EAW and FOC ship models not in the Imp.zip Pir.zip or reb.zip ?

[Gyron]

there are tons of great ships in those zips that are perfect for use as starting points for the Outer Heaven ships, many only needing to be made less chunky and adding more close detail so they look awesome even up close (like if you are flying across the surface of one like in EP3) as well as of course the Death Clones, Structure Points, Hardpoints, and Interiors. I saw some ships i didn't even know were in the mod, like the Acclamator with the Hangar and Reactor Bulb, which reduces our workload at Outer Heaven even further (we were expecting to simply mod the normal Acclamator with a Hangar and Bulb, but were kindof hoping that a Mesh would already exist for it.)

 

however the EAW and FOC ships are not in these Zips, and they are cruicial, as the first ship we plan on adding to Outer Heaven (a mod for Star Wars Galaxies) is the Tartan Patrol Cruiser, at 200 meters long with 10 manable gun turrets and a small hangar for fighters (similar to the Corellian Corvette hangar from EP3)

 

I was just wondering if the meshes were available somehow, or if they could be made available soon, as progress on the Star Wars Galaxies emulator projects grow ever nearer to completion, and since Dynamic Meshes and Animation files have been figured out allowing for new models and far greater modding capabilities. we wish to get started on getting the Corellian Corvette and Tartan etc in game. "also for turn arounds and diagrams for the shield projection, armour coverage, weapons system placement etc"

 

PS, what program or parameters did you use to render the ships in the gallery? Even the untextured ships look ALOT nicer than how 3Dstudio max renders them,

[shadowlegion421]

youguys are working on a mod for galaxies, as opposed to just a rollback to when it was a good game? wow, i never even considered modding it, cool idea though. used to be the best game ever created. sony sucks.

 

as for eaw/foc ships, i know that a lot of the ships in those games are not cannon, even the ships they didnt create for the game specifically were not cannon in most cases. also, i cant say for certain why EJ, hasnt included many FOC ships, but if i had to guess, it would be that the ZC is about the most un-star warsy creation ever to plague the lucas arts lineup. my explanation would be that EAW was a huge disappointment, but thats me and im judgmental and bitter.

[EvilleJedi]

I have a ton of unreleased stuff on my harddrive, so that's where they are right now.

 

Interesting project to mod SWG, honestly I only played the beta and never got an account.

 

I am probably going to make some of the models available soon, though there is a lot of work to remove junk from the files to make the zip files managable. (the actual working directory is well over 7 GB because of a lot of in-progress files)

 

for the rendering, use the lighttracer renderer with a skylight.,

[Gyron]

we do plan on having many of the ZC ships are in Outer Heaven, but they are not so overpowered, the Big cannons fire much slower and do far less damage, and the shield drainer fires like a normal gun, and can only drain so much shielding at a time, also mass drivers and torpedoes affect the shields like any other weapon.

 

as for the ZC themselves, they also do not exist, in fact there is a really easy mission for Black sun, where all it is, is this

 

"alright that pretty much wraps things up around here, you can go talk to the Vigo now, oh by the way, one of our loading dock workers has been spending all his time daydreaming about building his own Criminal Empire while he should be minding his work, so far no one has died but he's cost us more than 50 thousand credits when he let a crate drop and spill it's contents all over the bay... i was going to send some of my muscle to "fire" him if you catch my drift, but since you are headed that way anyhow, you might as well take care of him for me"

 

Mission received, Kill Tyber Zann

 

Tyber is a weakling opponent, and the easiest target in the whole mission run, the idea being the events of FOC were nothing more than his daydreaming fantasy before his death.

 

for more information about outer heaven you can find it here

http://outerheaven.freeforums.org/index.php

there are other projects which are devoted to making free pre-cu servers, and Outer Heaven is based around the pre-cu at it's core.

 

they include SWGANH, SWG PRE-CU, OPENSWG and... swgemu.... i guess...

 

Oh btw, the rendering is working great!

Edited October 4, 2007 by Gyron

[shadowlegion421]

i like that daydream premise. thats an example of a game i pirated and not only didnt buy, but promptly deleted. huge disappointment.

