[Mod Idea] Realism

from Sins Forums

I was wondering if anyone had decided to create a realism mod yet, or if anyone would be interested in this sort of mod.

What I have in mind is the following -

(1) Make all ships much slower (though leave or increase the speed using phase lane jumping) Makes planning more important because you will not be able to quickly respond to an attack, you must have already prepared your defense fleet to counter any incoming forces. (IE A fleet in the Gulf of Mexico can't speed across the Atlantic ocean and defend Britian in a few minutes, it takes a long time to move a fleet)

(2) Make every ship in the game extremly fragile but more useful. Instead of having ships sustain insane amounts of damage from enemy ships make the damage more realistic. Once the ships are done or are penetrated the hull of the ship should begin to take extreme damage. One lucky shot can destroy an entire ship if you hit a vital spot! This should make combat much more tense as you try to get your ships in range of the enemy ships without exposing them to return fire. Each ship would die a lot faster, but at the same time be more important becasue they have the ability to inflict the same loses on the enemy.

(3) Change the weapon systems on the ships so that they look more impressive. Instead of pooring weak fire onto an enemy vessel over the course of several minutes have one masive cannon shot destroy a frigate with a lucky shot. So a Kol Battleship will really be  something to fear! It's heavy armor and weapons with long ranges will make it a daunting enemy to fight. Getting anything other than a battleship in range of a Kol would spell its doom. The same would go for the other factions battleships but each one would have its own special abilities. For example the Advent battleship would retain its heavy shields and have several fire arcs, allowing it to dive into enemy formations and take out several ships with sustaining heavy damage to the shields but none to the hull. This would create tactical situations where you need to decide if it is worth the risk to engage enemies when you don't have superior fire power or range.

(4) Increase the role of strike craft and Long range frigates. - Fighters are no longer effective against anything other than enemy fighters and bombers. Would like to change fighters so that they use missles or beam weapons depending on the race to attack and defend against enemy bombers. Bombers slower but much more powerful. They will give your fleet the long range striking distance that is needed considering how fragile ships will become. Flak frigates and other defense vessels will become extremly important and would like to add a flak defense turret to the defense buildings you can place in your gravity well. Long range frigates will be like cruise missle launchers and will be very effective against enemy defense buildings but rather useless VS. enemy ships do the long distance involved and the high degree of missle jamming that could take place along with fleet movement.

(5) Reduce fleet sizes - Reduce the size of the fleets while making each ship more expensive. A normal light frigate will be cheep and take up very little space but larger ships like Kodiaks will take up a lot of space and play important rolls in your fleet. This will force players to think more about fleet composition and will punish building large amounts of the same thing. Each ship will have its role to play in the fleet and having to many of one type of ship will cause problems. If all you do is build Kodiaks your fleet will be very weak against enemy strike craft, if all you do is build LRM blobs you'll find your fleet is only good for blowing up enemy defense turrets and falls quickly to even the smallest enemy frigate fleets. I would really like to convert Seige frigates into long range cannons that can be used to strike planets from far away instead of just generally bombing the planet into a useless glass ball.

(6) Would like to make bombers or maybe an extra class of bombers that can attack planets as well. Would like to increase the number of strike craft you can choose from and increase the number of squadrons that can be carried on carriers. The carrier should be the most versitle ship in the fleet due to the wide range of things it can bring to the battle.

(7) Increase the range and damage of static defenses. Fighter hangers would obviously be more useful based on previous strike craft changes. The turrets would have an increased range and very heavy damage (Imagine how big a cannon could be if it never has to be moved once it is placed?) A shot from a static cannon defense should be able to destroy any frigate and two any cruiser. This will force players to bring in long range LRMS to deal with this defenses and give the defending fleet time to respond. Want flak turrets to defend from enemy strike craft.

(8) Super weapons harder to research, but game ending. IF you have a cannon that can fire all the way to another planet and destroy the populace on that planet with one or two shots, the game should end there. Researching Returning Armada, Nova Cannon, or the Advent culture cannon should end the game in a research victory. The Returning Armada would be to powerful to over come, The nova Cannon to powerful to resist, and the culture cannon should instantly mind wash all enemies to Advents cause. This will add a second victory condition to the game to allow people a seperate path to victory!

