The neo-standard thread- Standardising additional hull sizes.

[chewy027]

wow talk about overboard

[dogscoff]

quote:

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- why 3 classes of worldships i mean isn't one enough

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Well, as with all these images, they were included because they are used in a mod. If you don't want to design 3 worldships for your shipset - no problem, just do one. S_J's program will fill in the gaps. A worldship image isn't that hard to make though, and once you've made one you can make 2 more by just resizing it. (check out the generics)

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Why if you can destroy a planet with one size ship would you bother to build the bigger ones plus it would be easier to maks just one worldship pic

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See response above, but there's more to battlemoons / death stars than destroying planets. Hell, you can get a planet destroyer on a destroyer - doesn't mean you shouldn't research beyond that.

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-why have a baseshipheavy if your gonna have world ships seeme like the same thing to me

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Base Ship Heavy is the middle ground between the baseship (standard SE4 hull, but it normally uses the starbase image) and the worldships. Basically it's for mods which want something bigger than a baseship but shaped like a ship, not a planet. Devnullmod calls it a supermonitor and neomod calls it a megaship. I think this one will prove quite popular with modders.

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- i can see having one more size of fighters but i think the massive fighter would be the same as the scout so either nix the scout or nix the massive fighter

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Again, there are several mods which add 2 extra fighter sizes, (although some of them choose not to use additional images) so we put in 2 extra fighter images. The scout... point taken, but in some shipsets there is still a big visual difference between a big fighter and a small ship.

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- to me the transporttiny and carriertiny are pretty useless. i see the advantage of being a little faster but if your going to use fighters your not gonna use a tiny carrier and if you use troops same thing applies

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Again, used in Devnullmod. Remember that adding a smaller image doesn't necessarily mean a smaller hull: You could move the small carrier hull to the tiny image, shift medium to small, large to medium and then have an extra image at the top for a larger hull. The same applies (in reverse) to the larger fighter images.

Again though, we don't want to tell anyone what to do with this. Just to suggest. If you don't want to create 20 extra images for your shipset that's perfectly understandable - just do as many as you are comfortable with and let S_J's program fill in the gaps. I'll be providing a full set for the vikings but that's only becasue (a) I'm an obsessive completist and (b) I want the vikings to be the "flagship" of the neo-standard.

I envisage shipsets being designed with just one particular mod in mind, but the beauty of this system is that _any_ extra work you do won't be lost in a single mod and appreciated by only a small minority of our niche within a niche community. The website (be it on mine or Andres' webspace) will include a table of images, hulls and mods so that you can decide which images you need to include for compatbility with your chosen mods.

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SE4 Code:
L GdY $ Fr- C- Sd T!+ Sf-- Tcp-- A% M>M+ MpD! RV Pw Fq+ Nd- Rp+ G-
/SE4 Code
Go to my meagre SEIV pages to generate your own code.

[dogscoff]

OK... I'm currently putting together a few web pages for the Neo-Standard. It's not finished yet though, I'll need some more info.

I'll try to upload the files in about 4 or 5 hours time to this URL

Andres, Geo, S_J , please could you look it over and inform me of any glaring errors / incorrect assumptions. Things to look at:
-The descriptions and URLs of your mods on the mods and shipsets page.
-The secondary images and descriptions in the main table. Do you agree?
-S_J, will battlemoons be WorldShipLarge? Do you plan to use the inantry pic for your biofanatics?
-The download page: We still haven't agreed on a distribution method. I'm worried that if we include a copy in each compliant mod, ppl will end up downloading older Versions and messing up their files, as well as the duplication of data.
-On the "What is this?" link, at the bottom is a section on how to participate. Is this all OK?
-Typos, stupid mistakes (my speciality)
-Generally, is it OK? What would you add / remove?

This doesn't have to be the official or the only site. I just had some files left over from Last time.

Also, are there any more compliant shipsets I could link to? I seem to remember one with it's own battlemoon...


