AE - Ship related

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A general design for the Gaitori Gunship

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Time is the best teacher, yet it kills all of it's students.

Very nice, much better than the Gaitori cruiser, aesthetically speaking. I think we've got a new Gaitori weapon on our hands :).

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There are only 3 kinds of people, those who can count, and those who can't.

Looks great. Can't wait to see it in in-game form

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And a member of the Ares Extended Team.
(This message has not been edited by brookeview (sig edited 08-22-2001).)

(This message has been edited by brookeview (edited 08-22-2001).)

I'm going to be re-doing my Ishiman ships to increase the level of detail, hopefully in preparation for a possible upcoming movie...

I've thought a little more about the weapons for other races:

Cantharan:

Ion Cannon, Heavy Ion Cannon, Antimatter Reactor, Fullerene Reactor, Missile, Concussion Missile, Hyper Beam.

Gaitori:

Atomic Pulse, Heavy Ion Cannon, Ion Cannon, Concussive Pellet Gun, Concussion Missile, Missile, Photon Beam.

Please, where are the weapons ideas I was promised from other corners of the webboard?

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

I'm forgoing modelling the Ishiman ships so I can model the Cantharan ships. My reason is that the Cantharans will play a larger part in the plugin than the Ishiman will, and that our level designers will then be able to start planning Canth-friendly levels.

Here is a further debriefing on some of the newer weapons:

Ion Cannon: Small damage, knocks systems off-line.
Heavy Ion Cannon: Larger, piercing, higher damage, knocks systems off-line.
Antimatter Reactor: Generators antimatter in a pretty familiar manner.
Fullerene Reactor: Long-range weak pulses.
Missile: Generic missile.
Concussion Missile: Heavy missile.
Hyper Beam: A derivative of the photon beam, but with lower damage, higher energy cost, and longer range.

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There are only 3 kinds of people, those who can count, and those who can't.

LR Photon Beam would be a better name?

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And a member of the Ares Extended Team.
(This message has been edited by brookeview (sig edited 08-22-2001).)

It will be rather interesting to see Canth levels as standard - playing as Canth is quite different from Ishiman, since ships are cloaked. Will we do anything about the computer's detection of cloaked ships? I think it would make sense. Have cloaked ships put out invisible "ghost" images (hated) so that computer ships will fire somewhat inaccurately.

How do we balance the plug? Just give %-wise suggestions on these:
Salrilians vs. Audemed
Boodan War/Cantharan Crusades
Obish/gaitori War
UNS Ares

I'd say around 15%-30%-20%-35% would work out pretty well.

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"Once, just once, I'd like to be able to land somewhere and say, 'Behold, I am the Archangel Gabriel.'"
"I fail to see the humor in that situation, Doctor."
"Naturally. You could hardly claim to be an angel with those pointed ears, Mister Spock. But say you landed someplace with a pitchfork "

It's not the same weapon Brook, but a totally different one reached by similar levels of technology (aren't I the sci-fi guru today :).)

I'm not even sure the Cantharans will have cloaking technology. If NL didn't mention anything of the sort to Slug, then I plan on making cloaking technology a new-fangled thing that will appear near the middle of the plugin. How's that sound :).

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

Sounds good. Might want to increase the energy needed to cloak to make it seam more low tech. Or maybe only have the cloak last a couple of minutes through a delayed action.

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And a member of the Ares Extended Team.
(This message has been edited by brookeview (sig edited 08-22-2001).)

I think Cloaking should have constant energy upkeep cost, but I'm not sure how to go about it.

As to energy itselt, it will play a more substantial role in Ares battles.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

Well to have an energy upkeep you would need 2 of each ship you would want to cloak and 2 of each weapon that ship uses (including 2 cloak weapons). The first ship would be normal, the cloak would alter the base type to its duplicate which would have an periodic activate action that would draw energy slowly. When you fire a weapon or the cloak it would decloak and change back to the first ship.

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And a member of the Ares Extended Team.
(This message has been edited by brookeview (sig edited 08-22-2001).)