The general over all idea of the mod is to make the ships more realistic, so that they can't absorb insane amounts of damage before dieing and make the game more interesting. Just give me your general thoughts on this idea. I have no idea how to create a mod but I would love to see something like this become reality.

modding
15,279 views 25 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
See, some one told me my mod was not very balance, this one would prolly be very well balanced, the only problem for is that I like to have big battles that are slugfests, I dont play a game for realism, I play a game like this to feel like a general and blow stuff up. This does sound very good though and I wish you all the luck on it.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I think over time if you played well you could build up a very large fleet, and the engagements would very spectacular even if they had less over all ships. With each ship more powerful you could have large fleets with powerful ships slugging it out. Sooner or later you would have to get down to the nitty gritty and just suffer the losses. Have your battleships with your main cruisers engage the enemy fleet for better or for worse. I would also really like to change the default formation so that the ships arrange themselves around the flag ship diffrently. This would also make support ships that can restore shields and hull points all the more important, though most ships won't have time to have their hull points replaced :P Also I think I'd totally remove diplomacy as it stands now and make the game auto team friendly factions so that the Advent players are all on the same time and all the Vasari are on the same team ect more like AVP where race and team are the same thing.
Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
My general thought on that idea is: "I always dig realism mods, realism is always a Pro. But, game mechanics don't allow 'critical shots', because I think it's only "shot is fired > shot hits/misses, repeat".
So unless you can completely rework the combat system.."

Or am I wrong?

While I'm still here.. I always loved reading the fleet battles in the different Star Wars books. Loved how the strategists layed and played out their tactics, used various maneuvers, and so on.. this kind of depth in fleet maneuvering and tactics would be nice to have in any mod, or game for that matter.. but then again, SoaSE is just too limited in it's abilities."

End of my general thought.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
I think your idea for a "research victory" is not very "realistic". Not in the sense that a superweapon is game ending, but the sense that is so easy to get. In GalCiv2, a tecnnological victory takes a very long time to complete. In Sins, just capture a few planets, build a bunch of that branches' structures, and research away. It would be too...easy to win through a technological victory. Even if the cost was steep.

I very much like the idea of promoting fighters/bombers. They definately need to be emphisised.

The frailty of ships, however...it seems like a game breaker to me. Aside from the roots of the RTS genre influencing the core gameplay of Sins, (4XRTS) I strongly think that weak ships would severly detract from gameplay, as Sins is not set up to be a game of chess. A handful of units that need constant baby-sitting is not becoming of - generally - any RTS.

The slowness factor of ships might also make the game extremely boring. Now I understand the idea of "reality", but this isn't a game like Freelancer or Freespace where you are piloting a small ship and capital ships are indeed mammoth, as well as any planets and other space structures. This is a game where you control everything, and the pace at which this would set Sins at might be quite dull.

I hear where you're coming from though. I think a more realistic approach would benifit Sins very much. However, some of the major changes you are suggesting might break gameplay alltogether in the sense that everything needs to be micromanaged, speed is slow, and ships aren't really worth it to build as they die very quickly. (One shot? Come on. I know, vital spot, but think about it - ships take a long time to make, with armour, shielding, and probably back-up systems and forcefields.)

I realise that in different genres this might be applicable, but in reality, it just wouldn't work.

On a brighter note, I'm sure if you could come up with a lot of small changes that didn't effect the game as much as some of the things you mentioned, Sins could definately be improved upon.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
My general thought on that idea is: "I always dig realism mods, realism is always a Pro. But, game mechanics don't allow 'critical shots', because I think it's only "shot is fired > shot hits/misses, repeat".
End of quote


Actually, the game is more like: shot hits, shot damage is reduced by armor/mitigation/armor vs. damage type/repeat. There isn't any missing by default (except against fighters, or in asteroid belts, etc).

I did add a critical hit system in my own mod which does much to liven up the gameplay, so it is possible. (Though things like armor depending on facing and weapon damage/chance to hit depending on range would be much more difficult).

Serondal, I'd suggest getting your hands dirty in the game files and trying to edit in some of the features you've outlined... most are simple changes and could be fairly easy to implement... and at the very least fun. Good luck.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
First of all I really like the idea of a realism mod. But I agree with the others that some of the changes might be a little too extreme to maintain fun.

