The aim of this thread is to express to Mike a few of the modding options that I'm really hoping are possible in this game. Most of this relates to the shiplist aspect of the game, I'll give you an idea of the way I'd like to structure and arrange things in any mod I make, and hopefully you'll be able to tell me if some of it is within the realms of possibility!!

I will be running through a few of the specifics of how I envisage my shiplist looking, however please note that I am in no way questioning Dafedz' "official" shiplist, or attempting to get any aspect of it changed, I am purely thinking of my own future mods to the game! I'm hoping that this thread will get others thinking of the types of things they'd like to be able to do, because if we bring them to Mike's attention now, it might be a tiny bit of coding at this stage, but a total ball ache later.



Firstly, in Dafedz' shiplist the type of ship in the build queue determines how soon it is replaced by another class. For example; a new Transport will immediately replace the previous class of Transport, however a new Cruiser will not replace the previous Cruiser, it will instead replace the one before. My request is that this can be altered and amended freely by the modder. For example we might want 5 classes of Cruiser buildable at once, yet only 1 Destroyer. My point is that the coding should be individual to the ship class in question, and not pre- coded that all Cruisers face the same restriction etc. Am I making sense??

To give you an example of a certain section of my shiplist. During the beginning of the movies period you will be able to build Constitution class Heavy Cruisers, Miranda class Destroyer/Light Cruisers (haven't decided), Oberth class Surveyors, and a Scout of some kind (maybe Chakotay's Maquis ship). After a certain period the moment you've been waiting for arrives.... the Excelsior is buildable!! Now, I don't want to suddenly swap the Connie for the Excelsior as the Feds would suddenly find themselves losing a mid price, mid performance ship class, for a very high price, high performance class. However, my opinion is that the Excelsior is a replacement for the Constitution in the fact that it's a versatile blend of combat and science, exploration and diplomacy etc- I doubt Starfleet would be building one inferior, older class, alongside a newer version, considering all major exploration duties would be taken care of by the existing Connies and the new Excelsiors. So my solution is this.... The Constitution disappears from the build queue when the Excelsior arrives, but a new ship type, the Cruiser, becomes available in the shape of the Constellation. The Constellation marginally outperforms the Connie in terms of key attributes like speed and combat, but leaves the boldly going to the Excelsior. That way it is no more expensive that the Connie was. So now Starfleet have the Excelsior, Constellation, Miranda, Oberth & a Scout. (as well as an entire fleet of existing Connies, NX's etc).

Now..... What later happens is that the Ambassador arrives on the scene! Yet again, the Ambassador replaces the Excelsior and takes it's Heavy Cruiser slot. However at the same time, the Excelsior class becomes available as a Cruiser.... Replacing the Constellation!!! This Excelsior is also slightly better in terms of general performance, but there are no upgrades to her scientific/ diplomatic abilities as this is really now the role of the Ambassador.

Does this make sense???

If so, I'd really like to be able to refit my old Excelsior class Heavy Cruisers, to the new, better Cruiser configuration. This shouldn't be a problem, but don't forget that the new Excelsior wasn't the class that replaced the old Excelsior in the shipbuilding queue, meaning that Mike would need to code the game so that "ship number 334 can upgrade to ship number 339", independent of ship number 339 actually replacing ship number 244 in the build queue! There would need to be 2 values rather than one, only Mike knows if this is too much extra work!

The other major question I have concerns refits. In the beginning, the consensus was that everyone wanted refits to become available to existing starships, however they would take place at shipyards, take several turns, and cost resources. The BoTF2 database seems to have completely abandoned the idea of refits, instead having older ships be decommissioned and replaced by a ship of a newer class. Whilst I feel that there is certainly a place for this process in the game, I do feel that refits should still be possible. It surely couldn't be too much extra to program? I do think that in order to have large amounts of Excelsiors and Mirandas towards the end of the game, there needs to be a large amount of time between these ships becoming available, to the class being replaced in the build queue. A refit seems to be a logical solution.

If refits were possible, I'd really like the option to add a refit to a particular class, without having the refit itself become a buildable vessel. For example, I know some people like the tri- nacelle Galaxy refit from "All Good Things" (not my cup of tea but still). Now, nobody can seriously suggest ships of this type will be built from the keel up, some 30 years in the future, however it could be a nice refit for the Galaxy, at some point at the very highest tech level.