Or have one action that when the cloak activates it has many alter energys one after another with a little bit longer delay after each one and another alter cloak at the end to simulate an energy draw.

Does that make sense?

How do you plan to make energy play a bigger role?

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And a member of the Ares Extended Team.

(This message has been edited by brookeview (sig edited 08-22-2001).)

(This message has been edited by brookeview (edited 08-24-2001).)

Energy will not be as plentiful in AE as it was in Ares. I don't mean to say that ships will fire a while, then suddenly will be spent and worthless, but that energy, in ships, is regained at a slower rate. Thus, long battles will deplete your ships energy, but not exhaust it completely. (Notice the strategic and tactical avenues that are just begging to be explored).

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Edit your signature, please, that (sig edited) stuff is unnecessary.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

Sig changed testing now. (I'm surprised you didn't like it)

So how do you plan to make energy more important? It sounds like a good idea whatever it is.

I'll create a quick demo of those two types of energy drain cloaks tomorrow sometime.

(edit)I actually misspelled a word even with Omniweb's very helpful spell checking(/edit)
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EVN started out as a plugin too...
(url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl?path=ares/scenarios&file;=Earths Journey.sit.hqx")Earth's Journey Back To The Stars(/url)
(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/brookeview2")My download page(/url)

(This message has been edited by brookeview (edited 08-25-2001).)

Example: If you increase the energy the Ishiman gunship holds by a factor of 10, and the weapons it uses by a factor of 10, then nothing has changed in that regard. But, the reloading of energy is much slower, as that is a constant factor.

I don't know how to avoid all the multitude of energy blobs that would be created, can someone help me here?

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

Quote

Originally posted by Joveia:
**I don't know how to avoid all the multitude of energy blobs that would be created, can someone help me here?
**

Sure. Make them expire instantly. That way AI ships won't behave so retardedly when something is destroyed.

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Time is the best teacher, yet it kills all of it's students.

Yeah. Energy Blobs are idiotic - of course, to the same effect you could turn off the Blob's hated flag. The reason they behave retardedly is because they're trying to engage the Blob by ramming it (and don't bother paying attention to enemies because they think they're already fighting one).

As for the cloaking, here's what's necessary:

Quote

Standard Ship. Special Weapon: Cloak. Build Flags: ----
-Standard Actions (Destroy)

Cloaked Ship. Special Weapon: Decloak. Build Flags: --C-
-Standard Actions (Destroy)
-Periodic 4/Range 3/Activate Action:

  • Create 1 GHOSTIMG distance range 100

  • Energy -250 (assuming the x10 energy addition)

-Expire Action: Decloak

Ghost Image: Invisible, No Weapons, Hated, CantBeCollided, Expires in 20

By Cloak, I mean "Alter BaseType to Cloaked Ship," and the opposite for Decloak
The two main weapons of the ship come in two variants - normal and a reflexive Decloak which is used, of course, only on the Cloaked Ship.
All weapon projectiles (ALL) have the following added to their collide action:
--Die Expire, Nonreflexive, Build Flags --C-

Since I first came up with this idea, I've gotten how to do it pretty well set down. What's above should do everything you need.

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"Once, just once, I'd like to be able to land somewhere and say, 'Behold, I am the Archangel Gabriel.'"
"I fail to see the humor in that situation, Doctor."
"Naturally. You could hardly claim to be an angel with those pointed ears, Mister Spock. But say you landed someplace with a pitchfork "

Great ideas from everyone. 🙂

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EVN started out as a plugin too...
(url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl?path=ares/scenarios&file;=Earths Journey.sit.hqx")Earth's Journey Back To The Stars(/url)
(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/brookeview2")My download page(/url)

The Gaitori Carrier:
Posted Image

Coming up next: the Gaitori Frigate

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Time is the best teacher, yet it kills all of it's students.

Slug, what are those things at the rear that don't appear to be attached?

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EVN started out as a plugin too...
(url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl?path=ares/scenarios&file;=Earths Journey.sit.hqx")Earth's Journey Back To The Stars(/url)
(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/brookeview2")My download page(/url)