WCU ships in Privateer

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Post by Gosshawk »

The banshee is from the armada line acording to WCIC and I couldn't find anything about the cutlass, specificly its time line.

Besides that, what are your thoughts on their role and alignment. I know you were thinking pirate, but they seem a little advanced in the time line for that. But I'm not sure.
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Post by z30 »

Gosshawk wrote:The banshee is from the armada line acording to WCIC and I couldn't find anything about the cutlass, specificly its time line.

Besides that, what are your thoughts on their role and alignment. I know you were thinking pirate, but they seem a little advanced in the time line for that. But I'm not sure.


Are the Banshee & Cutlass models any good? Where do you think they should be placed at their tech level?

re: Raptor , I'd rather stick to the JFS specs as much as possible. I'll try playing around with the thrust & manuevering values so it will have the feel of a heavy fighter - not a heavy freighter.

I think a lot of the models in WCU were done by people who were good at modelling but never played the original WC series and didn't have the feel of how a medium/heavy vessel should handle. Or how different a heavy fighter handles vs. a heavy freighter.

Most of the disconnects with WC lore occur at the heavy fighter class , the Jalkehi & Raptor handled very differently from what were described :

http://experts.about.com/e/r/ra/Raptor_ ... ighter.htm

I also dont' remember the original Raptor being this sluggish.

We have to be careful of taking those particular units entries as gospel truth. The light fighter entries seem to be ok.

Leave the heavy fighter balancing to me, if need be I'll check the Scimitar specs and scale the Raptor values accordingly.
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Neat CSV editor

Post by z30 »

I found a neat CSV file editor at this link :

http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/u ... 29217.html

It has a facility for moving columns and checking the integrity of the CSV file among other things. Will try it out and give feedback, I was getting tired of how fat Excel & OpenOffice were :)
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Post by z30 »

Gosshawk wrote:
I had the rapto at 12 upgrade spaces and it had two tungsten armors installed. It made it, imo, more like a heavy fighter and distinguishes it from lighter ships more. I changed it to 14 to give a little more flexability. I'm thinking 14-20 for heavy craft would work, 10-14 for medium, and 8-10 for light craft. might shift the numbers up a little. but the limited space for light ships would force more careful consideration for upgrades. Light ships would have 1 armor and 1 shield, 2 each likly for medium craft, and 3 or 4 for heavy craft. what do you think? It would have to be a ship to ship thing, making the different ships, well, different.

As far as the krant goes, it depends on where this mod going as to who gets it. If we go the retro war route, then they should get it. If we do something els, then maybe a pirate vessel, or kilrathi.
Hello Goss, I've started standardizing the existing craft to the ff. specs

Light fighters 10 upgrade spaces, 3 system jump range
Medium fighters 13 upgrade spaces, 6 system jump range
Heavy fighters 16 upgrade spaces, 9 system jump range

Light traders 13 upgrade spaces, 6 system jump range
Medium traders 16 upgrade spaces , 9 system jump range
Heavy traders 19 upgrade spaces, 12 system jump range

I better save this entire thread to a log file, its a great way of tracing back how a particular feature came about.
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Post by z30 »

A snapshot of the Hunter OrionMk2,. This variant has two turrets, cockpit & rear, two hull guns and one missile launcher. Jump capacity and upgrade space standardized and top speed is 800kps.

Reactor & shields are just level 4 though :)
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Post by Gosshawk »

Thats all great z30. Geting heavy fighters right is tricky, especially since some heavy fighters were up gunned light or medium fighters. Plus the fact that military ship would be more manueverable and faster than their civilian counterparts, simply because of tecnology available to the military.

The upgrade spaces look good, but maybe there should be a bit of a difference between military and civilian ships. As in military ships having 2 more upgrade spaces. Also, some of the military craft didn't have jumpdrives at all. They relied on their carriers. I don't know if that would work, maybe just stick to reduced jump fuel.

