WC:CD "Fan Input"

[Triple-B]

I dont know if it fits well in the game. but i have always missed to play wc3/wc4 ships in and beyond prophecy timeline.

remember when the st. helens showed up in secret ops? all her fighters were thunderbolts and excaliburs and I (as a player) was always looking forward of flying these old ships, but as we know secret ops never gave us the oppurtunity.

so how about if there is a lack of fighters in the game at some point, where these old ships are brought in to fill the gap? I am only talking about a small variety of fighters. this would also fit in the story pretty well i guess. resources are getting scarce in the fierce battle with the nephilim and some renegade kilrathi, therefore it just seems logical that old fighters are beeing reused.

what do you think?

 

[JasonRocZ]

Triple-B:

I've Ex'd the Hellcat being in the mod...There are 2 variants of Excaliburs in the mod...The original (Unmodified Variant except for and updated model) and also a variant to be used as part of the Revenge Crew.

As far as the story goes. I've really been steering away from being a Confed pilot in this mod...and reason being... I for one really like the Privateer feel to a game, and even the Privateer feel to the Nephilim Encroachment.. It doesn't mean that you won't see the ships, it just means that you as the player are in a totally different role. And don't really have some loyalty to anyone, You really get stuck into something that you don't necessarily want todo...But have to do to clear the ships name and not be imprisoned for Crimes against Confed. So Confed hires The Revenge to assist in some front line engagements...Knowing that Half the crew are actually ex Confed operatives and/or military background.

Here is a list of flyable ships....With the Revenge
Arrow Scout (2 Diff Missile loadouts)
Rapier Blade (2 Diff Missile loadouts)
Excalibur Wyvern (2 Diff Missile loadouts)
Broadsword Executioner

Covered in the mod, I mean there is already 2 ships that for the most part are from WC3 I mean the Arrow scout, Excalibur are WC3..The Broadsword, WC2..Most flyable WC4 ships if you don't remember were Border World Militia ships. On top of that there is also ships that you don't fly in any campaign that will still be flyable in the simulator. So you don't really have to worry about not being able to fly them you just won't fly them unless it's in the simulator.
My point is...I think I have too many ships on the friendly side at the moment any ways... I'm trying to focus more on the different Kilrathi ships...and also Nephilim ships. I mean there was 4 ships you could fly in SO...Panther, Vampire, Wasp, and Devastator. I think that's plenty of ships for a modified destroyer to have. Think there may be 4 ships but you have 3 to 4 wingmen...That's a total of 16 ships you'd need just as supply. I figured having a light,mid,heavy, and a bomber is far enough to have for flyable ships in a campaign...

ChrisReid:

I actually got that "Hurricane" name from the Privateer Online Design Doc...It was a proposed Confed Medium Fighter. Pg 42 I was going to tie it in, both to being a confed fighter at the moment and hey who knows maybe that's not what the ship is named in the future maybe those pirates call it the Vendetta! We don't really know but seeing how Arena mentions on Page 10 ..Please see. https://cdn.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/starsoldier_page10.png
I did have some thought behind it...And I do try and make sure I'm not doing things in the mod that are not conflicting to the WC world as we know it. But I do understand your thought that I do.
There are some things that are "MADE UP"..Like the Excalibur Wyvern...There's no mention of it anywhere but...It is something that is plausible..It's a modified Excalibur that I took some ideas from the Arena Crew and the concept art to have a different looking Excalibur, in the Mod. In which I dubbed the "Wyvern" that I actually got the name from Final Fantasy IV as that cool looking dragon that does some nuclear assault on your party that is totally devastating. It kinda has that dark look to it that I related to the WC3 dark look paint job so I applied that thought to this fighter in naming it.
I know there has been some few things down the road in which I've made up and totally sounded silly....But "You" as the WC community have helped me in realizing certain faults and I truly appreciate the creative help. I don't want to make a MOD that is not plausible at all. But I do, do the research needed before I make decisions...Which proves to be time consuming but it needs to be done so that, I'm not making some MOD that WC fans say "OMG WTF is that? Does that even make sense?". And you guys have always helped.
I was being sarcastic up top, and apologize, because I forget that it's hard to show sarcasm in text..But I really did do research into it...just because we don't really know what the Hurricane II looks like...Unless I missed something, somewhere?