Actually I tried to add some realism for myself. Instead of reducing the max speed of ships I decreased the acceleration and deceleration. You can't accelerate with 7 G or beyond without crushing the entire crew inside. But you can reach very high speeds by accelerating constantly.
I also tripled the damage of all weapons.
The effect was quicker fights and more tactics needed when positioning your ships or trying to retreat etc because ships weren't able to navigate as quickly within battle. All in all it was quite fun. Only the AI couldn't handle the limited mobility of the ships it as well as I hoped.

An idea on the critical hits just came into my mind. Maybe it's possible to give all ships a (passive) ability that increases damage by 1000% with a probability of 1% or something similar.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
GoldSabre it would certainly take some play testing to make sure it isn' to boring or hard to manage that is for sure :) . As for the research victory you might make a seperate branch of research that starts from tech 1 and has techs on each level that need to be researched in order to reach the victory research at level 8. By going for this victory you would use giant amounts of resources that your enemies would be spending on ships ect so it would be risky. Again this is all just speculation, and I don't have the mod files on my computer at home which has no internet access atm so I don't know what can be done.

The hit shot kills would only be from battleships or defense turrets to frigates with shields done or weaker shields. Think about a Battleship from WW2 hitting a frigate from WW2 with a direct hit from its main cannons and that is what I want to happen. I guess my mod would more or less make it like WW2 in space :P IT would certianly change the pacing of the game and require more micro managment, and that is why I Would want to make less ships over all so it doesn't get out of control. It would still be Real Time 4x but the real time part would be more like Heros of WW2 instead of Starcraft :P (if you've ever played that game you know what I mean, your tanks can be blown up with one good hit and your soliders can die in the blink of an eye. A good example of how to much realism can make a game insanely hard)
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
I like it, I like it a lot. My only concern is that it may pander to the mouse jockeys, especially in massive fleets where those who can select and position their ships the quickest, win, leaving no time to sit and enjoy the battle scenes. Just my opinion you understand.

However, you have just touched upon the one thing I HATE about our current games and that's the fact that we are STILL mired in the board game roots of hit points, modifiers, dice rolls etc. Just look at all the RTS games that have come out in the last few years, in essence they, the basic game engines, are the same with different graphics and effects.

We now have massively powerful 64bit multi-core computers, served by multiple Gigabytes of RAM and a myriad a very talented developers and modders yet we are still slaves to dice rolls.

I for one say that we need, no, scratch that, I call for something new, something original, something special that'll drag the gaming world, particularly RTS and it's 4x offspring, into the 21st century, neatly severing those roots once and for all.

Board games have served their purpose and served it well but it is time to move on.

Surely?

Cheers,
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Maybe I could make the battleships and larger cruisers take more hits that way we could have good old fashioned broadsides type battle where the two ships just open up on each other and the first one to hit something vital wins? Of course support cruisers and capital ships would play very important roles. Again I can't Mod so I'm just throwing this out there incase a modder without any idea wants to take my idea and run with it.

Also I think it'd be neat if the guns firing have bigger flashes and the hits have extreme explosions but few shots fire so each one is more extreme and memorable. It'd been cool to redo the hit animations so it looks like there is a breach in the hull and fire is getting sucked out into space and then dieing as it runs out of oxygen which debris from inside the ship spewing into space and what not.

As far as the HP and what not I totally agree. I would like to make this mod where the ships die in realistic ways. If everyone on board the ship that can make a difference is dead it could become a hulk, if the magazine or reactor is breached it could explode (and damage ships around it) If the sensors are damaged it could stop firing and only move if the weapons are destroyed it could stop firing and only move, engines destroyed it would just drift at the same speed and direction it was going in before hand ect ect.

