[WIP] X Rebirth: The New Frontier

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[WIP] X Rebirth: The New Frontier

Post by BlackRain » Sat, 18. Feb 17, 21:07

Link to the location of the mod files:

https://github.com/40712ef4f9/nf_a

After you are at the site above, please review the readme.txt file for installation instructions.

It is absolutely necessary to start a new game after installing this mod.

If planning to use other mods at the same time, see the readme and ask in this thread first to avoid compatibility issues.

--------------------------------------

Currently, Marvin Martian and I are working on a new mod. This mod is intended to be a TOTAL OVERHAUL of X Rebirth in many ways, although not every aspect of the game will be overhauled.

The name is currently tentative as I just came up with it on the spot, but if no other name comes to mind I will keep it. Anyone have any ideas for a name, please share.

DISCLAIMER!!! These are GOALS we hope to achieve for this mod but some things may or may not be possible/feasible and may not make it into the mod, but we will try to achieve all of this if possible.

The following is the scope and goals for the mod:

Faction Wallets:

1) Each faction, regardless of Major or Minor, will have a "Wallet" from which to draw funds from. Everything must be purchased using these "Wallets." Nothing can be purchased if money has run out.

Construction of ships and Stations:

1) No ships will be spawned anymore except for at the START of a new game. Each faction will be given a handful of ships at the start of a new game and from then on, no ships will be spawned. No more reliance on jobs.xml at all for spawning.

2) No more stations will be spawned, except for at the start of a new game. Some factions will be given a handful of stations to start with and all new stations must be built. There will be more information on this below under the relevant category. Stations WILL NO LONGER be tied to maps.xml and as such will only be spawned by an MD script once at the beginning of a new game. Once destroyed, these stations will never respawn, but may be rebuilt.

Major and Minor factions:

1) Major factions which will now be designated as "Government factions" for all future communication so that there will be no confusion as to what is being discussed. Government factions will start out with one military fleet and a few trade ships. Government factions will have their own start zones already predetermined and there will be a number of Government factions per cluster and they will compete with each other for domination of a cluster and beyond. Each Government faction that shares a cluster will not have a home zone in the same Sector. These Government factions will also start with their own Shipyard and Warehouses filled with resources at the start of a new game in order to get the economy moving initially. Government factions will not be involved in manufacturing, other than Ship construction. They will generate income with the sale of ships to factions which purchase from them and will build their own military ships as well. Consideration is being given to whether "Military ships" and "Trade ships" should be split and get their very own types of shipyards.

2)  Minor factions will have the following designations "Corporation factions," "Pirate factions," "Mercenary factions," "Xenon," and "Khaak." Xenon and Khaak are given their own designations because each will function in their own unique way separate from all other factions.

3) Corporation factions are the factions which will be competing economically with each other and with the player. Each cluster will have multiple corporations for a specific "Group" of wares. A "Group" of wares will refer to similar industry types. The industries are as follows, "Energy industry," "Arms industry," "Food industry," "Mining industry," "Construction industry," "Low-Tech industry," "High-Tech industry," and "Robotics industry." These corporations, as they grow and expand, will compete with other corporations in the same industries throughout the universe. The following is under consideration: Corporations will hire "Mercenary factions" to attack other corporations or even the player OR Corporations will build small military fleets to attack other corporations and/or the player.

4) Pirate factions will have their own kind of basic industry where they will go around plundering wares and then bring those wares to their stations which will consume the wares and build "Ship parts" which can then be used to build their own ships at a Pirate shipyard. Pirates are the enemies of everyone and will attack anyone, even other pirate factions. A goal would also be to have the player be able to become a pirate or help a pirate faction if they so desire.

5) Mercenary factions would only purchase military ships and would be hired by corporations, or the player, to attack a competitor or to defend their assets. This is how Mercenary factions will make money, they will also be involved in the "Illegal industry" which will be producing wares which are illegal as a possible secondary income.