[Gyron]

I enjoyed both EAW and FOC, but mainly when playing as the Empire in Galactic Conquest mode, they had some great units (finnally i think it's the 1st game since Dark Forces, to actually do the Dark Troopers justice, Galactic Battlegrounds did okay tho.) and it had allot of nice features that improved from EAW, but the ZC were hugely overpowered and had no right to be there in the first place, at first I found it more satisfying to obliterate them early on the old fashioned way then go after the rebels, then i figured i'd mod them into a group that would make the Imperials look like they were the good guys, and at the same time make the ZC pretty easy to beat, but eventually I just moded them out of the game entirely unless I felt like thrashing them around a bit.. z3rox's mod provided a good basis for it, which ironically uses allot of models from this mod here too. Edited October 5, 2007 by Gyron

[shadowlegion421]

i keep coming across ship descriptions and pics and models and whatnot all over the place that i swear came out of warlords. i know they're all over the star wars wiki. just a testament to how outstanding this mod really is.

 

one of my biggest issues with EAW in general was the shields. projectiles in cannon star wars do not ignore shields. they overpower them quickly, but they dont ignore them. if you wanted to get technical, then you could cite that ray shields and particle shields protect against energy and projectiles, but in every written description in the official star wars novels, all combat star ships with shields blocked both energy and matter. that, coupled with the tons of mass weapons that the ZC had in foc, made me want to vomit all over eaw. the game was a great idea, just done very badly. i do agree with the dark troopers though, i always loved those. it was kind of cool to run across the phase 2's as npcs in SWG too.

[Gyron]

yeah i agree about that, the mass drivers and torpedoes ignoring shields thing is total BS, and i really don't think they are any more effective than energy weapons either, just take up more ammunition storage space rather than tibanna gas and energy. that's why I always destroy mass drivers first, and have interdictors etc use missile jamming fields so as to make enemy bombers useless, in Outer Heaven both Mass Drivers and Torpedoes will effect shields like any other weapon, though some types of torpedoes that are heavy armour peircing can ignore armour and fire an ion pulse, (in game terms the torpedo bypasses armour, but not shields, and can damage a shield projector to keep the shields from recharging, an Ion Cannon can also do this)

 

another thing that annoyed me about EAW, especially in an interview, was the power generators being outside the shields etc, and the idiot who was talking about em was saying "In true star wars style, the shield power generator is outside the shield it powers" which there has not been a SINGLE instance in star wars where a shield generator is either not protected by it's own shield, or if it's a subsystem, protected by another shield

 

for example, in the case of the invisible hand, where the atmospheric containment shield was still up in episode 3 before Anakin brought it down with his fighter, the primary shields which would have protected that had already been brought down before Anakin and Obi-Wan had even launched their ETA 2s

 

In the Hoth Battle vader even says "prepare to land our troops beyond the energy field" and the Walkers aproach from the horizon and eventually destroy the generator, if the generator was outside it's own shield they would have simply destroyed it from orbit.

 

the Endor shield bunker itself was heavily guarded and even the "back door" was rather well protected. and was protected from orbit by the same shield it emmited.

 

and as for the Executor, well the loss of the sensor globes occured only AFTER the shields were down thanks to heavy bombardment, in the Complete Locations and Inside the worlds of star wars book, the globes are scanners with "Local area shield projection vanes" Local area = limited to the globe itself, it also says the shields have equivilent power of a medium sized star, and our sun is only considered a small star.

 

 

the Dark Troopers in SWG look kindof cool but they have a few problems, one they seem to have the normal guns in their hands, not the special assault cannon that they have in Dark Forces or Galactic Battlegrounds, or the E-Web of the much larger, slower and bulkier FoC versions (I like to call the Dark troopers in Dark Forces the Mohc Pattern while the ones in FoC the Veers Pattern) and because they range in size but are generally around 8-9 feet tall, the guns look like little toys or pistols in their hands, with the carbines like... well they hold them with both hands but the hand that normally rests under the barrel is actually some distance in front of the muzzle. they are also weak opponents and almost, and in some cases just as if not more as big of a joke, threat wise as the so called Dark Troopers in Battlefront and Battlefront 2.