Similarly, I'd like to mod in the Miranda variant from TNG (without rollbar) as a late game refit for the Miranda- to convert it to a Transport. My logic is that you'll have a lot of Mirandas by this point, it seems a shame to retire them all, even though production stopped on the class some time ago. If a refit of this type were available, the player could choose whether to send an individual Miranda to be neutered and converted to a Transport (obviously it won't be as good as the actual transport), decommissioned, mothballed, or kept in service, maybe patrolling low threat borders or escorting colony ships within Federation borders. Unless the Dominion come along, in which case it's job will be to get blown to **** instead of the Defiant!



This post has to rival those of Matress...! Thanks very much to anyone who's genuinely read it all. I've got a few more concerns and ideas, if Mike is interested in hearing them, I'll add them to this thread. Also, please feel free to discuss any other ideas regarding this general subject in this thread.

An excellent idea. This is exactly the kind of community involvement I like to see . It helps if I know early on what kinds of things people would like to be able to do with my game. I'll do my best to answer your questions based on my current design plans.

Gotcha. I never thought that hard-coding the way certain classes were obsoleted was the right way to go. As it stands, any tech object (building, ship, etc) can define a list of other objects that it renders obsolete, as well as a list of any objects to which it can be upgraded/refitted. So, according to Dafedz's ship list, the second transport would explictly obsolete the specific model of transport that came before it. The third Cruiser would explicitly obsolete the first Cruiser. This is not actually dependent on the class of ship (Transport, Cruiser, etc). You could have a Heavy Destroyer render a regular Destroyer obsolete. You could also set it up so no ships are ever rendered obsolete, or you could choose your own line of progression like the one you described.

I intend for refits to be implemented, and I will use the example you gave regarding the Excelsior.

For the mod you described, the Excelsior would not render any ships (i.e. the Constitution) obsolete. However, when the Ambassador became available, it would render the Excelsior obsolete. At the same time, a new variant of the Excelsior would become available (the Enterprise-B variant, for example). This would require defining a separate Excelsior variant in the ship list with the same tech requirements as the Ambassador. For the original Excelsior, you would define an Upgrade Path that would allow the old Excelsiors to be refitted to the new Excelsior variants. The new variant might also have a classification of Cruiser instead of Heavy Cruiser. The player would not be able to construct the old Excelsior anymore, but he could construct the newer revision of the Excelsior as well as the Ambassador. Old Excelsiors could be refitted to the newer variant at any shipyard. I assume that the Ambassador would render the Constitution and any of its variants obsolete, though this would not be required.

Does that answer your question? Please let me know if I was confusing.

Hi Mike, thanks very much for your quick response!!!

Everything you've said is music to my ears, glad you get where I'm coming from!

Just to clarify; In my mod the original Excelsior would render the Constitution obsolete, however at the same time the Constellation would be buildable, acting as a lighter counterpart to the Excelsior, rendering nothing obsolete.

The Ambassador renders the original Excelsior obsolete, and the new Excelsior renders the Constellation obsolete, acting as a lighter counterpart to the Ambassador.

Not that the specifics are important anyway, it's clear that I'll be allowed to do exactly what I'm intending anyway. Really glad you're looking at this project in a very open way, rather than programming it to be restrictive!

It's great to know that any object can obsolete another. In some instances for certain races I feel a new class can perform the function of 2 previous classes. Is there any way a new Scout/Surveyor could obsolete both the existing Scout and the existing Surveyor?


Thanks again mate, I'll download you UI test this week and give some in depth feedback. Keep meaning to but time etc!

No problem, I'm always excited to see activity on these forums and just as eager to answer any questions .

That's all possible. Also, there's no reason why it would have to be the Ambassador that renders the old Excelsior obsolete--it could just as well be the Excelsior Refit that renders the original obsolete.

I always try to plan for the unforseen contingencies .

Absolutely. There's no limit to the number or type of designs that can be obsoleted by a newer design, nor is there any limit to the number of possible upgrade paths from one design to another.

No problem. Any other questions, just ask. Hope you enjoy the UI demo . It'll look better once I get more ships in the database and more images for the ships and buildings.

I'm no modder but willing to learn so my question is this; Would what Mogh
stated above be also available to all races ships? I only ask this cause there are some rom ships that are older but I do love how they move, attack, escape ect.

