Fightercraft

Idea for fighters...I do understand this isn't solid yet, but just a thought:

Certain fighters, (I'll use an analogy) like a TIE fighter, could be small, no FTL, no shields, but the equivalent of an X-Wing (shields, hyperdrive) could make the mod much more interesting.


Improvements or comments to this idea welcome.

EDIT: on the subject of docking or landing, have the fighter either stores as an item or actually "welded" to the ship upon which it has landed.

TheLordofError wrote:

Idea for fighters...I do understand this isn't solid yet, but just a thought:

Certain fighters, (I'll use an analogy) like a TIE fighter, could be small, no FTL, no shields, but the equivalent of an X-Wing (shields, hyperdrive) could make the mod much more interesting.


Improvements or comments to this idea welcome.

EDIT: on the subject of docking or landing, have the fighter either stores as an item or actually "welded" to the ship upon which it has landed.

Well i like your idea

Well, I think smaller craft are going to be just a large entity with X amount of hit points. The problem with that is there will be no "customization" of the design, a fighter will be a fighter, a bomber a bomber and so forth. Personally, I'd really like to see us develop a corvette sized ship as the standard light ship of the game. My reasoning for this is the customization of the ship.

There's been a lot of talk about scale in the game and I think if we're seriously going to have the potential to build mammoth 600k plus block ships, and mind you, 600k blocks is a whole lot bigger than it sounds, that the idea that a little entity space ship is going to do jack squat against it is just silly.

I think the smallest ships should be 1-200 blocks, require the usual power source type modules and not be the size of an F-16. In space, a tiny little strike fighter makes no sense.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the subject, others might have better thought out ideas than me.

ectrimble20 wrote:

Well, I think smaller craft are going to be just a large entity with X amount of hit points. The problem with that is there will be no "customization" of the design, a fighter will be a fighter, a bomber a bomber and so forth. Personally, I'd really like to see us develop a corvette sized ship as the standard light ship of the game. My reasoning for this is the customization of the ship.

There's been a lot of talk about scale in the game and I think if we're seriously going to have the potential to build mammoth 600k plus block ships, and mind you, 600k blocks is a whole lot bigger than it sounds, that the idea that a little entity space ship is going to do jack squat against it is just silly.

I think the smallest ships should be 1-200 blocks, require the usual power source type modules and not be the size of an F-16. In space, a tiny little strike fighter makes no sense.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the subject, others might have better thought out ideas than me.

I support this, because I think you can get more done in a small ship with relatively light armaments than in a dreadnought, depending on the mission, of course. If your obliterating a server, a dreadnought is what you want, but if your infiltrating an area, a frigate is best

ACH0225 wrote:

ectrimble20 wrote:

Well, I think smaller craft are going to be just a large entity with X amount of hit points. The problem with that is there will be no "customization" of the design, a fighter will be a fighter, a bomber a bomber and so forth. Personally, I'd really like to see us develop a corvette sized ship as the standard light ship of the game. My reasoning for this is the customization of the ship.

There's been a lot of talk about scale in the game and I think if we're seriously going to have the potential to build mammoth 600k plus block ships, and mind you, 600k blocks is a whole lot bigger than it sounds, that the idea that a little entity space ship is going to do jack squat against it is just silly.

I think the smallest ships should be 1-200 blocks, require the usual power source type modules and not be the size of an F-16. In space, a tiny little strike fighter makes no sense.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the subject, others might have better thought out ideas than me.

I support this, because I think you can get more done in a small ship with relatively light armaments than in a dreadnought, depending on the mission, of course. If your obliterating a server, a dreadnought is what you want, but if your infiltrating an area, a frigate is best

I think you misunderstood. Ectrimble was suggesting getting
rid of fighters, due to a lack of customization ability. I think some very small
craft, like fighters are important, but I do see Ectrimble's point. Perhaps we
will find a more customizable way to create fighters. But Ectrimble, you are
forgetting, fighters aren't really a "ship" in their own right. They
are only an advanced weapon, with people inside, not something for carrying out
missions, or going long distances. That is what drop ships and frigates are
for.

We could probably do customizable fighters if we wanted to put the time into it. The Copernicus engine will certainly allow for it.

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

We could probably do customizable fighters if we wanted to put the time into it. The Copernicus engine will certainly allow for it.

I, for one think it's a good idea.

So, you think maybe something along the lines of like module based entities?

Like how when you place (and this is just a loose example) glass panes they adapt based on their surrounding blocks? only do this on an entity level rather than a block level?

I haven't played around much with modding entities outside of making some new projectiles so I'm kinda in the dark as to the technicalities of it.

It's not too hard. The thing to take away is that you can do pretty much anything with an entity, and there are no set in stone rules for how it is rendered or how it behaves.
Glass panes are procedurally rendered during the chunk update. It's a bit different.

TheLordofError wrote:

Idea for fighters...I do understand this isn't solid yet, but just a thought:

Certain fighters, (I'll use an analogy) like a TIE fighter, could be small, no FTL, no shields, but the equivalent of an X-Wing (shields, hyperdrive) could make the mod much more interesting.


Improvements or comments to this idea welcome.

EDIT: on the subject of docking or landing, have the fighter either stores as an item or actually "welded" to the ship upon which it has landed.

Thats pretty cool man good "spit"

I was seeing fighters as being small ships in their own right... such as Halo's Longsword fighters (which are the size of 747s.)

Shiva wrote:

I was seeing fighters as being small ships in their own right... such as Halo's Longsword fighters (which are the size of 747s.)

I think that's too big. My cruise ship is not much bigger than a 747, now, how would something that size fit in the hangar?

