Nice looking new model there...i'm having fun playing TEC with their destroyer class and with the working version of Distant Suns it adds such a level to the game.

I do have one question though, and that is the Destroyer level-ups. The second two weapons, the missile swarm and armor pen laser, they both seem to lose their damage notation when you improve them. I assume they do still actually do damage?

Maybe you coud take a look to see if the TEC Destroyers level-ups are working correctly before the new patch.

Thanks and keep up the good work.

Looks good Zombie. ANd a fitting tech for the rogues i reckon hehe, where did they get it? Hehehehe.

lol

Anyways... Here's the Rogue Traders Titan

It's another model by SolCommand with textures to match the fleet and based off the Bablyon station, but I think it looks cool.

 Edit - see it has a pirate logo on the side

Pacts for nine races?

The current problem with pacts is it's limited to a max of 18 no matter how many races you add.

At a minimum I want atleast one pact that represents the end level relationship for that race.

Here's a rundown of my current thoughts.

Advent: Shield
Tech: Supply
Vasari: Weapon Cooldown
Nephilim: Capital Ship (Experience/Supply)
Plague: Starbase Improvements
Rogue: Pirate Lords (something piraty)
Archailect: Seed AI (Research bonuses)
Hypercorp: ? (Maybe get's Efficiency)

This approach would essentially steal 5 (assuming I come up with something unique for Hypercorp) pacts from the existing races. Currently I'm thinking about gutting:

AntiMatter
MassReduction
Efficiency
PlanetBombing
Thruster

I'm also thinking about replacing Beam with Projectile Weapons.

Assuming these changes it would leave the following pacts to distribute between the 8 races above:

MetalCrystal
Market
PhaseJump
TacticalSlots
EnergyWeapon
ProjectileWeapon
Research (May get switched out)
Culture
Trade
Armor

Thoughts?

Hmm rogue traders titan eh, looks a mite strange to me i must admit, i am having some problems seeing it as a rogue vessel, but maybe i just need some time. hehe. Or maybe.. hmm i need to look it over further and debate some on it before making up my mind. I do notice it has a rather scruffy look that fits the pirates.

Seems like nice concepts, what do you mean by supply for tech? and what do efficiency mean for hypercorp?

Some alternate ideas: Arent plague supposed to be the swarm race, how abouth just going along with cheaper ships, which is a large part of beeing "swarmy" or simply higher fleet cap. Cheaper or more.

Nephilim are supposed to have the overal strongest ships, could just make all their ships stronger, whether a tiny increase in all stats or a larger one in select areas. Type, all nephilim ships are a shrine and a living example of their faith and devotion. I just seem to recall plague beeing the swarmy race with the cheapest ships of all while nephilim should have the best ships, just made sense to me to make them into polar opposites in this area. Quality vs Quantity.

And i assume by beeing piraty you mean something to do with either raiding or money?

Edit: it looks more fitting to me now than when i first glimpsed it although i still have a tiny strange feeling hehe.

So ya, the problem is bird in the hand versus two in the bush. This is a textured model that's meant to look big and matches the rogues other ships texture wise. Is it ideal?... maybe not... is it menacing looking?... yes!

Good ideas.

First the Tech, Advent and Vasari are their existing end pacts.

The ones I had for Nephilim and Plague are the original end pacts I had designed. Though I'm open to change.

Efficiency would sorta be what it is now pact wise which is increased construction speeds with maybe a few additions (which is fairly boring but all I can come up with right now).

The thing with pacts is it should be something you share to get the end result which makes it kinda tough to design something that benefits both sides.

Well what is the essence of a hypercorp. Hmm, i would say profit if it is run like any normal company. But then they have their nano/psionic side aswell, so they have many avenus open to them. I think i would go with some fom of income, imo tech is all abouth trade while hypercorp is all abouth income, not just from trade but from anywhere, selling/buying, market manipulation, various services etc.

Yeah i know its tricky, because its not solely related to the one faction.

I know it was not correct prior to R3 and... I thought I fixed it or was atleast going to

Drop these files int he SOTF (E) R3 GameInfo directory and let me know if it corrects your problem.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5790092/Temp/FallenTech.7z

Thanks much for reporting this.

I have a version working with Diplomacy v1.31 and Distant Stars 0.99 B4. However, I'm going to wait for the pending patch to 1.31 before I release anything.

You have balanced the races with the ones in distant stars? I know they have modifed all ship stats aswell as having alot more research tiers. Wouldent want your races to be on the loosing side!

Woot, reports from my first attempts at beta testing in a while.

Tried Hypercorp,got a ctd+ minidump and all that. Meh.

Their tech tree seems to be jumbled up, with there being a level four tech on the first page and all that. But thats most likely because of you trying to change that particular tree from defences into psionics. It might just be me speaking at the moment, but it does seem like they are still a little too similer to TEC.

