I looking for it to change the sprite

Hello everyone,

I've been on a bit of hiatus and just started getting that itch again in the last few days. About a year ago I took it upon myself to make a Borg plug-in as none existed. The finished product was met with some positive feedback but mostly negative; but not surprising as it was my first attempt.

Anyway I'm jumping back into it and am working on the storyline. Well actually storylines as I'll be adding a new government charged with protecting everyone from the Borg. I'll also be modifying the Borg ships a bit as I think they're too powerful at the moment. I guess in short I'll be revamping a bunch of things.

Now the point of this topic is to try and solve one of my previous problems. You see I want it so that if you capture a planet, while piloting a borg ship, I wanted it to change the sprite to a dead world and naturally change the description and all that. I know I can do it through missions and such but I thought this would be a neat feature. I'm also going to be working on making ships you capture become Borg ships. I have this figured out I think by modifying the "upgrade" option. In short when you upgrade them they will be modified with Borg technology and have borg weapons and all that. I don't know if I'll get into actually modifying the sprite to make them look more borg'isk. Instead I may just add a str and make it say "borg upgrades" or something.

Anyway back on topic, I thought of maybe doing it through bits but I don't know if that would work for dominated planets. Also would I have to modify each spob or could I just make them all change into one planet? For the most part Borg worlds all look the same so if I could make it work with just having to set 3 or 4 planets as templates that would be so much easier.

Anyway what are everyone's thoughts on this?

Thanks for taking the time to help;

Geoff

This post has been edited by Arringfray : 17 August 2011 - 06:23 AM

How about: Create three or four assimilated planet sprites. Set every planet’s ‘DeadType’ to one of these. Set every planet‘s OnDominate NCB field to Y128 to kill it (substituting the correct resource ID, of course).

Am I overlooking anything?

@david-arthur, on 17 August 2011 - 08:04 AM, said in Help with domianted planets:

How about: Create three or four assimilated planet sprites. Set every planet’s ‘DeadType’ to one of these. Set every planet‘s OnDominate NCB field to Y128 to kill it (substituting the correct resource ID, of course).

Am I overlooking anything?

Dead spobs cannot be landed on (unless a certain flag is set, in which case the live spob cannot be landed on.) And you cannot hail a spob that is in its state of life or death that disallows landing, so you could not demand tribute. Also, a spob must not be invincible (Strength cannot be negative) for it to be destroyed by any means including Yxxx. Also, killing a spob does not change its techlevel.

The other way to do it is replace the whole syst with a different one containing another version of the spob. Preferably the two systs should not have identical pixel coordinate, because of how Nova decides whether to offer certain missions, as well as inconsistencies regard legal status and system color on the map when two systems share the same map coordinates. Even so, switching spobs can generate havoc regarding which missions can be offered where and when, not to mention trying to complete missions you’ve already begun.

The backup spob can be always dominated. You’ll have to decide how you want to handle things if the player chooses to release a dominated spob. You’ll also have to decide which of the spobs should pay the tribute, and how to stop them from paying tribute when you don’t want them to. One possibility is to never have any tribute be paid, and the only reward for dominating is that the new spob appears.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 17 August 2011 - 10:29 AM

I think your best bet here would be missions. If the player is flying a Borg ship and assimilating worlds for the Collective, I would think they'd be a Borg drone, albeit a high-ranking one to be commanding a ship. Maybe even a Locutus copy. My point, though, is the player shouldn't have much free will here. They'd be ordered by the Queen which worlds to dominate and when. That allows you to control which planets the player dominates and lets you control how they change.

If you wanted, you could even give players a small group of planets that they would choose the order to dominate them in through missions in the Mission BBS at Borg HQ. Just as long as they're not in the same system, otherwise that makes it a little more difficult. The choice is really only to allow players to mix things up a little on each play-through like with EVO's mission strings; they could be done in almost any order.