Elemental Shift (Alpha)

[Song]

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ELEMENTAL SHIFT

Coding and writing by Song, Additional graphics by AssumedPseudonym & Aury

Alpha 0.97.11 now available via Dropbox as a standalone download for game versions 1.9 and later.

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Requirements:
- Transcendence version 1.9 or later
- Corporate Command

Recommended
Song 'N' AssumedPseudonym's Superior Sounds (Multiverse link)

Instructions
- Download the TDB file from the link at the top of this page, or below the promo images.
- Save to your Extensions folder (if you are on the Steam version you may not have this by default, just create one in the game directory)
- READ THE KNOWN ISSUES further down this page. This is not a bug-free mod.
- Start a new Stars of the Pilgrim game with Corporate Command and Elemental Shift enabled (and SNAPSS, if you have it). New starting ships will appear at the end of the ship selection list.

But what is Elemental Shift?

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Promo1.png (652.44 KiB) Viewed 67112 times

• Escaping closed development once again after many years, this comprehensive overhaul and enhancement of Stars of the Pilgrim and Corporate Command is back as a public alpha!
  

  

  AutonPromo.png (184.3 KiB) Viewed 67112 times

• Lead a swarm of new and improved auton types into battle, maybe even in a tweaked, slightly-nicer-to-start-in Constellation class!
  

  

  Zulu2.png (238.51 KiB) Viewed 67112 times

• Experience one of fifteen new starting ships, including the Ronin/B, Scorpion, T31, and the mighty Mouse. You can also upgrade to numerous new and modified hulls throughout the game!
  

  

  AvengerFinal.png (539.43 KiB) Viewed 67112 times

• Meet new and exciting NPC factions. And kill most of them.
  

  

  Type35Cannon.png (403.86 KiB) Viewed 67112 times

• Enjoy over 200 new weapons and ammunition types, with tweaks and changes to more than 80 vanilla and Corporate Command guns and missiles as well!
  

  

  StartonCalm.png (719.98 KiB) Viewed 67112 times

• New systems await your explorations. Admittedly, they are entirely made up of placeholders right now!
  

  

  BushidoPlant2.png (403.72 KiB) Viewed 67112 times

• Trade with new friendly and neutral stations and enjoy a more immersive experience with expanded guard, escort, and traffic tables!
  

  

  ChickenArmorTake2.png (219.4 KiB) Viewed 67112 times

• Amuse yourself with detailed and extremely canon-friendly item descriptions!
  

  

  MilitiaFight1.png (1.32 MiB) Viewed 67112 times

• Lose yourself in the same world that you've played through before. Just....more of it.
  

  

  Tripoli.png (210.04 KiB) Viewed 67112 times

• Surprises await, as familiar ships and stations have been significantly altered across the game. Don't assume things are always as you remember them!
  

  

  Changeling.png (373.08 KiB) Viewed 67112 times

• Hi, so you've probably noticed what I'm doing with the first letter of each of these bullet points. If you haven't, go back and look!
  

  

  AXTIRBarricades3.png (591.59 KiB) Viewed 67112 times

• It really isn't easy, let me tell you...anyway, (ahem) Shoot space Nazis!
  

  

  AkanQuad.png (331.49 KiB) Viewed 67112 times

• Featuring over 700 new things, a complete overhaul of the fuel system, major rebalances and innumerable small tweaks and changes, Elemental Shift is a labour of love, finally ready for the public gaze!
  

  

  StartonDef1.png (597.47 KiB) Viewed 67112 times

• Take a new trip through Stars of the Pilgrim and Corporate Command as you've never seen them before! Or heard, if you have not yet installed SNAPSS and do so as well, hint hint!

Download it here!

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Okay, that's enough of that. It's almost 11 at night and I'm running out of vaguely in-date screenshots. So...

Elemental Shift has been my project for....a very long time now. About a decade, which puts it...okay, probably slightly ahead of the other megamods in terms of progress, but still a long way behind where I'd hoped.

