Nividium Shipyards

[gefer8]

I'm going to redo all of this. It's going to be more clean, and more specs. To the dates we are!


(Sirius XVII)

Balony - Light Patrol

Balony was first used a long time ago. It was the protector of Earth, but it's technology easily fell to the pirates shortly after. It was the bringer of doom to any missile or projectile.
Now it's just a simple light patrol. Nividium upgraded it with the latest weaponry to fit the sockets of the previous ones, but it's very simple. It is easily destroy-able and doesn't do much damage what people would hope for, but it's easy to make design and it's low cost makes it a regular to Nividium's patrol lines.

Name: Balony
HP: 80
Speed: 2
Turning: 2
AI Range: 350
Accel: 0.05
Description: Generally Unhealthy
Number of sections: 6
Total HP: (Classified)
Number of weapons: 4
Number of modules: 0

Weapon List:

2x Machine Gun
2x Flak Gun

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The Nividium Battery

Balony used to be a bad eyesight. It was afterwards that every patrol line was filled with the Balony (as Nividium also sells products to the Terran Military), and the Nividium considered an upgrade like no other. They recently found a asteroid belt filled with rare crystals, or Nividium. When refined, they produce energy with 0 waste. However, the Terran Military soon arrived and confiscated all of the asteroids and launched them to the sun. However, all hope of this crystal was not gone. The ship that jumped into the asteroid belt was a mining ship, and fled to Nividium Headquarters to show them the discovery. It was cept under high security, and is now replicated continuously. As the Terran Officials questioned, Nividium is answering with "Fusion Reactors", and nothing else.

Provides:

Better output of energy to support better engines and weaponry. However, explosive.

---

Balony Mark 2 - Light Patrol

There first experiment - the Balony Mark 2. They engineered a blueprint to insert the battery, remove the old machine guns and fit in newer technology. With this, the ship itself is faster, actually, to fast to fit the patrol requirements. Nividium put extra armor to weigh it down a bit, so the pilots will not get carried away. The guns was specially modified to fit in the ship, and is now a better competitor then it's predecessor.


Name: Balony Mark 2
HP: 100
Speed: 3
Turning: 3
AI Range: 400
Accel: 0.05
Description: Hot Gunner
Number of sections: 7
Total HP: (Classified)
Number of weapons: 4
Number of modules: 1

Weapon List:

2x Gatling Pulse
2x Flak Gun

Module List:

1x Nividium Battery

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BG - Anti-Frigate

This ship was made during further experimentation with the Nividium Battery. The Terran Military found out, but on the Grand Presidents order, gave permission to Nividium to further there research and production. The Terran Military had to accept, and with apologies with the questioning, they gave a experimental ship for Nividium to tinker with. This was the result. A large Nividium battery, that was reaching far out, it had to be covered by other sections. The main gun on it, which got it's name, is a modified rail-gun that shoots large penetration shots to other ships. In testing, it appeared to be super effective against other frigates, particularly ones with a middle weak spot. But for the rest of the energy the Battery is giving off, it has 2 Blasters and a Flak Defence.


Name: BG
HP: 300
Speed: 1.5
Turning: 1
AI Range: 1000
Accel: 0.1
Description: Balloon Popper
Number of sections: 11
Total HP: (Classified)
Number of weapons: 7
Number of modules: 1

Weapon List:

4x Flak Gun
1x (Modified) Rail-Gun
2x Blasters

Module List:

1x Nividium Battery

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Sirius Mark XVII - Anti-Frigate



We are proud to announce the comeback of the Sirius. We figured out the problem: the missiles were out of date and wasn't compatible with our latest battery. Nividium had to update the missiles and the front cannon with there own versions, much more advanced. Refitting each and every one, making a new mark, and now the amazing phase of the new technology is at it's finest form. Originally, it was doing poorly against the frigates, which it was meant to be. It would mean that the battery might not be the best-of-the-best after all. Now corrected, it patrols the trade lines once again

Name: Sirius Mark XVII
HP: 500
Speed: 2.25
Turning: 1.2
AI Range: 600
Accel: 0.05
Description: Wedding Anniversary
Number of sections: 15
Total HP: (Classified)
Number of weapons: 7
Number of modules: 3

Weapon List:

2x (N) Mini-Missile Launchers
2x Flak Guns
2x (N) Missile Launchers
1x (N) Gatling Blaster

Module List:

2x Aegis Deflectors
1x Nividium Battery

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Emperor - Anti-Battleship



For a ship it's size, Nividium is proud to announce it's new ship: The Emperor!
It has 4 Big guns and more then double the small ones. And what's supporting the entire mess? It's the brand new Nividium Tubes! No longer will there be a weak spot, but only a hardcore ship designed specifically for other big ships! The first test with the Cronus was a huge success, and it even took a second one out, and only 1 section was gone! This state-of-the-art ship will make those enemies running!

