Star Wars vs. Homeworld

[Theotherguy]

So you're using made-up stats and ingame measurements you've distorted. How is this valid?

The stats from Relic come directly from the programming of the game. You don't "make up" stats in video games. After all, a video game is essentially a simulation of the ships in combat, and the arbitrary values that a programmer gives to the ship is obeyed in the simulation. If that's "made up" I'm not sure what more you would want.

Game mechanics cannot be used for vs debating as they are just that, game mechanics. They are not always consistent with reality. An often cited and infamous example are Marines taking down Battlecruisers and Carriers in Starcraft. If we use game mechanics, we must conclude that it's possible to take down a mile-long ship in orbit by taking potshots at it with a rifle that has problems penetrating Zergling carapace in the cutscenes. See what I mean?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

And how, might I ask, is analyzing film any better? After all, it is all fictional depictions that are made to look in a certain way to advance plot, or gameplay, or simply to "look cool." Analyzing a few frames that an artist made in a film so that he could make pretty things light up and go bang is hardly much more scientific than analyzing arbitrary constants and gameplay in a video game.

Let's take the Death Star scene as it destroys its first planet, for instance. We see, very clearly, a giant green beam of some sort (though it is not so giant in comparison to a planet) blasting into a planet and blowing it up with an explosion that looks like C4 or gunpowder exploding in air. A typical response to this sort of scene on this site is "oh look, that great big laser vaporized a planet! Planets have X amount of mass that's composed of Y. So this great big laser must have an energy of K terajoules! That's amazing!"

How is it that the second calculation is valid, but the calculation based on what is seen in a video game is invalid? How is it that one piece of fiction imagined by writers and put into place by artists is any more reliable than one piece of fiction imagined by designers and put into place by programmers?

[Theotherguy]

Don't get smart. My point is that there are many ways to determine the length of the major axis on the mothership (manual, database, ingame, etc) and they're not the same. So how can you combine these sources?

I haven't the slightest idea. If they were in contradiction I'd probably arbitrarily take what is displayed ingame to be canon, or simply take an average.

[Stark]

In analysis you look for consistency. Below a certain level of consistency, the synthesis is so unreliable as to be worthless. You can use Homeworld to generate all kinds of numbers all over the place; does this really give us a clear understanding of the universe? Is the universe described reasonable?

Frankly, if you don't understand how game mechanics, cutscenes and fluff generate inconsistency and make games difficult to analyse, you're retarded. It doesn't help that Homeworld's story and tech is so totally absurd, but the source is still unclear.

[Stark]

I haven't the slightest idea. If they were in contradiction I'd probably arbitrarily take what is displayed ingame to be canon, or simply take an average.

So you're just accepting a set of information uncritically and then presenting it as 'analysis'? Bear in mind you presented 'acceleration figures' by dividing an unreliable velocity measure by the time to reach top speed in a game with top speeds. Does this strike you as a meaningful result?

[Theotherguy]

In analysis you look for consistency. Below a certain level of consistency, the synthesis is so unreliable as to be worthless. You can use Homeworld to generate all kinds of numbers all over the place; does this really give us a clear understanding of the universe? Is the universe described reasonable?

Frankly, if you don't understand how game mechanics, cutscenes and fluff generate inconsistency and make games difficult to analyse, you're retarded. It doesn't help that Homeworld's story and tech is so totally absurd, but the source is still unclear.

I do see how it makes it difficult or impossible to quantize any of the data.

However, I don't see how its much easier to quantify data in any other sort of fiction. Not a lot of writers come out and say "This ship uses X weapon which delivers Y amount of energy."

If we're going to do these kinds of arguments at all, we might as well be consistent about it, and decide what is canon, what isn't, what should be taken seriously, and what shouldn't. Otherwise its just a crapshoot -- (well, its a crapshoot anyway, as it is fiction, but at least it can be a CIVILIZED crapshoot).