But now it's getting close to completion. I'm aware I've been saying this for several years but I actually mean it.

This mod is not intended to transform the game beyond recognition. It's an enhancement mod, not a total conversion. If you can't quite tell where the original game ends and ES content begins...bugs notwithstanding...I've done my job. Most of the weapons, stations, ships, and tweaks have been done, a lot of content that wasn't possible for me to maintain has been offloaded onto George and put into the game proper (notably the outlaw miners). My next stages are system and topology creation, missions, NPCs, and some plotlines. These are hard, and it's going to take a long time. So in the interests of testing, I'm putting the mod out as an alpha now, to see how it runs in the background while I try to work out my next steps.

Please be aware that this mod is not finished: There is placeholder content. There are a lot of missing things (plot, for starters). There will be bugs that you will encounter as you play, some of which are related to core engine functions, some due to transdata problems complicating balancing procedures, and others due to the mistakes and omissions that build up over a decade-long amateur development process. I'm hoping to open up the Ministry section for Elemental Shift (there is one, though it's not much used by me) at some future point to help with collecting these. Known issues (as of 0.97.9) include:

- Walls on sung fortresses are incapable of being damaged and also cannot shoot. You have to use AoE or passthrough weapons for now. This is caused by an engine bug that has a fix in the works.
- All plasma explosives have extremely questionable balance due to engine oddities and transdata being a bit iffy about it all.
- All SEM missiles behave in unintended ways due to an engine limitation (I've tried to balanced them by hand for now)
- The commonwealth traffic algorithm will sometimes send ships to stations that they are hostile to.
- Reactors that use non-levelled fuel criteria (eg "all fusion fuels") will feature nonsensical level ranges on the UI. This is a core engine bug.
- Some older content has inconsistencies and/or decidedly incorrect values for various parameters due to changing systems and various rebalances over the years. Most commonly power use.
- Eden's Apples and counterfeit Eridani mineral water cannot be sold to the Victoria Nightclub (there's a core-side check for items that I need to work around)
- Some NPCs have questionable balance for where they appear in the game.
- In the Cyclops HQ mission, the various NPC ships will spread out due to their different speeds.
- Tinker recipes will sometimes fail due to insufficient cargo space when there is sufficient cargo space. This is a core bug that hasn't yet been tracked down for a fix.
- Tenhove missile redirect is a bit too powerful at the moment.
- Some ships have weird line breaks on shipyard screens due to core bugs.

I'm planning to fix some of these in the short term. Others require longer-term changes to the Transcendence engine itself. But in the version I'm putting up, they're all still here.

Despite this, the mod is generally stable (stable enough not to force people to wait even more years for it to be ironclad) and should work reasonably well on an up-to-date copy of Transcendence compatible with API53. In addition, Corporate Command is required to launch the mod, and the use of SNAPSS is highly recommended: the two mods are designed to work together. This mod has not been (and will not be) tested for compatibility with other extensions, registered or otherwise. You are of course free to alter your own copy of the mod to get other mods to play nicely with it... just please don't redistribute it.

I hope you enjoy Elemental Shift. It's been a wild ride making it, and I'd like to get off while it's got a long way to go...I'm pleased with what I've got to show for it.

[Song]

Morning-after update: It seems everything's working! Good. Staying up past 11 to do the silly bullet points probably wasn't worth it.

I also have a few pointers on the starting ships, since the intro doesn't always give everything. Unless otherwise indicated, a ship should start in Eridani:

Constellation: Freighter/Auton carrier. Exactly the same as the stock vessel (and it shows up in the same place in the ship selection screen roughly), but the autons have been swapped out for a more level-appropriate model. The main gun has also been swapped from the Moskva 11 to the longer-ranged but less powerful RK2 recoilless turret. Starts in Tau Ceti.

