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Posted: Fri, 15. Apr 05, 04:52
by rustybucket
Just mount most of the heavier gun turrets to fire outward. There is no need to make it symetrical. The M2s here are no longer independent ships; they function as gun batteries. Their rear will be protected by one of the other M2 batteries.

As I mentioned above: if it should look something like the station in Deep Space Nine; each of the 3 vertical arms would be an M2 shaped like a rib with all of the 7 turrets (quad GPPs) mounted on the outside flank. The outer ring would be composed of three cresent shaped m1 (each spanning 120 degrees), also with 6 turrets (2xGHEPTS) each mounted to fire outwards. The " Y" shaped inner hub would be built on yet another m1, this one mounting 6 turrets and lighter weapons to fire inward (4xGamma IREs), mostly anti-fighter and anti-missile fire. Then at the center of the whole is a engine/bridge built on a TL platform, with a few more light weapons (1xGPAC), and possibly a good hardhitting frontal mount (like 4x GPPs) to use in an emergency. Remember that the center TL can swivel and provide additional fire support at the player's discretion.

Can a Nova get in there and wreck havoc? Well perhaps; but, first it would have to fight through a cloud of fighters and then 4 KM of heavy weapons fire. All while evading a cloud of missile fire. Then they would have to dodge the lighter fire of the inner guns (do gamma emmitters even have the range to hit the M2s?); and, if they are really lucky they will be able to take out the TL before the player manages to line them up in the TL's frontal gun sights.

Posted: Fri, 15. Apr 05, 05:02
by rustybucket
This thing is designed to create a safe chunk of space within a very hostile environment. It may be just the sort of thing that the Paranid, Argon, and Boron Empires devise jointly to police a Khaak/Xenon home sector. As long as you ship remains within the ring; it would be very hard for a Khaak cluster to make it through to you. This is why the "Y" spoke is built upon a 4th M1 template; it has plenty of launch bay space to safely receive VIPs and their security details.

Posted: Fri, 15. Apr 05, 05:03
by Galaxy613
lol THIS will be interesting.

Posted: Fri, 15. Apr 05, 05:15
by AdmiralTigerclaw
Where's milling? I need direct contact with him ASAP. It's of (anti)VIRUS level priority.

Posted: Fri, 15. Apr 05, 05:29
by Red Spot
AdmiralTigerclaw wrote:Where's milling? I need direct contact with him ASAP. It's of (anti)VIRUS level priority.
I just had a weird "bleeb"here .. perhaps my PC's got it to .. :o

Posted: Fri, 15. Apr 05, 05:43
by milling_hordesman
(aside: he's talking about the protoride worm. if you think you may have it, please ask an antivirus company or computer technician or someone else who would know how to identify and remove it, because i'm not professionally qualified)

anyways, yes, i see your point. that 's a lot of ships, but i'm pretty sure i could handle coordinating it. let me go ahead and mess around some and see what results :)

Posted: Sat, 16. Apr 05, 11:40
by Tsar_of_Cows
Out of interest, just throwing this into the arena... with such a multi-segmented ship, what in God's name happens if one bit gets destroyed eh?

Then the ship is going to look very very strange, and X2 doesnt have a facility to replace ships inside ships AFAIK :/


And, IMHO, it should be a Xenon M0. :P

But playable somehow :D

Posted: Sat, 16. Apr 05, 15:13
by DeadlyDa
I'll be interested in seeing what you come up with. I tried the exact same thing when I was doing my custom stations a few months back, 'cause I wanted a new station type that was partially mobile (battle moon concept).

All I ever got into X2 was garbage (polly's here...polly's there...nothing linked worth a damm). Then, once I realized that even if I got it to work, I was still stuck with a measly six turrets...I decided it wasn't worth the hassle.

Hope you are more sucesful...it would be a fun concept to play around with.

Posted: Sat, 16. Apr 05, 22:29
by rustybucket
what in God's name happens if one bit gets destroyed eh?

1) The destruction of one of the segment reveals the hidden side of adjacent segments which has been textured to simulate battle damage. It would sorta look as though you were looking directly at interior spaces.

2) To the game the destroyed segment is just another ship. There is nothing to stop you from buying another replacement component at a specific shipyard. It is not a ship inside a ship; it is just one of several ships flying in a very tight formation.

3) With one exception: If the core ship is destroyed the whole combined structure is destroyed in a runaway reactor blast.

This is a very large structure, perhaps 5-10KM in diameter, assembled from major components available at a specific shipyard. The components are fitted together at the yard and will remain in place until destroyed from battle damage, or from separation from the core TL. This would be a very expensive tactical vehicle designed to move into very hostile sectors, and to serve there as a base of operations for as long as necessary.

Posted: Sat, 16. Apr 05, 23:06
by Tsar_of_Cows
Now, I like the sound of that!

Posted: Sat, 16. Apr 05, 23:49
by rustybucket
This is what a real ship looks like when a large section of its hull is ripped away. The ship was the US cruiser CA-72 USS PITTSBURGH; and she has just lost a 104 foot section of her bow during a 1944 hurricane. It should give us some suggestions for how battle damage can be textured.

