[Mod] Playership Drones v4

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PM
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Playership Drones v4 is ready and available at Xelerus. It is just as large as v3, and spans four files. My signature has the links.

Here is a brief, incomplete list of new features in v4:
* Linked fire weapon support! If your ship can support secondary weapons, go to your ship's configuration and look for a new option called "Link Weapons".
* CPU tier system removed. Shipyards sell ships only if the player has less than two drones. However, the player can obtain more than two ships with (relatively rare) shipbuilder items.
* All playable ships have engine drive effects.
* Drones may be named by the player.
* Drones may install and remove patch spiders intelligently.
* Scuttling ships will recharge or repair all installed Gaian demolition cannons.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
Yama
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Thanks PM, I'm really looking forward to trying it. It might be a little while though 'cause I'm 4+ hours into my first 1.07a (with Playership Drones v3 :) ) permadeath attempt, and still alive three systems past St. Kat's.

Regarding v4, I have one suggestion, one question and one request.

Suggestion: It might be good to post an updated version of the "How to enable a custom ship the player can dock and swap at will." instructions that you posted in your "Playership Drones v2" thread.
http://neurohack.com/transcendence/foru ... 5&start=16.

Question: Following my first play through with v3, I decided that drone wingmen flying upgradable gunships make the game way too easy. Since then I've limited my use of drones to a single heavily armored freighter, to do my looting for me. Will Playership Drones v4 work with only "Ships 1" installed?

Request: At some point, please teach the drones to use their jump drive (if so equipped) to flee, in order to escape destruction.
"A good ship should not look like a plumber's nightmare."
- Atarlost
PM
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There will be an update on how to add a custom ship, along with how to add a linked fire weapon usable by Playership Drones.

Yes, maximizing your drones' strengths makes the game (much) easier. This was why the CPU system was used to limit ships in previous versions. Now that v4 lets the player pilot ships that can fire multiple weapons, CPUs are almost meaningless. If I was overly concerned about balance, I would probably abandon autonomous wingmen and only allow the player to upgrade his playership. Now, the player can buy drones until he has two, and can exceed that with the portable shipwrights. In the next update, I may lower the two drone limit to one drone only; and if the player wants an army, he will need to use the shipbuilder items.

All you need to run Playership Drones v4 is the main zip. Granted, you can only play the three default playerships, and you will not be able to acquire other ship types. You can add any combination of the three expansion parts. Part I will let you fly the rest of the Commonwealth ships plus a few others.

Drones should already use the jumpdrive to save themselves, in theory. I just checked the code and found a bug in the jumpdrive check code.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
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digdug
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PM wrote:Playership Drones v4 is ready and available at Xelerus. It is just as large as v3, and spans four files. My signature has the links.

Here is a brief, incomplete list of new features in v4:
* Linked fire weapon support! If your ship can support secondary weapons, go to your ship's configuration and look for a new option called "Link Weapons".
* CPU tier system removed. Shipyards sell ships only if the player has less than two drones. However, the player can obtain more than two ships with (relatively rare) shipbuilder items.
* All playable ships have engine drive effects.
* Drones may be named by the player.
* Drones may install and remove patch spiders intelligently.
* Scuttling ships will recharge or repair all installed Gaian demolition cannons.
this has become a truly awesome mod. :D Congratulations PM !
ytszazu
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Some notes:

I've installed this two following mods (and others, but I don't see a code where the stations clash):

Loading extension: Extensions\PlayerDrones\Ships\PlayerDrones
Loading extension: Extensions\SFSpaceStations v092 1_01

This two clashes for the following building code:

Dry Dock and Fortress.

However, I have the purchase ship option for the dry dock.

Sorry, I'm new,from the code, your mod just adds extra options to choose to the dock screen?

Thank you,

Regards,

ZAZU
RPC
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Location: Hmm... I'm confused. Anybody have a starmap to the Core?

Ok, I have a Scarab, thinking that I could have turn it into a battle freighter by having it use multiple omni-ammo weapons (namely the omni thermo and omni akan 30), but for some reason, it doesn't like firing even though they are linked, and only fire those weapons when I am piloting the Scarab.
Is there something wrong with the AI or is it supposed to only fire when the player is in control?
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RPC
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Location: Hmm... I'm confused. Anybody have a starmap to the Core?