There is a lot you could do to make this all go on behind the scenes so all you have to do is watch as well, no need to make the experience any diffrent from Sins is now, just change around the rules so the battles are more dire and the out come would never be certain.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
one thing you could do, if u could figure out how to. would be to make it so ships inertia actually effects how they fight in a battle. i just dont find it believeable that battleship stops as fast as it does, or any other ship for that matter.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
one thing you could do, if u could figure out how to. would be to make it so ships inertia actually effects how they fight in a battle. i just dont find it believeable that battleship stops as fast as it does, or any other ship for that matter.
End of quote


Hood, you can do this by making each ship's deceleration values equal to its acceleration. Right now they accelerate at about 100 whatsits per second and decelerate at 500. Equalize it and it feels more natural...
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
I was just thinking about this actually.
one thing you could do, if u could figure out how to. would be to make it so ships inertia actually effects how they fight in a battle. i just dont find it believeable that battleship stops as fast as it does, or any other ship for that matter.Hood, you can do this by making each ship's deceleration values equal to its acceleration. Right now they accelerate at about 100 whatsits per second and decelerate at 500. Equalize it and it feels more natural...
End of quote


I would like to make it so that the ships have inertia and know how to use it when they move. SO instead of a ship moving like it is in a fluid when it turns around it will just turn on the spot and start to accelerate in the other direction. There is no reason for a battleship to loop around when it could just turn 180 degrees and start to go the other direction.

It'd be cool also to add retro rocket animations to the front of the ships and turning rockets to the sides of them for when they turn. Fighters should be able to turn on a time due to their tiny mass and powerful engines instead of swooping around like they're in atmosphere. (Note, I'm not complaining about the way the game is now, this is just an idea for a mod. I'm not saying this is the way it should have been done to begin with. I totally understand a game going for low-realism to make the game more enjoyable to a larger crowd. This would just be a mod for a niche of people.)

The battles would be quick but spectalur with something like this. I'm hoping this weekend to get a hold of the mod tools as see what I can figure out.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Someone's got to bring it up so I guess I will. Height? Why is it that ships go around a planet instead of overtop of it? Why do ships not move on the y-axis? Doubtless that this is an engine thing, so it probably can't be altered. But for small-scale battles like you propose, a height system like something out of Homeworld could mean the world in tactics.

Also, I think strikecraft already turn quite well. I think it's just the time it takes them to make another attack run. It seems like the fighters dive onto the target, shoot, and fly off too far when they could have turned and shot again.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
Or they could have just slowed down to a stop and hung there and wasted the frigate since it has no way to defend against attacks. The whole idea of moving continually is based on flight in atmospehere. There is no reason a fighter/bomber group couldn't slow down and waste a target when they know there is no threat of return fire. Even then slowing down and doing a lot juking from side to side and up and down while remaining locked a target would be just as good for dodging incoming flak fire as just doing a fly by.
It also seems strangt to me that in the future we'd be using flak to defend against fighters when we use missle systems now :P Only backwards armies continue to use flak systems and they tend to lose (Iraq?) Maybe the mod could replace the TEC Flak frigate with a Aegis Frigate that can launch missles to shoot down fighter/bombers and a special ability that allows it to shoot down incoming phase missles (Since a missle that can jump past shields would be REALLY over powered in a game where the shields are your frist and last line of defense eh?) just a thought , again
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
Or they could have just slowed down to a stop and hung there and wasted
the frigate since it has no way to defend against attacks.
End of quote


I'd imagine that if the fighters (and bombers, of course) stopped, they would become relatively easy targets, a ship could just pick them off.
Also, they fighter's motions kind of make sense. Holding with the realistic acceleration and deceleration, a fighter would take far longer to slow down than start up. It moves so fast because it would have a rear thrusting engine; adding one of similar power to the front would leave room for the pilot, a seat, and maybe a handgun if he squeezes. In other words, virtually no weaponry.
Seeing that quick deceleration is unfeasable, it would make sense to just keep moving, dodging flak.
Further, it should take a good chunk of time to fly the fighters out of a ship, and fly into a ship. It's not safe to blast you engines to full power inside a ship, practically suicide if their's no exhaust/flame ventilation. A fighter would have to be pushed or flung out of a carrier, and then start its engines once it leaves the vicinity of the ship. When landing, it would have to slow down very much, and glide slowly into the ship. All the while extremely vulnerable to any ship who cares to look and shoot.
A point of note: Shouldn't the shields go down while the fighters fly in and out of the ship? Otherwise, wouldn't they just splat on it like bugs on a windshield, damaging their carrier as well?

On an more random note, why the hell do they have wings!?
The only reason I see that they would have wings is if they could fly right up close to a planet and blast the heck out of the infrastructure. And they can't.
Any able modders out there to fix this?