Zulu-II: Light gunship. A solid if unremarkable early-game workhorse that's one of my go-to picks. Can fall behind later, but you can complete the game in one of these if you really want to. Limited slots, but no restrictions on what you put in them.

Mouse: Light gunship. Similar to the Zulu-II, but a bit harder to fly effectively. Very small, very cramped, but you can fly between the shots of a dual weapon if you're careful. Probably don't use this for your first playthrough though it is extremely fun sometimes. Starts in Tau Ceti.

Sirin 3B: Light gunship. Slower than most competitors, but can fit super-heavy armor. Comes with the Novaya system integrated, a disposable missile pod that gives targeting while it's installed, a blast primary weapon, and a fission reactor. Bogatyr fission reactors deliver substantially less power and cannot be refuelled, but are designed to last for the approximate lifetime of the reactor (and then some). Starts in Tau Ceti.

Mako: Light gunship. The fastest starting ship, the Mako is extremely light, extremely cramped, and extremely fragile. It's also extremely fun to fly. Not a good ship for hoarders.

Likho: Light gunship/gunship. Generally a terrible hull, but you get good starting equipment, including SRS enhancement and a targeting program pre-installed. That's about it. Use this if you want a solid start followed by a trip to a shipbroker to buy something better.

Wolfen/A: Light gunship/gunship. I had (and have) huge problems with the premium Wolfen/C being the one you can just start with (it disincentivises using the shipyard system). This is not a premium Wolfen. This is the basic model, appropriate to the early game but not really something to keep right through to Heretic.

Ronin/B: Gunship. Solid all-rounder, excellent hull, and probably my most commonly played ship.

Earthzone 1200: Gunship. Starts with no shield, but a distributing armor system and a decent WMD weapon.

Naga: Gunship. A fast, agile vessel with limited armor capacity. A watered-down Mako in many respects. Starts in Tau Ceti.

Oromo: Gunship. Starts with an SRS enhancement pre-installed, and a boost to the player's armor repair skill. Fairly unremarkable balanced platform.

Sotho: Heavy gunship/freighter. Slightly different to the Sotho you'll find in shipyards (I had to cheat a little to get the drive power down), but still decent if not quite as good. Has a single omnidirectional slot for a single-point-origin primary weapon.

Asterion: Heavy gunship. Extremely heavy, in fact. This is a freighter that can dance, if a little slowly, and fit up to massive-category armor as well. Starts with an auton bay.

Scorpion: Heavy gunship. Cannot use missile launchers, but gets a bonus to installed non-reactor devices by Earth Industries. This includes EI sidemounts, of which there are quite a few in Elemental Shift. Starts in Tau Ceti.

EI100/M: Missileship. Painfully slow, and with all the agility and grace of a regular EI100. The upside is a high armor capacity and an omnidirectional slot for your missile launcher. This thing is exceptionally powerful if you put it in the right place, but it's maybe not the best choice if you want a fast-paced early game experience.

T31: Freighter. This absolutely isn't a way to start with a black market ID and George's favorite weapon (which I have mercilessly nerfed). I know nothing about smuggling. I have no idea why anyone might say otherwise.


Feedback (especially praise, I crave validation) and bug reports are welcomed on this mod, it's been a long time since anyone other than George or myself played an up-to-date version of this mod.

[Laika II]

Just wanted to say that this is very much appreciated! I'm downloading it now, hope to post something actually constructive later.

[Song]

