Oh, we have few more completed hulls. I didn’t want to spoil the surprise when the mod could be released so I refrained from posting them. They look good.
I have been coding modules and generally tweaking weapons.
Cool. My kids are slightly older now (6 and 9), but were little when I was first messing with this. Honestly, my 6 YO is to blame for my return, I was showing him games I thought he’d like, and realized how much I liked this one myself 
The ability for a module to not shoot at some target sizes is pretty critical. Alternately, if weapons would simply not fire at targets above their tracking speed unless no other targets are on the map (don’t waste a shot on a 2% lucky hit unless there is literally nothing else on the map to shoot at). Right now the paradigm is to take that shot if nothing else is IN RANGE, but weapons that fire rarely, or we’d prefer to only fire once (wave motion gun, or big fighter weapons) are FUBAR when this is the case.
It’s not less gratuitous, either, what could be more gratuitous than anime space battles?
Heck, Star Wars needs the same line, too. Else the X and Y wings all dump their proton torps at the first sight of a TIE fighter instead of heading for the Death Star trench.
I should add that while the deslok cannon, and wave motion gun are nothing if not gratuitous, I don’t see myself adding them under the current limitations. I’d want them to fire very, very rarely. Currently that means they’d attack fighters in most cases. The smaller (but still “spinal” shock cannons are another matter )
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[size=150]Update[/size]
Tater, Flavoredpickle and I are collaborating to get this thing done. We have already started discussing modules and the overall strengths and weaknesses that will be built in to the mod. I think it should be good. In the meantime, I will leave you with this…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BGu9HESMuI&feature=player_embedded
I did some experiments last night with the idea posted for trying to limit fire arcs. While not ideal for a beam weapon, it actually works OK for TORPEDOES.
I altered the Gamilon ramhead to have the module way out in front:
0 = 128.00,-2000.00,TURRET,(128.00-50.00)
And the torpedo is then changed to min range 0, max 60. The goal is to get them to bloody well attack the larger ships they are meant to attack. Since they drive to the large targets, with the small torp window ahead of them, they will only engage fighters that are dead ahead (torp range had been 400, so the lateral range resulted in them always blowing torps on fighters).
Seems to work better than before.
The salvo interval as a work around is still pretty weak, however. Limited ammo is desperately needed to make fighters make any sense at all. The design tradeoff for fighters should be total damage delivered vs weight (and hence speed). Not DPS. Fighter DPS should always be tiny for weapons without an ammo limit. “No effect” vs larger craft, pretty much. The way to damage large ships should be missiles (torps, rockets, whatever), or possibly a novel “gun pod” that fires a beam of some sort, but is either incredibly heavy (a fighter towing a frigate weapon), or less heavy than the frigate weapon it equals, but has very limited shots.
This is really needed for GSB to work for most any popular SF universe that includes fighters.
Star wars? Needs limited ammo, and the ability to force targeting (else Y-wings and X-wings dump all proton torps at first TIE they see, no dead death star).
Space Battleship Yamato? It;s ww2 in space, the fighters have a few missiles slung under wings. 'Nuff said.
Macross? Ditto.
All other anime? Ditto.
B5? Fighters have seemingly unlimited ammo, but ships have defensive guns that shoot down their shots, so I’ll assume a large ammo load, but limited. They don’t waste the ship splitting spinal beam weapons on fighters, however.
Trek? The show doesn’t have much in the way of fighters, but Star Fleet Battles did, and many had some limited ammo weapons (drones, etc).
BSG? Unsure, but fighters don’t seem to cripple capital ships, just wear them down.
Watched the SBY2199 episode last night with the subspace submarine.
Cloaking can definitely work for this mod. Since in SBY they are “specialty” craft instead of just thrown on every ship, I think I will aim for making it VERY power hungry for each size, plus very expensive. In return, they need nasty weapons.
Ok guys - here’s where we are at:
Tater: Coding
Flavoredpickle: Graphics - Definitely Gamilons, Whether to redo EDF or not needs to be decided on.
jupiter6. Don’t know any more.
