EVN - Delphi

Heh, good to hear. I still have nightmares about trying to hit TIEs in X-Wing.

My God Delphi, do you ever fail at making ships that stun and amaze? That is one of the most beautiful ships I have ever seen! It just looks.... so.... amazing. I can't describe why, but it's awe inspiring. I can imagine one of these dominating hangers. I am so very excited. So very very excited!

Actually, EK, you gave me an idea. Since this ship is just one giant kitbash, it's pretty easy to move the parts around and/or glue on new ones. Though this one would be overpowered by being both a heavy cruiser and a carrier, I could easily make a modified hull variant that replaces most of the artillery with hangar space, making a good heavy carrier to work alongside the cruiser version. I'd probably strip off the weapon mounts (the arms), but the front of the ship would still have some extra structure to hold the fighter complement.

Oh, and I liked that one idea somebody had to make the fighters as though they were a zoomed-in representation of a small object on-screen: I think I'm going to use a small faction-colored ring to indicate the fighter's position, with a tiny holographic rendering of the fighter in the middle of the ring. Really, it means they'll look just like the ones in EV:N, with the scale problem, but their transparent holographic nature will lend suggestion to the fact that they are actually much smaller.

Glad to be of service on the fighter idea. I'm excited to see how it works for you!

So not only can this thing pound away at people with the loving nuclear cannons of doom, it can also quickly be changed so it can gently caress the enemy ship with waves of fighters. Oh I do like that. I really like your universe in general. Very excited Delphi, very excited!

This promises to be an awesome TC. I can only hope my TC can compare once finished. Keep up the great work, Delphi!

Congratulations, Delphi: I liked the Harbinger so much I made a Spore model of it. I realized when I started it that I wouldn't be able to create a model exactly like yours (similar to what I did with my stock Nova spore models) but instead created a representation of the ship. I hope you like it:

Harbinger.jpg (93.59K)
Number of downloads: 59

Very cool, Jalisurr. That looks like it could be either a heavy cruiser of a heavy fighter. Awesome!

Delphi, you said something about rings representing fighters? Care to elaborate? I don't quite understand what you mean. Or, if anyone wants to help out Delphi and explain for him so he doesn't have to, that would be fine.

With the fighters as rings thing, it means that Delphi would be keeping the ships more to scale in game. The player would fly larger ships, and small, single man fighters, which would be too small to see if done to scale, would be represented by a symbol, like on a HUD. Also, one symbol can be used to represent a whole squadron of fighters, so that the number of fighters launched from a carrier can be kept more realistic without hitting the limitations of the Nova engine.

I think the "fighters as HUD icons" idea is one of the best solutions to the scale problem I've seen. I heard (may have been this thread, actually) an idea about representing them with tiny colored dots, which works too, but then you run into the problem of either making two versions of light weapons or having fire from fighters be 4-5 times the size of the fighter itself.

Not to mention the player could no longer be able to pilot a fighter without suddenly becoming a squadron commander and having to outfit every fighter in his/her squadron the exact same way. Also, all fighters in the player's squadron would be stuck in formation mode with no option to split up or anything. No, I think using rings to represent fighters and other really small craft should only be used if each ring is one craft.

As for making it more realistic in terms of fighter-to-carrier ratio, who's to say that a realistic space carrier wouldn't have a more limited supply of fighters than today's aircraft carriers? As we all know, there is no such thing as of yet, so a 'realistic' definition does not yet exist, either.

Actually, pure maths puts forward a good argument for space based carriers being able to carry potentially millions of fighters, especially on the scale Delphi's talking about. Water-based carriers have to have a physical limit to their size, on sheer cost and usefulness. Space based carriers are limited by the strength of the material you make them out of, so it wouldn't be as big an issue.

Aside, it's quite probable that all fighters in a squad would be outfitted the same.

