[MOD-WIP] SkunkTurrets v0.01 Early Alpha, try it and give me some ideas. :)

iforgotmysocks · Post by **iforgotmysocks** » Sat, 11. Oct 14, 01:08

Hey guys,

swatti requested a turret for the skunk: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=372207

So...:

You need to install SideBarExtender by Philipp Offensand for the menu options to work.
Either download it from this page's files, or better visit his page and leave a thanks.

Requires a new save. This mod is highly experimental yet, and you might not be able to remove it just yet! Very very early Alpha! ^^

Yep, the Skunk is getting turrets.
Link: http://www.nexusmods.com/xrebirth/mods/421/?
Sadly it was never planned by egosoft to give the Skunks turrets, thats why there are almost no models, which fit on the skunk.
I'll keep working until i manage it anyway to give it some proper turrets.

Well, you get at least one by now.

You can set the turretaggression at: Menu (enter) -> Modes (1) -> Change Turret aggression level (6)
Set to active, the ai uses following prioritization: drones - m -> cap ship surface elements -> cap ships -> station surface elements.
Passive is pretty much shooting what shoots you.

Try it and give me some feedback please. ^^
Give me all the bugs you can find, give me ideas what to improve, where to place the turret or others.

To-do:
- The Defense Officer who is currently "hanging" in the skunk need alot love, because there is pretty much no interaction possible right now.
- Turrets need to be install/deinstallable
- More Turrets
- Further improvements of ai scripts
- Other turret models, effects, positions, types?

And i think its time for a thank you to UniTrader, who has been playing notion ping pong with me for quite some time now.
You've been helping me alot buddy, thanks.

iforgotmysocks · Post by **iforgotmysocks** » Sat, 11. Oct 14, 11:50

Little update:

I'm currently writing the aiscript for the new turrets, once this is done i'm going to release the alpha.

Why am i completly rewriting the aiscript for the skunk turrets?
Because its simply rediculous how stupid and uneffective vanilla turrets act....

swatti · Post by **swatti** » Sat, 11. Oct 14, 14:30

Any chance you could bring back the "vanilla" chaingun effect while at it. Shooting red pew pews is plain boring and the chainguns back in vanilla really looked awasome.

iforgotmysocks · Post by **iforgotmysocks** » Sat, 11. Oct 14, 16:34

swatti wrote:Any chance you could bring back the "vanilla" chaingun effect while at it. Shooting red pew pews is plain boring and the chainguns back in vanilla really looked awasome.

I'll try. I just want to write a good ai script first, then i have all the time i need to worrie about the good looks and customization.

Hope thats fine with you. ^^

swatti · Post by **swatti** » Sat, 11. Oct 14, 16:35

Yes of course!

In X3 fighter turrets were just rotating "gun model" - If there is one, it would suffice very well.

nazcarspider · Post by **nazcarspider** » Sat, 11. Oct 14, 16:44

Its looking awesome. Great work socks. Take your time and get it right.
looking forward to some ACE dogfighting with this mod.

nazcarspider

iforgotmysocks · Post by **iforgotmysocks** » Sat, 11. Oct 14, 17:12

swatti wrote:Yes of course!

In X3 fighter turrets were just rotating "gun model" - If there is one, it would suffice very well.

Thats quite the problem yet, there aren't much models which actually fit on the skunk.

I need to find some graphics guy who might be able to shrink them.
Until then i don't have much of a choise there. ^^

swatti · Post by **swatti** » Sat, 11. Oct 14, 17:16

nazcarspider wrote:...
looking forward to some ACE dogfighting with this mod.

You mean sitting still, eating something un-healthy and watching turret eat away red markers off radar...

... cause i am

iforgotmysocks · Post by **iforgotmysocks** » Sun, 12. Oct 14, 17:53

Yap, you can do that.

But you might wanna move, if you don't want to get blown up. xD

Little update on things:

Aiscripts look ok so far, i've created 3 options for the aggression level the player can set for the turrets. Aktiv, passive and disabled.

The turret works pretty good already, but there are still some things to work on.

Current Problems:
- [Edit] Turret can't be repaired yet
- Player can't interact with the Defense Officer onboard (i'm gonna ignore this one for now, it shouldn't do any harm)

swatti · Post by **swatti** » Sun, 12. Oct 14, 18:41

"Dis gonna be GOOOOOD!"

wwdragon · Post by **wwdragon** » Sun, 12. Oct 14, 18:53

iforgotmysocks wrote:- Ship can't be repaired anymore

That's a huge problem!

iforgotmysocks · Post by **iforgotmysocks** » Sun, 12. Oct 14, 20:01

wwdragon wrote:
iforgotmysocks wrote:- Ship can't be repaired anymore
That's a huge problem!

Nah its a feature. ;x
Just a new difficulty mode. xD

Edit:
Okay, ship can be fixed again, but the turret can't just yet.

iforgotmysocks · Post by **iforgotmysocks** » Mon, 13. Oct 14, 23:17

You need to install SideBarExtender by Philipp Offensand for the menu options to work.
Either download it from this page's files, or better visit his page and leave a thanks.

