MINI FAQ

this is a FAQ mainly to answer the very repetative questions that I get annoyed with.

It may seem like I’m angry, but I’m really not, I’m just trying to get a message across.

Basically anything that isn’t on this list is fair game to be added, but this is just the ones I could find.

Q) ships can’t hit the broadside of a barn!!!!111

A) neither can storm troopers… but in reality if you want ships to last longer (IE corvette vs ISD) you have to make things have inacurate guns.

a corvette with destroyer class shields is no longer a corvette (and impractical) the best bet to explain thingsis to assume that there is in any battle

a continous haze of electronic counter measures being thrown around (and this is why there are humanoid gunners) a person is needed to analyze the data and

make a best judgment through both telemtry reading and visual readings to decide where to point the gun. these ships have massive targetting computers and should

be able to hit a fly on earth from the moon, but if you want to make the game playable we have to make sacrifices (I know the shipyards are too hard to hit, this

is getting fixed another issue is the effects engine does not truncate ‘bullets’ when they hit the ship, so if a ship is 20 m long and the laser is 50m

it will come out the other side looking like it missed (the hit calculation is done on the center of the ‘bullet’)

Q) WHY ISN”T THERE A MAC VERSION@!@!@!#111

A) currently we are attmepting to resolve problems with porting to the mac and also write an installer script. the reason for having an exe installer is the same

reason for writing an apple script launcher, people are incapable of following instructions, as for this being hosted on the main site we’ll see

Q) Ships seem to fire in bursts WTF? I don’t understand!!!111

A) hmm interesting fact, weapons have reload times, when something gets in range, all the weapons able to fire do, then they have to wait… got that?

Q) You broke some anal canon rule and shattered some precious fantasy about how SW is

A) so? I probably have a reason, go read the jedi council boards and post “I love the Expanded universe” you’ll get torn apart

Q) things look too small

A) this is because I made the camera able to zoom out more than 6 times what the normal game.

You are just abusing a feature that I so graciously enabled

Q) fighters are too small

A) to an extent I understand, it can be an organizational issue and if you really want to zoom in,

you have to do some convuluted alt-click camera work, but this is a scale issue, and I want things

to scale because it’s impressive. As far as the gameplay part goes, I will try to improve the tactical

icons and possibly reimplement N-lips so that they are more visible

Q) fighters are too fast and look silly when moving

A) really they aren’t, this is a trick played by the tactical icons, if you really want to see

that it behaves right I can tell you how to modify the code to see each individual fighter at a

distance, and it looks very good. The problem arises because the tactical icon is centered on the

fighter group, when they get spread out or one dies the icon teleports. this is really just an interface glitch

Q) the shipyard designs look crappy

A) this is for two reasons

1) YOU CANNOT HAVE BUILD ANIMATIONS IN HW2

2) these are not fixed facilities, they are portable quickly deployable field equipment (read: tents)

the maps that are at shipyard facilities will look much more like what you are probably expecting

Q) there are too many missiles

A) this is really a balance issue, if you look at it, ships like the MC90 get nearly half their total

firepower from their torpedo launchers, take this away and they really suck. A lot of SW ships have missiles

that they didn’t use in the movies (ISD I torps, SSD heavy concussion missiles, mon cal blister bombs)

It’s better to have the weapons than conform to some idealistic nonsense that SW capital ships don’t have missiles.

as far as fighters, this is a valid point, a squad tends to hemorage all of its missiles on one target,

research is being done to work on fixing this

Q) there are too many lasers

A) lets do some math:

ISD I: 60 turbolasers, 60 ion cannons, each of which can fire lets say once every 15 seconds…

this is 640 projectiles from one ship per minute.

