The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I figured I would seperate out the UQM fork discussion into seperate forums, to keep discussions about bugs from cluttering up discussions about ideas, and to keep melee-change discussions from cluttering up story idea discussions.

This thread is for discussing ideas about the new Melee system, which I am currently dubbing 'Frenzy'.

Here's a run-down on the current development status; comments are welcome:

1. Combat Area - the combat area is significantly (400%) larger than in the standard SC2 game. Additionally, the base resolution for the game has been increased from 320x240 to 640x480. I'm currently working on fixing bugs as a result of this; right now, all non-melee functions operate somewhat strangely because they assume a 320x240 resolution.

2. Ship speed - ships top-end speeds are significantly increased; overall, all ships have roughly the same top-end speed now. I had wanted true inertial acceleration, but beyond a certain speed, projectile collisions start behaving strangely, so I capped it out as high as I could.

To restore play balance, I'm adopting a concept from Death_999: acceleration will 'top out' after a certain amount of time, which will be proportional to the ship's original top-end speed. The formula will be simple: every 'N' seconds (N being proportional to the ship's original top-end speed) of continued thrust, the ship's current acceleration rate will drop by one increment, until it reaches 0. Every 'N' seconds of non-acceleration, the ship's acceleration rate raises by one increment, until it reaches its original value. So extremely fast ships, like the Pkunk, can thrust nearly indefinitely, while extremely slow ships, like the Vux, must wait for their engines to 'cool down' before re-thrusting.

It may make more sense to have these values be independant of the original maximum speed values, and have them reflect the 'character' of the ships - for example, have the Pkunk run out of thrust very quickly, making a nimble, agile fighter with no real 'staying power', while the Vux and the Chmrr plod inexhorably onwards.

Non-inertial ships, such as the Arilou and the Slylandro, have simply have their speeds increased to 2.5x their original
3. Weapon ranges - all weapon ranges have been significantly increased; I'm going on a factor of 2.5 to 3, roughly. Additionally, tracking weapons now accelerate smoothly in a manner identical to ships; they accelerate much more quickly when pointed at their target than when turning. Laser weapons now scale down based on range; the Chmrr, for example, do as much as 6 damage per hit at point-blank range, but only 1 damage per hit at the edge of range. This is SIGNIFICANTLY more damage than they originally did, so I've added a 'randomization factor' to try to balance it out, until I get critical damage effects working.

4. Weapon damage - Weapon damage is going to be completely reworked, to reflect the new damage system. Currently, damage is unchanged, with the following exceptions:

A) Human - I'm working on making the human missile have a proximity detonator and a large blast radius, to reflect the fact that it's really a nuke, and to try to mitigate the fact that at these speeds, the tracking system can't hit for shit. Ideally, it'll be a scaled-down version of the Shofixti self-destruct system - which means it will be suicidal to fire the missile at close range.

B) Chmrr - The laser damage effects have resulted in the Chmrr dealing massive amounts of damage with their primary weapon; I'm attempting to mitigate this by having the damage rate pulse, and by randomizing them. 'Pulsing' means the laser damage depends on the intensity of the beam - note that when you fire the Chmrr's laser, it's dim, then it gets bright, then it gets dim again. The brighter it is, the more damage it's doing. 'Randomizing' means that once the damage is computed, the actual damage is randomly reduced, on average down to 25% of the maximum.

C) Vux - The Vux laser now does up to 4x its normal damage at point-blank range, which scales back to its original damage at the last 50% of its range.

5. Gravity - the planet gravity well has been increased out to 500% its original range, since there's so much more space now. I'm working on scaling up the planet itself to be about 5x to 10x its original size, and having an area of atmosphere around the planet which scales back top-end speed.

6. Collisions - collisions with asteroids and other ships should do a point or two of damage at high speeds. Right now I'm checking this, but there's a crash bug that occurs if I actually try to set it. I'll look into this.

7. Damage model -
Ideally, different types of weapons should do damage differently, and different ships should take damage differently. Here's my current plan for the damage model:

A) All damage will first come off of Armor. A ship will have between 1 and 100 points of armor (for example, the Chmrr and Ur-Quan will have values in the high 80's; the Arilou and Supox will have values in the low 10's). Each point of armor represents a 1% chance that a given point of damage won't get through. Armor degrades by 1 point each time it fails to block a point of damage.

B) Any damage that penetrates armor will immediately hit a critical system. Each ship will have a given weight matrix for each system, which determines which system gets damaged by a given attack from a given direction (front, left, right, back).

For example, the human ship would look something like this:

Front:
 Crew - 30%
 Weapon - 30%
 Turn - 10%
 Special - 15%
 LSS - 5%
Left:
 Crew - 10%
 Turn - 25%
 Thrust - 10%
 Special - 5%
Back:
 Crew - 15%
 Thrust - 30%
 Battery - 20%
 Turn - 10%
 Special - 25%

'Crew' means that a crewmember dies. 'Thrust' means the ship's acceleration drops by 1. 'Turn' means the ship's maximum turn rate drops by 1. 'Battery' means the ship's recharge rate drops by 1. 'Special' means the ship's special weapon stops working. 'Weapon' means the ship's primary weapon stops working. Each 'LSS' hit means that one crewmember starts dying per second.

C) So long as there is at least one crewmember alive, the ship is still considered 'alive'. If there are more than 1 crewmen aboard, each additional crewman has a 1% chance of repairing a single point of critical system damage per turn. (obviously, crew can't repair crew damage). So the more crew you have, the faster critical damage repairs.

A special note about this is the Mycon - since they are purely organic, and can regenerate crew, I will probably have two points of critical damage repair themselves automatically each time their crew regeneration power is activated, and double their crew's repair ability.

Comments? Ideas? Anything else?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! DON"T DO IT!!!! Don't repeat sc3 mistakes please. Leave the planet as it is now. I repeat. Do not repeat sc3 mistakes.

Btw- Find any solution to my problem?

actually, that sounds pretty cool
is there any plan for a module system for sc2 someday (mods like if fps games ie quake)
or just a separate build
either way
sounds interesting

Yea but did you saw what happened in sc3? The plant gravity was too powerful. Leave it! Don't mess with it. Please.

Yeah we don't want to go to realistic.

Actually, the planet in SC3 was tiny and had a ridiculously sharp gravity well. This increases the size of the planet and smooths out its gravity well -- making it act NICER not MEANER.

Also,
"It may make more sense to have [overheating] be independant of the original maximum speed values, and have them reflect the 'character' of the ships - for example, have the Pkunk run out of thrust very quickly, making a nimble, agile fighter with no real 'staying power', while the Vux and the Chmrr plod inexhorably onwards."

This is what I originally intended. Remember, I suggested (in different words) that since we were losing an old crucial ship balance independent variable -- top speed -- we needed to add a new crucial ship balance independent variable.

