings or qwell them.
2. The tech tree would be very simple.
3. There would be only six main weapon types:
A. Turbo Lasers - Primary Weapons for all units, ships, and bases.
B. Ion Cannon - Used mainly for weapon platforms, and a few ships.
C / D. Missile and Torpedo Weapons - Fighters and a one or two ships.
E. Blasters - Troops / Infantry
F. Lasers - Anti Fighter weapons used by ships.
4. Both the Empire and Rebellion would start the game with access to several ships and fighter hulls. Both would have a maximum number of ship hulls of about Six or Seven with the Empire having the largest ship, the Super Star Destroyer, and the largest Base, The Death Star.
5. Both races would have one or two basic bases.
6. Spaceyard / construction yard would be upgradeable via expansion yards much like it is in EAW.
7. Each ship will have a specific fighter / cargo capicity for fighters / troops.
8. Troops will be a seperate raical trait from Infantry
9. Troops will have two types, ground and air units with each having its own weapons.
10. Fighters will be limited to combat movements only, with an exception for the Rebel fighters and one or two Imperial ones.
11. Fighters will hopefully be indiviually unique and each have their own capibilities and weapons.
12. Facilities will be limited to Mining (Monolith type) ala Rebellion.
13. Cultures will be limited.
14. The focus of the mod would be to allow the Empire to be greater militarly while the Rebellion will have a greater appeal to the minor races and have better intel / sabotage abilities.
15. There will be 20 minor neutral races
16. There will be an Empire, Rebellion, Pirate, and UnderVerse racial traits.
17. I might use the Hero/Facility method to approximate Generals, Admirals, and Planetary Governors. (This would require new facilities be added)
18. I might add Captains, Commedors, and Admirals to be used as components for ships.
19. Components will be limited to basic componetns scaled by mounts.
20. Mounts will be very important in the mod for scaling.
21. All ships will have built in fighter launch capabilities, troop cargo, ecm, muti-tracking, and combat abilities.
22. Smaller ships will be much more maneuverable and cheaper to build.
23. Larger ships will take longer to build and hopefully be more important to the game than the general cannon fodder use.
24. Larger ships will be harder to kill than smaller ones.
25. Planet invasion is more important than planet glassing.

[Black_Knyght]

Oh HELL yes !!!

I for one would love to see you do this mod.

May the farce be with you..... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

The Force is strong with this mod.....

[RonGianti]

SEIV is no longer going to grace my PC. I've put all my hopes in SEV. So my vote is, if you're going to spend the time, get started on SEV shipsets.

j/m .02

[Black_Knyght]

RonGianti said:
SEIV is no longer going to grace my PC. I've put all my hopes in SEV. So my vote is, if you're going to spend the time, get started on SEV shipsets.

j/m .02




This is one opinion that is NOT universal by far.

I personally plan to stick with SEIV and would readily play a new mod developed for it. I'm not going to bail on SEIV and write it off just because a shiny new version with "ooh, aah, oh !" graphics comes out.

[RonGianti]

Black_Knyght said:

I'm not going to bail on SEIV and write it off just because a shiny new version with "ooh, aah, oh !" graphics comes out.



Good heavens why? If SEV is superior to SEIV in every way, why would we go back to SEIV? I would hardly call playing a game for an unheard of 6 solid years to be "writing it off". Please tell me you are NOT a beta tester. If you are, I'm very scared now....

[Captain Kwok]

SE:IV will continue to remain popular for some time because even though SE:V will be here shortly, it will take some time for the game to be polished to a similar degree and for new mods and shipsets to emerge. In time, SE:IV activity will diminish but I don't think it will go away as much as SE:III did.

[Atrocities]

RonGianti you might want to consider the possibility that you may not like SE V. It has been my experience that when you place too much "hope" into a single minded endevour, in this case SE V, that you are ultimately dissappointed.

