QUOTE (DarthKev @ Aug 3 2010, 02:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Aw, that sucks, StarSword. I hope your jaw feels better soon. Well, I just saw your edit so let's see about some of that feedback.

The writing was alright, I guess. Don't take that personally, I've never been a good judge of writing skill. The one thing that stood out, though, was how much it really looked like an official document from the files of some government agency. I almost felt like I shouldn't be reading it without proper security clearance.

The story itself, though, has really sparked my interest in the Axe-tail Star Empire. A code of honor, brutal efficiency in combat, and they have cloaking devices?! In the words of Misha*, "I like working for you!" I am curious as to how your time stamp format works. At 1638:32.32 subspace ruptures and the UGN fleet confirms it's the Axe-tail fleet. However, right after that at 1638:06.06 the Axe-tails exit hyperspace. I would normally assume 1638:06.06 should come before 1638:32.32, assuming the numbers count up. Does your system work differently? Is this actually a standard military time system?

• For those who don't know, I'm speaking of Misha Milanich from the video game Mercenaries 2.

Let me check on that; I had some trouble getting my word processor to accept the formatting.

• investigates file *

The timestamp format is supposed to read "hours minutes:seconds.fractional" (HHMM:SS.00 in format code). It's an expansion of real-life military time, a 24-hour clock without an hours-minutes separator (2PM is written 1400 and read "fourteen hundred hours").

The mixed-up-looking example you mentioned where the "subspace ruptures" looked like it should have come AFTER the "Axe-tails exit hyperspace" was a foul-up on my part; the "exits hyperspace" entry was supposed to read 1638:40.06, but as I said, I was having a little trouble with OpenOffice. I finally discovered the check-box for "Number recognition" and turned it off; it then let me write them the way I wanted. I must've missed that timestamp when I went back over the table.

And yes, the Axe-tails do have cloaking devices. So do the UGF and Balcrusians, mind you, but they're basically at the experimental stage (power requirements for a cloak that can handle hide something the size of a command ship or Marauder are an issue), whereas the Axe-tails have had high-grade cloaks for a while. The Ministry of Justice even flies ships with area cloaks (useful for witness protection and the like).

And the second half was supposed to look exactly like what it was: an official government document. I'm glad I carried it off so well. What did you think of the Axe-tail legend at the beginning?

Trivia: Incidentally, Commodore Evsen Zahradnik is supposed to be Czech. I actually did some research (ain't Google grand?) to come up with the name.

P.S. Oh, and krugeruwsp? I think you might be in the wrong thread. I asked about Sketchup, but not anim8or or Wings.

This post has been edited by StarSword : 08 August 2010 - 01:20 AM

QUOTE (StarSword @ Aug 3 2010, 09:10 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What did you think of the Axe-tail legend at the beginning?

A very interesting story about their loss of honor and their road to recovery of said honor. Sounds like they started as Aurorans, degraded to Moashi, and then improved to Heraani. I could even go as far as making an analogy with the Klingons. They started as pre-Federation Klingons and ended up as Federation-aligned Klingons after recovering their honor.

Sorry for the analogies. I'm not implying you're unoriginal, it's just easier for me to describe things with analogies.

Ah, sorry, I failed to look at the correct screen name. Someone else said they were using anim8or and Wings, thought it was you at first. My bad.

One final point on the Axe-tails and cloaking devices: often a cloak is used to sneak around and past one's enemies, so one might think that a race of honorable warriors would find them distasteful. But like the Klingons, just because Axe-tail ethics stress honor in combat doesn't mean they don't use almost* every tool they can get their hands on. In fact, said ethics also stress making death as swift and painless as possible, so they prefer to strike a sudden, decisive blow than to fight a war of attrition.

• The almost: Axe-tails consider the use of NBC weapons to be abhorrent: those who aren't killed immediately suffer a slow, lingering, painful death. (This is a holdover from the First Empire and the War of Retribution, detailed in the preamble.)