If you don't want me to use ingame stats, then there's really nothing I can use, and the argument is null and void, the thread is locked and the discussion ended. That is fair enough.

[Stark]

Except games almost never have canon policy. You can claim something is canon, I can disagree, and the discussion is essentially over. Look at Starcraft; almost no meaningful information can be extracted from the game, and the manual fluff is absurdly stupid or obviously wrong.

[Theotherguy]

Except games almost never have canon policy. You can claim something is canon, I can disagree, and the discussion is essentially over. Look at Starcraft; almost no meaningful information can be extracted from the game, and the manual fluff is absurdly stupid or obviously wrong.

Starcraft, unfortunately, comes from a line of games that employ "rock paper scissors" balancing. These sorts of games are usually very cartoonish in the way they represent stats and firepower. Its more akin to a D and D paper and pencil game than to simulation.

Some games -- and Homeworld is one of them -- employ rote simulation to do balancing. That is, every object is physically simulated in the game world, and every projectile and beam weapon is simulated to some degree of physical accuracy. Nothing is perfect, of course (the scales and ranges in Homeworld are ridiculously small), but in a simulation-based game you can at least get a better idea of what the stats SHOULD be. There are some games, even, that use real physical constants, distances, and the like to produce as accurate a simulation as possible. I think Homeworld represents a fairly middle ground.

[Stark]

So what? Being modelled in 3d doesn't tell you anything about the universe - ships in the HW verse don't have hitpoints, they don't have little floaty lifebars, they don't magically vanish when they explode, etc. Changing the visual medium doesn't make it a 'simulation', and you deciding HW is a more sophisticated RTS doesn't make it a more valid source.

How does HW do impact deformation on railgun projectiles? Oh yeah, it does '-2hp'. SIMULATION!

[Ghost Rider]

I also want to hear some form of hard data because we've been here, done this, and came up with nearly nothing.

So let's see if we have more then nothing.

[Theotherguy]

So what? Being modelled in 3d doesn't tell you anything about the universe - ships in the HW verse don't have hitpoints, they don't have little floaty lifebars, they don't magically vanish when they explode, etc. Changing the visual medium doesn't make it a 'simulation', and you deciding HW is a more sophisticated RTS doesn't make it a more valid source.

How does HW do impact deformation on railgun projectiles? Oh yeah, it does '-2hp'. SIMULATION!

I'm afraid that's as close as you're going to get. Obviously HP is a highly artificial construct that has nothing to do with anything in reality, but it does have some bearing on the potency of a specific weapon. HP should be taken as more of a relative measure.

Like I was saying before, the only way I could imagine doing this is to take some example of a ship doing something, or surviving something which is clearly supposed to be representing something that we have real math for in reality, and then applying that as a scalar factor across all of the stats set up in the game.

If this is insufficient, then I suppose there really isn't enough data to make any real conclusions. Oh well.

[Stark]

Shut the fuck up. It would be TRIVIAL for a spaceship game to have more advanced mechanics, and it's ABSURD for you to claim that 3d = simulation when it's just sparklies over the same goddamn mechanics, all of which has NOTHING TO DO with making up numbers and expected people to accept them.

And sorry, even in HW hp isn't a 'relative measure', because 'destruction' doesn't work that way. You could argue that the beams do way less damage than it appears, because they penetrate and brew up the ship while mass drivers have to beat the whole thing to bits. Except the ships never take damage and then explode at 0hp. Whoops.

[Adrian Laguna]

There are a few possibilities for scaling the mothership. We see scenes of the scaffolding as seen from Karak's surface. We can also see the scaffolding up close in its orbit during the opening scene/first mission. The latter part can be used to estimate the height of the orbit, assuming Karak is Earth-sized, and then the first scene to estimate, based on how much of the sky it takes up, the size of the scaffolding. Once we know how long and wide the scaffolding is, we can know the size of the mothership. I know a similar method was used to estimate the size of the second Death Star.

