SF:1 Flying Mech. I'm no good at design; help?

[Anonymous]

So the game has a shortage of SF:1 mecha. There's often reasons for this, but that's besides the point. I've got an inspiration, but I'm not much good at design, and I'm piss-poor at naming or titling anything. In other words, yeah, I'm foisting nearly all the work off on whoever will take it.
The biggest question is name, as I can probably cobble something together, although I don't trust my concept of game balance. Highly likely to fall either to one side or the other of balanced, and no particularly greater likelihood either way.

Concept, of course, is inevitably the starting point, so here we go. SF:1, with both hover and flight movement types. Wings are optional, but probably needed, as that would be the practical place in an SF:1 to put the flight jets if you need the main body for hover. Might otherwise look a little like a car. Aerofighter base design.
An SF:1 weapon with sufficient range and power, probably some form of laser (are there any SF:1 lasers we know of?), for hit-and-run tactics.
What this is made to represent is a flying craft which utilizes mountains, trees, and hills as cover. I'm uncertain how old the design should be; that will probably depend more on the final specs than on the concept, as we'd have to pick a paradigm.

Oh yeah. That, and I'm no good at 3D modeling.

[Epsilon]

Sounds like a jet helicopter with wings attached. You could kind of make it a tilt-rotor styled craft, with the rotors counting as "wings" with arc thrusters. You're not limited by the weapons the game uses, FYI; feel free to make sumething up. I made a few SF:2 shotguns/flechette cannon and grenade launchers because I felt the game world lacked them.

[Anticheese]

The thing that you are after is a Hoverfighter base, it's like a helicopter with jets.

Unfortunatly you cannot use trees and mountains as cover (You are flying at least two levels above the cover in question) but what you can do is keep it fairly lightweight (I.E 9 tonnes)

You don't need an SF:1 laser allready in the game for use on a mech (there are none anyway), Rather you can just enter the specs in the design file.

One trick I've learned when designing Mecha is to check the PV value of a mech in the View Design Files menu, It saves alot of grief that comes from looking around shops to try and find your mech, if the PV is near other SF:1 Mecha then you know you have a balanced one.

I think that if you do add wings to it, try to downplay them and resist the temptation of  giving them alot of armour and weapons, Make them class 1 wings to represent their size.

[macksting]

Ya sure can use them as cover! If you hover instead of fly!
Forgot about Arc Thrusters. Boy I feel silly. Yes, an arc thruster. As to hover vs. aero, I'm remarkably indifferent; I liked the idea of using the aerofighter's chassis and design, but it is, one supposes, a hover vehicle. Therefore, a hoverfighter would be more appropriate.
Anticheese, other than the mention of being unable to use trees and mountains as cover, you're dead on about the wings. Pretty much exactly what I imagined, which increases the importance of it being a hoverfighter, I suppose...

In the spirit of keeping it lightweight, it had best be without a turret. Not really part of the design I'm imagining anyway. Forward facing guns, fully intended to throw in my own small lasers; I simply was curious as to whether or not there was a setting moritorium on SF:1 lasers.
Silly question. There's a considerable number of SF:0 lasers.

As you can see, when I wrote the original post, I was pretty out of it.
How often are player designs co-opted into the main bulk of the game?

[Drakeson]

Quoting: macksting

As you can see, when I wrote the original post, I was pretty out of it.

And I thought I was the only one who surfed inubriated.

Aren't you looking at the swan here? just put some hover jets on it and tiketybo. Or do you want a flying ground hugger?

Has anyone ever got the monsterous to sustained flight?

[Anticheese]

Quoting: macksting

As you can see, when I wrote the original post, I was pretty out of it.

No problem, You're keeping my redundancy notice away

Quoting: macksting

How often are player designs co-opted into the main bulk of the game?

Very rarely.

Quoting: macksting

Forward facing guns, fully intended to throw in my own small lasers; I simply was curious as to whether or not there was a setting moritorium on SF:1 lasers.

Nope, you can do whatever the heck you want with weapons.

Even a DC10X200 BLAST 18 BRUTAL HYPER RUST BURN OVERLOAD FLAIL SPEED 10 MAGAZINE 200 BV 20 MASS -500 missile launcher.

