Llama, Franklin,other vessels, perfect upgrade.

[plueschinger]

Hello

Sorry for my bad english,
I wanted to know something about the upgrade possibilities of
some ships.
I still have a Llama and around 2000000 Bugs,
so I thought a Franklin is a nice ship, but I didn't got any Information
about the upgrade possibilities for both ships.
I searched in the Vegastrike-Wiki, but I found nothing.

Then I decided to write a Wiki for the Llama:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... Statistics

If someone has the time to read my Llama-Wiki,
and if someone could write a Wiki for The Franklin, this would be perfect,

I don't want to bother anybody, and I'm new in this forum,
please correct me in the Wiki, that I wrote , if I did something silly.

Happy Easter
Regards
Plueschinger

[To Megatherion]

Nice work and idea. Something like a character guide like in Diablo...
I didn't want to mess up your Wiki entry so I'm posting this here:
The best hull upgrade available is aera milspec PolyDuranium as far as I know.

[plueschinger]

Hello

@Megatherion
Thanks for your answer,
I modified my Wiki entry a little bit more,
at the moment I think for the Hull Upgrade, the best is
4 x Add Uplative Hull Coating -> all together Substainable Hull Damage 23,760 MJ
and I think, this will no't the last change.

An aera milspec PolyDuranium sounds very interessting,
I would like tot try it, but there is a problem,
I didn't saw an aerean vessel for ages and the navigation computer
can't find any system owned by the aereans, at the monent I'm hanging
around between vega and sol sector.

A hint would be nice, where to find them (which sector).
I read some news, and I know there are battles between rllan and aera,
but unknown sectors for me.

P.S.
To find the rllaans with the navigation computer is not a problem.

P.S.2
My 2.nd problem still is, how to upgrade a franklin perfect.

Regards
Plueschinger

[BurninLeo]

Hi!

Are you still interested in the Franklin?
If you want one, you definitly shall buy a military one. The "standard" can only be equipped with a mini-mini-reactor not enough for handguns.

The military can be equipped with some weapons, but nothing great at all. You cannot equip much better shields or reactors - not evan another radar (which is annoying with autotracker).

If you like hunting small ships and bomb some bigger one with (two) torpedos, the Franklin Diplomacy Transport is really fun

I stongly suggest disruptor beams - anything else has too few firepower or need to much energy for the integrated reactor.

[plueschinger]

Hello

@BurninLeo
Thanks for your answer,
First I had a millitary franklin, but then then I realised,
there was no way to buy a radar system with ITTS
( intelligent tracking system), so I sold it again and I bought one
with nothing (Stock).
Then the next thing, I bought a shield -system level 7 (quiet expensive),
but there was no way to buy a bigger reactor than level 1,
than I had my second multishield regenerator and a big energy problem.

Next step:
By the way my system is linux,
I looked at the /usr/local/games/vegastrike/units/franklin files

And there I saw:
You can use just a reactor level one,like you told
"The "standard" can only be equipped with a mini-mini-reactor not enough for handguns"
but you can upgrade it 10 times with reactor capacitance,
so the next problem, reactor capacitance upgrade needs 20 tons of upgrade volume, but the ship has just 16.

Then I tried to hack these files, nothing happened, then I delated the whole
franklin folder, the only effect, I didn't had a picture of my vessel.

Next step:
( I don't like Loki-Installers) and I only have a modem,
so I hope, I can make the old version-4.1 run again, I did it already onetime,
it was a python-2.3 problem, if you can read german, the second posting
in this link.
http://www.linuxforen.de/forums/showthr ... vegastrike

With some luck, I just have to change some numbers in the
/usr/local/games/vegastrike/units/franklin files and recompile it.
and everything is fine, if no't hellcatv and klauss pehaps have an answer
or the ship is not interesting and weak.

Regards
Plueschinger
Que coisa

P.S.
I bought a cheap vessel, a Shizu,
more about this ship soon.

[BurninLeo]

Hi again!

It sounds like you had a lot of fun

If it just the ITTS you're missing, try another way: As far as I know, the only advantage of the thing is that you see where to fire for hitting a moving enemy. Right?

Buy a military-spec und a lot of autotracking capabilities for each of you gun-slots. Then you won't need this stuff again. And it makes fighting a lot more efficient, of course


But I think there's only one reason for which the franklin is worth 2.7 Mio: It is one of the fastest ships - no long periods of wasting time (docking on planets etc.). I also tried a pacifier - and it was horrible!!!

