One thing to remember: Not all mods are for all people. Some people like this, some people like that, it really depends, and its why theres such a wide variety of mods, because theres a wide variety of tastes.

Indeed, thats what I'm trying to get hold of, ideas that cover a broad range of taste...

join a modding project and your contribution to the community will be more effective =)

*hint hint:mine hehe - just saying i need a system designer for an ambitious planet-system, since i am pretty busy converting stations to be truly modular and lootable/ and macro-balancing weapons and encounters with XML. besides that i have an internal project to the mod. a joke-system to have fun deathmatches in - just a few examples of the strange inventory i've already built for that;moosle(cow)missile launcher,anvil firing cannon,teddybear cluster mine, tron lightcycle & tank(with accurate glow maps), an easterbunny ship w/ egg-mine launcher, and so on - all with comic soundfx. i really really need help building this system because i am pretty slow at it, and the main aim of the mod is building an evo-like expansion w/ no new space-systems & making caps a lot more like fighters w/ upgrading & destructible parts - that's what i'd like to focus on, but i believe that the internal joke-system could be the real clincher when it comes to incentive for players to try it

this offer(plea?) is open to everyone

Edited by - Cold_Void on 5/8/2006 7:42:51 PM

Evolutions for me has been the best mod that i have played. Its best points, for me, are the ability to upgrade your ship to suit your own personal preferences. Thats pretty good, giving players choices so that they can take a ship and tune it into their needs. Also it means that a skillful player could use a smaller/less able ship and modify it with expensive equipment to give them a hard hitting and agile fighter with better performance than usual.
I think its good to cater for the other people too. Some people just areen't as into the whole combat thing and like to just trade. Adding decent trade routes and transports will keep them happy.
Another thing is balancing the game. Most people find the original FL to be too easy, so you will most likely need to increase the difficulty. But, this needs to be done properly. I played a mod ages ago, i can't remember the name (and wouldn't tell anyhow), but i played it for about an hour or two. I started off, got the defender, got some reasonable weaps and popped to texas. Where i died very quickly.. After i autosave returned i scanned the ships and outcasts were using kraken 1's at the texas to new york jump gate. After that it completely changed my whole view of the mod. I never played it again. It might be actually a really good mod once you get into it. But, i wasn't exloring the furthest reaches of the unlootable fields or attacking some pirate base. I was just using the trade route and in my view shouldn't meet anything to much at least for the first few systems.
If you can add some new features to you mod too then that is really good. Creating something that hasn't been done before makes things much more interesting for the more experienced players.

Thanks so far ...

But I mean features here, on some mods pirates drop pilot loot you can take to a Bounty Hunter base and sell them for a good fee.

One idea I had was to create a trade system, where a few bases would have lots of transports coming in, so you could pretty much make 1 million or 2 just by spending an hour there.

There are also little things, like admins setting bounties, players hunting others down for said bounties.

These are what I call server features, these are what I'm after from other popular mods...

As for the guy with the the mod help request, wrong forum my friend, try the mod help wanted/available forum hehe, as for me helping you, I don't have a lot of time right now nor want to start playing with mods when I'm just learning myself as I go, right now I'm plucking information off these forums and basically organising it. In doing so I learn.

Edited by - oPwnagEo on 5/9/2006 3:01:59 AM

Well, for the trade system, i've added a cargopod based economy where players can mount commodity-cargo pods and take them from base to base. That works pretty well and i haven't heard of it being done before.
The pilots thing is a must, in my opinion, as is multiple over lapping loadouts for ships.

Can you explain a little more about the cargo pods? Does that mean you can mount a cargo pod that has a different cargo limit than your own cargo hold? I'm just a little confused on that one.

Overlapping loadouts? You mean when you come across a bunch of NPCs each of them has a slightly different loadout?

just to get this right

you want to know the features of the other mods so you can download them, have a look at the code and if needed copy what you need?

can't you create something own that is not based on the work of others?

