Adding spice to the game...

[Hok]

I recently bought the game after playing the demo shortly.
I'm an old-days Elite's fan and I found the similarities between the two games the main reason that convinced me to buy this one.

As a software developer I do understand the difficulties involved in coding so many features and I praise the work that has been done by Aaron (uhm!? is that the author's name?).

Bugs left will be surely resoved with one or two more patches I hope, anyway I still feel something must be done to make the game better.

I really think that a few features should be added (some of them were in Elite):

1a) Passengers as a new cargo type
1b) Cabins to host passengers
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Missions would vary greatly depending on what kind of passengers you fly with.
For example if you escort some outlaws to a penal colony you could be attacked by their pirate friends. Alternatively you could ferry some people on sightseeing across the galaxy for a price (almost like the planet scanning missions: you have some planets to visit but the difference is that you must bring the passengers back home at the end).

2) Minerals (eg.: ore) as a kind of cargo
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With the possibility to fire on asteroids to mine them and sell them to Industrial colonies.
Like in Elite there could be a mining laser that must be installed first.

3) Planetary Defences
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If you approach a planet from an enemy race you should be fired on with very powerful weapons.
This is simple to implement and would bring planets to life.

4) Ill effects while going through Ionic Storms or such (for example storms which rend shields useless, like in SEIV).

I should put my hands on the non-demo Version in a few days.
Meanwhile... I read that someone is actually playing with demo-Version with the 1.15 Patch applied: how did they do it !?

I tried but could not apply it.
Is there a special patch somewhere ?

Wow! This post has become reather lenghty, hope I did note bore you guys!

Bye

Umberto (alias Hok)

[Phoenix-D]

1a) Passengers as a new cargo type
1b) Cabins to host passengers

1a can be done, 1b not. You just have to assume they cabins are modular and loaded into your cargo bays (reasonable since the smallest component is one KILOTON in size..).

Events can be triggered based on your cargo, so carrying certain passengers could do various things.

2) Minerals (eg.: ore) as a kind of cargo

Possible. However the more destroyable objects you have the slower the game runs (this includes planets).

3) Planetary Defences
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Possible. It does screw up the planet display, though- you have to use the same display as for ships (eg. the population field goes away)

4. can be rigged via invisible off-plane attacking objects (though they'll still appear on radar) I'm not sure how the AI will handle it, and again the more firing objects you have the slower the game runs.

no special patch.

[Suicide Junkie]

Damaging storms can be made by creating a new race "natural hazards", and giving them sats that look like asteroids and are placed aboe and below the plane, inside storms.

Toss on shield depleting weapons, and the storm is shield depleting. Lightning rays for more deadly storms.

Put a second hazard race, and you can have them shoot at each other, so the storm dosen't go completely quiet when nobody is around.

Put insanely fast regen on them so they can't be killed...

[Hok]

Thank you, but... well, actually I wasn't asking how to introduce those changes throught modding.

I was just trying to figure out if some of them would be worth putting in the *original* game.

Modding is fine, but I bought the game mainly to enjoy the good work done by someone else.

I don't want to "work" at home again, programming my own game, after a hard working day sometimes I go back home and just want to relax playing a good game.

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For what regards mining on asteroids I did'nt mean to have them destroyed, but have them "spit out" some ore-cargo maybe every 1-2 mins of mining (mining's hard work ya know? ).

Of course I also think that this odd behaviour could only be implemented by hard coding it in the game.

A really nice feature could be to add two custom screens, one for your ship, and one for your character.

Then you could add your own character attributes or ship attributes with modding (e.g.: number of passengers, bank account, etc...) and have them displayed in the game on this custom screens.

Anyway I think this game IS a good game.
It only could be better!

Hok

P.S.: (on bugs) I think that having PD not hitting incoming missiles while you are turning is not a bug, I think its more real: in fact those PDs are small mechanical rotating turrets, not laser beams, so they can fail if they cannot trace the target very well.

[Phoenix-D]

Some of it will take hard code.

But you don't always have to do the work yourself to enjoy modding. I've got a campaign in the works, for example. The map's done..and its twice as big as the original game's.

[Wdll]

I don't know their names or anything, so I was wondering, do the developers of this game read the forums or do they plan to add some of the above/below actualy recommendations? I too would like to see the original poster's ideas implemented in the game with a patch. Is malfador planning to add things like that to the game? I am not in a great hurry since I don't own the full game yet, but with the disgrace of the control system of X2 I just have to have my elite fix soon :-)

[Baron Munchausen]

Most of these requests would require code changes, yes. But there is one way that modding could add "spice" to the game, though...

We need more variety of ships. It's ridiculous that every freighter of every race looks exactly the same. Is there some galaxy-wide merchant cartel with military efficiency that controls all trade? We need at the very least different style freighters for each race, and ideally a wide variety of freighters, especially for the Terrans. Where are the commercial services? Shouldn't there be various sizes of freighters from specific companies? Shouldn't there be an inter-stellar equivalent of UPS with a distinctive ship design and logo? (Call it 'Q-Haul' ) Shouldn't there be broken down old 'tramp' traders in lots of odd designs? Shouldn't there be passenger liners? For that matter, shouldnt there be some other activity in space besides trade? How about some research ships? How about a colony ship heading out to start a new outpost?

If there is one thing that all the anxious modders out there can do to make this game 'look and feel' realistic it's add a wide range of 'civilian' ships.

[ February 12, 2004, 02:44: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Oh, btw...

I think we ought to be able to target and fire on those 'cargo box' things. Then the Terrans and Abbidon could dispose of that 'illegal cargo' they are so uptight about.

[Drake113]

I was working on a planetary defense mod, which would basically treat planets as ships. I even had a pretty nifty display to go along with it, and you could still do all the regular stuff you could do on planets (go to spacedock, talk to contacts, etc). Unfortunately, there's no way to get the planet to show up correctly on the system map, which caused me to abandon my work on it. It would be great if there was some sort of toggle in the system map file that would allow you to choose the type of sensor contact associated to a particular object. Sigh.

[Hok]

I'm waiting the release Version to be shipped, after that I'll play it and see how much better is than the demo.

After playing for a while I'll also take modding into account, if that is the case.

About adding variety...
I think that there are fondamentally two ways to add spice, variety and "life" to a game:

1) Simulate it: you place events into specific game points and let objects appear in certain locations but the objects themselves don't know why they are there, they just behave like they are programmed to do (e.g.: pirate ships).

2) Add real behaviour to the game: you program objects of the game to interact with the environment and you (programmer) put into them the knowledge to react with self generated events.

The first method is the one which seems to be implemented at the present time in SF.
The second one is much more difficult and needs more time to plan and program.

That's my opinion at least.