Updated mod: The Babylon Project

[Jamiri]

PaddirN said:
With the Vree (and Tirk), I've changed the coding around some and made it so they actually appear on map, this may or may not fix that issue. Were they not being summoned into combat or on the star map or both?

Neither on the map nor in combat!

PaddirN said:
The text for the Pak'ma'ra ally is fairly similar for both the victory mission and the others, I think a bad smell is mentioned in both versions and that he needs to remain on his own ship (which I figured would explain the extra ship in your flotilla). It may be that or its possible something is out of whack in the large map version.

You may be right. Need to double-check that next time.

However, there's another bug I found: I allied with the dark side (Morden) and had attached a keeper to me later. When I got to Zhad'um, the radar popped up and I was about to fight. But then the mission, where I have to get Sheridan from B5, suddenly came up after I decided to stay. At the same time, the siren (warning me of a super nova) was played and when I clicked "ok" on the Sheridan mission I got to another screen (which was all the time in the back already) saying that I had followed Sheridan to Zhad'um, who was now blowing up the whole place. I barely escaped but I took some of the nice stuff from the planet with me. However, it seems broken that Sheridan was already there, when I received the mission to get him from B5.

[Jamiri]

I had a really good gaming experience with the B5 Project mod tonight. So here's my (bug) report:

I got the Narn and the Pak'Ma'Ra ally relatively early and managed to take out some fleets (played on medium), while building up a rather well equipped Whitestar. I also found the Triluminary and Delenn became "cocooned" soon, but strangely never came out again (although I explored all systems). In one of the tougher battles I lost the Pak'Ma'Ra ship but not before befriending the rest of their race.

I also got the Drazi Sash, and here's the first major bug: After getting the sash I went to the Centauri Homeworld and destroyed the fleet gaining the Jumpdrive. Then I went to a Drazi fleet and they told me that they would beat me up wearing that Sash in the wrong colour. However, another window popped up telling me that the Drazi were impressed by my battle skills at Centauri prime and that they would ally up with me. But they didn't...instead they attacked me. Maybe some of the quest conditions need to be checked here, don't know.

And then the situation became tough for me, as two Shadow fleets and one Drakh fleet appeared on the scene making their way towards B5. I decided to intercept one to see how strong they were. I had the frozen telepath with me only to reveal a Battlecrab in the fleet so I retreated from battle - for the moment. While the invasion fleets were moving I noticed another strange bug: fleets seem to stop moving when their movement path traces through a black hole. These fleets get stuck in space for good.

I used the jumpgate beacon to displace any Shadow fleet that had reached B5 until I had explored the entire map, hoping to have Delenn pop out of her cocoon after all. When I realized that she wouldn't I used the jumpgate (mirror) effect to get the Minbari fleet to B5 and waited for one of the Shadow fleets to arrive. Together with the Minbari War Cruiser I took it out easily.

However, the Minbari capital ship was destroyed during the engagement so I had to get another fleet - this time the Pak'Ma'Ra - in to defend against the second Shadow wave. I succeeded again but only to find the incoming Drakh fleet stuck in transit towards B5 next to a black hole (see above). So I retired (as everthing else was explored) only to find out that I still lost due to a Shadow victory, since I did not destroy the attacking Drakhs.

What I also had tried was sending Shadow fleets into a black holes using the jumpgate beacon (=mirror), but they did not get destroyed in there, which is a cool feature I think. On the other hand, the invasion fleets move very slowly through nebulae, as if the y had no drive equipped at all. Maybe you should fix that, as the Shadows definitely have developed such kind of nebula drive.

Comments:
Wow, this was so great to play tonight and even though I played on a medium sized map, it felt epic as the struggle against the incoming Shadow fleets seemed to last for ages. I also managed to find out some new things, such as getting into trouble if you have "dust" on board your ship (make it more valuable to have the player keep it on board at all times) and bump into a EA fleet. They scan you and tell you to stand down, but there's another bug here. During the encounter when they scan you and detect the drugs they will let you leave or investigate the system without harming you. But if you come back later or go to a different EA system, they'll attack you (which is fun nonetheless).

I still believe the jumpgate beacon is way too powerful right now and breaks the game somehow. I suggest: just remove the jumpgates from play until you find a better solution. I know it's been a great effort and it's already your second try to get them into the game, but I'm sure you'll come up with a much better alternative later. On the other hand it's just my opinion and if the others believe they should stay in the game, well, it's your choice.

On a further note: I met Morden only once recently. Have you reduced the odds for him to show up?

Gonna play the mod again as soon as I find time! It really rocks!

[PaddirN]

Whew! That's some hella feedback, glad people are still enjoying the mod, bugs and all. I'll try to get to everything.

