Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => Mods => Topic started by: Stalker on November 30, 2015, 10:11:15 PM

Title: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: Stalker on November 30, 2015, 10:11:15 PM
(http://i.imgur.com/hZcFwHM.png)

Download Freespace v0.2! (https://github.com/mechwars/Freespace-release/raw/master/Freespace-v0.2.zip)
(Requires LazyLib 2.1 (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=5444.0))
(Requires GraphicsLib 1.0.3 (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=10982.0))

Compatible with Nexerelin 0.7.6d (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=9175.0)

Some Lore...
Spoiler
The year is 2375. It seems like it was only a few years ago that the Shivans invaded again. Only a few years ago since we had to sacrifice Capella to satiate that devourer. Now, on the brink of reestablishing contact with our home world, it seems as though we're back where we started. Unrest in the outer colonial militias has led to to the rise of a new Terran rebellion, led by the few survivors of the old Neo-Terran Front. Our once-grand Terran fleet, preoccupied with guarding the last of humanity and our Great Work, has grown stagnant and complacent.

With the mysterious death of Khonsu II, even the Vasudan remnant has begun to pull away from our grand alliance to focus inward. So much for BETAC, eh?. In this vacuum has stepped, like a phoenix reborn, that old Vasudan cult: The Hammer of Light. All of this is awfully convenient, considering the reports coming in from the frontier for the past few months. I'm sure you've heard them... the rumors. If there's any truth to them, we've got a helluva lot more to worry about than putting down some rebels or recalcitrant Vasudans...

So, you still want to sign up?

- GTVA Recruiter Mickelsson, Antares Station, L1 Lagrange Point, Antares Prime
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Freespace is a mod that will add 5 new factions to the campaign (3 primary, 2 "pirate"), three new star systems, missions, and a huge variety of new ships and weapons. All of these are pulled from the Freespace universe, and credit is due to the great work by the Freespace SCP Open teams, without whom this mod would not be nearly as pretty.

I hope to eventually build some next-generation ship sprites for each of these fleets, but for the initial major release I'm going to focus on just getting the recognizable ships from FS2 into place.

Click here to view extracts from the 2374 edition of Jane's Starship Guide, for FREE.
Spoiler
(http://i.imgur.com/6gYwdab.png)
Earth, Earth, Earth... all the military seems to care about is Earth! Well, sorry to tell you lads, but Earth is gone. Lost forever. This side of the Sol node is all that is left of humanity, and you who stand before me are the last hope of that humanity, the harbingers of a new terran dawn. - Captain Isaac Richards to assembled supporters, just prior to the Delphi Incident

Hercules (Heavy Fighter)

(http://i.imgur.com/3ttST4J.png)

Hercules Mark II (Heavy Fighter)
Spoiler
The refresh of the venerable Great War-era heavy fighter, the "Herc Deuce", as most of her pilots call her, is a very capable front-line combatant. Although it has less primary firepower than its predecessor, the Deuce' brings a heavy load of missiles into every fight. Bombers and small capital ships fear the firepower of these heavy-hitters.

Standard Loadout
2 Subach HL-7
2 Prometheus R
2 Hornet Missiles
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(http://i.imgur.com/MZrqdKS.png)

Ursa (Heavy Bomber)

(http://i.imgur.com/9ZpsJUH.png)

Fenris (Cruiser)

(http://i.imgur.com/EwYIn3S.png)

Aeolus (Heavy Cruiser)

(http://i.imgur.com/quEOoWR.png)

Deimos (Corvette)
Spoiler
No longer fresh off the assembly line, the Deimos-class Corvettes served admirably in the fight against the NTF and in the final Shivan encounter. These ships are fast for their size, well-armored, and covered with beam cannons and anti-fighter defenses. These ships remain the core of the Terran fleet, however they are now more expensive to maintain, due to their Vasudan-designed reactors.

Loadout
4 Terran Light Beam Cannons
4 Anti-Fighter Beam Cannons
3 Dual Heavy Pulse Cannons (3 Medium Hybrid Turrets)
6 Pulse Cannons
2 Anti-Fighter Missile Launchers
[close]

(http://i.imgur.com/ZKC00e4.png)

Charybdis (AWACS)

(http://i.imgur.com/kbjMqoI.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/G2HG6cZ.png)
***IMPOSSIBLE!!!*** - Final transmission of the diplomatic transport Khorusal, on a mission to convey Emperor Khonsu II to a meeting of the GTVA Security Council. The Khorusal was destroyed, with all hands lost. Investigations are ongoing.

Serapis (Interceptor)

(http://i.imgur.com/lK1OukT.png)

Sobek (Corvette)
Spoiler
Just barely losing out to the Hatsetphut for title of "Pride of the Vasudan Fleet", the Sobek is almost ubiquitous now in Vasudan battlegroups. Don't let its smaller size fool you. Faster and less well-armored than the Deimos, the Sobek's heavier beam cannons give it an edge against other capital ships and its concentrated anti-fighter beams can cause no end of problems to attacking fighters and bombers.

Loadout
2 Vasudan Light Beam Cannons
4 Anti-Fighter Beam Cannons
2 Heavy Pulse Cannons
4 Pulse Cannons
2 Flak Guns
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(http://i.imgur.com/EUdEH8y.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/Igf3sxY.png)
We have nothing to fear from the Shivans. They either all died, or left, or whatever happened in Capella. That's practically ancient history now. - Overheard in the Officer's Club of the GTD Capella.

Astaroth (Interceptor)

(http://i.imgur.com/aaqlPbG.png)

Mara (Heavy Fighter)

(http://i.imgur.com/MBVFwA1.png)

Moloch (Corvette)
Spoiler
CLASSIFIED LEVEL RHO BY ORDER OF GTA SECURITY COUNCIL

Loadout
3 Shivan Beam Cannons
2 Flak Guns
4 Shivan Lasers
2 Cluster Missile Launchers
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(http://i.imgur.com/okK0zro.png)

Demon (Destroyer)

(http://i.imgur.com/24yXVt5.png)

Would you like to know more? Subscribe to Jane's Starship Guide today, and get a 25% discount on your next Fleet Store purchase!
[close]

Change Log
v0.2 (2/11/17)
- Updated for compatibility with SS v0.7.2a
- Added Nexerelin compatibility
- Switched from ShaderLib to GraphicsLib
- Fixed a crash bug with the Piranha clusterbomb
- Cleaned up and fixed up sector and planet generation code

v0.1 (12/21/15)
- Initial Release.


Credits
Stalker - Making all the things work together
The Freespace SCP Teams - For their permission in using renders of their beautiful HTL models.
Special thanks to the makers of Blackrock Driveyards, SCY, Templars, and Interstellar Imperium for code inspiration.
Thanks to Tartiflette for his Radioactive Code Dump slashing beams. I'm glad I didn't have to figure that out myself.


Design Philosophy/Other Notes
Spoiler
  • Lore-wise, the three Freespace factions are being dropped in to the Corvus system via an accident with a subspace portal. Their planetary systems now open up to the Corvus system.
  • Terrans are neutral with almost everyone. The Hegemony casts a wary eye in their direction, as they don't want competition for governance of the sector. Besides, the Terrans bring with them technologies and expertise that could bring new life to the sector, and that endangers the Hegemony's control over the populace.