I wouldn't trust Homeworld's 3D engine to render things accurately in game, since it's all basically game mechanics (fighters are, for example, likely too big so they can be seen). Though I see no reason to believe the Mothership and its scaffold are not to scale relative each other. I think we can treat the black and white cut scenes as being close to life depictions, if nothing else because there is some consistency in them. The only potential problem is the the background (ie, Karak) of the first mission of Homeworld being to scale, which is no guarantee but you work with what you have.

A supplementary method to do an check order of magnitude check, would be to use the scene depicting the interior of the cryogenic trays to estimate how much volume per person they use up. Each tray has 100,000 people according to the dialogue (I prefer to think it's 1 million but that's fanon). So a bare minimum for each tray's volume can be obtained. The actual trays would of course be larger for various reasons, such as the external hull and both mass and auxiliary life support, but it should be god enough. Since we know the Mothership can fit six of those on the bottom third of its length (middle third is construction, and top third is C3 and hyperdrive), we can then estimate its approximate volume.

If using both methods give congruent results then we have at least something to work with in terms of the size of the Mothership, and by implication Homeworld materials science, since the thing can accelerate, albeit slowly, without being torn apart. If they are not congruent, meaning many orders of magnitude of difference (do remember we're being kind of rough here) then it can only be concluded that Homeworld is far too inconsist to yield useful measurements.

How useful this information can be, in the even of congruency of measurement, aside from telling us how big can Homeworlders build when they want to build big... I'm not sure, but it's at least something to work with as opposed to nothing.

I would love to try and do all these measurements myself, but unfortunately both my usual computer and games are out of my reach and shall remain so for the near future.

[Theotherguy]

Shut the fuck up. It would be TRIVIAL for a spaceship game to have more advanced mechanics, and it's ABSURD for you to claim that 3d = simulation when it's just sparklies over the same goddamn mechanics, all of which has NOTHING TO DO with making up numbers and expected people to accept them.

And sorry, even in HW hp isn't a 'relative measure', because 'destruction' doesn't work that way. You could argue that the beams do way less damage than it appears, because they penetrate and brew up the ship while mass drivers have to beat the whole thing to bits. Except the ships never take damage and then explode at 0hp. Whoops.

No, its not simulation because it is 3D. It is simulation-based BALANCING because it relies on a consistent physics engine which all of the game objects (essentially) obey. It's simulation-based because the paths of the ships and missiles, as well as ship accuracy and the like are based, more or less, on the precision of the simulation, rather than something completely arbitrary.

In contrast, a game like starcraft relies on "dice rolls" to determine damage, and weapons damage is completely inconsistent depending only on what thing they're shooting at, and none of the projectiles are simulated in their firing arcs..etc.etc.

I did not imply that its a very GOOD simulation, but that it is at least an attempt at simulation. There are obviously many ways that it could be better.

[Samuel]

In contrast, a game like starcraft relies on "dice rolls" to determine damage,

Did we play the same game?

[Stark]

I'm pretty sure SC had damage expressed as a range, (ie, 4-7, whatever). I'm not sure how having identical damage every time makes HW more 'realistic' or whatever.

[Hawkwings]

The Homeworld: Cataclysm manual gives production times for the two Somtaaw command ships. They built those two ships and the research frigate in 45 days on the Mothership construction facilities. Off Homeworld shipyards, the Kuun-Lan is 613,000 tons, which they built in about 15 days. The Somtaaw carrier is 129,000 tons and takes 280 seconds in-game to build. That's about 20% of the mass of the command ship. So in "real time" it would take about 3 days to build. Or, one second of in-game construction time equals about 15 minutes "real time".

ship scaling, see here: http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread. ... 043&page=1
I seem to recall that the initial pictures were figured to be about three times too big. Giving the mothership an in-game size of about 2.5km tall.

And yes, my research comment was a joke. Should I include emoticons and "/sarcasm" next time?

[Stark]

I guess that's why they have unlimited fleets then.

