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Topic: Yoho! Cower ye mortals, for The Cookies Mod has returned! (Read 15930 times)
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Crazy_Pirate_unInc
Zebranky food
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Posts: 24
Yarrrr!
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@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.
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« Last Edit: June 24, 2006, 07:23:29 am by Crazy_Pirate_unInc »
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We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
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Twurckle
Zebranky food
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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.
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Draxas
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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.
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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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.
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Draxas
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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?
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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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?
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Draxas
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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.
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Crazy_Pirate_unInc
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Yarrrr!
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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.
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We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot.
Drink up me 'earties, Yo Ho!
Yo Ho, Yo Ho! A pirate's life for me.
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Draxas
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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.
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1ceph
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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.
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)))8o~ (Presumably 1st Ur-Quan Smiley)
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Pages: 1 [2] 3 4
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There be no minerals, but lots of biological lifeforms that look like old Earth sail vessels. Plenty of storms though.