    Some Terran ships have limited compatibility with Corvus sector weapons systems. The Terrans have opened up their ship and weapons manufacturing on a limited basis to denizens of the sector.

    The Terrans are plagued by a small force of New Terran Dawn rebels. These rebels find much opportunity in their new location within the Corvus sector, and are making concerted efforts to align all the pirate tribes under their leadership.

    Terran capital ships focus on an overall distribution of firepower around the ship, with a heavy emphasis on anti-fighter defenses. Terran fleets tend to rely on their fighters and bombers to soften up opposing capital ships, before their beam cannons come in to play.
  • Vasudans are allied with the Terrans, but everyone else distrusts them due to their alien nature. The Vasudans hope that trade will encourage new alliances, so they have almost fully opened their shipbuilding and weapons manufacturing up to the sector, only keeping a few of their higher-tech ships under wraps.

    No Vasudan ships have been made compatible with Corvus sector weapons systems yet.

    The Vasudans find themselves dealing with the resurgence of the Hammer of Light, a Shivan-worshiping cult thought annihilated many years ago. The HoL has found common ground with the Path of Ludd, and will likely bolster that cult's until-now meager forces.

    Vasudan capital ships have a much more offensive focus that Terran ships. Most firepower is mounted toward the front of the ship, although there is still a decent amount of anti-fighter coverage as well. Vasudan fighters and bombers are not as diverse nor as effective as Terran equivalents, but still pack a punch.
  • Shivans are completely hostile to everyone. There is no trade, no alliance. They are the Great Destroyers, and nothing will stop them from cleansing the sector of all starfaring races.

    Needless to say, Shivan ships cannot be customized with Corvus sector technology.

    If one were to successfully land on a Shivan world, if there is such a thing, it's unknown what a non-Shivan would find there, other that certain death.

    Shivan capital ships are almost entirely devoted toward offense. They pack immense forward firepower, designed to end a capital ship engagement quickly. Anti-fighter defenses are limited, if present at all. Shivan fighters and bombers match their capital ship cousins in an emphasis on tremendous forward firepower.
  • Shields/Armor: Only fighters have shields. Capital ships have thick armor to compensate (equivalent survivability to same-class vanilla/mod equivalents that have shields).
  • Weapons: All weapons are being balanced to roughly same-tier equivalents in vanilla/other mods.

    Most weapons slots on ships are hidden, unless they are visible as turrets in Freespace (mostly Terran ships). I'm thinking that everything except for beam weapons will be customizable in the end. I don't want to open up a situation where people can mount nothing but beam weapons on a ship... at least, not right now.
  • Speed: Freespace capital ships are slooow. They rely on fighters/bombers to pursue faster ships
  • SPECCIAALL BEEEAAMM CANNOONNN: The larger beam cannons are really only a threat versus ships that aren't maneuvering actively. They have long charge times (up to 4 seconds) before firing, so if you sit still for too long, you're going to get skewered. If you see a Demon or Ravana charging up their main beam cannons, GET OUT OF THE WAY.
  • Combat: Your best bet in a Freespace faction fleet is to rely heavily on your fighters/bombers. They are going to be stronger than any fighter/bomber in vanilla or other mods. Use your expensive capital ship(s) to anchor an engagement (their armor can take it), and use your fighters liberally to keep the enemy off balance and your bombers to devastate their larger ships from behind (bombers actually send out bombs, not torpedoes, so a fast cap ship should be able to evade).
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Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 01, 2015, 05:01:24 AM
To do list for me...


The idea here is just to work first on getting all the ships and weapons playable and baselined from a balance perspective. Then, I'll investigate what it'll take to build star systems for this to exist in the campaign mode.

Anything I'm missing here? I'm going to give myself three months to work out the first phase, so I don't kill myself in the process.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 01, 2015, 08:26:29 AM
Just built a spreadsheet out based on a guide on this forum to the weapon/ship/wing stat CSVs. Not sure if it's still 100% correct to what fields are available, but it'll give me something to tinker with. I am nothing if not a spreadsheet nerd, at any rate ;)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bU67QJvR7jMSJzr4rwcq_gNh0Qov6BRPtItJVFzUxUU/edit?usp=sharing
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 01, 2015, 08:27:38 PM
Successes for the evening!


Ship progress
Spoiler
Maps! Let me know if any of this doesn't look right. Trying to model off of what other mods have done.

Ship
(http://i.imgur.com/g58wbCM.png)

Material
(http://i.imgur.com/k6Za3hO.png)

Normal
(http://i.imgur.com/hCU9VDr.png)

Surface
(http://i.imgur.com/Zl7kbsB.png)

...and a version with the glowmap applied for the render. I think I actually like this better than the first one.
(http://i.imgur.com/Vwx4NjR.png)

[close]

In terms of efficiency, should I just be using the editor for bounds/hardpoints going forward, and then edit the rest manually in the *.ship file as needed? I don't know what I don't know at this stage in terms of getting a ship in the game.

Tomorrow, time permitting, I want to get this ship in the game (crude as it is right now).

I'm really intent on making sure I have solid pipelines in place before I tackle anything else. I've done this enough times that I know, once the creative juices are flowing, it's a bad time to struggle with technology to get pipelines in place. So...

**Moved to OP**

I've never coded in Java before, or really any compiled language, so this should be an adventure...
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 02, 2015, 08:39:33 PM
Dug in a bit more to file structures tonight, all pretty straightforward CSVs and JSONs. Nothing Java yet.

Figured out a shortcut in my render pipeline that gets me great results and saves a ton of time. Results are great. I processed through a few ships (including the Deimos again) to try it out, and I had no issues. See for yourselves...

Spoiler
Hercules Mark II (Terran Heavy Fighter) - 34 meters long (double FS2 values, because 17 px makes this fighter just a smudge).
(http://i.imgur.com/Tn5rU69.png)

Deimos (Terran Corvette) - 717 meters long
(http://i.imgur.com/FVoQ4VZ.png)

Moloch (Shivan Corvette) - 724 meters long
(http://i.imgur.com/ByryC5T.png)

Sobek (Vasudan Corvette) - 660 meters long
(http://i.imgur.com/XZ8e3Fo.png)
[close]

Image Prep Process in Blender (you expert Starsector modders out there, please review and let me know if I'm doing something incorrect in the process - if nothing else, this post will serve as my own documentation for my process):


Unless anyone has any recommendations of how to improve those pieces for optimal awesomeness, I'm going to move on to the ship pipeline work tomorrow.

EDIT: Aaaand just for giggles, this is how big the Orion will be if I keep the current 1 px = 1 m scale going.

Spoiler
(http://i.imgur.com/UJnsVQZ.jpg)
[close]

This mod is NOT going to have the Sathanas and Colossus. They are just way too big for this game, even if I scale everything down by half (both are 6000m+ in FS2).
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 03, 2015, 12:18:01 PM
Updated OP, so this seems like a real mod.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 03, 2015, 07:46:43 PM
Didn't accomplish a ton tonight, but did refine the sprite process quite a bit.


Note to self for balance mapping:
- Destroyer = Battleship
- Corvette = Cruiser
- Cruiser = Destroyer
- Fighter/Bomber = Frigate (CR degradation included?)
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: MesoTroniK on December 03, 2015, 08:02:43 PM
1k is too large, there basically is a soft cap for ship sizes of about 800px... And ideally it would be closer to a circle in shape than narrow when that large.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 04, 2015, 04:29:55 AM
Quote from: MesoTroniK on December 03, 2015, 08:02:43 PM
1k is too large, there basically is a soft cap for ship sizes of about 800px... And ideally it would be closer to a circle in shape than narrow when that large.