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Updated to 0.97.1

• Tinker Lamarr in Rigel now uses the current intended tinker inventory and trade system(requires new savegame)
• Tinkers will now not sell back damaged gear
• Removed deprecated Borer and Borer II overwrites that were breaking their gun selection (requires new savegame)
• Fixed Ranx Dreadnought using the old 40-facings graphic [Thanks to IronParrot]
• All core ship overrides now use ShipClassOverride, not ShipClass, which should mostly prevent similar bugs.
• Major Freeworlds should now buy illegals as intended
• Zvezda-400 now has the correct description text [Thanks to IronParrot]
• Updated Eridani mineral water with correct tags, it's still impossible to sell to nightclubs and I'm still working on a solution to that.
• Asterions now have an integrated auton bay, identify all autons ala the Constellation and Armstrong/Aldrin, and come with autons when you buy them. (requires new savegame)
• Asterion starter ship now begins with an AK5 heavy recoilless cannon, not a Trident. It seemed a little unfair to put a short-range weapon on a ship that isn't very agile. I have been persuaded otherwise, so this will be reverted in 0.97.2 unless I am re-persuaded other-otherwise.
• Asterion starter ship now begins with two autosentinels (also requires new savegame, also obviously)

The download links and known issues section of the OP have been updated to reflect these changes. To apply this patch, redownload the TDB and replace your existing one with it. Savegame bugs may result from continuing existing games.

[Song]

Well that went well.

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Hotfixed to 0.97.2

• This patch adds workarounds to numerous bugs caused by core engine issues with ShipClassOverride that the 0.97.1 fixes triggered including invisible and immobile EI200s and a 20-facing (??!) Kate Morgantal.
• No I have no idea what was going with that either.
• Earthzone 5000 is now split between player and NPC versions to get around the engine adding a linked fire weapon when it shouldn't
• Asterion has a Trident again
• Updated the Eir's setup, but did so as an overwrite not an override to get around override bugs.

This should make the mod work again, but there may be other oddities. Please report any issues with missing graphics or immobile ships, they are likely caused by the same problems with ShipClassOverride.

You can download this patch from the link in the OP. Effects on existing savegames is unknown.


Edit: Reuploaded to fix yet another inheritance issue where the Kronosaurus wasn't inheriting its wreck chance, and thus wasn't leaving a wreck.

[Laika II]

I enjoyed my short journey in the mod so far. It's refreshing to be surprised by new content in the early systems.

I've ran into a possible issue though. I can't seem to buy another ship at the ship broker. According to the price tag I should be able to buy the ships, but the option is greyed out.
edit: might be similar to the issue reported here

[Song]

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Updated to 0.97.3

• Reverted use of ShipClassOverride wherever possible to prevent further random chaos from core bugs with that system.
• Freeworld trade posts should now purchase illegal items as intended

I've ran into a possible issue though. I can't seem to buy another ship at the ship broker. According to the price tag I should be able to buy the ships, but the option is greyed out.

This will be due to baHumanTechShip being missing, which is almost certainly due to the ShipClassOverride fiasco if you were running one of the last two versions. Most playerships in Elemental Shift inherit from a shipclass, which then inherits from the human tech base class. It's probable that the overrides broke that chain, thus stopping the broker from working. If that's the case, this patch should fix it (though it may require a new game). If this version still has the problem then please let me know what ship you're in (and if only some ships are greyed out, what ships they are) and I'll check for a specific error.

[Laika II]

Started a new game and the bug is gone. Thanks for the quick fix!

[Song]

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Updated to 0.97.4

- Fixed ShipClassOverride bugs on Revelations-class missileship by swapping to an overwrite (thanks to IronParrot)
- Trinity cannon and omni trinity cannon are now level 3 and 4, not 4 and 5, are re-statted appropriately
- Sapiens stations and ships now use Trinity cannons instead of non-radioactive kinetics.
- T31 playership starts with a single level 2 gun, not a level 1 and level 3, also gains a smol shield.
- Crafting recipe for Trinity cannon updated to use the Flenser 10, not Flenser 40 (it is still almost certainly too expensive to be worth making, I will redo the maths on it later)
- Moved the ESNB branch of systems to better fit in with The Stars Beyond until I can yell at Aury about their system placement
- Added semi-rare easter egg to one of the Black Market ships you can buy.

I attempted to really fix the problem with Eden's Apples and Counterfeit Eridani Mineral Water not being sellable at nightclubs, but there's coreside code that prevents it (I think a mass limitation). I'll need to consult George on ways around it.

