How true to scale should we be?

Grrr! I hate to even bring this up. You all know what a stick in the mud I am concerning accuracy. But MajorTom has shown me time and again how the flux engine just wasn't meant to represent fights between tiny ships. In fact, he says the bots won't even engage at ranges less than one kilometer.

Now, we all know from my previous posts that SW fighters move very slowly in battle (between 100-400 mph) and engage at rediculously close ranges (within a few dozen meters in some cases), and MajorTom and I been discussing the idea of scaling the mp maps and such down to accomodate this. And the truth is; we just won't get a SW feel unless the ships appear to be behaving in this recognizeable way. But the reality of what the game engine can do is at odds with what we need.

Scaling the ships up by several times would effectively reduce the base unit of measurement size within the game to something that would work with the scale of SW fighters. So, I have to ask (reluctantly), how true to scale should we be? If there were no other recognizeable ships or stations, or, if we scaled them up as well, does it really matter if we change the scale of the ships?

I somehow suspect that I'm going to get all sorts of arguments of one kind or another, but maintaining a proper SW feel is my top priority (well, trying to anyway).

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Trust your instincts.

I'd choose 'feel' over detail, especially when dealing with Star Wars. The movies never cared if the science was correct... they focused on the 'feel' of the story.

Well i'm just a newbie here, but from my point of view, the most important is to have the correct proportions between ships, i.e. a star destroyer is X times bigger than an A-wing and so on.
Scaling the ships up is no problem to me as long as EVERYTHING (every single ship and station...) gets scaled up by the same number.

If real-scale ships prevent the AI behaviour from working properly, then scaling everything keeping all size ratios identical to canon is probably the best way to go. Actually (although I must admit I didn't burn my brain on this topic) how can you tell your ship's size ingame apart from comparing it to the other models ? (including Cal's model seen inside the cockpit in first place of course). Ah I know : you take your speed, the time you need to go from an extremity of a station to the other, and there you have the distance you went ; and then you can compare your ship's size to this distance. hmmmmmmmm.... who does this ? I think what we do while playing to estimate our ships' size is only comparing them to their environment. Buth still there is a point : to get the right feel, the time needed by a scaled xwing flying at its top speed to fly all the way along a scaled stardestroyer should be the same a real size xwing would need to fly all the way along a real size star destroyer... So what about the scaling of speeds ?
I guess it will worry you SC... I would say it is probably the best way to go anyway.

Sorry if I misunderstood your post...

Thanks for the feedback.

I should clarify that when I said "no other recognizeable ships or stations", I actually meant ships or stations from EoC. So, yes, all SW ships will maintain perfect proportion to each other. But I believe that several EoC stations appear in a few maps. But the maps are still in development, so this should change.

As yet, we haven't even begun setting up the speeds of the ships. Or indeed any other specs. Basically, we haven't started doing any balancing yet. So speeds adjustments won't be a problem. But if a scale change is in order, then it definitely needs to be decided on first. Since everything else will be based on this.

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Originally posted by Second Chance


As yet, we haven't even begun setting up the speeds of the ships. Or indeed any other specs. Basically, we haven't started doing any balancing yet.

Thats not really so, at the moment the ships are balanced in speed and weapon configs for the scales and map sizes we are using.
Tie Fighter and X-Wing are a match, Tie Int and A-Wing are matched.
Now we are changing weapons and worrying about linked or not
If we keep changing everything impulsivly at every whim we'll never get anywhere. We need to come up with a concept and stop coming up with new ideas that put us and all we have done back to square one.

Originally posted by Second Chance


So speeds adjustments won't be a problem. But if a scale change is in order, then it definitely needs to be decided on first. Since everything else will be based on this.

We've already spent hours discussing this subject in many threads in this forum. For example the trade offs of scale, size, collision hulls, mass and speed on weapons here:
www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1815

We don't have LDS in MP! If we make the ships slower you'll never get to the battleground before the battle is over. If we make the maps smaller like 20-30 KM diameter to compensate for the slow ships you can never place a Death Star on it.

Whatever we do the relationships and trade offs are a given

Theoretically it would be possible to make a sort of fudged LDS in MP. Theoretically we can put longer range weapons on the bot ships and leave short range weapons on the player ships. So the players engage at closer range, and the bots stay 1000m away and shoot from there.
So, How big will an X-Wing need to be to fill the target reticule at 400 m distance? How slow will the bolts have to be so the server can calculate a collision at 300 m distance? How about a scientific answer? Can anyone here calculate it mathematically? Do we really want to make new maps and try it out imperically? Or, do we just want to talk about it as a passtime?

Theoretically it is possible to do lots of things but if we can't accept reality and use what Flux has to offer we'll just spend our time chasing theories and the mod will never get finished.

I think it's time we decide what we want (instead of whats theoretically possible) and stick to that.


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I think it makes a great pastime . But seriously, good point about the Death Star.

Here's a question. Does anybody here ever fly in combat at less than full throttle? I frequently slow way down during a fight for various tactical reasons. I ask because maybe we could leave the higher max speeds (for travel) and just recommend that the players engage at slower speeds for made-up tactical reasons (but really to give them a better combat experience with the smaller ships). If you read something like that in the manual, would you do it? I'm just curious. Because it would be nice if we could leave the maps the size they are and the ships the size they are, without having the players flash past each other so fast they don't see each other or get more than 3 seconds to shoot at each other.

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