The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Avast, me hearties!

Aye, after many long months of hardship, after many grueling battles with the kraken of commitment, the vicious sharks of family, and the weird, squidgy sea-monsters of life in general, Crazy Pirates unIncorperated is once again open for business!  Thank the whim of a mad-man for our return, for without that gift we have remained forever lost.

Unfortunately, due to a slight "mishap" involving a hard drive, a dinghy, the captain's mistress, and half a keg of grog, all previous work on the Cookies mod was lost.  Arrr... it be a sad thing indeed.  'ow was I supposed to know delicate computer componants don't agree well with salt water?

However!  We piratical types are never ones to let hardship stand in our way, and are eager to return full-force to the battle of modding UQM.  We have already taken the first steps in reviving the Cookies Mod, and shall soon be sailing forth with a complete product in mere weeks, nay, days!

(Well, okay, it took an entire bloody evenin' just to get Subversion working right... 'parrently the bleedin' program does not appreciate trying to deal with 40,000 small .png files.  Still, that be all in the past now.  Amazin', the things you can solve with enough gunpowder...)

So aye, progress may not be swift nor certain, but we are back.  And just to prove it, we present *da-da-da-DUN!* our first screenshots!

My reaction to this one was "Holy shit!":
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies1.png

Hang on... that's not what Jupiter looks like!
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies2.png

Technicolor solar system!
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies3.png

Ah-ha!  We've done something actually worthwhile!  Introducing, Charon!
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies4.png

Looting and pillaging once again,
Crazy Pirates unIncorperated

This might be a dumb question, but...

what the hell does this mod do?

Uh, cap'n... please don't keelhaul me...

If we knew yet, we would tell you!   ;D

Weeelll... we've got a few plans. The one that caused the entire solar system to freak the heck out was creating new planet types. Specifically, it was making large versions of all small planets and small versions of all large planets. It was an ugly kludge getting it together, and we certainly don't intend to leave it this way. That is, with the starbase looking just like another slaveshielded earth.

Our to-do list includes rebuilding our old random starmap generator as well as a few other more remote possibilities.

Gyarrr.

From translation of such sentance, it sounds like your remaking SC2 so that we have to do some more searching to get to places, like Star Control is a slave shielded planet so we-

Wait, slave shielded, planet? That doesn't work, considering that the Ur-Quan wanted it out of the shield because of resource up-keep, etc.

Maybe it changes Sol to be more realistic?

Or this Jupiter and duplicated slaveshielded planets give me another idea - it simply randomizes starmap, turning it into a chaotic scizophasic mess of multicolored planets, swaps the pictures for VUX and Syreen and makes dreadnoughts fire good ol' gunpowder cannons, with Arr, Matey! instead of Launch Fighters. :)

Haha!

No, actually. About the VUX and Syreen at least. "Arr MATEY" might go in, though! :D I just finished up adding Phobos, Deimos, Charon, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, Dione, Rhea, Iapetus, and 50000 Quaoar.

There needs to be a better way to say "50000 Quaoar", but there ISN'T. The distortion you see (jupiter, etc, not being gas giants, double slave shield planets) is pretty much accidental. HOPEfully we can clear it up.

The real goal is to 1) put a little more realism in things 2) add more variety in planet types and 4) rock on.  We ate number 3), I think it was a cake. The randomized starmap thing we used to have was also kind of a kludge. What it did was add random locations, star types and distributions, etc to the starmap array and then paste in a few things we always HAD to have (for example, we always had to have Sol in a certain place, and at one point we had the entire original starmap plugged in there). What it ended up doing was giving random non-plot stars. Which was actually really freaking cool.

Our first task is to debug the new planet types (so the universe isn't filled with purple earths, blue venuses, and jupiter as a large selenic world). Then, we might start getting down to business on a few refinements to the random solar system generators and starmap generator.

For example, I've always noticed Sol was singular in its clear distinction between the inner planetary system (mercury, venus, earth, and mars) and the outer planetary system (all those other damn planets). I'm simultaneously terrified at the prospect of delving into the enormous block of code that is the random solar system creator intrinsic to SC2... and lured by the possibility of one, two, or three delineations between planet groups.

