Frontier space ver1.0-update

Well, I`m hoping its just human nature to want to explore. With the addition of capital ships at every jump gate and at the major house bases, the pirates will have a hard time unless they use the jump holes. Last count on the ships is approx. 160. I`ve been thinking about removing the big utility transports and doing away with the docking fix as i`m not keen on it. Also If you could have 1200 cargo hold it would mean you could earn far too much credits far too easy. Also, do I need to have equipment included in the mod? I don`t like having just shield/power upgrades. I wanted to add a cargo bay life support and radiation shielding, but I don`t think either of them are possible. Still debugging and doing as much as poss in my spare time..

Oh, cheers. I`ve done quite a few weapons already. My newest one is a swarm homing pulse missile with 4 missiles.. I`ve just finished adding 9 more factions to the mod. Most are alien and they are based on the homeworld ships (i`ve got to check to see whose ships they are before the mod is released), but its gonna be a really nice little region. About 12 systems, no trade lanes lots of different factions scouting around. With strongholds being well defended against raiding. Each faction has their own weapons (based on other core factions) and the specific thing for the region is lots of firepower of ships and decent shields, but the ships don`t have their armour as high as in the other tough areas of the navmap. Its a shame there`s no capships for the homeworld ships, but i guess that would be crossing the line and would feel a tap on the shoulder from above.

Newest things, I`ve gone through kusari, bretonia and the tau region and increased difficulty. The mod is based around OpenSP, so I`m not restricted to keeping the levels low for the story missions to be ok. Kusari is now actually worth going to, even if you have an eagle. It is pretty much diffculty 10-14, so from long range hawks to basic falcons. The millitary and police have been given tempory prototype versions of their existing ships to even things up and Blood dragons now fly- Dragon`s teeth, Tiger`s claw and Eagles claw. So there up to a vhf class. Bretonia has manchester the same, with slightly harder ships going towards omega13 and tau 31. Molly`s now use wolfhounds almost exclusively and i`m going to give the Gaians falcon Long and basic. Dublin and Edinburgh are going to be the toughest in Bretonia, as from there you can jump to Ross 154, one of the first frontierworlds. I`ve gone through all of the paths, patrols, ambient pop ,mission base levels and increased the level of weapons around the region. Rhineland, Sigma region, Independent worlds and most of the edge worlds will be modified to make the game a bit tougher. I`m going to leave Omicron Gamma and Omicron Alpha as they are as I think thet are fine as is. I have give the corsairs and GMG patrolling gunboats within their major regions. With the corsairs having Bretonian and GMG having Kusari. The pilots have also been change to freighter ace so they fire there weapons all of the time ( i`ve done that with all of the capital ships and the kusari destroyer is awesome). As usual, If anyone has any ideas for possible improvements or comments then let me know.

I`ve not heard much about the deathwish AI mod stuff.. I`ve given all of the npc`s bots and shield gens as standard. Increased loadouts and increased the general level of the encounters in everywhere except liberty space. Its harder, but its difficult setting the valves. I don`t want all of my hard work going to waste just because of something silly like the game being to damn hard. I have made up a new region, its about as edge world as you can get. In it there are alien factions and i think they`ll give any player a run for their money. You will be able to kill a few but it`ll take all of your shield gens and a few nanos to do it. In my completely biased view it is the best mod that i`ve played so far. I could spend months exploring even when i know all of the locations. Other than the deathwish AI, I haven`t had much in the way of ideas guys..

