FreeOrion

No, variable space-slots is not a workable option, assuming:
1) the smallest ships are much smaller than the biggest ships
2) the difference in the size of weapons is significant
3) Weapons will be large enough to be visible on more than rare occasions.

And if 1, 2, & 3 are not true there's not much point in actually displaying the weapon models on the ships. We can't "just fit the weapon models onto the hull model somehow". If a scout can hold 5 ordinary laser cannons, it can't fit 5 death-star beams in the same spaces. Slots need to have at least a general association will a volume of space. — or else weaponry doesn't show on the model, and the question is moot.

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The physical positions on ship models corresponding to individual slots could perhaps just be spaced out far enough for the largest weapon models to fit... Then smaller weapon models would just have some extra space. Not ideal graphically, obviously, but if such a system was better in various other ways...

Ok, so I assume you are talking about a grid of squares where we try and arange components in this grid, where each component takes up:
(1) or (2) as you state.

Is (1) that a weapon always takes up multiple slots, eg 2x2?
Is (2) that a weapon takes up any number of slots, eg 1x1 or 2x3, etc?
How is (2) not achievable? It has been done in games like Diablo and many other RPG games.


Why do we suddenly need to be able to attach weapons onto the hulls in a 3d model system like Galciv2? This seems overblown to me.

We should just place components in slots, how ever many slots they take. Have the 3d ship models be some overall ship design that doesn't show weapons.

Eg look through out scifi and you you see ships that don't show weapons:
Romulan Warbird
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/4196/warbird.jpg

Because if we don't there's no way to gauge on sight anything but the size of the ship. Not an impossible situation, but certainly undesirable.

If your enemy has 1 big ship with (it's current best tech) a stellar converter, but dozens of a similarly sized vessels, you want to know that at a glance, not after your system's star has been pushed to nova, or less dramatically not after having to check the into on each one.

Being able to identify on sight many of the capabilities of your own ship would make sorting and controlling your own fleet easier too.


It should be obvious i'm not proposing anything like GalCiv2. There is nothing in my proposals that would allow you to make a ship that looks like a Transformer, star trek ship, or whatever. I'm proposing a 1-to-1 correspondence between what has been placed in various external slots, and how the ship looks— no complicated 3D modeling interface of any kind.

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I doubt that even if there was a bunch of guns on a ship, whether big or small, 1 or 50, you won't be able to tell what weapons and abilities it has. Sure, you could see that a ship has a stellar converter, because it is the biggest gun in the galaxy, but what about the little laser cannons or nuetron blasters.

This is not an RTS, so there is time for the GUI to tell us about each ship, but I think you should still be able to give each ship a distinctive style and look, but were only focusing on weapons. Are we gonna show what systems the ship has by making them visible too?


I like not exactly knowing what the enemy has. Eg you see some Shadow ships (Babylon 5). No sweat you think, then bang, massive pink particle beam cuts your ship in half.

Suprise is good. Besides knowing what the enemy has is what scanning and detection is for. I don't think visual clues by themselves are going to make the difference you think.

A case could be made either way...

Alpha Centauri had rather poor voxel unit graphics, but if you looked reasonably closely, you could usually figure out what weapon a unit had, and could always discern a terraformer or colony pod or supply crawler due to their overall different appearance. As long as we keep the number of weapons per ship small, and the relative size of weapons on a ship rather large, it should be possible to make ships appearance indicative of their function to some useful degree. Likely not all details will be shown... particularly internal components... but we can take some creative and practical liberty with "realistic" weapon, engine or defensive component sizes compared to overall hulls in order to make the ships more distinctive...

That said, some GUI indicators could be used instead of relying on the appearance of ship models. This might be more flexible, and would allow ship models to be more carefully crafted to be more interesting looking, without having to worry about where on them a variety of differently-shaped weapon models could be mounted. This would have a drawback of making it harder to decide where to show beams or fighters or missiles coming out of an attacking ship, however...

