Why everyone should own this game

[Melkor]

http://astoreth.net/Screen1.jpg

[DamoclesX]

those are some big ships
do they use specs?

and is this a full mod?

[Melkor]

If by specs you mean specular maps, then no. I really have no skills as a modeller, and I'm just porting them from XWA Upgrade models. Then I use the Specular 1 option in Magic. It feels like a cop-out compared to your stuff, but it works OK for now. At present I'm mainly concerned with getting the ships to function properly and display some semblance of balance. Prettiness comes later. While I'm posting, I have a couple questions:

1. Occasionally some of my fighters appear to have impenetrable shields. I set shield_factor between 0.75 and 0.9 for all of them, but sometimes it's impossible to actually damage them. Then, suddenly, damage gets through as it should. Could this have something to do with the shield models?

2. I'm pretty sure that this is impossible, but is there anyway to circumvent the new fighter assault behavior (side slipping)?

3. How is cap ship engagement range determined? Mine don't seem to like to get in close to fight.

4. Can Farcasters use filters in the same manner as Flight Decks?

By the way, thanks so much for your tip about reducing verts in 3DS models in that other thread. Makes a huge difference in texture clarity!

[DamoclesX]

Okay
Specs are easy, just contrast the normal texture in photoshop and tweak the brightness to make it look "real", remember to greyscale it first, trust me, its one of the easyer things to do
unless the ship has like 100 textures, then its next to impossible in magic cause you have to select the faces, its pretty much the main reason I try tokeep the ships now one texture(didnt on the dilgar dartfighter, paying for it)

1. You could have shields set wrong, they could be set to absorbe all damage, then fail and let damage through rather then reduce damage, check mephs site for the life of my I Cant remember the settings

2. I dont know, it could be the reason my fighters are next to usless now too so I cant help you there

3. from what I can tell they try to close in pretty fast, however I Think milo added some code to take into account long range weapons, so that could be throwing your ships off, they will never get in close like starwars ships unless they are out of control, at least thats what I have found with the b5 ships.

4.no clue

[Melkor]

WOW! Spec maps make a WORLD of difference! I'm still tweaking the contrast settings, but I'll post some screenies as soon as possible! Thanks Damocles!

[DamoclesX]

ya, thats why I pushed milo for them so much, they really make it look more life like.

once you get used to the, you can then use them for other effects, I have specs on the windows on the fighters to give an impression or either scratches, or dirt,
you can use them on metal to show metal scratches

or you can use them for color changes, the minbari ships skin changes color with the light direction

[Melkor]

Star Destroyer patroling above Tatooine

[DamoclesX]

ya, that looks damn cool

[Duken]

*drool*

[DamoclesX]

keep this mod going:) I really wanted to do a starwars mod for starshatter, but I cant do em all.. and b5 was calling lol

[Melkor]

I'd like to take a moment to ask for a little help, mainly from a balancing standpoint. Right now, I have the fighters balanced to each other pretty well, but I'm having some trouble with the capships. Would anyone be interested in helping me out? What I really need is some feedback regarding weapon numbers and power. I'm trying to strike a balance between what is seen in the movies and what people expect from other games, like the X-Wing series. The problem is that there is so much contradictory information floating around, and I need at least one other opinion. I'd prefer to have someone who can understand the def files, just so I can get actual quantitative feedback, but anyone who wants to try simple playability is more than welcome. I'm in the process of re-doing models right now, so only a few capships are available, but enough to give a basic idea. To sum up, HELP!

[DamoclesX]

I wish I knew ANYTHING about starwars.. other then .. stuff blows up lol and stardestroyers are invincible.. or something along those lines lol

[Duken]

ROTJ battle. Star Destroyers were able to survive half an hour of ship to ship battle with Mon Calamari battlecruisers in the Battle of Endor before they started to lose shielding. If we assume roughly one Star Destroyer per Mon Calamari cruiser and ignore fighters (in spite of the fact that they were carrying thermonuclear weapons), we can estimate that a Star Destroyer can survive many thousands of shots before shield failure. In the opening scene of ANH a Star Destroyer is seen firing roughly 25 shots in 5 seconds, for a time-averaged refire rate of 5 shots per second. As discussed in the turbolaser page, each shot carries at least 1.5E15 joules of energy, and around 1E17 joules of energy if set to maximum power. If similar fire rates occured in the Endor battle (note that we are disregarding the heavy turbolasers which would increase the estimate by an order of magnitude), this means that the energy capacity of a Star Destroyer's shields is between 1.4E19 and 9E20 joules, so 1E20 joules (24,000 megatons) is a reasonable estimate.

Characteristics of offensive weaponry. An ISD1 can unleash more than 6E19 joules (14,000 megatons) of energy with a full broadside. If an ISD can withstand at least one full broadside from another ISD, then this would mean that the burst energy capacity of a Star Destroyer's shields is probably in the range of 1E19 joules.

[DamoclesX]

I dunno, in my option any numbers from shows seem like a wild blind drunking shot at a golf hole located in our solar system.

Everything done in shows is -always- done for dramatic effect or story, meaning if the story needed it that stardestroyer would fry another in one shot, or over a 44 minute episode.

Its the biggest fight I have with b5 fans

the blah blah does blah blah damage to the blah blah and would always win against the blah blah because of episode blah

Then I have to quote jms who himself said "the starfury will be as fast, and have as much fuel as the story needs"

Not to say numbers liek that are not fun, just... dont ever try to base a game on them, try to get the general feel more then anything, or you will like me, go insane after a month of numbers, throw your excell document against the wall(virtually of course) and tell b5tech to bit your ass then move onto inventing your own balance system lol

[Melkor]

Lol...I know exactly what you mean. What I meant was that I want to recreate the general look of the movies, but still keep it playable. I don't think two ships pounding away at each other for half an hour with no results is any fun, but neither are capital ships that pull instant course changes like in the X-Wing series. The situation I'm in is like this: How many Republic Dreadnaughts should it take to whip an ISD? If they have B-Wing escorts, how much of a difference should they make? Things like that will either make the mod fun or stupid, depending on how well they compromise between "realism" and playability.

[DamoclesX]

i have always thought xwing did a good sim of that

it takes 2 of those uber big mon pickel cruisers to take down an isd, so... try to balance from that... the smaller pickels would do less.. the frigates were basically usless against an isd you would need like 10 lol

[Duken]

Those numbers came form Mike Mong over at Stardestroyer.net (turbolaser page here)

[Mehrunes]

It's a trap!

[Melkor]

This one's gonna take a loooong time to .def....

[Melkor]

New fighter package:

http://astoreth.net/Downloads/SW_Test_003.rar (DAT format)
http://astoreth.net/Downloads/SW_Test_003a.rar (Uncompressed)

Tweaked a few things, but Concussion Missiles still need work. Also, do specular hulls look
a) Good
b) Bad
c) What the hell was I thinking?