Ironically, the UGF on the other hand has been known on occasion to use chemical attacks on small scale (but only with direct authorization from the High Council, and only chemicals that have a half-life of less than 15 hours), and treats electron-compression weaponry as a staple of warfare (the thirty-meter Devastator -class MIRV missiles carried by UGN command ships can be targeted on ships, stations, or even planets, and are frequently used in conjunction with starfighter airstrikes and orbital turbolaser bombardment to eliminate surface installations before landing troops).

This post has been edited by StarSword : 08 August 2010 - 01:40 AM

I remember you saying something recently about Delphi's pieces not being sleek enough for what you had in mind for the ships of EVN:UGF. Well, I've got a counter point for you.

I present the Apache Class Command Ship and the Black Knight. Below you'll find links for both Sketchup models. I can't say for sure if you'll want to use them, StarSword, but I think they look pretty accurate when compared to your screenshots.

So... did I change your mind?

Apache
Black Knight

This post has been edited by DarthKev : 22 August 2010 - 06:01 PM

QUOTE (DarthKev @ Aug 22 2010, 06:59 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I remember you saying something recently about Delphi's pieces not being sleek enough for what you had in mind for the ships of EVN:UGF. Well, I've got a counter point for you.

(snip) (/snip)

I present the Apache Class Command Ship and the Black Knight. Below you'll find links for both Sketchup models. I can't say for sure if you'll want to use them, StarSword, but I think they look pretty accurate when compared to your screenshots.

So... did I change your mind?

Apache
Black Knight

Hell yes, you changed my mind. Nice job, dk, I think I'm actually going to use these! Can you render a sprite and mask each? (Make the engines on the Black Knight about 50% larger in diameter, though.)

You just earned yourself a PERS resource, my friend.

This post has been edited by StarSword : 23 August 2010 - 10:00 AM

Well, I would render them for you, but I'm still having trouble with that. I could give you working sprites, but they wouldn't be true rendered quality. If you still want them, then I need to know what sizes you want for each. Also, do you want banking graphics with the Black Knight, or not?

QUOTE (DarthKev @ Aug 23 2010, 02:58 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, I would render them for you, but I'm still having trouble with that. I could give you working sprites, but they wouldn't be true rendered quality. If you still want them, then I need to know what sizes you want for each. Also, do you want banking graphics with the Black Knight, or not?

Well, I'm thinking the command ship needs to be roughly Raven-sized (given that the Raven is the biggest ship in stock EVN). The Black Knight ought to be about the size of a Viper, and yes, I would like banking graphics.

Meaker VI ran off the Klavarese ships for me (also using Delphi's pieces); my suggestion for him was that he send the sprites AND the original Sketchup file (that way I can texture them later).

Wait, you're on a PC, right StarSword? If you can afford to buy Twilight, then you can render the ships yourself using Meaker's RenderSetup file. I don't recall how much Twilight costs, though.

If you still want me to make some sprites myself, I'll do it. Just one more thing I need to know. Would you like the lines to be visible (to show the detail) or would you rather they be hidden to more imitate true rendered ships? This is what a Sketchup ship looks like without lines:

And that's with shadows. It can be hard to see detail at all that way, not to mention any extra lines on the pieces to show panel separation (such as on the wings) disappear, making ships look a little plain.

Ok, technical question regarding PERS's. Is the Hail Quote list (STR# 7100) 0-based, or 1-based? (I mean, is the first item on the list item 0 or item 1?)

According to Mission Computer, they start at 1 and go from there. I do not know, however, if Mission Computer is changing it to 1 so it makes sense to non-programmers or if that's how it usually is.

The numbers given to the strings in an STR# resource are indexes rather than ID numbers; they aren't innate to the resource, and there isn't exactly a ‘correct’ way to assign them.

MissionComputer's STR# editor is one-based because ResEdit’s is, and ResEdit is as close to a canonical source as we can get for resource editors. The number represents the number of strings in the resource, and zero means an empty resource.

