2nd attempt; space armarda

I'll give the "pringles ship" a try, seems easy enough. The green is used for the thrust, though right?
 
This is all great stuff, where do you get all these ideas from SM? You are so creative and this mod will end up being very unique. I will find more info on the ion drive to help with the confusion as I do not have the memory to explain what I have read properly.
 
One question: will I need to make any attack animations for the pringles-lookin' one, or will it just be transport, scout, or something like that?

EDIT: I have finished the model for the Pringles ship, a preview is attacheted below (the .jpg lost some quality with the solid colors, though); tell me if that's what you're looking for when you get back on...

EDIT 2 (well, more of an update): I have made the .pcx file for the pringles ship default, but every time I try to export it with FLICster, part of the thrust nozzel just dissappears... It's in the .pcx, but just goes away... :confused: I'm not sure if this happens in-game, haven't tried it yet, but I have no idea how to fix it. It works fine in the .FXM, though.

BTW: I didn't give the ship a shadow, for obvious reasons...
 
A Viking Yeti said:
One question: will I need to make any attack animations for the pringles-lookin' one, or will it just be transport, scout, or something like that?

EDIT 2 (well, more of an update): I have made the .pcx file for the pringles ship default, but every time I try to export it with FLICster, part of the thrust nozzel just dissappears... It's in the .pcx, but just goes away... :confused: I'm not sure if this happens in-game, haven't tried it yet, but I have no idea how to fix it. It works fine in the .FXM, though.
Click to expand...

Looks cool, I figure realisticly space ship design would follow three main evolutions;
Shuttles would be the first type of ship, easily transfered up the gravity well and not requiring any secondary construction or modifications. The worker settler and "warrior" units will be represented by shuttles.

Once space bases are established in the outer solar system and humans start living in space more permanently ships will have to be bigger, containing enough equipment to keep human crew alive for months or even years. They would not have to re-enter the atmosphere and would spend most of thier time moving back and forth between locations such as planets, space stations and asteroids.

Eventualy a need would arise for more "active" ship designs; Police and warfare roles as well as raiders and escorts.

Other "oddball" designs would be available, such as satelites and deep space probes.

The second kind of ship, would probably be the pringles type, though to start with it would be just a cylinder of girders and fuel tubes with a small habitat wheel. Later would come an armoured sleve to protect against micrometors as well as hostile space ships. your design would be exelent for this role, with some light weapons, perhaps just a sensor bouy launcher retro fitted to launch "dumbfire" explosive packs.

Post your flick and I'll have a look. its probably a pallette issue, usualy is with these things. :)
 
Actualy the idea of space ship design is a very complicated one. With lots of mechanical considerations, some more than others.

I think the most important considerations for a space war ship without faster than light drives or force fields (both saved for future ages) are these;

#1 gravity. Anyone spending a long time in space needs to think about gravity. Rotational gravity is realy not much use for making daily life better as the corriolis force (the same force that causes weather on earth) would knock you sideways. However rotational gravity is the only feasible solution to space travel in the near future. The best way to use it therefore is either in small rotating personal cells, where crew can carry out physical exercise thus getting the most of thier daily allowance of single G rotaional gravity or to rotate the whole ship, Both of which are practical and cheap solutions when compared to rotating "habitat rings" or hubs. In the second case the ship needs to have a well distributed mass around its center of gravity to stop dificulties with unevenly distributed stress which could other wise tear the ship apart. This leads on to point 2...

#2 distribution of mass. When manuvering an object in a zero gee vacum distribution of mass is more important than anything else. When moving through air a long stream-lined object will tend to fly straight, however in a vacum enviroment the object will soon start to tmble and spin, multipling any initial instabilities. In fact the ideal space ship will have even distribution of mass all around its center of gravity, like a cube or sphere, with thrusters and retros distributed all round its surface, perhaps even with several outlets for the main thrust to allow quick manuveriong without rotation.

