This may be too many planets...

[geoschmo]

Have you ever thought to your self any of the following:

I wish I could get more than 255 systems.

I want a quadrant so packed the game takes two minutes to generate the first turn.

I want an empire so vast it takes me a day and a half to do my turn file.

10,000 ships is easy, I want 10,000 colonies!


Well this may be the mod for you.

Ultra Quadrant Mod (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/download.php?Number=336088)


From modinfo:
Ultra Quadrant mod introduces a new highly condensed system type, the Ultra system. Each ultra system is equivalent to 9 regular star systems.

Ultra Quadrant Mod also allows for 255 systems, for some really immense quadrants. Up to 2295 Stellar sub-systems with 18360 planets!

Caution: Ultra Quadrant Mod may cause your system to run slow. The authors of Ultra Quadrant Mod are not responsible for any damage to your system from running Ultra Quadrant Mod. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



I don't claim to have come up with this idea, but I don't think anyone has ever actually put it in a mod. I have a screen shot of what an ultra system looks like.


http://seiv.pbw.cc/ultrasystem.gif

Geoschmo

[Fyron]

You, sir, are insane! Now go run a PBW game using 255 of these systems and bring the server to its knees! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/stupid.gif

You might want to scale ship movement down (for strategic anyways) a bit. Otherwise ships will cover dozens of systems in one turn. Just add some combat movement bonus to keep combat speeds stock-like.

EDIT:

Maybe a more reasonable setup would be 4 star systems per "system?" It would at least allow the systems to not have everything so bunched up.

[NullAshton]

A game with those systems would take years! Maybe we should make a PBW game with it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif See if we ever finish it.

[geoschmo]

We'd need to migrate PBW to a rack server with one blade per game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

The system movement thing was something I was thinking about. So far all I've done is setup the quardant and I wanted to let you all see the depths of my dementia. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I'll probably put something like that in the 1.0 version. Would I have to totally rework the components for that? Or is it something simple?

[geoschmo]

Imperator Fyron said:
Maybe a more reasonable setup would be 4 star systems per "system?" It would at least allow the systems to not have everything so bunched up.

Bah! Reasonable? I only stopped at 9 because I wanted you to be able to move between sub-systems without engaging everyone's colonies. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

IIRC the original idea had all the planets for each sub-system in the same sector with it's star. I think I like this better though because you can see each planet. ANd I think we tried that other way and couldn't get the star to show up on top, which looked a little wierd.

I will probably add a smattering of moons in a later version.

[NullAshton]

All you'd have to do is alter the ships file. To half the movement, simply place a 2 in the movement per point thingie. Of course, bonus points would mess all this up. You could just remove every other engine component to fix that http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Fyron]

geoschmo said:
The system movement thing was something I was thinking about. So far all I've done is setup the quardant and I wanted to let you all see the depths of my dementia. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I'll probably put something like that in the 1.0 version. Would I have to totally rework the components for that? Or is it something simple?

Depends on how much slower you want system movement to be. For 1/2 speed:

Increase the engines per move setting for all vehicle sizes to 2. Edit all engines and divide the bonus movement ability values by 2. Do the same for Solar Sails. Next, add Bonus Combat Movement ability (the one used by Afterburners) to engines. The value of this should be what makes up the difference between what the combat movement speed with 6 of those engines was compared to what it is now.

For example, take ion engines. Now, they would only give a ship 3 movement points if you have 6 of them. This results in 2 combat movement speed. Before, the ship would have had 3 speed in combat. So, add 1 bonus combat movement ability to the ion engine components.

It is not going to be perfect, but it will be a fairly good approximation. An alternative method would be to introduce a QNP style movement scheme, but that brings the game farther from stock-like tech, so it might not be what you want to do.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

I looks pretty cool, would simulate some sort of short-range FTL speed thing, where you could have a description stating that "a system is actually a cluster of smaller planetary systems pakced relatively close together, with warp points linking multiple clusters" or "each system is a Galaxy, with several planetary systems. FTL travel is possible to other systems (as explanation why traveling to a nearby planet takes as much movement as moving to a nearby system you could say you use interstellar spacetime folding drives you don't use in systems) but the intergalactic distances are too vast, so we need to use warp points to travel to other galaxies".

But what would you do with nebulae systems and black holes?

[Fyron]

Nebulae and black holes would take up far more space than a few dozen star systems, so leaving them as an entire system seems perfectly reasonable to me.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Why mod the movement? Current movement would make for fast, long-range, deadly strikes.

(Downloaded immediatly. That doesn't happen very often) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Narf: Read the rest of the thread. Even in ST and SW, and even HHGTTG (oh I forgot you haven't read those. SACRILEGE!!!!!) travel between systems takes absurdly long. In HHGTTG, the fastest hitchhike from the one side of the galaxy to the other took five years - and that was as fast as possible. In SW, I don't know exactly, but it also takes quite some time. In ST, even travel between some systems placed far between can take two months. I believe that you would need several months of continuous Warp 9 travel to get from one side of the Federation to the other, and remember Voyager? 70000 lightyears... I believe it was 60 or 70 years (could also be 35). And since this galaxy is 100000 lightyears in diaeter, well...

[Nodachi]

Actually, I agree with Narf. Let this just be a map mod that other modders can incorporate if they wish to, just like FQM.

