Matrix Games Forums

a few patches ago i started playing as humans and i noticed alot of weirdnesses, bugs, texture issues, stuff that could be improved with the human shipset.
today i noticed engine trails being way off... so i think its time i actually write this all down.
its all minor stuff, nothing gamebreaking, but still stuff that could be improved.

so first thing i noticed with the human ships was a weird green light in the center of them: here for example on the construction ship.
as i played zenox since release and just now started a game as humans and before seeing on streams that some other factions have blinky lights on their ships... and zenox haveing no blinky lights atall... i thought maybe this green light is some bugged out blinky lights for human ships. but i doubt that is the case. i guess humans have instead of blinky lights all the glowy bits and windows etc?
the green light is also in the small freighter
the exploration ship has it too very visible.
also the mining ship has it visible between its boxes.

so no idea what that light is supposed to be... but it feels "wrong" and bugged out.

---------------------------------------------
so i just made a new game with all tech and went through a few ship designs...

i.e. the small and medium exploration ships have the green light... the large exploration ship doesnt have it.
same with the constructors... small and medium has it in the middle and the large one doesnt.
with mining ships the small one has the green light but the medium and large one doesnt have it.

also the green light is kinda blinking... and i saw that the battleship and carrier both have blinking lights on it (they look great) and no other ship or station has blinking lights? why?
i hope it is a bug as the blinking lights on the carrier and battleship do look great and having them on all ships/stations would be great. (fighters included... blinky lights on the wingtips or so could look great)

-----------------------------------------------
while we on the topic of blinky lights... other races also have the same inconsistency with having blinking lights and not having them...
i.e. the haakonish explorer looks great with the blinky lights on it blinking in some intervall pattern (not all on/off at the same time)

------------------------------------
at this point i might aswell make a list of the races about what ships do have blinky lights and what ships dont:

haakonish:
has lights:
-battleship, carrier, colonyship, constructionship, explorationship, M-freighter, mining ship, passenger ship, L-freighter, S-Freighter, troop transport, fuel tanker,
has no lights:
-bomber, cruiser, destroyer, defensebase, escort, frigate, interceptor, L-spaceport, monitor station, mining station, M-spaceport, resort base, research station, S-spaceport,

this is a total mixed bag with ships, big ships have lights like battleship, but also small ships have lights like exploration and freighters... and smaller combat ships and stations dont have lights.
overall pretty good blinky lights on this race, they dont just turn "on/off" but have some patterns to them.
colony ship might could have a few more lights maybe? at the square back and maybe the green circle things.
the fuel tanker lights are a bit hard to see ontop the white bit. maybe they would be better to see if they go 45° left/right along the round bits on the green part instead of along the white bit ontop of the round bits.

i think the medium freighter might use the wrong ship model? it looks like the fuel tanker where the small and large freighter look more bloky.

------------------------------------
Teekan:
has lights:
- battleship, carrier, colonyship, cruiser, constructionship, destroyer, defensebase, escort, explorationship, frigate, M-freighter, L-freighter, L-spaceport, fueltanker, monitor station, mining station, M-spaceport, passengership, resortbase, research station, S-freighter, S-spaceport, trooptransport, mining ship.
has no lights:
-bomber, interceptor,

basically everything has lights, apart from fighters and bombers.
the unsymetric light placement is nice on teekan stuff... still jsut "on/off" pattern... but the unsymetric placement fits to the race well.

------------------------------------
Ackdarian:
has lights:
-battleship, carrier, colony ship, cruiser, constructionship, destroyer, escort, explorationship, frigate, L-freighter, S-freighter, passengership, mining ship, troop transport, fuel tanker, M-freighter (bugged lights! too far from model)
has no lights:
-bomber, defensebase, interceptor, L-spaceport, monitorstation, miningstation, M-spaceport, resortbase, research station, S-spaceport,

basically all ships have lights, all stations dont.
the medium freighter has bugged lights.

------------------------------------
Boskara:
has lights:
-
has no lights:
- ALL ships/stations

with boskara it makes sense atleast as they all organic... and they have "spotlight" glowy bits.

------------------------------------
Human:
has lights:
-battleship, carrier
has no lights:
-everything else

why do just these two big ships have lights? it doest really make any sense.

also why does just the escort have a mroe white/blue texture instead of darkgray/blue?
every ship/station/even weapons are dark gray... why is the escort more white?
(also the white/blue of the escort looks good... maybe make all the darkgray textures (ships/stations/weapons) more white like the escort white is?)

