I'm willing to throw in my support for whatever codewise and scriptwise things we can do. >.>

What I am interested in is if your going to portray the Rebel Alliance as a major military and technological power that controls entire planets or a small group of infultrators that seek to turn the Empire onto itself through inciting the population and opportunic military victories.

Simrex, Legerdemain, sign up here http://warlords.swrebellion.com/smf/ on the Warlords forums I'll give you some staff access and work on getting stuff setup for FTP and bug tracker.

Depends on the era for the complexity of the Rebellion. In theory the rebellion had a lot of planets supporting it with resources while still being officially supportive of the empire (remember Alderaan was actively vocal against the empire, and it wasn't a major military power) If we can work in era settings into the menu then I'd be all for the rebellion being a highly mobile, highly financed fringe organization (essentially play as the pirates) but in the NR era it would be a direct competitor to the Empire actively taking planets.

Any way, onto the fun stuff

Did some playing around with code herder's exporter and realized we need to fix the scale of the planets (and grav wells)



A few more
SSD
ISD
Hmm planet needs to be bigger

I didn't get the data or normal map texture in, but those should be trivial, there are some lighting issues because of the max obj exporter and some weirdness with not having the other maps. I will be playing with these a bit to see if I can't tone down the shiny and get normal maps working properly.

Thanks to Enterprise-E for the SSD model and texture.

Try Amazon.com and e-bay -- I got mine from Amazon for about 10$.

Hey EvilleJedi, good to see you.

I have very little modeling ability. However, I can happily sit for days, balance tweaking armor, armor types, shields, scale, costs, accuracy vs target types, research branches, maps, and so on.

I go by the user name Nath in the warlords forum (yeah, the same guy who's been pushing SoaSE so much). I really want to help out with this project. Please sign me up.

In fact, I'll head over there now and see what is going on.

As for a decision on the era of play, personally I would shoot for post ROTJ. This has the most balanced navies on each side and a larger variety of ships and also makes a lot of sense in universe. Certainly playing during the rebellion could be an option, but honestly it's been done too many times. The clone wars also works as an era of play, but has a limited focus. This would probably be a game option or could just be based on the player race. (we will need to see what restrictions we can put in)

After some experimentation with importing ships and scales I'm wondering what might be the best decision on scaling between vessels and map objects.

the ratios I want at minimum to maintain are the following (acceleration will be modified to meet these)

1) all ships are scaled correctly relative to one another, no questions, the engine supports it, the overlay is there, everything will be to scale as much as possible, but the base unit of scale will be determined based on how the engine responds to a larger scaling of vessels and other objects.

2) planets to look sufficiently massive need to be at least 10x the size of the largest ship (excluding deathstars) so probably around 200 km would be a good size, but this will have to be experimented with because of how the camera will react to them.

3) ships weapon ranges will be roughly 10x the length of the largest ship (so if the executor is roughly 20km then the range of heavy turbolasers will be around 200 km in game) I'm willing to play with this, but ranges will be no shorter than 40km for heavy weaponry. (which is what I have in HW2 right now) the ranges could be a lot longer, but I don't know how well a player would be able to manage this or how it would look. ships would need to move closer in to engage all of their weapon systems, so firing from extreme range would only be for picking smaller targets off or harassing economies. ECM would also be a significant factor in shortening weapon ranges.

4)gravity wells can be either equal to or larger than the maximum weapon range. Defensive stations will have similar ranges to ships and planets will have shields vs bombardment so the threat of planetary bombardment/invasion is only an issue with significant force or minimal defenses.

5)inter planetary distances just need to give an impression of space so they can be arbitrarily determined as a multiplier of the gravity well final size

I am not opposed to using the phase lanes in the game simply for gameplay reasons, having open connection maps would be more in universe (maintaining gravity wells would be necessary though)

As for research and tech trees... Knowing this goes against decades of 4x gameplay I would opt for a very limited tech tree. Each player would start out with the capability of building most frigate sized vessels or less and most of the weaponry would be available (turbolasers, ion cannons, torpedos). Instead of a very broad tech tree with lots of options I am thinking of a limited tech tree that gives a very focused unlocks for specific ships or abilities (superlasers, interdictors, baradium charges, or specific vessels). Upgrades like armor upgrades would be considered to be fleet wide investments in the armada rather than 'finding a new type of armor' These upgrades would be a lot more expensive and time consuming, it all depends on where you focus your cash.

As for empire building techs, these could be considered more of an investment in infrastructure rather than a 'new technology' for example focusing on droid production will give you an incremental boost in build speed and could be thought of as simply buying more droids or upgraded droids for all your factories, rather than 'discovering' a new type of droid, gameplay wise it actually doesn't change much, it is just how it is worded in the description. The classes of ships would be controlled by signing contracts with ship builders to build ships for you (for example, placing an order for star destroyers requires a contract with the KDY corporation, more like a liscencing fee instead of research, this doesn't make a lot of sense in the trilogy era, but afterwards makes a heck of lot of sense) Other Empire building could be useful like implementing the tarkin doctrine as a 'culture' tech. so again not changing the effect of the tech research or upgrade just how it is described.

I'm going to need help implementing this changed tech tree, and coming up with ideas for individual upgrades. so again please go to the warlords forums if you want to help.

questions, comments?

Evile, first off let me say I am a big fan of your work. Those models you made for HW2 are jawdropping to say the least. I am very excited to see you here looking at modding this engine.

My only comment about your points is I wish this game went the route similar to Imperium Galactica III. When you zoomed into combat the planet scaled massively into the background providing an epic feel to combat. I really wish ironclad had gone this route.

