[MOD][WIP] Wing Commander 3/4 Mod

[Lc4Hunter]

Wing Commander 3/4 Mod
Wing Commander 3 and 4 Shipmod


Defintion:
This modification lets you fly the most ships of Wing Commander 3 and 4 in X3 Terran Conflict.
There will be some new weapons like the lasercannon, the AMG (anti-matter-gun) or the tachyoncannon.
Some new sectors wait for you with new possibilities and new enemies...

An importent feature is that you have NOT to restart your game to play the mod. The mod works like an update. You copy the files in your x3 directory and are be able to play .


Features:
- New ships (at the moment about 30 in progress, 15 of them for testing ingame)
- new weapons like the lasercannon, the AMG or the tachyoncannon
- new missiles like the anti-cap-torpedo
- new stations and factories
- new texturesets for kilrathi and confederation
- new sectors for both races
...and some more...


Impressions:
Here some pictures of the mod.
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And here are 2 Videos showing some Content of the mod:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EvBwCB0abA
- shows some of the ships and some action against the xenon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd15pDueDmI
- shows the new jumpeffect


Homepage:
At wc34.lc4hunter.net you can find more information about this project and a status overview about the modelling process, conceptarts/WIP-art and some ingame screenshots.

At the moment this page is only german. If i have some time i will translate it into English. Sorry for that

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It would be nice if you give me some feedback

Best Regards,
Hunter

[Predator02]

As much as I love Wing Commander, it looks really dated in comparison with modern X ships. They really need some bumpmapping and shaders added on with more detail.

[tougeman]

yeah i agree. ship style is way to old compared to the rest of the game. needs a graphics update before ppl would start jumping on the wing commander bandwagon

[Lc4Hunter]

Well, i agree that my textures are not the best ones but these are my first ones i ever had made so i think, for this, it´s ok.
I like the simple design of the ships cause they look more practical than these rounded ships, but it seems that i´m the only one who likes this look .

Most of the ships shown at the pictures aren´t really ready cause i took them ingame for testing some things.

The only ships thats 99% ready is the Excalibur fighter. With this ship i´m really happy .

Later i want to add more details to the ships and rework the textures but for this i need some more practice with it...

[superbun]

I agree, i perfer the old slightly "Blockier" ship style... when i learn to mod, i'll probably go for the blocky ship designs...

[tougeman]

well thats your opinion sunburn. blockships are so 1990s.

[jlehtone]

You are not forced to use a mod if you don't like it. And if you know a procedure that makes these ships look better (easily), why not describe it to Lc4Hunter?

There are bound to be players, who will like this mod simply because it resembles WC.

[Predator02]

I'm not saying blocky ships are bad, the Vesuvius has and always will be my favorite capship design, it's the lack of fine detail present in those models.

[apricotslice]

Personally I preferred the ships in WC Prophesy. WC4's ships were a major disapointment. 3's were ok.

You copy the files in your x3 directory and are be able to play.

Exactly how are you doing this ?

The preferred method here is a cat/dat that contains everything except scripts, which is put into the mods directory and selected as a mod.

[Lc4Hunter]

Thanks for the lot of comments. I will answer/explain later cause now i have to go to work .
Here another WIP-Picture, showing 3 Kilrathi fighters im actually working on:

[ external image ]

Regards,
Hunter

[Dominator]

This is going to be one mod I won't miss, like the look of it although the capitals are old still looks fun to play

[Lc4Hunter]

...it's the lack of fine detail present in those models

I agree. The Problem ist, i don´t want to change too much of the original design. I like this simple look cause its more realistic than a designed ship like an argon titan or a teladi phoenix.
This ships look very detailed but if you look at modern militaryships they are relative simple in their design.

I like the clearly defined lines of the ships. Well, it´s not everybodys "style" but i like it, i finish this mod and i hope at least one person who likes Wing Commander will play it. Than i´m happy

Exactly how are you doing this ?
The preferred method here is a cat/dat that contains everything except scripts, which is put into the mods directory and selected as a mod.

The mod consists of the mod-files (cat/dat), a new map, scripts and (at the moment) 1 mission director-file.

