Registered: Aug 2001
Location:
Posts: 42

Being Brazilian and not having a real say in the military strength of foreign powers (which would probably make me the most unbiased of the bunch of you fellows) I think it would be smart for me to start a new thread and revitalize the true topic of my previous post. So far, I've gotten half a squadron of breaching pods in order, but they're spread out enough to allow at least one to two to dock with Babylon 5 (as most likely was the case in the show). Listening to the music of the episode has made me retool ALOT of the scripts, which I haven't gotten to do much seeing as how I have school again in two days and my procrastinating nature is catching up to me (well, not really, I've read over 3,000 pages of literature this summer, and I only have about 20 pages left, but then I have only 5 pages of essays to write). I keep re-timing everything with a trial-and-error mentality until I can finally get a full copy of the "Severed Dreams" episode. The forces so far are: (with their relative positions)
*Clark's Forces*
-Two Midwinter-class Heavy Cruisers (The Plato and the Socrates) (100% hulls), each broadsiding an Omega, facing their prospective targets
-Two Omega-class Destroyers (The Roanoake and the Agrippa) (100% hulls), facing their prospective targets, 5 kilometers away from the Jumpgate (I'll script them jumping in from the gate later)
-Six Invader-class Breaching Pods (designation Stealth wing) (100% hulls), staggered formation, 1K to the left of the Agrippa, facing Babylon 5
-48 Thunderbolt-class Starfuries (designation War, Disease, Famine, Death, Rattler, Python, Colt, Cobra wings) (100% hulls) facing their prospective targets, launching from the hangers of the Omegas
-36 Aurora-class Starfuries (designation Broadsword, Longsword, Mace, Flail, Dagger, Siletto wings) (100% hulls), facing their prospective targets, launching from the Omegas and Hyperions after the Thunderbolts
*Babylon 5 Defense Forces*
-One O'Neil-class deep-space station (Babylon 5!) (100% hull), 25 kilometers from the Jumpgate
-Two Omega-class Destroyers (The Alexander and the Churchill) (100%-80% hulls), facing their prospective targets, two kilometers to the right of Babylon 5 (if facing Epsilon III (I believe that is the name of the planet)
-48 Thunderbolt-class Starfuries (designation Freedom, Liberty, Peace, Prosperity, Green, Red, Gold, Blue wings) (100%-80% hulls), facing their prospective targets, launching from the Omegas
-24 Badger-class Starfuries (designation Alpha, Bravo, Beta, Charlie, Delta wings) (100% hulls), facing their prospective targets, launching from Babylon 5
-48 Aurora-class Starfuries (100%-80% hulls for the Omega launchers, 100% for Babylon 5 fighters) (designation Epsilon, Baker, Dodge, Tango, Xavier, Zeta, Kappa, Geronimo wings), facing their prospective targets, launching from Babylon 5 and the Omegas

-Back to writing more silly essays!-

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Z'ha'dum
Posts: 186

You may want to rethink the number of fighters,I dont think Freespace2 can hold that many ships.And the earth forces coming to attack you should have them launch there fighters after they jump out.I dont know if you know this because I didnt know when I found the babylon project is that multiple ships cant jump using one jump point. I'd suggest that have the Omegas and Hyperions launch the fighters and breaching pod so it'll look better.

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Registered: Mar 2001
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Posts: 194

Are you using Freespace 2 ships? Or are you scripting the whole thing, and later will drop in the TBP models?

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Posts: 42

Some player run wings allow for only 4 ships to a squad, which I'll figure a way to re-tool around.

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Registered: Jun 2001
Location: England
Posts: 2275

This sounds like a really great mission.

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: The Land of Square Lights
Posts: 541

Man if only the B5game would of made it to see the daylight... This would of been an awesome mission... Unfortunately FS2 (I believe) doesn't support so many ships at the same time... And by god it would of been a sight to fly a against a massive swarm of Clarkes forces We'll I hope this mission will be as cool as possible...

But couldn't you people split the SD mission to several parts? First wave (mission update), second wave (another stupid mission update), third wave (CHURCHILL Rams one of the Clark's ships/Cinematic of CHURCHILL ramming...), the final battle between the Alexander, last fighters and the Roanoke.

Hmm... Btw. Will the Minbari ships come to save the day in the SD mission in the end?

(Silly question above )

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Last edited by ApaBaBooN on 08-13-2001 at 07:52 PM

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Sheffield UK
Posts: 1913

You need to cut down the number of ships definately

The fighters should max around 80 for both sides....its a freespace 2 limitation. just remove 50% of each wing to start with see if the game will handle this (around 115 objects).

you need to start thinking about the scripting. you cant have 80 fighters battle it out just like that. i would suggest events to make one sides wing be replaced with another once the first wing is destroyed........but you dont want them warping - unless you can get them to all warp in though the jump gate i suppose that would do. best thing is you use the "make visible" tag icefire talks about. im not a mission maker myself so i have limited knowledge but im trying to make would will obviously be an incredible mission more feasible good luck

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: yes
Posts: 1184

Can someone please stop this Colonel West guy ?
He is interfering with my business....

