Contact

[shanejfilomena]

The Original .xml was deleted by mistake and my computer skips the recycle bin, so I had to start over :
In Contact I am basically playing with my food , I'll get to that.
I return the friendly Centauri as tinker and working stations : I did want them to be " normal " and change after you take out Arco, but they refused to be associated with him no matter how I tried it.
But all is good : they turned out to be Industriously Friendly and I am liking it this way.

The Casino and Spa returns : unlike the more technical versions that brought Casino adventures to the Universe, my casinos are pretty simple, you have a good chance at winning or otherwise loosing a " sweet 100 credits " ; the Office might have a Destroy station mission; and it still buys things from the player at the Loading dock.

You can Dine at the Restaurant on prepared meal servings I selected with idealistic Holographs you imagine while you do, there are not alot of choices in the meals, but in transcendence it is either "Rice with" or without.

So I got that going and I worked on the screen for it, which was fun : it kept trying to install your Dinner .
" we are out of potatoes, Captain, What do we fire next? "

Salvagers : I did want them to work with the Tinkers, I have set them to but after the last adventure with them I don't really care if they obey me this time: the amount of time a player stays in a system would make the orders useless anyway; I just have to sit on Autopilot one of these times to be sure it just does not cause any errors.

Ice Farms: you Know I like to see the farms manufacture, and some other stations as well : what I am trying to do is meld the stations with the normal ones more carefully so they basically function alike in terms of buying items from the player, with a slight twist to use some items for making more inventory. The selection of ships guarding the stations are a dead give away, you know I like Guard ships.
I still have to work out some kinks because a few item descriptions for sale don't seem to fit the station they are in, so I want to tinker with that.

And it is an Adventure so once I get the basic "idea stations" working I will figure out where the Adventure is going ( or I should say where it was supposed to be going when I first started the original .xml ).

No Over-writes: This is heading for 1.01, so it has to play fair and make room for all the 1.01 goodies out there. I did think of going to 1.03 but I have not played that in so long I am not sure I could cookie-cut somethings into that version like my Casino and Spa.
I did want to pull down a few ideas from more updated versions that can work in 1.01, but to do it I have to build stations or ships to keep from over-writes. No big deal there but the hard question is usually " where do you put such things after you got them? " .

And I already have that covered being as the Universe is a large and diverse place in contact so I think the ideas will fit when I get to them.

** Image is after a purchase .
The testing ship is stronger then I needed to do this Adventure testing of stations, I edited the ship for a GodMod idea I had once before I decide that GodMods are not for me.
Even without the edits the NCC-1701E is pretty powerful ( just stay away from the Ventari ).

[Autohummer]

The idea with dining is immensely interesting, however, I wonder if it has any gameplay role (except using up some of your credits), I apologize if the answer has been mentioned elsewhere.

[shanejfilomena]

The idea with dining is immensely interesting, however, I wonder if it has any gameplay role (except using up some of your credits), I apologize if the answer has been mentioned elsewhere.

Thank you for the Input : I actually had fun with this menu stuff trying to create believable servings of believable meals
I had to give it it's own "intbuyItems" and screen , convince it to not try to Install the food and later I had to head off an Inventory Issue by having a ship take the items you purchased "off the station" because you allegedly consumed them so they had to go.
( If you kill the ship the items are not there, i do not know exactly why, but they are "not random" so that might explain it.).

And you are correct about it just being something to spend credits on, a diversion from 'normal' : the Casino is where you actually Gamble and have a reasonable chance to win : you can also use the casino & Spa to obtain a Black Market ID , get missions to destroy stations and sell items the Hotel can use. So I do not think it is entirely just a diversion station to distract the player. I do want to get more " Corporate Contracts " ideas into Contact but my main concern at the moment is Items available and Stations working properly.

I have ( spoiler ) outlaw miners : In the past I tried to make them closer to the Ferians but I decided it was too much ( after the fact ) and this time I simply went with giving them 3d9 : 9 ( maximum ) extra miners is ALOT of ships coming at you after you took on the main station , so I think my new edit to them is better and more balanced for the system level.

Another thing I did that I am a big fan of is that If a station sells something : such as the Armor dealer:
they should buy and/or repair those items ( I did once go into all that, but this time I am sticking with the buy and sell part )
If a Armor dealer is selling Barrels and Coils : they should buy them if the ones you have are the ones they can sell.
And I think they should sell Defensive, Armor / shield related items like Roms and coils and patch spiders.

ALSO, Shields : when a Armor dealer offers to upgrade a Shield they offer the Monopole : you might not want to trade your Hull Plate Ionizer for a Monopole.
So I FINALLY stole the Pirate's code and edited it for giving a shield resembling the system level. I am sure you can appreciate at least having an option closer to the kind of damage a system level is kicking out on you. And I think it is nice if the stations are not always just offering you one option as a general peeve.

Code: Select all

<Action name="Upgrade shield generator" key="H">
								(block Nil
									(setq gPrevScreen "Main")
									(setq gPrevPane "Default")

									(switch
								(eq (sysGetLevel) 1)
									(setq gItem (itmCreate &itLaserDeflector; 1))

								(eq (sysGetLevel) 2)
									(setq gItem (itmCreate &itHullPlateIonizer; 1))

								(eq (sysGetLevel) 4)
									(setq gItem (itmCreate &itR1Deflector; 1))

								(eq (sysGetLevel) 5)
									(setq gItem (itmCreate &itNephrenP25; 1))

								(eq (sysGetLevel) 6)
									(setq gItem (itmCreate &itSuperconductingShields; 1))

								(eq (sysGetLevel) 7)
									(setq gItem (itmCreate &itInvincibleDeflector; 1))

								(setq gItem (itmCreate &itCeratopsQuasiArmor2; 1))
								)
									(setq gCost (add (itmGetPrice gItem) (divide (itmGetInstallCost gItem) 2)))
									(setq gCheckMilitaryID True)
									(scrShowScreen gScreen "&dsInstallSpecificDevice;")
									)
							</Action>

I selected the shields actually in the order I have played them on my ships : I am a huge fan of the Hull Plate Ionizer and often take it past STK If I make it that far
However, working with the Dall Sphere Mission I noticed the Ceratops ( 1 ) was a good shield and while I barely survived Charon with Ceratops QuasiArmor1, I still think they are good. I have taken the Ceratops QuasiArmor 2 rather far into the Universe so I selected that as the " catch-all " Default shield.

[shanejfilomena]

Resurrecting an old station : a Luminous Assembler that is friendly : the station creates it's own drones, and some are escorted to other stations ( but not by the player )

The entire point of the station was to originally open an idea of trade with the Luminous to provide material that they can make their stuff with : the Down-Side is that there is not much I can actually think for them to make that I think a player would want other then the weapon and shields : so that part was never in the previous version of the station because we have tons of weapons and such.

So far I have had a major issue with making the display in the dock screen work right : I wanted a display that was operational but not exactly what you can see later in the game : Just close enough to it to represent an AI station. I FINALLY got it after stripping the original down to almost nothing so I can get the animated image.

Now back to my constant problem system : Cristoforo .
This system has always been a pain because for strange reasons with stations on planets that are not even in the system design : so I STILL, after 3 versions am trying to figure out where these planets are coming from and getting rid of them .

It is the most insanity i ever had with any system and I have made over 160 system designs but Cristoforo has always been the one to drive me up the Hull every time I get to it to see how it came out.