Dynamic war

Arqentus

Spaceman
To get back to the "faction" problem ( the buoys have been discussed already ;) ).

It's true that they are a bit troubling. While running the Pirate job's in the game, i ended up shooting down several militia fighters ( dident really have a choice, they gangbanged me right from the jump point ). The effect was, almost every system now is hostile, sinds almost every system has militia units. Yet, i only shot them originaly down in one system.

Same deal with the Kilrathi, somehow i have a perfect score with them becouse i killed a lot of Retro's ( who are supply'ed by the kilrathi as saboteurs somebody pointed out ). Who do i gain favorable rating with the Kilrathi for shooting pirates.

If we look at it from a race perspective, the Kilrathi are a samurai like warrior race. So shooting down those honorless pirates is not a bad thing in there eye's. But, why do they even know I shot them down. My actions are know all over the place, now that's kinde strange isent it. A galaxy with how many billion people, and yet, every faction respons to my actions directly.

I posted this before, but it may be better to take a look at Space Rangers 1. I'm using this a referance a lot, becouse they have been able to create a living universe, with a constantly moving front.

In SR1, the object is, to a) take back the universe b) take out a 1 of 2 super ships ( story related ). Option (a) is done by removing all enemy presents in a sector.

For instance, lets say Sol is under enemy controll. The enemy is able to create ships on the planet's, and after a while, they fill up a fleet, and it move's out to conquer the next system.

Your own allies do the same thing ( the confed equivalent ... ships from a race will try to take back those sector's, aided by the rangers faction when there are ships around ). The entire game sector's will be taken, sector's will be lost ( i've even heared where the game ( you start with +- 20% of the sector's in allies control ), where people after xx turns even up with only 2 of 3 allied sector's ( of the 50 or 70? ).

A enemy attacking a sector will show op in your nav map as such ( a contested area ), same with sector's owned by your alliance or the enemy.

Your alliance consists of 7 race's who controle sector's or sometime's dual controle a sector.

If you can remove the enemy presents, you are rewarded with xp, and some other stuff sometime's ( artifacts ). At the same time, missions or quest's can be flown/done to get you your money, trade etc, the basic privateer stuff.

While the race's can be looked upon as faction's like privateer, they differ a lot at the same time. Landing on a planet of a faction you have a bad rep with, means you can't access some things ( like buying stuff ( equipment or goods ) , missions etc ). But, it's not a global thing ( you need to be a real pig, to turn the entire faction hostile to you. Most of the effect's are a) planet based b) sector based c) and finally race / faction based. Also, you can redeam yourself to by a) killing enemy's of that race/faction b) doing missions for that race/faction c) by paying a brible to the planet ( so even with the entire race/faction may want your blood, a well placed bribe can turn a hostile planet into a neutral one for the time ).

Why did i explain all this long winded story. Becouse it think it's possible to add some of this stuff.

Instait of running into a few conf & kilrathi fighters dogging it out, in reality it need to be fleets. You with your tiny ship dont need to conquer the sector's, but your help can make the differance. Take out several kilrathi fighters, and it may give the confed fighter fleet the needed breathing room to allow bombers to target there cap ships, and weaken them some more.

In a later part of the game, when you have the money, you can start 'liberating' sector's with your own fleet.

Also, in this basis, what's there to prevent you from becoming a Kilrathi, and try to conquer the universe as there ally.

There need to be a end. It's all good & well a open universe, but after a while, there needs to come a end to the game ( in general, the moment you become to powerfull & can conquer sector after sector widout much problem , then the game ends automaticly, sinds you own the entire worlds, aka end of war ). This rule's out the boring factor, where you in Privateer finished all the missions & become to powerfull, and the game become's a bore after it.

The fun is getting from your little ship, to better ships, to gaining a carrier ( missions needed ofcourse to gain access to xxx ships & tech ), and other cap ships if needed. We have a linear path here, so it become's easy'er to script toword this.

A lot of ships / equipment can be discribed as 2 part's. a) civilian b) militairy.

With missions you can gain access to militair equipment before they hit the civilian market. Cap ships can only be gained with missions ( or for the explorers, you maybe can find a few very very old cap ships ( note: flying wreks ;) ). Militairy equipment reaces the civil market after xx time periode ( + random factor ). Some militairy equipment can be gotten from black market at high price's before that timeframe.

