ship designs boring and too similar
 

hm i'm kinda annoyed at how every ship has only 2 forward gun hardpoints and only 2 forward heavy weapon hard points. One would assume a battleship or somthing would have more forward firing weapons than say a destroyer. Right now every ship is basically the same except for max tonnage. Sure you can throw on bigger and better weapons but you really can only have 2. I've really not found a use for hte side mounted weapons anything I throw on there for occational use can be better spent on bigger heavy weapons or more shields. Is there a way to mod a ship to make all the hardpoints face forward? or give them more hardpoints in general. Also why are all the heavy weapons ONLY missile weapons. Thats kind of wierd. Why not just call it a missile/torpedo hard point. Heavy weapon implies that a 40kton ripper bean should fit there.

[ October 10, 2003, 06:27: Message edited by: spacerat ]

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

Lots of the non-Terran races have ships with interesting firing arcs. I like the Abiddon ships, myself. They have pretty good all-around coverage. If you really want a 'battering ram' type ship with 4 or more forward facing missile or torpedo mounts you could mod it. You can also mod weapons to use the 'heavy' mounts if you want. That's the best feature of MM's games.

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

hmm, I guess it is time to reimplement that Orc Battle Kroozer by Atraikius. very fast, terrible to maneuver, and 5 weapons facing forward http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

That EEE destroyer was pretty nifty too.

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

You can mod the demo spaceships (terran cruisers, etc).

You can have all exsisting hardpoints have the same firing arc (direction)- just go into playership-somethingorother.txt

You can change the exsisting Hull spaces to be weapon slots (either light, or heavy). You can increase speeds (or decrease), turning rates, armor and hull and shield regeneration rates, costs, sell back value, actual tonage, etc.

The only thing I haven't been able to do is create a 360 degree firing arc, but something tells me that this will be possible (either later with a fix, or with the full game).

I'm sure with the full game you will be able to mod it so that certain hard points only accept certain types of weapons (like for just alien weaponry, or certain MOUNT size weaponry). As it is, it can distinguish between Heavy and Light, as well as armor or Shield... so it should be rather straightforward.

I might add, you can add extra shield and armor points too.

I bet this game would make a good Honor Harrington Mod since you could effectively mimic the 'wedge' and set up ships for broadside attacks.

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

It might, but you can't minic laser-heads except with fighters, and they wouldn't be destroyed when they attacked. Nor can you emulate rolling ship to interpose the wedge between you and incoming fire.

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

well i have the full verison and theres nothing as simple as playship.txt or anything to edit. Most the files arn't readable in notepad so i dono what to do. I'm sure some util will come out in a few days to do it but till them apparently im SOL.

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

Actually, most of the files -are- readable in notepad. You want the Campaigns folder, not the .x files.

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

I agree that the ships are too similar, but not because of weapons or firing arcs. I think that it is odd that the Fazrah cruiser is billed as the king of fast attack ships, while the Abbidon Crusiser 2 is described as slower than its Terran counterpart. However, top speed, acceleration, etc, are same for all cruisers, destroyers, battleships, and carriers (within the classes I mean). I am messing with modding some of this stuff to be different, such as making the Fazrah ships faster than the others, adding built-in armor & hull regeneration to Amonkrie ships, making the Abbidon ships slower, but maybe with increased resistances, and adding extra base cargo capacity to pirate ships. Only race I am having trouble coming up with an idea for is the Xiati... maybe added shield regen? Hopefully, these kinds of modifications would make the ships a little less generic.

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">All of the AI ships need some sort of 'base' level repair to compensate for their lack of a 'character' with skills like you get. Different races could have different levels of ability in various areas, of course, like the Amonkrie having higher armor regen.

The nearly identical maneuverability is a problem, as well as the arbitrary caps on speed. The only reason a destroyer is faster than a battleship is that the battleship has been capped. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif Both of these factors need to be adjusted, but hopefully MM will find a way to tweak the propulsion system to make it more realistic.

The Xiati could be given a 'unique' ability with some weapon modding. They already use Meson BLasters and Plasma Missiles, which are both relatively fast-firing weapons but do less damage per hit than others of similar type. You could speed them up further while decreasing the damage proportionally -- then a Xiati attack would consist of a hail of little fleabites that would be very hard to stop and add up to serious damage over time. This in itself is an advantage of sorts. The big, hard hitting Graviton Hellbore does lots of damage if it hits (it should do more, though... another mod needed) but you can hit that single torpedo with your PDC and make it useless. A huge number of little bullets from Meson BLasters and quick-firing Plasma Missiles is much harder to stop.

