USS Defiant Playership (Beta)

[Cygnus.X1]

I mentioned this in another thread but I'm so proud of my baby that I feel she deserves her own thread.

USS Defiant, the hybrid warship we all know and love from Star Trek: Deep Space 9.

http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=311

[Dalva]

a lot of torpedo variations.... Cool

at first i make that NCC-1701E also try to make the torpedo launcher and the torpedoes, but i always have no time to do that detail, so i cancel it and publish it without Torpedo. that's why i call it v0.75 cus it's beta 8)

[Cygnus.X1]

Quid Pro Quo

Please feel free to use my torps etc in your ships as well 8)

I did not include the stellar cartography device as the Startrek wikkies specifically mention the lack of an astrometrics lab on the Defiant.

"emergency cash"

[Dalva]

"emergency cash"

why? emergency cash is cool enough right? or at least i will reduce the selling price to 100 creds each then give only 10 set at start

yeah at first i already think "is this strange? 9k emergency cash? lol"

[Cygnus.X1]

a few dozen platinum cash card does the trick, but yours is faster

[Dalva]

um... just a note, i my phaser XII's description saying "the omni can be turned on and off"

it's actually experimental when i make the mod, but when i reease it i didnt actually upload the omni switch. so can you delete that description? (i mean only delete this --> the omni can be turned on and off)

that omni switch is inspired by digdug's mod at the time i create the NCC-1701E

oh and... maybe i'm gonna use basic concept of your torpedo launcher for the next update of my NCC-1701E

[Cygnus.X1]

Found it! Sorry for rezzing a long dead thread, but it's mine to begin with and I'm working on the Defiant again. Stay Tuned...

[Cygnus.X1]

So, I've made it to St. Katherine's on my current test run. I'm totally in love with the Victorian Archeology! That's a great update to the main plot. (Yes, yes, I know, I've been away for a bit ) I've also had a pretty good run so far, finding 2 E-Autons at random and a BM station that was selling a military shield that I shouldn't have been able to get yet. It's great fun having Autons disable an enemy and then using the Phaser, even with it's short range, to slice the enemy to bits.

The Phaser VIII seems to me to be a low to mid-level weapon, and I'm now finding some things that it takes for-bloody-ever to destroy, like those marauder platforms (and methinks the only reason I can kill those accrused platform ships is because of my Autons disabling it). It works GREAT for swarms of smaller ships, even with the significantly reduced range. Even so, it makes the initial levels a cake walk so further nerfing may be needed to consider the playership balanced as a whole.

The Pulse Phase Cannon (PPC) seems to be a mid-level weapon, so without significant nerfing it prolly shouldn't be included on the initial loadout. If I do nerf it I will be adding upgraded versions just like for the original Phaser weapons, allowing for a initial, weak version to be pre-loaded and having upgraded versions available somewhere deeper into the game. Aside from my horrible aim, it munches most of the early ship classes. In the Battle Arena, I kept getting told I needed to take more hits, as between the PPC and the Phaser array I pretty much curb-stomped everybody.

I have 3 military ID chips, one that's pre-loaded with the ship (because I have all the Starfleet weapons labeled as military for roleplaying), one that I got for the Korolov revenge mission, and a third from St. Kath's for completing the one and only military mission there (which apparently also gave me officer rank which I learned by going to the next star system and visiting a Militia starbase, getting denied officer access, going back to St K's, completing that mission, and then going back and finding out that I now have officer access).


Which brings me to my next issue... Where the hell are my upgrades (as in, Phaser Type X and XII and the better Torps)? IFAIK items listed in an extension (but not pre-installed on a playership) are added to the master list for random items available for sale, but a recent post on another thread mentioned that military tagged items are excluded from that list, so I figured they might be available from the CW Militia starbases once I got officer rank. So either I'm wrong and am missing something, or I have to overwrite the vanilla XML to force their inclusion, or I've just got bad luck with the RNG and the only CW Militia SB I've found so far just happens to have not got them. Any suggestions?

[RPC]

What level are they? You might have to wait until the Outer Realm until you get ~level 7 military devices.

[Cygnus.X1]

Level X

IIRC you can change pre-loaded weaps from a ship mod and not reload, yes? /me is going to try anyway Actually, yes you can!

[Cygnus.X1]

I'm editing this entry as I figure stuff out.

