BlackRain's Mod Projects and Possibilities

[BlackRain]

Hey all, just wanted to have a single thread for all the projects I am working on and/or thinking about. Some stuff is hypothetical and some is actual.


So far, these are the following Mods I have already created/worked on:

World War X - This is a mod which simulates a war in the X Rebirth Universe. Patrols/fleets/fighter wings have been created which will patrol and fight in various places including large battle ground areas. There are some other smaller things also in this. I have added a boarding mod integrated in this. All ships have marines on board and they will defend their ships. You can either succeed or fail. If you fail, you lose all marines and the marine officer. I also had to add a drone bay to the Balor, Succellus and Gangrene chaser.

Boarding Mod - This isn't really a standalone mod right now although I may consider doing so in the future. This is integrated into World War X. This will add marines to all capital ships in the game. You will be able to fail boarding missions and failing comes at a price. You will lose all marines and marine officer if you fail to board the ship. You can check info for ships to see how many marines they have on board and what type of marines to make good decisions on what ships to take.


Player Shipyards - This is going to be my version of the Build shipyard mod. Some of the scripts are copied from Berserk Knight and all credit for those go to him. I added some code and other features to the mod. You will be limited to one small/medium dockyard per the major shipyard factions. There is also an added small/medium dockyard which builds XENON/PMC Hybrid fighters (Golem and Moebius). I am also considering adding split, xenon and any future race shipyards to the mod as well. Shipyards will look same to other races but will build faction specific ships. I may even break up the small/medium shipyards in the game per faction (meaning PMC, HOA, JSS, etc. type small/medium shipyards).



I will also be adding new variants of ships as well. For example, I have already added one to the game, the Sul Heavy Weapons platform. This is a variant of the Heavy Sul and will feature two top deck mounted HIVA (forgot the name) turrets, the big plasma ones. This ship will have no drone dock so can't hold drones but will be an effective Mobile anti capital ship. I am considering other variants of ships to make. Perhaps different variants of existing ships which change the weapon loadouts for various purposes (like a Sul with lots of HIT MA Turrets and only these, etc.)


Faster Ships Mod- This mod speeds up all capital ships in the game, both traders and military ships. It is not a ridiculous speed up but a reasonable speed up. The idea is to give capital ships faster forward thrust but still relatively slow (albeit faster) turning speeds. This is already in development and I am tweaking as I go along.

POSSIBILITIES/IDEAS UNDER CONSIDERATION - NO PROMISES WITH THESE

Station Placement Mod - Under consideration is a new way to build stations. The idea is as follows: You will fly to a spot where you would like to build a station and open up the station placement menu, say build station here and select from the list which station you would like to build. You will be charged accordingly for the first stage of the station and queue warp animation (ala Euclids jump mod) and the first part of that station will spawn in the spot near your ship. It will have all weapons for the first stage of the station (which you will be charge for in full) and then you can attach a CV to it and build the rest the normal way.


Faction Station Destruction Mod - The idea behind this is that you will be able to destroy any station in the game. There are some ideas floating around but this one is the most difficult of my ideas and will need some looking in to. The idea is either you can destroy a station so that it is all debris (can remove engineering scripts from station to stop it repairing) or possibly somehow remove the station. This is the hard part. It may and I say "may" even be possible to have factions try to rebuild those stations.


Station and Capital ship weapon loadout rebalance - This would be a rebalance of the weapon loadouts for stations and capital ships for a more strategic and interesting game. Stations would no longer be deathtraps for fighters and Capital ships would have more specialized roles so that fighters would be useful in large battles. This would remove HIT/MA turrets from the larger Capital ships and give more HIT/MA turrets to smaller capital ships to make them focus on anti fighter roles (removing plasma turrets). The Balor would be a special case because it would be mainly an anti capital ship (with torpedoes) but with good anti fighter capabilities too.

Anyone with ideas is welcome to post here but I make no promises on what can or can't be done and if I have the time to do them. Also, any modders wanting to work with me on anything, please let me know.

[NZ-Wanderer]

Faction Station Destruction Mod[/color

Hmmm, one variant on that if it were possible, would be, Once you get the station destroyed down to a certain level you can then actually board it with marines and if successful take over the station (ie: it becomes yours) after which then you can start rebuilding it with your own CV

[BlackRain]

Faction Station Destruction Mod[/color

Hmmm, one variant on that if it were possible, would be, Once you get the station destroyed down to a certain level you can then actually board it with marines and if successful take over the station (ie: it becomes yours) after which then you can start rebuilding it with your own CV

It is something I will certainly look into. This would be the "preferred" method.