Oh wait, they don't. Good thing the Taiidan didn't have unlimited ships.

[Hawkwings]

Well, there is the whole "We only have a tiny population" problem when crewing ships.

[Stark]

Do you honestly think the ludicrous production times you just listed make sense in context of the Homeworld story? It sure makes HW2 quite the laff riot.

[Connor MacLeod]

The best calc I ever figured on for Homeworld (that I can remember at least) was the Homeworld Cataclysm manual that listed that a pair of destroyers can vaporize a frigate in a matter of seconds. Its fairly straightforward since we know the mass and roughly the composition of ships (Uranium as I recall played quite a role).

We can compliment that with the ion beam frigates by calculating beam energy via recoil of the ship (again masses and accelerations are known) and by going by rough power generation. Generlaly its going to be kiloton range, low megaton/s tops. Falling far, far, far, short of what they need to threaten SW even by pre-ICS calcs.

[Connor MacLeod]

As far as suspension of disbelief goes.. Homeworld's ingame stuff (at best) would not be treated the same way as film visuals, the two are clearly not the same. At best you would treat it as a computer-rendered "simulation" but the "realism" of the simulation will always be up in the air and unproven (unless someone cares to prove it) You might be able to vaguely draw conclusions from it (eg weapons fire can destroy asteroids) but not necesarily anything conclusive (IE its debatable you could scale from it reliably, since it may simply be a generalized representation rather than a highly accurate rendering.)

Ingame stats are always trickier and may or may not be valid depending on the data in question (for example "hit point" based analysis probably doesnt tell us much)

Regardless, you can't just ASSUME ingame visuals, cutscenes, or filimic evidence are the same things just because they are visuals. Any more than you can assume visual artwork (EG, comics, drawings, or others) neccesairly equal real life photos or screengrabs or even film evidence (EG comic book or artwork depictions of a film character may not totally resemble said film character, or vehicle, or whatever, and allowacnes thus must be made for differences between one and the other.)

[Theotherguy]

As far as suspension of disbelief goes.. Homeworld's ingame stuff (at best) would not be treated the same way as film visuals, the two are clearly not the same. At best you would treat it as a computer-rendered "simulation" but the "realism" of the simulation will always be up in the air and unproven (unless someone cares to prove it) You might be able to vaguely draw conclusions from it (eg weapons fire can destroy asteroids) but not necesarily anything conclusive (IE its debatable you could scale from it reliably, since it may simply be a generalized representation rather than a highly accurate rendering.)

Ingame stats are always trickier and may or may not be valid depending on the data in question (for example "hit point" based analysis probably doesnt tell us much)

Regardless, you can't just ASSUME ingame visuals, cutscenes, or filimic evidence are the same things just because they are visuals. Any more than you can assume visual artwork (EG, comics, drawings, or others) neccesairly equal real life photos or screengrabs or even film evidence (EG comic book or artwork depictions of a film character may not totally resemble said film character, or vehicle, or whatever, and allowacnes thus must be made for differences between one and the other.)

You're right I suppose. I guess there really isn't much hope of quantizing Homeworld in terms of Star Wars.

[Connor MacLeod]

Uh, you didn't listen. There ARE ways to quantify it, lots of ways. I pointed out several examples as it is (the manuals are actually full of data that can be useful).

[Stark]

If you decide to accept it. You're going to have a hard time convincing me to use a literal 'vaporisation' definition for the 'PHOAR SHIT YEAH THIS IS UBBEBRZZZ' fluff in the manual. If we did that, Starcraft would be pretty ridiculous.

[Theotherguy]

Completely irrelevant, but here's a vid of the Hiigarans being completely raped by the Empire in a hybrid mod:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdfcdIar ... ature=fvwp

Granted, the hiigarans did nothing but spam carriers for the ISD to target practice, but I have heard that the people making the Warlords (star wars) mod for Homeworld put a lot of effort into accurately scaling Star Wars weapons to the Homeworld 2 universe.