Might it also be purely the size of the rescource? But that would put misns up there at the top of the list.

(Ive never gotten novatools to work. But ill look into it for this elusive dialogue box changing ability).

NebuchadnezzaR, on Sep 9 2005, 02:05 AM, said:

(Ive never gotten novatools to work. But ill look into it for this elusive dialogue box changing ability).
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You don't need to bother about NovaTools to do that. Just open up the EV Nova app with ResEdit.

Guy, on Sep 7 2005, 06:15 AM, said:

2. There's been a couple of topics about stopping ships from hyperspacing - search for them if you like. In addition to giving them less than 100 fuel you can stop the player from hyperspacing by giving him an outfit which increases the jump radius by 11000 or something.
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Jump radius? Que? I've never heard of it, but it sounds interesting...

Ah, thanks mate. Ill do that. Will the fields have any sort of labeling though? Or is it up to me to figure out the size of the boxes in the game and guess the fields accordingly?

Chrome Falcon, on Sep 9 2005, 02:15 PM, said:

Jump radius? Que? I've never heard of it, but it sounds interesting...
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In the Nova Bible, under the section entitled "The oütf resource":

If ModType is: Then it’s:              And ModVal refers to:
23             hyperspace dist mod     Amount to increase or decrease the
                                         no-jump zone’s radius by (the
                                         standard radius is 1000)

And in simple terms, it's the point at which you can push the "j" key and jump to a new system, the points being arranged in a circle around the center of the system.

Ragashingo, on Sep 7 2005, 12:28 AM, said:

5. I think so, probably by bonking the contribute / require bits over the head enough.
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I'd just use the outfit ncb, something like !o128 for the availability.

NebuchadnezzaR, on Sep 9 2005, 02:16 PM, said:

Ah, thanks mate. Ill do that. Will the fields have any sort of labeling though? Or is it up to me to figure out the size of the boxes in the game and guess the fields accordingly?
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Nope, better

Edwards, on Sep 7 2005, 07:25 AM, said:

Removing that button could be done by editing the appropriate DITL. I've attached a really quick version (done by memory, untested in-game)- convert it and see if it works (and also see if you can copy the DITL into another file).

For the hyperspace, make all ships have less than 100 fuel, but give them all invisible fuel pod outfits. The AI ignores the amount of fuel a ship has, except for jumping, and the player can have their jumping stopped by the aforementioned "jump distance +20000" outfit.

Edwards
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Unfortunately this doesn't totally prevent it as you can still push D even though the button isn't there.

Guy, on Sep 10 2005, 07:04 PM, said:

Unfortunately this doesn't totally prevent it as you can still push D even though the button isn't there.View Post

Yeah, I realized that a couple hours later, but forgot to mention it in my post the next day. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way around that.

@Sealgaire: For putting the DITL into your plug file, try copying all of your plug's resources to the DITL file and see if it still works.

Oh, and: "A pox upon ResEdit's unstable DITL editor; and also upon Nova, for changing the system volume to 50% every time it runs!"

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 10 September 2005 - 08:41 PM

Quote

@Sealgaire: For putting the DITL into your plug file, try copying all of your plug's resources to the DITL file and see if it still works.

That did it, thanks.

I forgot about the hotkey for the demand tribute button. I guess I'll just make every defence fleet as large as possible and hope anyone who uses the hotkey will get the picture.

Sealgaire, on Sep 7 2005, 03:54 AM, said:

Is there a way to not give players the option of dominating planets? I guess I could just give them unbeatable defense fleets, but that lead to some frustration before the player figures it out;)
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Not sure if anyone have mentioned this, and I have no idea if it is possible.
But:
If you find a way to make it impossible to get deadly combat rating, won't that make it impossible to successfully demand tribute?

If combined with Edwards idea, hitting D won't work either.

This post has been edited by modesty_blaise_us : 11 September 2005 - 01:46 PM

If you want to make a planet un-dominatable, simply make the defense fleet come in waves of zero. That way the defense fleet can't be destroyed.

Keldor Sarn, on Sep 11 2005, 01:09 PM, said:

If you want to make a planet un-dominatable, simply make the defense fleet come in waves of zero. That way the defense fleet can't be destroyed.View Post

Very nice. That works perfectly.
The only difficulty is that NovaTools and MissionComputer both have blocks on setting the per-wave number to 0. Fortunately, EVNEW has no objection, and both of the other two have work-arounds (although you'd better not open the spob again if you're using NovaTools).