#3 attack profile. When a ship, or plane or man is in combat it is imperitive for them to provide the smallest profile possible, either turning side on or attacking head first. However, if the attacker can be outflanked by a second attacker it can display a much bigger profile. The best profile is a sleek spear, which displays a small profile from front and back and a small profile from top sides and bottom. Actualy one of the best profiles for a large ship designed to tackle just one oponent is a saucer or flying wing, (from experience playing games such as colony wars, i can say that a small attack profile can greatly increase the attacking value of a spacecraft) however, both these designs offer a massive profile if caught off guard by a fast attacker at close range or if attacked from multiple directions. The best design again here from the point of view of a defending unit is a sphere or cube.Also included in this section is slanted armour, somthing that make a lot of difference in tanks, reducing the effect of incoming fire through deflecting the force of the blow. As you can imagine slanted armour is hard in true 3d combat, as an attack can come from literaly any angle, however, breaking up the flat planes of a ship with ridges, domes and points can help reduce the power of incoming shots at the last moment. The sphere is also good in this area, as only shots hitting dead center will not be deflected by its armour.

#4 finaly, structural strength. From as structural point of view, complicated space ship designs such as the starship enterprise have a very poor design. Although the individual components such as the saucer or engineering hull are structrualy sound the joining struts and unevenly distruibuted mass aroung the center of gravity mean that this is a ship that could only work with very advanced technology such as structural integrity fields. With contemporay science the enterprise would rip itself to bits the first time it attempted a sharp turn. The cylinder, pyramid and sphere are all good structural shapes, from a tortional and impact point of view. The egg is one of the best structural shapes able to take masive amounts of crushing forces.
 
Smoking mirror said:
Actualy the idea of space ship design is a very complicated one. With lots of mechanical considerations, some more than others.

I think the most important considerations for a space war ship without faster than light drives or force fields (both saved for future ages) are these;

#1 gravity. Anyone spending a long time in space needs to think about gravity. Rotational gravity is realy not much use for making daily life better as the corriolis force (the same force that causes weather on earth) would knock you sideways. However rotational gravity is the only feasible solution to space travel in the near future. The best way to use it therefore is either in small rotating personal cells, where crew can carry out physical exercise thus getting the most of thier daily allowance of single G rotaional gravity or to rotate the whole ship, Both of which are practical and cheap solutions when compared to rotating "habitat rings" or hubs. In the second case the ship needs to have a well distributed mass around its center of gravity to stop dificulties with unevenly distributed stress which could other wise tear the ship apart. This leads on to point 2...

#2 distribution of mass. When manuvering an object in a zero gee vacum distribution of mass is more important than anything else. When moving through air a long stream-lined object will tend to fly straight, however in a vacum enviroment the object will soon start to tmble and spin, multipling any initial instabilities. In fact the ideal space ship will have even distribution of mass all around its center of gravity, like a cube or sphere, with thrusters and retros distributed all round its surface, perhaps even with several outlets for the main thrust to allow quick manuveriong without rotation.

#3 attack profile. When a ship, or plane or man is in combat it is imperitive for them to provide the smallest profile possible, either turning side on or attacking head first. However, if the attacker can be outflanked by a second attacker it can display a much bigger profile. The best profile is a sleek spear, which displays a small profile from front and back and a small profile from top sides and bottom. Actualy one of the best profiles for a large ship designed to tackle just one oponent is a saucer or flying wing, (from experience playing games such as colony wars, i can say that a small attack profile can greatly increase the attacking value of a spacecraft) however, both these designs offer a massive profile if caught off guard by a fast attacker at close range or if attacked from multiple directions. The best design again here from the point of view of a defending unit is a sphere or cube.Also included in this section is slanted armour, somthing that make a lot of difference in tanks, reducing the effect of incoming fire through deflecting the force of the blow. As you can imagine slanted armour is hard in true 3d combat, as an attack can come from literaly any angle, however, breaking up the flat planes of a ship with ridges, domes and points can help reduce the power of incoming shots at the last moment. The sphere is also good in this area, as only shots hitting dead center will not be deflected by its armour.

