SA-408 Bearcat Assault Fighter

Hadrian · Post by **Hadrian** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 12:17 pm

The SA-408 Bearcat is a assault fighter, commonly refered to as Space Superiority fighters. Fast, powerful, heavily armored and shielded they are terrifying combat platforms even in a rookies hands, in the hands of a veteran Ace they are the closest any living being can come to being a god.
The Bearcat carries four omni-class cannon mountings, two on the wing tips, two on the nose, and 4 multi-rail missile points on the wings, giving the Bearcat near limitless loadout options. Very dificult to produce, and expensive, few of the Bearcats will be made.

The model is actualy the first one I ever made, Ive been overhauling it. And yes, the Dragonfire fighter is based heavily on the Bearcat, I see the Dragonfire as a future version of the Bearcat.

tiny paintings · Post by **tiny paintings** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 1:44 pm

Looks pretty nice. Kind of cartoonish but that's not a bad thing if that's how you like it.
Good job on the cockpit, it adds a good sense of scale - it looks pretty big.
I have a few crits:
* It looks like the engine pod mount is hollow? If so, it looks a little weak.
* You spend a lot of (IMO, unnecessary) polygons in the engine nozzles (not that poly count is an issue here, since it's so low poly already).
* The flat-shading. Any particular reason why you're not using smooth shading?

Hadrian · Post by **Hadrian** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 2:35 pm

The engine pods arent hollow, just inset on the intake and exhaust. As for the textures, I just recently figured out adding the bloody things to a model in Wings3D, so I have no idea how to change from flat to smooth shading.

When I designed it for Starshatter three years back I was basing it off of my all time favorite fighter designs, the Raptor heavy fighter and Rapier medium fighters from the original Wing Commander, hence its "Cartoonish" look. And the fighter is big, even as a two seater its the size of most heavy bombers. My reasoning for its use as a fighter is the advanced Inertial damping and hull integrity systems, wich allows the fighter to not only move like a ship half its size, but allows the pilots to make full use of that manuverability, while keeping the firepower that one would expect on such a large frame. And while for me its still on the high poly side, for most systems you should be able to handle many of them. Total polycount is 1224 currently. I was able to drop about 1500 when I removed the original weapon pods on the wingtips and revamped the engine pods (the old pods didnt look right and were nearly 250 poly a piece)

tiny paintings · Post by **tiny paintings** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 3:04 pm

Hadrian wrote:The engine pods arent hollow, just inset on the intake and exhaust. As for the textures, I just recently figured out adding the bloody things to a model in Wings3D, so I have no idea how to change from flat to smooth shading.

I was refering to the engine pod mounts. The intake/exhaust insets I refered to as "engine nozzles"...

I can't remember how to switch between smooth and flat shading in wings (I'm a blenderhead now, and never going back!

), I did find AutoSmooth by right clicking though. Wings doesn't really have everything you'd want in that area, as it doesnt support variable edge creases - only an option for soft/hard edge.

Hadrian · Post by **Hadrian** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 3:58 pm

The Pods themselves are inset in the front and rear, but not hollow. Unlike the Dragonfire, they are standard aft thrust pusher turbine's wich also feed the main HVRCS system wich are the exhaust ports, wich is used when the fighter is at its cruising speed, about 500km/s. Given its mass, even with the ID system engaged it takes a massively powerful thruster system to push the fighter off a straight course, and hold it on its new one untill it overcomes its DeltaV.

The mounting pylons connecting the pods to the fuselage are solid, but inset. The reason for the pylons is the pods can be jetisoned in a extreme emergency situation, and a small set of chemical thrust engines in the aft of the fighter engaged, namely catastrophic damage to the turbine rendering them useless, or the reactor gets knocked offline wich renders the engines useless. The Chem thrusters will allow the bearcat to make its way home and dock, though at a subtantialy reduced speed.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 6:05 pm

There's nothing to take in through the intakes in the void of space, but the forward openings will serve as retro rockets, which are a very welcome change. Leave them as they are and, pending some changes in the engine, they'll ligth up when you deccelerate.
Nice work.
Maneuvering jets... Check out the "Windows, greebles and little things" thread.

