Planetary Assault Mod

[KnidVermicious]

I can't seem to attach files in the Downlad forums. What do I need to do? It used to work.

Anyway, here is something I've been working on:

Planetary Assault Mod v0.9 11/25/2003

Purpose of mod:
To change the strategic importance of planets and planetary invasion. Inspiration came from the Pacific Theater in WWII

Changes:
Removed the ability to target planets from all weapons. Ships can no longer glass planets from orbit, they must either land troops or blockade. The exceptions are Neutron, Radiation,Virus, and Smart Bombs. The other planetary assault weapons are gone.

Weapon Platforms are removed. I left the tech in to stop the AI from giving me errors. I intend to add massive planetary weapons (think Ion Cannon from Hoth or the Death Star laser) in future updates.

One side effect of changing the targets for the weapons is that ship weapons no longer target fighters. Point-Defense still works. A player must use fighters to engage other fighters.

Another side effect is that I had to divide fighter weapons between targeting fighters and ships. Although I did not originally want this, I think it adds some new dimensions to space combat.

Fighter vs Ftr\Sat\Seekers\Drone weapons:
Small AP Beam
Small DUC
Small Meson BLaster
Small Electric Discharge
Small Telekinetic Projector
Small Time Distortion Burst
Small Incinerator Beam

Fighter vs Ship:
Small Phased - Polaron Beam (to take advantage of the shield skipping)
Small Anti - Matter Torpedo
Small Crystalline Torpedo (I added this. It's essentially an AM torpedo that skips armor and costs more Rads)
Kamikaze Warhead
Small Rocket Pods
Small Shard Cannon
Small Acid Globule
Small Shield Depleter
Small Graviton Beam

---------------------------
In the future I intend to create new one-shot weapons for satellites and massive weapons on planets. I'm also trying to redo the entire troop setup to create larger units with more variety. I need to get the graphics done for that, though.

Any suggestions, bugs, or ommissions? Please let me know, this is only my second mod and I'm still hammering things out.

[ November 26, 2003, 19:15: Message edited by: KnidVermicious ]

[Fyron]

I can't seem to attach files in the Downlad forums. What do I need to do? It used to work.

The uploads module was not reinstalled when the server was upgraded. If you can, email the mod to me at admin at spaceempires dot net and I will post it on there for you. Otherwise, we can find an alternate means to get it on there, such as a temporary FTP account.

[ November 26, 2003, 19:15: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[KnidVermicious]

I emailed it to you. Thanks Fyron.

[Fyron]

All I got was a 0 KB text file? Try zipping the mod up instead.

[Suicide Junkie]

You can upload it to ftp://imagemodserver.mine.nu/uploads alternatively.

Just click OK when your browser complains about not having read-permission, then drag and drop your ZIP or RAR file.

I can then move it to the miscellaneous section of http://imagemodserver.mine.nu for you to link to.

[userx]

Will the AI automatically start invading planets with these changes you are proposing or are there other things that you will need to change to make this work? I find this very cool as I also believe that it's more useful to invade then to "glass."

[Fyron]

Just so you know, you can download the file from SpaceEmpires.net here: Planetary Assault 0.9

[SpaceBadger]

Cool idea. I have always found it annoying that a tiny little escort with one measly early-game weapon like a DUC1 or APB1 can come in and destroy a colony. Another idea if you didn't want to completely prohibit normal ship weapons from attacking planets would be to adjust the number of damage points required to kill a given number of population - I remember seeing that adjustment in one of the data files, maybe settings.txt?

SpaceBadger

[Fyron]

The problem with that is that every shot will kill at least one population, regardless of how high the setting is. So colony might take a second combat round to finish off, but that is it. That, and I don't think that setting modifies how much damage it takes to kill facilities.

[SpaceBadger]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
The problem with that is that every shot will kill at least one population, regardless of how high the setting is. So colony might take a second combat round to finish off, but that is it.

Ah, did not know that. Bummer.

That, and I don't think that setting modifies how much damage it takes to kill facilities.

Yeah, to make it work you'd also need to go through the facilities data files and make them all tougher - but the "1 shot kills 1 pop" thing you mentioned above pretty much ruins that idea anyway.

SpaceBadger