General feel of mod: No shields (possibly a variation of the GSB shield though), but very powerful weapons. Fighters play a larger role than normal, with bombers to the foree.
Ships: Not as many hardpoints as vanilla and other mod races, however compensated for by very powerful weapons. Strong hulls.
Weapons: Shock cannons, devastating missiles and torpedos.
Ideas for modules.
FRigate/fighter camouflage: For Gamilons only? The EDF didn’t have it in the series.
Blast containment bays/bulkheads: High HP damage control modules
Combat Satellite: Small crewless satellite with no offensive capability, more nuisance. Drifts slowly or is static in the battlefield scrambling enemy missiles and shooting enemy ships with an EMP gun. Frigate class hull with 505 power. The two satellite hard points require 250 power each for specialised satellite missile scrambler and EMP gun, with a tiny thruster engine that moves the satellite very slowly draws 5 power.
GAmilon defence cannon for bombers. REar facing.
Defense cannon is on my Ramhead (new one is a good sprite), and the striker (a crappy sprite). Trouble is that given the current engine, defensive guns* (already coded) are neither strictly defensive (360 arc, though I could offset the circle, I suppose), nor are they even used defensively. If they have a useful range, they will bait the fighter into attacking anything it flies past, regardless or orders (or deleted orders). Sigh. Telling them to not attack a class to make them not attack that class.
One thought is to drop the range on the defensive guns a LOT. Under 50, perhaps. Maybe 25.
*the guns on fighters seem to be GUNS, or at least pulse lasers, if not auto cannons. I suppose we can make a few versions and test.
Offensive fighter guns can also have much shorter range, perhaps. Maybe 50. Vanilla GSB has gun ranges for fighters of 200-270, and rocket/missile/torp 450-1000. Ours will be far shorter, if for no other reason that to try and get fighters to behave as they should.
Regarding the satellites, I suppose they will soak up shots given the AI. Not sure if that is good or bad. The EDF will stay in perfect line-astern while they are literally annihilated with only one ship surviving to run away (Okita’s ship), but if you as them to not under any circumstances attack those ships over there? They will all ignore the admiral, lol. Perhaps we can make a HUGE “ship” that doesn’t move, and covers the entire edge of the screen, and make planetary base modules? Sats can then be above, and they might have a weapon that rarely fires (the pluto base reflector sats). Dunno. Asteroid bases at least look more ship like, we can make some up, they have the right feel, even if not canon.
jupiter6, I have gone through in the last few days and done stuff like change all the gamilon crew names to either names I saw in the subtitles (many may have R/L confusion 
), and some EDF ones so they are not strictly english (added A Saburo, Mori, etc). The best eye candy would either be Mori, or that nurse, but that’s outside the scope of GSB .
Note, the image above with the ships to scale. I did NOT scale ships to that, as it is a 2199 diagram, and I had found a different scale a few years ago when I made the ships I made. The major difference is that 2199 has 3 gamilas ships, the Destoria, Kelkapia, and Kripitera as CA, BC, and DD respectively, while in the original they were all the same size (variant DD types). I’m fine with the variability of 2199 stuff. Maybe the gamilons can get more frigates with a subspace submarine, and use the old DD (not on that diagram, it has one X (rear) turret, and missile tubes forward. One issue is that many SB ships have launch tubes. I have added these to the extant SB mod as you know, but the player can still throw turrets where tubs belong, for example, and the ships will look weird if they do. No way around that. I suppose a “read me” is in order, showing what slots are tubes.
Does displacing the module on the UI for module placement displace the weapon even if linked (in parenthesis) to the actual turret sprite? I was thinking there might be a standard whereby we place all “non-turret” weapons in a certain place on the design UI. Perhaps all non-turret weapons get loaded on the front of the ship.
I agree with the “blast containment” stuff, though I think I might up the hitpoints of many SB modules as well. “Armor” in GSB has an absorption value, but no hitpoints. What happens when armor has hitpoints? Anyone tried this? That might be something to test.