What do you mean by soft cap, in this instance? Can you provide more details on what would make it impractical?

If I need to shave off an extra 200 px to make my largest cap ships playable, I'll see what I can do to make that happen. I'm already making compromises on fighter scale right now (larger), since otherwise they would just be a barely-recognizable smudge on the screen, so the precedent is there.

The most important thing to me with this mod is achieving a balance between authenticity and fun, emphasis on the fun.

EDIT: Here's a comparison between the existing ships and two sizes of the Orion (representing the biggest ship sizes in this mod)
Spoiler
Hercules/Deimos/Sobek/Moloch against a 800px vs. 1000px GTD orion

(http://i.imgur.com/MZrqdKS.png)(http://i.imgur.com/ZKC00e4.png)(http://i.imgur.com/EUdEH8y.png)(http://i.imgur.com/sUsaNYC.png)(http://i.imgur.com/wge69jv.jpg)(http://i.imgur.com/D4uwRAB.jpg)

Which looks better? 800px vs. 1000px?
[close]
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Titann on December 05, 2015, 06:28:14 AM
1000px really too much but colossus and sathanas should be 1000px others should be smallers
Sprites looking awesome though^^

Also is this mod will be total conversion or there will be vanilla ships/systems too?
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 05, 2015, 07:58:22 AM
Quote from: tokmak333 on December 05, 2015, 06:28:14 AM
1000px really too much but colossus and sathanas should be 1000px others should be smallers
Sprites looking awesome though^^

Also is this mod will be total conversion or there will be vanilla ships/systems too?

What are the issues with having a ship be 1000px? I'm totally new to modding this game, so I don't know what the limitations really are.

Sathanas and Colossus are really too powerful, unless they are going to be "boss" ships. I'm probably going to keep them out of the mix initially. Probably not forever, though :)

It's going to be compatible with vanilla, Nexelerin, etc. This won't be a TC. I want to play this with Blackrock Driveyards and the other great mods out there.

So, the biggest challenge for me is going to be balancing all these ships so they aren't too OP versus Vanilla/mod ships.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 05, 2015, 10:17:22 PM
Woo! Got the ships in-game. Now, granted, they are operating without using custom weapons, but they're still in there! :D

I documented the first encounter between the Terrans and the Shivans in recent memory. The Shivans were at a bit of a disadvantage, but that's sure to change soon! Open the spoiler for screenshots!

Spoiler
(http://i.imgur.com/TasWaOj.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/i71tuQH.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/QEp3URk.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/iUW07F3.png)

VICTORY!
(http://i.imgur.com/T95xQSF.png)
[close]

Taking a break from development tomorrow. Now that I've got Github set up, I can work on things like stats and balancing and whatnot when I'm not at home. I just have to be on my home PC to get all the graphics done.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 06, 2015, 05:16:20 PM
OK, so I said I would take a break from dev, but "can't stop won't stop". ;D

I played around with the ships in the combat simulator today and took notes on balancing. My goal is to have these corvettes balance down to Starsector cruiser-level. Once I have those dialed in, I'll balance the remaining ships initially based off the balance scaling I used for the corvettes (FS2 stats -> Starsector stats).

Played around with the photon beam code in the Imperium mod, since it is the closest I've seen to an actual charging animation for beam weapons. It registers where you want to fire the weapon, charges up, and fires it along whatever vector it was at when you tried to fire it. So, you can totally miss with it if you try to fire when you don't have a good firing solution (or against really maneuverable targets). It definitely fits what I wanted to do, and having an example to work off of is super helpful. I just have to rewrite it to work for my requirements. Good times!
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: kazi on December 06, 2015, 08:32:05 PM
Quote from: MesoTroniK on December 03, 2015, 08:02:43 PM
1k is too large, there basically is a soft cap for ship sizes of about 800px... And ideally it would be closer to a circle in shape than narrow when that large.

I strongly suggest taking MesoTroniK's advice. Try not to go larger than a Paragon and stay as round as possible

Why limit your ship size? The game really starts to drag with the sheer number of armor cells and stuff in play.

Why make your ships close to a circle in shape? Stuff gets weird with the autofire AI for long and skinny ships, resulting in a lot of really sub-par gameplay behaviors.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 07, 2015, 06:26:31 AM
Quote from: kazi on December 06, 2015, 08:32:05 PM

I strongly suggest taking MesoTroniK's advice. Try not to go larger than a Paragon and stay as round as possible

Why limit your ship size? The game really starts to drag with the sheer number of armor cells and stuff in play.

Why make your ships close to a circle in shape? Stuff gets weird with the autofire AI for long and skinny ships, resulting in a lot of really sub-par gameplay behaviors.

Ah, I guess it *would* be a lot more expensive for AI calls vs. polygonal bounds rather than against the radius of a circle. Makes sense. Thanks for that... It's important to know how things work under the hood. I haven't even scratched the surface on that yet.

Unfortunately for the shape I'm tied to the source material. I will play around with smaller sizes, even though that messes with the sense of scale I am trying to convey (fighters, cruisers, and corvettes battling amongst 2km-long titans, locked in mortal combat with each other).
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Tartiflette on December 07, 2015, 07:05:16 AM
Well Uomoz and a couple of other modders tried to do that the other way around:

http://gfycat.com/DelectableAffectionateEidolonhelvum

http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=2663.0
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 07, 2015, 07:39:47 AM
Quote from: Tartiflette on December 07, 2015, 07:05:16 AM
Well Uomoz and a couple of other modders tried to do that the other way around:

http://gfycat.com/DelectableAffectionateEidolonhelvum

http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=2663.0

Wow, that is quite... something.

I'm definitely going for something more along the scale of the battles seen in vanilla and most of the mods out there. Even in Freespace 2, you might just have 2 big ships against each other, a few cruisers and corvettes, and maybe 10 squadrons of fighters/bombers split between each side.

That thread was helpful, as it made me realize I'm going to need to figure out/reverse engineer code for handling broadsides. Some of the ships in this mod do not have the majority of their firepower in the forward arc.

In other news, I'm making a push to finish out all ships/weapons sprite work this week. Next week I can tackle the weapons sprites. In-between there, I want to get the Anti-fighter beams and some of the warship beams working code-wise, and pop some sounds in.

v0.1 is shaping up to look like:

Then, we'll go forward from a solid base and just gradually add more and more ships+capabilities.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 07, 2015, 01:06:03 PM
Added design philosophy and other notes to the bottom of the OP, so it's clear how I'm thinking about this.

TL;DR: Freespace factions get stuck in the Corvus sector and just have to deal with it.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 07, 2015, 09:17:38 PM
OK, I've finished the high-res spriting work for combat ships. I still have to do freighters and fuel tankers, but I need to get some sleep. I'm going to slowly start updating the OP spoiler with ships (there's a new one in there now!) as I get these sprites sized appropriately. No promises on more flavor text for now ;)

Here's a picture of all the pretties in one place.