Having the little planets modeled with those ridculously fast traffic lanes looks very cheesy to me but hey it's abstract so who cares.

My recommendation for the mod would be to remove the planets and cause the background to change to a planet wallpaper when zoomed in close enough. This would allow you more movement space for the ships. Not sure how this could be done without causing a lot of bugs.

Good luck evile, I can't wait to see the star wars universe come alive in this mod.

/drools

I wish I could help... but I can't model, skin, code, or use photoshop to make the buttons!

So how are you building the ships now? lol

Any idea what the factory will look like? As for tech tree stuff, maybe researching for the Death Star to fire on ships... after researching the death star of course.

And since this is after RotJ, are you going to add more than the New Republic and Empire? And what about all the other super weapons the empire had? Will ship have all the squadrons their supposed to have? And do you have a list as to the factions ship and roles or do you not have enough ideas for all the ship slots (I still want to see a Chiss Star destroyer but then again I'm not the one making this!)

I feel bad for whoever is going to do all the custom buttons...

Hey Eville, it is interesting how closely we see the final mod being.

Here are some of my personal thoughts on the project details you've mentioned (to shorten the post, I'll only mention things I see differently from what you've shared so far):

1. Weapon Fire Range: I would like to see weapon ranges in the 500km-1000km range (at least for the largest weapons). Closing the range would enable ships to bring to bear their shorter ranged weapons/torps and so on. ECM ships would be easily implemented to shorten the range of enemy ships.

2. To better fit this extended weapons range, gravity wells should be in the 5000km-10000km range. Of course, to have gravity wells this size, you can't have 20+ planets around each star. But since there are very few examples of Star Wars star systems having more than one useful planet per system, this won't be a problem. So the Star Wars map would have a more stars:FAR less planets ratio than what the stock game offers.

3. I like the 'less research' concept since the tech doesn't change drastically after ROTJ. However, for building larger ships, is the plan to make a Kuat/KDY 'dealership' orbital structure, and have purchased ships just appear after a while? I kind of like it, but the problem is that Kuat and KDY will actually be in the modded map. These cooperations could be conquered, couldn't they? Just brainstorming here.

4. Ship abilities. I was thinking it might work well to do the following. Capital ships don't gain levels as they do in the Stock Sins. However, they do arrive with 1 ability point to spend (maybe 2 or 3 points for super ships).

So, for example, let's say you contract a Star Destroyer from Kuat. Once it arrives/becomes yours, you can go to the ability selection menu and make your pick of one extra ability.

So, you could choose between abilities like Strikecraft Improved Hangar(gives an extra squad or 2 of strikecraft and faster strikecraft build times), StormTrooper Drop Pods (would effectively 'colonize' planets that have been bombed into submission), Enlarged Reactor (faster turn/acceleration rates, faster shield recharge rate), Armor/Structure upgrade (improved Armor and health), High Grade Hyperdrive (faster jump calculations, faster jump speeds), Enhanced Weapon Systems (faster fire rates, long energy weapon ranges).....and so on.

This would basically reflect customer specialization requests for Kuat/KDY (even though the player has to chose the ability after the ship is delivered).

It would also take a bit of the sting of having a lot of research removed from the mod.


So, for example, you could have had Kuat customize your

Damnit Thrawn, I was just editing my post to fix it, and you had to make a reply post in under 2 minutes...sigh.

*A final little question about strikecraft. Non hyperdrive equipped strikecraft (such as the cheap Tie Fighter) would work well with the present stock mechanics (of course, they need to have much longer build times). However, what about all the hyperdrive equipped strikecraft that CAN operate far away from their base ships? Do you think it would make more sense to have X-wings and such be individual little ships that are build in factories, and are not at all tied to larger carrier type ships? Unfortunately, I don't know if the game can support squads like HW2 does.

Also, will the mod be about mass producing hundreds of Star Destroyers/Mon Calamari Cruisers and having massive fleet battles, or will the bigger ships be made so expensive that you actually care if you lose them in battle.

Make them too cheap, and the smaller frigates/corvettes become useless. Make them too expensive and they play a very small part in the game and players will be reluctant to risk them. Personally, I would rather we err on the side of more expensive than too cheap.

Well I do plan on getting the 6 CD set of music soon... idk if they can sue you either, seeing as how you aren't making money off of this!

Having two time periods sounds OK I guess.

With things like Kuat, how about add a third, unplayable fraction that "owns" everything that represents the civilian population? They could be a civiliany with ships that fly between planets and stuff, and maintain small anti-piracy forces. Players could nationalize said civilian things by paying a certain amount of resources for stations or setting up a garrison for the Empire/envoy for the New Republic or a Cell for the Rebel Alliance with special colony ships represented by troop carriers and special abilities from large Empire ships and diplomats and infultrators that look like freighters. Players could then use the planet normally. For the ship building corporations, maybe players can buy ships from them? Of course, certain planets should refuse to build certain ships for each side, like the Calamari refusing to build anything for the Empire or Kuat refusing to sell the Rebellion ISDs.

I've considered refueling mechanics as well. Perhaps we could give capital ships some sort of 'trade station' value. So trade ships make their way too and from the capital ships, all the way back to the 'trade center depots'. Simply give these little trade/resupply ships the 'solar regen' ability and they will recharge your ships when they enter the same gravity wells.

Strikecraft and corvettes would likely end up being used a lot for raiding these supply lines.

Yeah, I know the concept would need a lot of ironing out. But it seems workable. It will be nice when the forge tools are released so we can see what is possible and what is not.