I'm actually trying to stray from animal names as much as possible, as it's just such a commonly used trope in ship naming. Albeit it's usually birds that the names are taken from (Raven, Kestrel, etc) and a crab or a scorpion would be less obvious, but I'd still like to keep from the animal kingdom system of nomenclature as much as possible. I've actually been able to create some neat concept names by using ancient Roman-esque word structure. For this one, I think I like the ring of the name "Echavius" (e-KAY-vee-us).

Also, I attached the ventral module.

It looks loosely like a smaller, stripped down Alexander. Love it.

Just a head's up, Delphi; you may want to change this note in your profile:

Quote

Oh, and I've been working on the same TC plug for the past five years. Currently, it's slated for release on the same day Duke Nukem: Forever comes out.

According to Game Informer, DNF apparently has a release date now.

What are you talking about? It's out, it has been for weeks now. ._.

@delphi, on 23 June 2011 - 01:17 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

... "Echavius"...

You're right, that does have a nice ring to it. And I guess I understand why you wouldn't want to use animal names. As for me, I'm still going for it. Clichés are my friend.

@krugeruwsp, on 23 June 2011 - 05:33 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

It looks loosely like a smaller, stripped down Alexander. Love it.

Agreed. Very attractive, while still holding a presence of deadly authority.

@starsword, on 23 June 2011 - 06:49 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

According to Game Informer, DNF apparently has a release date now.

@templar98921, on 24 June 2011 - 02:47 AM, said in EVN - Delphi:

What are you talking about? It's out, it has been for weeks now. ._.

Templar is right, the DNF team managed a miracle. Or possibly a curse. I haven't decided yet.

From what I've heard it's a curse.

I'm lost in the greebles.

@jacabyte, on 25 June 2011 - 12:06 AM, said in EVN - Delphi:

From what I've heard it's a curse.

For those who loved the original, it will please, delight, and entertain. For those who were expecting some god-king of modern gaming technology: you'll be sorely disappointed. What Duke Nukem Forever is, is just a solid, funny, fun game. Jon St. John's voice work is pinnacle quality as it always was, and the character of Duke was perfectly represented. None of these next-generation brown graphics or "gritty and real" storyline and characters. It's Duke, aliens are stealing the Earth's babes, and it's up to you to grab your RPG and wipe 'em all out. It's basic good gameplay using tried and tested gameplay mechanics that don't try to be anything more than they have to be. No weird active cover systems, no role-playing level systems shoe-horned into a FPS (I'm looking at you, Fear 3), and none of this idiotic "we ran out of world designs so here's three chapters in a sewer" tripe. They did replace point-based health with a regenerative system, in which your "ego" is your shield, and they made it so you can only carry two guns at once, which makes more sense overall. The game has a lot of well-thought-out polish touches - ranging from the way that the alien assault troopers behave and look almost exactly like they did in Duke 3D
(adjusted for modern graphics, of course), and the inclusion of shrunken-Duke physical puzzles - up to more subtle ones, like Duke's sunglasses breaking and going askew in your view if your character is killed. Though there is the occasional break in fluidity, where you can notice the change in hands between 3D Realms and Gearbox Software, you can tell that both teams were genuine fans of the original source material and did their best to bring it into the next millennium.

That's my little review, I guess. I'll get back to making ships, now.

Today's post is brought to you by the magical power of Fruit Loops!

Seriously, yay for breakfast. It's been years since I had mornings available to actually eat.

I'm sitting down right now and going through all of the existing ship stats and balancing the whole lot. I know that the shipyard is not complete, but for at least the NDC I've created several light, medium, and heavy ships, including certain "keystone" vessels that are meant to work as milestones as you climb the hull-size chart. For instance, the Monolith is about as typical as a medium cruiser goes. The Ares is your average frigate type, and the Alexander is the largest playable ship. This is ideal because it gives me a chance to assign each hull type some basic template values for defensive and offensive purposes, so that I have at least one ship that's 5% strong, one that's 50%, and one that's 100%, in comparison to other vessels. I'm basing almost everything off of the potential damage-per-second (DPS) of each ship with its default weapon loadout, meaning that I'm also tweaking the weapon values a little bit. Basically, if I know that the lighter of two cruisers should finish off the other vessel in twenty seconds of continuous fire, and the heavier ship should do it in fifteen, I can balance one against the other using default weapon values. Using this system, if two Electromags causing 5 hull damage are the default weapons of both ships, and this results in two shots per second (30 frame reload delay), then the smaller ship should have at least an armor value of 150, while the larger should be 200. This would result in very simple, basic, limited-hitpoint ships. Where the strategy comes in is when I apply the unique shield systems of the Delphi universe, where a shield isn't just a big recharging armor tank, but rather more of a damage threshold. If I give each ship a shield that recharges instantly between shots and is 10 points strong, theoretically neither vessel can actually harm the other one's armor. If I make one ship have a shield rating of 8, then a couple points of damage should bleed through on each successful bombardment. The shields do not recharge instantly though, so there is a sort of balance struck between using it as a damage sponge versus a damping effect on weapons. Rather, a shield takes at least a few seconds to recharge, usually just slightly slower than most singular weapons' reload times, meaning that enough concentrated fire with even a weak weapon can penetrate and hit the hull. This is the method by which fighters can still rip a larger ship to pieces: fighters all carry forward-turreted weapons, but in small groups, or by themselves, they cannot breach the enemy's shield. If you get just a large enough number, though, their excellent accuracy and swarm mentality can quickly overwhelm a large ship's shield reload capabilities. Combine this with strategically peppered capital ship fire from the carrier that berthed them, and you have a force to be reckoned with.