Spoiler
(http://i.imgur.com/KOkJQsP.png)
[close]
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 08, 2015, 08:06:28 AM
For those who are interested, I'm making semi-regular commits to this project in GitHub.

https://github.com/mechwars/Freespace/

Feel free to download and test it out. I won't be announcing updates to this repository until the initial-release branch is complete, at which point I'll merge it into master.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 08, 2015, 09:28:44 PM
This screenshot doesn't do it justice (I need to figure out a setup for recording gifs/videos), but I got Terran beam weapons working. I also incorporated some old slashing code from the radioactive code depot, which works quite nicely. The beams actually slash across a target! I just need to tweak the amount they slash by, so they don't just miss the target entirely.

Spent the evening commenting code, bug hunting, and managed to get the result I was hoping for.

I have a few sound bugs to work out now (for some reason, the charging sound is playing AFTER the weapon is done firing), and need to tweak the visuals, but it's getting there.

Spoiler
(http://i.imgur.com/3PbYzcd.png)
[close]

Once I've gotten this beam code cleaned up and solid, I'll set up all the other beam cannons. Good times!

Beam To Do:
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 09, 2015, 07:24:31 PM
Beam weapon demo on the Deimos! Coming soon to a Starsector near you...

You can see the that all the beams that fire at the same time are inheriting the same slashing calcs, rather than each using an independent slashing calculation. That seems to be what's causing some beams to just fire into space, rather than toward their target. Not a super high priority for me to fix just yet, but it's on the list...

I may try just reducing the turret angles and see if that effectively fixes it, especially since it's only on a few ships... most ships just fire straight at the target.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4SpRESwk3M
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Alex on December 09, 2015, 07:28:56 PM
Quote from: kazi on December 06, 2015, 08:32:05 PM
Why make your ships close to a circle in shape? Stuff gets weird with the autofire AI for long and skinny ships, resulting in a lot of really sub-par gameplay behaviors.

Is this still a thing? The AI (both autofire and not) is approximating ship shape using a combination of oval sections. Afaik that works, so long skinny ships should be workable.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: MesoTroniK on December 09, 2015, 08:09:11 PM
This is just my angle, but extremely long and skinny ships should only have a narrow front shield that cannot be extended or converted to Omni to avoid having huge gaps between the shield and hull.
You want to avoid having large distances between the elliptical targeting radius and the actual bounds, this is more likely to be an issue on long and narrow ships.

(http://i.imgur.com/1PwdiWg.png)

Anyways, the 800px soft cap is mostly from modiverse experiments that shows anything larger than 800 does not really play nicely with the refit screen and EMP arc visuals etc also fail. And in the end ships that big just sort of get in the way and don't really play very well.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 10, 2015, 10:15:38 PM
Thanks for the thoughts, guys. I'll still cap out at about 800, just for fitting-things-on-the-screen reasons, if nothing else.

More Freespace shots! Shivans are in!

(http://i.imgur.com/mEcntb0.png)
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 11, 2015, 09:21:43 AM
Ok, good times. I've got weapons working for both the first core cap ships, and can finally start to really balance them against vanilla ships and each other. Things I've noticed so far:

Spoiler
  • Beam Damage: The beam weapons of the Deimos, even though they waste about 50% of their DPS just firing into space as they are slashing, are still well-placed enough to eventually wear down opponents. The standard Shivan beam cannon does less DPS overall, but hits the target directly with 100% of that damage instead of wasting it in space. They are great against armor and hull.

    The issue is shields. Since no Freespace cap ships have kinetic weapons, they just aren't as effective against ships with shields and decent flux venting. It remains to be seen how much of an issue this will be once fighters and bombers are in the mix. If they occupy and take down shields, the cap ship beams can light up and pierce through armor and hull. It should work out.
  • Passive Defenses: An armor rating of 2000 on these Corvettes is just too high. I'm going to bring them down to 1500 and see how it plays. A Corvette should be able to win about 50% of the time against a top-tier cruiser, 1-on-1. So the combination of armor+hull needs to equal the combination of shields+armor+hull, when weapon damage is taken into account at typical engagement ranges.

    I'll probably reserve the 2000 armor rating for the big Destroyers. Corvettes at 1500 armor, as mentioned. Cruisers will go down to 1000 armor. Non-combatants will probably get 750 armor. Bombers 250 armor to start, and probably 100 armor for fighters.
  • Speed: Slow enough that Freespace caps can be easily surrounded by vanilla ships. I think this is fine for now. I really need to get fighters into the mix and see how that works.
  • Overall: Need to do some tweaking and balancing, but it's actually pretty darn close as-is right now. My goal is to make balanced Freespace fleets really powerful threats that have to be approached carefully. Nothing at the level of Templars, where each individual ship is a bottle of nightmares, but where combined arms eliminates the advantages opponents have.
[close]

I'm going to get v0.1 weapons completed this weekend. I'll get the Vasudan corvette in and 2 fighters per faction (heavy fighter and interceptor). Plus, each faction will get a fighter refit craft with 1 flight deck each, so fighter wing refits can be handled in absence of actual carrier vessels (which are gigantic and expensive).

I think I'm actually going to get Corvus-mode integration of this sooner rather than later. It'll be really hamfisted and basic at first... I'll just copy the implementation of a few existing systems, remove/change some things, and get a home system for each race in place.

Then I'll release this bad boy out to those of you reading this and I can start getting your feedback! :)
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 11, 2015, 09:36:44 PM
A few action shots from tonight's Anti-fighter beam and new beam graphic tests.

(http://i.imgur.com/DBcSaDY.png)

(http://i.imgur.com/YJz7FG1.png)
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 14, 2015, 10:01:55 AM
Progress Update!

Got all the v0.1 weapons in place, and appropriate weapon graphics/sounds. It feels very Freespacy now.

Spent most of Saturday addressing git errors. Had to learn Git command line so I could nuke my local repo and get things back up and running.

This week I'm going to finish off the ships by adding the Vasudans, then create the faction files and some basic systems.

If all goes well, I'll release v0.1 by the end of this week.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Serenitis on December 14, 2015, 11:32:46 AM
If the skinny vs. round deal is still a thing for ships, maybe the Hecate (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GTD_Hecate) would be a better carrier/capital choice than the Orion?
Still, really interested in how this is going to turn out it looks great so far.

Also, thanks for reminding me how much I miss PXO and FS in general. :P
Spoiler
SuicideDarts represent - Pegasus 4 eva!
[close]
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 14, 2015, 12:33:01 PM
Quote from: Serenitis on December 14, 2015, 11:32:46 AM
If the skinny vs. round deal is still a thing for ships, maybe the Hecate (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GTD_Hecate) would be a better carrier/capital choice than the Orion?
Still, really interested in how this is going to turn out it looks great so far.

Also, thanks for reminding me how much I miss PXO and FS in general. :P
Spoiler
SuicideDarts represent - Pegasus 4 eva!
[close]


Glad to hear it!

Fair point re: the Hecate. If all else fails, I'll contact the producers of non-canon designs for Blue Planet and see what we can use from there (I may do this anyway). I think the Orion should be fine at 800px, even being long and skinny. Hopefully, anyway. My goal is to get both the Orion and Hecate in-game

As soon as I have v0.1 out I'll make a push at getting the Orion in-game to see how it plays. Which reminds me, I need to create a sprite for it's giant turrets like I did for the Deimos.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 15, 2015, 06:31:56 AM
Some thoughts on integrating Freespace into Starsector...