*nods*

Well, I haven't implemented thruster overheating yet, or armor or criticals, but here's the latest version:

http://www.wherethesundontshine.net/uqm_frenzy2.zip

Note that it also installs a new directory under contents, called 'human2', as well as a 'frenzy.ndx' and 'human2.shp' - these are for new graphics (specifically, a gigantic nuclear explosion for when your missiles detonate).

Have fun, and please provide any useful feedback you can think of.

I would have to see for myself how it's all working to really say anything, but it seems that you solved most problems.

There's one thing, the Mycon plasmoids accelerate every time they turn, now that you've added the homing projectile acceleration, the effects may be similiar to what happened to Pkunk and Ilwrath.
Or have you taken care of it already?

And I have a question.
Can a ship live without armour, or is it just as critical as crew?

By the way: Jiffa you were already asked to stop beeing a jerk, and I ask you again: PLEASE STOP IT!
One thing that I hate about critics is that most of them don't have a bloody idea how to do anything better then the thing they're criticising.

Just downloaded it and ther're 2 things:
1) It still doesn't work (the game wont load)
2) I looked through the new graphics and... Dont you think that the nuke explosion may be  just A LITTLE too big.

That's all for now as I can't get the game to work.

See? I am not the only one with the problem. So you MUST solve it now.

If the problem is the key.cfg file then maybe you could send yours along with the zip file.
Jiffa deleted his and nothing happened.
I never had a key.cfg file.
The interesting thing is that the original Ur-Quan Masters or your first mod (uqm2.exe) don't have any problems with anything.

When I ran uqm2.exe the first time around, I was unable to use controller input. Considering I'm using Striker's CVS build and uqm2 was (presumably) built off of the 0.2 source, this isn't surprising. However with this newest mod it seems you've updated the source to the latest, because I did not have to worry about changing to my old keys.cfg.

If you're having problems, I suggest you update all of UQM to Striker's build and see if you're able to run this fork afterwards.

Anyway, back to MELEE ideas...

I think that with the new longer ranges the tactic of slipping between fire arcs will be a bit more prominent. This is an especially big change for the Yehat... before, if you turned, the arcs would cross about 1/3 of the way up the stream of fire, leaving very little room between them at full range. Now, however, full range extends much further, so there is plenty of room between them at full range. You can fit a dreadnaught in there, broadside...

I am not sure what solution can be applied -- perhaps with the double-length ranges it is fair to double the number of allowed angles (or at least increase it by some amount)... unless the AI counts on the particular number of angles...

Alternately, more weapons could be subject to the Zoq-Fot spray effect, but less so.


Lastly, do not feed the troll.

 i dont htink u should mess with the crew instead of armor. that would completely mess up a bunch of ships

Yep. I'm working on increasing the number of rotational increments from 16 to 64 to compensate. I anticipate being finished with this by the weekend.



Luckily, the AI doesn't care; it just uses whatever the FULL_CIRCLE constant tells it to. The trick is keeping the frames synched to the angles - if there's 16 frames, but 64 angles, I need to remember to divide by 4 whenever I'm talking about rotation frames, but NOT when talking about animation frames. Annoying, but certainly doable.



I've considered that, but I'd really rather not do that, especially for the laser-based weapons.



Well-noted. Is there any way to put certain people on 'ignore'?

Well, I'm willing to play it out both ways, and see how it goes.

Assuming I DO use armor, here's the values I'm looking at right now:

human - 32
chenjesu - 40
mrmnhrm - 48
arilou - 10
shofixti - 16
pkunk - 20
zokfotpik - 20
syreen - 28
druuge - 32
melnorme - 60
androsynth - 36
yehat - 24
utwig - 36
supox - 16
kzer-ka - 64
kohr-ah - 80
spathi - 48
thraddash - 24
umgah - 32
vux - 72
mycon - 40
slylandro - 16

I'm considering having armor also be distributed front/left/right/back, so that some ships are more vulnerable from the sides, while others are more vulnerable from behind, and so on.

The 'critical system' display will show a red dot (like the battery display) by each system that's damaged. So, for example, if a human ship has taken a hit to its left thruster, you'll see a red blinking dot over the left rear nacelle on the status display, indicating that your left-turn rate is reduced. The frequency of the blinking will indicate the severity of damage.

For the main precursor vessel, this presents an interesting opportunity: Each module can be assigned its own damage rate and effects. Hits to a cargo hold can damage your cargo; hits to a fuel pod can reduce the amount of fuel on board; hits to a crew pod will take off crewmembers. The simpler pods, like weapons, tracking modules, turning jets, and the like, can just be marked 'disabled' until repaired, as above.

It would also be interesting to have different ships handle repair differently - for example, the Druuge and Mycon chould automatically repair damage whenever they use their special ability, the Slylandro whenever they successfully re-charge, and some ships might repair faster if they aren't actively turning, thrusting or firing.

What do you think, Sirs?

Are you planning on staying true to SC1's vision of the alien ships? For example, I seem to recall that three of the six Eluder spheres are decoy spheres (including the main body) and therefore don't contain any crew (or likely any other valuable stuff).

http://www.wherethesundontshine.net/uqm_frenzy3.zip

Now has much finer rotational control (64 directions instead of 16, although still only 16 animation frames per rotation).

Next comes the armor/crit system, and bugfixing - there's still a few bits of weirdness, like it locking up 30% of the time when you select a Vux ship, and like everything but Melee being screwed up.

#2 and #3 both crash for me after loading 'lbm/status.ani' and 'lbm/activity.ani'.

I'm using entirly zipped content (except the OGG files).

Just a side note, you seem to know what you are doing.  Did you ever think of maybe working on some of the bugs that are in the game.  That way your work/talent can be used by everyone.

What I have to do to get some answers here? Are you ignoring us on purpose?

I think the only person being intentionally ignored here is you, Deep_Trolla.

If you do use armour, remember that not only do the ships need to maintain balance, but they have flavour too. I would suggest upping the Spathi armour by a _lot_ (it should probably be at least up there in the 70s with the VUX, though 85 or more would be better) and reducing crew somewhat. The large crew of the SC2 Spathi probably mostly represented armour and shielding anyway.

hrm. I haven't tried any of this with zipped content... not even sure precisely how to go about it. ;)

apparently, the next file thereafter is starcon.fon - I don't know why it would crash here.

Well, actually, I was probably going to handle it a different way - keep the armor at 48 (pretty high, if you look at the scale), but adjust the crit chart so that crew hits are extremely unlikely, since the crew are deliberately placed in the 'least vulnerable' parts of the ship.

The current critical hit charts look something like this:

Human - side hits will damage either turning, batteries, or thrusting; a rear hit will damage either thrusting or the special weapon; a front hit will damage either the main weapon, life support, or the crew.

Slylandro - hits from any angle have an equal chance of damaging any given component.

Orz - Hits from the front will either damage crew or the weapon; hits from the back will either damage the thrusters, the weapon, or the special ability; hits from the side will either damage the turning jets, the batteries, or the life support system.

Spathi - Hits from the front will always damage the weapon; hits from the sides will either damage the turning jets or the batteries; hits from the back will either damage the thruster or the special weapon.