Moving away from the fighters, onto general propulsion. I don't claim to know how any of the ships move, but wouldn't it leave some trail of detritus, some lingering energy?
And wouldn't that pose a very real hazard to other ships? Shields would protect them, for a time, but tailgating another ship would really be a bad idea. Perhaps, space where a ship has moved through cannot be moved through without taking damage? I realize this is probably completely out of the reach of any modders; most likely it is built into the game engine itself how things like that work. Still, it's an idea.

I agree with the making ships weaker, much weaker, but I hold that they should remain the same price.
Rockets should pack a real punch; they would have much kinetic energy as well as whatever warhead they were carrying; while energy weapons would have a much smaller effect. It takes one hell of a laser to cut through a warship's hull, one hit.
Also, shields shouldn't do anything to stop projectile weapons: it takes mass to do that. Unless the ship is pushed back a little each time a rocket hits, rockets should just go through a shield, as if it wasn't there. Rockets should also take twice or three times as long to load; it just isn't realistic to have them up and ready to go in seconds.
With physical, kinetic weapons holding such increased power, flak cannons would turn into a much larger threat to any ship that gets in range. Gauss platforms would be lethal, and autocannons not much better.

And on a final, passing thought, shouldn't energy weapons recharge energy shields? Just a though, probably a stupid one. Heh.

Anyroad, there's all that. Kudos if you read through it all. ;)

Ah, an addition: shouldn't stars and storms damage ships? Shouldn't ships be either slowed to a crawl or hurled into the star if they fly in it's gravity well? Also, a stars gravity well should be downright HUGE, and have a couple steroids, to boot. (very rich asteroids, all the heavy, dense metals would have been pulled close to the sun)

Even more kudos if you beared with me in that edit. xD
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
AS far as the shields go a magnetic shield could deflect incoming rockets (Or cause them to explode pending on what kind of detenation device or tracking system they've got) The ships in this game just have generic "shield" that stops everything and somehow loses power when its hit, which is what a lot of games use.

We could flip the role of shields and armor, so that armor is reflective and is a defense against beam weapons while shields are magnetic and are used to deflect or stop kinetic weapons. This way having your shields damaged makes you more open to having your armor damaged (By something they can't protect against), thus making you more open to beam weapon damage. This could serve as a way to balance the three races.

Vasari - Heavy shields and reflective regenerating armor but weak weapon choice. They can take a beating from either race but have a very limited range of weapons to deal damage back. Have to disable enemy armor or shields with their support ships to do damage?

Advent - Heavy shields but weak armor, making them open to beam weapons and very hard to hit with normal cannons/missles. Their own ships use beam weapons 99% of the time so would be very strong against other Advent players but weak VS TEC With their heavy armor.

TEC - No shields what so ever, use reflective and thick armor that can take a beating and reflect beam weapons at the same time.

Just as examples, to what you might be able to do ?

As far as fighters go you have to remeber that in space there is no fluid movement, so all that swooping around and what not is a waste of fuel. Instead of swooping to the left or right in an arch it would save fuel and time just to point your ship the other direction and start to fire your engines that way. (for example if you wanted to turn around instead of doing a 180 degree loop you could just spin 180% while your ship is still moving in the first direction and fire your engines the other way.) Examples of this type of fighter combat can be found in X3, I believe the Elite games, ect. The way the game works now is with false space flight like in Star Wars where fighters in space swoop around like they're in a fluid substance and have lift on their wings.

Slowing down to a dead stop would be really hard and it would open fighters up to fire from normal weapons so yes, zooming by would be more useful, but think of this. As the fighter zooms by it could rotate to always face the enemy ship so even as it flys away it can fire on the ship (Since it will keep going in the same direction if it never fires its engines again) Once the fighter is far enough away that it is out of weapons range it could just fire up its engines and come straight back without wasting any energy. That kind of attack would look a lot diffrent than what you've got in Sins now. Also it seems like fighters should use missle weapons to knock out other fighters, not guns since the distance between fighters in space is normally vast (Even modern fighters seldom go to using guns any more, they use Air to air missle systems)