If it's not fun, I'm going to drop it, obviously. The primary goal of this mod is to make a fun experience.

Thoughts on the above?
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 15, 2015, 08:27:55 PM
Finished up tweaks and fixes to a ton of weapons, and finalized the Deimos and Moloch hulls and variants! I also got my first weapon sprites in... just need to resize the comically large turrets on the Deimos. Still on the road to v0.1!

Here's a screenshot for your viewing pleasure:
Spoiler
(http://i.imgur.com/YWGZNbN.png)
[close]
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Tartiflette on December 16, 2015, 12:39:02 AM
 The thing you have to keep in mind is, what type of faction you want to do. If it's a NPC faction, you are pretty much free from any limitation as long as they aren't boring/too strong/too weak to fight against. If it's a player faction (which I suspect) you must favor player agency.

 One of the core and novel mechanic of Starsector's combat is the managing of your flux that govern your offense and defense. This offers a lot of tactical decision making in combat and in fitting your ship (although this has been considerably reduced by the recent missiles buffs since venting is now as much a death sentence as overloading). To tank a hit on the shield or hull require quick reflexes, a good knowledge of the universe to assess the threat, a good knowledge of your ship's characteristics, and commit to either action. That's what make the game so exiting, rewarding for the veterans players, and surprisingly deep in gameplay.

 The second very interesting mechanic of Starsector is the ship system. Those allow to enhance your ship's performance or give you an edge and must be used wisely (again, player agency). You have to refrain from spamming them and wait for the right moment to make the most of them. You'll also notice that , with very few exceptions beyond civilian hulls, ships that don't rely heavily on their shields have a ship system that require a lot more commitment, to compensate for the lack of finesse involved in managing their shield. You don't burn drive blindly in an enemy fleet!

 Finally there is the ship customization load-out mechanic. It may not look flashy, but that is a very important one to make the most out of the other mechanics. You can optimize your ships to your play-style, compensate for the hull weaknesses or on the contrary stack on their strengths... And with skill opening more options, it reinforce the sense of character progression. You may have noticed the sharp difficulty difference between vanilla and SS+, and the largest part of this spike comes from the random load-outs the AI have: Vanilla load-outs are voluntarily non optimized and facing an AI on a mostly even ground (the player still has the benefits of the fleet wide bonuses) is a nasty surprise the first few times, until you adjust your strategy. This show how important thinking about your choice of weapons is.


 Now removing to a large extend those mechanics is a huge deal, it will only leave the tactical aspect of the game to positioning, and since we are talking about large ships that doesn't mean much: a shield-less, system-less, hulking faction will only be able to sit in range, all weapons on autofire and duking it out until the ship with the less HP will die first. Not the most exiting thing compared to the vanilla gameplay all about split second decisions and preparation in refit. It will certainly have a certain appeal at first, if only for the nostalgia kick. But that might be short lived, or people might only keep them as a NPC faction and for the occasional weapon they drop. You are about to invest a lot of work in this if you want to bring it to a good level of polish, and such outcome could be disappointing.

 The core gameplay mechanics of Freespace are based on the piloting of fighters, you can't port that into Starsector, and their large ships aren't sophisticated enough because the game was all about fighters.

 I would advise you to rethink how much you want to respect the original Freespace franchise. What are the core principles of Freespace you want to bring in Starsector? If it mostly concern ships sprites, tons of fighters, and huge slashing beams, your mod wouldn't be worse from using the same mechanics as vanilla: would it be so bad if all ships had shields instead of just the fighters? Systems are often difficult to design, but they offers a lot of way to add some flavor to a ship design and to the way it is played. Adding those wouldn't suddenly break their Freespace heritage...
 If you are set on using shield-less ships, you'll have to think about something to replace that: Templars have the Priwen Burst, Exi have their temporary Repulsor, some blackrock ships have their Scalar-something-bullet-eating-lightning-spewing mechanic... All these ships replaced the shields with something else as to maintain the amount player's agency available when flying them. If you don't have that, you better have at the very least an awesome ship-system.

 I'm not a fan of IP mods specifically in Starsector because usually they try to stick too close to their source material and remove everything that make the game worth playing in my opinion. If they were only keeping a loose relation, they could take the best of both worlds and be very much worth playing. But that's only my opinion, so feel free to ignore it if you disagree. In any case, good luck with your mod.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 16, 2015, 10:53:39 AM
Quote from: Tartiflette on December 16, 2015, 12:39:02 AM
:words:

Good points. Thanks for the post. I hope I can clarify some of your concerns and misconceptions as to this mod, below.

I think of the real-time space combat side of Starsector in terms of the Theory of Constraints. By identifying (and possibly eliminating) constraints, you create a free space to play within. From this perspective, the performance constraints in SS are:


In addition to those constraints, I would add a line item for "Opportunity Creators". Each ship system has to, by its nature, be capable of creating an opportunity for the mounted ship that the ship in question would not otherwise have had.

In my case, I'm taking the 1st constraint and removing it from non-fighters. In return, I'm increasing the influence of the 2nd constraint to compensate, to ensure TTL is roughly maintained across the board. What this creates is a new dynamic for players. By eliminating shields, players must now rotate their armor facings to absorb damage effectively while preventing a hull breach (active management of a passive mechanism) This creates a situation where battles still last just as long, at the ranges we're accustomed to, but require an even better handling on positioning and combat management than with vanilla ships (due to the lack of shields and the extent of the speed constraint).

I'm leaving all the other constraints in place, aside from the 1st.

Some other points:

TL;DR: I'm trying to make something fun for me to play alongside all the other Vanilla mod factions, while teaching myself Java. I hope everyone else enjoys the end result too.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 16, 2015, 05:47:55 PM
Ungggghh... I just now figured this out. To get beam weapons to behave how I wanted, I needed to be able to define charge up duration, firing duration, charge down duration, and cooldown. Finally tinkered enough with this to get it done:

These are in numbers of seconds...

1. chargeup - The beam starts charging before firing (cue charging sound/animation)
2. burst size - The beam is firing at full power for this duration (cue firing sound/animation)
3. chargedown - The beam powers down (cue discharge sound/animation)
4. burst delay - The beam cools down

Now that I've gotten these ships done, I'm balancing them and their weapons against each other and vanilla ships. This is my favorite part.

Here are shots of the Deimos and Moloch in refit (note that most of the slots are available for weapons):

(http://i.imgur.com/4XRWeZh.png)(http://i.imgur.com/0Mbethl.png)
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 17, 2015, 09:33:54 PM
Today's update: Got all the v0.1 ships in and started play-testing them a bit. Fixed a few obvious bugs. There are minor ones with display and sound which I'll fix later.

Overall, I'm happy. I took a fully-kit Deimos up against a stock Paragon, and the Deimos just barely lost. I need to tune its power down a bit, and then it'll be where it needs to be. I increased the range a bit on the beams, but seriously upped their flux generation. I'll definitely nerf their damage, especially at the top-level, since the bigger beams currently do about 1000 DPS. That just ain't right. Not from a vanilla balance standpoint, at any rate.

Got the first full-sized Destroyer in the game (800px). Looks and plays well. 800 is a great size.

GitHub is updated with the latest. Feel free to try it out in advance of the release.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Blaze on December 18, 2015, 09:42:56 AM
Will definitely be trying soon.

