Russian Rockman wrote:I take it you also saw biohazard's randomized flagship fight. That didn't quite go as planned... Fire Suppression, great idea. Is Slug Repair Gel a thing also?
I think Repair Gel is possible too yeah. (This was the vid in question.)
I'm actually not doing a lot with CE anymore, but there are thousands of people using it and want to keep fixing and optimizing stuff. And its still fun after after all. Doing the greeble thing was quite cool for example, although it was exhausting at times. But I'm pretty much out of ideas now. The mod has extended FTL on pretty much every level, but maybe some new stuff might pop up at some point.
Russian Rockman wrote: And cryo weapons would have to use the crystal lockdown, which looks a bit weird. I'm pretty amazed by all the Captain's Edition weapons, pretty much anything that is possible to add, we already have.
I liked that concept, but defining it as a cryo thing would have been a little weird, as there would have been no way to prevent some strange situations from happening (like freezing a room that is completely on fire ). But CE already has the "heavy Lockdown" effect, which is basically the cryo effect that was described (crew stunned, aka frozen/crystallized, room blocked). The Crystal Lockdown Bomb Mark II and the Crystal Lockdown Blast Mark II cause this effect.
Sleeper Service wrote:Remember those days when Zoltan B had two burst Ions and Mini Beams? Good times, right? Well, Zoltan C was actually ment to go a little more int that direction, but just like with stealth C I missed changing the weapon count tag and the ship never go all the guns that where planned for it. Guess people just went with it, assuming I'm super sadistic or complaining anywhere but here *shrug*. Anyway, the ship starts with two burst stunners instead of one now, as originally intended.
CE Update 1.26b
- Fixed Zoltan C starting loadout
- Fixed Zoltan Beam-Ship system stations (?)
I noticed the other day that the stealth C is using the Drone_Shield_Big blueprint that didn't work. Meaning it's shield drone cost 3 power like it does for everyone else. Most people agree that for the Stealth C it should only cost 1 power.
I imagine you wanted people to not be able to run both the shield drone and the Effector drone at the same time initially, but I think it should still come with a Shield+ drone.
Btw, I'm still very very sad the shield drones didn't make it into the game. I remember being so excited for those. And that's definitely never getting fixed now. Sad drones.
Heya! I'm kinda new here and all, so feel free to ignore me if I don't understand limitations of various degrees, or simple lack of interest. I know you said you weren't really working on Captain's Edition anymore, aside from optimization, bug-fixing, and the occasional content update, but are you still taking general suggestions? Well, outside of quests and the like.
In any case, if you're still happy to implement suggestions, I have a few for new Sectors, and other various things.
It would be the Galactic Core and Galactic Rim Sectors. These sectors would be like Hazard Sectors or Nebula Sectors, where there's a large emphasis on the type of nodes you jump to. Of course, these would be more well represented in regular ol' CE, rather than CE Infinite, as it'd be difficult to implement their usage on a general scale with Contested Deep Space Sectors.
The Galactic Core would only appear once on the Sector Map, much like the Home Worlds of the various factions. It would contain a lot of black hole hazards and star hazards, as it would be very dense and it'd be difficult for the beacons to be spaced without running into these sorts of problems. The Galactic Core is designed to be highly dangerous. In addition to the other difficulties, this Sector would only contain one store, although it might contain a large number of exotic or less-than-legal ware, due to the rarity of officials being able to pay them a visit or inspection. On an event basis, most of the stars and black hole events could would be the same, although I do propose a few new ones.
The first would be something I'd like to call a Plasma Storm. These would be predominant in this area, and would feature something similar to an ion storm, as well as a 'beacon too close to a star' style of events, as well as a pulsar event. All on a smaller level, of course. Ambient plasma would reduce and overheat the reactors, forcing reactor power loss. Semi-frequent 'plasma waves' would occur, which set fires and ionize systems. I'm not sure about the limitations of the coding available to you, as I'd be unsure how to work all of these ambient difficulties into one.
The second would be a Supernova event, which would be a rare type of beacon. Essentially, it would work similar to a PDS attack, albeit a very specific one. It would have to be very slow in effect, something that could be out-run unless one is already having issues. Once it goes off, however, two things happen. One, it triggers an event which puts you and the combatant into a Plasma Storm, and it 'fires' 5-12 two damage shots, each with high shield piercing (not sure on the number for balance, but probably between 3 and 5), along with a 100% chance of causing a fire and causing a hull breach. Of course, in return, the only things the player would face here are either research stations or enormous, deadly ships or battlestations, using the dying star as cover, and each would offer a large amount of loot.