All SB missiles are pretty powerful. I was thinking that guided weapons should be very powerful (a small number take out a frigate, and maybe twice that take out a CA/BB), but we can have ECM and defensive weapons that can shoot them down. For the anime sense of loads of swirling missiles flying, decoys for all, perhaps.
Short ranged defensive lasers indeed work to make the attack fighters drive to their actual targets, combined with my use of the offset forward torpedo module. The only problem is that on a “blank” fighter hull, you cannot place the torpedo if you wish to design it yourself, since it is off the screen.
I tried a range of 40 for the lasers on fighters, and it certainly works (min range 0). Slightly larger might work. I will try an offset astern tonight, as my fighters were almost never even getting inside defensive range.
Not ideal, but better than how it was working with more “stock” settings.
I need to zip up 0.71 and throw it out there for anyone who wants to mess with it. I’ll see if I can get that out tonight for you.
My wife is on call tonight and last I heard taking someone to the OR, so I have to get my daughter at Girl Scouts, then feed the kids, bedtime, etc, so I won’t have a zip file upped til later tonight (4 hours, anyway, to be safe). Sorry. 0.71 is not hugely changed from 0.61, though.
Some pictures and picture links since the zip needs a little tweaking, and I was simply too beat to do it.
s583.photobucket.com/user/MadKal … t=6&page=1
Some Gamilon ships:
angelfire.com/nc3/uchusenkan … amilas.htm
Dunno how they get Yamato as being so very much larger than the REAL Yamato (263m). She could be slightly longer with the engine sticking off the back, but not 70m.
What I have done so far cleaning up 0.71 so I can release it and have it worth your while.
New units:
EDF (UNCN):
Cosmo Tiger (black tiger) fighter. Small, fast.
New sprite for the Cosmo Zero
Gamilon:
CA (from 2199). The sprite is kinda meh, but those are easy to replace, and by the time we have a good one, maybe I can dial in the balance.
A new sprite for the ramhead fighter.
New module:
Autocannon for fighters. Very short range.
I changed many weapons. All the fighter stuff is either MUCH shorter range (think 50 instead of 300) except missiles. In the show they seem to use GUNS, and they shoot like a modern, or even WW2 fighter would with guns (the target fills the gunsight). This seems to get them to get less distracted.
General balance changes, though still VERY up in the air. The gamilons are too weak. The early UNCN ships should tend to blow up, sadly. We only have a few though. The later EDF CA and DDs can be tougher. Added gamilon names to their chatter. Altered names for edf to make some nods to the japanese.
To do list (not for 0.71, but moving ahead):
- set the race file to disallow ALL vanilla tech.
- Make new copies of all vanilla tech needed that are suitable.
- Alter the pricing on many (earth should cost more, they need to be underdogs).
- Some scenarios that don’t stink might be nice
- Experiment with using different weapon types for primary armament to see which has the right feel.
Cosmo Tiger:
Gamilon torpedo bomber (Ramhead on some lists):
HI all,
As this has been dormant for a while, I thought I would update everyone.
To be honest, what I thought was going to be a collaboration sadly turned out not to be. I was pretty much shut out, got busy with other things and then this project fell off the radar. Taking in to account that development for GSB has stopped and it’s looking very likely that GSB 2will go ahead, I think there isn’t much point continuing down this path for now.
Once GSB 2 is here, I’ll get back in to it.
Sorry everyone, I meant well but it wasn’t to be this time.
Shut out? I kept posting in the hopes of collaboration, but stopped when it was just me (as I did the first time). This engine has serious flaws for doing anything really interesting (posted about in some detail in multiple threads), so I’m not really gonna bust my chops when there is no one participating (or even interested apparently), except me.
Look at the posts above, the only new material was from me. You want to work on it, let’s go! Just post everything here, I don’t work in secret, I blog on forums like this in near real time if I am working. You guys had new ships, right? Never saw them. Had they been posted here (they are just sprites after all) they’d already be in game.
