Project Renegade (Beta) (1.7)

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Xephyr
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This extension is currently in beta, and many features are left to be implemented. The playerships included in this extension start out in Citadel space, but this extension is 100% compatible with Vanilla and Corporate Command.


Add Renegade to your collection on Multiverse here


This extension adds:
  • -Several star systems
    -3 playerships
    -5 enemy factions
    -2 friendly factions
    -New planet graphics
    -Many weapons, armour, shields, etc
    -and much more, with more to come
Renegade initially started out as an adventure extension, but I chose to rework it into a regular extension due to time constraints (although, it's debatable whether I actually saved time by doing so). The adventure extension will be completed and released later down the line.
Last edited by Xephyr on Fri Apr 15, 2016 12:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
Project Renegade (Beta) : "The Poor Man's Corporate Command!"
Real programmers count from 0. And sometimes I do, too.
JohnBWatson
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I like the new plot - it's quite a bit more interesting now. I look forward to giving this mod a go once I get some spare time.

Edit: Testing it out now. Results below:

Comment: First system looking good!

Possible glitch: Docking at the first station and talking to the stationmaster does not highlight/target the Citadel - facing stargate, despite the orders to report to it.

Possible typo: "radiation shieldings" sounds grammatically incorrect.

Glitch: An error is thrown when requesting a mission from the complex near the Citadel. This also occurs sometimes with dockyards.

Typo: Sigma 7 description needs an "of".

Comment: Overall, the mix of new enemies is awesome. A few things, though:

Balance: The heavy unit of the Cloudskippers lacks any means at shooting at things outside of its range, and has very slow speed. Supplementing it with a carrier bay or(non - omnidirectional) main gun might be nice. The Autons fielded by the Vanguard could also use some extra speed in order to better supplement it.

Balance: The Archives have a bit too much HP.

Edit:

I believe I've tested every system. There were 5 new ones, correct?

Anyways, everything seems to be pretty good. The Walkin Fortress was a pleasant surprise - I like the idea of encountering boss stations throughout my run.
Last edited by JohnBWatson on Sat Mar 12, 2016 1:53 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Xephyr
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Yeah, the missions were gutted to make this release functional, so that's why you're getting error messages and such. They'll be functional within the next release.

I know about the radiation shielding, but haven't decided on how I should change that yet.
Project Renegade (Beta) : "The Poor Man's Corporate Command!"
Real programmers count from 0. And sometimes I do, too.
relanat
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Awesome. I had been eagerly awaiting this. There is no doubt about your graphics skills. The Tbird is great, the crisscross beams rock, the thrust effect that kicks in after half a second is excellent. The Gwillim complex looks even better in the game that I thought it would (and it already looked great). All the stations look good.

Love the brown asteroids and the brown space background.


Renegade bugs
Be advised I had GodMod installed so that may have been stuffing things up.

Could dock with a Mechanist Autofac while radioactive with no 'radiation' dockscreen coming up.
Same with a Luceid Dockyard. Couldn't decontaminate.

Also when I clicked on the pirate mission it first gave me a 'You have succesfully completed the mission' and 'C'ontinue screen before I got the mission screen. Happened continually for every next mission I went for. Also the missions offered appear endless. I did nearly 10 in one system.

Some miissions give either "Debug screen" or the error that JBW mentioned because missions are disabled.

Minor quibble: Ferra cannon image in dockscreen list. The graphic looks to be at a different angle to standard Trans weapon graphics. Maybe tilt it to match Trans standard angle like laser cannon? (Unless this is to 'brand ' the weapons in this mod) Also the barrels don't look quite parallel. Ditto with the tilt of the stardust cannon. Maybe capitalise the 's' in stardust.

Odd docking positions on Gwillim complex. The playership at bottom left appears to be docked in thin air (OK, empty space). Same with the NPC Tbird at top right.
Image

Also while I think of it, I assumed that ships would dock in between the 'prongs' on the station with all the double arms sticking out, but they dock in a cluster near the centre. Not sure if this is intentional.

I found a Sanzu Citadel, which I assume is the citadel meant by the "Your current orders are to report to the Citadel", but only get couple of sentences in the description and the Undock option. EDIT: because missions are disabled.

