Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

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KillerB
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Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by KillerB »

Killer's Mods
For Vega Strike 5.0
So far I don't have a true Mod, just some tweaks I've made to some of the files to make my own gameplay more intersting. If anyone would like a copy of my modified units.csv and master_parts_list.csv give me a PM and I'll zip it to ya.

Ejection Pod tweaks:
First of all I made the base price of ejection pods $760,000 instead of the original $760. I thought it was ridiculous that the price for a captured pilot, and his ejection pod, was on the order of a scrap metal price.
Next I tweaked the fuel capacity, speed governor, and acceleration figures for the escape pod. I added an even ton of mass to the thing to make up for the weight of the added fuel. Now one can play ‘hard core’ and actually escape in one’s ejection pod and return to a base, planet or passing ship, in a reasonable amount of time, to call up another of one’s fighters from one’s remuda or buy a new one, and finish that damn mission. A side benefit is that if one attempts to tractor in and capture an escape pod, if one misses then the escape pod drifts slowly away a few hundred meters away, instead of zipping away thousands of kilometers. edit: okay that was w/ a standard tractor beam. The Heavy Tractor Beam still sends 'em scooting away...just now quite as fast.

For my next hack I’m going to try to make a copy of the escape pod with ‘zero’ mass and volume, as a purchasable ‘cargo wingman’. The primary purpose for this is so that if I run out of gas on a mission (hey I love those tiny little fighters like the Robin and the Derivative, and I hate letting to in the middle of a scrap), then I can eject an escape pod and EVA to a base, and finish the mission. I hope that if the fighter I left adrift isn’t destroyed in the meanwhile I can go back an get it later….I’ll let y’all know how that works out!
Later, if I can get a geek to do it or show me how, I want to try to make it so that a damaged ship’s crew will punch out sometimes, leaving a salvageable ship adrift. Then a quick EVA over to the damaged ship, and now she’s a prize vessel. Hey, it’s a great idea, if it’ll work with this code…

Gawain Fix:
I bought a Confed fighter known as the Gawain. It looked like it would be an awesome addition to my remuda, but unfortunately it came with a size 1 reactor, and I wasn’t allowed to trade that tiny piece of crap in for something big enough to run my guns for more than a few milliseconds.
A quick copy of the Llama.begin ‘Restricted Upgrades’ data into the Gawain’s files in the Units.csv folder in Excel took care of that little headache. Now the Gawain is one of my favorites.

Player Flyable Thales:
You know it, you hate it if it’s ever blown you out of the sky on a mission, or chased you down and destroyed your cargo ship. It’s the Andolian manufactured leftover from the First Interstellar War, the Thales Corvette. Now it’s in the hands of pirates and Forsaken pilots.
If you’re like me, you’d much rather shoot someone down and loot their cargo than go back and forth and round and round trading cargo. I started out using my good ole Llama, once I discovered the advantages of phase damage and outfitted her with a set of Hesphatia cannons.
I moved up to the Pacifier, and while the cargo hold on her is half that of the Llama, the bigger guns make quicker work of those Gleaners, Oxs, and Mules. I looked and looked but I couldn’t find a bigger ship that was any good at scavenging. Oh, sure, there’s the plowshare. Lots of cargo space there, but it handles like a brick. Great for trading in if one’s reps are clean, but no good at all for us cold blooded murdering space pirates who are wanted in half the star systems in the galaxy. Likewise the Mule was a rather expensive disappointment as a scavenger. I thought the Ox might have possibilities, but there doesn’t seem to be any such thing as a tractor turret.

I created a Corvette.stock by copy & pasting the Corvette_Pirates files in the Units.csv, and then creating a Corvette.stock file in the Master_Parts_List.csv. Man I love these Excel hackable programs!!! Quick & easy, just like I like my women :wink:

I learned how the damn TCNT widget works the hard way. I ran a bounty mission against some Pirates in their own Thales and when I checked my ‘Info’ stats, I learned to my horror that my kill score on Andolians and Shapers had gone from 0 and 1 respectively to 26 and 58. And now I was hated by the Confed, the LIHW, and a score of others who I had no idea didn’t like people going around mowing down Andolian and Shaper pilots who blundered too near my bloodthirsty turret gunners.