Daim, need to stop writing :)

Side note: Also a consequence of contraband smugling or piracy in SR1 if you land on a planet, is you get jailed ( show a little old text based quest system to get out of it or take the punishment ). I'm pointing this out, sinds planets & bases are a bit way to easygoing on you currently.
 
It's true that they are a bit troubling. While running the Pirate job's in the game, i ended up shooting down several militia fighters ( dident really have a choice, they gangbanged me right from the jump point ). The effect was, almost every system now is hostile, sinds almost every system has militia units. Yet, i only shot them originaly down in one system.

I'm with you. However, if you only experienced Privateer through the remake, let me tell you that race relations are broken right now. They don't work like in the original game. Maybe it's just some numbers that need tweaking, maybe it's something more fundamental, but, in the remake, I was TRYING TO be enemies with the hunters, but the moment I'd kill just a couple of kilrathis, the hunters would love me gain, in spite of my having killed dozens of them.

In the original, you could patch up your relations with a faction, but it took some work: You'd befriend some of them, but in the next system they'd still hate you; but if you kept at it, you'd finally make friends with them.
I also don't like this business that a mere accident can make your friends hate you instantly. This is another thing Privateer 2 fixed over the original: If you hired a cargo ship, and during a fight you accidentally shot him, he'd just complain "Hey, this is your Cargo you're shooting at!". Of course, if you kept doing it, he'd become an enemy; but that made a lot more sense to me.

And like you seem to suggest, the character of a faction should play a role in how you repair, or break relations with them. In the case of the hunters, for instance, they should not "hate" you ever, for they are cold-blooded people. If you become a threat to them, they simply put a price on your head. You want to fix your relationship with them? Then pay the price they put on your head and you're clear. At the opposite extreme, the kilrathi are a very racist race, they should hate you for being human, even if you took out an entire Confed fleet in front of their noses.

It would be interesting to progress to having a carrier and conquering systems.
I'm not sure how flexible the vegastrike engine is, in this respect. I would think that the "faction attribute" of bases or systems should be fluid. I played through the remake, and in the missions for Destiny, I helped the militias take out two pirate bases. In the last, the militia brought a Paradigm and was shooting at the mining, er.. pirate base, supposedly to then flood it with troopers. Next time I was passing by, I went in to see the base, expecting to see it labled "militia", but no, it was still "pirate", and it still sold drugs. Disappointing.

But I would not have the player be "given" vessels. Rather, I would have the story alternate between civilian and military roles. During military stunts, you could be asked to pilot a Paradigm, sometimes; so you'd get the experience. But if you want to own one, you have to pay... ;-)
 
dan_w said:
But I would not have the player be "given" vessels. Rather, I would have the story alternate between civilian and military roles. During military stunts, you could be asked to pilot a Paradigm, sometimes; so you'd get the experience. But if you want to own one, you have to pay... ;-)

True, a ship may never be given, it needs to be earned ( never said somebody can get it for free ;) ). You need to do missions to gain access to those ships. Aka, you join the Confed as a privateer, but you need to do missions to gain rank or status.

A privateer can work for the confed with a larger degree of freedom. For instance, you can be granted Letters of Marque or other forms.

Letters of Marque: A commission granted to a privateer enabling him under certain conditions to seize the goods and ships of an enemy country and also to make search for contraband of war subject to certain rules and regulations.

Letters of Reprisal: A special commission more limited than letters of marque, granted by the government to the owner or master of a merchant ship to obtain reparation for injuries sustained at sea from the subjects of a foreign country after all attempts by this owner and his government to obtain legal redress have failed.

Your right about the Kilrathi & a rather racist nature, but racism never prevented people from working for them dispite that they dont like them. Like Germany WOII, while they hated yews, they had them in the army working for them ( even several of them at the highest place's ). It create's a intresting scenario in my book. Working for a race, you know hate's you, will also bring up intresting missions, and intresting character development. And let's face it, human are racist toword the Kilrathi in my eye's.
 
And let's face it, human are racist toword the Kilrathi in my eye's.

I was hoping they aren't. I know from Privateer, you can say some pretty racist things to them; but I haven't played the other WC games.
It would be nice, if that's the case, if we could make a few subtle changes here and there to give humans a bit of humanity.
 
Thanks for the suggestion! The dynamic war system is something which is kinda sketchy at the moment -- we're still working on a lot of stuff, remember :)
 
dan_w said:
It would be nice, if that's the case, if we could make a few subtle changes here and there to give humans a bit of humanity.

