Factions

Yeah making a basic template for each Faction seems a good idea, and would at the very least allow us both to start before having decided, and allow fluidity of the purpose and identity of the sub-factions

Mechanics

Although the 4X player in me wants to say that we should implement both multiple forms of supply, and civilians as described by Zaphear, (Initially) It may be too complicated both to implement and to play with, but that said the latter really depends on how much gameplay emphasis we wish to place on giving the feeling of you running an empire rather than solely on ship vs ship combat. Personally I do think that we should keep it on board as an idea, as, if later on we decide that the gameplay feels a bit empty (I worry that it might turn into a waiting game until you have sufficient ships to accomplish anything), then we can bring it in and try it out

I would say that splitting factories down (further than they already are) would to a degree counter making them more important (as you would be required to have more of them), and a single factory is both easier to implement and to balance.
That said i wonder if factory "modes" could be implemented somehow, so that instead of having another building to contruct frigates or cruisers\carriers you are merely switching the one building between frigate or cruiser\carrier construction, or at the very least maybe making it a buff to the construction of one unit type, ordering it to emphasise production.

We do also have to figure out a way of making it so that you dont Have to destroy orbital structures, that would add greater depth to the decisions of what someone builds on a world, ie you may try to avoid building a factory on a frontline world in case the tides turn and it allows the enemy to build\repair\re-arm ships effectively in your territory, it would also give a tactial meaning to scuttling structures

Zaphear also brought up Planetary types, which i hadnt thought about as much. We have two real options

1) leave the current planet types (including asteriods, gas giants etc) as they are and simply add more.

2) Effectively, start from scratch and only use or create planet types that "fit", which would most likely be multiple variations of Terran planets, Desert planets, asteroid fields, and dangerous fields of space (*is trying to work out how to do the Iserlohn corridor*) etc. Obviously we would have to try and make it so that the planets didnt all look the same

All the ideas about additional supply and additonal planet types are just too much to start with I think. I definately like some, others need more work to flesh everything out but we should start small. As already said, most of the more complicated ideas and concepts can be added later without the need to go back and change everything done before.

@Capitals: As we have pinned down most stuff we have to talk about capitals, too.
I think we can all agree that caps should get more emphasis as well as factories. But I wouldn't make them unique because of several reasons:
1. Players wouldn't like it. Even now people just drop or end the game when they lose their cap.
2. The mod is about big fleets. In sins you usually have several fleets and they should be lead by a capital each.
3. An unique cap is always the same which will get boring. Ok, we have the different subfactions, though.

As a compromise I would suggest that each subfaction has an unique flagship (thats basically where you sit and command) and can build additional capitals.

The flagship is more or less a normal capital but gets much stronger with levels (more than 10 levels also?) and research. This way people have to commit the flagship to combat if they want it to be really powerful.

Buildable caps are somewhere below sins caps. They have abilities that are specifically designed to support/command large fleets and you can build less than in sins and the buildtime will be looong.

So when choosing "Empire - Lohengramm" you get the white command ship form start.

Alright, decide on CapShips/Flagships then emigrate to modcraft then?

*laughs* actually before that two things,

The name of the mod - because simply "Legend of Galactic Heroes", might seem a bit dull in the long run, perhaps hijack one of the episode names?

and somebody feel like throwing together a quick logo? I figure just re-do the frame from the opening credits with the galaxy in the background and "Heldensagen vom Kosmosinsel" over it. but obviously translated into english.

Which brings me to something else actually, how much of the german are we going to translate e.g Schwarz Lanzenreiter or The Black Lancers?

Capitals

My main basis for the unique Flagship(s), was to add as much weight to them as possible so that the player couldnt think of them as disposable. So the Flagship + Capital Ships compromise sort of keeps that logic, for me the only things would be making the Flagship powerful enough and useful enough that players are willing to put it into battle, and to make sure that the CapShips arent just smaller replaceable versions of it.

Taking on my original idea of making Flagships tactical hubs rather than just ships with bigger guns, maybe make the majority of CapShip abilities more directly combat related and only one ability (per ship) being an overall tactical bonus, and then conversely the majority of a Flagships abilities being tactical bonuses and then a defensive ability for safe retreating (which i feel is likely to be appreciated more than another gun if we make it unique)

Hey. I just had a random thought

Basically, we really cannot create the scale of LoGH if ten thousand+ ships battling against each other if we make ships spawn one a time.

So, I had an idea of one "unit" being roughly 100/200 ships.