Found the Bantam autoturret confusing but love the idea. Couldn't get it to uninstall (I installed it with GodMod). Finally worked out it needed dock service to do that. Perhaps have a weapons slot indicator with external showing. Also sometimes the 'B' enable/disable menu doesn't do anything, clicking doesn't change it (couldn't replicate this though). Edit: found it in the Misc Devices dockscreen but it won't disable there. Also found it looked odd that it fired from the centre of the X1 not the front. And I'm not sure if there should be an overlay showing the autoturret installed on the ship.

The Sigma autoturret appears on the 'B' enable/disable menu and you can enable and disable it there. But you can't disable it in the Misc Devices dockscreen. There is an Ena'b'le option but it doesn't change on clicking (but it will enable it if disabled when you go to the Misc Dev screen).

Possibly the Augury-class Destroyers need to be beefed up a bit. They seem a bit vulnerable for this level. But there is a mix of high-power ion and particle and low-power kinetic and laser in the mod so that may be intentional.

Great work. Love it.
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Xephyr
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Thanks for the feedback, Relenat.

I haven't decided on how to handle decontamination, but it should probably be standard procedure at Citadel affiliated stations (and cost less than CW decons) but I might do something special with them too, like the Tinkers.

Already made progress on some of the things you brought up, hopefully I'll have the next version released in a couple weeks with functional mission frameworks.

Thanks for checking it out.
Project Renegade (Beta) : "The Poor Man's Corporate Command!"
Real programmers count from 0. And sometimes I do, too.
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Xephyr
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Updated to version 0.2b. Now a registered extension! Adding Renegade to your collection will download to your collections folder, so don't forget to clear the old version out of your extensions folder.

Code: Select all

-CHANGELOG-
-----
0.2b
-Updated playership descriptions
-Added Valor-class star cruiser
-Updated nebula-type worlds to spawn only in nebula
-Fixed a bug with Kaikas ion cannon power usage
-Added fission reactors (do not produce waste)
-changed Lynx II's loadout to use regular grenades (so napalm isn't used against player)
-Reworked varukisas vanguard and some varukisas equipment
-updated playership large graphics
-implemented missions
-updated stargate topology
-tweaked system generation
-added unique= "inSystem" to cut down on mechanist stations
-Lots of re-renders to stations and ships to be better with scaling
-added Trask armoured freighter
Project Renegade (Beta) : "The Poor Man's Corporate Command!"
Real programmers count from 0. And sometimes I do, too.
JohnBWatson
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Testing it out a bit more.

Missions:

Pirate ship mission: Looks good. Balance was excellent, and it was definitely fun. Fit the general theme of Transcendence missions well too.

Escort against salvagers: Could use a rebalance. The freighter isn't scratched by their weapons, as it has internals. Also, the internals of the Nomads are hard to penetrate with starting gear, which is when this mission shows up.

Glitch in main mission: After taking two missions from the starting station, they gave me the "Are you lost" dockscreen, with no buildup or introduction to my mission. Either they shouldn't assign missions before the mission given by that dockscreen is complete, or they should first give a mission to go to the Citadel.

Balance:

I still say Verukisas bases have a bit too much health. They take far too many missiles considering the loot they give and how early they show up.

The Trask are a bit on the weak side, relative to everything else. Their ships are very slow and unmaneuverable, and their weapons are quite low - ranged. I'd give a random portion of their gunships a moderately longer ranged weapon as was done for some other factions, but it's not that bad given how early they show up. They're fairly even with the Centauri in vanilla, so this is more my opinion of them than something that's objectively broken.

Typos:

Trask brood death screen: "face" --> "faces"

Other:

The Verukisas patrols behave very strangely. Is this intentional? Their flavor text does indicate that they may not think like we do, being computers and all. That said, there are probably a few too many of them - if they were aggressive, it would be nearly impossible to navigate the first system.

Comments:

Definitely enjoyed my attempts at getting through the first system. It's certainly a challenge to fight some of the enemies there, which may be a result of the time I've been away. At any rate, the models still look fantastic, including the new ones. I also like the flavor text for the dead stations. I'll have another go at getting through to the other systems in about a day.
Last edited by JohnBWatson on Sat Apr 16, 2016 12:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
JohnBWatson
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Tried out a few later systems after clearing the loop that connects to the starting system at two points. You may want to nerf the Vanguard spawn rate - at present they spawn about as fast as I can kill them. They're effectively capital ships, which are never used as encounters in the main game, so it's a bit hard to say how rare they should show up against the player. They could also do to have better wreck chance and loot(perhaps some higher - tier autons of their faction) to justify the cost of fighting them. Other than that, everything seems pretty good, and balance feels like a lot of thought went into it. I particularly like the Archive station sprite. I also tested the mission to kill a Charon Rogues station, which seems to work as it ought to.
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Xephyr
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Just pushed out an update to support some seecret stuff I'm working on.

