The Raiders Thread - Path To Victory mod for Homeworld 2

Soo... you may have heard. You may have not. But the raiders are coming... they're here for guts, glory, prizes and of course, SPEEED!

The question is: What would you like to see in the turanic raiders race? What ideas do you have and so on. If you have any idea, post it here!

Well to me Raiders should be an ambush force, just like they are in first Homeworld. Perhaps once more two "trees" - pirate/corsair.

1. Pirate would focus on enhancing strikecraft - giving the old Bandit-class interceptor rocket launchers (like the ones of Acolytes in Cataclysm) to aid in the 'first strike' tactic. Development of mimic/cloaking technology, allowing you to produce cloaked ion frigates.
2. Corsair would focus more on capital ships - upgrading their damage, adding some subsystems.Also, since they are pirates of sorts, what about adding boarding capability to some of their ships? Vaygr and Hiigaran have their specific, boarding-dedicated units, but raiders could board from any vessel big enough (examples: Rancor-class could board, being a carrier)

It's just my suggestion though.

Edited by: Fuel?

I think that would definitly be something to look in to. I'll have to give it some thought but I like this idea somehow.

As for me Turanics was allies of Taiidan. As in Homeworld 1 when Turanics attack Kushan's Mothership and as in Homeworld Cataclysm when Turanics use Taiidan's tech like Heavy Cruiser. So here is my idea.

What if Turanic's factions will be

1: Northen Turanics ( or something else from here Home.comcast.net )
2: Turanic of Taiidan ( Home.comcast.net better if yellow stripes will be main color)

What the diffrence will betwen them? As I imagine Imperial Turanics will have other color theme (as in screen of Turanic Corvet.) and like Kadeshi will have sub factions witch allow build 2 of 4 (or another numbers of ships) ships. Like Taiidan Interceptor (But with rocket launcher) ofc with new models Taiidan Corvet (also with rocket launcher or multi gun corvet) Taiidan Frigate (maybe assault one or again rocket frigate) and ofc well known Taiidan Heavy Cruiser.
Chose system just like Kadeshi have. At the begging probably can use Vaygr buoy or something familiar with Hyperspace. No need for now create taiidan badge just can use this triangle (idk how it calls, in homeworld1 interceptors have them on the wings and in homeworld 2 some Vaygr Frigates have them)

Ok so this is only my oppinion I dont make every one follow it and ofc if its possible.
Ty for attention.
P.S. With all this rockets things I just think rockets are Turanics weapon.
And one more thing all this screens not mine i just copy it from Google
Sry for my bad english.

Edited by: Sinigr

Hm... I was thinking of ex-imperials as part of the turanics already. They're planned as mercenary ships which you can 'hire' in addition to your normal raider ships. For now there will be no raider faction - though that may change. The reason is that the planned tech tree allows for far too much custiomization to make factions all that viable.

However I would like to do a faction system later when the other races get more this. No clue how it will look thoug. Thanks for the thoughts though always good to hear more oppinions. (And I agree, rockets are a turanic weapon. Rockets and fast firing guns)

How about add communications between Turanics? Like here Youtube.com . Cant find better video/sound. But who played homeworld 1 know what i mean.

Ofc if that possible.

Ty for attention.

Not so much an official update as a little preview of the raider carrier. Still missing its subsystems and the turrets might need a little retexture but I think you get the general idea:

Cool nice models (as always ) will be there ion cannons? And hangar lights, somthing something wrong with them, maybe its because im old homeworld player its look empty. Maybe add some sight or light like in the old one Images1.wikia.nocookie.net

Ty for attention.

The hangar still needs some work but i didn't have the faintest clue what to do with it so I just used a simple repeating texture until I decide what to put there.

There will be ion cannons or torpedo tubes as a buildable subsystem (you can see the space they'll get built onto already) plus a generic subsystem slot for 'cooling system' which will give you 25% speed or 'reactor capacitors' which will give you 25% damage. Names subject to change.