As far as energy weapons recharging enemy shields that could be a special ability on some ships, to absorb the energy from beam weapons to recharge the ship. Still I think the power of the shields should be linked to anti-matter, so when your shields are damaged it should drain your anti-matter reserves instead of some shield %
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
Hmm.
I suppose you have a point, with the fighters...
But I can't help think that the engines needed to push side to side on the fighter's nose would take up weapon space, as well...
It also occurs to me that watching fighters seesaw back and forth around their target like that could get pretty dull after the fifth or sixth run. Heh.
I still think it's a wonder that the fighters can take off and land w/o splatting on the carrier's shields...
:L
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
lets look at it

if ships slow but faster phase jump, you acualy did nothing but change in gravity well battles, or sped up the arival time of a fleet docked ready to jump, LRM's combined with the slowness, would be murder, exept with light frigates who could zoom up and blow it to pieces, cap ships should be able to blow frigates up, and with there having lower cap, cost, and and greater speed, could run circles around them, and could pay to stand the losses.

definatly micro manage, but i also dont liek the idea of quantity over quality which is what it is. and fighters, are anti bombers >.> bombers blow ship up while being small and safe. spam bombers from those carrier and see what i meen. cap ships should be stronger, but it was a balance issue.

reduced fleet size would make defence immpossible as you have it, as your suposed to be able to supply a defending fleet and a assult fleet.

for that extra class of bombers, there is its called a siege frigate, stop being lazy and acualy make a few and assult a planet, fighters lack the realistic power to escape a planets gravity, and get in range to bomb.

the defences are small range because realisticly trying to target something in the dead of space, with little light is hard, "is that a star or a ship?", their small range so it means that you first off the bat defence weapon to be useful has to be stratigicly laid.

super weapons are game ending, for TEC anyway, all the other races, are well... crap tec has a anti-planet cannon, vasari, anti-moon cannon, advent has anti-nothing cannon. suprisingly the advent cannon acualy does .15 dmg persec to ships in the gravity well, and gives you those special researchable culture things. vasari needs to be stronger so it can blow up entire fleets save caps, unless bombarded by multiple shells.
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
As far as fighters go you have to remeber that in space there is no fluid movement, so all that swooping around and what not is a waste of fuel. Instead of swooping to the left or right in an arch it would save fuel and time just to point your ship the other direction and start to fire your engines that way. (for example if you wanted to turn around instead of doing a 180 degree loop you could just spin 180% while your ship is still moving in the first direction and fire your engines the other way.) Examples of this type of fighter combat can be found in X3, I believe the Elite games, ect. The way the game works now is with false space flight like in Star Wars where fighters in space swoop around like they're in a fluid substance and have lift on their wings
End of quote


do you relised the kind of advnced computer, and engine calibration needed to thrust the plane to urn while flying and puch it side ways, and cause it to fly off target, and the amount of thruster fuel needed to control sutch and act, woudl require? the engines would not be off they would would be redirected to the thrusters giving it the ability to turn and it woul;d still need forward thrust ballanced by, side and front thrust to keep it going at the required speed and angle. and then of cource the fighter is constant changing speed the pilot would have to know the exact speed hes going and calibrate for it. and people there is no way save dopple radar of telling your speed, but then all objects around you would need to tell what speed their going and send it to the fighter. >_> so yah your idea makes perfect sence because of it loss of fluid motion when you turn your ship what stops it over the target a force in the oposite directiong, and then when you are coser to somthing you turn faster farther away you turn less. it would require knolledge unatainable, and put into a person mind to interface his boosters. thus the amount of energy used would probably be more from this uncontrolable constant managment then if you simply turned around.
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
Just to throw in my two cents this is a game not real life. I can see a realism mod and that would be cool and all but you don't need to fix every little detail like how fighters could conserve fuel or how they would splat on the shields, they obviously
have some sort of way to get through and thats all that matters. Critical hits would
be good. Getting rid of the whole hit points and dice rolls thing would be cool but
unless you've got some really good idea in that brain of yours 'If it ain't broke don't
fix it'.