Kinda like a Univeral way of modding.

Yes, everything I stated above is independent of the type of ship or owner of the ship.

Congratulations, on a job well done!

(Hehe anyone know where i quoted that from? It isn't from Trek, in case anyone was wondering)

...

I'm glad that you're going to code the game in this way, Mike. To be honest, I hadn't noticed that Dafedz had missed this point out. Dafedz is still yet to read my PM about other points that need updating, and it's starting to annoy me now. Anyone know where he's disappeared to?

So the way I understand it, a ship file would have something like this?

#ID: 123
#Name: Excelsior
#Type: Cruiser
#Model File: Excelsior.something
#....
...
..
..
..
#Refits to: Exclsior II (ID 129)
#Renders obsolete: Constitution (ID 103)


#ID: 129
#Name: Excelsior II
#Type: Cruiser
#Model File: Excelsior.something
#....
...
..
..
..
#Refits to: none
#Renders obsolete: none

I'm assuming a similiar file format as well. Personally, I'd have the ID infront and the ship name behind it (easier to parse programmatically, but really a minor detail).

IE:
#Refits: ID 129 (Exclesior II)
#Obsolete: ID 103 (Constitution)

Like I said, the format is hugely minor. But I'm in a programming mood at the moment and I'm bored, so I thought about it and felt like sharing :p

Are there typically visual differences between original ships and their refit counterparts? I thought I saw somewhere they could be, so it's likely it could warrant a seperate model.

Actually, they look like the example below. Note that the "Key" attribute on the "Ship" element is a unique identifier, and is referenced by the "ObsoletedItem" and "UpgradeOption" elements. The values of the "Name" and "Description" elements are the keys used to look up the actual name and description from the string table for the current language ("TECH_NAME_SHIP_FED_NEBULA" might return "Nebula-Class Heavy Cruiser"). The naming conventions I've used for the Ship ID, Name, and Description keys are only a guideline to help ensure uniqueness. They are not required to conform to those formats.

No, Mattress, I haven't heard from dafedz, and he hasn't responded to my PMs or e-mails. I'm starting to get worried .

Okay, I have to ask for people like me who are not modders. Is there going to be a modding for dummies put out? It sounds like fun but again I do not know how to mod.

Yeah, I've already written some documentation for TheWhiteRaven, as he's helping me put the tech tree into XML. Right now it only covers buildings, as I haven't updated it to include ships yet. It also has a few typos, but you can take a look if you want: http://www.armadafleetcommand.com/botf/strobel/tech_database_xml_reference.pdf.

I'll also be happy to answer any questions that aspiring modders might have.

Excellent, I'm going to check it out.!

Just looking over the different variables gets me very excited about playing, and modding this game! Particularly liking the differentiated scan power and sensor range, sweet.

The power vs range aspect is a feature that will be necessary if we're going to implement the "research by scanning" features.

I'd be pretty annoyed if this system wasn't in for the random events. I'm not saying any more than that though...

...

At first glance, some people may think the XML code that has been posted is pretty daunting from a modding point of view. But once you start to really read and take in what it says, you'll realise just how moddable this system will be. For simple mods, it's a simple matter of changing numbers - that's it!

And for more complex mods, it's a matter of adding in/removing whatever variables you need.

What could be simpler than that? I really am exciting as to what posibilities this system will mean for modding purposes...

Glad the potential modders are liking my work . If you guys really want to look at what you can do with the game, start looking through the data files that come with the demo. The 'Resources\Data' directory contains all the XML files; the 'Resources\Tables' directory contains a bunch of tables, including all of the variables used for the galaxy generator. The tables are tab-delimited, so it's best (and easiest) to just open them in Microsoft Excel.

Looking at this code I can understand it. Strange as this reads! lol

I would like to know though why would a ship have to have this in its code?
" PopulationHealth " the rest of the code I get..

It's for relief during plague or other disasters (that are mostly random events, but could be sabotage). The event would kill a number of pop points and this figure is what percentage is saved. Note that only the highest value applies. This is according to the database.

Ahhh that makes sence.. Thank you for the info..

No problem. I have a frightening ability with memory. Especially trivia.

Should not have said that... I now have the ultimate Trek Tivia Question!
but it is not for this thread..