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silly artifacts of hacking the game...
How does everyone here handle renaming the 'abort' button in the mission dialogue, or even the mission dialogue itself?
For my plugin, the standard mode of communication is the Telegram. Just in name, you know. It was what PMs were called in Astronest, my inspiration.
So my mission BBS is renamed "Telegram", and the accept field is renamed "Reply." I don't know what the menu should be called for the mission dialogue (Status? Objectives? Information?), but "Abort" is relabled "Reply" there aswell. The game assumes what sort of reply the player would make in a given situation. The player catches on pretty fast that the only thing to say to most missions is "I quit". This is explicit at first, but then I just assumes he either knows what is going on, or never will. There will be certain instances where the quickbrief will clearly state that 'reply' will do something else. For example, if the mission is 'status report from engine room', then reply would be asking for more speed/whatever.
Also, I figured out a way to do a nearly ipod like menu system: Even though it takes a day to have effect, it fits in RP wise. The mission BBS would look somthing like this:
Tier 1 Missions: Delivery to Utapau Pick up cargo somewhere get parcels Tier 2 Missions: Rush delivery Explore area Tier 3 Missions: Corporate espianoge (but spelt correctly) Weapons testing Telegram Status
et cetera. Each Tier is roughly a factor of 10 above the previous. Level one goes up to 10,000, Two up to 100,000, three up to 1,000,000. All the way to level 5, which is everything above 10mill, averaging often at 100mill. The mission info for each of the category missions would read something like this:
"Tier 1 Missions: These are publically available missions sent to you via an agency service. Anyone with the proper license is permitted to accept these missions, and there is no penalty for cancelation.
Missions issued under the Tier 1 agency permit have a maximum pay of 10,000 gold.(I'm a stickler for fidelity to source material) If you are not interested in missions of this level, please reply to this posting with a Telegram titled "Unsubscribe Tier 1" with the full body of this message intact.
DMW04JVNSDHLDN947SJFMGBKS03RJKD10<<<<<"
When you accept this mission, the briefing is:
"Thank you for your response. It may take us up to 24 hours to properly respond to your request. After that time, we will block every mission with Tier 1 ranking. If at any time you wish to unblock any agency messages, please respond to "Telegram Status".
Your patronage is very much appreciated"
Naturally, when you accept the above mission, it sets a bit such that Tier 1 missions are no longer available. This bit also changes the text of the "Telegram Status" mission.
"Telegram status" is full of mutable strings, all as short as possible, that indicate slight hints as to what the player might want to do next, or bits of information that may have been forgotten. This info is all storyline relevant, length will be at a minimum. If I run out, I can always abort it and make a new one. At the bottom, it will indicate what telegrams are blocked, with a note that, if you want to unblock missions, just reply to this. At that point, when the player accepts the mission, it unblocks everything previously blocked, and therefore lets the chapter headings for each Teir reapear (so you can reblock teir 1 if you only wanted to unblock nubmer 2).
This system looks to work out great and minimise clutter (like who cares about delivery missions once you've already saved the universe once?), and I feel that my scale factors are more appropriate than the payment in NOVA. For my plugin, you are a commander, and in the original game commanders were hired for vast sums of money. Therefore it is appropriate that the player really gets bid up as he progresses. If only they didn't call the money 'gold'~ Well, atleast I can abbreviate it Au, which is neat since it isn't actually elemental gold they are talking about.
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I'm still trying to decide how to rename Shipyard and Outfitter. With clever bit usage, you can obviously by ships in one or outfits in the other, so there should be some better distinction.
The last thing I have to change is how ship mass/cargo and such works. The biggest problem that I've run into so far is that outfits that grant cargo space can be sold regardless of resulting negatives. That, and it doesn't show cargo in the outfitter section. If these were different, I would just make everything take up the same kind of space and have mass be something else.
I've already decied that Turrets are going to be renamed device ports
Thats right, you only have 4 slots in which to put things. Things that people take for granted... Like IFF, or Grav scanner, and most weapons require a certain combination of devices (luckily IFF is required for half of them, so you can get that without a problem).
I still don't know what to do with the gun slot though... I want weapons limited only by space (with clever ways to keep 250 beams off of a mothership). And the fact that something is only either zero or one guns makes it impossible to do something like energy requirements.
