try this maybe;

rumor = base_0_rank, mission_end, 1, ;XMLRUMOR01

{data file="data" method="replace" numTimes="1"}
{dest}
;XMLRUMOR01
{/dest}
{source}
0; GENERATEXMLRES("<xml><RDL><PUSH/><TEXT>Soylent Green is people!</TEXT><PARA/><POP/></RDL></xml>" )
{/source}
{/data}

probably won't work(i don't even know if FLMM can replace one word in a line, i always replace the entire line) but its worth a shot at least - flmm 1.4(still in beta) is supposed to address this issue, so... yeah

Hey ColdVoid,

Thanks for the input! Unfortunately your idea didn't work. Good suggestion anyway. Indeed FLMM seems only capable to replace a whole line (and then, in this case, it 'eats' anything between the = and the generated ids_info nr.

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flmm 1.4(still in beta) is supposed to address this issue, so... yeah

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That's good news! I'm not really in a hurry so I can wait until its done.

What I actually want to do is create some sort of a follow-up to my original FL experience (which was just fly around, do some trading, do some missions, so MP or OpenSP - no storyline) and therefore it would be nice to have new people at the bars, and new rumors to share - which I think is quite doable if it can be scripted... creating all new rumors with FLED-IDS is a much less flexible way. Well, at least I can already use FLMM scripts for the individuals' names. It's sort of a Toolkit-like approach if you like. And I'll wait with the rumors until 1.4 is released.


Btw - do you know if there's more to the wrecks than just the ship archetype and its loadout? I don't think so, but maybe there might be some connection to vignettes and/or exclude zones which I failed to notice sofar (the lack of structure in the StarSystems ini-files often makes it hard to immediately see connections - like docking rings, fixtures and planet death zones being many paragraphs away from the planet itself - you probably know what I mean.) Getting rid of all the wrecks and hiding at least as much new wrecks in the Star Systems is also on my list.


O, a third question that comes to mind (you seem to have a wide experience, and I greedily try to take advantage of that ): do you know if it's possible to do a repetative "append" instruction for each StarSystem ini-file? That way it would be so much easier to add the entire block of encounter file references to each star system? (Too bad we just can't put those in Constants.ini - they consume a lot of space and they're always the same anyway. The onnly advantage would be if one would like to create a multiitude of, say, area_scout encounters, so that there's different types of area-scouts in the various StarSytsems - but this is done nowhere in the game, and most modders will just prefer a new encounter type anyway.)

Anyway, I don't think this is possible right now; some sort of a "append-to-all-files-at-this-level" command would be needed, like

{data file="Data\Universe\Systems\ALL\ANY.ini" method="append" numTimes="0"}

or something like that... But maybe it's already possible in a way I fail to see?




Edited by - Moonhead on 4/4/2006 6:11:38 AM

besides those, the wrecks use fuses to drop their loot,destroy collisiongroups & set them to invincible so they don't disappear & reappear in a few minutes or whenever you fly away - afaik they don't use zones except to obscure their scanner range

system editing/creation & encounters that is definitely my weakest area, but i can tell you without a doubt theres no way to do a mass append like you want
the organization of system files is a terrible mess and unfortunately its just too big to tackle manually - a tool that would rearrange them based on solar prefixes would work pretty good if it was available/known

read further if you'd like to hear my gushing about The mod

FL Redemption is about embellishing and expanding FL's gameplay by squeezing every last drop of sim-goodness from FL's engine. unused INI properties that can do things like scatter & spread shots, increase & decrease ship speeds by zone, alter cruise mode handling, enable pilot-faction selection(still hunting how to enable it in game), permeneantly destroyable/lootable stations and lots of other less noticeable things i learned through mind numbing experimentation and EXE&dll dissection are all used extensively

besides these embellishments i have expanded on Argh's excellent XML toolkit; enabling battleships (and making them break-apartable in an effort to make them more realistic and to balance them against smaller ships), reducing all the unique capguns to 5 distinct classes and adding important nuances that make them all useful in their own ways, and dedicating hardpoints to them so capship classes mean something more than how many total guns you have, and adding them to naval groups

removed collision groups on fighters & freighters to put them on even footing with new mod ships and eliminate annoying repairs/free their names up for capship part names, made balanced armor upgrades with volume to displace ammo/loot/power capacity/limit them to specific ship classes & gave every fighter the same basic hitpoints. Created three shield upgrade classes; condensor(capacity), cooler(regen), and relay(extra power).

Every single fighter gun is XML tweaked, which has been critical to getting the balance in the ballpark -and i made the NPCs as accurate with their fire as players because i took away their wuss-infinite-powers, and most important of all i believe in K.I.S.S: keep it simple, silly

it is a modest upgrade/rebalance when compared to many of the huge expansions available, but one thing i really really LOATH about those mods is player densities are crap because the systems sprawl all over and by the time you get to the fighting the other players have logged out. I am not adding any more systems at this time, besides the Pittsburgh system which is a proof-of-concept for planet-systems. I understand that people like to explore, and that would be great for SP - but if you locked those systems in MP you would hear no end to the griping, and if you didn't lock them you would hear complaints about wild goose chases.

the mod's SP/MP compatible(and SP has a difficulty slider enabled in the options ) and i invite everybody to come check out some screenshots and maybe register on my forum to wait with baited breath for the next release - and also because 13 is bad luck and thats how many registered users we have

there's lots of things i haven't listed, and you'll just have to wait to find out what they are or actually come over and see whats new

Wow, that looks really promising!!

