Well, he looks like he pretty much handled the graphics department, I wonder if he has any sounds, cause I basically replaced virtually all of the sound effects, short of escort voices which I used Nova's as placeholders.

This is certainly a project I'm going to look forward to. EVO has always been my favorite scenario of the EVs, so a sequel ought to be quite fun indeed. If you want any help with the Nova engine, I would be glad to help.

@guy, on Dec 30 2006, 08:06 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

If you're lucky (I don't recall if this works or not) the OnPurchase of an escape ship will be run when you launch into it.

It isn't. However, the OnPurchase field of shďp 128 is fired when the player uses an escape pod, so it would be quite possible to have it set a "player has ejected" bit to activate a set of cröns to set things up the way you want them (correct system and ship for the storyline, etc.), and then start an auto-aborting date-advancement mission to allow those cröns to fire. Do note that to do this, you will need to make shďp 128 unpurchasable (probably set it up to only exist to fire off those cröns).

@pac, on Dec 30 2006, 07:48 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

Latest question: The escape pod seems to send the pilot to system number 128 (fixed). I had thought that it would send you to a system generated by the appropriate char resource - but apparently not.

That's odd. The last time I tested, the escape pod sent you to a not-quite-random system, apparently based on the RID of the system you ejected in (although I never worked out how it was connected). I did those tests a couple of versions of Nova ago, though, so things may have changed since then. At any rate, if you want to have the post-escape-pod system be based on which chär the player chose at the beginning of the game, have each chär set a unique NCB, and use those NCBs to control which cröns fire in the above set-up.

Edwards

@guy, on Dec 31 2006, 03:06 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

If you're lucky (I don't recall if this works or not) the OnPurchase of an escape ship will be run when you launch into it.

Ah, I misread this as 'OnPurchase of an escape pod ' the first time. I'll test this out (at some point …).

Edit: And then I got to Edwards' post. The cron work-around sounds good for multiple important characters, but as I have just one main one and one (possible) 'bonus' one, I think I can use a simpler approach. Thanks for the info though!

As for which system you get sent to after ejecting, well, I only tested it in one system (system 128, in fact). I'm going to do some more testing …

Edit2: Okay, this time I ejected in system 129 (still Centauri), and ended up around Earth … which is especially odd, as Sol is now system 183! (Although Earth is still spob 128.) So far seeing little rhyme or reason to this - unless it's just putting you in any nearby inhabited system.

Edit3: And this time I got it to send me to Aludra (144) (which is a particularly odd one - in terms of the way it ends up looking - since the system doesn't have a planet at 0, 0, so you end up 'orbiting' empty space). I give up for now, I think …

Pace: thanks for the link. That looks like a quite stunning piece of work!

This post has been edited by pac : 01 January 2007 - 08:28 AM

Weapons and ships are almost statted now (fair proportion of graphics are placeholders only, of course). But not the variant ships. And I'll probably want to add more special Council-only weapons (as the Alliance has lots of stuff, and the Council is feeling a bit left out :(), at least. And everything will change with testing, as always.

So, outfits should be next tomorrow, which is bad, since ResEdit/NovaTools (otherwise remarkably stable under Classic) goes to pieces with great regularity whenever I touch outfits Or I may leave outfits for now, and start setting up battles to see how these perfectly statted (!) - in theory - ships actually match up to each other.

(If all this seems fast, bear in mind that I have had the majority of the new weapons/ships planned from ages ago, so it's just been a matter of putting the numbers in, and deciding what to use of the Nova engine features. A few weapon/ship ideas have been completely new too though. The fact that there are now eight weapon slots on ships opens things up a bit for the big vessels.)

Getting ahead of myself with this thought but:

I've been thinking about trying to get the effect that (at a certain point during the game) a certain set of AI ships' Jamming appears to improve. Now, at the moment, my method would in theory look like this:

• Makes copies of all the ships you want to affect
• Give all of these an AppearOn setting so that they won't appear until the appropriate event in the game (and give the originals the opposite)
• Make copies of the governments controlling the ships you want to affect, and give the copies the new Jamming
• Put the IDs for the ship copies into a copy of the appropriate dude(s) for the original ships
• Change the govt of the new dude(s) to the copy govt with the new Jamming settings
• Add the copied dudes to all systs which contain the originals (hope you had plenty of slots spare!)
• Fiddle the proportions of all these systs so that probabilities remain the same (for other dudes there) as you had them before (and the same before and after the switch)

(Note: An alternative method would be to use system visibility. This would save duplicating the ships, amongst other things. However, I'm assuming I don't want to use system visibility for this (it's busy!).)

