Mods and Stuff - Discussion

[Suicide Junkie]

My personal take on space combat and stuff, while keeping the storyline from the first campaign.
I may have gone overboard with the Meson BLasters, but it sure looks cool during large fighter battles!
P&N - Homefront.zip

Major differences from the stock campaign:
- Don't be surprised by the inoperable display screens on your control panel. You need combat sensors or Long range scanners to get the enemy display, and system scanners or Long Range Scanners for the Radar map. Your System and Galaxy maps plus your self-status monitor need only the Bridge.
- Initial crew capacity of your ship will be VERY SMALL. You need crew quarters to boost that up and improve your resistance to psychic weapons, and other crew killing verbs and nouns.
Crew will repair your ship slowly! More crew = faster repairs.
One crew quarters for every hull class larger is a good rule of thumb.
- Armor is extremely tough to fix. Great hitpoints, but hard to fix. Best to sell the old stuff as scrap, and get fresh new armor. It'll be cheaper than repairs at a starbase, unless the armor is special (organic armor, for example).
- Beware fighters. Alone they aren't much threat, but you can't ignore it. In Groups, you'll need help. Point Defense Lasers will help muchly, but you'll need multiplex tracking in order to hit often. A few good shots by the main guns does wonders too
- Watch out for mines. They're very hard to spot, but if you're tailing someone and hear the sound of objects being jettisioned/launched, TURN!
The small mines Skip Shields, and will roast your armor with 100+ damage. The heavy mines do normal damage, but many times more of it. There are a number of illegal bombs and stuff that can be deployed as mines. They're much more powerful per kt, but you won't have any friends.

Common Trouble for New Captains
- Watch out for Illegal Cargo. Pirate ships ofter carry Banned objects, and if you pick up every bit of debris, you're liable to snag something the authorities don't like. Scan it first, or check your inventory immediately and jettison what you don't want. Having a TCN Battlecruiser pump a volley of Quantum torpedoes into your aft hull for carrying planetary napalm is not fun.
- Beware friendly fire. If you accidentally hit a TCN ship as it cuts in front of you, run away until they calm down. (usually by the time their shield recharges after your attack) You're not likely to win against the entire navy.
- DONT RAM THINGS. Especially asteroids and planets. If you hit anything much larger than a fighter, you're liable to lose lifesupport if not be killed outright. Ships that are weak enough to ram can be killed by a few volleys of fire. Unless your guns are destroyed, just shoot it

[ September 10, 2003, 19:04: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Phoenix-D]

Thanks SJ. I may not be able to play yet, but I can look at the data files!

[Suicide Junkie]

SJ's Toolkit.zip
A combined download file for:
1) SFSlotmodder
2) SFStoremodder

These help take the drudgery out of lining up slots to look pretty, and renumbering things when you want to move or delete entries in the big lists.
Both are still undergoing some development as suggestions come in.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

i'll try them out on your mod.

[Wydraz]

Very cool utils, SJ. When opening a file I saved in the SFslotmodder, and choose the one design I have from the list (and click Edit) I get an 'Error 55, File aready open' message and it crashes. Same if I try to edit the files from your mod. Could you educate me a bit more on file operations?

[Ed Kolis]

Here's an example of adding new ships to the game:

Starship Enterprise

(I'll probably want to make the ship bigger, say 600kT, as per discussion in the beta forums, but it's a start )

[narf poit chez BOOM]

the store thing came up all blank for me. and the enterprise doesn't use an enterprise picture in the slot modder.

[Atrocities]

Why did no one use the ships I made? I never did get feed back on them. They all worked just fine for me and looked good in the game.

[Wydraz]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
Why did no one use the ships I made? I never did get feed back on them. They all worked just fine for me and looked good in the game.

Come on, give us a chance to look at them before you assume we will hate them! How about a link?

[Suicide Junkie]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
the store thing came up all blank for me. and the enterprise doesn't use an enterprise picture in the slot modder.

The slot configurations don't specify what picture to use. You have to press Background->Load (CTRL-B), and pick a portrait to use on your own.

For the StoreModder, you should load your components file and your main_shops.txt in order to have something to work with

Originally posted by Wydraz:
Very cool utils, SJ. When opening a file I saved in the SFslotmodder, and choose the one design I have from the list (and click Edit) I get an 'Error 55, File aready open' message and it crashes. Same if I try to edit the files from your mod. Could you educate me a bit more on file operations?

Did you happen to accidentally open the wrong file before that, or did you have the file open in notepad or word?

[ September 10, 2003, 19:10: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]