Calling all modders

[Alvarin]

That actually is not much more than I thought. I though it is about half of what it actually turned out to be.
The only thing it means that it will take longer to complete and might have higher risk of procrastination kicking in earlier in the progress.
On a side note - I appreciate greatly the fact you were willing to warn me about the volume of work - I do not typically encounter this level of integrity, that has a high risk of harming one's project.

[5thHorseman]

I'm in the learning phase of modding. I'd love to contribute but don't think I'll have it all down in the time frame you have.

I would be happy to write events though. I assume each "sector" will be a sea/ocean and each "star" will be a bay/inlet/open sea area?

[DryEagle]

each sector is going to be something like an archipelago, with each jump in that sector being an island / bay / reef / floating wreckage / etc

suns will be erupting volcanoes, no joke

[Alvarin]

I want to start early, as knowing myself deadlines are hard thing.
What did you have in mind for the crews?
All human with uniform/hats/body-shape/skin-color variations? Different races entirely? Identical appearance but different abilities?

[DryEagle]

So, since these are sailing ships, naturally everything is run by grog - more grog makes the crew happier so they work better. Basically that's what power bars are. With that in mind, here's the rough outline for the crews - all humans, with different jobs. Some variation in their visuals would be nice e.g. engineer can have a hardhat etc. Feel free to be creative ;) but this is the basic outline.
Going to leave crystals out of it as I can't think of a good way to make their lockdown power work in this context. Was thinking some kind of netting but the graphics wouldn't work well for it.
So, you can also use the human/rock/engi/zoltan animation sheets to give a basic set of reference for all of them in terms of shape and movement, since they're all humanoid apart from the drones. Though a bit of colour variation would be nice to have as well.
Just keep in mind, this is your part of the mod, so don't be shy to express artistic freedom and all that.

Human = officer (regular person)
Mantis = fighter (guy with cutlass)
Engi = engineer (guy with wrench)
Zoltan = drunkard (guy with stein/tankard)
Rock = guy in armored suit
Slug = guy with telescope
Repair drone = monkey with wrench
Combat drone = automated cannon (if that makes sense)

A few other notes on animations: some kind of fan or something instead of fire extinguisher for that section,
for the console animation, I think we're mostly going to have it as a series of cranks, since ships are controlled by ropes. I mean one of these:

though piloting will obviously be just a big steering wheel, etc.

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Oh and before anyone asks, there won't be any shields on any of these ships. We're going to be using a completely different defense system, which wouldn't have been previously very feasible, except because we're going to have custom shops, it is now a possibility (lots of guns that shoot a lot of times, lots of damage, lots of HP, cheap cheap cheap repairs).

Basically there's going to be 3 distinct classes of ship - cutters, which are small and quick, submersibles, which can submerge (cloak), and line ships, which are big and properly heavy. We'll initially start with 3 of each. Looking at giving them 30, 90 and 150 HP respectively - the cutter will however be getting rockplating/systemcasing at ~80-90% value (change "resisted" to "missed") so it's basically got the same kind of effective HP, just that it exhibits it by being smaller and harder to hit, instead of by being heavy and sponging lots of damage. This does however mean that to keep your survivability, you lose 2 augment slots, which will feed into the overall balance of the ship. The sub will be the least directly-defensive ship in that sense, but with cloaking to compensate. And yes that means no damaging beam weapons, though some kind of flamethrower (read: fire beam) will likely make an appearance.

Not entirely sure how we're going to handle drones yet - attack drone = seagull? some type of da vinci style flying machine?

[Alvarin]

Gliders for drones can work.
For fire extinguishers I think to try buckets of water.
Sailing ships have no real use for wrenches, saws(not really) and hammers(probably) are more like it, no?
For combat drone I'll try do do something steampunky, but am not sure that will have enough pixels for it...

[DryEagle]

well, aren't even wooden ships held together by metal bolts? but yea a hammer is a good idea

[5thHorseman]

well, aren't even wooden ships held together by metal bolts? but yea a hammer is a good idea

Old ships like these were actually held together with large nails.

[brothershogo]

How about make it more steampunk/magic themed? Instead of grog, everything will be powered by mana/magic. Maybe even have flying boats/zeppelins...just google "steampunk ship", theres some cool concept art for that. Also maybe have metal and wooden ships...(maybe wooden whips can have magical shields while metal ships rely on heavy armor resistance.) For submersibles, I can't help but think of the Warcraft Orc Giant Turtle/Submarine unit in the original series... Hell maybe have different races. Zoltans=magical elves/wizards that can power systems, Mantis=orcs, Rocks=giants, humans=humans, engi=steampunk robots like Skyrims automatons, slug=dwarves/goblins with looking glasses, Crystals=elementals/golems...etc

[BrenTenkage]

How about make it more steampunk/magic themed? Instead of grog, everything will be powered by mana/magic. Maybe even have flying boats/zeppelins...just google "steampunk ship", theres some cool concept art for that. Also maybe have metal and wooden ships...(maybe wooden whips can have magical shields while metal ships rely on heavy armor resistance.) For submersibles, I can't help but think of the Warcraft Orc Giant Turtle/Submarine unit in the original series... Hell maybe have different races. Zoltans=magical elves/wizards that can power systems, Mantis=orcs, Rocks=giants, humans=humans, engi=steampunk robots like Skyrims automatons, slug=dwarves/goblins with looking glasses, Crystals=elementals/golems...etc

Hmm would be easier to mod, and could make for clever weapons. Just a thought, though I'm not a modder, so I have no say LOL