Finally, there'd be a Galactic Singularity beacon. There'd always be one in this sector, and it'd always be dangerous. I'm not too sure, but what I think would be cool, although probably cliche, to have would be some sort of extraordinarily difficult thing to fight, one which was completely alien in design, with a heavy focus on engines, shielding, and having a ton of health. It could have special 'Otherworldly' weapons, ones that could be attached to the ship and turned towards your benefits, and would, of course, reap a good bargain in at a store. Nothing over the top, of course, but something unique and powerful. Maybe a self-replicating bomb, where when it fires, every time it deals damage, it spawns a bomb elsewhere on the enemy ship, rolling to see if it hits or not? Or maybe a drone which teleports bombs onto the enemy ship? Or heck, how about an augment which which would give several choices at the end of combat, such as 'absorbing' a ship to repair a large amount of hull damage, but in return you get no scrap from it?
As for the Galactic Rim Sector, it'd be essentially a Pirate Sector with a lot of Ice Fields. However, there'd be a theme of Void Ships, and 'Creatures from the Galactic Void.'
These ships would all seem to be completely automated, except that the ships systems are repaired at the speed of a regular crew member, rather than extremely slowly. The ships would be very dark in color, and their weaponry would have a special 'Void' quality to them. Essentially, they would be able to work like that drone you have in game where when it fires it is essentially a flashbang, but limited to the room it appears in. It would appear dark and void-like, and cover an entire room, as well as locking the doors. It would rapidly drain the air from the compartment, but it wouldn't actually deal system damage or room damage.
These would contain one new beacon type - 'Void' beacons. These are beacons where one is truly in 'Void' territory, where the beacon was either placed far from the galaxy, drifted there, or simply was stolen by the Void Creatures. In these sectors, Cloaking would be useless, and the attacks from Void Weapons would act much like asteroids in asteroid belts, or the mines in minefields. It would drain fuel to come back as well, due to how far out the beacon is. There could be a plethora of events here, with anything from interrogation to sabotage to questing for contact could be found at these beacons, and in these sectors in general.
Next, I have is a one-off weapon suggestion: Poison weapons! These would be Effector Style weapons that are fast-firing, but do crew-damage instead of system damage. However, I'm not sure if Crew Damage can be dealt via weapons in increments less than fifteen, but I still think they'd make fun weapons to fight with and against.
Finally, I'm not sure if I should put this in this topic thread, or in the event suggestion one, as it's more a general idea rather than a single event.
I've noticed that, even in CE Infinite, the quests' lines are always rather... short. Seven beacons long is the biggest I've really found, and that was the Curator one. I loved it! I loved reading all those little things about the various objects and creatures you were picking up for him, and the fact that the end reward was almost always worth the effort of going out of your way.
But I digress. I've always thought that CE Infinite would benefit from having long, drawn-out quests with large stories and plot-lines to them that expand on the lore and feel of the game, as well as telling their own story. An example would be being recruited into a particular battle fleet, a take on the two-beacon long event line I've seen, and following their escapades across the universe, growing to know the various people in the battle group, and fighting alongside them.
And, of course, there's always the idea of extended/multi-stage fights. There are a few of them in CE, but not on a huge scale, such as diving deep into a fleet v fleet war to tackle the lead cruiser, only to watch as the rest of your fleet gets decimated, and they leave to harass other places. This could take one on a long and deep revenge plot-line, trying to track down this fleet, and take down their lead cruisers in large-scale fights.
And, of course, multi-beacon fights against a single enemy. It always seemed odd to me that the only ship you do this with is the Flagship. Can't all ships beam away in the middle of the fight? They just have to make their parts modular to a degree in order to survive the trauma of such an ordeal. This could provide huge fights, and show just how formidable that a Battlecruiser could cause, or perhaps a ship even more deadly than that.
For example, you stumble across, in an Auto-Construction Sector or Contested Deep Space Sector, a massive hub ship, which is slowly being re-designed to be an even bigger threat than the Flagship. After all, the Flagship is meant to be the Rebel's weakness. It might not be even close to their strongest asset, simply the one which gives the Federation the best chance of survival.
Anyways, this hub ship has, let's say five, different stages. The first is the Discovery Stage, in which you first face it's outer-most defenses, and must overcome them, only to watch it escape with an On Board Beacon, allowing them to FTL the entire thing from beacon to beacon, as well as FTL support ships to it.
This would come into play during the second stage, where the captain and the crew realize the threat this thing opposes, and have to face it one-on-one in order to find some sort of weakness. Of course, by now the hub ship would have back-up in the form of PDS or ABS, or something similar. During this stage, you hit an event which states that some crew member managed to learn enough during the battle about the ship that they learn that, with the right access codes, they could teleport inside the hub ship using it's On Board Beacon. But first, they need access codes. They manage to pull from the enemy's database where they could get the access codes, either a huge Guard Ship sort of thing, or perhaps a large Rebel base. That would complete the second stage, as you FTL away to find this ship or base.
