Messages

Nice.

If you remember, give a shout when you make it active in the game.  I have two unique hulls waiting to use it, including my capital ship.

Yeah, you're right, with the advanced shields the draw would be out where you put it.  Not even the other engineering stats for shield power efficiency and power plant efficiency would make a dent in that, I don't think.  At best I think you could raise your plant output to around 100, and drop the shield drain with the large-number math down to 700 or so, which would still deplete you in a second.  Huh.

[think]

I think the math is correct.  If I'm not mistaken the listed value for shield regeneration is not supposed to be a maintenance cost but the cost in energy you pay per point of shield healing.  This is then limited by the max regen on the shield.

For instance, the basic civilian is 250 max shield cap, 25 regen/second, 4 energy cost.  That'd mean that at full draw the shield is going to consume 100 energy/sec while recharging, putting you far into the red.  I had thought that weapons operated the same way, but I'm not entirely certain given what I've experienced with some beam weapon damage numbers where I expected the damage value to be the total damage over the course of the beam duration... but it's actually the damage per second on the beam, for any beams over 1.0s.  (A three second laser with a damage of 60 will actually do 180 damage over the course of the activation)

Now, I have no idea if this is even possible (and if it's not, or it'd be difficult to implement, that's cool) but might it be possible to include an option to flip the Z axis on turret hardpoints on the hulls so that the mounting 'post' pointed upward instead of downward?

Heck, it may already be possible and I just don't know how to do it, but the goal would be the ability to mount turrets underslung along the bottom of a hull, instead of always being across the top of it.  Might look pretty cool with some of the default hulls as well, like the Fang, with launchers hanging under the wings.

For #2, would it be possible to create a certification of sorts and then stick it on the hull as an effect, since that's possible now?  Then just create a new type of asteroid to mine.

Basically, instead of having a skill that grants the effect of use_good_mining_lasers, you stick that on an upgraded hull instead.  Then create Mining Laser Mk2 that requires use_good_mining_lasers so it can only be used on the proper ships, and make a version of the mining routine that just checks the new asteroid type against Mining Laser Mk2.  I think it should be possible to use an 'or' argument to modify the base mining script as well, even, so that both Mining Laser 1 and 2 are valid to hit normal asteroids.

[want]

Having both in game in some form does seem to make a lot of sense.  I kinda wish I had a mouseaim option when I'm flying something faster and more maneuverable, as keyboard turning after you've leveled up a bit, in something like a Banshee II... well, you start to turn so fast with a good RCS that it's actually hard to control with the keyboard.  It also makes lining up fixed weapons a pain.

By the same token, in the slower ships I can see having keyboard turning actually being a plus instead of a minus.  I'm still working on a ship designed for broadside fire, I think including something like that would be a big step toward selling people on the advantages of keyboard control, where you might not want to face something to shoot it.  The same goes for mine weapons, of course, and possibly even missile weapons when you want to arc in a tracking shot without having incoming laser/ballistic fire constantly wrecking your missiles.

I actually get the same thing.  Their shields drop very quickly and they take some hull damage, then it seems to stop.  After a little bit I'll see their shields reinitiate and hover around 20% or so, give or take.  After a bit more time I'll be able to damage the hull again... but the shield never drops again for me, and they die with shields left on their ships.  Might it have something to do with the introduction of multiple shield types?  I was never really sure how the shield statistic was derived for NPCs anyway, since they don't seem to have a gear listing for the shield, just general mods (-hull percentage, ect) and then weapons.

Right right, the impulse I had figured out and I assumed radius and max_radius were used in the same way as range and max_range.. but it's good to have it confirmed.   I actually tweaked with both impulse and tracking_delay to make my MIRVs; the small impulse from the blast when the primary round detonates knocks all the submunitions outward a small distance in a scatter pattern before the tracking kicks in and leads them toward the target from multiple vectors.

Thanks for the info on damage types as well, too.  I saw something in one of the weapon descriptions about being 'effective against shields' so I thought mebbe something got changed.

Quick question of the day:

What does damage type actually influence?  Is there a difference between energy, ballistic and explosive in terms of how they interact with shields and hull/armor?

Also, as a thanks, the tracking_delay attribute is awesome.  I've made a fun little MIRV for the mod using that, as well as a (woefully unbalanced and thus not in the public release) drone that flies forward slowly, spitting other drones that activate after a moment to engage locked targets.  Fun stuff!

