Mon Apr 05, 2004 6:51 am
Excelcia RPG mod 2.1
We have almost finished the 2.1 patch. It will fix a lot of issues and include a bunch of new features.
among these are:
- a completely new custom made economy. this replaces the quickly made initial one (which was jsut a dirty fix for the initial release).
- new commodities, completely new mining (raw materials)
- missiles, torpedos, nomads overwork
- new weapons (dumbfire missile pods, a new nomad gun, ... )
- new bases (criminal bases for hispania, LR shipyard)
- new ships: Danrik (civ "sportscar" VHF by black_lightning) and Zennousha (criminal HF by Cyborgninja)
- new menu background scenes by Wasabe
- player lootdrop by Wasabe
- lotsa small bugfixes
we have almost the same amount of new stuff nearly done, but tha will be included in a patch following this one pretty soon (2 weeks maybe).
stay tuned for the release within the next days (if everything goes right)
Fjord
---------------------------------------------
old (2.0 preview) post follows:
---------------------------------------------
Ahoy folks, the Excelcia RPG mod 2.0 is nearing its release date (a few weeks maybe) and as current progress is very good I'd like to give you a rough overview on what it includes.
It is a massive mod, nearly all ini files have been touched and overworked, manymany changes that make it very different from standard Freelancer.
Forget everything you knew.
The beginning
Players will start in a system where they can "choose" the house they belong to. Their reputations will be adjusted by this move, they can fly to a small base and get a small fighter or fighter with very basic equipment.
Criminaly can additionally fly to a crim base nearby and get "criminal" status, i.e. a reputaion adjustment.
then you can enter the real world of excelcia by flying through the one-way gate that leads to the house you belong to. No way back, its merely for setting up a player's character.
Gameplay
This is affected by a lot of things. In "everyday" gameplay you will notice quite a few differences. The difficulty of each house has been adjusted to the same level. You meet every shipclass everywhere. You can get the whole range of missions everywhere. NPCs use setups that are more similar to players. They dont gain the advantages they had before (armore multipliers, infinite power reactors, ...). They'll use nanos/batts, the same equipmetn and guns as players do. This makes them more vulnerable, but they also fight back a lot better.
Ships
Every ship has been overworked / changed in a few aspects. To say it in general, a complete rebalance of all ships. Smaller ships move faster, larger ones are tougher and can carry more/better guns. We have included bomber class ships (made by black_lightning) and several other ships are in work as well. A new cruiser for Hispania is also finished. Every house has a Gunboat, at the moment the most powerful vessels, but we intend to include the whole line of ships up to the big babies - all ships u know from FL.
Ship speeds have also been adjusted. in general 80 for freighters and VHFs, 90 for HFs and 100 for LFs.
Ships can be equipped following a slightly different concept as FL initially had. This brings us to the next topic:
Mounting System
All guns and equipment (shields) have been reclassed. Ships have been adjusted and many more good and new setups is possible. One thing is that there are seperate Missile mounts (for CDs and missiles). Guns use low, medium and high energy mounts, depending on the power of the gun. Capships have their own wepaon classes, so they can be equipped just like ships in many various ways.
Shields also use new classes, this way capships also can use a bigger variety of those. There are also 2 new gun classes, they will be explained in the next topic.
Guns & ammo
All guns have been overworked. ALL of them. Every gun is useful now, in its own way. The guns for factions, houses have been all overworked with a special view on balance.
the "EX" guns: call them EXcelcia, EXperimental, its up to you. There are special new guns with their own mounts on ships. They are more powerful counterparts of old guns, using a new technology (power cells as ammo). This results in higher damage output and a lower powerplant drain, BUT they use ammo.
The well-known codenamed weapons also use ammo now.
nomads are a bit weaker in damage, but they retain other advantages.
Ammo:
now it will start to get tricky. EX guns, missiles, torps, mines, CDs, even CMs use cargospace. The general ammo-limit has been raised to 20000. Thats enough for a 8.33 refire gun to fire for quite some time.(~10 minutes if u use 4 guns with the same ammo type and refire 8.33).
The cargospace of ships is very carefully chosen. some vessels can carry quite a nice load of ammo, others cant. there are a few vessels that can be equipped to real missile boats. Another aspect of this is that you CAN mount quite large missiles on small ships, but you wont be able to carry much ammo for those.
light fighters can really bite with some setups, but they wont be good in longer fights.
This is something that players have to learn. It may look tough for beginners, but its an awesome feature for more experianced players. There are a LOT of possibilities to equip a ship in a very good & realistic way.
Shields
We have created nearly 150 new shields. Seperate LF, HF, VHF, FR shields for each house + our criminal syndicate, so to say a 7th house consisting of criminals. Each house has its own type of shield with its unique strengths and weaknesses. There are 3 types of each shield: a low-capacity - high-recharge, a balanced and a high-capacity - low-recharge one. This is also important from the power drains. higher capacities have a higher constant drain, higher recharge have a higher rebuild drain. You can select the type you prefer, all are worth to be used and all have their advantages/disadvantages in various situations.
New ships come with a relatively weak defaul shield, a low and high power opgrades are possible for kinda all ships.
Economy
This has been redone from scratch. completely overworked with a view on production, resources, inner and interhouse trading. it should give the traders out there new challenges and opportunities.
... rest see next post...
