Request partners; MARS mod

[Kal-el]

Are you going with the SF3D as the later generation of the Mars suits? I ask because, 1) they are awesome, and 2) if so, then I want to make sure it looks like the first generation suits could be the precursor to the later models.

I don't know if you've seen these drawings I did, and I don't think they are necessarily applicable to this project, but if you see something you like that I can use as a base to jump from let me know.

The first two are concept designs for US future soldiers.
The second two were concept sketches for Bebro's X-Com mod. Of the four I think the second X-Com suit is closest to what you are looking for in that it is the bulkiest and most utilitarian looking, but still it is far from what I have in mind for the early Mars design.

When you say "spikey" what exactly do you have in mind? You're not talking about actual spikes are you? And large antenae sticking out all over the place doesn't seem very practical. I'll work on it and see what I can come up with. I am going to have to find a scanner, I don't have mine with me here. I may have to have it shipped out, that might take a while.

But, the answer is yes, I would love to work on some concept artwork for this mod. Give me something to occupy my mind other than figuring out how to take over the world.

 

[Steel General]

@Kal-el: I just have to say that those drawings are awesome!

 

[GRM7584]

Actually, I can just wait until I get some more buildings that can be assembled; I'm going to have to redo those dome cities anyway, as I had not realized how completely garbled civ's palette had made them. Fortunately I saved the original domes and miscellany structures in a seperate file. Once you have an assemblage of structures for your terrain buildings, post it or PM me. I plan on doing my own little space-colony mod (and have actually been working on it despite 2 ongoing betas) so I wouldn't mind doing all the cities on my own, although I will likely only do 2 eras a piece unless we have a lot of unique buildings. My planned city set for my colony mod was going to be something along the lines of:
Geodesic (Dome Clusters)
Epic (Column-shaped arcologies with a mediterranean feel)
Urban (Towers built on top of tightly packed "slums")
Modern (Flatter arcologies with a lot of horizontal blue glassy material)
Crag (Somewhat organic/smooth arcologies in rough formations)
But I'll make whatever I can find to work with.

 

[Smoking mirror]

I guess when I say spikey I mean, angular, though a bit like the decepticons from transformers, with maybe with some solar panels that can be articulated, remember that Open FX has some good skeleton features, so feel free to Indicate "transformative features", they should fold back, to make it easy to move quickly through cramped corridors or rooms, but can be folded out for extra targeting or to recieve satelite updates.

When I think of the Earth forces, I'm thinking of "for life" professional Mercenary soldiers, who embrace all technologies, including cybernetic addons. The Martians however will be more like a revolutionary militia, just everyday people, adapting thier tools to self deffence. The martians therefore would value survivability, and multiple redundancy in thier systems. The earthlings on the other hand would concentrate on enhancing thier already considerable combat experince, making sure they get off the fist shot, that it is on target and that it is garaunteed to take down the enemy.

for game mechanics the earthforces would have high stats but be very expensive, if not irriplaceable. They would have special abillities such as invisible, parradrop and all terrain as roads.

I'm also thinking of doing a colour replace on Bebro's Xcom troopers for some of the earliest troops, perhaps at the start of the second scenario. I think they are realy good units.

For GRM7584 here are some images of martian building features, cut and paste them together to see what you can get, hopefully I've got the angle right, it's the same as I used for the terrain, so it may be a little off as stangley civ uses slightly different angles for terrain and cities, something I forgot. I've got the original files so can reset it if it needs it; Buildings

Here is an update on the terrain, I've kept all the orriginal files so that they can be used for landmark terrain; Picture

 

[fe3333au]

Probably too early ... but have you concidered having 'goody huts'

they could represent early exploration missions ... with the following effects

>Cash - represents the recyling value of precious metals and other material used in construction of these rovers.
>Map - the memory database is still accessible and reveals terrain information.
>Build City - represents a 'lost' manned mission which lost contact with earth and was therefore assumed a failure. or abandoned as mission was temporary.
>Unit joins - the rover is repairable and only required a power recharge.
>Settler joins - an automatic unit which was to build a base (survival bubble) for manned missions. Could have been an emergency 'life raft' type of unit.
>Tech - database from an abandoned settlement attempt.
>Barb - rogue rover, attacks with exploration attatchments.

