Frigate possibilities for Epic and I-War

@Shane:

What I was doing when I worked on a few new Indie textures for the frigate campaign, was drawing them in a 16 bit palette and then loading the I-War palette with "nearest colour matching" turned on. It worked pretty good, just the colours mentioned above had the be replaced by a similiar colour from the middle of the palette, which wasn't too much work with a colour changing tool (I used Paint Shop Pro 4).
I'd recommend the diecast tool of the I-War texture developpment kit for "stamping" the Indie textures, but the problem is that it doesn't work reliable enough (at least not on my machine). In fact, it worked once. [xx(]

@jwk:

As mentioned above, balancing the ship's armament is a difficult job. What makes it even harder is that I-War 1's player corvette was considerably more powerful than the AI corvettes and that even corvettes and destroyers were balanced pretty sloppy. This makes the whole job of balancing the frigate to fill the gap between corvette and destroyer pretty hard, but I'm currently playing around with this configuration:
The ship will definitely have more than just two forward guns, but the two forward Long-Range PBCs are its main attack weapon.
The little pylons are the ship's "turrets", working in a similiar fashion as the Dreadnaught class corvette's and the Bastille class destroyer's pylon-mounted weapons. Each pylon should will also have limited backwards firepower.
As for missiles, I'm not too sure any more whether to give the frigate offensive missiles at all (except LSDI missiles). This may make the whole ship even more powerful than a destroyer, which isn't exactly what it should be like.

As for its thruster power, it will be a little slower than a Dreadnaught class corvette. Slow enough to feel its size, but still fast enough to keep it playable.

Sounds good. I'll try the color-replacing idea.


No confusion; just wrong or right ... Only Solutions

In Epic i edited the game files so that all destroyers had ldsi missiles, most had disrupters, and some had REM's. It was great fun and if felt more realistic to 'have' to run away...and then try so hard just to get away from the bastards. I also tested what itwas like to have have the ship Speed (note : speed, not manuverablity) proportional to the engine/size ratio, not the raw 'size'. This is more realistic because, just as with the creatures in the sea, the bigger the ship/fish, the stronger its engine/muscels relative to its overallbody size. E.g. Sharks are way faster than their prey, but its turning around that they found difficult. Of course there are certain fish that evolve to break this generalisation, like tuna or hammer-heads. but in general it is true. It certaintly makes sense to be true in IW2 as well.

Jwk...comander of =HEMP HUNGRY MONKEY=
www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=310

A quick update: I'm applying the textures, but I seriously wonder if I'm going to make it for a Christmas release. I'm happy with the way it's progressing, and don't want to screw it up now by hurrying.

Perhaps a Holiday release?

http://images.snapfish.com/3395283523232%7Ffp54%3Dot%3E2328%3D%3C2%3C%3D8%3A8%3DXROQDF%3E23234848588%3B8ot1lsi


http://images.snapfish.com/3395283523232%7Ffp58%3Dot%3E2328%3D%3C2%3C%3D8%3A8%3DXROQDF%3E2323484856897ot1lsi

<font size="1"><font face="Book Antiqua"><font color="black">"Never before in the history of the world had such a mass of human beings moved and suffered together. This was no disciplined march; it was a stampede-- without order and without a goal, six million people unarmed and unprovisioned, driving headlong. It was the beginning of the rout of Civilisation... of the massacre of Mankind."
--H. G. Wells The War Of The Worlds</font id="black"></font id="Book Antiqua"> </font id="size1">

great work shane:D i love it, i am still wondering about the terrapin too, are we gonna see that out soon too>

"Faith lies in the ways of sin"

It's...beautiful! I'm speechless.

I need to sit and stare at it some more...then I'll post more useful and understandable things to say.

*blinks back tears of joy*

--
Hot4Darmat