44 replies to this topic

[Unikraken]

-READ ALL THE WAY THROUGH BEFORE COMMENTING-

 

One of the biggest things about using SoaSE to make SotP for me has always been that battles in the Halo universe, as with most other sci fi universes, take place on a larger scale than SoaSE can provide. You're rarely fighting over more than a few solar systems and often just the planets of a single system. Anything larger than that and the game crashes.

 

Perhaps there is a way around this within the system of the game.

 

Perhaps if we swap out some meshes here and there something else can take place. The thought occurred to me, there is nothing stopping us from turning stars into supermassive black holes. There is nothing stopping us from changing out the planet mesh with something else, like a little star, or a small solar system. Maybe changing resource asteroids into tiny planets that orbit these tiny stars.

 

I'm sure there would be some wonkyness to this idea, and I'm posting it here to have the issues pointed out and possibly find a solution for them, or finally wipe this idea out as too silly.

 

If you're really unfamiliar with what goes on behind the curtains of SoaSE, please do no more than read, this is really a discussion for modders and players who understand the game's mechanics.

[Emberblaque]

This is interesting, but if we did it grav wells and "planet meshes" would have to be scaled up a lot.

 

I also don't know how Sins would deal with collisions for a planet mesh more complicated than a single sphere.

[Fleet Admiral agigabyte]

Would that not mess up scaling? I for one would not like to have to zoom in all the way to see my ships, and that is the only work around I can think of.

[Cole Protocol]

I could see the idea working, a different idea, that's for sure but it would be amazing to do epic battles without having to make them prolonged campaigns that take hours to complete. Reenacting system wide battles would be much easier, such as the fall of Reach was spread across epsilon eridani.So I like it, but this should be a option cause going back and forth would be more likable.

[Fleet Admiral agigabyte]

plot device

   *Kills you with fire*

[Unikraken]

Ship scale would not change in my idea. It's not necessary to have the system be fightable inside, the whole thing is symbolic to begin with. The solar system outside of the resource roids could be inside the area that now contains the planet mesh, meaning no one would have issues where they fly into something.

 

 

The CSO will never be featured in this mod while I have some control over it, never mention it again here, including in any responses to this message.

[sloosecannon]

This is interesting, but if we did it grav wells and "planet meshes" would have to be scaled up a lot.

 

I also don't know how Sins would deal with collisions for a planet mesh more complicated than a single sphere.

it would make a big sphere covering the entire planet lol.

 

This is an interesting concept - and totally possible, assuming everyone's fine with the asteroid>planets not having any kind of orbit or motion whatsoever

[Unikraken]

Alternatively, the only thing in the center of the gravity well could be the star. The planets could entirely be made out of resource roids.

 

And just to be absolutely clear about scaling. Scaling is not perfect in SoaSE and never will be. There is no reason to attempt scaling any further than we have already done. Any smaller and it actually makes the game more frustrating, so let's not get caught up on that.

[Emberblaque]

And just to be absolutely clear about scaling. Scaling is not perfect in SoaSE and never will be. There is no reason to attempt scaling any further than we have already done. Any smaller and it actually makes the game more frustrating, so let's not get caught up on that.

It's true that scaling is not realistic and that the engine lacks the capability to even approach it, but don't forget that most people don't have any real conception of how incredibly distant SoaSE scale is from true scale. They're used to the way it is and keeping the ships the same size while making the planetary systems the size of planets would probably be a huge turn off. They know so little that SoaSE's completely unrealistic scaling immerses them. This would be such a huge change that it would not immerse them.

 

Besides, I figured that having these large grav wells would offer more tactical maneuvering.

 

The fact that SoaSE would just make a spherical collision mesh largely turns me off of this idea. I say if anything, go with the plan to make planets into stars and resource asteroids into planets.

[Unikraken]

This isn't a definite thing. May never see the light of day. Just talking theory. I do think having a star be the planet and planets from the roids would be best.

[Zero]

Well couldn't you have non-resource planets be the dead asteroids in some wells? They all have their own collision bounding, so I doubt it wouldn't be too hard to place a few "dead" planets and mineral planets around a sun. The only real issue is coming up with enough textures to make the whole system interesting. It would be comprised of about 2-4 rocky planets and 1-3 gas planets if it were modeled off of Sol.