Only thoughts Some I like better than others (esp. the recycling of the previous harware littering Mars' surface)

Not sure if some 'goody hut' options can be turned off because some are lame, ie. Tech and Settler and maybe City

I am following this thread with interest

 

[Kal-el]

when I'm looking at the SF3D armor and thinking of what its predecessors would look like I can't help but think of the Deep Sea Pressure Suits.

I'm thinking somewhere between the two would be good for the first generation Martian suits.

 

[GRM7584]

SM: Here's another attempt at Dome Cities in the same basic style, but with an improved palette and a couple of those buildings. This time in .pcx format! I don't know how it will look on terrain, though.

 

[Ozymandias]

SM: Here's another attempt at Dome Cities in the same basic style, but with an improved palette and a couple of those buildings. This time in .pcx format! I don't know how it will look on terrain, though.

Looks cool -- well thought out.

-Oz

 

[Cabbit]

Your mod looks interesting, reminds me of the old Mars scenario for Fantastic Worlds (Civ II).

An idea that you could maybe work into one of the scenarios is having grassland and/or plains represent terraformed terrain. Then you could use the worker actions "clear forest" and "clear wetlands" as "terraforming".

Alternately "terraforming" could take the place of a space ship victory, since it would be very expensive and time consuming. I don't think the space ship victory is plausible for use in this mod in it's original form becuase there are probably better places than mars to stage an interstellar mission from.

Another spaceship victory replacement could be an orbital tower(aka Space Elevatorm, beanstalk, skyjack). It would also be a very expensive thing to build but would make space travel to and from the surface of mars much cheaper after it was built. It is also plausible that, if we could find suitable materials to build it w/ on mars, that we migth actually build an orbital tower on Mars, since it's smaller gravity would make its construction a much easier proposition than building a simliar structure on mars. (it would require some research, but I suspect the strongest materials currently engineered would actually sustain the stain of putting an oribital tower on mars)

I personally dispute that after unification mars would have a tendancy toward regionalization. I think that if Mars is initially unified by force that this might be probable, but if Mars unified diplomatically or in the face of invasion it's quite likely that Mars would stay unified permanently. Unless of course settlers in Southern Mars employ slave labor while this practice becomes illegal in th northern hemisphere...

If you want to have essentially 3 scenarios I think that you could have your war for independance before you have a politically unified mars, or you could have Mars become politically united but I think after both of these political events happen that the possibilities for a Civ III based game based in the same future timeline start to dry up.

Anyway regardless of that I would like to point out that if push comes to shove, you might be able to "borrow" some city graphics from Alpha Centuari. I don't know if anyone here played the Mars scenario for Fantastic Worlds, but I would think that maybe that scenario could provide some ideas for the scenario.

Anyways, those are just some ideas I had. I can't really help w/ the creation process becuase I'm a lousy graphic artist, so all I can really do is make suggestions. (although if anybody wants graphics from SMAC I could help w/ that)

 

[GRM7584]

Yes, I mentioned the FW Mars scenario as a reason for being interested, but I think SM is already planning using most if not all of the ideas therein; rovers, terraforming, terrain bonuses and whatnot. Plus I mentioned the clear forest idea for terraforming; it must be a good one!
There are actually already some SMAC city graphic conversions on CFC, I believe, although I personally don't like the idea of even using bits of them, since years of playing SMAC have made them so instantly recognizable by faction. I may have to go ahead and re-install to see what I can see, though, but I lost my expansion pack long ago to 'borrowing'. Another place to get buildings might be MOO2, so I may scroll that up as well.

 

[WildWeazel]

Imperium Galactica 2 haqs some nice buildings, but it would have to be doctored screenshots.