I'll check on the models themselves later and let you know.
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Post by z30 »

Gosshawk wrote:Thats all great z30. Geting heavy fighters right is tricky, especially since some heavy fighters were up gunned light or medium fighters. Plus the fact that military ship would be more manueverable and faster than their civilian counterparts, simply because of tecnology available to the military.

The upgrade spaces look good, but maybe there should be a bit of a difference between military and civilian ships. As in military ships having 2 more upgrade spaces. Also, some of the military craft didn't have jumpdrives at all. They relied on their carriers. I don't know if that would work, maybe just stick to reduced jump fuel.

I'll check on the models themselves later and let you know.

I've retained the upgrade values for the Stilleto and the other mil craft (12) since these were at the upper limit of the light fighter range. Ditto for their above normal ranges since some were patrol craft.

Hmm... that gives me an idea, will check those values again.

fyi, the cutting and pasting the Raptor & Krant values onto units.csv is crashing my game and making it act weirdly. Nothing wrong with the figures and columns, could be some embedded invisible characters.

[Edit : Could be Excels quirky handling of large CSV files]
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Post by Gosshawk »

Could be, or something else. Take the entries out and see what happens. I've had no issues whatsoever.

Now, on to the bad news. Banshee is from WC4. Banshee bomber model Does not look good or right. I suggest dumping both.

The good news. Cutlass looks sweet, and will likly work as a pirate or militia craft. Given its a collection of parts from the Scimitar and Raptor, It could be used for either. however, using it and the raptor as militia craft may be best. Maybe give the pirates modified civilian ships.

Militia: Sparrowhawk/Hornet/Kukri/Scemitar or rapier/Raptor/Cutlass
Confed: Stiletto/Rapier II/Sabre/Broadsword
Hunter: Talon/Hornetcvl/Demon/Orion and varients/Centurian/Galaxy HKs
Merchant: Tarsus/TarsusMk2/Orion M/Galaxy/
Retros: Talon/Salthi/Krant
Pirates: Talon/Demon/Centurian/Orion/Galaxy

Something like this maybe?
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Raptor

Post by z30 »

There are some ships in WCU & Privateer that are just so beautiful in design that even a relatively unifinished or roughly textured model can't hide the underlying elegant lines of the ship.

The Ferret is one good example, the Raptor is another.

Currently the ship in PR handles like a heavy fighter, tweaks have to be done to adjust the acceleration (too fast) and the weapon configs (too stock & light, this is meant to be pilotable/usable as heavy fighter) but its getting there.

I also don't like the default cockpit (Gladius), maybe the Centurion's would work much better.

Comments & suggestions appreciated, you can all thank Goss for porting this particular model over.
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Post by micheal_andreas_stahl »

I down loaded some thing to add the hornet and some thing else. i put it in to the cvs file and the marster parts thing in but when i go to buy either ship i get some error message with lots og zero's.
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Post by Gosshawk »

Six heavy weapons mounts feel about right. Put six Tachyons on the Raptor, then tell me it's to light a gun fighter. Other than that, I left the weapons mix the same as WCU except where there were weapons not in PR.

We need more cockpits. Are there any in WCU? Can anybody make some?
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Post by z30 »

Gosshawk wrote:Could be, or something else. Take the entries out and see what happens. I've had no issues whatsoever.

Now, on to the bad news. Banshee is from WC4. Banshee bomber model Does not look good or right. I suggest dumping both.

The good news. Cutlass looks sweet, and will likly work as a pirate or militia craft. Given its a collection of parts from the Scimitar and Raptor, It could be used for either. however, using it and the raptor as militia craft may be best. Maybe give the pirates modified civilian ships.

Militia: Sparrowhawk/Hornet/Kukri/Scemitar or rapier/Raptor/Cutlass
Confed: Stiletto/Rapier II/Sabre/Broadsword
Hunter: Talon/Hornetcvl/Demon/Orion and varients/Centurian/Galaxy HKs
Merchant: Tarsus/TarsusMk2/Orion M/Galaxy/
Retros: Talon/Salthi/Krant
Pirates: Talon/Demon/Centurian/Orion/Galaxy

Something like this maybe?
Scrap the Banshee but we'll put in the Cutlass as a militia medium fighter as in your list.

