[MOD iP] New Dimensions [Alpha 4.2] (Update 06/09/10)

[Scoob]

Hi,

Love this mod, the hull changes really do make a huge difference.

Could I make a small request?

While combat IS much better I still regularly see M6 class ships performing endless circles in combat while they try to get a lock on smaller, more nimble craft.

In my own game I've given M6s up to a 4x max rudder boost, this instantly turns the basic, front gun biased, M6 into an effective heavy fighter. Sure, really small ships can still run rings around it if they choose to do so but they become a much more effective M3 killer. The 'Heavy' M6 varient I gave less of a boost because they are more about turret coverage. Though they also can more readily bring there main guns to bear on smaller craft now.

I felt this, with my perceived role for the M6 as being a super-heavy fighter, really balanced things out nicely. A 10-15 Milion credit M6 can now hold it's own to the same value in M3's - for the most part. The hull increases that are standard with your mod compliment this nicely, while still meaning an M6 can survive against a capital ship PPC barage...for a little while at least.

Additionally any basic M6 with a rear turret I added a second weapon to give them a bit more of a sting in the tail. This annoys the smaller craft the M6 cannot turn to face.

What do you think, something you'd possibly consider?

Cheers,

Scoob.

[X2-Illuminatus]

We've found time and motivation to work on New Dimensions again and the result is the New Dimensions Alpha 4.1. In this version we worked on further ship, mission and map balancing. Most of the sectors of the universe are now around 50 % bigger. Also we did some adjustments on the generic mission's reward and fixed several smaller and bigger bugs.

Alpha 4.1 OUT NOW
Fixes

• Connecting Mines and SPPs won't cause a CTD anymore
• Fixed several errors in generic missions
• Fixed problems with the race ranks management
• Fixed balancing of several ships
• Fixed different job issues
• Fixed mistakes in map
• ...

New Features

• New Balancing of generic mission's reward
• Reactivation and balancing of several ships
• Increased sector size around 50 %
• Increased ranges of all scanners
• Removed exploit for selling weapons and shields at equipment docks
• ...

In addition to that we're testing our new installer, which will help to simplify the installation and uninstallation of the Mod and future optional extensions.

We'd also like to thank all of you, who tested the previous alpha versions and provided us with very helpful feedback.

Please refer to the OP for further Test and download info.

[Mr. Reeves]

No jumpdrive? I'm confused. A jumpdrive makes life in the X universe managable. For a few thousand credits you can jump clean across the universe by storing yourself in the gates buffer and passing clean accross the universe. It makes sence a jumpdrive would not fit in a small ship. I like big ships anyway. I also like doing mock 5 in a modded kestral! Thank "GOD" for inercial dampeners! I will miss my jumpdrive but will take on this challenge (after backing up my current save) to make me feel like a green horn. Possibly i will wait till the next patch of this NEW X-universe game before committing to starting over. Let's be honest Egosoft. You could of sold this as a downloadable expantion to the fans for $9.99 and you could of gotten it. Your support to your fanbase and products continues to surprise me and keep me hooked on forking over my hard earned cash for your products. Thankyou!

I still can not seem to wait for "the next big thing" Egosof't releases. I'm sure it will present a truly fantastic experiance and be worthy of both wonderful and terrible reviews depending on what kind of gamer is playing the game. But hey one thing that is true is you can not please everyone.

[Nanook]

I have multiple instances of TC on my machine, both modded and unmodded, including both TC v2.5 and v2.6. I have a new vanilla instance of 2.6 that I installed the latest New Dimensions mod into. I've also got the Bonus Pack installed in both my normal modded game and the ND version.

Problem is, the new Nostalgic Argon start doesn't appear in the ND A4.1 version, but does in the others. Is this by design, or just a bug?

[Iifrit Tambuur-san]

Problem is, the new Nostalgic Argon start doesn't appear in the ND A4.1 version, but does in the others. Is this by design, or just a bug?

Actually we use a modified gamestart.xml from an older TC version where this gamestart isn't added yet. We will fix this in the next available version.