---------------------------------
Excelcia Mod Team Leader
www.excelcia.org/forum
Edited by - LordFjord on 7/22/2004 12:13:59 AM
among these are:
- a completely new custom made economy. this replaces the quickly made initial one (which was jsut a dirty fix for the initial release).
- new commodities, completely new mining (raw materials)
- missiles, torpedos, nomads overwork
- new weapons (dumbfire missile pods, a new nomad gun, ... )
- new bases (criminal bases for hispania, LR shipyard)
- new ships: Danrik (civ "sportscar" VHF by black_lightning) and Zennousha (criminal HF by Cyborgninja)
- new menu background scenes by Wasabe
- player lootdrop by Wasabe
- lotsa small bugfixes
we have almost the same amount of new stuff nearly done, but tha will be included in a patch following this one pretty soon (2 weeks maybe).
stay tuned for the release within the next days (if everything goes right)
Fjord
---------------------------------------------
old (2.0 preview) post follows:
---------------------------------------------
Ahoy folks, the Excelcia RPG mod 2.0 is nearing its release date (a few weeks maybe) and as current progress is very good I'd like to give you a rough overview on what it includes.
It is a massive mod, nearly all ini files have been touched and overworked, manymany changes that make it very different from standard Freelancer.
Forget everything you knew.
The beginning
Players will start in a system where they can "choose" the house they belong to. Their reputations will be adjusted by this move, they can fly to a small base and get a small fighter or fighter with very basic equipment.
Criminaly can additionally fly to a crim base nearby and get "criminal" status, i.e. a reputaion adjustment.
then you can enter the real world of excelcia by flying through the one-way gate that leads to the house you belong to. No way back, its merely for setting up a player's character.
Gameplay
This is affected by a lot of things. In "everyday" gameplay you will notice quite a few differences. The difficulty of each house has been adjusted to the same level. You meet every shipclass everywhere. You can get the whole range of missions everywhere. NPCs use setups that are more similar to players. They dont gain the advantages they had before (armore multipliers, infinite power reactors, ...). They'll use nanos/batts, the same equipmetn and guns as players do. This makes them more vulnerable, but they also fight back a lot better.
Ships
Every ship has been overworked / changed in a few aspects. To say it in general, a complete rebalance of all ships. Smaller ships move faster, larger ones are tougher and can carry more/better guns. We have included bomber class ships (made by black_lightning) and several other ships are in work as well. A new cruiser for Hispania is also finished. Every house has a Gunboat, at the moment the most powerful vessels, but we intend to include the whole line of ships up to the big babies - all ships u know from FL.
Ship speeds have also been adjusted. in general 80 for freighters and VHFs, 90 for HFs and 100 for LFs.
Ships can be equipped following a slightly different concept as FL initially had. This brings us to the next topic:
Mounting System
All guns and equipment (shields) have been reclassed. Ships have been adjusted and many more good and new setups is possible. One thing is that there are seperate Missile mounts (for CDs and missiles). Guns use low, medium and high energy mounts, depending on the power of the gun. Capships have their own wepaon classes, so they can be equipped just like ships in many various ways.
Shields also use new classes, this way capships also can use a bigger variety of those. There are also 2 new gun classes, they will be explained in the next topic.
Guns & ammo
All guns have been overworked. ALL of them. Every gun is useful now, in its own way. The guns for factions, houses have been all overworked with a special view on balance.
the "EX" guns: call them EXcelcia, EXperimental, its up to you. There are special new guns with their own mounts on ships. They are more powerful counterparts of old guns, using a new technology (power cells as ammo). This results in higher damage output and a lower powerplant drain, BUT they use ammo.
The well-known codenamed weapons also use ammo now.
nomads are a bit weaker in damage, but they retain other advantages.
Ammo:
now it will start to get tricky. EX guns, missiles, torps, mines, CDs, even CMs use cargospace. The general ammo-limit has been raised to 20000. Thats enough for a 8.33 refire gun to fire for quite some time.(~10 minutes if u use 4 guns with the same ammo type and refire 8.33).
The cargospace of ships is very carefully chosen. some vessels can carry quite a nice load of ammo, others cant. there are a few vessels that can be equipped to real missile boats. Another aspect of this is that you CAN mount quite large missiles on small ships, but you wont be able to carry much ammo for those.
light fighters can really bite with some setups, but they wont be good in longer fights.
This is something that players have to learn. It may look tough for beginners, but its an awesome feature for more experianced players. There are a LOT of possibilities to equip a ship in a very good & realistic way.
Shields
We have created nearly 150 new shields. Seperate LF, HF, VHF, FR shields for each house + our criminal syndicate, so to say a 7th house consisting of criminals. Each house has its own type of shield with its unique strengths and weaknesses. There are 3 types of each shield: a low-capacity - high-recharge, a balanced and a high-capacity - low-recharge one. This is also important from the power drains. higher capacities have a higher constant drain, higher recharge have a higher rebuild drain. You can select the type you prefer, all are worth to be used and all have their advantages/disadvantages in various situations.
New ships come with a relatively weak defaul shield, a low and high power opgrades are possible for kinda all ships.
Economy
This has been redone from scratch. completely overworked with a view on production, resources, inner and interhouse trading. it should give the traders out there new challenges and opportunities.
... rest see next post...
---------------------------------
Excelcia Mod Team Leader
www.excelcia.org/forum
Edited by - LordFjord on 7/22/2004 12:13:59 AM