So I think I found a way for a more reasonable nerfing of the Phasers, I'm trying to use the capacitor function ala the Ares Lightning Turret.

Does anybody know how the hell the numbers are supposed to work? I've dug all over the wiki and the forums, but can't find any specific references to how the different variables using numbers actually work.

Sample:

Code: Select all

      counter=                  "capacitor"
      counterActivate=       "-1"
      counterUpdate=         "1"
      counterUpdateRate=   "2"

A variable is used to track the current counter amount, with a maximum value of 100.

counterActivate value is subtracted from the tracking variable every time the weapon fires a projectile.
counterUpdate value is added to the tracking variable...
counterUpdateRate controls how often the counterUpdate variable is added to the tracking variable (frame multiplier?)

Notes:
counterActivate = 0 means the tracking var doesn't change on weap fire, fail
counterActivate >= 1 means the tracking var is increased on weap fire, fail

counterUpdate and counterUpdateRate must combine to add a value to the tracking variable that is < counterActivate+RoF or the capacity functionality is redundant (and may flicker the charge graphic alot)

counterUpdateRate: larger values make for much slower recharging

[Atarlost]

The counter always maxes at 100. If counterActivate is 100 it should fire once. You will get 100/counterActivate shots per volley plus however many shots worth of energy replenish during the firing.

For simplicity I usually put counterActivate=counterUpdate and make counterUpdateRate twice the desired sustained firerate. (counterUpdateRate is in ticks because no event can happen more than once a tick. fireRate is in half ticks because it can be scaled by weapon enhancements and the AI element fireRateAdjust.)

[Cygnus.X1]

I settled on the following variables for the Phaser 8 weapon, and will add incremental improvements to the upgraded versions as well. I choose capacitance functionality over temperature overload because I don't recall a single ST episode that had their phaser banks overheating and exploding, but I do recall several instances where the ship didn't have enough available power to fire the phasers.

Code: Select all

      counter=			"capacitor"
      counterActivate=	"-3"
      counterUpdate=		"7"
      counterUpdateRate=	"10"

Next step is to line up the PPCs to similar vanilla low, mid, and high level dual fire weapons.

Addendum: Thanks, Atarlost! Previous posting updated

This attribute took some digging to find ... I'm considering adding "passthrough" to the phaser weapons. OMG awesome sauce!

PCC work is progressing, I've increase the range but significantly slowed the speed of the bolts and the rate of fire. The Mark I version is still somewhat useful beyond St. K's but nowhere near as overpowered for Starton.

[dosbox-gamer]

Many many big thanks, Cygnus! This has always been one of my favorite playerships and now I have even built a little fleet off of it: the Steadfast-class freighter, the deep-space Surveyor, and the take-no-prisoners Stormchaser (great for picking a fight!). Interested parties should see my latest version of the Playership Freighters on Xelerus, but again, many many thanks!

[Cygnus.X1]

Awww, thanks! And you're very welcome!

There's still lots of stuff left to tweak, like buy prices for the SF weapons, replacing the unbalanced armor with a starter armor (130 some-odd armor points is mid-level ), reducing the number of available device slots ( again), and the ever-present OCD factors in making the weapons "perfect" but I'm hoping to get that stuff done sooner than later.

For long term goals I'm hoping to figure out how to have random NPC pilots flying Defiants around, and ensuring that the higher level SF weapons are available on military related stations.

Addendum: Of course I want to try your variants out, but I'm using 1.08g and got the following on launch:
"Error loading extensions
Stormchaser-class warrior (d4270228): Unknown design type: d4270019"

Not sure what that means but I'm really curious about your Stormchaser ship so I'm going to attempt to monkey the code into working for me

Notepad++ FTW

Code: Select all

Search "d4270019" (1 hits in 1 files)
  C:\Users\...\...\Trans108g\Extensions\dbg freighters\playership freighters v5p7_Twelve-seg.xml (1 hits)
	Line 19: 	<!ENTITY itFBombAdv			"0xD4270019">

Code: Select all

Search "itFBombAdv" (2 hits in 1 files)
  C:\Users\...\...\Trans108g\Extensions\dbg freighters\playership freighters v5p7_Twelve-seg.xml (2 hits)
	Line 19: 	<!ENTITY itFBombAdv			"0xD4270019">
	Line 718: 			<Device deviceID="&itFBombAdv;"/>

What the hell is an FBomb? Now I'm reeeaaally curious