StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Kosh: ...a thing of great beauty.

Oh my

WOW! That looks awesome! The FS2 engine would be perfect for BSG, with small fighters zipping around whilst the huge battleships duke it out.

I wonder how many polys were used in those Basestars?

Ubiquitous wrote:WOW! That looks awesome! The FS2 engine would be perfect for BSG, with small fighters zipping around whilst the huge battleships duke it out.

I wonder how many polys were used in those Basestars?

Knowing the FS2 engine, not that many. While SCP has done wonders, in terms of poly its hitting into memory ceilings.

For those interested, there was some talk earlier about the total conversation here.

Certainly looks the part. I just hope they keep the FS2 flak'crack' somewhere. I love that noise.

So, any word on whether the fighters will fly like nBSG ships, or will it just use the regular FS2 flight mechanics?

Drooling Iguana wrote:So, any word on whether the fighters will fly like nBSG ships, or will it just use the regular FS2 flight mechanics?

FS2 is incapable by default of Newtonian movement, but since it's open source, such has been in the modworks.

They'd probably be able to implement something kinda newtonian, with slides and stuff, but with a top speed enforced to make sure the game stays playable. Like how dogfights are impossible in B5: I've Found Her... I hope they do that 'speed limited newtonian' for playability's sake.

I don't think the nBSG mod has its own coder. They would have to ask the SCP team to implement it, though it would probably get in if the nBSG team pushed hard enough, or if TBP and nBSG team asked together.

Nephtys wrote:They'd probably be able to implement something kinda newtonian, with slides and stuff, but with a top speed enforced to make sure the game stays playable. Like how dogfights are impossible in B5: I've Found Her... I hope they do that 'speed limited newtonian' for playability's sake.

It's very playable if you have some experience with it. Unfortunatly, B5: IFH just trows you in with a pretty manuverable fighter, which just gets you into trouble unless you have a good mindset. A good game to get a hang of newtonian flight is Independance War 2. It has much more protections against player stupidity (which can be overriden easily) and it phases you into the system slowly. Once you get a hang of it tho, plain ol' ww2 fighter-stlye suddenly feels very limiting and clunky.

mmar wrote:

Nephtys wrote:They'd probably be able to implement something kinda newtonian, with slides and stuff, but with a top speed enforced to make sure the game stays playable. Like how dogfights are impossible in B5: I've Found Her... I hope they do that 'speed limited newtonian' for playability's sake.

It's very playable if you have some experience with it. Unfortunatly, B5: IFH just trows you in with a pretty manuverable fighter, which just gets you into trouble unless you have a good mindset. A good game to get a hang of newtonian flight is Independance War 2. It has much more protections against player stupidity (which can be overriden easily) and it phases you into the system slowly. Once you get a hang of it tho, plain ol' ww2 fighter-stlye suddenly feels very limiting and clunky.

I do have the hang of IFH. The problem is that your acceleration is too low to be controllable, compared to the speeds you usually fight at. So you'll make high speed passes, and contests are decided entirely on who can aim better instead of who can maneuver better.

Nephtys wrote:I do have the hang of IFH. The problem is that your acceleration is too low to be controllable, compared to the speeds you usually fight at. So you'll make high speed passes, and contests are decided entirely on who can aim better instead of who can maneuver better.

While perhaps that doesn't feel like B5 space combat, that sounds more like how combat actually would be - "boom and zoom" usually beats "turn and burn" any day of the week.

phongn wrote:

Nephtys wrote:I do have the hang of IFH. The problem is that your acceleration is too low to be controllable, compared to the speeds you usually fight at. So you'll make high speed passes, and contests are decided entirely on who can aim better instead of who can maneuver better.

While perhaps that doesn't feel like B5 space combat, that sounds more like how combat actually would be - "boom and zoom" usually beats "turn and burn" any day of the week.

Yeah. I was hoping a little trade off between realism, and true to the show stuff. Although in large battles, such as Into the Fire, the fighters mostly do jousting passes at each other and targets...

Well. Anyway, at least it shows you why the Nial is such a deadly fighter. Lightspeed beams PLUS ridiculous acceleration means it'll eat squadrons alive.

My understanding with the FS2 engine, and what I've read from the coders, is that it would be easier to code a flight engine from scratch than make you fly backwards in FS2. Sliding is built in, though, so they can make your fighter quite slidy, at least.

As to IFH, jousting is just what you do if you can't manage to match speed with your target. Once that's done, it turns into a really scary dogfight where your acceleration is just as important as your turning speed. It's the only way I know of to take down a Nial, jousting just gets you vaped.

I believe that the highest-poly model of the Battlestar is around 30k polies. I don't know about the Basestar. The team seems quite convinced that polies isn't an issue, assuming the user has a fairly modern graphics card.

Alan Bolte wrote:As to IFH, jousting is just what you do if you can't manage to match speed with your target. Once that's done, it turns into a really scary dogfight where your acceleration is just as important as your turning speed. It's the only way I know of to take down a Nial, jousting just gets you vaped.

Strategy for taking down Nials:
-Set dificulty to easy
-Tell you fighters to go swarm him
-Sit in the sidelines lobbing missles
-Pray

I found that with the nials, if its 1 on 1 you can beat them fairly easily , if in a little silly way.

If you burn away from them at top speed, you can then be flying directly away from them, and they will not exceed a certain speed to follow you. This means that you can then dictate when to come into weapons range. If you slow down just enough, you can hold station just on the edge of your weapons range and snipe them while just outside of the range the AI will use, and you get to shoot at a static target.

Bit silly though, better just to hope you manage to get some shots in on them in the initial pass.