-On the other note, it has thrusters on the back that is vulnerable to damage, but is secured by a Gatling gun, a surprise for those flankers. The Nividium Battery, we redesigned into a tube like structure. The coolant is a remarkable discovery recently by another corporation, a energy-to-temperature device. So we divided the big tube into 3 smaller ones, and now each one is cooling each other down. This is why we don't have the nuke missile on board. Would have been a nice addition, but currently, it's scientifically impossible.


Name: Emperor
HP: 1000
Speed: 2
Turning: 1
AI Range: 900
Accel: 0.4 (A side effect from the tubes, still under investigation.)
Description:
Number of sections: (Classified)
Total HP: (Classified)
Number of weapons: 17
Number of modules: 8

Weapon List:
1x Twin Rail-gun
2x Twin Auto-cannons
2x Gatling Blasters
6x Point Defense
2x Mini-Missile Launchers
2x Missile Launchers
1x Mega Beam
1x Vulcan Gatling


Module List:

5x Thrusters
3x Nividium Tubes

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Download is... Don't know where to upload
File attachments!

Edit: Version 3, now Sirius XVII, Fixed Emperor Mini-Missiles

Nividium Shipyards.zip

(5.16 KiB) Downloaded 149 times

[Doogie12]

I applaud you with your effort to start with stock parts. However, these ships are fairly bland. Don't get me wrong, there's absolutely no flaws, but its not exactly much to look at either*. I've been there. My post-weapon spam ships were just me trying to imitate the in-game ships...you will never find my early stock days on here so don't bother looking. Try to experiment with different and abstract shapes to get a feel for how sections piece together. Also, if you go under the "tools" tab and "group arrange" there are 28 more stock (I think they're stock. Although Chiiro chewed me out once for using them, claiming they weren't stock...). Anyways, try to make more distinct ships and show that you have your own style. Use colors that aren't bright green.
Personally, I would say try to go for organic approaches at this point. They always churn out something interesting.

*although your battery idea is pretty nifty

[gefer8]

Aw thank you. I'm pretty bad with making weapon designs. I'm starting to get the feel for the editor though.

This one I'll call the Emperor. Weapons... most likely one big one and a few small ones. Not entirely sure how to make a good layout.

This one is called the Sirius Mark XVI. It will be the first frigate that Nividium has Aegis Deflectors.

Edit: The second wasn't very clear. Here's the blueprint.

[Bad Boy]

These are a huge step up from the first ones, their designs are way better. Just keep building and getting the hang of shipmaker - make sure to use other colours, stock green is really a pretty awful colour for ships.
Whey you get more comfortable with shipmaker, I recommend trying triggers and movement/rotation and of course using non-stock sprites. The latter can be found in the custom sprites forum though the easiest way to get them is to download the shipmaker repack in that forum.
Also, I'm not sure how you're taking shipmaker pictures but the best way to do it is to do the following:
1. Press backspace or home to go to default zoom, ships tend to look their best at this zoom, the only I advise default not be used is if you want to showcase a specific small area of a ship.
2. Press F11 to enter preview mode, this will remove the size circles and any trigger lines from sight.
3. Press F9 and drag a box with the mouse over the area you want to take a picture of.
It'll save your picture into the SMScreenshots folder and you can upload it straight from there without it looking blurry.

[Doogie12]

Boom. Instant improvement. Now you should color them with GOOD colors. I'm not sure how to simulate depth with stock; with SW its the higher a section on the ship, the lighter the color. Anyhow, avoid the stock green.
Edit* Dang, ninja'd. Yea, just do what he said. He's been around longer than me.

[Anna]

And make sure you don't have Shipmaker in fullscreen mode when you take screenshots. It results in them being a bit stretched and warped. Anyway, this latest design isn't too bad for stock stuff.

[gefer8]

3 replys while I was editing, good thing I stopped early.

The problem with F9 is that it requires adminstration permission to save in Program Files. Sadly, I wasn't running on admin mode. Now I will.

Green is the color of the player-ships. It will change when it's controlled by an ally or enemy (Alien/Pirate)

Edit: Finished the Emperor... Now I got to tinker with the frigate a little and where all set.
Which is done!

[Cycerin]

Hey, the overall outline and shape of that last ship is pretty good. Just take screenshots with f9 in shipmaker, please.

[gefer8]

At your request

[gefer8]

I gave a try to make a shiny section ship. However, I have no clue on how to make custom weapons actually work with the front turrets, so it's on stand bye.