[Ampersand]

ITTS is quite useful for autotracking as well, if I remember correctly. Otherwise you automatically shoot just behind the target.

[BurninLeo]

Hmm - not as I remember.

Use beam weapons - they're better in power usage anyway

[plueschinger]

Hello

As far as I remember, with my military franklin model,
I had 2 Ktek-Beams and 2 Plasma-Guns and autotracking on all weapons,
but even when I only used the beams, I didn't hit the target,
so in my opinion ITTS is very important.
With my LLama with a beam I hit the target always.

But the other problem is the thing with adding reactor capacitance.
In the file /units/franklin/franklin.template
there is 15 times add_reactor_capacitance,

so my question,did anyone ever added reactor capacitance to his vessel,
perhaps there is something, you can buy to make the 16 cubicmeters of
upgrade volume bigger, or it's just a simple programming mistake.
Instead of 20 cubicmeters volume it should be 2 cubicmeters volume.

And I never saw a ship, vessel with more than 16 cubicmeters upgrade volume.

Stay tuned

Regards
Plueschinger

[loki1950]

remember that autotracking is not automatic you have to lock to it "l" before you shoot.

Enjoy the Choice

[plueschinger]

Hello

This is off-topic
@loki1950
Sorry, that I talked bad about loki-installers,
it's very comfortable and installs the game without problems,
but what I miss is the option to just unpack the source
and compile it in the old way (./configure,make,make install),
and I only have a modem, so the CVS-Version is to expensive for my telehphone bill,
and so I don't have any chance to manipulate the code,
I'm just a hobby programmer,
I made a possible migration for python-2.3 (link above) for vegastrike-0.4.1
and the keyboard-events for the game freelords,
which were included in this game ( my bigest success).

In the topic again:
Did you meant "l" like the small L, (lock on target),
this I did for shure, or the big "I" like Ironman?

Regards
Plueschinger
erros são chato e também chatos são chato

[BurninLeo]

Hi!

Autotracking is automatic in my Windows-version. The Lock-function seems to work only as visual effect...

The only problem is that the Franklin-radar has only a short angle (about 20°) within which the autotracking works.

[loki1950]

plueschinger that was"l" as lower case L for lock on. As for manipulating code a lot off the interface and missions are in Python so have a look as you already have everything youi need in a linux system

Enjoy the Choice

[plueschinger]

Hello

Again about the franklin.

In my opinion, you need both to hit a target very well,
ITTS and autotracking.

Something about the energy of a military model,
like I remember, that means the numbers can be not 100% correct, but nearly
Energy Subsystem:
Recharge: 5,000 MJ/s
Weapon capacitor bank storage: 150,000MJ/s

With my experiments, I wasted a lot of money.
And I still think, that you can upgrade it with 15x add reactor capacitance,
but you can't upgrade reactor capacitance,
because it needs 20 upgrade volume.

So here is a very bad and very simple hack, to allow an upgrade until a reactor level 8, which has more or less the same energy than a military model.

I don't know, if it works with windows.

@BurninLeo and everybody
If you have enough money, save your game,
do the following hack and buy after it a stock model of the franklin.

Find the file: /usr/local/vegastrike/units/units.csv
The path is for shure a little bit different in the beginning for windows.

Open the file units.csv with an editor.
Linenumbers I can't give, my editor shows only line number 1.
Find the following entry in this text with the search function of your editor:

franklin.template

Four-five lines down you find:
{reactor_level_1;;}

change it to:
{reactor_level_8;;}

and save the file and start the game again.
Suddenly you can buy reactors until level 8, if you have the money.

On my computer it works perfect, don't try to make a 4-sides-shield,
that doesn't work, it is more complicated.

Regards
Plueschinger
Jakkadakkadah!!!

I would be interested, if this hack works on other computers and systems too.

[loki1950]

plueschinger you can edit the csv much more easily with OO calc or any other spreadsheet program makes finding the right coloum to change easier.as for the effect of your edit on XP and OSX they should work with no problems we are a cross platform project afterall

Enjoy the Choice

[plueschinger]

Hello

@loki1950
Thanks you for your help and advises,

What do you think, about the "add reactor capacitance" thing,
I think the upgrade volume should be 2 and not 20,
and many ships have this ability,
just look at /units/***/***.template,
but they all have just 16 cubicmeters upgrade volume,
I don`t know even one vessel, which can use "add reactor capacitance.