 

Outer Heaven we hope to bring in both the Veers and Mohc Pattern of sorts, though the only difference might be size, armement and speed. (Mohc Pattern are smaller, faster and use an Assault Cannon (rapid fire heavy blaster/plasma gun with built in minature rocket launcher), Veers Pattern are larger, slower and use an E-Web like an underslung cannon)

new animations would likely have to be made, either that or we could simply make it so the hand motion that is normall holding the barrel at the bottom of the gun is holding a handle that is at the top of the gun, and a grip/trigger that comes from the back/top of the gun, and always firing as if you are running forward (firing from the hip)

[EvilleJedi]

part of the reason for the particle shield issue I think is that the old WEG game mechnics they were introduced in basically stated that the particle shields were part of the armor, so missiles and kinetic rounds went through other shielding and then attacked the 'armor' (a combination of particle and physical material) directly.

[shadowlegion421]

how is it that you guys are getting around the EULA for SWG? i know in there it states that private servers and games are prohibited, and i also know that sony tried to spaz out on the team that made the pre-cu and pre-nge emulators. i never wanted anything more out of swg than RotW CU gameplay. to me, that was the absolute incarnation of what SWG was meant to be, and the creators even stated as much at the time. NGE just before the beastmaster chapter wasnt even that bad, its actually when i started making a name for myself in MCO-E, but when BM came out, i was disgusted at how powerful a lvl 90 character with a lvl 90 pet was. as an officer, i couldnt compete anymore, so thats when i hung up the stormy armor for good.

 

Ion cannons and other weapons that overload electrical systmes should have a much greater effect on shields, but shouldnt ignore them. as for the emitters on the sensor globes, sources seem to conflict about these being just minor sub-system shielding, or actual primary emitters. for example, when the globes on the bridge tower of the executer were destroyed, they said the bridge deflector was down. but on a ship the size of the executer, the bridge area was all the normal shield system from a vanilla ISD could cover, and there were numerous other pairs of globes over the rest of the hull of the SSD's. the MC cruiser shield generators are said to be in some of the blisters over the hull, again suggesting that while you are correct in saying that a single emitter only covers a small portion, these small protions do in fact make up the entire shielding system of  ship, except in the cases of ships small enough to be covered entirely by one or two emitters.

 

 

EJ- right, but the issue with EAW is that they act as if the particle shields dont exist, and i can say fairly certainly that whoever manufactured a sar destroyer without particle shields would have been  force-choked with reckless abandon

[Gyron]

The EULA doesn't apply to Pre-cu and CU because Pre-cu and CU no longer exist, they are in essence abandonware. the NGE however is protected, but the rest is not. also SOE never tried anything to stop the Emulator projects, and would not be able to even if it did.

the most SOE can do is ban people from their servers if they find out a player is involved with it, and since players spam adds for things like "Pay me $10 in real american money and i'll give you 10,000,000 credits" for days if not weeks on end in the Mos Eisley town square and not get into trouble.

 

Bassically we'll be fine so long as either we don't directly steal code from the pay servers, which is fine, no need to. or charge money for playing or accept too many donations that the server admin group and such exceed the ammount of income that a "non-profit" orginization would.

 

as for those shields, most of those are on the assumption of the Globes being shield generators, which they are not, it was a very common misconception but due to more active participation and a more realistic mindset those have been Retconed, but the biggest cause of the misconception still remains in RoTJ.

 

quite simply, regardless of how many of them the Globes are not shield generators, never were (except when people made mistakes) and never will be (unless people make that same mistake again) the shields being on those globules on the Mon Cals is from the same school of thought, as is the so called shield gen on the Nebulon B. so we can pretty much disregard them as extensions of a mistake.

 

the Executor has so many not because of it's size as a massive ship, but it's role as a command ship, the Globes are both for communications and scanning, so it is of no surprise that the Executor would have a massive number of Communications and Scanning globes to help it's role to co-ordinate with other ships all over the Oversector as a command ship.

 

in the films they do mention that the bridge shields were down right after Globes were destroyed, which is what caused this misconception to begin with, and attempts to remove it has come up with controversial "halfway" compromises about them being both, which is impossible, silly and defeats the purpose of the argument.

