So I had just finished creating my previous post when I started thinking about the EV "forklift" weapon, and the humour behind it. Then, I thought to myself "why not make an actual space forklift?"

As a result, I made this construction frigate. Its "pincer" clamps, though menacing, are really not good for anything other than assembly of large components, but at that it excels. These small cruisers are assigned to duties including station construction, satellite retrieval, and battlefield salvage. They have the armour and shields typical of a comparably-sized NDC warship, though their weapon set is fairly limited. Though incapable of carrying heavy artillery, their open back is a perfect site for anti-fighter emplacements, which they have installed by default. Though most mining in the NDC is done on mineral-rich planets like Tirach, these ships are also good for collecting and harvesting asteroids, with the addition of a short-range laser.

Oh, and yes you can fly it. It's not that impressive though. Just fun, or good money if you're an asteroid prospector. It has a really high carrying capacity (go figure).

This post has been edited by Delphi : 22 September 2011 - 12:18 PM

@delphi, on 22 September 2011 - 12:15 PM, said in EVN - Delphi:

So I had just finished creating my previous post when I started thinking about the EV "forklift" weapon, and the humour behind it. Then, I thought to myself "why not make an actual space forklift?"

As a result, I made this construction frigate. Its "pincer" clamps, though menacing, are really not good for anything other than assembly of large components, but at that it excels. These small cruisers are assigned to duties including station construction, satellite retrieval, and battlefield salvage. They have the armour and shields typical of a comparably-sized NDC warship, though their weapon set is fairly limited. Though incapable of carrying heavy artillery, their open back is a perfect site for anti-fighter emplacements, which they have installed by default. Though most mining in the NDC is done on mineral-rich planets like Tirach, these ships are also good for collecting and harvesting asteroids, with the addition of a short-range laser.

Oh, and yes you can fly it. It's not that impressive though. Just fun, or good money if you're an asteroid prospector. It has a really high carrying capacity (go figure).

The Terrapin in Nova was basically a space-forklift - It picked up leviathan-containers and moved them around. If this ship has a high capacity; you should make it be already carrying a cargo/weapons/whatever pod for the variant. The base should just be easily upgradable with the cargo pod; it should be cheap to swap them out for different ones; and one option should be some kind of scrapped vessel used for storage

To complement the yet-unnamed "forklift", I threw together this little worker bee. The Scarab is a light constructor vehicle, with only a small cockpit and a single pilot. The rest of the body is comprised of a large manipulator claw at the bow of the vessel, and a welding laser attached to the vehicle's port side behind a blast flange. The Scarab is one of a few asymmetric utility vehicles, designed completely with raw function in mind, with not an errant thought to form. These ship are commonly seen across both NDC and Enclave space, as their non-military design is safely and securely outsourced to civilian manufacturing firms. They are most frequently found in frontier systems, where new stations and weapon emplacements are being deployed.

Unlike the "forklift", the idea is that this little ship can safely make landfall to collect assembled components and cargo, while its bigger brother must have them "handed" to it or delivered by larger haulers.

With that in mind, while grafting together components for the Scarab, I took inspiration to make one of those science vessels I've always been talking about but never getting around to. Though most of the NDC science ships are just modified versions of existing vessels, there are a select few that are markedly unique to their role. The Norenean is one of them.

Though it's not much to look at, the Norenean science vessel is special for the implementation of extremely powerful interference-cutting sensors built into the hull of the vessel. These advanced systems also give it the ability to take readings from systems several light years away, effectively giving it the ability to chart planets and stars up to two jumps away from the ship. It is only minimally armed, but for wartime surveillance purposes, it isn't uncommon to see the Norenean outfitted with a missile launcher and a pair of anti-fighter turrets. During regular operations the ship can be seen on the fringes of charted space, crewed with researchers and occasionally colonization experts, looking for new worlds for the NDC to populate.

Features unique to the Norenean in the game are the sensors mentioned above, as well as being one of only two ships capable of carrying colony pods to fulfill a portion of a side-quest for the NDC science division. Being that the alternative is a massive colony ship, I believe that most players who want a multipurpose vessel will be using the Norenean for a large number of the science missions.

Since the Scarab is capable of landfall, but the 'Forklift' isn't (you know, that actually isn't that bad of a name for it) I can see Forklifts maybe carrying a few Scarabs for carrying cargo to and from planets. I'm guessing other than the welding laser the Scarab is unarmed, however, so it would be perfectly reasonable that players wouldn't be able to use the Scarabs as fighter craft.

Alternatively, they could be a powerful weapon, welding the bases of the enemy's rotating parts closed, effectively performing a physical ionization of the enemy ship.

