Additional item descriptions

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Erk
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Additional item descriptions

Post by Erk »

I have these saved in the CSV file on my computer, this is for critique. I have not been playing long enough to know the purposes of some items to write a description, and there may be some mistakes among mine. Please proofread :)

edit: What do people think about including functionally identical (or nearly so) but practically different "brands" of items? Consider:
laser wrote:Though not a laser by any stretch of the imagination, due to its resemblance to the so called 'lasers' of classic games and movies of the previous millenium, the misnomer has stuck stronger than space rated epoxy. Cheap and utterly dependable, this and other similar low yield exhaust-compression weapons are ubiquitous in armed civilian populations.
Laser: Burton and Wells c92 'Cutter' wrote:The latest entry in one of the most respected laser series, the Cutter has received remarkably poor reviews from specialists. With a relatively high price tag when it hit the market, the Cutter nevertheless exhibited surprising failure rates, and shipyards reported problems with installation and in-flight software bugs. Patches and replacements prevented it from becoming a full recall, but Burton and Wells' reputation has not yet recovered.

Cheap and utterly dependable, this and other similar low yield exhaust-compression weapons are ubiquitous in armed civilian populations.
Laser: NeoPlast Inc. 'Rockbiter' wrote:Billed as "the miner's best friend", NeoPlast Inc.'s dependable Rockbiter design sets the stage as the baseline exhaust-compression 'laser' type weapon. Inexpensive and functional, the major critique offered for these tools is that their construction has a lot of crude, rough edges on which EVA mechanics could rip their spacesuits. Thus far there are no reported events of this taking place.

Cheap and utterly dependable, this and other similar low yield exhaust-compression weapons are ubiquitous in armed civilian populations
This allows the creation of a larger, more immersive game world than simple generic "lasers" and "shield 4s" and such. Now, without further ado, here are a bunch of more generic weapon fluff descriptions.

ion_beam
'@upgrades/medium.png@The electric charge of ionised plasma makes it particularly easy to compress and fire using simple magnetics. Deceptively simple in design, these weapons' expense comes from the difficulty in making an ionised plasma that remains coherent after firing. In the last ten years, advances in this field have led to drastic drops in the accessibility of ion beam weapons, and to a market glut of cheap knockoff brands.

ion_burster
'@upgrades/beam2.png@Actually an older design than the ion beam , the ion burster relies on solid ammunition to form ionised plasma. An ultra-high-frequency magnetic induction field turns a solid vapourisation plate into semicoherent plasma, simultaneously stripping it of its electrons. Before it loses coherency this ionised plasma is ejected at high speeds. The relative simplicity of this system compared to generating a plasma from scratch allows it to be more refined and elegant than the modern ion beam.

stormfire
'@upgrades/swarm.png@Individually fairly worthless, the PC-031 "Stormfire" was designed as a low-yield, low-overhead gun that could be employed in high numbers on fighters with multiple weapon mountpoints, or as point defense on capital ships. Surplus Stormfires have seen additional use among merchants as cheap, reliable alternatives to the laser.

antimatter_gun
'@upgrades/medium.png@Antimatter is not to be toyed with, but some people do anyway. As storing ammunition for an antimatter weapon is nearly as dangerous as being hit with such a weapon, most antimatter guns rely on a "pay-as-you-go" system. Fueled by raw deuterium, they generate antimatter on the fly and eject it using a sophisticated point-repulsion charge. Any error during the firing process will not merely slag the gun, but will evapourate it and a large portion of the vessel on which it is mounted; thus, every aspect of the process is perfectly controlled. Needless to say, such engineering does not come cheap.

tractor_beam
'@cargo/cargo_hud.png@Artificial gravity technology can be used in a wide variety of ways: arguably the most popular is keeping your soup in its bowl. A Nonreal-Point Gravitic Field Emitter, commonly known as a tractor beam, is good at putting somebody else's soup in your bowl.

repulsor_beam
'@cargo/cargo_hud.png@Generating a negative-gravity beam is quite a lot more difficult than it sounds. Repulsor beams, relatively new items on the market, have seen considerable use in large-scale construction projects; some creative combatants have found different uses for them.

