Damage model for the Ships

posted on December 31st, 2008, 3:05 am

actually i have to dissagree about the damage only being visual, if it is also included in the gameplay it will make it more realisistic, consider that you have a soverign class going against a nevargh class, (the best klingon ship) and the klingon ship wins but is damaged, well it can just go and repair itself and now you have wasted 700 dilithium and lots of time and resources, however if it cost money to have that nevargh repaired, it might even it out a bit more.  I would suggest thta the onboard crews can only reapair to a certain point, say to the point where are systems are functional, but lets say that the speed is greatly reduced as is the weapons, it could also be fun to be able to directe your onborad repair crews to repair certain systems over others so that your engines are fully functionl as are your sheilds but everythinhg else is only just functional, just smone thoughts to consider, tell me what you think

posted on December 31st, 2008, 3:23 am

i dissagree with the cost to repair, esspecialy since the game would then be unbalanced with borg vessels being so expensive.

but the idea of crews (not including the borg) can only repair to an extent, is good 

posted on December 31st, 2008, 3:48 am

thanks i like my idea abouyt it to, lol

but my first idea about the cost to repair, that would only apply to non borg races, and it would cost that much but it would cost enoug to slow them down, and more for each type of ship, so an intrepid maybye 75 dilithium, and a soverign 200 or 150 dilithium, i just think i t would balance the game moree

posted on January 1st, 2009, 2:06 am

it would also slow the game down alot. as players attack then retreat repair, repeat, a damaged fleet attacking a base with new ships that only have to go a second to the rearest ship yard makes for a canon look at ST. BUT makes that GAME alot HARDER :p

The crew rpair is a good idead but the roms ships are more expensive than feds or klingons, and what about stations? not every race has a ship that repairs its vessels, (only the feds actualy).

posted on January 1st, 2009, 3:14 am

yes i agree it would slow the game down, and i belive make it more equal and more real, now i belive a big question is can ships be repaired at the yard while new ships are being built? i personally think hey should cus that would slow it down,but not to much

how would crew repair matter for a more costly ship? more crew more repair, simple as that, or it could be a standard repair based on points, for instance you know how every system is like 100 points? well if there were two icons one for repair, then you could keep track of how good your systems were, so if you have 30 percent weapons, you probably wont attack, i think that this could make the game realyl cool, true not every race does, but the romulans have other special weapons, such as the tavara, its way powerful, for the feds howver you can only build 3 repair ships, but you can make it so that it costs much more money, and has high defense to even it out

as you know none of this applys to the borg really, as they can repair fast and have no sheilds or repair facilities, so for borg we could just get them some better weapons, cus they suck right now

posted on January 2nd, 2009, 12:20 am

the borg dont suck if you arrange them right, the cube can attack 2 targets at once and its torpedos can destroy any thing under 25 defence value in two shots, but i do agree they need some serious tweaking.

As for repair as build, you can already do that, its just not a priority atm cuz ships do fix themselves.

But i honestly dont think it should cost to repair, sure it would be more real but it would make the game unbearably. It would take ages to get the more powerful ships, and by then with repairing costs it would become to expensive to build the high end ships.

posted on January 6th, 2009, 12:41 am

Yeah, I was thinking the same for this mod of having damage models for all the shis and stations. Though I was disappointed about the damage effects in Armada II. Wasn't all that impressed with them. 

posted on January 6th, 2009, 12:27 pm

Yeah, I was thinking the same for this mod of having damage models for all the shis and stations. Though I was disappointed about the damage effects in Armada II. Wasn't all that impressed with them.   :ermm:

Yeah you want good damage effects, get Bridge Commander, the ship actauly demodles and breaks apart.

The Damage effects in A2 were just textures added to the hull. I really think thats about as far as the A2 engine will support though, just like the Doom3 engine doesnt support skeletal demodeling.

posted on January 6th, 2009, 9:19 pm

Yeah, I heard Bridge Commander was supposedly 'THE BEST' Star Trek game ever made. I only tried it once, I should have gotten it. 

posted on January 6th, 2009, 9:27 pm

Yeah you want good damage effects, get Bridge Commander, the ship actauly demodles and breaks apart.

