Working With Reactors

Freeform discussion about anything related to modding Transcendence.
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Prophet
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@Atarlost - I agree.
Changing the default playerships is nearly impossible because of the initial setup of the Wolfen, so I agree with you Atarlost. Barring a major nerf to the Wolfen or a major boost to the other ships, it's currently just not possible to make the balanced. I have attempted it and it didn't work out great.


@Aeonic - I'm glad you like the idea. I currently am using the Xeno Arc for lack of options. I envisioned something big, like a mobile colony/spacestation with millions of aliens trading with eachother. I have a few starlights following it, as other independent traders and a few stalwarts for protection. I'd like to expand these to simulate a wide variety of alien visitors.
Drives are a little more difficult to make variants of. I have a few with specialization in mind (high spd, low thrust / low spd, high thrust) but there isn't much else beyond that. I found it is very beneficial to have the stats in the description as a drive can literally make or break your ship if it doesn't suit your ship.

When docked, there are 5 individual merchants that you can buy from, each specializing in a different category of items. These could be the different manufacturers of the new reactors as well as some other interesting items.
Coming soon: The Syrtian War adventure mod!
A Turret defense genre mod exploring the worst era in Earth's history.
Can you defend the Earth from the Syrtian invaders?
Stay tuned for updates!
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Aeonic
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The problem with drives is they don't replace your ship's specs, they only improve them. If you have a ship that goes 10C with 1000 thrust, and you install a drive that gives it 25C with 200 thrust, the ship will then have 25C with 1000 thrust. It only makes use of the best drive stats available, which really makes no sense. So you cannot have variations in drives where one drive is high speed but low thrust and another is low speed and high thrust, because the ship will just take advantage of whichever stats it needs and players will only use drives that benefit their ship in the way the ship needs.
Last Cause Of Death: Destroyed by Karl Svalbard's last Lucifer missile, right after I blew him up. And the crowd cheers.
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Atarlost
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I think the current drives are high thrust/low speed (or high thrust/high speed for the pteracnium megadrive). Something beefier but slower might be noticable on a heavily loaded freighter, but not on the other playerships.

I think that the way drives work right now low thrust/high speed drives will break on the Wolfen and become high thrust/high speed.
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Prophet
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I still think there is some room for improvement. Granted, drives are most beneficial to the freighter because of it's high cargo capacity, which is able to make a difference in the thrust-mass ratio where as a wolfen starts with a 10:1 and fully loaded lands just under 5:1.
The sapphire starts at 5:1 and fully loaded is just under 2:1
The freighter starts at 4:5 and it's max is 2:5.

While you can't penalize a ship for taking a high speed/ low thrust drive the wolfen probably wouldn't anyways and save the slot for something more important. Perhaps making the drives more inline with boosters, they could not require a slot and thus it would be assumed that they don't have drawbacks, only benefits.

Just a thought...




************* Update ***********
I uploaded a demo of the merchant convoy on Xelerus.
It requires the starlight and stalwart ships and has a jpg included for added effect in the dockscreen.
It's is currently made for testing and is not in anything resembling a finished stage (obviously)
The "Look around" action has some surpises so check that out. It's not really associated with out project but is a fun little extra.
Last edited by Prophet on Sat Nov 28, 2009 11:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Coming soon: The Syrtian War adventure mod!
A Turret defense genre mod exploring the worst era in Earth's history.
Can you defend the Earth from the Syrtian invaders?
Stay tuned for updates!
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Aeonic
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Is it possible to modify the ship's stats when the drive is installed/powered on and restore their stats when it is removed or powered down? Are there any other things that could be changed with a drive through scripting instead of just adjusting the variables which don't really allow for much?
Last Cause Of Death: Destroyed by Karl Svalbard's last Lucifer missile, right after I blew him up. And the crowd cheers.
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Atarlost
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You can't modify a ship's base stats, only add devices on top of them.
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