AP Community Project [Released]

[Killjaeden]

What are CP mods? But, yes, that's what I have been trying to say. Make an effort to maintain compatibility, as long as it does not interfere with the goals of the project. [...]The final battle in Operation Final Fury was pretty good, too.

CP mods= Cockpit mods. I've been trying to say the same, apparently not well enough. I don't think anybody intended to make things incompatible on purpose
Khaak are gone in AP, so that plot wouldn't make sense. According to Ketraar ES has removed alot of stuff dealing with them, jobs and certain entries and who knows what else. That's why reintroducing Khaak without flashback might be difficult from a technical point of view and (maybe?) story point of view.

An idea that creeped into my head:
What if the player could register his own company (officially)? You have to register at a teladi company thingy, but you have to do them favors first ( stuff like fetch missions or some such - possibilities to include tutorials). Or bribe them if you want to skip the favormission part.
After this you official own a company.



Ideas for possibilities as company:
-Maybe have Company ranks (like Trading rank)
-Maybe add in, what kind of products your company is specialised in to this registration. E.g. Food, Energy, Tech Wares,Missiles,... . If you want to add product categories you have to pay a little extra fee to the teladi registration office
-Do something with the stock exchange?
-Get the possibility to buy a Company Headquarter (one of those ring stations) if your company rank is high enough.
-Get Delivery missions from companies or races, where you have to deliver large quantities of a product /products to a company HQ or EQD/SY/TD/MO, depending on your company rank. First you get missions from other companies, after that you get missions from races that you have a good standing with. The higher the company rank the bigger the quantities that might be demanded. Each mission increases company rank.
With high company rank and race relation you might get a mission to deliver 100 Particle Accelerator Cannons to an Argon EQD for example.
Maybe with time limit as well- maybe 10h (ballpark figure) for those PAC's , if you make it in time you get a bonus, if not it's just standard price. Basically a possibility/market for large quantities of goods that nobody would need otherwise.

Instead of offering them at stations ,those missions could come up occasionally as "pop up" and you have a certain timeframe to decide if you want to/can do them. The products demanded are based on the product type you registered at the teladi company

[EmperorJon]

Hey, stop using up all the company ideas, I need them for my stuff!

(*Starts writing down things he hadn't though of.*)

[jack775544]

I do like the idea of a war plot between the commonwealth races. An outline for Argon vs Paranid could be:

Part 1:
The Paranid have noticed that with more and more Argon ships being diverted to the war effort, it would be an ideal time for the Paranid to attack Argon space. To help further this end the Paranid decide to make an alliance with the Terrans. Knowing that the Argon would look suspiciously on a Paranid ship trying to get though their blockade, they employ an independent spacer (you) to reach Earth to meet a Terran Representitive.

Part 2:
To help faciliitate a secure form communications between the Terrans and the Paranid you have been requested by the Terran representative to hack several Argon communication satellites (Advanced Satellites) so the Terrans can not only safely talk to the Paranid but also intercept Argon communications (The hacking will be pretty much the same as the hack pirate station part of the TC Terran plot). The Terrans will give you the location of the first satellite but you will need to find the location of the other ones. To do this you can access the a garbled version of the messages that are sent through them and these messages shall have hints to where the next satellite is hidden. On the last satellite on some desolated (Nyana's Hideout?) sector the Argon shall see you trying to hack the satellite and you have to destroy the patrol. One of the patrol go to a nearby Argon station to report your actions. If you can stop him you don't take rep loss, if he makes it you do. Once you finish hacking the last satellite then you will be told to report back to your Paranid employers.

Part 3
If the patrol craft that tried to report back succeeded or if you have low rep with the Argon anyway:
your Paranid employer will tell you to join up with the main paranid fleet in Sacred Relic, where the Paranid fleet will try start to begin their attack on the Military Bases in Argon Sector M148. Your job will be to escort a TP filled with Marines to one of the bases while the combined Terran and Paranid fleets distract the Argon defenders. When the TP reaches the base they shall plant explosives and then depart on a Griffon that they were able to capture. The military bases shall explode (there was a team on the other base as well), and the fleets shall depart having crippled the Argon war effort. You shall then be given the captured Griffon as a reward for helping the Terrans and Paranid.

