[MOD] [0.1a] M2W Split Mantis Prototype (090727)

[KCK]

"M2W(hat)?"
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Regular M2s are nothing more than beefed up TLs, they have the same turret layout&ship design, only more guns, energy and shields. Which makes them great for police actions/sector defense against other M2/M7s or Fighters, but from a military point of view they're just crappy.

M2Ws have quite strong shields (because they need them when fighting other M2Ws), but the other stats are just average and don't seem to be impressive at all. What makes them so deadly is their turretlayout, imagine a Thresher M2 with 24 front mounted PPCs as hit&run ship, a Brigantine with 24 side mounted PPCs for 'true pirate-style' broadside or a ship like the Mantis which even looks like a warship and obliterates everything that dares to get into firing range and isn't in a blindspot..







"Doesn't that make them cheatships?"
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Not really, they're just M2s with better weapon-layout, no infinite energy, no 754m/s speed, no zomg Kyon Emitters. And they will absolutely need ammo-based weapons, because no generator would survive 24+ PPCs firing at the same time, which can get quite expensive. The only thing that is overpowered are their shields, because the Mantis is currently alone, and doesn't have any natural enemies. xD However with weak shields they would just 'pop' when facing another M2W, that's why they definetely need those shields.

"Will there be more M2Ws? Xenon, Khaak, Pirate..you know missons and stuff.."
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Well I hope that other Modders will see it and think "damn, why haven't I thought about THAT?" and start building more M2Ws, because without enemy M2Ws its quite boring, no real reason to include it into a mod, although capping one could be difficult and buying one would be to easy. The military won't give their shiny toys away to anybody else.


"Blogged.."
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Or "things I wish I would've known before.." and the reasons why the Mantis turned into just a 'boring overpowered Cheatship' instead of a cool Python replacement that pwns everything with just average M2-Stats and invents a new Warship-Class by clever design.

Yeah, that was the plan, but due to technical limitations it didn't work out that well. The idea was simple: get the Python-Stats, combine them with the Tiger-Chassis (and some of its unique properties), tweak a few things and take it to the next level..

What went wrong?

1.) Firing Arcs
Turrets are limited to a 180° sphere, and thats it. No way to change it even though some of the Mantis turrets could've easily reached 210-230° and more, which would've improved power projection and fixed possible blindspots without any additional guns..

2.) Turret Count
Ever wondered why each capital ship has 6 turrets, one on every major direction and yet the Hyperion has 2 Front and 2 Rear? Why the K side turrets have one mountpoint at front,mid,rear? And why the side/front guns can't fire forward even though their line-of-sight would allow it? The solution was easy: change some angles and instead of combining 28 guns into 6 turrets, use 14 turrets with 2 guns, to deliver damage to where it needs to be. No reason to fire 8 guns at that 5% hull M5, when 6 of them could target that evil Khaak M2.. Sounds great doesn't it? And would've been really smart too, because on a real warship there would be no reason to 'hardlink' all those batteries. Unfortunately the X-Engine doesn't allow it. 6 turrets are the holy number and thou shall not use more..

3.) Blindspots, Power Projection and the M2W..
The Mantis was intended as warship, hence the m2W designation, because every other M2 is just a beefed up TL, with more guns and better shields, but the same crappy turret-layout. The Mantis has no blindspots, only weakspots where less guns can point to. Thats one of the reasons why the Mantis has _ridiculous_ high estimated power projection 74% (100% forward, 71-85% side, 50-64% up/down, 58-71% rear). I don't know the values of other M2s (to lazy to calc ), but its a lot less.

4.) Fixing it up..
How do you fix something that isn't broken? I can't because the engine doesn't allow it, so the only way around it is 'cheating'. Add some more mountpoints to compensate and overshoot a bit, because these guns can fire with 'bugged' turrets at the same time, while on the real Mantis it would be just one gun, pointing one way or the other. Making it more of a M2+ than a M2W military grade ship.

5.) Aftermath
Is the Mantis a overpowered cheatship? Well, it's your decision.. But to me it is somewhat overpowered, because the current implementation that is enforced by 'poor' engine design goes beyond the intended goals. I only wanted to rearrange 28 guns on 14 turrets with average M2 stats, and that would already be enough to wreak havoc. The current draft has 36 guns on 6 turrets + special weapons, because it can only track 6 targets instead of 14 and because it can't reach the power projection values that the 'real' Mantis has.