The third stage would be the battle against the ship or base, and it would be more of a survival-based event, rather than one where you simply have to defeat the enemy. Here, you have to wait until the event triggers that you got the code. At this point, the enemy, if a ship, begins to FTL away.
The fourth stage would take place back against the hub ship, to grab hold of the position of the On Board Beacon. This would simply be a battle to defeat the ship's physical defenses, to garner time in order to program the beacon's presence into the ship database as a usable beacon, as well as associating the access codes with it.
And finally, one moves to the final stage of the quest line, inside of the hub ship, fighting against the Hub Ship Core. It'd be a hugely difficult fight, but a satisfying one.
Sadly, I'm only now taking my first class in C++, as well as my first class in Drawing, so I sadly will not be able to help with the actual coding of all of this. If I could, I would!
Thank you, though, for reading the wall of text I just posted, even if it had little bearing on anything around it. And if this should be in a different thread, go ahead and let me know so I can copy-paste/quote it over.
Pre-post Edit: Wow, this ended up being a loooooot longer of a post than I thought it would be.
Man, I really love your ideas, Golemer! The new sector types, the multi-stage quests in Infinite...I gotta say, they're really creative and I'd love to see them in the game!
But I'll just briefly commentate on what's impossible. It's up to Sleeper's discretion whether to follow the rest of them.
Golemer wrote:Maybe a self-replicating bomb, where when it fires, every time it deals damage, it spawns a bomb elsewhere on the enemy ship, rolling to see if it hits or not?
Although the mechanic you described is impossible, it sounds a lot like the Cluster Bombs CE already has. There, each bomb rolls based on evasion--it's not exactly what you're looking for, but it's kinda similar.
Golemer wrote:Or maybe a drone which teleports bombs onto the enemy ship?
Drones can't use bombs. :/
Golemer wrote:Or heck, how about an augment which which would give several choices at the end of combat, such as 'absorbing' a ship to repair a large amount of hull damage, but in return you get no scrap from it?
Sounds like a helluva lot of event scripting for that one rare augment. Not impossible, but I'd imagine it'd be too tedious to properly implement.
Golemer wrote:...These ships would all seem to be completely automated, except that the ships systems are repaired at the speed of a regular crew member, rather than extremely slowly.
Probably not possible. But, something similar: the Auto-Terminator in CE starts automated, but the ship has a clonebay, and the event spawns a boarder. The boarder can get teleported back by the automated ship, and can man its systems, repair quicker, etc.
Golemer wrote:It would appear dark and void-like, and cover an entire room, as well as locking the doors. It would rapidly drain the air from the compartment, but it wouldn't actually deal system damage or room damage.
A weapon can't rapidly drain air, aside from causing breaches. Locking the doors sounds a lot like Crystal Lockdown, though--and if I recall, bombs with two effects don't reliably cause all those effects.
Thanks for letting me know on the limitations! If I have ideas I want to share in the future I'll take them into account. Still, I'd like some of the ideas that were possible be implemented. Of course, even if they are, Captain's Edition is an amazing mod as it is, and I do have a lot of fun with it.
Golemer wrote:Thanks for letting me know on the limitations! If I have ideas I want to share in the future I'll take them into account. Still, I'd like some of the ideas that were possible be implemented. Of course, even if they are, Captain's Edition is an amazing mod as it is, and I do have a lot of fun with it.
Glad to hear you are taking C++, I myself am currently majoring in Computer Science. Where would we be without programmers!!!
I recently downloaded CE and I love it. However, my game keeps freezing like midways through like the second sector. It always happens right after I jump to a new beacon. I've looked around for a fix but can't find anything.
I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do but I saw someone else with a similar issue on this thread and they posted the stdout contents here... so here they are.
Interesting output you got there, how did you generate that exactly? I fixed the stuff that poped up there, but it is still odd if that missing text list crashed your game. Usually that just lead to the textlist name being displayed in the event. Maybe let me know if it works now, cause no one else seems to experience that crashes.
CE Resource Pack 1.261
- Ship Greebles Graphics mod changes integrated
CE Update 1.261
- Ship Greebles Graphics mod changes integrated
- "Ambush well known criminal" outcome for "Take on some mercenary work" fixed (was not supposed to spawn as quest obviously)
- Some small stuff fixed
Targeting Jammer seems not to be working (again?) in 1.26. The event appears but all the enemy's weapons are still functional even when the event succeeds (judging by the message).
EDIT: It might be related to Internal Generator, i.e. it might only not work when powered with it, but it needs to be tested more.
). But CE already has the "heavy Lockdown" effect, which is basically the cryo effect that was described (crew stunned, aka frozen/crystallized, room blocked). The Crystal Lockdown Bomb Mark II and the Crystal Lockdown Blast Mark II cause this effect.
And that's definitely never getting fixed now. 
Sad drones.