If the patrol craft failed:
You will be told to infiltrate the Argon Military Base and place a virus that shall shut down the automated defences in the sector (Lasertowers and OWPs). **There should be some interactive way of hacking the base, like suduko from ANH**. As a result of these hacks you were able to take contol of a docked Griffon. You will then depart the station while the Paranid and Terrans lauch an attack on the bases. When they are destroyed the fleets shall depart and you will be told to keep the captured Griffon as a reward.

Thoughts? All of that can be subject to change.

[EmperorJon]

I think I more prefer the idea of the Split being aggressive against the Boron, or even better, the other way round! The Boron have always been a bit neglected, why not make them try to reclaim the space the Split stole in a massive war when the Split least expect it, and the Argon and such have to sort of hold them back... and things could get quite nasty.

[apricotslice]

From the point of view of maximum usability and findability, if we aim for something that Egosoft will sign and put into the bonus pack, more people are likely to find it and use it in their games.

If Egosoft wont sign it, then the number who will use it drops significantly.

Hence it seems a good idea to stay as vanilla and canon as possible, so that Egosoft will choose to run with it.

I like the idea of a mixed tutorial that leads to the player registering a corporation and placing their PHQ. I'm a firm beleiver in encouraging people to have an ingame entity at the corporate level. If the plot actually gets them to do one, it cn encourage them to think about what they like in the game and how they see the way they play as a corporate entity.

Once thats done, its really possible to introduce characters to join the organisation, who provide mission suggestions, advice and comic relief.

[eldyranx3]

- Maybe have Company ranks (like Trading rank)
- Maybe add in, what kind of products your company is specialized in to this registration. E.g. Food, Energy, Tech Wares,Missiles,... . If you want to add product categories you have to pay a little extra fee to the teladi registration office.
- Do something with the stock exchange?

I think these are excellent ideas to add immersion, and we should be able to replicate using existing Script/MD commands (not sure how the stock exchange works though TBH) I know it has been implied that competing Corporations instead of Races will be future X-conflicts. To our story developers, are there any elements of the X-Encyclopedia that we could tie back into this player corporation element? It'd be great to tie player accomplishments to this dawning of X:R.

-Get the possibility to buy a Company Headquarter (one of those ring stations) if your company rank is high enough.

Would this replace the PHQ? Or is this where we could we 'buy/lease' the Unknown Sector?

[eMYNOCK]

Would this replace the PHQ? Or is this where we could we 'buy/lease' the Unknown Sector?

Nah! Company HQs are not similar to the PlayerHQ, they are just Trading Stations / Equipment Docks with a much different design.

I would say they are prestige Objects for very succsessful Players or a nice gift for high Rank Company Supporter.

To claim an Unknown Sector i would suggest to do something special or have... hmm... much money.

cheers

*** Translated by Google Translate

[Killjaeden]

Company HQs are not similar to the PlayerHQ, they are just Trading Stations / Equipment Docks with a much different design.

A new entry can be made, so that it works like a HQ (but doesn't replace it) - maybe without the ship production capability. EQD's are not very usefull because of their very limited storage space.
Only problem would be that the blue print mission only adds blue prints to the most recently placed HQ type station.

[jack775544]

Also if you have more than one HQ capable of ship production the blueprints any scripts (or MD i'm presuming) will omy get added to the last built HQ. However ships that are reverse engineered are added to the correct HQ. but it would be nice to have a player owned 'repair dock' where you could repair your ships the same you would in a HQ.

[eMYNOCK]

Company HQs are not similar to the PlayerHQ, they are just Trading Stations / Equipment Docks with a much different design.

A new entry can be made, so that it works like a HQ (but doesn't replace it) - maybe without the ship production capability. EQD's are not very usefull because of their very limited storage space.
Only problem would be that the blue print mission only adds blue prints to the most recently placed HQ type station.

For that reason we could pick up this idea from Saetan.

I'm not really sure how the replacement routine works but the enhanced EQD are in fact real HQs without production, spray shop or repair cycle.


