Now more important business. Though I can host limited games myself, I need somebody to provide a broadband server for Epilogue. If you can help, don't hesitate to answer here. You can post as a guest. No need to even register.

NEWS UPDATE #5-A:
Got a new forum because MyBoard.org killed itself. I'm really, really sorry, and if I ever hear anybody mention that they worked for MyBoard, I'll punch them square in the goddamn crotch, just for you.

NEWS UPDATE #5:
CV Mk. III "Ethos"
The Raider Wars had been a maxim in the fledging world of deepspace combat. In the years following its conclusion, analysation of the war became a cottage industry as the three corporations sought to thoroughly learn its lessons and apply them to the next generation of starships.

The aging Carrier Vessel Mk. II "Vexil" was the foremost target of their efforts. Field data had shown that the Vexil's automated defense systems were extremely vulnerable to hostile starfighers, so much infact, that they were ultimately scrapped along with the Vexil itself.

In its place, a new model of Carrier Vessel codenamed "Ethos" was built from the ground up, modestly sharing its predecessor's hull design. Equipped with a cutting-edge shield generator based on the Lynn Theory, an offshoot of the research surrounding the PF-12 Dragon's experimental plasma systems, and armour that would stop a FAS-2B's payload of crew-killing Grunts dead in their tracks, no other starship can come close to the sheer defensive power of the Ethos.

Provides the backbone of Hast, Osis, and Vaught's presence in space, and serves as the mothership to their respective prospecting expeditions. Its only weakness is an absolute reliance upon starfighters to mount aggression against hostiles.

-----------

FAS-5E "Cudgel".
With new technologies employed by the latest model of Carrier Vessel, Grunts became uselesss. As a result, the FAS-2B assault transport was reworking into the Cudgel assault bomber.

I completed the Carrier Vessel and FAS models after some work that, for a person lazy as me, was bitterly hard. I even inserted them into the game! What crazy madness.

It's not easy to tell from this, but Allegiance is horrible at scaling textures. Sure, maybe it's because Microsoft never thought some maniac would give anything a 2000 size scale, but still, my CV looks like a muddied mess in-game, up-close. Bad lighting doesn't help it any, either, and neither does its knack for slowly dissapearing at a range of 10, 000+ miles or meters... Whatever Allegiance's measurement system is.

I also took some liberties. Although it's POSSIBLE to give a base multiple docking ports and launch tubes, I'd have to make the CV even more ridiculously humongous to be in-scale with the other ships. So I gave it one docking port, one launch tube. Also since Allegiance doesn't support automated turrets attached to bases, no more gun-towers on the model. The engines aren't 100% accurate, either... I hope overall my model looks close enough.

Then there's the FAS-5E. It's much more accurate to RW than the new CV, and luckily isn't getting punched in the face by bad texture scaling. I haven't got the handling down perfectly, but I will soon. It'll have it's authentic drives-like-a-woozy-cow steering in no time. Its Grunt-replacement bombs are even done and loaded into cargo.

Grunt-replacement bombs? Yeah. Allegiance don't have any locational-hit system, so capturing CV's is gonna be sort of different. No more blowing open its docking port and launching little packages of murder in... Instead, a CV can be captured by hitting it ANYWHERE with enough of the FAS's bombs. I gave the bombs a short lifetime, so the FAS will have to get close in to use them.

The difference between FAS runs in RW and FAS runs in this mod should be negligable at most. I personally think they are, anyway... In my last test-run, I made the first CV-capture in Epilogue.

On to other news, the forums are experiencing "temporary downtime" because myboard.org is transitioning to a new server. But I suspect they're permanently dead. Thanks, MyBoard! It couldn't have come at a worse time!

I'll find another host if the bastards can't get with it, soon. Also added the preliminary About RW section.

(Yes, I DID totally make up that the original Carrier Vessels had the model designation CV.MK II "Vexil". I needed an explaination for why the new CVs and FAS's are a bit different from the old.)

NEWS UPDATE #4:
FAS-1X "Sunrise". A deep-space asteroid miner heavily retrofitted around cutting-edge shield technology. Its predecessor, the FAS-1A, was the ancestor of the FAS-2B assault carrier employed during the Raider Wars.

I wanted a Raider Wars themed replacement for Allegiance's drone miners. Here it is.

It's good most of the work I'll have to do is copying pre-existing designs, because if I had to make more semi-original ones like the Sunrise up there, I'd vomit blood and die.

Mining's gonna be one of the VERY few parts of Allegiance I'll carry over into this mod. After all, mining was the centerpiece of Raider Wars even though it never happened. Does that make sense? Who cares. Don't worry, though - I won't make everything revolve around mining like it mostly does in Allegiance. It won't effect the classic Raider Wars stuff at all. Just the SLIGHT handfull of whatever small expansions I'll make to RW... Which won't effect the classic RW stuff, either.

NEWS UPDATE #3:
RKF-6D "Victor". While not the fastest starfighter in space, no other ship is more agile than the Victor. Lightly armed and armoured, its handfull of retired pilots are considered almost-mythic aces.

It's done. After pain and headaches and at the moment some nausea, my RKF model's complete and crammed right into Allegiance's brain. I now know alot more than I used to. Fun fact; I hate texturing. I hate LithUnwrap even more. But for now... Oh for now... Simply gaze at THIS.(I know it says PF12. That's just my Allegiance screen-name, I haven't gone and called an RKF a PF-12. I could never be THAT tasteless.)

NEWS UPDATE #2-a: Thanks to Orion on the Allegiance forums, I was able to fix the problem. Enjoy this horrible screenshot with lighting that makes my obnoxiously solid-green RKF look like it's a puffed marshmellow.

NEWS UPDATE #2: People are registering on the forums, and everything's beginning to steadily move along. Smooth, though, it isn't.

I'd planned on putting my almost-complete RKF into Allegiance just to test out adding new ship models. Everything was working fine until I tried to launch from the carrier, when it crashed the game.

I don't know why. So far nobody on the Allegiance modding forum can tell me why, either.

So while I wait on that, I figured, why not do some of the ship and weapon phsyics? So I have. There's now a ship with a damn fine copy of the RKF's handling, and a weapon that mimmicks its Standard Railgun... And while doing the editing, I realized some things.

I'm almost 100% sure Allegiance and Raider Wars use the same units of measurement. I'm also positive the ways both games determine ship handling are almost identical. They're so similair, by tweaking just the right settings, even my RKF clone's velocity reticule has the same elasticity as the real thing.

Now that I can compare RW and Allegiance side by side, the biggest difference between the two really struck me.

In Allegiance, space is hugely oppressively big, and all the ships are these tiny, slow-moving flecks. In Raider Wars, space was small and the ships were big and fast. The dogfighting was quick and furious. In Allegiance... It isn't so much.

But with my RKF clone's max speed of 297MPS, space in Allegiance suddenly seems a whole lot smaller.

It seems more like Raider Wars than I ever expected it could.

Which is a whole lot.

=============

NEWS UPDATE #1:
After a bit of waiting, I finally have a copy of the original Raider Wars, courtesy of Staruk. Equal thanks goes to The Bounty Hunter's Carbide and Wolfpak's Darius for their efforts in looking, too. Also thanks to Ceowolf because him, Staruk, Carbide, and Darius were the only ones that responded to my plea. Nobody else had working email adresses.

This demented project now begins in earnest. Weary veterans, we WILL fly and die again in all our old and superbad style.

However... I still need help. With Raider Wars now being permanently offline, the ONLY way to duplicate the weapon damage rates and ship hit-points is by reconstructing them from memory. So I need every available pilot to register on the forum and start recollecting.