Yehat - Hits from the front will either damage the crew or the special ability; hits from the sides will either damage the weapon or the turning jets; hits from the back will either damage the thrusters, the turning jets, or life support.

Utwig - hits from the front will either damage the crew or the weapon; hits from the side will either damage the weapon or the turning jets; hits from the back

Supox - front hits will damage the weapon or the crew; side hits will damage the batteries or the special ability; rear hits will damage the turning jets or the thrusters.

Chmrr - front hits will damage the weapon or the crew; side hits will damage the batteries, the turning jets, or the special ability; rear hits will damage the thrusters or the special ability.

Pkunk - front hits will damage either the crew or the weapon; side hits will damage either the weapon or the turning jets; rear hits will damage either the turning jets, life support, or the thruster.

Shofixti - Front hits will damage either the batteries or the weapon; side hits will damage either the life support or the crew; rear hits will damage either the thrusters, the turning jets, or the special ability.

Vux - Front hits will damage the weapon, crew, LSS or batteries; rear hits will damage the thrusters or the special ability; side hits will damage the turning jets.

Mycon - front hits have a chance to damage the weapon; rear hits have a chance to damage the thruster. Other than this, hits from any direction have an equal chance of hitting LSS, crew, batteries, or turning jets.

Ur-Quan - front hits damage the weapon or the battery; side hits damage the the special ability, the thrusters, or the turning jets; rear hits damage the crew or the life support.

Kor-Ah - front hits damage the weapon or the crew; side hits damage the battery or the special ability; rear hits damage the thrusters or the turning jets. Kor-ah will have a single crew member, with the remaining 'crew' modeled as increased armor and decreased chance of criticals.

What would be really useful would be a schematic of each ship, showing what goes where. I can conceivably split armor and crits into 16 different pie-slices, instead of just 'fore', 'aft', 'starboard' and 'port'. Anyone willing to work out the location of the following components for each ship would be appreciated:

0. Nothing (no critical)
1. Weapon firing port (weapon damage and accuracy)
2. Weapon loading port (weapon firing rate)
3. Battery recharger (battery recharge rate)
4. Battery storage banks (max battery)
5. Left turning jet (left turn rate)
6. Right turning jet (right turn rate)
7. Main Reactor (thrust speed)
8. Thrust Exhaust Port (thrust speed and accuracy)
9. Special ability subsystem(s) (special ability)
10. Special ability controls (special ability firing rate)
11. Crew (immediate crew damage)
12. Life Support (gradual crew damage)
13. Armor plating (lose one armor point)
14. Bulkhead / Superstructure (hit to all systems)
15. Fuel / Commander (instant kill)

I have an idea. How about changing the weapons critical hit for serveral ships like the terminator, the jugger and anyone who shot more than "one" shot(the jugger shot 6). Instead of destroying the whole weapons, remove 1,2 or 3 firing cannons. Same thing can be done with the koar-ah ship's special ability.

P.S The game sounds great without the bugs, but since I can't play it I can't know for sure... Keep up the good work.

Another P.S (lol) Is there any chance this mod will be in the offical version?

I second DJ's idea.

Also, it seems odd that some ships don't damage their crew at ALL. Spathi's engineering ability is pretty intense if they can keep a fusion blast from hurting anyone any of the time... Also, you are missing a few, like the utwig rear.

Also, if the armor plating is hit, and armor is on a scale of 1-100, it seems pretty inconsequential to lose that ONE point. :p

Well, all critical hits ar per point of damage. So an 8-point hit [like the Ur-Quan's main cannon] could conceivably shave of 8 points of armor, or 8 crew, or 3 crew, 2 armor and 3 'absorbed' damage.

The idea is that each point of damage hits *something*, with that something being either armor (no effect), armor:critical (lose 1 armor), weapon (weapon fires slower), weapon:critical (weapon loses damage or range), battery (battery charges slower), battery:critical (battery loses 1 row of max charge), crew (lose 1 crew), crew: critical (LSS hit, lose 1 crew per 30 seconds), etc. etc.

'Armor' is always the first thing checked; if it penetrates, then it checks each of the other systems based on their probability.

Ok, I have finally tested it and I must say: Great Idea!!!!!!!

But... few things need to be repaired first...

1.Mmrhrmn laser is too short
2. Chmmr laser is too long!!!!
3. Earthing are almost unbeatable
4.Menu graphics are damamged
5.Koar-ah F.R.I.E.D got more power than usall, every ship that will touch it will be destroyed.
6. The planet has too much gravity....
7. Hard to control, too fast and hard to menuver. Even the computer has a hard time controling the ship...
8. Orz has endless range...(not sure)
9.Ur-quan fighters die too fast.
10.Auto tracking isn't worth much...
11.The game(not the melee) is a little bit fucked up.
12. Slyndro is backwarded. You press left he move to the right...
13. umgah ship is much weaker. Same range and the special ability speed didn't increase.
14. the shofixi glory device has the same range...
15. The stinger ship weapons has the same range.

Well thats all for now.

It it just me or does this really screw the Syreen vs Kor-Ah matchup (not that it wasn't hard to begin with)?

Well, Syreen effectiveness is way off period... this is merely an extreme case.

Well, it is a work-in-progress



Agreed. Should probably about 4x its current range



Possibly, but I think it's about balanced, compared to say the human or the ur-quan.



Yes. I'm going to adjust the damage rating to be much less further out, but still incredibly high for point-blank explosions.



Yeah, I'll figure that out as soon as I fix the melee play; it's because I changed from 320x240 internal to 640x480 straight through.



Yeah, I doubled the number of puffs in the ring; perhaps I should halve the damage to compensate.



This IS annoying. I should probably diffuse it somewhat.



This is true for some of the faster ships, like the Pkunk, but you DO get used to it. I've since made turning a more gradual process; I'll re-release this weekend.



Their main cannon, or their marines?



This has been a source of difficulty all week. I hope to have this fixed by the next release.



Every few changes either makes it too powerful or too weak. I still haven't found 'just right' yet, but since I'm currently just testing in Melee, I'm not too worried just yet.



Yes, EXTREMELY. I'm pretty sure I mentioned when I released it to ONLY play in Melee until I get the hyperspace bugs fixed.



Oddly enough, I thought it was ALWAYS like that. Can I get confirmation from someone else?



Yeah, I should really at least increase their backwards acceleration.



Agreed. It should do about 4x its current range.



Yep. Of course, I never play these guys anyways, so I missed it. I'll have to extend their weapon range, but I'm not sure if it's even possible to extend their special ability range.



Thanks! This was EXTREMELY useful.

Here is another one brent, but I think you should fix it in the end. The sa-matra fireballs are crazy! You must x2/3/4 the turning rate of the fireballs. Btw: Once my mmrhrmn (in x-form) couldn't move. Is it your damaging system or a bug? If it is your system the pkunk don't "heal" the damage immidiatly after they return to life.