While I'm wishing, I might as well wish for a way to move plot systems, as well as a way to link the randomized coordinates of plot systems to dialogue. That way I could make the locations of plot specific places always differ. Then I'd like to be able to fly off the edges of the starmap.

So yeah. No clue what we're doing. :P

However, we do occasionally tend to aquire clues, often by following innocent ships, boarding them, and looting all of their clues.

This tactic has proved successful, as we now have a fair handle on how planets happen; the Solar System is once again sane, and has more goodies in it.  Saturn and Uranus have (more) moons, because why should any gas giant feel left out?

Anyway.  We have lots of vague weird ideas, but not many actual plans.  Some of the things we ARE sure of involves building a random starmap generator, doing some ship-tweaking (for instance, it'd be nice if ZoqFot didn't suck), and doing a wee bit of conversation hacking just for fun.

Then of course we get into more involved and less possible things, like giving ships 64 turn arcs instead of 16, random Chenjesu, more technology, and cool stuff in general.  So we'll see how that goes.

that should prove very hard, considering you have a sprite per angle. you would have to quadrate the number of current sprites (don't forget there are 16 sprites per zoom level, 3 zoom levels, which means instead of the current 48 sprites per ship you would have 192.
even if you use some automatic script to rotate all the ships 'just a bit' it would not look well in game.
you could use the ships from the graphics enhancement thread which have much better quality, but then you would have to recode the graphics engine, a thing which even the core team is reluctant to mess with.

at least we'll always have our bottle of rum! :P

Gyarr, Censored, it be not the graphical part of 64 sprites that gives us tha fear, it's coding UQM to look fer the 64 sprites.

(Pirate mode disengaged)

Actually, a huge pet peeve of mine is the illusion of bullets firing farther when your ship is turned... mostly because a friend of mine uses it to rain death upon my beautiful starships as I chase him. Evil man. If we do get started on making melee a little saner, 64 turn arcs might come along with velocity being imparted to bullets. The downside is that Mycon plasmoids are less likely to run over the Mycon. Which actually makes their ships a little less goofy.

I like Pirate Mode ;)

And who doesn't, matey?

Byarr, we be havin' some luck with tha Newtonian physics by gerrymandering... nar, errr... keelhauling? Jury-rigging! tha blasted Pkunk's code. Unfortunately, they were... unwilling ta part with it willingly.

So we parted tha Pkunk, y'see, with cannonballs. 'Twas an excellent skarrrmash, arrr.

Screenshots be forthcoming on a bugfree hackjob. Tha firrst vessel we be fittin' with accurate physics be the Chenjesu, gyarr.

Buckle up, me hearties, arrr!

if Newton was alive you could rob him for codes too :)

rather than making 64 different sprites why not program the thing so that it can rotate a single one?  I've never done any graphics programming but I assume that direct-x and gl both have some way to rotate a static image. I suppose that would be a bugger with collision detection, but that would need to be revamped either way.

DrunkenWolf: Aye, we be knowin' that.  'Owever, that be takin' time, an' as th' UQM program already knows 'ow ta use diff'rent sprites, makin' it rotate tha same sprite woul' be e'en more'f a hack-job.

Now!  We've bein' havin' some success the last week or two, an' return 'ere amidst much grog 'n' tacos ta revel in our triumph.  Be'old!

http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies1.png

Five moons, baby.  Count 'em, FIVE.  An one jus' so 'appens to be a gas-giant.  I keep tellin' me first mate that that thar's utter insanity, but ye gotta admit 'tis cool.

http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies3.png

Aha!  Fear the comin' of our bran' spankin' new starmap randomizer program!  Now, our trained monke... erm, programmers may've gotten jus' a weeee bit o'erzealous on certain bits, but e'ery star there is real, and the original SC2 starmap is bein' in thar somewhere if ye look reeeeeal close.

An' now, just for kicks, we be givin' ye the starmap randomizer isself!  We'll be tweakin' an' changin' things with't 'till it be givin' us the right results, but 'ere's the prototype we 'ave now.  'Tis GPL, since UQM is, and we be includin' the UQM starmap info in it, so 'tis technically usin' th' same code methinks.

http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/random-starmap.py

Yers with FIRE AND DOOM,
Crazy Pirate unIncorperated

BYARRRR!!!

