Concept for a New mod, need help of course.

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AVBJim
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Concept for a New mod, need help of course.

Post by AVBJim »

Concept:

Ships:

All ships have their performance data/mass calculated based upon their intended use. Ships will also have a basic set of equipment, based upon their use, that is calculated in as part of their base mass. Example, a cargo ship has X volume of cargo space, the base mass and performance specs would be based upon that volume being filled with cargo. The mass for cargo will be based upon average mass/volume of available commercial cargoes. The governors on the ships will be set based upon you having a full load of average mass cargo. So being under loaded will not affect your performance specs unless you change them. If you change them, your ship could get damaged or destroyed when you over-stress the frame during manoeuvring.

The definition of a ship will be the hull and cockpit. All other parts will be modable, within reason. I.E. you cannot put a Mule's engines on a Llama.

Military ships, fighters, bombers, milspec, etc will only be available after you have earned the trust of the military. The military does not sell full spec fighters to civilians. The military ship hulls will be available through salvage that is rebuildable but the military left floating in space or junked as too costly for them to fix. Milspec weapons will not normally be available for sale, however, you can acquire them if you are first on the scene of a recent battle and salvage hulls before the military sends in clean up units to de-weaponise the hulks. A black market system will be created to give limited access.

All non-military craft will start with turrets only. Yes, all ships, except fighters will have turrets. There will be milspec and civilian turrets. Again, milspec will only be limited in availability.

All volume in a ship will be available for upgrades/cargo. No split between the two. Volume is Volume.

Ship availability will be based upon where the ship is manufactured. If a ship is an andolian craft, then it will be more readily available in andolian space. Elsewhere, it may be rare to find it, depending on it's usage. General use cargo ships will be available almost universally. However, you won't find Confed/human ships in Rylaan or Aera space (except maybe in conquered systems) and vice-a-versa.

Ships suffer from wear during regular use. Don't do inspections for awhile and you could have failures. Current condition of your ship will be saved. No more free fuel by saving and then reloading.

All ships will be available either through sale or capture. If you acquire a carrier, you will be able to move all your non-capital ships to there and can launch and dock at your own carrier.

All Cap-ships will be multi-crewed. This means if you have one, you will have to hire crew members to run it. On cargo ships and shuttle class ships, you will have the option of hiring specialist, but can still run without them. Your turrets will become more effective if you have a gunner. A ships mechanic will be able to make repairs in-flight, assuming you have spare parts and repair robots for him to control. You can have a basic repair AI do this also, but a mechanic will be more capable and faster.

Equipment:

Milspec will be milspec. The military research has availability of technology not on the open market. If you don't have good relations with a military, you don't get milspec except on the black market.

Everything is modable. You will be able to mod every aspect of your ship. Even add to the hull. Of course, your performance will be affected by doing so. Some mods, such as putting capital ship parts on a fighter will not be available. But if you want a large weapons mount on your Llama, you can pay to have it added.

Spare parts: You cannot make repairs in-flight if you do not have spare parts and materials. You will have to purchase these and keep them on-board (yes, taking up cargo space) if you want this option.

SPEC Drive and Jump points.

Jump points will no longer be un-regulated. Each point will have a Jump station that controls traffic. You will have to contact the jump station, which will then que you and the controllers will control you jump, not you. You will be able to just barge through and do an uncontrolled jump but will risk collision and will be accessed a fine. You will also upset the faction controlling that jump point, especially if you don't pay your fine. All jumps between fighting factions space will be unregulated.

SPEC drive will be changed to allow you to set the velocity at which you exit SPEC. Assuming of course, that you made the change in velocity in time for the calculations to be made, if not, you come out at the designated point at whatever velocity you were able to reach.

Leaving SPEC, you will be at a designated distance from your target and will always be heading straight for it. It is your responsibility to make sure you don't exit so fast and heavy that you hit it instead of docking. However, if you do, the stations will have repulsers to knock you off of a collision course. This will result in a fine and damage to your ship. If you do it enough times at the same station, you will be banned from docking at that station. Failure to pay fines will also get you banned.