The hangars... yellow... ugh. I can understand why though, since the Turanic Raiders seemed to have a yellow/black color scheme everywhere else (well, except when HW1 bugs out, and I get orange and red... actually, the orange/red looks pretty awesome, to tell the truth). How will primary/secondary colors work with the Turanics?

In addition to the hangar, I think the viking antenae could do without the red/white, and could use a second look (something that ventures a little farther away from HW1 I think, though still retaining the viking aesthetic).

Yellow hangars are because every race has a hangar color.

Hiig = blue
vaygr = green
keeper = red
kadeshi = white

thus

raiders = yellow

No clue on the team colors. Haven't implemented them yet but they'll probably replace the red stripes on the sides of the larger ships.

Not sure on the horns...

Since you are stuck on what to do next with the raiders, I was thinking about going back to the hiding thing about ships. It may or may not be a feature that is faction driven, but:

What if the Raiders could build ships that mimic the ships of other races? It wouldn't fool the AI, but:
-The basics are that these ships belong in a totally seperate class of units... and this seperate class has NO tactical overlay icon
-The ships look like hiig or vay ships, and adding the lack of tac overlay icons, if one of these mimic ships is in the midst of another players ships, they shouldn't be able to easily see that it isn't one of their own.
-Make it so that all races ships do not recognize this special class of ships, and so will not fire upon them unless they fire first. I don't know how HW 2 ships are coded, but I think that there is a way to make some ships undetectable if they are within the max sight range of enemy ships, but not within a second smaller sight range, so make the special class also invisible to the second sight range, or modify each ship so that the minimum sight range is incredibly small. If you can't do it, that's fine too, because most players leave their ships on defensive, and ships on defensive will not auto-attack until fired upon anyway.
-These mimic ships are extra expensive for the Raiders to build, to make sure that players don't just build them instead of normal Raider ships that fill the same role... with the mimic strikecraft being like... 3x as expensive as their real counterparts, but mimic capitalships being more like 1.5x as expensive as their real counterpart (are you really going to be fooled for long by a mimic destroyer that is grey, while your ships are blue? I think not)
-All mimic ships can cloak themselves (but not others)
-Mimic strikecraft (and missiles etc.) should have no engine trails (or otherwise trails that are only a couple of pixels long), so that mimic strikecraft won't stick out like a sore thumb in the midst of enemy engine trails
-Mimics also do not have a primary or secondary color layer to them, but instead the underlying primary textures are modified so that the ships look like they always have a grey color scheme, perhaps with slightly darker grey where the secondary team color used to be. Mimic strikecraft will be hard to spot, but a mimic BC doesn't even try to pretend that it can hide itself.
-Mimics can capture enemy ships
-Mimics have an inate sensors distortion ability (that is only large enough to make themselves invisible only) so that mimic ships don't appear in the sensors manager either.
-There are Kadeshi and Progenitor mimics, but their availability is limited (Where there are all kinds of mimics for hiig and vay, the only kadeshi mimics would be a fuel pod mimic, a resource collector mimic, and a gun pod mimic)
-Finally, Mimics always do not have the same weapons as what they are mimicing do. For instance, the mimic interceptor (hiig and vay) looks like it has the normal kinetic gun, but actually it might fire anti-strikecraft missiles, and the "kinetic gun" actually fires a pulsar/laser (laser if it's hiig, pulsar if it's vay, just to change things up). Plus the interceptor has slightly more armor, and can capture enemies as is standard for Turanic ships.

Another example: the mimic ion cannon frigate might fire the same weapon as the Vay BC, and it also has two concealed flak turrets that have a nice pop-up animation when the ship goes into attack mode, and retract when the ship stops attacking.

