Litcube's Universe

[Jack08]

The max grid size for sectors in X is 21x19

Are you sure about that ? I can create universes of 24x19, is there an invisible problem with the engine if I do that ?

Apologies, your right... i have no idea why 21x19 is stuck in my head. Fixed the original post.

[Litcube]

I've been playing LU on and off since it was released and I've had more fun with it than most full priced games. So, I'd like to show my appreciation for your hard work.

Donate to charity, come back and tell everyone what charity you donated to!

[DarrenTomlyn]

Without going into any LU specific things, there's a few things I wanted to point out.


It is impossible to add ship classes to the game in a way that they will be supported, obviously you can add pseudo classes into your balancing, but not actual classes ingame.

Well, when I say 'classes' they are 'pseudo-classes' (E.g. light/heavy variants of existing classes.) (22/24 of them in total - 10 Fighter (+2 bomber) +12 capital) (The two bomber classes don't require their own weapon slots - though the light bombers I've added still need me to add their intended missile at present which can wait until I start messing around with the missiles in general - and neither does the light M3+, (basically an M3+ with M4+ weapons, M3 shields and increased speed))

Weapons compatibility with ships is based on a 32 bit-flag subtype system, the amount of weapons in the game already stretches that limit to near max;

I'm not sure what this is truly restricting, and how - the actual amount of weapons in total? 32-bit signed is what, 2 billion?

Even using standardized mounts can take up too much room if you add too many new pseudo classes to the balance. The other problem with adding new weapons en. masse, is that there is very few defining factors that go into a weapon, the vast majority of the additional weapons will likely end up behaving just like existing ones, just with different looking projectiles. You cant really control accuracy of bullets fired in any other way then projectile speed, implementing rapid fire weapons is one way ticket to low framerate, etc etc.

This is where the class-based standardized weapon mounts actually help, rather than hurt. It doesn't matter how similar the weapon is to other weapons of other classes, merely those within the same class itself. It's possible to specialise each races weapons based on their race, (compared to the basic/standard ones - e.g (Argon) Light Repeating Blaster for the IRE mounting having slightly higher fire rate/dps at the cost of more energy usage/credit cost), (including making them colour-coded ), and each standard mount will have one of each at least, giving more options when equipping ships. (And although I've given/will give Terran, Xenon and Yaki their own weapon mounts, there's no reason why the other races wouldn't be working on reverse-engineering them to fit standard mountings )

I feel there's enough variety to offer to create at least one weapon from each race for each class/mounting, and maybe two if I ever get round to it (I'm not talking about adding 5 weapons of each class to each race atm - just one is enough for starters )

I (will) have 19 class-based slots/1 utility/10 race-based, though I am still thinking about the distribution of the racial slots - to see if I can free up an extra utility slot specifically for repair lasers, (and separate them from the tractor beams/MDS.)

Adding shields to the mix is an even bigger issue, because of the way the TShields file and shield compatibility behaves, i cant go into details because i cant remember it all, but what i do remember is that the list of shields that is compatible with a ship, is directly related to the TShield index that ship is assigned in TShips.

Yes, the ships deal with shields based on the order of the list - (so you need to start small and increase in size) - it's not hard. The only 'difficulty' is that getting ships to use such shields requires manually editing the TShips file - but since I have to do that anyway...

Also, shield sizes above 2GJ will begin to degenerate in sector, rather then regenerate this can also happen for "strangely" sized shields, this point deserves another paragraph in and of itself, but ill stop here.

I'm already leaning towards ships having lots of smaller shields rather than a couple of big ones anyway, so the shields I've added tend to fill in the gaps for some ship classes'. E.g 3MJ/10MJ/75MJ for M5+/M4+/M3+ fighters, 600MJ for Frigates and 1.5GJ for heavy cruisers. I was thinking of trying a 5GJ, but if you say it'll have problems, then... TBH, I've never noticed any problems using the shields I've added so far, with either the player or NPC ships.