6) The Xenon will be unique in that they will mine basic resources and with these they can produce ship parts to build their own ships. The Xenon hate everyone and will try to attack and conquer every zone, sector and cluster if they can. The Xenon will be located in more than one cluster, but only on the distant outskirts initially. Their stations will be unique and be able to produce all weapons, ship parts and possibly drones they need from the most basic ores and gases. They will build "Warp stations" which Xenon ships will be able to jump to from anywhere. If not stopped, they will continue to grow and expand and crush.

7) The Khaak will be an enemy faction that is isolationist. They will have a special station which can produce their ship parts without the need for resources, but they will never expand and only defend their home.

UNDER CONSIDERATION

8 ) If military and trade ship production is split then perhaps a "Shipbuilding industry" for building only merchant and mining type ships.

Faction logic:

1) We hope to have different faction logic for each faction. Some factions might want "domination" while some may be more peaceful and "defensive." We also hope to have differences in the way Corporations and such expand/grow and Corporations in different industries will build stations related to their industry and hopefully with some smart logic to what gets built and where.

2) Government factions will try to expand by building outposts and/or fortresses in space as well as possibly building additional shipyards and such.

3) Possible "Taxes" for being able to build in a zone owned by a Government faction, sort of like a "Protection fee." All factions would have to pay this "Tax" to the Government faction in control.

Exploration:

1) Even though the Universe is obviously known by all by now, since initially "Civilization" will be limited to very few zones, there is an element of exploration. If possible, maybe we can tie some of the expansion that goes on to "Exploration" by either the player or NPC factions. For example, a mission that asks you to explore a certain zone when a faction wishes to expand, these would be highly experimental though and maybe not possible.

2) You don't know where factions will build and what they will build, so exploration will be a must for trade opportunities, etc.

3) The Xenon could be lurking somewhere in space so there would be a need to search and keep track of their expansion.

4) Creating new zones when building player stations would also add to this as factions will be able to find you out in space and this would of course open up new trade lanes (although no new highways or anything like that would be built of course)

The Universe:

1) All clusters from vanilla, the DLC's, and possibly even other mods (if permission is given to use) will be used as part of the "Universe."

2) That means HOL, Teladi and perhaps any other clusters created by other modders who will allow us to use their work and factions of varying types will be populated into this universe.

3) Many new factions will be created of different races, although logo's will not be unique and will need to be reused.

Economy:

1) There will be some pretty major changes to the economy in terms of what is produced, how much is required for production and the costs, etc.

2) This will have to undergo extensive testing because we are introducing a new and very important ware, "Ship parts" which will be used in ship construction. These "Ship parts" will be made in a variety of different ways depending on certain things.

3) Some resources may be eliminated entirely for streamlining purposes, although this is yet to be determined. This will depend on how we wish to do things, but another idea would be to have not just "Ship parts," but also "Station Construction kits." We could create stations which produce "Ship parts" and stations for producing "Construction kits." These wares would be produced in a variety of ways but could be universal for ship and station construction. So instead of having to get energy cells, fusion reactors, etc. for building ships and stations, you would just get the parts or the kits. These "Ship parts" and "Construction kits" would still require relatively the same amount of resources to produce so this might simplify some things in a much more efficient way so that it isn't difficult to construct ships and stations without taking anything away from the economy.

End game goals:

1) As you know, X Rebirth is a sandbox and it is up to you what you will do, however, this mod will offer many new types of goals for the End game. Factions can be "bled dry" economically which opens up many new types of play styles. When you hack stations and steal their cargo, etc. this is costing that faction money. When you attack a factions' supply lines, infrastructure, trade ships, etc. this is hurting that faction and may cause the death of a faction if they can't pick themselves up. You can muscle a corporation out of an industry and gain a monopoly, you can become your own government faction and conquer the universe, etc. You can decide to be a hero and make it your goal to take on the Xenon and wipe them from the face of the Universe, or decide to work for a government faction/corporation and help them rise to the top. As you can see, there will be many new opportunities for play styles and goals.
Last edited by BlackRain on Sat, 18. Feb 17, 21:59, edited 2 times in total.

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Post by BlackRain » Sat, 18. Feb 17, 21:08

RESERVED FOR FUTURE PURPOSES!


