Age of the Council (AotC)

Five or six years ago, I began work on a plug revolving around the disabling of Crescent Station. I never actually got as far as doing much with systems beyond it, but I did write a sequence of missions which took place in the main EVO systems leading up to it. If you like, I could send those to you for idea-mining.

@lindley, on Dec 29 2006, 06:10 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

Five or six years ago, I began work on a plug revolving around the disabling of Crescent Station. I never actually got as far as doing much with systems beyond it

There are no plans for new systems (and the can of worms that is Crescent Station will stay shut for now).

Thanks everyone for the replies on the bays. Multiple bays for faster launching was one option I considered, but we're probably talking about one 'Azdara/Manta'-style bay - launching everything almost at once, but with no initial speed - and one traditional bay - launching them one at a time at a fraction of the ship's usual speed - (but both using the same fighter). So I'll stick to the original plan.

And what about bays that can house many like the Voinian interceptor, are you planning to chop the outfit in half in way that the more bay a player can buy, the more fighters they can hold?

@coraxus, on Dec 29 2006, 06:54 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

And what about bays that can house many like the Voinian interceptor, are you planning to chop the outfit in half in way that the more bay a player can buy, the more fighters they can hold?

Well, most bays won't be purchasable (or sellable), like most bays in EV:C/O. But it's an option that might be used somewhere, yes.

BTW, the MaxAmmo field for weapons seems to essentially do the same thing as the IncreaseMax Mod type in outfits (?).

@qaanol, on Dec 29 2006, 09:20 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

Source?

@coraxus, on Dec 30 2006, 06:21 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

In regards to weapon (not fighter bays) the only thing the Nova engine has never quite fixed was the plundering situation, sure you may be able to buy ammos to use on at least two different weapons, but you could never be able to plunder the same kind of ammos you have from a ship that used a weapon different from yours. I know, I've tried very hard to find a way around that. I just wished that plundering could have been fixed in the next update.

I came up with an idea for a way around that here. Untested but I think it will work.

@pac, on Dec 30 2006, 08:31 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

BTW, the MaxAmmo field for weapons seems to essentially do the same thing as the IncreaseMax Mod type in outfits (?).

Pretty much, yeah. Use the MaxAmmo field where you can and use IncreaseMax for other outfit types. I think the main difference is if you use MaxAmmo you can't buy any ammo unless you have at least one of the weapon but with IncreaseMax you can always buy up to the normal max of the outfit even without any of the IncreaseMax outfit.

@pac, on Dec 29 2006, 06:21 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

There are no plans for new systems (and the can of worms that is Crescent Station will stay shut … for now).

Yes, which is why I think it might still be useful. Similar scenes, different purpose, y'know? For example, there was a meeting between the leaders of the Zidagar and the Azdgari, but it could be adapted into a meeting between any two major officials from opposing governments.

Anyway, if that writing is ever going to show up anywhere for any reason, this would seem like a good project to donate it to. Your call if you want to see it.

This post has been edited by Lindley : 29 December 2006 - 03:54 PM

@qaanol, on Dec 30 2006, 04:20 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

Another thing to avoid is the crön. All cröns are evil. I say if you can't do it without a crön, don't do it at all.

Ignore this man, Peter. cröns are great.

Indeed. It is good if you fail missions like in ARPIA2. Sometime, it is necessary to advance missions by using crons.

@guy, on Dec 29 2006, 03:33 PM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

I came up with an idea for a way around that here. Untested but I think it will work.

I tried it, it seems the AI won't recognize ammo sharing and will persist that each ammo-dependent weapon must have their own ammo regardless.

Do you think that's an engine 'bug' that could be fixed, or the way that the engine is supposed to work?

I really liked EVO, though I don't think I ever finished all the strings. A sequel, much less one made by the original author, would be awesome -- if you make it, I will play it.

- Bob

@ue_research---development, on Dec 30 2006, 10:54 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

Do you think that's an engine 'bug' that could be fixed, or the way that the engine is supposed to work?

Well, I think it's just something that had been ignored and that it's just how the engine behaves, but I still think they should have made ammos plunderable.

Currently working on getting ship stats right. There are currently about 40 ships - not counting variants. About 15 of these are new ones (and I have to stop myself from adding too many more, as I only have models for some of them), with the remainder being carried over from Override (although many/most are modified quite a bit). A few of the hold-overs will be rare curiosities (like the Emalgha Freighter) rather than ships you are likely to want to use - ie, they would not have been kept in except that the Nova engine has so many ship resources, and file sizes are not such a big issue these days. I have even found a use for the Krait!

(Of course, in testing, all the stats will soon change back again! :D)

This post has been edited by pac : 30 December 2006 - 05:25 PM

I love the ships that are there that aren't necessarily intended for use by the player. The Emalghia ships were disproportionately cool in that regard, because although they weren't exactly something you'd want to use, they were there, making the universe more believable.

Latest question: The escape pod seems to send the pilot to system number 128 (fixed). I had thought that it would send you to a system generated by the appropriate char resource - but apparently not. Anyway, for this and other reasons, Sol is no longer system 128. Or can someone tell me that there is a way to change this?

(And - if there isn't - I am surprised, given that the option to run different characters is built into the Nova engine. As well as or instead of picking a system from the appropriate char resource, the ModVal for the escape pod is unused - it could easily point to the number of the system the pilot should eject to.)

Fortunately, I only need to have one char (although I have an idea for an optional second minor one).

(I have thought of one work-around (at least, I think I have), which could allow a degree of ejecting (and thus Strict Play), without catapulting the pilot to a completely inapproriate system. The escape pod in one plot could automatically come with a fighter outfit item flagged as an escape ship, so that the character in that plot never actually uses an escape pod, only ever ejecting in a secondary ship.)

It also sticks you in ship 128, regardless of chars. If you're lucky (I don't recall if this works or not) the OnPurchase of an escape ship will be run when you launch into it. You could use this to move the player where you like, give him what ship you like, say a little message on the bottom of the screen, display a mission dialog, etc...

@guy, on Dec 31 2006, 03:06 AM, said in Age of the Council (AotC):

It also sticks you in ship 128, regardless of chars. If you're lucky (I don't recall if this works or not) the OnPurchase of an escape ship will be run when you launch into it.

Yep, I knew about ship 128. (That's actually an even bigger problem if, say, you wanted to have two species so alien to each other that they couldn't use each other's ships or technology. One of them would have to have no escape pod; or an escape ship work-around as above; or you'd have to switch a plug in and out depending on character (which would defeat the point of having a char resource in the first place!).)

And unfortunately, no, OnPurchase for an escape pod doesn't trigger (just tested) when you eject (just when you buy it as normal). One for EV4!

Edit: The one thing that is (still) in place is desc resource 13999 - the escape pod message, which can be changed to anything you like. (Probably - not tested yet - you could get this to say something different by putting a {bxxx (etc)} in. But the effect would be unchanged.)

This post has been edited by pac : 30 December 2006 - 10:42 PM

You seem to work very fast, I think I may have to give up on my NOvarride project or something. I was currently working on weapon stats like the Emalgha machine gun, rather than firing the way they did, I'd have the fire in the same manner like the hailgun and the chainguns from Nova, and they'd also have to have ammos though they don't take up many mass at all. Also, I was working on making a dispersal turret rocket which would be avaible when playing the Crescent Renegade string, something that would help somewhat to counter act the Zachit's pursuit missiles.

You guys should check out Revenant.
Who knows, you might be interested in teaming up with Verb After all, he has pretty much everything but the storylines