 

[ChrisReid]

I think all that's great. Pulling stuff out of the POL design docs and bring in P2 ships are both admirable things. I think just in this particular case, crossing those two references and suggesting a proposed Privateer Online ship may be the precursor to a Tri-System ship sounds convoluted. If you have a new ship, I don't think there's any problem calling that the unseen Hurricane, and then it's separately a special thing that we first see the Vendetta a hundred years before it pops up again in something else.

 

[JasonRocZ]

Hmm interesting point of view and you do have a point that you do....

How about I design a new ship and reference it as the Hurricane II... I'm going to agree with Chris on this.
Maybe this P2 Vendetta ship can be a pirate ship after all

 

[frostytheplebe]

Triple-B:

I've Ex'd the Hellcat being in the mod...There are 2 variants of Excaliburs in the mod...The original (Unmodified Variant except for and updated model) and also a variant to be used as part of the Revenge Crew.

Godbless you on that one. I've had enough of the Hellcat to last me a life time!

As far as the story goes. I've really been steering away from being a Confed pilot in this mod...and reason being... I for one really like the Privateer feel to a game, and even the Privateer feel to the Nephilim Encroachment.. It doesn't mean that you won't see the ships, it just means that you as the player are in a totally different role. And don't really have some loyalty to anyone, You really get stuck into something that you don't necessarily want todo...But have to do to clear the ships name and not be imprisoned for Crimes against Confed. So Confed hires The Revenge to assist in some front line engagements...Knowing that Half the crew are actually ex Confed operatives and/or military background.

Not bad, like where this is going. Have you ever thought about adding in pilots you could hire? Like say someone on the Revenge gets iced, you could choose to hire another one or something, like come across the option to save a fighter during a mission, which will decide if he joins ur crew or not.

Here is a list of flyable ships....With the Revenge
Arrow Scout (2 Diff Missile loadouts)
Rapier Blade (2 Diff Missile loadouts)
Excalibur Wyvern (2 Diff Missile loadouts)
Broadsword Executioner.

Sticking with the originals, good man. I do not like what Arena did to the BS. By the way. which colors will you fly the Broadsword under? Concordia or Gemini?

Covered in the mod, I mean there is already 2 ships that for the most part are from WC3 I mean the Arrow scout, Excalibur are WC3..The Broadsword, WC2..Most flyable WC4 ships if you don't remember were Border World Militia ships. On top of that there is also ships that you don't fly in any campaign that will still be flyable in the simulator. So you don't really have to worry about not being able to fly them you just won't fly them unless it's in the simulator..

If this is set this far into the future... don't you think the BWS fighters would be either in museums or the scrap yards by now? Don't forget the books descriptions of them being old, falling apart, and arguably scratch built. I mean it's up to you, but these fighters would be considered a joke at this point. If you really want to use them, have them updated with Firekkan tech and hand them to the birds. I doubt you could make the case of anyone else using em. But thats just my thoughts.

My point is...I think I have too many ships on the friendly side at the moment any ways... I'm trying to focus more on the different Kilrathi ships...and also Nephilim ships. I mean there was 4 ships you could fly in SO...Panther, Vampire, Wasp, and Devastator. I think that's plenty of ships for a modified destroyer to have. Think there may be 4 ships but you have 3 to 4 wingmen...That's a total of 16 ships you'd need just as supply. I figured having a light,mid,heavy, and a bomber is far enough to have for flyable ships in a campaign...

Agreed!

 

[JasonRocZ]

like come across the option to save a fighter during a mission, which will decide if he joins ur crew or not.

I really like that idea and I also had something along those lines.

Sticking with the originals, good man. I do not like what Arena did to the BS. By the way. which colors will you fly the Broadsword under? Concordia or Gemini?

