Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => Mods => Modding => Topic started by: xenoargh on August 01, 2017, 04:29:12 PM

Title: [0.81a] Thar Be Dragons, 0.4a
Post by: xenoargh on August 01, 2017, 04:29:12 PM
Download Link (http://www.wolfegames.com/TA_Section/xeno_mod_pack.zip)

Thar Be Dragons is a mod designed to make Hyperspace a little more fun and challenging.*
What It Does:

In Thar Be Dragons, flying through Hyperspace is basically normal, except:

1.  There's code that automatically "cleans up" Hyperspace clouds that have spawned around stars and Jump Points, rather than letting them be covered.

2.  Hyperspace Storms no longer drain your fleet's CR at all.  However...

A.  Hyperspace Storms still slow down your fleet and reduce its sensor coverage.

B.  There's a small chance that a very powerful enemy fleet will suddenly spring out of the interference of a Hyperspace Storm and attack your fleet!  So be on alert at all times, when traveling through Storms!**


*I thought about naming the mod, "Bringing back the Hegemony Defense Fleet" but at this point, many newer players wouldn't get the joke ;)

**I'm not kidding about the danger here; with a maxed-out squad of Captains, all Level 29, and top-tier gear, I've only won a few times thus far.  Expect huge battles and a genuine challenge.
Title: Re: [0.81a] Thar Be Dragons, 0.1a
Post by: StarSchulz on August 01, 2017, 08:39:00 PM
Hey, i tried the mod and i can say i really like the hyperspace terrain not spawning over the jump points, that was something that somewhat bothered me. Just have a problem with the *massive* fleet. It seems to spawn very often, to the point of when i got caught in a storm by accident it spawned two before i could get out.

Just as a suggestion, maybe having it scale to the player's fleet size might be good, since the MASSIVE thing is a bit much for a player who is salvaging and gets caught on accident x.x


( and i worry with the size, the lag it might create )


Oh, and they didnt aggro to me. they just moved around killing pirates nearby. maybe i had transponder off and they didnt see me?
Title: Re: [0.81a] Thar Be Dragons, 0.1a
Post by: MesoTroniK on August 01, 2017, 08:43:50 PM
Why do arbitrary fleet spawning like that?

How I imagine something like this being done is a custom fleet spawner that only does so when the player *and* other NPC fleets are *not* nearby. A custom fleet AI tells it to go dark, and takes them into a terrain feature to hide. When hostiles pass nearby, they get an intercept order and if the distance between them grows too large then they return into hiding :)
Title: Re: [0.81a] Thar Be Dragons, 0.1a
Post by: Tartiflette on August 02, 2017, 12:50:31 AM
I don't mind that as long as it is done right: spawned just out of sensor range right before the player passes by, with enough time to avoid it and with a reasonable and justifiable size (proximity of a system/market). And they would be removed if evaded. Forcing the enemy to actually spawn far away and wait in ambush is a good way to have many fleets floating around doing nothing, bloating the save and causing even more memory issues, for no benefit since it is invisible to the player anyway.
Title: Re: [0.81a] Thar Be Dragons, 0.1a
Post by: xenoargh on August 02, 2017, 11:04:07 AM
I think it's fair to say that the AI fleet generation's Very Alpha right now :)
Title: Re: [0.81a] Thar Be Dragons, 0.2a
Post by: xenoargh on August 02, 2017, 02:40:13 PM
Alpha 2's been released. 

Cleans up a few things about enemy fleet generation and how interception works; it's not perfect but it gets a little closer to feeling "ambushed". 

I'm not entirely happy with the way this works; the fleet AI's quite averse to going through Storms, so it acts a bit goofy, instead of diving in for the kill, and thematically, it doesn't feel so much like an "ambush" as "random thing happens on the map that 90% of the time, we can just avoid".
Title: Re: [0.81a] Thar Be Dragons, 0.3a
Post by: xenoargh on September 03, 2017, 07:14:43 AM
Alpha 3's been released.

Some tweaks to the generation logic and other things.
Title: Re: [0.81a] Thar Be Dragons, 0.4a
Post by: xenoargh on September 04, 2017, 09:28:26 AM
Alpha 4's been released.  Tweaked the generation of ships a bit, so that you get surrounded by a cloud of enemies at higher levels, but aren't quite so overwhelmed at low levels.