The max grid size for sectors in X is 21x19, meaning a maximum sector count of 440, If you made a universe of this size, and then populated it with even remotely the amount of ships needed for it to feel lively, you will in very likely run into game performance and SETA throttling issues.

Aside from the getting the galaxy size wrong (as people have said), IMHO the game already adds TOO MANY NPC ships to a map of this size, which is why I want to edit (simplify) the number of traders on the jobs list - (and see if it helps) - I'll try and replace some specific traders with 'general' traders for the basic infrastructure stations etc. - e.g. ore+food+energy - and also try and make some more general entries for the Military ships too. Dunno if it'll do anything, but I'll try anyway...

More ships/sectors = more cpu load though is pretty much a given, though the effects I've noticed can also depend on the ship you fly. (A couple of ships I've added seem to cause more problems than others, but I'm looking into replacing them.) I don't know if speeding up the ships as I have has helped or hindered though - (all my added sectors are big, though vary in size from 762 (general) to 2288km (hub/unknown sectors) on the map screen).

Are you aware that by doing so you will drastically effect the factory cycle time, resources, output count, etc - they are all based on relval - this can make factory's useless in some cases because the values go nuts if you don't adjust very carefully..
also, if you were to do this in LU, SCH may not like it!

I know this, which is why, at present, 2Mil is the maximum cost of any piece of factory-made equipment in my mod (2GJ shield). But such restrictions do not apply for ship prices themselves.

Having said that, I have been thinking of further alterations to the economy, but they will have a much bigger affect on how goods are made, (and the complexes needed to create them), so I'm leaving it until everything else is working first before I start testing it - (assuming it'll even work)

(Since more ingredients = less of each ingredient in needed, I am thinking about adding an extra type of food for each race (equivalent to the food already present - 2-types each - that can be used respectively, in addition, for stations manufacturing L and XL goods. (Yes, it means the complexes get more 'interesting')

Since energy is the cheapest and most numerous ingredient needed, however, I'm thinking about adding two further types - (if it's even possible?) - also needed for manufacturing L and XL goods, (and using/having L and XL versions of resource factories, and L and XL versions of crystals to go with them). As I said though - this is a really big undertaking and it can wait for now...)

--

Please keep in mind, that if your going to base this kind of near total/total conversion on top of LU, that LU is going to contentiously invalidate it, there are some big changes that may be coming to LU in the future, i cant state specifics because I don't want to add any hype to this message, but near-total or total conversions on top of other total conversions are going to be extremely hard to maintain in the long run. This isn't to say don't do it, its just a word of caution.

I do like your ideas, I had similar ones from my old project, but the game engines limitations killed, or vastly reduced the awesome-ness of a lot of my plans.

I know that, which is why it's merely an idea atm The only good thing about my mod is that it uses no additional scripts to really collide with anything else - purely weapons/shields/stations and ships and a map to put them all in, though it's the map that's always the main ingredient, of course.

If we're talking about a REAL wish-list, my main one would be a random map generator that works from the installed T-files to be 'fully' (barring any scripting funny business) mod compatible (Or any decent up-to-date working map generator, to be honest.)

[Joubarbe]

You can use mine and script everything to make it work YOUR way It's my general idea for my (potential) next mod : replace stations UI, how they work, how they produce... and this way have a lot more control on everything.

[DarrenTomlyn]

You can use mine and script everything to make it work YOUR way It's my general idea for my (potential) next mod : replace stations UI, how they work, how they produce... and this way have a lot more control on everything.