Up until today i`ve been having problems with a few factions and couldn`t get the random missions to work at all for new bases. But, i`ve got that sorted and today i`ve fixed the factions and added random missions to about 25 bases all fully working. Its going to take a while to go through the rest (there are countless bases added well over 100), but at least i can work towards something which will help the mod be released. Done so far- Improved loadouts, NPC regen b/b, better(and worse)versions of original ships. New factions approx 14, some are alien and are tough enough to test anybody New systems, over 100 now, some as an extension to kusari or bretonia, others mostly BW and EW. Harder level everywhere except liberty Capships, done subtley so that there are varying amounts of caps not just there is always 1 dread, 3 cruisers.. Different types of capitals, for new factions Loads of new weapons All the factions that have civillian ships have their own skin. Zoners keep the original skin. Secret areas dotted around Revised loadouts for wrecks, so wreck hunting isn`t so easy Some of the new bases have many objects joined to them to make the original base models look a bit more interesting. Nomads have caps too, and a few more systems. Asteroids (the big solar ones), can be blown up to yield loot. So you can work as a miner if u wanted too. Loads of new commodities, including escape pods for each faction. Pirates actually behave like pirates! If u go to crete and aren`t very friendly with the corsairs they will most likely scan u and demand your very expensive missile ammo or mine ammo. Fixed a few silly typo`s in the original game so hogosha use only their weapons, not junker turrets. Mollys too, not corsair turrets. A couple of systems have rival capital ships fighting each other in large scale battles. Added destructable universe, and cruise speed 600. Designed for open SP, i might see if i can get SP working too. The house millitaries use long range versions of their ships to act as couriers. So rhineland has a long range valkarie with added cargo space and reduced arour. Escorted by a couple of normal or improved valkaries. Basically every ship from the original game has at least 3 versions now. The freighters have 4 in total. Had to remove the docking fix, I didn`t like the camera views. I`m not keen on allowing large transports or capitals for players as it would make the game too easy. One thing i am very happy with is multiple loadouts for the same difficulty level. Meaning, the bounty hunter`s have been given a new vhf the "Moray", the moray has 4 different loadouts spread over 2 difficulty levels. So whwn they spawn u don`t know which one its going to be. At D19, one has Paralysers and a firestalker, the other has 2xWILDFIRE. For a hidden faction i`ve added 6 loadouts at the same level each with their own distinct strengths. Just to keep things more interesting.. GMG and (new faction)Ind Gas have their own capital ships in the form of prospectors. The heavy prospector for gmg is hardcore, imagine a kusari battleship with 2 paralyser turrets, 2 firestalker turrets, Adv Debilitator turrets and about 10 Skyblast B`s. Oh, and it has a shield to of around 25000 capacity. Some things are better left alone! In return the Indgas use Bretonian caps and have outcast type particle weapons (i.e. good ones) and their higher level ships have diamondback as standard. Still to do- I`ve added new things to blow up but can`t find the entry for naming them. I`ve got to sort through a few of the ships and remove any weaker models. Still got to go through the rest of the random missions for new bases. Still got to add commodities and equipment to about 30 bases Not sure about the high refire weapons, I`d like the mod to be MP compatible, and if a weapon has refire 100 or 200 it would most likely ruin the game by lagging too much. I`d like to add the random missions in other systems, but we don`t seem to be quite there with that one yet. Add more wrecks thoughout the new systems, i`ve added quite a few but a few more wud be good. Some of the factions have other factions weapons, they need to be given their own names and info. Quite a few entries for ships info need to be done. Some of the first systems i created are a bit basic, might need to redo some things.. I`d like to go through the AI and actually make the NPC`s fight better, not just "turning evasive" and kissing my ass goodbye.. Once i`ve even done all these things i`m still gonna have to start playtesting for a bit. Anyone actually read all this, well done! If u have any ideas for additions post here. C ya.