Then again, these are engine-limitations and its the only way to bring the Mantis ingame. Without these fixes it would be just another crappy beefed up TL-Destroyer Warship-wannabe and there would be no reason to finish it at all..well other than for looks.

6.) Testdrive
Finally all those small things slowly come together. The ship is complete (no more holes ^^) and is only missing some grebble and textures. After I had threatened the turrets to turn them into toasters, they finally agreed that it would be a great idea to start shooting. Had to fix some more angles, cameras and stuff sticking out, but after that I could finally do a first testdrive and I have to reconsider my previous estimation..the Mantis retains its M2W-designation, because its evil. I don't even want to know how the real Mantis would've turned out..to scary. It has some pretty big blindspots, and isn't that great at killing fighters, but I increased the roll-rate, when something stays in the blindspots just do a short 90° roll, problem solved, which is quite cool, because as pilot the player doesn't has that much to do anyway.

Whatever, the Mantis pops other Capships like bubblewrap..the X-Universe needs more M2Ws, or the Boron will be gone before the next patch. When the Split realize what gem they have in their hands..


Mantis Prototypes
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The Split military is currently field testing the Mantis Prototypes to decide which configurations will replace the outdated Raptor&Python. The following Prototypes were spotted and classified by Argon Intelligence..

M2W Mantis Prototype
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Dev-Note: First draft, will probably divide into a few subtypes with slightly different layout, its the alpha Testdrive-Model to show what an M2W can do and to see if everything works as it should. I had the subtypes already 'sketched' out, but the X-engine busted those designs. Have to think about it for a while, to see if there are more combinations that make sense, other than M1W-carrier, M2W and M2W+player-convenience dockingbay. (I always found it odd why the dockingbays were removed after X2, even if it was only one for a M5-ship..its just annoying to jump back or micromanage a TM with M3&M5 every time you're looking for missions, the game doesn't gain anything through that other than forcing you to 'snail' through sectors..)



Version 0.1a (090727)
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alpha-test release
DON'T SAVE(!) or you might mess up your precious savegames, use the cheatscript to spawn one, have some fun wrecking stuff and quit. Maybe M2Ws will merge into other mods or will be pluginmanager compatible, but this release is only for testing and to show off the deadliness of M2Ws. Using it like any other ship in your real games is not supported, although loading a game, mess around there and quit is fine, as long as you don't save.

The files contain a cheatscript (cheat.mantis.test). You can use it to spawn 1 full equipped player mantis or 5 enemy ones. Just execute the script and enter 0 for the playership and 1 for xenons. I did a quick test in M148, they seem to be quite effective against other AI-ships (wrecked the sector without a 'scratch' other than through heavy missile barrage) but they didn't seem that deadly against the playership, maybe because I was in a Mantis too, or because I was strafing to much. Maybe its more difficult in a basic M2 or without strafing, I don't know..

There are some issues with enemy ships, they don't fire back like they should. I think the reason is that I don't know how to set turret scripts properly or it has something to do with the loadout. I highly recommend using M.A.R.S. with enemy ships enabled it works a lot better.

*first stat-draft mixed with carrier stuff (no the M2W won't keep 50 dockingbays)
*missing grebble&textures
*minor graphical errors at QLaunchbays (they're slightly off, but should be functional)
*funky "disco-mode" near base underneath bottom armorplates, related to missing textures..I don't even know how they got there, but who cares?

090727-MantisPrototype.zip (download)
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I currently don't have that much time to finish grebble&textures. (I'm not a great artist either ) But the ship is functional and I wanted to give away a teaser and well maybe inspire some other modders to build more ships like that. Be careful during final approach to the dockingbays its a bit tight. Dock&Launch was only tested with a couple of split ships and they won't crash into the rear turret anymore (you can clearly see where it was.. ). The weapon layout&energy is more or less intended. The Mantis won't work without ammo-based weapons and yes it can't use PPCs (not that it needs them..). And last but not least the 3rd side turret on each side can't fire forward, it was 'blindspotted' on purpose..it's one of the bug-fix turrets.

