Okay finally I managed to upload the new Killer Mod
from the Killer Mod 2.5 Read Me:
Killer Mod version 2.5 Last edited 09/07/12 by KillerB
These files are to convert Vega Strike version 5.1r1 to the Killer Mod.
THE KILLER MOD:
Vega Strike is an awesome space flight sim, with interactive factions, realistic dynamics and a dynamic universe.
Kudos to the Vega Strike team, but sadly the designers are apparently more merchant types than fighter pilots....
So I started cooking up some modifications to make the game more Killer friendly:
better payout on looted cargo, some ships that can loot a nice fat load of cargo instead of going back and forth and back and forth trading cargo:p
This is an Alpha release, which means it has some hickups in it that the Killer Mod team is still trying to work out.
Use this Mod at your own risk; you are your own test pilot and guinea pig!
WHAT'S NEW:
1-Shipyards now actually SELL ships!
2-Le Condor Noire (the stealth Thales)is now sold only in Forsaken shipyards, and she has the awesome paint job that Turbo created for her.
Oh, and the Forsaken shipyards have docking points now so you can actually land there and shop for new nasty toys!
3-RESIGNATION AMMO is now for sale at Confed bases.
4-The new Forsaken Light Fighter JACKAL now has a cocpit and is available for sale at Forsaken Shipyards and aboard Gleaners (and asteroid shipyards...those guy's don't care who they do business with...they even sell Redeemers!).
I took the liberty of altering her stats. She would have been a crippled old dog instead of the Wolf of Africa and Asia with the original stats:P
09/04/12 oops shoulda test flown her before messing with her stats...gotta find an original copy of Units.csv and put everything back. Things insanely uber now...
Okay back to her original stats and she's still insanely fast. Turns out she only masses 20 tons. Which is ridiculously light considering she sports 4 medium guns...edited her to 40 tons but haven't had a chance to take another one out for a spin yet.
5-PIRATE PINYATAS-Added some nice loot to the Hyena, Plowshare, and especially the Thales XD
6-Stuck Turbo's killer stealth blackout/Pirate flag paint job on the scourge of the spaceways, the Pirate_Thales XD
7-Killer -new- CONFED REACTORS, the Pegasus mk10
8-Wicked -new- CONFED THRUSTER, the Mercury mk6
and RLAAN THRUSTER, the Ktek mk3
9-Corrected the Thales weapon ugrade that came with the 5.1r1 release (they addded 2 of those nasty capship guns but one was on top of the other)
and upgraded the Thales lineup (Pirate_Thales, Matilda, Le Condor Noire) to match.
10-Revamped the Robin.hunter and Hyena.hunter:
Installed some weapons so you don't get that annoying "Sorry boss I can't do that" message when you order them to attack a target.
(designers neglected to give any of the cargo wingmen weapon loadouts)
Added fuel capacity & edited mass/inertia figures to factor in extra fuel mass.
11-CAPSHIP UPGRADE ARMOR: so far we have the new Thales upgrade and replacement armor 5400Mjoule/4400 tons added weight (I figured at 5% of her overall mass of 88,000Tons)
hey you *could* stick this on your Llama...you'd be almost invincible...and PRETTY MUCH IMOBILE!
12-CAPSHIP UPGRADE REACTOR: Stingray v1 upgrade reactor for the Thales corvette XD approximately 25% bigger.
13-Resized Thales upgrade space from 600 to 6000. She's a light capship not a heavy fighter after all. And ya gotta have room for replacement parts eg reactors as the originals are bad about getting shot out.
14-Resized the Stock Reactor lineup (had made the Stingray ~ 4 times bigger than the mkXV...then noticed that even though I had upsized the Thales upgrade space by a factor of
ten, not only didn't the Stingray fit but not even the mkXV...looked at the power increase curve vs the volume curve and decided that the VS designers really didn't plan for people to use capships in combat...just trade).