Ares · Post by **Ares** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 9:14 am

JET ENGINES DO NOT WORK IN SPACE. Most burly work at all above 90,000 feet.

If they did you'd be able to take a 747 to Mars.

Hadrian · Post by **Hadrian** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 9:43 am

Ok people, who the frack said they were JET engines? Ive seen reapetedly assumptions that these are traditional jet engines, THEY ARENT.

They are ionic turbines. Why Turbines? there ARE free particles and trace elements in open space, the turbines collect those in the intake collectors, they are processed in the turbine and ejected out the back. The principal is the ONLY simularity between a Jet Turbine and a Ionic Turbine. Of course, even though its called a turbine, there are only a handfull of moving parts. What moves you ask? Magnetic constrictors. What do they do? They provide a series of magnetic fields that constrict and compress the ionic stream created in the earlier stages and then eject the highly compressed stream aft. The stream then creates a wave of opposite charged particles that flow towards the soure of the ion stream, causing a inverse pressure to build where the ion stream and particle wave meet, the vessel is pushed forward by the building pressure as it has nothing holding it in place. Hence movement. The more powerfull the ionic engine, the more ions, the stronger the wave, the faster the movement.

Hadrian · Post by **Hadrian** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 1:19 pm

Well, adding to the Bearcat, getting her finished off. Here is the latest incarnation, with the wing guns and for/aft/pitch/yaw RCS thruster ports.

here's a closeup of the RCS Port assembly

spiritplumber · Post by **spiritplumber** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 3:14 pm

n0ice!

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 1:40 am

Hadrian wrote:Ok people, who the frack said they were JET engines? Ive seen reapetedly assumptions that these are traditional jet engines, THEY ARENT.

They are ionic turbines. Why Turbines? there ARE free particles and trace elements in open space, the turbines collect those in the intake collectors, they are processed in the turbine and ejected out the back. The principal is the ONLY simularity between a Jet Turbine and a Ionic Turbine. Of course, even though its called a turbine, there are only a handfull of moving parts. What moves you ask? Magnetic constrictors. What do they do? They provide a series of magnetic fields that constrict and compress the ionic stream created in the earlier stages and then eject the highly compressed stream aft. The stream then creates a wave of opposite charged particles that flow towards the soure of the ion stream, causing a inverse pressure to build where the ion stream and particle wave meet, the vessel is pushed forward by the building pressure as it has nothing holding it in place. Hence movement. The more powerfull the ionic engine, the more ions, the stronger the wave, the faster the movement.

Vegastrike has fairly well established science canon. It tries, as much as possible, to stay within the confines of plausibility. The amount of particles in space is so dismally small that, when the possibility of collecting hydrogen from space as fuel was considered by NASA, the scoop was going to fold out to the diameter of Mars.
Those are retro thrusters, for decceleration, I'm telling ya...

Well, adding to the Bearcat, getting her finished off.

"Finished off"?!!! How many polys is it? You must be joking...

Hadrian · Post by **Hadrian** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:10 am

1852 polies, wich is where I was shooting. Im considering redoing the nosecone, see if I can get a better look. My target range was 2K max for it, any more then that is useless detail that will rarely be seen. Especialy since the mod Im working out wich will be made for both VS and Starshatter by matrix games, will have large numbers of these ships in space. the Starshatter version will have carriers with 48 of these a piece and can launch ALL of them when attacked dynamicaly, so you can understand why I try and keep the count as low as possible.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 5:02 am

VS can handle poly counts much higher than Starshatter, by the sounds of it.
I've seen battles in VS involving countless ships. Like once I was passing by a system and one human faction was attacking a space station of another, and I was friendly to both, so I spent like two hours watching. It was like an endless caravan of cap-ships, preceded by a stream of like a hundred torpedoes heading for the poor station, on top of battles raging all over the system.
Anyways, it's true you don't see much of a ship you're fighting, but you might end up flying next to it. And VS supports LOD also.
You should take a look around the ships people are working on; check the Content Development forum, for submitted ships that are sort of "officially approved", to get a rough idea of the level of detail that's expected.

