[Mod Idea] X - The Beginning

[apricotslice]

This came up in a thread a while ago now, that I now cant find, and its had me thinking about how to do it.

I think I've come up with some conclusions. So wanted to present an idea, and seek to fill in ideas and existing code.

The Idea :

The universe map is stripped down to the home sectors for each race, the Xenon, and select pirate sectors. All other sectors are coded as neutral, and contain nothing but roids and gates.

Each race and the Xenon, are given a job that sends M5 ships out to explore the galaxy using the gonor wandering code. However, when they encounter a sector that is completely empty, they claim it for their race. Once claimed, the god engine should start populating the sector with stations.

Once the explorer ships start to intersect, sectors may change who claims them according to the last one in, and until the first station is actually built, at which time the sector is locked to whoever got a station there first.

The player attempts to do the same thing, but has a completely different way of doing it. Exploration is done by an "explore and claim command" which can be run on any ship, or by manually moving ships into sectors, and then using a "claim sector" command.

Because the player is not linked to the god-engine, and must provide their own resources, the player will start with a PHQ in somewhere like Legends Home. The PHQ will have blueprints for a common range of stations that will allow the production of all resources needed to set up full closed loop complexes for supplying the means of building stations and ships. And a starting amount of all needed resources. Its up to the player to balance the need for building support stations with the need for explorer ships and defense ships, before the initial resources are exhausted.

The object of the game for the player is to claim all sectors.

In the early game, trading is impossible. Later on, its only possible if you remain in good standing with a race. But ideally, the player remains hostile to all races with the object of universal domination.

Once the races have expanded to claim all sectors, then the player must first clear a sector of stations in order to claim it.

Obviously, the races will respond to anyone destroying their stations.

At around the mid game stage, all sectors will be claimed and stationed, the normal economy will establish itself, and the races will have potentially very different areas of influence.

Its up to the player how they play the game, and to what extent they defend their own territory.

Issues :

The explorer code and the jobs to run the explorer ships is easy enough to set up. As is the PHQ for the player. Also the initial map, although a pain to go through and delete most things while keeping the sectors.

The player would need a TL ship and a starting player ship, plus 1 or 2 explorer ships. Needs discussion on whats the best mix to start with.

The player will also need neutral stations to get upgrades from, or mechanisms to get them. Commands to load them are easy and one extreme, while building a whole neutral race set of stations that will allow trading and thus money is the opposite extreme.

The big issue is if the god-engine works as I think it does and will automatically repopulate the universe as sectors get claimed.

Some level of race response is needed, as they are in competition for space and at this point dont know each other. So at least at the intersection points, there should be constant battles going on, and enemy explorer ships should be targetted and destroyed. Question : Will the existing race response script set already do this without modification ?

Questions :

Does doing this as a non money based game appeal ? Or do we need to build a whole neutral economy in order for at least a sector trader to be fully utilised making money ?

Does the concept make sense ?

What have I missed ?

What exists that can be added in easily to make it more enjoyable ?

Posibilities :

It can be based on the AMS mod, renamed to Apricot Expeditionary Force from the planet Legend.

Since the player having totally different technology is in character, using FDN, SSDN and CC seems reasonable. As is the Apricot guns, and the Apricot ships.

The player is going to be limited to start with, since the races are not limited by available resources in order to rebuild sectors. Therefore, technological advantages should actually give some balance.

On the other hand, its hard to say without testing, how long it will take for all sectors to be claimed and conflicts ensue.

Discussion is welcome. Suggestions welcome.

Please keep it to the scope of a game that starts with 1 home sector for each race and the player, with the object of universe domination by someone.

[apricotslice]

reserved

[apricotslice]

reserved 2

[apricotslice]

reserved 3

[Kapakio]

It seems you are trying to simulate Age of Empires in an X game. Could be tnterseting, but not sure if it would work.

[Tomonor]

hehe, reminds me of the good old star trek armada II, where you start with a starbase, 3 contruction ships and a scout.

[apricotslice]

You mean Birth of the Federation ? Yes, something like that. Also Master of Orion.

Its been asked for a number of times but until today, I hadnt figured out how to do it.

[corhen]

wow, i love this idea... it has so much possibility.

[s9ilent]

Hmmm, it sounds like a 4X strategy game type thing, put into the X3 engine <3. I think this kind of thing would also be a good frame work for essentially any TC mod, as this is in essence, a generic galaxy AI.


Suggestions/feed back:
1) God: Not using the god engine at all. The God engine is unpredictable and some what unknown, I think it might be better to just use the script engine to do things. As it can do everything that god can do (AFAIK at least). I think (*hope*...) god only repopulates sectors with stations, that are created from the original universe map. So starting with a blank map would stop this problem (hopefully)

2) Jobs: Once again, I don't think that using the job's engine is necessarily that good an idea. It was made to give sectors "busy-ness", but given the dynamic nature of the universe you may find too many/too few ships in a given sector. Once again I recommend using just the script editor. (This way you can build an AI economy, instead of ships just appearing everywhere)

3) Software upgrades: It should be easy enough to just have neutral stations in the shipyard sectors. (Just say a free one comes with each shipyard-equivalent station).

RRF- No idea.

Implementation:
- Clearing the sectors: This can be done quickly via in game scripts in the galaxy editor or by some external scripting (e.g. in VBA or what ever)
- Money: I think money should be kept in the game as 1) you need it to buy upgrades for eq docks, and 2) trading/diplomacy between your partners could still occur. Think about sins of a solar empire, credits still play an important role.

