What could be better?

EVula: I emailed you the Igadzra hail picts.

(This message has been edited by Blackdog (edited 12-29-2001).)

I've cruised through all the plugins available on the addons page here, and tried a number. Many of the things that have been mentioned in this thread have been done and are out there. The problem is that there are dozens of different plugs by as many talented people, and they are by no means guaranteed to agree with each other. If you make a collection of seperate plugs as you've suggested, and test them to make sure they work alone and in combination, that would be a worthy accomplishment indeed!

As for adding bays, I think it wouldn't be a matter of adding anything - the outfits should be there in the data files, since EV has to use them for the AI ships - it should simply (questionable choice of words) be a matter of making the outfit available to the player, preferably after they've accomplished an appropriate mission (an existing one, nothing new). Graphics are a different matter, but I have used plugs with graphics for Zidagar bays, UE bays, and Voinian fighter/interceptor bays which match the regular outfit graphics perfectly, so the stuff is out there. If CF bays are sellable, there's no reason the rest shouldn't be.

It is possible to make mass and cargo expansions sellable, the plugin Outfit MODs does just that - no engine limitation. The cargo expansions are easy to justify as resellable items - looking at the graphic it would appear a cargo expansion is nothing more than a cargo-pod bolted to the side of your vessel, so how difficult could unbolting it be? Mass expansion would be converting interior cargo space to exterior weapons space. Reversable? Why not?

On the Zidagar beam. I wish to disagree respectfully with removing their fuel-draining 'feature.' It is a powerful weapon, and as such should have some sort of drawback. Making it drain fuel more slowly than it does wouldn't be unreasonable, and I always thought it was overly bulky at 20 tons, lowering that to 15 might not be a bad thing, it's all a matter of what you're willing to mess with. As for making them resellable, it does mention how it's thoroughly incorporated into your ship, never to be removed...

Hailing the Igadzra. Regularly, no - this is part of the character of that strand, and should be left as such. As escorts, yes, otherwise how could you release them from servitude if you chose to do so?

I guess my main request would be to make unique items available for repurchase in the event a person has traded in their ship and lost them. The Zidagar systems upgrade especially. All at appropriate prices and only available where they were first acquired of course. Being able to sell back armour would be nice, as would being able to purchase more than two extra fuel tanks. The new system where turrets take up gun slots and vice versa can go - guns should be able to fit in spots that turrets can't. A highly debatable plug might allow the play to buy more than one thrust/engine/RCS upgrade, say to a max of three each.

I would suggest taking a wander through the addons page yourself, if you haven't, see what's available, what's not, what works, and what you like. It should give you a good idea of what people think is needed as well, and if you decide to create a plug similar to one that exists, you could ask the creator of the other plug for suggestions, permission to use graphics, or even permission to include their plug with your collection, after it's tested for compatibility therein. Finally there are plenty of guides and utilities for creating plugs and deciphering the EVO data files to be found there.

"Oh no, I've said too much, I haven't said enough." I'll shut up now.

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Vocatus atque non vocatus
Deus aderit.

(This message has been edited by Valiant Bastard (edited 12-31-2001).)

I agree with most of the stuff here.Been dieing for alot of it too. please fill all of the above requests!!!!!!

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One more suggestion: change the Guidance values for all the guided missiles from 2 to 1. Guidance type 2 isn't supposed to be used under the EV Override engine, and it results in the guided weapon not behaving properly.

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Originally posted by MartiNZ:
... also the Strange asteroid is a coke machine as apparently intended.

Do you mean this plug-in?

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Originally posted by Valiant Bastard:
It is possible to make mass and cargo expansions sellable, the plugin Outfit MODs does just that - no engine limitation. The cargo expansions are easy to justify as resellable items - looking at the graphic it would appear a cargo expansion is nothing more than a cargo-pod bolted to the side of your vessel, so how difficult could unbolting it be? Mass expansion would be converting interior cargo space to exterior weapons space. Reversable? Why not?

The difficulty is that if a mass expansion is resaleable, the player could buy one, fill up the new space, and then sell the mass expansion and have all the cargo space back.

