Nosferatiel wrote:
If I read your explanation correctly, you were talking about an electric field only on one wing and a magnetic field only on the other.

I've just got to say that there are no magnetic monopoles and changing electric and magnetic fields give rise to their counterparts. That's why we only have electromagnetic waves.

So what you do propose is to send off impulse by electromagnetic wave emission. Depends on the wavelength, amplitude and weight of the ship about what the hell we're talking here, but chances are high it's not radio, microwave or visible light, but rather UV or gamma ray emission at very short wavelengths to get enough impulse done, so the change in the fields would have to be enormous and still the amplitude would have to be very very high.



Wonder where they get all the energy from... Still, the emission direction would probably not be completely spacially coherent and there should be some losses in the emitters that heat up the wings, so this ends up being a pretty complicated tech, if at all feasible...

I was hoping you would come along to poke holes in my argument lol



I only realized some of the issues you presented in my post, of which I was just going to shove under the rug :P Especially if the craver's wings are akin to that of an earth dwelling bug, as they would never withstand the punishment offered by a propulsion systems that sends photons packing across space at 300,000,000 meters a second.

Nosferatiel wrote:
*bows to the audience*

Always a pleasure to blow your mind.

I gladly take the back seat to the more knowledgeable physicist in this scenario lol

Solentis wrote:
I'm curious too. Feedbacks on my designs are always usefull. At the first stance, the cravers drones flying around were supposed to fly like flies around... You know...

That's what I thought. I kind of like it.

I love how Craver ships look. Just big hunking Armour plates, rocket lauchers and stardrives being accompanied by locust. mmmh



on second thought it is silly but imho it still looks really great.

Solentis wrote:
I'm curious too. Feedbacks on my designs are always usefull. At the first stance, the cravers drones flying around were supposed to fly like flies around... You know...

I'm in awe to the fact that the actual artist is here chatting on the forums. I don't think I've ever been part of community where the actual artists are chatting on the forums. There's usually other people doing the forum monitoring. I didn't really mean for anyone to be fired.



My OP was just a rant I guess. But I'm sure even you can agree that these bat like creatures look a little odd flying around the ship like that. I don't even know if even possible to change something like that in a patch or DLC, but it something to think about for any future space game you design.



When I think of the word hive, I guess it's common to think about a bee's nest. Then the next thing I like think about is the first Star Craft game, and those organic buildings that use to spread throughout the map so you can build more. When I hear the word hive, I think of something that can devour. When I see these flying creatures around the Craver ships, I think of those goofy Star Wars Geonosians. I mean common, who really took those goofy looking things serious? I sure didn't.



Nano-bite/insect plume. That would have been awesome. I'm sure with more testing you could created something really cool looking.

I understand your point. Did you take a look at the artbook? Cravers ship's were more of a hive with cravers worker flying all around like you expected to. But there is a gap between how I see things in my concept arts and how 3D artists interpret it, and the actual FX pattern didn't shock me at the time, so I give up, because creating FX is a hard job, and I was fine with it.



But now, if it's a big problem to many people, I can try to ask our FX artist about this. Maybe his answer will be "No way, I have a lot of work at this time and the actual FX do the job" maybe it will be "no problem, wait just a second and... ok it's done, enjoy".

I haven't seen the art book yet. I bought it from Steam, they usually don't give you anything other than a free pdf manual. Maybe I can find a digital copy online somewhere. I understand trying to create something from a sketch and then bring it FX is hard. The boss should have asked himself this, what is making the money? The free cartoon art book, or the actual game? Sometimes it's even necessary to reboot an idea. But, what do I know? I'm just 35 year old gamer lol.



I might have even used the Fighters/Bombers as the workers then. This would have kept the ships looking nice and clean.



I'll be honest, I hope theirs an Endless Space 2 on the Horizon. I can't wait to see what would be added.

The artbook is available in the same directory as the soundtrack. It's a huge pdf, more than 200 pages that take me a looooong time to do. It's digital btw. Take a look.



Alongside, when someone create a game, it's about priority. When something is done, maybe not good as is intented to be, it's done. Another thing became the next priority. I have a tchat with our FX artist, he is really busy at the moment, but it's not an infeasible thing. So...

Well I want to say thanks for even bothering with an ignorant fool like myself. I have to commend the designers for actually following these threads and being a part of the real community. Most of the time you only hear from the designers when a patch is released. And thx for letting me know where the art book was, and soundtrack. I had no idea both were inside the game directory. Thx man.

Solentis wrote:




But now, if it's a big problem to many people, I can try to ask our FX artist about this.