Questions:
-How are you going to deal with ship construction? e.g. At the start you might only build <5 ships, but towards endgame, you would be buying entire carrier fighter squadrons at a time. And multiple HQ's have issues. You could use a completely custom menu system (on some dummy station) but custom menu systems are always somewhat less accesible than the games menus. Allowing carriers to build their fighters could help this a bit, but then there is still the issue of how are you going to deal with transporter needs.


Game Concept Question:
-What game play features/elements would give the player incentive to NOT build stations, seta over night, repeat. (Other then the fear of impending death) i.e. What things are there for the player to do in real time? i.e. Where is the game play?

[lp]

WOW ages of new gamepaly!!! GREAT

A technology tree would be even better, you can have an equipment dock and spend some money or resources to achieve technologies... (I love Civ type games).

[stealthhammer]

When I first looked at X3R this is the idea that came to mind, only I was looking for a game like Star Trek Armada 2 at the time. I like this idea and I really hope it goes well.

[Killjaeden]

i had a somewhat similar idea but only for khaak /pirate /xenon played by the player -> the nonsupported factions by the game...

3 people (2 and myself) are making a khaakhive mod where you can only acquire ressources by mobile mining - and mines. ships&equipment will be build out of 3 ressources only (ore, silicon, nividium). No credits.
We have a thread, but only in the german S&M forum yet.

if the basic scripts are given then it only needs a few adjustments to create pirate / xenon version of that... and a few ships of course
Mobile factories and that stuff.

[Ketraar]

I've been (on and off) trying to do something similar, well in the part of "make the Universe grow as one goes along". Where I find that the "growing" part is actually possible and fairly easy to do, my main struggle are the jobs. Those are really PITA. Don't want to have to spawn every job ship myself. Still there may be a possibility, but I've not yet found the time to try it, but it theory it should work.

Basically one has to create a mirror universe, with sectors "placeholders", so one sector per race for every "future claimed" one. Once a race has claimed a sector, one can kill the ships in one of the "placeholder sector" and change its race to unknown, this should make the destroyed ship respawn in the newly claimed sector.

Well like I said, this is just a theory, but it should work.

MFG

Ketraar

[apricotslice]

Its all in the map at the beginning. If the races only have a single sector, then the jobs will only spawn for those sectors. All empty sectors should remain clear. That assumes you remove the random spawning jobs.

As the races expand and claim sectors, so the jobs file will start using them.

The difficulty is new jobs for the ships which do the exploring and claiming.

You dont need to placeholder, it just needs the map cleared of allocated sectors.

So every sector basically starts out as an unknown sector until claimed.

Until a sector is claimed, there wont be any spawns.

[Ketraar]

Yeah I get that, but you will notice that you either will have a very empty universe later, or very overcrowded sectors at the beginning when there are only very few sectors owned by that race. Jobs cannot be updated "on the way" unfortunately.

Only other way I can see is to spawn Ships "by hand", meaning via script, which seams to me a great undertaking.

Anyway, just trying to add some input.

MFG

Ketraar

[apricotslice]

There are tags on each job that can determine when they run. Its just a matter of ensuring that the tags are set, so nothing happens until after a sector has been claimed.

As I read the jobs file, at the beginning with just 8 or so claimed sectors, most of the job file will not activate. Only the core sector jobs will, and the new explore and claim jobs.

As sectors are added, jobs will spawn ships for them.

They dont need to be updated. The jobs are tagged for only spawning in race sectors, so when there are none, they simply wont activate. As the sectors get claimed, the jobs will turn on for that sector.

The necessary tweaking should be minor.

[LV]

i got bored


http://www.arcl07.dsl.pipex.com/x3tc/pl ... oy.uni.rar

run plugin.lv.delete.the.universe.xml (it will freeze the game for a few seconds as i commented out some waits so i didn't have to wait)


it will clear the entire universe of ships and station bar yours, change every sector to neutral race

then create 1 m5 for each race in their only core sector that fly to other sectors and if no other race m5's are present change the race.

all ships set to 199ms

if they get killed they resurrect

have a play with this it will give you a steer on your idea

[corhen]

Wow, Nice LV, will try it, at some point....

i was thinking, it would be cool if the ships that were availible at a shipyard depended on the number of secotrs...

all races would start off with M4's (i view these as you earliest space ship)
after a sector, they would gain access to the M5 (more terittory means more space needed to patrol.)

4 sectors would mean the M3, 5 would be the M3+
10 would be the M6, 15 would be the M7, at 20 you would gain the M1, and 30 the M2....

you could also weave M3+, and verious Prototypes around to flesh it you.

What you think?

[Lancefighter]

As an idea relating to mass of ships built in the later game vs in the early game, maybe this idea.

First, change the HQ to build/repair really quickly. (a token amount, like a few minutes for a capship, moments for small fighters, and somewhere between for most stations)
Then, require a trading station to claim a sector (but make them cheaper), and a equipment dock to make a sector 'core' (but more expensive.. maybe)

As the player expands, he builds his own Trading stations in each sector.
These stations every now and again spawn a TS ship (based on type - outer reaches might make a 'fast' variant, while core sectors would make a SF variant). Of course the EQ dock might also spawn a TL (or maybe just another SF.. or maybe EQ are only SF, and trading station only smaller?) now and again to ship materials to your HQ..

This freighter goes towards your HQ, and when he reaches there, he offloads his cargo of ship/station building materials, and credits possibly.

The HQ production would have to be simplified, (or maybe not), but it would be the amount of territory you control that would dictate what you could buy.


Of course, the NPC's would do the same thing, building trading stations and EQ docks, and by raiding their TS's you could possibly steal materials..

[corhen]

lancefighter

I like it, simple, yet sounds like it works well.

for patrols, possibly a similar thing, based out of ship yards