I want decently accurate weapon counts, not some potshot contest that doesn’t do shit, basically

you aren’t used to seeing ships actually get angry (KOTOR did a decent job in the planetary bombardment FMV, think of that)

Q) firefights look like christmas

A) hmm rebels are red, imperials are green, ions are blue, SORRY THAT LUCAS CHOSE THESE COLORS

Q) the lasers aren’t big enough

A) this is just a visibility issue, and it makes the above issues worse, heavy TL’s are already 1 km

long at least, also the camera zoom plays a factor, the game removes smaller effects as you zoom out

Q) capital ships die to quick (ISD II)

A) I guess this is an issue of balance, but the real only well documented example is the battle of calimari,

where 2 MC90s escorts and a ISD were able to pretty much destroy 2 ISDs and an allegiance in a single salvo,

basically some of these ships mount incredible offensive power and really can’t take it in (ISD II)

Q) ships shouldn’t tilt

A) next time your fleet lies in rubble try telling that to your opponent who can think in three dimensions

famous last words “SHIPS SHOULDN’T TILT?!!!”

also this is a huge problem with the game engine, if the ships don’t point their engines in the opposite direction of

travel they go REALLY SLOW

OR

they turn around and go BACKWARDS to try to get to the same level

OR

they get dead

Q) capital ships go to fast

A) stop playing Xwing or TIe fighter or XVt and XWA and realize that size means nothing besides slower acceleration.

you just have preconcieved notions of what should happen

also try playing on larger maps, you’ll thank me after a while

Q) I’m going to complain about the fighter squadron size

A) just stop now, there are so many game engine issues with this…

Q) your models look crappy for having so many polys

A) okay the textures suck, but here’s an interesting fact
starwars ships are basically junk heaps, their geometry is so irregular that a lot of polys are burned in the

general shape of the ships, leaving less for detail. Stock homeworld ships are just extruded boxes, maybe

150 polys for the underlying shape. A star destroyer requires at least 1000 polys to even look like a star

destroyer (or at least determine which class of SD it is)

Q) OMG THE SHIELD GENERATORS ON THE STAR DESTROYER…

A) you mean sensor domes… go read technical commentaries, believe what you will, but it won’t change the mod

Q) weapon ranges are too long

I think they are too short, deal with it
(I really hate games like command and conquer with the 4 square tank main gun range and the 3 square

infantry machine gun range REALLY REALLY HATE THAT)

Q) WTF is an Imperator SD I thought it was an Imperial SD?

the designation Imperator comes from the fact that it was the first ship of the class made, this is following

naval tradition, not any official references (treat this as similar to the shield generator dome question read SWTCs)

it’s basically slang because there are so many variations, I mean the term SSD is thrown around like candy too

Q) I have some other complaint

A) remember this is a BETA STUFF ISN’T DONE YET, but I will listen and may add it to this list! be proud!

The Mod

What is this?

A modification for Homeworld 2 that seeks to add Star Wars ships to Homeworld 2.

Who is working on it?

Currently myself, and a few community members that have graciously contributed individual elements.

What modes does it work in?

Currently only skirmish and LAN and direct IP, it should work over internet, but possibly not through in-game matchmaking.

Does it work with 1.0 and 1.1?

Currently works with 1.1, a SCAR script prevents it from working with 1.0

I want to help! What can I do?

Please contact me through evillejedi@swrebellion.com or though the mod thread on the Relic forums.

What did you use to verify your Star Wars facts?

The modification draws heavily from the SW RPG and from Star Wars technical commentaries.

What programs are you using?

Modeling: 3ds Max 5

Importing: Maya 5

Texturing: Photoshop 7, Deeppaint 3d

Model conversion: deep Exploration

I’ve been using CAD software for a long time and have used versions of 3d studio since the DOS days.

What is the story?

There is no “storyline”, it is meant to be a skirmish and multiplayer mod, Single player will be historical battles

Well, what is the premise?

Basically to include every naval warship in the starwars universe in a decent RTS game

How does this relate to SW:NR for Homeworld 1?

It doesn’t, well not exactly. I did some work for SW:NR, so some of the ships from it will be used.

This seems like it will contain a lot of ships! How will it ever get done?

Have to consider that beta .1 and before was released while I was working 60 hours a week in a lab doing a microprocessor design, I don’t have anywhere near the workload now.