Ok...when I said fighters, I did mean something fair-sized (i.e. 5-12 meters length) but not flying an airbus around o_e

Good ideas though.

Shiva wrote:

I was seeing fighters as being small ships in their own right... such as Halo's Longsword fighters (which are the size of 747s.)

i would quess the longsword is a bit smaller. maybe a 737 idk since you cant fly them without mods (and i cant mod x-box)

Well, you should have those ships smaller than 1,200 blocks be like ground support, able to attack bases and stuff...otherwise there would be no point in them.

It would be great if Engines from a certain grade burn the Atmosphere by turning it into space.Cause It wouldn´t make sense if you just have to build the biggest Ship to win an Planet battle.
And another poin would be an repulsor engine which is rellay energy expensive but won´t burn the Atmosphere so you could allow middle sized vessels to take place in a Battle as an short time Support.

Cool3303 wrote:

It would be great if Engines from a certain grade burn the Atmosphere by turning it into space.Cause It wouldn´t make sense if you just have to build the biggest Ship to win an Planet battle.
And another poin would be an repulsor engine which is rellay energy expensive but won´t burn the Atmosphere so you could allow middle sized vessels to take place in a Battle as an short time Support.

If the engines are big enough to harm an atmosphere, the ship would be the size of the moon. That would crash all computers connected to any server in all of Minecraft.

No, cause it's ANTIMATTER!
Seriously, I think that we don't need environmental dangers of any type. We want battles, not ecology. Not that I am not an environmentalist, I am as a matter of fact. Actually, global warming could be cool as a different mod, or an add on to industrialcraft. But not on futurecraft! (Just assume you truck it to the moon automatically.

Where did you get the idea that bigger would be better?

so small ships aren't allowed? That would not make sense. What if we had fleet of small ships against a big ship, what now. Where obvious more maneuverable. Can we have the option at least, not everyone is going make big @$$ ships.

I'm not following this logic. Why would there not be small ships?

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

I'm not following this logic. Why would there not be small ships?

ectrimble:
"I think the smallest ships should be 1-200 blocks, require the usual power source type modules and not be the size of an F-16. In space, a tiny little strike fighter makes no sense."

he's a dev, so i figure he has great influence over size limit and tiny strike fighter makes no sense apparently.

That was strictly discussion. We haven't settled on anything yet.

xanex21 wrote:

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

I'm not following this logic. Why would there not be small ships?

ectrimble:
"I think the smallest ships should be 1-200 blocks, require the usual power source type modules and not be the size of an F-16. In space, a tiny little strike fighter makes no sense."

he's a dev, so i figure he has great influence over size limit and tiny strike fighter makes no sense apparently.

I'm a dev, but I'm doing the back end stuff, Frost is working on the ship system at the moment. He will ultimately make the call there.

To explain my thinking on this, so it's not taken out of context, I will elaborate.

I said I don't think we should do tiny little fighters simply because we're talking about having grand flag ships upwards of 100k blocks. I really think we should stay away from copying the airplanes mod and stick to our ship design. Thus I think that the smallest practically sized ships would be 100-200 blocks (not 1-200, sorry if I typo-ed that). Frost, think of the scale of a Frigate in Eve compared to a Battleships (like take the Rifter and put it next to an Abbadon or a Rohk), the size scale is ridiculous. I don't think we need that, I think Corvettes and Frigates should be the smallest space vessels.

Again, these are just my thoughts, little nimble TIE fighter looking things would probably be cool too, just don't know if they'd be worth the effort if everyone's going to be building huge battle cruisers.

[quote="ectrimble20"]

xanex21 wrote:

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

*slash*

ectrimble:
*double slash*

But the thing about fighters is that they're usually maneuverable, so they could be used as a distraction. If the target larger ship has weak spots, the fighters would probably carry a small amount (say, about 4) of missiles which could be used against that weak spot. Also, they could be used as smaller, cheaper boarding craft, although I wouldn't recommend it. So basically fighters are there to be little mosquitoes, usually just annoying, but if they have the right stuff on board, you could die from them.

ectrimble20 wrote:

xanex21 wrote:

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

I'm not following this logic. Why would there not be small ships?

ectrimble:
"I think the smallest ships should be 1-200 blocks, require the usual power source type modules and not be the size of an F-16. In space, a tiny little strike fighter makes no sense."

he's a dev, so i figure he has great influence over size limit and tiny strike fighter makes no sense apparently.

I'm a dev, but I'm doing the back end stuff, Frost is working on the ship system at the moment. He will ultimately make the call there.

To explain my thinking on this, so it's not taken out of context, I will elaborate.

I said I don't think we should do tiny little fighters simply because we're talking about having grand flag ships upwards of 100k blocks. I really think we should stay away from copying the airplanes mod and stick to our ship design. Thus I think that the smallest practically sized ships would be 100-200 blocks (not 1-200, sorry if I typo-ed that). Frost, think of the scale of a Frigate in Eve compared to a Battleships (like take the Rifter and put it next to an Abbadon or a Rohk), the size scale is ridiculous. I don't think we need that, I think Corvettes and Frigates should be the smallest space vessels.

Again, these are just my thoughts, little nimble TIE fighter looking things would probably be cool too, just don't know if they'd be worth the effort if everyone's going to be building huge battle cruisers.

If I recall, there were also fighters in EVE, and them and drones were about the only thing a large ship could use to fend off swarms of frigates, which move around too fast to be tracked by anti-cruiser guns. I don't know that we have to follow suit, but fighters might make for some interesting gameplay.