AvP Mod

[Goatfoam]

Yeah, I think the aliens are going to have a pretty distinct flavour and should be a lot of fun to play for those of us with 'evil' leanings.

As for weaponry... They've got Projectile Acid, Acid Spray, Pheromone Discharge, Psychic Disruption and Alien Runners for their main weapons so far. Projectile acid is the most conventional weapon, doing medium damage over a fairly short range. The Acid Spray is a point defence weapon, again with short range, which will dissolve any missiles or fighters that run into it. The other three weapons are all really for aid in boarding attacks. The Pheromone Discharge increases enemy reload times, Psychic Disruption works like a tractor beam, and the Alien Runners are a precursor to any boarding action - they have a range of 1, and do damage to any security/boarding teams on the enemy ship, which will leave them open.

The one thing I'm not sure about is the boarding actions themselves, which I haven't got too far into looking at as yet. Once the aliens have boarded a ship (assuming it doesn't self-destruct), I really don't want them to have access to the technology - is there any way to force the alien player to strip the ship of components and replace it with hive sections at a space yard before they can use it?

[Ragnarok-X]

hm as far as i know, there is no way to achieve what you want. There are a few options, such as making a ship "uncontrolled" until the combat ends (so the capturer cannot move or fire until the combat is over). Maybe there is an option which will make will give no new tech if the ship is analyzed (maybe something about the tech tree, to make it impossible to further research the analyzed techs by restricting them to traits?)


anyway another question: im a bit confused by the races. You say Xenomorphs and Aliens. I guess the "Aliens" are the ones from the "Alien" movies, but what are Xenomorphs again ?!

[Goatfoam]

"Xenomorphs" and the Aliens from the movies are the same thing. "Xenomorph" is just the term that the Colonial Marines have given them, since there are hundreds of different alien life-forms out there.

As for tech... yeah, all the techs are specific to the races in the form of traits already - but the aliens will still be able to control captured ships after combat - unless the ships are fitted with self-destruct mechanisms. I suppose the aliens could make use of many smaller vessels with boarding parties to exchange ship deaths with the enemy, which would make them a "swarmy" player... that could be fun, so long as the constant loss of ships in combat wasn't too much of a disadvantage.

I don't suppose there is a way to completely remove components from a ship after capture (other than making them simply "destroyed"), is there?

[Ragnarok-X]

im modding quite a lot, too. The only things i know off are the following:


- Successful boarding attack will result in the destruction of ALL components with boarding defense abilty, a unsuccessful boarding attack will result in the destruction of ALL components with the boarding attack ability.

- Destroyed components can only be repaired if the required tech knowledge is available.

Maybe you can make up something with the help of those 2 "hints" ?

[Fyron]

is there any way to force the alien player to strip the ship of components and replace it with hive sections at a space yard before they can use it?

Sure. Give 1 boarding defense ability to every component that you want to be destroyed upon boarding. As long as the tech needed for them is unavailable to the Aliens, they won't be able to repair such components and will need to retrofit the ship. You won't be able to use the "Only Security Stations" damage type very well, but it might be ok. Also, this does increase the boarding defense of ships, so you might want to increase the boarding attack values of all boarding party components by an appropriate amount to compensate.

[Goatfoam]

I suppose I could add the Destroy Planet Size ability to security components, and set it to 0, then change the damage to type of the security-destroying weapons to Only Planet Destroyer, since there likely won't be any weapons that can destroy a planet in this mod. Would that work?

[Fyron]

It would, but it might confuse the AI into thinking those are actually stellar manipulation ships. You will have to test it.