The Nephilim in Nexus (Note: Image heavy)

The file serving sites can be somewhat annoying to download from. Just use our front page link.
https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/7755
http://download.wcnews.com/files/mods/wcapoc_testrelease1.zip

Thanks, I missed it on the updates...

By the way Exarch, I noticed that the Kilrathi destroyers only defend themselves from fighters, but don't attack other capships... besides, I think the Kilrathi fighters are a little on the weak side...

Really cool mod... the ships look amazing and I love the way the fighters look... excellent job with the weapons, loved the mass diver...

Keep up the good work; I'm looking forward to fight the nephs:D
 
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Yeah, the Kilrathi destroyers aren't shooting because of a bug I noticed after release. It's fixed for next patch.

EDIT: Since I have a bit more time now, I'll explain the bug. Basically, original Nexus ships were meant to have a gun above and below the ship. This was to prevent guns on the bottom firing up through the hull at a ship above it. This can be fixed with giving the projectile a max firing angle that's independent from the turret barrel. Thus, I gave it 5 degrees of freedom, rather than the default no limit, which prevented it from shooting through the ship.

However, this created a problem with the engine's LOD system. When the camera zooms out too far, the cannons stop animating and fall into their rest position. That means that, with my settings, if the ship isn't directly in front of them, the guns won't fire, because it isn't in the firing arc. So, I took out the firing angle limit, and it all works fine again, minus the weirdness of having a cannon on the bottom shooting at a target above the ship. But small price to pay, when considering the cannons won't shoot at all if zoomed out too far.

As for the mass driver, I hope you like it! :D The sprite was ripped straight from Prophecy. I figured nothing would work better than the original graphic. ;)
 
ALL of the weapons fire looks really nice... great work on that...

As for the destroyers, I wouldn’t mind the "weirdness of having a cannon on the bottom shooting at a target above the ship"... if it works for the game it's all right

I'll be looking forward to the next update... :D

By the way... will you include the torpedoes as a weapon for capital ships... or even CapShip missiles???
 
Absolutely. After further inspection of the Ranger on the ship database, I saw that I unfortunately left out a capital ship missile launcher. Though, I believe I did that partially because I have no clue where such a launcher would be located. Perhaps someone could give me a hint. The only thing I could think of was possibly rigging the launch bay to catapult a missile... but the Rangers don't have catapults, as far as I can tell.

EDIT: Oh, just out of curiosity... what do you think of fighter behavior? Is it acceptable as it is, or do I need to figure out how to tweak it some more?
 
EDIT: Oh, just out of curiosity... what do you think of fighter behavior? Is it acceptable as it is, or do I need to figure out how to tweak it some more?

I think it was nice... I played the BSG mod and I loved the way the fighters work in your mod...

form what I heard in de BSG mod, they were having a realy hard time with fighters and I noticed that after 60 seconds there are no fighters left; but in your mod I found the fighters were the hearth of the game...

My tactic against the AI is to turn tail and run with my cap ships, use my fighters in CAP and launch bombers with fighter escort against the enemy, keeping the destroyers in close to protect the carrier and that's the way it should be...

The only thing taht could make it beter is making someting like the HARM misiles and using real WC team tactics and formations

By the way, I noticed that the tigershark's misiles worked just like the Kilrathi torpedoes... whats up with that?

I think it's working really well so far, I liked the original nexus so I love to see WC ships like that... They look amazing :)
 
By the way, I noticed that the tigershark's misiles worked just like the Kilrathi torpedoes... whats up with that?

Ah, yeah. That was explained a bit earlier. Fact is, missiles simply won't hit fighter craft. I think it's something to do with collision detection, or rather the lack thereof. Also, the game engine needs a fighter to be equipped with at least one anti-capital ship weapon, else they won't launch. So... all missiles are anti-capship weapons in the mod. I tell myself that the capships in the mod currently are WC3 ships, which were vulnerable to all weapons fire, so that's my consolation. :p
 
Well, as I was poking around the forums for information, I found some posts from LOAF detailing how it's basically a back and forth battle between shields and weapons technology. Weapons improve to the point of penetrating shields, and then shields improve to compensate. When we left off with Wing Commander Prophecy, the universe was in one of those stages where shields had the advantage. With WC: Apocalypse set five years after, it's not too hard to believe that perhaps weapons technology has gotten the advantage once more. Afterall, we see huge technology leaps towards the end of Prophecy, and also with Secret Ops.
 
That's a good point... besides, if you want to be realistic, just don't send fighters to attack cap ships...

It would be nice if we could get the missiles to attack devices insted of the hull itself, like the HARM...

Anyway, I wouldn’t mind about this little thing; it's after all, a VERY good mod... I really enjoy it...

By the way, I noticed that too many fighters will make a dent in performance, but then how will you make a difference between light and heavy carriers with out this problem??

I would recommend using different types of fighters for different carriers, just like the WCP ICIS said about the Shrike/Devastator and Panther/Vampire...

What do think??
 
Well, it's been a trend in other WC games where the "by the book" method -is- to conserve missiles for larger ships.