[Gazz]

[Killjaeden]

Make it more angled... currently it looks a bit like an oversized paranid Tiger to me. Split have sharp edges on their ships (to cut trough boron hull at ease xD) - pleaaaase don't use 'smoot'-modifiers on splitships... it doesn't fit.
Look at the Tiger to learn how ES / the guys from XTM did the model (look at the details)

You should improve the design(especially the texture - use vanilla Split textures, it's not very difficult to put these on your model. Rip them of from the imported Tiger and look at a 'multitexture'-tutorial)
Add some details to the model (you could rip off some of the details of the Python and Tiger, rearrange and resize and place them as needed). Put some L.O.V.E. into that model - It's your "baby"


I wonder about that turret layout. Those frontmounted Turrets - do they shoot to the front or the side? because if they were front they would shoot through the ships hull (doesn't look good) and if they are side they only can shoot in a 90° arc because of the camera. It's tricky to use vanilla turrets so they look good AND work correct. Sometimes it's "designbusting"

€ Are guns mounted at the rear the frontguns? That's uneffective regarding range because you have maybe 2 Km between your rear end and your frontend... inbetween the cockpit. If you shoot EBC/HEPT with the mainguns you can tell how long your ship is if you watch the shot.... lolz

Actually there are no 'better then destroyer' needed because capships die so fast you can't get to the kitchen to grab some popcorn if you want to see the 'final' (explosion) - even in a 2-room-flat. Maybe you rethink your design and move it to normal M2 stats because that would fit the design&size. If the design rocks people will love it - and it won't need superiorstats.

[KCK]

It was designed with 28 guns like the Python, now it has 36 because the engine doesn't allow to mount them like I had it planned. Those 8 guns are mounted rear and it has huge blindspots up&down because I couldn't rearrange them without scraping the model.

I designed it, because I found it odd that every M2 has the same 'box-layout' like TLs. And why the military can't come up with better layouts. The only ships that are some what different are the M7 ships. What I did was arranging the turrets in a different way, which allows them to work together, instead of doing nothing. What I mean is, why would somebody build a destroyer like a giant box, when he could choose a diamondshape with careful placed guns to make it more effective? These box-turrets just don't seem to be made for war-time use.

But I have to agree with you that NPCs can't use ships that well, especially not against the player. Strafing is way to strong, but 'fixing' that is more complicated. It also seems that capital weapons do to much damage compared to their shields. Maybe even intentional because those stats were calculated with bad layout in mind. M2Ws probably make that even worse, because they can focus more firepower on one spot. I could probably cut half the guns and strip the shields down to 2GJ or less and it would still work well. The shields were only added because it would turn into a coinflip with no choice at all when facing another ship like that.

It wasn't intended as lonesome ruler, but I can't build 6-7 unique capships like 'that'. I'm not even an artist (terrible drawing skills xD). Maybe with Khaak/Xenon ships it could be more interesting, but it would probably require changing weaponstats&stuff too. Anyway it was just an "what if..you take an M2 and place the turrets smart?" Maybe the universe isn't ready for that, or it should never reach a players hand or maybe the split indeed finished it and nothing survived..game over. ^^;

[Gazz]

[Killjaeden]

[someone else]

looks like a Split-Boron Capital... ooh especially with those rear antennaes... very very cool Like it. It is a strange Hybrid though. If you make it a bit more round it will become a very cool Boron ship (and Manta is a Boron ship name).

lacks some textures though... and yeah, for now is simply overpowered. (for now) just create another two or three (making them spawnable by the Game Engine) and the problem will be fixed.

To be a OMG badass-ship is a bit too small imho, the split Python (and Raptor and Elephant) are the smallest capitals of the game. (look at my ship size comparison in my sig.)

You are making a indescrivible mess for having hundreds of f-ugly turrets.
I have an idea:
-Instead of turrets why don't placing invisible weapondummies? a invisible weapondummy that shoots parallel to the normal of the surface it is placed onto has a perfect hemispherical range and does not looks as bad as a turret.
Maybe make the point where you will place the weapondummy look like some kind of fixed gun port, or like a small cupola from where the shots come.

[KCK]

You were right, those turrets shoot through the front section and a charged PPC should completely destroy it. xD

[someone else]

[fud]

You can only have 7 cockpits/turrets, period.

That said, you can have up to 12 guns per turret (but there's a 72-gun limit). Which is ok with capital ships, as the front (main cockpit) is rarely armed.