Likely because this would introduce a few other issues, such as ships taking 3-4 times longer to cross a planet's gravity well, unless you speed them up by that much, which would itself cause other issues...
In that respect, scaling huge objects down makes things much less complicated. And if never mentioned, who but the most obsessive perfectionists would notice?
To the fellow multiplayer afficianados:I'm down with using Hamachi to duke it out Star Trek style. Anyone else?
Major Stress:I notice that the Distant Stars mod already has Entrenchment 1.04 compatibility working. I know that a total conversion mod like this overhauls much more, but perhaps consulting with the Distant Stars team would be helpful.
SCALE THEM DOWN !!
We are aware of that mod and how to scale the planets, There are some issues with redoing the size of the planets thou. Untill those issues can be fixed or addressed resizing the planets is off the table for the time being.
I am with you guys for scaling down the space station, but the ships are going to be a little more obvious. A half size cube would make the all of the other federation ships seem that much larger, and that kinda defeats the purpose.
In the end, the stations should be somewhere around the same size as each other (ergo, klingon space station and fed station should be about the same size, no matter what), otherwise you run into the problem that one races advantage is that it's stations will cover more grav well than others.
As for scaling back Cubes, they don't move when fighting and are supposed to be hulking behemoths, so size isn't all that big of an issue, just pop cap (perhaps make them more expensive both pop cap and resource wise, but with more attack, health, shields, e.t.c.).
I believe he was referring to seeing what they did to update their mod to 1.04 compatible (vs. having to redo the entire mod from scratch) - and not talking about what the mod itself does.
We already upscaled our gravity wells to make room for ship dynamic movement. If you haven't noticed our gravity wells are twice the size of vanilla sins grav wells. I understand there are a few who wont agree with the 1/2 scale idea, but trust me this is the best way IMO. We all agree to disagree. Ill have the 1/2 scale starbase packaged up, and uploaded soon.
I also think any ship, or structure on the z axis (forward to aft axis in 3dsmax) Should be capped at 1500 meters. Dont you agree?
like Jtaylorpcs said messing around with planet sizes, and whatnot would introduce a whole new set of issues. Mainly the ships will act like they are in a suns gravity well, and move super sloooow, or they will all run into the planets. Much like the vanilla sins ships run into asteroids, and get stuck. Not a pretty sight.
There is much we need to check over in SoA2. Distant stars i am assuming is just map changes (i haven't played it). SoA2 is an almost everything change. Which means we have to check EVERY file. Its gonna take time. Like i said be patient.
The next patch will be released with version 1.04, if your still playing the mod i would wait until the next release to update your game.
stress & shimmer my mod updater has been uploaded in its thread reply 93
harpo
I'm definitely for scaling the station/cube down rather than replace them
I thought the teaser cube on the vanilla sins version was a pretty good size
I really liked the huge cubes. The first time your scout finds one, it's the massiveness that blows you away, just like in any of the programs. I say keep thenm huge, the scale is perfect!!! The only thing about them being so big I didn't like is I played a lot with them in the Vanilla version, and I didn't like the cubes clunking into each other. If you have 2 or more of them together and they target the same ship they tend to bounce off each other. The bigger spheres do it too, but not so bad. If it's possible I would change that... but only that. The rest is cool.
Oh, as for the stations... yeah, those I would scale up or down, whatever, so they more or less match up. And I LOVE the bigger gravity wells, gives you room to have a decient battle...
For my two cents, I would have to say that scaling down the starbase would be a good idea, I really wouldn't complain about it so long as it's about the same size as the Klingon one.
But as for the cubes:
Cubes should be big, yes? scaling them down to something the size of a D'Deridex (which I have to imagine as on scale with the federation and klingon capital ships) would make them sort of silly. A cube should inspire an "Oh Excrement" moment, even if you have to balance it by making it take multiple cap-ship crews and an obscene amount of armor and weapons. Thus, if you must scale it down, please leave it rather noticeably bigger than our federation, klingon, and romulan counterparts.
Of course, if you must take it all the way down, you must- gameplay must come first, after all.
The Sovereign is the longest Federation ship at 700 meters. The longest Klingon ship is roughly 600 meters. The romulan DDeridex is supposed to be 1300 meters, but is miss-scaled in the mod. 1500 is still quite large. The Jemmy battleship is 1500 meters, but looks smaller, because she is a "thin" ship. The cube would be 1500x1500x1500 the "oh shit-ness" would still be there. We have a theory that there are many sizes of cubes, and they build up over time to the 3000 meter monsters we have seen.