It has to be a bug; my damage system isn't implemented yet.

I have one suggestion, probably not very useful in combat, but a nice touch of realism: when missiles run out of fuel, they don't disappear but continue along their last vector until they reach the edge of battlefield.

Already implemented in the newest version [I hope to release tonight].

Me too. What did you changed in the new version?

http://www.wherethesundontshine.net/uqm_frenzy5.zip

New version - all the ships should be playable now.

Still no critical damage, but all the velocities and controls are where I want them. (I might have missed some of the 'minor' ships, but I don't think so)

Ok brent don't leave I am testing it now. ok 50 mb, late brent

Hrm. One odd thing I noticed: The new Shofixti Glory Device graphic is NOT working, and it was before I posted the link. I have NO idea what could be causing this, but I'll look into it.

Ok brave programmer... I have a harsh complaining I mean.. oh nm. Lets get to the point.

I see you have fixed serveral stuff but I found new thing and somethings didn't change. Without adding a word here it is:
1. This one really bugs me. The planet is too strong, it pulls me from no where!!!
2. Odd the chenjesu direct hit only does 6 damage but if the shreds hit you, oh boy... 18 poor crew die.
3.The vux special ability green jiffa is too fast.
4.Mycon plasma missles are too slow.
5.Ur-quan fighters die too fast plus they are too slow
6.Zok-fot-pik ship range still remains the same
7.Same with umgah ship including the speed of the special ability which suppose to make it the second fastest ship.
8.mmrhmhrm laser range suppose to be just like the chmmr range and it is too short.
9.Again, the chmmr range is too long!
10.The skiff ship is too slow same with the probe.

Now the VERY IMPORTANT problems (in my opinion ofcourse)
First, strange that the earthling nuke doesn't do two things. a. the explosion doesn't hit the earthling ship and b. the hit doesn't "push" the ship like druuge hit does(I think it should).

Second, The Probe ship is still reversed! Since no one will read the list except you ill mark it as red. People please tell brent that the probe ship isn't reversed, thank you.

And finally one of the major problem of your fork. You need to change the shots speed. Some ships that has fast shots but short range(The terminator for example) got long range and became almost unbeatable(especially the terminator). I think you should think about it.  Keep up the good work, one day it will be a great game!

P.S You should join the ur-quan masters team. I am sure they will be glad.

Hi Brent,
just a note to confimr Deep_Jiffas' complaint about the probe. if you press left the probe should go left.

Although i appreciate your efforts for trying new ideas in UQM, i do not have the time to play your version. I even had to stop playing UQM, which makes me sad at the time being. Once you've ported your changes on the final UQM1.0 code I will try your version as well, promised!

Greetings from Europe,
Martin

Hmmm. Just a thought: since Realism is such an important factor of this game, perhaps you could set it up so that there were four "screens", each with a fourth of the planet in the corner, so in the center the planet is massive and huge. Because planets... are big. Like, real big. Implementing it would suck, though. Perhaps you should be able to move around the planet? It would be nice also not to have the shots of weapons like missiles hit the surface of the planet but hit the atmosphere a ways out (later you could put in a blue "atmosphere" haze graphic). Missiles, the mycon plasmoid, most projectiles under 4 damage (the exception being the photon crystal and the fusion-plasma blast, and lasers) would all explode inside an atmosphere. "Ooops" shots accidentally just sorta ramming into the surface always seemed a bit... hmm...

Yes. Also, having ships skip off the atmosphere as opposed to the surface would be a neat touch.

The immediate downside to all of my idealizing here is that the gravity whip would be nonexistant. Well, not true, I suppose you could use it for tangential acceleration.

Is there some way to make the Earthling Cruiser missile proximity fused? I wholly agree with the Earthling making a direct hit and scoring all kinds of whoopass on whatever it's hitting, but i think scoring a direct hit with a nuke on something moving is nigh impossible, and most of the time the earthling nuke would explode some ways away from the target, grazing it with the explosion. Perhaps you could make it explode out to a set distance of arcs to the side, so that things alongside it (or if it came into range while turning) would have it explode, while still allowing for a straight-shot to hit without detonating prematurely? Besides... the nuke would do a ton of damage not only from blast of the nuke, but because of this great ugly missile whacking into you at really high speed.

This, even just from the forums, seems to be a REALLY interesting and exciting project. I really hope to see critical hits implemented, Brent! Go for it.

First brent, this game is great! I can see you put hard work in it and I know it will be even better! But lets get to the point. There are few things I don't like in it and things I like. I am sure other people think like me so I have a suggestion. Sure you will need to work more but you don't have to do it. I think there should be an option to disable or to enable any of your feature. Personally I don't like the new speed mostly but I like the idea of the damaging system. I think there should be two types of games: One like you do now and one with the damaging system and the earthling changes only without the chenjesu and the F.R.I.E.D changes(Refering to melee only).

Just another crazy thought.

Ok. Found another 2 bugs.

1. I fought with chmmr against koar-ah from close and when I "touched" him the avatar did 180 angles turn.

2. I am not sure it is a bug but the thraddash after burner hot spots move!!!

-- The thraddash afterburner hotspots should move, since they should be at rest compared to the ship the moment they were released. Since the ship is probably moving at that moment, the hotspots should be moving. Note that this is consistent with the behavior of other weapons.

-- As far as Nuke proximity fuses -- the nuke could go off if the dot product between its orientation vector and the displacement to the target has become zero or negative (i.e. it has just passed the target). This will get it as close as possible, while still making it hit the target directly if it can.

-- The gigantic planet idea would again be a huge change... However! Making the planet huge is a necessary counterbalance to giving the planet strong gravity. Otherwise it's like playing near a neutron star instead... which would be different and fun, but not balanced in the same way.

Something that I find really odd, the only factor as too how much damage the planet does is how much crew you have.  How about making it something that makes sense, something like a combination of speed and shipmass?  Also it should really slow you down after you hit it, so its not like a ping-pong ball.

I think you are wrong death. The thraddash was with his back toward me and he moved toward me. I didn't move and it shot it on me!!!! I wonder how the AI knew about this "change".

Well...



The thraddash puffballs DO attain a velocity relative to the ship's velocity. In fact, they're shot BACKWARDS at the same speed (relative to the ship) that the bullets are shot FORWARD; the rationale being that anything that imparts THAT much forward momentum to the ship must be moving quite quickly the other way. Because of the huge accelerations on both sides, though, it might be somewhat hard to tell.



That's more-or-less what I've tried to accomplish - you may notice, they already DO detonate on proximity, but it seems to only work about 30% of the time. I'm still debugging this.



The planet's already been scaled up by a factor of 8; anything bigger REALLY thrashes the rendering engine. Gravity has been scaled up by a factor of 3, sort of - it's been changed from linear to an inverse square (which makes Keppler orbits possible]. I'm currently working on an 'atmosphere' band, which will slow any objects down that pass through it.

