Nope. You could try emailing Kris (his address is in the read me) though I'd be surprised if he'd be willing to give them away. Let me know if you do though

How about having different mods for the Clipper; Heavy Fighter, Courier, Pirate etc. It would add more accuracy to the descriptions (Instead of seeing only one kind of clipper roaming around).

Also, what's up with the unused ship graphics? (Ex Pirate Clipper, Rebel Kestrel)

This post has been edited by IT 000 : 08 March 2009 - 05:20 PM

Beta 4 may or may not be now or never available.

This is a big update in comparison with previous betas as it finally adds the xData. It's not complete yet though, ship variants are still to come. There are numerous other changes as well though, so while the next beta is probably another 5 years away I'll make another list of things for people to comment on/provide their opinions.

Note that while the original xData appeared to be aiming for more of a sense of realism with the power of weaponry ships such as a Confed Cruiser might actually have, I've been trying to aim for a better balance between both this aspect and also good gameplay. A Confed Cruiser raining down 500 tons of neutron power from afar and an endless supply of torpedoes might be cool and all but in practice I think it's better to tone it down slightly. Any suggestions regarding the balance (outfit weight/price, weapon power, standard weapon/ammo loadouts) are welcome.

- Retools have been reworked. The Bulkhead Restoration has been made redundant - instead, buying the opposite retool will remove one you already have. The bulkhead restoration could also be exploited to get negative free mass, which is now completely impossible. I've also tweaked the pics to make cargo/mass easily distinguishable from each other... hope you like it.
- Shield capacitor/shield booster: As per sniper kitty's suggestion these have been increased. The booster is now 40 but I only increased the capacitor to 20 as I realised any more than that would outclass the armor upgrades and make them essentially worthless.
- Neutron Turrets are supposed to take up 2 turret slots but you can't actually make an outfit that requires 2 slots in advance before you purchase it. You only need one free slot to purchase them and can 'overload' your turret loadout by one slot. I could set up some tokens and crons to ensure this doesn't happen but it probably isn't worth the trouble.
- Neutron and heavy proton weaponry don't have quite the same range as in the original xData but they're still much longer than standard proton/laser weaponry. Neutron turrets also have lower dps than the heavy proton turrets (they always did) which seems odd given their weight...
- Mass Driver. I suddenly remembered this weapon and wondered what to do with it. I've doubled the speed a second time to position it more as a railgun but without making it front-quadrant (which I don't really want to do) it still seems kinda pointless as its difficult to aim over long range.
- Javelins have been implemented similar to Grenth's suggestions with a limit of 180 per launcher (max 8 launchers). As he says, this is quite fun.
- Single shots. The original rEV had most secondaries firing simultaneously and was supposed to include an extra plug to disable this but it got left out. In this version, the only weapons that fire simultaneously are Swivel Neutrons (cos they look cool on the Cruiser) and Javelins. I always preferred to have control over how many shots I fire, especially on small ships where you have limited ammo. It would be possible to make outfit to toggle the behaviour, though it would be a little complicated with crons and stuff.
- KMQ's original intention for secondary weapons was to have ammo limits for different launchers, eg. 3 missiles per rack, 1 missile per mount etc. Nova didn't like this much though so instead he used bursts with long reloads. Additionally I've restricted it so you can't buy both racks and launchers for the same weapon. I think this works quite well but there a couple of ways that limits could be enforced. Here are the options:

• Leave it all as it is now.

• Remove the launcher restrictions so you can have racks and launchers at the same time.

• Make use of the Increase Max modtype to enforce limits. The downside to this is it doesn't work quite so nicely when selling launchers - you pretty much need to sell all your ammo before you can sell one launcher, and then you can buy back ammo for the launchers you still have.

• Make separate ammo outfits for the different launchers, having only one visible at a time. The annoyance of this is the outfitter reloads itself whenever an item's visibility changes and we have enough of this happening as it is (retools and fighter bays).

Hands up who likes rEV :). I really like the style of the graphics, which seems to fit in with the original while being much higher quality. Eg, plug-ins like Magma (and also Nova) may be high quality but they lose that charm that the standard EV and EVO graphics have.

This post has been edited by Guy : 13 February 2011 - 08:23 PM

<raises hand>

Awesome, Beta 4! Can't wait to play around with it!

In regards to secondary 'volley fire' issues, I would suggest leaving as is. Options 3 and 4 are complicated and have side effects that, in my opinion, are not worth the benefits. Option 2 doesn't make sense. Why would you purchase one when you already have the other? They don't stack, so having both is useless and just takes up extra space. Leaving it as it is now makes the most sense to me.

I question the fact neutrons have less damage than heavy protons but are heavier. I agree it's odd and wonder why it hasn't been changed. In fact, I've always found neutrons to be rather useless because of their slow speed. It's almost impossible to hit anything with them. Even heavy protons can be somewhat hard to aim, but not as hard as neutrons.

Only 1.5 years. Not sure how this happened - I didn't really want to do it and regret the amount of time I've spent on it again :rolleyes:
Ah well, here we are with beta 5, if anyone is still around to see. As usual, find it at the link in my sig.

Firstly, @DarthKev: Thanks for your comments, they have been helpful, even though I never replied at the time.

