The Nephilim in Nexus (Note: Image heavy)

Thanks again for the quick reply. I intend to get back into the Nexus SP campaign shortly where I left off, so as to get a better feel for the gameplay dynamics and how the mod should play out.

Exarch said:
The Kilrathi Light Destroyer currently cannot harm the Midway. I looked up the ship on the CIC database, and did notice it had a classified weapon. Is this an anti-capital ship weapon?
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I'm not entirely certain, the Ships Database tends to reflect the official game literature, which I believe often omits certain, known, standard weapons because they weren't possible to implement in the game engines. These weapons were either fleshed out elsewhere in the game literature or subsequently in the novelisations.

I would think that Loaf would be the best person to ask here on this issue. There has been a fair bit of discussion on the topic over time on the forum, as this search for "capital ship weapons" outlines.

While by no means definitive I'm sure, I believe WC capital ships are described variously as having mulit-layered defensive systems, ranging (depending on class, build era, etc) from:

1. Multiple, small point-defense, anti-fighter batteries (which have generally not been realised in the game engines so far),
2. Ubiquitous dual-laser turrets
3. Anti-Matter Gun (AMG) turrets (prevalent on heavier capital ships, such as cruisers)
4. (Multiple) Missile and/or Torpedo launchers
5. Capital Ship Missile (CSM) capability
6. High-yield anti-capital ship weapons
7. Flak weapons.
8. Special (Phase Transit Cannon on the Concordia, Plasma Gun on the Midway, etc).

In the Locanda series in Wing Commander 3 it becomes evident that the Kilrathi Light Destroyer has a CSM capability when it launches the bio-weapon missile. Although listed with 8 laser turrets, IIRC at least two of those were AMG's as implemented in gameplay.

I'm not sure how malleable the Nexus engine is in terms of adding weapons capability -- although you seem to be very proficient with it, Exarch -- or how keen you are take on additional workload, as well as gameplay balancing for all the different weapon systems?

Since I don't believe that the implementation of capital ship weapons has ever been addressed in such scope in one of the games or mods before, perhaps it would be a good idea to shoot Loaf an e-mail or catch him on IRC to discuss the weapons question in more detail, particurlarly any canon issues and what you feel can be successfully implemented in a balanced and timely fashion?

Anyway, thanks again for updates -- it looks to be shaping up nicely!

Cheers,


BrynS
 
Interesting... I never thought that there'd be more than what is listed in the database.

The only trouble I'm having with weapons capability is getting a weapon to shoot at both capital ships and fighters. I wouldn't mind at all to add more guns into the game, especially if it meant more exciting fights between capital ships. More workload isn't much of an issue at this point. Modding the game is very streamlined and efficient. Basically, everything is done in an excel spreadsheet, and a macro exports the file into the .ini file that the game reads. It's very helpful and speeds things up greatly.

Balancing the weapon systems will be interesting, I'm sure, but for the moment, I'm not worried about that too much. Once the first run of the mod is released, the players can help determine what is overpowered and what isn't. At the moment, it seems to play very well, but I only have a handful of ships and weapons, so that could potentially change drastically.

The only concern I have is that weapon systems are limited to 24 slots. Multiple turrets can be tied to one slot, but only one would fire at a time. Furthermore, they are divided between normal guns (capital ship weapons), flak weapons, and siege weapons (non-turreted superweapons). Currently I have it set as 9 slots devoted to flak, 4 to normal weapons, and 1 to siege. I could change the division of weapons easily, but I don't want to limit one type too much, if that makes sense, especially anti-fighter weapons, as I'm sure that comprises the majority of weapon systems in Wing Commander.

And I've asked LOAF about WC issues before, and I've enjoyed his input. I'm hoping to work closely with him in making sure the mod is true to Wing Commander, and this sounds like something that definitely needs some attention. Thanks for the input, BrynS, I'll look into it ASAP.

As for the Tiamat size, you have to remember, the Midway is 1.8 kilometers long. 4 kilometers is very long. 22 kilometers is insane. Only three of those Kilrathi dreadnoughts were built, and for very good reason. The Tiamat's length of 4 kilometers is not short at all, but actually very large.
 
Exarch said:
Interesting... I never thought that there'd be more than what is listed in the database.

The only trouble I'm having with weapons capability is getting a weapon to shoot at both capital ships and fighters. I wouldn't mind at all to add more guns into the game, especially if it meant more exciting fights between capital ships. More workload isn't much of an issue at this point. Modding the game is very streamlined and efficient. Basically, everything is done in an excel spreadsheet, and a macro exports the file into the .ini file that the game reads. It's very helpful and speeds things up greatly.

