Unit in progress: railship

[Ozymandias]

For anyone seriously into the math of rail guns, try --

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~aaguado/Rail Gun Analysis.pdf

-- But, really, it's overkill for Civ ...

-Oz

 

[Neomega]

Thanks DS. A range of 1 is default for most ships, and I was considering giving the ship a range of 2... allthough I am not sure if the AI would do inland bombarding.... it has been so long since I played Civ III.....

I wasn't sur eif the shell was launched 100 km in the air.... even if it is so, then the actual time between firing and landing is enormous.

I guess, there was a regulator, it could be used to launch the rails a shorter distance. Before talking to my brother, I always thought rail guns would only be useful for line of site targets, and could never really be used for artillery.

 

[gaultesian]

Any idea on a completion date yet?

Sincerely,

Gaultesian

 

[Smoking mirror]

It wouldn't actualy take too long for the fire to arrive at target, quicker than a missile anyhow.
I'd give it about the same range as a missile, but less power. The ship should have fairly low A/D values and be mostly used for bombarding at long range. The AI would use it or inland bombard, but like all its artillery would tend to target railways, mines and roads to resources.

You can imagine a team of special forces locating an enemy strong point and calling in a rail strike to the general area. Anyone who played Syndicate Wars in the late 90s will understand what rail gun artillery can do (though in Syndicate the rail launcher is mounted on a satelite). Three large railguns would easily level a city block, the only defence would be to continualy move (so wouldn't be usefull against "invisible" units like terrorists or special forces.

 

[Neomega]

Any idea on a completion date yet?

Sincerely,

Gaultesian

Absolutely none, as I spent all last night setting up the camera and lights in Blender for Civ III compatibility.

 

[WildWeazel]

Actually artillery is (will be) the primary use for rail guns. And keep in mind that the porjectile will leave the rail around Mach 7, so it gets to its target pretty fast. Much faster than traditional artillery.

 

[gaultesian]

Thanks for the reply Neo, I realize that all model designers such as yourself have to put up with the constant whining and cajoling of the general Civ public wrt new units.

Keep up the good work and believe me - I will be one of the first to download it (providing, of course, I am online at the very moment of the release).

Smoking Mirror's comments about strategic artillery/bombing are actually really good.

One of my peeves about a normal game of civIII is that both myself and the AI have a reasonably easy time building/repairing damage caused by disasters/nukes and pillaging/artillery strikes.

I have my CIVIII worlds made such that general worker tasks take a great deal longer to complete.

For instance, I have my workers working at about 10% capacity - therebye either taking a great deal of time to develop roads/railroads/resources, and also because, in the later portions of the game, it provides for some really excellent strategic bombing wars/campaigns (imagine the civilization at war with a rival and suddenly, all or most of it's accesible resources have been bombed out, and reallizing that it will take many turns to get even basic resources back online).

Of course to keep the troops from constantly pillaging, I had to disable this for just about all the troop types.

Therefore artillery, naval artillery, and fighter/bombers become paramount later in the game. Also, when someone makes a nuke strike, the damage is hard to fix and takes considerable time - the consequences both for the attacked state trying to get back on its feet and the rest of the world trying to avert global warming are great.

This railgun ship would prove a vital role in my games as a deep strike/strategic naval artillery piece.

Sincerely,

Gaultesian
p.s. when the worker's job effectiveness is at 10%, watch and observe how many workers the AI will make, and how many are captured during wars.

 

[Neomega]

Actually artillery is (will be) the primary use for rail guns. And keep in mind that the porjectile will leave the rail around Mach 7, so it gets to its target pretty fast. Much faster than traditional artillery.

I am thinking the problem with rail guns is this:

They fly too fast!

Therefore, as artillery, they either have to be fired almost straight up, until gravity pulls them back down, or they have to be fired at something in the Line of Sight..... meaning an enemy hunkered down behind a hill on the shore is safe, becase the rail gun's shell flies to fast to fall like a convential shell over a mountain. For open sea combat, the curvature of the Earth may be the only real problem, and even then it is probably fired at a high enough velocity to get in to sort of a low orbit, meaning it would actually be superior in taking out other ships, at very long ranges.