The Broadsword Executioner I actually mimicked the Arena Textures for Three of the flyable craft...The Rapier Blade, The Broadsword Executioner, and Also the Arrow Scout. I've modified the Rapier Blade a little bit but...You get the point. The Excalibur Wyvern has WC3 textures, which I've tinkered around a little bit with, but you also get the point there

I'm not going to include many Border World Craft maybe 1 or 2 but that's bout it... I'm not even going to refer to them as Border World Craft...Just "The Local Militia" sad but true.

please see below I've actually included an image of the Flyable Craft. Labeled... For every one to see. This is exactly how they are in the Vision engine...I'm not able to take screenshots with this computer...I'm in the process of rebuilding the old one.. But my vid card doesn't let me take photos and I'm too lazy to play in anything different then OpenGL. This is a 1600X1200 collage of the ships. Enjoy !

Please note: The ships in this are not to scale. And also I opted not to do any of the other Confed craft in Arena for the simple fact that it is so silly to fly any of these ships and also much to hard to evade anything if your fastest speed is like 600...it just can't be done...and does not make the game experience all that much fun. I just couldn't deal with the stats of the other broadswords and even the other Rapiers being as fast as they were and with so much armor. So in a way I guess this is before any of the Armor scarcity issues during Arena. (The reason why the craft were so slow).

Also for a short description of one of the first missions I've designed an Arrow Scout with the least amount of armament (missiles) and hardware (decoys) (To justify - bumping up the speed) to inspect a large Terran Convoy (Which is believed to be carrying a large amount of contraband and Kilrathi slaves to a nearby planet but this convoy is also escorted by some fighters. You inspect these craft for the local militia so that they can decide how to go about stopping this convoy.

 

[JasonRocZ]

Here's another mock up of the "Hurricane II" Confed Medium fighter...(Unarmed) Also I got a few ideas from an Armada fighter called the "Phantom" Check out the similarities. Any suggestions?

 

[NinjaLA]

my suggestion would be to add big wing commander 1 style guns running down the sides of the fuselage and maybe adding those armor shields that a raptor has through the winglets (sort of shaped like this pair of parenthesis)

 

[JasonRocZ]

Hmm That's not a bad idea....Stay Tuned I'll keep ya posted on what it would look like.....Being a Medium Fighter What kinda guns should I have on this? 2x______ and 2x_______ ?

Since this would look similar to the Raptor after I make those mods......NO mass driver/Neutron combo. And also NO Plasma, it's a medium fighter, Not a heavy/bomber

Here's the list of guns that are in the mod, and are visuals on some fighters. Mods of the guns are tweaked a little bit, but not too far off from the originals, keep that in mind.

Meson
Laser (A lil quicker refire rate but all in all the same)
Tachyon
Particle
Plasma (Listed but won't be used for this fighter)
Chain Ion (Fast refire)
Ion Pulse (Second best to the Tachyon)
Mass Driver
Stormfire MK III (Needs Ammo)
Neutron

 

[NinjaLA]

I say stick one in the middle of the nose and do 3x laser but that is just me

 

[JasonRocZ]

Having 3 of any gun drastically reduces the refire rate of the guns in the SO engine...But I do like the idea of the big guns down the fuselage type of idea.....I'll keep ya posted...On what it comes out like

 

[JasonRocZ]

Here's an updated screen of that same "Hurricane II" fighter work. I'm thinking to arm it with 2 Meson (Outside engine intakes) and 2 Neutron (Sides of fuselage). Or...... 2 Meson (Outside engine instakes) and 2 Tachyon (Sides of fuselage)

 

[JasonRocZ]

Here we go with some armament... ( I sometimes can't wait for suggestions) I armed it with ... 2 Neutron and 2 Meson...

 

[rapierdragon]

Is that a Hurricane II or a Raptor 7?

Uh, looks good and all but uh, can I just say "Raptor" ? (maybe not so much the top-view, but the front view and front-quarter type views certainly look similar. Pity to any cat or pirate whose computer mistakes it for the ancient fighter.)