Regards
Plueschinger

[BurninLeo]

My ship's Wookie is just on vacancies. And I do not want to screw around on this ship myself. Do you know what such an oversized reactor whould make the ship look like?

The Franklin (in its original style) is something like a notebook. Smart, fast and very cool. But have you ever tried to put another graphics card in your notebook? This ship is a masterpiece of exactly balanced components - making it fast as light, but with enough firepower to make space-trash from some pirates.

If you want to make a hack: Polish the hull, add some decent details to its design and always make a hand of fans stand around this ship when docked


btw: Image a lubricious dealer who wants you to buy a brand new ship. And he says: "Hey dude - put in this ship whatever you want from my stock and have a test-drive. But leave me your credit card for security."

Thinking about the (bad) surprised when buying a new ship - that would be a cool feature, eh?

[prestidigitator]

I just finally bought a Milspec Franklin. MAN is it fast! You are right that the reactor STINKS, though. Even on the Milspec version it might as well not have the heavy weapon capability. Even with only light laser beams it uses more energy than the reactor can produce, and the reactor takes 46 seconds to recharge completely! Yuck. I guess you have to rely mostly on the turrets.

[plueschinger]

Hello

I thought a lot about the reactor capacitance thing for the franklin and other vessels, and I think, it is smarter to hack this:

Find the file /vegastrike/master_part_list.csv
Find the line:
add_reactor_capacitance,upgrades/Capacitors/Reactors,40000,20,20,"@cargo/cargo_hud.png@Provides additional energy storage for main capacitor bank"

Change it to:
add_reactor_capacitance,upgrades/Capacitors/Reactors,40000,20,0,"@cargo/cargo_hud.png@Provides additional energy storage for main capacitor bank"

Just change the second 20 to 0, and a lot of ships can be upgraded with
several times add reactor capcitance, depends on their /units/.../...template file

Don't do both hacks, this would be cheating and you create a supership.

Happy Vatertag
Plueschinger

[loki1950]

plueschinger cool hack to bad i can't use it at the monent my XP hd did the ticky-toc sunday evening and no more boot or grub so i can boot into my fc5 install so i'am subsisting with Knoppix 4.0 till i get a new drive

Enjoy the Choice

[plueschinger]

Hello

Thanks to Loki,
that you think, that this is a cool hack
I am having FC4 and Konqueror makes big problems to attach a file,
so this perhaps is a firefox test.( No Firefox did it)

This is mostly out of topic.
With Konqueror it's impossible to attach a file,
So the 1st file just has the hack, the other one "deutsch" has a lot of translations into german.
If you hack master_part_list.csv, then you can translate it too,
This is a first start to try Internationalisation, first into german, and at this stage only the upgrade part,

Some translations are quite funny, for example add-aera-hull-coating:
By lining the hull in radiator vanes embedded in high temperature ablatives sitting on a kinetic distributor, energy is spread over a broader region of the hull, allowing the hull to take more damage before any one part collapses."

Mit dem Belegen der Huelle mit Kuehler-Windfahnen, eingebettet in Hochtemperaturablative, die auf einem kinetischem Verteiler sitzen, wird die Energie verbreitet ueber die ausgedehnten Regionen der Huelle, was der Huelle erlaubt mehr Schaden einzukassieren, bevor irgend ein Teil kollabiert."

So, if you can speak german, download the "deutsch" file,
give him the name "master_part_list_csv" and replace the old file.
This is just a test, I hope you like it.

@To Megatherion
Bitte ausprobieren, das ist nur ein Anfang, das Spiel zu uebersetzen,
Ich brauche ein paar Tester, bis jetzt sind nur die Sachen im Upgrade room
zum Groosteil uebersetzt, dass heisst die descriptions.
Enjoy your partically german Vegastrike.

If I translated the whole file I start a new tread in Contributor help & Internal Howtos

Regards
plueschinger

[Zeog]

If I translated the whole file I start a new tread in Contributor help & Internal Howtos

For your information: there is an entire subforum devoted to translation of vegastrike. There even is a german translation thread. You might want to check that out before "reinventing the wheel".

[Halleck]

I think that work on the in-game german translation project stopped, as they were waiting for a better translation infrastructure. There is a current ongoing effort to translate the wiki documentation, though.

It would be a good idea to coordinate with those guys in any event. Once there are some files done I can even put them in SVN... I made a temp directory for translations a little bit ago, and we have a partial italian translation already.