------------------------------------
Mortalen:
has lights:
- all ships/stations
has no lights:
-bomber, interceptor

small freighter blinks better than all the other ships, as the others just go "on/off" with their lights. why does just this one ship has lights that blink this way? it would look great if all ships/stations lights blink in such a way liek the small freighter lights does. gives it some "racial feel" to the lights, instead of just "on/off"... similar to how teekan lights are all unsymetric.

destroyer blinks quicker than the rest?
large spaceport lights blink very subtile.
S and M spaceport lights dont blink atall? (but they got lights)
mining station just has lights on one half. (both hangars have lights around them though, the one on the side with no lights has them too. the lights at the hangar corners are a bit hard to see, compared to the other lights)

------------------------------------
Zenox:
has lights:
-
has no lights:
- ALL ships/stations

actually if zenox are also staying without blinky lights... there are black bits at the ships.. maybe the teal areas in these black parts could glow similar to how human/boskaran ship parts glow... that might would give the ships a special feel.
all the stations dont really have such black parts though... a few do have darker bits but not as black as the ships... but maybe adding some black areas to the stations and making the bright bits in there then glowing might look good?

------------------------------------
------------------------------------
in general maybe makeing the blinky lights a bit more "bright" so they show better a bit zoomed out might be good to? imagine airplane lights in the dark... they viewable quite some distance.
(example: haarkonish explorer... the two green lights at the end of the poles are the only ones that really show if you zoomed out a bit. but that might just be the level of detail reduction when more zoomed out, the lights disappear after a while too)

also some lights on the wingtips of fighters/bombers might look nice and makes them more visible?

another bigger "issue" is engine trails:

i noticed with the humans that alot of the civillian ships dont show engine trails atall, where all combat ships do show trails.
and some engines show trails and other engines dont. its a bit all over the place.

ion engines (red trail) dont show on:
freighters, mining ship, explorer, constructor,
they do show on bombers, but dont show on interceptors. -------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
proton engines (green trail):
this engine trail was very obviously alinged "wrong/too high" on passenger ship and too low on mining ship, -------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------

directional thrusters dont have an engine trail atall: (they should probably use the same color as most of the other engines on the ship) it still looks kinda okay with 2 engines and 1 directional on this frigate.... but on a destroyer with 3 thrusters and one directional it looks weird: they also dont have a trail on zenox ships... so i guess they might not have a trail on all races? -------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
quantum engines on the zenox fighter in engine bay 1, the engine trail faces in the wrong direction.

while randomly checking through races i randomly noticed that the ion engine on haarkonish ships doesnt have a trail on passenger ship, mining ship and small freighter, where on a destroyer it does show an engine trail.
(might be a similar issue as with the humans)

i noticed that some weapon bays could be placed better as they are "off center"... or "a higher tech ship design might adds the weapon on the other side"

i.e. with the zenox command battleship weapon bay #4 in the back is placed on the right side of the ship... and none on the left side. in this case it would be better to place this turret on the centerline of the ship. ----------------------------------
----------------------------------
one of the haarkonish fuel designs (i think it was the small fuel tanker one) also has a weapon mounted to the right side with none on the left. where the higher tech designs have also a weapon slot on the left.
might also be a case to move that weapon to the center of the ship for this design? while the higher tech designs with two weapon slots keep the two weapon bays on the sides. ----------------------------------
----------------------------------
alot of interceptors and bombers also have such an "issue" where they have one gun infront or at the ship center and the second on one of the wings... where they could have both weapons on each wing instead. like here the haarkonish low tech bomber has a weapon infront and on one side. where one of the higher tech bombers has both weapons on the wings.

when you upgrade a ship design it often moves engines that are in symetric arrangement to engine slot 0 makeing it unsymetric looking:

the haarkonish fleet frigate has slots for 5 engines on its model, but it can max use 3 engines... so the outer two slots are never used.
where the normal frigate design just has 3 engines without the two outer slots. (maybe remove the two outer slots on the fleet frigate similar to the normal frigate?)
the fast frigate can have 5 engines and does use the two outer slots for engine setups with 4 and 5 engines, so its fine on that one.

more cases of engine trails:
the human constructor ship does show vortex engine trails (blue) (i think it doesnt show ion and proton engines like mentioned above) the ore miner though has the engine trail alinged wrong with the vortex engine: the human passenger ship has the vortex engine trails too at the wrong spot: the engine trail issue also happens on akdarian ships, i saw it randomly on one of their freighters with turbotrusters:

the ackdarian medium freighter also has its lights placed wrong... they are shows off the model: ----------------------------------
----------------------------------
one of the human freighters has no engine trail with vortex engines

----------------------------------
----------------------------------
the mortaleen constructor and one of their freighters also show no engine trail with vortex engines:

now for texture issues:
the missile launcher on human ships doesnt have a back texture: the missle launcher isnt aligned 100% with the slot i.e. in the front weapon slot of the escort... (but god noone really will notice this one XD) (no idea if the other front slots of the other shiptypes are also like this, not like if these few pixels matter much anyways.) the radar and missile launcher weapon textures seem somehow not aligned right?
like one half of the missle launcher base has the glowy line and the other half has a different texture... it feels like the textures arent right on these ones.