And … I think that should do it. Of course, missions would be unaffected - except that, if they happen in a sequence after the 'switch' event - you can manually set them to the improved jamming dude anyway. (You could do fleets - and even pers ships - too with their AppearOn fields.)

Now, I think that the above should work - unless Nova doesn't like having dudes for which no ships can be placed (and even that could be worked around). But is there a less complex and intensive way of doing it?

This post has been edited by pac : 02 January 2007 - 12:00 AM

@pac, on Jan 2 2007, 05:56 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

But is there a less complex and intensive way of doing it?

Yes :). AI ships take advantage of jamming outfits, so all you need is the extra ships in the same dudes that you already have.

@guy, on Jan 2 2007, 06:06 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

Yes :). AI ships take advantage of jamming outfits, so all you need is the extra ships in the same dudes that you already have.

Ah - well, it's a good thing I didn't start doing all of that lot above then. So, I suppose government jamming is counted in addition to outfit based jamming?

Since we're on the subject, does anyone have any kind of list of outfits the AI does/doesn't use? I'm told that AI ships need cloaks and mining scoops if they're going to cloak/mine. Also now jamming. Anything else? (I can see testing virtually every ModType myself, anyway.)

@pac, on Jan 2 2007, 05:12 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

Since we're on the subject, does anyone have any kind of list of outfits the AI does/doesn't use?

Yep. The AI uses the following outfits:
Cloaking Device, Cloak Scanner, Asteroid Scoop, Jammers, Fast Jump, and Repair System.

Edwards

@edwards, on Jan 2 2007, 05:38 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

Yep. The AI uses the following outfits:
Cloaking Device, Cloak Scanner, Asteroid Scoop, Jammers, Fast Jump, and Repair System.

Thanks for that.

I'm starting ship balancing, but need to fix shield/armour recharge rates first. I think all ships across the board will be a bit faster (to cut down on those long waits during some big battles). So far, I just have the Azdara fixed: 0 to 160 in just over 90 frames.

I've been updating govts, and have come across some odd ship behaviour which I can only put down to the MaxOdds field.

Now, I had imagined that if the MaxOdds ratio was exceeded, that the AI ships would run away! In practice (it seems), they don't - instead going about their normal business (eg, docking at a port). Of course, their enemies are still attacking them , so I've just been watching three destroyers be picked off one by one by a superior force. None of the others do anything to help the one who gets attacked. They just sit there by the station and wait for their turn …

So, it seems that (in any system with non-hostile ports, at least) MaxOdds is unusable. Is it worth the effort of making multiple govts/dudes to use it in empty/unfriendly systems (where the default behaviour will be to leave the system - ie, run away - anyway)?

This post has been edited by pac : 02 January 2007 - 04:04 PM

That's a bug, Peter. If you send that through to Matt I'm sure he'd be willing to take a look.

In the meantime, I think there might be a sliding scale... I think if the odds are larger by a little then things break -- try making the odds larger by a lot (artificially). I know, I know; it's not right. Try it anyway and see if it makes a difference.

@pac, on Jan 3 2007, 01:12 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

So, I suppose government jamming is counted in addition to outfit based jamming?

I assume so, but have never tested it.

@pac, on Jan 3 2007, 07:50 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

Thanks for that.

That's in the member-run FAQ, btw ;). If you haven't already checked that topic out I suggest you do, along with the cool hacks topic. Lots of good stuff in there.

@pac, on Jan 3 2007, 07:50 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

So far, I just have the Azdara fixed: 0 to 160 in just over 90 frames.

Yikes, they'll be a serious pain to kill

Speaking of bugs, I think that was probably what Qaanol was referring to when he said crons are evil. There are multiple bugs with cron behaviour, so beware.

This post has been edited by Guy : 02 January 2007 - 06:49 PM

@pipeline, on Jan 2 2007, 10:00 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

That's a bug, Peter. If you send that through to Matt I'm sure he'd be willing to take a look.