15-CAPSHIP WEAPONS AND AMMO
Now you can upgrade that good used Andolian corvette you bought from a reputable dealer at a commerce center, shipyard, carrier or Ice Planet! Or from a not so reputable dealer at an asteroid shipyard or Forsaken shipyard...or aboard a Gleaner if you don't care where they got the stuff from XD
16-SHOP AROUND:
FACTORIES turn out heavy weapons and ammo, so they have the best prices on 'em; they also have the biggest inventories.
COMMERCE CENTERS are the middlemen, so they have mid-range prices.
CARRIERS/FIGHTER BARRACKS are the end users, so they tend to charge a little bit more.
Rlaan & Aera turrets can be found at any of these, but they're scarcer and more expensive at bases & ships not owned by the faction producing them (reconditioned captured units or trade-ins).
17-THALES UPGRADE OVERDRIVE: the Predator Overdrive from Forsaken Industries LLC delivers predatory performance. By vectoring exhaust gases from a secondary breeder reactor, the Predator boosts the turning jets, allowing your reconditioned Andolian corvette to swoop on her prey like a bird of prey. The Predator installation also includes auxilliary vertical and horizontal thruster nozzles and an overboosted thrust reverser. All of this comes at a cost of course; after all this overhaul requires extensive labor intensive refitting and those Astrotech Union technicians don't work cheap! The Predator weighs in at 800 tons and takes up 150 m3 of upgrade volume, but will pay for itself in one or two good "salvage" operations ya pirate you! Real gas guzzler though...cool watching the gas gauge move on a 88,000 ton starship!
18-Worked in downscaled thrust vectoring into the Mercury and Ktek Overdrives.
19-GAUSS AMMO (which is honestly the main gun for the Leonidas preloaded with enough ammo to last a lifetime) now costs 32 million credits, takes up 180 upgrade space and wieghs a cool 45,000 tons (15,ooo for the ammo and the other 30000 for the big honkin gun). So nobody is sticking that sucker in a Robin now! Unless they don't care if they can move or not....it'll still fit into the Thales but barely and uses a gawdaful amouont of energy, so you pretty much have to fire just this thing if you wanna get off more than 2 or 3 shots before bleeding even a Condor Cap dry. And it really cuts into the performance edge of that Predator overdrive 'cause the manuevering inertia goes up too.
20-RESIGNATION AMMO now takes up 20 upgrade space and weighs 4 tons, so you can't fit it in a Robin, though it'll still shoehorn into a Pac if she isn't overloaded w/ upgrades.
21-Updated the size notepad in Units/Subunits so all the turrets in a Thales can be upgraded XD Mine has Rlaan 'mini-turrets'(ironically this is a Medium turret but they're the biggest ones on my ship) where the turret_120's were; cappship pd longs swapped out for the flackturret_90's; Aerapd's where the turretpd's used to be now.
22-Edited the Ox's docking points so that you can dock 2 Oxen nose to nose, or bring in your Thales at a 90 degree angle and dock with an Ox, if you're verrrrry careful.
23-Built a TRACTOR TURRET to fit in the turret_120 slots of a Thales (or any other ship that uses a 'medium' turret. 09/04/12 ooops it quit working....
24-Stuck some loot in the Aera fighters. While I was at it I convinced the Captains of the Confed carriers to pay a premium for contraband delivered into thier 'safekeeping'.
25-Aera fighters drop Aera Contraband now, & Confed carriers pay extra for it! Sort of a standing bounty on the Horse People of the Apocalypse XD
26-Installed tractor beams in the VIGILENCE & beefed up her upgrade space so you can refit her with replacement reactors etc like the Thales as she gets shot up.
27-Made the new uln interceptor, the KNIGHT, available for sale aboard Yeoman & Gleaner freighters.
28-Added a nice fat docking ring above the masts of the Gleaner (figure they probably need to resupply the occasional Thales in deep space). Haven't had a go at landing Matilda on a Gleaner yet...haven't spotted a Forsaken one lately and the Uln and I aren't on such good terms.updated 09/11/12 Matilda juuussst fits!
29-RIPPER CONFED LIGHT GUN: I always wanted a downsized version of the Razor for use in fighters with light gun mounts. Now we have one! Damage is half that of the Razor; refire is 8 shots/second vs 5. Packs 500 rounds in a light hardpoint (my testbed).
