Courier

[bobtheterrible]

Skipjack or Marlin??

I quite like Skipjack but they are eaten by Marlin!

[nozmajner]

Skipjack Courier rolls of the tongue better I think.
Marlin could be an interceptor in the future, specifically designed to intercept such fast moving moving couriers, if the eat them anyway. :D

[bobtheterrible]

Skipjack it is then!! :)

Looks like the normal map IS being applied but it just looks very flat...

The Shield is still causing me problems. When I add it to the highest LOD section in the .model file it renders in the model viewer with the texture and is not recognised as a "shield" to be hit.

From the docs, the file needs to be named courier_shield.dae for it to be picked up as a shield - do I need to do anything else? All modifiers have been applied and there is no material associated with the best I can tell.

Also, if anyone wants to make some suggestions for stats please do. Otherwise Im going to give it 1000Gs worth of acceleration and a million missiles :D

Nearly there...

[nozmajner]

If I remember correctly, the object has to have the _shield in the object name. The Kanara has it as kanara_shield for example.

Not sure about the stats. My guess is that it should have relativaly meager acceleration compared to the other couriers, since it's larger, but it should have a bit better deltaV. The turning rate felt good I think, but not entirely sure. Maybe it could be a bit more nimble. Mass should be relatively low I think. I have to look at it a bit more, my mind wasn't on the ship stats for a while now.

[impaktor]

For ship stats, I think this could be one of those Millenium Falcon / Asp Explorer / Imperial Courier of the game, meaning: good and versetile, not the fastest, or best range but in the top third on most/all stats (except price/upkeep/crew).

[bobtheterrible]

Noz, you were exactly right - I had not read the docs properly - It clearly states the object needs to be named with _shield... Shields are now working (pushed)!

Stats, stats, stats - I have come to realise that I don't know what half of them mean nor how to calculate realistic values :-s
So, I figured that I would put the Natrix here as an example set here for discussion:

Natrix:

Code: Select all

{
   "angular_thrust" : 19500000.0,
   "capacity" : 80,   # What does this mean? What is its relation to cargo/fuel?
   "cockpit" : "",
   "down_thrust" : 1800000.0,
   "effective_exhaust_velocity" : 18200000.0,  # Are there any docs on how to calculate values for these?
   "forward_thrust" : 6100000.0,
   "fuel_tank_mass" : 60,
   "hull_mass" : 50,
   "hyperdrive_class" : 2, # What are the classes?
   "left_thrust" : 1800000.0,
   "manufacturer" : "opli",
   "max_crew" : 3,
   "min_crew" : 1,
   "model" : "natrix",
   "name" : "Natrix",
   "price" : 241000.0,
   "reverse_thrust" : 3800000.0,
   "right_thrust" : 1800000.0,
   "ship_class" : "light_freighter",
   "slots" : {
      "atmo_shield" : 0, # What does this do??
      "cargo" : 80,
      "scoop" : 0,
      "laser_front" : 1,
      "missile" : 0,
      "sensor"  : 2
   },
   "roles" : {  # This is new to me :) what are the various roles and what are they used for? Guessing NPCs?
      "merchant" : true,
      "pirate" : true
   },
   "thruster_fuel_use" : -1.0,
   "up_thrust" : 3800000.0,
   "front_cross_section" : 37,
   "side_cross_section" : 95,
   "top_cross_section" : 290,
   "lift_coeff" : 0,
   "aero_stability" : 0.45
}

The Skipjack:

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{
   "cockpit" : "",
   "forward_thrust" : 7050000.0,
   "reverse_thrust" : 5000000.0,
   "left_thrust" : 1050000.0,
   "right_thrust" : 1050000.0,
   "up_thrust" : 5500000.0,
   "down_thrust" : 1050000.0,
   "angular_thrust" : 20000000.0,
   "effective_exhaust_velocity" : 30000000.0,
   "thruster_fuel_use" : -1.0,
   "fuel_tank_mass" : 300,
   "hull_mass" : 60,
   "hyperdrive_class" : 9,
   "manufacturer" : "kaluri",
   "max_crew" : 3,
   "min_crew" : 1,
   "model" : "skipjack",
   "name" : "Skipjack",
   "price" : 500000.0,
   "ship_class" : "heavy_courier",
   "capacity" : 580,
   "slots" : {
      "atmo_shield" : 1,
      "cargo" : 180,
      "scoop" : 1,
      "laser_front" : 1,
      "missile" : 8,
      "sensor" : 10
   }
}

