Playership Drones for 1.8

A place to discuss mods in development and concepts for new mods.
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Fleet Admiral
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Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Playership Drones was originally made to give the player additional and upgradable wingmen on demand. Additional ship types available for play was added later. As for today...

Purpose of Playership Drones
* Allow player to acquire more ships to build a fleet.
* Expand selection of available ships beyond what is available in a standard game.

Field Repairs will probably be the primary way of obtaining more ships, and the only way for hulls that cannot be bought.

The main priority of Playership Drones today is to maintain it and keeping it running for new versions of Transcendence.

Immediate Goals
* Get Playership Drones up to date for 1.8.
* Make most stock ships playable, with no more need to include PSD-compatible copy types.
* Remove dependence of Human Space types and make Playership Drones playable for Vault of the Galaxy.
* Keep things simple.

1.8 has introduced much that makes many features of Playership Drones obsolete, and it is time to update Playership Drones to take advantage of such features.

Since many stock ships used by NPCs lack some player features, such as reactors, hero shots, and HUD elements, I may end up overwriting a bunch of types to get the Playership Drones update working as planned, then perhaps make further tweaks as Transcendence gains more features.

I do not know when the first update will be ready. Currently, I am searching for obsolete code to rewrite or remove.
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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Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

With more ships in Human Space getting built-in equipment, such as trader's bay for EI500, and all ships in Vault of the Galaxy designed with built-in reactors, not to mention all of the virtual equipment bioships have, I will probably abandon (and remove) Field Repairs for the next release of Playership Drones. Unfortunately, I do not have a good idea to replace it with.

For now, I will focus on getting the extra wingmen/fleet part of Playership Drones updated. What this means is the player will be able to buy whatever ships are available at the Ship Broker and command them as done in Playership Drones. If the ship is not available in the Ship Broker, then it is not available for the player, unless the player activates the CHEAT option to spawn ships. On the other hand, if another mod (or a future Transcendence update) adds more ships to the Ship Broker, those added ships should be able to be used as Playership Drones.
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.
NIGHTHAWK620
Militia Lieutenant
Militia Lieutenant
Posts: 129
Joined: Sat Aug 06, 2011 2:24 am
Location: WESTCHESTER COUNTY, N.Y.

Please finish soon, in cheat mode the ships I spawn won't loot and / or loot and scuttle at this time and the ship remains connected to the targeted ship, which will not release on it's own. You have to call the ship to form up. :cry:
NH620
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Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Earlier, I wrote that I probably will abandon Field Repairs. Since it is the only major feature from Playership Drones v7 not yet implemented for the current version of Playership Drones, I decided to give that another look. After some thought and experimentation, I may be able to re-implement it in some form.

Wild planning ahead...

Before, player's ship needed a patcher arm installed, bring spare parts (reactor and armor), dump them in the wreck, then wait while the wreck is repaired. This time, due to more integrated items and varying technologies in part 2, I am considering to have the player simply pay to repair ships, with no need to dump items. (Pretend that the parts are already there hidden or embedded in the wreckage, such that the player cannot loot them. If player already looted some of the items, pretend that the wreck had spares laying around inaccessible for looting. As for payment, assume player has a space credit card like a reverse cash card. Big handwave, I know, but useful to make the mod playable and fun.) If the player can afford it, he can start repairs and wait until they finish as before. After repairs finish, if the player can still pay for the new ship's worth, the money will be deducted directly from balance and the wreck is repaired. Exactly implementation yet to be determined.
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.
NMS
Militia Captain
Militia Captain
Posts: 569
Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2013 8:26 am

If you want something more plausible but still straightforward, you could have to buy a starship field repair kit, or hire a mobile repair platform wingman.
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Fleet Admiral
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Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

I probably will avoid items since Playership Drones will be designed to work in both Human Space and beyond. Plus, I do not want the item tied to a single level where player can find some for about a third or so in Human Space then cannot find anymore, then ditto for Vault of the Galaxy.

In early Playership Drones, I had an item called portable shipwrights. I eventually replaced that with field repairs. I like to keep Field Repairs if I can. Other ideas I had was ship scanning (or auto-scan the most recent ship looted) or even custom order a ship similar to Corporate Trading Posts.

I am not opposed to stretching plausibility if the result is playable or fun. Might make things a bit too easy, but I will keep an eye on that. Do not want repairs to be totally free.

Moving on...

I have rough draft of the new Field Repairs functional. As per my last post, all the player needs to repair ships is enough money. But the cost assumes a fully equipped ship, but field repairs will strip all non-essential items from the ship, which is anything that is not armor, reactor, or built-in items like EI500's trader's bay. This is fine, because it should discourage player from reviving a ship unless it is powerful and cannot be acquired from the ship broker. So far, Field Repairs lets the player rebuild ships if there is a type with either startingClass or shipBroker attribute. I could have genericClasses rebuilt, but that is not a good idea because those are not fully playable (due to no reactors or biotech/archaeotech using mechanist/human tech interface or other similar dissonance). What I am considering is adding new types that are custom versions of playerships with a special attribute like say... repairedClass (or something else). They are similar to startingClass or shipBroker types except for an attribute used by Playership Drone's Field Repairs. These repaired class types will be separate from core Playership Drones. Ideally, genericClass would be fully playable out of the box, but until such a time happens, I will need to add repairedClass ship types to fill in gaps not covered by starter or ship broker ships.

The plan is to have a core Playership Drones mod that will be functional in a variety of adventures or extensions, then additional extensions representing repairedClass ship type volumes to enable field repairs for ships that are normally not playable.
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
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

I have been working on Playership Drones for 1.9, and I am getting close to a possible release, which may be ready by the end of May. For the moment, I am doing a cleanup pass all of the repairedClass ships I have added. One last thing I may need to address is possible custom reactors for large capital ships. Hyperion is not enough power for the likes of Phobos. Even some of the lower level ships may have too high requirements for the fuel available.

I will probably only have repairedClass ships from core Human Space. Ships exclusive to Corporate Command, Near Stars, and Vault of the Galaxy may not be supported... at first.
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
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Playership Drones has been updated to 1.9 beta 1 and uploaded to Xelerus. With that, my immediate goals are mostly done. Mostly because I should add support for ships in Corporate Command, Eternity Port, and maybe Vault of the Galaxy.

It has been more than two years since the OP. The latest Playership Drones that was released today will probably be the last major version. From now on, I will try to maintain it as much as I can. It was a struggle, or perhaps tedium, to update Playership Drones to 1.9, and the main reason I kept at it was it has been a useful debugging tool for my other mods.
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
Fleet Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 2570
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2010 12:54 am

Today, Playership Drones was reuploaded to Xelerus with support for ships in Vault of the Galaxy. With that, Playership Drones (v8) is finally finished, at least enough to replace PSDv7. I had my doubts reaching this far, but... I made it somehow.
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.
wnmnkh
Miner
Miner
Posts: 43
Joined: Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:48 am

First of all, thank you for this mod. I really enjoyed this particular mod and I think similar functionality should be included in base game.


I am not still quite sure if this mod is the issue, but it seems after this mod is installed there's some problem with "Ship Broker" for Near Star systems. Either the station that should have Ship Broker does not even have option or it gives me empty selection. Can you look into this?
wnmnkh
Miner
Miner
Posts: 43
Joined: Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:48 am

Nevermind about the last post. It seems I cannot replicate the same problem with different start. Perhaps there might had been a slight problem on system generation from start but it seems it is just one of thousand chance.
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