Post by **klauss** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 7:51 pm

Chuck, you haven't seen battles with countless ships.
This is a battle with countless ships

But take a look at the FPS: 6. Well, most of the time it went around 10fps, and it's a heavily optimized version I'm working on. Current CVS goes at 1-3FPS.

PS: Pay special attention to the radar. Those aren't the asteroids showing.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 9:17 pm

Nice! How come the yellow color on the radar? And what's that gorgeous ship you're flying?

Post by **klauss** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 3:40 pm

About the yellow, I don't know. CVS shows the neutral ships yellow... but it didn't do that before. Someone must have changed it.

And the gorgeus ship is Strangelet's new cockpit. It's a little shifted upwards, but it's been fixed already (Those screenshots were originally for dandanman, who punched in the cockpit but couldn't test it propperly because CVS is missing a graphic fix I did to cockpits - glowmaps and specmaps didn't work right).

Just for numbers, those are 275 root units (without counting subunits - and that means asteroids are out). That, running at 10FPS, is a nice improvement IMO. Anyway, I just had 230 root units run at 40FPS. Neat. Given the number of capships, I wouldn't be surprised if, counting subunits, the total number of AI scripts running / collidable units was >1500 (without the asteroids). Add the 1k asteroids or so, and we're talking about 2500 collidables (collision is O(N^2) if the hashmap doesn't work right, that was what was making superbattles impossible, and some AI functions also took O(N^2)).

Now, there's a way to make it work at 50-60 FPS all the time. But it's a lot of work. It implies changing the 3d hashmap into a 4d hashmap. I don't know if I'm going to try that now, or leave it for later. It already works quite well, and some very important optimizations can be performed.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 4:14 pm

I knew that's Strangelet's new cockpit. But the ship, from the outside, is also pretty gorgeous; and I'd never seen it. Like it looks a bit segmented, exoskeletal, and having internal structure...

Post by **jackS** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 4:20 pm

klauss wrote:About the yellow, I don't know. CVS shows the neutral ships yellow... but it didn't do that before. Someone must have changed it.

And the gorgeus ship is Strangelet's new cockpit. It's a little shifted upwards, but it's been fixed already (Those screenshots were originally for dandanman, who punched in the cockpit but couldn't test it propperly because CVS is missing a graphic fix I did to cockpits - glowmaps and specmaps didn't work right).

Just for numbers, those are 275 root units (without counting subunits - and that means asteroids are out). That, running at 10FPS, is a nice improvement IMO. Anyway, I just had 230 root units run at 40FPS. Neat. Given the number of capships, I wouldn't be surprised if, counting subunits, the total number of AI scripts running / collidable units was >1500 (without the asteroids). Add the 1k asteroids or so, and we're talking about 2500 collidables (collision is O(N^2) if the hashmap doesn't work right, that was what was making superbattles impossible, and some AI functions also took O(N^2)).

Now, there's a way to make it work at 50-60 FPS all the time. But it's a lot of work. It implies changing the 3d hashmap into a 4d hashmap. I don't know if I'm going to try that now, or leave it for later. It already works quite well, and some very important optimizations can be performed.

@klauss: Danny and I have also been working on increasing the supportable number of ships - it would seem we should coordinate more closely lest we end up working at cross purposes. We have, for example, already constructed an alternative to the hash-map for initial collision pruning. I would be very interested in hearing what optimizations you have been pursuing, so that we can brainstorm more effectively - independence is great, but I think we're just being disorganized at the moment.

Post by **klauss** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 4:34 pm

@chuck: It's the corvette. Odd that you never saw it, it's pretty common for pirates, for instance, in VS. And yes, it's gorgeus. That's why I have it. Hacked my savegame to have it (not for sale, I think).

@jackS: I didn't know you were working on that, until dandanman told me. I've already written a lengthy description to Daniel, I could forward it to you too. I had also thought of a better pruning method, and it's on that mail. If you woud mail me what it is you were doing, we can brainstorm right away. I don't have your mail, or I lost it. Mine is klaussfreire at gmail com.

