Alright, this is a rather simple map idea. A ship to ship battle. Not so simple you say? Bah, I say to thee. Bah.

Here is my idea. Have a big wide open area for the battles, with a Halo ring around, a moon and planet to either side. One side is the human ships, the other is the Covenant. Now, since I bet you are wondering what I am talking about, here is my idea.

Have two vehicle teleporters set up at one end of the launch point. Players spawn, hop onboard their ships, pilots in the middle, gunners around at strategic points, they lift off and out they go. For sense of scale, the planet inside would be their launch point, and since the ships are supposed to be moving fast, they can simply have a small planet to simulate speed and scale.

How would this work, you ask? Simple enough. Take already existing tags, modify them to fit the model. Take the Covenant Cruiser. Take the Phantom tag, modify it's speed, controls and whatever to fit the Covie ship. Place the pilot's slot in the middle, and have all the gunner seats placed around it. Have the ship itself be about waist to chest high in scale so that the people can get on and whatnot. Maybe a little larger with a couple of walk ways over/around for the people to get up onto it.

The human friggate would be simple enough. Take the Banshee tag, replace the model with that of the Friggate, replace the plasma bolts and banshee bombs with a single Gausse cannon centerline forward, (Thats at the nose.) and a set of missiles for the archer pods. Give it faster manuvering and faster speed, since it is smaller than the other ships. Put a couple more of these for the single pilots.

The Marathon class or Halcyon Class? Marathon could replace the Pelican, with upgraded handling, and the Halcyon could replace the Longsword.

See? Easy enough concept. It requires a little bit of elbow greese to make it work though.



Edited: Good ideas with the rocks in the middle of the map. How would you make it so that the rocks registered as destroyed? Make them go invisible and without any damage points?



Edited: Alright, an edit for whomever makes this map. Umbrella shielding. Or, whatever adds all the shields of all the people together. IE, the more people there are on a single ship, the harder it is to take out.

For the ships, just in case, have the seats that the people sit in for the gunner's positions, have them be turrets. If possible.

Have the covenant be plasma turrets, IE, fuel rod guns for the plasma torpedoes, plasma bolts and sentinel beams for lasers.

Have the humans have homing missiles for the archer pods, Gausse turret weapons for their mac cannons, and a single nuke per ship. As in, they only get one. The weapons would have to be modified somewhat significantly to work properly. IE, ballanced out. Like the nukes would only do five times the damage of a plasma torp, but missiles would do as much damage as the plasma bolts.

I don't really know how to ballance it out yet. But, it would need to be ballanced so no one will have grounds of complaining about unfair fights. IE, a single covie ship taking out the entire human fleet. At least, unless the human fleet sucked at flying.


And as for the scale not really being accurate, who cares? It isn't supposed to be accurate. Besides. The Capital ships are over 4 kilometers long. Not good for a multiplayer map when you have five ships of this scale flying about. So, do I have any takers? Not only will you get to make a truely awsome map, but you will have the opportunity to surpas the only other map that allows you to fly big ships. (Of course, that isn't too hard, but still.)

If you so desire, I will gladly make the base myself, just for some hand in it other than the basic idea.
Edited by Angel Natavi on Feb 4, 2009 at 08:10 PM

Heres somthing that could make the map cooler:

Bay doors: so enemys can get into the ship.

Destruction tags: Make it realy high though. So you will be able to blow up the enemy ship.

CE vehicles: instead of having modded ships, make your own or find a CE vehicle. like the draco.

Flags: have flag poles in the ship so u can play ctf.

Garbage: put asteroids in the middle so you can weave around and try to make your tailgater crash into the rocks.

Also custom weps are always cool.

so thats my 2cents which compared to yours is like 20 bucks. LOL

Yeah, your 20 bucks compaired to my 200.

Good idea though with the asteroids.

Flags: Its a "SHIP TO SHIP" fight, not CTF. Besides, the flags or other such objective based gametypes would have to be in the base.

Size: For ease of use, the ships would have to be small. It would take too long to get to a regular ship anyway. Ergo, no inside maps to the ships at all. This means no bay doors.

And yes, while custom weapons are cool, snowballs coming out of ships are very ridiculous, same with needler rounds.

You are not taking into consideration the complexity and lag issues most people have. While a lot of maps have a lot in it, they are also small. The bigger ones don't have much in it. While you are describing a good idea, it won't work with this scale, and not easily if it does. It is best to just have a simple map, big, with the ships scaled down by quite a bit for ease of use. I have been on too many big maps and been forced to walk from the middle, all the way to either of the base.

The purpose of this rant is to illustrate a point. Quite simply, big ships with long distances between them require long time to get to. Small ships with small distances between them require less time walking to, and quicker launches. Simple enough for you?

Ambitious, but I like ambitious.

If the only way to kill people is with ships, why not make them start in the ships? Then you don't have to worry about people spawning and walking to them at all. Of course, you might want to choose what type of ship you want. Maybe a custom UI menu? Then you spawn in it, take off, go in space, and start fighting.

You're right that planets , large ships, etc. can all be scaled down to make everything easier. The covenant cruiser can have the same world unit dimensions as the banshee, but if everything else is also scaled down, no one will notice or care.

I'm also a little confused. What type of ships are there? Will you be piloting actual covenant cruisers and human frigates, or just the smaller fighters. (Please say the big ships!)

If you ever get any of this working, you'll have to have made a full covenant cruiser. The one on a50, truth and reconciliation, has no geometry on the top, and no map for the top either. So if you somehow finish it, please release it! I need a full cove cruiser as well.

You may also end up with cool explosion effects/ shrapnel, etc. You should release these as well. lol. I'm greedy.

I like the asteroid idea, and I don't think they'll cause lag, since the only other things in the game are the ships right? You should make the meteors vehicles, so that they can have physics. (no seats or anything, just a vehicle tag), and so they can sync and cause damage when you crash into them (or they crash into you). You can also push them around, and destroy them if they are vehicle tags.

You can also script everything to not have gravity.
(well, every object. Not players, but they'll be in vehicles anyway. I think you can script (empty) vehicles to have no gravity, so the metiors will not fall)


Good luck! Can't wait!
Edited by Vick Jr on Feb 4, 2009 at 05:29 PM

Well, here is the thing. I was thinking about the big ships. Like, the Cruiser would be replacing the spirit, and the Carrier would be replacing the Phantom. I have all of the models of the Halo, save for a good full Halcyon class. Everything else I do indeed have. So, if anyone takes on this project idea of mine, I can supply (And by supply, I can dirrect you to where I got them from.)

As for people spawning in the ships, why? If you can make the ships themselves as vehicles, have the people spawn around them in one area, that way you have opportunities of choosing your vehicle.

An easy way of making things work, would have the vehicles and debris equiped with a nul-grav script, allowing them to float. And, since it is too hard to have a good map with big ships moving slowly, have small ships that move relativly slowly. Simple enough.

An idea for the launching platform, have it be a stair-step formation. Lower tier would be the bigger ships, upper tiers would be the smaller ships. Have them set in slots with holographics located above the ship to designate pilot's station, weapons, and what type of weapon. It is simple enough, methinks, to make them work. And, if the scale of what I am thinking of does work, it will be simple to get it functional.



EDIT: To make it clear, I have all the models of the Covenant and most ship models of the Humans. I can and will point anyone to where I got them. (So I don't get my butt sued.)
Edited by Angel Natavi on Feb 4, 2009 at 08:13 PM