.com.unity Forums - Facilities

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From a tangential comment in Artists, Shipset designers, and other creative types, please read
This looked like it could use a thread of its own http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
<blockquote>quote:<hr>By Baron Munchausen:
I'd like to know why there is so much race/shipset creating and hardly any new components or facilities. There are all sorts of images we could use.
A decent 'armored bulkhead' image is the first component that comes to mind for me. An internal reinforcement, as used in several popular mods, should look different than an external armor plate. Organic and crystalline armor flavors should be included in the project. Also, just larger/heavier looking Versions of the existing armor for 'capital ship' Versions of armor. Missiles with funky looking warheads for various special weapon types are another obvious component that no one seems to have made. Plague armed missiles anyone? Or neutron bomb tipped missiles? Any number of new styles in beam weapons are possible. There is a very clear sameness about the weapons in the default set. There are many other ways to depict a beam weapon.

Quite a few of the facilities images are re-used even in the default configuration of the game. Where are the new images? Surely the people who enjoy making all these ship sets so much can make some facilities? We could use 'specialty' faciltities to go with the racial techs, for example. Shiny, multi-faceted buildings for crystalline techs... Textured, multi-lobed and rounded buildings for organic techs... and just lots more distinctively different 'ordinary' buildings to relieve the re-usage of the default set.

Does someone have to offer money to get these made, too?<hr></blockquote>One of the neat things about the facility part of your comment is that it will be extremely easy to implement. Make an exact duplicate of any facility (changing only the picture), place it right after the original in facilities.txt, and require the racial trait. Show only latest and upgrades will both jump to the cool racial buildings. I suppose you could alter the cost to build of the the buildings too, with Organic buildings using organics instead of minerals.

EDIT: fixed quote

[ 18 December 2001: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]

Great Idea. I hope this thread goes somewhere.

Perhaps it should be mentioned in the BAB5 thread.

I can try, but given that Bryce and DOGA are my only modeling options, this may be a little.. interesting..

Phoenix-D

I thought DoGa was pretty decent for buildings. I wound up making the WPs for my shipset look like bunkers and towers, so I don't see why we couldn't use it for other facilities.

Where can I get Bryce?

Look around (I got mine.. at a student discount.. from CDW). You can download the 30 day trial from Corel's web site.

Phoenix-D

I think this is a great idea.
So far most mods are restricted to the standard set of pics. Some make very good use of it taking advantage of the pictures that are not used by standard techs. And in some cases, those pictures are quite appropriate and shouldn't be changed.
(Did you see the stargate facility and the trek-transporter component among those. I wonder how hard can it be to make the hard code changes to make a long range cargo transfer and maybe a long range boarding abilities for them?)

To answer Baron Munchausen's question:
Creators of most of the popular mods are not good artists and are unable to make the pics by themselves.
In the case of a shipset, an artist knows all pics needed. Note that until we came up with the neo-standard all shipsets were made with only the standard ship sizes.
Analysing mods to find which pics are needed, making the pictures and assigning each a new and different number (most wouldn't dare to change any of the original pics) and changing that big pics that include all minis and modding the data files to use the new pics and then submitting that to the author of the mod would be too much for an artist.

But you're right, there're a lot of artists out there making shipsets that should be able and willing to make new comps etc.
And the only thing that needs to be done is to coordinate their efforts with modders.

Making all pictures for all mods may be a lot. But something good is that unlike with a shipset, all comp pics don't need to share the same style. Different artists may be able to contribute even if with only 1 or 2 pics each.

The idea of making different looking Versions of the standard components is good, but that's another mod. Anyone willing to make it or incorpore it to his/her mod? I'm sure that if someone is willing to edit the data files and coordinate, artists will soon join and make the needed pics.

IMHO there's no point in creating a unique set of pictures that includes all extra pictures used by all mods. Even if some of the pictures can be shared between mods.

So IMHO the logical steps to add a new set of pics to a mod are these:

1- The modder or anyone interested starts by requestig the pictures; to do that Posts a list of all components, facilities, etc. that need new pics, including a description and maybe an idea of how it should look.
The modder can also request pictures for items not yet included in the mods.
I suggest using the mod's thread or a new thread, it can get confusing if pics needed by different mods were all posted here.

2- Then artists can pick one by one the pictures and when made post them there.
This can be made fast if many artists cooperate and are carefule enought to avoid making the same picture twice while leaving another unmade.
If two or more pictures should be alike, for example ship and fighter Versions of the same weapon, they should be made by the same artist to give it consistency.
Of course that you don't need to wait for all pics to proceed with steps 3 and 4.

3- The modder or one of the artists renames the pics assiging pic numbers for each comp/fac and updates the big picture/s with all minis. Remember that height of those pictures can be increased by 36 pixels to add extra rows in the bottom if needed.

4- The modder includes the new set of pictures in the mod, updates the data files as necessary and Posts the new Version of the mod!

I hate the idea of transporter boarding or transporter bombs. Perfect conVersion from matter to energy and back, preserving even the molecular patterns, is so insanely advanced that practically every other technology we can imagine would be made obsolete by it. This tech implies incredible powers that make the usual 'Trek' uses laughable. It would be unbalancing in the game even in the limited implementation that we've seen in Trek. About the only use I can see for transporters is stealing cargo from an enemy transport or planet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

How about boarding shuttles? That would allow boarding at a distance and still give you a chance to resist.

As far as the component and facility pictures, there's no need for anyone to choose a number. Each modder can choose it themselves. Just post large & small Versions of the component or facility & let each modder put it into the 'group' file where they want it.