My stock Thales handled surprisingly nimbly, until one day I got the crap shot out of me and then managed to make a dead stick landing. It turns out that I had lost not only a forth of my turrets, but my huge and irreplaceable engine, and all of the ‘Shady Mechanic’ upgrades which had come as standard equipment. I put in the biggest reactor the Thales’ upgrade stats would allow, but she wouldn’t produce enough power to charge the jump drive. Worse yet, now she turned nearly as slowly as a damn Plowshare.
I wound up having to trade that one in on a new used Thales. While I was at it though, I tweaked the files so that now the Thales has enough upgrade room to install the biggest reactor and then some. The size 15 reactor is actually less than half the size at around 14,000 Megajoules of the original Thales reactor which outputs a staggering 30,000 Megajoules. I need to make about a size 20 in case I ever make the same mistake and land outa gas and shot to ribbons.

Note: when attempting to capture downed pilots or intact starfighters, you need to put the target under your nose. For some reason the Andolians installed the hard point for the tractor beam down under the belly of the Thales and towards the rear…like where the pecker would be. I figured this out the hard way. After blowing up several downed pilots and having a few fighters explode on the nose of my Scavenger, I looked at a third person view of my Thales while turning on the tractor beam. It looked like my good used Andolian Corvette was taking a blue piss.

By adding two Cargo Expansions, suddenly my Thales has 10,000 cargo instead of 5024. There seems to be some sort of bug in the program, but at least this one is actually helpful.
The best turret that I’ve found and been actually been able to install in my Thales is the Long Range PD turret. Sadly the awesome Franklin Turret won’t fit a Thales, although it does fit an Ox.

Le Condor Noir:
I’m working on building a modified version of the Thales, with some of the fuel tanks removed to make more cargo space, and to make room to install a cloaking device. The reason I’m trying to make ‘The Black Buzzard’ cloakable is not so much a ‘cheat’ as to make it at all practical. At the moment I seem to spend way too much time swatting flies and getting blown up and having to start all over again, to be able to get anywhere. I wouldn’t mind battling an occasional flight of fighters or one or two capitol ships, but I seem to draw fighters like flies to horse manure, and whole herds of Kiergaards and whatever that thing that looks like a huge carp in space is that those damn slug people the Rllan use for a capitol ship.
Hey, it makes perfect sense if you think about it. Lone wolves like ourselves don’t have the scores of Hyenas and Plowshares flying escort for us like those fat cats in the official Pirates Association. Okay, I could probably just hack my save file and make my reps neutral…but then I kinda like being a bad guy…
I’m making the cloaking device charge time quite a bit slower and the energy requirements quite a bit higher than those of the Schroedinger’s cloaking device, to make things more realistic.

Update: I’ve got the cloaking device installed and working…well sort of. It seems that cloaking a ship this size takes a ridiculous amount of energy. When I turn it on, my drive systems power level (the blue bar on my hud) starts dropping like a rock. The cloaking device goes active, as the blue bar keeps creeping down. After about 20 seconds the cloaking device kicks out and then my drive energy starts climbing again. I’ve tried tweaking the units.csc box under ‘cloaking device energy drain’ but it doesn’t seem to have any effect, even after reducing it by an order of magnitude.

The good news is that the other tweaks I made to ‘The Black Buzzard’ have worked out great (so far). By reducing the fuel load and reducing the overall mass of the ship, I’ve turned the Condor into a dynamo of a scavenger. One unfortunate side effect of my experiment is that I’ve seemed to have accidentally fixed the bug that was letting the earlier model of player flyable Thales double her cargo capacity with the addition of the first two cargo expansion improvements.
The only weapons upgrades I’ve been able to find for her so far are of course the Heavy Tractor (this is actually the first ship I’ve seen which came standard with a Tractor Beam installed), and a turret called the ‘Long Range PD Turret’, which replaces the rather ineffectual original ‘Flak Turret’. I was somewhat disappointed that I couldn’t mount any of the ‘Capitol’ turrets, or even the ‘Franklin Turret’. Why is a heavy fighter carrying a bigger turret than a Corvette can mount? I’m guessing the Franklin must be someone’s favorite pet…

At any rate, with four of the ‘Long Range PD Turrets’ installed, with their 30k range, and with the Condor’s improved handling, she’s made short work of everything she’s been thrown so far. I took her up against three of her poor half sisters, the Pirate Thales, and she danced and pranced around them as she sliced them to ribbons.