*** Translated by Google Translate

[ConCorDian]

i got a wishlist for you:

ships:
all races get own M2+ and perhaps fast M2 (re re balance Boreas for role)

M1+ class, capible of carrying a handful of M8's as well as fighters.

all races get 6 types of M7: (first 3 for pirates)
Attack M7 like a Tiger or Thresher with forward firing heavy weapons
Flak Frigate like Cerberus
Carrier Frigate like Ariadne and Panther
Functional Drone Carriers - obviously with functional drones
Missile Frigate (kinda already covered although Terrans could use one)
Tender Frigate: capible of carrying numerous repair lasers and capible of automated repair of large vessels like captured M7-M1 in a reasonable time

4 types of M6's:
Attack M6 (heavy hydra, Heavy Centaur) fast enough to intercept caps in groups and hold till heavy guns get there, but out done by fighters
anti fighter Corvette (Centaur, Dragon) with upto 4-6 turrets in each direction but only capible of fighter based weapons (argon would be like PRG's, Pac's etc)
military Patrol Corvette (Hype), strong sheilds, decent weapons loadout and capible of carrying a small wing of fighters (3-4 fighters)
Yaught (TLS) a very basic combat ship, probably outdone by heavy fighters in attack power, but powerful sheilds, big cargohold... and fast, good for a player to cruise about in and just jump from area to area to tend to his corporation

Fighters:
make a clearer definition between the subclasses of fighters... a raider less attacking punch but clearly faster than the normal.
fighters cant jump.... except M3+ and M4+ which would be Military only purchases, putting more power in the hands of Carriers, which have been losing their place a bit since the introduction of M2+'s
make M4's the main-stay fighter of the corporations and militaries, as well as better fo Player to buy, in other words make M3's more expensive than their worth. and make the M7 classes the mainstay combat ships... very few super heavy ships like M2's/M1's but when they do enter they are far more powerful than their M7 counterparts.



Stations:
each race has their Own PHQ in their design style.. but PHQ's wont be able to build/RE/scrap M7-M1 classes or TL's
Player Purchasable Shipyards... capible of REing building and scrapping the classes PHQ's cant...
Player Purchasable Fighter Yards... basically can do the same as the PHQ by building fighters, corvettes and freighers/Bombers
Player Repair Yards... repairs ships by burning resources (same as PHq)
Storage Depot... cant trade with other races but capible of docking frieghters and TL's etc... and capible of holding massive amounts of resources...

stations that can produce Cargo/Rudder/Engine Tunings which can then be transported to your shipyards/EQd's/PHq's/repair stations for install onto your own vessels.... or sold to NPC versions (tunings would become a buildable and tradable ware and wont automatically be avalable at all stations all the time)
buildable ship upgrades, like jumpdrives, trade command software etc... they would be very expensive to build the stations for what profits they would make but would allow the player to be standalone in late game.
NPC's would need resources to build fighters and so on as well as the player... meaning more places for various resources to be sold and burned... also means if you want those ships you need might need to help out a little. in effect turning fighters into a producable ware as such until sold in at which time the fighter is spawned at the NPC shipyard.
buildable "missing" weapons labs... things like PBG's IBL's PBC's PALC's RL's all these kinds of things... main races use them so why not make them themselves... and sell us the factories.



General stuff:
rebalancing the ships and so on... make the powerful ship truly powerful but rare to be seen, make sheilds more powerful, to drag out fights... harder to bring down a ship. that sort of stuff. bringing down a Megalodon should be a big task unless your sitting in an equivelent ship, but fighters shouldnt just drop like flys they will last but just take a lot longer to bring a ship down.
repricing ships and stations... if say an M5 was to cost 1Mil for basic model, make M4's 2.5mil.... and have things like frigates into the 100 mil range, you get the idea... again make buying that first big cap ship a real achievement!! same with stations... stations can make you a fortune, but you can buy numerous stations for the price of a fighter? make them 10's of millions to start off... youll see your investment back but not in a matter of a day or so... that way if you have a massive corporation then you really have worked to get it!!