Another example: there might be two mimic vay destroyers: one that fires an ion cannon from the longer side (and hidden ion array panels flip up when the ship attacks), the two turrets are rapid fire (though they do less damage to compensate for the faster fire rate), the missile pods are decorational, and the shorter side practically transforms to reveal a weapon that does massive EMP splash damage with one shot, but the fire rate is terrible...
and the other destroyer mimic fires a rediculous amount of anti-strikecraft missiles (that can auto-target new ships when their first target is destroyed) from the original destroyer missile bays, the two turrets are static, and will transform down to reveal progenitor-esque turrets that fire what looks like a progenator take on a rapid fire pulsar, and the short side auto-transforms (when the ship goes into attack mode) into what looks like sensors and stuff that you see on the command corvette and an array that looks like it could be a HS inhibitor (and indeed this anti-strikecraft destroyer has inherent command ability and HS inhibitor)

Another example: the mimic sensors distiortion probe is actually a fighter that shoots extremely powerful plasma bombs (how many dist probes do you really think you can sneak near your opponents?)

And another: the mimic resource collectors (which are evil, because they actually are allowed to harvest asteroids [at an extremely slow rate, so hopefully it won't detach from the asteroid any time soon and return to a Turanic resource controller], but also can capture enemy units, and can cloak, and have a weapon...) will fire a pulsar that does extra damage to resource ships, platforms, and carriers.

Other mimics that you might not immediatly think of: carriers (typically used to draw in attacks, and then it turns out the carrier is bristling with weapons), resource controllers, all the probes, platforms, and marine/infiltrator frigates.

Would these mimics be part of factions or not? If yes, then I suggest at least having two frigate sized mimics that pretend to be freighters (but of course, they don't do too good of a job fooling even human players because there are no freighters that any of the other races build, the only two things going for these mimics is the cloaking and the lack of a tac-overlay).

Mimics are sort of the extreme take on Raiders taking a chassis, and putting as many weapons (from any race, not necessarily hiig ship with hiig weapons) as possible on it. However, the price for these ships is greatly inflamed, and their build times are somewhat slower, so if you're being chased around by the other races who are trying to finish you off, you would be better off building "normal" Raider ships.

.......aaand a question: how will you tackle resource collection for the Raiders? Because I'll tell you now, thinking that the resources from captured ships will be enough is a mistake.

Resource collection: the Raiders will have a normal collector which will be able to harvest however you will only get very few of these. The result is buying a new collector is a huge investment you will not make often. Thus expanding your fleet over building is always risky. Furthermore this keeps the raiders bound to a specific spot in the department of collecting at least - most notably because the carrier can't dock collectors, only the controller (which can't be built until T3, you get one at the beginning of the game though).

As for mimics... hmm... I'd love to make it work but the complexity of it is a little too high. I have several ideas on how to emulate a mimic ability for ships but none of them would be easy and none of them would work as well as in HW Cata. It may however be possible to script the ship's mimicing ability to some extent. However if I can't get it to work I'll be leaving the mimics out mostyl (i really like the idea - I do - but I won't implement something that doesn't work 100% or seems 'faulty or incomplete'.

I was thinking of allowing you to build certain 'raiderized' ships (normal ships with raider colors) after capping them but I never really got that far. The sheer ammount of work to implement all the texture reworks would be dauting for one, for another it would overload your build menu to an excess. If mimicing can't be simulated I don't think it will be going ingame...

The one way I can think of simulating it would be: give a ship cloak or sensor distortion - whatever works. Then add an FX for every ship it can mimic. Depending on what ship you select for a special attack or something, it will activate the fx of that ship and appear to be that ship. However this is really just an overcomplicated cloaking ability.

What if mimics can only mimic asteroids? That would be far simpler to implement but tricky to get working I'd suspect...

overall, mimicing in HW2 without the ability to make it work, will probably cause more trouble than it will solve.

Alternatively you could also have ships mimic your own ships e.g. a fighter apears as a frigate or similar.