New things, got all the solars named as random mission targets. The most interesting thing is the custom ship shipyards. In order to cater for the more experienced player and give people more control over their ship layout i`ve added the bare hull to specific shipyards. On one base for example, the custom eagle one, you can buy the hull in 3 configurations. 1. As standard. but guns 7/0 and shield mounted onto turret Hp 2. As standard. but turret on shield Hp and shield mounted onto turret Hp 3. As standard. but guns 6/0 and an extra class 8 shield mounted onto turret Hp So you choose the basics, then choose the engine type; 1. Basic 2. Long range (less volume, bit slower) 3. Superiority (more volume, bit faster, lower cruise charge time) 4. Intercepter (most volume, fastest, lowest cruise charge time) **Note the engines also have different stats depending on the ship class** Also, the types of the flame effects can be chosen. You can choose to have a bretonian/kusari/rhineland VHF superiority drive for its flame effects if you like. Then choose powerplant, 1-9 **There are also 6 types of powerplants** Basically, you can make the ship that you want and configure it as a combat, fast courier, long range courier. Also added new are the courier commodities which are bought from a location as a contract. You deliver the good to a specific base and receive its payment all from the commodity room. So, in Manhattan, there are missions (of quite low value) to Texas, Colorado and California. You will be able to transport police type commodities to specific bases. If you take too long, they perish, it is a contract after all. If you take them to the wrong base and sell, they will give you less money than you paid for in the first place! All of the courier goods are in levels, from 1 to 5 and each level requires that you have a minimum reputation to buy the contract. To come is I would like to add long range destroy missions buy using commodities, Again you buy the contract (maybe not i`m not sure yet) which gives you details of a target in a system several jumps away. On the info is the name of the target and its location. You fly there destroy the base, observation post, telescope.. Then retreive the trophy to return to the base and gain the payment (while being chased by everybody who will be scanning you for it). Its a pretty good idea and its do-able. Not the most important change, but it should be included before the mod is released.

Hi Mace! This all sounds great and it is unbelievable how many additions you already got. Keep working on it. As I´m also a modder I know how much work is put into a good mod and yours has got so many things! Just Great! But, why don´t you release at least a small teaser of the mod. I would really like to try it out, as I´m always seeking for good new mods! But of course it´s your choice and I don´t want you to release a buggy mod. So just think about it. Keep going! Black Eagle

Thanks for your support. I have thought about releasing the mod as the ver 1.0 it was meant to be. I could just mbase and commod/equip all the bases, but the prob is the mod is already about 80Mb big. Not many people would be happy downloading a big unfinished mod as it is at the moment and i don`t like the idea of releasing a poor first mod. I have stopped modding as much as I used to, it used to be almost daily. I`ll leave creating any more systems. I might change the odd base, but i`m just going to work on practical things going towards releasing it rather than would be nice but not essential.

Okay, I understand. Just keep working on it, because it would be a shame, if you would never release all your work to the public. So, take your time to finish the mod, but then I think everyone would like to play it.

Been pretty busy. I`ve added unique ships for all of the civillian skins. Added a new black kusari drone for gmg, added new red borderworld ships for the red hessians. Added black borderworld ships for bundusch, the moray now comes in black (yet again..), a motley tiger type and a texture using the bretonian scheme. Lane hackers get a green version of the stiletto to match their hornets. The blood dragons now have coloured skins for their ships. There are now 4 versions, with added blue, green and red colours. I`ve got just about every base mbased, so they offer missions. Fixed a long running bug in shikoku.. I`ve been going into doing new ships and importing them. I`m really trying not to get too sidetracked and keep working on frontierspace, but i`ve got so many ideas for ships i have spent a fair bit of time in doing them. I`ve created my first two, the sidewinder and the krait assault ship. They`re a bit basic, if anything they are too curvy, but its just a learning experience at the moment. Even tried to make a new capital ship, it looked pretty good in the modelling program so I imported a tester with basic hardpoints and... "congratulations its a brick!". There`s not too many more ships that I will be adding, I am going to get rid of the shadow ships and the thargons as the shadows keep crashing for some reason and the thargons are too low detail to be an entire factions ships. I`ll most likely create some new ones. There will be several alien types regardless once released.

