Interesting, that is definately one of the weapons... but for what races or context I'm not sure.

Now then, here some of my ideas for the Ishiman classes:

1:Fighter: Not much different, but should be worth it's cost.
100:Cruiser: Should have anti-fighter and anti-gunship abilities.
200:Carrier: Carries 10 fighters and has a turret (is cheap and weak).
300:Gunship: Should be anti-carrier and anti-battleship.
400:Battleship: Pretty much anti-everything except gunships.

Well, this is paper-scissors-rock like in Ares, but the roles have been changed around somewhat. I know it would be truer to the Ares model to have strict classes, but I want diversity. We should not limit ourselves here.

I don't know about the ship classes. I think we should have continuity with the original missions and some new ships. The Ares class system works very well but I think the best solution would be something in between Ares and your ideas.
Fighters - Only good at fighting other fighters unless in groups
Fighter/Bomber - Good against larger ships in two or threes but not as good against fighters.
Cruisers - Slower than fighters but quicker than gunships or carriers and more longer lasting fire power.
Gunships - Mainly around to combat HVDs
Carrier - Should be toughest vessel and have no weapons except for a turret and its fighter and fighter/bombers.
Heavy Destroyer - ? Carrier killers. Good defense against the fighter/bombers but need to have some weakness against Cruisers and Gunships
In this system the Cruisers and Gunships would escort the Carriers against the HVDs
Of course their would be other classes but they would belong to individual races.

I just thought of this on the spot so it will need some work. You of course have more of a final decision than I do in this matter.

Thanks for the complement about the missile ship thing by the way.

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And a member of the Ares Extended Team.

(This message has been edited by brookeview (edited 08-09-2001).)

now wait a minute. I gotta agree with LCA here, is this a TC or just a revisited sort of thing. I dont think Admiral would appreciate you using his storyline then just screwing around with the ships. If your using his storyline the ships are gonna have to be ares style, or im outta here too.

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just take my post, and imagine everything is speeled right.

I won't leave but I do agree with Pyro. Keep the Ares type ships and add a few new ones.

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And hopefully a member of the Ares Extended Team.

Ideas for weaker existing ships.
Ishiman
Gunship - No Lepton(sp) beam cannon. Replaced with another Rapid PK beam cannon.
HVD - Same. Replace Lepton with RPK
Cantharian
Cruiser - No cloak
Gunship - Make the large plasma pulse do less damage. 2/3 maybe

For the people leaving this should be ok changes to make. It doesn't mess around with the class system it just makes the ships seam less advanced. If you do have a problem with anything any of us suggest please bring it up before leaving.

Oh and an interesting thought. EVN started out as a plugin. It was good enough to attract major attention and get a new game engine built for it...
Remember it was just a thought

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And hopefully a member of the Ares Extended Team.

Anic why did you leave?

I just wanted to say if any of you are leaving because of my new ship being in a normal Ares mission, It was the first mission that you could build ships in. I in no way meant to try to change a orriginal mission. It is just a good mission to test ships in.

If not just ignore this post.

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And hopefully a member of the Ares Extended Team.

Here's my new brainchild: Not mess with the class system, but have more classes. This provides some originality. We will not mess with the weapons terribly, but add more.

Fighter
Bomber
Schooner
Cruiser
Escort
Gunship
Carrier
HVD
Battleship

The only new class you added was the bomber. That should work just fine.

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And hopefully a member of the Ares Extended Team.

In Ares, there are only 5 constant classes per race, in my version, there 9, thus I have actually added 4 new classes.

If this should be true paper-scissors-rock, which ship is anti-HVD? How about a specialised frigate or something (maybe even the bomber?)?

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'Is that what I think it is?'
'What?'
'A big orange swirly thing in space!'

• Red Dwarf

Ok now tell us what you envision the bomber to be. A fighter/bomber perhaps or something like a B-52 or B-1.

Same thing for the battleship. What will it be?

I'll make some fun previews for the fighter/bomber.

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And hopefully a member of the Ares Extended Team.

Ok I updated the AE Project file on my iDisk. It now includes an original briefing detailing the new ships and the Bomber.

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And hopefully a member of the Ares Extended Team.

I've thought hard about the ship classes, and this is what I've come up with so far. Each ship has a primary strength, and a secondary strength.