Please discuss the ideas listed above and share suggestions/thoughts. If you have any wishes you would like to see in the mod, please share and they may be considered if they fit into the scope of the mod.

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Post by iforgotmysocks » Sat, 18. Feb 17, 21:49

Hell yeah, what X-R should've been all along. Very nice!

Edit: And i like the name. ^^

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Post by TheRealBix » Sat, 18. Feb 17, 22:29

I suggest X: Rebirth: Rebirth

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Post by mr.WHO » Sat, 18. Feb 17, 23:27

I hope that Lost Sectors could be integrated into this mod due to new systems and lots of new ships.

Also some other ship packs for faction diversity would be nice too.

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Re: [WIP] X Rebirth: The New Frontier (Tentative title?)

Post by Snafu_X3 » Sun, 19. Feb 17, 00:16

Sounds /very/ interesting; however a couple of suggestions occur:
BlackRain wrote:5) Mercenary factions would only purchase military ships and would be hired by corporations, or the player, to attack a competitor or to defend their assets. This is how Mercenary factions will make money, they will also be involved in the "Illegal industry" which will be producing wares which are illegal as a possible secondary income.

6) The Xenon will be unique in that they will mine basic resources and with these they can produce ship parts to build their own ships. The Xenon hate everyone and will try to attack and conquer every zone, sector and cluster if they can. The Xenon will be located in more than one cluster, but only on the distant outskirts initially. Their stations will be unique and be able to produce all weapons, ship parts and possibly drones they need from the most basic ores and gases. They will build "Warp stations" which Xenon ships will be able to jump to from anywhere. If not stopped, they will continue to grow and expand and crush.

7) The Khaak will be an enemy faction that is isolationist. They will have a special station which can produce their ship parts without the need for resources, but they will never expand and only defend their home.
6 & 7 races may be swapped to gel with 'lore': Khaak are xenophobes who want to wipe out every other race (but are 'intelligent', therefore will retreat if battling overwhelming odds), while Xenon are 'terraformers gone rogue', so are only interested in pursuing an expansionist policy while not caring about (their) attrition.

5) doesn't make sense IMO. The goal of a mercenary /company/ (in both military & civilian senses of the word) is to make money thru combat (war support, peacekeeping, security, WHY). It would make more sense for this faction to have a /limited/ number of heavily-armed traders as a logistics section (Ly? Tit?) with which to gain their supplies ('ship parts', food, ammo etc) at the cheapest prices throughout the range you allow for such trades, thus making their fundamental philosophy more logical IMO

Just some thoughts..

Dunno when I'll look at this again as I don't look at this forum very often, but best wishes for this project & to both of you!..
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Post by UniTrader » Sun, 19. Feb 17, 00:50

Regarding Faction Wallets:

the biggest problem i see there is that it will result in a viciuos, self-strengthening, circle:
=> if the Economy is in good shape more ships and Stations are built causing further growth
=> if the Economy is in bad shape few new Ships (and Stations) will be built, possibly not enough to replace the losses, which weakens the economy even more

not sure if you have thought about counter-measures against this, but here a few approaches, in order of how good i think these Approaches are:
=> Create a Counter-Balance Force, for example: the fitter the Economy the more Pirates are created (not referring to spawning there, but more along the lines of converting existing Ships to Piracy) to harass it, and on the other hand stop creating these when the Economy begins weakening (for Pirates it might be logical: the more Goods are shipped the more lucrative is buisness, but if not enough goods can be stolen the Pirate "Economy" stalls as very first because the few remaining Goods are better guarded)
=> If a Faction gets completely wiped out (think this is your intention) re-introduce it after a whilc under the same conditions as a new Game (lets call it startup-company-bonus)
Maybe somehow make clear this is a "new" Faction by adding some statistics how often which Faction has been ressurected. and Restart them in a firendly Corner of the Universe.
=> Create some Counter-balancing Events which vitalize or slow down the Economy (lets call it Government intervention) - this either spreads Money and Goods into the Economy (to vitalize it) or removes them (to reduce growth) - the latter could be resoned because of faked bilances or something like this
=> Add some minimum Amount of Trade Ships for each Facttion to prevent a complete stall (yeah, good olld Spawning :roll: i know you want to get rid of this, but if the Economy fails by tself otherwise its imo a valid and easy Option till the other, more complicated ones work reliably enough)
if these or other measures are not taken you will probably end up with a very static universe, which is boring..

