To ChaosLord, It has been done already in the "Free Worlds" Mod (The Cloud City System). Maybe you should check out Free Worlds to see what did the team did.

Yep....my freind and i were starting our own little mod like what you desribed, only tyo find Free Worlds already did it. Here is (was) our Plan:

Change the model of the Jumpgates to docking rings and re-scipt them.
Create white nebulas for clouds, the gound being one big flat plain.
Instead of clicking for commodity dealer, equip etc, we would, say, dock with manhatan and you could fly to the 4 differnt places and moor with them (they would be space stations consisting of oyl yhe specified option)
We were also planing on creating a land battle:
Create a new weapon model, a person, and have the shot point out of the barrel of the gun. Postiton them close to eachother, so uit would be constant fighting. We would create tanks by mounting a pre made turret on a new base to look something liek a futuristic tank. Also, becasue planets are so large, we were making a "high speed subway" (aka a jump hole) to take you from place to place. There were some other ideas, too, like scripting the ground like the sun, so you explode on impact, and maybe even the same for the atmosphere. However were "modders" with little experiance with scripting, but we do have a good handle with milkshape and my partner in crime, Andy, is great with textures. We hoped we could take the buildings from the manhatan.ms3d file and just multiply it out to make a city. and put an crimnal base out in the middle of nowher guarded by "AAA" (turests) and "SAM Sites" (weapon platforms with missles). Yeah.
But it probably won't happen for a while. Im checking out Free Worlds now to see what they did, if they made the cloud city like an invisble, unknown system in the corner. That was our plan, but we have NO idea how to do 90% of the stuff we came up with.

was thinking bout that a long time ago too, but decided it really wasn't worth the effort dealing with sur files for the buildings cause really nothing currently in game can match new building models dimensions. Would just end up with a system where people could fly through all the buildings lol.

hmm. it should be possible. i'm thinking of the last single player mission, where you have to blast the 4 sheild generators to open up the dyson sphere... the flat surfaces there are quite functional, and they just about go on forever...

the sur files might actually not be as difficult as was being pointed out, if you keep to simple objects - if you go up and look at the sur files sticky post...

hmm. i like the idea, though. it would certainly provide a very new and different environment in which to play.

Alright, it's been discussed and here's our Mod as we plan tyo make it:
A New Sector with 5 Systems (the docking ring to Mannahttan is destroyed by the invading Rhinelanders)
1. Central Plaza (Front Endo for Commodietioxms Equipment, Bar and Commerece Bases like Agera, ryer etc.)
2. Industrial Sector: full of Smokestakes and pollution, this "system" will have all of our industial factions, +Junkers
3. Lower Levels Tghe city under the city, this is where you'll find all the crimanal factions, each with thier own cantina (base), with a jump to the Industrial Sector.
4. The Front Lines: The Skys are filled with Fighters, Gunboats and Capships from both Liberty and Rhienl;and, along with Weapons Platfroms (that will be modeld something like a tank) and foot soliders, close enough for a constant Battle. A small encampment on each side, and on the Rhienland side a jump to....
5. Rhienland Central Comand, our final system (we think), with the wreckage of part of the city and dark clouds. Here you'll find a large Rhineland base, full of Dry docks, wit hthe Rhinland Flag(?) flying above.

Each of these "Systems" are hopefully going to be somewhat large, with corporations in thier respective areas, and dry docks, buildings, SAM and AAA sites (weapons platforms with missles, turrets, respectavly) tunnels to the lower levels, the "high speed traqnsit system" (jump gates from system to system)

We might include a starting cutscene of the invading Rhienland forces, along with a quick explination of the situation. A topic beiong debated is that, when you start a new game, "enter the system" (fly through the 'to bwdestryed' docking ring, we haven't got that far) you have to evade an immensse rhineland fleet and escape to the central plaza. We still don't know.

Anyways, moorings will be stuck onto the sides of indiviudla buildings, and you can dock wit hthe. Agira, the Trade-Lane manufacture, will probably be in the plaza, with a nice looking building, where a munitions factory will be in the industrial sector with a dirty, smoke-ridden factory as a base.

Were going to need alot of help, which is (hopefully) covered in the Tutorial sections.

From dodging buildings in dogfights to exploring the trecherous lower levels, "The Fight for Liberty: THe Manhattan Project" is underway.

That is a ridiculously awesome idea. I look foreward to this, most definately!
Personally I'm a single-player gamer. It's a little thing to ask, I hope, but could you make it work for single-player mode, too?
=^.^=

I'M ABOUT TO GET DODGEY!!!

"For every spirit there is a proper place in Hell!"
Herr Von Clausen

Me Again. Whopdie-do.

All this is subject to cjange, and all this is OUR idea, so...yeah. Not yours, ours. Don't take it.

Is there a way to copy past in milkshape? this is gtting ridiculus trying to copy each vertex. :fumes:

Yep...also ran into a problem just thining about it.

New Models = New Collisons = You Know What

THe .sur files.

Im going to investigate this right now, but a way around it may be putting a minefeild under the long plane that is the ground, so when youu toucjh the ground you explode.

Thats my only hope right now, any ideas around it would be great. And any idea if ythis would cause problems with making new buildings? Or would it save alot of time/effort/sanity to use differnt bases.

Im a moron, i can simply use duplicate selection. Sorry.

Yes! A BReakthrough!!!

After playing the Free Worlds mod, i came up with an idea:

While docking with an ISD (imperial Star DEstroyer), i relized you could fly through the ISD model, but there is a small box that you can bounce of off....

Anyone thinking what im thinking?

My idea is to take the Prison Models and collison files. They are basicly a rectange.

Rectangular = A Block

And what can you do with blocks?

Stack 'em.

So i plan to use those to create buildings, then "drape" a texture or model over it, to make it loo like a building, like the FRee Worlds team did with the ISD.

And i still hovent figured out the Dyson Sphere trick yet, but if i cant....

Blocks line up reallllly good. ;}

We did something similar for David Hunter 4 - we've built a singular huge planet per system (and not much smaller than the system), each planet with a large quantity of multiple docks leading to different places and reachable via different trade lanes.
We're also gonna make some enormous space stations like that too

+++++++++MESSAGE ENDS+++++++++++

Is David Hunter 4 still going strong? Good to hear

Someone tried scaling up the planets to make them larger, and all i asked was if they could simply find out if the sur scaled too or not - they said it did. Now i haven't tried it - so give it a go if you like


Furthermore - the sur problem, seeing as its a "surface" that they will fly ABOVE and not ON, then like everyplanet - it should have an atmosphere shouldn't it? Well - perhaps making it a damage zone to kill covering the whole area, and even up to 500m ABOVE the surface would be much better - as they would die (they would really ), at which point sur aren't QUITE so important as you might have thought. Just a thought for ya

(ps. yes, you could have layers of zones doing increasing damage etc, and other stuff............try making the "atmosphere" as well extend like that, so they know they are flying through the atmosphere etc.

That would be cool. I got an idea let me know what you think of it. Add the new terrain and planet idea to the existing game. By this I mean say when you dock with Manhattan instead of just landing on the planet and selecting the ship store and bar you fly to them and dock with the individual store. If you have played X2 they kind of have something like that but with the larger space stations you can actual fly on the inside of the station.

That last comment sounds like something pizzapete was talking about.
Tell me, is it possible to have multiple docking rings on a planet? Seeing as we're on a similiar topic