Think about it. You build one "unit" of ships that come out of the shipyard as 100 ships. Obviously, these would be smaller then normal ships (meaning you coudn't zoom in all the way to see the fine detail)

So, this allows:

1) Small models to be used, with very low polygon counts
2) Small models to texture which makes it a bit easier
3) Allows the recreating of a lot of ships duking it out

Also, flagships could just be 1 ship, maybe surrounded by 99/199 other small "elite" ships if you want.

Conquest Frontier wars is a great game. They had a really good idea with supply chains and such.

My personal preference would have been to leave the german untranslated as well (obviously now the corrected german), i just wasnt sure if it might confuse people, but aslong as descriptions are in english i suppose it shouldnt matter too much.


I had thought about the idea of producing a "unit of ships" rather than producing a single ship, but the only way of doing it currently is very rubbish (this would be including multiple copies of the ship in each mesh file) its very ugly, very limiting, and it looks stupid because the game still handles it as a single ship (ie one set of weapon stats, one health bar, etc). but maybe an idea if the full modtools allow something more sensible.

That map version is old and needs to be replaced. I should do that.

Also, does anybody know why the map is inverted when actually playing it? What I mean by this, phezzan is on the "top" of the star.

Rotating around the Z axis inverts the mouse controls (so if I scroll up, the game camera pans down) and seems annoying. Am I doing something wrong here?

Its a quirk of the current version of the galaxy forge, as i am aware there is nothing you can do about it, aside from making all the maps inverted to begin with.

*stunned*
I'm amazed there are so many Galactic Heroes fans around, given how old it is I had assumed it was fairly obscure. In fact when i first played the Sins beta one of my first thoughts was "wow this game would make for a great Galactic Heroes mod!".

Galactic Heroes is by far, my favorite anime ever aired. If a mod for this game were to surface that was base on it I would gladly do everything I could to help it. Unfortunately theres not much I could do to help, I've only recently started making some basic mods and maps for the game and even there haven't exactly had stellar success.

Just wanted to voice my support really, and encourage you guys to make this happen. The ideas mentioned here are truly superb and with a game like Sins behind it you could really capture the atmosphere and quality of the show.

So what sort of ships are going to be used? I have been going through what videos there are on the web and it doesnt seem like there is too many ships. I have got the cruisers, battleships, and fighter, but I think there must be smaller ships as well as a variety of flagships.

The carriers im having a bit of a hard time finding. I know what the imperial and free alliance forces have as carriers. The FPA carrier I only have one shot of in the distance sort of. Its enough to get a basic idea of how its built, but more shots would be handy. The imperial one isnt that different from the other cruisers. Seems to have bigger nacelles on top that store the fighter hangers.

Here are my thoughts:
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Ships:
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It's been a while since I watched the series but it looked like there were only a few types of ships.
Fighter/bombers:
seemed to be good at taking out other fighters as well as frigates
Frigates:
forward firing weapons only, carries no fighters. these seemed to make up most of the fleet.
Cruisers:
slightly larger than frigates, forward firing + turreted weapons, carries many fighters.
Flagships/battleships:
these appeared to be customized to each admiral, so maybe make it a capship with a unit limit of 1.

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factions:
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I like the idea that some people have suggested about having a different subfaction for each admiral. it would be good if you could work it so that multiplayer team matches had a shared economy for each team. Also, there needs to be a Phezzan faction. They sit on one planet in Phezzan corridor and do nothing but trade with both teams. There also needs to be some way of making sure players don't just charge through Phezzan with a huge fleet until later in the game.

now I'm going to have to download this again. (or has it been released in the US)

Yeah there are no official translations, it was almost released a few years ago but they couldnt get the interest (largely due to the fact the company in question decided that Only releasing it in a $2000 box set was a good idea)



Its hard to say really, because there are a lot of ship designs (missile cruisers are a good example) that are, shall we say incidental ie shown for about 10 seconds in the entire series, so we shall have to decide which of the designs to pick as we decide on roles. for Flagship designs there a fair few, for the Imperials there are about 4-6 distinct designs and then variations on them, but for the FPA there are effectively only 3 that i can think of.



Sort of continuing on from my incidental ship designs statement, Somewhere in one of the battles there is a scene of a dedicated (i think FPA, judging from what i remember of the colour scheme) carrier ship, which has dozens of fighterbays along its bottom side. But prefering not to have to trawl through every battle in the series to find it i was faintly hoping that somebody somewhere had already done so.

Shugyosha said he'd investigated the ships once before, so is probably a more thorough source of info.

EDIT: Additionaly, I have just posted info (Hopefully not seen as too presumptuous in making myself the point of contact) in the Major Mod Projects Index on this forum, and am about to go and request a Modcraft.net subforum.