Hmm, perhaps you could story-wise it up so that the Hurricane-II was the revamping of a classic design or something. (Though people would wonder why it therefore didn't get the name Raptor III or IV something).

Course, it's not like the Raptor has been in use the entire time, getting updated every few years... but sometimes in war they pull a good old design out of the books, but then make it totally out of new parts and materials: thus earning it a new name, rather than having a 2 or 3 slapped onto the old name.

Hellcat mk.5 is a good example. True, we never saw marks 1 thru 4, but maybe the tech at the time was steadily advancing and by the time the factories got a few squads of Hellcat mk.1's built the tech was updated and they just upgraded enough inner workings to make a quick and painless shift from the mk.1 to the mk.2, then the mk.3, and so on up to mk.5.

I mean look at winXP... the computer tech advanced so fast in the late 90's that Microsoft went win95 (which you could call "windows 4" since the version before it was windows 3.1), and within a few years it went; win95sr2 > win95sr3 > win98 > win98se (aka win95 service release 5) just within a few years. Then we rapidly had win2k (win95 release 6), winME (win95 release 7), winXP (aka "windows 5")... windows Vista ("windows 6") and now we got Windows 7. That's FOUR GENERATIONS in about ten years.

Hell, I mean just look at the tech changes from WC1 to WC3: phase shields, the armor tech got updated what, like 4 or 5 times (dura-steel > plasteel > tungsten > iso-metal > or whatever the order is)... new guns with more range and power, etc. Who's to say that their tech at making stuff smaller (miniaturization as its called) wasn't also improved? Hellcat mk.5 could be an identical size and shape of the Hellcat mk.2, but easily have twice the engine power and four times the shielding. For all we know it went just like win95... Hellcat mk.1 could have been outdated within weeks of introduction.

Hell, a computer comparible to the pentium-4 would have been the size of the state of Minnesota back in the 80's, but we have them in the size of what, a PSP or something? So hell, by Wing Commander 7's timeline they could have what, phase shield generators and anti-matter guns small enough to fit into a medium fighter or something.

Paper Firekkan Fighter

As for the paper Firekkan Fighter, I was somewhat ill just before the holidays and then was kept busy with family during them, but did still manage some work.

 

[Triple-B]

quite frankly spoken, i dont like the new "hurriraptor" it simply reminds me of the raptor.

why did you change it anyway? the vendettastyle was nice.

 

[rapierdragon]

NinjaLA was the one who suggested it... maybe NinjaLA and JasonRocZ both forgot the old Raptor.

And its not like Jason can just make the round body-bits larger to circle all the way around... cause then it would look like WC1's Scimitar medium fighter.

That's the big problem with design (and movies) these days. There's so many old designs (and old stories) that something "truely new" is rare. Even the Hurricane II design kind of looks like a half'n'half mix of Hellcat and Thunderbolt, but but the design is different enough to look totally new (you have to sit and think where Jason got design ideas... unlike the x-wing-with-curved-bits design which immediately makes you go "I know I've seen something almost identical to this before").

I prefer the old blue Hurricane II (and its red varient) over this new hurriraptor... or is the hurricane/raptor gonna be a totally different ship? If its gonna be a different ship then yeah, totally could see it, especially if you use my logic to the design.

As I said, maybe they didn't have time to design a totally new ship. Maybe they had a bunch of modern parts and materials, but only had access to a factory programmed with old designs...

Even without the curved-bits, the X-wing design is strongly reminescent of the Wraith (except with smaller guns to either side of the cockpit). I can also see its likeness to the Phantom (as Jason put the ship right in his first post with teh x-wing layout yesterday).

As to finding/making other designs

If you want some designs that are less common you could dig around in older anime... the 3 ships from Getter Robo G (aka Starvengers) or their newer counterparts (Neo Getter Robo, Shin Getter Robo, New Getter Robo) could easily be altered and repainted to give unusual design ideas.

