23 replies to this topic

[mikker]

(sorry for the decrypted names)

i think detectors should be faster then motherships, cityattackers, etc. ufos.

why? because they are so small. They use 1 engine for the little bit, but the bigger ones use 4 engines for a MUCH BIGGER one.

so i would arrange it so its (fast-slow);

small detecter
medium detecter
big detecter
foodgatherer
kidnapper
cityattacker
mothership
pizzadeliverer

[stewart]

Likely the bigger the ship the faster it will be.

Air resistance increases by the square of the scale whereas engine power increases by the cube of the scale.

Accelleration may be a different matter though.

[mikker]

yes stewart, thats hat i ment. Air resistance would really damp down the big ones, and if you look at the pics there, the higher doesn't even have THAT much engine power in scale of the small ones. Might be changed in Xeno, though.

[mikker]

(sorry for the decrypted names)

i think detectors should be faster then motherships, cityattackers, etc. ufos.

why? because they are so small. They use 1 engine for the little bit, but the bigger ones use 4 engines for a MUCH BIGGER one.

so i would arrange it so its (fast-slow);

small detecter
medium detecter
big detecter
foodgatherer
kidnapper
cityattacker
mothership
pizzadeliverer

Pizzadeliverer???
I think I missed a poll somewhere

Heh, none of those they are used for has been selected yet, so i just......just....

...argh, forget it, screw my underdeveloped imagination.

[Robo Dojo 58]

Air resistance increases by the square of the scale whereas engine power increases by the cube of the scale.

Air resistance- scale^2
Engine power- scale^3

I think you might've skipped it, Mikker, but engine power increases at a much faster rate than air resistance. It's why you don't see any little model jets going mach 3 and beyond.

But, dodging and acceleration is a different matter, entirely. A UFO twice as big needs to accelerate twice as fast to dodge incoming shots. Big UFOs won't be able to dodge anything that a small UFO could avoid with ease.

But, a big UFO could ram into an interceptor, and not feel a thing.... hmm...

[mikker]

Air resistance increases by the square of the scale whereas engine power increases by the cube of the scale.

Air resistance- scale^2
Engine power- scale^3

I think you might've skipped it, Mikker, but engine power increases at a much faster rate than air resistance. It's why you don't see any little model jets going mach 3 and beyond.

But, dodging and acceleration is a different matter, entirely. A UFO twice as big needs to accelerate twice as fast to dodge incoming shots. Big UFOs won't be able to dodge anything that a small UFO could avoid with ease.

But, a big UFO could ram into an interceptor, and not feel a thing.... hmm...

hmmm....so smaller crafts would be harder to hit? That might be stupid IMO, as the smallest are the first. You wouldn't want to have problems shooting down your first ufos.

[Robo Dojo 58]

hmmm....so smaller crafts would be harder to hit? That might be stupid IMO, as the smallest are the first. You wouldn't want to have problems shooting down your first ufos.

You also start the game with two different craft missiles. It'd be much easier to hit any craft with those, since they fly independently of the interceptor. Missiles don't care how maneuverable your attacking craft is, so the difficulty won't be changed much.

But when you get laser and plasma cannon on your interceptors, it might be nearly impossible to get a clean shot on a UFO, making them almost useless. It would be a very good idea to get the alien-tech ships, or the [fusion ball missile], then.

--Edit: Alright, making the [fusion ball missile] useful, and making the player have to research hybrid craft all in one post! --

Edited by Robo Dojo 58, 02 March 2004 - 08:08 AM.

[stewart]

The smaller ones are easier to catch since they are slower. Recall though that as small as they are, rockets, shells, and beams are lighter still. They may have used ramming in the navy centuries ago but as far as I know that tactic has never been standard in the airforce

Top speed is a function of surface area and engine size. Acceleration is a function of power-to-weight and surface area. It may be reasonable to assume a constant power-to-weight ratio for UFO's of any size. Given that, two facts would emerge:
1 ) the bigger they are the slower their accelleration
2 ) the faster it's going the slower the acceleration

[dipstick]

How about having a 'top speed' for UFOs, but a maximum time they can travel at that speed - so as in the original the UFOs slow down so that they can be attacked even by interceptors?

[Ceberus]

to be honest to fly interstellar you need a form of energy shield to prevent you get cracked up from meteors or such when you fly fast nearly then lightspeed
to have a real good form of acceleration higher the then our aircrafts you need any form from antigrav or you get smoked

so at all reality is good but want you implement all ?

and when they drive fast enough through our air they would crack up the whole world for the life

Ceberus


sorry for my bad english i live in austria

Edited by Ceberus, 29 August 2004 - 04:28 PM.

[Paladin]

Well, the "Energy shield" might not be as important as you think it is, quite simply because deep space is so... empty that you need not to worry about a collision, especially at the speeds to wich the UFOs go (about 2000 - 5000 km/h), considering our rockets need 20 000 km/h to put a mere satellite in orbit...
The problem with vacuum at those speeds, is that a mere fleck of paint can become a problem, blasting a 5cm deep (and large) hole in titanium. That's why low Earth orbit is saturated with countless little debris of that sort, some a lot larger...