 

in terms for Outer Heaven, it's simply a matter of game mechanics and balance, in canon Star Wars, well it's a bit more complex than that,

people let it slide because most times it comes into play is during the Endor scene which no evidence is given on screen to say it was just a scanner/comm system rather than a shield, and in most Star Wars Video games which, until relatively recently, were all either single player, Rebel centic, and/or starfighter centric.

 

but now that capital ships are a part of the game for either faction and require a player crew, making the common single player concept of the globes being vulnerable, unprotected shield generators isn't just a mistake, it's broken balance wise.

 

maybe if they ever make a new Star Wars release, they will have Han shoot first, Remove that stupid beak on the Sarlac, and switch things around so that either a new scene is added to the crewpit where someone said "our port scanner globe just got destroyed... that must mean"

because the scanner globe could not have been destroyed without them losing their bridge shields first. or, having the scene inside the ship say "Sir we've lost our bridge deflector shield" then show the A-Wings strafe my the globe, and then cut right to Piet saying "Intensify Fire on the forward batteries I don't want anything to get through" and end the debate once and for all.

 

 

also in Outer Heaven the Ion Cannons do not ignore shields, they do however bypass the armour and damage the shield projectors, but do not bypass the armour for any other system. this is because the shield projectors are so close to the armour plating right beneith it, in game terms it simply means that if the enemy shields have been reduced to 0% on that projector, Ion cannon fire from Starfighters can damage the shield projector directly and destroy it, keeping that projector from recharging the shields (which recharge quite fast)

Edited October 12, 2007 by Gyron

[harvey032186]

I googled for but couldn't find Outer Heaven for SWG. Could someone please state the address? I'd like to take a look.

-edit

nevermind. I just spotted the address above. Sorry

[EvilleJedi]

The official retcon actually specifically states that the shield projectors are the small vanes on the globes and that the function of the globes themselves is specifically for sensors. Many more of these vanes must exist to cover the entire ship (in fact if there are not projectors on the domes and shields are form fitting, then it would be difficult to explain how the domes themselves are shielded as they are one of the extreme extents of the vessel) There's nothing preventing the scanner globe from being destroyed by the A-wing attack, as long as a localized shield failure made the dome unprotected (remember that the rebels concentrated fire, hopefully timing thier salvos to maximum effect) destroying the domes guarantees that a large section of the bridge shield projectors are taken off line.

 

So there is really no reason to change the dialog, the rebels concentrate fire, the domes blow up, taking out the generators mounted on them and therefore bringing down the bridge shielding network so that an Awing can kill the morons that are having a party on the bridge, jamming the controls long enough to plunge the ship into the DS2. (and the fucking ewoks say yubnub)

[Gyron]

yes a localized shield failure would make the globes vulnerable, but I still don't believe that the globe's destruction had anything to do with the shield failure, and that the shield failure happened moments before the globe was destroyed (it just made the Shield Failure more poignant to the crew).

 

also the ISD bridge is placed very well for a starship, and the Glass windows are not a sign of arrogance, overconfidence or stupidity but are quite simply a result of what had occurred during the clone wars

 

at the dawn of the Clone Wars and some time before it, most Warships used Viewscreens and their bridges were located within the tower, but not on the outer hull. (both Droid Core Ships and Republic Acclamators did this) however such an over-reliance on Viewscreens became a problem, as interference and jamming rendered them useless, by the end of the Clone Wars the newer ships replaced viewscreens with large transparisteel windows.

 

Windows cannot be Jammed or Interfered with by Electrical means. it did however make the bridge more vulnerable in the event of shield failure, however it was found that this was a worthwhile Trade off, as in the Event of a shield failure the bridge was not much more vulnerable than any other Armoured section. and more often than not, the Jamming and Interference rendered a ship helpless long before a shield failure did.

 

the Viewscreen advantage was provided by overlaying HUD displays on the windows, which could be shut off at a moments notice, also blast Doors could close to protect from De-pressurization, but are not designed to deflect a Starfighter sized, wedge shaped high speed projectile made of Durasteel in the event of a shield failure.