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Registered: Aug 2001
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I never thought of seperating the mission into waves... might work out, might not. Right now I have about 120 ships in the mission (no joke) and it runs just fine. But that's just the Babylon 5 Starfury numberical force alone, I've got to tone that down or the sheer volume of ships will unbalance the sides again... I'm sure scaling it down won't be a problem, if it comes to that, but I don't want to leave anything feeling incomplete or too undeveloped. I'm currently using FS2 ships due to the fact that I'm doing this out of TPB jurisdiction but I hope to port it to TPB as soon as the demo comes out (substituting Auoras for all different types of starfuries, hyperions for midwinters, and novas for omegas, while keeping the transports for breaching pods). I just figured out I'm missing a massive chunk of an assignment I'm supposed to be doing so this will keep me from working as much as I would like to until later on in the week. But just about every hour on the hour I get to work a little on the mission... the SEXP list is humongous and I'm working out bug after bug due to my inertly bad "typing skillz". Being my first FS2 mission, it's still good to know that when I play it, apart from the odd bug and glitch here and there, I know the direction of this will lead to a good ending if I just keep perserverant.

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Posts: 42

I'm spending WAY too much time on the forum and not enough time working! LMAO.

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Trust me, it isn't just one major furball... certain wings are designated as interceptors, other wings designated as strike craft, and yet other wings designated as support as a mix of both strike and interceptor. It all balances out to about a 33%/33%/33% shift, and targets work out perfectly... the only problem is that it always swings down to numerical superiority that unbalances the gameplay. After only 5 minutes of gameplay, I'm usually the only craft left alive. Maybe I should tool the AI to each specific craft to be at the top level and this would solve the problem? In example, B5 strike craft assigned to take out the Socrates and Plato usually get chewed up by interceptor craft assigned to take the strike craft out, but not after being seriously harrased by the B5 support and interceptor craft flying about causing havoc (I'm thinking about changing a few wing designations to show-bound ones like Sheridan's Tiger Squadron, etc., but I don't know if custom insignias are attachable to the top half of the Starfury like in the show). What I'm aiming for here is the basic paper/rock/sicssor configuration that uses strategy and not brute force, as well as sacrifice, to maintain a balanced mission. I still need to keep retooling certain aspects of the mission to keep the screen filled with fighter craft... but not so much as to make it seem like there isn't any fighting going on at all.

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: yes
Posts: 1184

Can't someone delete this topic ?

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Freespace 2 : The Babylon Project team member
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Registered: Jun 2001
Location: England
Posts: 2275

well hey, at least the guy's dedicated.

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: yes
Posts: 1184

At least the guy is drifting.

Oh , with a few hundred ships all is still smooth on his system , hmm ? Very funny. I .... Pah ! Oh . And we dont need waves .

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Freespace 2 : The Babylon Project team member
http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/babylon
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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: The Cold Northland!
Posts: 8392

Skullar...we're encouraging this behavior of creating missions...not discouraging it.

Two things ColonelWest:

1) The mission may crash on other peoples machines...regardless of speed and memory. FreeSpace 2 is funny that way.

2) Babylon Project models are more complex than their FS2 bretheren and you will have a loss in performance almost guaranteed.

I figured at the beginning that you were using waves...but apparently not.

A good number for ships in a mission is 50.

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[url=http://www.volitionwatch.com]Volition Watch[/url], [url=http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/blackwater]BlackWater Operations[/url], [url=http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/babylon]The Babylon Project[/url], [url=http://terra.sourceforge.net]Machina Terra[/url], [url=http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/ott/]Over The Top[/url]

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: The Land of Square Lights
Posts: 541

And btw. the mission should last longer than the first contact... We don't wan't 1 minute missions. We'll at least I don't want.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location:
Posts: 42

*Packs up and leaves*

I have BUDA5 converted models (I know it isn't the same as TBP models but it gives me a better sense for visuals) on my system but I didn't want to tell you guys since you might think that I have leaked models or something...
I'm running on a fairly cheap but powerful machine (Athelon Thunderbird 1.5 Ghz, GeForce 3 ULTRA, 256MB SDRAM), but since I'm not part of the TBP team I didn't really take into consideration that it would be getting into the hands of more than maybe a few people. I've learned eons of information since I first started toying around with FRED2 and I think I've become somewhat of an amateur map-maker considering the relative inexperience I have with this map maker and the short time I've used it. Waves might habituate to the needs of technical limitations, but I want to make more of an artistic mission than one that would simply run on someone's machine... I don't want to make it boring, but then I don't want to trick people into thinking that there is more action than really is happening... but I suppose that is what I will eventually do. I have over 50% of all the SEXPs written, but without things such as B5 animations or recorded wave files with B5 speech from the episode, or even a way to put in custom music, I will be very limited in production value.
The ultimate goal of this mission is to, as par the previous TOPIC of my post, "make a mission with the same intensity of the show".

Last edited by ColonelWest on 08-13-2001 at 10:06 PM

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Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Z'ha'dum
Posts: 186

ColonelWest remember this before you put bab5 ships in. The speed of the ships isnt the same! I'm pretty sure that the omega can outrun the orion so you will have modify the waypoints and ship speeds.Theres a good chance that if you have the Chruchill ram the Agrippa it will miss. You'll have to spend several hours modifing the mission.

__________________
You come here and you will die.
http://www.bobborries.com/ProudTN.jpg
Words of logic from RED GREEN
The mans prayer "I'm a man,but I can change if I have to,I guess."
The three little words men find so hard to say "I don't know"

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Registered: Aug 2001
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Posts: 42

The other half of triggers I'm going to put in I'm waiting for B5 models to be released for the simple fact that I don't know the .tbl values TBP folks are entering. I doubt, no matter how accurate my extrapalations into Freespace 2 to Babylon 5 ship information conversions are, we don't share a telepathic link.

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Registered: Jun 2001
Location: England
Posts: 2275

Glad you're still with us

Phew! that smiley didn't load b4 I read that post, and I was thinking you'd really stormed off! Well I'm glad you haven't because this is interesting.

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