Perhaps, but no one has made a case that being able to see some of what a ship can do is bad. (The coolness of something in a movie doesn't usually carry over to a movie intact.)
These are the strongest counter-arguements i can imagine are:
1) it's too much work
2) it will prevent the ships from looking really cool


1) it's too much work
Well, this certainly is a less functional aspect of v.4, and the whole could work without it. I can't accurately estimate how much additional coding this would require, but it'd guess it's a small fraction of the total v.4. As for the art, it probably would be a lot of work to create all the weapons and whatever, however it should be easier to create a weapon than a ship. And we don't need to wait for all 3D models to be complete before this system has value. Even if at first the whole gamut of laser cannons is represented by only 3 models, that's still more information than nothing.

2) it will prevent the ships from looking really cool
This is true, to a point. Ship models that must accept arbitrary additions all over the outside will generally look less cool than ships models designed as a single piece. However, realistically FO is not going to win in the contest for wiz-bang, snazzy, eye-candy-yummy space ships. Even if we attracted top talent, graphics that impress are judged on an ever harsher scale as technology improves.
So while we should make things look as good as we can, it's unlikely we'll knock anyone's socks off with pure eye-candy power. So let's not try. Rather let's give the form of our ships interest by giving them meaning. The image of a destroyer with a doom-ray may still give the jaded player chills, not because the art is the best ever, but because that doom-ray has, in the past, cost him victory.



Exactly what i'm thinking.


I think there should also be ways via the GUI to find out more detail about a ship— possibly related to your scanner tech. But persistent indicators, that gave more than the most simplified info about a ship would be intrusive and probably annoying.



Also Utilea, and anyone else. Please don't post such large graphics without a good reason. It makes the forums hard to use, unless one devotes ~1100px screen-width to the browser, assuming one has a big enough screen.

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I must now offer a counter point.

A heavily armored vessel might have enough armor covering the outside of the ship that it's (visually) little more than a metallic blob. It might not have any visible systems at all. Many ships in Babylon 5 and Star Trek were like this.

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Yeah, sorry, it was hard to find pics of a descent sice. But yeah, Ive made it into a URL link. All other pics can be done like that, to give people the option.


@eleazar
I see that your idea of weapons visible on ship models is similar to Galciv2, except that it is automated, so it is really closer to Diablo 2 and other RPGs where the players visual appearance is a reflection of what they have equiped.

I wouldn't mind your system, but I am just weary that we do it the right way. I don't care if it is difficult, just that it is done right.

I think it'd be better to get a functional combat system up even if it's (initially) no more complex than the one in MoO2. fancy graphics are a project for later.

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Yeah, well I guess first is:
*Overall 'one piece' ship models.
*Basic list ship design.
*Display ship models on a map.

But what about more nonmilitary designs, i think i proposed somewhere sometime ago miningship for production bonus from asteroids. And if you do cataclysmic events then special event required ships would be interesting too - Your sun is not stabile anymore build 4 scientific baseships that would hold sun stabile. And if enemy attacks your system and destroys those baseships orbiting sun, well...
Well those things probably cannot be for 0.4 but it would be very interesting and new strategical angle to game imho.

But.... those would be best done as special ship designs, not as special ship hulls.

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Agreed.
I don't think anyone has seriously proposed that ship function be strictly limited to special hulls.

Unless it somehow impacts the way ships will be put together, this thread isn't about the various roles ships might perform. I don't believe any of the ship design methods discussed would have any more difficulty accommodating a solar-stabilizing-beam than a planet-busting-blaster.

Weather we have solar-stabilizing-beams is a question for another time or at least another thread.

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Combat and Non Combat ships can be made based on what components and systems that have.

Eg
Typical Combat Ship has Lasers.

Typical Repair Ship has repair drones, engineer teams.

Typical Mining Ship has mining equipment, can deploy into mining station.

Typical Colony Ship has colony equipment, can deploy into colony.

etc