More Lootable Contraband:
I’m trying to get the Luddites to start dropping Luddite Religious Tracts (I’ll have to either tweak the price or make them drop thousands of them at a time). So far I’ve got ‘em dropping the same loot as a Thales does, booze, cotton and oil. By the way, that is a really weak reward for blowing up the baddest mission target in the game! Hyenas drop more expensive loot!

The holdup is that the .csv file for ‘Import Cargo’ is in some dialect of Geek that I can’t make heads nor tails of. If I can figure out how those damn semicolons and numbers translate into real (well VR) stuff I can probably also build a tractor turret. The language for the weapons loadout is in the same dialect of Geek.
Once I get the Luddites dropping religious tracts, I’m going to try getting other factions to drop stuff like illegal weapons, overeager immigrants, and zhollus.

Scavenger Turrets:
With a turret mounting a Jackhammer on one side and a Heavy Tractor on the other side, the big klutzes like the Ox would make real scavenger monsters. What??? Am I the only nut who wants to be able to loot whole convoys at a time? Now if I can just figure out what those semicolons and numbers in the ‘Subunits’ box translate into! Anybody got a Redneck-Geek dictionary handy?

Update: if someone decides to take on this project, I think a better choice for the gun side of the Scavenger Turret might be either the FS MWR Laser (Cap ship Light) or whatever is installed in the Franklin Turret.
It may be that we can only mount one type of weapon in a turret. Only hacking and test flying will tell.

Coyote Ugly:
I'm working on making a customized and renamed Hyena to stick in the cargo hold of the Llama.start, pre-equipped with weapons/shield/ecm/scanner, so new players can get right into doing missions if they wish instead of hauling booze, cyberhos & space porn to lonely miners for a few hours. Back and forth, back and forth...not my idea of a good time :roll:

Making the Coyote Ugly was the easy part, and it was the inspiration for me to build a revamped and renamed Thales, Le Condor Noir.
The hard part is getting the thing into the cargo hold of the Llama.begin. My experiment with the Luddite loot drop has only been partially succesful in that I can make them drop something, just not the thing I want them to drop.
I don't know why the 'Import Cargo' box had to be written with all those commas and meaningless numbers instead of just saying for example Commmodidy/Food/Liquor/Space Grog
Can someone help me out with some pointers on how to translate this gibberish and make it my virtual bitch?
[OC]Killer B
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by KillerB »

Le Condor Noir aka The Black Buzzard
I've found that by adding several SPEC Capacitors to this modified Thales, the cloaking device stays on longer before the blue 'drive energy' bar drops too low and the cloaking device kicks out. So apparaently it takes a crap load of energy to run this thing on such a big ship. I tried editing the energy usage figures for a cloaking device upgrade with no discernable effect. I can live with having all those SPEC Caps & thier weight to make the CD work long enough to be practical. It makes the Black Buzzard less uber.

I've noticed though that when I got her shot up real bad in a scrap with seven of her ugly sisters in a Corvette Bounty mission, and made it home with Le Condor Noir showing zero fuel/zero energy and running on reserve drive energy; when I repaired and then launched my reactor was still offline. The game wouldn't let me install a replacement for it either.
I think it may be in this case related to the 'weight savings' from reducing her mass & moment figures, and her fuel figures. I'm going to try restoring the fuel level to the original first. The first bug I noticed with this modified PF Thales was that my repairs are usually 'no cost', but 'repairing' doesn't refuel her. With such huge fuel tanks this isn't usually a bigge; I just work her till she's nearly out of fuel and then either close the game and reopen it, or simply 'suicide', and the fuel levels are back to 100%.

Tractor Turrets
I've had mixed results with my first attempt at this project. I've managed to make what I named the 'Scavenger Turret' show up for sale at the Shaper battleship bases in Trel Meth. Unfortunatly, it won't install in any of the ships I own wich use turrets, the Thales/Le Condor Noir twins, the Ox, or the Franklin. I'm not sure if it's a problem with labeling the turret wrong, or if I'm just not getting all of the subsystems right. I'm leaning towards the latter, as my first attempt was a mixed weapon turret, pretty much a Franklin turret with a tractor beam added, and resized to (at least I hoped) fit the PD slots on an Ox.
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by KillerB »

Le Condor Noir
Making a Condor.blank seems to have fixed the 'zero repair bill' problem, although I haven't tested it thoroughly yet...I had sold off the original 'Black Buzzard' and stuck the equipment and improved turrets into my stock Thales. So I haven't gone hunting in the Condor since making this fix.

