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Author Topic: Adding custom ships  (Read 229487 times)

Avan

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #195 on: June 16, 2011, 10:10:26 AM »

So I've been busy the last few days, but this computer (the one I mess around with starfarer on) had wifi issues, so I wasn't able to put anything up

I made a bunch of new weapons & ships, but I don't have screens of all the weapons yet, so here are the ships instead:



Yes, those fighters have HILs, though they can't fire them for long without maxing out their flux.
The Fang-class heavy fighter is very adept at causing pain to slower frigates (Because they themselves are not the fastest of fighters) and destroyers, but are extremely vulnerable to being overloaded when firing, and don't fare well vs. interceptors. Though larger ships lacking missiles tend to be incapable of doing much harm to them (except the Onslaught Elite with its hypervelocity drivers that easily overload them), they are nothing more than nuisances, because of their inability to shoot at a single area and that they can't sustain their fire either.

The Valkyrie II armed transport is a slightly newer version of the Valkyrie often used for transporting valuable goods and VIPs around, as its fast, well defended, and decently armored. Its capacity is lower than commercial freighters and even its predecessor by a large margin, to accommodate the expanded weapon systems, but short of expending much more valuable military ships on transport duty, its fills its niche very well. Its shield is smaller than the standard Valk, but it is omnidirectional, giving it improved effective coverage area.
While it is a fairly abysmal direct-fire combat ship, its can be very useful as a makeshift support or PD 'destroyer', depending on its configuration, though a dedicated ship would do much better.
In the hands of a skilled pilot though, it can take out even the david hasselnought in its stock configuration (though this takes a VERY long time, as you basically are chisseling away with your ir pulse lasers at the Onslaught's rear end.

The War Hammer-class Missile Barge is a slow, frigate-sized ship. It lacks speed and size, but it has a respectable amount of HP, and it can deliver a huge amount of firepower to the battlefield (as can be seen in the screenshot... it will hurt [those missile launchers carry 8 homing torpedoes each, aside from the typhoon, so 16 emp & 16 atropos & 10 typhoons in the standard variant alone].) Its shielding can be best described as 'downright pathetic' given it will overload very quickly and has low efficiency, and the 120 degree coverage doesnt even completely cover the front of the ship, though it can be a life-saver against LRMs or enemy homing torpedoes, given it is an omni shield. Any small craft tends to be very effective at combating it, with the possible exception of bombers, given that the War Hammer can still out-maneuver them, though it has trouble doing so. Alone, it is still not terribly effective vs. large ships by itself, as a supporting ship, given it is a missile ship, it can be devastating to Capital ships with another ship capable of raising the flux of the enemy ship significantly.
The PD variant of the War Hammer outfitted with shard & swarmer missiles are essentially just the reverse; they will maul smaller ships at range, but can barely scratch the paint on an Onslaught (unless the armor is already gone, at which point the fragmentation damage they deal can be quite deadly.)

Trylobot

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #196 on: June 16, 2011, 10:25:49 AM »

Looking good! Can't wait to tear stuff up
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mendonca

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #197 on: June 16, 2011, 02:53:04 PM »

So apparently modding an onslaught to have the speed and manouvreability of a mid-range frigate isn't quite as fun as it sounds.

Who would have thought it.
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"I'm doing it, I'm making them purple! No one can stop me!"

Trylobot

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #198 on: June 16, 2011, 02:55:41 PM »

I should make a ship whose sole purpose it is to ram other ships, and die. I'd give it a high mass, low hull strength, very high speed, low cost. My only problem would be that I couldn't encourage the AI to scuttle as a tactic.

OR CAN I

ALEX

...



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Avan

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #199 on: June 16, 2011, 03:24:57 PM »

or maybe a ship that has high mass, high speed, high armor, but no armament (and little maneuverability) - so the basic idea is to essentially act as a giant battering ram.