[ 18 December 2001: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Transporters are useless against shields, and maybe even useless against EMC.
Boarding parties would still be needed, and spent in the boarding operation. The only difference wold be that instead of being at point blank the boarding ship can be a few sectors away.
Transporter bombs wouldn't be different than a direct fire weapon there's no need for that. Other uses such as food replicators may already be being in use without our knowledege.

I'd also like to have boarding shuttles combined with starwars ion cannons, if not your shuttles would be killed by pdc before getting close http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

And about component and facility pictures. You seem to suggest that we should make pictures first and then let modders choose and add the ones they need.

That will not work. I don't want to make a pic no one will ever use, or if some picture looks really good, force modders to use it.

The point is that everything starts with modders requesting the pictures they need.
I'm not sure if a small Version of the picture is needed, since small Versions of all default pics are just re-sizes of the big ones.

I also suggested that some modders may need help editing those bitmaps that contain all minis.

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Transporters are useless against shields, and maybe even useless against EMC.<hr></blockquote>If you're referring to trek style transporters. Definitely ECM is effective. Even certain common ores can prevent transporters from operating, and you don't have to be buried under it either. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I think the main problem with the transporter is that even if you can't materialize anything at your destination, you've still got one hell of a "High Energy Discharge" Weapon. Remember that E=MC^2, and you've moved six people worth of mass (in the form of energy!) in under six seconds from one point to another.

E = MC^2
= 500KG x (300,000,000 M/S )^2
= 4.5*10^19 J
= 11,000 Megatons TNT

So, 500KG -> 11,000 Megatons of TNT, all dumped into a small room over a five second period...
Who wants to purchase a shuttlecraft capable of cracking a planet? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

I always wondered why the Trek shows didn't make heavy use of the obvious powers of the transporter as shown (e.g. if an enemy vessel's shields have been downed, you could beam a bomb *inside* the enemy ship, say, into their warp core... likewise, the pattern storage system would also seem to encompass cloning. An army of Data clones, perhaps?).

Much more powerful than the rest of SE4 tech, with the possible exception of warp point manipulation, unless we presume that for dramatic purposes all the races in the SE4 galaxy are too inane to take advantage of them.

Speaking of facilities, it occurred to me that perhaps radioactives production should be negatively correlated with climate / colony survivability. Unless we're positing radiation-immune races, or some "clean" method of living on, say, a 180%-rad planet. It'd might be rather difficult to implement reasonably without a whole Stars!-like system of environmental preferences, 'tho.

And for some REALLY rambling ideas, perhaps more efficient construction yards (e.g. reduce actual building cost -- say, takes computers and space yards... and maybe resource manipulation?) would be nifty. Right now, all we can do is influence the production side of things; we can't ever lower actual resource costs.

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Taqwus:
And for some REALLY rambling ideas, perhaps more efficient construction yards (e.g. reduce actual building cost -- say, takes computers and space yards... and maybe resource manipulation?) would be nifty. Right now, all we can do is influence the production side of things; we can't ever lower actual resource costs.<hr></blockquote>

True from the facility side we can't affect the production cost. That would be a nice ability.

You can do this in a roundabout way from the component side by extending the tech tree and adding higher level components that are cheaper, but have the same abilites. Already done in the stock game with engines. No reason other than extra complexity the same thing couldne't be done with other components.

Geoschmo

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by geoschmo:

You can do this in a roundabout way from the component side by extending the tech tree and adding higher level components that are cheaper, but have the same abilites. Already done in the stock game with engines. No reason other than extra complexity the same thing couldne't be done with other components.

Geoschmo<hr></blockquote>

This is one reason why I put on my wishlist, a tech requirement for "CompEnhancements".
Imagine being able to create an "Construction Efficiency" tech which allows a compenhancement entry giving a % reduction in costs (amng all the other possible benefits such a system could bring)

About creating new pictures for components and facilities used in mods.
I didn't see modders as interested as I expected.
If some modders such as s_j, the starter of this thread, would post a list of pictures required by their mods I'd like to help with a some pictures. And I'm sure other artists would do the same until all custom components and facilities in his mod have good custom pics.

There are some comments about a new mod with some interesting variations of standard techs instead of new tech trees.
There's potential to make a great mod here. And the idea of spicing it with more variation in graphics is good.
Again when someone starts actually working on this mod he can request artists the pics he needs.

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Speaking of facilities, it occurred to me that perhaps radioactives production should be negatively correlated with climate / colony survivability. Unless we're positing radiation-immune races, or some "clean" method of living on, say, a 180%-rad planet. It'd might be rather difficult to implement reasonably without a whole Stars!-like system of environmental preferences, 'tho.<hr></blockquote>There're planet conditions in se 4. Even if they only affect reproduction and ground combat (never verified that one).
It shouldn't be too difficult to make high rad value planets have poor conditions.

Trek transporters are scientifically impossible. So what? I already knew that. They are sill cool. FTL travel and shields are also impossible. Are you going to say that all standard technologies in se iv are scientifically realistic??
Some theories about transporters suggest that they don't transform energy into matter, but do some limited manipulation of matter at a molecular level. (you cannot replicate latinum, and even some complex organic proteins are difficult to replicate, however they can be easily transported...)
Who cares? Their main use, if they are ever included in se iv should be as its name indicates TRANSPORT.

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Unless we're positing radiation-immune races<hr></blockquote>I'm reminded of a short story I read a long time ago (long enough to not recall the title or author) in an SF mag, which involved a radiation-dependant race that would die in an environment without enough background radiation.

Here is a zip file with 76 facility pictures taken from BOTF:

BOTF Facilities.zip

Some of the mini pictures look weird, but oh well.

[ 23 December 2001: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Ya, that's nice. It'd take a while to come up with facils to use all of those. Though, it'd be annoying to get hassled by the BOTF lawyers.