-K

I thought for a bit about the Scarab and its construction, and then came to the realization that tractor beams are a very real thing in the Delphi universe, and would probably make for more accurate construction. Sure, the bigger "forklift" ship makes sense because moving gigantic station components would be more economically feasible, but for smaller, delicate manoeuvring and assembly a tractor would give more precise control. As a result, here's a new model for the Scarab, with a heavy-duty construction tractor mounted in place of the claws. The clawed version just looked too long anyway.

Oh, and the Scarab isn't completely without armament. Though the civilian version is no threat, the Pariah use a dangerously unstable version with amplified tractors on the front closer in design to the graviton beams of the Enclave, which they lasciviously use to tear the victims' ships apart. In short, they're equipped with a unique damaging tractor beam. It holds you in place (or tags along with your ship if your mass is higher) and slowly dissolves your hull. Take these down with anti-fighter weapons as quickly as possible if a Pariah fleet employs them against you.

The thought of the Pariah using these things both scares me and makes me wanna kick some Pariah keister even more. Say, when did you say you'd be able to release the TC minus storylines? I really wanna shoot me some Pariah.

I've got a few more ships to render before the "default" set is done, and then additional ones can be added through updates. The majority of the stellar objects are placed, but trade has not been balanced and some of them are still lacking images (notably stations, which all show up as the Polaris stations, for some reason). The ships have not been balanced in any specific way, so they are all still just a very rough cut. I once used a Monolith to take down an Alexander, is what I'm saying. However, they still turn and move nicely, even if some are just a little too fast for their hull class. I wouldn't mind releasing my source files for people to try out sometime very soon, if even just to prove that I actually have got quite a lot done. The graphics are definitely one of the longest parts of the process, and as such have taken me a few years now.

I tip my hat to you, sir.

Ever since I discovered my new method for texturing ships in Bryce, there were a few "early attempts" that got left behind in the game. Most of them were slowly removed and done away with, but I still always liked the odd design of the Versatile Shuttle, and generally had decided it was going to stay in the game one way or another. With that in mind, I put my ship toolset into motion once again and updated the hull for this little cargo-hauling beastie.

Here's the redesigned Versatile. The outboard atmospheric engines have been kept the same, but the body has been filled in a little and made slightly more "streamlined" (as streamlined as NDC ships get, at least).

During jumps between systems, the pods retract in toward the body, as shown in the picture. When in-system, though, they slide outward slightly, preparing for atmospheric navigation. (EDIT: Maybe. I just remembered that I also wanted it to bank when turning, and that would create a LOT of frames. Don't want Nova to choke on a mere shuttlecraft.)

For those who haven't seen the Versatile before:

The Versatile Shuttle is a multipurpose cargo hauler built for the NDC, and is one of the only ships made by the Coalition the construction of which is outsourced to civilian contractors. Although the pieces that comprise a Versatile are manufactured all across populated space, the final assembly is always carried out to the galactic southwest of Sol on a planet named Everest within a system of the same name. The original design documents are held here in a specialized manufacturing center, where every component is carefully attached to the chassis and analyzed by NDC shipwrights. Though shipping the uncompleted pieces to Everest is a costly procedure, the nearly perfect track record of the Versatile attests to the benefit of this quality control stage in its creation. Everest is also one of the largest general NDC shipyards in the Orion Core, and the quality of the materials used on the planet has actually caused the coinage of the slang adjective "everest", which is to say something is of the highest caliber possible. Though several counterfeit versions of the Versatile exist, a shuttle owner need only visit Everest and have their ship's hull examined for the unique crystalline scarring that occurs on each hull during atmospheric testing but before final sealing and painting; the result of uniquely-shaped particulate silicate in Everest's air.

Though the shuttle is not competitive when placed against even the most basic of NDC military vehicles, it is highly prized for its extraordinarily expandable nature, and the NDC makes heavy use of this little ship during anything from basic shipping to full-scale military supply mobilization. It is not uncommon to see Versatiles on the front line of combat, working feverishly to resupply an NDC destroyer or cruiser before fleeing from battle at the highest speed possible. To facilitate their combat-readiness, there exist numerous modular upgrades unique to the Versatile, that can do anything from bolster their engines to even adding an entire second layer of armour around the vessel.

In the grand scope of gameplay, the Versatile is a premium early-game ship, sort of like a cross between the Starbridge and the Argosy from the original Nova. I'm even working on a version with different geometry specifically designed to harvest asteroids. The mining lasers in Delphi are really cool , by the way. I'll show you what I mean shortly, once I have it all nailed down.

This post has been edited by Delphi : 05 October 2011 - 09:34 AM

@delphi, on 05 October 2011 - 09:16 AM, said in EVN - Delphi:

During jumps between systems, the pods retract in toward the body, as shown in the picture. When in-system, though, they slide outward slightly, preparing for atmospheric navigation. (EDIT: Maybe. I just remembered that I also wanted it to bank when turning, and that would create a LOT of frames. Don't want Nova to choke on a mere shuttlecraft.)