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Originally posted by Valiant Bastard:
On the Zidagar beam. I wish to disagree respectfully with removing their fuel-draining 'feature.' It is a powerful weapon, and as such should have some sort of drawback. Making it drain fuel more slowly than it does wouldn't be unreasonable, and I always thought it was overly bulky at 20 tons, lowering that to 15 might not be a bad thing, it's all a matter of what you're willing to mess with. As for making them resellable, it does mention how it's thoroughly incorporated into your ship, never to be removed...

Agreed on the fuel-draining. Removing that is something a cheat plug-in would do, not something that introduces moderation to the game. However, I think it would make sense for them to be resaleable; regardless of the presence of an explanation, it's still not all that reasonable a restriction.

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Originally posted by Valiant Bastard:
Hailing the Igadzra. Regularly, no - this is part of the character of that strand, and should be left as such. As escorts, yes, otherwise how could you release them from servitude if you chose to do so?

There should definitely be hail pictures for the Igadzra ships, as they are not always flown by the Igadzra government.

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Originally posted by Valiant Bastard:
The Zidagar systems upgrade especially.

Here there's a problem: the Zidagar systems upgrade isn't supposed to be an object; it's a process that somebody put your ship through, so I don't see how you could reasonably expect it to be transferred to another ship.

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David Arthur
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer and the Talon plug-in for the original Escape Velocity

Insead of making the Mass expansion sellable there shoulb be a version of the mass expansion and the cargo expansion that does not lose any space when used (ie 10 tons for 10 tons) but be more expensive (or the same cost but move less space) so you could put the space back but it would cost you alot.

The early transport missions should reward a few more credits to make the early non-combat part of the game shorter.

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No, this is not a sig, it
only looks like one.
Really.

Shade? Tell me before you release the plug. I'm going to make a plug, and I'd like you to include it, or at least make sure it's compatable.

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"I- I Swear Officer.. The Dwarf was on fire when I got here!"
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"....This is only what I think. We can't in a million years guess what goes on in the snarling, churning bowels of Red's head."
~ESPilot

An improvement on the guidance weapons would be welcome, I tend to avoid them because it's frustrating to watch two out of three go flying off in a strange direction.

I wouldn't suggest making the Zid systems upgrade transfer, but rather make it an outfit available to the player, after completion of the appropriate missions, should the player get a new ship. This would be something like the Azdgari upgrade - no space lost for a considerable performance gain, available only once per ship, not resellable, but still available for the player who has traded in their last ship along with said upgrades. I think this system could be used for the cloaking device as well - it's not supposed to be removed, but after all that the player does for the UE, surely they could see their way to installing a new one on a new ship, for an exorbitant price of course. And if the player doesn't care about the cloaking device, they don't have to get a new one.

The big thing to remember is that EVula is going to make this a collection of small plugs, so you can pick and choose what you like or think is fair to the spirit of the game. A much more amiable idea, than plugs which make numerous changes, only a few of which you may want.

Igadzra comm pics yes! I didn't mean to disagree with that. I've seen a decent set in the traditional head on view, which could have been straight from the wireframe model on the sidebar. There should be a bit which would make ships affiliated with the Igadzra gov't non-hailable - without affecting Igadzra type ships piloted by different gov'ts.

Mass expansions. Good point about overloading their weapon space by filling it and selling the expansions. Not at all fair. If a player got two expansions, filled them with an extra turret, then sold the expansions, his ship would be overloaded. If that player chose to switch the turret for something else, selling it would not open up 20 tons of space, but leave him/her with their original amount of mass tonnage. They could of course get mass expansions and run through the whole thing again. Hmm... the only nice thing would be for a newer player who fills up all his cargo space in a hurry, then realizes he can't do some mission or other because he can't haul the necessary cargo. There's also something to be said for learning that the hard way.

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Vocatus atque non vocatus
Deus aderit.

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AWoohahD's location: **
Somewheresville,SomewereCounty,North
Dakota(I Lie)
**

Please shorten your location. It lengthens the margins unnecessarily.