#4 finaly, structural strength. From as structural point of view, complicated space ship designs such as the starship enterprise have a very poor design. Although the individual components such as the saucer or engineering hull are structrualy sound the joining struts and unevenly distruibuted mass aroung the center of gravity mean that this is a ship that could only work with very advanced technology such as structural integrity fields. With contemporay science the enterprise would rip itself to bits the first time it attempted a sharp turn. The cylinder, pyramid and sphere are all good structural shapes, from a tortional and impact point of view. The egg is one of the best structural shapes able to take masive amounts of crushing forces.
Click to expand...


But what about looking cool? ;)
 
Well, I'd say that the first age would feature solar sails, ion drives, nuclear rockets, fennely scoops (sucks in interstellar hydrogen to power a fusion drive) etc.. all in together, depending on the tech and resources available to each civ. It'll be fun seing different ships departing sol at different times and being overtake by faster, more advanced ships as the first age moves onward.
The second age should start with the implementation of nanotechnology, allowing submolecular manipulation of forces; essential for such techs as microscopic wormholes (to power light hugger engines with primordial energies), and the higgs field manipulator, (allowing artificial gravity, and reduced ship inertia). Towards the end of the second age wormholes will be built big enough to "airlift" units from city to city (with airport/wormhole generator).
In the third age ships will have thier own wormhole generators, allowing parradrops to other solar systems, and you will be able to build "gravitronic disruptors" which will act like fighter planes, shooting down incoming wormholes or using "gravatonic wave reflection to "recon" distant areas of the map (Planets, ships and space stations will be visible by the gravity shadows they cast into "subspace".

The forth age will develop acording to testing, but will probably feature long range massive wormholes (and the ability to use Massive gravatonic disruption to destroy planets and stars in the style of nuclear weapons) and true faster than light transport ships.
 
It always seemed like the Startrek design was a bit 'unstable', with those apparently very powerful engines attached by the skinny supports... Seems like from what you're saying, a sphere would be one of the best designs, since it's symetrical from all directions. You'd need a lot of weapons/thrust ports though.

The default flic is below, I'm hoping the game's smoothing effect will help the rough edges a bit and I'm thinking off lightening the civ specific colors a bit (a lot); they're pretty dark which wouldn't show up well on a space background...
 
hey, looks good. don't realy know whats going on with the partly disapearing thruster, got me stumped.

A few tips, #1 make it about 50% current size, although this could be done later with the multi unit tool, it takes less memory and processing power to work with a smaller flic. #2 the camera angle is slightly wrong, move the camera slightly higher in the air and looking down more on to the unit, just not too much. :) try matching it to the civIII battleship. #3 make the texture colours a little brighter. I don't know what textures are available to you with your 3d program, but for the satelite dish I'd sugest gold texture, as in space instruments are often wraped in insulating gold foil to protect them from radiation. Can you use BMP (bitmaps) for textures? if you can I'll post some generaly textured coloured BMP's for you to use.

heres one to try out, its civ coloured, but I can post some that are usefull for grey areas or red or black details. I kind of like your Primary colour look, its very "cold war era".
 
I think the rotational gravity spin would be good for a default or fidget animation for the sphere.

From a design point of view a sphere would be one of the best defensive designs, however a flying wing, or cone would be the best design for an attacking craft, perhaps a cone/egg design, for good structural strength. The sloping edges of the cone would help defelect incoming fire, providing a very acute angle in every forward sloping surface.

The flying wing or cone however would have to be very fast to get best advantage and counteract its dificult manuverabilty.

heres what the rotational gravity animation would look like. Does anyone think it would look too busy on screen with all your ships spinning like this in default? (it looks a bit jerky at the moment, but thats cos its only 9 frames, the finished default would be double that so would be much smoother. during the attack fortify and other aniamtions the ship would not rotate);
 

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Yes, my program supports bitmaps. I've been using plain colors, applied by face (Anim8or can color faces without a texture, and I generally don't use ones -'cause I'm lazy :p). I just downloaded OpenFX, and am reading Morpheus' tutorial. Once I get that figured out, the camer angle should be fixed. Shinking it'll be no problem. Thanks for the texture.