In the meantime, I think there might be a sliding scale... I think if the odds are larger by a little then things break -- try making the odds larger by a lot (artificially). I know, I know; it's not right. Try it anyway and see if it makes a difference.

I'll check this out soon. By the way, don't mistake me - from my point of view, it's a new, bonus feature to play with. If it doesn't work quite as I'd guessed, there's no loss from what I'm used to.

@guy, on Jan 2 2007, 11:48 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

I assume so, but have never tested it.

Now that I know how things work, all inherent govt jamming should be set to zero (for normal governments, at least). I'll try and test it anyway.

Quote

That's in the member-run FAQ, btw ;). If you haven't already checked that topic out I suggest you do, along with the cool hacks topic. Lots of good stuff in there.

Thanks, I have been checking out the stickies - just missed that info on AIs and outfits. Zacha Pedro's annotated templates have been especially useful.

Quote

Yikes, they'll be a serious pain to kill

Actually, Azdaras will be easier than ever (poor things :(). There're quite a few weapons that even the AI can't fail to knock them out with. But if you're just an suspecting trader (Azdgari have gone all xeno on us ) with primary weapons only, you may have trouble

Quote

Speaking of bugs, I think that was probably what Qaanol was referring to when he said crons are evil. There are multiple bugs with cron behaviour, so beware.

I have quite a few things in mind that I'd like to do with crons, but nothing - I think - that I need them for. So I'll be sure to check out that link before I get started with them.

First, the point of my post, and then all the obsessive stuff.

One major turn-off of Nova, in my opinion, was the way ships handled in comparison to Classic and Override. This "Statting" as you're calling it, with the notes of fixing speed and adjusting things... Does that include making them handle like in the previous games?

I only came into the series in 1999, but I've been a fanatic ever since, particularly of Override. My thanks to you for having made it in the first place, and again for this recreation with the Nova engine. My thanks, for standing by the same way of advancing the plot, and not jumping onto the Novelization bandwagon. I really appreciate being allowed to draw my own conclusions, instead of being told what I'm thinking and doing.

There's nothing I can possibly do to help you with this project, but I wish there were. Instead, only my one-time encouragement and appreciation.

@u-e--admiral, on Jan 3 2007, 03:17 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

One major turn-off of Nova, in my opinion, was the way ships handled in comparison to Classic and Override. This "Statting" as you're calling it, with the notes of fixing speed and adjusting things... Does that include making them handle like in the previous games?

The main difference between Override and Nova in terms of handling is that Override ships tend to have much higher acceleration stats relative to their other manoeuvring stats. As I've been working from Guy's Nova Override port, most of that was set up already. In fact, relative to that, I've actually brought acceleration down 10% across the board, and max speed up 25% (the latter is to do with playing on a higher resolution these days, where the same speed feels much slower). So, yes, this is one of those things I'll be trying to get right!

(And don't worry, Azdaras won't suddenly become inertialess or anything. :))

Yeah, one of the engine differences I noticed while doing the port is that Nova required the acceleration values to be doubled in order to produce the same results as EVO.

Okay, I'm back to testing this MaxOdds thing again.

@pipeline, on Jan 2 2007, 10:00 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

That's a bug, Peter. If you send that through to Matt I'm sure he'd be willing to take a look.

I'm not sure it is a bug, to be honest. It fits exactly with what's documented in the bible: 'A value of 100 in this field represents 1-to-1 combat odds, and will cause a ship of this govt not to attack unless it calculates that it is as strong, or stronger than, its enemy.' And that's exactly what they're doing: not attacking (until they're attacked). It just leads to undesirable behaviour in this case.

Quote

In the meantime, I think there might be a sliding scale... I think if the odds are larger by a little then things break -- try making the odds larger by a lot (artificially). I know, I know; it's not right. Try it anyway and see if it makes a difference.

Okay, my test situation is this: fleet A of 3 ships of Strength 50 each, against fleet B of 3 ships of Strength 60 each. The first time, govt A happened to have a MaxOdds of 120 (which meant the numbers matched exactly). At that value, they don't engage.