------------------
SE4 Code:
L GdY $ Fr- C- Sd T!+ Sf-- Tcp-- A% M>M+ MpD! RV Pw Fq+ Nd- Rp+ G-
/SE4 Code
Go to my meagre SEIV pages to generate your own code.

[chewy027]

well if andres doesn't mind nocking the number of worldships down to 1 then i guess that makes it official right? Cause his is the only mod that uses 3. So at least thats 2 less. So instead of having the three worldship classes i guess the obvious thing would be to just call it portrait/mini_wordlship

I think i'll work on the vandron first. I already have a massive base ship in there anyway for SJ

[This message has been edited by chewy027 (edited 21 November 2001).]

[Suicide Junkie]

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Andres, Geo, S_J , please could you look it over and ...

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As of this post, the page is not up, and I won't be back all day. When I do, I'll be sure to post something.

For right now;

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S_J, will battlemoons be WorldShipLarge? Do you plan to use the inantry pic for your biofanatics?

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-I figure battlemoons would be on the small side of "world" (which goes from moons to gas giants).
-Definately infantry pic.

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The download page: We still haven't agreed on a distribution method. I'm worried that if we include a copy in each compliant mod, ppl will end up downloading older Versions and messing up their files, as well as the duplication of data.

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We should have a set of neoshipsizes.txt available for various mods, alongside the imagecopy utility. That way, players can make full use with a tiny download.

Expanded shipsets in a separate Category, maybe two Versions, Full and Only New images.

[Andrés]

So, after removing the extra worldships, the list looks something like this:

1>Scout - smaller than escort
2>Corvette - between escort and frigate (or rename the frigate corvette and make a new frigate)
3>DestroyerHeavy - between destroyer and light cruiser
4>CruiserHeavy - between cruiser and battlecruiser
5>DreadnoughtHeavy - between dreadnough and baseship
6>Baseship - very big base sized ship
7>BaseshipHeavy - even bigger ship
8>WorldShip - planet sized ship
9>ResourceShip - resource miner ship
10>ResourceStation - resource miner station
11>CarrierTiny - smaller carrier
12>CarrierMassive - bigger carrier
13>Warstation - base between battlestation and starbase
14>ColonyShipLarge
15>TransportTiny - smaller and probably faster transport
16>FighterHuge - bigger fighter
17>FighterMassive - even bigger fighter
18>TroopInfantry - Human sized troop
19>TroopHuge - very big troop
20>StellarManipBarge - big weaponless ship

[This message has been edited by Andrés Lescano (edited 21 November 2001).]

[zen.]

Hi guys. I'd have to agree with Chewy about the worldships. 3 might be a little overkill (no pun intended).

Out of curiosity...won't AI design files need to be appended/overhauled to include designs for the larger and in-between ships? Do enlighten me...I'm a graphic designer, not a programmer.

zen

[Andrés]

This is a general set of pictures that should work with many mods, AI may need to be updated to work with most of the mods (not only because of new ship sizes).
Many sizes (eg in-between)should not be a problem. Default AI uses the same entry in the text files to define all sizes between escort and dreadnought, some custom AI have different desings for the smallest and for the biggest ones.

[This message has been edited by Andrés Lescano (edited 21 November 2001).]

[zen.]

Ah...so if the race-specific AI wants something that isn't in its race files, it will default to the DefaultAI files? That would definitely make things easier!

zen

[Suicide Junkie]

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Out of curiosity...won't AI design files need to be appended/overhauled to include designs for the larger and in-between ships? Do enlighten me...I'm a graphic designer, not a programmer.

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The AI_designcreation.txt specifies a design pattern, and has entries for max and min hull size.

So, any attackship between, say 150KT and 300KT gets design A, while those from 400-600KT get design B.
For example; Design A includes minimal defenses, and cheap to research weapons, while design B adds lots of shields and stealth armor and powerful, expensive weapons.
The AI will typically use the largest hull available in the design range, so if there is an entry for 10,000KT- 60,000KT it will be used to build anything from battlemoons to large death stars.
The designs tend to specify "minimum of x components with this ability", and "Y% of the ship should be components with this ability"
That way, its scalable.