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I realize that to suggest a new idea for a plug-in is somewhat frowned upon, but bear with me. Those familiar with the book "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge will recognize the scenario.
I think it would be interesting to have a plugin in which different levels of technology worked in different areas of the galaxy, and your technology might either be degraded in quality (possibly permanently) as you go 'down'. As you go 'up' on the other hand, your technology would rapidly become obsolete.
I'm wondering how this could be accomplished. The obvious (to me) answer is to have, say, 3 versions of each outfit from the high tech area, 2 versions of each outfit from the mid tech area, and a single version of each outfit from a low tech area. There would also be a crön for each system that on entry, could activate or deactivate the various outfits to be appropriate for the local space technology potential level.
(This message has been edited by Mazer Rackham (edited 01-03-2004).)
So, the idea is, say there are three tech areas: If you bring something from a high-tech area into a mid or lowtech area, it would be weakened. If you bring something from a mid-tech area into a high tech area, it will be unchanged, but will be inferior to what's there If you bring something from a mid-tech area into a low tech one it would be weakened If you bring something from a low tech area to a mid or high tech one, it would be unchanged, but inferior to what is there? The 3 versions of tech for highlevel, 2 for mid, and 1 for low works, but the issue is activating the crons at the right time - there is no bit to test if the player is in a given system, so you would need some rigamarole to get the player between the areas that would get you to a situation where you can evaluate an NCB string.
I think this or some variant on it would be a very interesting idea. -Az
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I currently can't quite see how this could be made to work effectively and seamlessly, but it's a very nice idea nonetheless.
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Quote
Originally posted by Azratax2: **So, the idea is, say there are three tech areas: If you bring something from a high-tech area into a mid or lowtech area, it would be weakened. If you bring something from a mid-tech area into a high tech area, it will be unchanged, but will be inferior to what's there If you bring something from a mid-tech area into a low tech one it would be weakened If you bring something from a low tech area to a mid or high tech one, it would be unchanged, but inferior to what is there? The 3 versions of tech for highlevel, 2 for mid, and 1 for low works, but the issue is activating the crons at the right time - there is no bit to test if the player is in a given system, so you would need some rigamarole to get the player between the areas that would get you to a situation where you can evaluate an NCB string.
**
use nebulas, make entering a certian invisible nebula activate or deactivate the bit.
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You could do this if you could wait for the player to land on a planet. Just have a mission that triggers on each planet of all the governments in each of the respective zones of technology.
Unfortunately, this would probably require 3 missions for each outfit and weapon. That would be nearing the mrxak's challenge number of missions.
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Originally posted by Lumpy the Elf: **You could do this if you could wait for the player to land on a planet. Just have a mission that triggers on each planet of all the governments in each of the respective zones of technology.
You cannot do it with missions alone. You would need one cron per technology item effected. -Az
Originally posted by Cunjo: **use nebulas, make entering a certian invisible nebula activate or deactivate the bit. **
This is a very good idea, an idea that would be the ideal solution. Sadly, the bible explains that it won't work in the imagined way:
The Nova Bible - nëbu resource: OnExplore Control bit set expression that is evaluated whenever the nebula is tested for visibility and found to be visible. Note that this field is handled a little differently from other control bit set expressions in Nova, because the explored state of the nebulae isn't saved from game to game; rather, it is recalculated every time based on the systems the player has explored. As a result, this expression may get evaluated multiple times, so you shouldn't use the random operator or any operators which do anything but set or clear control bits here.
Thus, this is not a reliable solution. :frown:
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damn! well, it was a thought.
I don't know how to accomplish such a thing, but thought that some wizard on these boards could manage it. Still do, for that matter.
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Originally posted by Mazer Rackham: **I don't know how to accomplish such a thing, but thought that some wizard on these boards could manage it. Still do, for that matter.
It can be done. I just realized how: a few always invisible missions to detect when you cross the boundries. make the special ships invisible and appear in they systems between the boundries (you would need two missions and two boundry systems, so the player couldnt turn around and confuse it.) with the special ship goal being to observe. Thus you can get it to evaluate OnShipDone fields. Use crons to deal with players who go into one boundry system and turn around. -Az
Darn, Az, you beat me too it!
It would still end up being really resource intensive, though. Basically, you'd need 3 outfits for each outfit, plus some token outfits to say what it was capable of, so 5 outfits per actual outfit (assuming it's a high-tech peice, which is the worst case given the scenario). Then you would need a number of crons- 1 for the high-to-medium downgrade, 1 for high-to-low, 1 for med-to-low, 1 for low-to-med upgrade, 1 for low-to-high, and one for medium-to-high. Oops... wait, you can scratch the high-to-lows- the low to mid and mid to high can work sequentially. But you'll still need some token outfits to tell it where the outfit is capable of going.
Sounds like a mrxak challenge to me more than a workable plug design. Interesting idea though.
------------------ ~Charlie Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)
Not hard enough to be an mrxak challenge. I could probably have puzzled out how to accomplish this, albeit inefficiently. Ergo, it would fall under the pathetic category of mrxak challenges (there isn't a pathetic category).