...................Anti
Fighter............Bomber, Gunship
Bomber.............Cruiser, Gunship
Schooner...........Fighter, Bomber
Cruiser............Schooner, Gunship
Escort.............HVD, Cruiser
Gunship............Carrier, HVD
Carrier............(Below gunship)
HVD................Battleship, Carrier
Battleship.........(Not very offensive units)

Fighter: Moves very fast, has fast-firing beam. Extremely manouvrable. (Like, turn rate of 3, max velocity of 10.)

Bomber: Has an armament equivalent to cruiser's firepower, but with longer range. Not much stronger than a fighter, decidedly less manouvrable.

Schooner: Has almost a fighter's manouevrability and a cruiser's strength, but also has a light armament.

Cruiser: Has normal firepower levels, decent manouvrability.

Escort: As manouevrable as a cruiser, a little stronger, long-range weaponry and very powerful.

Gunship: Longer range, and more firepower. This will be boosted in firepower in AE, to handle more capital ships. The escort will take it's place in handling smaller ones.

Carrier: Turreted weaponry will take out all ships that don't have long-range or very powerful guns.

HVD: Does exactly what it says.

Battleship: Is strong and has powerful weapons (about as powerful as a carrier but not turreted). Can withstand alot of attack, but is not invulnerable to groups of i.e. escorts.

Now, this seems the formulae for atleast one of the races.

Guys, Nathan Lamont wouldn't give less of a rat's ass on how we make this plug, just as long as the plugin in unofficial and we don't use all of his ideas. It's fine.

As far as time setting goes, I think before the Ares War is best, as loads of stuff happens to set up the Ares plot:
- The Boodan War (I know all about it, but at the request of NL I will add a few unofficial bits)
- The Star League/Cantharan Expansion (again, I know most about it)
- The last Gaitor/Obain war (I know tons about this)
- The Cantharan Crusades and the fall of Gaitor

So keep this in mind that the Pecking order went roughly like so:

Gaitor
Cantharis
Bazidan
Ishima
Salril (includes the Audemedons)
Elejee
Bood
Obain

As for graphics, I'll start work on some Gaitori Empire ships right away.

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Time is the best teacher, yet it kills all of it's students.

Ishiman weapons:

Fighter: PK beam.
Bomber: Rapid PK beam, LRPK (not salrilian) beam
Schooner: Trreted PK beam.
Cruiser: Fusion Pulse light, PK beam.
Escort: Astrominer pulse (longer range), Fusion Pulse light
Gunship: 3 missile ports, rapid PK beam
Carrier: 2 missile ports, fighter launch, bomber launch
HVD: Lepton beam, 3 missile ports, rapid LRPK beam
Battleship: Fullerene pulse (slower firing), 6 missile ports

You should have previews of each of those ships by noon my time tomorrow.

Schooner with turreted laser? Are you sure?

Shouldn't a bomber have something like a bomb?
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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And hopefully a member of the Ares Extended Team.

(This message has been edited by brookeview (edited 08-10-2001).)

Sure am I not.

Are we just modifying original weapons slightly or creating totally new ones? I think the bomber should have a bomb, on second thoughts. Yes, that would be it. A neutron bomb. Ahh, I've got a great explosion sequence and sound for that (not used in SETR).

I can't have that preview out because all the Ishiman graphics will have to be redone, and there is no placeholder bomber graphic. At the moment, I'm kind of mucking around with ships and weapons.

Fighter: PK beam.
Bomber: Neutron bomb
Schooner: Rapid PK beam.
Cruiser: Fusion Pulse light, PK beam.
Escort: Astrominer pulse (longer range), Fusion Pulse light
Gunship: 3 missile ports, rapid PK beam
Carrier: 3 missile ports, fighter launch, bomber launch
HVD: Lepton beam, 3 missile ports, Very rapid PK beam.
Battleship: Fullerene pulse (slower firing), 6 missile ports

Having nothing better to do, I created a new Ishiman fighter sprite and accompanying weapon. It is available (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/joveia/.cv/joveia/Public/Ares Extended-binhex.hqx")here(/url).

Nice sprite. I think it would be better suited to the bomber and have a redone and better looking Ishiman fighter. I think we should keep the general look of the original ships but have them look better.

I'll have the updated AE demo ships file up sometime around noon here.

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And hopefully a member of the Ares Extended Team.

Ok the file has been updated on the iDisk.

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Creator of the great new plugin for ares "Earth's Journey Back To The Stars". And hopefully a member of the Ares Extended Team.