Defiance's Eyecandy Thread

Star Rider said:
The Ferret is faster, has a smaller profile, and almost double the armor plating. The two advantages that the epee has is it's I.T.T.S and Missiles. You could argue Particle Cannons also, but I prefer the Ferret's Mass Drivers in WC2 as they have a better firing rate. As far as looks when I first flew it in game back in 1996 The Ferret was like a cross between the X-Wing, and OG BSG Viper.
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Yeah, on paper the Epee has some advantages, but in practice, the Ferret is more survivable and hits harder. And with the Super Ferret, it even gets missiles.
 
The Super Ferret is interesting in and of itself, because it's a clear step towards making the Ferret equal the Epee in terms of armament. I can't help wondering if this isn't a sort of tacit admission on the part of the designers that the Epee didn't turn out to be as fun as they hoped. Once Special Ops introduces the Super Ferret, there just doesn't seem like there's any role left for the Epee as a light fighter. Then, of course, Academy came out, and its manual suggested in no unclear terms that yes, the designers are aware of how players feel about the Epee's survivability.
 
The real issue with the Epee in my mind is that the particle guns are such energy hogs that they don't deal as much damage over time as the mass drivers. otherwise it's ok, if they gave it different guns or beefed up the armor a touch it would be a better fighter.
 
DefianceIndustries said:
The real issue with the Epee in my mind is that the particle guns are such energy hogs that they don't deal as much damage over time as the mass drivers. otherwise it's ok, if they gave it different guns or beefed up the armor a touch it would be a better fighter.
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Sounds like a good opportunity to take WC2 and the Ship editor out of mothballs after work, and try it out :D
 
DefianceIndustries said:
The real issue with the Epee in my mind is that the particle guns are such energy hogs that they don't deal as much damage over time as the mass drivers. otherwise it's ok, if they gave it different guns or beefed up the armor a touch it would be a better fighter.
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So I've performed some initial testing in Wing Commander Academy. Thanks to HCI's WC2/Academy Ship Editor, I've added additional armor to the Epee equivalent to that on the Ferret. The Epee can now take two missile hits with shields up. The first hit knocked out the forward shields and armor.

The Second hit knocked the forward shields down again and caused internal damage to the following: Target Tracker Destroyed, Acceleration Absorbers Destroyed, and Shield Generator Moderate Damage.

I was still able to fight and managed to destroy a flight of 4 Drakhri on the highest difficulty setting.

As far as changing the guns, I tested the Epee with Lasers, Neutron Guns, Mass Drivers, and it's default Particle Cannons. Mass Drivers performed the best followed by the Particle Cannons with Lasers, and Neutrons coming in third and fourth.

ChrisReid said:
It'll always have a job as a light torpedo bomber...
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I'll modify the Epee next to simulate the Belly Torpedo that Angel refers to in the Tesla Mission 1 briefing and perform some test runs on some Dorkrathi and Ralatha
 
After Action Report 2019.227

Last Night I performed two anti-ship attack simulations with The up-armored Epee equipped with a torpedo. Both attack runs were against Ralatha.

On the first attack run, I used my afterburners to take up a position about 10,000 Meters from the Ralatha to set up my attack run, and acquire torpedo lock. As I closed the distance I began taking fire from the Ralatha's Flak Guns. Shields took the brunt of the damage thanks to the recharge rate, and I continued to close on target. At 2500 Meters I unleashed the Torpedo, and proceeded to peel off to avoid any splash damage should the torpedo get hit by the flak. As I was making my hard turn away, to my surprise the right VDU lit up with a message from the Ralatha. "NO..." My guess at the time was that the torpedo must have scored a critical hit on a vital area. As the Ralatha broke up I flew back to base mission accomplished.

On the second run I pretty much repeated my attack pattern from the first run. At around 2500 Meters I released my torpedo, and began to peel off. This time however as I peeled off I took damage with the rear armor of the ship being completely destroyed, and moderate damage to the Repair System. Bringing the Ralatha back into my gun sights I checked the Right VDU for targeting data. The display showed that the Ralatha had been hit by the torpedo in the forward section. With no remaining torpedoes I ended the mission .