Jump points will have to be a given number of AUs or Planetary Units away from stars and planets to function.

Factions and missions:

There will be an increase in factions and a more complex system of managing them. Doing missions and kills will of course affect you factions. But, if you kill a pirate in shaper space, you won't gain with factions who don't like the shapers. How much each faction changes will be calculated upon relations between who you did the mission/kill for and how others feel about them.

There will be military factions added. You will have to do missions for the military in-order to raise the faction. What milspec and military use items are available to you will be determined by this faction. Refusing to do a mission for a military will result in a decrease in faction for that military. To do mission, you will have to become a reserve member of said military. This is going back to the time when Privateers got sponsorship (Marques) from a government to pursue commerce raiding and hunting. Military equipment and milspec mods will differ from faction to faction and only be available at a particular factions bases.

Fixers will be created to offer missions from the different factions.

Bases:

Bases will be logically based upon their function. Example, mining bases will always be in asteroid zones or near gas giants. There is nothing to mine in deep space, so no reason for them to be there. Military bases will be based near habitated planets, jump points or critical resources. Changes will be made to all the base types and the number and availability of a base type will be determined by how long a system has been occupied of the system.

Some services will be made available at certain types of bases but not others. The ability of a base to do repairs will be determined by it's type. Only shipyards and military bases will be able to accomplish full repairs and modifications. Other base types will only be able to do temporary patch repairs with usage limits.

Military bases will only do repairs if you have good faction with that military.

Planetary Systems:

Redo all the planetary systems based upon current theory of solar systems. Life bearing planets/moons can only be in liquid water zones, or whichever zones allow liquid forms of your breathing requirements.
AVBJim
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Re: Concept for a New mod, need help of course.

Post by AVBJim »

Now, what do I need help with.

Mass/performance specs. I have tried changing the base mass in the Units.csv and working_units.csv and doing what is necessary to get them into the game. However, all modified ships still perform based upon their original base mass, even when base mass is displaying at 100%. I have also tried changing the moment of inertia, but to no effect. What other files effect the performance and mass of the ships?

SPEC Drive-what files control the behaviour of the drive system?
strook
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Re: Concept for a New mod, need help of course.

Post by strook »

You Need c++/Python Knowledge for this.
Try at first change a simple thing and inspect the code.
The thing you may need to look at could start at src/savegame.h, or src/main.cpp.
Look for the gameconfig load in.
Maybe it's located there what you're trying to find.
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AVBJim
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Re: Concept for a New mod, need help of course.

Post by AVBJim »

Thank you for the suggestions.

I am new to C++ and Python programming. I have read the books and done the tutorials, but they are all simplified teaching tools. I am undertaking this project to give me a reason to work more with the coding and practice in programing code. It may seem a bit ambitious to start with such a complex program, but working with such large constructs and tracing them out is one thing I really need to learn.

I have found some of the SPEC calculations in the navigation coding. I, however, have not been able to find the base mass calculation. Still analyzing to find it. One problem I keep running into is the statement include Math.h. I cannot find a Math.h anywhere. So, I am still exploring all the includes for each part. An include chain is really fun to chase down sometimes.
strook
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Re: Concept for a New mod, need help of course.

Post by strook »

Math.h is a system lib. It is usually in the /lib or /usr/lib folder.
I don't know if vs calculates any mass (yet).
Maybe take a look in physics.cpp
plz visit my vegastrike project branch here

plz support VegaOgre by donating to it!

My systems: Mac mini 1, 4gig RAM;
i5 Quad Core 2400, 300mbit WLAN, 1,3Tbyte HD, 60 GB SSD,
nvidia geforce 8400gs 512MB, 6gig RAM with Ubuntu 11.4,
win7 and hackintosh installed
AVBJim
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Re: Concept for a New mod, need help of course.

Post by AVBJim »

Beats self profusely with many objects. Duh, how did I miss the brackets denoting a standard header file? Ok, must pay closer attention or will make a big mess.
Thanks guys for the help.
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