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Anyway, I was just wondering what you guys are doing in this renaming sort of direction. I know if you guys are making a TC, you might not want to spoil the surprise, but for everyone else (like me) who has an unfinished pet, I am interested in what you guys have done with these default naming things. Heh.. this post was a bit longer than I meant it to be, I hope someone likes my ideas
This post has been edited by NebuchadnezzaR : 16 November 2005 - 04:40 PM
I'm using the 'bar' to more represent just wandering around the general area, being renamed Heq'akit. Avenues for shopping and other minor detailsy stuff crops up there- the gambling representing different ways to deal with money.
I am also using expiring travel permits (to access certain nomes), expiring licenses (no buy once crap here), hopefully a more complete economy than Nova had and severe technological availiability restrictions: Peh'reri things are only available on Per Peh'reri, Thena things only on Khentiasiu Meh, etc. This is more importaint when the factor of resupplying ammunition comes into play Whole areas of the map are restricted. Some ships are incapable of entering hyperspace at all (and with an average of at least two spobs per inhabited system this is not as limiting as one may think).
NebuchadnezzaR, on Nov 17 2005, 04:50 AM, said:
I'm still trying to decide how to rename Shipyard and Outfitter. With clever bit usage, you can obviously by ships in one or outfits in the other, so there should be some better distinction. View Post
I've often tried to think of ways to use the Shipyard for something other than ships but you can't change the fact that when you click 'Buy Ship' you get a new ship and lose your old one. Can you?
You've spelt 'Tier' wrong the whole way through
Yeah. I noticed that. My german fears the animals.
Also, there are ways... you make every outfit persistant, then when you actually buy a new ship, have it trigger a cron set to remove everything. Its pointless for most implementations though, but it would certainly nice.
This post has been edited by NebuchadnezzaR : 16 November 2005 - 04:43 PM
NebuchadnezzaR, on Nov 16 2005, 03:50 PM, said:
I still don't know what to do with the gun slot though... I want weapons limited only by space (with clever ways to keep 250 beams off of a mothership). And the fact that something is only either zero or one guns makes it impossible to do something like energy requirements. View Post
What do you mean it doesn't show cargo space? I can see my cargo space remaining just fine when I'm in the outfitter. Unless you mean it doesn't show how much cargo space an outfit will take? Well, you can always include that info in the desc.
For the multiple gun slots thing, couldn't you make an outfit automatically Gxxx/Dxxx invisible items the just to take take up more slots? Hmmm Nova might not check that on the fly. Well, you could get close I guess, because it wouldn't let you buy more if you were over.
Yeah, whenever you Gxxx something, you get it regardless of everything.
And I didnt say it wasn't visible, it just isnt part of the outfitters and that kind of bugs me. It sort of seems like the intf bar is in the background, but its plenty ok.
NebuchadnezzaR, on Nov 16 2005, 10:31 PM, said:
Yeah, whenever you Gxxx something, you get it regardless of everything. View Post
What I mean is you could do it, but you'd have some fuzznies when close to the limit. (which might not be all that bad) Let's say you have 50 energy points to work with (gun slots). Different items may need 1, 2, or up to 5 energy slots. If you're carefull, you might be able to squeeze in items totaling 54 energy points. I dunno, that doesn't sound too abusive. But I guess it depends on what you imagined for the balance. It wouldn't balance well if some items cost 20 points, or if you only had 5 energy slots to work with.
:cryptic grin:
Qaanol, your sig officially passes the NebuchadnezzaR test for greatnessย. If NebuchadnezzaRtastic had any ring to it, I'd say it was that.
I really don't like fuzzy upper limits, but I really understand what you are saying.
I was trying to work with the idea of engine slots, and different configs would actually change the shan to change the engine flares. The only rule was it depended on the power system you were using, so there were, for example, 5 different fusion engines of varying levels of awesome, 5 plasma engines, 5 ion engines... etc...
Why should weapons be artifically limited by slots, rather than, say, cargo expansions being thusly limited?
:even more cryptic:
Ah, like how rEV has a cargo expansion which attaches to a gun mount?
Qaanol, on Nov 19 2005, 04:09 PM, said:
Why should weapons be artifically limited by slots View Post
Game balance. But, I think the justification is surface area. A huge container ship migth have a lot of physical room, but only the front-facing surface area is really useful for front-facing weapons. You only have so many good spots for weapons.
In my mini-TC that I'm making, I've got so that you can convert your cargo area (build conduits, walkways, bracing) to be suitable to hold weapons and functioning ship components. (At a 15 to 10 ratio like the original scenario.) But you can only do this so many times before you run out of the most accessable and easy space to convert. Then you can only convert at maybe 20 to 10. Dimishing returns.