Did you still want a copy of the .mpk to check on the issue with adding skills?  I tried adding three back in, and I still couldn't get it to work with 0.9.0.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dhhwj2qdztt2c83/btc.mpk

The three skills added are light, medium and heavy hybrid weapons in Combat.  I -think- all of them are set up correctly, as is my modification to the qualifications effects (just added use_hybrid_weapons as a new one for the hybrid tree).

Or, if 0.9.1 will also fix this issue, feel free to disregard this.  And thanks again for all your hard work!

Actually, I think I found the issue with #4!

Previously I had been including the version of the mod in the .mpk filename and it still worked fine.  For instance, my last iteration was BTC 0.1.0; filename was BTC_010.mpk, header ID was 'btc', version number was 0.1.0, and the launcher seemed to correctly set the ModsConfig.xml pointer to 'btc_0.1.0' just fine.

When I started updating the mod, though, I moved to version name BTC 0.2.0; filename was BTC_020.mpk, header was 'btc', version number 0.2.0.  When selecting the mod via the patcher, however, it was setting the pointer in ModsConfig.xml to 'BTC_020_0.2.0' instead of 'btc_0.2.0'.  I changed the name on the file to exactly match the ID in header.xml and voila!  Worked just fine.

So at least now I have it working, though I'm not sure if that's intended behavior or not.  Would be nice if we could still include the version number in the filename so people could tell at a glance if they had the most recent version.

Bwahaha, found an additional 'bug' that is probably unintended, but it took me a bit to realize what had gone down.

Took a bounty mission, killed the pirate, didn't get progress toward the quest (which is now stuck).  Pretty sure the reason it happened is that I killed him via ramming and thus it didn't attribute the kill to me.   Not really sure what you guys can do to fix that, but yeah!

Now I'm intrigued by the notion of faction management and how you'd pull it off via scripting.  Thanks a lot.

At least giving the illusion of it should be fairly easy, if one were so inclined, just by scripting in new NPCs with multi-path missions that had far-reaching effects.  Just don't know of a way that you could create a custom UI for 'empire management' of a full-blown faction.

Just starting a small list here for you guys.

1) Gentleman bonus on quests seems bugged.  It's giving me something like 2 XP and 5 extra cash per reward when the notification of the bonus comes up.  I suspect it's because the data files list the bonuses as 0.05 base / 0.15 per level when the engine is actually expecting +5 / +15 respectively.  (I'll test this out later with BTC if I have a chance.)

2) Banshee Mk2, ballistic turret got moved to off-center (by accident, I imagine) and now appears to the right of the circle on the hull.  Seems to just be a positional element in the hull data.

3) Getting the occasional issue on attempts to quit the program where it freezes and I need to kill the entire voidexpanse.exe process to escape.

4) Can't get any sort of .MPK files to work with the new version.  I figured maybe it was just an issue with outdated data files, so I did an experiment and just tried cloning core.cpk, giving it a different and unique ID and info, then saving it as a .mpk and loading it as a mod with all the default data; same issue, game will load but when I try to start or load a game it hangs on connecting to the local server.  I also tried taking my mod and substituting it in for core.cpk and it loaded 100% okay, so the issue seems contained to .mpks.

5) Related to #4, in the interim until .mpks work again I've just been modifying the .cpk on my local drive in an effort to update my mod stuff to 0.9.0.  Was working just fine until I attempted to add a new skill into the mix, at which point I get no errors when starting the game and the .xmls parse just fine, but if I attempt to start a new game or load the VE logo starts to come up before the game freezes up.  All I did to create the new skill was copy light_direct_weapons.xml, then did all the usual stuff (gave it a new ID, description, filename, and then changed the effect type at the bottom).  Removing the new skill from the directory brought me back to a fully-usable version again.  Adding the new effect under qualifications in effect_definitions_qualifications.xml seemed to work just fine, though, so the issue seems to the engine just trying to find a place to slot in the new skills.  Is there a list of any sort that I need to add new skills to elsewhere?  Back in the previous version I just added new skill .xml files and it found a place to put them inside the game skilltree automatically.

Really liking the new build so far, guys.  I notice some of the new weapons seem... familiar, too.

+1 from me thus far, looking forward to looking through the data files at all the new stuff!  Like the new handling characteristics, models and sounds/music as well.