The goal of this thread is to coordinate development on our project codenamed HighSpace - a mod for Freespace 2 that will be a mashup between it and High Fleet. A description of how the mechanics of the two games could be combined is available in the first thread.
Who we have
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@FCfromSSC - 2D/3D artist
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@netstack - developer, tester, and suggester of great ideas
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@Mantergeistmann - writer
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Me - developer
Who we need
The more the merrier, you are free to join in any capacity you wish! I can already identify a few distinct tasks for each position that we could split the work into
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developers: “mission” code, “strategic” system map code
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artists: 2D (user interface), 3D (space ships, weapons explosions)
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writers: worldbuilding/lore, quests, characters
What we have
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Concept art for a long range missle cruiser, curtesy of @FCfromSSC
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A proof of concenpt for “strategic” system map we jump into on start of the campaign. It contains a friendly ship and 2 enemy ships, you can chose where to move / which enemy ship to attack.
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A somewhat actual-game-like workflow. Attacking a ship launches a mission where the two ships are pitted against each other. If you win, the current health of your ship is saved, and you can launch the second attack. If you clean up the map you are greeted with a “You Win” message, or “You Lose” if you lose your ship.
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A “tactical” RTS-like in-mission view where you can give commands to your ships.
Updates
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The System Map and the Tactical View got minor pimp-ups. The System Map now shows the ship names, and the Tactical View has a grid to help with orientation, draws ship icons if the ships are too far away to see, and draws waypoint, and target icons to give some indications of the ship's current goals.
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The System Map now supports Battle Groups, and the player is now in charge of one - the original GTC Trinity cruiser, and a wing of fighters.
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We now have “just in time” mission generation. Like I mentioned in the previous thread, the scripting API gives you access to the file system, so it was pretty easy to generate a mission file on the fly. This has some advantages over using a “blank” mission file and setting up the mission via the API, because not all mission features are exposed to the API. The most obvious example here will be how there's no longer an “extra” player ship, just the ones explicitly declared for the System Map (in the previous versions you'd be flying a fighter, even though in theory there were no fighters in the System Map).
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Thanks to the fighters and their current load-out it's actually not that hard to win the game at the moment. Your cruiser will easily dispatch the Shivan one, and as to the corvette, you can order your ships to run away, and take out the turrets yourself, then order your ships to attack. It will take a while, but with a defenseless enemy it's only a question of time.
What's next
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The System Map didn't get a lot of attention so far, so I'd like expand it. It would be nice to move around an actual star system, add camera movement, and split/merge mechanics for fleets.
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The Tactical View is somewhat functional, but still needs to give a player handle on what's going on, and better control over their ships. I wanted to add subsystem status, beam cannon charge status, and a handier way to give advanced commands.
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
What about completely conventional, chemically-powered ballistics? I get that they're often ignored in sci-fi due to being boring caveman technology, or because their muzzle velocities and accuracy are insufficient for long-range space battles, or because people assume that gunpowder doesn't work in space, or because the writers just have a strong dislike for real guns. But do they not work? Especially in settings with close-range fighter engagements? Yes they lack velocity, but couldn't you still use them to overwhelm defenses with high rates of fire or heavy projectiles? Yes they're less accurate than magnetically accelerated shells, but can't they compensate for that by using proximity fuzes?
In short, I see uses for old-school guns at knife-fighting range. But feel free to shoot me down here.
It's the muzzle velocity/accuracy one. The problem with chemical slugthrowers is that your projectile velocity is capped to the maximum expansion speed of the propellent gasses, which top out at around 1220 meters/second, and even getting that velocity is fairly prohibitive. I think there's various theoretical ways to improve that somewhat, but railguns are just a whole lot better, because the distances involved in space combat mean additional projectile velocity is equivalent to additional effective range/accuracy, not because the bullet goes closer to where you want it, but because the target has less time to get out of the way.
I actually agree with this. I don't think there's any reason why railguns couldn't be adapted to rapid fire, but chainguns and electric gatlings are going to give you high ROF cheaper and with lower technology, at the price of reduced effective range. Have them as low-end Point Defense and possibly fighter weaponry, and you have something to upgrade to in more advanced ships.
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They'd work. All you need is a combustible gas, oxygen, and a combustion chamber. It's just that they'd be outclassed by most other technologies. Maybe they'd make sense as a dumb-fire missile alternative (they're basically the same thing, except missiles carry their fuel to accelerate over time, while guns would have the fuel carried by the ship, and would have to do instant acceleration of the projectile).
More compact than missiles, with higher initial velocity, and cheaper to boot. I guess the argument that railguns or coilguns do it all better holds true, so long as you assume that each ship has a power plant that's so strong that the energy cost of powering a magnetic gun that outclasses any chemically-powered weapon is negligible.
I just recall very much fearing the flak guns in War In Heaven, and those were fired at fighters at a distance of...maybe 500 meters? You don't need railguns for that!
Rockets are mostly fuel. At the end of the day the same amount of fuel releases the same amount of energy, meaning the same acceleration. One (and I don't know which) might be more efficient at translating the chemical energy into kinetic, but I wouldn't expect that much of a difference, so at the end of the day, I think they'd be the same size.
They do make sense on Earth, because half of the fuel mass is floating in the atmosphere.
Even now slapping a nuclear reactor on a space ship, or even a probe, solves energy problems to the point nothing else can really compete.
OTOH, if you already have rail guns it's easier to feed it different munitions than set up entirely different guns, feeding mechanisms, etc.
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