Animal-inspired fighter designs are rarely used in games (their more common to cartoons or anime) but I've got a few things around here and there I could upload pics of that I always thought would be cool to try to convert into a space-fighter.

Another good idea is a toy series from Japan or some place that I know as mugenbine. (its like a cheap transformer... but rather than transforming its more like a core piece that you attach various oddly-shaped bits to, kind of a bit like lego, to make the "core robot" change into a larger robot, or a robotic animal, or a fighter, or a car/truck/drill/boat or any number of things). Usually each has one animal form, a car/truck type form, and a fighter/jet/flying type form, so I could easily get you like 20 different design ideas just from that alone.

Yeah, the muginbine is cool. Some of the fighters are obviously jets, but some are kind of odd, like a jet that has this kind of dragon-shaped or bird-shaped head (sometimes its just cause they were cheap and didn't want to include a specific jet nose/cockpit type piece). I'll have to find my picture collection.

 

[NinjaLA]

I think it looks neat. especially the guns.

the wings (at least in my mind) are supposed to remind you a bit of the raptor but the rest of the chassis certainly doesn't. It's sort of wierd to think that a fighter like the raptor would be designed with an element that would be categorically rejected for all future fighter types.

Obviously it is your choice.

*edit* besides, the way he has them set up there they just look like some beefed up protection for the gun mounts, hardly the giant-sized ones from the original game.

 

[Triple-B]

Why creating with force new ships? or modifiying existing ones from other sources? there are so many half hearted used ships throughout the wc universe, both on terran and on kilrathi side

examples: banshee ( from armada), the phantom (which we jason brought up recently), the wraith( Wc2 / armada), the gladius or even some more of the arena variants of the ships, we could use some fighters from privateer 1

jason, you said that you had some problems in finding non terran ships, how about kilrathiships that have been seldomly used throughout all wc games/ fan games ??

example: shoklar (armada), goran (armada), kor lah (armada)

maybe even those weird steltek ships could be used randomly in the game

just an idea

edit: those kilrathi armada ships could be for example used as privateer/pirate kilrathi ships. or could even be used by terran pirates who work togehter with kilrathi pirates

 

[JasonRocZ]

To reply to everyones thoughts, suggestions, and commentary.....

Triple-B:
I've decided to make a few different fighters here and there...Just to break up things, and also to try polishing my own 3d modeling skills...(I never took a class...I didn't goto school to do any 3d modeling....I started it when I actually started this mod. So in a way I wanted a few pieces of work to put into the project as my own accomplishment. (

I'm starting to run out of room for extra fighters, I have all the Kilrathi fighters/bombers that are needed for now. One of which was a creation (The Darthek)...I've really been focusing more Kilrathi Transports....Terran Transports...and that Firekkan Transport lately, simply because I want to fill out some of the nav points with random ships. I've really just wanted something different to put into this mod...and not the ships and gameplay from the previous computer games....
When you show up to a nav point...Although space is an infinite area I want to fill it out a little bit...I mean take a station for example...When you arrive at some type of outpost...Wouldn't you think there would be a little more activity other than Just the Outpost being there? Wouldn't you think Transports are docking with the station....Some station patrol craft are hanging about? Just my thoughts that Prophecy and Secret Ops left out.

I've included some of the Arena fighters because they're not modelled or textured as they are in previous games. and also that they are part of the timeline that I'm shooting for....
There are 3 ships that I modelled awhile back...That are Steltek origin...And I've been debating to use any of them at the moment. We do know that the Nephilim were looking for some type of Steltek artifacts or ruins at some point but...little is known about that, and I'm not really too sure If I even want to touch that subject.

As far as the other design the "Vendetta" ....ChrisReid had a good point that it wouldn't be such a plausible ship to have as the new top of the line Confed Medium fighter. So I decided it would be good as a pirate ship....Just as it is in Privateer 2. So to make things believable, the "Vendetta" would be a private ship independent ship design similar to the "Talon" or "Centurion" or anything like that....