Another problem is that using the simple Approach Money can only Disappear, but never be added to the Economy (except when the Player does Missions, but i am leaving that out because Player Intervention should not be a requirement): When Ships and Stations are Destroyed the Wallets of all contained Entities disappear with it removing their Money from the economy forever
Also the total amount of Money needed in the Economy is not constant but depends on Game Progress - the further the Game is the more total Money is required. Starting with a total Money pool for the expected Economy after lets say 90 Days makes this Wallets pointless initially since everyone has basically unlimited money, and starting with enough moey for the first day will stall the Economy quickly because there is not enough Money in circulation to allow for all necesary Ware Transfers (even if the economy as whole were sustainable)




PS if you are interested i have a small expansion for the Allbion system which i never got around to complete... wasnt missing much, but this stuff isnt required for your mod (placing Stations and creating some Jobs)
if not stated otherwise everything i post is licensed under WTFPL

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Post by BlackRain » Sun, 19. Feb 17, 03:27

The "Wallets" are not set numbers that "only" decrease. Each faction will EARN income as well so there is no such thing as a fixed number. Every purchase or sale will increase or decrease the income a faction has. Each faction has its own "wallet" and none of them are tied together.

The goal is to have absolutely no spawning at all, so if a solution to something is to "spawn" stuff then the whole thing is a failure in my opinion, but that doesn't mean we can't compromise minimally if there really is absolutely no other way.

We could have factions be reintroduced over time, but if that is the case, there would have to be some mechanism to do that which wont get in the way of the player being able to just wipe everything out if they want to. This is something which would need to be intuitive but not some kind of cheat. For example, the player could "donate" a significant amount of money to bring a faction back.

I intend for nothing to be a "cheat."

Factions at the start of the game will spawn with ships, but that is the only time it will happen. Government factions will spawn with fully stocked warehouses too and since there will be lots of Government factions (Maybe 3 per cluster) then it should be enough to get things going to where eventually the economy comes alive.

Of course, until it gets sufficient testing and such there is no way to know what problems might crop up.

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Post by escondido » Sun, 19. Feb 17, 18:13

I loved that the player had a system of his own with a small mining fleet with a basic station where he could research and build his fleet of destroyers / transporters / weapons / drones like npcs xenon, is it viable?

:lol:

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Post by tomchk » Sun, 19. Feb 17, 18:47

This is incredibly exciting to see moving forward! I especially love the drive to eliminate all the spawns and cheats currently in the game. Maybe you should call it Realism Redux or something. Just a thought.

By the way, can you provide more detail about these ship parts? Is that something to simplify the economy? I'm behind whatever you decide--just curious.

Thanks for all the amazing work you do for this game and genre!

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Post by BlackRain » Sun, 19. Feb 17, 19:29

escondido wrote:I loved that the player had a system of his own with a small mining fleet with a basic station where he could research and build his fleet of destroyers / transporters / weapons / drones like npcs xenon, is it viable?

:lol:
Well, this would be more along the lines of a custom start. It is certainly possible but that is something to consider for the future.

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Post by BlackRain » Sun, 19. Feb 17, 19:38

tomchk wrote:This is incredibly exciting to see moving forward! I especially love the drive to eliminate all the spawns and cheats currently in the game. Maybe you should call it Realism Redux or something. Just a thought.

By the way, can you provide more detail about these ship parts? Is that something to simplify the economy? I'm behind whatever you decide--just curious.

Thanks for all the amazing work you do for this game and genre!
Its to simplify things but not in the sense you are thinking. I will explain.

Both "ship parts" and "construction kits" will need a factory to produce them and they will be produced by the same types of wares that would normally be used to produce ships and stations. It will take some trial and error to get the balance right and ultimately it wont be exactly the same in terms of resources used and cost as it is in vanilla, but the goal is to get it somewhere around the same. Although, it might be ideal to make things more expensive but cost less resources to produce.

