Planning for the 7th Transcendence succession game

[PM]

The compilation seems okay so far, though I did not check thoroughly.

I reuploaded DrakeTech to Xelerus, but the changes are very minor (but includes some unid swaps), and may not be worth updating here.

[FourFire]

Ok, so I've been playtesting the modpack a little, and first I would like to thank PM, TVR and the others working hard to increase mod compatibility!

PM: I love how you've done decendence recharge entities.

Second of all: there are way too many items!, especially weapons and ammotypes, I want to start voting out the more obnoxious and immersion breaking mods* which also add multiple weapons, though I don't want to be annoying so whoever voted in these mods feel free to tell me why you want them included and I'll probably shut up.
So with that said here is the list:

HOSHIGAMI
MacsWeaponPac
Weapon+27


*I don't mean offence to any mod makers out there, this is me potentially being a douche, and partly being annoyed at not being able to get two of the same weapon ingame and having to scroll through 147 different weapons in my cargohold before I can look at what shields or armor I have.

[RPC]

Mod request to modify cargohold view by category to add a search function that searches for partial strings in item names? That way if we're just looking for "katana" we can get katana star cannons and their derivations instead of scrolling down a massive list.

Mod questions:
-Does the ansible work properly? I tried syphoning and checking cargo but it said 'unknown function'.
-Can we add HD stargates?
-Also, what is the station at the sun? It's like a virtual station that isn't virtual D:
-Siom warlord camps have a psychological attack by the sheer scary of the ship/station sprites (Looking at them is messing with my eyes for some reason).
-Hoft enterprises use the Iocrym small base image, at first I thought it was an enemy Iocrym base but it's just a friendly station, kinda breaks immersion?
Remove Hoft because it spawns in the beginning (after St. Kat's at least) AND at the end of the game. It's too common, doesn't even sell anything nice (just impossible to get reactors) and has NO defenders.
-No idea why Coreward Bazaar sells CLAWs and Urak mass drivers when there are Ares around.
(I would take on fixing Test Drive/my mods but finals in ~1-2 weeks so T.T )
-I think Test Drive triggers siniblaster or something with the "Energy!" mod. It doesn't matter since the ship is just a dummy ship to test out weapons though.
-It might be possible to kill yourself with debris from the Buoy in Test Drive.
-Also it would be nice to clear the target after test driving.

[Alfino]

to unlock cargo scanning and credit siphoning, you'll need cargo scanning and swordfish ROM. They are military and illegal rom.

[roushguy]

Sure, I'll give it a whirl, but I also suggest we add in Weapon Labs, or something akin to it. Being able to create a weapon will be nice.

[FourFire]

if we add in weaponlabs, IF it is compatible, then we need to choose between it and WE6, since those mods don't play nicely with eachother IIRC.

[PM]

Will the succession use beta 2? I will need to update PSD for that.

[TVR]

-Improved "ODM Alarm System" with positional audio system
-Fixed Nano Blaster in "Hoft Enterprises" and reduced the station's frequency
-Replaced foomerians with Foomerians.xml (PM: Check your PSD Xelerus extension for Foomerians.xml, it should be foomerians.xml with a lowercase f)
-Added "Weapon Labs beta" by sdw195

We may have to switch to 1.3 Beta 2, as Beta 1 is no longer available for download and existing installations will auto-update to Beta 2. The bad news is that Beta 2 breaks the stock playerships and possibly others in PSD. For the time being, I could mirror Beta 1 for download.

On a side note, we'll soon need a name for the player character in the succession.

@Pixelfck

If there are any bandwidth limitations, let me know, we can always switch to LZMA/.7z compression.

The Hawking does overwrite the BM Shipyard and shipTable, by means of (TypCreate) at game start. Currently planned is to mix the PSD Brigand's BM Shipyard overwrite into the Hawking.xml

@FourFire

First of all, thanks for promptly evaluating the modpack, feedback always helps.

In regards to the inventory, did you try using the Category View option in the cargohold screen?