Not really what I'm looking for The whole point about my mod is that I've had to hand-craft all the additions in the first place - though I used Nick Sinno's X3R (not fully correct) Random Map generator for a fast way of getting station co-ordinates. If it doesn't randomly add stations, I can already do everything else easily enough

(Since I've now got a 480 sector map, I've already got a template I can use to add stuff to - but it's the adding stuff I'd like to automate in the first place )

EDIT: Have you even seen Nick Sinno's map generator? (it is pretty old now) It's a good example of what I'd really like - just working properly, such as no duplicate sectors, get the target gates N/S sorted properly (they go in the opposite direction atm), and using the full updated station/ship lists etc. - though, as I said, if you can get it to read what's in the game using T-files, then that'd be great

[Scoob]

Hi,

I've been away from LU for quite a while, having a blast with it all over again - things have changed a little!

They sure have!

Welcome back, Scoob.

Missiles have always been expensive in LU. And as you know, the time it takes to produce something is directly related to the cost of the item.

Thanks

Of course, I see the prices of many things are a fair bit higher than vanilla - not that I've played a vanilla game in years mind. This price increase actually hit home last night when I sold off a few hundred cargo units of scavenged missiles - and netted 50 million credits! Considering I was a bit poor at the time (under 10 million with my UT's bouncing that as low as 2 million periodically) the funds were welcome - and spent within moments lol.

Anyway, I can see why production times are so high based on the new value of certain items, but I'll need to amass many millions of credits and grind Terran rep in order to play around with the Saturn Complex thingies to get my production up.

Btw: Fighter Drones - damn, they can kill a bank balance quickly! Having several station agents gain a rank and go off to buy 6 fighter drones each all at around the same time and just before my station needs another influx of resources can HURT! 100k cr+ a drone is a big jump!

FYI: last version I played was 1.4.2 but I started in an even earlier version. In that game I was churning out Flail missiles and the larger torpedo for my M7M Squad from a normal complex, so I guess the cost/build time changes happened after that as prices were far far lower in that game - fighter drones were cheap back then too

Anyway, it's great to see this mod is still being worked on so actively. Coming from an older version things do feel a lot more polished and features more mature.

I do have one complaint though...these regular 3am bedtimes I seem to be having will have to stop

Scoob.

[Alex_123]

Donate to charity, come back and tell everyone what charity you donated to!

Well, the point was that you'd receive the donation but if you don't accept donations that's fine. If you ever need any help with anything LU related, let me know. I can do those tedious and repetitive things, like mass text editing or copy pasting.

[dizzy]

Anyway, I can see why production times are so high based on the new value of certain items, but I'll need to amass many millions of credits and grind Terran rep in order to play around with the Saturn Complex thingies to get my production up.

If you're thinking amassing many millions of credits is a problem then you aren't thinking in LU scale No, you don't need many millions of credits, you need many billions of credits (ex. a Boron SCH250 in a 400% sun intensity sector costs over one billion). I don't know what stage you are in your LU game right now but in my LU playthroughs I like to solve the money problem first and then go about doing everything else (like PHQ, fleet setup, etc):