[Song]

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Hotfixed to 0.97.5

-Fixed centurions and minotaurs not having reactors (note: Minotaurs have not been tested to see how their reactors handle loads)
-Nerfed damage on the SEM series missiles heavily now I've made my point to George about how Transdata needs some work for cloud/plasma weapons
-Fixed incorrect mass on the BEL-15 energy missile, buffed damage for 40kg normalisation

[relanat]

Just downloaded it. Unfortunately:
"Unable to start game

TA5-class Sentinel (scTenhoveSentinel2): Unknown image: 100391"

Occurs in debug and play mode.

Really looking forward to playing this.

[Song]

Just downloaded it. Unfortunately:
"Unable to start game

TA5-class Sentinel (scTenhoveSentinel2): Unknown image: 100391"

Occurs in debug and play mode.

Really looking forward to playing this.

I've been unable to replicate this, so I'm not sure what's going on there. It may be an issue specific to your game or mod install.


...that class is obsolete and should be deprecated, but looking at my tables it turns out there's one that still uses it. I'll change the table, then in a later version do a savegame-breaking update that removes the class entirely.

[relanat]

I had a look. The image UNID 'rsTenhoveHD' isn't defined anywhere because it was obseleted in API 51.
Deleting the upgraded sentinel ship classes and removing them from the ship table lets the game start.

And, wow, ES is huge; new weapons, ships, stations, traffic.
The Fleet Outpost looks great, so do the Tigers. Enemy Scorpions?
Excellent.

It looks really clean too. Are you going to open a bug thread?
Until then, from the field repairs kit:

ESactionbox.jpg (57.22 KiB) Viewed 66905 times

The action box isn't big enough for the text.

[Song]

@Relanat That let me find the problem: my testing mod, and SNAPSS probably, are lower API versions that force a compatibility mode. I've replaced the graphics for the time being, will do something more concrete later.

I've also trimmed and reworked the fleet repair kit. Technically that's a core bug, but it's easy enough to resolve.

There is an Elemental Shift ministry page. It's just not public yet.


Patch will be incoming later this morning, once I've done a few more tweaks to some new things I'm sneaking into the patch.

[Song]

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Updated to 0.97.6
-Corrected various typos
-Vanilla centurion playerships now repurposed as uncommon variations
-Solon anti-particle shield now correctly suppresses particle weapons
-Level 5 hammerhead now actually shows up at level 5, not level 3
-Level 5 Hammerhead no longer spawns with a reactor that cannot power its equipment
-Level 5 Hammerhead generally revised to be a more reasonable purchase
-Removed stray external tags from various sidemounts that weren't supposed to be breakable
-Removed stray NotStandard and NotForSale tags from various tinker items
-Fixed crash bug caused by legacy Tenhoves using obsolete resources
-Fixed Ascraeus reactor producing ten times the power it should have been
-Commonwealth stations can no longer refuel reactors that require Ares fuelcells
-Delta 25 and 27 now fire slower, use less reactor power, and are cheaper
-Updated the Tenhove sentinels with the auton base code and slightly altered configurations (this may cause some stations to be more challenging to fight)
-Added the Tenhove autons as player-usable items
-Swapped legacy TA5/7/9 over to new purposes
-TA5 and 7 implemented as improvements of the base TA3. This doesn't mean they are actually good however: they are still tenhove sentinels.
-TA9 converted to TR-350, an improved model of the TR-200.
-New auton added at level 7, the TMA11, an improved model of the TMA9
-Corporate auton dealers are now more common, cannot have 'tenhove' in their names (if the override works)
-Added Tenhove and Omnidefense dealers. These are unique in-system, and will repair any autons but only sell their own. They do not buy anything.
-Added new Tenhove auton table specifically for their dealers to use, so they don't have Omnidefense autons circling them. (Yes I could use the one various other faction use but eh)


Edit: oops, uploaded the wrong tdb. I'll fix that now.
Edit2: fixed!