Great work Geo! Are you trying to break the PBW server? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[geoschmo]

Ok, new idea. I played around a bit with Fyron's suggestion of four sub-systems per system. I realized that four stars could be spaced so I could use two rings of planets around each star and not interfere with each other. This would actually permit more planets then you'd have with nine subsystems if you wanted to stuff it full. However, it's not very astheticly pleasing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

What four stars with two planetary rings does allow me to do is use less than the maximum number of planets and introduce some randomness to each subsystem. So they start to look more like tiny star systems instead of fuzzy dice. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The empty sectors between planets could could have asteroids or storms even.

Here's an example. This was created by moving planets around in the paint program. I haven't updated the mod data files to actually produce these system types. What I'd need to do is create a little script to make several system types that are all similer with some randomness in planet placment so they don't all look alike.

http://seiv.pbw.cc/ultrasystem2.gif


This gives us much better looking sub-systems, while still having almost as many planets as the 9-by format.

[Captain Kwok]

I think the 4 star one looks nicer. It could also be designed to allow for a bit more variation in the placement of planets etc.

[Nodachi]

Why not keep the original way you've done it and add the four system set-up as an additional option?

[Puke]

i dont know if you could make it impassible, but you could create a destructive border between subsystems. wormholes would have to be placed in each system with the map editor.

also, you will have to tweak crystiline solar resource generation. lowering it by 1/4 or 1/9 will actually be harder on crystiline races, as there will be no trinary systems for them to take advantage of.

and stardestroyers will be really harsh in this... ouch.

[Ed Kolis]

I wonder what this would do to the highliner mod... would make for some interesting scenarios, where riders could perform limited interstellar travel...

[geoschmo]

Would also make Neutral AI somewhat more of a challange in stock games.

[Nodachi]

geoschmo said:
Would also make Neutral AI somewhat more of a challange in stock games.



Absolutely! The AI should love this mod, it might slow down their expansion, though.

[Fyron]

Another thing... You need to divide the affects of star-based items by the number of stars in each system. Solar Collectors and Solar Resource Generators (crystalline facilities) will be 4 or 9 times as powerful, depending on the number of stars you end up using.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

StrategiaInUltima said:
Narf: Read the rest of the thread. Even in ST and SW, and even HHGTTG (oh I forgot you haven't read those. SACRILEGE!!!!!) travel between systems takes absurdly long. In HHGTTG, the fastest hitchhike from the one side of the galaxy to the other took five years - and that was as fast as possible. In SW, I don't know exactly, but it also takes quite some time. In ST, even travel between some systems placed far between can take two months. I believe that you would need several months of continuous Warp 9 travel to get from one side of the Federation to the other, and remember Voyager? 70000 lightyears... I believe it was 60 or 70 years (could also be 35). And since this galaxy is 100000 lightyears in diaeter, well...


I did in fact read the rest of the thread. I am well aware of general sci-fi starship travel times. I simply thought it would be fun to have the ships move fast.

[Atrocities]

OMFG! Simply in awe.

[Atrocities]

I remember trying to stack the planets in one sector. Have a star followed by planets, with moons. I had to do it in the map editor and ever really got it too look right. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif My hat is off to you Geo, this is impressive, but is it really practicle? I mean 2 hour turns, come on man!

[Slick]

Wow! What a new and great idea. I sure like this.

[Nodachi]

I've got one of these loaded into an STM game, what a blast!

[Atrocities]

Nodachi said:
I've got one of these loaded into an STM game, what a blast!



Screen capture please. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Renegade 13]

No such thing as too many planets.

Nice work!

[Kamog]

Wow, I like these new systems. We can even have binary and trinary clusters, with two or three stars in the center of each group of planets.

[Atrocities]

First, I would like to point out to new members that THAT image is not the quality of the game. Believe me the planets look a lot better than that.

Secondly wouldn't it be nice if each planet were its own star system? Like I said before I tried that but could only do it with the map editor. And could never get it too look right.

Each system map became a region with 12 seprate systems in each region. 8 regions to a quadrant, 4 quadrants to a galaxy, 12 galaxies to a star map.

[Nodachi]

Per request, resized for forum formatting. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
http://img67.exs.cx:81/img67/8514/ultrastm4ca.png (http://www.imageshack.us)

[Kamog]

Looks good! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
How did you change those "detail" "facil" "cargo" "ability" buttons to green?

[Caduceus]

THose are all the buttons from STM. It changes the "face" of the buttons to look like Federation lettering.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

How the devil did you manage to change the button font? I tried several times, but it didn't work!

[NullAshton]

Easy. Change the pictures http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

So... there's pics for the buttons? Font doesn't really matter?

It's just that I want to change some fonts for a mod I've made (but I'm not planning to put on the net), but every time I overwrote a font file the game wouldn't load.

[NullAshton]

I believe so.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Geo could you plz upload a version of the UQM with the four-star system clusters?

[geoschmo]

Eventually. When I have one ready. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Then where did your screenshot come from? Map editor?

[geoschmo]

geoschmo said:
Here's an example. This was created by moving planets around in the paint program. I haven't updated the mod data files to actually produce these system types. What I'd need to do is create a little script to make several system types that are all similer with some randomness in planet placment so they don't all look alike.



http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Sorry forgot...

As for the rest it looks good. I'm looking forward to it.

[Fyron]

So have you decided on how you are going to do this yet Geo? You could definitely have both options (4 systems per system or 9 systems per system) available as different quadrants. If you do this, you need to have something that is not a "standard system" type as the first system in SystemTypes.txt. SE4 has a bug that all maps will have some systems set as this first system, irregardless of how the quadrant is defined.