I've got more pictures! Yay!!

Since EVWeb's dragging his butt texturing models, I've started 'rendering' some on my own (via Meaker's Sketchup file which isn't true rendering). These five ships are the first five to be rendered; the Carpenter, Beetle, Peregrine, Ceres, and Boltbucket. The Boltbucket is in the lead with the Carpenter (port) and Beetle flanking it just behind. The Peregrine (port) and Ceres take up the rear.

I also made the engine glows myself. None of these are textured in the least, beyond basic paint. I'm actually considering not bothering with Sketchup-quality texturing, since they look fine to me as-is. Meaker, I again thank you for making that file, I never could have made these without it.

Edit: Oh, these are also actual size in-game. For those of you who notice Jupiter looks bigger than it should be in the second image, it is. I got permission from BluePlanet to use the gas giants in NeoPlanets Beta 2 so I can use manticore's planets at bigger sizes and still have even bigger gas giants. Flying through space has never looked so glorious!

This post has been edited by DarthKev : 30 July 2011 - 01:22 AM

Here's another picture.

Behold the Milky Way galaxy!*

*Artist's rendering. Not actual size. Subject to change. Your results may vary.

Goliath Shipping Yards Nymph Class Personnel Transport

Whatever anyone might say about Goliath Shipping, one has to admit they take good care of their employees. The sporty Nymph is the space-age equivalent to a private jet, capable of ferrying a VIP and his or her extensive entourage anywhere they might wish to go all while in the lap of luxury. That is, as long as no one's shooting at them. The Nymph is completely unarmed save for a single PD system.

Okay, so I decided to make one more ship. Goliath Shipping is one of two main shipping companies in Legacy TC. The other is the United Shipping Express Cooperative, aka USEC. In addition to the Nymph, Goliath Shipping has a line of ships including the Pegasus patrol corvette, their own variant of the Mafia Raider, and the Mk.II and Mk.III variants of the Kestrel destroyer. You can see the other Goliath ships in the gallery.

Looks like your galaxy is about the same size as the EVC galaxy. Pretty well arranged, too.

Yeah, they're pretty close. The Legacy Universe is actually 40 systems larger on the dot. It's not the whole game universe, though. Like EVN:UGF, parts of the Legacy story take place in the Andromeda galaxy. Unlike EVN:UFG, however, Andromeda isn't immediately accessible to anyone in the Milky Way when the player enters the game.

Oh, and I'm glad it looks well organized. I tried very hard to make it look that way. And you know, I should probably give a list of which colors equal what factions.

• Earth Empire

• Orion Government

• Onli Conglomerate

• Mafia/Shojen Samurai

• Shipwreck Rogues

• Eagle Enterprises Inc. (they hold only Farazon)

• ELX/Askan/Newton (Eridani, Igloo, Motherboard, and Roid)

And in case anyone's curious, USEC's HQ is in Tundra, Goliath's HQ is in Nesre, and MDS' and DCD's HQs are in Dune.

As for ELX, Askan, and NE, they're all currently owned by three of the Fuzzy Four: four famous individuals known just as much for their deeds as they are for the charismatic cats each one has. Nancy, Jesse, and Dennis Kovacich are mother, son, and father, respectfully. DarthKev is the fourth, Jesse's brother (obviously 'DarthKev' is a code name, but I'm not about to reveal his real name :p). Nancy is currently CEO of ELX, Jesse is CEO of Askan, and Dennis founded NE himself. ELX is in Eridani, Askan is in Igloo, NE is in Motherboard, and Roid is home to Eros Mining which is owned by Askan.

The name 'Fuzzy Four' was produced by the media and the individuals it describes have been trying to kill it off ever since.

My home internet connection is kaput, so I won't be online very often. Expect updates to be even less frequent than usual.

Work goes slowly, but in this case I have a good reason: I have a new job! Soon I should be able to get internet back up with the money I'll be earning and then I just need to manage time so I can still work on this. Fortunately it's only part-time, so it shouldn't be too hard to find free time and still have a social life.

Congrats on the job! I've been looking for work for months now.

Thanks, StarSword. And good luck in your job hunt efforts. Hopefully you won't be searching much longer.

Actually, I've got an interview Wednesday, so with any luck I'll be employed by next week.