In some more programmatic contexts, though, the index for the first string is zero, and I believe përs communication strings in EV Nova are in this category.

QUOTE (David Arthur @ Aug 24 2010, 03:13 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The numbers given to the strings in an STR# resource are indexes rather than ID numbers; they aren't innate to the resource, and there isn't exactly a ‘correct’ way to assign them.

MissionComputer's STR# editor is one-based because ResEdit’s is, and ResEdit is as close to a canonical source as we can get for resource editors. The number represents the number of strings in the resource, and zero means an empty resource.

In some more programmatic contexts, though, the index for the first string is zero, and I believe përs communication strings in EV Nova are in this category.

I guess I'll just have to test it and see what happens.

<idea>
Wait, hang on a second ...

• tappity tappity tap *

I looked into Nova Data 4 and 5, which contain the PERS and STR# resources for stock EVN, respectively. The Comm Quote field for Matt Burch (his Kestrel's line is "I think I took a wrong turn at Palshife...", which is the only one I could remember) is set to 11. And his line is the 11th item on the list (starting from 1).

So, it seems that, for EVNEW at least, STR# resources start at item 1.
</idea>

Love those custom HTML tags. Should've done this to begin with...

Oh, by the way, Darthkev, is the ship you showed to demonstrate what a Sketchup ship looks without lines going to show up in HOTS? Or was it just a doodle?

This post has been edited by StarSword : 24 August 2010 - 10:22 PM

It'll be in HOTS. It's the Wyvern Class Destroyer, personal warship of yours truly. Though I'm thinking, if I have to make my own ships in this way, too, I'll leave the lines visible. Maybe fiddle with their appearance so it looks better. I also want a darker blue on the wings.

I'm starting the mission coding (beginning with basic civvie missions), and I've run into a problem right off the bat. How do you assign special cargo types? Do you write a JUNK resource, or what?

And what do a government's "classmates" entail? DOes that mean the government and its allies, or the government and all governments that are a member of the classes of the selected government?

Also, is there any guide as to which DESCs are reserved for which resource types?

This post has been edited by StarSword : 26 August 2010 - 08:10 AM

Cargo types are in String 4000 4001 and 4002, add a cargo type in those and you should be able to assign a new cargo type. I recommend that you have a look in Nova Data 5 and 1 to see how the game handles the different numbers.

I don't really know how classes work but I think it's all govts which are members of a certain class.

The bible has a list of a few of the descs but I don't think it lists all of them Nova Data 3 and Nova Ships 7 contain a lot of the descs that are interesting, have a look in those and see what you can make of it.

Anything that says "... of Planet/System of gövt and Classmates" refers to the classes the chosen gövt has listed in its Class fields. Any gövt assigned to one of the classes there will be included. Also keep in mind -1 and 0 cannot be used as classes. Instead they render the class field inert until changed to any number above 0.

Meaker VI has kindly used his expertise to build the ships of an entire major faction in EVN:UGF, using Delphi's pieces. (Those parts are useful.) I now present the Klavar Republic.

Longtime foes of the Axe-tails, the Klavarese are a race of gray-skinned, red-eyed humanoids that border the UGF's eastern territory in the Andromeda Galaxy. They are hard to quantify psychologically. One description of them might be "resourceful, clever, and shrewd"; a less-charitable description would be "opportunistic, greedy, and self-serving." Despite this, they are valued allies of the UGF, given they're the only other star nation that is willing to oppose the Axe-tails. (The only other star nation bordering the Axe-tail Star Empire, the Turadoc Consortium, is a nation of peaceful merchants and traders.)

The Klavarese government is a parliamentary democracy, though around two dozen major families hold the bulk of its political power. (Apart from the power wielded by business leaders, that is.)

Among themselves, the Klavarese speak a melodic language of the same name as their race, but thanks to their close relationship to the UGF, the vast majority also speak Galactic Basic.