* As far as events not showing up (Morden, Delenn chrysalis), I'm guessing thats due to the number of events in the mod now. I may change the FLAG for Morden to always or just add in another wishing event to compensate. With the Delenn (and Garibaldi) change events I didn't make the two stages linked, as in under the same event file. Before it wasn't so much a problem because chances were you'd always get both events, but apparently that isn't always the case anymore. I'm sure there's a way to make both occur in the same event file, I'll just have to play around with that.

* With the Drazi sash and centauri prime victory conditions, I can imagine how I can fix that, though I'm not sure if it'll work or not. I've noticed that when trying to cram too many Conditions into Page commands it tends to just ignore the Page altogether. Although 4 is the limit I still notice problems with even this many, I usually try to keep it down to 2 or 3. We'll see what happens.

* When the fleets come to attack B5 its actually supposed to be only Shadow ships with no Drakh, but for some reason I can't figure out which Fleet numbers its using. In the quest file it goes for shadow flets -1, -5, & -10, but the fleets it actually sends out don't seem to correspond with those numbers.

* Hmmm, not sure about the fleets being stuck in transit to B5. It may have to do with the hull flags on the ships. I may just need to set them all to 'antigravity' or something. However, that would then take away the 'black hole kill' aspect of it.

* Dust has been made more expensive for the next update, making it worthwhile to keep. I also noticed the bug with the EA not immediately attacking you if you have dust onboard and I've been working with it, but I'm still not sure why that is. I may just have to make a Page command that just makes the EA an enmy as long as you're carrying it aboard, and not just when you encounter them.

* With the jumpgate beacon I'm reminded of the vanilla version of weird worlds and every time I go into the weird worlds forum I always see that forum thread: "The non-violent high score list", so I figure there's gotta be at least some people who are interested in playing with an aethric mirror effect in the game. I'm tempted to make it not findable, but allow it to be wishable so that if you really want it you can get it.

Hope that covers everything.

[Jamiri]

PaddirN said:
* When the fleets come to attack B5 its actually supposed to be only Shadow ships with no Drakh, but for some reason I can't figure out which Fleet numbers its using. In the quest file it goes for shadow flets -1, -5, & -10, but the fleets it actually sends out don't seem to correspond with those numbers.

Isn't it just because you made the Drakh and the Shadows being one race in order to not attack each other?
If you cannot correct it, I don't see a problem here, as the Drakh may very well support the Shadow attack with a small fleet.

* Hmmm, not sure about the fleets being stuck in transit to B5. It may have to do with the hull flags on the ships. I may just need to set them all to 'antigravity' or something. However, that would then take away the 'black hole kill' aspect of it.

Don't want to be able to kill the attackers in black holes. It's too easy.

* Dust has been made more expensive for the next update, making it worthwhile to keep. I also noticed the bug with the EA not immediately attacking you if you have dust onboard and I've been working with it, but I'm still not sure why that is. I may just have to make a Page command that just makes the EA an enmy as long as you're carrying it aboard, and not just when you encounter them.

That should work, I guess. Can you make the dust be valuable regardless of the type of mission you are on (i.e. science, military, etc.)?

* With the jumpgate beacon I'm reminded of the vanilla version of weird worlds and every time I go into the weird worlds forum I always see that forum thread: "The non-violent high score list", so I figure there's gotta be at least some people who are interested in playing with an aethric mirror effect in the game. I'm tempted to make it not findable, but allow it to be wishable so that if you really want it you can get it.

B5 is not a peaceful world, so I don't think people want to play it the non-violent way (as it might be the case for vanilla). Here's my suggestion if you want to have a aethric mirror effect in the game: use something different to represent it, not the jumpgates. Jumpgates do not make other fleets swap places with your ship if you use them. That's just not as it is. It destroys some of the B5 realism in the game...

Jamiri

[Jamiri]

Ok, here's another short report:

- I played 5 times, of which I had Tirk's beacon three times, but he never could be summoned (neither on the map nor in battle). I played on a large map tonight with the Omega.
- Dust: the EA fleet was scanning my Pak'Ma'Ra ally for contraband although it was long since dead already. And I read carefully this time ;-).
- Dust (continued): this time, however, the EA fleet immediately attacked me, while another one later on did not. How come?
- Recommendations: make the Nial fighter have a much smaller turning radius to give it more agility, which it deserves.
- the Omega frontal cannons should be "integral". Right now I usually swap them with the Rocket Launcher in the second row and have my full firing arcs back again. They are even better protected there from enemy fire. In addition, it would make sense to have these heavy guns fixed to the ship permanently as their sheer size make them difficult to handle in deep space. The player still keeps four flexible weapon slots to put all his other nice guns and beams into.

Jamiri

EDIT: this page might help to get some ship pictures http://www.shipschematics.net/b5/chronology.html

[Fingers]

The negative fleet numbers pick the fleet based onthe race's difficulty settings. -1 is the first fleet on the DIFx line, -10 is the last one. The DIF line is chosen based on the map size and the "number of enemies" setting, just like for regular fleets.