Given that we've yet to even enable WE5, rather than avoid mods for providing too many items, perhaps it would be more worthwhile in the end to improve inventory management instead.

@RPC

1) Ansible works, but advanced features require upgrade ROMs.
2) We have HD Stargates, 128 px already.
3) In Companion Framework, the original XML comments out the virtual= tag, so fixing that may be difficult. On the bright side, it's just cosmetic.
4) Seems like "Siom camps" was a good addition.
5) Let's tweak "Hoft Enterprises" a bit and see if it helps.
6) Quite a bizarre bazaar indeed.
7) It does, could patch PSD: Descendence, but it's low priority.
8) It's impossible to destroy the playership with kinetic ejecta in 17 seconds, I tried. It's not perfectly fool-proof, though, it's theoretically possible for the player to kill themselves with a weapon that does massive self-damage or has a range exceeding 10000 ls.
9) I'm not sure that's possible. I've tried (shpOrder gPlayership 'aim Nil), to no effect.

@roushguy

Alright, be sure to comment on it!

@PM

Updated DrakeTech, but we will likely also need an updated version of PSD D&O.

[PM]

If possible, I suggest we use beta 2 just so that no one (especially me) gets tempted to exploit the rollover bug to produce unlimited items or cash. I tried the rollover bug in beta 2, and attempting it treats any negative value due to overflow as zero.

The PSD library itself (specifically, the three playerships overwrite) needs to be updated for beta 2. D&O1 ships do not need to be updated except possibly for the updated Corporate Cruiser. That said, I will try to rerender the ships in TransArt if I can and re-release the batch. I planned on deferring that for PSD7, but now that beta 2 supports 40+ facings, I should try to get that done as soon as possible. Should that be successful, the only thing left for PSD7 would be a code rewrite. (I did not think the road to PSD7 would be as incremental as this.)

[RPC]

I'm going to raise a warning that it is very easy to make an overpowered weapon with Weapons Labs. I think it's still doable to do Porost's suggestion with the current mod, but if I'm wrong please let me know.

[PM]

So far, I re-rendered nine ships from Transart with 120 facings. At the rate I am going, it will (probably) take me at least a week to re-render the rest of the ships.

[george moromisato]

So far, I re-rendered nine ships from Transart with 120 facings. At the rate I am going, it will (probably) take me at least a week to re-render the rest of the ships.

BTW: I plan to re-render all (or almost all) large ships with 120 facings. It will probably take me a month or so to get it out. I don't (yet) plan on re-rendering all small ships. I'll probably do a few if they can benefit.

[FourFire]

@TVR

The issue if the UI needs to be fixed inside shops and loot/jettison menus as the viewcargoholdbycategory mod doesn't work in these menus, and this is where most of the frustration exists as you need to scroll downwards from the top every time you want to jettison/sell something.

@RPC

Yes weaponlabs is very very abusable, but fun all the same you might need to nerf, or not include it.

[Atarlost]

I'm an outsider, but I'd suggest that if you include Weapon Labs you don't include any other weapon additions. Being able to make fully custom weapons is going to make all those nifty mod weapons dead weight.

[TVR]

-In the process of mixing "Hawking BM Fighter" and "Black Market Expansion" together. Respawn events seem a bit off, though, every destroyed BM Shipyard spawns several in the same location.
-Added ability to test ammo weapons and launcher in "ODM Test Drive"
-Added several more mods
-Partially reimplemented Excaliber Targeting, crosshairs function correctly again.

The current proposal for listing of items:



Adding Change to category view in dsLoot, dsJettison, dsExchange, dsCargohold.



Choose category.



Sorted.

@RPC

Could you clarify Porost's suggestions?

@FourFire

I'll see what I can put together, but it may push the extension start date back a bit.

@Atarlost

Yes, but then I would miss my Plasma Carronade too much.

@EditorRUS

Finished the MIDAS bomb yet?

@Digdug

WE6?