gnasirator wrote:I submitted this and my MK3 improvement to get signed. And cycrow told me they might be interested in the explorers for their bonus pack.
Nice!
Cycrow can probably help you with your menu, too. He seems to enjoy helping (cryptically, sometimes, but he will hep).
(Don't let him trick you into needing a hotkey to launch, like the otherwise excellent Community Configuration Menu. Hotkeys suck.)
To my eye, the job is not completely done until the user interface is clear to newbies. (Which would include yet another move to the Navigation menu... sorry!)
Also, the Earth sector may need special handling. It is not enemy territory, but any attempt to drop a satellite there will get the Explorer blasted out of the sky (it just happened to mine). It will be some time before testing is 100% complete.
But actually I'm more proud of the mk3 improvement ....
I looked at your description for the Mk3 Optimization. Twice. But I don't think that I understand what problem they solve? The number of times that my Mk3's have problems with fuel or enemies is a very low percentage of their trips. I do not find them annoying (except when they die, because they are a pain to train). So maybe you can tell me more about the script?
The new MK3s work SO perfectly well now. Can't even think of anything for them to do better now
One obvious thing would be a separate script to integrate pilots with the rest of the game. There are too many different kinds of pilots (CLS/CAG, pilot union, Mk3) and they do not work together seamlessly. Worse, pilots in cargo holds lose all of their pilot skill and experience.
There is some support built into the engine for pilots, although it only has one value for skill and experience. It would be a nice enough improvement if you could preserve that one setting throughout a pilot's lifetime. (Bonus points for integrating pilot union pilots better.)
I am thinking that there might be a way to store the various kinds of skills and experience settings -- perhaps based on the pilot's name? (I know that the names are not guaranteed to be unique, but they are more often than not).
Or maybe a script could be run on the pilot himself, that would track and coordinate his experience? This might have some problems, because some scripts destroy-then-recreate an object (like Apricot's CBeam/ABeam). Performance could be an issue as well. That is why I thought of tracking the pilot by his name.
If you could link the various kinds of pilots, and preserve their settings when they become passengers (as in rescuing ejected pilots), then you would have one fine addition to the game. It could make pilots almost fun.
Then, in your Mk3 script, if you went on to add a better info screen, and better in-game explanation (like a menu choice that sends a msg with the Help documentation!!!), then you might make pilots a real winner, rather than the tangled mess that they are now.
(It would be easier to fix the offending scripts, but that brings us back to the problem of it being a "mod" rather than a "script". So an external process would be better for compatibility, even if it is more difficult to code.)
But sadly they don't want to replace files with their bp, so no perfect mk3s in the next bp.
Would they mind if you simply renamed your script? You could call them Galaxy Traders, and put them right below Universal Trader on the Trade Menu. You could let them use the same ware (Mk3) -- just add a new option for the player.
I imagine that would involve copying a lot of EgoSoft code, but maybe they would not mind? You would have to get permission, obviously.
Nice work on the Galaxy Traders so far. Are you giving up on improving the menu? And I assume that you also submitted your command slot for the public list?
about the many readers: I bet, I alone am responsible for at least 20%
Of course. I might be responsible for another 20% because I edit a lot. But that still leaves over a thousand hits from others. In just a few days... that is quite a lot of attention. Clearly people are interested.