Hey Mace! How is the mod going? Everything allright so far. I´m really waiting to see some of your work. Hopefully soon <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

Its going pretty well thanks! I`m working on addind the commodities to quite a few bases by using templates and i`ve made up a new bomber run type encounter for a few ships to attack capitals. Totally stopped creating ships for the time being and just working on usefull things. I have spent quite a bit of time playing Total War and they`ve given me a few ideas for things to add. Can`t really give a date yet, but once the bases are all equiped, mbased and have commodities it isn`t going to be too much longer for me to finish off. The commodities are the last of these. Gotta question, do u think its important to have unique names for every base? I have had them given generic ones for the time being like supply station and pirate stronghold. I`m not totally happy with that, but the prospect of adding names to an uncountable amount of bases isn`t much of a prospect. It`ll probably be the last thing that i do before releasing, if i decide to do it. The shadows will be staying, but i`d like to get a really good beam effect without having multiplayer ruining lag. Thanks for showing an interest.

Good news! In my opinion it should be okay, if you just give generic names to the bases. Only some special bases should get unique names, so that maybe in each system there is at least one base, which has a unique name. If then you have some more time and have released a first version, you could still add some more names, if necessary. Unfortunately I don´t know any solution for the problem with the beam weapons. They really cause lags and maybe you can try to replace them with similar weapons, which do not do this. So, good luck with all this and keep working on this. I´m really keen to see your work! Black Eagle

Been pretty busy! I`ve re-done all shields, modified a few powerplants and added quite a few new sounds to the game. This is really good, if you get close to an alien vessel you can hear their distinct sound. I`ve added sfx_.. type rumbles to their ships and som of them are a little &quot;unsettling&quot;. Another good one is a system which is a shortcut between omega and hudson, its pretty much a derelict graveyard with over 30 wrecks (most containing nothing) and quite a few high level pirates doing the rounds. If you`re gonna use the shortcut, ur gonna have to work for it! Also, in this system i`ve added 8 black nebula fields to the main debris field. These have sounds added to the zones, so you can hear sampled distress calls repeating throughout the system. There`s 6 different samples so far, i `m really happy with them so i might add a few more. Its really erie. I`m still finding quite a few things to change. I tend to start play testing, then fill up 2 pages of A4 for things to change. Then go through the list. Blackeagle, Would you mind if I used your liberty gunboat in this mod? Promise to give proper credit if you don`t mind..

Hi Mace! This sounds really cool. In most mods I miss some new sounds or music. Very good addition. And the shortcut system is a great idea. I hope I can try it out soon <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Of course you can use the Liberty gunboat. Just be sure to give credit to the creator of the model ( it was made by &quot<img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>v(aster&quot; for the Excelcia mod). I hope everything goes well! Black Eagle <img src=´http://img131.echo.cx/img131/1…ackeaglesignature28wu.jpg ´>

New things today! I`ve gone through and got rid of the homeworld factions and ships. They have been replaced by factions more linked to the rest of the map. The new factions are Independent Pirates, Sirius Rogues, Sirius Trade Guild, Altairans and Edilazians. The last two being from Altair and Edilaze respectively. I think It might be a direction that I go in of creating factions that are assigned to a couple of systems. I could quite easily create another 10 factions each with their homeworld and border space. I think it would make things more interesting and mean it would be worth exploring. The Independent Pirates and Sirius Rogues are really good. The Pirates have loadouts from every other pirate faction and even some bounty hunter and zoner ships. The Rogues have less factions but still a ridiculous amount of ships possible. The job i`m going to have is to make the new corporate factions interesting and unique. So far the Trade Guild use loadouts assigned to both house weapons and civillian weapons ( as do all corps), but they use all of the houses so you get a mixture of all of the weapon types. It works really well. The Altairans have been given zoner and Br-corp loadouts for now. They`ll most likely get their own ships assigned to them as will the Edilazians who have ku-corp and zoner in the mean time. I will most likely use some of the homeworld ships as they have a really unique design to them. As usual, if you have any ideas then let me know