Chiletrek's Armada Modding

[Chiletrek]

If that is the case, why is it an escort? If it's larger than a Valkyrie and has roughly similar firepower, it's a full-blown strikestar (or whutever you'd like to call it).

Hello:
Well, Valkyrie has 25 mid-sized turrets and 28 secondary turrets .

But Berzerk, even if it is bigger, has the denomination of Escort ship because that is the role given by the author for when his ship was made into the serie (movie "Razor").

I suppose that, even if it has 10 Launch tubes or Vipers, it's ample (and only) Hangar bay could be more adapted for quick deployment of Raptors and Shuttles for any kinds of assault operations, as Battlestars could better handle ship-to-ship combat.

 

[Terra_Inc]

Hello:
Well, Valkyrie has 25 mid-sized turrets and 28 secondary turrets .

But Berzerk, even if it is bigger, has the denomination of Escort ship because that is the role given by the author for when his ship was made into the serie (movie "Razor").

I suppose that, even if it has 10 Launch tubes or Vipers, it's ample (and only) Hangar bay could be more adapted for quick deployment of Raptors and Shuttles for any kinds of assault operations, as Battlestars could better handle ship-to-ship combat.

Ah, makes sense. Thanks man, definitely clears things up!

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:
I am glad I can be of help. And I guess that can surely help to give that ship a role ingame too .

 

[Dan1025]

Quite the fleet you're putting together there Chile, can't wait to download them

 

[Majestic]

Hello:
Those sound like good ideas for a Colonial fleet, but don't you think we are forgetting a ship? a canon ship that appeared in Razor and was originally made as a possible Galactica redesign many years ago.

Yep, I am referring to the Berzerk class Escort . 1198 polies with no turrets and 2958 with all turrets (10 mid-sized ones and 10 small-sized ones).

What do you all think?

You're doing all the ships I am doing, talk about great minds... not saying my mind is great at all.

Beautiful work, I would've personally put a little more poly's into the head of the ship but that's just me.

??

Indeed, that is one canon vessel the community is severely lacking at the moment. The only one available is.... inaccurate, to say the least.

And the one I have laying on my desktop untextured and incomplete.

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:

Quite the fleet you're putting together there Chile, can't wait to download them

Thank you very much .

You're doing all the ships I am doing, talk about great minds... not saying my mind is great at all.

Beautiful work, I would've personally put a little more poly's into the head of the ship but that's just me.

And the one I have laying on my desktop untextured and incomplete.

Yes, in fact you might see from me other ships you have done too, hehehe, but I am not telling right now (not counting the Chrysaor as I did that as my first ship in this topic ).

Well, I only fixed some innacuracies with the ship's proportions, and happily, those caused just minimum issues with texture mapping. I just didn't want to start a rebuild of the head section... if I do one, it might be for a later date .

As for other Battlestars, I will add the new turrets I made to all of the ships I have made. I think it will be interesting the Talos class Battlestar, as it has a darker hull colour, so the turrets will be dark too .

 

[Jetfreak]

Very nice work man, loving the fact that they all have a consistent feel, great texture work!

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:
And thank you Jetfreak! .

A ship that will be a bit out of the color scheme will be the Talos, but Iosys made that ship to have a darker hull color to start with. I plan in giving the Talos the new turrets I made, recoloured accordingly, and I will show it soon. But the ship's model requieres no changes as it is very detailed and surprisingly low in polies.

More updated to come soon.

 

[Majestic]

I was never a fan of the Talos personally, but I am sure you'll do the model justice with the re-work on your model of her.

 

[Starfox1701]

So are they going to get the LOD treatment too?

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:

I was never a fan of the Talos personally, but I am sure you'll do the model justice with the re-work on your model of her.

Talos is a nice design in my opinion: 990 meters lenght is still a good-sized Battlestar, with big Flight Pods it is my belief that ship could be the first ship to have all that is needed to build Vipers and Raptor by itself. The hull makes us see it is more modern than ships like the Galactica, but the ribs and cockpits in the turrets suggest it is older than Valkyries and Mercuries. So I think the ship is in the lost-era between the Cylon War and the Cylon Holocaust.

But I respect your opinion about the ship... nah, I will still send a fleet of them to nuke you .

I'm joking . I know we all have favourite and less favourite ships, for all series .

So are they going to get the LOD treatment too?

I think so, but I haven't taken a closer look to your treatment with the valkyrie, so I haven't done that... yet. But I will be doing that soon.

I hope you won't get mad if I still release a version with LoDs and versions without them .

 

[Starfox1701]

Thats up to you. As long as She sees the light of Day I'm down

 

[Majestic]

And I'll send a fleet of Solaria's back to you for the same treatment.

Yes we all have our favourite fan designs, I still look forward to seeing what you can do. Any BSG released material is good in my opinion, as unfortunately not everyone can model BSG stuff like you and I.

