Slightly modified Standoff screenshots

-danr-

Vice Admiral
So, with absolutely no intention of insulting the brilliance of the project that is Standoff, I decided to throw in some WC3 ships in the spirit of making things feel a little more '2669'...

With a little education from reading old threads on this board, I've found its quite straight forward to use TREman, and then switch ship IFF, MESH and MAT files.

I made the following changes:

Gladius --> Now Thunderbolt (the mesh from SO)
Kamekh --> Now Kamrani
Stilletto --> Now WC3 Arrow (mesh downloaded from the CIC)
Drakhri --> Now Dralthi 3
Gothri --> Now Vaktoth
Pirate Talon --> Now Scimitar (Thanks to the UE model)

and here are the results (sorry about low quality, no graphics hardware with any balls I'm afraid)....

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Hope you don't take this as an insult to your game.

The only reccomendation I can make is to switch the IFF files manually once extracted from the TREs, avoid using WCPEdit as it will modify all the game's weapons back to the Prophecy equivalents - and you'll lose the Standoff ones.

Thanks again to the team for the great game that is Standoff, I may get flamed for this post, but I'm by no means trying to suggest I've improved it - just my own take on things.
 
That's neat, I'm certainly happy to see people modding Standoff :).


...But it would be better still if you updated the textures, engine flames, etc. to make use of all the special effects Standoff has to offer :).
 
That's really neat to see. The newer Kilrathi Corvette mixed in with the others makes it look like the next generation technology is beginning to replace the old. That shot makes me think of how the US military still used a WWII era battleship in the first Gulf War along with newer naval ships. That would've likely had a psychological effect on Confed pilots defending earth against not only overwhelming odds, but also next generation technology. Nice work -danr-.
 
See, this is what happens when ships get lost in during Jumps, they go back in time to the Terran-Kilrathi war!
 
Thanks for your comments, yep, unregistered is right, some of these models are from Prophecy...but they don't seemed to have changed much since their apperances in WC3 so I think they fit in alright - the Kilrathi Vaktoth and Dralthi especially wouldn't have been modified much since the end of the war, the cats didn't have the resources.

I agree Whoopass, about combining old and new ships - and thanks for your praise. One of the things I like most about Standoff is that we're still flying Sabres and Rapiers in 2669, at a time of war, Confed would have needed every working fighter it had left, and that includes some of the older models, never liked the way WC3 replaced most of the best ships from its predecessor - in true war, ships of all generations would come up against each other. It's very interesting to take on a Hhriss in a Thunderbolt, or fight a Scimitar against a Vaktoth.

Taking advantage of Standoff's textures is something I'm tinkering with right now, yes, as you can tell, I'm quite the amateur.
 
One of the things I like most about Standoff is that we're still flying Sabres and Rapiers in 2669, at a time of war, Confed would have needed every working fighter it had left, and that includes some of the older models, never liked the way WC3 replaced most of the best ships from its predecessor - in true war, ships of all generations would come up against each other. It's very interesting to take on a Hhriss in a Thunderbolt, or fight a Scimitar against a Vaktoth.

And in the background, that is indeed what was happening in Wing Commander. From a gameplay point of view and with a team of new artists, it makes sense to throw in a bunch of new designs, but the intent is not that suddenly all ships in WC3 are brand new just months after WC2. The vast majority of the ships we see in WC3 have existed for many years, which makes the pairings above fit well.
 
And in the background, that is indeed what was happening in Wing Commander. From a gameplay point of view and with a team of new artists, it makes sense to throw in a bunch of new designs, but the intent is not that suddenly all ships in WC3 are brand new just months after WC2. The vast majority of the ships we see in WC3 have existed for many years, which makes the pairings above fit well.