[UniTrader]

regarding Station Destruction i would have a look if Stations could be replaced by NPC buildspots and then add complete Stations to them after Gamestart or stations under constructin if the buildspot is free during gameplay. this way you could circumvent the respawn by ego.

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

I'd like to see a mod which would make Skunk look like Katana
But of course, I only use mods which can be removed and their effects reverted by simply deletting them.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Faction Station Destruction Mod[/color

Hmmm, one variant on that if it were possible, would be, Once you get the station destroyed down to a certain level you can then actually board it with marines and if successful take over the station (ie: it becomes yours) after which then you can start rebuilding it with your own CV

It is something I will certainly look into. This would be the "preferred" method.

Nice idea. If it proved too difficult and it had to remain NPC-controlled, perhaps a station in a border zone that has had all its components damaged could flip ownership to the neighbouring zone’s major faction. Getting somewhat carried away here but perhaps in such a case, the neighbours could send a fleet over, which needs to survive for x mins to achieve the claim.

You can check info for ships to see how many marines they have on board and what type of marines to make good decisions on what ships to take

Might have already been considered but perhaps we could need to buy a better scanner to gain info on marine numbers and a top tier one to know about their type.

[BlackRain]

Faction Station Destruction Mod[/color

Hmmm, one variant on that if it were possible, would be, Once you get the station destroyed down to a certain level you can then actually board it with marines and if successful take over the station (ie: it becomes yours) after which then you can start rebuilding it with your own CV

It is something I will certainly look into. This would be the "preferred" method.

Nice idea. If it proved too difficult and it had to remain NPC-controlled, perhaps a station in a border zone that has had all its components damaged could flip ownership to the neighbouring zone’s major faction. Getting somewhat carried away here but perhaps in such a case, the neighbours could send a fleet over, which needs to survive for x mins to achieve the claim.

You can check info for ships to see how many marines they have on board and what type of marines to make good decisions on what ships to take

Might have already been considered but perhaps we could need to buy a better scanner to gain info on marine numbers and a top tier one to know about their type.

This may already be the case, I just always buy a police scanner right away so I never know heh. Can you see all cargo and such with just the basic scanner on any ship?

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Ah, good point...not positive

I've not used Rebirth since about June (little litcube-shaped holiday) but from memory, I don't think there was much of a difference between scanners in terms of gaining ship info.

[euclid]

.........
Station Placement Mod - Under consideration is a new way to build stations. The idea is as follows: You will fly to a spot where you would like to build a station and open up the station placement menu, say build station here and select from the list which station you would like to build. You will be charged accordingly for the first stage of the station and queue warp animation (ala Euclids jump mod) and the first part of that station will spawn in the spot near your ship. It will have all weapons for the first stage of the station (which you will be charge for in full) and then you can attach a CV to it and build the rest the normal way.
...........

I've tried something like that some time ago (skeleton code result: PropertyAgent) but postponed further attempts because of the lack of proper tools. Without hacking (read: XML editing) there was (and still is?) no way to create menu for selecting location and station type. But even if we get around this (for example by using MadJoker's library) there is the problem of building locations: you can only use CV's if there is a construction site. Of course you can build (spawn) stations anywhere but then the CV won't work for building.

...........
Faction Station Destruction Mod - The idea behind this is that you will be able to destroy any station in the game. There are some ideas floating around but this one is the most difficult of my ideas and will need some looking in to. The idea is either you can destroy a station so that it is all debris (can remove engineering scripts from station to stop it repairing) or possibly somehow remove the station. This is the hard part. It may and I say "may" even be possible to have factions try to rebuild those stations.
.........

Similar with this idea; tested it some time ago after a long and very frustrating war with PMC. The main problem here, as Uni has mentioned below, is that the game engine will simply respawn the removed (destroyed) stations. But there are other problems like ownership, subordinates etc..

Cheers Euclid

[BlackRain]

.........
Station Placement Mod - Under consideration is a new way to build stations. The idea is as follows: You will fly to a spot where you would like to build a station and open up the station placement menu, say build station here and select from the list which station you would like to build. You will be charged accordingly for the first stage of the station and queue warp animation (ala Euclids jump mod) and the first part of that station will spawn in the spot near your ship. It will have all weapons for the first stage of the station (which you will be charge for in full) and then you can attach a CV to it and build the rest the normal way.
...........