I reccomend perhaps a DC:2X4 laser or pair of DC:1X4 lasers with a high BV.

--

Quoting: Drakeson

Has anyone ever got the monsterous to sustained flight?

Yes.

Once.

It involved buying alot of Mecha with high level flightjets and installing them on both the armour and the chassis.

It was a real pain in the butt to save up for as well.

[macksting]

And probably decreased the already hideous pilotting modifier to unheard-of levels of uselessness. I imagine, after all, that this would increase the mass.
Can't you put engines on mounting points, by the way?

Anyway, I hadn't quite thought of missiles; they seem like a natural fit, albeit at a small calibre, for this sort of craft. As an auxilliary weapon, mind you. Figure a rocket pod or two?
The point was, essentially, to have something between an aerofighter and a groundhugger, which would be a hoverfighter. (There are awfully few of them in the game in my experience.)

As to getting this co-opted into the game, I suppose the key to making it more likely is to
a. keep it balanced,
b. get pictures of it,
and c. to badger somebody who makes mods to put it in and list it in the changes, so that he doesn't have to do it himself, even if he likes it.

[macksting]

Mrrf. So much for editting. I'd prefer to accidentally post anonymously than to have my post lost to the ether.
Thoughts on design:
Zoanoids and ornithoids just aren't my genre of mecha. Therefore, as I was looking for something between a groundhugger and an aerofighter, a hoverfighter sounds fairly ideal.
Class 1 Targetting Computer
Class 5 Sensors
Class 4 or 5 Arc Thruster
Intrinsic light armor, the sort you'd find on a fighter jet, or even slightly less. No armor equipped; leave that decision to the players.
Two stubby wings, one with a mounting point equipped with a rocket pod of decent calibre but -2 to strike and short range. Main body has a laser weapon, 2x4 or what-have-you, fairly hit-and-run and not intended for anti-personnel.

This is basically intended to represent a small attack helicopter.

[Anticheese]

The main problem with mounting points is that they let you salvage the weapons, So try to make them balanced.

[macksting]

Does the rocket pod sound unbalanced? The mounting point was partially a stylistic matter; it also meant the basic model could have different sale models, such as an AC-12C for the version with an attached mech cannon, or the AC-12A for the rocket pod.

[Drakeson]

you can make various versions in the design files, you don't have to use mounting points. Though if you had one mounting point on each wing with a single missle or a 4 pack of rockets.

You could include an under nose turret with a machine gun on it for anti personel (though with no personel in SF1 combat it would be kind of redundant) just using the assault cannon.

You could also give it massive drive systems and gyros to increase the ability to clese range quickly.

Or are you thinking like a sky cycle style not a weapons platform. The sky cycle could just have one rocket on each wing and a laser or MG on the nose with huge engines and a really weak cockpit. Make it bloody fast though 250-300.

[macksting]

1. The mounting point was thematic, as I said. I just like the idea.
2. Are there any anti-personnel attack choppers in real life? I was under the impression that attack choppers and their strategic ilk, this craft being the latter, are more anti-installation than anti-personnel.

Really, I was thinking of creating this as a small, affordable army vehicle, made to take advantage of cover in all situations; full flight, including the ability to fly between buildings. The rocket pod is intended to be its most credible threat (even then no more PV than a mech cannon), the laser weapon its token effort at defense. (I'd best give that laser cannon an Intercept quality, now that I think about it.) Likewise, that same mounting point (or, if you really don't like mounting points, that same spot in the text file) can be swapped out for different models (the mounting point also making it a reasonable thing to swap out in general), depending on the nature of your mission.

[Epsilon]

I think most modern choppers are designed to take out a wide variety of targets, soft and hard. Mounting point is a good idea.

[Joseph Hewitt]

I think it's a good idea. A SF:1 anti-infantry/s-infantry weapon would be very useful.

[macksting]

*grins* And I have heard from the voice of Joseph and he has looked upon it and said that it is good.
I guess I'll start cobbling together the stuffs for it tonight. What can we do about a picture for it? I don't know squat about POV ray.