I'm not too comfortable with the Pirates having the Galaxy ship as it's too complex and high end for their facilities, same argument against them having the Centurion.

Retro line seems ok, hunters wouldn't settle for Talon fighter as it's too low end and jump range too low. Hornetcvl looks good in the hunter line up though as their lowend light fighter).

I think the Demon should be more expensive than it currently is, maybe 150k?
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Post by z30 »

micheal_andreas_stahl wrote:I down loaded some thing to add the hornet and some thing else. i put it in to the cvs file and the marster parts thing in but when i go to buy either ship i get some error message with lots og zero's.
Just wait for the 1.1 alpha patch Micheal, it should be out in a few days.
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Post by Gosshawk »

The pirates can get there hands on any ship they can hijak. Maybe just make them very rare, if possible. And maybe less equipment and lower specs due to lack of proper maintenance fascilities.

Demon being more expensive is a good idea.

The talon could be a starting ship the same way the tarsus is. A hand me down from a hunter relative.

The Cutlass is classified as a heavy fighter, but makes more sense as a medium fighter. So we'll go with that.

Banshee scrapped.

Gladius. What do we do with it?
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Post by z30 »

Gosshawk wrote:Six heavy weapons mounts feel about right. Put six Tachyons on the Raptor, then tell me it's to light a gun fighter. Other than that, I left the weapons mix the same as WCU except where there were weapons not in PR.

We need more cockpits. Are there any in WCU? Can anybody make some?
I'm tending more to 4 light/medium wing gun mounts and 2 heavy gun mounts for the hull. This follows the stock Raptor weapon pattern while providing the player which more options.

I think it's very important to try and keep each ship addition to PR unique, the kind of weapons carried on each location of a stock WC ship is a good guide on which direction weapon modifications should go.

For missiles maybe 2 eight round light/medium launchers and one five round heavy missile launcher in the middle.

The nice thing about this ship is you can buy and decently equip one with 500k. The 1200kph top speed means you can get buy with just level 2 or 3 shields.

Also talked to my friend and I was right, the original Raptor in WC did not maneuver as clumsily as the WCU stock Raptor manuevers. I'll increase the maneuverability to something more decent.
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Post by Gosshawk »

Stock numbers from wcu are 120/120/120 and makes it to maneuverable in my opinion. The 60/50/60 numbers are from Joans. somewhere in between should be good. Maybe 100/90/100?

Also, the gun mounts were direct from WCU. But, 4 mediums and 2 heavys might be a good mix. I tend to favor the tachyons, hence I like the heavy mounts.
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Post by z30 »

Gosshawk wrote:Stock numbers from wcu are 120/120/120 and makes it to maneuverable in my opinion. The 60/50/60 numbers are from Joans. somewhere in between should be good. Maybe 100/90/100?

Also, the gun mounts were direct from WCU. But, 4 mediums and 2 heavys might be a good mix. I tend to favor the tachyons, hence I like the heavy mounts.
Your weapon config for the Raptor was dead on , no complaints there. This is a very good ship, I could actually kill things with 2 particle guns and 4 lasers.

100/90/100 looks good considering how boosted the Gothri specs are compared to JSF specs. I'll try 90/80/90 first then scale up and see which is better.

Do you think we should mess around with the Centurion? There are a lot of Centurion fanatics out there and I'm worried we'll draw too much flack for making variants.

But then the stock PR Centurion isn't that really attractive an option considering that it manuevers like a beached whale and is such a large target.
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Consistent missile loading

Post by z30 »

Here is what I'm thinking :

Light Fighters - total of 10 missiles, distributed any which way. 2 five rounders, 1 10 rounder, 3 launchers (4/2/4) etc.

Medium fighters - total of 20 missiles

Heavy fighters - total of 30 missiles

Missile load will also be adjusted depending on ship lore & balance consideratons.

Also, I'm thinking that militia ships will favor missiles for quick kills and because the militia never stray that far away from their home bases. Resupply shouldn't be a problem in that case.