I'm not talking about trying to reproduce what cataclism did, I mean having the "mimic" ships in the build menu as normal buildable ships (albeit much more expensive than traditional Raider ships). Think of them as ships that were captured elsewhere, were thoroughly refitted to the point that they no longer have the same purpose (or weaponry) that they once did. Then all of these new weapons were disguised to appear as the ships normal weapons.

As for textures... if you re-read more closely about the details about their appearence, then you'd know that the only think you would have to do is remove the primary and secondary team color layers of the original textures. Why should the ships be the default grey? Because you wouldn't be fooling any human player if they had blue colors, and your turanic colors were red and orange. The grey should do a decent job at fooling a human player with ships up to corvettes, maybe frigates.... as long as the other things are done.... no Tac Overlay for the mimics, no engine trails for strikecraft or missiles for the mimics, and all mimics having sensors distortion ability so that they don't show up in the sensors manager. Then the cloaking ability is so that a turanic player can more realistically sneak their ship into enemy lines, and the capture ability is because almost all Turanic ships can capture.

Collectors will be super expensive huh? That will make resource collector "mimics" all the more important to the Raiders.

Asteroid mimic too? That's not a bad idea... again, as long as there is no engine trail, there is no tactical overlay icon, and it has inate sensors distortion ability. These "mimic" ships (well, the smaller ones anyway) are primarily meant to fool human players, and attack them from within when they are distracted from battles elsewhere. I might even go so far as to say that you should remove the voice-over that informs players that one of their ships is being/has been captured. Really, these mimic ships wouldn't fool an AI player at all. So if you were playing against the AI, you would mostly build the larger "mimic" ships... frigates, destroyers, cruisers... because they don't even try to fool enemies (human or AI), and instead are just (more expensive) more tools in the Turanic toolbox. That is why the small "mimic" ships should have their prices greatly inflamed, and the larger ones not so much.

Reread my post (please) to get a better understanding of the specifics of what I'm trying to say.
....I will admit though, that the parts about destroyers effectively transforming large parts of themselves is a bit far-fetched when it comes to the technology that Raiders could have.

Edited by: Hell_Diguner

I understood your concept of the raiders but failed to bring across my point - namely that buildable mimics would end up cluttering build menus extremely (imagine, one fighter per race, one frigate per race and so on... you can extrapolate from there). If I can't find a way for a ship to mimic an enemy ship or your own ship - well then, I'll just have to work without it... however I like the general concept.

The question is how do I fit it into the game so it all works out, plays smoothly and adds a nifty (and well implemented!) feature to HW2 that represents mimicing? The answer is I don't know quite now.

Most of the last few sleepless nights were spent trying to get the raiders up and playable and an AI implemented. After that's done I've got to do some things on the hiigs, then I'll be able to work on more ideas for the raiders and see if there isn't a way to make mimicing working. I like the idea very much.

I had assumed that mimics would get their own build menu (or menu's, one for each race that can be mimicked). If you don't want to clutter the main production ships build menu with three to five extra tabs, then have a specialized ship that is able to build mimics, and only a few other things (subsystems, utilities, maybe fighters). Just have two shipyards. Or carriers, if you don't want to have "mimic" ships that are larger than a frigate.

Wanted to make sure you saw my reply, so:

mololu wrote: Actually, there's no issue per say with cloaking. It works well enough but I'd like to make it a real mimic ability though. If I can't get it working - hell - they'll just get cloak.

Well, if you want do a more Cataclism-like mimic (as opposed to what I've been trying to convince you to do above), then how about this: You give any ship (that is to be able to mimic, whether it be an ion array frigate, or a bandit interceptor) a build menu, and in it you can build one of a selection of "subsystems" that have no visual appearence (or maybe they do, if you want). This subsystem allows the ship to cloak, and when told to do so, it cloaks as normal, but then also activates an effect that is similar to the "phase shields" from your progenitors. Only this version of that effect looks exactly like an enemy ship, minus engine glow, nav lights, and team colors, and of course it doesn't act like a shield. Whatever subsystem you build determines which enemy ship the effect appears to be. The problem now would be cluttering up the build ques (which I for one use a lot, instead of the big menu on the right), because every ion cannon frigate, missile corvette, and bandit interceptor would have a build que.