NinjaLA & rapierdragon:
As far as the new design is concerned I do see the similarities to the Raptor as far as the wing set up.... And also understand I had no intention of making it "The Raptor II" or anything like that.....This design, although lending some similarities to the "Raptor"... (In which I believed it would after I put on that Armor, I believe I stated that when I posted it up). It does look different to the Raptor. You also have to think...That with the 100+ ship designs within the Wing Commander series and the 1000's of others in the Sci-Fi community in general. It's hard to make something NOT look like something else. I mean originally it looked like the Xwing... ok ....That's fine...Then by just adding 2 things on the wings it now looks like the Raptor......

My point is.... If you were never exposed to either ship...would you know that it looked like them? Most likely...NO ..you wouldn't. Even with a different fuselage, different engines, different intakes, different sized wings, different guns,..... because your exposed to Wing Commander....it looks like the Raptor. If your exposed to Star Wars it looks like the Xwing....

Personally, the way I look at it.... It's something that has been a self creation by NOT trying to base it off either of those ships.. I tried to base it a little bit off of the Phantom design in having the four wings that was basically it. But whatev....I don't think that I can make a ship that doesn't look like something else at this point... With every sci-fi game or movie that comes out there is so many different designs....The creative process is starting to become copy and paste to be honest.

On a general note:
I would use old models....but some people say "No that wouldn't make sense that fighter would be almost 50 years old that's not right!" in reality it wouldn't really matter.... as we see some ships are being used for 100+ years... I'm just shooting for a few different ideas or ships... to say.. hey that looks cool and I'd love to fly that thing in this timeline.. or even "Man I keep flying this ship and it sucks!" I'd rather people focus more on the gameplay then the way the ship looks..I mean let's face it... WC1 sucks graphically concerned but we still play it right? WC2 sucks graphically...But we still play it! WC3 & WC4 have become dated as far as a 3d engine but we still play them!

Point is...I love your suggestions and ideas for models...But try and believe I don't try to make things look like other things in the WC universe... Unless I note "Hey I'm using this fighter model to create this one" or I got this idea "From this one"....It's just things look similar to others..nowadays

Anyways enough of my rant....I'll start texturing this fighter and see where it goes.

The OLD Hurricane II design will be the "Vendetta" (To be used by a Pirate Force) and the new Hurricane design will be the ship you see at the present.

And BTW "Rapierdragon" awesome job on that Firekkan Fighter! Keep up the good work

 

[rapierdragon]

cartoony colorings

Cool, so old red/blue Hurrican now Vendetta... design certainly matches the name. Might I suggest converting to (the red area in most recent color post) a black paintjob with a big white skull'n'crossbones on the back?

Never meant to sound mean... Raptor was a good fighter and as we all know, revamping a classic design is something that happens from time to time. And from a certain view, it makes sense (both in time and money). Why try to make a design from scratch and then go through different tests... its easier to take a solid stable design and improve it.

(heck, it worked for Spiderman... I mean way back in the old days we thought a radioactive spider was a neat idea for a super-power, but nowadays we know the spider would die quickly and if it was that radioactive then Peter Parker would have died too (or at least lost his hair). The move to a G.E.'d/mutant spider (short-slang for Genetically Engineered) "makes" more sense.

Name change makes sense too... both are strong and powerful, both are relatively fast, but a Raptor is an ancient dinosaur and a Hurricane is something, well, not so much "new" as it is "frequently new" (at least till it dies, and then a different-piloted Hurricane will come along).

Did up a few win-paint colorizations of your 3d renderings... know its kind of cartoony, and don't mean to insult ya, but thought it might help get the creative process going for you.

Vendetta > Pirates of the Radioactive Drifts

Hurricane w/Raptor paintjob > Possible ship ancestor? Design off-shoot? Re-vamped alternative to an old design? (by Sivar, now that I see the small preview-post, I'd swear it has Raptor genetics in its fighter DNA) Certainly looks meaner than the old WC1-Raptor though.

Hurrican w/militia red paintjob > based the color and setup off the red Hurricane from your earlier posts. Looks even meaner than the green Raptor-paint version.