What be tha point of our mod? Why d'we keep on postin' 'ere?

Because we care. We care, in fact, enough ta do this.

http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies4.png

"What in tha name of Davey Jones' vacsuit be wrong with those thar planets?!  And WHUT THA SWEET DEVIL IS WITH THE MENUS?!" We hear yer plaintive cries.

As to tha first part, well, the First Mate noticed that tha surface temperature of Venus was significantly lower than tha meltin' point of cannonballs. He also figured that tha idea of a Greenhouse World from tha old SC2 PC manual was a pretty durn decent one and reasoned that thar ought ter be a way ta make sure such an "increase o' surface temper-churr based on at-mo-sfeer-ick den-city" (errr... or summat like dat) wurr possible. And ARR! Before ye ye see tha proof! GARR!

And, err, to tha other bit... Mind now - tha strangeness with tha menus is temporary, or so tha Captain assures me. (In fact, with the rather incredibly prompt and generous assistance of Meep-Eep in solving our newbish problems we've already fixed MOST of the problems, arr)

O' course, should we be unable to fix tha leak our vessel of a mod has sprung, there shall be a MUTINNNNY!!

Other projects in progress:
Starmap randomizer: We've refined it to have weights of dwarfs, giants, and supergiants, as well as star classes. Currently we've adopted a model that slightly more realistically portrays the real universe, with something like 33% of stars being red and 6% being blue or something. We may even do away with blue dwarves, seeing as I don't think they actually exist. I know blue white stars exist in dwarf class, but hell.  Green stars probably shouldn't be quite that green, either, even if it is kinda pretty.

Next up we're going to tackle plot item randomization in the starmap randomizer. This is only scary because we'd like to ensure that the plot items are spaced sanely, so you don't end up with Sol chilling out in the middle of Ilwrath space or worse, the Ur-Quan / Kohr-Ah battlefield. Also, my personal pipe dream is to integrate it into the game itself, as an option in the Game Options (including a "no random stars", "<x> additional random stars", and "completely random including plot point stars". The reason this is a pipe dream is that it's easier to tell a python program to change the coordinates for all the plot points in the dialogues than it is to tell Starcon's code to do the same thing.

Devices:  We need to work out how devices work, both in your device list and on planets.  We haven't even looked at this stuff yet, but considering how much of SC2's plot works around devices, it seems the next logical step.

64 turn arcs: This is back burner'd but not forgotten. This project is also hampered by SC2's... peculiar math system.

PIRATE REQUEST: If anybody has any cool ideas for extra planets, shoot them at us like cannonballs. Cause I'm thinking new planets are cool.

Cheers!

Hide a star where every one of its (many) planets is full of hostile life, dangerous weather, and high temperatures, and also they're all Treasure worlds full of gold. Hide an object - a Treasure Chest - on the surface of the deadliest of these worlds. Build this Treasure Chest into a simple quest involving a race of pirates who, sadly, went extinct.

You want ideas for more planets?  Well, can you make UQM handle an 11-planet system, because I have a couple for ya here in Sol's orbit!

Planet #10 "Xena" (http://www.solstation.com/stars/kuiper.htm)
Planet #10's moon "Gabrielle" (http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/moon/index.html)

Planet #11 "Sedna" (http://www.solstation.com/stars/oort.htm)

@Razorback : We'll have to investigate the "more than 10 planets" thing later, because while one chunk of the source code (and the strings for that matter) indicate that support for up to 16 planets was intended, it definately has an override later limiting it to 10. We've bumped that number up above 10 before and it causes crashes. We shall investigate in the future.

Currently, our only new planetary object is 50000 Quaoar, which I chose because it was of a decent size and it wasn't ridiculously far from the sun. Thing about Sedna is that it is so far away to have it just chilling outside pluto would be pretty inaccurate, and I don't feel like coding in another zoom level (and then doing all the art)  in order to accomodate it. Though come to think of it, it would be pretty neat. Because the solar system is pretty enormous. Even then, we may ditch Quaoar because it is far less say-able than Sedna, Xena, or Gabrielle.

We've also beefed out the moons on the "crappy" gas giants of the solar system. Earlier in the thread there's a full list, but since we increased the moon cap to five we may expand the solar system even further.