Well, i disagree here. Human's can be darn racists. Remember, we arent comparing us humans here, who are at "relative" peace, we are looking at humans who are under total war from another alien race. Total conquest means a life in slavery, death, mass genoside to those humans. I suspect you will be hard pressed to find a human who doesent hate the Kilrathi, or who express a liking to them. Other humans will turn against those few humans.

That's where the Kilrathi storyline come's from. A human outcast by his own. Whats thay saying: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. So for the Kilrathi storyline, it's something acceptable in my eye's.

spiritplumber said:
Thanks for the suggestion! The dynamic war system is something which is kinda sketchy at the moment -- we're still working on a lot of stuff, remember :)

If you want to, i can make a basic chart & other info on how to implement a working dynamic war model ( when i get some free time ). Used to program a lot, so i know the limitations ;)

Ps: Another item sujestion rated to jump's. At the moment, every jump drive is the same. Isent it better to combine the jump drive with a engine component.

Aka:
Engine I: 300kps - 200 drain on the system
Engine I+J: 300kps - 250 drain on the system
Engine II: 400kps - 300 drain on the system
Engine II+J: 400kps + Jumpdrive - 350 drain on the system
Engine I Overdrive: 375kps + Faster acceleration - 300 drain on the system
...

FulePod: 300l ( 3 jumps able before refuling )
Fulepod: 500l ( 5 jumps able before refuling )

Yes, i'm one of those nuts who likes lots of components he can buy for his ship :)
 
Yes, i'm one of those nuts who likes lots of components he can buy for his ship

Aren't we all? As a matter of fact, that reminds me of another small failing of the original: Getting only half the price one paid for most upgrades is just too harsh. 70% would be understandable. It really dampens the urge to upgrade.. "Hmmm, I could buy engine 3, but I'd lose half the price of engine 3 when I go to 4, so might as well keep hauling cargo until I can afford engine 4" type of thing...
 
I've been leaving the upgrade list alone for now but it doesn't mean that I won't take hints -- abotu the dynamic war, PLEASE DO? the relevant file is dynamic_battle.py
 
dan_w said:
I was hoping they aren't. I know from Privateer, you can say some pretty racist things to them; but I haven't played the other WC games.
It would be nice, if that's the case, if we could make a few subtle changes here and there to give humans a bit of humanity.
I disagree. You need to get across the contempt humans have for Kilrathi and vice versa, so you have to include fairly harsh lines. It's not really racism, we're not discriminating against a real people here.
 
spiritplumber said:
abotu the dynamic war, PLEASE DO? the relevant file is dynamic_battle.py

I'll have a look at it tonight. Will take me a while to figure out all the WC functions, and pyton one's...

O yea, does anybody know the militairy status of the WC universe. Like how many fleets are there on both side's. How are those fleets confgured ( class of ships, amount of fighters etc in a typical fleet ). The better way is to use a Fleet AI, who do all the conquering. This limits the amount of CPU time needed to calculate battles.
 
Well, i've been playing the game with the Dynamic Battly from VegaStrike active ( remove the ## from the last 2 items ), and it creates some intresting situations :)

But, is it me, or are the cap ships static ( the one with the 1 engine on top sticking out, and the 2 below sticking out ... forgot the daim name, WCIII or WCIV one ).

There are a LOT of battle's going on. Like New Constantine, it's a battlezone beyond beleef. Last night, 10 pirates ships, several merchant ships, all in a deathmatch with each other, and with the conf troops. Ofcourse the confed never lost the system, becouse they had 3 carriers in the system. I havent checked if any system has changed ownership yet from one faction to another ( to see if the script file works perfectly, all i know, it spiced things up a lot ). Battle's going on in all the sector's i jumped passed ( expept those way back behind the kilrathi line's, it was rather silent there, but then again, i havent jumped around much ).

Factions need to be redone, if you want to use thise battle system. In case anybody wants to know, the system i talked about is done by the dynamic_battle.py file.

Factions need to be defined in area controlled groups. Kilrathi, Bugs, Confed. Merchants & Pirates can't be in the factions groups anymore, sinds with this script, they also join the battle to controle terrain.

I'll run the script some more to see if factions actually take over area's ... daim, i'll give my lung for a top down map where you can see what factions owns what area.