[Gavrushka]

I'll do a fresh install this weekend .

Is it okay to run it with 2.7?

Are there any specifics you want testing?

[X2-Illuminatus]

Is it okay to run it with 2.7?

Nope, the mod will need some further adjustments to run properly under version 2.7.

Are there any specifics you want testing?

Best would be to have feedback about the generic mission rewards, which include money and rank rewards. But also feedback about the other changes is as always appreciated.

[Demotruk]

I'm getting pirate ships (harriers and others) that say "Pirate ***UNDEFINED*** Tug", which have a TL symbol for some reason. Though it may be possible I didn't install things correctly (I patched to 2.6 straight over my modded Alpha 3.5 game, and then applied Alpha 4.1).

[Gavrushka]

Played for 2 hours - 1 Immediate suggestion, I think it would make sense for Com range to be boosted in line with scanner increase / increased sector size - Coverage to ask about missions is difficult in such large sectors otherwise.

First mission I took an hour and a half into the game was to supply energy cells (4,000) to a factory in Argon Prime (rated very hard), 14 minutes allowed with a reward of 220,000 - I had some Ecells on board and the additional round trip of 125km took around 10mins 30 seconds in a Mercury - The timing I think was great but the reward of 55 credits per energy cell is still a little generous - PLUS the rep increase for that one mission means I could now buy as high as a Nova - far too much in my opinion.

Glad the Equipment Dock exploit removed I really hated that as you'd sell without realising it wasn't a natural stockist.

Sector sizes feel good, and seems to be less collisions to date.

[Rheikon]

Also getting ***UNDEFINED*** Tug and camera drone factories. A couple others I can't remember right now as well. Mine was a pirate tug too, until he bailed...

[Nanook]

Return ship missions are borked. With the larger sector sizes and lack of jumpdrives, they seem impossible. I just took a mission in CBNW to return a pegasus located in Rolk's Fate. The time limit was 38 minutes, yet the mission was listed as 'average'. In my 400 m/s Disco, it took 25 minutes to reach the pegasus, leaving 13 minutes to get it back. A total impossibility, so I self-destructed it. If this is an example of an average mission, I hate to see a hard or impossible one.

You wanted feedback, here's another.

Removed exploit for selling weapons and shields at equipment docks

is a bad decision, IMO. You may have removed a so-called 'exploit', but you've also removed a major gameplay element, the fine art of collecting battle salvage. You've made it so it's very difficult to unload collected weapon and missile salvage, which is really bad if you're playing a pirate and don't have many friends. Which means you can't dock at stations that buy most of your collected goodies.

For example, I just collected some Wildfires from a battle. There are no factories that build these, so there's no equipment dock that stocks them, as far as I know. So how do I sell them? Same goes for things like PBG's, IBL's, Hammerheads and Banshees.

EDIT: Apparently it's not just the return ship missions, it's missions in general. Just got an 'average' taxi mission to fly a guy from Terracorp HQ to Getsu Fune - in 40 minutes. And I'm still just 3 hours into the game and rated as Harmless/Opportunist. Hmmm.

So I'm assuming that time-based missions are something that will be dealt with somewhere down the line.

EDIT 2: Ok, here's another little oddity. So far I've found two abandoned ships with ~50% shields just floating in space - a harrier in CBSW and a mako in Elena's Fortune. These appear to be either 'return ship' or 'used ship for sale' ships, but without a pilot or owner, and not connected to any mission. I was able to claim and repair them with no problem.

[Ketraar]

Removed exploit for selling weapons and shields at equipment docks

is a bad decision, IMO. You may have removed a so-called 'exploit', but you've also removed a major gameplay element

Well this will not be a subject of consensus I fear. But it seams that we all agree that it is an exploit and therefore will remain gone.
We did increase the amount of stations where you can sell weapons and extended it to Military Outposts, Pirate Bases, Anarchy Ports and also to Corporate HQs. What we can do is to add those weapons to Docks so you can sell them.

So far I've found two abandoned ships with ~50% shields just floating in space

We added 19 abandoned ships iirc, those are spawned randomly, should also not be any oddity.

