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[Rushyo]

cool cant wait.
i might get into modding but adding factions and ships. i have never done modding before so ill start small because i dont think i would be able to ever do what your doing.

I can definitely recommend starting small. Don't feel the need to rush in to anything complex until it starts calling. When I started modding I used to add individual ships/guns/paint-jobs to games and it was plenty of fun for a very long time!

It was 4 years before I published my first proper video game and 15 years later I find still modding fun. I've always been more of a games designer at heart and whilst software architecture/penetration testing pays the bills I find modding projects the most fun because it's the quickest way to get from an idea to an actual playable thing in-game. Developing games from scratch (esp. when not using an existing engine) just doesn't offer that immediacy; you spend a lot of time writing code that doesn't actually realise your unique stuff in any way.

With modding you can have an idea for a cool ship or gun, out of the blue, and see it done by the end of the hour/day/week, which is always ace

[joe130794]

i know how to edit ship and weapon stats but i havent made any weapons or ships. i tried with trylobots ship maker but didnt know how to incorporate what i made at the time and havent tried since. i might have a go at the weekend.
what programs do you use to make ships and weapons?

[Rushyo]

Demo alpha build is ready after 0.6.5a porting tomfoolery: https://www.dropbox.com/s/lhprymxgn3dh4oj/BattlestarDemo.zip?dl=1

what programs do you use to make ships and weapons?

Trylobot's sf-ship-ed, Notepad++, and Fireworks 8 (graphics package). Mostly Notepad++ ! The main trick to modding is to look at examples of things that are similar to things you want to do and copy them as much as possible. That way you don't have to learn everything at once

[MesoTroniK]

The spammy rockets on the BaseStars fade out before hitting the target usually.

[Rushyo]

The spammy rockets on the BaseStars fade out before hitting the target usually.

Yup, ty. Presumably a side effect of 0.6.5a (spent the last five hours alone porting it over, didn't really have time to test everything properly). Let's see what the new missile behaviour looks like..

[Rushyo]

Uploaded new version with hotfix for missile fading issue. Potentially not properly balanced but ought to be okay.

[joe130794]

will it work on 0.62 because i havent updated yet because not many mods have been updated for it.

[joe130794]

had to go on 0.65 for it to work in the end.
played through all the missions.
love it, its brilliant and no lag at all from having large ships like some mods.
was looking forward to using the mercury battlestar but the galactica does brilliant on its own and even the valkyrie can take a basestar without too much hull damage.
mission scores in order on the list.
50%
50%
45% using just galactica
50%

beating the mercury class was the hardest. and the last mission with the 3 basestars, i only sent out galactica until after i wiped the basestars and then i sent out my vipers and raptors to mop up the fighters but there werent many left haha

[Rushyo]

I suspect the recent missile patch has thrown the balancing out of whack; sigh. Looks like another all-nighter (still need to port across the character creation process to the new system too ).

will it work on 0.62 because i havent updated yet because not many mods have been updated for it.

If you edit the mod info file in Notepad then you can probably set it as being compatible with 0.62 and it should work, since it's far, far less likely to have any backwards compatibility issues than the full total conversion mod.

[joe130794]

ah maybe. the nukes tend to be intercepted to by the mercury class. the base stars have no pd weapons tho so just 1 nuke and then finish em off with the main guns .

[joe130794]

could you edit a mission to use the mercury class.
i tried to edit cylon ambush but it didnt work
thanks

[joe130794]

i just did the mission where you have cylon ships. i fired the ships nukes as soon as i could and they took the enemy base star out before it got near me.
they need some point defences to stop long range attacks with the nukes.

[Rushyo]

i just did the mission where you have cylon ships. i fired the ships nukes as soon as i could and they took the enemy base star out before it got near me.
they need some point defences to stop long range attacks with the nukes.

ah maybe. the nukes tend to be intercepted to by the mercury class. the base stars have no pd weapons tho so just 1 nuke and then finish em off with the main guns .

Generally speaking the raiders should take care of them. I may have hobbled that AI behaviour by accident somewhere along the line; in which case Basestars are kinda stuffed as they simply don't have point defenses. The raiders are their PDs. It might be necessary for me to tell the raiders to prioritise which missiles they intercept... (and maybe buff the number of raiders per Basestar)

I'll do a proper balance pass at some point, since I think quite a few things are out of whack at the moment. It honestly doesn't take more than a couple of minor tweaks to make a Basestar nigh-on-indestructible (there have been a few alpha builds like that) so I've probably just gone too far the other way.

As an example: I could make Basestars 5-10% faster so they can dodge slow moving projectiles more easily; this would be more in line with canon too. However, then they'd be able to shove nukes right up a Battlestar's... aft section... which would completely negate the utility of the Battlestar's flak shield, making the most viable strategy for the Basestar to shield itself with Raiders and basically turn them in to Protoss death balls.

Generally speaking in the TV show (and in Diaspora) the Basestars are inexplicably stationary relative to the Battlestar until the screenwriter decides otherwise. That bit of artistic license doesn't work in the context of Starfarer, so it requires rather different rules to manage. To facilitate the perception of 'stand off' fighting between two carriers (permitting strategies like the 'flak shield') they need to be equivalent speeds. You could make them both exceptionally slow to prevent a Basestar from closing too fast, thereby preventing the deathball strategy, but then the wider battle becomes a snooze fest of watching your raiders/vipers spawn, fight, die, repeat. To actually make the capital ships relevant and interesting to play means they need a manuever element.

These are not problems the TV series ever faced, as they could (and did) hand wave all those issues. Indeed, if the battles in Starsector were nearly half as drawn out and predictable as the TV show (or Diaspora) you'd pretty much fall asleep from boredom in a truly 'authentic' strategy simulation. Thus, I'm having to design a whole new asymmetrical balance within the constraints of making it 'feel' like Battlestar. That constraint means no point-defense weapons for Basestars even though it would patently resolve these balance issues.

could you edit a mission to use the mercury class.
i tried to edit cylon ambush but it didnt work
thanks

You should just be able to change "bsg_galactica_Standard" to "bsg_mercury_Standard" in the "Starsector\mods\BattlestarDemo\data\missions\cylonambush\MissionDefinition.java" file.

[joe130794]

i did notice that some nukes didnt hit them and i think that was mainly because of either raiders being in the way or when the basestars fire lots of rockets, the nukes were being taken out by them first.

i changed the mission part and it worked, thanks, i tried copying the mission and making it a separate mission but that wouldnt work.

love the missions and the ships though, its brilliant so far and i cant wait for the finished mod.

[joe130794]

just edited the valkyrievsbasestar mission to test other ships and i started with the berzerk class cruiser, ran it through the simulation against a base star and it won. the flak battery shot down most incoming rockets and the basestar only fired 1 nuke which was intercepted as well.
and the loki cruiser can take a basestar too.so there would need to be a lot of basestars for me to consider retreating from a battle.