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More ships

291 (55%)

More weapons

106 (20%)

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Total Members Voted: 529

[Histidine]

6.  Would like it if Shanghai had a heavy industry...want to sell them a pristine Nanoforge BADLY to up the quality of the THI ships for sale there...

Shanghai already has an Orbital Works in both random and non-random sector, sell your nanoforge there.

[eidolad]

thanks for the feedback(s)!

[Argonaut]

Just posting to say i like the old art more! More scrappy and metallic, more dark and the Chengdu's launch bay has actual depth to it.

[MesoTroniK]

You are entitled to your opinion, but like... Sighs this is a complex subject.

The new art though, is *objectively* better than the old. The old, in many cases had literally impossible Esher-like shapes.


Where if were to hand the art to a 3d modeler and ask them to interpret it directly into a 3d asset? It could not be done as the shapes didn't make sense. They would need to make massive amounts of changes just so it could exist in a virtual physical space. Now everything is well constructed, and can logically exist in a 3d space. While also being less greebly (scrappy in your words), to be more vanilla friendly but it is *still* more greebly than vanilla. Additionally they were way too dark before, to the point that it was problematic.

And regarding the Chengdu specifically? The old one's bay had *too* much depth. Where the edges vanished into a dark void, projecting a shadow that was nearly pure black, also in the presence of bay lights on top of that! Additionally even near the center where it was not shadowed? It was so dark, that it didn't agree with the overall Z axis (height) of the ship! Now it looks like about 1/3 "up" relative to the overall box-hull section which is exactly what makes sense. And it still has significant depth even looking at it in a vacuum! Good edge and contact shadows but without ones so intense that it creates an Escher-space heh.


Anyways, an old friend of mine who mentored me somewhat on art once told me. That outlines, overly intense shadows, blown out highlights, and overall not subtle rendering? Is a crutch to lean on to cover for one's own lack of talent, skill at painting, or neophyte-level design sense. I am far past needing any such crutches, and overall? This conversation reminds me of back when vanilla first started getting de-greebled and a good few folks thought it looks worse. But I would eat my own hat, if many still thought that. They learned the errors of their ways, and perception, as they saw how much more readable the sprites became especially in-game when they are rotated and scaled is a very different thing from looking at a static image.

And in the end? The fact vanilla has moved on, is exactly the reason I have reworked the THI art. THI was always meant to be more greebly than vanilla, but when vanilla got smoothed, it became far too greebly. And the reworks are still more greebly than vanilla, just not to such a comically out of place degree anymore

[Gwyvern]

Yeah the old sprites were kind of a mess. If you squint and don't look at them too hard, then it will probably look more interesting and eye-catching than the new ones, but once you take the time to sit down and examine them, you realize that what was so 'interesting' about the old sprites was that they were sort of an unmitigated disaster of high-fidelity nonsense that did little beyond the aforementioned catching of the eye, almost like the toy aisle of a grocery store.

[Dazs]

Hello there, I've been away for a bit but when I saw an update to this great mod well here we go again! I have gone back a couple pages but there's 30+ so if this has been asked before, I apologize. Is there a specific reason there are no tankers in Tiadong's ship inventory? I would love to make an expedition fleet of all Faction specific ships but I cannot effectively do that due to their range being limited. Other than that one little thing, this is hands down my favorite faction to hold a commission with.

[MesoTroniK]

Evening Dazs. Well lets look at it this way... Does THI need a tanker? They by design use a mix of their own ships and vanilla ones. So what would it really do giving them a tanker from a gameplay standpoint? It sounds mostly like bloat to me. If you are role-playing as THI, then you should do as they do and run mixed tech

Also, they in a way do have tankers. Not dedicated ones, but hybrid ships. The Tianshui-Class Light carrier, and Tuolu-Class Missile Destroyer both carry more fuel than is typical for combat ships, especially the Tianshui.

Anyways, if you got a suggestion for a tanker for them that wouldn't in effect just be the vanilla ones but painted green? I am all ears, and do value suggestions.

[Dazs]

Well you make some good points there for short to mid exploration but I am talking deep space exploration especially early game when you have a small fleet and a frigate sized THI tanker would be of great value. I play as a scrapper, trader, salvager and I use the Starship Legends mod. Typically the storyteller will talk of a decent ship lost near a star located at the edge of the map. A major factor in taking THI ships is their speed (which helps when going dark to avoid those pesky AI patrols in those sectors) and the ability to pass through nebula which is negated by having to take another factions tanker. Another consideration is that these ships are sometimes in a sector nebula and it takes a bit to find them.

So on a Faction lore of having come from an outskirt sector and boosting profits by salvaging resource, extraction, contract killing and tech mining it would stand to reason they would have had tankers to both get from the outer rim to the core as well as fast access to the resources and tech that are left out in the rim now they are based in the core.

[AxleMC131]

@Dazs: Re-read Meso's previous message:

... They by design use a mix of their own ships and vanilla ones... If you are role-playing as THI, then you should do as they do and run mixed tech

Interesting suggestions for a THI dedicated tanker aside, Tiandong's response to a "small, early-game tanker" is the vanilla Dram. They're a faction that mixes their own tech with vanilla, and there's nothing wrong about you, the player, reflecting that in your faction playthrough.