The benefit of what I was, and am trying to convince you to do instead of a more cataclism-like mimic, is have ships that look more like what the Turanic Raiders supposedly do --- capture enemy ships, and modify them for their own purposes. Well, there isn't a singe Raider ship that looks like it is a modified version of Kushan, Taiidan, Hiigaran, Vaygr, or any other known race. The idea was first to have ships that looks like converted ships from other races, and then second did I think to make them try and mimic enemy ships by doing things like having no engine trails, and having no tactical overlay.

I for one, would rather have Turanic ships that can cloak normally (and I'm not forced to mimicing), and then have mimic ships that won't clutter up the production ques... and if that means having a bunch more tabs in the build que, or seperate production ships for normal and "mimic" ships, then so be it.

I will suggest yet a third option though... one that is almost exactly like the Cataclism mimic. Have one mimic ship (a drone, or fighter perhaps). Give it inate cloaking, and seperately the ability to build the variety of subsystems that activate the visual effect of an enemy ship. The mimic would have no weapons, and would look silly if it were to fly while it is mimicing a large ship (destroyer moving as fast as a fighter) though. But... you would be able to trick your (human) opponent by cloaking some mimics, moving them within his ranks, building a module, and make it seem as though he has more ships. You could retire the module, and have the fighter be able to cloak normally again. AI opponents wouldn't see the ship at all because it is cloaked though. And you'd have the same problem with cluttering up the production ques. And you wouldn't have opponents being completely pissed off by their "own" ships turning on them. This kind of mimic would be a nuicance only... and a waste of resources for the Turanic player (most likely).

EDIT

Looking at all of this, I think I need to redefine what I'd like to see with the Turanics, and start again from scratch. So let's see:
-Normal cloaking for most if not all traditional Turanic ships. I don't want to be forced to use some form a mimicking for these ships.
-A seperate batch of Turanic ships that look like converted Hiig, Vay, Kush, Taii, and other never seen races ships. Maybe Progenitor if it looks decent.
-Mimicking that is useful, aggrevates enemy players, but is not aggrevating because of annoyance (then people won't like it)
-Traditional Turanic ships, mimics, and kitbash (you've seen that word before I hope) ships should integrate well. No cluttering of build build manager, or production ques, traditional and kitbash ships shouldn't overrule one or the other, mimics should work well against humans (and later the AI), etc.

I tried to suggest killing two birds with one stone by combining mimics and ships that are converted from other races, but it seems to be causing too many problems, plus the whole kitbash point was elliminated, so forget combining the two.

The biggest problem, I think, is having kitbash ships and traditional ships integrate smoothly. Sure, the kitbashes would have a Turanic color scheme, but how can you have two of every ship (practiacally), and keep the Turanic theme, and make them interchangeably usefull, and make them still different? Ideas: factions, opposite stats, identical stats. Factions is probably the way to go... have traditional ships OR "modern" ships. Maybe the Turanics would be the only race where whichever faction you choose, you choose towards the start of the game, and are stuck with it for the rest of the game. But that means practically doing another race, as the two factions would only share a handful of units. Plus you may not like kitbashes anyway, so... hmm. damnit.

Mimics.... perform as advertised, but also should be able to attack. Because just fooling your opponent in the size of their/your fleet isn't enough to be more than annoying, the mimics need to be able to do some damage for players to mark them as more than a mere annoyance. How they mimic can probably be solved with the fairly elegent solution of having them cloak, but add a phase-shield inspired false image to the ship. It would be good to have the ability to cloak normally, and mimic, so that you can more easily sneak your ship into an enemy group, then turn the mimic part on. They also need to not be able to build anything (subsystems, for instance) so that they won't clutter the production ques. But that would mean cluttering the build ques instead with dozens of the same ship. So, probably a specialized production ship (which may or may not look special) should be the only craft that can build these mimics, and it can have half a dozen build tabs, each with a dozen ships in it without much clutter problem.