[EvilleJedi]

You can easily blind windows by blinding the observers (hence the extensive references to viewscreen blindness and darkening from laser fire and explosions). If you can hit a ship with a laser then you can just make a high intensity beam that makes looking outside painful. having real view ports gains you nothing other than an absolute failsafe and some satisfaction that you aren't being deceived by some simple hacking. the ISD bridge only gives you a small viewing angle, the arc is limited to 180x90 degrees at best so it gives you a very partial view of the battlespace.

 

Additionally weapon fire is not directed through the bridge, it is through gunnery stations that are using as many different sensors as possible with guidance from the commanding officer. The main point of the bridge is to aggregate information to allow broad tactical decisions to be implemented and even then it is more for navigation control than other operations. (for example the ISD would not control any hanger operation from the bridge directly, it would rely on a hanger controller to direct traffic and maintain telemetry on other ships, occasionally the bridge may make a decision that changes the docking order, but much of it would be delegated or piped in through view screens)

Edited October 13, 2007 by EvilleJedi

[Gyron]

Yes I do know that, and firing directly at the bridge shields could theoretically cause a blinding flash though shields generally have a "splinter" effect on weapons fire, but for whatever reason at the start of the Clone Wars they all used Viewscreens on their capital ships, but by the end they all used windows.

 

and yes i do know that the bridge on most capital ships is primarily for navigation and co-ordination/communication with the other parts of the ship where other ship systems are controlled.

 

Outer Heaven does have the gunnery stations mentioned, they function similar albiet from different consoles than the gunnery stations on say a YT-1300 in game, (which is really just a ladder with the option to go to the top or bottom gun while on capital ships it's a console of varying sizes depending on ship and station, along with numerous NPCs that look like they are doing something ) for the sake of gameplay each gun turret regardless of size is controlled by a single player, and on all but the Corvette, Tartan, Lancer, CC7700/a (since Rebels are more hit and run based I figured that, while the CC7700 looked like the best candidate for the Rebel counter to the Lancer (more ship to ship bassed than anti-starfighter bassed) the Rebels would have a variant which traded the gravity well generator for a second reactor allowing for stronger shields and more weapon emplacements, as i recall only the Heavy Turrets on large capital ships like ISDs have dedicated power sources, while most other ships weapons take their power directly from the main reactor.) and the Dreadnaught (to simulate the massive Crew requirement the ship is supposed to have) all the guns on those ships are manualy controlled by 1 player  per gun,

 

while on larger and more advanced ships such as the Nebulon B and upwards, there are NPC controlled "Point Defense Guns" each the equivilent of the standard "Null Bolt" that is generally equipped to ships like a YT-1300. The Point Defense Guns lack a huge amount of accuracy against starfighters and like most guns in JTL have a limited range of around 500-600 meters, but can be given basic orders by the Commander or Tactical officer from the bridge, (the only weapons control other than the torpedoes that are taken from the bridge directly, the idea being that the NPCs at the specific gunnery controls actually do the firing, while the Commander/tactical officer give the order(s).) only 2 ships so far we plan on giving capital scale Torpedoes, that being the Assault Frigate with two forward facing torpedo launchers and one aft, as well as the Acclamator 2 Assault Frigate which has 4 Torpedo launchers all forward facing. the Victory 1 has it's Torpedoes replaced with 6 Heavy Turrets for the sake of game perfomance (having a ship fire so many torpedoes might cause lag issues, and the balance system was designed for the Acclamator to have a short lived heavy hitting power from it's torpedoes, so in battles involving Tier 2 ships as the largest vessels, the Acclamators would lead the charge, and after their torpedoes have been depleated the Victory Classes would take over as they have both Heavy and Light Turrets, while the Acclamators only have Light Turrets and Torpedoes )

 

The Point defense Guns can even be craftable by guilds that have Access to the Tier 2 Capital ships (the Tiers of Capital ships are ENTIRELY separate from the standard pilot profession Tiers) thus reducing the crew requirements on the smaller corvettes and even the Dreadnaughts significantly. the basic orders include Open Fire/Fire at Will, Cease Fire/Stand Down (if a ship had been disabled or NPC mobs are close but you want the Starfighters to take em down in stead) Concentrate fire on specific Target or Ignore a specific target (once again in the case of a disabled craft, while other active craft are attacking.)