1. first thing in LU, make money by buying, repairing and selling everything that is sold with hull more than 80%; especially if you can land one of those rare TS+ with 50% hull damage deals; combat missions will be hard in the beginning and give you very little money per time spent doing them; similarly automated traders (STs, UTs) give less money than buying/repairing and selling damaged ships, at least not until you get 20+ UTs or so
2. while doing #1, explore the universe, drop an advanced satellite in every sector
3. it's good to get a fast TP (I even used a TP as a personal ship until I got an M6) early and do the very rare but well paid transport missions; once you get an M6 get lifesupport system for it and use that to do transport missions
4. while doing the above steps, every time you have over 20+ mil credits balance, buy 1-2 new traders to get them going as UTs; DO NOT drop the player cash balance below 10 mil because then you will be so mad when someone offers you a TS+ damaged ship that you could have made 10 mil profit to repair and sell but you can't afford to buy
5. as your trading fleet starts growing and the known universe becomes bigger (and has advanced satellites in them which gives your traders more options to find good deals) you will be amassing money quicker and quicker; do everything possible to get reputation 6 with one faction and buy their TL
6. now things take off: do all the Build Station missions that are Average difficulty and harder that you can find, with LU's "Remote Drop Station" command you can do them remotely while you go about your business in your player ship; doing this continuously easily gives you about 100 mil credits per game hour; keep on making UTs but when you get to about 60 you should probably stop
7. the next target is to make money making SCHs (I don't even bother with normal factories and complexes, they are a waste of time in setting and and management, time that could be used to make more money doing build station missions); the ideal is to decide on one of the lightest weapons (Mass Driver, Impulse Ray Emitter or Alpha Particle Cannon), find a sector with good sun intensity (>=400%), use a trader ship (that you should keep around for special missions) and order it to supply your TL with 5k crystals and 1k quantum tubes, have your TL buy 100k ECs from an equipment dock, use Plutarch Mining thingy to move asteroid resources where you need them; build at least a SCH50 making small weapons, less than that and they are too inefficient (in terms of complex cost vs money made per hour), should cost a few hundred mil which you can make in a few hours of build station missions, assign one TS as a station agent, this will land you about 10 mil credits per hour; when you have the money upgrade it to a SCH100 (should now make you 20 mil per hour); when you have the money upgrade to SCH200 and then SCH400; once you reached this limit wait to have enough money and build another SCH400 doing the same thing; do this until you get to about 5-6 of them, i.e. will be making a few hundred millions per hour, out of thin air, no you should not have any money problems and can focus on more interesting things

EDIT: regarding the last point with many light weapon SCHs making money, one thing you need to be careful with is oversaturating the market. To fight that simply make your complexes build light weapons of different types. Once you get a PHQ (or some other dock), you should not try to sell the weapons from the SCH using Station Agents but instead use a Courier to collect any weapons from any of your complexes and drop them at your dock, then use assigned Dock Agents to sell them. Dock Agents can oversell (ie if a dock only has capacity for 2 Alpha Particle Canons, a Dock Agent can sell any number of them), that mostly takes care of oversaturating the market. Should probably get the PHQ or a dock sometime after making your first SCH400 with light weapons as at that point it might be making too much of it to sell with a simple Station Agent.

[Scoob]

1. first thing in LU, make money by buying, repairing and selling everything that is sold with hull more than 80%; especially if you can land one of those rare TS+ with 50% hull damage deals; combat missions will be hard in the beginning and give you very little money per time spent doing them; similarly automated traders (STs, UTs) give less money than buying/repairing and selling damaged ships, at least not until you get 20+ UTs or so
2. while doing #1, explore the universe, drop an advanced satellite in every sector
3. it's good to get a fast TP (I even used a TP as a personal ship until I got an M6) early and do the very rare but well paid transport missions; once you get an M6 get lifesupport system for it and use that to do transport missions
4. while doing the above steps, every time you have over 20+ mil credits balance, buy 1-2 new traders to get them going as UTs; DO NOT drop the player cash balance below 10 mil because then you will be so mad when someone offers you a TS+ damaged ship that you could have made 10 mil profit to repair and sell but you can't afford to buy
5. as your trading fleet starts growing and the known universe becomes bigger (and has advanced satellites in them which gives your traders more options to find good deals) you will be amassing money quicker and quicker; do everything possible to get reputation 6 with one faction and buy their TL
6. now things take off: do all the Build Station missions that are Average difficulty and harder that you can find, with LU's "Remote Drop Station" command you can do them remotely while you go about your business in your player ship; doing this continuously easily gives you about 100 mil credits per game hour; keep on making UTs but when you get to about 60 you should probably stop
7. the next target is to make money making SCHs (I don't even bother with normal factories and complexes, they are a waste of time in setting and and management, time that could be used to make more money doing build station missions); the ideal is to decide on one of the lightest weapons (Mass Driver, Impulse Ray Emitter or Alpha Particle Cannon), find a sector with good sun intensity (>=400%), use a trader ship (that you should keep around for special missions) and order it to supply your TL with 5k crystals and 1k quantum tubes, have your TL buy 100k ECs from an equipment dock, use Plutarch Mining thingy to move asteroid resources where you need them; build at least a SCH50 making small weapons, less than that and they are too inefficient (in terms of complex cost vs money made per hour), should cost a few hundred mil which you can make in a few hours of build station missions, assign one TS as a station agent, this will land you about 10 mil credits per hour; when you have the money upgrade it to a SCH100 (should now make you 20 mil per hour); when you have the money upgrade to SCH200 and then SCH400; once you reached this limit wait to have enough money and build another SCH400 doing the same thing; do this until you get to about 5-6 of them, i.e. will be making a few hundred millions per hour, out of thin air, no you should not have any money problems and can focus on more interesting things