The Damage effects in A2 were just textures added to the hull. I really think thats about as far as the A2 engine will support though, just like the Doom3 engine doesnt support skeletal demodeling.

that's cos it was intended to be light on the CPU.
The current version of FO requires a duo core with high end RAM.

If we go for all the "realistic" implementations are we going to need cross config quad core PCs??

posted on January 9th, 2009, 10:29 am

that's cos it was intended to be light on the CPU.
The current version of FO requires a duo core with high end RAM.

If we go for all the "realistic" implementations are we going to need cross config quad core PCs??

Actauly FO will never use a dual core... correct me if im wrong but the A2 engine is just to old for multi core PCs.

posted on January 9th, 2009, 4:37 pm

what i mean to say is as follows:

I use 1 computer - 2005 DELL Inspiron with 1.6 P4 512 mb ram, and 80gb hd with ati radeon 8600.
Game is slow and choppy. Battle sequences kill me - takes 10 secs to get one explosion
Borg ship creation slow when clicking confirm - the fragments process slowly-- seen this in 3dmax6 when using particles.. possibly linked to the flying off of the node structure when the ship config is created and confirmed.

the other one is newer
Dual core. 2 gb ram, nvidia 256, 130 gb hd. Game moves fine.

i.e the game is heavy on RAM and CPU mem at this time. Specifically the "extra effects" like the detailed borg node break away on ship completion, or explosion fragments and lighting on explosions, as well as the weird earthquake rattle when destroying stations (which is a waste IMO - merely rattles the screen and spoils targeting in the heat of battle)

So yeah - when you guys opt for creating these new effects, we have to be sure our PCs/laptops can take it. Would not make sense to need a new PC with quad core, 10gb ram with cross config graphics cards to play this mod... hope u get my drift.

[Ozymandias]

posted on January 10th, 2009, 12:11 am

Last edited by Ozymandias on January 10th, 2009, 12:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

The original A2 engine supported extra meshes being applied to models as well, when one of a ships systems was damaged anything attached to that damage node would show up however you couldn't blow off a nacelle because that would involve removing something. Anyway in response to a few posts up I don't think that ships should only be repairable to a certain point if your ship if you ever have a damaged ship at the moment (doesn't happen often) they do take quite a while for the crew to repair fully and it's quicker to take em back to a yard. My point being, given time a crew can completely repair a ships systems no matter what the damage so it should be left as is.

But would definitely like to see visual damage effects and borg assimilation effects come back.

The original A2 had damage pop up the instant a system went off-line, what would be nice is some kind of incremental damage if it could be added so the more damage a ships systems took the more visual damage appeared on the model.

Edit: Just read the posts above more thoroughly and you guy's are looking at damage the opposite way to me, the way I see it is damage is already there being done to the ships individual systems and hull and the visual effects just need to be added where it seems you guys are talking about actual torpedo causes hole which means ship is damaged in some way.  I would say the way your looking at is kind of infeasible but then I would say that about most of the work that's been done so far 

posted on January 10th, 2009, 2:55 am

2005 DELL Inspiron with 1.6 P4 512 mb ram, and 80gb hd with ati radeon 8600.

the other one is newer
Dual core. 2 gb ram, nvidia 256, 130 gb hd. Game moves fine.

Yeah the game actualy appears to be RAM and VRAM bound. The A2 engine was designed on a single core for a single core. All the CPU does is compute AI which isnt very intensive, and tell what goes were.
The RAM is for the actual load of ships, effects, environment clipping in, detail clipping, etc.
The VRAM is then used for the D3D Bump mapping, Bloom, all visual rendering, not to mention the fact that all this could be happening on multiple ships.

posted on January 10th, 2009, 4:06 am

@ snapshot, the repair costing wouldnt make it imposbbile to make larger ships, it would just slow down the process of getting larger ships, but not by much, and it would also increase the cease fire between atacks because players would be repairing, and that would allow for the team who repairs better to maybye have an edge or not, but remeber it wouldn not cost that much earlier in the game, as ships get more complex, or larger, whatever, they get more expensive to repair, i think would be really cool