Requires a new save. This mod is highly experimental yet, and you might not be able to remove it just yet! Very very early Alpha! ^^

Yep, the Skunk is getting turrets.
Link: http://www.nexusmods.com/xrebirth/mods/421/?
Sadly it was never planned by egosoft to give the Skunks turrets, thats why there are almost no models, which fit on the skunk.
I'll keep working until i manage it anyway to give it some proper turrets.

Well, you get at least one by now.

You can set the turretaggression at: Menu (enter) -> Modes (1) -> Change Turret aggression level (6)
Set to active, the ai uses following prioritization: drones - m -> cap ship surface elements -> cap ships -> station surface elements.
Passive is pretty much shooting what shoots you.

Try it and give me some feedback please. ^^
Give me all the bugs you can find, give me ideas what to improve, where to place the turret or others.

And i think its time for a thank you to UniTrader, who has been playing notion ping pong with me for quite some time now.
You've been helping me alot buddy, thanks.

swatti · Post by **swatti** » Tue, 14. Oct 14, 10:03

Any chance to make this work with an EXISTING save? I dont want to leave my huge fleet and station empire.

iforgotmysocks · Post by **iforgotmysocks** » Tue, 14. Oct 14, 10:20

swatti wrote:Any chance to make this work with an EXISTING save? I dont want to leave my huge fleet and station empire.

Yap, better usablilty is the next big point that i'm gonna start working on. ^^

cicero111 · Post by **cicero111** » Tue, 14. Oct 14, 18:26

Took it for a spin in malestrom (new gamestart) - love it!

Great having a flyswatter back on the player ship to take on the fighters, i had really missed that.
The targetting for fighters seems to work really good already, could not verify surface elements (the k killed me too quick to verify - whoops...)

A request:
It would be really nice with a status/mode textbox in the lower right corner ("idle", "acquiring target", "firing at xenon M","firing at turret" etc).

Maybe have it listed as a really expensive software upgrade? ("Turret AI module") - would be lore friendly from X3AP as one of skunks lost features IIRC.
Or add as a slot 5 weapon and have support for different weapon types. Or both?

iforgotmysocks · Post by **iforgotmysocks** » Tue, 14. Oct 14, 20:02

cicero111 wrote:Took it for a spin in malestrom (new gamestart) - love it! Great having a flyswatter back on the player ship to take on the fighters, i had really missed that.
The targetting for fighters seems to work really good already, could not verify surface elements (the k killed me too quick to verify - whoops...)

A request:
It would be really nice with a status/mode textbox in the lower right corner ("idle", "acquiring target", "firing at xenon M","firing at turret" etc).

Maybe have it listed as a really expensive software upgrade? ("Turret AI module") - would be lore friendly from X3AP as one of skunks lost features IIRC.
Or add as a slot 5 weapon and have support for different weapon types. Or both?

I'm kinda careful with those notifications because they stop the player entirely from being able to see the gravidar. The tower switches targets very fast from time to time, depending on ranges and enemy/componenttypes, it might end in spam. ^^
Are you rly sure u'd want this?
I for my part am fine to know that my tower is gonna shoot that fighter above me, or whatever there is. ^^ You can't rly do much about it anyway.

I'm still working on making it install/deinstallable, and ya, i'm gonna try to make the tower available as a usual weapon.

Prolly i'm able to add different turrets and the player can simply buy the ones he wants, but i need alot more time to got there.

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Tue, 14. Oct 14, 20:21

For the target report idea, if you wanted one, perhaps it could just be a little on-screen line like the Show Credits mod (for bonus points, positioned over a blank monitor depending on what cockpit was installed).

If it was possible to interalace the turret with the frontal gun slots, id suggest considering having a turret somehow being a replacement for perhaps two of the other weapon slots. As a kind of balancing feature.

(Long-term ideas)

cicero111 · Post by **cicero111** » Tue, 14. Oct 14, 20:48

Ah - good point about the potential "spamminess" in my suggestion. Noticed the turret was rather quick finding new targets so would probably be a bit noisy.

Status info whith with only type "idle", "targeting" and "firing" - in a "Show Credits" type textbox as Sparky suggested is probably the best.

Had just been flying a lot in third persion to see if the gun was firing - the bullets from that K smashing into the shields made it hard to hear if the gun was active or not

cicero111 · Post by **cicero111** » Tue, 14. Oct 14, 22:48

Done some more testing and can definitively say the capital surface element targeting works as advertised. Correct there are some line of sight calculations in here as well? The turret seems to behave a lot smarter than i'm used to from vanilla...

Having the firing arc stop just before the target point of the mian gun made for an interesting mechanic - one would always try to position the ship so both the "belly" turret and main gun had a surface target when taking down capitals.

Impressive stuff, and if you put some more turrets on here it will make a very lethal skunk... Reminds me of the X3 Vidar + MARS style of gameplay.

Edit: added MARS, tie vanilla X3 turrets was not exactly stellar either...