EDIT: regarding the last point with many light weapon SCHs making money, one thing you need to be careful with is oversaturating the market. To fight that simply make your complexes build light weapons of different types. Once you get a PHQ (or some other dock), you should not try to sell the weapons from the SCH using Station Agents but instead use a Courier to collect any weapons from any of your complexes and drop them at your dock, then use assigned Dock Agents to sell them. Dock Agents can oversell (ie if a dock only has capacity for 2 Alpha Particle Canons, a Dock Agent can sell any number of them), that mostly takes care of oversaturating the market. Should probably get the PHQ or a dock sometime after making your first SCH400 with light weapons as at that point it might be making too much of it to sell with a simple Station Agent.

Hey memeics,

Thanks for taking the time to post some tips! Regarding your points:

1 - Scavenging is my No.1 money maker, though as a twist I've been doing up and fully equipping any decent M3's, TS's and M6's I find - I even had an M7 bail via NPC action and nabbed it as my flagship.

2 - Done it! Every sector that I can get an Adv. Nav Sat in has one - gives my UT's the options they need.

3 - Might try that. Used to do it in games prior to LU, good to hear it works well here too.

4 - Doing that too. I tend to pop out an ST (soon to be UT) if I find a decent ship. I do take a hit when they stock up on Fighter Drones though.

5 - See my comment above, UT count increasing A TL is on my hit list as a future purchase. I want the Split TL and I just hit the rep requirement last night, need some more dosh first though.

6 - That is a plan of mine once I get a TL

7 - I have set up a few stations already - just normal complexes. The first was initially a single small SPP, then I added an XL SPP when I had the funds. For some reason the entire region around Argon Prime and beyond was totally EC starved for some reason. Many other productions were stalled too, either due to energy or other goods. Local economy is now in a MUCH better shape than it was. I also did a 6x 1mj shield fab as a test, this brings in steady money as well as actively stimulate local Cahoona production now the stations can actually produce the stuff thanks to having EC's now SCH's will be my next step, but my Terran rep needs work as all are red to me currently.

I do tend to use a single station (one of the new docks, or a Trading Station) to actively sell all my wares, with other ships transporting them to the station. I suspect I'll follow this model again.

Quick question: There's a missile I regular see NPC's using, it appears to be unguided yet is multi-warhead & is very effective vs. capitals, yet I've totally forgotten the name. Want to equip some of my ships with them as they appear to be way more effective (and cost effective) that trying to equip my M8 with Tomahawks.

Scoob.

[curlsworth]

I've been playing LU on and off since it was released and I've had more fun with it than most full priced games. So, I'd like to show my appreciation for your hard work.

I couldn't agree with you more.

Donate to charity, come back and tell everyone what charity you donated to!

You got a preferred charity Litcube?

[Nikola515]

@ Scoob

Taking brake from XR too
I just started LU too and best way to get money for me is boarding pirate M6 and selling them.... I use ATF Vidar because it can use boarding pods and it can take a lots of damage... I make 11k minim on each ship and it is pretty profitable


Edit: Does anyone know if Ion weapons drain weapon generator energy in LU? I noticed that they slow me down though....