Wow, its been a long time, but college is in the way as it were, and I haven't had time to check this too much. Just from reading, however, I have a few comments:

Armor ratings: This may just be me, but why is the Mmrnhrm armor higher than the much larger Chenjesu? Is it due to crystalline design compared to compacted metal?
Was the Yehat armor kept low due to it's natural ability to shred anything it aims at, or just because the Yehat didn't see a need for plating? (You'd think they'd want some, their ship is kinda pokey...) Also, would the Mycon GET an armor rating? Their ship is organic, which would yield some odd benefits and disadvantages...

 HentaiZoga, on his Aug 23rd post, forgot the Syreen, the Arilou, the ZoqFot, the Kohr-Ah, and probably some we both missed. I don't know if they've had these things added, but be I so bold to offer for the Syreen:
Front -Weapons, Spec.
Side- Crew, LSS, Turn control  
Back- Engines, Turn control, although less-so as side shots.
 I also noted that not all ships have LSS. Obviously, races like the Chmrr, Chenjesu, Mmrnhrm and Slylandro dont have it (vaccuum supported races, Slylandro doesn't technically HAVE crew) but shouldn't all other living races have such a chance at catastrophy? Looks like those poor ugly VUX are the only noted ones. Probably ease up on the Shofixti and the Arilou, though, as they die easy as is.

Easy idea for the increased turning vectors: Take the pictures of the ships at their 16 different angles, put 'em in Adobe Workshop or the like, then rotate it each time by 5.625 degrees to get 64 different facings, save and name. Simple.

Deep_jiffa: The Slylandro ship works correctly: It depends on which direction you're going. If you press thrust, you know it reverses direction: a full 360. This means that the entire ship is going backwards. Ever steered a car going in reverse? Same concept, which is why no one likes to play the Slylandro.

Weapons/Spec: Is the Kzer-Za fusion blast going to have a radius as well? Something of that power and being unhindered by a shell like a missle, should, I think.
Another idea; possibly weapons such as the Mycon plasmoid, the Androsynth Fireball, and even Kohr-Ah FRIED should have 'tracer' damage. They're all potentially high damage, high energy weapons. The Mycon plasmoid decays as it flies: does the plasma just disappear? I think it would be left behind in space as the different layers expand out and break the outer shell of the plasmoid. The Blazer is like a comet, and comets have trails. Kinda like engine wash on steroids. FRIED...well, I guess it's powerful enough, but that stuff must practically burn a hole in space. The tracer damage wouldn't deal TOO terrible damage, but it would make ships like the Pkunk, Shofixti, Arilou, and all the other chaser ships a little more wary of following these tugs.
Another thing about the Androsynth Guardian (I love this ship, but it's more of a downside) and the X-Form too, I guess. There should be a delay inbetween Guardian/Blazer and Xform/Yform. Watch the Blazer collapse into a ball, watch the Transformer's wings move. Also for the Guardian, coming out of the Blazer mode would probably leave the ship going at it's last speed (top, I'd wager) and would leave the ship's hull VERY hot, so it'd do damage if touched as well, but the metal would be more flexible, either temporarily weakening the armor or simply making damage scored in systems rather than armor easier. Just seems realistic.
Chenjesu: Do the Crystal Shards travel until they reach the edge of the map, or do they go indefinitely? I'd wager edge-of-map, as that'd get a little laggy and would be too easy for a Chenjesu to score a win.
Druuge: Someone mentioned that the ship would repair quicker when it used it's special ability. Why? You're torching a crewmember, that would make it LESS useful, not more (unless the slaves are thinking "not me next!").
More comments once I test the thing, I'm @ the college computers right now and I can't. They'd kill me if I DLed something like this.

Shoot, forgot something: Projectiles, if they already aren't, should be pulled by the force of gravity, except powered ones like Nukes, which could fight it off. As for laser weapons, they'd bend in the atmosphere, but gravity wouldn't have any effect.

Yes, precisely. The Chenjesu will have lower armor because their hull is more brittle, but will repair faster.



The Yehat armor was kept low out of the idea that it's a fast, maneuverable ship, and weighing it down with tons of diamond-impregnated alloy would slow it down, a LOT.



Indeed. And I feel they would get armor, since their genetic engineering allows them to create egg pods that can survive reentry and impact forces of over 6,000 G's.



I think that turn control should be managed primarily by the back fins, which are more back than side. The side should be primarily crew, LSS, and special ability; the front should be almost entirely weapon and battery.



Pretty much all of them will have potential LSS hits, except for the non-organics. Some will just have more LSS than others [the Mycon, for example, will have LSS crits as a high probability from ANY angle].



Perhaps. I'm thinking that 'special' crits to the Shofixti will prematurely detonate their 'glory device', whereas 'special' hits to the Arilou will disable their warp device, but also instantly activate it one last time (getting them out of any further damage from this impact).


As it is, I'm just using the current 16 facings, but having 256 actual turning angles. It's very difficult adjusting EVERYTHING that needs rework moving from 16 facing directions (projectiles, explosions, etc.), and it doesn't look TOO bad to just 'approximate' the actual angle when rendering.



I THOUGHT that was the case, but I wasn't quite sure. I now have equal weight and both sides. Would a third party care to verify?



I think the fusion blasts should be point-hits, and not have a blast radius. The whole reason they do so much damage is that all the energy burns straight INTO the hull instead of dissipating in an explosion.



A neat idea, but somewhat difficult to implement without totally bogging down the system. There's potential approximations that can be made, however - but it might overpower these ships a touch.



Heh. I have a fun idea for the Transformer, actually - I was hoping on adjusting the graphics for the X-wing mode, so that instead of just shifting the wings back and forth, it actually transformed into a stylish 80's cartoon robot, with the laser cannon on the sides of its arms. Slap a modified 'autobot' symbol on the side and camp it up.



I DO like this idea, but I don't know how difficult this will make them to play.


The little chunks die out after 0.5 seconds; the actual main 'bullet' keeps going until you let go of the button.



I mostly figured that the sudden boost of power would let the crew manage repairs more effectively.



Yes, I'm working on this, but in some cases having gravity work on them creates a few odd secondary effects.

In reply to the Chenjesu bit, I guess I should've specified: In Frenzy, how does the shard operate?

Other temporary stat change ideas:
-Kohr-Ah FRIED. If it annihilates things from the outside of the nova, imagine the CENTER of it.  :o Probably do the same thing as the Blazer-mode exit, but potentially longer, and it would affect the entire hull.
-Syreen Call: Ports would need to open along the length of the ship as long as crew were out in space, thus lowering their side armor.
-Orz Marine: Temporarly lower rear armor to allow ingress/egress of Marines.
-Kzer-Za Fighters: Temporarly lower dorsal armor to allow ingress/egress of fighters.
-Chenjesu DOGI's: Same as Fighters and Marines.
-Ilwrath Hellblast: Anyone ever notice on the little spec screen that it said "Poor tactical positioning" right next to the Hellblaster? Perhaps it has a bit of curlback and would temporarily weaken the frontal armor.
(Poor bastards are weak as-is, though...)
-Thraddash Afterburners: Prolonged use (50% or more of total fuel reserves) would weaken rear armor.