That concludes my report.
 
I haven't posted anything here since August? What is wrong with me?!? Well I may have gone a bit radio silent but it doesn't mean I've been slacking. Mostly I've been working with @Pedro on refining the workflow for importing meshes for the WC4 remaster. The fruits of which you will hopefully appreciate.

The Stealth Arrow (or Cloaking Arrow if you prefer). I tried a few different purple paint schemes but honestly, it looks better without it (certainly better than the weird tribal tattoo angel wings it originally sported). I may keep tinkering but for now I think this looks good enough for the Black Lance. Paulson didn't seem to big on exotic paint schemes anyway - though Seether, I hear, was partial to Pollock.

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ChrisReid said:
Looks good!



I think a number of fan projects surged to produce some awesome stuff for the Birthday... and then people were collectively worn out for the rest of summer. The news must go on, however!
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Thanks! The funny thing is I feel like I've been doing a bunch, just none of it is particularly newsworthy. I doubt too many people care that I'm reworking some old meshes to make them game ready, or pedro and I have been figuring out the best workflow for FBX to Usagi, or the glory of collision meshing. 😁 it's all important stuff but not really sexy...at all.
 
DefianceIndustries said:
Thanks! The funny thing is I feel like I've been doing a bunch, just none of it is particularly newsworthy. I doubt too many people care that I'm reworking some old meshes to make them game ready, or pedro and I have been figuring out the best workflow for FBX to Usagi, or the glory of collision meshing. 😁 it's all important stuff but not really sexy...at all.
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For the birthday we made a decision to focus on stuff we could show, and since then going silent is also somewhat intentional.
We could keep focusing on building up further but the foundations would be very shaky. Figuring out the old formats is especially important as they will drive a lot of what we do.

Also I kind of want to give Wing Leader some breathing space, that kind of project will have very fast early progress and the remake will move faster towards the end of it. Whatever we show atm will pale in comparison.
 
Pedro said:
Also I kind of want to give Wing Leader some breathing space, that kind of project will have very fast early progress and the remake will move faster towards the end of it. Whatever we show atm will pale in comparison.
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Wing Leader is also on the list of projects that haven't seen an update since the Birthday... :)
 
Occasionally I take on a project to model things that I find odd, poorly designed, or just plain ugly. Why? I dunno, I think it's really more to explore the process behind it, sometimes working on a thing that I don't like sometimes leads to a better appreciation of it, or reinforces why I don't like it without being overly judgmental. (Probably a bit too philosophical for a thread entitled "eye candy").

Anyway I chose to tackle a ship in the category of "Things that get little to no love" in the Wing Commander Universe: The WCM Snakeir. After knocking around on this one for about a week I've come to appreciate it a bit more. The movie FX shots are so dark that you can't really get a good appreciation for the ship's aesthetic. It's still not my favorite, but I think it gets a bum wrap by-in-large. Anyway that's my thoughts on it, you're free to comment below if you feel otherwise. :)

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I am conflicted between giveing you a like or not ^_^
The model is well done and its good to see it in bright light but then I still don't like the ship as a Kilrathi ship at all.
If I hadn't seen the movie and someone just showed me the pictures I would say that its a terran design. Something I think humans would build.

Also is it just me or does it look a lot like the Reliant from StarLancer just bigger?
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Anyway good work on the model.
 
ChrisReid said:
Wing Leader is also on the list of projects that haven't seen an update since the Birthday... :)
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Well with Howie having just launched a commercial title that's not too surprising, I am sure Wing Leader will be back soon kicking ass at a pace we can't match.
Wing IV is fighting a lot of unexciting battles on multiple fronts - loading gameplay scripts to in order to load FMVs you've already seen, which requires loading subtitles, and branching options - which you've already seen but need to be implemented anyway.
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And then there are tasks like updating the particle editor to make it more user friendly
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And after that I'll still have to update the effect/material editor.
That's not even mentioning other boring stuff like task/bug boards, a new server to allow us to use more than the 1GB of assets we were limited to for the demo.

We are trucking along; there is just a *huge* amount of boring groundwork to lay.
 
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