[PaddirN]

* What do you mean by: "make the Nial fighter have a much smaller turning radius to give it more agility"? I would like to keep it from stopping so much when firing but I'm not sure which attribute you're talking about.

* I'm looking into the large maps and fleets, for some reason none of the beacon allies shows up, I suspect it has something to do with the #'s in the distribution.ini file. The beacon allies work fine in medium size, so I figure all I have to do is tweak some numbers.

* Having dust on you should work properly now with the next update and the EA will attack on sight although I'll have to change the text around because I think the code for <uvar=shipname> will just grab the newest ship in your flotilla.

* I don't think I need to make the omega main guns structural, I should just be able to change the size of the weapon slots to make it so they only fit into the forward slots.

As for the distribution.ini file, curious about what these values mean exactly, these are the values for the large map size:

ENMY 4
FLET 25
JOBM 40
SCRN 96 112 128
SCRE 96 112 128

[Jamiri]

I mean the radius the Nial needs to make a full 180° turn, which seems to be much smaller for other fighters. Might have something to do with the overall speed of a fighter.

Currently the problem with the Nial is that it sometimes
does not stop spinning around the waypoint you sent it to.

With regard to the Omega: Didn't know that the weapon slots on one single ship can differ.

[PaddirN]

Ok, new update 2.6 is posted at the top o' the thread.

* I believe I figured out the problem with some fleets not showing up in the large maps. Well actually, I came up with 2 fixes for it and I'm just not sure which one did it. It had to do with the max number of fleets allowable. This created some conflicts with some races always having a set # of fleets vs. the fleets created for the random races. Beacon allies should show up now on large maps.

* New Ships! Shadow Scout, Narn Frazi, EA Thunderbolt, and the entire Brakiri fleet has been redone.

* New image for the Omega shows rotated section. Doesn't actually rotate... yet?

* Centauri primus launches fighters now, should make it a bit tougher (antique primus unchanged). Why should the narn have all the fun?

* Changes to the weapon slot sizes for the Omega and the whitestar. Omega only has two large (size 3) weapon slots in the front. Whitestar only has one large weapon slot. Instead of being able to load up on heavy weapons, you'll have to pick and choose between your big guns.

* quest file naming structure changed ('ally_', 'alws_', 'evnt_', 'main_', 'game_', and 'nver_'). Purely an internal change and *shouldn't* affect anything in game. Just easier to organize everything now.

* Jumpgate access codes no longer findable, however they are still in game as a cheat code of sorts.

* The price of dust has gone up and the EA should respond accordingly to traffickers. Just say No to dust!

* You now have something of a choice of what to do with the data crystal containing Clark's dirty little secret.

* A bunch of other changes too small worth mentioning!

[Jamiri]

Guess I've become an addict of your mod . I am always looking forward to the latest updates of this.

So today I couldn't wait to give the 2.60 a try. Here's what I found:

- the new Omega looks good. But check out the firing arc view of it in the game. It overlaps the border of the circle.

- EA dialogue seems to be cut short (or a full stop is missing)

- Hooray, the Brakiri ships have arrived! This was one of the greatest additions, I believe! I just couldn't stand the Muktian/Brakiri hybrids any longer. Their cruiser seems a bit weak though.

- What's the use of the Apocalypse box? Does it have any?

- Nice: the enemy Primus Battlecruisers now launch fighters. But they are missing the fighter bay on the schematics during combat (not too much of a problem).

- the Narn Gorith ally is also great. Have they been using Drazi Railguns all the time?

- Tirk's beacon cannot be traded (e.g. when he's dead). Intended or just a bug?

- The scanner anomalies are really creative! At the first encounter nothing happened and then on the second the nasty Shadow scout took me by surprise!

BUGs:

- I encountered B4 (after a long time eventually) and this time it jumped during combat, just like a Zorg Fighter! It was also armed like hell (which is no bug, I know)!

- Spelling: Micheal Garibaldi (in his second form) should be Michael

- Debriefing: when playing and finishing Omega missions, I got the following: "...put the XYZ to a test", where XYZ was the name of an allied ship long since dead.

- major bug: played Omega on large map, came to Earth and suddenly the End of Civil War event popped up. At that point I had not triggered any specific events or missions, and carried no specific items. The only special items I had were the Green Sash and I had dumped the Dust before (using no in the dialogue). The latter one might be the reason, as it probably affects EA fleets in some way.

Ideas:
- remove sound in the intro that is played when the planet is displayed.

- make some muzzle effects for the beam weapons (low priority)

- there's still the glass sound when you confirm something. Should be changed, imho.

Apart from that: Great, great, GREAT mod!

Jamiri