As for mission times, we cannot adjust them without feedback, so please post your opinion about those as much as possible. Try to be as accurate as it gets. i know its a pain but balancing and testing is

bout the ***UNDEFINED*** ships, this is the hardcode driving us mad by spawning ships that we have deactivated.
Please report those, by describing them (name, race, ships stats, etc) so we can identify them.

To all so far thanks for your feedback, much appreciated, keep it coming

MFG

Ketraar

[Demotruk]

Ok, I'll take notes of their stats etc. next time I see them.

[Demotruk]

Here are the stats of Pirate ***Undefined*** Tug ships I've observed in my tour of the universe (randomly spawned sectors working fine, btw):

Elite
168 Speed, 56 Acc, 71.2 Steering, 4350 Laser Energy, I've seen three ships like this all fully tuned

Harrier
195.3 / 375.6 Speed
70 / 135 Acc
31.6 / 52.7 Steering
1100 Laser Energy

Buster
95.6 / 199.3 Spped
31 / 64 Acc
33.1 / 48.6 Steering
4550 Laser Energy

Hopefully that's enough to identify them.

[Ketraar]

Hopefully that's enough to identify them.

yes according to Jens Ka its enough, thanks.

MFG

Ketraar

[Demotruk]

I spotted a couple of discoverers in Herron's Nebula flying together which were both named "Argon", nothing more. They were regular version discoverers with Argon pilots and they seemed to be engaging in normal behavior (I think they were escorts). I doubt it will be much use but their ID's were AM5MR-86 and 87.

[Ketraar]

Jobs are undergoing a general overhaul. (read total)

And no the ingame ID is pretty useless to us

Still post these kind of findings and try to describe the issue the best way you can.

MFG

Ketraar

[Nanook]

During my flyabout, especially in pirate sectors, every single red pirate fighter was labeled as **UNDEFINED Tug**, with the TL icon. I never saw a red pirate ship that wasn't so labeled. I do recall seeing a couple of blue ones that were normal, however. And my rep with the pirates was -10000, so most pirates would've been red to me anyway.

We added 19 abandoned ships iirc, those are spawned randomly, should also not be any oddity.

What I found odd was that I found two of them within a few sectors of each other, and just floating in the middle of the sector, easy to see and claim. If this mod is all about making the game more challenging, these abandoned ships seem like a step backwards. Here I was, struggling to get started (Anonymous Argon) and suddenly I'm presented with several hundred thousand free credits. So you might want to spread these ships out a bit more, in both time and space, if you're going to keep them in the game.

Well this will not be a subject of consensus I fear. But it seams that we all agree that it is an exploit and therefore will remain gone.

At the risk of starting a major debate, and not really wanting to, I have to point out again that even if you add a few more weapons/missiles to different docks, you're still basically ruining a good part of a pirate player's game. Pirate players have very few friends, so will not be able to dock at most equipment docks to sell their loot. Therefore it's mandatory that they have a way to sell it wherever they can.

Most players that go the pirate route only keep one, or at most two, races they can deal with. So unless you make it possible to sell all weapons/shields/missiles in every race's docks, somewhere, playing a pirate, or even a salvager, is going to be a whole lot less fun. If you're going to remove this so-called 'exploit' (which I don't really believe it is), then you're going to have to compensate for that loss some other way. I'll be curious to see what you come up with.

[djrygar]

is it possible to change amount of stored wares in NPC outposts/trading stations?

because if one's able to sell for example 10 salwaged missiles at once, then it would be ok

well, I actually like idea of removing exploit, I myself always felt like I'm cheating when used this feature. But in other hand, yeah, its silly that outposts store 10 pieces of flail missiles, that dont even allow to load one single bomber. For me it would be enough of compensation if some stations would buy for example 10 hammerheads from me. More than it is now, but limited amout.

[Demotruk]

How about if you allowed Pirate bases and limited other stations to buy unlimited weapons/missiles, but at a much diminished price rather than average?

Oh, and Pirate Novas come up normal for me, though all other pirates are ***Undefined***.