Actually that was more like 50 dollars but you get the point.
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
Lol.
It's the principle of the thing!
Still, this is a thread for discussing a realism mod.
So we are discussing ideas of how to make it more realistic.
We know its a game.
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
do you relised the kind of advnced computer, and engine calibration needed to thrust the plane to urn while flying and puch it side ways, and cause it to fly off target, and the amount of thruster fuel needed to control sutch and act, woudl require? the engines would not be off they would would be redirected to the thrusters giving it the ability to turn and it woul;d still need forward thrust ballanced by, side and front thrust to keep it going at the required speed and angle. and then of cource the fighter is constant changing speed the pilot would have to know the exact speed hes going and calibrate for it. and people there is no way save dopple radar of telling your speed, but then all objects around you would need to tell what speed their going and send it to the fighter. >_> so yah your idea makes perfect sence because of it loss of fluid motion when you turn your ship what stops it over the target a force in the oposite directiong, and then when you are coser to somthing you turn faster farther away you turn less. it would require knolledge unatainable, and put into a person mind to interface his boosters. thus the amount of energy used would probably be more from this uncontrolable constant managment then if you simply turned around.
End of quote

That was the most incomprehensible mess I've seen to date. I can't even tell if you were with or against Serondal, the guy you quoted. Either way, I'm with Serondal on this, and if you can pull this mod off, it would be fantastic. I love the feel of the X3 game (didn't play 2 or 1), and performing things you described with fighters, although I think the drift wasn't quite enough in X3, cutting your engines stopped you too quick.

Anyway, this looks like a really nice mod, hope everything goes to plan with it, and any help I can offer, you know where I am ;)
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
As far as fighters go you have to remeber that in space there is no fluid movement, so all that swooping around and what not is a waste of fuel. Instead of swooping to the left or right in an arch it would save fuel and time just to point your ship the other direction and start to fire your engines that way. (for example if you wanted to turn around instead of doing a 180 degree loop you could just spin 180% while your ship is still moving in the first direction and fire your engines the other way.) Examples of this type of fighter combat can be found in X3, I believe the Elite games, ect. The way the game works now is with false space flight like in Star Wars where fighters in space swoop around like they're in a fluid substance and have lift on their wingsdo you relised the kind of advnced computer, and engine calibration needed to thrust the plane to urn while flying and puch it side ways, and cause it to fly off target, and the amount of thruster fuel needed to control sutch and act, woudl require? the engines would not be off they would would be redirected to the thrusters giving it the ability to turn and it woul;d still need forward thrust ballanced by, side and front thrust to keep it going at the required speed and angle. and then of cource the fighter is constant changing speed the pilot would have to know the exact speed hes going and calibrate for it. and people there is no way save dopple radar of telling your speed, but then all objects around you would need to tell what speed their going and send it to the fighter. >_> so yah your idea makes perfect sence because of it loss of fluid motion when you turn your ship what stops it over the target a force in the oposite directiong, and then when you are coser to somthing you turn faster farther away you turn less. it would require knolledge unatainable, and put into a person mind to interface his boosters. thus the amount of energy used would probably be more from this uncontrolable constant managment then if you simply turned around.
End of quote



The fleets air craft carriers could track and provide all that info to the fighters. It takes very little thrust or fuel to turn a tiny little ship in space, and we are to assume they have some sort of anti-matter drive so I'm not to worried about the fueld involved ;P

Uzi I certainly think if I ever did make this I would want to include your extra planets as well as the mod that creates realistic universe settings. AS far as LRM's go I Wanted to change those to attack fixed targets in space only, and have seige frigates attacking enemy frigates over large ranges while fighters attack the planet but that is just an idea, nothing set in stone.
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
Am I crazy to point out that you guys are spending a lot of time arguing the supposed mechanics of fictional flight systems and fuel sources? Who's to say in this crazy future they find a way to may flight mechanics a little more resonable with the complibated use of retro rockets and boosters. Ah well. I did like the way Babylon handled it.
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
I was wondering if anyone had decided to create a realism mod yet, or if anyone would be interested in this sort of mod.
End of quote

Well, depends on realism. If you think about space combat realism rather
then atmospheric fight realism these are different things.
What is more important is that this is just a game and should be fun ;)
So my comments follow... nothing important just thinking about
space combat.