Klavar Republic Ministry of Defense N'valik -class Phoenix
The N'valik -class Phoenix hasn't changed much in the nearly three hundred years it's been in production. This powerful, well-shielded and -armored starfighter combines Klavarese masers with ion engines borrowed from Galactic ships. Multiple microjets give it impressive maneuverability, and many Klavarese pilots have learned to send the ship into a corkscrewing spin while firing all six guns simultaneously, resulting in a hailstorm of gunfire that is nearly impossible to dodge.

The flying wing design of the Phoenix enables the fighters to be carried in racks, greatly reducing the space the Phoenix bay takes up. However, it is more expensive than comparable Galactic bays.

Klavar Republic Ministry of Defense Linvon -class Picket Ship

The Klavarese Linvon -class picket ship is optimized for long-term patrol duty. Normally a patrol vessel is classified as a gunship, but the Klavarese build them more along the lines of frigates in order to better defend their sprawling territory. They mount several heavy masers and shock net launchers, and also carry several squads of soldiers for boarding disabled ships. They form the backbone of the KRN.

Klavar Republic Ministry of Defense Fiir'olong -class Destroyer
Like most Klavarese craft, the Fiir'olong-class destroyer is designed with an eye more toward defense than offense. The vessel has thick armor, strong shields, and powerful engines, making it the perfect craft to escort Klavarese battlecruisers. Its weaponry consists of four heavy masers and a half-dozen medium masers, as well as Icepick and Harpoon missiles.

Klavar Republic Ministry of Defense Thiera -class Battlecruiser
The Thiera -class battlecruiser is one of the most powerful vessels in existence. The pinnacle of Klavarese technology, it handles rather poorly. However, its angular lines conceal an array of weapons that would make a superweapon blush: it can deploy a full squadron of Phoenixes at little to no notice, and can fill the vicinity with a hellish cloud of maser bolts and Harpoon missiles.

Klavarus Shipyards Shir'onuli -class Diplomatic Transport
The Klavarus Shipyards Shir'onuli -class Envoy is a diplomatic transport. It has powerful engines and long range, making it the vehicle of choice for Klavarese VIPs. As with most diplomatic vessels, it offers a wide range of creature comforts; the Chaska Envoy , the personal starship of Prime Minister Arech'ask'asalo, carries a full-service restaurant, an observatory, and a library. Don't take it to be a lightweight in combat, however: it mounts twin medium maser turrets and several Icepick missiles, along with a pair of Phoenixes.

Klavarus Shipyards Ver'ashak -class Transport
The Klavarese merchant fleet may be managed by House Durok, but the ships themselves are built to the stringent quality standards of House Inrokini, which owns Klavarus Shipyards. Their Ver'ashak -class Transport is fast and has impressive range, and its two hundred ton lifting capacity makes it a key component in the Republic's economy. Though its armament leaves something to be desired, the craft's simple Klavarese elegance -- not to mention its upgradeability -- make it a popular craft.

Klavarus Shipyards Yad'orila -class Bulk Freighter
The six-megaton Klavarus Shipyards Yad'orila -class Bulk Freighter is a lumbering giant. Most of the interior is taken up by its massive cargo bay and matching reactor and engine chambers, leaving little room for creature comforts. The bulk freighter is a key part of the Klavarese economy, but the state of many these days indicates that the Republic has fallen on hard times.

Those Klavar Republic ships look nice. Those designs look familiar though...

Awesome! Beautiful ships by Meaker and a well balanced fleet by StarSword. Just one question:

QUOTE (StarSword @ Aug 29 2010, 04:13 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

... many Klavarese pilots have learned to send the ship into a corkscrewing spin while firing all six guns simultaneously, resulting in a hailstorm of gunfire that is nearly impossible to dodge.

Is this inspired by The Last Starfighter? I remember a maneuver in that movie that entailed a fighter spinning frantically and spitting out everything it had as a last resort to eliminate enemy ships. I believe it was named the 'Death Blossom'.