Like I said, nothing needs to be changed because those clever cravers are rotating Electromagnetic fields with their wings :P

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
Like I said, nothing needs to be changed because those clever cravers are rotating Electromagnetic fields with their wings :P

If I read your explanation correctly, you were talking about an electric field only on one wing and a magnetic field only on the other.

I've just got to say that there are no magnetic monopoles and changing electric and magnetic fields give rise to their counterparts. That's why we only have electromagnetic waves.

So what you do propose is to send off impulse by electromagnetic wave emission. Depends on the wavelength, amplitude and weight of the ship about what the hell we're talking here, but chances are high it's not radio, microwave or visible light, but rather UV or gamma ray emission at very short wavelengths to get enough impulse done, so the change in the fields would have to be enormous and still the amplitude would have to be very very high.



Wonder where they get all the energy from... Still, the emission direction would probably not be completely spacially coherent and there should be some losses in the emitters that heat up the wings, so this ends up being a pretty complicated tech, if at all feasible...

nosferatiel wrote:
if i read your explanation correctly, you were talking about an electric field only on one wing and a magnetic field only on the other.

I've just got to say that there are no magnetic monopoles and changing electric and magnetic fields give rise to their counterparts. That's why we only have electromagnetic waves.

So what you do propose is to send off impulse by electromagnetic wave emission. Depends on the wavelength, amplitude and weight of the ship about what the hell we're talking here, but chances are high it's not radio, microwave or visible light, but rather uv or gamma ray emission at very short wavelengths to get enough impulse done, so the change in the fields would have to be enormous and still the amplitude would have to be very very high.



Wonder where they get all the energy from... Still, the emission direction would probably not be completely spacially coherent and there should be some losses in the emitters that heat up the wings, so this ends up being a pretty complicated tech, if at all feasible...

God damn it!

Igncom1 wrote:




God damn it!

*bows to the audience*

Always a pleasure to blow your mind.

What about have them just crawling around the ships while their in space. You can still allow them to have wings, but they hang around the outside of the ship tinkering on the ship. Heck you can even put in an animation of them getting blown off when their ships get hit. That would look cool. This way everyone gets what they want. But the flying around the ship in space just looks too funny.

Let me see, that would be... 99% of them? lol

Hey, I'd just like to chip in that I think the effect looks really cool as it currently is. I admit it threw me off when I first saw it, but it does a really good job of projecting the Cravers' "otherness." Alien species are supposed to be a galaxy apart from human likeness and our concept of normalcy. That is something that can be hard to show in space simulation games where species are primarily represented by their ships. I've always been impressed by the artistic direction of Endless Space, your team does alien and foreign really well.



If anything: more background, explanation, and story would help people understand the alien ship designs- and in my mind would be preferable to cutting out model features. (Although I will say that Bad213Boy's suggestion for having the Cravers crawling on the outside of the hull and getting blown off from hits sounds awesome too.) If half the community doesn't even know that some Cravers have wings (and after reading this thread I'm now confused as to whether they are a hive mind or more of a pheromone communication "ant like" society) we probably need more background.

Cravers crawling on the outside of the hull

you could do that with an animated overlay texture. Just a thought.



Anyway I think it would be fair to make a poll on this.

Anyone who has seen my posts from long ago when the whole "which race is your favorite" discussions were going on knows I absolutely love the Craver ships.



I'm pretty sure it was said somewhere (don't remember where) that Craver ships were basically hunks of metal to take them from one planet to the next. I always did figure the things flying around the ships to be Cravers themselves - they basically just need an object with mass to ferry them to their destination. Given their lore, I would imagine they're a pretty energetic/restless species and so probably fly around the ships instead of slumbering inside.

Maybe, just maybe, their ships have some kind of field around them, a bubble, that contains atmosphere inside?

That would allow Cravers to breathe and fly in it.

Solentis wrote:
I understand your point. Did you take a look at the artbook? Cravers ship's were more of a hive with cravers worker flying all around like you expected to. But there is a gap between how I see things in my concept arts and how 3D artists interpret it, and the actual FX pattern didn't shock me at the time, so I give up, because creating FX is a hard job, and I was fine with it.



But now, if it's a big problem to many people, I can try to ask our FX artist about this. Maybe his answer will be "No way, I have a lot of work at this time and the actual FX do the job" maybe it will be "no problem, wait just a second and... ok it's done, enjoy".

I like how they look.

Nasarog wrote:
I like how they look.

Same. I don't see any great need to change them. I love them, and of course other people do too.



Quite frankly, if they were changed to suit one group of peoples' tastes, you would just make the other group even angrier. Probably best to leave things as they are.



Also... should I feel bad about pointing out typos in the art book? Because I found one :C