[MOD] Star Blazers!

==

===============

[size=135]UPDATE
(2014-10-04)[/size]

Unfortunately, tater’s original download link (from 2010) for this intriguing mod is broken. :frowning:

WayOfEnoch has graciously re-uploaded tater’s mod.

His link: >> http://www.mediafire.com/?swwqf7idwvieamu <<

The Earth Defense Force confirms WayOf Enoch’s
battlefield promotion to Sergeant-Major of Artillery
for that kindness. :slight_smile:

If that newer link should break at some point in the future,
please post the news about it in this thread. Thanks.

==================================

======

tater, I want to applaud you for your work in bringing some of Star Blazers into GSB. I just saw some of your efforts over here amidst hopefast’s Fantasy Fleet mod.

I had intended to do that very thing myself until I recently suffered a serious injury and was mostly offline until now. My family are fans of Star Blazers. This is in spite of its somewhat fractured nature, where it could never quite decide whether to be an adults’ show or a kids’ show so it aimed for both at the same time. Hard to believe that 2009 marked Yamato’s 30th anniversary of its American TV broadcast début as Star Blazers. The story arc has true flashes of genius to it, and it exists as a special definition of the very term “epic”.

Are you working on the Argentina-class Attack Spacecraft Carrier hull or the Texas-class Main Space Battleship hull? I’m using the fleet nomenclature from the “Star Blazers Perfect Album,” printed by Argo Press. The screenshot you shared with us in that other thread linked above looked to me as if it was showing a pair of 318-class Space Destroyer hulls in action.

I suppose we’ll have to await some form of area-of-effect weapon being handed to us by cliffski before anything remotely like a true Wave Motion Gun can be implemented in GSB.

Hull integrity, repair and point-defense in SB are nothing short of amazing. It’s like someone quadrupled the Tribe’s attributes and set them loose upon an unsuspecting universe! I guess only Earth’s good guys have that tech. If you’re captain of a Gamilon or Comet Empire ship, all that’s needed to make your ship explode with gusto is a swift kick.

A little bit of Star Blazers inspiration here…gives one a good taste of space opera. This one is a more astrofighter-centric view of battle. Unlike our torpedo fighters, theirs are pretty scary. :stuck_out_tongue:

These three connected segments are the quintessence of the GSB experience as seen through Star Blazers

Star Blazers Season 2 The Comet Empire eps 21 part 1 of 3 remastered

Star Blazers Season 2 The Comet Empire eps 21 part 2 of 3 remastered

Star Blazers Season 2 The Comet Empire eps 21 part 3 of 3 remastered

My #1 gaming buddy and I really like playing GSB with our Star Blazers soundtrack playing at high volume. (It makes the frigate torpedoes fly faster. :stuck_out_tongue: ) Can’t wait to see more of these ships eventually modded into the game.

I am working on adding all the ships I posted images of. There are more BBs that I haven’t started on. Frankly, the lack of “spinal” weapons for the wave motion guns puts me off from doing too many BBs so my thought was to concentrate on smaller combatants. Finding good, consistent images is hard, however.

I’ll upload what I have for you in the next couple days. Balance is another concern completely since I tend to make missile/torpedo modules with small salvos size and long reloads—and I also make the max ranges really high because I prefer less crowded battles (make most weapons work at range 2000 and battles are STILL quite crowded.

Hopefast has Argo in:

I have an EDF DD and a CA in (now with EDF-looking PD turrets, though I didn’t zoom in enough):

I plan on improving the DD/CA main battery turrets. I might in fact make a whole range of “real” EDF turrets moving forward and completely replace all the borrowed rebel ones. I can just alter the length and number of barrels, etc. Most missiles I’ve been calling “tubes” or “missile bays” and they have no visible turret. In return they get to be lighter, use less crew, etc.

One thing I am seriously considering is to load many more hardpoints on these than I have (right now they are balanced to GSB standards for my ships). What I will then do is make the main battery turrets, and other really powerful weapons weigh a LOT and use tons of power and crew. The missiles/torpedos I will them make use very little power, have fewer crew, and they will weigh very little. The missiles would then have low salvo_size numbers, and long reloads—but ships will typically have MANY missile launchers. So if the “torpedo boat” looks like it has 6 torpedo tubes, I’ll make it have 6 hardpoints up front, but the missiles combined might only weigh in like 2 turrets in GSB—but since there are 6, it will fire 6 at once instead of just 1-2 (for that anime look of missile swarms).

I’ll up what I have tonight, and you can mess with it!

Here is what I have so far. Note that my main battery and missile ranges are quite long compared to GSB norms right now.

mediafire.com/file/zkzjrnndd … 20v0.5.rar

Note that the damage models need some major tweaking, particularly the CA. Right now smoke and hits occur in some places off the actual hull. Need to fix that.

Fighters:

Triple turrets for the BB, but I scaled some for the CA, too:

Started on the only Gamilon ship I have.

Might be able to tweak it to make other Gamilon DDs, at least:

DD Eliminator:

Missile DD Eradicator:

Strike Cruiser Eliminator:

I think I might be able to mess with this given the top-down GSB view…

Nice Gamilon Destroyer you have there! Well done. I’m also impressed by the care you lavished upon the EDF multi-barrel turrets. I have to take a good look at everything in detail. For now,I’m getting tired; off to bed. Thanks for sharing!

Gamilon DD is in, just need tweaking, and I have to make new gamilon turrets for her.

I think nthe “eliminator” and “strike cruiser” should be easy mods to the basic hull. This particular 3d model that I found images of seems to be off in the “wings,” but I can always shorten them since it’s just the plan view.