Now a lot changed has in this beta, though much of it won't be obvious. Here are the interesting points:

• Improved picts. Previously, many picts didn't look so good due to the colour loss from converting 16-bit. Some of the worst culprits were Tabletop and the Alien shipyard picts. After getting in touch with Kris he supplied me with all the original material and I was able to reconvert them with BlitZen which produced much better results. Further graphical improvements include:
  • Mystery weapon removed from Frigate shipyard and target pic. I believe this was supposed to be a 'Plasma Syphon', an anti-alien weapon carried by the 'Old War Era' variant. Sadly the weapon doesn't actually exist.
  • Alien sidebar image improved and enabled.
  • Palshife landing image improved and enabled. One of the previously unused landing images was identified as Palshife - I re-rendered it to remove blockiness in the terrain.
  • Serpens Nebula image enlarged for better display at high zoom levels.
  • Real Space Bomb sprite added! I managed to do a sprite render of the Space Bomb model seen in the outfitter, so gone is the old green-painted thing.

• Tubes fire simultaneously (racks and the Missile Launcher do not).

• Flares changed to manually-fired secondary weapon. This is thanks to Qaanol's Active Flares plug. I never bothered doing something like this in the EV port because I didn't think it would be worth the trouble but after trying it out I do think it's much better. Unfortunately it totally confuses AI ships so it is now a player-only weapon.

• Many small changes and tweaks to balance everywhere, notably Neutron Turret is lighter, cheaper, and more powerful. I wanted to call this a triple-turret but it wouldn't match the pic so I've used the term "supercharged neutron blasters" rather than just "neutron cannons".

• Mass Driver is improved - more damage and range, front-quadrant swivel.

• Hawks and Confed Fighters are awesome ^_^. Complex mechanics let you buy 2 Hawks of either kind per Hawk bay, or 3 Patrol Ships OR 2 Gunboats per Confed bay. Please test these out - you can buy all the Hawk outfits at Spica, or all the Confed outfits at Earth if you're in the Confed string. See my topics on the dev board for more info on these.

• Pirate crew is more interesting :cryptic grin: (sigh, this was funnier in my head before I implemented it)

• Ship variants! Finally I have implemented some of these.
  Major variants:
  • White Knight (upgrade)
  • Rebel Kestrel (upgrade)
  • Rebel Corvette (upgrade)
  • Rebel Rapier (upgrade)
  • Rebel Frigate (upgrade)
  • Pirate Carrier (purchase)
  Minor variants:
  • CC Heavy Fighters
  • RC Siege
  • Pirate Hawk
  I ran out of steam to do more, namely the pirate variants including the Argosy Mark II (I wasn't sure how best to do this anyway).

Thoughts for the future:

• Obviously, implement more ship variants.

• Due to the abundance of high-powered weaponry, it might be good to increase all shields a bit (say, 25%).

• With all the new variants around, it might be good to increase ship count in all systems (say, 50%).

P.S. Does anyone actually know how to get the Clepet Fighter?

(UPDATE)
I figured out some improvements to the Confed Fighter Bay mechanics and have uploaded this as a minor update. You now have the ability capture Gunboats as fighters (previously I had prevented this by giving Gunboats zero crew). This is mostly limited to just recovering/replacing ones you've lost in battle.
Note Patrol Ships still can't be captured because they can't be disabled.

This post has been edited by Guy : 06 May 2014 - 02:07 AM

@guy, on 26 August 2012 - 10:19 PM, said in rEV 1.1:

Firstly, @DarthKev: Thanks for your comments, they have been helpful, even though I never replied at the time.

You are very welcome.

Quote

Now a lot changed has in this beta, though much of it won't be obvious.

Acknowledged, Yoda.

Quote

<snip>

If that's the interesting bits, there must be a lot of uninteresting bits. I look forward to playing around with it, especially with the ship variants finally in. I added some of them in myself in the previous version, but I doubt I had them balanced.

Quote

P.S. Does anyone actually know how to get the Clepet Fighter?

Actually, I do. I must admit, though, I cheated to find out. I dug through the files and figured it out. I won't reveal it, though, because I don't wanna spoil it. I will say it's fairly convoluted to accomplish.

Whoops, it seems I made a couple of mistakes with the Confed fighter system, such as a mission showing up in the mission computer when it should be invisible. I've fixed these and re-uploaded (still b5). Oh, and I added a hire desc for the Gunboat.

@darthkev, on 04 September 2012 - 12:30 AM, said in rEV 1.1:

If that's the interesting bits, there must be a lot of uninteresting bits. I look forward to playing around with it, especially with the ship variants finally in. I added some of them in myself in the previous version, but I doubt I had them balanced.

Yeah, things like re-encoding the explosion rleDs to avoid glitches with colour runs just didn't seem interesting

@darthkev, on 04 September 2012 - 12:30 AM, said in rEV 1.1:

Actually, I do. I must admit, though, I cheated to find out. I dug through the files and figured it out. I won't reveal it, though, because I don't wanna spoil it. I will say it's fairly convoluted to accomplish.

Heh, I sort of accidentally found it out the same way when I first started working on rEV (since I need to know what everything does and how it works). I wonder if anyone has or will discover it on their own just in the course of play...