[ October 10, 2003, 22:42: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

Speaking of bullets, I really hope MM makes bolts able to miss in a patch; right now they're tracking is so pathetic they always miss, but when they're able to lead, not being able to miss might be a bit unbalanced. And strange!

And can you adjust the length of beams anywhere?

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

While I'm here, a quick question about guns...
I've got 2 PDC on my ship. When I get shot w/ 2+ torps, only one is shot down because both of my PDC target the same seeker. I don't suppose there is any way to make the PDCs target different seekers?
Are beam/bolt weapons allowed to be heavy? Can you make light torps? I suppose I could mod it and find out, but feeling too lazy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

Another question:
Several component types from SEIV that took awhile to research are avaliable pretty much from the start. The engines are the main thing I'm thinking about here. In SEIV, quantum engines represent quite a bit of research. In SF, they are available from the start. Is there any way to change this, so that certain components are only available for sale after a certain stardate, or something along those lines?

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

Bolts don't track, they only lead...
So, if you're far enough away, any changes in heading or speed by the other vessel can cause your whole volley to miss.

When I'm being chased by an angry squadron of meson bLaster carrying fighters in my mod, a series of zig-zags helps reduce the damage since when I zig, the bolts already in space are leading against my zag http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif
In practical terms, at best I can avoid maybe a half to a third of the fighter swarm's attack. Against a single ship with a single incoming fire vector, I can do much better http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

-----

You can't change the length of beams... They have fit the distance between your ship and the enemy...
Moddable duration would be very nice, and I'm suggesting it now.

-----

Any weapon will fit only in slots where the component says it is allowed.
Go to main_components.txt, and just add the names of other slots to the comma-separated list of allowed placement locations.

Or, you could just make a second "Heavy Mount" component, that is identical except that it fits in heavy wepaon slots, does double damage and is 50% bigger http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Which, incidentally is what I did for my mod... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There is a minimum level setting in the components.
Currently, the main difficulty in getting the advanced engines is price and simply them not showing up very often in stores.

You could also make some of them extremely rare by only giving them out as payment after particularily difficult missions.
Perhaps a "deliver-the-scientist" type mission.

[ October 11, 2003, 01:45: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

Engines... or certain stuff can be modded to appear based on skill level (experience).

There is a percentage chance for appearance in the spacedocks... play with that.

edit-beat to the punch:)

[ October 11, 2003, 01:45: Message edited by: clark ]

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

Doh, I forgot to check your mod out... I bet most of the stuff I'm talking about is in your mod in one way or another already http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
I've got it downloaded, but I was going to finish the game first. Now I want to go try it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

My mod uses the stock campaign, and just alters the physics.

As such, it'll either be an alternate for campaign 1, or a huge pile of spoilers depending on your point of view http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

Sj, I was mainly refering to how beams can go wild and are effected by ECM in that comment. Bolts aren't. Don't move? You WILL get hit.

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">true, there is a lot of stuff to resurrect (and so little time...)
Currently I am running into problems. Starfury gives me an invalid floating point operation and have no clue why http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">For my Mod, I have set things in the components so that shields provide their own regeneration even if you don't have dedicated regenerators... fairly slow, but shield damage is never permanent if the generator is still there.
I also gave 0.001 hull repair for every crew member on board. I added crew capacity modifiers to the crew quarters (naturally), bridge and med lab.
So, unless the ship is almost completely gutted already, they can slowly recover. A disabled shield generator gets fixed in a few minutes, assuming no other damage.

So instead of spending 10 skill points on hull repair, you could just add a 10kt crew quarters in order to house 50 more engineers http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

Component Configuration Slots ?

Is it possible to make new types of component configuration slots ? My ideas was to make new component and new component configuration slots for armor, shields and weapons. Then I could restrict certain types of component to certain classes of ships.
I tried using the SJ's Starfury Modding Toolkit - Release 1, and it works to a point. The problem is that the new component configuration slots are not visible in the game, but it does work. Any suggesting are appreciated.

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

sooo has anyone figured out how to change the firing direction for slots yet?