Percheron
I bought a Clydesdale.merchant and while I was impressed with the ability to add a tractor beam to her, the Clydesdale just handles like a brick. I built a modified version renamed the Percheron. The cargo capacity is reduced to less than that of a Clydesdale.milspec, in exchange for a souped up reactor/propulsion/attitude thrusters, and the same armor specs and Mounts as the Clydesdale.milspec.
Now if I can just find one for sale somewhere....

Contraband
I went through the rest of the contraband files & edited the pricing. Now 'Illegal Weapons' are worth $300,000 instead of $300, etc. I copy & pasted the 'Contraband' 'Import Cargo' from the Clydesdale's files into those of the Thales_Pirates. Now to get a Corvette bashing bounty mission and see what we get...
[OC]Killer B
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by KillerB »

Killer's Mod so far:
warning experimental!
Save backups of your .csv files before installing :idea:
In this alpha version we have:
2 Player flyable Thales Corvettes, the Thales.stock which is the standard Pirate light capitol ship, and Le Condor Noir, a modified Thales with some of the fuel tanks yanked out to install a cloaking device.

A modified Clydesdale renamed the Percheron, with some of her cargo space traded for better acceleration and maneuverabilty.

Improved payouts for contraband, and the Pirate Thales now drops contraband in addition to the booze, cotton, and fuel oil they used to dump.

Ejection Pod now has enough Delta V and fuel capacity to actually escpape somewhere, for those who with to play 'hardball' & play a mission out after getting shot down.
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[OC]Killer B
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by w03 »

KillerB:

You may have gotten this sorted out by now, but I got the tractor turrets to work. I'm not 100% sure this will work with other turrets, however.

Here goes...

1. Copy a line from the section that starts out aera_turret_pd__upgrades... Paste the line directly below the one copied and change the name to what you want, e.g. Tractor_turret__upgrades
2. At the end of the line, there will be a slot with the turret name w/out underscores, for example aeraturretpd or franklinpd. Change this to whatever you want, e.g., tractorturret.
3. Copy the line for the same turret from the column that starts out aeraturretadvtorp (about 3 sections down), e.g. aeraturretpd. Then change all turret names in the line to whatever you had before, e.g. tractorturret /subunits/tractorturret EXCEPT for the texture/mesh files, such as aeraturretpd.bfmx.
4. At the end of the line, check if it says a weapon, or another turret name. If it says another turret name+gun at the end, for example rlaanturretminigun, then copy the gun line as well and repeat #3. If it says a weapon name, change that to what ya like.
5. Go to Vega Strike 0.50/units/subunits. Copy the folder with the name of the turret you just used (in this case, aeraturretpd), then change the name of the folder to the name of your new turret (tractorturret).
6. Go to size.txt in the same folder, copy the turret used (aeraturretpd), paste it directly under, then change the name to whatever your turret is (tractorturret). At the end of the line, there will also be a turret size. Change this to what you want. (capshippd).
7. If the turret used has a "gun" line (e.g. rlaanturretminigun), repeat steps 5-6 with the gun line.
8. Go to master_part_list.csv and copy the line with the turret used (aeraturretpd). If the turret used is not in there, copy the closest one. (e.g., instead of heavy_beam_turret, use beam_turret). Change the name to whatever was in step 1. (Tractor_turret__upgrades) Make a description, price, etc.
9. Save everything.
10. Go on VS to test and enjoy your turret!

As mentioned before, you may have figured this out already. If so, repeat #10! :D

BTW: Here is a wonderfully disproportionate picture of a tractor turret mounted on a franklin: Image
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by KillerB »

@ W03:
Thanks for the tip!
I think #5 is why I've been able to make a new turret for sale, but it won't mount in anything.
Same for trying to build a replacement mk 30 reactor for when the original in my PF Thales got shot out, and for trying to build 'capitol ship armor'.
I'll see if this won't also do the trick for that pesky FS IR cannon that looks like it would be awesome in my Thales, except for the fact that its a 'Capship-Light' weapon; I've looked through the .csv files & I don't even see any ships at all w/ a Capship-Light gun mount.
Turret sub-units, sure...
too bad you can't just switch out weapons in the turrets.

