Pirate Guild 1.6x branch : Development Topic
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Goals
- The versions tagged 1.6x will have the main objective to beef up the Guild against both the player and other AI factions while avoiding artificial spawn of pirate ships. The idea is to make pirate ships and stations more "clever" / less stupid, which is very different from stronger firepower Suggestions and ideas are welcome especially from players used to battle against the guild.
Bug reports and feeback about current existing versions of PG still go in the official topic. New ideas for future version go here until 1.60 is released.
Here's the list of suggestions and changes that will make it in a version or another of the 1.6x branch. Suggestions that aren't not linked here are under consideration / waiting for a first release / discarded, depends. And there's also the "Future Changes" page from my wiki.
- Ability to "hijack" vanilla pirate big ships [confirmed 1.60 Beta]
- Kills Satellites in range [confirmed 1.60 Beta]
- Improved Defense Grid mechanism [confirmed 1.60 Beta]
- Anti Missile Laser Towers [confirmed 1.60 Beta]
- Ability to "call back" mission ships when under attack [confirmed 1.60 Beta]
- Improve the fund distribution amongst the PB (using Mobile HQ ?)
- Station racketing as a new source of income
- Force the Mobile HQ to use ADS too
- Defense Grid ships not going into suicide missions / lost cause
- Ability to build a few additional PB according to map size
- Capture abandoned ships left by the NPC Bailing addon
- Capitals ships should have a chance to jump away when outclassed
- Targeting of Sector / Universal trader
- Experiment with PG a lot (or even, read the code ) and report ideas, experiences, and unwanted behaviors you've seen playing the game. I do have a liking for simple ideas with high impact, but feel free to use you imagination as long as your solution sounds plausible.
- Depends, i'd like to add some trading at a point or another, but i may also want to spend my free time on other projects. If a 1.7x branch is built it will be the last one and it's main focus will be to correct the texts (less "engrish") and optimize the code for a lower impact on CPU (which is already low).
- People who know me already know i don't like the question and that release dates are made to be broken.
Deal with it.
Thanks for your time!Original Post wrote:I don't like creating unnecessary new posts but for once, i think it's better to do that than posting in my 28 pages topic about the next development branch as I want the to be related to feedback and debugging about existing versions only.
This said.
The 1.6x branch of Pirate Guild won't be released anywhere soon so don't even ask for a release date. But i need feedback and ideas now so i don't start writing code that i will have to remove / rewrite later . Anyway, if you are a Pirate Guild user, i have a bunch of questions to ask. As usual don't be offended if i don't add everything you say or if i ignore a post. I have usually good reasons for that.
First of all, here are the changes that will be made in the 1.6x version.
I assume people are using ADS with PG. Otherwise, well no dice. ADS will become mandatory for the 1.6x releases anyway, as it's the base I am using to build my Faction:AI library and because the Defense Grid system i'm using (you know, those nasty M7) in PG can be handled by ADS 2.6x. There's no reason to complain, ADS is virtually compatible with every script and mod on earth.
By the way, please state your Pirate Guild settings before answering, it would help.
1) How do you take down a Pirate Guild Stronghold or (even better) Fortress? There's a few tricks that make things much easier, but i don't know if you've found them. Well they are somewhat obvious if you read the documentation, but still Spoiler tags are welcome here.
2) I've the idea to directly target universal/sector traders. The downside is that the UT/ST have a crappy (read "no") defense AI, and it would basically be a massacre if i add this feature. I could enable this only if the player is targeted as the "worst foe". Any thoughts ?
3) From time to time a PB will decide to do some racket. A hell lot of pirate ships will jump around a factory owned by an enemy race (that may means YOU) and ask for (a lot of) money if you don't want this base destroyed. You'll have the choice to pay, kill them all, or see you factory die. It sounds neat, but you'll have to forget to SETA by night. Yay? Nah?
4) The amount of M2 owned by the Guild is currently capped to one, it spawn only when the guild is very rich, and it's used only for defensive purpose, mainly because i can't find something better to do with it right now. I don't like that, so maybe someone has something better to suggest ?
5) This is totally unsure, and depends of my willingness to write tons of complicated code for Pirate Guild but i think it's somewhat a good idea that probably need some tweaking. Basically i want pirate bases to use TM ships to capture capital ships from enemies (and YOU). It will use a simplified system that don't need the marines to really go near the hull to avoid the many many issues with the vanilla system. However it will force the player to have trained marines inside their capital ships, and rare software like the firewall thingy to prevent a capture. Yes it sounds neat, but think a bit about it for a few seconds. Yeah it's realistic, but loosing a 100M carrier or destroyer, or even an unique ship is worth it according to you ? Any idea to balance the thing ?
6) Not really a question but just a precision. PG 1.6x will try to capture abandoned ships created by the NPC Bailing Addon plugin from ThisIsHarsh.
7) Another big question. As ADS will handle the defense grid mechanism, I thought i may add the standard pirate capital ships to the defense grid. It would basically be the same as the Race Response Fleets plugin from LV, but for pirates. On the other hand it will suddenly make every base, even outposts MUCH harder to kill. Any thoughts on that ?
Cheers,
SK.