Then again, those alien alloys are surely capable of withstanding this kind of impact.
The major advantage the UFOs get, is their anti-gravity, becasue in theory they'd be able to maneuver out of harm's way...
Then again, it also gives them the ability to go in space at speeds far less than orbital, wich reduces the air-friction a LOT... 5000Km/h is actually around the top air speed (Mach5?) of the SR-71 "Blackbird", and some experimental rocket airplanes got as fast as Mach 7 or so...
Of course at Mach5, the wing's forward sections get as hot as 400 degrees C, so they need to be made of Titanium, and the SR-71 is actually leaking fuel at liftoff, because the heat stress will close up all the cracks with the metal dilatation, instead of wrinkling the whole plane
Tehn again, this is a game, so we can use those miracle "alien alloys" as long and as far as we want... ::

[fux0r666]

There's a lot of rumor flying around the internet (probably started by the idiots at abovetopsecret.com) regarding the capabilities of the sr-71. Officially (and the flight manual of the sr-71 corroborates this), the top speed of the SR-71 is 3 528 km/h, which is mach 3.31.

Hehe, some guy on abovetopsecret said that the blackbird must be capable of at least mach 7 because the f-14 can go at least mach 3... hehe. The f-14 couldn't reach mach 3 if it was falling out of the space shuttle during reentry.

I think that the UFO speeds don't really need to make sense, though, as they are UFOs. Really, with the amount that is unknown about them you can rationalize the speed differencial with anything and it would sound reasonable.

Edited by fux0r666, 30 August 2004 - 04:05 PM.

[Paladin]

It makes sense...
How wide are the continental US anyway (East-coast to West Coast), cuz I remember seing the official record for crossing by a SR-71 to be just over an hour or so...

[JakeDrake]

This should be in "Craft detection and interception"

And so with the intent that this topic will be moved there I will say more.

Did you ever try to catch a medium UFO with your <Interceptor>? Not only did all the ships have higher top speeds but the things could turn on a dime! Now true, it was not a problem from a design standpoint because the aliens were supposed to have much better ships at start-game, but if we are going to talk about ship speeds I think the solution is turning speed and evasion chance.

Smaller = greater turning speed to allow crazier flight paths (perhaps a bonus can be applied if engaging a craft from behind) and less of a chance to be hit.

Larger = Higher top speed but much lower manouverability(sp), which will make it easier for an <XCom> craft to get behind it and attain that bonus, and very easy to hit.

[GARAK]

I don't know if this has been mentioned or not but it is kind of rediculous that ufos have more than one engine. If you buy an SUV it's bigger, maybe twice as big as a volkswagon beetle, but it doesn't have 2 engines. It has one that is twice as big. Same thing with ships. The enterprise aircraft carrier only has one nuclear reactor, and that ship holds 10,000 people. (It has a diesel backup, but never uses it). I don't think it would change the game dynamics much, but it would give you more to research if their were different size engines. Also, your own craft might use different size engines.
The "engine rooms" in the first game were kind of lame. Lets spruce them up a bit, and make them more unique for the different craft.

[GDD]

Smaller ones should be faster, its just physics

[mikker]

I don't know if this has been mentioned or not but it is kind of rediculous that ufos have more than one engine. If you buy an SUV it's bigger, maybe twice as big as a volkswagon beetle, but it doesn't have 2 engines. It has one that is twice as big. Same thing with ships. The enterprise aircraft carrier only has one nuclear reactor, and that ship holds 10,000 people. (It has a diesel backup, but never uses it). I don't think it would change the game dynamics much, but it would give you more to research if their were different size engines. Also, your own craft might use different size engines.
The "engine rooms" in the first game were kind of lame. Lets spruce them up a bit, and make them more unique for the different craft.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

heh, theres a nice explaination to that:

1) Seperating the engine from the rest of the ship might be done like we do with neclear reactors today- some type of decay that is lethal under prolonged contact.

2) If you are making a great assault fleet of 1.000 ships per year (or so), in several diffrent kinds of crafts, it is far cheaper and cost-efficient to just use one general design. Then it can be pre-manufactured. If it isn't powerfull enough, make 2 or 4. Logic. That can't be compared to a starship (big project - attention to detail) or a car (diffrent kind of system, and also more attention to detail).

[GARAK]

I don't know. Toyata must make tens of thousands of different cars a year. They don't all use the same engine. Sure we COULD rationalize just about anything, but common sense suggests that the only reason they didn't do it in the original is because they didn't feel like making different engines or engine rooms. The engine rooms looked like any other part of the ship or alien base, except it had a power source in the middle of it. I just think xenocide can do better than that.

[Astral]

On earth we have big rocket lunchers that are huge and yet very fast, on other hand we have plains that are smaller but yet slower at speed... So the point is elseware I say let's not look if that one is small and that one is big... But we have to see the identity of the ship, if it is scouting ship not matter big or small it has to be fast as it can go, but if it is mission ship with crew or alliens or erthlings, doesn't mutter, or if it is a bombardier it have to be slow, because it is the nature of this ships... i hope you get it,....

[GARAK]

That sounds reasonable Astral. Sure the aliens could make any ship go any speed if the xenocide designers want them to, but traditionally the bigger the ships, the slower they are. Think sea vessels, since those are really the only thing we can truely compare to.

I do see a problem however. In the beggining of the game when you only have interceptors, you are mainly fighting scouts, and the bigger ships are harder to shoot down. It is possible, and possibly fun, but it might be difficult to balance the frastrion and fun factor as scout after scout outruns your interceptors.

Personally it wouldn't bother me if all the ships moved at the same speed. (related threads talk about whether smaller ships should be harder to detect, and I already mentioned that the engines should be more detailed.)

[mikker]

to solve the scout thing: Maybe make an AI override, so that scout UFOs won't run fast untill at the point where you start to get harvesters n such.

Or just start off with lots and lots of research missions. They have to land, and shouldn't use all the vehicles max speed as well (AKA, catchable).

[GARAK]

Good solutions.