Can you make a ship invisible on radar but visible to spobs? I'm guessing that the ship needs to be "visible" to the player in order for a spob to see it.
I'd test it myself and tinker some more but it's time to go to work. (At least it's just Sierra Nevada)
This post has been edited by Sklent : 02 January 2014 - 04:59 PM
As far as I know, there's no way to allow spöbs to see cloaked ships. Only AI ships equipped with cloak scanners can see cloaked ships. And really, you're making this extremely complicated for what the end result will be. Just make patrol ships a little faster and maybe make the ship(s) players will be using for smuggling a little slower.
I...
GOT IT!!!
Step 1: Move 4 spobs to the system corners (10,000s). Make them Nav Default 1-4. Move the other 4 to the center positions (about 4,000.
Step 2: Make a ship dude with 0 speed. Make it an enemy of the guard spob govt.
Step 3: Make 4 missions to spawn your dudes on Navs 1-4.
Step 4: Make the planet's weapon have a blast radius of 11,575. When the ships are hit this creates the EMP "field".
It's not perfect... but I get my damn EMP field! Yaaaaaay!
DK, I did speed up the patrol ships as you suggested. There however was no real "sweet spot" where slipping by them was challenging, yet possible. I also really really really fell in love with the EMP generator idea and got stuck on it. Thank you for attempting to talk some sense into me 
Well, at least it seems to work now. Just remember, there's also a limit to how many missions players can have at one time, that limit being 16. Invisible missions also count toward this limit, and if a player already has too many missions, your invisible missions won't start when they're supposed to. Since the main source of income here is through the Trade Center, it shouldn't be too much of a problem, hopefully, but it's something to watch out for.
Good point. But I really doubt the player will ever get close to 16 missions. There are very few BBS missions or other missions you can run simultaneously.
There may be a way to do it without the ships, however. I'll just have to tinker when I get home.
All in all, progress is good
edit: I have made a much simpler version of this. It still requires the use of one ship & one mission but it works much better.
edit edit: there will be about 45-50 missions altogether when I'm done. I have 35 that are semi-functional. I think I may actually finish soon!
I dislike fighting fleets so I'm making super-ships to fight later in the storyline. I have one done so far that is pretty fun to fight working on a second one now. I'll probably have 6-9 superships when I'm done, hopefully they'll all present unique challenges.
This post has been edited by Sklent : 05 January 2014 - 03:29 PM
There's actually several issues with that. Just in case you decide you want to make your own EMP field:
1. Spobs will not fire on the player unless these conditions are true: a) player must have pissed off the government by killing enough allied ships or by completing a mission that increases your reputation with an enemy government. 
The spob must be either the same govt or allied to the govt listed in the syst ID resource. (that or spob #1, I'm not sure)
So change the govt ID of Aurora to Federation and you probably won't get fired on by the space stations, no matter how bad your rep is with the Aurorans. "shrug" go figure.
2. I wanted the space AROUND the planet to be EMP-free, but not let the player get too far out. In stock Nova, I find evading scans ridiculously easy (just keep flying in the opposite direction). An EMP field that starts at about 2,000 pixels from system center forces the player to actually have to use piloting skills to evade the patrols.
3. Spobs can't fire beams or PD weaponry 
It was actually a fun challenge trying to figure this out. I KNEW I could make it work somehow, which was why I was so adamant about implementing it.
Update: I have one more supership done and ready to fight! These 2 I've done so far aren't particularly hard, but they force you to adapt and learn new tactics. Should be fun for you guys.
I'm thinking about eliminating all railguns, homing missiles, beam and long-range weapons from the Outfitter (while still allowing AI to use them.) This should make combat more challenging. Thoughts?
PS My character, Terrivel Snowden is a cool badass I hope you'll be pleased.
Due to me being in the phone I can't download certain plugs.
http://www.ambrosias...ed_on&order=asc
Would someone mind emailing me "ModPirateStarbridge PC"? sklent_rehroh@yahoo.com
@sklent, on 20 November 2013 - 06:26 PM, said in "Trade Captain" Plug-In Development Questions:
OK I just drafted a character profile for Captain Francis "Frankie" Kovacich. You are in command of the N.F.S Freedom, one of the few Destroyers still in optation. Your crew is often out of uniform and things are a mess, regulationwise, but you know that they would follow you to hell and back. Federation HQ sends in someone to "clean out up" every so often, but these officials rarely last more than a couple weeks. If it weren't for the fact that the crew of the "Freedom" is just so darn good and saved the day so many times, they'd all have been demoted and discharged years ago.