Balancing the weapon systems will be interesting, I'm sure, but for the moment, I'm not worried about that too much. Once the first run of the mod is released, the players can help determine what is overpowered and what isn't. At the moment, it seems to play very well, but I only have a handful of ships and weapons, so that could potentially change drastically.

The only concern I have is that weapon systems are limited to 24 slots. Multiple turrets can be tied to one slot, but only one would fire at a time. Furthermore, they are divided between normal guns (capital ship weapons), flak weapons, and siege weapons (non-turreted superweapons). Currently I have it set as 9 slots devoted to flak, 4 to normal weapons, and 1 to siege. I could change the division of weapons easily, but I don't want to limit one type too much, if that makes sense, especially anti-fighter weapons, as I'm sure that comprises the majority of weapon systems in Wing Commander.

And I've asked LOAF about WC issues before, and I've enjoyed his input. I'm hoping to work closely with him in making sure the mod is true to Wing Commander, and this sounds like something that definitely needs some attention. Thanks for the input, BrynS, I'll look into it ASAP.

As for the Tiamat size, you have to remember, the Midway is 1.8 kilometers long. 4 kilometers is very long. 22 kilometers is insane. Only three of those Kilrathi dreadnoughts were built, and for very good reason. The Tiamat's length of 4 kilometers is not short at all, but actually very large.
Click to expand...

I agree that 1.8 km is large for a ship. I feel the Tiamat is really large, even larger than the dreadnought. It takes forever for me to fly across that Tiamat. Even thousands of meters away, it is still large.
 
Exarch said:
Also interesting to note is that the Shrikes are carrying 6 torpedoes each fighter. By the time they finally destroyed the dreadnought, they were empty. 6 torpedoes times 3 fighters times 6 squadrons equals approximately 324 torpedoes spent, minus the torps that died with the bombers that got shot down.
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6 * 3 * 6 = 108

Those are great shots anyhow.

Exarch said:
As for the Tiamat size, you have to remember, the Midway is 1.8 kilometers long. 4 kilometers is very long. 22 kilometers is insane. Only three of those Kilrathi dreadnoughts were built, and for very good reason. The Tiamat's length of 4 kilometers is not short at all, but actually very large.
Click to expand...

The Tiamat is actually closer to 3 kilometers long. The Kilrathi Dreadnoughts were huge, but they weren't as massive as their length would imply. We know the name of three of them, but I think we see more than that.
 
ChrisReid said:
6 * 3 * 6 = 108
Click to expand...

Either my calculator needs to be looked at, or else I need my brain checked. Thanks, Chris. :p

The Tiamat was simply a guess when comparing it next to the Midway. Looking at it again, 3 km is probably a little more accurate.
 
Fantastic shots, however I have to ask. How far along into a playable demo is released? For a while now I've been seeing screenshots of people importing WC ships into Nexus and talking about their plans for a full mod. I'd be satisfied with just someone releasing a playable demo mission where you fight against a generic Nephilim force with limited Confed forces...you don't have to import every single Confed ship...just WCP ships would be fine like what you have here. Just curious.
 
Well, technically, it's playable right now. However, I'd like to add in a few more ships to make things more interesting. It's my goal to release something over this Spring break while I have the time to seriously work on it, but I can't give anything specific yet.
 
Do you need the Nexus game in order to play this mod? Will the Nexus demo be sufficient enough to play your mod?
 
It will require the full game, I'm afraid. But it's a great game in and of itself even without the Wing Commander mod. If you can find it, I'd say it's worth the price.
 
Are there any plans to animate the movement of the giant alien ship's limbs? I know the prophecy movies had the giant alien motherships move the limbs or open up port of the hull to fire the energy weapons
 
That has been something I have considered, but at this moment, it's not part of the official plan. I'll continue thinking about it, and as the mod gets closer to completion, I'll know more about that.
 
Alright, I'm going to turn the tide on this Q&A session and ask all of you something. :p

I'm going to give you all a choice on what you want for the first release. Basically, you have two choices.

Option 1: I can reasonably add in most if not all ships planned for the mod, complete with proper weapon loadouts and most everything else. However, I would leave the high resolution textures out of the mod, except the ones I've already completed. While you guys are having fun with the mod, I'll be working on updating the rest of the textures for a future release. This would maximize the gameplay experience, but minimize the graphical quality on the first release.

Option 2: I continue doing what I am now and add in a few more ships complete with their new textures. This would ensure everything looks like it fits together, but at the same time, it may not be as fun to play as the first option.

As you may have guessed, I'm leaning towards Option 1, but I wanted to ask you which you would prefer the most.
 
callous said:
Are there any plans to animate the movement of the giant alien ship's limbs? I know the prophecy movies had the giant alien motherships move the limbs or open up port of the hull to fire the energy weapons
Click to expand...

I don't think the limbs really moved, and the ship with the big opening port was the Kraken.
 
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