I know from first hand experience that SE V and SE IV are differant enough games that both can still be played independantly of one another with equal enjoyment. I would hope that this would be true for you, but each is to own. Thanks for your opinion, it is a valid one and I appreciate it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Jarena]

I'll play it either way, but why not hold off and build it for SEV? I'm not a beta tester but it seems that you'd be able to do bigger and better things with the V.

[Captain Kwok]

My solution is to build both mods at once. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Atrocities]

SE V, once released, will more or likely require a significant amount of modding time in order to produce a quality mod. And given the fact that many things will change over the course of then next few months following the release of SE V, modding the game so soon after its release might prove to be more of a waste of time early on.

Also modding SE V is not like modding SE IV. While you have far more modding options with SE V, modding SE V requires a significant dedication and pronounced effort.

As to making ship sets for SE V, it can be done with DOGA, but again texturing the models has proven to be a nightmare that I have yet been unable to overcome.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I'd wait for SEV to come out, then choose which one to make the mod for. Right now, all you have is other peoples' opinions.

[Suicide Junkie]

I get the impression that you want to hardcode the ship designs in this mod... is that accurate?

[Atrocities]

Yes to some degree I do. The one thing I've noticed about both EAW and REbellion is that the ships all have pre-set amounts for fighters and troops.

Engines and weapons will be added by the player in the design process along with other support components such as mine sweepers, layers, bonus sensors and other items.

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, first you should consider if such restrictions are truly a good thing...

If you still want to, then you will probably want to use SE5 to allow greater control over such things.

[Atrocities]

Good point.

[Xrati]

It's still a mod, with the PLAYER ultimately designing the ships. If you don't want somebody doing something that could upset balance of the ship designs then it would be better to hardwire the ships. "Give someone enough rope and see where they hang out." http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Fyron]

Hard-coding ship designs doesn't seem very fun to me. Should I bring out the Canon Cannon? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Atrocities]

Its star wars not space empires. By the time the rebellion was formed most of the major research was done for both the empire and the rebellions. They had fighters, large ships, and standard technology. If you want to research massive amounts of technology, and design every faciet of a Star Destroyer then this mod won't be for you.

In order to achieve the feel of the Star Wars universe, hard coding the ships to limit the amount of fighters and troops they can carry is essencial. It is the Star Wars way.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Looks like AT has the canon cannon.

[Fyron]

I disagree. In my opinion, taking away the ability to customize your designs is not required to get a Star Wars feel. What you are proposing is more of a limited scenario than a mod. Why not include all of the eras? Allow the games to develop as they will? You don't need to force the same boring designs on everyone to make it feel like Star Wars.

Did you have to hard-code them to get Star Trek in Star Trek Mod? No. You could make the same argument about designs being more or less fixed at any point in the Star Trek timeline too.

[Atrocities]

That is a valid point Fyron, however if people want that kind of customization in a mod, they why not simply just play stock SE IV Deluxe?

Star Wars is a very differant beast then Star Trek. There were a lot of races to work from and a ton of technology to work with. Star Wars for the most part has very little new tech and has but only two or three factions.

A stardestroyer can carry fighters and troops and is the primary assualt vessel for the empire. In order to assure that a Star Destroyer has these capabilities they must be hard coded in.

Star Wars is not about researching new technology to the end of the time, nor is it about adding tons of components to a hull. It is about using exsisting tools in accordance to and for the objective purpose of conquring the enemy.

We know what a Tie Fighter is and can do. The same for an X-wing. If a player wants to modify his X-wing fighter to have 10 lasers and six armor with five torpedo launchers than it no longer is an X-wing fighter.

This mod won't be for everyone, but it will be fun for those who want to play it. If your all about having the freedom to design a star destroyer or Rebel frigate from the ground up then use the sets in stock SE IV or with another mod.

[Suicide Junkie]

Mainly because stock generally sucks.

You seem to be thinking of the ship classes in SW as hull types. That's going about it way too iron-fisty.