What I was thinking about when I said more planets was something like this:
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies5.png

 Argent World : a counterpart to the Auric World, with silver and silver compounds, white-body planet, with the selenic color tab, topographical algorithm surface generation and the same xlat tab as an Auric World. We've gotten them working right except for the Fscking strings, and screenshots will come eventually. There are tons of little tweaks to the planets, including dust worlds worth landing on (based of course on the composition of mars and its atmosphere) as well as buffing the deposits on selenic, infrared, hydrocarbon, telluric, noble, and water worlds to make them competitive with things like Auric worlds (which have thicker precious deposits than noble worlds).

What I'm getting at is that we need more planet TYPES, and any suggestions are welcome.


@Bongo Bill: Now THAT is a pretty sweet idea. Even now, we are investigating the creation and implementation of plot through devices. Your contribution WILL be noted, Sir. Heheheheheh... hidden stars. Maybe in quasispace somewhere? Though making objects you interact with in hyperspace that don't appear on the hyperspace map is odd. It's worth investigating.

Hmm new planet types... Looking at real life planet types that are being discovered outside our own solar system might be a good source of inspiration. They're finding all kinds of crazy planets there: planets with masses inbetween terrestial and gas worlds, and searing hot jupiter sized worlds  that orbit very close to their stars. A nice site with scientific speculation on what these planets would look like can be found at : http://www.extrasolar.net/speculations.html (scroll down a bit)

Also, have you considered adding new creature types to the planetary surfaces? It always bothered me that the number of different creatures was so small, and that life all over the quadrant looked more or less the same. I'm willing to do the graphics if needed.

Water planet. No surface, except possibly a little island with some gold and silver. Possibly a small hut with a pirate flag :) There be no minerals, but lots of biological lifeforms that look like old Earth sail vessels. Plenty of storms though.

Backwards world. Lander controls are inverted.

Ice world. Hoth, loads of snow, small animals like the onvce jedi cut up and sleep inside. Snowmen. Bigfoot. Some minerals.

Primitive civilisation world. Temperate, Earth like. Plenty of cities that you can't enter (entering one just brings up the message "everyone is hiding from you"), but you can collect minerals and "collect" lifeforms (peasants) before going away again.

Death World: Pretty much Sirius I, codified into a world type. Super dangerous rocky world, with just enough minerals (and possibly very hostile biologicals) to intice you to land, but the super high temperatures, high tectonics rating, and constant lightning storms make it likely not worth the cost in crew and landers to attempt any kind of mining mission.

Magma World: A planet resembling what Earth is speculated to have been like early in its formation. Highly tectonically active, with rivers of flowing lava flowing across a superheated surface. No atmosphere worth mentioning or life present on the surface, but the molten flows bring up all kinds of metals and other sorts of deposits of widely varying quality. Is there already a world type like this (besides the Shattered World)?

Artificial World: An abandoned world literally sheathed in metal plates by agents unknown. No tectonic activity and cool temperatures, but any level of weather could be appropriate. Life would not be natural, and if present, would be limited to something similar to the auto-dozers the partol the abandoned Earthguard base on the moon (though possibly some could be more advanced devices that are able to defend themselves). Deposits of various metals would, obviously, be plentiful.

I always thought that there weren't enough commons around. I mean, they're supposed to be common, but how many of them do you actually find? And on top of that, they are generally on worlds with nasty weather.

I'd say, let there be enormous heaps of silicon dioxide (i.e. sand) on dust worlds. Let it be a common.

Well, commons are so uncommon because they're generally not worth picking up. That's a gameplay issue more than a realism issue, really; even if there were heaps of commons on dust worlds, who would bother landing on one just for those?

Suppose it takes 0.3 fuel to go down, that's 6 RU and a small amount of loss of range.

The unenhanced lander-load of commons is 50 RU.

The only problem is the cost in RU and module slots of more storage bays.

But the main reason is, if they're common, why are they so uncommon?

Because, if you're like me, you see a planet loaded with commons and move onto the next without ever landing. Granted, they can be profitable ventures, but even a huge load of commons is undesirable next to half the amount of base metals, and base metals are EVERYWHERE (and not all that desirable either). As I said, it's a gameplay issue; if commons were as common as they should be, and you were forced to make mining trips to retrieve them, you might be hard pressed to make enough RU to finish the game in a timely fashion.