30-REAPER now has longer range and a slightly higher refire rate. I had always wanted one of these until I bought one...and found it inferior to the Razor (with the original refire rate it had much lower damage per second in spite of being a heavier weapon and using much more energy).
31-Busy day today! Also built a capship-light sized Reaper knock-off, the REAVER antimatter cannon...AND a capship-heavy version, the RAPTOR antimatter cannon! Flight tested the Reaver on my Vigilance. Nice killing power. Really sucks down that big fat capacitor though! Haven't had it up against anything big yet, but my Vigilance eats Nicanders alive! When I actually manage to hit them that is...this thing is really more for large targets.
updated: took Matilda out w/ 3 Raptor Cannon 2 Reaper Cannon weapon loadout on a bounty mission on a Thales. Daddy likes! Well worth the expensive ammo for this kinda killin' power XD
Took out my Robin with 3 Rippers on a Nicander bounty. Didn't even touch the Stormfire & IFF missile loadout. Like the Razor, they're tricky to hit with, but when they connect its TKO in a couple of bursts. The high refire helps some, though like the Stormfire, you'll find yourself RTB for a reload on those long Sweep missions. Rippers rip through thier 500 round magazine rat quick y'all!
So now the Confed Weapons lineup for 'hybrid' guns is:
Ripper light mount autocannon
Razor mediuim mount autocannon
Reaper heavy mount cannon
Reaver light-capship cannon
Raptor heavy-capship cannon
32-VIGILANT CAPSHIP ARMOR: upgrade replacement for the armor that comes with the Vigilance. 7020 all around; 6600 tons. Works on the Thales lineup too, if you don't mind the extra 2200 tons over the Corvette Armor upgrade.
33-NEW MISSILES:
Slinger heatseeker; 1/2 the range, but 1 1/2 x the killing power and faster lock-on than the Heatseeker, for those knife-fight close in furballs XD
Stalker Bounty Hunter missile; slightly smaller payload than the Image Recognition missile, but double the range and an EMP kicker to stun those targets that try to pull a winger and SPEC away XD
34-Those pesky Dodo's now have the new LOOT AI; instead of goofing around shoving ships into bases, now they spend thier time more productively, 'salvaging' cargo (and stealing missiles).
35- COMMIE CANNONS:
-> 23mm Autocannon (light mount): Drawing on schematics from historical references, the ISO designed an elegantly simple weapon. Using old fashioned chemical propellant to hurl a simple fission warhead, the 23mm autocannon can be produced even on worlds with limited manufacturing infrastructure. lght mount/refire 4 rounds/second low velocity 9km range high yeild. *and a wicked sound effect...borrowed 'explosion.wav for the gun sound, so ya get a visceral 'boom boom boom boom' from a one second burst*
-> 37mm Autocannon (medium mount): beefed up & slightly lower refire rate (3 booms/second).
*Available at Forsaken Shipyards, Desert Planets and aboard Gleaners
*All the really good weapons seemed to belong either to the Confed, the Rlaan or the Aera...so I figured what the heck, why not give the 'bad guys' some good guns...
These hit really hard IF you can manage to hit something with 'em. The range is set at 9k, but most of the time I can't hit a fighter unless its filling my canopy! Low velocity means really long lead with the targeting pipper.
*Sometimes with these guns I find myself passing the target to get the lead right...then firing a burst and moving out of the way while my victim flies into it!
*Be careful not to hit boost after firing a burst...you can run over your own ammo! Been there done that, got a 'Shot myself down' T-shirt :O
36-ISO Hammer now has 23mm autocannons; ISO Sickle has a 37mm autocannon.
37-Seaxbane.hunter now available as a Cargo Wingman. Ripped out the wussy parking lot cop guns and gave her a pair of Rippers and a 37mm autocannon. "Pitbull of Space" Nice & compact @ 450 m3 & 25 tons/less than half the space of most manned light fighters.
38-VIGILANTE upgrade reactor for the Vigilance; 37,500 MJoules.