How will the capship vs destroyer classification work out though? The biggest ships are referred to as destroyers in FS, excluding things like the Sathanus and mods. Conversely, the only frigate sized ships are transports.

Also looking forward to seeing if you can make the Infyrno not suck.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 18, 2015, 09:57:52 AM
Quote from: Blaze on December 18, 2015, 09:42:56 AM
Will definitely be trying soon.

How will the capship vs destroyer classification work out though? The biggest ships are referred to as destroyers in FS, excluding things like the Sathanus and mods. Conversely, the only frigate sized ships are transports.

Also looking forward to seeing if you can make the Infyrno not suck.

Good question.

Freespace "Destroyer" = Starsector "Capital Ship"
Freespace "Corvette" = Starsector "Cruiser"
Freespace "Cruiser" = Starsector "Destroyer"

The only "Frigate"-class ships in the mod will be transports and smaller support ships. Non-combatants, really.

That gap is crossed by having really awesome fighters and bombers, which effectively act as multi-part frigates.

The Piranha/Infyrno hybrid I have now is basically an anti-fighter MIRV. The effectiveness is still debatable ;)
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: ChaseBears on December 18, 2015, 10:05:37 AM
Classifications are arbitrary.  Starsector's hull classes are purely about size.    Though that does bring up the question of whether you place the Lucifer+ ships as Capitals or some sort of super-capital.

Personally, I think the Freespace cruisers qualify as frigates. *shrug*

Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 18, 2015, 10:16:12 AM
It's all pretty easy to change whenever.

The Lucifer and other supercaps are not going in the mod anytime soon. I'm sure they will be cool, but they're going to be really difficult to balance...

BONUS:

Here's the latest video. I'm actively balancing and tweaking this... based on the feedback I've already gotten through other channels, I'm going to be speeding up the blob turrets, making them HE damage (and just more damage), and significantly upping the flux cost of beam cannons. That being said, it's getting closer to being fun, alongside vanilla ships. Next video I'll drop some Freespace ships in against a Hegemony fleet and see what happens...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snhHxmiwIiQ
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Vinch on December 18, 2015, 02:39:53 PM
Quote from: Stalker on December 18, 2015, 09:57:52 AM
Quote from: Blaze on December 18, 2015, 09:42:56 AM
Will definitely be trying soon.

How will the capship vs destroyer classification work out though? The biggest ships are referred to as destroyers in FS, excluding things like the Sathanus and mods. Conversely, the only frigate sized ships are transports.

Also looking forward to seeing if you can make the Infyrno not suck.

Good question.

Freespace "Destroyer" = Starsector "Capital Ship"
Freespace "Corvette" = Starsector "Cruiser"
Freespace "Cruiser" = Starsector "Destroyer"

The only "Frigate"-class ships in the mod will be transports and smaller support ships. Non-combatants, really.

That gap is crossed by having really awesome fighters and bombers, which effectively act as multi-part frigates.

The Piranha/Infyrno hybrid I have now is basically an anti-fighter MIRV. The effectiveness is still debatable ;)

Also the only frigate present in freespace vanilla is the NTF Iceni, which is described as a "pocket destroyer" so somewhere between a heavy cruiser and cap ship.
Anyway, freespace cap ships do have shields IIRC, its just that it dont look and act as a protective bubble but rather as a magnetic field that hold the hull and armor when otherwise it would be compromised. I don't remember where i read it :/ could be in a mod.

Regarding the ships active systems, you may want to take a look at how they handled that in "the blade itself", "the battle captains" and the mission "one future" from BP. These are some awesome stuf man ;) when you take control of capitals ships in freespace 2 its like another game!
So, out of my mind in the mission where you control the deimos  you had 2 or 3 active abilites: an extended afterburner, a beam overcharge and a thing against inc torpedoes or something.
The mission in TBI: an active regenerative hull, a ECM burst to jam Tevs beams and an active armour wich reduce inc damage.

Just to give you some ideas ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwiEK4YD7Ck
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Serenitis on December 19, 2015, 02:25:38 AM
Quote from: Blaze on December 18, 2015, 09:42:56 AM
Also looking forward to seeing if you can make the Infyrno not suck.

The Infyrno wasn't bad, it was just misclassified.
It terrible and counter productive as anti-fighter weapon.
But it rocked balls as a budget anti-cap torpedo - like a dirty Reaper. (Essentially a 3/4 strength unguided Cyclops with extra subsystem damage, and double damage for a direct hit. Which can be carried by lots of things which are not slow and clunky bombers.)

Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 19, 2015, 11:59:59 AM
I'm finishing super-basic star systems (1-2 planets each) for each of the factions today, and I'll drop in a few basic missions as well (Terrans vs. Shivans, Vasudans vs. TriTachyon, hegemony vs, terrans). I can't promise any of the campaign or mission stuff will be balanced yet... It's just there to allow you to play with the FS factions a bit.

Once that is done, and basic debugging is out of the way, I'll set the campaign to run overnight in Nexerelin Corvus mode while I idle in a test fleet, to make sure nothing breaks in an extended test with other mods. Assuming all goes well, I'll release v0.1 tomorrow morning.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 19, 2015, 10:51:00 PM
Tons of Null Pointer Errors later, I finally got the campaign running! Woo! Most of the NPEs were due to faction name misspellings. Oops.

Campaign is running in test now. I'll have the release out tomorrow, barring any major major issues.
Title: Re: [WIP] Freespace
Post by: Stalker on December 20, 2015, 11:17:43 AM
Testing we tell enough, but I'm getting a persistent crash when the campaign runs long enough (hard crash when spawning a Shivan trade fleet). Shivan fleets aren't really spawning, that I can tell. I may have to rebuild the Shivan faction file.

Terrains, Vasudans, Hammer of Light, and New Terran Dawn factions are all working properly, though.
Title: Re: [0.7.1a] Freespace v0.1 (updated 12/21/15)
Post by: Stalker on December 21, 2015, 08:01:01 AM
v0.1 is out! Please post your feedback here. Enjoy!

DOWNLOAD FREESPACE v0.1 FOR STARSECTOR 0.7.1a!

Known Issues
Spoiler
  • I wanted to make it Nexerelin-compatible for this release, but it kept crashing due to the inclusion of Nex code in the rules.csv, so I just renamed it to rules2.csv.

    Renaming it to rules.csv doesn't help, strangely enough. I need to figure out what's missing that's preventing Freespace factions from showing up in the Nex factions list. All the code I wrote is in this release, so if anyone can figure it out...
  • No faction logos yet. It's on the list.
  • Faction markets do not skew heavily towards fighters yet. It's also pretty difficult to find FS weapons right now at markets. Not sure how to fix the markets yet...
  • Faction fleets are not really balanced yet, due to the lack of ship diversity. This will be fixed by adding more ships later.
  • Cap ships are getting their armor and flux venting reduced, but have been given buffs to base flux capacity. This should allow beams to be fired for their duration, but they'll fill up your flux meter, which will take some time to empty. This should bring flux dynamics to be close to parity with shielded ships.
  • Issues with Faction naming and fleet compositions. Way too many Corvettes, no Shivan Destroyers, and not enough fighters.
[close]
Title: Re: [0.7.1a] Freespace v0.1 (updated 12/21/15)
Post by: Stalker on December 21, 2015, 10:58:15 AM
If you want to play with these races in Nexerelin, just rename data/campaign/rules2.csv to rules.csv

You won't be able to start a game AS these races yet, because for some reason they aren't showing up in the list of selectable races. You can, however, play next to them and presumably join them in-game.
Title: Re: [0.7.1a] Freespace v0.1 (updated 12/21/15)
Post by: Blaze on December 21, 2015, 11:12:48 AM
If you're talking about Nexerelin, you can refer to that OP on how to make them playable.
Title: Re: [0.7.1a] Freespace v0.1 (updated 12/21/15)
Post by: Stalker on December 21, 2015, 11:18:02 AM
Quote from: Blaze on December 21, 2015, 11:12:48 AM
If you're talking about Nexerelin, you can refer to that OP on how to make them playable.