PF Thales
I've tested Le Condor Noir thouroughly, and the 'repair bug' seems to have been totally fixed by adding a Condor.blank in the units.csv
A side effect is that the dang Cloaking Device works perfectly now...even when I jump through a wormhole, the blue bar still stays high enough w/ a single mk5 SPEC capacitor to keep the CD up and running.

I built a second PF Thales, this one as a Thales.milspec: 'Matilda'. Matilda has heavier armor & extra gun mounts salvaged from a Llan fighter & torpedo launchers salvaged from a Clydesdale.milspec.
I haven't found any bugs with Matilda so far.

Percheron
I own a Clydesdale, and I found it to be a one trick pony as far as I (as a ummm Privateer) am concerned. It does great at destroying other cap ships, chewing whole squadrons of Thales up as snacks. But I have yet to recover a single scrap of loot with this slow, clutzy workhorse.
I built a sister line to the popular Clydesdale frieghter, the Percheron.
The Percheron trades in a large part of her cavernous cargo hold for a bigger engine, bigger thruster & bigger turning jets. I'll let y'all know how that works out for her...
[OC]Killer B
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by w03 »

The thales line looks somewhat like this, correct?:

Corvette__pirates,./thales,Thales,,Vessel,SCAVENGER,"Over the decades, as they were decommissioned from the Andolian fleet and sold to other governments, many Thales class vessels have found their way into the hands of less than reputable parties.",corvette-hud.spr,70,,,,,{thales.bfxm;;},,,,,,,88000,88000,16000,2500,250,250,500,500,350,350,600,600,10000,10000,10000,10000,,,,,50,0,1000,11000,300,TRUE,,,900,250,1,4,3000000,3000000,3000000,8,10,8,2700000,2500000,1500000,750000,750000,750000,750000,135,135,FALSE,TRUE,1000000000,10,180,60,5000,,,,,,,0,0,0,1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1,1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1;1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,,,,mult_shady_moreupgrade;mult_shady_morethrust;mult_shady_moreshields;mult_shady_moregunrecharge;mult_shady_moreshieldrecharge;mult_shady_moreturning;upgrades/Overdrive:1;upgrades/Capacitors:1;upgrades/Reactors:1;upgrades/Armor:1;upgrades/Sensors:1;upgrades/Shield_Systems:1;upgrades/Passenger_Quarters:1;upgrades/Repair_Systems:1;upgrades/ECM_Systems:1,{turret_120;0.80;0.12;-0.08;1;0;0;0;1;0;75}{turret_120;0.80;0.08;-0.08;1;0;0;0;-1;0;75}{turret_120;-0.80;0.12;-0.08;-1;0;0;0;1;0;75}{turret_120;-0.80;0.08;-0.08;-1;0;0;0;-1;0;75}{turret_120;0.68;0.085;1.875;0;0;1;1;0;0;160}{turret_120;-0.68;0.085;1.875;0;0;1;-1;0;0;160}{turretflak;1.72;-.11;-1.375;.966;-0.25;0;0.25;0.966;0;160}{turretflak;1.72;-.14;-1.375;0.966;-.25;0;-0.25;-0.966;0;160}{turretflak;-1.72;-.11;-1.375;-.966;-0.25;0;-0.25;0.966;0;160}{turretflak;-1.72;-.14;-1.375;-0.966;-.25;0;0.25;-0.966;0;160}{turretflak_120;-0.065;0.36;2.4;0;0;1;0;1;0;160}{turretflak_120;-0.15;0.36;2.11;0;0;1;0;1;0;160}{turretflak_90;0;-0.05;-1.45;0;0;-1;0;1;0;85}{turretflak_90;0;0.33;-1.45;0;0;-1;0;-1;0;85}{turretpd;0;-0.07;-1.45;0;0;-1;0;-1;0;180},;;;;;;,,{capshipdisruptor;;;capship-heavy SPECIAL;-0.025;-0.073;2.75;;;;;;;;;1;1}{tractor;;; SPECIAL autotracking;0;0;-1;;;0;-0.17;0.98;0;1;0;1;1},,{;0;-0.3;-0.7;0.3;0},{Natural_Products/Food;1.3;.2;10;20}{Natural_Products/Liquor;1.05;.1;;1}{upgrades/Ammunition;2;.1;5;10},,,0,600,0,,,,,-10,pPiI

Change the mountsize (bold) to {capship-light capship-heavy special} (erase the cap-heavy and special if ya like). This will allow you to mount the IR laser. However, don't have really high hopes for the IR. It doesn't do much damage and looks exactly the same as the standard microwave laser.