I hate to break it to you, Delphi, but I'm pretty sure Nova can only handle banking or animations for ships. You can't do both. And when I say 'animations' that includes folding wings.

Though, if I were to be proven wrong, this is definitely a time when I wouldn't mind it.

Though I'm sure you all already know, I need to post this.

Yesterday, on Wednesday October the fifth, Steven Paul Jobs, founder and co-founder of Apple Computer, passed away.

I expressed my thoughts best, I think, in a sudden and random post on Facebook yesterday.

Quote

It must be understood the scope of this man's successes. He and Steve Wozniak are the number one reason you have a computer in your house. Steve Jobs is to modern computing what Benjamin Franklin was to electricity, and what Thomas Edison was to the light bulb. The entire world changed its way of thinking because of the work the two Steves did in a garage back in 1977. Consequently, it can be reasonably argued that even the phone in your hand was spurred to creation because a crazy 21 year old and his friend decided that computing could be done smaller and better. Every successful modern technology company owes nearly all of its success to these men.

I know this sounds like blind hero worship, but the facts speak for themselves. In 1977, a "computer" was a server-based mainframe you had to go to the office to use. The idea of "home computing" was laughable at best, and was a fantasy fever dream even for the rich and famous of the time. We owe every tablet, smartphone, desktop computer, and laptop to what Jobs and Wozniak sired.

We owe this man so very much, and I hope we can uphold his inspiration and his genius for decades to come through our creativity and our desire to be more than we are.

To quote General George S. Patton:

Quote

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived."

Rest in peace, Steve Jobs. You succeeded in your goal: you left a massive dent in the universe. Your contributions will never be forgotten.

Could not agree more, Delphi. Thank you.

On a lighter tone: I never had the chance to ask what you guys (and girls, possibly) think about the new Versatile design. I've rendered it and throw it into the game. Once I get the sprite looking the right size, I'll post some screenshots. I'm also going to make a snapshot with all of the completed sprites in it sometime soon (like the small NDC one I did way back), to show you guys how the shipyard is looking these days.

I never saw the original, but the new one looks really cool. Kinda reminds me of a spider Replicator from Stargate.

While I have to say neither version of the Versatile is the prettiest ship I've ever seen, I do like the new one over the original. The original design looked more like some sort of drone than a manned craft, particularly because it seemed to have a large hollow section in the middle of the body. The new design doesn't have that.

Also, while the Versatile isn't the prettiest, it's not ugly either.

Despite the lack of posted updates, this last month has not been without progress. I've been trying to fix a bit of a flaw in the Nova engine, which is not really so much a "flaw" so much as a difficulty of scaling. You see, the original Nova ships, while capable of being very powerful, are more or less assembled from the same basic scripted components. They increase in size, armament, and mobility on a fairly linear scale. The Heavy Shuttle is slightly better than the Shuttle, the Fed. Carrier is better than the Fed. Destroyer, the Anaconda is better than the Viper, etc. In the world of the NDC and the Enclave, many ships are built with specific purposes that don't fit this scale. A science vessel is a poor contender to bring alone to a firefight, but its expanded shields and support capabilities can make it useful in a fleet engagement. Likewise however, the mighty Alexander and Cyphus class NDC "Dominants" are actually NOT good at taking on fighters, because their armament is designed to handle similar-sized ships to themselves. Beyond this, all military "platform" ships (artillery-carriers) are blind to their aft because firing through a large ship's impeller wake is a very bad idea in the universe of Delphi. Not really in the Nova engine, of course, but I'm trying to keep to my original writing here, so the limitation is placed accordingly.

The biggest issue I was having is that I wanted to have ships that are customizable, but only to within a certain degree. I know that Qaanol's whole pitch is the idea of pushing a shuttle to its extremes and using it to defeat every mission in the game's storyline, and I just can't have that. It breaks the gameplay experience when you can customize a one-pilot shuttle to take on a capital-ship mission in which every script mentions your ship and your crew as though they were large things. I came to the realization that the biggest problem is Nova's "mass" system for weapon and outfitter upgrades. You see, mass is a fairly recognizable term, especially when measured in realistic figures like tons, and so I could either make a shuttle that only carries a few tons of systems and Dominants that carry thousands upon thousands, or I could create an entirely different system and a creative set of limiting factors that adapt the system to work for both ships large and small. Here is that system.