INTALLATION:
Just cut & paste or copy & paste the included files into the Vega Stike folder in your computer's hard drive something like my "computer/c/program files/Vega Strike"
"AI" "master_part_list.csv and weapon_list.xml go right into the front page.
units.csv, vessels, and subunits folders go into the Units folder.
HICKUPS:
1-Stormfire ammo now shows up in the upgrade screen, but you still can't actually buy or sell it.
2-Same thing for something called a Spacebomb.
3-Designed a new shady upgrade called "Auxilliary Fuel Tank" to give light fighter pilots an option to avoid running out of gas on those long "Sweep" missions...
unfortunately, while I got the thing to show up for sale, and install, and all the other stats are correct (extra 2 tons of fuel, 2.2 tons added mass,-2 Cargo)
the extra 2 tons of fuel don't actually show up....gotta find a way to install the fuel LINE and approprite valves and solenoids apparently *shrug* *sigh*
4-Got the CLOACKING DEVICE to show up for sale as upgrades/Experimental....but I still can't install it on any of the ships I own or can buy at Watson carrier, that I've already edited with Cloacking stats eg energy consumption/cloak_min
I *think* its a prohibited upgrades problem...might've misspelled something....who knows.
For some reason we seemed to have lost the Condor cloacking stats....redid those, but still haven't found a Forsaken shipyard or asteroid shipyard to try her out.
5-Designed another shady called SPEC Ballast to dampen those annoying yo-yo autopilot flybys...gotta figure out where I got the stats fubarred...shows up as a 99% reduction in mass instead of increasing the Warp Cost by a factor of 10.
6-Built a copy of the Tractor Turret which worked fine for a while but now i can't install it in any of the biggies I own (Thales.stock, Matilda, Mule, Kierkegaard). Seem to have lost it when I built another turret called Jackhammer Turret. Which I also can't seem to install...
7-Built a multi shady called Hull Reinforcement, but although it shows up for sale, it doesn't have the right stats & won't install. Need some serious help with those cussed Shadys!
8-Can't seem to load any Resignations lately...I don't recall changing it since the last time I playtested it...had similar trouble w/ the Confed torpedo but fixed it by rearranging the weapon_list.xml....hmmm....
WORKS IN PROGRESS:
1-Vega Strike v5.1r1 has its units.csv & master_parts_list.csv totally redone, so we had to go back to scratch to edit the Killer Mod back in.
So far we've got Contraband & the usual Yeoman/Gleaner loot re-edited so you can make a killing while you go around killing haar matey.
2-You should be able to escape in an Escape Pod again, haven't manageD to get shot down since I edited that one yet *shrug*
3-I think the Jackal needs a paint job...haven't managed to buy one yet to check her out, but I noticd the vessels/Jackal file doesn't have a .png in it. 09/02/12 wrong about that...bought one aboard a Forsaken Gleaner. The Jackal has a killer paint job. Wrong about her stats too. Even after I put the originals back in she's way too Uber. Turns out her mass is only 24 tons. Which imho is way too light/ the tiny Derivative weighs in 40 tons heavier.
4-I tried to give the new Confed Reactors & Confed/Rlaan thrusters sound effects, but no luck so far.
5-I'm trying to work out a way to make adding a bigger reactor increase your ship's thrust...which is how I wound up with the Mercury and Ktek Overdrive...
I tried just sticking in the correction factors directly but that only screwed up the stats on the Upgrade Screen...maybe a subunit link to a dummy multi_upgrade file?
6-THALES.STOCK WEAPONS:
TURRETS: only the turret pd's show up to sell. Seems to be an issue of missing listings in the Master_Part_List.csv
Tractor Turret only works in manual mode "[" key to enter turret. Even made a custom AI called 'Loot' that targets:
Inert
Cargo
Torpedo
Missile
Bomb
(the last 3 so it will try to catch 'em before they detonate/ have accidentally caught missiles with regular tractor beam guns before...figure it can't hurt)
Gonna try taking out the color feature in the tractor turret's bfmx files next...I've noticed that turrets won't fire at neutral (yellow) or friendly (green), even when you use TCNT and shift P to order them to. Maybe if we make it color blind it won't know the difference. Update 09/04/12 hmmm colorblind radar didn't do the trick either.