For merchanters, the concern is to kill or distract the enemy as quickly as possible and get away. So heavy missile loads also makes sense here.

We'll keep the stock ship missile loads as is for the Tarsus, Demon etc - I don't want to disorient players by messing around too much with their favorite stock ships.

A little variance is also good, as the quote from Pirates of Carribean goes "it's not a rule, more like a guideline" (not exact quote:)
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Post by Gosshawk »

Sounds good.

Theres not much to improve with the centurion. Four gun mounts, two missile racks and a turret, with enough cargo space to make small cargo runs. Improve the maneuverability slightly and it should be fine. The reason the demon is a better ship is its speed and maneuverability, and its quad set of guns almost dead on the centerline. I think we should take away the heavy guns from the demon. Maybe even the medium. I know taking the Tachs away would make a difference for player ships, but the particle cannons would still be extremely deadly. Four light guns in such a tight package would still be effective. Would make more sense to upgrade to the centurion in that case. Demons more of a dogfighter, while the centurian is more of a multi role. Not really great in any aspect, But good enough to do what you ask of it.

What about creating a longer range missile, like the pheonix from the f-14?
Make them a special class for cirtain heavy fighters. Might be a suitable matchup with the less maneuverable fighters. Give them a handfull of longrange on hit one kill missiles.
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Post by z30 »

Gosshawk wrote:The pirates can get there hands on any ship they can hijak. Maybe just make them very rare, if possible. And maybe less equipment and lower specs due to lack of proper maintenance fascilities.

Demon being more expensive is a good idea.

The talon could be a starting ship the same way the tarsus is. A hand me down from a hunter relative.

The Cutlass is classified as a heavy fighter, but makes more sense as a medium fighter. So we'll go with that.

Banshee scrapped.

Gladius. What do we do with it?
Got this quote from an old post from the wcunews site, Spirit was the creator of the Cutlass :

http://www.crius.net/zone/showthread.php?t=18210
SpiritPlumber wrote:
Old 06-11-2005, 09:33 #17
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The reason for this is that the lasers use very little energy and allow the turrets to keep shooting pretty much continuously, the idea is that you do your fighting with the big guns, and the turrets prevent your target's shields from regenerating.

Re Cutlass: Every WC game introduced new ships. The Cutlass is basically a slightly upgraded Scimitar, not some kind of superfighter... if a fan game had introduced the Dragon we'd all have (and rightfully so) screamed munchkin. I think that the model is beautiful I will leave the Cutlass in as it adds all of 200kb to the download and, if we want to disable it, we can do so in about fifty seconds (less if we're good with grep). Right now we really should keep as many things as possible... I thought it was a beautiful ship and wanted to see it fly in its element, is all :) I WILL remove the Delphinus though, that was just me playing around with Wings3D, and it has nothing to do with Wing Commander (it was supposed to be the space version of the skyship from Skies of Arcadia).

What I was thinking as a way to make everyone happy was to take the Cutlass model and "map" it to some fighter we have heard about in the novels, but we don't know what it looks like -- again, it's a beautiful ship and should fly. Would that be acceptable? ^_^ I thought i came up with a cute backstory for that ship design, but it doesn't matter to me, I just want to make sure that the MODEL is in because it's beautiful. There's plenty of ships we've seen mentioned in novels which we don't know what they look like, and since the Cutlass model has a WC1 look, it should fit right in with the pre-wc1 stories.
I have this strong feeling we should touch base with her on what directions the Cutlass should take in our mod. Also note her turret design comments.

I don't know what to do with the Gladius, it's one of the least efficient fighting ships in the game. The Xwing gun spread factor isn't that bad for the Hornet or the Raptor but it really cripples this particular craft.

It also maneuvers like a heavy and is easy to hit for some reason. I've tried pushing the Glad to its envelope and its really very mediocre for what its supposed to do.

We can keep it around as a militia craft but one thats being phased out.

Fyi, the Kukhri missile complement will be upgraded to 2 five rounder Light/medium mounts & one 10 rounder heavy mount to keep it in line with the new additions.
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Post by z30 »

Gosshawk wrote:Sounds good.