We've had some thoughts about this ourselves. One idea was to rebalance the RU/kiloton of stuff curve, but even then you've just got to improve radioactives and precious even more to make room. For example, if you curve it so that it goes something like:
Common / 3
Corrosive / 4
Basic / 5
Noble / 6
Rare / 7
Precious / 8
Radioactive / 9 or 10

It's still not worth it to pick up commons because it takes lots of fuel to land repeatedly, and it takes fuel to go to different systems, and time to pick up all that stuff, etc. And Urea Worlds have been abolished... those were such a pain in the butt it was foolish. Though Orz space was so silly... it was easy to pick up 800+ precious from one or two systems, which was absurd. It was really cool, but it wasn't like treasure or auric worlds were especially hazardous beyond class 3 weather.

However! In fooling around mining our expanded starmap, we've definately found that 1) we need to make crystal worlds rarer because finding a crystal world with two crystal world moons is really really silly and 2) it's much more tempting to pick up lots of minerals and even more basics simply because that much more fuel can be allotted to picking up those other minerals.

Hell, you know, that table doesn't look too bad. But there's something elegant about commons giving you one RU... ah well. At least this way radioactives are only three times as good as commons and twice as good as bases, as opposed to eight times and three times respectively.

@Death 999 / Draxas: I've thought about that... What's really silly is that there are WATER WORLDS. I mean, crap, just take the lander down in the ocean and scoop some up and go. There would only be deposits of water ice on things like selenic worlds, and there's no real way to just say you can collect as much commons as you like at a water world.

Unless you feel like making water worlds have ridiculous quantities of water deposits, which is in fact entirely doable. I just think it would be annoying to have to dodge water deposits. One thing we did was diversify the mineral deposits on dust, water, and to a lesser extent selenic worlds (yay wikipedia) to make them more worthwhile and reflect vague reality. It's pretty interesting, actually. Tomorrow I hope the crew can assemble and we can get some screenies.

@Draxas: Your idea of an Artificial World intrigues me greatly. Would you mind if it became a reality some day? Magma Worlds (unfortunately) existed and were total lemons (and as such discarded, because there were enough basic covered worlds). I've yet to come up with a way to distinguish a world like a primordial earth from a Shattered World, both in the appearance and in mineral deposits. If you've got any ideas in that regard, fire away.

Feel free to use any ideas put into this thread; that's why I typed them up, after all. ;)

If you've ever played Total Annihilation, you can probably instantly see where my inspiration for the Artificial World came from.

As for the Magma World, the difference between that and a Shattered World is really just semantics. It's a question of  "is there a Deep Child egg ease here?" and little else, as far as gameplay is concerned.

You know, that's good enough for me. That a Magma World just doesn't have a frickin' Mycon egg case on it. I made something like it but it didn't quite work out.

I think I even have a plan. I will attempt to make several demo worlds and upload screenshots to see if they add up to what you were expecting.

I always found it silly that the starbase can function with only one certain type of matter (preferably exotics).

now, physics-ly speaking, one could reason that a reactor would work better with (or, only with) heavy matter, but still - you should leave the RU price and other charateristics of the commons as they are, and add a special need for them.

say, the replicator in the starbase cafe' only works on commons and the commander just has to have his morning coffee!

or something.

there was a nice idea in one thread... don't remember who's the author and in which thread...
something like that:
No RU anymore. Instead, the ships will cost something like this:
EARTHLING CRUISER
500 base metal
(hull)
100 commons
50 corrosive
20 noble
20 rare earth
40 precious
(these all for various parts of the ships, say, electronics and etc.)
100 radioactives
(for the ship's power core)
for plain cruiser, no exotics needed

This will make the player look for _all_ the resources.
Alien ships will need also exotics, etc.
(especially the ones like Utwig Juggers will devour large amount of exotic resources)

The crew will then cost 3 commons, and the fuel will cost, say, 3 radioactives/unit.

