Is There Any Way To Mod

[Atrocities]

Is there any way to mod SE IV into a differant game. Say a game that is based on a planet where the worlds are replaced by islands and the star chart is an ocean?

Where the star ships become naval ships, and fighters become more like RL fighters. Where Troops are artiliary and infantry. Warp points become shipping lanes and components and facilities are based upon real world concepts.

Can it be done?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Probably. Only need to explain warp-points. Whirlpools?

[Jack Simth]

Nah - ocean currents/trade winds - you can go places FAST when the water/wind is pushing you in that direction. The warp points are simply the safe places to join the currents - if you try to jump in from the side current, your boat would be torn asunder from the speed difference in the water when you are halfway through - the "points" are places where the change is gradual.

[Atrocities]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Probably. Only need to explain warp-points. Whirlpools?

I have not read the other posts so please just bare with me.

I would say they are Trade Lanes and use an icon for that.

[Atrocities]

For the other mods that may have attempted this, all I can say is that I have been talking about it for years with many others. I wish they had stayed on but nope. If it can be done, I would like to try and do it. I honestly don't know how to pull it off, but I would like to try.

[Fyron]

The bulk of the work will be in creating the components and hulls and such. Converting the map to be oceans with islands is trivial. Well, once you decide what the planet types and atmosphers are supposed to represent, anyways...

[Atrocities]

Planet types and atmosphers cannot be editied. So they will have to be remain the same. I guess they can be explained away by localized habitat phenominon. Make all the races ROCK - Oxygen and if possible set up the mod to use more rock oxygen types than other. Some islands are more hospitable than others, and have better resources while others are less hospitiable, and my be poluted with poor resources.

Making the island images is going to be the hard part. As for ships, planes, and other images, well those will just take a lot of time.

To begin with make one basic set for all with differant flag and emblem colors. The ships will all look pretty much alike but will have a differant color strip on them like in Empire Earth.

How would we use satellites and DRones? Drones could be ICBM's, and Satellites could just be that, Satellites.

Weapon Platforms can be ground based AA weapons and or Surface to Air and Surface to Surface (SAM, SAS) sites.

Fighters will be a focus for the mod of course as the players navy should focus around the carrier as in RL.

The mod does not have to be based on earth, it can be based on any planet.

I think it would be a fun mod to try and make. I don't know about playing, but that too would be nice. In stead of glassing an island a player would have to land troops. Give islands a heavy defense bonus, and set most weapons to not target Islands (planets).

The propulsion system will need to be figured out though.

Long range fighters can be small ships (set up to be fighters if possible.)

Mines are mines are mines.

[Evil_Duckie]

I've often dreamed of a mod like this as well and would really like to see it happen. I'd love to give it a try, even though I've never modded SE4 (or any game for that matter...)

Atrocities, as for islands, I might be able to help out in that respect, since I'm a cartographer.

[spoon]

Based on what I was able to do in the Fantasy Empires Mod, I'd say, YES, it is definitely possible to mod se4 into a real-world naval game. There are some hardcoded things that can't be modded, but I don't think they detract too much from the immersion.

Fyron hit the nail on the head when he said:

Imperator Fyron said:
The bulk of the work will be in creating the components and hulls and such.

Don't underestimate the amount of time this takes. I basically just cut-n-pasted images from the web for components in my mod (see link in sig), and it still took a very long time to do.

Also, debugging some of the .txt data files was a lot more troublesome than I though it would be.

All said, you'd probably be hard pressed to get the mod out before SE5 ships, especially if you are doing most of the work yourself. (depending, of course, on the complexity of the mod and your amount of free time.).

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

I'd suggest changing just about the entire list of comps+facils..... so you'd have entirely different types of weapons, and you could make facilities which have multiple specialities, so that each facil will do at least one thing.