Now what should they fire... and should there be multiple ones... ... ...I think there probably ought to be class based different sizes. Maybe have a fighter one, a frigate one, and a resource collector one, where the fighter mimics small ships (probes to corvettes), the frigate mimics large ships (frigates to cruisers), and the resource collector one mimics rescol's, refineries, and platforms (and can be told to harvest resources, which it does so very slowly, so a human player won't wonder why three of their rescol's aren't harvesting anything). I would guess that all three would not be seperated by class, you'd just have one build tab for each race, and then a list of ~15 ships that can be mimicked, and the craft that is to do the mimicking would not be further seperated by fighter class, frigate class, etc.

As for attacking, the fighter probably should fire a single burst of ~20 missiles that are to track different targets, and would be effective against all types of enemy craft excluding platforms and resource ships, but it wouldn't fire another burst for two minutes (promoting the Turanic player to attack, then recloak or remimic, and have the mimics sit the rest of the fight out, as mimics may be cheap(er), but have almost no health). The frigate should be similar, I think, but fire more missiles that are slightly less effective against strikecraft, and more effective against frigates and larger units. The resource collector should fire some sort of laser or pulsar that is very effective against resource ships, platforms, utilities, and corvettes, but not so much against anything else. I imagine it being a rapid fire pulsar, but the offset is that it is easy to kill, because it mush uncloak/unmimic to fire, and it doesn't have a lot of armor.

I apologize if this is a repeat, but I cannot locate the answer anywhere else, so here goes. I am having trouble building the capital ships of the Raiders. Judging by your manual included in the v.006 download, I am supposed to create a scaffold, then do something to it with a slave miner. I have now tried absolutely everything I can think of, but the scaffolds remain as scaffolds and the capital ships are rendered useless. Am I missing something, or is this particular part of the mod incomplete? Any help here would be greatly appreciated.

You build the scaffold, then order your slave miner to repair it.

The scaffold will be repaired from 10% HP to 100% hp. When it has got to 100% hp it will turn into a capship. I'm fairly sure it works without issues unless I missed something very dumb (but all the tests I did had it work without any problems).

Alright, that's what I thought, I guess I just need to be more patient. Thanks for the help!

No Problem

And something of a mini preview of the Raider's Pirate Lord upgrade. You'll be hearing more about this soon, it just isn't all done quite yet.

Hi, I joined simply to say two things, firstly that this is by far the greatest hw2 mod,
and secondly - the raider capital ship thingy doesn't work. Which is a pity cause
they are by far my fav race. Of course I don't normally need the cap ships to win,
but I'd like to see them nevertheless.

But on to the bug.... the scaffolding comes out at 100% health. so ordering a slave
to repair it simply puts the slave into "wait beside ship until it takes damage" mode.
Leaving it like that for ages doesn't seem to magically build the ship. I've even tried
putting the scaffolding in harms way, letting it get damaged and then repairing it,
but then the slave merely repairs it normally.

any ideas?

Honestly no as I've never had this issue. Under what circumstances did this happen? And are you using a mac?

I can't think of a reason this should not work but I'll check it if I have time.

No, running windows 7 pro. And uuuuuh it happens under any and all circumstances.
Like I said the scaffolds come out at 100%, although I cannot for the life of me think
why this would happen to some installations and not all of them. could my Homeworld
2 version be at fault?

I also noticed a few other bugs, Ill list the others under the bugs thread, but can I
post any other Raider problems here?

assuming I can.... saw some Raider research glitches which seemed strange, sometimes
some research would be available, sometimes not at all.... Of course maybe you made
it a game mechanic, so that Raiders would only get research thats currently available on
the black market?