(1) Make all ships much slower (though leave or increase the speed using phase lane jumping) Makes planning more important because you will not be able to quickly respond to an attack, you must have already prepared your defense fleet to counter any incoming forces. (IE A fleet in the Gulf of Mexico can't speed across the Atlantic ocean and defend Britian in a few minutes, it takes a long time to move a fleet)
End of quote

In space, ships accelerate and decelerate but they can be as fast as
much they can sustain acceleration. Different thing is how fast they can acc/dec
Second in space combat terms beam weapons rule.
While earth fleet cannot fight at longer distance, fleet around Jupiter
could hit fleet around Earth with beam weapons in space.



(2) Make every ship in the game extremly fragile but more useful. Instead of having ships sustain insane amounts of damage from enemy ships make the damage more realistic. Once the ships are done or are penetrated the hull of the ship should begin to take extreme damage. One lucky shot can destroy an entire ship if you hit a vital spot! This should make combat much more tense as you try to get your ships in range of the enemy ships without exposing them to return fire. Each ship would die a lot faster, but at the same time be more important becasue they have the ability to inflict the same loses on the enemy.
End of quote

Again, not very realistic for space combat.
Because of long ranges and low probability of hit, weapons would probably
have lower damage but could sustain constant fire. In that way fleets
could bombard each other for weeks till enough damage is done.
Ships would be probably very well shielded and armored in order
to survive space travel.



(3) Change the weapon systems on the ships so that they look more impressive. Instead of pooring weak fire onto an enemy vessel over the course of several minutes have one masive cannon shot destroy a frigate with a lucky shot. So a Kol Battleship will really be  something to fear! It's heavy armor and weapons with long ranges will make it a daunting enemy to fight. Getting anything other than a battleship in range of a Kol would spell its doom. The same would go for the other factions battleships but each one would have its own special abilities. For example the Advent battleship would retain its heavy shields and have several fire arcs, allowing it to dive into enemy formations and take out several ships with sustaining heavy damage to the shields but none to the hull. This would create tactical situations where you need to decide if it is worth the risk to engage enemies when you don't have superior fire power or range.
End of quote

Again this is realistic for fleet on the sea.
In space combat terms, firing arcs does not play that much of a role
because of ranges involved, so that several smaller ships could have better
chance against one bigger ( of course provided that they can penetrate defenses).




(4) Increase the role of strike craft and Long range frigates. - Fighters are no longer effective against anything other than enemy fighters and bombers. Would like to change fighters so that they use missles or beam weapons depending on the race to attack and defend against enemy bombers. Bombers slower but much more powerful. They will give your fleet the long range striking distance that is needed considering how fragile ships will become. Flak frigates and other defense vessels will become extremly important and would like to add a flak defense turret to the defense buildings you can place in your gravity well. Long range frigates will be like cruise missle launchers and will be very effective against enemy defense buildings but rather useless VS. enemy ships do the long distance involved and the high degree of missle jamming that could take place along with fleet movement.
End of quote

Again fighters and missiles are not realistic for space combat.
Enemy fleet would have long time to destroy incoming fighters
and ordinary missiles with beam weapons.
Only realistic use I can see for fighters and missiles is
short range atmospheric/orbital fight for planet.
That means both attacking or defending planet.
Then again both fighters and missiles would have
hard time in dodging short range (probably tens of thousands of kilometers
is short range) beam weapons from space craft.



(6) Would like to make bombers or maybe an extra class of bombers that can attack planets as well. Would like to increase the number of strike craft you can choose from and increase the number of squadrons that can be carried on carriers. The carrier should be the most versitle ship in the fleet due to the wide range of things it can bring to the battle.
End of quote


This is in my opinion ok as atmospheric bombers can play their usual role.
Just not to attack space craft, as their usefulness in space would be very low.



(7) Increase the range and damage of static defenses. Fighter hangers would obviously be more useful based on previous strike craft changes. The turrets would have an increased range and very heavy damage (Imagine how big a cannon could be if it never has to be moved once it is placed?) A shot from a static cannon defense should be able to destroy any frigate and two any cruiser. This will force players to bring in long range LRMS to deal with this defenses and give the defending fleet time to respond. Want flak turrets to defend from enemy strike craft.
End of quote

Static beam weapon defenses should have long range , probably of novalith cannon ;)
damage would not be that hi, though. Anything ballistic would be shot down before
even arrives.

Greets, hope this helps.