This is a moot point, but ill bring it up anyway. Voyager episodes had the cubes miss-scaled at around 1500 meters. DS-9 was notorious for scaling errors as well. Lets not forget 1st contacts oops of miss-scaling the defiant at 80-something meters compared to the big-e soverieign as she passed overhead. So trek itself is full of errors. Like i said. A moot point. However what we are doing is intentional. We know what size the ship/structures are supposed to be, but also know they are "downsized" to prevent the very "bumper-car" problem just-jim described above. The only thing changed is the size. NOT thier firepower, or thier stats. They will still be the same ship/structure. The bumper car syndrome will still happen, but hopefully not nearly as much as with the full sized units.
I appreciate the input from both sides of the issue. All i can say is let us try it.. If it doesnt work we will try something else.
the DDeridex is that big? it looked just a little bigger then the enterprise in the tng episodes. But of course gameplay comes first.
gief DDeridex sexiest ship in the whole universe !!!
just try it and see if it works out
Just half-scaled the new fed starbase. Not imported in game yet because im sending the model to shimmer for hardpointing after i make the -da and normal textures for her. Width is 1900 meters (1/2 3800). It is still about 3000 meters top to bottom. So its more like a TMP scaled mushroom. A Constitution, and strike craft should fit thru the doors but not much else. Just have to ignore any larger ships clipping as they come out. We know the true size.
The DDeridex is a confusion, because the shows miss-scaled the ship several times. Ranging from 800 to 1200 meters. The "official" length is around 1200 meters. In the mod right now its at 800-ish. I was gonna compromise, and rescale it to 1100 meters. A nice in between figure. It is described as being "Almost" twice the size of the Galaxy class. That figure could be almost anything in trek incontinuity. Regardless the DDeridex will be upsized to 1100 for the next release.
a 1500 meter cube will still dwarf a DDeridex, and a Jemmy Enslaver, but it will give the ships much more room to manuever without getting stuck on one another.
I have a question, will the borg be using "credits" when their released? Afterall, they are all a collective, it would make more sense to have their ships cost a lot of dilithium and tritanium, thus making credits only useful for buying more of the resources, and making borg ships that much more limited.
We will cross that bridge when we come to it. We got plans for the borg trust me
I think capping the z-axis is a great idea. One of the unfortunate side effects of the ship dynamic movement (fighter movement) is their little excursions outside the gravity wells and up/down.
This is caused when two ships are both targeting each other, but one is following the other. The ship in the lead can't decide which way to turn to get the following ship, so it keeps going in a straight line. If the follow ship is a lot faster (e.g., B'Rels), it turns when its bombing run is complete. However, if the ships are about the same speed, they just keep going... and going... and going.
If you're playing and you see this, tell your ships to move to one side slightly - fixes the problem instantly. Unfortunately, the AI can't do that, so capping the Z axis is the next-best solution. Unlike the edges of the gravity wells, where it is obvious when ships head off to Timbuktu, it is not clear in the Z axis unless you tilt the view angle. Should be a real help.
I have the fed starbase ready for import, and testing, but i failed when i tried to convert my build of the mod to 1.04 using Harpo's tools. Jaylorpcs has had more success, but he is still testing before he uploads his build.
However it worked for 0.03c. So i must be missing something in the entrenchment build.
Harpo if you read this can you test this on your end?
Ill import the fed starbase as the "trade station" in 0.03c just to test out the mesh, and the new scaling theory out. Tho it would be a very bad test since it is unarmed right now, and there is no dynamic movement in 0.03c
BTW if anyone has 0.03c you can easily convert it using Harpo's tools. It converted straight over to 1.18 with no errors.
Yay for frequent updates about what you're doing!
Looking forward to whenever we get to see A). the fed starbase B ). the Romulans or C). both.
of course you're all very busy with the 1.04 issues, real life, etc, so I'll not pester you for any time estimates. I'll just keep checking back several times a day
if you want the 0.03c it is still up at fileplanet, I have not got around to deleteing it yet.
regarding the testing, majorstress, I have tested on my development machine, and ran the manifest maker as I suggest in the post AND the special instructions in the rar and only recieved ONE error to do with the gameevents file which the mod updater copies but does not alter.
Stress I uploaded the updated Soa2 "1.04 "to sync yesterday. Mod is stable and compatible with 1.04 . We need to redo sync thou for 1.04 mods folder
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