If anyone is skilled at colorizing the line drawings like those below… we could have MANY more. The trick is a little shading so they look 3d.

Right now I have 2 versions of the DD hull file, one with more slots than many GSB cruisers, and another I carved down to the GSB frigate standard realm.

Since we cannot limit people to not use the “standard” weapons, the latter makes more sense except for a “total conversion” mod to star blazers—which I have right now in a 2d install with JSGME swapping out the files.

I have a gamilon “prowler” fighter in game, too.

I’m putting a Star Blazers mod together with my ships, plus the ones hopefast has done and or tweaked.

My version of things is a little different than his, I’ve rescaled a few ships, altered slot numbers, etc to be consistent with each other.

It will come with a special “gamilon encounter” scenario on a huge map, too. The biggest current failing is a dearth of gamilon ships to the same nice quality as the EDF stuff.

Balace right now is tricky. Watching the shows, I seem to recall that they had no shields. One thought was to make them somewhat Tribe like—a negative shield bonus, and a SLIGHT armor/integrity bonus (0.10 to 0.20 or so). I’m also messing with faster ships for them as well.

I’m torn between a “straight” star blazers setup, and ships that will also work well with GSB stock stuff.

A group of Gamilon Striker dive bombers heads into a furball between Rebel fighters and some Gamilon Prowlers.

You can get away with sort of crappy fighters since they are so very small.

yamato-movie.net/

live-action movie… page has a count down going til tomorrow…

Making a Gamilon BB from scratch (no images from the top on the web)…

I might alter the color a little, but it’s not bad (the model I took a picture of was a resin cast I made (can’t find the original model, I made some copies for myself to mess with and bash):

Still have to tweak the hulls file.

This gives us a bomber, a fighter, a Destroyer and a large cruiser. Show calls the Galmus a BB, but I have it like a battle cruiser (230 units long). Right now it’s 10 Standard, 8 turrets, I might add a couple more standard slots.

Note that for all the “stock” Star Blazers stuff I have no shields installed at all since I don’t recall any shields on the cartoon so they need room to armor themselves.

I have 2 scenarios now, so I think I’ll zip this up later for y’all to play with. Balance seems OK I test the scenarios to see how easy they are vs rating with stock ships and easy is easy to beat, medium was a win but pretty even, and hard was, well, hard.

I might add some more fighters to both sides.

Note that my current ranges are set pretty long, I wanted “carrier battles” to be sort of possible before the warships hit each other.

tater, your SB mod is looking really sharp. That’s even in spite of still being work-in-progress. I’m scouring various sources for quality top-down views of Gamilon ships, especially additional cruisers. My ability to work with .dds files (file conversion, color/shading, alpha channel) is seriously limited, though. I like what you’ve brought into the game thus far!

I’m uploading a version for you to try right now. Stay tuned. I’m calling it version 0.5.

Needs a lot of balance testing. I can make a more stock GSB compatible version as well I suppose, too (shorter ranges).

Here it is:

mediafire.com/?zzz4z3gnoyj

(still waiting on stupid filefront)

Note that if you want to be more SB-like, don’t use any shields. I suppose in a later version I can give a huge, negative shield bonus.

The Cosmo Tiger II seems perhaps a little overpowered. Of course I didn’t give it a good counter on the Gamilon side. I think I need to give them the “Arrowlet”

Musing on balance for ships with no armor (yeah, turns out there was a shield used once in the show—high resistance, low strength, perhaps almost zero recharge?).

I might tone all the damage values down, but have pretty good armor penetration on the big guns. I watched some youtubes of the show (had not seen it in decades, though the guy who wrote the miniatures game for SB is a friend of a guy I know from college, and I’ve met him a few times) and the shots seem to penetrate ships, punching loads of holes, then eventually they explode in a gratuitous way :slight_smile:

So high penetration, low damage might be the way to go.

I did a quick test with all the hitpoints bumped via an integrity bonus increase.

Seemed interesting.

More definitively for now, I’ve been correcting some ranges I had wrong in 0.5. Now the Battleship triple beam (Yamato) has the longest range, followed by the cruiser triple beam, then the destroyer. I made the beams have faster ROFs as the range/size decreases. I also made a copy (exact, except for a HP increase) of the DD double turret for the cruisers. So you can put far lighter DD turrets on your CA/BB—the two triple CA turrets are VERY heavy. All have ranges between 1000-and 2400 (the huge range being Yamato’s guns).

Sadly, I cannot make a “bullet” laser with 3 pulses at once.

I did similar tweaking on the Gamilon stuff. Since the Galmus turrets have 8 firing ports, I assumed they worked like a gatling gun of sorts, and gave them salvo_size = 8, and a longer reload time after those 8 quicker shots. In addition, I mapped many of the stuck turrets under the edf and gamilon “races” files to use the few turrets I already have. In addition, I made a “single barrel” gamilon DD turret.

Some weapons will be listed as “tubes” or “lower hull” and those have no visible turrets to mess up the ships.

I think what is called the “torpedo frigate” needs more standard boxes given that it is really an “old battleship.” From a scale standpoint, it’s clearly smaller in the show than the other BBs.

I also have a new fighter repair bay with fewer supplies that uses less crew and weight.

Tweaked the frigate damage control module (it’s VERY slow now). The idea behind this was just good old fashioned damage control that assumes already existing crew for the most part. The notion is that set to cautious, a frigate might limp away and slowly repair.

I’m open to any and all feedback.