[nozmajner]

I think the stats are mostly good, but I'd suggest some changes:

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{
   "model" : "skipjack",
   "name" : "Skipjack Courier",
   "cockpit" : "",
   "manufacturer" : "kaluri",
   "ship_class" : "medium_courier",
   "min_crew" : 2,
   "max_crew" : 3,
   "price" : 500000.0,
   "hull_mass" : 80,
   "capacity" : 200,
   "slots" : {
      "atmo_shield" : 1,
      "cargo" : 180,
      "scoop" : 3,
      "laser_front" : 1,
      "missile" : 6
   },
   "effective_exhaust_velocity" : 16000000.0,
   "thruster_fuel_use" : -1.0,
   "fuel_tank_mass" : 200,
   "hyperdrive_class" : 4,
   "forward_thrust" : 12050000.0,
   "reverse_thrust" : 5000000.0,
   "left_thrust" : 1050000.0,
   "right_thrust" : 1050000.0,
   "up_thrust" : 9500000.0,
   "down_thrust" : 1050000.0,
   "angular_thrust" : 20000000.0,   
   "front_cross_section" : 78,
   "side_cross_section" : 142,
   "top_cross_section" : 223,
   "lift_coeff" : 0.3,
   "aero_stability" : 2.8
}

580 Capacity is way too much. That's about the whole length of the central hull. The whole ship is about 800m^3. I've reduced it to 200. Maybe 300. I kept the 180 cargo capacity, that's spot on for the rear side of the central hull.
I've set the fuel capacity to 200, the volume of the "wings".
I think it's not yet a heavy Courier. It can land on the small pad of the octagonal ground port.
I've increased some thrusts, decreased the exhaust velocity to be a bit better than the Pumpkinseeds.
I've added some aerodynamics stats. The cross sections and stability are measuerd in Blender, the lift is a guess.
Also, I've rearranged the entries so their groupings make more sense to us humans. I always find it hard to use the alphabetical order.

I noticed two things:
You are using the shield mesh as collision mesh. I'd advise against that, it would be better to have a proper low poly collision mesh.
The Ship ID tag isn't at the best location, since it doesn't follow the curvature of the hull. You might want to reconsider their placement. Scaling them down could also help in finding a proper place to them.

[bobtheterrible]

Awesome, thanks Noz!

I think it's not yet a heavy Courier. It can land on the small pad of the octagonal ground port.

Works for me

You are using the shield mesh as collision mesh. I'd advise against that, it would be better to have a proper low poly collision mesh.

Done

The Ship ID tag isn't at the best location, since it doesn't follow the curvature of the hull. You might want to reconsider their placement. Scaling them down could also help in finding a proper place to them.

There are not many flat spots on this ship :-s

I had noted on some other ships that "sensors" and "hyperdrive class" are really quite high. I dont quite know what the hyperdrive classes equate to however I envisaged the Skipjack to have a decent jump range as it is a courier intended to get to places quickly (also because I remember charging around the galaxy in my Imperial Courier as a teenager!)

No Roles??

And go on, pretty plz........ give it more missiles ;-)

[nozmajner]

You can add more missiles if you want. I think I started off from the previous version of your repo, and it had 5 of them there. But it can have 8, fine by me.
The upper side of the nose is flatter than the botton side, that might be a better place for the ship ID.
I did not add any roles, because I'm yett to check out how they work, what roles are available. They are for NPC things, yeah. Feel free to add them.

Hmm, I just noticed that the ship is a bit off-center relative to world origin.

The Sensor tag is used to limit what you can equip onto the ship. If you don't include it, it should default to 1 if I'm correct, but you can set it to 0 if you don't want the ship to be able to equip any radar. At least that's my understanding. No point raising it to anything above 1.

The hyperdrive stat sets the default hyperdrive for the ship market (and NPCs I think). You can go up with that as capacity allows. (class 5 with the 200 capacity, but this kind of hyperdrive classification needs thought anyway, I think it's a rather oversimplified logic currently)

[impaktor]

I'm thinking perhaps this could be a good time to move all ship/station/city models from git, into git-lfs, together with music files. Just throwing it out there.