That, and with the ridiculously high casualties that the Confederation's front-line fighters (especially the Sabres and Broadswords) took at Sirius and Earth, it made sense to focus new construction on whatever could be built fastest. Hence the Hellcat V over the superior but doubtless harder to build and maintain Rapier II (Hurricane vs Spitfire, here, I think). Why the hell the Excalibur project wasn't cancelled at this point I have no idea. I mean, yeah, it turned out to be the weapon that won the war, but why are you building a superfighter when your primary strike fighters all just took 50-90% casualties? Wouldn't another dozen squadrons of Thunderbolts have been a better bet?
 
That, and with the ridiculously high casualties that the Confederation's front-line fighters (especially the Sabres and Broadswords) took at Sirius and Earth, it made sense to focus new construction on whatever could be built fastest. Hence the Hellcat V over the superior but doubtless harder to build and maintain Rapier II (Hurricane vs Spitfire, here, I think). Why the hell the Excalibur project wasn't cancelled at this point I have no idea. I mean, yeah, it turned out to be the weapon that won the war, but why are you building a superfighter when your primary strike fighters all just took 50-90% casualties? Wouldn't another dozen squadrons of Thunderbolts have been a better bet?

We don't know the true costs of building the newer fighter compared to the old fighter, so we can't assume that 1 Excalibur > 1 Squadron of T-bolts in terms of cost. Also, remember that the Excalibur wasn't ever deemed a "superfighter" by Confed. It was just a new generation heavy fighter, further evidenced by the fact that we see them regularly in WC4.

Now, the Dragon was considered exorbitantly expensive, but that was a different kind of beast.
 
And in the background, that is indeed what was happening in Wing Commander.

I get the impression from some of the novels that this was the case, I seem to remember hearing that 'The Price Of Freedom' makes reference to Scimitars being used by the Border Worlds military long after the Kilrathi war. I think you hit the nail on the head as to why these ships didn't always show up in the games, it's all about design and gameplay, and fans would have been wanting to see and fly new ships, it's what keeps a sequel fresh.

As for the Rapier/Hellcat switch and the like, I like to pretend the reason we don't see the older ships in WC3 is because Confed began replacing the fleet after the battle of Earth, not necessary with newer technology - as has been pointed out, the first time we see the Hellcats and Thunderbolts they're already well-established craft.

I just wish they'd gone with the Broadsword instead of the Longbow in WC3, simply because it's a blast from the past for old fans and from the way I understand it was the backbone of Confed's bombing capabilities throughout the war. The reasons against it are pretty obvious though, it'd be hard to model it WC3-style and could you even fit one of those things in the Victory's hangar??
 
I always thought they made entirely new ships for WC3 because the 3D engine required much "blockier" object shapes, though i really like the design of those ships. I was kind of disappointed that the Wraith and the Gladius didn't find their way into the new game.
 
I always thought a good explanation for the change in standard ships could be that many of the factories that made Rapiers and Sabres were destroyed when the Kilrathi pushed to Earth and destroyed many of Confed's biggest colonies. We hear a hint in Action Stations that some government officials were pushing for the factories to be close to the front lines. We can also assume that the factories could be on one of those planets since many of them seemed relatively safe from Kilrathi attack during most of the war, and anything on Earth or farther from the lines would take a long time after building to get into the action.

The other reason is that the blockier designs could be easier to build and maintain. Confed had a big challenge post WC2 in fielding competitive fleet numbers which were ridiculously out of balance with the amount of craft the Kilrathi possessed.
 
Thankyou, Jason. Here's a Vaktoth, seconds before I got frustrated with the fact there's an armistice on and iced the furball. Unfortunately shooting him down seems to get Spoons on your case. *Note the VDU, telling me this is a Gothri, I'm still working out WCPPascal to change this.

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anything on Earth or farther from the lines would take a long time after building to get into the action.

I've often thought the same, the smaller outer-fringe factories and yards would have gotten a lot busier after the Terran colonies' batterings when the armistice ended. and there are probably a number of viable reasons for the shift in new craft, it would be interesting to see how much canon can be found on the subject. That along with Chris's original point, switching ships makes for a better new game.
 
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