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's pretty easy. Each weapon slot has a firing point set for it in the ComponentConfigurationSlots files. The actual firing direction is in the SpaceObjects_XFiles.txt file, it looks like this...

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Just change the Start and End values to whatever you want (in degrees). The arcs shown in the inventory screen are defined in the ComponentConfigurationSlots files themselves and should be set to match the values in the XFiles file.

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

Did you make a purchasable ship hull that used the slot layout you just created?

You'll need to specify the components it comes with, crew levels, speed, 3Dmodel, etc.

Add the new ship hull to the player's purchaseships.txt or the startingships.txt

Or, just change one of the existing hulls to use your new layout.

PS:
Also note that it will not change a ship that already exists; you have to buy a new ship to get the new slot layout.

[ October 12, 2003, 03:58: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

I have double checked all my files but I am still having the same problem with the component configuration slots. It does everything it should, but shows up as a blank space in the spacedock and inventory screens. It does, however, shows up in the ship dealer screen.

This was after buying a new ship.

My files originally from the campaign 1 - homefront.
1065942971.zip

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

Ah, your comp type allowed is Weapon (D).

This is a known issue; the slot is actually there, but just dosen't get drawn because the type isn't one of the defaults.

It'll work fine for enemies, since they don't care anyways, and the patch will have them show up for players too.

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's pretty easy. Each weapon slot has a firing point set for it in the ComponentConfigurationSlots files. The actual firing direction is in the SpaceObjects_XFiles.txt file, it looks like this...

Quote:

Firing Point 1 X := 0.8 Firing Point 1 Y := -0.41 Firing Point 1 Z := 3.7 Firing Point 1 Arc Start := 315 Firing Point 1 Arc End := 45

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Just change the Start and End values to whatever you want (in degrees). The arcs shown in the inventory screen are defined in the ComponentConfigurationSlots files themselves and should be set to match the values in the XFiles file.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">dosnt work i tried that

edit: never mind it does you just gota rebuy the ships

[ October 13, 2003, 10:00: Message edited by: spacerat ]

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

My new placement locations are still not visible to the player even with the patch. Is there any way to make my new placement locations visible to the player? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

My new Placement Locations are:
Weapon (Ftr), Weapon (Sat), Weapon (Light), Weapon (Medium), Weapon (Heavy),
Weapon (star), Armor (Ftr), Armor (Sat), Armor (Light), Armor (Medium),
Armor (Heavy), Armor (Star), Shield (Ftr), Shield (Sat), Shield (Light), Shield (Medium),
Shield (Heavy), Shield (Star)

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

If you aren't using SJ's slot modder, I know that you have to manually set what the boxes look like on screen in addition to changing what type of box it is.

Slot 16 Xpos := 496
Slot 16 Ypos := 282
Slot 16 Group Name := Shield 2-1
Slot 16 Comp Type Allowed := Shield
Slot 16 Comp Type Abbreviation := S
Slot 16 Comp Box Color Index := 3
Slot 16 Ship Section := Hull
Slot 16 Ship Side Facing := 2
Slot 16 Weapon Firing Point := 0

Maybe Comp Box Color Index needs to be changed, or Comp Type abbreviation.
Possibly, if you have added a totally new box, you just need to change the Number of Slots line near the top of your ship's entry to include your added boxes.

Hope this helps! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, the patch arrived annnnd..custom slot types still don't work. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

"Should have", I suppose.

They are showing up in the ship dealer's screen, but they are hidden on the spacedock screen...

You should be able to drop components into the slot if you remember where it was.

This is probably because there isn't a checkbox under the display options for "Other" or "All"

[ October 25, 2003, 00:36: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

So far, no. Doesn't even beep if you try to put a non-valid component there.

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

I created a "Weapon (Magic)" slot on an abbidon carrier just now (using 1.08).

It did show up fine in the store, and buzzed me when I tried to drop an armor component in the hole where it was.

Re: ship designs boring and too similar
 

That's odd. I just did the same thing- changed a Terran Destroyers weapon(heavy) to weapon (Fighter)

The slot doesn't show up, but it DOES beep.

EDIT: it shows up in the ship purchase screen, but not in the spacedock..

And I missunderstood your post apparently, heh. Yeah, this is the same as what you said. It does show up in the dock if you turn on firing arcs, FWIW.

[ October 25, 2003, 03:59: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]