Stuff added:
-Added Krual system, with the Krual Metropolis, the Trask's Capital.
-Added Trask primordial and rocky mines

This will probably see more changes down the line, but I just needed to throw in a couple things.
Project Renegade (Beta) : "The Poor Man's Corporate Command!"
Real programmers count from 0. And sometimes I do, too.
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Xephyr
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Quick update, probably the last for a while. Fixed a few quick things.

0.2.1b
>Added 250mw reactor to Gwillim + thermo cannons for purchase (Gwillim now also supports fueling w/ pteracnium and other fuels)
>Made Dragon Heavy launcher installable at autofacs + gwillim, as it was too high a level previously
>Added CX Saber missile, a thermo missile for the CX launcher
>Fixed extra spaces in pretty much all the armour types
>And again, some stuff to support my seeecret project

Renegade now also has its own page on Ministry! Keep in mind there's gaps in content right now - I'm mostly concerned with bugs and balance issues at this stage, but feel free to make tickets.
Project Renegade (Beta) : "The Poor Man's Corporate Command!"
Real programmers count from 0. And sometimes I do, too.
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Xephyr
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Updated to 0.2.2

Hopefully it feels more balanced and playable now.

Code: Select all

-Added Triavid ships + encounters
-nerfed Varukisas
-buffed Buster damage in exchange for fire rate
-fixed bug on kaikias cannon power usage
-Sanzu Embassy now appears in St K's
-Sanzu stations will now decontaminate your ship
-plenty of minor balance tweaks
-Added more Higan vessels (no encounters, will appear in missions)
-Fixed bug where soundtrack would not play
-made fuel cheaper at Sanzu stations
There'll be more balance touchups by the next release, but the main focus now will be implementing missions. My goal is to have 100 missions by the end of the year, so we'll see what kind of progress I can make here.
Project Renegade (Beta) : "The Poor Man's Corporate Command!"
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NMS
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I seem to recall reading that there's supposed to be some kind of blockade isolating this region from the rest of human space. That doesn't seem to be the case. As such, it feels like the best plan is to get some adequate (level 4 or so) armor and weapons, then run straight for the gate to the vanilla systems, where better equipment is available, the reward/risk ratio for attacking enemy stations is better, there are stations that pay higher prices for loot and trade goods, and fuel isn't horrifyingly expensive.

Of course, once you escape, then you're just playing vanilla with an almost strictly worse version of a vanilla player ship. They have some marginal upsides over the nearest equivalents, but not enough to make up for the loss of 2 devices slots or a slot and lots of maneuverability.

Still, the new content is pretty cool and seems reasonably balanced.
JohnBWatson
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A lot of vanilla equipment does soar past the power curve for Citadel space, but I like the experience of having less wealth and less powerful equipment immediately available. Moving the entry point towards an earlier part of the vanilla path might alleviate the issue of immediate access to a vastly more powerful vanilla route without the need to buff many weapons and enemies to match the standard power curve.
relanat
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Quick dated post about a couple of things I noticed, but they were from the second version (I think) so you may already know about them.

Sanzu Exops id comes up when you use an analyzer even though it is already known.

When you select 'I'm in.' at one of the settlements there is a noticeable delay before it moves on to the next screen. It seems to only happen with the salvager missions.

Apologies for the delay, been busy.
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JohnBWatson
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Found a few things in a recent test run:

- Trask freighters appear to be set to "wander" rather than the standard freighter behavior. This tends to lead to massive wreck pileups and may be a copy - paste error.

- Vanguards spawn very, very often. Limiting their spawn rate or changing their behavior might be beneficial to balance, given how often they show up in early systems before the player has a weapon that can reliably fight them.

- The Trask Metropolis could use some better defenses. Right now, it only has a small handful of gunships.

- Most of the hostile capital ships I've seen cannot defend themselves beyond medium range. While the new weapons introduced have been very good about not making this apparent, this could cause issues with players that come in from the vanilla territory rather than vice versa. In particular, looting a howitzer from the Macht Coven can really unbalance a fight against any of the other new factions.
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