Player HQ to (semi) realistic Shipyard MOD

[Protrader]

After experiencing the player HQ and using it for a while, I determined it was superbly balanced, excellent looking but at best mildly fun and lacked feeling. I really wanted a shipyard. The Credit free HQ mod mainly felt like a cheat, however, I did approve of the increased resource usage as it fit a little closer to the shipyard description of “Because of the massive resources to create as well as maintain one of these each race has only a single shipyard” But I still didn’t have that shipyard feel.

So… I created this HQ mod. I call it HQ to Shipyard V 1.51

With this mod the HQ feels more to me like a shipyard with a universe draining demand for raw materials. It is also much more responsive with build and reverse engineering times reduced dramatically, and offers a massive storage bay to allow most of the ships to be built still even with the increase in material usage.

Exact changes to the player HQ (and my reasons why I wanted the value this way) by this mod are as follows:

Energy cell usage per ship has been changed to 1180% of Standard
Energy is used for smelting ore and a lot of it will need to be expended in the creation of any ship.

Ore usage per ship has been changed to 2361% of Standard
It’s ORE. Which is mostly hunks of rock. There are certainly metals in it, but by volume most ores are very low yield. I WISH there was a Foundry to overcome this limitation in my mind but there isn’t =(

Silicon usage per ship has been changed to 1417% of Standard
What would a silicon wafer be used for at all on a ship? I don’t know so I decided that its becoming part of the armor plating and the outside of the hull is plastered with solar cells made from the wafers as a supplemental energy source.

Cloth Rimes usage per ship has been changed to 340% of Standard
At first I had no clue what these could be used for other than upholstery and reduced their usage to 20%ish but I thought about it and Kevlar armor is a cloth like substance, if you used a cloth in an armor plating mesh you could probably increase strength dramatically. So I put it back up.

Teladianum usage per ship has been changed to 202% of Standard
Decided this stuff is used in the armor, and makes the metals stronger.

Crystal usage per ship has been changed to 142% of Standard
Must be used in the drives.

Quantum Tube usage per ship has been changed to 333% of Standard
I decided these things in rows are what the ships drive is made out of… They are what allows a ship to move without seeming to be affected by inertia and are reason ships have a maximum speed at all instead of being able to accelerate up to the speed of light.

Microchip usage per ship has been changed to 43% of Standard
I struggled with these as I could think of few places in a ship an individual microchip instead of a computer system would be used. In the end decided that microchips were actually sensors, and used throughout the hull and the like. Even so, I figure there must be 40,000 sensors or more per unit of “microchips” and just cannot justify that kinda use in my mind.

Computer Component usage per ship has been changed to 567% of Standard
I would think that almost any ship system could be a “Computer component” and I prefer to think of these as generic systems like the interior lights and the water recycler as well as the automated cargo transfer system and the actual computer systems.

Rastar oil usage remains unchanged.
This is what is used to lubricate the fabrication machines and their drill bits, seemed reasonable considering the amount of burn off of oil when I drill metal.

Nividium usage remains unchanged.
Rarely used. Seems reasonable.

*I wanted to add majaglit as a resource since superconductive wiring made sense, but I couldn’t find the ware name and it would also cause problems in plot enabled games as the Paranids blockade their sectors.

Credit usage has been changed to 17% of standard
While it’s mostly automated, ship production must still require a few specialized systems you need to buy and a couple technicians to supervise.

Space on the shipyard has been increased to 15 million to allow most ships to still be built with the increased resource demands.

These changes cause ships to cost at universe standard prices (e.g. 16 credits an e-cell 504 a stack of silicon) slightly more than you can make selling them back to a shipyard. While if you find the best deals across the universe *really difficult because of the raw material usage of this place* you can make a slight profit selling them to a shipyard if you are at the highest notoriety level for the race.

The next part of the HQ that was changed is the time required for each ship.

M5 Produced twice as fast.
M4 Produced about 2.5 times as fast
M3 Produced a little less than 3 times as fast
Goner Ships Produced about 3x as fast
M6 M7 M8 M1 M2 (M0 if you can build it with available resources didn’t test) and TL ships are built 3X as fast.

Transport, which I believe is TS and TP ships, are built at 60x Speed. Yes I know its really a large difference, but even so most people will probably still buy their ships at a shipyard in order to get the L versions, instead of producing them. But incase anyone happens to have a pile of resources in their HQ they can build a small fleet of transporters quickly to replace losses by them acting like idiots (but not sadly can not replace experienced pilots, and they are a lot of work moving shields and such around) it may not be quite as realistic (or maybe the other times are not realistic), but I liked the feel of it in my game. Not like your going to use them to wipe out Xenon sectors or take on khaak invasions with them anyways.

In any case, I hope you enjoy my mod, but if it doesn’t look like your cup of tea that’s all right. It’s created for my tastes and I am releasing it so if anyone shares them they have some fun added to their game.

I am releasing it in fake patch format for compatibility with all the other mods out there *except credit free HQ mod obviously*

INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS

Download the mod
http://mburkart49014.googlepages.com/HQ ... dV1.51.zip

Extract the two files to your X3 directory

RENAME the 1x.cat and 1x.cat files to one higher than your highest numbers of those same files in the X3 directory. Mine happen to be 11.cat and 11.dat but don’t use those that unless they are correct or you will most likely wipe out a mod.

After installation - Build a new HQ for the changes to take effect.

[zazie]

Sounds great !
Two questions: The DL was surprisingly small (853kB iirc) - correct ?
I suppose as a fake patch it should work with the XTM-custom-starts too, where the BalaGi-missions arn't available but the player can buy the HQ at a station - correct ?

[Protrader]

The file size is correct, its a very compact mod(under 1k)

As a fake patch it does work with XTM version 0.7.3 and its what I am using it with.

And yes there are several ways of making the headquarters available, I personaly use the "Bala gi ships station unlocker for XTM" however in 0.7.3 you get a headquarters in your mammoth that works correctly in the extreme tycoon custom start. I also here rumors that at 30K 30K 30K in kingdom end there is a station to buy the HQ from. but I have never been there.

[zazie]

thanks!

[Protrader]

Well, no complaints so far, I am going to see if I can get this added to the community mod list =)

[defiant1]

does this have the creditless HQ ship building bit (i dont honestly see why I should pay my self credits to build a fracken ship...so then money would in theory go out the airlock?)...or not?

[Protrader]

No, There is still a credit requirement, but it has been DRASTICLY reduced.

As per real life there is always some items that must be bought, but I think this is much more realistic. The cost of materials is about 90% of the cost of the ship, instead of 10% like they use to be.