Topic: Just an Idea : Cross between Modelers and Scripters.

[Sirgod]

I've recently been re-reading some books that dealt with a Huge Starship war, that spanned a large area of space. What I was thinking of, is Given the Wrekage from all sides in the ST Novels ( A Time To Be Born/Die) , How could this be used to add something to the game.

I believe that TracyG did some experiminting with moving asteroids ( Sorry If I named the Wrong person) , and I know alot of you are just Great Modelers.

What I'm Proposing is a few Models and Scripts that deal with Missions in an Area that is Littered with Wrecked hulls, Torn Starships Pieces, and Anomilies. I believe In the book It was refered to as the Boneyard.

What I Envision is Having to enter the area to Tractor a shuttle back out, yet the Environment fights against you, there could also be another opponent that wants the sshuttle for It's Tech/ Military plans.

What I'm thinking is to use asteroids as Ship parts, IE. Switch the models, But I think It would be better to have new custom models done for this.

Mind you, I don't know if the scripters would be up to doing this, any more then I know the Modelers would be up to this.

Another Possible Idea would be , It would take Much smaller ships to accomplish the Missions in such an area. A good use for the DD 's and Less.

What do you all think, and please elaborate. It's just an idea I'm tossing out there.

Stephen

[ModelsPlease]

There's both "Suprise the enemy" and an Asteroid field mission in SFC II/OP . I don't think it would be hard to create what you propose. And there are a few wrecks out there as well at the moment. Grant you there could be more but all the references you speak of exist already so it would just be a matter of combining all the elements I beleive.
-MP

[Sirgod]

Thanks Models , That's what I was kinda looking for.

Stephen

[ModelsPlease]

No problemo........it would be cool to have a "Graveyard of Ships" concept like that. It ushers me back to the days of the tall masted sailing ships and stories of the great wrecks at sea. Very very cool. The scenarion could go something like this..........

(Any race) being pursued by overwhelming odds (CA,BCH,DN,BB)x3 must find away to navigate through the "Graveyard" . IE. the asteroid field. to escape.

Just off the top of my head.
-MP

[Wicked Zombie]

One could also modify the stock brk models for all the ships. You could delete most of the 'chunks' and just have the central bulk of the ship, then add in damage and scoring to the textures. Obviously, you wouldn't want high-poly wrecks if there are going to be dozens on screen so brk models would be a good starting point.

If there were any key ships that you wanted in the mission, they could possibly just be powered down or have weapons damage (like the TWOK E and Ent-C), where the ship itself is intact.

[ModelsPlease]

One could also modify the stock brk models for all the ships. You could delete most of the 'chunks' and just have the central bulk of the ship, then add in damage and scoring to the textures. Obviously, you wouldn't want high-poly wrecks if there are going to be dozens on screen so brk models would be a good starting point.

If there were any key ships that you wanted in the mission, they could possibly just be powered down or have weapons damage (like the TWOK E and Ent-C), where the ship itself is intact.

So WZ you mean replace a bulk of the asteroids with wrecks ? Be-it partial or complete. I love it !!!! Great topic.
-MP

[ModelsPlease]

sounds fun where do i sign up

LOL I think we just did 
-MP

[Centurus]

A slightly similar concept was adopted in the Near Distant Future mod.  I remember the campaign well.  All the asteroids in the game were replaced with ship models, to represent ship wrecks from the Dominion War.  Now, these ships didn't fire or do anything.  No lights at all.  Some had glows, but they all were given really nice damage textures, and just like asteroids, they floated around. 

What a scripter could do is write a mission script so that when the player reaches a certain point in the mission, some of the ships come alive, partially, and start firing.

To be honest, if they had such a mission in NDF when I flew, it would have scared the sh*t out of me, BIG TIME!! 

Also, there are some ship models out there already made that are meant to represent extremely damamged, if not destroyed, ship hulls.  We could use some of them too. 

Also, who says we would need complete ship hulls, or the majority of a ship's mass.  Why not parts, like a stardrive here, a warp engine there, and pieces of a saucer around.  Hmm?