Trylobot

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #200 on: June 16, 2011, 03:29:39 PM »

If it was also volumetrically large, it could even act as a physical shield for other ships, assuming the right shape. It could make escape missions a breeze.
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Avan

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #201 on: June 16, 2011, 08:18:23 PM »

you'd probably want a dedicated design... I don't think a shield ship would make a terribly good ram, as you'd have to have a huge distance to get it up to speed or a buttload of thrusters to the back like the Phoenix has in order to get up to speed (the Phoenix-class monitor, not the HSS Phoenix)

In other news, I have another new ship in the works! I already have the graphics done and laid out, but its a high-tech style ship, and is thus not only asymetrical, but annoyingly curvy, so making the .ship hull file is going to take quite some time, especially with a total of 23 slots: 5 large energy turrets, 3 large missile turrets, 4 small missile turrets, 11 small energy turrets. It has... armor that leaves something to be desired, but its better than the Astral, but it makes up for that with a great shield and HUGE flux reserves, with a very respectable rate of flux dispersion. Maneuverability is lower than what the Astral gets, but not by too much. It manages to cost more fleet points than even the phoenix, but its not called a dreadnought for nothing! ;)

This ship's blueprint is actually 'featured' in another mission, and the mission I want this ship for is going to tie directly into that mission.

Will post screens once I have it in-game

Avan

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #202 on: June 16, 2011, 10:15:07 PM »

Almost there... ended up boosting 3 of the small energy turrets to medium.

Trylobot

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #203 on: June 16, 2011, 10:33:21 PM »

Here's my process for defining the polygon lately:

In Paint.NET, make a copy of the ship graphic. Rotate it CW 90 deg. Create a new layer. Place colorful dots where the vertices need to be, keeping in mind that the upper-left corner of the pixel is the actual coordinate being referred to. Open a spreadsheet with Calc or Excel, put it beside the paint window. With focus on the spreadsheet, hover over each of the vertices in turn, recording their raw values as reported by paint; these will be relative to the top left corner of the image in the current orientation. When all points are recorded, find the center point of the image. Create new columns next to the existing ones, subtracting the center point values from the recorded values, and inverting (multiply by -1) the Y-coordinate values. If the ship is symmetrical, copy and re-sort the values for the second half, and invert again the Y column, assuming a center position defined that is the actual center of the ship. Paste into notepad++, replacing \t with ", " and \r\n with ",\r\n". In this way I can have the bounds done, even for a very large ship, done accurately in a matter of a few minutes.
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Avan

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #204 on: June 17, 2011, 01:23:52 PM »

My problem is I just have a short attention span :P (I would get distracted every 5 or so points)


Images of the Panther Dreadnought (note that the designation is actually in reference to its firepower & slot utilization vs. its size [roughly same size as an Atlas II]; it has an unprecedented 8 heavy turrets (only the phoenix has more heavy slots (9), and only 2 are turrets), more OP than the phoenix, and the largest flux capacitors of any ship currently in so far. Its armor is mediocre, but it has an omni-360 shield to compensate for that)
full-size ingame view (zoom 0), blowing up a wing of fighters

zoomed out (zoom -2), attacking a lasher. Also note the custom configured Astral & Venture.


Now for some more custom configurations of stock ships (for the first mission featuring the Panther)


The Eagle makes a pretty good PD platform, though it does manage to have a bit of trouble fighting anything bigger than a frigate that isnt a freighter.

Flare

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #205 on: June 18, 2011, 12:37:31 AM »

So purty :D.
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Quote from: Alex

The battle station is not completely operational, shall we say.

"Now witness the firepower of this thoroughly buggy and unoperational batt... Oh, hell, you know what? Just ignore the battle station, okay?"

Krelian

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #206 on: June 18, 2011, 04:15:20 AM »

some of the ships made here are SO AWESOME that makes me want to cry out of pure bliss

great work folks !



As you might have guessed, there is a ship editor (which is the reason I don't have to remember this anymore). It's not quite ready for prime time, but at some point we'll polish it up and release it.


was that editor released already?

Im burning inside to make some ships, but setting the ship boundaries by hand sounds like a pain in the ... specially on very irregular ships >_<
« Last Edit: June 18, 2011, 04:20:03 AM by Krelian »
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Avan

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #207 on: June 18, 2011, 09:11:28 AM »

its not yet released. not till .35a

Alex

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #208 on: June 18, 2011, 09:08:24 PM »

Im burning inside to make some ships, but setting the ship boundaries by hand sounds like a pain in the ... specially on very irregular ships >_<

I can attest to that, having put together some ships by hand before the editor existed. Some of the fine folks in this thread have a high pain tolerance :)

The hardest part (imo) is actually drawing the sprites, though. So if you're of a mind to get started on some ships, I would say go for it, and you'll just have the sprites ready by the time the editor is out.
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Kotatsu

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Re: Adding custom ships
« Reply #209 on: June 19, 2011, 08:51:33 PM »

I am sort of wondering how you guys drew ships with just pixels.
Wouldn't that take a hell of a long time?
 
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