WING Commander: Invasion. An update!!??!!

Major A Payne

Rear Admiral
Now I know quite a few will find this pretty boring to read and if thats the case then feel free to just skip to the planned v3.0 update.

Anyway, I never thought I would actually be carrying on with this after the Galactic Conquest problem stopped me in my tracks. However, a developement has been made, and it was something so unbelievably simply it was staring me in the face all along.

So to begin with, as most will know, the GC AI was being so stupid it just would not move from its home planet and spread out. After 3 months of trying everything I could I finally gave up and left the mod in its unfinished, but stable v2.5 beta. As it stands the mod is, as far as I'm concerned, still unfinished as theres some important things left to add. Thankfully, the problem has finally been solved and it took all of about 10 minutes to work out. Each planet uses an amount of credits as an update gain and main income stream per game "day" of play. All the test GC planets had this figure set to 60, which is simply no where near enough to even afford the first capital ship. I estimated at this rate the AI would need over 60+ game days to actually get enough to afford its first capital ship, so the game owuld be very long and drawn out. Just increasing the amount by a factor of 10 enabled the AI to build and move. It was a small surprise that this one simple change got the AI to start playing so it now means that at almost 12 months since the v2.5 beta release, I can get on an update the mod with more content.

So what does this mean??

Well put simply the following is a small sample of what I'm hoping to add:

- A complete set of Galactic Conquest mode maps. Although these can be played in any order, they will be set up in a specific date order so that the player can play each and it should resemble some sort of basic story to the invasion. The complete GC campaign though, is told more from the point of the Confederation so will featured Sol system primarily (there will be some other connected GC's that take place in other regions whcih will require some research from me to get the details correct).
- Income stream generating structure. The skirmish portion of the game, as those that have played will know, uses a mining station to generate a continous stream of additional credits. I will attempt to replicate this function for GC to make gaining credits much better and faster.
- Additional skirmish space based maps. As this mod is set in space, the space based skirmish maps will require a decent selection. Now these are likely to be fairly basic but it will be attempted to make them functional, and easy to play.
- Additional support structures. Although Pioneer station provides one structure there are bound to be other stations and structures which should provide various useful functions, such as additional ship construction, defensive and offensive structures.
- Space props. More as a functional eye candy space props will always have their place as well. I will attempt to produce as many as possible but any maps that feature them will not be to over saturated.
- Border Worlds. After recently looking over the ship lists and with some additional ship models whcih Scooby Doo has released I'm convinced its time to include the Border Worlds side. As I understand it this side is somewhat a miss-mash of outer system planets who use older technology. I'm unsure currently just how this side will go, but they will replace the stock pirate faction, so expect some hostilities from them.


So thats it. The planned v3.0 update outlined above will take time but at least I can get on with it now. If theres any suggestion that are viable then I invite any and all input (and by viable I mean simply that the game engine can support it. I've tried adding alot in the past with some seriously problematic results due to the engine not working with a particular function).

Further updates to come.
 
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