unique stations

[Betelgeuse]

One station of the same kind is the same functionally. Maybe this can be improved on by giving stations of a kind a random bonus.

such as:

for friendly stations
cheaper fuel
free un/installing
better selling price for a certain item class
better buying price for a certain item class
better rate of fire
better weapon
better regen

for enemy stations
less likely to have items within damaged when destroyed
better armor
better rate of fire
better weapon
more guards

the main thing is that different stations of the same kind would be more different other than just cargo and name.

any thoughts?

[Periculi]

I have been thinking along the exact same lines.

I think that it is easy to implement some larger variety, and that creating more stations within random tables would make re-play more fulfilling.

New station types could be interesting too:

Museum / Archeology - Specialty Research of various kinds - Intelligence/Espionage - Mercenary/Bounty Hunter - Commonwealth Government, just to name a few.

[Kamikaze]

Actually, a good bit of that is possible, I believe. A station could have a table used to define the weapon, armor type, reinforcements yes/no, guard types, even the number of docking ports!

Dang, Transcendence has gained new meaning for me. How far CAN we push it?

[Periculi]

I would say- "very very far".

I have been studying the xml for weeks now, and I have found that George has built in a great deal of flexibility. Many of the functions are only used once- as a sort of sample of the ability. But re-iterations of useful and interesting built-in methods could provide a huge spectrum for game play.

I have begun to look at transcendence as more of a sci-fi game platform rather than a mere game.

[Kamikaze]

Exactly.

I'm not exactly new to modding Transcendence, just a little rusty, but I've never looked too far into the xmls.

But just after seeing the StarSystemTopology and the possibilities with modifying it... Just that (I think) we can MODIFY existing systems via Extension, create new ones via modification of Transcendence.xml...

Wow.

Transcendence in itself is very well packaged. No other game I know of does so much on 20-25mb of disk space. Now we can possibly make it longer, tougher, bigger, and more replayable...

If it takes a hundred megabytes of space, I don't care. As long as it stays playable on my Celeron tower (913mhz, 512 mb ram, 128mb video card).

[george moromisato]

I really like the idea of unique stations.

A couple of ideas for implementation:

1. For stations that have different prices, I think the best way is to allow script to modify the <Trade> section of the station definition. The OnCreate could then randomize the prices.

2. It is always possible to create a new station type with a specific variation. The levelFrequency would be set to rare or very rare.

3. Random weapons could be implemented using code in <OnCreate>.

[Betelgeuse]

thanks
I think an important point would be that there be no standard stations (other than maybe non random stations) that every station would have something about it.

[Periculi]

My angle was to have interesting content for the random branches mod I am (neck deep in) developing. With the additional terrain comes a large difficulty- repetitive elements. AN improved and expanded set of unique qualities for stations would be essential to providing the content for a larger branching node system.

In order to make each game interesting and keep the unique feel to every new game I wanted to create a set of endings for the branches- such as capitol systems with hardened stations and more variety of station types for sovereigns.

Another aspect is the centralized 'story giver' type of stations- let's call Korolov one of those for instance. In a larger topology with lots of branches and dead ends there needs to exist reasons for the players to go and explore those diversions from the main trunk (the linear path currently). So, a set of random systems that had rare, very rare, and unique types with own sub set of special stations could link back to the traditional story-givers in the main trunk- making the branches coherent with the main game story arc. In the Korolov example, beyond defeating Charon pirates the player could also run across Korolov related events and items in the branches and dead end systems- perhaps a unique pirate fleet with bounty on the captain paid in St. Ks, or a new market to open up, recovery of a wrecked super freighter's cargo and more- this could be made available only if the random dead end with unique station is generated, and the story giver could be set to 'know' if a given type of unique system/station/event/item or whatever existed. (OnCreate covers this type of functionality) Many of these small plot items could be assembled into a table with some randomly generated content that would expand the possibilities in the same fashion as Diablo's item generators, for example.

Eventually, enough players re-playing would assemble the entire array of possible uniques, but we could always add a few hundred more.

[F50]

if this mod can be pulled off periculi, this will become the mod that EVERYONE plays with.

[Periculi]

/me points to Betelgeuse 8)

[Periculi]

I am a little confused about how to adjust prices inside the <trade> tags. Just to add some simple variation on pricing randomly I thought to attempt a die roll in the priceAdj, such as priceAdj="100+1d20". Which seemed to have been ignored except for the first number. So it is only taking a number that represents the percentage, without any allowed adjustments there.

Then I tried to use <Table> inside the trade tag, but adding chance="50" inside the sell tag broke the store (no items displayed).

So none of the common, easy random methods that work in other areas seem to be functioning inside <trade> very well.

Could someone help me with some ways to alter pricing and randomly adjusting Buy and Sell inside <trade> for stations, please.


Addit- Looking at the Teraton code for stations I see that the gMargin is used to set the pricing margin (from the dockscreen) and the station I looked at had no generic trade tag. So the margin can be set for stations that way. But that would eliminate the trade tag altogether and I wanted to try adjusting inside <trade> like you suggested, George.

[Bobby]

the following code was posted by Red Pig on the
UTF

Red Pig
Posted: May 9 2006, 04:44 AM

<Action name="Buy items" imageID="&rsItemListScreen;" imageIndex="1" default="1" key="B">
(block Nil
(setq gPrevScreen "Main")
(setq gMargin (random 5 15))<---
(setq gShowCriteria "*NU -Illegal;")
(scrShowScreen gScreen "&dsExchangeBuy;")
)
</Action>

<Action name="Sell items" imageID="&rsItemListScreen;" imageIndex="1" key="S">
(block Nil
(setq gPrevScreen "Main")
(setq gMargin (random 5 15))<---
(setq gBuyCriteria "mwU -Illegal;")
(setq gMaxPrice 500000)
(setq gTitle Nil)
(scrShowScreen gScreen "&dsExchangeSell;")
)
</Action>

this is not exactly what you are trying to do, but perhaps the random margin could be replaced wit a variable stored in the globals for the station, and have an oncreate tag set the variable?

the luminous use oncreate code to chose their shield.

[Periculi]

That is the gMargin for a dockscreen rather than <trade> for a station. In the teraton code: (setq gMargin intTeratonBuyMargin) calls for a global that sets up the margins for various types of items, and the station doesn't have a <trade> tag at all.

I guess I can scrap together something following the teraton code style.

But I am still curious about how to set up <trade> to do things.

Edit- Cancel all that, the prices are actually getting adjusted each time I go to the Dock screen. So, that method does not work. I can get the lowest price for refuel and items just buy leaving and coming back a few times till I see a price I like. It's going to have to be done in a one time <OnCreate> that sets some global data for the station for gMargin to access. Can't have the market totally changing by flipping a dockscreen.

So I am still wondering how to get <trade> tags custom built with an <OnCreate> method.