Artwork, I imagine, due to the obscene amount of entities on the R&D Trees, may or may not exist as things are researched. There's so much of it, obviously it cant all be done at once, but maybe an early warning system or something can be made to get models ready, an unlock or two before they're needed. Or, we just wait till the entity is unlocked. /me shrugs.

Per seeing the tree, unfortunately, until Sin and I get a chance to do all the formulas, and auto generate the tree, it's not possible to show an example. I believe we hope to auto-generate using the entities we have now, as a means to see if it works nicely, and a means to showcase the tree structure.

I imagine R&D as not researching complete entities but as researching components . Then being able to assemble those components into entities DCs. I don't think it is to much to ask the faction to supply the art work with the components in the production process for the DC, this way you could have several factions with different looking ships that are basically alike. So in short make the factions submit a pic and save the admins alot of work.

We wouldnt allow factions to submit official images due to the fact people just rip off some other person images and or repaint them. Official images will be done by the art team before you even research the entity in most cases

“Or, we just wait till the entity is unlocked. ”

I like this idea.

“We wouldnt allow factions to submit official images due to the fact people just rip off some other person images and or repaint them. ”

With the above... Are you implying that an image for an R/D tree would be submitted by each faction for each entity?

“Official images will be done by the art team before you even research the entity in most cases ”

Kendall, if the Art team is doing images before the entity is even researched, then wouldn't this give certain factions a benefit come R/D release?

"We wouldn't allow factions to submit official images due to the fact people just rip off some other person images and or repaint them. ”


I think you could require them to submit images, based on guidelines by art team, and let art team then approve or disprove the images. If it is not approved the art team can make a new image for them or have them resubmit one.

I like the idea of having several ships looking different but having the same components.

“I think you could require them to submit images, based on guidelines by art team, and let art team then approve or disprove the images. If it is not approved the art team can make a new image for them or have them resubmit one. ”

That could take bloody forever. We have something similar to that right now, it's called Art Team Public. Where people can-

"submit images, based on guidelines by art team, and let art team then approve or disprove the images. If it is not approved the art team can make a new image for them or have them resubmit one."

And we all know how often that gets used.

I imagine the images will be generated just like any other project we get. Asims post a list of images, we do the images, it gets synced, people make their own customs.

“Kendall, if the Art team is doing images before the entity is even researched, then wouldn't this give certain factions a benefit come R/D release? ”

How exactly would an image/model give "certain factions a benefit"?

TLDR: Art Team will be doing the images.

Even if the 5 or 6 active art members know whats in the tree, it wont be any benefit; we will not know how the tree is structured, nor how many points to unlock things. We just have a box of random lego pieces, with no idea how to put it together. Its no advantage at all really.

@ Ric I didnt know we had that team. However we are talking about factions not individuals. Do you not think that would work better.

No it wouldnt. We require the art to be from scratch and the IP owned by a combine player. We dont allow for repaints, copy pastes, crops of any image used on net for official images. The number of people that can even remotely do that is far and few in number in which case would take for ever for just one image to be produced.

edit: Forgot to say if you really want a custom image on the entity you research, you can always use the custom image system its what it is there for. Then you can put a reasonable image on the DC.

“Reverse engineering will not be possible in the initial releases, of added later, that's undetermined.

- Jesfa
 ”

Should this be added at a later time, would the ship(s) (i.e. ywing and TIE) used for reverse engineering to obtain a DC (TIE wing) with R/D be recoverable via the Repair skill to put the ship back to its original form (ywing and TIE) or are they lost in the reverse engineering process?

It's so far away, if at all, that I havent the foggiest idea.

Hey Jesfa what is the latest update on R&D 1.0?

For the next couple weeks I have very little time for anything other than school, once that's done though, hopefully I can steal zhao away for a little whole and we can get going on a few projects that are lying around to get everything moving. Aside from that, I don't have much update. This week alone I've got 25 pages worth of papers due, half a dozen law quizzes and a verbal Spanish exam that is worth a hefty % of my grade. :(

Good Luck Jesfa! We know you guys do a lot and it is appreciated.

I'm still trying to get a mental picture of how things will work with regards to actually doing unlocking stuff.

Will it be like Production, but (kind of) replacing RMs for different types of R&D points? For example Ship X, needs 10 each of Hull, Electronics, Engine research points. Would you load the datapad with the necessary points then install it in the research facility then hit the go button and wait for the 'leaf' to be unlocked (I'm guessing there'd be a production-like timer on this which could then be used to control the speed of unlocking entities)?

With the tech tree itself, the impression I'm getting (but not sure I have this close to correct) is that it's a little like Empire At War's tech tree but more fragmented. You move up a level and have the option of unlocking variants (sideways movement along the branch) or moving to the next tech level (to a higher branch) with the latter costing more points.

Do the plans so far, include the generation of research points? Will it be like crafting (sitting in research facility with a datapad 'crafting' research points) with higher skill points leading to faster point creation with possible bonuses for collaborative efforts to encourage multi-player R&D departments over man-in-a-shed operations?

I can see the potential for R&D to rally push the collaborative/faction-based ethos of SWC, and if done correctly encourage greater faction interaction. Could the non-production factions not be used to boost certain factors, like mining factions boosting metallurgy, info faction boosting electronics or research speed itself?

The tech tree should have multiple variants, and 1+ new entities coming off of each branch type thing. So say you researched the YT-2000, you could then get variants on that to increase speed, or cargo cap, etc, but you might also have the options to research upwards to the YT-3000 (say) or to the YV-666.

I'm not really fond of being able to combine points originally intended for say Projectile Weapons and then be able to suddenly place those points into a new capital ship design.

It would really strongly take away from realistic strategic planning. If you initially started a bunch of small projects, but have a sudden need for a new super duper capital ship, I find it would be both way overpowered, a cheep escape for poor planning, and odd considering the rebels/new republic sometimes got their advantage from researching the more important tree while the Empire was busy trying to make super weapons or some other half wasteful project. Of course in the movies this was partial symbolism of governments putting tons of money into one project as if a single bill can change everything but the point still stands.


For an actual question, any idea's on how the point difference between capital ships and small entities like weapons will work. Obviously from realistic standpoint capital ships would take trillions of cumulative man hours while a new weapon would probably only take a hundred thousand or so. But from a gameplay stand point we don't want the entire blaster tree to be completed in only a decade. Any thoughts on the general solution for this issue?

That likely will not be the case. There's more likely to be "vehicle hull points" than just "Hull points" for that very reason. Otherwise the Ackmin Empire with all 12 of its different factions will just have every member researching and putting the points towards the Super Fish Cruiser MK15.

I get the points being entity specific. That is great :)

However why cant we research components in place of entity variations? I would rather research a HS6 capital ship engine then use that in conjunction with other research components to assemble a ship that meets my markets need vs having to research different ships all with a HS6 engine which may not have the components that I want.

I think it depends on how you look at the research... for example metallugry, if you are researching better hull armor... once you create a new compound, it can be applied to any ship, no matter the size.. or to body armor.

engines would be different though, as an engine able to power an A-wing couldn't budge an SSD.

Of course the "tree" aspect is a different setup than a 'component-based' R&D setup, so perhaps the its assumed you discover those compunds and technologies and how to apply them along the way to designing a new class of ship, and then refine thoe components on the variants.

Same thing with weapons, a new turbolaser could be (power issues dependant) plased on an SSD platform, or a ground platform, or even larger freighters...

So there really should be some ability to "shift" between projects. But I don't really mind either way.