Hadrian · Post by **Hadrian** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 2:57 am

Its that kind of battle that I had in mind when I started designing my fighters. For the Starshatter version, they will be included with a MP "Persistent" campaign setup Im working on, wich will allow players to engage in a campaign against each other with a twist, a fully AI controled race hellbent on gencidaly whiping out both sides. That campaign can see as many of 7 carriers, each with 48-95 fighters, with a few extreme scale carrier dreadnoughts and carrier battleships, well over 3 miles in length and carrying 135-165 fighters/bombers. Given that the groups will have about 16 slots for each faction, plus the AI fighters, you can figure the number of strike craft in a game at any given moment.

1 CVBB, 165 fighters.
4 Line CV's, 95 fighters
3 Strike CV's, 48 fighters.
They launch a full strike against each other.

48 x 3 + 95 x 4 + 165 = 719

Now thats only the carriers fighter compliments, standard Battle Cruisers, DN's, BB's will have small compliments themselves, 6-12 depending on the class. One BB, two DN's and three BCH's per group.

BB, 12 fighters
DN, 8 fighters
BCH, 6 fighters

719 + 12 + 16 + 18 = 765

Now, the missions will also have stations with fighter compliments. These are entirely AI controlled, so lets say the station puts out 4 scout wings, 4 fighters each. thats a extra 16 onto the 765....

And that isnt including the AI controlled race, wich is near entirely strike craft driven....now you get the idea why low count is infinately better.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 3:13 am

Sounds like green and purple smoke will come out of the CPU, trying to compute collision detection, physics and AI for that many ships, long before the GPU gets even tickled.

Hadrian · Post by **Hadrian** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 5:25 am

thats a worst case scenario if everything is in one system, each "missin" in the campaign will have two to four starsystems, each system has 4 sectors. The most Ive had was a total of 200 ships ingame at one time, and I still had around 35FPS. But again, the models were medium poly, 1200-2200, with four to six LoD levels on each ship. When Im done, the fighters will have atleast four LoD levels in SS, and possibly more in VS. Of course, the CVBB and CVDN's will be restricted in number to one in a mission per faction, usualy only one in all honesty.

Post by **klauss** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 4:10 pm

Don't worry. Hellcat has a system which would easily handle 16k units at a time, all fighting in a terribly packed furball.

It's a very elegant system.

But has some serious drawbacks that make it terribly hard to integrate into the engine. We're discussing that, but that thing is most probably going in anyway.

Even my modifications, I just checked, handles fighters very efficiently. I just spawned 2000 of them, and the engine ran at 20-30 FPS. It's capships and beams the ones that kill the engine. I'll have to look into it.

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 4:39 pm

Klauss, this may sound like a radical suggestion, but....

I think, traditionally, shields are energy beam deflectors. Physical objects, like mass drivers, rail guns, and other projectiles should ignore them (but their munitions are limited stock and expensive to replace).
Beams, on the other hand, travel at the speed of light and therefore should all be like the VS beam arrays, instantaneously computed intersection of a line. This change would substantially lower the amount of items that have to be kept track of, trajectory-wise, while making the game both: more realistic AND more interesting. More realistic because these luminous bolts moving through space make no sense. And more interesting because of the conondrum in choosing between non-delayed (instantly frying) beams that have to get through shields and consume reactor power but are inexhaustible, and projectile weapons that ignore shields and consume no power but have delay, are limited in ammo, and expensive to restock.

Post by **klauss** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 5:09 pm

Problem with beams is that they're huge. That's a technical term: they span too many hashtable entries, and so are kept in a global collection. Beams don't go in the hashtable, but they do query it. Otherwise, they're mostly treated as you say, except for the shielding difference between the two.

Shields have a funny interaction with matter, IIRC, so matter is very sensitive to shields (and shields are very efficient in protecting you from projectiles).

Actually, you should clear that up with JackS. I'm not sure about that thing.