An X-wing is simply a large fighter design. The X-wing class ships have 4 guns, a shield and a hyperdrive because the rebels designed it that way.

The Tie Fighter is a small fighter much like the rebel headhunter... they use different shipsets, and designed their small fighters differently.

See the perspective?

[Atrocities]

Its hard to explain my perspective or take on the concept for the mod. It seems that whenever a new concept comes along a lot of detail must go into the explaining of it inorder to obtain a clear understanding of the overall design aspect of the mod. While I know what it is I want to try and accomplish with this mod, it is indeed difficult for me to adiquitely describe it to hardened SE IV fans who have their own perspective on how and why things should be the way they should be.

All I can do is try to make the mod, and then go from there. While cetain aspects of a ships hull will be hard coded, ie the amount of fighters and drop troops ability, other aspects such as weapon load outs, mounts sizes, numbers of engines, support components, and such will be up to the player. While the ships will have hyperdrive capable engines, or a fair approximation of it, they will also have to have main and secondary engines.

I wanted to keep the larger ships combat movements limited in order to promote the use of fighters however this cannot be successfully done as there is a hard coded basic combat movement per engines built into the game. (look to other post at SE.net for more info - will get link later.)

As too fighters, I want to limit thier max engines, and weapons for the most part. Support componens such as shields, armor, combat support, and the like would be up to the player to add to each design.

I intend to have two or three engines classes, short range, medium range, and long range engines.

I hope this helps to clear up some things.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Sounds good to me. Keep the SW classes, just make them modifiable to a reasonable extent.

[Suicide Junkie]

(Now that the demo is out, you can see the following for yourself)

There shouldn't be any problem making capital ships absurdly slow in combat but fast in strategic move in SE5, since there is what amounts to a "Combat speed per movement point" value in the vehiclesizes.txt

The restrictions in the same file will also let your force the number of whatever components, if not their location.

[Xrati]

It's a Star Wars mod.If you change the ships/fighters then you now go on the alternate galaxy theory! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

The real question is whether it you want the mod to be loose and use the physics of the SW universe... or if you want the mod to try to force a lot of story details.

There's a good quote about gripping too tightly in SW http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Wade]

Not to be rude but your pole is asking: I say to get off the Star Wars and Star Trek kick and focus on the SPACE EMPIRES culture. For the other franchises just watch their movies and shows and play their games. Just my opinion and advice. You don't have to take it.

I love uniqueness and originallity.

[Noble713]

Atrocities said:
A stardestroyer can carry fighters and troops and is the primary assualt vessel for the empire. In order to assure that a Star Destroyer has these capabilities they must be hard coded in.




I understand your approach and it is similar to my own feelings about ship design in Star Wars. However, the degree of flexibility required in ship design is dependent on the scope of ship classes you wish to include. For example, the Tector class (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tector-class_Star_Destroyer), while seemingly built on the same hull as the Imperator/Imperial, appears to have no fighter or troop capacity. Likewise the Immobilizer 418 (aka Interdictor cruiser), which carries 24 fighters, is built on the same hull as the Vindicator class that carries 36 fighters (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Vindicator-class_heavy_cruiser)

What I tried to do was find the right sizes for components and hulls so that ships could have exactly the same equipment they do in the cannon universe, but it wasn't forced. In the example of the X-Wing, I would add all of the components (cockpit, life support, astromech droid, shield gen, 2x proton torp launchers, 4x laser cannon, etc) and then reduce or increase the X-wing hull size accordingly. They also designed to move at very specific speeds with very specific # of engines. You could design an X-Wing hull with only 1 or 2 engines and a bunch of extra armor, but it would definitely be far slower than the "real" designs. You could also design all the ships and save them with the empire styles, and perhaps force the AI to not design new ships (is that possible?) and strongly encourage the players to use the existing designs.

[Santiago]

Considering the reception the SEV demo is getting, I'd say SEIV will be played for quite a while and this mod would be most welcome

[Atrocities]

That is so very sad.