Or, for example, a hellbore cannon will cost something like:
100 base metal (in fact, the cannon is not big, yet powerful)
50 precious (for electronic compounds)
400 radioactives (due to large amounts of power consumed)
200 exotics (due to certain powerful alien technology)

While debris collection will look something like:
3 ur-quan dreadnoughts
+87*3 commons collected
+12*3 exotics collected
well you got the idea )

Of course this means that you'll have to tweak the planets - more commons (for crew), for example.

Actually, that seems like a really neat idea to make all the resource types more important. Unfortunately, it seems like it would also be really hard to implement...

However, creating fuel exclusively from radioactives would be problematic, at least in terms of the quantites existing currently. That's a pretty rare deposit composing the most commonly purchased item in the game; after all, you can use luck and skill to avoid losing crew on a voyage out into the galaxy, but you consume fuel just by moving around.

Also, I don't think crew should necessarily cost commons under that system. After all, it's not like you have to synthesize the warm bodies, just pay them apparently. So, instead of making fuel and crew cost a particular type of resource, perhaps there could be a dual system of resources and RU. You can either choose to convert materials to RU or leave them as is, depending on the application you require them for. Fuel and crew would cost RU exclusively, while ship and module construction would require certain specific types of resources (and possibly some RU as well, to defray the wear and tear on the station). So, instead of the Cruiser cost listed above, it could be more like:

500 base metal
100 commons
40 precious metals
50 radioactives
500 RU

Just as an example. Of course, this would be a huge project, since it would require that all buying and selling costs in the game be completely revised, all ships would need a unique resource pattern for their debris (or perhaps a partially randomized one, based on their components; this could possibly lead to a player hunting down a typically allied race if their resource drops contain certain highly desirable elements!), resource distribution for planets would have to be revised, etc. etc. etc.

Anyway, forgive my rambling on this subject. What can I say, I like the idea. ;)

As a consolation prize, here's a new planet type:

Mountainous world: A rocky world with a distinctive geography of huge, craggy mountains and deep valleys. The surface is a result of the crust being highly unstable and undergoing constant tectonic activity. Tectonics levels would be 6 at a minimum, and 7 or 8 are much more likely. Weather patterns and lifeforms would vary by particular example, and follow no set pattern. These worlds would mostly be cool enough not to experience surface hot spots. Base metals, rare earths, and precious metals would be commonly seen on these worlds, with the occasional smattering of commons or corrosives.

http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=1447.msg18222;topicseen#msg18222

Way before my time, D999, but point taken. I still think it's a good idea. I was also thinking about the ability to salvage the wreckage of your own escorts as well, seems like you beat me to the punch there, too.

Another new planet type:

Junk World: A planet completely covered by heaps of destroyed and discarded machinery, of widely varied but uncertain origin. The entire world appears to be a dumping ground for all manner of devices, none of which function as intended anymore. The world surface is subject to mild or medium tectonic activity, not because the world itself is particularly tectonically active, but the unstable trash heaps are subject to collapse without warning at any time. Temperatures are low on the surface, as the machinery would have melted into an unrecognizable mass otherwise. Weather varies by specific case, and follows no set pattern. The presence of biological life is rare, but not unheard of; some organisms have managed to survive amidst the trash on some of these worlds. Much more likely is the presence of malfunctioning machinery, some of which was originally designed for combat, meaning these defective denziens are as likely to be hostile as not. If there happens to be both biological and technological inhabitants on the same world, they are both likely to be extremely hostile. Base metal and common deposits can be found practically everywhere on a Junk World, though on rare occasions, small deposits of radioactives or exotics can be found from a discarded power core or similar. In addition, the chances of discovering artifacts on a Junk World are very good, though whether said artifacts will be functioning correctly, or even at all, is quite another story.

What about if the Melnorme could sell you various kinds of minerals for Credits?


And also, I really don't think that this could be possible to implement right now, but what about some system in which you could slightly modify an escort ship's design (change max crew capacity, etc.) by adjusting the amount of a certain type of minerals used to create the ship?

The stats adjustable would be the same as in Star Control 1 (where you collected relics to increase these stats):
Max crew capacity
Jets
Thrusters
Fuel recovery (Dynamo)
Max fuel capacity

EXAMPLE: I want to adjust the Cruiser. It's basic cost would be like this:
200 base metal
100 commons
30 precious metals
10 radioactives
50 corrosive

Now if I would want to improve the Cruiser dynamo for example, I would increase the amount of radioactives used to build it to 30 radioactives. That would slightly improve the fuel regeneration speed of the Cruiser.