Sorry if my stuff doesn't make much sense... I'm an 8th grader, so the programming and all isn't easy for me either.
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by KillerB »

I still don't have the turrets sorted out...if you wanna have a go at editing the 'Scavenger Turret' & then post it back I'll add your callsign to the credits in the ReadMe.txt 8)
I was an eight grader when Star Wars came out...I mean the movie just called 'Star Wars', not one of the sequels or prequels...
and this stuff is hard for me!

Here's Alpha 1.1 of The Killer Mod:
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by w03 »

Here's your scavenger turret: http://filefactory.com/file/a2f65d2/n/K ... urret_.zip

I saw that the files were based on turretpdlong, so I erased all scavenger lines in the units.csv and rebuilt it on that.

I also added the missing entry in size.txt in subunits for the scavenger turret. :wink:

By the way... the turret was tested and it works fine!

NOTE: There are two units.csv files in the zip, because you said you wanted a jackhammer laser on the turret. However, in the original file, instead of a jackhammer, there was an LR Disruptor Beam. In one csv I kept the LR Disruptor Beam, and the other has a jackhammer.
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by pheonixstorm »

sounds good so far, I might have to check it out once I get the latest svn to compile for windows....
Because of YOU Arbiter, MY kids? can't get enough gas. OR NIPPLE! How does that mkae you feeeel? ~ Halo
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by KillerB »

Thanks for the work on the Scavenger Turret w03 :D
Now if I can just get it to download for me...
I seem to be having trouble w/ that File Factory location...
I keep getting a 'application is causing windows explorer to run slowly & may shut down/ warning when I attempt to DL the file :roll:

Since the last release:

More PF biggies:
Watson Carrier
She's the big honking highly automated monster built as a joint project by the Mechanists and the Andolians. I didn't have the 'Scavenger Turret' to work with yet, so I gave her four tractor turrets, one big honking gun, & four 'capship torpedo launchers'.
W/ four forward aiming Heavy Tractor Beams, she scoops up Gleaners & Oxen whole :twisted: :mrgreen:
Not to mention the occaisonal flight of fighters that wanders too close!
I gave her the forward firing gun because I noticed that in ships w/ only turrets, if I try to fry a ship that isn't red on the radar, the turrets just won't shoot...must be a safety feature :roll:
The capship toroedoes...well what the heck...I wanted to try 'em out :P
Be careful with those though...first time I lit one off, I thought I was far enough away, but I got vaporized along with about a dozen or two innocent bystanders :oops:
I should have read the description first...it says these monsters are the size of starfighters, have thier own SPEC drive, and put out around 10 Megatons. It doesn't mention the blast radius, but apparently its more than 30 KM.
I made upgrades allowable on her, since it seemed pretty silly to have a few thousand upgrade space & none allowed...
w/ the shady mechanic 'oversized turning jets', she turns fast enough to chase down freighters & swallow them.
This ship is somewhere in size between a fair sized asteroid and a planetesimal. The SPEC drive gets used up pretty quick, but that makes it feel more like flying something huge.
The conventional drive works surprizingly well....this thing isn't a racehorse by any means but she doesn't just sit there either like that cussed Ox.

Vigilance
The annoying Puritan corvettes that always seem to show up in packs of half a dozen to a dozen. They only have two turrets, but four forward firing Light Capship guns, four torpedo launchers, and 8 or so IFF Capship Missile Launchers.
It handles quite well actually, almost like flying an oversized bomber.

Vigilante
I decided that 8 missile launcers is redundant since the refire time of 2 seconds & the ammo count of 25 means I never seem to empty more than one launcher.
I tore out 2 missile launchers & replaced them with Jackhammers, and then I supersized 2 of the forward firing guns from Light Capship to Heavy Capship.
The guns won't shoot very long continuously w/ all 4 capships & the 2 Jackhammers going, but they don't need to!
I've been getting one-shot kills on Thales & Vigilance corvettes, & taking down Gleaners & Oxen takes only a few seconds.
Clydesdales are another ball game...but w/ the longer range of the 2 monster guns, play 'shoot the turret' from a safe distance for a while & then close in for the kill.

