Hi there,
I'm new to this forum, and new to this game as well. I rarely play RTS game, but this one is just too good to miss.
After I played the vanilla version for a couple of weeks, I start to think about creating my very own ship. I believe am not the first one who think about this, and will not be the last one as well.
Thanks to the Trylobot's ship editor, creating a ship from a sprite is not a difficult work. But when I start to design a ship from scratch, I find that I need something stylish, more than a pretty sprite.
And then, occasionally, I find this GIF:
I have to say, this thing is so cool! I want one as well!
Why transformable? Coz it's cool!
And then I worked out my one, which is much awkward compared to the one above.
Well, I just move parts around to a different position, assuming it is "transforming". I know it's not a good sprite, but this should be enough to show you what kind of stuff I'm working on. I have a modified( actually just painted) version, although still looks somehow awkward.
I have already make this ship a mod, which just contains a ship, the weapon of this ship, the ship system of this ship, and the ai used for the ship system. I have no idea how to share it to others, but it looks nice in game. I feel it get better in game when rendered. lack of detail is not a big problem as this ship is small, about 20% smaller than Lasher Class frigate.
And naturally, I start to think about better, larger, more complex transformable ship. If I can create more ships, maybe I can put them into a faction. but currently all I want is a stylish transformable ship.
However, there is actually some limits on transforming in this game.
- Transforming is just a visual effect, the actually collision border of the ship will not change. The weapon slots will not change as well. This is not a big problem for small ships, as the difference in shape before and after transform is just a few pixies , but if you scale up to a cruiser size, then it might not be OK.
- As the weapon slot cannot be moved, it doesn't really make sense if the ship just moving parts around to compose a slightly different shape. Each form shall have it's own style, but sharing same set of weapon making this difficult to achieve.
- Most transformable ship/fighter/ actually transform between a certain form and a human form. However, it doesn't really make sense to create a human form in a top-down view, which all you can see is the head and shoulders.
- Also if you have ever created and played a transformable ship, you will notice that it is significant stronger than most ships in its class, and difficult to balance. A typical transformable ship will most likely to have a high-mobility form and a high-firepower form. Few ship have both mobility and firepower, but a transformable can benefit from both by simply switch between two forms.
- Something else but I cannot think up now
So, if you have some idea about transformable ships, and willing to share, please leave a comment. I personally would like to create a few more transformable ships, but it is a hard work as I need to draw the transforming animation frame by frame.
Ok, it's time to continue my work on my second transformable ship......