If you copy these files in your x3-directory the new map-part will load at the next gamestart/load of a savegame.
The scripts are made as plugins, so they start automaticly, too.
I hope i could answer your question with that

[tougeman]

ok well im still not a fan of the ship designs but i do love the weapons effects. very fast paced (which is up my alley). i just wish most of the weapons in x3 are more rapid fire.

[Lc4Hunter]

The problem with rapid firing weapons is that smaller ships have very big problems during battle.
The "good" of an slow firing weapon is that you can avoid the attack. Whis a bigger fleet of small ships you can have a successfull attack.

With rapid firing weapons you have much more losses cause these shots hit more often... In a game like X3 that can be very annoying and frustrating...

But i think my weapons are a good middle of it. I´ll see during balancing .

[sartha]

OMG... >.> You are my hero! The ships are even better than the ones I ripped from various sources for Reunion @.@

I'd like to know if you're keeping the fighters and starships faithful to the game though in terms of weapon placement and numbers? I'm not a fan of adding turrets on heavy fighters just because X3 heavy fighters have them. Balancing can be done in many different ways that won't take away from the ship's "feel".

As for the blocky nature of the ships, I like it. I will deffinately be playing this mod! Maybe one day there'll even be a wc 1/2 addon for this mod so people can have more choices ^.^ As far as the wing commander story goes, most of the ships seen in 1 and 2 were still in service in wing commander 3... only after that did most of them get discontinued or sold to the Landreich.

Ofcourse for now I'll be more than happy with just the 3/4 ships! they are my favorites anyways! Pitty we can't make a working cloaking device for the Dragon fighter though.

If you need ideas about the ships, I'll be glad to offer some! BTW, I hope you're making every capital ship able to land shuttles, it always annoyed me that capital ships in TC are reliant on transporters for quick supplying.

By the way, I visited your german site and found that you're missing some ships in the status, are they going to be in the mod or are you omitting them for unspecified reasons?

Vindicator Medium Fighter/Bomber (Border Worlds WC4) (http://www.wcnews.com/ships/wc4vindicator.shtml)

Avenger Heavy Bomber (Border Worlds WC4) (http://www.wcnews.com/ships/wc4avenger.shtml)

The Border Worlds assault shuttle (not very important really) (http://www.wcnews.com/ships/wc4assaultshuttle.shtml)

Even less important is the Evansville black lance transport (http://www.wcnews.com/ships/wc4projecttransport.shtml)

There was also a black lance carrier designed for wc4 that Origins never actually used but it was incorporated in the game CD's anyways. (http://wcnews.com/newshots/full/blcarrier.jpg)

Just my $0.02!

[Lc4Hunter]

I make the ships as original as i can. Meens i don´t give them more weapons, make them bigger as they were or something that way.
That means a Sheffield or later called Southampton-Class Destroyer has 8 double mounted laser turrets and 1 double mounted AMG turret.

An Excalibur has 6 guns, like in the game. The only thing is now that you can choose your weaoponsconfiguration. I´d like to give them the weaponsloadout from Wc3 but i think choosing your weapons is ok, too.

The only ship i added turrets is the Kilrathi Dreadnought cause this ship is definity underpowered with 15 turrets over a length of 2.2km.
I know that the size in the Wing Commander 3 manuel tells 22.000m but everybody thinks thats to big. In the videos showing this ship you can good see that the ships is not bigger than ~2...2,5km.

An Addonn for WingCommander 2 ships is not planned. The problem is these ships are another era of time and they don´t fit.

During the time i made the status-list i were not sure of making the Avanger, Vindicator and so on. BUT i can definitely say that these ships will come!

Only the blacklance carrier i´m not sure about... but I think that I'll build this ship.

Curenntly i´m fighting with the model of the kilrathi dreadnought cause there must be much more details on it without distorting the original design...

[sartha]

I noticed in your videos however that the vesuvius is severely overpowered compared to what it had in wing commander 4 (both the video cut scenes and the actual battles)... I know the manuals say 24 laser turrets, 16 mass driver turrets and 12 anti matter guns... but the ship only has 26 turret locations on the Origins model @.@ which is how I based the armament on the one I imported into X3 Reunion.