Ok, another small request:
can you say whether the ship in question has linked fire support in the description (before you buy the ship)?
EDIT*
Also, with WE4 and 400+ weapons installed, I'm having a tough time finding those exact weapons and armors to use for the shipwright (I had to find a cannon marked "Cesium" O.o ). Can there be an alternative way to rebuilding ships? Maybe you could have a tug item that is one-use and tug the wreck across a system to a shipyard, where you pay lots of money (maybe 1.5 times the cost?) to have the ship prepared and after a while you get a message saying the ship is rebuilt. Any thoughts on that system?
Tutorial List on the Wiki and Installing Mods
Get on Discord for mod help and general chat
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Der Tod ist der zeitlose Frieden und das leben ist der Krieg
Wir müssen wissen — wir werden wissen!
I don't want any sort of copyright on my Transcendence mods. Feel free to take/modify whatever you want.
PM
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I do not know how or why the AI cannot use all of its weapon slots.

The ship purchase screen could use a redesign to fit more information in a clean way. I could place the red X and green slot numbers for ships that have extra weapon slots.

Someday, I plan to let the shipbuilder items rebuild the ship with any (undamaged) armor segment available, and install devices up to a given level. This will require a rewrite of large chucks of code, something I am not willing to do now. It will be addressed, eventually.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
PM
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Playership Drones v4 was updated. The update mostly consists of bug fixes. Added howtoadd*.txt documentation. UNIDs have changed, so (re)download all four files.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
RPC
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Location: Hmm... I'm confused. Anybody have a starmap to the Core?

Sorry for asking too much, but this is a really great mod and I want to make it better by having suggestions/comments ;)
Is it possible to make armors on ships with many armorsegments change colors when they get damaged? I keep dying on my Ranx DN because I forget that one armorsegment to repair....
Tutorial List on the Wiki and Installing Mods
Get on Discord for mod help and general chat
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Der Tod ist der zeitlose Frieden und das leben ist der Krieg
Wir müssen wissen — wir werden wissen!
I don't want any sort of copyright on my Transcendence mods. Feel free to take/modify whatever you want.
PM
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In Playership Drones, ships that use more than eight armor segments do not use any armor segment graphics. (Technically, they use one black pixel from the Sapphire armor graphics as a dummy entry to keep the game happy.) The armor hp boxes themselves are used as segments. I do not know of any way to change their color.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
RPC
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Location: Hmm... I'm confused. Anybody have a starmap to the Core?

OOOooooh.
That's a very interesting way of doing things. (Very clever too, I didn't catch on-- not throughout my entire playthrough ;) )
Should the request turn to a ticket about asking for the ability to edit the armor hitboxes instead?
Tutorial List on the Wiki and Installing Mods
Get on Discord for mod help and general chat
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Der Tod ist der zeitlose Frieden und das leben ist der Krieg
Wir müssen wissen — wir werden wissen!
I don't want any sort of copyright on my Transcendence mods. Feel free to take/modify whatever you want.
PM
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In case you did not notice, ships with 36 segments have so much armor there is not enough room for ship graphics. They use a 4x9 grid of hp boxes, and their shield graphics is a big green square surrounding the grid.

To answer your question, it is up to you.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!

Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
sdw195
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hey pm,

how do linked weapons work, I tried making a linked weapon system on a aquila but I couldn't figure out how to set the maih weapon, any suggestions?


also, I added a function in my mod, cheatcodes to spawn a playerdrone by name. so congrats on having the first mod cheat code :D

also. Thank you for putting the "playerShip" attribute to all the ships, it made adding the code whole lot easier :)
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Patupi
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I really like this mod, but I've virtually given up using it as anything other than buying (trading) a main ship. The drones flying around me, what ever ship they are, tend to wander off for no reason. At first I thought it was only when I had them on 'Form Up' and they autodocked to salvage stuff... but since then I've had it happen when I've had them 'Wait' too, or when salvage was toggled off. With them on wait you can't get them back if they are drifting into deep space. With them on 'Form up' at least you can use a stargate and they'll immediately arrive with you.

Other than that I really like it. I haven't liked just upgrading a ship from the beginning of the game with a new ship mod, but this allows you to slowly upgrade throughout the game by buying ships as you go. For a while my favourite was a reconstructed Charon Frigate, but it's acceleration sucks. Good weapon load out and cargo load, especially with fusion drive upgrade, but still takes a while to change direction :). Now I'm onto EI1700, one linked weapon, 2000 cargo, lots of device slots (though only 2+launcher weapons). When I get there I'm going for an Auroch :)
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