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Re: Capital ships - Carriers and mobile bases?

#31
Well, I already outlined the idea somewhere else, but here's my suggestion on handwaving the whole docking shebang.

First of all, a blast from the past, the Taiidan Flagship:
Image The blue glowy bits were the actual hangars for smaller crafts. They consist of little more than a slight hull indentation covered by a glowy blue forcefield style texture. My idea is to implement an actual "Hangar Module", which is more or less a flat rectangle slightly protruding from the Hull. Please excuse my utter lack of painting or 3D-modeling skills, but it's late and I have a jolly rotten head cold.
Image Basically, we have a rectangular box which can be set into any part of the hull large enough to fit it, representing out hangar bay. The glow needs to be bright enough to prevent one from looking inside, but not quite "engine wash" level. To be honest, size and shape are variable, and need only to roughly fit the size of the docked craft, which should be much smaller than the mothership in the first place.

Docking and launching would be merely routing the craft to and from this window, having them appear/disappear at a certain distance from the actual hull to prevent collisions. One might consider adding a tractor beam effect for docking, to represent the mothership assisting the landing.

A second idea would be external docking clamps, in which case the carried ship's model would simply be glued to the outside of an existing craft. This is of course only feasible for craft who carry very small numbers of ships, like a pair of fighters or a single captain's yacht.
Last edited by Hardenberg on Mon Dec 10, 2012 6:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Hardenberg was my name
And Terra was my nation
Deep space is my dwelling place
The stars my destination
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Re: Capital ships - Carriers and mobile bases?

#34
NikoDG wrote:I like Hardenburg's idea, Homeworld was a classic and having a little styling queue that kicks back to it would be pretty awesome (for those of us that remember Homeworld anyways) ;)
'Follow me lads (and lasses) were going to Hiigara.' All Hail the mighty Homeworld. :D
If I've rambled and gone off topic im sorry but i tend to be long winded as you might notice if you stumble across my other post XD. thanks for reading.
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Re: Capital ships - Carriers and mobile bases?

#36
OH MY GOODNESS.

I don't want to get too excited yet. But I think I may have just found an esoteric little free library that can solve all our problems. Oh my. I'm not going to bed tonight. Pray for me. And if you pray hard enough, we may have working procedural hangars by the morn....
!!


!!!!!!


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Capital ships - Carriers and mobile bases?

#37
JoshParnell wrote: Pray for me.
Colonel Attar: 'Bow Your Heads!'-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8-wJfNMqzw
May the great ship builders in the sky watch over Josh as he braves the dangerous virtual world of code this night.
May he come away from this trial a stronger and more alert code crafter than he was entering upon this treacherous road.
amen.
Last edited by Dadalos on Tue Dec 11, 2012 2:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
If I've rambled and gone off topic im sorry but i tend to be long winded as you might notice if you stumble across my other post XD. thanks for reading.
Post

Re: Capital ships - Carriers and mobile bases?

#39
JoshParnell wrote:OH MY GOODNESS.

I don't want to get too excited yet. But I think I may have just found an esoteric little free library that can solve all our problems. Oh my. I'm not going to bed tonight. Pray for me. And if you pray hard enough, we may have working procedural hangars by the morn....
!!


!!!!!!


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't want to get too excited.... sorry think you missed that boat ;-)
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Re: Capital ships - Carriers and mobile bases?

#40
Bryce wrote:
JoshParnell wrote:OH MY GOODNESS.

I don't want to get too excited yet. But I think I may have just found an esoteric little free library that can solve all our problems. Oh my. I'm not going to bed tonight. Pray for me. And if you pray hard enough, we may have working procedural hangars by the morn....
!!


!!!!!!


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't want to get too excited.... sorry think you missed that boat ;-)
I know, right? I pretty much peed my pants :lol:
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Re: Capital ships - Carriers and mobile bases?

#41
Your prayers worked :) I guess it was worth staying up all night for....
awesomehangar.png
awesomehangar.png (901.46 KiB) Viewed 2475 times
Still very early tech. This implementation is not perfect either, but it's the best I've found so far, and it doesn't seem to hard-crash. It does hang infinitely sometimes...but that's fine, I can work around that. This is pretty darn exciting :D
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Capital ships - Carriers and mobile bases?

#42
Praise the Josh!

The fun part is now to create even more UI to manage fighters, internal equipment transfers, and all that crapola. =P


So ships that are able to dock would have to keep within certain model size limits, I suppose.

Or are the hangars scalable like other "building blocks"?
The player would decide what kind of ship designs can dock through how big a hanger is built into the carrier.
That would require quite a bit trial and error or some display for "you can only be this tall to dock here".
The advantage would be that it's a "one size fits all" solution and players could build a Death Star that launches Imperator class Star Destroyers.
Actual size is a trivial issue with PG content. =P
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Capital ships - Carriers and mobile bases?

#43
Gazz wrote:Praise the Josh!

The fun part is now to create even more UI to manage fighters, internal equipment transfers, and all that crapola. =P


So ships that are able to dock would have to keep within certain model size limits, I suppose.

Or are the hangars scalable like other "building blocks"?
The player would decide what kind of ship designs can dock through how big a hanger is built into the carrier.
That would require quite a bit trial and error or some display for "you can only be this tall to dock here".
The advantage would be that it's a "one size fits all" solution and players could build a Death Star that launches Imperator class Star Destroyers.
Actual size is a trivial issue with PG content. =P
Yep -_- I'm definitely not promising that hangars will be of this quality in the final implementation (i.e., still no promises about whether there will be handwaving or not), because this is such a recent development..still need to see to what extent it is viable. Still..it's a very cool start.

Yes, they would be scalable like everything else! Death Stars ahoy. You could choose different shapes and such as well. In theory we could actually construct interiors to the ships as well with this technology...full-blown rooms and corridors...procedurally...ah....so much to explore!!! :D
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Capital ships - Carriers and mobile bases?

#45
JoshParnell wrote:Yes, they would be scalable like everything else! Death Stars ahoy. You could choose different shapes and such as well.
This is some crazy shit.

Not only would ships have to know how tall / wide they are in relation to the hangar module, some players would certainly demand to dock their tall-but-slim ship sideways. =P

JoshParnell wrote:still no promises about whether there will be handwaving or not because this is such a recent development
Some handwaving may be a good idea anyway. The manual dock / undock procedure in X3 is an endless source of FUN. The Dwarf Fortress kind.
Allowing "manual" docking was a good intention at one time. It just turned out working less than stellar with all the ship and station types that were added later. =)

I'm thinking:
If something wants to dock it only has to be in the general vicinity of "in front of the hangar". Maybe just within x meters of the carrier.
Some tractor beam with vampire sparklies shoots out of the hangar, grabs the ship, and forces it on a perfect approach path and alignment. Only then it is dragged inside in a perfectly straight line.
That way you don't have to stop the carrier during any dock / undock events, the hangar module can have any alignment in the carrier model, crazy ship geometry is no factor.
Since this procedure takes time, docking is a dangerous procedure under fire. You can't exploit it like the X3 Docking computer. (*poof* I'm docked)

Would also take care of attempts of creatively docking oversized ships, then crashing on launch. Instead it would be "You will use automated docking and you will like it". =P

JoshParnell wrote:In theory we could actually construct interiors to the ships as well with this technology...full-blown rooms and corridors...procedurally...ah....so much to explore!!! :D
Maybe you should PG another Josh first.
While there may be no technical reason against ship interiors, that's a big leap in scale and requires a lot more in UI and management features.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.

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