multi threaded reputations with races.... each race should be made up of multiple reputations.... for example:
Argon Rep, Argon Military Rep, OTAS Rep, etc etc.... yes one will slightly impact the others but you wont be able to get max Argon Rep by just working for OTAS... and if you want to buy say a Colossus youll need to be very high up in the Argon Military Rep... but for a boreas youd need to be very high up in the Otas rep.... trading stations and equipment docks would be government based and would require Argon rep but Shipyards and weapon plants and so on would fall under Argon Military so youd need max with them to buy them....meaning to play an Argon game only youd still have numerous reps to work to get everything

more sectors, primarily a cluster of sectors with the various resources that the player could take control of (maybe 6-9 sectors) to set up your own empire... but maybe the Khaak or Xenon have posession of them and a you need to clear them out first!!
more weapons, have race specific frigate weapons and so on... then have perhaps a single upgrade, for each race.... so if you bought a Cerberus it would only be able to fit Argon weapons.... but if you bought the Split weapon Compatibility upgrade from the Split you could then fit Split weapons to the ship.... same for other races.... there would be no Terran Compatibility but Terran ships with the correct rep could buy the other races!!

fix the issues with docking for vessels.... i hate docking with Hypes, SB's, Megalodons etc because i know 9 time of of 10 im going to blow up when i undock!!

think that will do me for now... i do have some plot and story idea's to pull most of what ive wrote in, and if you would like some stories and plot ideas id be more than will to write them up for you, but im no modder or scripter so i cant do anything with them.

CCDn

[UniTrader]

this is planned as a small addition to the Game, not a complete rewrite and rebalancing

[Killjaeden]

You are basically suggestion a total conversion of TC, which is not going to happen.

[Unbekanntes Feindschiff]

I like jack775544's plot idea. This plot makes sense in the background story and is playable for both terran and commonwealth players.

[KilleRTidE]

If you need a model maker, I'm here for you guys.

I am a bit ( by bit i mean alot ) rusty, I haven't placed a ship in game since X3 Reunion so, I may need a bit of time to catch up but if you guys have any ideas, shoot and I'll get them going.

I also have alot of ships and guns/turrets made, so ready to go if everyone likes them.

[ConCorDian]

im not suggesting everything be added, just saying those are the kinds of things i would like to see.

also with it being a community project, there is no reason it couldn't be done bit by bit.... add the ships.... but balance them to the game as is, then add stations in a future one, as part of the sections fix things like the docking issues in relation to stations, in the ships addon fix the docking as part of that.... then perhaps when things start to add together the big bit of rebalancing could be done.... but having a larger final concept wouldn't do the project any harm, it means the project could focus on 1 aspect, but whilst doing it could have the bigger concept in mind which means things could be designed to fit into the larger concept without too much hastle when that section comes up.....

obviously the rebalance to what i suggested would be a massive job in its own and would be a potentially a 4/5th project in the future.... and considering many of the things im suggesting have been done to some degree in the past just to my knowledge hasnt been done entirely the way im suggesting... id imagine some of it could be pulled together with previously made mods and so on. it just means if this community project does kick off properly, and is recieved well the future ones could be built to function in conjunction with the previous ones or seperatly, which means the community who is using it could pick and choose which elements are what they are looking for. or could function as a full total conversion once various projects have completed....

CCDn

[X2-Illuminatus]

What I also would like to see are more missions, where the player has to think for himself without other persons or the mission guidance system telling him, what to do.

Could you expand on this?

Sure. The basic problem is simple: You are a trade mogul and/or a fleet admiral. Your employer surely knows that - why would he hire you else? Now why does your employer still treat you as a trainee pilot or as some beginner that just got his first trade ship? You're pretty often exactly told, where you have to go and what you have to do, which ship with what equipment you have to use, in which timeframe you have to solve the mission and so on.
However, if I'm a fleet admiral and I'm sent into a battle, it should be clear that I bring my own fleet along. If I'm a trade mogul and I should provide a constant supply of a certain ware, I maybe should on my own come up with the idea to build a station or a complex. With the same logic, it should also be clear that an urgent request has to be answered now and not after I wandered through the universe for quite some time. And this is what I would also like to see in one or even more missions.
This kind of mission style is not completely new. We saw missions or mission parts like that in other plots already (Aldrin Expansion, ANH, Treasure Hunt in X3TC or Operation Loose Ends in X3AP).

Of course, there's then always the question, how hard it is to code something like that via the MD and if it's worth the effort.

What if the player could register his own company (officially)?