There's a story in there about how you decided to break formation and take on a fleet of pirates head-on, ignoring direct orders, military convention and common sense. You were court-martialed but all charges were dropped.
You rose quickly to the rank of.Captain and while you have the capability of becoming an Admiral or more, both you and HQ.agree that would be a disaster. You have no desire to leave your team and be taken out of the action. And HQ has no plans to promote such a maverick any further.
Only just now saw this edit to an earlier post. There are parts I like and parts I don't like, but I'll let you leave it as-is.
Also, remind me: what format do plug-ins need to be compressed in for you to download properly?
If they're emailed to me, it doesn't matter. If I'm browsing, they generally have to be in a zip file (otherwise my phone freaks out and says it doesn't recognize the file and won't even attempt to download.)
btw Captain Kovacich plays a key role in this story, beyond just being the smuggler's inside contact. I based him on people I know in real life who are jokers and never seem to take anything seriously, but who at the same time are very good people.
PS I'm guessing you didn't like the "things are a mess regulationwise" bit? The "Freedom" contains the best fighting unit in the second sector, with a wide range of talents and skills. But Kovacich isn't the type to hold his crew to every obscure regulation in the book (page 117 paragraph 8 line 2!) so long as he knows the men and women serving with him are gonna do the job.
In short, the "Freedom" is full of duty-bound, yet fun-loving people.
edit: so my EMP field presents another interesting challenge to hyperspace navigation. If you aren't careful and simply hold the jump key you're likely to get ionized. If you jump in from the left and immediately jump north, you're likely to hit the EMP field on your way out. To avoid this, you'll have to head south a little before jumping north.
You'll rarely be making more than 4-5 jumps in a row for missions, and once your ship has begun to enter hyperspace ships can't scan you (oddly enough, this is true even when you're "warming up" at a standstill).
This plug is already 1000x better than I first imagined. I'm a proud papa
This post has been edited by Sklent : 07 January 2014 - 08:55 AM
@sklent, on 06 January 2014 - 12:18 AM, said in "Trade Captain" Plug-In Development Questions:
There's actually several issues with that. Just in case you decide you want to make your own EMP field:
1. Spobs will not fire on the player unless these conditions are true: a) player must have pissed off the government by killing enough allied ships or by completing a mission that increases your reputation with an enemy government. /> The spob must be either the same govt or allied to the govt listed in the syst ID resource. (that or spob #1, I'm not sure)
So change the govt ID of Aurora to Federation and you probably won't get fired on by the space stations, no matter how bad your rep is with the Aurorans. "shrug" go figure.
2. I wanted the space AROUND the planet to be EMP-free, but not let the player get too far out. In stock Nova, I find evading scans ridiculously easy (just keep flying in the opposite direction). An EMP field that starts at about 2,000 pixels from system center forces the player to actually have to use piloting skills to evade the patrols.
3. Spobs can't fire beams or PD weaponry
It was actually a fun challenge trying to figure this out. I KNEW I could make it work somehow, which was why I was so adamant about implementing it.
Update: I have one more supership done and ready to fight! These 2 I've done so far aren't particularly hard, but they force you to adapt and learn new tactics. Should be fun for you guys.
I'm thinking about eliminating all railguns, homing missiles, beam and long-range weapons from the Outfitter (while still allowing AI to use them.) This should make combat more challenging. Thoughts?
PS My character, Terrivel Snowden is a cool badass I hope you'll be pleased.
Ah, I see. I didn't realize you wanted to have a safe zone.
Removing weapons from purchase would be interesting. You'd have to capture a ship to get ahold of it, or to replace ammunition, which has legal and financial ramifications. Especially if you need to USE missiles to disable a ship in the first place.
I suppose that depends on how... how would you say this... "illegal" you want to make player activities. I remember you wanted to have a pirate storyline integrated somehow, and depending on how bad of a person you want to let players be, making ships un-boardable might not be the greatest idea, especially if they want to do some actual pirating to get their hands on some of the contraband goods. If you want to restrict weapon purchases, I might go the route that Nova did, but to the extreme level. Let there be certain "illegal" outfits only available on certain planets, but with much higher, or rather special tech levels, and maybe special mission requirements to access them, along with incredibly high prices.
That's just my opinion. Is there a way to make A.I. ships boardable, but unable to be captured?
This post has been edited by TerrĂvel : 13 January 2014 - 03:45 PM
I'm scrapping the Fed and Pirate storyline for now. Right now I am just going to plan a release with a smuggler storyline and a couple minor missions. I may plan future releases with more missions/storylines but that depends on the feedback I get.
