Hey guys,



Long time, first time... I've been modding the files for my own game slightly, however, before I dig deep into trying to add some flavor to the game I'd like to ask here first before starting a hopeless quest.



The generic equipment and specifically weapons of the game kind of bother me. Missiles x,y,z, Guns x,y,z, Lasers etc.. Always Laser, Synchotron Laser for each race.



My question: I've only played around with the assets17 file, but is there a way to reference the same technology with race specific text.

Laser may be the same type, however, if referenced for Empire it might be branded to MK-17 "head hunter" "description: blah blah blah" while the same tech might be branded as "xyz" for the Horatio...



I've noticed that the ships are uniquely named, any love for the modules?



-me

It would be possible, but quite a lot of work. Today, there are a small number of racial techs. A racial tech can replace an existing normal tech, and a racial tech can grant a unique weapon. The hissho upper level missile works this way. So, theoretically, you could replace just about every tech with a set of 8 racial techs, and then add 8 copies of each weapon with a unique name. This will be much easier when the game reads loose xml files, so that you do not have to count whitespace so carefully.

It's not only possible and doable but it's also really easy.

Main problem right now is that one lacks space though.



Basically this is technology:



[code]















%TechA01Description





[/code]



Lines which interested you are:

. Basically this tells that it belongs to Science tree branch, x=--1.8 and y=1 sets it to right side bit up from middle. (or to say more clearly this is tech which opens first tech building) Category="Sciences" tells that it's main group is Sciences. Since techs are quite spread apart in xml different techs are: A line (science), E line (Terraforming and so on), G line (defence and so on) and T line (economy)

. You can put inside this any trait or affinity in a format of: $(TraitScience02Norm1)

This is what I am most interested of. So far game uses Improvements, ships and techonologies. In theory nothing stops one to but traits here unless possible values are hardcoded.

This is researches title, by putting something else than what game has put here you can change name how ever you wish.

%TechA01Description And this is same for description.







For components there are:



[code]




CriticMultiplier="2.0" CriticChance="0.1"

InterceptionEvasion="0"

NumberPerSalve="6"

TurnBeforeReach="0" TurnToReload="0">

Kinetic




RateOfFire="20" NumberOfProjectilesPerSalvo="2"

Priority="50"

BoardSideMaxDuration="2"

BoardSideFireDelay="0.3">















%ModuleWeaponKinetic2Description



2





[/code]



Since first 2 paragraphs have been gone so many times I don't feel that I right now have to explain those.



What you want to notice are: Name="ModuleWeaponKinetic2"

and whole Gui part



Now lets make new weapon: Massdriver and give it to Swarm. (sadly this is bit undoable in game due to space problems)



first we would have to do



[code]





$(!AffinitySwarm)



TechG03







This technology gives you Massdrivers







[/code]



after that we would have to do completly new module which should atleast have following lines (hopefully you add rest or it doesn't do anything):







This weapon is MassDriver



2

Thanks guys for the quick follow up. I was afraid of that answer Hupailija running out of whitespace. As it is i'm already editing comments to make up for subtle changes. Davea, do we have an eta on when assets will be broken down to component files or some similar format. I think I'm just going to have to wait on any changes and just brood...



Thanks again guys!

Actually made me wonder, what happens if one sets



Speed="1800"

RateOfFire="20"

BoardSideMaxDuration="2"

and

NumberPerSalve="6



to completly ridiculous numbers. Would it be possible to create constant beam from one ship to another... and would NumberPerSalve make that beam bigger?



As in say:

Speed="10"

RateOfFire="100"

BoardSideMaxDuration="20"

and

NumberPerSalve="100"



should in theory create slowly moving huge rate of fire object which lasts long and fires multiple minor objects at once.

From my understanding of the combat system it goes like this



Reflection speed: rate at which the gfx moves from one point to another, the gfx calcs the theortical interception point at the current speed. Dmg is determined when gfx intercepts the target. Slow it down to 1 and you'll have a line of super slow moving beams/kinetics from the firing point to the theortical interception point that is impossible far out in the distance. Crack it up 10000 and you never see the gfx animation, instead ships will just fall out of the sky.



Rate of fire: exactly what it sounds like



Broadside: duration of the triggering animation



Numberpersalvo: Doesn't affect gfx just the dmg multipler delivered per gfx hit

iblise wrote:
From my understanding of the combat system it goes like this



Reflection speed: rate at which the gfx moves from one point to another, the gfx calcs the theortical interception point at the current speed. Dmg is determined when gfx intercepts the target. Slow it down to 1 and you'll have a line of super slow moving beams/kinetics from the firing point to the theortical interception point that is impossible far out in the distance. Crack it up 10000 and you never see the gfx animation, instead ships will just fall out of the sky.



Rate of fire: exactly what it sounds like



Broadside: duration of the triggering animation



Numberpersalvo: Doesn't affect gfx just the dmg multipler delivered per gfx hit

Is there any way to make larger beams? :P

Hupailija wrote:
Is there any way to make larger beams? :P

Haha Wave Motion guns for everyone!

I don't believe there is any way to alter the animations for weapons currently until we get access at the gfx files themselves. I really want to make true beams for lasers... not the machine gun laser bullets we have currently.

iblise wrote:
I don't believe there is any way to alter the animations for weapons currently until we get access at the gfx files themselves. I really want to make true beams for lasers... not the machine gun laser bullets we have currently.

Yeah I think I can confirm with Iblise now. FX_Laser_A_Src is what seems to own animation effects I did a sweep through the asset files looking for these gfx to see if they were buried in xml files somewhere but no luck. Looks like pretty much all the prefab stuff is untouchable right now.



On a side note what exactly do these do:

Boadsidemaxduration

Broadsidefiredelay



As a test I kicked maxduration up to 9 seconds and compared it to a level 2 laser with the stock 2.5 and didn't see any real effect change.

Check out missiles instead, animation effect is more clear there

iblise wrote:
Check out missiles instead, animation effect is more clear there

Hrmm will do. In the mean time i'm toying around with triple build times and tripled hit points on the ships. With some slight variations between classes of the same weight.