Oh... wow.

We got a magma world prototype, but Mercury is funny in that if you stick a shattered world or a magma world there, it is a featureless gray ball.

Pending our understanding of production of new graphics there will be artificial worlds and mountian worlds. Not to mention a new lifeform, the Commander Keen inspired Yorps, that will be worth decent data but will crowd you harmlessly and annoyingly.

Re: Mineral requirements for stuff... WOW. That is out of our current reach and goals at the moment. I may just adjust the RU rewards table, silly as it is, for the moment.

One idea we had was something like this: on initial conversation with Melnorme, they say they'll give you technology to build a "garden pod", a self contained cargo bay for the lifeforms you bring back for them, and equip you with one for free. More modules is something we've wanted to do for a while, as well as the possibility of people who will sell you different modules.

Actually mercury is a geologically dead world, just like the moon, we have one real life example of a shattered/magma world in our solar system : io ,one of jupiters moons. I seem to remember that it's quite a friendly place in SC2, but in real life it has -HUGE- vulcanoes  and a very active geology.


Are yorps the little green one eyed creatures? In that case the graphics are already done :)
check out the list of SC2 creatures, and scroll down to the "Penguin Cyclops" all you need to do is change it's behaviour and make it more annoying. That said, I would love to see more creatures.

Could you add more derelict ships to the planet? Or for example, a remaintant of a Chenjesu colony has been discovered with some Chenjesu and their ship, things that would alow you ships that aren't used in the main plot.

And when you get the CHMMR on your side, you can upgrade your Chenjesu. Similarly, if you find Androsynth, you can bring them to the Orz and have them *squeezed*  to *happy campers*. [/bad joke]

Interesting idea though. If it wasn't for the fact that you need native captains, this would be  a good way to aquire enemy ships as well.

@Draxas:
Magma world is now complete to my satisfaction. I may reduce the size of mineral deposits, but hell. I mean, they're very very rare in the current setup. The differences are in the amount of surface lava present on this (the magma world) than on a shattered world. The difference is subtle, but it's there.
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies11.png

Mountainous worlds are also implemented. I kinda like this, actually, though I wish there were more obvious peaks and valleys. Though in hindsight, it kind of reminds me of a telluric world. 
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies7.png

And now, for Junk Worlds. This one took quite a bit of work, but I think it looks like a world covered in rusty machinery and seas of toxic effluvia. I may in fact beef up the mineral deposits to make it even sillier, but that's up to you, really.
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies6.png

Something that just sort of happened are these two pictures:
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies10.png
is an early concept of something we developed into this:
http://cec.wustl.edu/~snh1/cookies/cookies8.png
We decided to call it a "Poison World", currently it's got (as you can see) a few radioactive deposits but I'm hoping for mostly commons and corrosives, along with some others if at all possible.

@Lukipela: That is intriguing. Our next real project is to configure our random starmap generator for devices and special solar systems with predetermined planets and such. Once we get our heads around device code we may attempt just that.

(edited for crappy link wrapping)

I don't see a reason to upgrade Chenjesu since you can buy Chmmr ships, while on the other hand Chenjesu ships have their purpose to. After all, they were the strongest Alliance ships in Star Control 1. But, I didn't think of Chenjesu in particular. I just thought of the idea. You could also leave some Androsynth ships that are completely abandoned and use them (I figure that humans and Androsynth are similar enough). Or maybe even enemy ships that aren't loyal to their race. Enemy ships may even be easier since you don't have Chenjesu dialogue screens.

Black Spathi Squadron.


How's this for a new planet type? Inhabited World. Replace all the planets you can go to to talk to somebody with this. Basically you just take whatever the planet normally is, but you put some buildings on it, and it is at these buildings which you converse with the person you normally hail from orbit. Just give them very small amounts of minerals. Make new life forms inspired by the inhabitants' spaceships that ignores you until you try to shoot one, and then it kills you really fast.