Is it a sign one is too fanatic about their own TC when they've begun attempting to create a language for one or more of the alien races in it? I've actually been doing just that for the Onli. This also means new names for their ships, possibly for their systems and planets/stations/moons as well.

@darthkev, on 22 October 2011 - 12:40 PM, said in Legacy TC Status Thread:

Is it a sign one is too fanatic about their own TC when they've begun attempting to create a language for one or more of the alien races in it? I've actually been doing just that for the Onli. This also means new names for their ships, possibly for their systems and planets/stations/moons as well.

Nah, it just means you're getting into world-building. My favorite part, honestly.

Although I've got a theory that would let you keep the existing names for the Onli ships. Maybe the Onli have a sense of irony about the whole French-eating-frogs thing, and adopted those names after first contact with humanity.

The planets and moons, though, would probably need to be alien, as they would be named in the Onli language.

This post has been edited by StarSword : 22 October 2011 - 09:13 PM

On that subject, can I recommend a book to you? How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card (author of the Ender series, among others). Chapter 2 is all about world-building, and even offers tips on designing languages.

@starsword, on 22 October 2011 - 09:11 PM, said in Legacy TC Status Thread:

Although I've got a theory that would let you keep the existing names for the Onli ships. Maybe the Onli have a sense of irony about the whole French-eating-frogs thing, and adopted those names after first contact with humanity.

I dunno. For an entire race to embrace irony like that... then again, one of the Onli Navy's military flagships bears the name Effervescence. Perhaps some of them will stay the same. I'd like to rename some of them, however, most likely after local wildlife on Onli worlds.

And I think I will take a look at that book. The San Francisco Library should have it if nothing else.

A few things to talk about this time around. First, an overview...

Work proceeds well with everything except the Onli's new language. It makes me wonder how any languages managed to form considering how much work goes into making one. I think I might end up cheating and simply adapting an existing language to my needs. I'd really hate to do that, but at the same time I'm not planning on becoming a language professor at a university, either.

As my skill with Sketchup and my patience with sitting in one spot while manipulating a single model for hours on end both increase, I'm finding more and more of my models seem... well, I'm unsatisfied with them. I even went back to the ELX models again and tweaked them some more. So I'll be going over all my models and seeing if anything feels like it needs improvement and then enacting that improvement. If and when I finally feel satisfied with them all, I'll update the gallery images for all of them with shiny new versions actually worthy of gracing a desktop.

Last thing. It's never been a big issue of mine in EVN, but something in the back of my mind has always nagged me about the fact players never have to worry about making sure their ships are stocked up with rations, spare parts, and the like while also juggling the costs of those or else dealing with the consequences. As such part of me wants to implement that in Legacy. The rest of me, while interested in the prospect, worries it might disillusion players from actually playing Legacy. In short, I'm wondering what everyone else thinks of such a system and whether they'd be interested in trying it out. I'll probably add it either way, but if enough people voice their concerns, I'll include a plug-in that turns off that part of the game.

That's it for now. I'll come by with another update as soon as I feel I've done enough work to warrant one.

@darthkev, on 28 October 2011 - 03:15 AM, said in Legacy TC Status Thread:

Last thing. It's never been a big issue of mine in EVN, but something in the back of my mind has always nagged me about the fact players never have to worry about making sure their ships are stocked up with rations, spare parts, and the like while also juggling the costs of those or else dealing with the consequences.

I hadn't thought of it like that, but I had worried about the disparity between the cost of fuel and the profitability of doing various runs. For example, in Firefly, the crew are barely squeaking by doing missions with the cost of fuel (let alone pay and rations). So I had considered making it (if I were making anything) so that the cost of everything was related to the cost of a unit of fuel (which I don't think you can change, oddly enough). The high/low on 10 tons of freight might be a wash for even the highest initial price goods on one jump; so you have to plan carefully and missing a jump is detrimental.

But then I read another article somewhere that talked about wanting to limit any player's "climbing" time, and how that's basically what that is - grinding.

Another idea I recently stumbled across was to force a player to loose their ship at some point as part of a mission (where it gets destroyed and there's not much the player can do but escape), and have that play into the unfolding of the galaxy (So you have to lose your ship, but your legal status would change to something despite having lost your ship). If done properly, it would be a very emotional and important part of the game.

Food for thought, anyway.