[Daynen]

Is there any reason THI ships can somehow lose their immunity to slowing effects?  My 16 speed sustained burn THI-only fleet is suddenly moving at 12 through nebulae and don't know why.

It's not a thing with Starship legends as far as I can tell.  Even the negative traits shouldn't really affect something so specific.  It's also not a supply, fuel or crew issue; I've got plenty of each.  No D-mods on any ship either.  Anyone else experience this?

EDIT: WAIT hang on...nevermind.  Somehow a salvaged ship snuck in and I didn't see it through all the green.  Blargh.

EDIT AGAIN: No, checked again and double checked that every single ship has the retrofit and STILL going 12 instead of 16 in clouds.  What the hails...

[MesoTroniK]

Evening Daynen. Damn, I have never heard of this happening before nor seen it myself. Odd indeed, going to look into it. But first two questions:

Are you *positive* your fleet is comprised only of THI ships?
What is your modlist?

[Daynen]

1: yes.  After I noticed this I swapped things out until I had ONLY ships with the tiandong retrofit hullmod.  Still slowed in clouds.

modlist:
another potrait pack
blackrock drive yards
Cari's UI lite
dassault Mikoyan engineering
ED shipyard
hullmods expansion
interstellar imperium
lazylib
legacy of arkgenesis
magiclib
nexerelin
nigijen extend
polaris prime
ship/weapon pack
starship legends
supply forging
terraforming and station construction
Tiandong heavy industries
vayra's sector
vayra's ship pack
version checker
zz graphicslib

Wow.  Those have really piled up...didn't even realize I'd piled on so many...and yes they're all up to date.

[MesoTroniK]

That is a uh... An interesting mod list you got there. All right well a couple of thoughts. What nebula were these? Any old nebula, or some special variant added by a mod? As unfortunately there is no way to get if one is in a nebula except by getting the statmod description like so:

Code

            if (statMod.desc != null && statMod.desc.contentEquals("Inside nebula"))
            {
                nebulaMod = statMod;
            }
            else if (statMod.desc != null && statMod.desc.contentEquals("Inside charged nebula"))
            {
                nebulaMod = statMod;
            }
            else if (statMod.desc != null && statMod.desc.contentEquals("Inside charged nebula (storm)"))
            {
                nebulaMod = statMod;
            }
            else if (statMod.desc != null && statMod.desc.contentEquals("Inside atmospheric haze"))
            {
                nebulaMod = statMod;
            }

So in effect I need to support special nebula variants added by mods manually. See all those after the first entry? Those are all mod added special nebula and as far as I know that is all of them but it is possible I missed one or two in the vast Modiverse. So yea what nebula were these, and when in them did it print in the stat card a bit of text that matches any of those?

In addition, some of those mods I am not really super familiar with but as a notable final comment? Hullmod Expansion is known to break scripts in other mods...

[MesoTroniK]

And after some thinking, and also consultation of others? Refactored that script to get some redundant checks, two of them lol. If this fix which will go into the next update of THI doesn't correct the issue? It is a safe bet Hullmod Expansion was at fault, which would not surprise me at all...

Code

    public boolean isNebula(StatMod mod)
    {
        //Global.getLogger(this.getClass()).info("Mod: " + mod.source + ", " + mod.desc);

        // If the mod desc says we're inside a currently known to me nebula type, this is a nebula
        if (mod.desc != null)
        {
            for (String nebDesc : NEBULA_DESCS)
            {
                if (nebDesc.equals(mod.desc))
                {
                    return true;
                }
            }
            // Do a brute force string search as well, because Overkill Never Fails™
            // and the Modiverse is vast and infinite into the future
            if (mod.desc.toLowerCase(Locale.ROOT).contains("nebula"))
            {
                return true;
            }
        }

        // Fallback to guessing based on mod ID, for double the overkill redundancy
        // This also handles translated versions of SS and SS mods!
        return mod.source.startsWith("nebula_stat_mod_");
    }

Regardless, thank you for bringing this to my attention Daynen but if you could still try the thing I asked for in the prior post? That would be very appreciated

[MesoTroniK]

Heh, well nevermind the above. Ended up refactoring it again, but it really should be as bulletproof as possible come time for the next update.


As the next update of THI approaches ever closer to completion day by day, I feel it once again might be a good time to show some of the reworked art.


The Dingjun, once a crappy mass of nonsensical Z-axis shapes and greeble for days. Has been almost entirely redone even down to the basic silhouette of the ship. It also is being heavily rebalanced, it will cost more to run, and have less cargo storage but in return is becoming significantly more powerful in combat. Truly putting the arsenal into its "Arsenal Ship" designation, still a combat freighter but more combat and less freighty.

The Nanzhong, well didn't change that much visually in the grand scheme of things but was cleaned up substantially to really look like a mean little combat frigate and not a flying mass of greeble. Also that gratuitously large sensor array on it isn't just for show, yet... It visualizes a built-in range booster hullmod that will be added for the next update of SS to segue with (very different) buffs the Brawler will be getting.