[ external image ]

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Posted: Sun, 17. Apr 05, 10:37
by Tsar_of_Cows
Bleeding heck! I cant believe that hting managed to sal back with gaping holes like that! :o

Posted: Mon, 18. Apr 05, 02:47
by milling_hordesman
will get back to work on this in a week or so; finals and Jade Empire are taking huge chunks out of my time right now ;) i'm pretty sure the idea might work; i'm concerned about the game's proximity detection, however. you know how if you try to position a ship inside of something else how it will shift it to the side? i'm not sure i'm going to be able to overcome the game's default behavior for doing that. we'll see.

regards,

Posted: Mon, 18. Apr 05, 03:12
by The-Prophet
ok well i did my best at adding a new sector, and well, it didn't work for me, i messed up x2 and had to get my back up files to overwrite that which i changed, is it possible to edit them in doubleshadows X2editor or would that be making things harder? also i can't find where to create the description on the sector although i found it last time i checked.

Posted: Mon, 18. Apr 05, 06:29
by rustybucket
will get back to work on this in a week or so; finals and Jade Empire are taking huge chunks out of my time right now

Good luck on your finals.

Posted: Mon, 18. Apr 05, 15:45
by Galaxy613
The-Prophet wrote:ok well i did my best at adding a new sector, and well, it didn't work for me, i messed up x2 and had to get my back up files to overwrite that which i changed, is it possible to edit them in doubleshadows X2editor or would that be making things harder? also i can't find where to create the description on the sector although i found it last time i checked.
Hmm, firstly you need to edit 440001.pck/xml which can be found in 01-04.cat/dats. All you need to do is add a new sector name at the location of your sector (in DS's X2Editor it should tell you the ID that would be needed). Sooo in 440001.xml you'll add to page 7 a new item with the ID of "1020520" and put your sector name there. Then put 05.cat/dat that I put in my speical pack into your main X2 directory if you haven't already and start up the in-game Galaxy Editor and look to the right of the farthest Split Sectors.

Of crouse you have to put the new modified 440001.xml into a .cat/.dat before you can view it unless you have extracted all the 01-04 .cats/dats but thats unlikely. Or you can just open 440001.pck directly with DS's X2 Editor but I don't really suggest that.

about docking ports...

Posted: Mon, 18. Apr 05, 20:36
by Harlock776
Wow this is all good!!! I hope that Rei comes out of hiding and reads this thread and decides to finish his xenon mod hehe. I wanna fly that xenon M6 he has it would make a great replacement for the argon centaur.

About the internal docking ports thing... For what I'm doin with my mod I just make a small cube and apply a black texture to it so it shows up invisible in game and then name it 00320.bod so it will be recognized as an internal docking port. It works great but I was wondering what exacly limits the docking port to one per scene file???

Can this be altered with the new stuff you guys are trying? I wanna have two docking ports for a remake of the colossus that I will be working on. It will actually look ok with just one port but it will be designed to use two of them just in case that feature ever exists. I've seen DeadlyDA get 8 external docking points to his m2 ships and m6 ships. If all he did was just add them to the scene then has anyone tried this with internal docking ports? What happened as a result eh? I will try it later on tonight just to see what happens hehe but I just wanted to get some imput from you guys about it.

Posted: Mon, 18. Apr 05, 20:47
by ShadowX
External and internal dockings work differently. As we all know there is only one number in TShips that defines docking and when you enter negative number it represent both *amount of free docking slots* AND *amount of dockable v-bodies*, however, when you enter positive number it represents ONLY *amount of free docking slots* so you CANNOT define the amount of dockable v-bodies for internal docking, at least not in the TShips.

Posted: Mon, 18. Apr 05, 20:48
by The-Prophet
i'm adding quite a few new sectors and well i'll follow that as best i can, also my pc reads the files easily and i have never unpacked the cat files i just double click and i'm in looking and the files inside (same with zipped files etc)

oh btw what i'm doing is shifting alot of the gate destinations, i'm not renaming any sectors i'm just making new ones or removing old ones from the map itself i'll make a topic about it once its finished.

Posted: Tue, 26. Apr 05, 06:16
by Amon RAy (RAider.EG)
I have a present for you ;)

http://checkertwo.narod.ru/patch06.zip
00.06 version of programm.

http://checkertwo.narod.ru/patch07.zip
00.07 version of programm.

In 00.06 version CheckerTwo made:
- a 200 new ship slots avaible
- option to make corrections of default shield class and count for Sats and Orb.Laser.
- option to make TS and TP avaible to dock on M2.
- option to make "small_ship" (M3,M4,M5) avaible to dock on M6.

In 00.07 version CheckerTwo made:
- ships from new slots will be able to create by ScE command in loaded game :twisted:
- also any changes in ships classes you make with an original ships(for example - changes the discoverer class from m5 to m6) - will take place in loaded game.

00.07 version was tested several days after release. Corrections in obj - not causes a game to crash and not causes a savegames to rise in size, and not causes a game to eat RAM :roll:

* Technical information: when game loads a part of code "_Restart" is called. When you start a new game a part of code "_Init" is called.
CheckerTwo made a corrections in "_Restart" part:
"Array" - an array of ships identificators for ScE commands.
Array = NULL. and after called a part of code same as called in "_Init" to initialize this "Array" again - from the obj-file.


Yep, its happen! Should we declare an international holiday and raise a monument for CheckerTwo? :)