I'll update later a bit. O yea, while the original Privateer small transport cap ships seem to fly, some of them seem to be static ( non moving ), dont know yet if it's a bug, or they just waiting becouse of the war script running.

Update 22:36

O yeaaa, a battle that crashed WC:U :) ... I just jumped from new detroid back to new constantine. Well, i just noticed one of the biggest battle's ever...

Militia with cap ships, vs confed caps ships. Confed Ship launching it's fighter wings, while a Militia cap ship ( i think ) was fireing on a Confed cap ship. You dident want to get between those 2 ... large laser beam weapons firing, some plasma like very slow one's also.

New Constantine Militair base was under merchants controle it seems. So new constantine must have been a Merchant sector.

Fighters wings of Galaxy's ( 4 + 2 tarsus ) taking on a few people. Pitty that the battle's are so big, that it seems to crash the game here.

Wait a sec, i don't remember a militairy base in New Constantine ... that's the perry base ... Looks like the script also builds new bases. I noticed it in the code, but it's the first time i noticed it active. That might explain why i also noticed in Kilrathi space, the same Perry base, but under Kilrathi controle. At first i was thinking that the random generate script created it, but it might have been a side effect from the dynamic war script.
 
Nobody ever really bothered to do the capship AI yet -- that's the next thing I was going to do in fasct.

As for factions, what I was thinking originally was having TWO factions in control of a system, military (for battle purpose) and civilian (for autogen ships and bases): so, say, Perry is confed/confed and New Const is confed/merchant.
 
spiritplumber said:
Nobody ever really bothered to do the capship AI yet -- that's the next thing I was going to do in fasct.

As for factions, what I was thinking originally was having TWO factions in control of a system, military (for battle purpose) and civilian (for autogen ships and bases): so, say, Perry is confed/confed and New Const is confed/merchant.

Well, if you want to use the current war script, what seems to work fairly well, i advice against factions for non militairy groups. New Constantinople becouse it has several jump points, is a major combat zone at this moment between 4 of the factions. Militia, Merchants, Pirates, Confed.

Hell, the merchants own New Constantinople. Not very logical :) Btw: some cap ships do have AI. Seen a few move around & shoot everything, while the basic conf ship had defence & auto launch of fighters active.

It did spice up the universe a lot. Biggest WC battle i've seen up to today i think :)

Update:

Some movie's of a battle, less spectaculair then the last one that litterly crashed my computer, but still nice.

Assault on New Constantinople
New Constantinople base blowing up
Assaulters fleeying the sector followed by merchant vessels ( behind me )
 
Another movie, showing New Constantinople's base defence at work ( show from the base's perspective ). Lost of laser's fireing ;)

Movie 4

Note: all movie's are +- 7 or 8mb, xvid. Only 30sec, 20fps one's, but it shows the dynamic battle script in action.
 
dan_w said:
It would be nice, if that's the case, if we could make a few subtle changes here and there to give humans a bit of humanity.

WTF is that supposed to mean. It's hard to be human towards someone that spend their time hunting human POW's in for fun. I dont hate kilrathi. In fact they are probably my favorite species in any sci fi universe, but i can see why i is hard for humans to be nice to them. Remember Angel, Iceman, and other unfortunate terrans like them.
 
Well, humanity is not a quality most humans possess, and perhaps it's something that might show up occasionally. Some human CULTURES have no built-in remorse mechanisms and no holds to hatred and revenge. Other human cultures are permissive to the freedom of individuals to question the worth of revenge, or the wisdom of war.
And that's what I meant. Given an opportunity for peace, there'd be humans who would let them go by, and other humans that would embrace them; whereas the cats might need to experience complete and utter defeat. But I'm no WC conosseur. And besides, I would not want to see the blatant "moral superiority" of Star Trek all the time. That's why I literally said "a bit of humanity".
 
Well, what we see, we see as humans, true human eye's. What if the Kilrathi offered a peace deal, what's the chance of humans actually taking it. Very small i think. A war at one point always become, where one side needs total defeat to surrender.

Germany WOII ... they only surendered after Germany was invaded from both side's & taken over by 90% + hitler shotting himself. Or Japan, WOII, same deal. I took 2 weapon's of mass destruction to get a surrender. A wild animal cornered will fight to the death in order to survive. Sound contradictive but it's true in nature, and it's true in war...

So, i dont suspect humanity will show much mercy to the Kilrathi until they get them to there knees, and visa versa.
 
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