To get them to fight normally, I had to increase the value quite a bit, for some reason. 125 wasn't enough. But at 150 they were behaving just as they did before I set MaxOdds values (ie, when they were all 32767). (In fact, when just one of the fleet A ships was left, it started retreating. This might have been due to being down to 25% shields, but it might have happened because the combat odds changed. Not sure. (Edit: In case you were wondering, he didn't make it. ;)))

I also reduced MaxOdds, down to 110 first, then 80, then 10. The behaviour was always the same: they went to dock at the neutral port, except the one under fire, which fought back.

(FYI, the results of these different combats illustrate the importance of concentration of fire. When fleet A fights properly, fleet B loses at least one ship - occasionally two - with one of the others badly damaged and the other slightly. When fleet A gets picked off one-by-one, all the fleet B ships survive, usually with none of them reduced to worse than 40% shields. So, this unexpected behaviour is at least serving as a useful proof of concept. (In fact, that alone is a good reason not to treat it as a bug and try to get rid of it. ;)))

Right, my next step will be to change the govt of the port - to hostile, friendly, and then remove it entirely - to see how this changes behaviour (at the moment it belongs to a government neither allied with nor an enemy to A or B ).

The behaviour for a friendly port should be the same as a neutral one. For completeness, I should check allied too - but it shouldn't be any different to friendly/neutral.

With a hostile port the 'outnumbered' fleet should still revert to default behaviour, but (IIRC) they won't dock at a hostile port - and in that case the default warship behaviour is just to jump out (in effect, to run away). The same should apply with no port at all.

If all this is true, then I can actually use this feature by setting up different govts and dudes: in friendly (etc) systems ships will have a 'fight to the death' government (although individual ships may still retreat on 25%), whereas in empty/hostile systems they will have a govt with a MaxOdds setting which will cause them to jump out again if things don't go their way.

… But first I've got to test that my surmise/memory is correct …

This post has been edited by pac : 03 January 2007 - 11:38 AM

Yep, behaviour is more as expected in hostile/empty systems. One ship in fleet A (the first one targeted) fights - effectively seeming to 'buy time' for the others, which is okay - while the others leg it.

At least, this is the case when MaxOdds is set to an extreme value (10). At something a bit closer to parity (110), some of fleet A appear to behave what I can only call 'indecisively': courses 'wavering' when closing in on an enemy; starting to retreat, but then turning back to fight again.

Some of this might be due to case-specific factors: although the ships in fleet A are significantly weaker overall, their long-ranged armament travels faster and fires faster, so the opening of the combat might somehow 'fool' them into thinking they are winning (but they learn better when they get into close range …).

So, it might be possible to use MaxOdds in some situations, but for now I'll default to 'no retreat!'. (Although individual ships will still try to retreat at 25% shields. They just rarely make it.)

Edit: Also, this behaviour makes it possible to differentiate between pirate types (who might behave exactly as described in the previous post above, not caring about their 'friends' until they themselves get targeted) and proper navies (who are genuinely comrades).

This post has been edited by pac : 03 January 2007 - 12:26 PM

Lots of updates today. Latest question is on AI targeting and retargeting.

Now, targeting on the old EV engines was very simple. All AI ships would pick the first enemy on the 'list' (this is the same 'list' as for the player. Press Tab (default) once from 'No target' and that's the first ship on the 'list') and would fly towards it and attack. Once it was destroyed, it would find the 'new' first enemy on the list - and so on until everyone on one side or the other was dead or fled. (Note that this could lead to stupid behaviour, such as a whole fleet futilely trying to catch one fighter (because it was first on the list) which they couldn't get anywhere near because (usually) it was chasing the player, who in turn was running away towards the edge of the system.)

Retargeting was also simple. If another ship (player or AI) shot a ship, it would change target to that ship, and then pursue it till it was dead (or until someone else shot it).

(Note that when the player shot the AI it could be - and still is - a little more complicated, if the player doesn't have the AI ship targeted (and is firing a non-turreted, non-guided weapon, usually). In various engines it's been possible to shoot an AI like this while not provoking a response (in order to avoid 'stray' shots making people hate you). This hasn't always quite worked out right: even in the current Nova engine, you seem to be able to shoot friendly AI ships continuously with beam weapons and, as long as you don't target them, they don't fight back and no one is upset …)

Okay, that's how it worked then. But the Nova AI is 'more sophisticated' - usually a good thing, but not always. I'm not quite sure how initial targeting works now. However, groups of ships do still concentrate their fire (ie, they all pick the same target), so it may be very similar.