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:

Thats up to you. As long as She sees the light of Day I'm down

And even if they get released without lods, a version2 can always be made... but I prefer all in one pack (with and without lods) .

And I'll send a fleet of Solaria's back to you for the same treatment.

Yes we all have our favourite fan designs, I still look forward to seeing what you can do. Any BSG released material is good in my opinion, as unfortunately not everyone can model BSG stuff like you and I.

That's not fair, Solarias are bigger than Talos :x . Hehehe, at least until I make the Nova class .

But I agree with you, there are way too few BSG stuff, I should just stop feeling lazy every time I must face a wireframe .

 

[Starfox1701]

TNS Novas or TOS Novas?

 

[Majestic]

I plan on having Novas as flagships in my mod, kind of like a moveable starbase.

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:

So are they going to get the LOD treatment too?

I had to quote you again. I took a close look at how you made the lods to my Valkyrie, model-wise and joint-wise. But I have a couple of questions.
1) How many lods can Armada games support? 5?
2) If that is the case. Can we have ships with less than 5 lods?

I plan on having Novas as flagships in my mod, kind of like a moveable starbase.

I agree with you, Nova class is the flagship class of Battlstar in my mod too ... maybe not a mod, or maybe just planned mod... or something, lol.

But it makes sense and it is also a popular ship too. I sent a PM to Infinity238 (who made the original model of the Battlestar Prometheus) and I haven't receive a reply yet.

 

[Starfox1701]

The max is 5 mesh and 5 texture. You can have less and the number of mesh lods doesn't have to match the number if texture lods. The average for stock models is 2 mesh and 3 texture levels

 

[Majestic]

Can you have 1 mesh with 3 texture lods? If so how would one set it up in the hardpointing layout, like which nodes would they connect to and how would you be able to link the lods with the textures?

 

[Starfox1701]

Just set it up like normal. While the texture system trips are the same as the mesh trips each is independent of the other. You only need to use the Geometry node if you plan multple mesh lods other wise just hange the mesh node of the root node like nomal ther is a limit though of 30 total meshes in milkshape. The texture system functions by virture of name tags. Example
Texturename = LOD0
Texturename_1 = LOD1
Texturename_2 = LOD2
Texturename_3 = LOD3
Texturename_4 = LOD4

 

[Majestic]

SO you don't need to put any joints in if you're only doing texture lods? Just have the textures named as you stated above?

 

[Starfox1701]

Thats right. In fact you should be able to ad texture lods to all of you exising ships and stations without messing with the SODs in any way. There's always Master Chief Murphy to contend with but I have never had a problem and was using texture lods long before I figured the mesh stuff out.

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:
All of that is very nice info for our models. I am thinking to try and have as much mesh lods as texture lods, only because I like to have an order, hehehe.

Some ships might need all 5 lods, as was done to the Valkyrie, maybe others might need less lods, I will see with each model and see what can be the best depending on the designs.

Thanks again for all the infrmation .

 

[Avon]

The texture system functions by virture of name tags. Example
Texturename = LOD0
Texturename_1 = LOD1
Texturename_2 = LOD2
Texturename_3 = LOD3
Texturename_4 = LOD4

I had always avoided it because the stock ones looked so terrible. Think it was one of the first things I learnt how to mod on this game. By removing all the _1 and _2 textures, the stock ships looked infinately better.
It's never really occured to me to go back and try it with some decent textures

 

[Dan1025]

I had always avoided it because the stock ones looked so terrible. Think it was one of the first things I learnt how to mod on this game. By removing all the _1 and _2 textures, the stock ships looked infinately better.
It's never really occured to me to go back and try it with some decent textures

Same here, thanks for the info Starfox, I've got a few things I think I'll be trying out LODS for in the near future

 

[Starfox1701]

Anything I can do to spread the good word and further extend the life of this game we love

 

[kjc733]

I'm unfamilier with a TNS style Nova - what is it?

 

[Majestic]

Yes many thanks Starfox.

I'm unfamilier with a TNS style Nova - what is it?

Battlestar Prometheus from the Battlestar Prometheus fan fiction series. Which I also used for my own Battlestar Endeavour series.

Spoiler: Endeavour

 

[Chiletrek]

Yes many thanks Starfox.

Battlestar Prometheus from the Battlestar Prometheus fan fiction series. Which I also used for my own Battlestar Endeavour series.

Spoiler: Endeavour

Hello:
I had no clue you made the Endeavour to be a sister ship of the Prometheus, Majestic. That will be interesting to see .

The point of me of contacting the modeller that made that model you used for your pic is to get more references so I can make my own version. If I get those I will share them .

 

[Majestic]

That would be great, thanks, failing that you can always use the low resolution pixel images as seen on Wolf Shipyards and the prometheus site itself.