More Loot Drop Improvements:
The Gleaner now gives up AI Cores and Contraband. If you use the Watson & swallow one whole, you can sell the Gleaner Cargo Starship, then buy it, then sell off all of the loot on board, which now also includes a smorgasboard of Hunter starships.
Next step is to do the same thing for the Ox & the Yeoman...

I'm going to wait until I get the Scavenger Turret downloaded & then added to my files before uploading any more Killer Mod Alpha zips.
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by w03 »

Reupload: Here's the file for the scavenger turret. I added another units,csv file, so there are 3 options. Choose the scavenger turret with an lr disruptor beam, rapid fire microwave laser, or jackhammer.

By the way, have you noticed that the kinetic missile is insanely powerful (able to take an capship out in a couple shots), but the stats say it only does 5.4 mJs of damage?

Random point: The Rlaan (my favorite faction) are often underrated. One of their cruisers (shundi) has almost as much health as the Leonidas class dreadnaught (32 million compared to 42 million) and has front guns about 10 times as powerful (3x icepick beams which do 1620000 damage and 1620000 phase damage per second w/ beam stability of 2 seconds). However, these beams only have 4000 meters of range and consume huge amounts of energy. (grand gauss has 155 km range and does 35000 damage and 75000 phase damage per shot).
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by KillerB »

Thanks W03, I was able to download it straight away w/ the attachment. I can't wait to try this stuff out!

I haven't messed around w/ the 'kinetic missile' yet, or any of the bigger Rllan ships. Yes, the whole Rllan military philosophy seems to be 'get in there really close and then hammer them'. I've actually done missions in a Shroedinger with a single of those Rllan Grav-thumpers installed and taken out Plowshares with a single shot. Which is a good thing since the GT only packs 8 rounds of ammo...

btw I noticed that your 'scav turrets added' attachment has already been downloaded 5 times (6 counting me). Either we have a fan base now, or someone has DL it more than once :wink:
[OC]Killer B
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by pheonixstorm »

ooo I downloaded once! Havent played with it yet though, too busy trying to make the win build work with latest svn
Because of YOU Arbiter, MY kids? can't get enough gas. OR NIPPLE! How does that mkae you feeeel? ~ Halo
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by w03 »

No problem KillerB. By the way, I finally figured out how to make my own ship models AND ships in the game!!! There are two problems, however: I can't convert .obj to .bfxm for some reason, so a DOS prompt stating how many vertices the model has shows up when the ship loads. The preinstalled upgrades also appear red and damaged, like what happened to your modified thales. Anyway, these are only minor flaws, so I'm happy to simply have the ship work in the first place!
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by KillerB »

Gah! Had to download the turret added file again...the first try wouldn't unzip for me.
Are you building new ships from scratch then?
You might want to search that .bfmx conversion problem, and if you can't find a reference to it post it under the developer help secton.
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by chuck_starchaser »

That old bug should be gone.
For windows, there's a new mesher.exe under /trunk/win32/ that should work.
For linux, you can build it from svn.
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by KillerB »

Well i got the turret files to download, that's the good news...the bad news is that i don't have a 'save' where I can land anywhere that sells turrets :| I just had to go see the Sol sysem...who knew the Puritans were running things down that way (they don't much care for pirates it seems...)
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by w03 »

Coincidentally, I'm in sol as well. If you want to buy turrets, dock at a clydesdale or some other capship (usually kahans will have a lot as well). Hope it works for you!

Finally debugged my new ships!
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by KillerB »

Congrats on debugging your ships W03 :D
I tried altering the faction reps & wound up crashing my game....
after a reinstall I've finally made enough dough to afford another Thales.
I also did some hacking in the Units/Factions/Planets and made those otherwise useless Rocky and Gas Giant planets start selling turrets & capship weapons.
I was finally able to try out the Jackhammer version of the Scavenger Turret in a Matilda (souped up version of Thales rather than Cloaked).
The good news is that it works fine....the bad news is that
A)the only slot it will mount in happens to be the very last that comes up while doing the [ turret view thing.
B)the 'select target closest to center' button doesn't work while in Turret View.