Ship balance and that part of game play is something I only looked into recently, and don't know much about, and haven't developed many well-contemplated thoughts on yet apart from:
- I'd like to get rid of the 'ship hierarchy' - with anyone ending up in an Eagle or Titan. For some purposes, a Starlancer or Patriot should be preferable (not just the player's budget)
- making all fighter/freigher weapons class 1, all gunboat weapons class 2, and all cruiser, destroyer and battleship weapons class 3 (and give the largest fighters/freighters the ability to also mount class 2 weapons - at an expense)
So it's a bit in the same line of thought as yours, although your ideas are much, much more detailed and worked-out.


I fail to imagine how you've done some of things you mention! Are they realized yet, or on your 'wanted' list? Like:

- orbiting satellites
That would be possible if you have the center of this satellite far outside of its visible part, and in fact have the whole thing at the same location of the planet it's orbiting. But then you can't really target the satellite, can you? So, how did you realize this?

'Warp' buoys
I assume this is based on the trade lane technology... But what do you mean with "but slow it to a dead crawl under normal impulse - getting cruise disrupted here is a bad idea " DId you really achieve to have zone-related cruise speeds? If so, that's awesome! I once tried to ahieve that per Star System (by copying and adjusting the relevant constants.ini section to a System's ini-file) without success.

I can understand if you don't (or don't yet) want to share your treasures before the mod realized, so I won't be offended when you tell me to ef off with these questions I'm just very curious.


Most of the features of the FL Redemption sound very cool (and the remainder are beyond my 'understanding horizon')!!

Too bad you ain't into adding Systems (yet...) Exploring Systems is indeed is what I like most about FL. That's why I now want to redo all the existing Systems - then there will be new stuff without the game getting much larger (altough I also want to add some systems...)

warp buoys are a fancy marker i made to show exactly where the zones are, its just a normal buoy with two very large beam type special fx attached that indicate the orientation of the cylinder shaped zone.now for the super secret zone property i found
just add drag_modifier = (2-50 is a good range) to a zone, for some odd reason it needs at least a minimal scanner interference to work

orbiting satellites is based on a tutorial that showed how to make orbiting planets(which looks awesome, but isn't very practical) - the "holder" object is just hardpoints, no mesh or sur,and attached to that is a {cargopod} with a satellite mesh.

I just tried the drag_modifier, but it didn't seem to do anything... I tried it in Alaska, by adding it to the large nebula zone... Does it have to be a cylinder zone?

It's a very cool discovery, with lots of potential... If it can be done for spherical / ellipsoid zones, it might even be used to simulate gravity (make ships almost unpilotable near palnets, stars and blackholes)


About the orbiting satellites: does that approach work for dockables too?

like i said, drag modifier _must_ have interference and you're not going to notice it if the number is very small - also my addition of cruise_drag to engine properties may have some effect on the way cruise goes warp in zones with very high drag modifiers - the zone shape its in doesn't matter at all as far as i know

dockable stations just can't spin - sorry.but think of how impossible it would be for the crude autopilot to actually land on a moving item - yikes

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dockable stations just can't spin - sorry.but think of how impossible it would be for the crude autopilot to actually land on a moving item - yikes

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I have tried to have a base spinning, but the base itself screwed up... the bay door remained at its position, while the base turned away from it...

But both that phenomenon, and the autopilot difficulties you mention, might be avoided when the whole landing sequence is skipped... Then, it still would only work if the base would be rotating very slowly... And then you'd still have the ugliness of the target brackets being placed over the rotation center instead of the visible station. Too bad, we might have had Luxury Liners making a very large rotation, as some kind of public transport

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dockable stations just can't spin - sorry.but think of how impossible it would be for the crude autopilot to actually land on a moving item - yikes

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I have tried to have a base spinning, but the base itself screwed up... the bay door remained at its position, while the base turned away from it...

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I tried having spinning bases in my "Privateer: The Reckoning" mods.
Both the "New Constantinople" and "Perry Naval Station" in the Privateer game rotated.
(Landing was on the spin axis, at either end of the stations.)
Freelancer's landing/launch sequences handled it fairly well, but would occassionally cause the player's ship to suddenly spin 180 degrees to realign itself with the station's rotating axis.
Beta testers complained about the effect, and the disorientation upon launching, so it was never released in any of the mods.

Watch your 6!

@ Warzog: Sounds like a cool idea! But didn't you have the problem of the dock's door remaining fixed while the station spinned? If the dock was at the center, this wouldn't really be a problem I guess... But that's what I experienced when I tried to have a stock FL base spin...

Well, both stations were custom-built models, and had no doors.

I've never tried it with a stock FL station.

I only posted it to mention what happens during landing/launching on/off of a rotating base.
It CAN be done, but many found the effect objectionable.
The disorientation upon launching seemed to draw the most complaints.
Which way was up/down, where's north/south, etcetera.

I might mention that I also tried using a docking ring, both a visible and an invisible one, but got complaints about that, too.
People wanted to have their ship rotate, as the ship in "2001 a Space Odyssey" did.

Watch your 6!