[Unikraken]

Well couldn't you have non-resource planets be the dead asteroids in some wells? They all have their own collision bounding, so I doubt it wouldn't be too hard to place a few "dead" planets and mineral planets around a sun. The only real issue is coming up with enough textures to make the whole system interesting. It would be comprised of about 2-4 rocky planets and 1-3 gas planets if it were modeled off of Sol.

If we bound rocky planets to the titanium resource and gas planets to the other we can actually have variable systems very easily. We can define the number of each resource based on the planet type (now star type).

[CanadaMan7]

I think the reasoning is sound, but the implementation and visual presentation are going to be wonky.

[Emberblaque]

I think if anything this should be some sort of separate mod, unless it becomes immensely popular.

[Fleet ADM. Drian]

I have been thinking of doing something similar to allow for more of galactic level play, though your idea seems to allow for larger game play than my idea, this should be a seperate mod though because I can see most other mods integrating this into their mods as this would allow for more canon-like battles (see Star Wars, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, etc.). And thanks to the Forbidden planets DLC this would allow for 3 more types of planetary systems to be in the game allowing for more realistic gameplay.

[Aunt Gruntie]

If this is ever done in any form, you would also need to think about how planet bombardment and system control would work. For example if you invade a system, by SoaSE logic you would need to bomb the planet, but if you just simply swap out the meshes and make the planet the star then would you be bombing the star? That wouldnt make sense. Same with the idea of a simple texture swap for resource asteroids would we just be shooting planets to destroy the mining facility? Also how would colonizing work, would you colonize the whole system, that could work but itd be a bit odd. Finally how would this affect the A.I?

This seems like a very interesting idea if you could get past the most obvious hurdles. It could be an interesting side project to see if this idea is even viable within the SoaSE framework.

[KhevaKins]

I've actually thought about this a lot, turning gravity wells into individual solar systems. I think it would be interesting to see how it would work. It would look way cooler defending solar systems rather then just a gravity well and it would also would leave room for some actually combat tactics, i.e. flanking and what have you.

 

 

Could we have a minor scale change? We shrink the size of the planets by half as well as the models but leave the stars so when the planets and the stars are in the same gravity well it doesn't look totally ridiculous (it would still look pretty ridiculous) . Also if the asteroids would be planets can resource asteroids have more than 1 model and texture each?

[KillaBC]

I had an idea similar once. The way it would work would be to increase the amount of planets you could fit inside a gravity well and as far as I'm aware is not doable in engine. I had the idea of making the stars gravity well massive with planets inside, you wouldn't be able to FTL in system and would have to rely on your normal speed. It unfortunately isn't feasible.  

 

On the OP it would look cool, though as someone pointed out the ships would start to bombard the star unless that can be changed I'm unsure.

 

Visually it would look cool, though on a technical level a bit wonky.  

[Lavo]

Read the OP going to give a possible option on this:

 

1) Sure, turn stars into black holes. This is easy as balls to do, no issues here.

2) Leave the current planets how they are. Even if they are to represent a whole, or part of a, system they are still the "core" of it, the reason to colonize the area, to defend it, etc.

3) Re-purpose asteroids. I don't mean the resource asteroids, but the purely visual surrounding ones. Nova, for SoGE, worked them out such that they look like moons. Some of said moons are in fact scaled down planets. It is feasible to make these instead appear to be planets and stars. If memory serves, one can also define how far away they are from the "real" planet; as such it is theoretically possible to make decently scaled objects and place them far away such that they don't interfere with the "real" planet. I would suggest not making them full-sized, this can be explained as the planets appearing smaller due to them being a distance from the "real" planet.

[WarthogRacingMan3]

I know I shouldn't be posting (I really don't know anything about Sins modding), but as a SoTP player, I don't like this idea.  I'm more then content with the current scale of Solar system wide battles in SotP and I don't see the need for Galaxy wide ones. Sorry, but I just had to state my opinion (don't eat me).