General Pants

Join Date 08/2006

+19

Jewelry Ideas

Some of which aren't exactly revolutionary

From the new interview, I gather that Dark Avatar will have tons of new jewelry. That, in and of itself, justifies the money I spent (or will spend) preordering the expansion. Ship design is definitely one of the big seeling points of the game for me. I had a few suggestions:

1) It would be great if parts could be sortable into categories based on shape, say:

a) flat things, wings and struts;

blocky things, like boxes, short towers, and spheres;
c) long thin things, like antennae, prongs, and tubes;
d) lumpy things, like the "mushroom" fins;
e) wicked cool funky stuff, like the fork-thing;
f) true jewelry, like the lights and the race icons;

2) It would be great to have another category with recently used jewelry, to save the hunting;

3) It would be nice to be able to override the racial color scheme for particular ship designs. This would permit special funky "elite" squadrons, etc.;

More coming up...

ideas

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General Pants

Join Date 08/2006

+19

MOVING PARTS:

Here's the weirdo: could we have moving parts? I was thinking a thing like this (based on animations in PowerPoint):
Click on the part or the hull, and click the "action" button. This brings up a "MOVE LIST", a list of items to which you can add and subtract items. Each item opens its own dialogue:

Move: from center (only option for hull)
from attachment to previous part
Rotation Axis: X
Y
Z
Type: tracks target (of attached weapons) before firing
independent
Duration: once
oscillating
constant
Amount: A degree slider (always 360 for "constant")
Direction: clockwise (viewed from behind)
counterclockwise
When? always
not moving on map
moving on map:
before
during
after
in battle:
before
during
after
attached weapons fire:
before
during
after

Examples:
VOYAGER: Engine struts rotate inward 45 degrees from attachment before moving on map, outward 45 degrees after moving.

BIRD-OF-PREY: Wings drop 30 degrees from attachment before battle, opposite after battle.***

B-WING FIGHTER: Body set to rotate at center counter-clockwise, and cockpit clockwise, 90 degrees at start of combat. Each wing to rotate 90 degrees (in the appropriate directions) from their attachments at start of combat. Opposite movements occur at end of combat.

OMEGA-CLASS DESTROYER: Crew section set to rotate about the center of its attachment to the ship's hull, thought 360 degrees, clockwise (I think...), constantly.

STAR DESTROYER: Each gun turret set to track target around (their) Y axis before firing, batteries set to track target on their own Z axis before firing.

*** you don't want combat moves to be automatically reversed after combat... it might be fun to have ships that combat "changes forever!"

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Fate

Join Date 05/2006

Moving part's is a really good idea, I especily like a few points you put up there like Wepon tracking targets, i just hate watching wepons fire at 150 degress to were they are pointing and hit a target, its just painful.

The Elite Unit's colouring is a great idea, sometimes you get half way threw a game and you think of a new colour scheem that would look great, but you cant use it because you have these generic colour's that you picked at the begining, It'd make controling your ships heaps easier to.

Also how about some animations, like smaller 'Fighter' Class ships doing strafing run's on bigger one's like the 'Ranger' Class Capital ship, that would look soo much better than ships just randomly floating around between eachother and there guns all fireing at odd painful angles... Just my thoughts.

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Nice ideas.

We also need more pieces which snap to place at their centre. Too often if you add a component it sticks out from the hull. What if you want to keep your hull narrow, but extend it? The only way to do that at the moment is with one of the assortment of rails and pylons, but if you want a solid hull, you need to cover that up with other pieces. More triangles = less speed.

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I know you can make your own ships, but is it possible to add your own Jewellery (with hard points)?

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General Pants

Join Date 08/2006

+19

ALTERNATE TEXTURES:

Two ideas I forgot to put on there:

5) It would be nice to have and be able to use alternate surface textures that would override the textures on the individual ship elements.

EXAMPLES:
a) I am making the "chigs" from Space: Above and Beyond. My fighters needs to have a tightly-woven, black mesh (red for the Red Baron), but my capital ships need to have a loosely woven, lighter-colored mesh.

I am making the Rebel fleet from Star Wars. Some of my ships should have the plain, light gray-with-off-colored-panels scheme, but the Mon Calamari ships have a completely different texture, and are darker in color (I think).

c) I am making a Babylon Five-inspired race... I want my early, EarthForce-style ships to have a basic "kitbashed" look, but I want my later Whitestar fleet to have the appropriate swirling purple bioarmor couch-camoflage pattern.

6) It would be nice to have square floodlights ala the USS Enterprise from Star Trek the Motion Picture. You coiuld set them up and position them and they'd illuminate part of the ship (say, your race logo).

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General Pants

Join Date 08/2006

+19

We also need more pieces which snap to place at their centre. Too often if you add a component it sticks out from the hull. What if you want to keep your hull narrow, but extend it?

Muppet: I'm not sure, but it sounds like you may not completely have the ship design interface down. Any piece that sticks out from the hull can be re-directed to project forward. If you want to make a narrow hull, take one of the long, narrow pieces, stick it to the nose of your base hull, point it forward, and increase its size. You will still have to deal with the transition between the base hull and the extension, but you are going to have to do that anyway, because the base hull already looks like a ship, and you don't want your result to look like a ship with a nose extension!

I understand what you mean about having to build around extensions, though. It is a big pain. I like using the "lumpy fin" pieces, stuck together so that the tops of the mushrooms interlock... it give the ship that Mon Calamari look.

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There's a couple of things I'd like:

Non-functional versions of all the weapons, engines, defenses, sensors, etc... It happens quite often that I can fit, for example, three Warp engines, but the design would look a lot better with four. Having a part that looks like a Warp engine, but takes up no space and doesn't add any speed would allow me to do this.

More realistic models for all the "dome" components. For some things, the dome shape makes sense, like life support and sensors, for example. But for point defense, shield projectors, etc..., I'd like to actually see them.

Similarly, it would be nice if the addition of different armors changed the surface texture of the ship, not added one more little dome.

Maybe what I'm asking for (and certainly not for any version of GC2), is to completely separate the functional and visual ship design components of the game. That way, you'd design the capabilities of the ship as you do now, but the look of the ship is a separate design.

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I'd just love for some simple shapes, like cubes and sheres, most every jewlrey part in the game now looks too exotic. It would make cool ship making alot easier than putting thousands (exageration) of parts on a ship when a few parts could make the same ship.

Also love the idea for moving parts, would die for that.

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

Non-functional versions of all the weapons, engines, defenses, sensors, etc... It happens quite often that I can fit, for example, three Warp engines, but the design would look a lot better with four.

There are already mods that do this.

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There are already mods that do this.

I really should get ahold of some of these...

Because, quite frankly, the Impulse series of Drives are the best-looking. Warp just makes me think of a space shuttle's backside (I don't want my ships resembling the ol' flying spacebrick), and hyperwarp has too much 'flare' to it, in my opinion. The Impulses look the most like actual nacelles, complete with Bussard ramscoops. Best-looking drive on this one hull I use during the Dread Lords campaign for my 'Heavy Fighters' was the Impulse MkII, mounted on the underside rear 'fin', and flipped so it was partially embedded inside the craft. The effect of the drive shaft glowing along the underside was just awesome. Not exactly in a position to post a screen shot of it right now, though...

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