 

[Smoking mirror]

Actualy Mars would be an almost perfect location from which to build a Interstellar spaceship. In orbit round one of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn would be better, with plenty of available hydrogen, but mars has the Metals needed as well as a gravity well that would be not too hard to overcome (certainly compared to earth).

I do recomend reading Kim Stanley Robinsons Mars trilogy if you haven't. It shows how mars can acheive unification quite easily to start with, but the continual flood of imagrants from Earth would swamp the Native martians, making the original martian concensus irrelevant. Unless you fought a new civil war every decade to maintain Unification, regionalism would be a much better choice, with each area of Mars having it's own national flavour and laws but following a single martian constitution. Less like the states of the USA and more like Europe, with more devolved political powers.

The only way to establish a "United States of Mars" would be to put a stop to imagration, this way Mars could adopt a permanent political identity. However this would be next to impossible without a system-wide war, a war which Mars with it's small industrial base and low manpower would be unlikley to win.
So the choice for mars would be unification under an earth banner of oppression or regional and political division under a central martian ideal.

Either way there would always be pressure form earth to establish covert or overt control over the Martian nations. Initialy this would take the form of a military force set up early on the planet, however this would be a fractured and conflicted force because of it's multi-national makeup. Later a military force independent from nationalist controls, most probably based around the unified interests of those who have invested capital in the Martian project, would be better placed to wrestle control of the planet for thier investors. As time pased the different factions of earth would move towards less agressive forms of control, most likley exerting influence through pupet nations and flags of convenience.

fe3333au; That's pretty much how I was thinking of doing the goody huts.

Kal-el; I don't know if you've ever seen it, but a few years ago a guy invented an armoured suit for observing Grizzly bears in the wild, it was able to take a direct hit form a AK47 or be hit by a speeding car without causing (very much) damage to the user. That'd give a good idea of what early battle suit designs would look like as it is designed to withstand high presure in a small area, rather than high pressure all over, like the diving suit.

GRM7584; Looks good, I'll post the terrain files soon so you can check the angles and colours in game.

 

[Ozymandias]

The grizzly bear suit can be seen & read about at:

http://www.nfb.ca/grizzly/suit.html

-Oz

 

[Smoking mirror]

Black Box:
Voice-activated recording device located on the rear-right side of head piece, to record bear sounds or, in the event of a catastrophic failure of the Ursus Mark VI, last words.

Ha! That's brilliant!

 

[Kal-el]

I'll definitely incorporate some of that into the design. I had completely forgotten about that suit until you brought it up again. First saw that on "Ripley's" a couple years ago. Far out design. What is the necessity for air-tightness? i.e. What is the atmospheric pressure of Mars, and other than making sure the helmet is air-tight, is it necessary for the rest of the suit to be?

The reason I was looking at the "JIM" suit was that NASA was looking at similar designs, though more streamlined, see below. It seemed natural that the Martians would be using suits based off whatever they came up in originally.

 

[Ozymandias]

The reason I was looking at the "JIM" suit was that NASA was looking at similar designs [...]It seemed natural that the Martians would be using suits based off whatever they came up in originally.

Wouldn't it also make sense that they'd resort to (in current Iraq-war parlance) "Hillbilly Armor" for, e.g., rovers and perhaps even medieval-style add-ons for ersatz combat suits?

-Oz

 

[Smoking mirror]

Well air presire on earth at sea level is 1, in space it is zero. At arival on Mars it's 0.1, so 10 percent of earth but still much more than space.

The body does need to be air tight, partly rigid, and elasticated so that it does not inflate. The other option is to have it already inflated, like space suit designs.

 

[Ozymandias]

Well air presire on earth at sea level is 1, in space it is zero. At arival on Mars it's 0.1, so 10 percent of earth but still much more than space.

The body does need to be air tight, partly rigid, and elasticated so that it does not inflate. The other option is to have it already inflated, like space suit designs.

I was thinking more along the lines of, say, vambraces (partial arm coverings) and perhaps "tunics" of a kevlar-cum-ablative sort; rovers could be fitted with welded plates etc.