Theres not much to improve with the centurion. Four gun mounts, two missile racks and a turret, with enough cargo space to make small cargo runs. Improve the maneuverability slightly and it should be fine. The reason the demon is a better ship is its speed and maneuverability, and its quad set of guns almost dead on the centerline. I think we should take away the heavy guns from the demon. Maybe even the medium. I know taking the Tachs away would make a difference for player ships, but the particle cannons would still be extremely deadly. Four light guns in such a tight package would still be effective. Would make more sense to upgrade to the centurion in that case. Demons more of a dogfighter, while the centurian is more of a multi role. Not really great in any aspect, But good enough to do what you ask of it.

What about creating a longer range missile, like the pheonix from the f-14?
Make them a special class for cirtain heavy fighters. Might be a suitable matchup with the less maneuverable fighters. Give them a handfull of longrange on hit one kill missiles.
Agreed - the Demon's power plant won't support heavy guns reliably anyway except for tachs.

I was actually trying to make a missile that could make a jump and hit the bogeys on the other side :)

We badly need a missile that will not require two missile mounts to make a kill. So a heavy missile , long range type would be good specially for the Kukhri and other ships that only have one such mount that can carry it.

This new missile won't be a feature in the new missile turrets, I don't think it will fit.
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Post by Gosshawk »

Definately not a turret missile. Strictly and intercepter missile. What about converting the gladius to an intecepter. Since its on the way out, the militia will want to upgrade it cheaply to get a few more years out if it. Like and old knifefighter not able to keep up with the new guys, brings a longer weapon to keep them a bay. Pair of intercepter gladius fires off their payload and runs home while the dogfighters mop up.

Inorder to hit targets on the otherside, we would need to be able to see whats over there. I don't think its possible with this game.

We probably should at least ask if we can use the Cutlass. Is a nice looking fighter.
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Post by z30 »

Gosshawk wrote:Definately not a turret missile. Strictly and intercepter missile. What about converting the gladius to an intecepter. Since its on the way out, the militia will want to upgrade it cheaply to get a few more years out if it. Like and old knifefighter not able to keep up with the new guys, brings a longer weapon to keep them a bay. Pair of intercepter gladius fires off their payload and runs home while the dogfighters mop up.

Inorder to hit targets on the otherside, we would need to be able to see whats over there. I don't think its possible with this game.

We probably should at least ask if we can use the Cutlass. Is a nice looking fighter.
http://tactics.solsector.net/borgers/fighter.htm

Take a look at the Lance Torpedo specs, our PR torps are supposed to be able to lock on though slowly. Slow velocity too - which explains why these are used mainly on capital ships.

Lock times for IR, IFF and HS are also shorter.

Hmm...Gladius with 3 missile launchers ?
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Post by Gosshawk »

The proton torpedo is a comercialy available torpedo, hence no guidance system. The lonce is a military torpedo. maybe equip broadswords with them, but not available to the public. Confed does not want civilians running around with capship killers.

I think there should be a new classification of weapons. put a few weapons in the military catagory, and give the confed craft a military entry. eg ;;;light medium heavy military autotracking;

Lock times are probably for the military varient.

Gladius missile fighter. Make it like the first F-4's maybe? Lots of missiles, but no gun.
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Post by z30 »

Gosshawk wrote:The proton torpedo is a comercialy available torpedo, hence no guidance system. The lonce is a military torpedo. maybe equip broadswords with them, but not available to the public. Confed does not want civilians running around with capship killers.

I think there should be a new classification of weapons. put a few weapons in the military catagory, and give the confed craft a military entry. eg ;;;light medium heavy military autotracking;

Lock times are probably for the military varient.

Gladius missile fighter. Make it like the first F-4's maybe? Lots of missiles, but no gun.
Sounds great - that would make the military craft unique and give "obsolete" mil craft like the Raptor something extra.

I love the missile gladius idea - it sounds like it just might work and would add flavor to the game.

Dropped Spirit a note fyi ,hope it gets to her.
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