I knew someone like you would come along, bare in mind I'm new to modding, and am doing this as a learning process, plus, have you never heard the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants"? Every single human being period has done this since the dawn of time.

Where would half of these mods these days be if other people before them hadn't given them the inspiration for/with their ideas. I'm primarily here for inspiration, but first I need to learn how things were done, in that way I get inspiration and the skills to be creative with what I know.

I don't copy other peoples work, I respect peoples work, I would ask permission of every chunk of mod I use from the author, even if I simply take my own spin on it.

I am aiming to get POPULAR aspects from mods and pile them into one along with my OWN ideas, in that people have lots of good reasons to play and less of the bad.

I personally likes aspects of some mods but not others, so what if you were given the choice to play a mod with ALL the good points, none of the bad points, would you not play that?

I think everybody who makes mods expects parts of there mod to be used in newer ones that come after it, but thats a good thing. With every mod we make, we gain new skills and ideas and constantly evolveinto better games. As long as full credit is given is it really a bad thing. That said, its obviously not good to copy chunks of other peoples mods, but their ideas are free to be creditted and used.
The cargo pods don't actually require cargo space. They are, in effect, shield generators that are mounted on to ships that would normally mount cargo pods. They are only sold in set locations, but i have added lots of them and lots of trade routes. The pods have high volume, so no one can unmount them and put them into their cargo space. But, they are mounted not internally so they don't take up space.
The overlapping loadouts are something i've done loads of. Isn't it really a bit rubbish having only one ship per difficulty setting? With overlapping ones you can use the game engine to generate varied encounters that give you no idea what is coming next. For some factions i have 10 loadouts overlapping each with either missile-crazy-pilots and missile based or befferent gun and shield combinations. One of my groups have all of the pirates loadouts overlapping and they are just impossible to plan against. No more taking popping on the positron shields because you are fighting against "x" enemy who only use neutron weapons at this level. Believe me, its much better.

Must be my newbness talking, but I'm still not sure of what you are talking about ... I understand the benefits of "overlapping" loadouts ... but am unsure of how you actually went about putting it all together, same for cargo pods, what is the benefit over standard cargo holds filled with whatever commodity taken to whatever base?

For overlapping loadouts you just add to the nicknames in faction_prop for each faction. The entries like:
npc_ship = li_n_li_elite_d11-19
are just nicknames that point to other details in npcships.ini. Its a lot easier to do that it is to explain, if you just pop through the tutorial you'll be fine. The transport cargo pod thing is partly just something different. If you had transports, but weren't able to mount onto them (or they were already fixed) it just wouldn't be the same. Well, that and they take damage too. If you have a difficult run and get hit hard your profits will be affected. It could be used for roleplay too.

I originally had some ideas of capture the flag ...

How this would work is ... there would be a small asteroid field at each base (custom named loot dropped, diff colour name for each bases asteroid field) that teams must go and grab, only thing is they have to get back to their base, dock, and sell it. That would count as 1 point (admin would scan the docking ship to make sure.

This opens up some fun gameplay because it involves a little strategy, I see a bunch of circumstances popping up:

1. All fighters battle it out and try and get through whilst other players are distracted and grab one, and high tail it for their home base.

2. All fighters battle it out until they basically force the enemy back into their own territory.

3. A fighter or two decide to fly out around the area to avoid detection, and make a cruise speed flyby, dropping into engine kill, grab and hit cruise, and fly back out of range, and back in range at their base.

4. Other fighters act as a human shield for the carrying player whilst he/she makes it back with the flag.

Obviously that would be open to abuse, i.e; players taking multiples, trading 1 between each player etc, hoping one gets through without dying, I'd obviously have to have rules, and make sure 2 admins are there to scan ships to make sure a valid score can be counted.

I would obviously have 1 round per group life too, just to keep things simple.

Whaddya think of that idea? Sound good?

Edited by - oPwnagEo on 5/9/2006 5:54:54 PM

Sounds good, it won't be easy to observe but if all players follow the rules it would be fun.

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