Tried all that, to the letter, and it didn't work. The factions work with Nex, but aren't selectable.
Title: Re: [0.7.1a] Freespace v0.1 (updated 12/21/15)
Post by: Stalker on December 23, 2015, 10:24:19 AM
Working on 0.1a right now. Fixing bugs I've noticed, and getting the remaining sprites and sounds done and in the build.

It'll be awhile before v0.2, as I won't be in a position to do development in January.

Any feedback on the current build? I'll throw any fixes into a 0.1a if I can.
Title: Re: [0.7.1a] Freespace v0.1 (updated 12/21/15)
Post by: Lictuel on December 25, 2015, 01:12:51 PM
Just logged in to say: damn I love what I'm seeing here. I have been a big freespace fan for a long long time and I'd love to see it come to starfarersector.
Title: Re: [0.7.1a] Freespace v0.1 (updated 12/21/15)
Post by: ChaseBears on January 06, 2016, 12:01:28 AM
compared to vanilla ships, the Freespace ships feel way too powerful but only if you are in their limited range.  I sim-scrimmaged several ships against freespace equivalents and that was true across the board;  got dunked close in but was able to kite and destroy them fairly easily.

suggestion: less overall power, but longer range on at least some weapons; a shieldless ship cannot afford to be outranged.

Note: Not sure what the default FS variants are like, so dunno if they were using Targeting Cores.
Title: Re: [0.7.1a] Freespace v0.1 (updated 12/21/15)
Post by: Takion Kasukedo on January 08, 2016, 10:03:49 AM
So, something i've noticed with Freespace in Nexerelin (yes, Freespace works with other faction mods, Starsector+ & Nexerelin, wohoo!)

The thing i've noticed is that the factions are using placeholder(?) flags so far, but the Shivans, everytime they have something to do with diplomacy it comes up as blank

Eg; PBC &  -prisoner exchange

Pictures coming soon.
Title: Re: [0.7.1a] Freespace v0.1 (updated 12/21/15)
Post by: Stalker on February 03, 2016, 08:10:41 AM
Thanks for the feedback, folks. I'm back from January, and will be ramping up development again. Some good takeaways thus far:


I'm going to tighten up the balance with the existing ships before adding too many more ships to the factions. I may add transport ships for the next build, since I'd like to move the FS factions away from using vanilla freighters/tankers.

Right now, I'm planning on the "rebel" factions using the FS1 ships, while the "military" factions use the FS2 ships and any new ships that come along. The Shivans will just keep shive-ing as they are.
Title: Re: [0.7.1a] Freespace v0.1 (updated 12/21/15)
Post by: Camael on March 15, 2016, 01:49:26 PM
Really got to say this was the best positive surprise in a while. Thought, meh, does not sound tooo interesting, but I loved freespace, so let's see. In my opinion the ideas are very well implemented. The capitals actually feel freespacy and have a very unique balancing behind them - tough steel blocks that have no real weak spots unlike more conventional starsector-ships that can be outmaneuvered, but in turn, no shields, so no regeneration, go in, do damage, get back out, repeat. Still super interesting in itself. In turn the fighterswarms with their absurdly useful shields also feel quite authentic and balance things out quite a bit - can outrange and kite the corvettes, but not the fighter-swarm.

Courageous design choices, well implemented, I am impressed and happy and can feel the shivan fear running down my spine already. Please keep it up, I am looking forward to actual fleets and the three factions interacting.

Also, thanks for not making this a total conversion, it's awesome to have them herc II's smash into some Onslaught PD...
Title: Re: [0.7.1a] Freespace v0.1 (updated 12/21/15)
Post by: Stalker on February 06, 2017, 01:14:32 PM
I'm still around, and I've still got my development environment up and running, so I'm looking at updating this for compatibility and slowly (very slowly) dropping mini-releases to get all the ships in and playable. No promises beyond that.

I was working on v0.2 a year ago and the branch is still live, so once I figure out what my workflow used to be, I can start plugging away.
Title: Re: [0.7.1a] Freespace v0.1 (updated 12/21/15)
Post by: Stalker on February 09, 2017, 06:14:27 AM
So, as mentioned on page 1, I have this spreadsheet I'm using for all the ship and weapon stats:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bU67QJvR7jMSJzr4rwcq_gNh0Qov6BRPtItJVFzUxUU/edit?usp=sharing

Rather than try to craft each ship's stats from scratch, individually (balance as you go), I'm taking the ships I have already balanced as a baseline and am calculating other ship stats based on the delta ratios.

This will enable me to get these ships in game much more quickly, where I can then begin tweaking them individually based on experience and feedback.

I'm also going to try the same thing with weapons and see how it works out.

Edit: Note to myself that ships should be sold without beam cannons, and only (D) versions should be available for sale outside of salvage or some really-difficult-to-attain faction rep. Other Freespace weapons only available via military submarket. Then there's a reason for conflict/play. Also, only cruisers and basic fighters/bombers should be avail in the regular market, maybe with ballistic weapon loadouts (a la Freespace 1), and everything advanced for the military.
Title: Re: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: Stalker on February 10, 2017, 09:25:04 PM
v0.2 is out! No new ships yet, but I've cleaned up a ton of code and have made the mod compatible with the latest and greatest everything.

Download Freespace v0.2! (https://github.com/mechwars/Freespace-release/raw/master/Freespace-v0.2.zip)
(Requires LazyLib 2.1 (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=5444.0))
(Requires GraphicsLib 1.0.3 (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=10982.0))

Compatible with Nexerelin 0.7.6d (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=9175.0)


Change Log
Version 0.2
- Updated for compatibility with SS v0.7.2a
- Added Nexerelin compatibility
- Switched from ShaderLib to GraphicsLib
- Fixed a crash bug with the Piranha clusterbomb
- Cleaned up and fixed up sector and planet generation code
Title: Re: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: Stalker on February 12, 2017, 08:03:59 AM
Here's a collage of the full GTA fleet (OK, minus freighters and tankers, which are on the back-burner)! These are "actual" size for Starsector.

(http://i.imgur.com/QrDImRt.png)

Random fact: the guide I use when converting FS ships over to Starsector is roughly:

Fighters and Utility: 2x pixels than FS length
Bombers: 1.5x pixels than FS length
Medium Capitals: .5x pixels than FS length
Large Capitals: .35 - .4x pixels than FS length

This normalizes sizes of ships a bit to work with Starsector, without being too weird.