Memory modules. Every ship has a computer system, and just like a modern computer can be made better or worse through the addition or removal of short-term RAM, the ships in Delphi can have the same effect applied to them, either unlocking the ability to use bigger weapons, or customizing existing systems. The Nova engine playing the plug would mention "Memory" in place of mass, but the effect would be the same, with a bit of tweaking. Remember how the Gamecube and the Wii measure storage in "blocks" instead of KB and MB? The idea is that a ship in Delphi always has a certain number of available memory sectors to manage different systems. You could, for instance, purchase a basic shuttle with 5 blocks free and then either upgrade it to carry an extra gun (3 blocks) or enhance the manoeuvring system (2 blocks) and add a self-repair module (2 blocks). If you are willing to, you can also sacrifice a portion of your ship's existing capabilities by simplifying systems to free up computer capacity. As such, you could either have a fast shuttle that turns on a dime and enters impeller space very quickly, or a slow cumbersome vehicle with extra guns and enhanced shields. Armour and other physical upgrades would be kept completely separate from this system and would instead take up cargo space, said measurement being the general capacity of remaining space on your ship. It never really made sense to me that you could "convert" cargo space to weapons, as if you could just tear hull and pop a new gun out of the nearest cargo bay whenever you simply wanted to. Instead, assume that the mounting hard points are already there (the ship's gun and turret max), and that its simply a matter of adding the necessary systems to drive those extra guns.

Now here's where it gets interesting. Each time you purchase a ship in a certain hull class, a bit is set in the Nova engine that affects exactly which upgrades appear. If you purchase a shuttle, you will NEVER have a Nichron Cannon appear for installation. At the same time, a Dominant is designed to carry heavy weapons and use Electromags for turreted defence, so the forward-cannon varieties of light weapons will disappear in favor of specialized turrets in various calibers. Some weapons may even have what appear to be identical twins above and below a certain hull class (multiple outfits) but gain or lose abilities according to the ship they're installed on. For instance, a missile frigate designed specifically for such will have a firing rate bonus for all missiles, and better anti-jamming by default. Also, it means that a missile emplacement on a shuttle or fighter will be lighter but suffer from reduced capacity (close to 20, let's say), while something like a destroyer can carry 200 but it takes more space for the launcher. Again, it didn't make sense to me that a shuttle carrying one Raven launcher could still carry more than 100 rockets, and that a Fed. Carrier with one had the same capacity.

This greatly simplifies upgrades for larger ships, because it means that a ship isn't so much about the total space within, but rather how it uses the hardware installed. It would be easy enough to strap a graviton cannon to every surface on a Monolith, but if the computer can't handle it, you simply can't do it, even if you have converted the entire cargo bay to weapons space. Also, it means that the Atlas freighter, while having lots of space to convert, can't be turned into a battleship without the proper integrated systems upgrade. After all, a big empty cavity in the hull is only that unless you run power and electronics to the weapons you intend to fill it with. There will now be deeper strategy in how you build your outfitter lists, and it will be particular to the type ship you are flying.

The final culmination of all this is the existence of expensive, rare, and valuable system upgrade modules in various ship outfitters, sort of like the Sigma upgrades you see in Nova. These will be far more difficult to acquire though, because the implication will be that your whole ship has to have some very major work done on it, just like if you were stripping the processor out of a computer and rebuilding the whole thing. For the aspiring outfitter, you will still be able to purchase small memory modules to increase the capabilities of your ship one unit at a time for a moderate price. Getting one of these major overhauls mentioned above will increase the number of modules you can install. For example, a shuttle and other vehicles in its class may be able to fit 5 upgrade units (not a final figure), but you can expand it by an additional five. By having the whole system upgraded, the new baseline could become 8 with a potential additional 8 units added to it. Up the chain, larger vessels use larger modules which represent whole computing clusters of perhaps 10 modules at once in one package.

What I'm hoping to do through this complex but simplifying system is to bring down the currently exorbitant mass requirements of systems like the Nichron Cannon, while also preventing people from unbalancing small ships just by cutting out their cargo space. In an ideal world, the average shuttle can measure its available systems/slots/memory/modules in 20 units or less, while a bigger ship can do it in 50, despite being twenty times larger physically. Since certain weapons are flat-out filtered to not show up for certain vehicles, it will be more about using basic or complicated "systems" for your particular hull class.

The last cool thing is that there will be a software difference between the NDC and the Enclave, meaning only certain technologies can be used by both factions. Of course, that doesn't rule out the possibility of software emulation for certain weapons and upgrades through the use of illicit mods; it just means they might not behave exactly as predicted, and you might have to hunt around to find a hacker capable of making that Graviton Cannon work on your NDC destroyer.

Tell you what; here's a memory module for a small ship like the Versatile.

I might even use this image for the outfitter. I really like the way it came out.

I should also mention that those modules aren't like typical computer memory circuits; each of the ones pictured above would be about the length of a human arm, fully outstretched. Though technology exists to create high-capacity chips in a similar format to those used in the present time, these larger ship-borne variants are far more durable and resistant to both damage and interference. Impact from weapons fire, atmospheric turbulence, and cosmic radiation would all cause serious damage to smaller electronics which would, in turn, likely prevent continued operation of the vessel. By constructing the same equipment several factors of scale larger, they are far more reliable against the rigors of space.