But retargeting is definitely trickier. It seems that you now have to do a 'significant' amount of damage to an enemy (even if you have it targeted) to 'distract' it from its current target.

The case in which this has become significant is that of fighters. AotC fighters are mostly new models not identical to Override ones, but they follow the same pattern - fragile, but potentially able to cause a lot of damage if not dealt with. Unfortunately, due to these retargeting issues, AI ships don't seem to want to 'deal with' them - in the typical case, they remain focused on the 'mothership' while the fighters shoot them up unmolested.

Of course, the Nova scenario doesn't have this problem, thanks to its 'point-defence' weapons systems. However, I'm loathe to add PD weapons across the board in AotC (though some rare or exclusive ones might exist). Of course, I can weaken fighter weapons and things like that, but what would really help would be if anyone can shed some light on this AI behaviour - does anyone know just what causes an AI ship to retarget to someone attacking it?

This post has been edited by pac : 03 January 2007 - 01:10 PM

@pac, on Dec 29 2006, 02:31 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

Well, most bays won't be purchasable (or sellable), like most bays in EV:C/O. But it's an option that might be used somewhere, yes.

BTW, the MaxAmmo field for weapons seems to essentially do the same thing as the IncreaseMax Mod type in outfits (?).

With MaxAmmo of x, and n copies of that weapon, you can get xn ammos. With outfit max of x, and n copies of an Increase Max modtype, you can have x(n+1) outfits. Also, while you can't sell a weapon that affects MaxAmmo until you get rid of enough ammos so you're below x*(n-1), I've never tested being able to sell an Increase Max modtype when you have more than x*n outfits.

@pac, on Dec 30 2006, 05:23 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

Currently working on getting ship stats right. There are currently about 40 ships - not counting variants. About 15 of these are new ones (and I have to stop myself from adding too many more, as I only have models for some of them), with the remainder being carried over from Override (although many/most are modified quite a bit). A few of the hold-overs will be rare curiosities (like the Emalgha Freighter) rather than ships you are likely to want to use - ie, they would not have been kept in except that the Nova engine has so many ship resources, and file sizes are not such a big issue these days. I have even found a use for the Krait!

(Of course, in testing, all the stats will soon change back again! :D)

The Krait was upgraded on Iothe Prime by enterprising engineers who had hired an independent captain to travel to Paaren Station in his or her Helian and return with Dospect Armor, and had optained a Swivel Phase Cannon mount, which was then refitted to take a Blaze Cannon, and its engines were increased proportionally to maintain its mobility, resulting in a well-defended fighter with accurate Swivel Blaze Cannons, right?

@ue_research---development, on Dec 30 2006, 07:54 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

I love the ships that are there that aren't necessarily intended for use by the player. The Emalghia ships were disproportionately cool in that regard, because although they weren't exactly something you'd want to use, they were there, making the universe more believable.

The Voinians killed my father in the Battle of Sol, and the UE wasn't doing nearly enough to satisfy my personal need for vengeance. As soon as I got my pilot's license and the cheapest shuttle I could find I skipped town. This was shortly after the Miranu contacted us, so I went up to their space looking for a better way. First place I docked I heard about the Emalghia, so I went over there, helped them move supplies between their homeworld and its first moon until I earned enough to buy an Emalgha Fighter, and the Voinians never saw me coming.

With blood boiling inside me every time, I crushed fleet after hapless fleet, not settling for driving them off but slaying them all, down to the last heavy fighter. After I killed the crew I transfered the rockets to my ship, brought them back to the base of Guarado, and left the disabled hulks for the cadets to practice firing at. When I finally returned to Earth my ship was the marvel of the spaceport and when I showed it to a Vice Admiral he knew it was the future. I returned to Emalghia and kept up the fight from that side, and when the Empire crumbled I was on the forefront. When it became clear that the Alliance didn't have any interest in finishing them, I again set off north and found the Zachit. My piloting skills were nothing to theirs, but I learned quickly. I kept my same ship, and the renegades didn't know how to deal with it. I stayed at the outpost when they attacked the Rock, and I was the last line of defense as Outpost Zachit was destroyed.

The Emalghia Fighter is the most fun ship to pilot in the whole game. Period.