alot of the human ships and stations have these nice square glowy weapon slot markers on their texture.
but often when you put the weapon there it looks a bit weird then.
like here on the top of the escort is a nice slot: and it kind works if you put a missile launcher ontop of it (apart from the missle launcher texture being all "wrong alinged" on itsself) it looks like its placed right on the slotmarker of the hull texture... but with the railgun it looks like its placed "too far forward" based on the marker on the ships hull texture: as if the end of the rail gun fits on the middle of the slot and not the middle of the railgun. maybe the railguns base is too far forward? it seems the actual gun is sitting on the middle of the weapon slot so with the guns base also being mroe forward the marker on the hull texture shows in the back.. what makes this all look a bit "off". on some of the human stations the marker on the hull texture seems also to be way "off" the actual position of the weapon slot. like shown on a mining station here, where the weapon is a bit away from the hulls edge (good) while the marker on the stations texture is sitting right at the edge of the hull. might be worth to doubble check if the railgun model is connected to the ships weapon slot at the right position. or better said: if the railguns base should be moved more so that the round weapon bit is centered on the base instead of on one side?
and maybe to edit some of the stations textures so the weapon slot marker is more placed where the weapon is placed. (like on the research stations top slots too is the marker quite far to the edge and not centered on where the weapon would sit on.)

also all weapons turrets always seem to point towards the "front" of the ship/station and not to the "middle of their fireing arc".
so it does look a bit weird sometimes like here on this station with the weapons pointing to the side and one even having the barrel inside the hull.

and as mentioned in the first post with the blinky lights:
why is the human escort the only ship that has a brighter grey texture?
its more to "white/blue" where all other ships and stations and even the weapons have a "dark gray/blue" texture?
personally i think the escorts more bright/white-ish coloring looks better than the dark gray... but i guess it would be quite a pain to recolor all other ship/station and weapon textures from dark gray to more "escort white".
still weird that this one is so different from the rest.

it can be seen here well, how the gray of the weapon ontop is much darker than the ships texture... and on a station the weapon fits the stations texture:

Hello Lunalis

Thanks for all of this. I was aware of the running lights on some of the Human civilian ships and some engine trails not working but all the other stuff is news to me. The running lights should be easy enough to fix they are just missing the dummy meshes for the running lights to be generated on. I'm not sure what's going on with the missing engine trails though as all the meshes are named correctly and everything.

Some of the stuff you mention is intentional but I'll be working on fixing all the stuff (that I can) you mentioned in between other more pressing projects.

i will just add this also to here... its not really a bug, more something that probably would look better if its changed:

its about the human exploration ships and the model of the 3rd scanner module.
like here i noticed that the exploration notifications have a ship shown that also has little long antennas at the bottom... but on the left the small explorer doesnt have that.
so first i thought maybe its a bug that the model doesnt have them long antennas.

but i checked a game with max tech level and it seems that the small and medium explorers have two sensor bays (one in front and one middle top)
and the large explorer also has a 3rd scanner bay (bay sensor2) that shows these long antenna then. and i feel it would look way better if all versions of explorer ships would have these antenna.
so maybe... swap around sensor bay 1 and 2. so that the bay ontop is just on the large explorer as additional sensor (the radar dish in the picture)
and bay 1 would have the long antenna and would be avaiable to all three exploration ships. (it might even would make sense to swap the 120 size scanner to this antenna slot, instead of the front slot.)

so small and medium explorer ships would have a size 19 sensor bay at the front of the ship. and a size 120 bay under the ship with the long antenna.
and the large explorer would also have another 3rd sensor bay with size 19 ontop with the radar dish.

that way all the early exploration ships would also look more interesting with them antennas.

-------------------------------
-------------------------------
one more thing i randomly noticed on the large spaceport... that has like not gameplay effect :

the space port has 4 visible size 100 hangarbays and two visible size 50 hangarbays...
and 3 size 100 ones are at the center of the station but the 4th is off on the pylon.
where one size 50 is on the other pylon and one size 50 is at the center. not sure why i even post this... maybe its just my "ocd" or so saying: "wouldnt it make more sense if all 4 size 100 bays are on the central structure and the two size 50 ones on the pylons?"... haha... it has like no gameplay change, but would make the design look more symetrical.

Could we get a sticky thread where all those graphic "issues" regarding ships are compiled, please? This one would be a good starting point. Over the last weeks I've added a few by my own, today I finally found two threads mentioning "medium troop transport". It would make life easier for both sides, devs and players, when all our findings are in one place.

Just wanted to thank everyone in this thread for reporting these issues. I just fixed a bunch of issues with the Human faction and this was a great resource.