the other guns such as Light Turrets and Heavy Turrets (which are weapon components seperate from the standard "Weapon" slot, a starfighter or POB ship weapon cannot be put onto a Light Turret or Heavy Turret slot or vise versa, and likewise a Light Turret cannot be placed on a Heavy Turret slot or vice versa)

 

Light Turrets have even worse accuracy against starfighters. The turret traverse and pitch is slow, and their HUD lack target leads and fire quite slowly. They do however have a 3km firing range and enough firepower to demolish even the toughest starfighter with so much as a glancing hit.

 

Heavy Turrets have 5km range, fire even slower, but are capable of potentially twice the damage of a single Light turret, The guns on a Venator for example are considered double barreled light turrets or Short range Heavy Turrets (2 separate light turret weapons in the same physical turret) giving it great firepower but short range, the Venator can spawn NPC Fighters that function like mobile Point Defence Guns) The ISD1 which is the largest ship available for Players (we have no concrete plans on making the ISD2 available just yet, though there will be some around for certain special Events, we might make the ISD2 available for certain Players that are high influence guild leaders that already have an ISD1 to convert it to an ISD2 if they are part of Imperial High Command or something) the ISD1 has a similar loadout to the Venator's deck guns but with twin Heavy Turrets on each of it's 8 Deck guns, making a massive 16 heavy turret guns on 8 Turrets (instead of the Venators 18 Light Turrets along 8 Deck guns and 2 Trench guns ). It also has 6 Quadcannon brim trench guns of 4 Light Turrets each, (manned by a single gunner for each Quadcannon) and 3 Axial Tricannons with 3 Light turrets each (again manned by a single gunner for each Tricannon) as well as multiple single Light Turrets dotted across the dorsal and Ventral sides of the ship.

 

the Victory 1 has 6 Heavy Turrets on 6 single barreled guns, 1 TriCannon and 2 QuadCannons

the Victory 2 has more but i have yet to work on how much exactly

the Acclamator has 12 Light Turrets in Acordance to lore, 3 guns on either side of the Bridge tower, 2 on either brim trench, and 1 on either side of the hangar beneth it.

[EvilleJedi]

the flash effect is more than just weapons hitting the bridge, I believe lotf even mentions the ships own batteries blinding it temporary when they fire. Large detonations and nearby impacts on other ships would also require significant dimming

 

might I suggest giving the Victory I a few very large powerful missiles that can be shot down? the rest of the guns would be point defense basically, it wouldn't be exactly right, but it would leave room for the victory II to be different, give it some ions as well.

 

consular cruisers have windows, victorys have windows and an observation bridge, dreadnaughts have windows (although not forward facing), all of the sepretist warships have windows on a bridge (providence for sure), nearly everything in the star hyperspace war had windows... I don't know of any ships that don't have actual viewports in the clonewars, and there are so few old ships that it would be difficult to find anythign without windows pre clone wars (all of the kotor ships have large observation bridges.)

Edited October 14, 2007 by EvilleJedi

[Gyron]

True, but I do know that the Acclamator used viewscreens, while it's successor uses windows, and It does most certainly appear that the Droid core ship uses Viewscreens rather than windows but I can't be sure.

 

as much as I like being as canon as possible the Acclamator already has large missiles that it fires, and I don't know exactly how one would script shooting these down, the idea is making them pretty well dumbfire, so another capital ship could theoretically evade them if they are far enough away, small enough profile, fast enough reaction time and manuverable enough.

 

also the Acclamator has the large Torpedoes and Light Turrets, while the Victory 1 has Light and Heavy Turrets, the Victory 1 also has double layered shields, while the Acclamator has only single layered. Victorys are designed for longer endurance, while Acclamators are spearhead assault ships.

the Victory 2 simply has more slots for more weapons, more point defense guns, thicker armour (double layered) and visually different for the lack of the "S-Foils" and having Three Primary engines and 4 Secondary engines (rather than the Victory 1 which has 2 Primary engines and 2 Secondary engines.)