Yeah I like that idea, I was toying around with the thought of races such as the ones today (pre hyperspace cultures) too, but also be advised that Earth can be compared to another planet and as such countries seem very small. So, an idea could be missile bases that will fire homing missiles, and a chalk load of laser batteries at your lander should be pretty good ;) You could also have jets which constantly follow your lander, ranging from F-22 like things to spacecraft (harder and faster). Tanks and Infantry are viable, having small sprites that fire small weapons fire at the lander and tanks which do the same (have to be pretty small though).

Dr. Crazy Pirate, I appreciate the fact that you say these decisions are up to me... But it is your mod, I'm just tossing out random ideas. Feel free to adapt and/or alter them as you like.

Sadly, I can't view any of the links; apparently my access is denied.

The images should now be available.

Nice. It looks as good as I imagine it could with the limited ability to manipulate the surface image; the idea of a series of 3D-mapped peaks and valleys, or hi-res detail on the junk heaps, is rather appealing to me, but I recognize that it's little more than a pipe dream given our current set of tools.

I look forward to seeing how this entire project pans out, and if I dredge up any more interesting world ideas from this twisted little imagination of mine, I'll be sure to post 'em up.

You missed the bad joke part I see. Still, you do not necessarily need to upgrade Chensju to CHMMR. Just give them Zapsats :)

Illoyal enemy captains is a good idea, at least for certain races it could work beautifully.

Proclamation: Salutations, minimally sentient organisms identified as UQM forumers.
Assertion 1: Approximate date of last posting in current thread equals 12 months ago.
Corollary: Probability_{project has been abandoned} greater than fifty percent.
Assertion 2: Mod equals very interesting.
Conclusion: Only method of confirming project status is resurrecting thread.
Process: Posting...

Query: Unit identified as Crazy_Pirate_unInc is directed to forward status report.

Assertion: Role Playing Resource Guide and Super-Melee ship denomination equals "Chmmr".
Secondary Query: Correct spelling of Eternal1s summoning device equals "Chmmr" equals only first letter uppercase.

Assertion: Magma World equals already present in vanilla UQM distribution.
Proclamation: System unit expresses compassion plus amazement toward Crazy_Pirate_unInc.

Assertion: Current number of planet ideas equals small.
Directive: System unit is directed to compute new planet ideas.
Process: Computing...
Query: Unit identified as Crazy_Pirate_unInc is directed to consider following planet idea:

LIVING WORLD: Planet equals huge organism plus sentient. Communication with planet via HyperWave BroadCaster equals possible. Communication options equals trading resource types according to simple supply plus demand model. Communications image equals 3D planet scan image plus magnified. Planet surface equals only bio. Bio equals tentacles plus spray-throwers plus planetary parasites. Angering planet via appendage destruction equals possible. Continued amiable communications with planet equals possible because identification of aggressor equals impossible for planet. Corollary: Planet tells about aggressor minus identifies aggressor correctly.

<TRANSLATION FOLLOWS>
The planet is actually a big honkin' sentient organism; you can communicate with it by using a Caster. Its communications image is actually the rotating 3D planet image, magnified. You can trade resources with the planet (for example 20 commons for 4 radioactives) according to its current needs and surpluses (for example, "I need 17 base metals and 8 corrosives, and I have 7 exotics and 23 commons extra"). If you land on the planet, it will not be pleased and will try to destroy your lander with big tentacles -- instead of weather; they follow you like bio, but do not show on the map; they can be killed, but they respawn and do not yield biodata -- and spray-throwers -- instead of hotspots -- and what not; there are also some (big) lice-like parasites living on the planet, which will attack you too -- instead of bio; they do not respawn and yield much biodata.

</TRANSLATION>

Assertion: Current lander physics equals highly unrealistic.
Query: Unit identified as Crazy_Pirate_unInc is directed to implement lander inertia.
Query 2: Unit identified as Crazy_Pirate_unInc is directed to increase lander mini-game difficulty.

This looks interesting :)

I think that it's very interesting that someone who agrees with most as for the "not" in SCnot3 would often use the Daktaklakpak talking style.  Oh, well.

Can't wait to see what cookies may come from this mod.  I just hope someone can make an installer or something so I can use it, with my horrible incapability to compile this game.