I love this idea! I think it would be great if there were more "drone" like enemies around to face of with. Its a rough analogy, but in many sci-fi movies, when a capital ship blows up, it shatters into pieces, so the "salvage" makes sense...especially when you have to board one to clear it out. But many smaller ships just vaporize into small bits. So I would love to know that those flak cannons, miniguns, ect had smaller vessels to help protect my ship from while the main guns concentrated on the other capital ship.
That has already happened. A replacement and augmenting of the existing Drone Types with Models provided by Vessel Creators to be a Model for the two Modelers to create new types.
Are you saying they will make bigger ships so the game doesn't need to rely on the actual voxel-based ones as much for PV and OPV ?
Yet, how could he know it has a reasonable despawn timer if he doesn't have a clue what it even is?? Just completely dismissing my entire post and doesn't even know.
I read some of that, not all. Can you point me to more specific places please ? Aaw... man, look at Hummel's recent sticky on this. How do you expect Taelyn to risk making a mistake with a summary? He just says "I will check" and he already gets trashed... come on...
https://empyriononline.com/threads/spawn-respawn-destruction-settings-of-ai-vessels.95121/ You can read more here (and share feedback)
Well, if you want to be offended, thats cool...but I just dont think its as dismissive as you think. I had far rather a dev tell me "I know it in general, but not in specific" rather than just shooting off a number from the hip that ends up being grossly wrong, which would lead to wailing and gnashing of teeth from users when a dev shows he messed up.
Ok But these are voxel-based ships, and the drones are models with curves and shapes not found in building blocks. I hoped for a little change because of shapes limitations, and it's much easier to make big models quickly in a 3d modeler software than making them from blocks in Empyrion. One easy example : we can not build ships that fill the grid in all 3 axis. Usually making a ship at max grid size in 1 or 2 axis takes time and we can't push it further because of glitches occuring at these dimensions. Models don't have these limitations, they can be huge, smooth curves or angles without requiring zillion blocks. In that respect, more can be done faster than by using the game to build these, with obvious limitations. Same for less large builds : in the time a builder makes 1 CV in game, a modeler can make many in 3d software - just a matter of working interface.
I'm not saying these ships will not do the job : they are amazing. But ... we have a whole galaxy to fill ! In fact I have other things in mind, as there could also be bases made partly with models, and partly with voxels from BA grid size.
Than offer your thoughts and Ideas to Hummel and the Thread - we are currently searching pretty hard for suitable additions to the existing Factions
While it may be easier to make them in 3d Modeling Software then in game, if i recall correctly the company has very few model artists and even if the model is made in Software it still takes a programmer and/or animator to make it work in game. I doubt many people with the right skills will make models and donate them but the Forum Admin can probably make a space for donated models in case i am wrong. In comparison their are people that like building in the game and those builds can use all the systems currently in place for operation so it only takes one person to review them for inclusion. Those points aside, i am not sure of the coding complications involved. However if its possible to apend something like SDS to the names of the ships that are part of the Space Defense System(thus self destruct when cored) it may help limit the complaints. I have not seen the game design documentaion and have only done a little work with unity so their may be a good reason for it not to be this simple but i would try something like 1)Duplicate the Unity Prefab used to instance the regular ships that are not supposed to self destruct. 2)Edit the duplicate to include SDS in its display name 3)Link the Duplicate that includes SDS to whatever method is used to create or assign the ships of the SDS force instead of the ones without the name. However the above stuff is just an approach i would attempt if their is not a way to just modify the existing "Summon SDS ship script" to apend SDS to the display name of ships that are part of that system.
Well... making spaceships in a 3d modeling is not the same as making animals or humanoids : they have no animations, and only require proper skinning / texturing, and can be exported in one of the many standard formats Unity supports. Then it's just a question of refering to these models in the scripts, like they actually do for the drones. Projectiles are fired from some coordinates inside the model probably, but what is important is that we see projectiles coming out from the appropriate faces. Not such a big deal, and no coding required for player-made submissions.
to truly replace the voxel ships they would still need some representation of a 360 x 180 firing ark for each gun, ie. a turret times 6 - 20 I imagine that greatly increases the complication and eliminates the "no animation" part.
Damn... you're right, forgot about the turrets... Well from what @Germanicus wrote, the in-house modelers will only use the ships submitted by players as "models" from which they will derive their design, so they must have already thought about this turrets issue on models like the drones.