Personally, I think it would make it a bit more of a challenge to have these bits implemented, it makes captains think more about using special powers rather than causing liberal overuse of special weapons. I know there's nothing I hate worse than Dread pilots that spill their guts into fighters. Those little buzzers piss me off. Marines too. I hate Orz. >:(

They have shields, why would they need armor?
Backwards is a 180 degree turn. (360 brings you forward again.)

But it gets cold and stops burning. then it's just gas and not plasma. And the proximity the dissolving plasma would have towards the plasmoid makes it unnecessary to have "tracer"remnants left (the plasmoid would hit you the saem time as the tracer).

No, the Blazer is not a comet. It has a comet shape. BTW: comets leave a trail because the ice is metling near the sun and the solarwind pushes the trail away. That's why the comets' trail always points away from the sun.) With the guardian there's nothing melting - thus no trail.

When the fire is out, the remaining ashes/gases would in worst case jam your engine for half a second. Nothing more (except maybe putting some dirt on the optics of a lasercannon, thus making it unuseable or less effective until the optics are cleaned again.). BTW: Why does the laserlight stop at the FRIED? Light should be able to pass fire, making it even hotter (and thus longerliving or inflicting more damage) but still hitting the Kohr-Ah.

first things first. This project is quite a lot for one man, inserting more graphics or even more (IF (...) THEN (...)) to calculate inflicted damages is a huge project. I'm apllauding at HentaiZonga for doing this. Before we start adding even more and more cases of reality damage I'd like to see a version of UQM Frenzy working. Another thing: SC became so beloved because the physics and damage is easy to count. If you have armor, this and that influencing, then I'd never continued playing SC, because I'm not able to say why my guns not working, why my ship got slower, why my left engine is not working and I'm always turning to the left side, why I got killed although I haven't touched the Planet (but the atmosphere). I never took the sizes as for what they are (come on, the nukes cannot be THAT huge). I just took it al for playability. If you shange too much, the playability might get lost.

That would not be balanced anymore. You can use the cometform to escape, but the downside is, if your energy is low, then you will stop early and be toasted. Part of the comet tactic is to come, hit and run. That's what the ships been designed for. You have to run while still in comet-mode. Otherwise the batterycapacity would have to be a third smaller.

Very hot, inflicting self-damage? The form has been changes, the hot hull has cooled down and thus the blazermode is stopped.

And disperse the laserbeam (thus loosing damagecapacity)....

So HentaiZonga, you got some work to do....
Whatever you do, be happy! Whatever you change, if it hurts playability undo it. The game has become famous for its' playability. That's what needs to be preserved. For the rest: I love seeing someone trying to implement more realistic damagesystems. Keep your good work and enthusiasm up!

Grretings,
Martin

Brent, don't you have the original uqm.exe file? If not tell me and I will send you the file. If you don't trust me that I will give you the original file just reinstall (not all files, minimal install) and then you will see that the slylandro isn't reversed.

Or you could ask other people who doesn't use common sense like necro but use knowledge.

Jiffa, it's no wonder you're not liked too much here if you make remarks like that about people. Some of my ideas are odd and possibly dont work, but they're just that: ideas. No one said they have to implement them, did they?

And what does "common sense" have to do with the Slylandro turning? I think its common sense to realize that, when in reverse, your turning changes. It's always worked this way in the uqm I've had, and I suspect since the downloads are identical, it should be the same for all.

Just like Ivan, Zoga, and Death_999 all have said, I guess I'll add to the list. Don't be a jerk.

No It isn't. I have the original uqm and it isn't reversed. Funny huh?

Well I've never touched my control settings, and it's backwards for me. Guess I'm used to it, but it's no big deal.

Krulle:
-About the Yehat: They've got shields, but they can't keep them up constantly. They might be birds of valor, but they're no idiots.
-The 360 bit: Damn, not enough sleep on this end of the keyboard. :P
-About FRIED and the plasmoid: I guess I should specify. Instead of being balls/spherical in nature, they'd have tails of the energy that's burning off of them. Guess it'd just be a graphic touch.
-About Blazer form:Do you think that the ship uses energy to cool itself back down to a stable temperature before it disengages Blazer? It'd have to. Even though it disengages, a hull doesn't go from 18 thousand degrees back to it's normal temperature instantly. That's not physically possible, it'd warp the hull something terrible. I also know that the insta-stop thing is meant as balance for hit and run, but then the ship would also need to consume energy for inertial brakes to achieve a full stop. Doesn't seem like the Androsynth way to me, they're pretty straightforward about "just break stuff". That and if this were to be implemented, a proposed counterbalance to this would be that it would take a little while for the Blazer to reach top speed.
-About playability and the proposed delay between Guardian/Blazer and X/Yform: What's that got to do with playability? It'd take like half a second, and it'd be some eye candy. Sheesh.
-About Blazer being a comet: I never said it _was_ a comet. Besides which, I don't know of any type of fire that doesn't produce extremely hot gasses after it's burned in/through an area. It wouldn't be much for damage, but it's real. A vapor trail, if you will. ;)
About laser weapons in the atmosphere: Yeah, I forgot to add that part. Thanks for sticking it in. :) Like I said before, not enough sleep behind the keyboard last time.

Well, that's my defense. Glad this bit was constructive rather than Deep_structive-er-destructive. >:(

Jiffa: Necro is right. Sylandro controls don't turn the ship left and right, they turn it counterclockwise and clockwise, respectively. That's how its always been.

I too shall add to the list. Don't be a jerk. Or a worm, or a baby, or a loser. Check your sources before you go opening your mouth (technically: typing a post) and making a fool of yourself.

Thank you, Sage, for that clarification.

OK, now it's my turn to be an idiot.

I downloaded the Frenzy mod and extracted it directly to UQM (I figured this was the right thing to do as it has all the shipfiles, etc as well as adding the new ones.) My problem is it loads, mentions something about a fatal error (I can't ever catch the whole thing, the screen pops up and out too fast) and doesn't work. I don't know if there has been some explanation of repairs somewhere else, and if there has, please direct me to it.

I don't know for sure, but make sure you're up to date with your version of UQM. Check out the Technical Issues FAQ for the links to the unofficial builds.

I don't really know what OS you're running, but if you're under windows, try running uqm_frenzy from the command prompt so you can see what the error messages are.

With these guns most are dead before the shield drops. And making the ship bigger and thicker might make it unable to shield. Depends on the technology (if the shieldgenerator is inside, it must work through the hull, armor could prevent that. And if it's outside, the generator could be damaged at the very first collision with a microparticle (tons of them in space) or the first unshielded shot).
no not really. If the energy is consumed, the hull starts cooling. The last part, the transformation back is made when it all has cooled by radiation into space. The 2 last energypoints were for bringing the ship bak into form, not for maintaining the heat. My proposal would be more like bringing the hot engine outside (giving it better efficiency (higher speed, turning rate) and afterwards back in (the hot plates will still be hot, shielding the ship from the hot plasma in the engine). I always understood the comet as a blue ball (the ship itself) plus the orange remnants of the plasma ejected out of the engine core.
Not everything is implementable. I'm just trying to give reasons why they were not implemented. But this are just ideas, do with them as you wish.