-Oz

 

[Kal-el]

I like Oz's idea of "Hillbilly" armor, but not as the "standard martian gear. There could be another group on the planet, nomads, hill people, desert people, outlaws, whatever, I'm, gonna call them Reivers cuz I just read an article on Yahoo about this cursed stone in England that was related to the Scottish Reivers that used to come down out of the hills and raid the neighboring English villages. I'm thinking they would have a Mad Max/Fallout look going on. Could be fun. They could be used as the Barbarians.

 

[Cabbit]

"I do recomend reading Kim Stanley Robinsons Mars trilogy if you haven't. It shows how mars can acheive unification quite easily to start with, but the continual flood of imagrants from Earth would swamp the Native martians, making the original martian concensus irrelevant. Unless you fought a new civil war every decade to maintain Unification, regionalism would be a much better choice, with each area of Mars having it's own national flavour and laws but following a single martian constitution. Less like the states of the USA and more like Europe, with more devolved political powers."
-quoted from smoking mirror

I still don't see how an independant mars that was unified at some one point would have more of a tendancy toward regionalization than, say, the united states. Even though US culture undeniably changed due to immagration, the only civil war we fought was centered on an issue that was already divisive at the time of the Revolutionary War (namely slavery). So I personally think that if mars decided to unify at the time of its declaration of independance, that it would not have a tendancy toward regionalization unless there were underlying problems at the time state was founded.

Lessons from earth history seem to point toward tendancies toward regionalization most often occuring when two cultural group with a reasonably long indepedant cultural heritage are unified, most commonly by force, but occassionally in the face of a common enemy. (this is not to say there are always problems, but when there are problems this seems to be the case, examples: Quebeq vs. Canada, Indian Regionalization Movements(there are a LOT of these, but Kashmir is by far the most famous), Kurdish Nationalists vs. Turkey, Iraq, or Syria, etc.). Occassionally there are divisive economic issues, but the only time that I can see that is in the case of the American Civil War, and there you could argue that the American South developed a different culture in part becuase of the different economic structure of its society.

While I guess it is possible that immagration could eventually cause a tendancy toward regionalization this would assume that you would have state-sized areas where people of one culture type would tend to immagrate to. I guess this did happen to some degree in th united states, but it has never been plasuable to suggest that all areas in which, say, Italians have immagrated to could plausibly forge thier own nation. Even if you take a group that makes up a larger percentage of the American population, like Americans of Hispanic descent, I still think it is highly implausible that Hispanic immagration could actually lead to the seccession of any state from the Union.

I would also question just how much immagration there would be to mars, since it would, in all likelyhood, be a very expensive trip.

But I never did read Robinson's Mars Trilogy, so I don't know what the societ laid out in the novels turned out like. (I've always sort of wanted to read those books but never got the time) Almost every book I've read that has included a politically independant mars has just pretty much assumed the whole thing would be unified after the fact. (but that doesn't really say much since it is all speculative fiction anyway)

The reason I don't think Mars would be prime real-estate for building an intersteller spaceship is that if we can colonize mars we can also probably colonize the asteriod belt and that is a much better place to construct any sort of spaceship. The Outer Planets might be better if you wanted to have access to large amounts of Hydrogen, but I think that the asteriod belt would probably be where you would want to finish your construction, then move the ship to Jupiter to load the Hydrogen. I guess if Martians really wanted to they could drag asteriods from the Asteriod belt into orbit and then mine them for materials (which would probably be cheaper than hauling the materials into orbit from Mars) and then build the ship in Mars Orbit, but since you aren't really using Mars for anything in that case, it doesn't really make sense to me why you'd want to do that. On the other hand if Phobos or Deimos is mineral rich I guess you could use one of them as a materials source. But I don't really know if that's the case or not.

I don't know, anyway, its not like this is the stage at which concerns for the detailed geopolitical setup of the scenario/mod really need to be considered anyway.