@darthkev, on 28 October 2011 - 03:15 AM, said in Legacy TC Status Thread:

Last thing. It's never been a big issue of mine in EVN, but something in the back of my mind has always nagged me about the fact players never have to worry about making sure their ships are stocked up with rations, spare parts, and the like while also juggling the costs of those or else dealing with the consequences. As such part of me wants to implement that in Legacy. The rest of me, while interested in the prospect, worries it might disillusion players from actually playing Legacy. In short, I'm wondering what everyone else thinks of such a system and whether they'd be interested in trying it out. I'll probably add it either way, but if enough people voice their concerns, I'll include a plug-in that turns off that part of the game.

Not sure if you were soliciting ideas, but my first thought was to charge landing fees on most worlds, then edit lines 63, 64, 103, and 104 of STR# 2002 to read something like "Ship resupply fee is X number of credits."

EDIT: That should be "soliciting", not "eliciting".

This post has been edited by StarSword : 28 October 2011 - 06:45 PM

@meaker-vi, on 28 October 2011 - 10:14 AM, said in Legacy TC Status Thread:

<food for thought>

Like you, I've also considered the possibility of fuel payments including the cost of resupplying the ship with rations and spare parts. At the same time, though, a measly 100 credits for all of that seems quite small to me when the consider the payment players receive for missions and how much various ships and outfits cost. When you consider the cost of goods in the trade centers, the 100 credit fuel cost would have to be much larger to include resupply.

You also mentioned how long it takes players to get to a decent playing position in the game. If the game starts you in a shuttle, then yes, paying for resupply everywhere you go could seriously lengthen how long that takes. In the case of Legacy, though, the player starts in a much larger ship with a good bit more funds. As explained earlier, the player's background involves entering the game right after inheriting his/her father's ship after he dies in battle. Even if you pick the 'pirate' background (in which case the player starts with zero (or very little) cash) their starting ship is a pirate destroyer, the most valuable of the possible starting ships. The ship itself is also a good deal larger than other destroyers, making it even more valuable. That all means players who pick that chär still won't be too bad off if they simply trade in their ship. Or they could simply loot some hapless traders with their warship.

I have considered the possibility of forcing the player to lose their ship and, while I like the idea a lot, I'm not confident I can pull it off in a good way. If I can figure something out, you can be sure it'll show up in Legacy. At the moment, though, it's simply an idea floating around.

@starsword, on 28 October 2011 - 06:40 PM, said in Legacy TC Status Thread:

<good idea>

That's definitely the simplest way to do it, but I wanted to make it more involved. Say, to the point where supplies actually take up cargo space. Buy more supplies and you can go longer before resupply, but then you can't haul as much cargo. Buy less supplies and you can make some serious cash on cargo runs, but you then have a greater risk of running out if you miscalculate. In short there would be outfits representing the supplies. Every inhabited planet would have an outfitter selling at least those if not other stuff, too. Using cröns those supplies would then slowly disappear from your ship. If you run out, more cröns would then trigger various 'disaster' missions such as ion buildup in the engines, frayed electrical cables causing power failures, or even scurvy running rampant among the crew. Then you'd have to pay to make repairs and still purchase more supplies to make sure it doesn't happen again. Except for the scurvy; that you'd probably have to wait awhile to go away once you have more food.

It would definitely be a very complicated procedure to implement, but relatively straight forward to use in-game. The whole thing is still in the planning stages, though, so if anyone else wants to offer ideas, you're welcome to do so.

@darthkev, on 30 October 2011 - 10:44 PM, said in Legacy TC Status Thread:

Like you, I've also considered the possibility of fuel payments including the cost of resupplying the ship with rations and spare parts. At the same time, though, a measly 100 credits for all of that seems quite small to me when the consider the payment players receive for missions and how much various ships and outfits cost....

That would be why you'd set your values based off of the 100-credit fuel cost, instead of much higher. So a 4-jump mission might net 1,000 credits, and 400 of that went to fuel. Missiles would probably need to cost 1 or 2 each. An expensive ship would be in the 1,000,000-range.

It's too bad you can't just manipulate the fuel cost though (At least, I don't think you can. Of all the things to hard-code...). I'd love to make it way more.

<facepalm>

Of course. Make things cheaper... actually, when I think of doing that, everything suddenly looks absurd because of how cheap it is...

This post has been edited by DarthKev : 31 October 2011 - 04:32 PM