In short, Qaanol will have his work cut out for him.

@delphi, on 05 July 2011 - 12:54 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

In short, Qaanol will have his work cut out for him.

He'll hold you to that...

@delphi, on 05 July 2011 - 12:54 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

Today's post is brought to you by the magical power of Fruit Loops!

Seriously, yay for breakfast. It's been years since I had mornings available to actually eat.

FOOL! One should always eat breakfast. The few times I've skipped it I've been unable to function until lunch.

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<explanation of how fighters can bring down capitals>

That's a pretty good way of making fighters better combatants than in original EVN (where apart from the Manta, they're cannon fodder to keep enemy gunners busy while you bring your capital ship to bear), but not overpowered. (We had a discussion on this not too long ago in the HOTS thread.) Seems to me the only fighter in stock EVN that's worth anything is the Manta, which is ridiculously fast and mounts light capital-grade weaponry. You seem to have found the middle ground between super-weak and OP'd.

@delphi, on 23 June 2011 - 01:17 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

I'm actually trying to stray from animal names as much as possible, as it's just such a commonly used trope in ship naming. Albeit it's usually birds that the names are taken from (Raven, Kestrel, etc) and a crab or a scorpion would be less obvious

I have to say, vanilla's Raven really did look like a crab to me. Or some sort of crustacean, certainly.
EDIT: Come to think of it, pretty much all the Polaris ships look like crustaceans. The Manta and the Cambrian's names come from sea life. The Dragon looks like a starfish, the Sprite a mollusk...

This post has been edited by waladil : 08 July 2011 - 11:43 PM

I always thought the Raven looked more like a butterfly.

While I go through the painstakingly boring task of drafting up ship combat values, I'm doing some simple renders for ship variants. Some ships, as you know, come in multiple flavors, and have actual visual differences as a result of their load-out. The Starbridge was one such example from vanilla Nova, and of course, all the pirate ships except the Manticore and Carrier were unique mods of civilian and military vessels. In this case though, the mods are less the result of reverse-engineering and hacking, and moreso the product of a modular chassis in the underbelly of every ship, capable of being torn apart and rebuilt as a new ship. Though this idea contributes greatly to easy and congruent ship design (as you know I use modular components to build vessels in Sketchup), even before I started this project I always had this concept in mind for the starships of the future. When you're building something that is city-sized and flies through space, easily serviceable parts and hull components are a must. It just won't do if you have to scrap an entire destroyer just because it took a grievous nuclear blast to its reactor shielding. Some large vessels, such as the Alexander and the Cyphus dominants, are even assembled in the shipyard in a modular fashion, the sum total of the parts being too large for even Nichron Shipyards in the Solar System to appropriately manage.

In short, several ships will have variants that can be purchased through the outfitter screen, which will either improve the combat systems or the general utility of the vessel. For instance, the Enclave Frigate (class still untitled) shares many systems with the freight model it was based off of. Both can be purchased from the shipyard, but purchasing the frigate first and then opting for the freighter upgrade yields a different freighter altogether, with both the carrying capacity of one but the armament of the other, albeit sacrificing speed. Purchasing the freight model first and choosing the "Explorer" upgrade strips the vessel of both its outboard cargo pods and part of its rear hull, while gaining speed and travel distance.

The Enclave "Explorer" is pictured here (not actual size).