I'll admit you have a point regarding how many fighters a space-based carrier could have, but I'm not sure about all fighters in a squadron being outfitted the same. Think about it: if all fighters were the same, they could only handle a few problems that their design has an advantage against. If each fighter is outfitted differently, they can handle more situations. It's the same with any commando squad. Would you rather be stuck in any situation with only four soldiers (including assaulting tanks) or would you rather have a few heavy soldiers and maybe a sniper with you?

Variety in a squad/squadron equals more strength.

Why, from a programming perspective, would it be important to make them all be outfitted the same? When you're talking about squadrons of dozens to thousands (or millions), you're either going with a dot to represent the squadron, in which case who cares what fighters are carrying what, or you're going with a sprite that appears to be several ships, in which case, if it's really important, you can give the ship that represents the squadron several types of weapons and make different ones appear from different fighters using exit point.

I'm failing to see the problem.

When it's the AI flying the tiny ships, then yes, almost no one cares what they have. However, when it's the player flying the ship him/herself, how do you explain that a weapon the player just bought for him/herself is suddenly mounted on a different fighter in the squadron?

And you're still stuck in formation mode. I mean, how's this for an example?

Player: "Ok, Zeke, you break right, Tanya break left, and I'll go right down their throat."
Zeke: "No can do, sir."
Player: "Well, why not?"
Tanya: "Because our ships are actually one sprite stuck together. We can't use squadron tactics like that."
Player: "Huh?"

See what I mean?

Still, that's not insurmountable. You could still have several ships representing several squads (think Ender's Game squadron mechanics, where task forces of varying size are all controlled together by different individuals); even if it wouldn't be perfect, it would be a reasonable facsimile. For weapons coming out of different ports, there are two options. 1) you make the outfits, instead of buying a weapon for your ship, be squad equipment. All the ships in the squad are assigned whatever outfits you buy for your squad, while other squadrons can have their own layouts. Still, if you want inter-squadron variation, you could go with 2) Outfits are assigned, via weapon port, to the appropriate ships. So if your squad has 2 short-range energy weapon fighters and one light missile fighter, any missiles you buy would come from the appropriate ship. This runs into the problem of weight though, since you only have one ship's mass resource. You can get around this by some hand-wave revolving around the total mass-age of the squadron needing to be under a certain limit for whatever reason.

Like I said, neither are perfect, but they're both viable solutions.

Alright, now I get it. I wasn't thinking things through enough, as usual. Carry on!

Why wouldn't all the ships in a squad be outfitted the same? Space tactic≠land tactics. You've got a 10k long support vessel, with cannons bigger than your ship. On the assumption you need something pin-point (Death Star trench run), you just request a different squad's assistance. Given the number if fighters buzzing around, it's not entirely unlikely that squads are assigned particular roles and outfitted for those roles to just stop the logistics becoming a nightmare.

Think of it like air tactics; you've got bombers, interceptors, ground assault craft and multi-roles. You know what each squad has, so you assign their roles respectively; interceptors defend or attack the bombers or ground assault craft, they attack any ground forces (especially those after the interceptors), and multi-roles get shoved in where you have a shortfall.

Now, extrapolate that to huge numbers of craft: You assign whole formations roles, with the internal squads all outfitted the same, simply so they don't confuse the hell out of whoever's giving the orders. Formations support other formations, etc.

Of course, if your orders are being controlled by a super-powerful computer, then you can have more leeway.

What if it's a lone fighter squadron acting without a carrier or some other support vessel?

Heavy fighters and gunboats will have a sprite representing a single ship. Small plentiful single-gun craft will have a single sprite representing their squad. There will be squads that carry only one type of gun, for sheer number style attacks, and squads that carry a few differet weapons.

E.g.:
Archon Primary Squadron
- x4 continuous electromag lasers
- reinforced fighter shielding

Archon Special Ops Squadron
- x2 continuous electromag lasers
- x2 missile launchers
- fighter speed boost

Also, you sadly won't be able to fly fighter squads. There would honestly be no point. Almost any ship in the game can swat you like a bug. The squads in Delphi rely on sheer numbers to survive, and you'll spend a lot of time buying more fighter squads. Think of them more like intelligent missiles and not piloting one won't seem so bad.