This ship is called the "Ray". Meant to counter the now popular Aegis Deflectors.
Edit: Well actually, I want rail-guns attached to the side turrets, and for the sections to actually rotate so it look's like the section is firing with the gun (that's invisible).
And a plasma charge on the last-middle section of the ship, but still, it's a stock weapon. Need to find out how to import weapon/module sprites.

Edit 2: What would be even better if it had a small transformation that activated when about to fire at the enemy, and the railguns kicked out of the middle. But of course, my lack of knowledge with scripting or triggers left me in the dust.

Edit 3: Eh. I guess I will just keep designing ships until then.

This is the Sirikos. It's specially designed to fire experimental missiles at a shocking rate.

Edit 4: This took a heck amount of time to consider and work on, but by deleting my "end" kind of style with ships, I managed to make Nividia's Capital Ship. Need's a name, though.

I really need to get on to make some weapons for these ships, it's just that I don't know how to import custom weapons.

[Bad Boy]

To change the weapon's sprite select the weapon, go to the edit2 bar and click the box next to 'custom sprite'. You then select the image you want to use (in your custom sprites folder) and it'll be the new sprite of your gun. You can also change the bullet sprite in much the same way.
To make your turrets (i.e. sections that rotate and appear to be the gun), you'll need to set the gun as their driver. There should be proper tutorials in the shipmaking info and help II subforum here though it's not too complicated, just fiddle with it a bit.

As for having weapons pop out, that'd be a bit more difficult. If you don't mind it looking kind of bad, simply set a weapon fire trigger on the section you want to have moving and set its trigger to the weapon that would be firing. Unfortunately this would result in the weapon firing before actually popping out, though that may not look too bad if you make the weapon pop out very quickly.
Instead, I can think of two better solutions.
1) Use the gun and set the pop out section's on trigger as weapon acquired target. This wouldn't give the exact result you want but would make the weapon pop out when the gun sees a target. To make this work better, make sure that the gun is set to not firing and that firing will only be enabled for it when the section has popped out. Keep in mind though that firing enabled/disabled have never worked very well (at least in my experience).
2) More complicated but a lot better. Use a targeting shot or laser (no damage) or whatever that can fire anytime and set it so that the section pops out when that gun fires and when the section has popped out the actual weapon is allowed to fire. Note that this may have the same problem with firing enabled/disabled.
Any of these solutions or any mix of these solutions should work. Feel free to work off of them and find something you like.
Also, make sure that whatever solution you use you set the trigger 2 (i.e. move back) to be the weapon losing its target (I'd suggest adding a delay on that so that your gun doesn't spas out) so that the gun will retract. Or, if you want it to retract after every shot, make the trigger 2 be either weapon firing or section reaching target depending on the solution used.

Keep in mind that actions can be shown in shipmaker, just press F11 to enter preview mode. In preview mode, anything time based will happen after the set amount of time and anything based on pressing a key will happen if that key is pressed. You can also activate weapon firing, weapon acquired target and weapon lost target triggers by pressing q, w and e respectively.

If this makes sense to you I'll be quite impressed since you say you know little about triggers. Before you try to do this I'd suggest familiarizing yourself with the basics of triggers (how to set them up and what they do and the like) then trying a few simple triggered and things first.

Oh, also, for the ships, I'd suggest trying a bit of shading and, more importantly for shiny sections, careful section usage. Shiny sections are all about how the sections work together to look interesting, take a look at some of the ships out there that use them and see what they do. If you decide to use sw sections, shading becomes important, but shiny ships can usually look alright with a few colours and accent colours.

Hope that wasn't too much to take in in one go, good luck with the building

[gefer8]

I will stick to stock parts a bit. It provides basic parts, and not lot's of sections to part together just for the effect.
As for the shiny section ships I made, I will just keep them at bay until I feel like working on that complicated mess again.
I will try to fiddle with the custom weapons and "triggers". I dreams once fainted when I looked at the possibilities of WC3 triggers, then actually trying the editor.

Edit: I'm going to make a few other ship's that's "Differint", and I mean that in as a Technological Virus that acts as one for every ship it captures, and upgrades.
The first act of the virus was a dangerous one. They took hold of a Sirius, and mutated it into a better fighter then ever.

While more wide, it's main cannon was made into what look's like a different Tachyo Cannon, and reports say it goes through the hull multiple times, damaging almost everything. It has two Aegis Deflectors, and the front two sections seem's to have been "Enchanced" in some way. The defence systems are almost 3 times as efficient as today's technology. There also appears to have a EMP cannon that fires a shock of electricity to disable other ships. Rumors say The TCI fleet is now starting to take casualties.


This one is what used to be a Cronus, and is now what appears to be long-range artillary, with a large Explosive Cannon that makes a hole into any hull... Every two seconds. It's supported with smaller variants of the Tachyo cannon, and a similar defense system as the other ship. Two Aegis deflectors, but no enchanced hulls.