Vega Strike Forums

The bartender at the Rllan Gas Mine in Abhakan gave me a hot tip: The Confederation in dying to get thier hands on some intact Aera weapons...if I can get my hands on some, haul 'em to a Confederation R & D facility and they will make it worth my while.

First question: what sector would I find these Aera weapons for sale? I've carefully left the Aera alone so far, so my rep w/ them is okay. I've found a couple of Aera planets so far, and picked up some of thier Adv Torpedoes on a neutral planet, but whenever I leave one of these systems with an Aera planet in it, I keep finding myself in Human, Uln, or Rllan space.

Second question: would the Aera Adv Torpdedoes count as Aera Weapons, or do the Confed geeks need some Aera guns instead?

Third question: if I do manage to get my hands on some Aera guns, where would I find a Confederation R & D facility?

thanks, KB

btw....why don't I ever see any Rllan hanging out in the bar at the Gas Mine? These guys are obviously MAJOR alcoholics....they pay 210 credits for a litre of wine!

Try looking through the cargo missions for ones which take you through Aera territory, or look on the system map for green systems. Cargo missions from Aera planets should take you to other Aera systems, look out for their star fortresses or Trantor class planets.

The torpedo and PESC guns are the only Aera weapons I've seen.

Okay, I'll try that....thanks for the tip
btw what the smeg is a Trantor Class planet?

When you target a planet you'll get a planet class followed by the planet's name. So Arid:Planetname, Desert:Planetname. Look for Trantor:Planetname.

If your question is more general, try googling Trantor Asimov Foundation

Zebedee wrote:When you target a planet you'll get a planet class followed by the planet's name. So Arid:Planetname, Desert:Planetname. Look for Trantor:Planetname.

If your question is more general, try googling Trantor Asimov Foundation

Personally, I think the VS notion of a Trantor planet is a little off from Asimov's city-planet, completely covered with buildings and infrastructure. University planets are closer to the Trantor I envisioned (and, frankly, I'm a little disappointed those don't offer more interesting stuff than they do, but that's another rant. ). Seriously, the capital of a galactic empire is hardly going to be sullied by billions of cubic miles of ugly, FILTHY industry. Not when they've got MILLIONS of other planets to make "industrial!"

Just sayin'.

Note that Trantor planets belonging to the Aera and Rlaan will be called such on the targeting readout, so you'll see them listed as Aera Trantor or Rlaan Trantor. At least, I've seen one Rlaan Trantor marked as such. I'm pretty sure you'll find them mostly within their own respective spaces, however, I do recall encountering an Aera Ice planet outside Aera space. I should look that one up again...

I don't know, the Trantor Asimov envisaged (some of the Foundation prequels) was not just a university planet - it had a university 'section' but also industrial sections, slums etc. But we're heading into territory which are probably better served by taking up elsewhere and with the story arc and guiding vision in front of us

Slightly related, in a more general fashion, but is there a master list of planet types and what they 'produce' anywhere? I've not been able to find one, and it's something which would obviously be of use. Wouldn't mind compiling one if there is sufficient source info laying tucked anywhere within a game file.

Zebedee wrote:Slightly related, in a more general fashion, but is there a master list of planet types and what they 'produce' anywhere? I've not been able to find one, and it's something which would obviously be of use. Wouldn't mind compiling one if there is sufficient source info laying tucked anywhere within a game file.

They're in units.csv. You may need to check your distro/package to find the file, though it should usually be in the units subdirectory of the data section. My Fedora 11 package has it in /usr/share/vegastrike/units.

You may have some trouble interpreting the data. Here are a few sample entries:
These aren't complete records. I cut them off after the *.spr file name, as you can see. You can have fun puzzling out the remainder. I'm just going to point out some (potentially) relevant details:

First of all, plant entries seem to be identified by the "__planets" suffix (with two leading underscores) in the first field. Some, but not all planets also belong to a subfaction of the "planets" faction, that is, they have a path like "./factions/planets/university" in their second field, as you can see for the University planet entry above. These paths actually refer to a subdirectory under the units directory, where units.csv itself is located. I'll touch on that later.

The planet type as it appears on the scanner seems to be the third entry, but it's not entirely clear. While many, like the samples I picked, seem to match types that appear on the scanner (university, oceanic ammonia, and bio simple methane, for example) other types shown on the scanner don't seem to exist! There are entries that look like they might match them ("ocean" for Oceanic, "Bio_Diverse_M_Class" for Bio Diverse, for example), but if they are, there must be some sort of translation going on between this table and the scanner. Personally, that's starting to look a little too "magical" to me.

In any case, back with the second field, where set, these point to subdirectories under units/factions/planets. Each subdirectory contains a single file by the same name, like "units/factions/planets/university/university". These XML files appear to define the parameters of the market on their respective planet types. For various product categories, they define an import price multiplier and typical quantity in stock, and include a standard deviation for each to simulate fluctuation. They also specify the types of mission typically available on that type of planet. Why those are listed as "upgrade" items is anyone's guess... BUT, between these files and units.csv, you MIGHT be able to figure out a little of what's going on.

Good luck!

Thanks athomic 1, much appreciated. I'll have a good look through over the weekend and see if I can come up with a viable end-product for 'reference' purposes. Interesting about the 'non-appearing' planet types though. Something to look out for when I get SVN running at a reasonable FPS

I think it`s just random fluff, sort of like the news articles in X3. That is, they appear to be about ingame events,price changes, etc., but really are not. As for the Rlaan and gas mines, there aren`t any fixer sprites for them AFAIK.

It turned out that there really wasn't any markup for Aera weapons when sold at a Confed research station or any other base...took care of that in the Killer Mod http://forums.vega-strike.org/viewtopic ... 10&t=15160
Forgive the mess, you'll have to dig through the topic to around page 5 or 6 for the most recent uploads.

I know this is an old topic, but I've noticed that Aera weapons are nearly twice the value at Oceanic planets (not nessisarly Confed planets).

I think the tip may be refering to that fact.

Aera weapons are cheapest at Aera Trantor class planets and Aera bases/ships, plus Bio Simple planets.