[IDEA] The Stardrake (Inspired by the Wyvera Mod)

[steelwing]

With the inspiration of Wolfy's Wyvera mod, I've come up with an idea for a playership that I think would be really cool and reasonably doable. I call it the Stardrake, but I'm open to other name ideas. It would essentially be a living organic ship like the Wyvera.
Features:

• Ship Management: The Stardrake's capabilities will be managed by organs like those of the Wyvera. The organs could be "fed" items to enhance their capabilities.
• Hull Growth: The hull itself can absorb nutrients in various forms to stimulate its growth. As the hull grows, so will the ship's cargo space.
• Armor: A separate organ manages the ship's armor and regenerates said armor at the cost of increased power consumption. Regen can be accelerated by feeding the organ the right items. The armor is the ship's skin and can't be replaced. It can only be enhanced by feeding the organ the right type of armor segments.
• Shields: The ship's shield is another organ. Like armor, you can't install a new shield, because the organ can't be replaced. It is possible for a new shield to be "attached" to the shield organ so that the organ can absorb it. This results in increased HP and regen rate for the shield organ. How much those things increase would depend on the difference between the organ's current HP and regen and the shield's HP and regen. If the shield has enhancements, there's a chance of the organ picking them up.
• Reactor: The reactor is another organ. Like the shield, it can't be upgraded by replacement. Fuel supplies can either be loaded into the reactor to recharge it or "fed" to the reactor to stimulate its growth.
• Engines: Also an organ that would grow through feeding. I suspect I'll copy this part from the Wyvera (with Wolfy's permission, of course )
• Weapons: Unlike the Wyvera, the Stardrake will have no "growable" weapons. Its weapons will be installed like those of other ships, allocated within 3 weapon-only device slots. A "weapon control" organ might be present to provide upgrades to weapons through feeding (+fast, etc). The same organ could repair damaged weapons if they were intact when they were installed.
• Other devices: Other devices would be installed just like weapons. They too would be repaired, through a "device management" organ. This and the "weapon control" organ might be the same organ... Like weapons, a device that was damaged could only be repaired if it had been intact at the time of installation.

Any suggestions or comments? Is this something anyone else would like to see?

[ThePrivateer]

This sounds freaking cool.

I haven't tried Wyvera mod yet, but this sounds AWESOME. And scary too. Like something out of Alien or any of those horror-deep space-type things.

[Aury]

Heh, I'm completely redoing the mechanics of the wyvera mod, because the old ones were, well, all I could easily do back in the day it was made, and there were significant balance issues with the old implementation. You can use the code from that old one if you'd like though.

Graphics wise, what are you planning?

[steelwing]

This sounds freaking cool.

I haven't tried Wyvera mod yet, but this sounds AWESOME. And scary too. Like something out of Alien or any of those horror-deep space-type things.

Thanks! I hope it lives up to expectations by the time I'm done with it. This is still just an idea in my head.

Heh, I'm completely redoing the mechanics of the wyvera mod, because the old ones were, well, all I could easily do back in the day it was made, and there were significant balance issues with the old implementation. You can use the code from that old one if you'd like though.

Cool! Thanks!

Graphics wise, what are you planning?

I haven't gotten that far yet. Hopefully I can keep it from looking too much like a Vorlon... I doubt I'll do anything special for the HUD, unless I need a custom silhouette for the armor status display (I'm planning 4 armor segments initially, but if I make the ship growable, I may want to expand that). How many facings should there be for a playership?

[Aury]

40 facings

got any concept art?

[Drako Slyith]

Sounds awesome You could also have a special organ that when fed will create a wingman/child. How powerful the wingman depends on how well fed the organ is. With the ship change mod, you could even have the ship and its wing-children grow up gradually.

[steelwing]

40 facings

got any concept art?

Not yet. This is all an idea that grew in my head since I started playing with your Wyvera mod. I've got a vague notion of what I'd like for it to look like, which if I can sketch it out, I'll put a copy up here.

[Ttech]

Star Dragon eh? Pretty interesting idea, though it does sound a lot like Farscape redux, I cannot say that is a bad thing but then you start getting weird blue people and a ship on an ocean and big explosions. If anyone does not know what I'm talking about you, you have totally missed the end of Farscape. Either way its an interesting idea, the ship could heal its self and be 'smart'

[steelwing]

Star Dragon eh? Pretty interesting idea, though it does sound a lot like Farscape redux, I cannot say that is a bad thing but then you start getting weird blue people and a ship on an ocean and big explosions. If anyone does not know what I'm talking about you, you have totally missed the end of Farscape. Either way its an interesting idea, the ship could heal its self and be 'smart'

Farscape Redux wasn't what I was going for, but you've got a point! Which means I also need to watch out for whether my ship looks like Moya...

[Aury]

Do you plan on including the ability to grow via the ship-changing abilities?
What degrees of specialization would the player be able to do?

[steelwing]

Do you plan on including the ability to grow via the ship-changing abilities?
What degrees of specialization would the player be able to do?

I definitely plan on including the ability to grow. That's what makes the hull growth concept possible.
If by "specialization" you mean differing growth paths...I'm not sure. I hadn't thought much beyond the feature list I'd already described. The ship will start as general purpose (sort of like the Sapphire, but a little bit stronger at start). Organs will only be able to grow so far without a hull level increase. I had initially thought to leave it at that, ending up with a "general purpose" ship that could do anything from carrying large loads of cargo to killing Iocrym. Now you got me thinking, though...
Maybe, at a certain point in hull growth, the player would be asked to make a choice leading to emphasis in one or more of the ship's characteristics with bonuses for the appropriate organ(s). Choices might be something as simple as specializing in gunship capabilities (limited further cargo space increases, bonuses to speed and weapons) or transport (bonuses to speed and armor, limited weapons). Or I might take it in another direction, allowing the player to take bonus organ enhancements (the equivalent of DnD's feats ) at certain stages in hull growth.
Either one would be fun, but I'm increasingly inclined toward the "feat" side of that question. I'll have to think on that some more, especially from the graphics aspect. Thanks for the idea!
And for people still waiting for that concept art, yes, I'm sketching stuff out and hope to have something to share soon.

[steelwing]

Here are a few "bare-bones" sketches of my vision of a StarDrake...

Side and front views.
The front view is deliberately uncolored. I was trying to convey relative wing size more than anything. I meant for the side view to show a long tail, but it shouldn't be that thin relative to the rest of the body.

Top view.
I swear I don't want this ship to look like a Klingon Bird of Prey... The neck should be longer, and the tail should be about the relative length shown in the side view. The coloration looks OK, though. It's meant to be a mottled bluish-purplish-brown...

These need refining, obviously... I'm not really an artist.

[Aury]

Heh, the sketches are still better than the sword ship. So what sort of textures would you be looking at trying to use?

Also, do you plan on modeling it, or anything?

[steelwing]

Heh, the sketches are still better than the sword ship. So what sort of textures would you be looking at trying to use?

I don't even know what software to try to render this thing in, much less what textures to work with. I need to review all the modding guides we have on the forum...

Also, do you plan on modeling it, or anything?

Once I figure out how, yes. If appropriate, I'd like to try it in Blender. The material options available there should offer lots of options for generating the coloration I want.

[Aury]

I don't even know if there is a guide to doing ships in blender on this forum.