tractor_heavy (expanded)
'@cargo/cargo_hud.png@Animal magnetism is overrated. This is just over-engineered. Capable of producing a g-field that could crush a human being, heavy tractor beams are rarely seen outside of deepspace construction yards and piracy organisations.
Last edited by Erk on Fri Dec 21, 2007 2:58 am, edited 3 times in total.
Erk
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Post by Erk »

particle_beam
'@upgrades/medium.png@There's nothing quite like spraying near-lightspeed particles at someone you don't like. Occasionally nicknamed a "squirtgun", the particle beam is inelegant but decidedly effective. Ammunition is propelled by various methods: older models use magnetics and ionised or ferrous ammunitions; however, supplies are limited on long voyages. Newer systems use a low-end compression field along the barrel, achieving an effect that works on nonmagnetic ammunition. Modern compression systems being what they are, this apparently complicated mechanism can be created at low cost... it is also almost universally the feature that fails when a particle beam weapon takes damage.

disruptor_beam
'@upgrades/beam1.png@This design is exceptionally popular among adherents to the trekkie religion, but its effectiveness make it nothing to scoff at. The "disruptor" beam fires an inelegant glut of energy along a rapidly phasing wavelength. When this smear of energy hits a shield system, the disruptor analyses refraction patterns to determine what energy best affected the shield's absorptive grid, and increases the proportion of that energy to rapidly degrade a target shield. The disruptor's inefficient design make it of limited use against hull plating.

shield_breaker
'@upgrades/beam3.png@Protective shields all work along fairly similar principles: the interception and elimination of incoming energy using null-waves. A shield breaker rapidly attunes itself to an opposed shield's null-wave signature and enters the same phase, turning the shield from a subtractive waveform to an additive one. This causes a feedback loop that makes the average shield generator break down and call its mommy. Used against a solid target, the shield breaker is about as deadly as a flashlight.

LR_disruptor_beam (I assume that is long range)
'@upgrades/heavy.png@The disruptor's simple, brute force method for overriding shields gives it a rapid falloff and poor range. Long Range disruptors implement a far more sophisticated detection system to allow focused selection of energy types; in layman's terms, the software selects the energy best suited to degrading a shield before they fire, and adjusts itself to suit. This sophisticated system comes at a high price, but improves range by nearly tenfold.

arc_device (Is this what this does?)
'@upgrades/beam3.png@This short-range cutting beam does virtually nothing against a hardened hull or shield system.

leech_gun (What exactly does this leech?)
'@upgrades/beam2.png@Why wait until your enemy is destroyed to steal from him? He's got all that energy floating around him in his shields...... Exploitation of the second law of thermodynamics is a heady front to be playing with. This weapon causes entropy to increase at a target location, and coincidentally decrease within a storage vessel in the weapon itself; as the contents of the vessel are reordered they are used to produce energy for the ship. Patents on the leech gun are extremely well protected; its manufacturer remains sole holder of the design. As far as any reverse engineer can tell, it should not work, and yet, it does.

crippler (I want to describe this but I have no idea what it is. Help?)

plasma_plume
'@upgrades/light.png@This is not much more than a Zippo lighter for starships. Some even come with stylish flip-top lids.
jackS
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Re: Additional item descriptions

Post by jackS »

Erk wrote:What do people think about including functionally identical (or nearly so) but practically different "brands" of items?
I'm all for it -- for first order approximation it'll mostly just require a lot of fiddling with cargo categories and import lists such that the different "Brands" have affinities in availability and pricing relative to who the manufacturing entity is. Really doing it properly though may require some reworking in how bases(planets in particular) work in relation to factional control.
Still, it certainly adds some variety to things, especially things that will eventually be on the "civilian" side of the spectrum.
On the military side of things, factional variants of certain common weapon types is certainly something I've had on the todo list for a while (but not at very high personal priority :) ).

re: descriptions -- I may not get around to looking them over/integrating them with the data set until I get back from my vacation, so feel free to nag me about them if I don't make noises indicating I've done anything with them.
jackS
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Post by jackS »

I've updated the MPL with weapon descriptions.

I haven't added in any variant weapons yet. The "Rockbiter" and attendant description will certainly make it in. If I don't get around to it this weekend, please poke me shortly before the next weekend.
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