Or just put a couple spaces in, after the commas.

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Vocatus atque non vocatus
Deus aderit.

Ah yes, how could I forget... A United Earth fighter bay in the outfits section, giving the player access to purchase and sell it following the Dreadnought missions. I'll create a graphic for it if you like.

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(url="http://"http://saberstudios.evula.net")Saber Studios(/url) - Your source for original EV/O/N graphics.
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Ah,so that's what's doing that thing to the margins.
Evula,could you make the added graphics in this plug free for use,as long as they credited you/the creator?
Redchigh,two things:
A)What does Evula have to do with the main objective in Wave of Destruction?
And B)Why are you asking me about this plug of yours?It's Evula making this thing,not me.
Skyblade:UE Patriot has already got a very beautiful UE Bay graphic.
Valiant Bastard:I hate to be fussy,but in one of your posts you put down "EU".
"EU" stands for "European Union".I believe "UE" was the acronym you were looking for?

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(url="http://"http://www.geocities.com/shades_shipyard")Shade's Shipyard(/url), the source for your ship needs.

That's the thing. Earlier I would have sworn that it was shade making the plug.
EVula, can I add a plug to your set? It just makes the fighter bays a little more realistic, is all. (A zidagar fighter is, essentially, a crescent fighter with a phased beamer, right? Shouldn't crescent fighters fit in the (heavier, buyable) Zidagar bay? Also, the Mass of an Emalgha fighter is less than a UE or Voinian fighter, so shouldn't 2 or 3 Emalgha fighters fit in the buyable UE fighter bay and Voinian Heavy fighter bay?)

Oh, Evula, in one of your plugs, why not make Voinian dreadnoughts and UE cruiers occasionally appear? Of course, with the dreadnought showing up MUCH less often.

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"I- I Swear Officer.. The Dwarf was on fire when I got here!"
------------------------
"....This is only what I think. We can't in a million years guess what goes on in the snarling, churning bowels of Red's head."
~ESPilot

Well shoot. Current events must have been getting to my head or something. EU! Hah. I'll look that up and correct it. 🙂

-REDCHIGH- I think specific ships need specific bay types, in order to refuel, repair and launch them properly. CFs and Zid fighters would almost be interchangeable, but Emalgha and UE or Voinian fighters? From a non theory perspective, it may also be outside what the engine can handle. I may be mistaken, but I believe bays are something like rocket launchers and such - a rocket launcher only launches rockets, a SAD launcher only launches SADS, CF bays only launch CFs. On a slightly different note, an Emalgha bay would be a nifty item, but EVula doesn't want to add anything, just modify.

Which version of EVO are you running? I have 1.0.2 and the UE cruisers do show up on occasion.

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Vocatus atque non vocatus
Deus aderit.

Just thought of something to fix, but I'm not sure how or if it can be done. In EV, when you had a mission to deliver something <classified> to Pirate space, the Confed. ships would actually scan you and start attacking you, but in EVO they keep on warning you but never attack.. both the UE ones and the Zidagar ones in the Igadzra recruitment mission - given it used to happen, I don't see why it can't now - and it has always seemed funny that it doesn't :).

Here's those shipyard views, EVula:

Posted Image
= - = - = - = - = - = - =
Posted Image

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(url="http://"http://saberstudios.evula.net")Saber Studios(/url) - Your source for original EV/O/N graphics.
GameRanger: -Sß- Captain Skyblade | Battle.net: Skyblade86
(url="http://"http://home.cfl.rr.com/aresev/")The Legion(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.gameranger.com")GameRanger(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.evula.com/")EVula's Lair(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.meowx.com/")Meowx Design(/url)

(This message has been edited by Captain Skyblade (edited 01-02-2002).)

Could you make the number of purchasable neutron cannons and Emal. cannons at least 5. Or be able to purchase 6 phase turrets. Or more because of the dreadnought. I think it is just weird that you could have a ship that has say 5 cannon slots be friendly with a gov and not be able to fill up the slots with that weapon.

Here's the UE Fighter bay pic:

Posted Image

God bless,

UE Patriot

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