You do still get the major blow to your legal status, but that seems like a suitable punishment for someone who tries to do something they obviously aren't supposed to. And for added fun, you could change the "we ignore your puny threat" and "wait until you see our fleet" messages to something congratulating the player on finding a way around the lack of a button, and telling them that it still doesn't work. Or just changing all of the messages to "you aren't a threat".

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 11 September 2005 - 05:40 PM

It's the same with the düde resource, putting -1 in the field for AI to make each ship in the düde behave as their shďp resource says (so you can mix warships and frieghters in the same düde, for instance). The NovaTools templates don't give that option in the drop-down menu. I don't know if EVNEW allows for it, but at least MissionComputer does -- and, as you said, don't open that resource in NovaTools afterwards.

UncleTwitchy, on Sep 11 2005, 04:35 PM, said:

...I don't know if EVNEW allows for it...

It doesn't appear to.

Edwards

EVNEW does let you set the defense wave to zero, however it appears the game treats this the same way as having no defense fleet at all, instant domination.

I already had the idea of changing the "bring it on" message to something like "So you found the hotkey, congrats" before either releasing an unbeatable defense fleet or having an insta-kill planet weapon that can reach anywhere in the system. I'm not too worried about it though, as I can't find the hotkey documented anywhere in the manual that came with nova, so the average player shouldn’t know about it.

I have another problem though. It seems the AI was not programmed to be able to deal with hypergate only travel. I used the "prefers hypergates" flag, which works for ships that are already in the system when you enter it. But if a trader or warship hypergates in, it drifts to hyperspace distance and just sits there. Is this because ships are programmed to hyperspace out of a system after leaving a hypergate and can't because I've given them all below 100 fuel?

Also, I've found there's no way to stop ships from hyperspacing in, but I can live with that.

This post has been edited by Sealgaire : 11 September 2005 - 08:07 PM

Sealgaire, on Sep 11 2005, 11:51 PM, said:

I'm not too worried about it though, as I can't find the hotkey documented anywhere in the manual that came with nova, so the average player shouldn’t know about it.
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How many people read the documentation anyway? Most people find hotkeys by pushing keys that would logically be appropriate for the button they want. D for Demand Tribute is pretty logical. Though it was a while before I worked out that you could push Tab to cycle through the player info panes.
The documentation has mistakes in it too. It describes the EV/O behaviour for bulk buying stuff, not the EVN behaviour.

Sealgaire, on Sep 11 2005, 11:51 PM, said:

I have another problem though. It seems the AI was not programmed to be able to deal with hypergate only travel. I used the "prefers hypergates" flag, which works for ships that are already in the system when you enter it. But if a trader or warship hypergates in, it drifts to hyperspace distance and just sits there. Is this because ships are programmed to hyperspace out of a system after leaving a hypergate and can't because I've given them all below 100 fuel?

Also, I've found there's no way to stop ships from hyperspacing in, but I can live with that.
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Yeah, I've seen this behaviour too. The ships didn't have zero fuel but they would all come in through the gate and then leave by hyperspacing. I never saw any hyper into the system though.

This post has been edited by Guy : 11 September 2005 - 11:22 PM

Hmm... I swear I've seen sigma hypergate out.

It also seems that 'preffers wormhole' and hypergate are slightly different, but I havent worked it out.

One of the wierdest behaviors that I have just noticed is that an asteroid miner, once full, will immediately jump out of the system, caring only for the jump radius, not for his fuel cap. Also, asteroid miners (defined by having a scoop, scoop bits set, and a weapon), if they jump into a mission/enter by hypergate will jump out without mining anything (regardless of <99 fuel). Its only the ones that start there that mine.

This post has been edited by NebuchadnezzaR : 12 September 2005 - 03:32 PM

Sealgaire, on Sep 11 2005, 04:51 PM, said:

EVNEW does let you set the defense wave to zero, however it appears the game treats this the same way as having no defense fleet at all, instant domination.
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You sure you gave the planet an actual defense count, a valid defense dude, and started a new pilot beofre testing? Because it works fine for me. Since Nova sets up the defense fleets at character creation, any planets you make and add and test with an old pilot won't have their defense fleet.