The video you have shows the vesuvius to be stronger than a fleet of ships. The Super Star Destroyer of the Wing Commander universe @.@ As powerful as the ship was meant to be, it's still a carrier at heart, not a battleship. It's large fighter capacity is supposed to be it's most devastating aspect. Not a barrage of millions of laser bolts ^.^;;

I do agree that the Hvar'kann is underpowered based on the stats given both in game and in the manual... As for it's size, the 720m long TCS Victory seemed pretty small next to the dreadnought in the "game over" scene when she kamikaze's into the dreadnought's "wing pylon" I agree 22km is too big, I think 2.5km is a good compromise.

For the armament of ships being customizable, you could opt for a system like what I used in Reunion... First, I assigned each X3 weapon a wing commander equivalent (Alpha IRE = Laser cannon... Beta HEPT = Tachyon Cannon, etc) then I looked at all the wing commander Light Fighters, listed all the weapons they had (example the Epee in wc2 has particle cannons, while most other light fighters have mass drivers, laser cannons and ion cannons...) and made all the wing commander M5's have access to all the "light fighter weapons" (so the Arrow V could mount aIRE, bIRE, Mass Drivers and aPAC which was the equivalents to Laser cannon, ion cannon, mass drivers and particle cannons). For missiles I made all missiles that can fit the fighter as useable (so a fighter with maximum S size cargo could use all S size missiles).

That's just my opinion ofcourse. You're free to do as you please on your own mod ^.^

[Lc4Hunter]

If you take the number of turrets and take it together you get 52 laserslots. At the moment "my" Vesuvius has 76 (6x12 + 4 front).
I agree that this is overpowered but taking the numbers from the description my vesuvius is a light-version .
But i will correct it.

The problem is that the WingCommander ships are only m7 ships cause of their size and weapons.
The Vesuvius and the Hvarkann Dreadnought are (at the moment) the only real Battleships from their sizes and weapons.

At the moment Vesuvius and Hvar´kann are nearly at the same level with shields, weapons and hull points. But how i said, i rework the Vesuvius that the ship has not too much firepower .

To the Video: All my ships used godmode
In normal game they never can take out a complete fleet

[Predator02]

in WC4, the Vesuvius was supposed to be an overpowered combat monster. It had ridiculous handling for it's size and compared to older capships, very thick armor and overarmed. As Tolwyn said in the beginning, it was made to put the fear of god into the Kilrathi. The war just ended before it was finished.

[sartha]

In wing commander lore, the battle of McAuliffe (at the beginning of the war) was their equivalent to our WW2, it showed Confed and the Kilrathi that the war would not be won by big-gun battleships but instead by fighter carriers. That's the official explanation as to why you don't see big battleships in wing commander.

The Tallahassee cruiser is wing commander 3/4's equivalent to the M2 designed as a fighter screen rather than a battleship component to a fleet while the Southampton destroyer was designed to be the "big guns" of the fleet with it's AMG turret.

To be honest there was a big battleship in confed but the last one was destroyed shortly before the beginning of wc3... the TCS Concordia, Confederation-class Dreadnought.

Admiral Tolwyn's quote about putting the fear of god into the kilrathi was both innapropriate (since the Kilrathi helped design the supercarrier) and overly confident (as we all know, Tolwyn ALWAYS has the big scarry guns... that usually get destroyed >.>)

I know the Vesuvius was meant to be the most powerful ship in the fleet, but you have to take into account the variables "other" than turrets that made her so powerful. 1) 400 fighter capacity... more than 4x that of the Concordia-class Fleet Carrier (TCS Lexington from wc4)... 2) Extreme shield regeneration... Slow fire rate weapons are pointless against her because she recharges her shields faster than you would be able to damage them. 3) Improved armor... strong enough to withstand an antimatter torpedo strike which is why the BWS Intrepid opted for a flashpack kill (if you didn't already waste it on the civy station) 4) Extreme maneuverability... While she wasn't much faster than other capital ships, she could "make the intrepid look like she's standing still" with her turning ability. Ofcourse if you take the "real" laws of physics into account... any starship is capable of doing that given enough side-thrust.

I incorporated all of that into my Vesuvius for X3 Reunion which made it more powerful than a single M2 or M1 from X3 but fighting 2 or 3 of them headon was suicide. A fighter-based strike against multiple such vessels was required. (more realistic too)

Again, this is really just my opinion based on what I know of the wing commander lore. If you want the vesuvius to have alot of turrets and balance it out in other ways it's your call and I respect that ^.^