The delay has nothing to do woth playability. I never said that (as far as i remember). And the delay results from the transformation. But i proposed to leave the way it is. It would be (as you say) just eye candy.

Still hard to implement. And in space it would cool of very quickly. Therefor i still propose not to implement it [yet].
But I'd like to playtest it (if i had time). Right now i'm using more time than i should on this board. Far more time than allowed...

Just wait for Brents answer. With these new ideas he's regretting to have proposed this stuff anyway ;)

Me too. But all these realistic and constructive ideas will be hard for Brent to implement. Let's see in a month how much sleep he has gotten.. ;)

Good work guys. I'm really sorry that I'm not able to understand the code. Keep it up!!!!:)

Ok, IM running Win98 >:(, I checked out all those stupid MS-DOS names, ran the thing, and the Fatal Error message is that, and I quote:

My installation procedure consisted simply of unzipping everything to the primary UQM folder, and everything went into the original "content" folder, so I'm left scratching my head. ???

A) The UQM executable should be sitting next to the content dir, not in it.

B) this is the melee ideas thread -- take tech support for frenzy to the original frenzy thread...

Trust me necro, this is not the place for getting technical support :-/ Try solving it yourself or if you will have luck, someone WILL help you.

Ugh, Necro, don't listen to Deep_Trolla over here, I'm sure he, or someone else will answer your questions.

What are you anti-deep? Just telling him from expirence that he won't get help here.

But then again, if you want to keep arguing and making meep-eep to lock this thread, go on.

Actually, that's supporting Jiffa, and he's right. In this game, turning 'left' and 'right' are from the perspective of the ship itself, so in this respect, the Probe is just like every other one. I've played Star Control 2 for the PC, and the Sly does turn left and right for those buttons. Don't believe me? Just get an Arilou Skiff, hold the thrust button, and watch as it acts like a slow little Probe.

This is so totally off topic, feel free to bash me, but HEAR ME OUT:

The ultimate in replayability: a random map generator.
I am no programmer, so it's likely what I dream up is impossible. But some talk was had about a random map generator for UQM a while back in a few threads. Anyhoo.

The only thing that hinders being able to replay this game infinitely is the fact that the map doesn't change. There are several ways to fix this.

Fixed systems: Sol, Alpha Centauri, Delta Crateris, rainbow worlds, item worlds, homeworlds...

In the "godly random map generator" you could set it to generate names too, using the "alpha/beta/gamma" + "lalande, centauri" generation system and set it so the stars in any given area of the map are always the constellations. But it would be neat to have Alpha Centauri, plus only two centauris, or have a six star Wolf constellation near earth. I think it would be really awesome... having more or less planets in some systems, also...

If I really could have anything I wanted in a random map generator for UQM, I'd have a whole screen for the new game, with difficulty settings, number of stars, size, and everything. occurence of supergiants, ratios of star colors... can anybody imagine how awesome it would be for a veteran player to start a game with 1000 star systems? I suppose it would be even cooler to have it reposition the key items, move the sa-matra. but i think that might be nigh impossible to make work with the dialogue. (and the vux beast's clues and so forth would be nulled)

But I think if there was some way to make the hunt for the sa-matra, looking for the ultron parts and the gateways to quasi-space different every time... there'd be no reason to ever stop playing this game.

I suppose it would be really cool to select "frames" for your precursor ship. Like the standard frame, one with more guns, one with more modules and less guns, one with more engines, etc... that would be a LOT of graphical work. Making the map bigger, though... I would really, really enjoy that. Maybe if I ever learn programming, I'll try.

One of my most fond dreams ever was to find some way to replay Star Control 2 and have all of the mysteries, all of the secrets in.

Hang on, doesn't UQM already generate most of the starmap with a pseudo-random generator? And didn't someone already hack it to produce completely different systems?


Changing these parameters should not be too hard.


Actually, you'd probably have to move all the key items anyway to get the game to work after changing the systems. I believe this was the part that prevented an earlier attempt at randomising the map in UQM. Then, you'd basically have to go through the entire dialogue, looking for references to star systems, coordinates and such, and replace them with references to whatever is generated. This works fine in text mode, but synthesising the speech would be a real pain (the "easy" way is to record all the possible star names in all voices).


Even if you randomise the positions you'd still have the same plot over and over again; you'd know exactly whom to ask for every coordinate, anyway. A more ambitious idea would be to randomise parts of the plot, too, although the result would be probably just as confusing as Captain Blood (http://argnet.fatal-design.com/bluddian.htm).

huh? :-/ What the hell...

All he's saying jiffa, is a way to randomize maps (I assume meaning more planets, other interesting bits to run into in space [nebulas, etc]).

Randomizing planets within (fixed) starsystems is incredibly easy;  just a one line edit.   Randomizing starsystem locations is a little harder, since Fred Ford hard-coded them into place.  It's not impossible though, it's just more work than making random planets.

Heh. Right on many counts, friends.
I meant speech. Oog... should be user, then can edit. Text, in the SC2 ver, would be really cool and easy, you're right. You'd just have to come up with new coordinates and new hints. Maybe even rotate the direction of the arrow to the core in terms of rainbow worlds?

It WOULD be the same plot, true. That would be a bit of a drag, popping the Sa-Matra again and again. Then again, if you are disgruntled by the thought, what are you doing here? :D Fun and kidding aside, I was thinking more along the lines of what Diablo did, having smaller subquests as you go along, building to the same goal; blowing said Sa-Matra / killing Diablo in Diablo.

If any serious voice acting is done to reconstruct parts of the PC text, I would consider alternate endings, like where you save the wonderful Precursor Service Vessel but let the universe go to crap. I mean, already the text has three mentalities; evil, good, and innocently ignorant (as mentioned in some other thread somewhere). One should have a plotline to fulfill all of these; the evil captain, the good captain (we already have that), and innocently ignorant. "But it's MY ship... it's sooo prettty..."

Anyway. That would be neat. New planets and new stars, more playing area, and more shit in quasispace, dammit!! Like, systems full of emerald worlds and the like! Not to mention a less all-purpose service vessel frame might be fun. Like a ship designed to be a battleship, maybe with the ability to fire two shots forward for a longer range, more slots, etc... My little pipedream while playing the game of kings.



No, not frungy, SC2.

The ideas mentioned about the Mark I present some interesting thoughts:

Regular Frame: The one we all know and love. Average in firepower, crew, cargo space, engines, fuel and fighter compliment.

Combat Frame: Bulkier and more suited for fights. Better in firepower, average in crew, less cargo space, average engines, smaller fighter compliment (it's going to be doing the fighting itself, after all). Perhaps, as mentioned, twin fore-guns, or better homing/PDL equipment.