[nekoexmachina]

i got an issue with SCH... It produces more than it can:
http://imgur.com/0rGcNIk
Advanced Satellites: cycle size 140, cargo available to hold satellites: 80.
Actuall issue is, it just doesn't produce, and the reason for this is I think ^

Same thing for Space Weed x40 complex...

[Scoob]

@ Scoob

Taking brake from XR too
I just started LU too and best way to get money for me is boarding pirate M6 and selling them.... I use ATF Vidar because it can use boarding pods and it can take a lots of damage... I make 11k minim on each ship and it is pretty profitable


Edit: Does anyone know if Ion weapons drain weapon generator energy in LU? I noticed that they slow me down though....

My problem is I end up keeping anything decent. I have 10 or so M6's fully upgraded which I could have sold for 100 mil+, as well as 20 or so good M3's which would have fetched a further 20-30 million. If I'd also sold all their equipment...well, I'd be rich! I do sorta like to play the slow game, I explore and salvage, hoarding anything interesting.

Don't know about Ion Weapons sorry, I've not actually personally fired a shot in the game - other than the repair laser - and I don't get into fights myself. It was a role-play choice vs. having my HOTAS cluttering the desk

Scoob.

[nekoexmachina]

Okay, I've found what broke my factories.. Its Mayhem mod. After its removal, factories work..

Edit:
Got another question about saturn complexes.
Can I change station size (L to M or vise-versa) from whatever does SCH generate for itself?

[Nikola515]

@ Scoob

Taking brake from XR too
I just started LU too and best way to get money for me is boarding pirate M6 and selling them.... I use ATF Vidar because it can use boarding pods and it can take a lots of damage... I make 11k minim on each ship and it is pretty profitable


Edit: Does anyone know if Ion weapons drain weapon generator energy in LU? I noticed that they slow me down though....

My problem is I end up keeping anything decent. I have 10 or so M6's fully upgraded which I could have sold for 100 mil+, as well as 20 or so good M3's which would have fetched a further 20-30 million. If I'd also sold all their equipment...well, I'd be rich! I do sorta like to play the slow game, I explore and salvage, hoarding anything interesting.

Don't know about Ion Weapons sorry, I've not actually personally fired a shot in the game - other than the repair laser - and I don't get into fights myself. It was a role-play choice vs. having my HOTAS cluttering the desk

Scoob.

I pretty much sell everything and buy good UT sips. So with one boarded M6 i can get me 2 to 5 UT ships if im lucky and find them cheap on sale Also i got me mommuth for station building and making sinks fo my UTs. Last night i even managed to board pirate M2 with only 16 marines I cleared all escort with my M6 and used 2x M8 to take it shields down. And called my Express with extra marines to help me board ( i transfer marines to my M6 and lunch them from boarding pods). Also i use drones for distraction to take its firepower of me and to drain its energy The reason why i don't keep any of my ships it is because they are easy to produce in HQ. It takes 3m to build M6 and it is cheap.... So you could have 10 of best M6/M3 in a minutes. Im actually getting ready to start building Saturn Somplex and get me HQ becuse im about make crap loads of money of that M2

Edit: Memeics has some pretty good videos that explain how everything works and it helped me a lot

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... v7ue1l2B7t

[dizzy]

My problem is I end up keeping anything decent. I have 10 or so M6's fully upgraded which I could have sold for 100 mil+, as well as 20 or so good M3's which would have fetched a further 20-30 million. If I'd also sold all their equipment...well, I'd be rich! I do sorta like to play the slow game, I explore and salvage, hoarding anything interesting.

Note how in my previous recommendations I specifically didn't want to go very hard on saying what you should do about that but in my latest game I definitely did not keep _anything_ of opportunity in the early game and just sold everything. In terms of efficiency (ie. finish LU in the shortest amount of time available), I don't think it's a good strategy. In terms of "having fun" of course it's subjective and you should do whatever you want there.

