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General Discussion / Re: how big are the ships in starfarer?
« on: February 05, 2012, 09:04:29 AM »
The scale of the ships is determined by how big they're supposed to feel visually, working within the constraints of what we can display on the screen. In other words, they have to work within the game as a piece of (fun!) software foremost. The fiction gets made up after.
This may not be a satisfactory answer in terms of game fiction but it's probably the way to make the best game possible. We spoke of and definitely wanted to avoid the problem seen in Supreme Commander where due to the size of the battle all these beautifully detailed units were modelled and animated but most of the game is optimally played in 'radar mode' which reduces them to simple icons. This is why weapon ranges in SF are best for the game's visuals when kept rather short and ship speeds kept relatively slow -- and (part of) why the role of the warroom has been reduced and the one-colour icons there replaced by resizes of the ship sprites.
If they were being true to a fiction, the ship sprite representations would be on a bit of a logarithmic scale, I imagine, hence why fighters are so big. ('Course the real reason fighters are so big is so you can see them.) I'll admit though that the inspiration for the basic range of ships was an idealized version of WW1/WW2 naval combat with its interplay between battleships & screens, carriers & torpedo bombers, and so on (... including submarines, but we're still getting there ... ).
This may not be a satisfactory answer in terms of game fiction but it's probably the way to make the best game possible. We spoke of and definitely wanted to avoid the problem seen in Supreme Commander where due to the size of the battle all these beautifully detailed units were modelled and animated but most of the game is optimally played in 'radar mode' which reduces them to simple icons. This is why weapon ranges in SF are best for the game's visuals when kept rather short and ship speeds kept relatively slow -- and (part of) why the role of the warroom has been reduced and the one-colour icons there replaced by resizes of the ship sprites.
If they were being true to a fiction, the ship sprite representations would be on a bit of a logarithmic scale, I imagine, hence why fighters are so big. ('Course the real reason fighters are so big is so you can see them.) I'll admit though that the inspiration for the basic range of ships was an idealized version of WW1/WW2 naval combat with its interplay between battleships & screens, carriers & torpedo bombers, and so on (... including submarines, but we're still getting there ... ).
Should that really be happening?
and this should make for good stories.
