Skirmishes Mod for Starfury

[rstaats10]

I have made a fun little Skirmishes Mod for Starfury. I would say it's more of an "arcade-style" game when you want to just fight. It's nothing too complicated just battles in 1 system against enemy ship(s) you can choose. You start off with the Basic Terran Destroyer Mark I and can purchase most any of the original Starfury ships with credits earned including the "amazing Sithrak Mothership".

There is roughly 80 total jobs in this Skirmish mod. There are 3 levels of difficulty too. You can choose between 1 and 3 jobs at a time. You earn credits, experience and bonuses (repair components, fighters and destroyer escorts based upon your job selections and completions. More details are included in the Mod.

If you just want to battle it out and dont want to travel through systems then this is something you should try out. I used the original Starfury ships for this Skirmish Mod. For example, if you want to take on a Xiati battleship with a Sithrak Destroyer it is possible. There are many combinations you can choose.

I have provided an attachment for download. Enjoy the Skirmishes Mod!

[Baron Munchausen]

Just played it a bit. Interesting, but has some problems. For one, there's only the single system. Meaning, you can't go anywhere and reset the stardock components. Meaning you have to save and reload to 'keep up' with your enemies. How about a few 'real' nearby systems? Alpha Centauri? Barnard's Star? Wolf 395? All you need is a few other systems to go to instead of having everything happen in the Earth/Sol system. An outpost of somesort in some of those system would possibly be good, but not as necessary as the systems themselves.

And a little cleanup of the "job" file is needed. Some of the missions have "[%EnemyShipsSpecificGroupName%]" appearing instead of the name of the enemy. Something has been typoed somewhere.

But I agree that a 'small' mod for simple unstructured play is a good idea. This is a good start. A little more work is needed.

[rstaats10]

Thanks for the comments on the Skirmish Mod. I purposely made it 1 system just to cut out the travelling around. This was to be just a simple fight-type mod with no travel or story. I knew about the components issue at the Earth spacedock but I opted to keep it with 1 system. Putting in another system would be easy though and would solve that problem with componets at the Earth spacedock. I just thought with the weps gained from enemy ships, an Earth spacedock, repair components, and fighter/destroyer escort bonuses, it would be sufficient for the player. Did you enjoy getting the Destroyer escort ships to add to your fleet?

I basically came up with this idea for the Skirmishes Mod when making my Stargate Mod, but waited to finish the Stargate mod first. Have you played the Stargate Mod? It took me over 1 year to make the Stagate Mod and has tons of missions and systems.

In the Skirmishes Mod I kept the original Starfury ships and stuff. I also thought it would be a good mod if someone wants to add their own ship model and test it out quickly against any number of original Starfury ships.

I kept all the original race alliances from the stock game on purpose. My personal favorite skirmishes are when I select 3 missions at once with different races and all races are fighting each other including me at the same time. But I left this in control of the player as to what ship(s)/race(s) they want to fight by letting the player select the missions.

Thanks for providing me the feedback on the Skirmishes Mod.

[Baron Munchausen]

I wondered where the destroyer escorts were coming from! I thought maybe I was accidentally picking them up when I destroyed 'rogue' Terran capital ships. Oh, btw, the 'rogue' Terran carrier I hunted had zero fighters or fighter bays and only Ionic pulse missiles for weapons. Weird. Something out of whack there.

If I collect enough of those escorts I can buy my own carrier & field a whole fleet of destroyers instead of fighters. Now if only there were an apocalyptic battle to use all that power!

The extra systems are really essential to make the game interesting. It gets boring running around the same system all the time. And it would be cool to have some 'realistic' depictions of the other systems known to be near us. Alpha Centauri is a binary, while Barnard's Star is a pale little red dwarf not even visible to the naked eye, and so is Wolf 359. You could have the Alpha Centauri system full of only distant planets (any close planets having been swallowed by the orbiting binary stars) or the Barnard's Star or Wolf 395 systems full of many nebulae because of the weak dwarf star not pushing the gases away like a more powerful star would. Outposts are optional, but would be nice to have.

So far I have only selected one mission at a time because the enemy arrival location is random and I don't want to fail a mission because of having to run all over the map. It would be interesting to have some more complex missions, but again that would be much more possible with multiple systems.

I did play the Stargate mod. It's much larger and more complex. There were some typos, but also some other problems. I didn't finish and wasn't going to comment until I had finished it.

[rstaats10]

Yes I know about the Rogue Terran Carrier and also the Abbidon Rogue Carrier has no fighter bays or fighters. I didn't notice the problem until I had make the mod available. It is a real easy fix however. Just change the enemies file to in the Pirate race section to have ship specific components and cargo. I had just forgot. I will add this to a list of changes and release a new version sometime in the near future.

I'm glad you like the Destroyer Escorts! I have them automatically loaded to your cargo hold after completing "x amount of jobs". I wanted this to be kinda arcade-sytle with the bonus components. It gives something extra for the player. As far as an final climatic battle, I may make one. We'll see. Keep the posts comming.

I could always make an extra system or systems but that was not my original design for this. Maybe I could make a deep-space system devoid of any planets. That would solve the componets restocking and levels issues at the Earth spacedock.


Thanks.

[Baron Munchausen]

You don't need to do any custom image creation to make the extra systems. Just edit some text files. Another possibility, I guess, would be to split the Sol system up into different 'virtual' areas. Put Uranus/Neptune/Pluto waaaay out in their own location. But then you'd have a system with no star.

(Hmm, I wonder if you could create a custom background to add a larger than usual star in one direction?)

[rstaats10]

(Hmm, I wonder if you could create a custom background to add a larger than usual star in one direction?)[/quote]


Yes you can. Good idea. I had never thought of that before. I tried it out and made a custom skybox bmp for the system. It worked. See the attachment for the pic.

[rstaats10]

Ok, I have the attachment for version 1.1 of the SF Skirmishes Mod available for download. I have fixed the Rogue Terran Carrier and also the Abbidon Rogue Carrier. They now have fighter bays and fighters. Also I put a Site Center on the Earth's moon so you can toggle back to the Earth to get the increased component levels with each advancing player level and it will reset the stock of components as well. No extra systems were made. This mod is just to fight so there is no need for stories or extra systems. Credits for illegal cargo was increased too. I made a few other little changes here and there.
Enjoy.

[mikewhl]

Very nice mod. I use it to get a look at my ships.
I've mod'ed your mod to not level up components (got tired of the constant swapping). Fun, I play it the most often.

Mike