Facilities

[Andrés]

I think this is a great idea.
So far most mods are restricted to the standard set of pics. Some make very good use of it taking advantage of the pictures that are not used by standard techs. And in some cases, those pictures are quite appropriate and shouldn't be changed.
(Did you see the stargate facility and the trek-transporter component among those. I wonder how hard can it be to make the hard code changes to make a long range cargo transfer and maybe a long range boarding abilities for them?)

To answer Baron Munchausen's question:
Creators of most of the popular mods are not good artists and are unable to make the pics by themselves.
In the case of a shipset, an artist knows all pics needed. Note that until we came up with the neo-standard all shipsets were made with only the standard ship sizes.
Analysing mods to find which pics are needed, making the pictures and assigning each a new and different number (most wouldn't dare to change any of the original pics) and changing that big pics that include all minis and modding the data files to use the new pics and then submitting that to the author of the mod would be too much for an artist.

But you're right, there're a lot of artists out there making shipsets that should be able and willing to make new comps etc.
And the only thing that needs to be done is to coordinate their efforts with modders.

Making all pictures for all mods may be a lot. But something good is that unlike with a shipset, all comp pics don't need to share the same style. Different artists may be able to contribute even if with only 1 or 2 pics each.

The idea of making different looking Versions of the standard components is good, but that's another mod. Anyone willing to make it or incorpore it to his/her mod? I'm sure that if someone is willing to edit the data files and coordinate, artists will soon join and make the needed pics.


IMHO there's no point in creating a unique set of pictures that includes all extra pictures used by all mods. Even if some of the pictures can be shared between mods.


So IMHO the logical steps to add a new set of pics to a mod are these:

1- The modder or anyone interested starts by requestig the pictures; to do that Posts a list of all components, facilities, etc. that need new pics, including a description and maybe an idea of how it should look.
The modder can also request pictures for items not yet included in the mods.
I suggest using the mod's thread or a new thread, it can get confusing if pics needed by different mods were all posted here.

2- Then artists can pick one by one the pictures and when made post them there.
This can be made fast if many artists cooperate and are carefule enought to avoid making the same picture twice while leaving another unmade.
If two or more pictures should be alike, for example ship and fighter Versions of the same weapon, they should be made by the same artist to give it consistency.
Of course that you don't need to wait for all pics to proceed with steps 3 and 4.

3- The modder or one of the artists renames the pics assiging pic numbers for each comp/fac and updates the big picture/s with all minis. Remember that height of those pictures can be increased by 36 pixels to add extra rows in the bottom if needed.

4- The modder includes the new set of pictures in the mod, updates the data files as necessary and Posts the new Version of the mod!

[Baron Munchausen]

I hate the idea of transporter boarding or transporter bombs. Perfect conVersion from matter to energy and back, preserving even the molecular patterns, is so insanely advanced that practically every other technology we can imagine would be made obsolete by it. This tech implies incredible powers that make the usual 'Trek' uses laughable. It would be unbalancing in the game even in the limited implementation that we've seen in Trek. About the only use I can see for transporters is stealing cargo from an enemy transport or planet.

How about boarding shuttles? That would allow boarding at a distance and still give you a chance to resist.

As far as the component and facility pictures, there's no need for anyone to choose a number. Each modder can choose it themselves. Just post large & small Versions of the component or facility & let each modder put it into the 'group' file where they want it.

[ 18 December 2001: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Andrés]

Transporters are useless against shields, and maybe even useless against EMC.
Boarding parties would still be needed, and spent in the boarding operation. The only difference wold be that instead of being at point blank the boarding ship can be a few sectors away.
Transporter bombs wouldn't be different than a direct fire weapon there's no need for that. Other uses such as food replicators may already be being in use without our knowledege.

I'd also like to have boarding shuttles combined with starwars ion cannons, if not your shuttles would be killed by pdc before getting close


And about component and facility pictures. You seem to suggest that we should make pictures first and then let modders choose and add the ones they need.

That will not work. I don't want to make a pic no one will ever use, or if some picture looks really good, force modders to use it.

The point is that everything starts with modders requesting the pictures they need.
I'm not sure if a small Version of the picture is needed, since small Versions of all default pics are just re-sizes of the big ones.

I also suggested that some modders may need help editing those bitmaps that contain all minis.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

---

Transporters are useless against shields, and maybe even useless against EMC.

---

If you're referring to trek style transporters. Definitely ECM is effective. Even certain common ores can prevent transporters from operating, and you don't have to be buried under it either.

I think the main problem with the transporter is that even if you can't materialize anything at your destination, you've still got one hell of a "High Energy Discharge" Weapon. Remember that E=MC^2, and you've moved six people worth of mass (in the form of energy!) in under six seconds from one point to another.

E = MC^2
= 500KG x (300,000,000 M/S )^2
= 4.5*10^19 J
= 11,000 Megatons TNT

So, 500KG -> 11,000 Megatons of TNT, all dumped into a small room over a five second period...
Who wants to purchase a shuttlecraft capable of cracking a planet?

[Taqwus]

I always wondered why the Trek shows didn't make heavy use of the obvious powers of the transporter as shown (e.g. if an enemy vessel's shields have been downed, you could beam a bomb *inside* the enemy ship, say, into their warp core... likewise, the pattern storage system would also seem to encompass cloning. An army of Data clones, perhaps?).

Much more powerful than the rest of SE4 tech, with the possible exception of warp point manipulation, unless we presume that for dramatic purposes all the races in the SE4 galaxy are too inane to take advantage of them.

Speaking of facilities, it occurred to me that perhaps radioactives production should be negatively correlated with climate / colony survivability. Unless we're positing radiation-immune races, or some "clean" method of living on, say, a 180%-rad planet. It'd might be rather difficult to implement reasonably without a whole Stars!-like system of environmental preferences, 'tho.

And for some REALLY rambling ideas, perhaps more efficient construction yards (e.g. reduce actual building cost -- say, takes computers and space yards... and maybe resource manipulation?) would be nifty. Right now, all we can do is influence the production side of things; we can't ever lower actual resource costs.

[geoschmo]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Taqwus:
And for some REALLY rambling ideas, perhaps more efficient construction yards (e.g. reduce actual building cost -- say, takes computers and space yards... and maybe resource manipulation?) would be nifty. Right now, all we can do is influence the production side of things; we can't ever lower actual resource costs.

---

True from the facility side we can't affect the production cost. That would be a nice ability.

You can do this in a roundabout way from the component side by extending the tech tree and adding higher level components that are cheaper, but have the same abilites. Already done in the stock game with engines. No reason other than extra complexity the same thing couldne't be done with other components.

Geoschmo

[Mark Walton]

quote:

---

Originally posted by geoschmo:

You can do this in a roundabout way from the component side by extending the tech tree and adding higher level components that are cheaper, but have the same abilites. Already done in the stock game with engines. No reason other than extra complexity the same thing couldne't be done with other components.

Geoschmo

---

This is one reason why I put on my wishlist, a tech requirement for "CompEnhancements".
Imagine being able to create an "Construction Efficiency" tech which allows a compenhancement entry giving a % reduction in costs (amng all the other possible benefits such a system could bring)