There are still quite a few NDC ships that I'll need to go through to create new variants, but none of them will stray too far from the original design so as to rob precious time from completion of the primary ships. Most of the time I just either glue on a known component from another ship (like a sensor array or weapons platform), or subtract from an existing model to create a slim version. Sometimes I might just move pieces around, like repositioning a vessel's engines and explaining how this adds the function of rear-firing guns and extra weapon space, but sacrifices maneuverability.

Enclave and NDC ships not shooting at each other? Oh no, what'll it be next? Cats and dogs living in harmony?

Or maybe it's because I got tired of always having ships shoot at me when I'm testing faction vessels, and thus I turned off government alliances/enemies.

Either way, the Echavius is looking good.

@delphi, on 15 July 2011 - 06:07 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

1uprjizmzdfj'jp)t\y004jawkjds;ngoziejt

Sorry, I passed out on my keyboard and apparently rolled around for a bit before I came to.

Just a question: what do the "prongs" (for lack of a better word) at the front end of the Echavius do? Are they weapons?

@king_of_manticores, on 15 July 2011 - 06:35 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

1uprjizmzdfj'jp)t\y004jawkjds;ngoziejt

Sorry, I passed out on my keyboard and apparently rolled around for a bit before I came to.

Pfft. :duh: :laugh: :hector_bird:

Niice, kom. I haven't seen one that good in a long time.

Quote

Just a question: what do the "prongs" (for lack of a better word) at the front end of the Echavius do? Are they weapons?

Try "tines," as in "of a fork."

I vote for weapons. They remind me of the emitters for the capacitor pulse laser on the Raven.

They could be a fork. For doing what you would expect to do with forks, only on a larger scale.

cut though the crunchy outer layer to the creamy nougat center

These ship look brilliant delphi. keep up the good work!

EDIT: ooh I just remembered. you should edit your first post with all of your updated stuff, like an overview of your progress so far. Just a thought.

This post has been edited by yamfries : 15 July 2011 - 10:46 PM

The nacelles on the Echavius do indeed house weapon assemblies. At the end of each housing is the projector for a lethal graviton beam. Sensor arrays are aligned on the outer surface just behind the armament for enhanced targeting ability. Near the core of the body you may notice a small platform on either side of the vessel. Buried inside this enclosure is the Echavius' primary reactors and impeller assembly. The Echavius is different from many of the older Enclave designs in that it doesn't use a typical vertically-oriented graviton core. Even the flat-looking Kevilan class contains an underslung ventral reactor housing that contains the graviton mechanism. The Echavius gets around this design necessity and successfully reduces its profile by using two cores instead of one, with a complex reorientation system built into the center of the vessel.

I guess I never really explained why the graviton core has to be oriented the way it is, did I? The graviton core in Enclave ships is the source of every element of their gravity-based technology; everything from artificial gravity plating up to their mighty beam weapons. Both the Enclave and the NDC use graviton emitters, but the Enclave ones have far superior output, due to better engineering. The produced graviton waves are harnessed and passed throughout the ship via conduits. In NDC vessels the gravitons are produced in a rather haphazard method, their low amplitude negating the need for worry about interference with other ship systems. In the graviton-powerful Enclave ships, though, special projectors produce the waves along a single 2-dimensional axis, which must be kept perpendicular to the wave motion of the ship's impeller. Otherwise, the ship's engines can't keep the vessel oriented during faster-than-light delivery to its destination, most likely ripping the ship apart as it spins uncontrollably at relativistic speeds.

Anyway, back to the Echavius. The ship is designed as a powerful battleship for the Enclave, featuring graviton weapons at each "wingtip", a central missile launcher, as well as a stolen Nichron cannon strapped to the underside. It has a lighter hull than many opposing NDC ships, but compensates with a powerful shield generator. It is one of only a few ships that stands a fair chance alone against an NDC heavy cruiser or dominant.

I'm also working on a carrier version...

@starsword, on 15 July 2011 - 09:44 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

Pfft. :duh: :laugh: :hector_bird:

Niice, kom. I haven't seen one that good in a long time.

Glad you found it funny, I didn't think it was going to be a hit it worked as well as I planned

@starsword, on 15 July 2011 - 09:44 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

Try "tines," as in "of a fork."

I don't think I've heard a more interesting word this month than "tine".

@delphi, on 16 July 2011 - 12:48 AM, said in EVN - Delphi:

I'm also working on a carrier version...

I suppose you'll be removing the nichron cannon and replacing it with a bay?

Speaking of which, do Enclave and NDC bays work differently in the universe (i.e. NDC fighters take off via a runway, while Enclave fighters are released vertically and freefall until they are outside the launching bay before they activate their engines)?