@Gaultesian: No worries.

 

[Xen]

just a question- woudl rail guns make a feasible space based weapon for ships agiast other ships?, as well as orbital bombardments?

 

[Neomega]

just a question- woudl rail guns make a feasible space based weapon for ships agiast other ships?, as well as orbital bombardments?

It would have to be attached to an orbiting nuclear power plant.

If you mean spaceships, I guess so.

But then again, throwing rocks from the moon can be deadly weapon.

 

[Xen]

in my own minds eye, space based battle ships and the like will spawn off terrestial natiosn creating orbital bomabrdment platforms; or, more likelly, "STARWARS" style efforts, to create a feasible anti-missile sheild in space- this leads to developments to counter thos eplatforms, by creating other space based pltforms to take them out , which leads to other to take out thos eo****ers, and vice versa, until we have the beginning sof a fulyl rounded space going armada

 

[WildWeazel]

They fly too fast!

Therefore, as artillery, they either have to be fired almost straight up, until gravity pulls them back down...

Since they are powered by electricity instead of chemical explosions, the launch speed would be adjustable. But because of the extreme power needed to fire them, they would probably be saved for shots beyond the range of conventional shells. And also the ships would probably have some conventional guns in addition to rail guns.

 

[Anarki]

Looks cool. Hurry up and finish it. and yeah, it needs to look more silver in places.

 

[vbraun]

Your camera looks a little high. But other then that it looks really good.

 

[Neomega]

I have had to relearn everything. I bought Paint Shop Pro 9, and redid the entire railship so it could also function well in the Blender game engine.

This model has a mere 903 vertices, is UV mapped, and uses less than 100K of RAM for the texturing. I just finished it, it has taken about 2 weeks, but I have learned alot, alot, alot.

All I have left to do is put some "laser sweeping shield" mounts on the side rails.

 

[Neomega]

civ III angle:

 

[vbraun]

Why are you going to use the game engine? Just wondering.

 

[Neomega]

I figure while I am at it, I might as well make my models lightweight, so they can be used for more than just converting to civ III flcs. The people actually making games in Blender are still quite amateur, some have produced a rudimentary first person shooter. Lets just say I have a goal, and hope to reach it in 10-15 years. It's been only 2, and I am far from professional graphics, but I expect to be at professional level in 3 more years, all while having lots of fun.

 

[vbraun]

That is really lightweight. My sentry gun thing is 6302 vertices...
I still have to figure out how to do the UV mapping thing.

Anyway, It looks really awesome.

 

[Neomega]

Every model is made of faces, (4 edges, 4 vertices) really made of two triangles.

All you have to do is be able to pick out where you can make a bunch of faces together . In the example below, figure 1 has 9 vertices, and 4 faces
fiugre two shows 4 vertices, 1 face.

You can reduce it one of two ways, both have to be in edit mode.

1st would be to delete the red vertices in figure 1, and then choose the four yellow vertices in figure 1 and press the "F" key, for "make face".

The other would be to choose the four yellow vertices, press "F" for "face", and then click on the face select button while in edit mode (the triangle in the second picure) then select the four smaller faces and delete them. The extra vertices will leave as well, in most cases, and all that will be left is the one larger face.

UV mapping, I had to watch greybeards UVtutorial about 3 times, and then "play the video, and pause" twice while modelling, to ge tit figured out. He uses a complex object, which confuses things. Basically, take a box, and imagine all edges are sealed with tape. To UV map you have to determine where to make teh cuts, so teh box will "unwrap" well. In the third attachment, I marked all the edges in magenta where the "seams" or cuts would not be made. SO in the cube, the red lines would be where the "seams" or "cuts" would be made. With the "Cross shaped" uv map, you would then be able to paint each individual side. But you will really have to watch greybeards uvtutorial to understand fully.