Regarding making certain outfits "illegal"... I don't think there is a way to make certain overpowered outfits have enough drawbacks to balance them out. In stock Nova, a civvie Viper can take down just about any capital ship if you give it enough IR/radar/HH missiles. This requires no skill beyond evading some missiles and pointing your nose in the right general direction. Making it illegal just means you make sure to evade patrols and make enough money to hand out bribes if need be. There's probably a way to include these outfits in-game while keeping it balanced, but I really want to get this out by February.
I've created challenges based around being limited only to short-range weaponry. I feel they are hard without being impossible. However, I'm not sure how to make combat challenging if the player can just go buy railguns.
I personally feel that being limited to short-range, unguided weapons puts the AI at an advantage. This advantage creates a challenge that is fun to overcome. Do you disagree?
PS the player still gets to soup up their ship in other ways.
edit: I may not implement this, but you probably CAN make ships boardable without being captureable. Simply give the ship 32000 crew, and then create an outfit that grants another 32000 crew. Then give that ship 32000 of those outfits!
So you'd have a ship with 32000 + 32000² crew :-). not likely to be captured any time this century.
This post has been edited by Sklent : 13 January 2014 - 05:43 PM
I realize that you're scrapping them for now, but it sounded like you wanted to implement them in the future, and if you DID end up deciding to let someone pirate a ship, it would be a sudden change of mechanics for both new and previously existing content. But it's your plug, I don't need to tell you how to make it. I'm not trying to boss you around or anything, I'm just bringing up a few things that might make people wonder why they're missing/changed. One minor issue that I just thought of though, is someone that needs to board a ship to recover energy. It will probably never happen, but I figured it was be worth a quick mention. I think I had to do it once, back when I was fresh to the game.
Balancing an illegal outfit would actually be pretty simple. It would be just like the salvaged Federation missile jammers in Stock. They don't perform to the same level as the mint condition versions on military vessels. The first thing that comes to mind is the illegal Ion Cannon. They are a separate resource, and unless I'm wrong, there is no ship that is armed with them normally. It would be a simple fix to modify their damage stats to deal less damage than their "legal" counterparts, as well as to modify the few pirate ships that come with the normal beam to use the weaker version instead, if desired.
As far as an invisible crew outfit goes, how would you get them on the A.I. ships? Unless I'm missing something, if you modified ships to have the outfit, they would also be on player purchased ships, unless you can set a mission to remove outfits. If so, it seems simple enough.
And yes, being limited to close-range combat would be a nice twist, it's one of the things I liked about Colosseum, I was just never very good at fighter combat.
This post has been edited by TerrĂvel : 13 January 2014 - 07:00 PM
Well of course you're not bossing me around I value your input here. I just wasn't clear on your opinion on eliminating railguns vs. not eliminating them. I want people to enjoy my plug and demand I make more!
I may do a Fed string later on, but a Pirate one is pretty much out. Their ships are way too powerful. Plus actually BEING a Pirate is something I'm too squeamish to actually write about.
Nerfing existing weapons is an idea, but it would also require explanation. My story is set 200 years after the stock Nova scenario in a whole new sector of the galaxy. A civilian not having access to homing missiles, but military and criminals do? I think it's perfect.
I think I will do something stupid: ignore advice and proceed with original plans. 
After all, if you REALLY want railguns all you gotta do is change a bit in the data files.
I suggested that earlier, and the reason he wants to eliminate the weapons from player use is that the boss ships become too easy to beat with them. Also, if you can capture AI ships, then you could still gain access to the weapons the AI has. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to allow players to board other ships but not be able to capture them.
Sorry, missed the entire fourth page.
Also, AI ships can't make use of crew-granting outfits. They only pay attention to jamming, cloaks, and repair kits. By repair kits, I mean outfits that get your ship functioning again if you've been disabled. They ignore everything else, even afterburners since that's added as an AI trait.
This post has been edited by DarthKev : 14 January 2014 - 03:13 PM
Drat. Still, a ship with 32000 crew would be hard to capture. I think I may make some ships boardable and others not. (0 crew, iirc)
Like I told DK earlier, this plug-in is pretty much done. I have descs to write, 12 or so systems that need proper dudes, and 7-8 more "super ships" to design, battle and refine, and perhaps a few more missions to break up some of the monotony. Right now I have 6 battle missions placed back-to-back at the very end. I'm leaning toward adding "filler" in between - perhaps more cool, uniquely challenging missions if I get more ideas.