Why are you doing this?

I have a few friends that would like to see this type of mod be made. Also to satisfy my own delusions of grandeur.

What if (gasp) LucasArts licenses the Homeworld 2 engine and makes a Star Wars game?

I would mod that.
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Current Version Issues

Third-Party Maps Don’t Work

To use third-party maps (those maps not directly provided by Relic) with the Warlords modification, create a “data/leveldata/multiplayer/deathmatch” directory, and place the level file in there.

The game crashes, and I want to complain.

Go to the thread and complain, with a Homeworld 2 logdump (HW2.LOG ONLY!!!!) if appropriate, and comments on when the crash occured, and what you were doing EXACTLY. This will help isolate the problem.

Something seems unbalanced, fix it.

State what is unbalanced and why. It probably does need to be fixed.

Why does the AI do weird things?

I don’t know, I put that on hold to fix other things. It is not a priority at the moment, but it will be fixed in the future.

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Star Wars Technical Issues

Note: Some of the technical issues are addressed in technical commentaries.

Can you destroy the ISD shield generators?

I thought about it, but couldn’t come up with a really valid system that worked in the game. As far as I’m concerned, the globes are sensors and not shield generators. Star Wars shields hug the surface of a ship and are generated with small pole emitters that jut from the hull surface. It would be pretty bizarre to have massive shield generator domes so far away from the area of the ship you want to protect the most (which are the power generation areas and engines). I know it goes against established canon but it makes a heck of a lot more sense from a survivability standpoint. Another reason why sensors would make sense at that location is that it provides a fairly unobstructed line of sight to most of the surrounding space and is high enough above the engine wash to give a good idea what is behind you. Presumably, there also are extensive sensor networks along the spine (or bottom) of the ship that would be used for docking, and compensate for the shadowed area of the main sensors. For more on this, read the technical commentaries.

What about hero units? I want Jedi!

If the mod had a SP component then there would be heros. However, I can’t justify them being in a MP game (or rather, I don’t want to). Imagine if they were buildable somehow. That just seems corny as heck (and what would they really do? Be so uber that you would use only them?).

Ion cannons

Ion cannons in the mod work (build the ion platform :-p) they just have shorter range than the equivalent turbolaser. This was mainly for balance, because it made you engage your ships closer to bring more weapons to bear. I would like comments on whether I should change this. Some ships in the game do not have EMP/secondary entries and are therefore immune to ion cannon fire. (the EMP/secondary health bar seems to popup at weird times, too. Let me know if you have any information on this). Should the ion cannon range be shorter?

Hyperspace

Currently, the plan is to make hyperspaceing a flat rate based on the tonnage of the ship. Also, larger ships will have longer reversion times. I also plan to make a minimum jump distance, so that you can’t hop all over the place (15 km or so). The rate will be cheap enough to encourage people to use it, but expensive enough that when you want to move a fleet to attack you will have to plan for it a little (an ISD may be around 50 ru’s). Does this pricing seem reasonable?

Flak explosions

I have the flak explosions because they are occasionally present in the movies. My personal judgment is that Star Wars “lasers” are actually magnetically contained plasma projectiles and not just photons like a laser is. When the field breaks down, the plasma is released, and rapidly cools in the vacuum. If people think it should be different, I’m not going to argue, because if something else looks cooler and is more technically accurate, then I will use it.

these have been removed because of performance issues and they didn’t look that great anyway
Subsystems

What complexity of subsystems should be implemented? I know that I can implement engine, hyperdrive, bridge, power generation, sensors and shield generators. There is the possibility of hangars also. Should this level of complexity be evident only on larger ships? Or should smaller ships (like gunships) have engine subsystems (but nothing else)?
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The Future

What about ion cannon hit effects?

Ion cannon hit effects are possible, and it will take some FX editing and proper collison meshes.

Why don’t ships have shields?

The collision meshes need to be generated and tweaked.

I have this great idea for a ship…

The ship list has basically been frozen, and any adjustments to it will be minor.
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