7-Custom turret AI 'Sniper' targets torpedos, missiles, bombs, mines, turrets. (need to work out the kinks in making custom turrets so I can actually install the custom AI)
STUFF THATS BUGGY IN THE 5.1r1 RELEASE:
(that I'm fairly sure I didn't break while modding....fairly sure...)
1-Gawain.confed has a Gawain Milspec package that SAYS it has a fair sized reactor...only she puts out 0 joules :O
Gawain.highborn has all the right stats for the Gawain_Milspec package...but the package doesn't show up in the Upgrades screen!
2-Weapon sounds don't always work.
3-Watson Confed carrier has a hangar deck that's too small to land even a Pacifier torpedo bomber. Anyone know how to stretch a .bfmx file?
For a temporary fix I stuck in a Docking Mount I borrowed from the Shaper Carrier Midwife (hey they'd need to be able to dock freighters with her to resupply in space).
08/27/12 2AM: Okay, now she has a set of Docking Mounts running along her upper (or is it lower? hard to tell in space) deck. This really makes more sense anyway...
they don't fly jet fighters INTO an aircraft carrier. They land on the deck. Gonna have a go at sticking some landing lights on there. Made a "Watson experiment" savegame so I can peek in and see how everything goes together. BTW the new DMs are offset 2 meters above centerline and thier size is .75 meters, and the bottom edge kisses the deck.
That means its only about 3 meters from the outside top deck to the outside bottom deck...seems a little smallish for a carrier...in point of fact those .75 meter DMs take up most of the height of the inside of the deck...which means it can't be much more than 1.5 meters vertical clearance in there...I thought the Pac was bigger than that. Oh that's right...she is...she scraped the ceiling and got stuck:P
WISH LIST:
1-It'd be awesome if we could get some custom .png's for the Killer upgrades:
Resignation Ammo
Pegasus Reactors
Mercury Overdrive
Ktek Overdrive
Capship Armor
Stingray Reactor
Predator Overdrive
2-Some Killer custom paint jobs for the Hunter variant Cargo Wingman fighters. I'm thinking maybe a reddish-brown Desert Planet camo pattern with yellow & black nose/tail/wingtip markings...Killer Bee squadron markings XD
3-A better way to recover Cargo Wingmen than the current 'chase 'em down and tractor 'em in' thing we have going now. It not only takes for EVER, last time I had enough dough ingame to regularly use Cargo Wingmen, I wound up with the Privateers Faction turning enemies with me because tractoring in a ship is considered an act of war...so my wingmen started showing up Red on my scanner and spamming me with hate mail, and eventually turned against me.
What we need is an AI instruction that says "Dock Here". The code's gotta be in there somewhere waiting to be finagled...after all the NPC ships are all the time cutting in front of me when I'm trying to dock at a station! So they MUST know how to do it...we just need someone to figure out how to TELL them to dock!
4-Landing Lights: in some of the darker systems, its a mother bear to land on a station or dock with a ship. Easiest way I think would be to make a 'weapon mount' type upgrade which would mount a 'beam weapon' with a broad mesh coning out in a wide cone and 0 damage. Anyone know how to build a dummy weapon from scratch?
5-WATSON CARRIER:
a)Could use some landing deck stripes painted along her new topside heavy fighter landing strip and underside freighter landing strip.
b)Landing beacons for same.
c)Gantries installed on her new underside freighter landing strip.
6-SMARTER TURRET AI'S: atm the quickest way to PO factions randomly is to turn your turrets on FAW in a crowded space, or really to use them at all if there are any non-hostiles anywhere nearby. This seems to be because:
a)The turrets will fire even if the intended target is nowhere near thier gunpipper.
b)The idiots usually keep shooting after the target is destroyed.
I think they really just need a simple little code add-in that says, "don't shoot if you don't have the target in your crosshairs". Anybody know how to write that?
THE KILLER MOD TEAM
- KillerB, Cat Herder
- W03, Turret Mods
- Turbo, Killer Paint Jobs
oh oops here's the subunits folder, which goes into the units folder