Updated mod: The Babylon Project

chabex · #1 December 17th, 2006, 10:37 AM

An idea- or question- hit me: would it be possible to use more beacons? Or use the existing one to summon an ally of choice? It would be cool if in case you have allies like the centaury or narn etc. they could be summoned to fight eg. the Shadow Battlecrab. This would be more like in the series and it would be more fun to play. Only small ships could be added to the fleet. Of course it would cut the possibility to upgrade those capital ships, but with race specific permanent weaponry could spice up the B5 feeling.
Opinions?

PaddirN · #2 December 17th, 2006, 03:13 PM

It's an interesting idea and it may actually help with another problem I've encountered. Maybe do the beacons as trade-offs: Each race would have its own item that would befriend them and get their beacons.

The only thing is that the command to get those beaconed allies to come is a SUMN command which I think just summons the nearest <race> fleet to your position. In the regular game this is just fine with the klakar because they only have just one fleet. So if I wanted specific allies I think I'd need to make new races for each one. Not too hard, but I'll think about it some more and play around with it.

Jamiri · #3 December 18th, 2006, 06:54 AM

I like the idea as well. And I don't have a problem with summoning the closest of the fleets (as this is the most logical anyway, although MIND that no races besides the Centauri, Minbari, Vorlon and Shadows/Drakh have the Jump Drives, so actually no other race could jump in instantly).

The Shadows will take out even larger fleets easily so you shouldn't worry to much about having to make extra fleets for each race that are sort of scaled down. But make the beacon single use only, cause otherwise you could summon in a fleet, back out if it is destroyed, go back in and summon another fleet again and so on.

B.t.w. when do we see the next update??

PaddirN · #4 December 18th, 2006, 07:39 AM

Actually I just uploaded the new update, you can find it at the top of the thread.

Two somewhat big changes:

1) Victory main gun is now a one shot (per combat) deal, with a "gong" type activation. Only fires straight in front of the ship, so make sure you're locked on to target. Also, b/c of this I had to remove any allies to the Victory mission (other missions unaffected), otherwise other ships in the flotilla would fire the victory gun. However, the ally beacon idea may very well solve this problem, so I'll mess around with it and see what I can do with it. Though, now that I think about it, no allies for the Victory (science) mission might make more sense as not having allies would give you less incentive to attack, although I might have to create an 'aethric mirror' type item(?) for non-violent scorers. Maybe I could finally do something with jumpgates!

2) Ship sizes/armor/speeds/turns have been altered after I reviewed info on the B5-tech manual. Not sure how that page rates as far accuracy, but I wanted to make everything consistent (ie the drakh cruiser should be the biggest ship at 3300m, while the Victory is 2990m, and the Omega is 1700m; whereas previously the drakh cruiser and the Victory were both smaller than the Omega). This may or may not completely F up gameplay, let me know and I'll fudge some more numbers.

Enjoy!

CautiousChaos · #5 December 18th, 2006, 10:33 AM

Love the idea of having Victory only firing once per combat. Much more aligned to the weapon's characteristics in the series. Just d/l now. Looking forward to trying this latest version out.

Want to compliment you on this mod. Hands down, this is the very best mod out there. I'm not even slightly inclined to switch back to the vanilla after playing this one for a few weeks...

-cc

PaddirN · #6 December 27th, 2006, 07:25 PM

OK, new version 2.45 has now been uploaded, you can get it at the top of the thread. Highlights include:

* As per request: the addition of beacons to your list of allies in the war against the Shadows. The drazi ally event has been deleted and in its place is: Tirk, a drazi mercenary you can summon with a hyperspace beacon. There's also a few more beacons out there to find, can you catch them all?

* New race & ship: Vree with a Xill saucer. Vree Conglomerate grandly open now for good business trade!

* New ship: Vorlon fighter

* adjustments to power levels of shadows & vorlons, should make battles slightly more manageable

* Jump point generator is now findable and the hyperin/hyperout effects/sounds have been changed to make it more "realistic"

* Yet another attempt at jumpgates

Enjoy.

CautiousChaos · #7 December 29th, 2006, 02:06 AM

Uh oh.. Bug. I met the Vree and was offered a beacon (think it was the Vree).

Anyways, I had no room for extra cargo, so I wanted to switch out an item for the beacon.

I clicked on the item to switch and then moved it to the planet.

Then a whole mess (like 5) beacons appeared on the planet. Then another 4.

I finally got rid of the item in exchange for the beacon and found 3 beacons in my hold.

This is over the maximum I should have been able to carry.

I then took this over to a shadow-occupied planet, entered combat, and crashed to desktop...

Pity, I was looking forward to the fight...

-cc