Exploration Frame: Smaller and more manuverable. Less firepower, more crew and cargo space, average engines, more fuel and average fighters compliment. Could carry MORE landers (15?).

I'm certain its kind of a goofy thought, but custom frames as well. Every stat aforementioned (Firepower, Crew, Cargo, Engines, Fighter Compliment) would start at...oh, lets say 5. (10 for Fighter Compliment, I think thats how many the Vindi can carry max?). Each point you take away from another stat would allow another to be boosted as you see fit for your own custom ship, and you would have to have 0 points left over once you've finished. So you could totally scrap your fighter compliment to have a massive battle platform, or ditch your cargo space to make engine room and have a ship that is sometimes confused with an Arilou for dead out speed. ;D

Obviously, these modifications to the Mark I would take about a month to do, and cost a (very) large hunk of RU, so it would be the bane of an indecisive captain to keep switching frames. Some people would stay with the old standard, others could shape and bend their craft into the Vindicator they've only been able to dream about up until now.

Also, an addition of items to be purchased from the Melnorme/others for the Vindicator would also be neat. Nothing like the godly-but-unsexy Cloaking Device, but useful stuff. Just a few from my twisted brain:

-Asteroid Net: The Vindicator, once engaged in combat, could deploy this Electromagnetic field that would pulverize asteroids that passed through and collect their remains for RU. Of course, this would cause the ship's turning/thrust to be diminshed somewhat, but that's a risk worth taking...isn't it? (I'd love this for fighting the Slylandro ;D)

-Esper Crew: Not really bought from anyone, but random amounts of crew are Psionics, this is mentioned when Zelnick finds the Taalo Shield. Perhaps a way of defining the Esper crew from the rest of the crew (purple squares instead of green?). Not really sure what good it'd do, but its just a thought. Maybe someone can run with it.

Ack, Im out of ideas. :(
I know these would be difficult to implement, as the pictures for each bodytype would be different, but hey, this is just an ideas thread, right?

The modules already make it ultra-customizable...

What could we do that would have a similar effect but not be as intrusive?

Add modules!

Have the ship's base fleet size be only 4, and add 4 special module slots (one at the front and back of each outrigger). These slots can hold certain modules:
- Field broadening: +2 fleet capacity (current Vindicator has 4 of these, not removable). cost: 150 (cheap so it's not onerous to bulk up the fleet)
- Thrust Regulator: Increase fuel efficiency, but you lose one thrust module worth of speed (can be turned on and off with a device that appears in the devices menu). cost: 500
- The Quasispace portal spawner could become one of these modules (in order to receive it you have to leave one open, they will hold it for you otherwise).
- Afterburner (tech acquired from the Thraddash if you become Great Teacher): Lower fuel efficiency, higher speed. Using an Afterburner and a thrust regulator at the same time should end up the same as or worse than using neither. cost: 3000
- Cargo Tow: very high carrying capacity, but reduces speed and fuel efficiency if it contains anything. costs 1000
- Fuel Pod: Lower capacity than main body fuel pods - say, only 30. costs 400
- Thruster-powered dynamo: Reduces your speed in combat, but increases energy regeneration a la a regular dynamo (still total maxes out at 3). cost: 1250
- Space Elevator: during planet exploration, there is a wandering cable hanging from the Vindicator. Landers which return while touching it don't have to use most of the fuel sent down with them.
This would really change the face of exploration to the easy side, so we need to make it have some disadvantages:
If a lander uses the elevator to get back up, it is vulnerable to hotspots and weather for a second after starting back up. Also, the procedure should take a day (currently, planet exploration is instantaneous). If you have more than one lander and enough crew for the others, you can run missions with the others while waiting for the first one to get back (either normal missions or with the elevator again... perhaps a restriction to only one per elevator at a time?)

Also:
alternate module in a turning slot: strafing thrusters for supox-like maneuvers
alternate module in a thrust slot: counts more towards speed in combat than a regular thruster, but doesn't count as much in hyperspace.
alternate module in a thrust slot: cheapo thrusters: more economical to build, but eventually the price of the regular thrusters will be worth the touch of extra speed.


These additions would certainly make the game easier... which brings up the issue of a series of difficulty settings.

Hmmm, interesting idea. Storyline wise the MarkI was a Precursor tug, not too flexable on the design except for the moduals. However, I suppose that enough time and a welding torch and I'm sure some engineering geek could outfit even a tug to a more combat ready form.

Interesting.

Maybe the Mark II could be this level of customizable? Hmm? (Any guesses on what the Mark II is to the precursors. Cruse Ship? War ship? Oooh, a Precursor ship designed specifically for war. The possibilities.)

Work Tug? Service vessel, baby. Two entirely different things. That thing ain't a tug, dammit. True, it's got that nifty hyperspace field, but it's more like a customizable corvette type thing.

Several comments:
I HIGHLY object to the thought of customizing your frame in-game. I was thinking more along the lines of making ALL-NEW derivations of the Mark I, new sprites and all. As far as I can discern from in-game fiction, the really important neat junk is in the spine and major modifications to that would be implausible. Plus, I mean your ship is HUGE. True, it would take a while, but I don't think it would be feasible to implement in the game, and if it was... what's the benefit? I think it's a bit TOO MUCH ability to perfect your ship. The whole point of SC2's original design was that it wasn't GREAT at anything, it had enough inherent customizability to be pretty damn good at just about anything. I was thinking about minor tweaks, but after thinking about it, I may be coming to the decision that maybe all the changes should be graphical only. Like picking variations on the Mark I that best suit your character.

My view on new modules: I also think the original modules shouldn't be tampered with. It's possible to put in *really* hard to find SPECIAL 1 of a Kind precursor modules, somewhat like in Starcon 1. Has anyone here played Stars! recently? I was also thinking a bit like the Mystery Trader modules, multi-purpose things. Maybe a 2-slot module that is a high eff fuel pod, a crew pod, and a cargo bay?

Or a two slot weapon that fires for an extra long range?
My one problem with Zelnick's Vindicator was that it has a medium range gun that means I have to scrap with an Ur-Quan, and if I get sloppy I pay for it. It would be nice to increase range by 50%.

A thought: A choice from the melnorme, choosing Auto Tracking or Increased Range?

Hmmm. I think that would change it too drastically. IMHO, the limit for changes in any "improved" UQM is little tweaks that add to the depth. Somebody made a thread about this a while back. Shoring up the story, it was called. One of the things I remember was adding more space stations and alien colonies. I like that. More depth, more of a "physical" game world. I think one or two hidden "one-use" only artifacts would make a neat side quest. To implement it, you could find lander reports, just so there isn't need for more text to be recorded.

more pipedreams. peace.

So slap one of those two-slot guns on, get the extended range from the Melnorme, 3 Shiva/Dynamos and you've got a Mauler with it's captain on a crack binge.  ;D