Developer Diary... image - Yuuzhan Vong at War mod for Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption
Behold the Yuuzhan Vong Army! This mod adds the Yuuzhan Vong Race as a playable faction and all units of this era. We are a community of modders working for the greater goal, so anyone who wants to help or support us is welcome!
So I thought this might be interesting to share:
While we make and texture the ships, we post pictures of renders here on Mod DB to showcase the model makers work, and to list the main armament of each ship along with special abilities.
This picture is an example of what our riggers work with to give the ships complete armament. Aside from all the heavy weapons we normally list, each ship is given a compliment of light weapons that are internally housed within the ship's hull. This adds to realism. Just because a ship is a battleship or a cruiser does not mean that it is devoid of AA weaponry. In this picture, the red lines represent Light Lasers and the blue lines represent Light Ions. These are weapons that each ship receives to combat smaller vessels such as fighters, corvettes and frigates. While the actual turrets do the most damage, these light weapons have shorter range, fire less frequently and do less damage, yet still provide protection from enemy vessels.
While the texturing of this ship is underway, EmperorNiko is currently working on the rigging so that Wariscool can begin coding the unit into the game. In addition to these light weapons, ships will also feature additional hardpoints such as: bridge, communications, targeting, sensors, hangers, engines and a few others.
The Corellian Destroyer has a Bridge HardPoint at the main tower, a Targeting HP at the forward command module and 2 sensor HP's at each radar dish. If the Bridge HP is destroyed: special weapons are deactivated such as power to weapons. If the Bottom Sensor is destroyed, the ship loses the ability to detect steal units. If the top radar is destroyed, the ship loses its advanced Line of Sight. If the forward Targeting bridge is destroyed (located right behind the forward top dual medium turbo laser turret), the ship suffers a decrease in weapon accuracy.
This is all part of the strategic improvement we are creating for each ship in the mod.
So while this ship's primary role is anti-capital ship combat, the blue and red lines representing light lasers and light ions allow it to defent against fighters and smaller attack craft, but only at a much closer range.
This does not reduce the significance of more dedicated specialized craft such as the CR90, which is much faster, and can shoot AA lasers at a further range.
But if the bridge is gone doesn't that mean the ship should be useless, considering the people who were receiving your orders and telling the others in the bridge to do said orders and the said underlings are all dead? I always wondered about that when I thought about the Star Wars: Battlefront 2 hardpoints being added to EaW.
I think most crew members like weapon crews would be able to operate independently, they would just lack overall coordination. Maneuvering could be a problem, but I also recall secondary bridges being a thing on larger ships (at least it would make sense).
The bridge is where main directives are issued, but just like modern day warships, there are auxiliary bridges, control rooms and command centers located for each section of a ship. Engineering can function on its own, just each turret can operate independently, the Bridge and Targeting command only allow for greater efficiency and accuracy of weapons. We have decided to portray this as loss of special abilities and loss of accuracy for these hardpoints, but warships made for combat, with their entire crews being fully prepared and able to carry out their assigned roles if one area of the ship becomes cripple.
Just as an example, this type of scenario has also been seen on television show such as Star Trek for example, but in real life, each component of a ship can operate entirely on its own if the rest of the ship is damaged or destroyed.
Makes sense, thanks for the info.
thx for this kind of information, its very interesting.
if you have more of this just post it :D
The realism you guys are bringing to the mod is very intelligent and well thought out. Most games should be doing this off the get go. Developers can learn a lot from modders I find.
The gaming industry really bothers me at times. Too many short sighted marketing 'geniuses' who think all games need to be made only for the youngest demographics with super fast action, flashy particles everywhere and over saturated colors. There is a viable market out there for adult gamers, but games need to have more depth and look realistic. If a game is made to look mature, and not super "kiddie", I truly feel more people would play it for a longer span of time. Older players would feel less embarrassed telling others about it and crave co-op and team style play. Younger gamers would hear the buzz and want to play it because others are continuously playing it. I really hate when games are made and have their success rate be determined by how many are sold in the first week of release. Just look how many players still play Homeworld 2, that is a very intelligent game, all space games should be of that caliber or better.
We are just trying to create something like that here. Star Wars does not have to be juvenile, it can be an experience that is enjoyed for many years.
Too many 12 year olds playing how do you think COD has stayed around for so long? Besides you know your mom.
Fantastic! Burnstrobe you and the Team are doing some amazing work particularly revealing the behind the scenes. i look forward to seeing the new life and gameplay your breathing back into the game.
i have one small question, which im sure the answer is just eluding me at the moment, but why do the small secondary weapons shoot less frequently than the main armament? wouldnt they shoot more often, because they are smaller? i guess it would make sense if it is like that in order to make it possible to have a niche for dedicated AA frigate/cruisers, but if thats not the case, i would be delighted to hear the reason. again sorry if it is something obvious and simple. Cheers, and keep up the amazing work you guys are doing.
Good question, our reasoning:
Less advanced/dedicated tracking and targeting systems.
The larger weapons had entire crews and tracking systems inside the turret. On a modern day battleship such as Iowa class for USA, there are 85-110 crew inside each of the 3 turrets. On a starship, the turret is much larger. Now many more systems are automated, but one could imagine each turret having its own engineer, gunnery, targeting and energy crews. This makes these primary weapons track and fire much faster. Secondary weapons would have much smaller fire teams. Their tracking systems might only be localized systems or even line of sight such as the droids had on the Invisible Hand. I had always imagined these light weapons to be like gunning crews that exploded at the Death Star 1 scene when xwings would strafe fire the surface. They were manually operated and fired through shielded window ports.
That's about the best description I can give. We actually do it because we are trying to control the number of particles on the screen at any given time. Too many particles results in lag.