Current Projects:
I)Making the scanners & engines of capships targetable and destroyable Subunits.
I made a Starscanner3 subunit that mounts the best scanner in a mount 'borrowed' from a TurretSmall.
I edited all the Thales (except Matilda as she's the 'Control Group' for the moment) to use a pair of these mounted just forward of the first pair of TurretGun_120 mounts.
It seems to do the trick.
Next step will be making a targetable/destroyable reactor for the Thales, then start redoing the other Capships.

II) Building a replacement upgrade for the TurretGun_120
I seem to be running into the same dead end I did when I tried to build the Scavenger Turret....it shows up for sale but I can't mount it.
I'm not sure what the heck I'm doing wrong here....
I may need some help again there Wo3...
I'm trying to give the 'aftermarket' Thales an upgraded 120 mount turret using a XASER as the main gun.
Although Jackhammers would probably do the trick.

III) Edited the three biggest reactors to make them replacements/upgrades for battle damaged built-in reactors for Thales & other Capships
I've never found any real use for anything bigger than a mk10 anyhow but the original specs for the Mk15 were way weak in a Thales that had its original reactor shot out.
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by w03 »

Concerning turrets...

As it turns out, the "turretsize.txt" file in the units folder seems to have no purpose. To make a new turret, the turret and size must be added to "size.txt" in
"Vega Strike/vegastrike-0.5.0/units/subunits/size.txt"

e.g.;

Code: Select all

turret_medium,medium
turret_medium_gun,medium
turretbeam,heavy
turretbeamgun,heavy
turretlcsbeam,heavy
turretlcsbeamgun,heavy
turretbeamheavy,capship
turretbeamheavygun,capship
turretscavenger,heavy
turretscavengergun,heavy
As for the turret slots, attach the xml file and I can put the scavenger turret mount where you want it. (Also attach your modified turret_120 files if you want me to make/debug the XASER turret.)

By the way, congrats on the subunit reactors and sensors! (Now it won't take 2 hours to kill a capship with a fighter!)

My current projects are:

1) Thinking of more random weapons to add to the game
2) Trying to make the missile AI work for me
3) Making more capship scale upgrades to add to the capship scale armor I made
4) Screwing around with natural phenomena like nebulas
5) Attempting to mesh and create my own bases/installations
6) Creating my own communications quotes on SVN
7) Meshing and creating more vessels (including some very cheesy/video game like vessels my younger brother convinced me to make)

Good flying (and don't break your hull)!
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by marX »

Does it messes up the saved games ?
I have a lot of credits with me and dont want to loose it !!
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by w03 »

It should not mess up your saved games; there are no changes to the saves directory in vegastrike-0.5.0

The only changes are to the units directory and master_part_list.csv

I've done lots of changes to my copy of VS as well, including some mods to the save files, and I have not lost my 2.6+ billion credits.
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by marX »

w03 wrote:It should not mess up your saved games; there are no changes to the saves directory in vegastrike-0.5.0

The only changes are to the units directory and master_part_list.csv

I've done lots of changes to my copy of VS as well, including some mods to the save files, and I have not lost my 2.6+ billion credits.
And my 5.2 billion credits are safe with me too :D

BTW, is there any mod which enables buying of all the cap ships and weapons ?
I have the Killer's mod with me (bought the "Le Condor Noir" and "Percheron" ships too) but its not enough !
I want more !!!!
I'm a billionaire, you know !!

Also I can't find any turrets for those ships !
Is the ships^^ upgradable ?
For me, it does not work. Percheron have 6 reactors, 4 ECMs.....and lots of stuff but you can do nothing....says its damaged !
So is the case of weapons. Can't be upgraded !!!
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Re: Killer's Mods: PF Thales/Escape Pod Fix/Tractor Turrets

Post by w03 »

Attach your units.csv file and your master_part_list.csv file. I can make all the ships available and fix the damaged parts problems. (On my copy of the game I have already modded for all available ships). However, I must warn you that some of the ships will probably make the game way too easy if bought (such as the beholder).

I'm not sure about the status of upgrading mod ships like the "Le Condor Noir", as I did not design the mod, I just debug it if the programmer says there are errors.
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