I came back to x3 AP because well, nothing out there (save EVE) scratches the space sim itch that AP seems to provide. However there is one big issue with the game that I have found and that is lack of things to do with my fleet once I've amassed a few ships. I have noticed most other space sims out there have the same issues. The dev's are too busy working on the mechanics of the game and forget their end-game content. What do you do with that big sandbox once you get a couple big ships on your hands? The answer for the most part has been.. roam around and kill stuff. Well that's great for the first while but looses its luster since there's no actual reward for doing so. However at least in x3 there's plot missions, like kill the khaak, finish the hub plot, the terran plot, etc. That is one thing the team of Egosoft has done that no one else has. Given the player the ability to have their own personal presence in the game in the form of ownership. Well I hope to add to that.I'm not a modder or a scripter. This is literally my first mod and it's a beast of a challenge. I'm reading and learning how to use the MD scripter to hand code some content to the game. What I hope to accomplish is this:
To provide mission agents at each of the HQ locations that provide a reason for you to bring out that hardware. The missions will be extremely difficult. I'm hoping to figure out the check conditions to figure out what you are running for hardware and adjust accordingly. If you have 1 M7, a couple of M6's and a few M5's, then the mission will spawn easier enemies accordingly. If you are running a fleet of M1's, M2, M7's and M8, as well as dozens of fighters, the mission will spawn apocalyptic enemies. There will be 2 main difficulties for these missions, hard and doomsday. So the AI determines what you are capable of, then selects either the hard difficulty (one which you will win with minimal losses) or the doomsday difficulty (one which is more of a fair fight, and you will likely loose a ship or 2). The missions will be of the following types (but more may be added):
DEFENSE:
- Defend the fleet: A navy fleet is under attack and it's up to you to save their lives. Jump to the system, destroy the enemy fleet, and escort the navy fleet back to home base
- Defend the TL: A TL class ship is on its way to deploy a new factory. Defend the TL at ALL costs. Enemy presence will be heavy.
- Defend the station: Enemies are seiging one of our outposts. Go there and destroy the enemy fleet.
- Defend the sector: A massive enemy incursion fleet has jumped into one of our sectors. Go there and wipe them out.
OFFENSE:
- Destroy the station: Enemies have placed a station in one of our sectors and you must destroy it. Be warned, it will be heavily guarded.
- Incursion into enemy territory: We need a strike force to jump into an enemy sector and destroy as many ships and stations as possible. Hold down the sector until reinforcements arrive.
- Intercept the fleet: An enemy fleet has been spotted in one of our sectors and we need you to destroy the fleet. Jump to the sector, destroy the fleet and hold the area until reinforcements arrive.
These ideas may seem similar in nature to eachother and there's not a huge amount of variety in them, and of course the game will still naturally have its roaming NPC fleets burning everything in their path. But at least this way you get paid for doing so instead of receiving a few credits through the security licences and the satisfaction of destroying a fleet. The mission rewards will vary as well. Here are some examples:
Money: Gain 30 - 200 mil per mission depending on difficulty.
Factories: Mission rewards may be a factory of rare weapon or missile types. These missions will be in the form of a small arc, where you go out, complete the objective, then fly back and talk to the TL pilot who has your factory waiting inside his ship.
Ships: Some missions will spawn (a) heavily damaged but fully fitted ship(s). These range from m3 - m7. Apocalyptic missions on the doomsday difficulty could potentially spawn an M1 or an M2. It's up to you to repair these ships back to life however. This is above and beyond the normal payout of money or factories.
I would like greatly to introduce my concepts and theories of dynamic sandboxing to these missions. For example, failing an enemy incursion will disable the GOD engine for that sector and hands will change from the owner of the sector to the new victor of the incursion. This way a REAL "war" is going on, with factions loosing and gaining sectors. This of course wouldn't apply to the random roaming NPC fleets that you already see in the game. This would only apply to the incursion end-game missions. This however may be beyond my expertise. Disabling the GOD engine for a sector that is under official incursion while keeping it enabled for the rest of the galaxy might not be possible. The other concern would be the disruption of trade routes. however this is endgame content we are talking about here. Truly claiming the galaxy for the faction of your choice? yeah.. that's what I call finishing the game. Here is how it would work should I choose to look at doing it:
Once all the main plot missions have been completed (HUB, khaak, pirate, etc..), the same agents that have been offering the missions will no longer be mission givers, but talking to them will bring up a screen. It will look like this:
[ Request Mission ] (clicking this pulls a mission as it used to)
[ Invade Sector ]
--- [ Khaak ]
--- [ Xenon ]
--- [ Pirate ]
--- [ Yaki ]
--- [ Boron ]
--- [ Split ]
--- [ Etc.. ]
[ Repel Invasion ]
--- Clicking this item brings up a new menu showing the player what sectors are currently under invasion. Selecting a sector launches the mission and allows you to hold the sector. Sectors are dynamically being invaded and failure to defend a sector will result in a permanent enemy takeover.
Obviously this is going to be a hell of a lot of work and I haven't even written my first line of code yet. I may be asking the community here for help on things here or there (like, how do I code such and such). I think I have a general idea as to how I'm going to get started. I need to build my own custom library xml files and name everything under a unique name so as not to disturb the vanilla missions. I plan on making this mod compatible with other mods. All I am doing here is simply adding new missions to the game. The agents themselves will have their own library file so the locations can be easily changed for mods like Xtended and other mods that add new sectors to the game.
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