In terms of playstyles, here's what I'm thinking:
- Bombers = Frigates. Fully configurable.
- Cruisers/Corvette/Destroyers = Cruisers/Destroyers/Battleships. Also fully configurable. Might as well let folks outfit them however they want. I guess that means beam cannons will be purchasable--I just need to find a way to make it so they are super rare outside of mounting on FS capital ships.
Title: Re: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: Takion Kasukedo on February 12, 2017, 02:39:09 PM
oooooooooooWOOOOAAAHHH.

Those are bloody huge... how soon will these be added?
Title: Re: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: Weltall on February 12, 2017, 02:43:07 PM
WWWWWOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW .... if I am seeing it right, these are humongous. Makes me miss even more Red Oculian Berserkers. I wonder how these compare in size to Ophiuchus.
Title: Re: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: Midnight Kitsune on February 12, 2017, 03:23:41 PM
These ships are game and AI breaking too big. The Cathedral from SWP is as big as you can get WITH A CIRCULAR ship. Giant stickships like this WILL break the AI in many ways
Title: Re: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: Stalker on February 12, 2017, 03:31:05 PM
Quote from: Takion Kasukedo on February 12, 2017, 02:39:09 PM
oooooooooooWOOOOAAAHHH.

Those are bloody huge... how soon will these be added?

I'm working on the Ursa right now, to nail down the "frigate" play a bit, and then I'll start working through the rest of the fighters and bombers this coming week.

I'm actually leaving the big boys for last, although the Shivans already have the Demon destroyer in-game now (it's the same size as the big guys above), and it's fully functional.

Speaking of which, I might as well drop the Shivan fleet in here too (in order, Fighters, Bombers [Frigates], Support and Cruisers [Cruisers], Corvette [Destroyer], and Destroyers [Battleships]:

(http://i.imgur.com/Y8DqwEd.png)
Title: Re: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: Stalker on February 12, 2017, 03:33:05 PM
Quote from: Midnight Kitsune on February 12, 2017, 03:23:41 PM
These ships are game and AI breaking too big. The Cathedral from SWP is as big as you can get WITH A CIRCULAR ship. Giant stickships like this WILL break the AI in many ways

I've actually been using these size ships for a bit and they don't break the AI - they seem to work without causing wonkiness to the game or AI.
Title: Re: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: Weltall on February 12, 2017, 03:41:34 PM
Quote from: Stalker on February 12, 2017, 03:33:05 PM
Quote from: Midnight Kitsune on February 12, 2017, 03:23:41 PM
These ships are game and AI breaking too big. The Cathedral from SWP is as big as you can get WITH A CIRCULAR ship. Giant stickships like this WILL break the AI in many ways

I've actually been using these size ships for a bit and they don't break the AI - they seem to work without causing wonkiness to the game or AI.

Midnight Kitsune might have mean the one I mentioned. It was definitely gamebreaking, making act all weird. Still, gamebreaking or not, I remember it made me smile.. and run away. Then again Oculian Berserkers was a unbalanced and a bit glitchy mod anyway.
Title: Re: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: Stalker on February 13, 2017, 05:15:31 AM
Quote from: Weltall on February 12, 2017, 03:41:34 PM
Quote from: Stalker on February 12, 2017, 03:33:05 PM
Quote from: Midnight Kitsune on February 12, 2017, 03:23:41 PM
These ships are game and AI breaking too big. The Cathedral from SWP is as big as you can get WITH A CIRCULAR ship. Giant stickships like this WILL break the AI in many ways

I've actually been using these size ships for a bit and they don't break the AI - they seem to work without causing wonkiness to the game or AI.

Midnight Kitsune might have mean the one I mentioned. It was definitely gamebreaking, making act all weird. Still, gamebreaking or not, I remember it made me smile.. and run away. Then again Oculian Berserkers was a unbalanced and a bit glitchy mod anyway.

Gotcha. I took a look at the ship you mentioned... it's easily twice the length of the destroyers above. In fact, I could probably increase the size of the destroyers a bit (from 800px to 1000px).

That being said, this does give me an idea. I wasn't planning on including the Sathanas or Colossus, since they are just such ridiculously huge and overpowered ships, but I'm wondering if I could pull a "Templars" and have a single Sathanas spawn with an "Annihilation Fleet" and have it just go around and cause havoc until it's destroyed. I could probably use the same event to spawn a "Colossus Fleet" - ideally there would be a way to get that fleet to hunt the Annihilation Fleet.

Long time away, if ever, but I think it's generally doable.
Title: Re: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: Takion Kasukedo on February 13, 2017, 02:51:24 PM
Quote from: Stalker on February 13, 2017, 05:15:31 AM
Quote from: Weltall on February 12, 2017, 03:41:34 PM
Quote from: Stalker on February 12, 2017, 03:33:05 PM
Quote from: Midnight Kitsune on February 12, 2017, 03:23:41 PM
These ships are game and AI breaking too big. The Cathedral from SWP is as big as you can get WITH A CIRCULAR ship. Giant stickships like this WILL break the AI in many ways

I've actually been using these size ships for a bit and they don't break the AI - they seem to work without causing wonkiness to the game or AI.

Midnight Kitsune might have mean the one I mentioned. It was definitely gamebreaking, making act all weird. Still, gamebreaking or not, I remember it made me smile.. and run away. Then again Oculian Berserkers was a unbalanced and a bit glitchy mod anyway.

Gotcha. I took a look at the ship you mentioned... it's easily twice the length of the destroyers above. In fact, I could probably increase the size of the destroyers a bit (from 800px to 1000px).

That being said, this does give me an idea. I wasn't planning on including the Sathanas or Colossus, since they are just such ridiculously huge and overpowered ships, but I'm wondering if I could pull a "Templars" and have a single Sathanas spawn with an "Annihilation Fleet" and have it just go around and cause havoc until it's destroyed. I could probably use the same event to spawn a "Colossus Fleet" - ideally there would be a way to get that fleet to hunt the Annihilation Fleet.

Long time away, if ever, but I think it's generally doable.

Do it.
Title: Re: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: MesoTroniK on February 13, 2017, 02:55:48 PM
Seriously, don't use the Red and Blue mod as inspiration or a guide on what to do!
Title: Re: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: Weltall on February 13, 2017, 03:28:36 PM
I never meant you to do it for sure!!! I enjoyed it because it felt broken in an amusing way. The ship was over 2500 pixels in length.. I am not sure what the creator was thinking, but I laughed many times when I would see it in battle or when his ships would rain my fleet with missiles and annihilate me passively. In no way I would consider adding this mod in my load order for a normal play!

I feel people are going to stone me for mentioning it. Lol.
Title: Re: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: Phearlock on February 17, 2017, 06:35:38 AM
If you ever feel like it, the UEF ships from Freespace 2: Blue Planet 2 would also be very welcome. And if you haven't played that freespace 2 mod, I'd higly recommend it. Fantastic set of missions.
Title: Re: [0.7.2a] Freespace v0.2 (updated 2/11/17)
Post by: Stalker on February 17, 2017, 10:36:15 AM
Quote from: Phearlock on February 17, 2017, 06:35:38 AM
If you ever feel like it, the UEF ships from Freespace 2: Blue Planet 2 would also be very welcome. And if you haven't played that freespace 2 mod, I'd higly recommend it. Fantastic set of missions.

Yeah, I really like that mod - the UEF have a cool aesthetic for sure. I also really like the GTD Raynor. Something I definitely want to explore after the core FS2 stuff is in play.

Speaking of which, here's where I'm at: