Dev-Blug: Teeth of the Tiger

[bengaltiger]

I've noticed I have the only project here that doesn't have a blogthread in it, so here it is.

Just like the competit... my fellow modders have in their sections, I'll be writing about things more or less related to this project.

I'll try too keep from spoilering things, perhaps by giving information not specific enough to make it obvious what will be encountered in the game. Especially if it's about the storyline (note to team: which I'll need to rewrite a bit, especially the last 2 chapters. Note to everyone: writing science fiction after a 12 hour work day doesn't guarantee it'll be good science fiction).

So here it goes:

Entry 1

Today I'll write the first few things about the Tiigran-Merisst (or highlight a few things that can be noticed in the demo, and some details).

First of all, they appear to be able to jam GTVA sensors and are untargettable unless there's an AWACS nearby. That is because they rely on sneaking around in space. Their ships are covered by a thick layer of armor, engineered not to reflect EM waves, and also to keep it's thermal signature pretty low (except the thrusters, but those won't make a large enough fraction of a pixel not to be filtered out as background noise when far away).
That allows their strike craft to roam through a system completely unnoticed beyond combat ranges, while the Tiigrans themselves see everybody. Their capships are yet to be spotted, so no info is available.

This allows them to conduct precise, fast and devastating attacks against their enemies (and the Shivans appear to be on their list of things to blow up). Their abilities are also so much superior to the GTVA's that they perhaps ignore us, just like a tiger ignores wild dogs when hunting down a gazelle...
Or the ones met in the Intro to 'Teeth of the Tiger' simply weren't authorized to say anything, or they didn't figure out English yet...

Their strike craft use mighty guns, strong missiles, and swarm bombs that can disrupt enemy ships. These disruptors are the reason why the T-MB Cuirassiers and T-MB Cataphracts in the third mission seemed to have absorbed an unbelievable amount of Flak and sAAA- most shots simply missed.

The price of having such advanced weapons is having a small amount of them (in the case of the T-MF Hussar) or being a big and slow platform (the bombers).

Now, if you've made it this far:
The T-M aren't the only reason why this mod will require an Inferno build of FS Open.

[bengaltiger]

Entry 2

I've fixed the ending, can't spoil it though The mod now has 39 missions planned, about 6 of which are either finished or need some small/medium fixes.

Other than that, I finally got to work on recoloring the Higher Shivans. People wanted green, so they'll get green:

[bengaltiger]

Entry 3:

The Ancients confessed they killed off tons of civilizations, and the Shivans most likely killed many more, but the Orion Arm (a minor arm of the Milky Way located between the Sagittarius Arm and the Perseus Arm, two of the four major arms of the Milky Way); our galactic neighborhood, is a big place. There are countless stars in these arms, and the place isn't as empty as citizens of the GTVA might think it is. There are the Tiigran-Merisst, which are pretty mysterious so far, but even they are just the tip of a ginormous iceberg, when it comes to the number of inhabitants of this part of the Galaxy...

[bengaltiger]

Entry 4:

After lots of non-screenshotworthy work, I've made it to the point that there are 7 Tiigran-Merisst strike craft of various sizes which are already modelled and UV-mapped on my HDD.
Now as soon as I get some textures on them, I'll be able to post a few updates. These 7 ships are the final T-M units that will be flyable in this mod, giving a total of some 12 Tiigran ships the player will be able to use. The ships range from very old fighters through standard issue gunships to brand new heavy bombers.

They're not, however, all the new player-flyable ships this mod will feature.

[bengaltiger]

Entry 5:

The number of ships and placeholders that are reserving a name and ship class (including 3 cargo containers) in the Tiigran-Merisst Navy is now somewhere above 30. Guess I have a lot of tech decriptions to write; so far I've done 3.

Obviously, to do those I had to create a whole story about the history of the T-M, so I could put a few things worth reading in the ships' descriptions.


And last, but not least: Happy Easter everyone.

[bengaltiger]

Entry 6:

With Nx joining I have some energy to work on this project again, prepare for another screenshotspam on HLP next week or so.

The ships I'm working on now include the T-MF Hussar Mk2 (top), the T-MF Ansar (middle), T-MGs Dragoon (left) and the T-MB Clibanarius (right).


Once done with them, all Tiigran strike craft to be featured in TotT will be flyable. They will form 3 generations of ships- the brand new units, the ones that form the main parts of the T-M fleet, and those which are no longer used by the T-M Navy, but can still be found on the frontlines once in a while (where, how and why- you'll find out when Chapter 1 gets finished).

[bengaltiger]

Entry 7:

This time it's an apology, I wrote before I'd have a bunch of stuff done by now, but I'm a bit too busy at the WUT (I'm even late with a couple of things), so I need to extend my break from TotT for at least this week.

Sorry d00ds.

However when I'll have the time, I'll be working on this again.

[bengaltiger]

Entry 8:

Back to work on this project, I have only about 15 more tech descriptions to write for the Tiigrans (including a few one-liners for cargo containers).

Included in them are some dates of large events in Tiigran history, information on the design and evolution of their ships, weapons, tactics, strategy and a few other things. This should give the T-M as a species some depth and detail.