I don't think it's efficient because there is almost no good gain from keeping ships early on instead of selling them and using that money to build your first money making infrastructure. I think that because:
- in the beginning any ship that you keep around will be generally useless anyway, it's not like you actually _need_ those ships to do something very useful at that point in the game; if anything attacks you, you can simply jump away, there is no real need of a fleet; also, in the beginning those 100mil that you are effectively "freezing" in an unnecessary (and much weaker than what you will build later) fleet are much more useful and critical for giving you an early game boost
- no matter how good a deal may seem initially (find a derelict M6, pay 1mil for a Dragon, etc), by the midgame (not even endgame) you will have so much money that a 100 M6s are a drop in the ocean; so why even bother keeping an M6 early game when you don't actually need it for anything and you can build hundreds of them later when you DO actually need them, makes no sense to me

But yes, like I said, in terms of doing things to simply have fun with the game, there are no rules there and the vanilla Litcube slow pace of Phanon and OCV actually supports that. But if you are playing Phanon Plus or Revelation Plus then I don't think that affords you to drag the game too long like that.

[BlackArchon]

I found a complete game-breaking bug: The Paranid Fragmentation Bomb Launcher Forge is abbreviated as "FBC Forge" in the Trade Product Search.

http://imgur.com/vLzQKyd

[Litcube]

I found a complete game-breaking bug: The Paranid Fragmentation Bomb Launcher Forge is abbreviated as "FBC Forge" in the Trade Product Search.

http://imgur.com/vLzQKyd

Nobody panic.

[Scoob]

My problem is I end up keeping anything decent. I have 10 or so M6's fully upgraded which I could have sold for 100 mil+, as well as 20 or so good M3's which would have fetched a further 20-30 million. If I'd also sold all their equipment...well, I'd be rich! I do sorta like to play the slow game, I explore and salvage, hoarding anything interesting.

Note how in my previous recommendations I specifically didn't want to go very hard on saying what you should do about that but in my latest game I definitely did not keep _anything_ of opportunity in the early game and just sold everything. In terms of efficiency (ie. finish LU in the shortest amount of time available), I don't think it's a good strategy. In terms of "having fun" of course it's subjective and you should do whatever you want there.

I don't think it's efficient because there is almost no good gain from keeping ships early on instead of selling them and using that money to build your first money making infrastructure. I think that because:
- in the beginning any ship that you keep around will be generally useless anyway, it's not like you actually _need_ those ships to do something very useful at that point in the game; if anything attacks you, you can simply jump away, there is no real need of a fleet; also, in the beginning those 100mil that you are effectively "freezing" in an unnecessary (and much weaker than what you will build later) fleet are much more useful and critical for giving you an early game boost
- no matter how good a deal may seem initially (find a derelict M6, pay 1mil for a Dragon, etc), by the midgame (not even endgame) you will have so much money that a 100 M6s are a drop in the ocean; so why even bother keeping an M6 early game when you don't actually need it for anything and you can build hundreds of them later when you DO actually need them, makes no sense to me

But yes, like I said, in terms of doing things to simply have fun with the game, there are no rules there and the vanilla Litcube slow pace of Phanon and OCV actually supports that. But if you are playing Phanon Plus or Revelation Plus then I don't think that affords you to drag the game too long like that.

Yeah, I play for fun rather than a "power-play" mentality to maximise my effective assets. I.e. it would have been "better" to sell everything, grind rep via missions, then buy capital ships for my fleet. However, I personally enjoy role playing as a scavenger and building up a mixed fleet that way. I notice that the pace of the OCV advance is MUCH reduced from prior versions I played, so I'm taking that time to, well, just enjoy the game really. Races still stand zero chance without my help though of course.

I will (and have in the past) ultimately start to power-game as I build up proper fleets - in the past I went for the heaviest capital ships and M7M's to push back the OCV, and anyone else who got in my way. Currently I'm still in my slow game however.