Well except for their extractors, but thats another thing. Is there no way to have the asteroids upgrade into the refineries, or just plain blow up so they can be replaced. Might be just because that's how I'm used to playing, but my economy started to fizzle around the time I usually started upgrading with extractors, only to find out I couldn't (it was a small game)

Love the Rogue superweapon, can't wait to have a blast.

Planet Bombing for the Hypercorp tech? As in their increased focus in trade has increased their capabilities in debt collecting or something like that. Maybe trade the research speed over to hypercorp (as they throw money at the problem.) And give the infomorphs something like Armor or Animatter reserves (if they are still gonna be the small ability based race.)

I doubt they would actually share the benefits of a seed AI with other people, especially not after so many of them were sacrificed to form it.

For the Pirate lords pact, my first thought was something like greater pirate strength against others or similar, or weaker pirate numbers. But then in a game without pirates it would be rather useless. More phase jump speed/being able to phase jump out further out would have been my second suggestion. Until I realised that would infringe on the Vasari.

Quoting ZombiesRus5, reply 458

I know it was not correct prior to R3 and... I thought I fixed it or was atleast going to

Drop these files int he SOTF (E) R3 GameInfo directory and let me know if it corrects your problem.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5790092/Temp/FallenTech.7z



Thanks much for reporting this.

End of ZombiesRus5's quote

I forgot to mention if you try these files you need to add the following to the entity.manifest you are using...

BuffTechGaussDefenseRailGunTargetDamage.entity

BuffTechGaussDefenseRailGunSelf.entity

I've done some rebalancing around capitalships and research trees. I know Plague could use some more as their research tree is a little different.

Yep, it's still very much a WIP which is why it's not been released. Research trees are in flux and abilities are still being worked out. Though I do have a majority of the models in which is a plus.

For the pirates you could either let them skim more credits from others trade or income or implement something special like sporadic spawning of pirates that attack random targets. Type: The alliance between the pirates and others legitimices their existence and increases the number of upcoming pirates preying on "lawful" targets, many pirates in real life were just that, people with a license to raid the enemy of their benefactors.

It might not fit at all into a shared tech tree however in which case one could always implemented an ability aka the one the tech got with slower enemy build speed/more costs.

So far all pacts have been defensive in nature, but why not have offensive pacts aswell with detrimental effects for everyone not associated with the pact holders. It may lead to stupid situations though, so might not be feasible.

To make it easy and suitable can always go for general income for hypercorp and stealing income for pirates, that must be the perfect fit for their respective faction, one seeks any type of profit and the other preys on that profit to make its own. Heh.

Offcource the problem with such pacts is that some will be better than others, one strives to make them equal which is pretty darn hard when you want to make them all different to boot and have such a limited set to take from.

I.. need.. moons... i need.. hypercorp tree.. gah.. cannot breathe... must... have....

Just wondering, but you didn't give the Plague the Infomorphs AI did you by any chance..

Mostly wondering because their first attack on me consisted of three to five level 5 capital ships, a couple of carriers and abut 40 fighters/bombers. I say three to five because they destroyed my most of my fleet before I could escape. There might have been a belial or two in there as well.

Do like the harpoon change though. Also, I'd like to suggest moving the trading post on rogues to level three or four. While it might break the lore a touch, it would be incredibly useful for those times where you get pushed onto the defensive almost immediately..

Then again their new superweapon will help with that anyway. Also wondering with their tech tree. For some of it, including the salvaging upgrades, they have two to three levels, but some of them only need one or two levels before you can get the higher level. The 'excess' levels also seem to not have an effect...

Was that deliberate?

Its been like that for a long time, ive noticed that the plague tend to use a fair number of cap ships aswell. Its kinda nice actually cause usually the ai hardly uses cap ships.

Oh its nice, it just gets annoying when you prepare a fleet to deal with large numbers of enemy ships, only to be swamped with five level five fleet carriers and their 30 or so minions.

Especially when its their first attack of the game.

Ive never noticed that on the first attack myself, well unless you built lot of defences and had a descent flet and they felt they had to wait til they had a sizable fleet or someting.

I was playing as Rogues. Since their economy tends to crash if you don't attack near constantly for the first 40 or so minutes, I had to armor up to prevent surprises. Speaking of Rogues, I've noticed some of their pirate ships don't seem to regenerate antimatter to steal resources.

I have put these files in, but now every time i select a TEC Destroyer, i get a mini-dump, even on a new game!!! Sorry to bring bad news.

More detail Sucal. Exactly what ships and more details so Zombie can fix it -if it is a real bug. (the ships not regaining antimatter)

Sorry for the issue. Here's a full zip of the Distant Stars Addon including the proper changes and entity.manifest. I missed a couple files in what I originally posted for you.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5790092/Temp/SOTF%20Distant%20Stars%20%28D%29%20R3.7z

It looks like it's just the Heavy cruiser. I'll fix that in the build this weekend. Hope to get a small update out to you guys soon, though work as been a bear with production issues all week

I'd like to get the moon prototype in for Hypercorp so you guys can see the mechanic in action.