I'm fairly certain HARM missiles will work, and will be featured in fighter variants if they do. So you'll get your wish hopefully. :D

The performance question is a good one, and one I don't really have an answer to yet. My only suggestion is... don't scramble all fighters at once. >.>

Shrikes, Devestators, Panthers, Vampires, Piranha... even Hellcats, Arrows, and other WC3/4 fighters will be included, with several variants. With the final product, carriers will have a mix from all of these.

EDIT: The one thing I'm looking forward to testing, personally, are the swarmer missile packs. :D
 
Sweet, HARM AND SWARMERS... I'll be looking forward to that...

About the fighters, I started thinking about it when I figured that it would be impossible to have a heavy carrier with 100 fighters... I think you did a nice job in making the fighter wing on the carriers so far, so in my opinion, you shouldn't need to chance the number of fighters... However, a difference between light and heavy carriers is needed...

It would suck if a light carrier had the same striking power as a heavy one, so the difference could be in the type of fighters...

A light carrier could have Tigersharks, panthers, shrikes... and a heavy one could have vampires and devastators...

Besides, several ships had a limited fighter capacity (i.e. cruisers and destroyers)... they could carry piranhas for support...

What do you think?
 
The Kilrathi Bordravs actually currently have the capability to hold a single wing of fighters, or later when I implement them, a marine landing craft. I'm pretty certain the Tallahassee cruisers will be set up to do the same once I add them in as well.

And yeah, something about the carriers will have to be thought out... currently, seeing the performance hit, I'm not certain if having a Midway carrier with all 252 fighters is a good idea afterall. We'll have to see. ;)
 
Yeah, I believe it's very clear we can't really have the real number of fighters on the cap ships but as long as it's fun and balanced, it's fine by me.

By the way, are you planning on making a campaign out of this, sort of like holding the line?

Hey, how goes the manual, I think it's a nice touch ;)

How is the progress on this project anyway? What’s the latest???

Anyway, I think you have done great so far, keep it up! :D
 
Perhaps the first step I could take in improving FPS with multiple fighters is reducing texture size. Just a thought.

I haven't had much time to log into the project with school and various family matters to deal with. I poke at it occasionally, but haven't had the chance to sit down and do some real work as of late.

As for the manual and campaign, I don't see either one being feasible, especially a campaign. The worst part of modding Nexus is the AI scripting, and I have no experience in doing that. If, eventually, a campaign were to be made, I'd have to recruit someone to help.

So much to do, so little time in a day...
 
Perhaps the first step I could take in improving FPS with multiple fighters is reducing texture size. Just a thought.

I haven't had much time to log into the project with school and various family matters to deal with. I poke at it occasionally, but haven't had the chance to sit down and do some real work as of late.

As for the manual and campaign, I don't see either one being feasible, especially a campaign. The worst part of modding Nexus is the AI scripting, and I have no experience in doing that. If, eventually, a campaign were to be made, I'd have to recruit someone to help.

So much to do, so little time in a day...

As for the fighters, that could be one way, another would be to have an abstraction of their real number...

As for the time, its ok, I'm on the same deal...

As for the manual and the campaign, I have been trying to find some time to learn how to work on modding something... I liked the nexus idea from before your project, when I saw something about another one in the CIC, so if you need a hand, I cold see what I can do :D

P.S. I think the story for a campaign should be virtually easy; there is a bunch of good writers in the forums that could have very good ideas
 
Well, writing a story is the easy part. I'm actually really good at that. It's scripting actual missions that's the trick.

The basic plan was to focus around the Midway-class carrier Coral Sea. Set 5 years after Prophecy, the Nephilim start pouring through the gate from Secret Ops (I think it was in.. Proxima?). This time, they're back with a vengeance, and with more capship power than before.

I had thought of doing some interesting twists like saving a Kilrathi fighter group after their carrier was destroyed, thus giving you these elite Kilrathi pilots flying off your carrier. Of course, the story would reflect that the human and Kilrathi pilots would have to be virtually quartered on opposite sides of the ship to avoid conflict at first, but as things went, you'd see them starting to mesh better, eventually accepting each other as almost brothers for the things they'd go through.

Not sure -how- I'd have pulled such a story off in a game like Nexus, but I thought it'd be fun.
 
Yes, I believe it was Proxima... as for the missions, I'll start locking into the programming stuff ASAP or finding someone who actually know about it :D

By the way, nice story, you could publish it on the forums anyway...

Again, anything I could do, I'm up for it :D
 
The basic plan was to focus around the Midway-class carrier Coral Sea. Set 5 years after Prophecy, the Nephilim start pouring through the gate from Secret Ops (I think it was in.. Proxima?). This time, they're back with a vengeance, and with more capship power than before.

Keep in mind that we're about to get some official details as to how the Nephilim War continued. :)
 
That's another thing I've been thinking about. Do I go with WC: Arena's timeline (which I have no doubt is going to be great, not like I'm putting it down), or do I make this like a "What if?" scenario? I think it'd be interesting to explore an alternate branch of the story... but that's still getting ahead of myself. A campaign and story are still a long ways from being a concern for the mod.
 
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