As for the sphere, I think the fidget looks good, but I'm sure it'll look better once you have all the frames added. You could try it for the default, that would make the screen look very active though. If you do, what would the fidget be?

As for the designs, a cone/egg would be good, unless caugth off gaurd or attacked from a different angle.

BTW: Do you my ship to spin at all, or is the should the spinning part be entirely encased?

EDIT: Apparently OpenFX doesn't support .bmp textures (or I don't know how to import them), and when exporting to .3ds in Anim8or, the textures disappear (not the plain color ones, just the .bmp ones). If you know how to import .bmp to OpenFX or have .TIFF textures that would be nice...
 
I'm still not sure about the spinning. My sphere has 90 degree symetry so it only needs to turn 90 degrees to mainatin the illusion of making a complete turn. However it has to turn those full 90 degrees or the illusion is lost. So it can make 9 ten degree turns, 18 five degree turns or 36 two-point-five degree turns. (or 30 three degree turns for instance).

18 frames is probably the maximum number of frames I would do in an animation, or it'll take forever. I need to test it realy, to see what it looks like.

here is a gold foil texture in tif format, for you to try;
 
I'm working on a fidget animation for the pringles ship (I'm starting to worry about copywright infringement :lol:, any suggestions for an actual name?), and it seems to be going quite well... OpenFX doesn't have a lot of the problems with shrinkage and has more functions than Anim8or, but I still haven't mastered the texturing. Once I get that down, I'll probably add that gold texture you sent me (thanks, by the way)...

A preview is posted below. The sattelite dish doesn't turn though; the second, small dish attached to it looked funny turning so much, and I thought that if I left that dish stationary I'd give a better feeling of rotational gravity, rather than just a spinning ship. Preview below:
 
Looks prety cool, have you given any thought to the attack animation? I'm not sure how you would show it, but the dish at the front could work as a microwave emitter. If a powerfull enough reactor was used the ship could emit powerfull microwaves that would heavly damage enemy ships (think what could happen to an enemy ship if it were put in a conventional microwave oven) it could also be an X-ray cannon. The emitor would be most effective against humans making EVA, or against unshielded sections of ships. It would become less effective as spaceships started including better insulation and shielding.

For a name it could be a "Defender".
 
is the goal to give the enemy cancer? X-ray cannons? i guess if they are powerful enough they could hurt. Microwave seems like a better option.

or I could just be an ignorant git. :crazyeye:
 
If they were very powerful, yes they would hurt. Although, microwaves are probably the best option (metal ship and wiring+microwaves=a whole lot of sparks :p)... I had honestly forgoten all about the attack, but what would microwaves 'look' like out in space? I.e. what should the attack effects look like?
 
Smoking mirror said:
I've finished putting together the interstellar craft for the first two eras, next is the innersystem craft. Heres a preview of the nine interstellar craft. I may drop one or two due to them being too similar to each other;
Click to expand...

I am glad you went for looking cool over reality :goodjob:
 
Ah, both attacks are actualy very effective, depending on your goal. A microwave attack would quickly damage electrical systems and computers while leaving the hull relativly intact for capture and refitting. The X-ray would be even better if focused well it could quickly kill crew mebmers while leaving most ships systems unharmed.

As to what they would actualy look like? Who knows, I think both would actualy be invisible but you would have to have some effect to represent it. perhaps sparks flashing in the space in front of the ship for the microwave cannon, while the X-ray laser could use a red light targeting laser to aim the attack.

The X-ray and microwave cannon would be good for raiders and pirates, as they can kill crew without damaging expensive goods. As to the strength of the xray cannon think of it this way, its a matter of strength, a light bulb will not hurt you with its luminance, but a laser can kill you in seconds. The benefits of a realy powerfull X-ray laser is that unlike a visible light laser it can pass straight through all but the heaviest shielding.

heres what I'm working on, done the default and attack so far. Its an early ancient era ship, about as powerfull as the swords man or babalonian bowman, the turret ship is made from high strentgh girders around a large engine and reactor and shielded crew nose section;
 

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