I like this and I had something similar already in mind for another project. I'm not that sure, about the wares delivery stuff though. At least not, if it's really in the kind of normal wares delivery missions. However, maybe we could expand this to something that was already announced for X Rebirth: contracts.
So a corporate could make an open bidding with some information like:

• Due to an pirate attack, we lost one of our supply factories. That's why we are looking for entrepreneurs, who are willing to help out ensuring the constant supply of our factories in sector z.
  • The details of this contract are as follows:
    Needed wares per hour: x units of ware y .
    Target station: Station u in sector z.
    Payment per delivery: xyz Credits.
    The first delivery is expected at 12:00.
  
  Please note that our Company cannot guarantee your safety.

The Player would then have to decide, if he's able and willing to set up such a supply or delivery chain for the paid price.
In addition to what you already wrote - get a bonus, when you're faster, get just the standard price else - the possibility of having to pay a penalty, if you're too late with one delivery and an even bigger one, if the contract is denounced at all, could be added. And then of course, you could add dangers like pirates or other competitors directly attacking your transports.

I wonder though, how this could be best implemented into some kind of storyline.

(The hacking will be pretty much the same as the hack pirate station part of the TC Terran plot)

Why not make a real hacking instead? With some kind of computer terminal. The scanning or automatic hacking sequence is in general imho a bit dull.

I think I more prefer the idea of the Split being aggressive against the Boron, or even better, the other way round! The Boron have always been a bit neglected...

Hah, I like that.

-------------------

What I also would like to see are some background events, which the player cannot influence, but which give him some idea on what is going on in the rest of the universe or how the rest of the universe reacts to the current situation the player experiences. The results or influences of a war for example will surely be greater than what the player experiences in one plot.
This could easily be achieved by some incoming messages the player would get about a news channel of the current company he works for (see AP HUB Plot for example). Or some actors who talk about the problems the current situation brings with. Other subtle events could be a shortage of certain wares in a specific part of the universe, where the war happens (weapons, missiles etc.), fleet movements or smaller and bigger battles the player is not directly invited to, but that happen nevertheless.

also with it being a community project, there is no reason it couldn't be done bit by bit....

Sure, this is a community project, but with your ideas you seem to miss the scale of this project. As Ketraar wrote in the first post of this topic the time-frame for completion should not exceed 2-3 month. Brainstorming is fine, I think that's exactly what we're doing right now, but with your ideas you seem to target a much bigger mod (a total conversion) than what we have in mind.

[Killjaeden]

I'm not that sure, about the wares delivery stuff though. At least not, if it's really in the kind of normal wares delivery missions. However, maybe we could expand this to something that was already announced for X Rebirth: contracts. [...]

The Player would then have to decide, if he's able and willing to set up such a supply or delivery chain for the paid price.
In addition to what you already wrote - get a bonus, when you're faster, get just the standard price else - the possibility of having to pay a penalty, if you're too late with one delivery and an even bigger one, if the contract is denounced at all, could be added. And then of course, you could add dangers like pirates or other competitors directly attacking your transports.

That doesn't sound bad. Although those contracts require even more planning on the player side - i wouldn't know how many products my company could produce. If you have a complex you can't see the output of the stations anymore, so it's kinda hard. And the problem with getting a penalty (below avg price) is that you could as well just sell tech (especially military wares) on an EQD that doesn't stock them -> "infinite demand. " A "deliver x products" allows more freedom, because you can decide if you want to deliver all of them at once if produced (Corp HQ's can dock TL's right? You could use a TL to deliver a huge amount of wares) or in smaller shipments. Both sounds good to me, the contract sounds pretty hard to get right.
If you have contracts that run for a longer time period on one side, and those large-quantity deliveries it could be a good mix. With contracts beeing possibly more rewarding because of their difficulty.

Maybe even have contracts that require you to deliver the wares and have contracts that collect the ware at your station (or Trading dock in a sector that you specidy) - those would give less reward but are easier for the player.

[KilleRTidE]

Not intending to go off topic but do we have a work area/forum?

I want to get my hands dirty busy

[DrBullwinkle]

(The hacking will be pretty much the same as the hack pirate station part of the TC Terran plot)

Why not make a real hacking instead? With some kind of computer terminal. The scanning or automatic hacking sequence is in general imho a bit dull.

That would be awesome.

But how do we implement it? (Certainly not like the Sudoku puzzle in Treasure Hunt. )