I've tried something like that some time ago (skeleton code result: PropertyAgent) but postponed further attempts because of the lack of proper tools. Without hacking (read: XML editing) there was (and still is?) no way to create menu for selecting location and station type. But even if we get around this (for example by using MadJoker's library) there is the problem of building locations: you can only use CV's if there is a construction site. Of course you can build (spawn) stations anywhere but then the CV won't work for building.

...........
Faction Station Destruction Mod - The idea behind this is that you will be able to destroy any station in the game. There are some ideas floating around but this one is the most difficult of my ideas and will need some looking in to. The idea is either you can destroy a station so that it is all debris (can remove engineering scripts from station to stop it repairing) or possibly somehow remove the station. This is the hard part. It may and I say "may" even be possible to have factions try to rebuild those stations.
.........

Similar with this idea; tested it some time ago after a long and very frustrating war with PMC. The main problem here, as Uni has mentioned below, is that the game engine will simply respawn the removed (destroyed) stations. But there are other problems like ownership, subordinates etc..

Cheers Euclid

But, Euclid, now you can replace a CV to an existing station (mentioned in changelog) so the idea may very well work! Using Madjokers library you can get a menu to spawn ships at your location so why not a station?


You may also be able to get around the issue with the respawning stations by having the station not necessarily get destroyed but change ownership which may not trigger a respawn? Or perhaps have it change to a blank empty space kind of model so it may be there sort of in the code but not there?

[rguy1]

@ Blackrain, Hi you seem like a pretty smart person and a great modder, Is there any way you can make a mod to fix the storage? What I mean is so the station only buys enough wares for production of 12 to 18 hours. That way storage will not fill up 150,000+ E-Cells or food or ore and leave room for finnished goods. Or even segment storage into production wares and finnished goods.

P.S. trying to wait patiently for new patch so I can try your new shipyard mod. I just hope Observes Transend mod is ready too. you know anything about that? Haven't heard much from him since he joined ES.

Thanks for all of your hard work and looking forward to seeing what you come up with

[UniTrader]

segmenting storage further (down to ware level) is pretty easy, you just have to add an individual tag to each ware (eg the ware type code) and add a few storages for them to the ships/stations. Someone in the German Forum started with that i think, but i have no idea about the progress.

[Peter Hull]

Player Shipyards - .....
You will be limited to one small/medium dockyard per the major shipyard factions.

This will mean one has to remain on good terms with any faction whose capital ships we need to build.

Will it be possible to add a large dockyard to the mod?

[BlackRain]

Player Shipyards - .....
You will be limited to one small/medium dockyard per the major shipyard factions.

This will mean one has to remain on good terms with any faction whose capital ships we need to build.

Will it be possible to add a large dockyard to the mod?

No, you can build Capital shipyards too. Nevermind that comment anyway, I added in all the small/medium dockyards. You can get, currently, 3 different Capital shipyards and 8 different small/medium shipyards (well 4 different types, 2 of each).

[Peter Hull]

@Blackrain

Thanks for the info. I'm happy now

[BlackRain]

I am thinking of adding the split ships but not sure yet what to do. The split only have 3 ships currently, there is the Capital ship and one small and one medium fighter. I was thinking maybe have a Split capital shipyard be able to build the Gangrene Chaser and the Titurel because the Titurel looks like it could be a split ship. It would have no other traders though. It could also build all the different mining ships. Small/medium dockyard could build the 2 split fighters and all the medium freighters and miners.


It would be cool if you could just "shrink" ships somehow. If I could shrink the Gangrene Chaser down and change its weapon loadout, that would be cool and I could add more ships heh.

[rguy1]

Can you add a drone bay to the Gangrene Chaser? It would be nice even it it were a small bay.In Xenon hunt mod he added drone bays to the ships.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Can you add a drone bay to the Gangrene Chaser? It would be nice even it it were a small bay.In Xenon hunt mod he added drone bays to the ships.

He has added one within his next version of WWX

BlackRain, will we be able to replace Gangrene Chaser weapons? I read somewhere that they cannot be replaced in vanilla.

[UniTrader]

you mean on-the-fly exchangeable turrets? possible, but either i didnt do it properly yet or EGO has to change eome things before we can use that or it will result in a CTD when upgrading/building these ships in a Shipyard... got an idea how to prevent that properly yesterday and will test it today..

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Interesting idea but that wasn't quite what I meant.

I was thinking about replacing/repairing their destroyed guns as per this bug report (I think it was reported prior to that too):

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=370332



Edit: Added missing "wasn't"...