The reason this makes things simple is not because it oversimplifies the economy. In fact, it is adding an extra step which may seem counterproductive. However, the benefit of this is that there will be a much larger supply of the resources necessary to build ships and stations than vanilla because the same end product will be created in all systems even if the resources needed to get there are different.

Previously, there would be shortages of the necessary resources to build ships and stations. Also, the resources required would be different between Albion, Omicron Lyrae and Teladi production methods. Now, they will all be ultimately using the same materials for ship construction and station construction even when the resources needed to produce these are different. This also makes it much simpler for us to include other factions outside of the norm in the system, like Xenon and the pirates. They will also ultimately use "ship parts" and "construction kits" as well. This means the player could potentially steal these from those factions or even work with those factions to get those materials, etc. This also allows for pirates, for example, to plunder these for their own use.

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Post by Hago » Mon, 20. Feb 17, 00:51

omg a dream comes true! 100% agreement in every point and feature. The idea with this "wallet" is, if working, so cool. It would bring this game so much depth. I hope this mod is possible to compile und to balance.

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Post by TheRealBix » Mon, 20. Feb 17, 02:40

This project is very ambitious and interesting yes, Even if I have some doubts on the economy balance (I don't say it's impossible to do, but it may require a lot, lot of time, trials and errors to adjust and find the good spot)
I really hope to be there when your mod will born, and pray for you that X4 will not come before your release :p

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Post by tomchk » Mon, 20. Feb 17, 03:23

That makes a ton of sense, and you anticipated my concerns. Thanks! This sounds amazing.

Would it even matter if X4 comes out before this? I bet Egosoft will benefit from your work and wouldn't be shocked to see them incorporate some of it!

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Post by Warnoise » Mon, 20. Feb 17, 04:47

I love this idea, this mod will be a godsend for people who want to enjoy Xrebith!

I have few questions:

Will pirates try to "board" other ships?


Also since economy will be changed (no spawning etc) will the AI also be adjusted in such way that they can adjust to the market?

Will governments try to expand all over the universe? (For example canterans expanding over albion, Plutarch over devries, etc...)

Last: Will AI build in all zones? (even for example zones in barren hearts, and other empty zones etc...)

Thank you

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Post by Senner » Mon, 20. Feb 17, 11:48

Really looking forward to this one. Thanks for putting in all the work.

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Post by BlackRain » Mon, 20. Feb 17, 14:24

Warnoise wrote:I love this idea, this mod will be a godsend for people who want to enjoy Xrebith!

I have few questions:

Will pirates try to "board" other ships?


Also since economy will be changed (no spawning etc) will the AI also be adjusted in such way that they can adjust to the market?

Will governments try to expand all over the universe? (For example canterans expanding over albion, Plutarch over devries, etc...)

Last: Will AI build in all zones? (even for example zones in barren hearts, and other empty zones etc...)

Thank you
Well, the "plunder" command has pirates attacking ships and taking their cargo. It is certainly possible to have pirates board ships, since we already have station boarding for npc's but it will be too cpu intensive of a feature I believe.

Governments will try to conquer and expand, how far their expansion will go has not been fully decided yet. Also, there will be more government factions than in vanilla, probably 3 per cluster.

As of right now, the AI will build in all the normal zones from vanilla, not sure yet if we will have them build in empty zones because it might become too complicated that way. It is possible though.

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Post by Marvin Martian » Mon, 20. Feb 17, 14:45

i already testing a surrender feature for plunder-attacks that allows the ship to drop all cargo before the ship will destroyed

---

In all zones stations can build the AI will build, based on the behavior the faction will use existing slots or force to expand into other areas

only at CWIR we have code (under testing) to create and build in temp-zones far away from existing - like for Xenon invasions - but this isn't a good idea in my opinion for every faction - thy would spam all sectors

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Post by Ezarkal » Mon, 20. Feb 17, 15:16

That's a very nice and ambitious project.

I'll give it some thought, then probably throw a few ideas, but you two already have a very impressive and pretty complete to-do list.

Keep us posted. You can bet I'll test that for you guys.
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