Scoob.

[nekoexmachina]

Btw, is it just me or non-scanned asteroids can be used in SCHs?



Up:
I'm trying to get LIFE explosion part working with LU. Mostly, I want the screen-shaking part.. It just feels good to have a big baddaboom in there.
What I have now in !ship.signal.killed.xml:

Code: Select all

$currentSector = [PLAYERSHIP] -> get sector
$enemySector = [THIS] -> get sector
if $enemySector == $currentSector
$distance = get distance between [PLAYERSHIP] and [THIS]
if $distance < 100
** dirty hack for now
gosub RotateBuffetedShip:
end
end

RotateBuffetedShip:
$gShip = [PLAYERSHIP]
if $gShip-> is of class [Huge Ship]
$buffetScale = 1
else if $gShip-> is of class [Big Ship]
$buffetScale = 2
else
$buffetScale = 4
end

$a = $gShip-> get rot alpha
$b = $gShip-> get rot beta
$c = $gShip-> get rot gamma
$counter = 0
while $counter < $buffetScale  * 10
** the smaller ship is, the more it shakes..
$xr = random value between -1 and 1
$yr = random value between -1 and 1
$zr = random value between -1 and 1

* scale buffeting based on ship size

$gIntensity = 1
$scale = $gIntensity * $buffetScale
$a = $a + $xr * $scale
$b = $b + $yr * $scale
$c = $c + $zr * $scale
$gShip-> set rotation: alpha=$a beta=$b gamma=$c
$counter = $counter + 1

* and wait for 3 ms every time..
 = wait 3 ms

end
endsub

the part with rotation is shamelessly stolen from LIFE, but I don't say its of my design, so I hope that's allright.
The issue with this is.. I get the screen-shakes every time when something in universe dies. Oh well.. I get them a LOT in core sector, where there is noone fighting.
So the question is, what am I doing wrong?
I've tried to use [this] -> is in active sector instead of $enemySector == $currentSector, however it still doesnt' work as I've expected
(this is crapcode, I know, I mostly have only a slight idea of what's I'm doing, but from what I've read from docs - I should be fine)


EDIT:
Okay, I got it. Apparently, sub was called every time regardless of the if's.
So the current results so far are:
1) separate script shockwave.simple

Code: Select all

$gShip = [PLAYERSHIP]
if $gShip-> is of class [Huge Ship]
$buffetScale = 1
else if $gShip-> is of class [Big Ship]
$buffetScale = 2
else
$buffetScale = 4
end
$a = $gShip-> get rot alpha
$b = $gShip-> get rot beta
$c = $gShip-> get rot gamma
$counter = 0
while $counter < $buffetScale  * 10
** the smaller ship is, the more it shakes..
$xr = random value between -1 and 1
$yr = random value between -1 and 1
$zr = random value between -1 and 1

* scale buffeting based on ship size

$gIntensity = 1
$scale = $gIntensity * $buffetScale
$a = $a + $xr * $scale
$b = $b + $yr * $scale
$c = $c + $zr * $scale
$gShip-> set rotation: alpha=$a beta=$b gamma=$c
$counter = $counter + 1

* and wait for 3 ms every time..
 = wait 3 ms
end


return null

2) this in !ship.signal.killed.xml:

Code: Select all

$activeSector = [THIS] -> is in active sector
if $activeSector == [TRUE]
$distance = get distance between [PLAYERSHIP] and [THIS]
if $distance < 1000
** display subtitle text: text = 'Shake it, baby' duration = 200ms
START null -> call script 'shockwave.simple':
end
end

Need to improve this a bit to improve shaking mechanics (like - to count distance dinamically, dependent on the class of the dead ship, and such). However, for now this works more or less. All the credits go to LIFE author.

One more edit:
25 ms seems to be a more logical pause-time for this. Or 100 as a multiplier for counter. Anyways, needs to be tested & modified accordingally to individual's taste.