SE:V Modification [B5 and anything else]

[GuppyShark]

Into the Fire or something? I think it was eventually released as an open beta. "Our game's incomplete, but we can't sell it so... might as well throw it out there" kind of deal.

[brianeyci]

I took a look at the data files to see how easily we could mod intel.

Code: Select all

Name                                            := Sabotage - Ships & Fleets
Description                                     := Intelligence activities directed towards sabotaging ships and fleets.
Picture Number                                  := 1
Portrait Filename                               := Event_IntelGeneralInfo.jpg
Large Portrait Filename                         := LargePortrait_Event_IntelGeneralInfo.jpg
Maximum Level                                   := 20
Number Of Requirements                          := 1
Requirements Evaluation Availability            := AND
Requirements Evaluation Allows Placement        := TRUE
Requirements Evaluation Allows Usage            := TRUE
Requirement 1 Description                       := Empire must have at least tech level 1 in Sabotage - Ships & Fleets.
Requirement 1 Formula                           := Get_Empire_Tech_Level("Sabotage - Ships & Fleets") >= (1 + ([%Level%] - 1))
Number Of Abilities                             := 1
Ability 1 Type                                  := Intelligence Focus Area Modifier
Ability 1 Description                           := Intelligence actions with a focus area of Sabotage - Ships & Fleets will be improved by +[%Amount1%]%.
Ability 1 Scope                                 := Galaxy - This Player
Ability 1 Range Formula                         := 0
Ability 1 Amount 1 Formula                      := [%Level%]
Ability 1 Amount 2 Formula                      := "Sabotage - Ships & Fleets"

I forgot that in SE:V, you don't directly make intel projects, but you assign focus areas. Anybody have any idea what the final line, ability 1 amount 2 formula refers to? I search for that text string and I can't find it. I want more control over exactly what kind of intel projects occur, and this doesn't give me anything. I can't find anything on shrapnel forums or SE:V about exactly how intel works in SE:V or how to mod it.

Anybody have any experience with intel at all?

Apparently there's going to be a "mod manual" released with the next patch.

My vision of a B5 mod goes as follows. A player simultaneously plays two games at once, one critical, the other optional. The first is the general explore, expand, exploit, exterminate.

The second game will be ferrying around perfect cloak civilian ships which generate intel points and building a diplomatic station which generates a shitload of intel points to spy on another player's civilian ships. The only way to deal with cloaked ships is mines. A player could completely ignore this civilian part of the game, but a good player would have 1 civilian ship at least per system, spying, and possibly more. The only way to detect them would be if they "decloaked" blowing their own cover, or if another empire bans civilian ships which is effectively not giving minefield codes away. Civilian ships would have no combat ability--they wouldn't even be able to ram, and a single warship could destroy any arbitrary amount if a player was stupid enough to "decloak" for no reason at all. The diplomatic station would probably be the only thing able to detect these civilian ships, and be invincible. Generally it would be in someone's best interest to place the diplomatic station far out in no-man's land, to monitor civilian ship movements, rather than in their home systems. This is the best way I've thought up of having a "meta-game" totally separate from the 4x part which would be interesting for RPers but not totally crucial.

Military ships would be built with 1 resource, civilian ships with another resource, and heroes another. Your first, tier 0 hero, would be some kind of orbital space yard generating intel points. This orbital space yard would be special--it couldn't build military ships, but only build civilian ships. That way if you want to build civilian ships, it doesn't tie up your real military yards. As you advance and research better heroes, the heroes being better kinds of diplomatic stations, you'd get diplomatic stations generating more intel points, and yards building civilian ships much faster. Now one problem is why would a person want to cripple his military research and put points into this metagame when the metagame doesn't seem to do anything. I may make research costs for heroes and civilian shit nothing. Perhaps if you build more civilian ships, they generate more of the civilian resource, and that would act as the buffer. Later in the game, you could build diplomatic stations more and more advanced as you built more and more civilian ships.

Meanwhile, the real part of the game, the 4x part, goes relatively unmolested by this metagame. A player could ignore all this RP business, and suffer a small weakness in that he doesn't have perfect scouts everywhere. Depending on how good intel is, you might be forced to do this civilian business, but I dont' know how good it is yet or how much control we'll have.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Wouldn't it just be easier to set "see all" in the starting options than to do all of that perfect cloak scout business? Anyway, I regard SE V's intel as similar to SE IV's, which is to say that it should be ignored completely. A proper model of intel would have more intel points cause a player to have a more detailed view of what is going on in other empires and cause them to have a less detailed view of what's going on in your own. Someone with relatively massive intel could see the positions of all a no-intel empire's planets and ships, what they're building on each, what they're researching, what facilities they have, etc. But as far as I know, this is not possible to mod in.

In any case, I think we should focus on the basics first and worry about things that would change the nature of the game much later. I'd say the first design milestone should be a playable and balanced mod that includes the EA, Minbari, Centauri, and Narn with one weapon each (that of course can be mounted in different fashions), the three ship types, and all of the basic components. Shipsets to make them actually look like the races they're supposed to represent, custom effects that make the weapon fire look authentic, and advanced game concepts can come later. And functioning AI can come much later, if we ever even bother.

[brianeyci]

This is a very good point. I'll try to get a 0.1 beta version out this weekend to try out. I'm thinking of the following kind of paradigm. Most if not all weapons as seekers, with point defense about half the size to counter a battery. Also I never recall fighters ever taking out a capital ship in B5. I'm thinking capital ships could be immune to fighters, in a way (read on). But at the same time I'll make fighters nearly impossible to hit with capital ships. What's the point? I'm thinking fighters, or the fighter bomber variant could strip weapons, destroy engines... there's a lot of flexibility with the different damage types now. But not destroy the ship itself, which would have an emissive armor component to make the inner hull immune to fighters. Weapons would be mounted on the outer hull and could be stripped by fighters. The only real way to deal with fighters would be your own fighters. There'd be a necessity for a balance between point defense, fighters and main batteries, and the person with the best balance would win. Anyway we'll see.

Initial version will have the EA, Narns, Centauri, Minbari, Vorlons and Shadows.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

True. We never really see small, destroyer-sized ships in B5. It's really just fighters, cruisers, battleships, and PK's to use my nomenclature, so I suppose we could either make destroyers unnattractive except for a few specialized roles. We could also conceive of them as being good anti-fighter platforms, but not necessarily better (or worse) than using one's own fighters for that purpose, but this is not reflected in the show, to my knowledge.