Request for a tutorial on how to create a station

[Darth Saber]

I would like to request that a tutorial be created to walk modders through on how to create a station. I have written a couple of tutorials on modding, but how to create a station is beyond my knowledge; if someone with experiance in this area would be willing to compile a tutorial on this subject, I would be grateful.

[alterecco]

Hi Darth... I thought i would use our wiki for this.

http://wiki.neurohack.com/transcendence ... tations101

Note that this is not a complete tutorial, so please point out any things that need more clarification, and lets see what happens.

.]

[Darth Saber]

Thank you alterecco. Here is some info on what you had difficulty on:


fireRateAdj= "10" {The lower the number, the faster the weapon fires.}
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{The values below affect how many hits a station can take before exploding}
hitPoints= "175"
maxHitPoints= "100000"
maxStructuralHitPoints= "25"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{If a station has multiHull then there are multiple layers of armor stacked onto one another; this makes it harder to destroy the station.}

multiHull="true"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{This attribute tells Transcencdence that the item in the mod is a beacon.}

beacon="true"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{This seems to deal either with the conversion of "credits" to "rins", "rins" to "credits," or the conversion of material goods to "credits" or "rins."

`creditConversion`
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{This deals with the ships which one randomly encounters in the game. In your example, you will encounter 1 Hurin Destroyer, which has been ordered to wander around. It will not be common, or easily found throughout the system, due to the "uncommon" attribute. You will not encounter more than four Hurin Destroyers in that system where this code is used.

<Encounters> Encounters frequency="uncommon">
<Ship count="1"class="&scHurinDestroyer;" orders="wander"maxShips="4"/>
</Encounters>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{As far as I can tell, this makes the name of the navigational beacon: "NavBeacon." There is a zero percent chance of it being named anything else.}

<Names>NavBeacon %s-%0%0%0</Names>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Overall I am impressed with your tutorial, and I thank you very much for it, alerecco.

[alterecco]

Thanks for the reply, hope you can use it. I will update the wiki page with your info where needed. However i have a few comments to some of your suggestions.

{The values below affect how many hits a station can take before exploding}
hitPoints= "175"
maxHitPoints= "100000"
maxStructuralHitPoints= "25"

That should hopefully be obvious. However, we would need more exact information on the difference. Why is there a maxHitPoints? Can a station heal? What is the difference between Structural and regular hp?

{If a station has multiHull then there are multiple layers of armor stacked onto one another; this makes it harder to destroy the station.}multiHull="true"

Again, what are the actual effects?

{This attribute tells Transcencdence that the item in the mod is a beacon.}

beacon="true"

Again, what is the difference between a beacon and a non-beacon?

{This seems to deal either with the conversion of "credits" to "rins", "rins" to "credits," or the conversion of material goods to "credits" or "rins."

`creditConversion`

Are you sure about this?

{This deals with the ships which one randomly encounters in the game. In your example, you will encounter 1 Hurin Destroyer, which has been ordered to wander around. It will not be common, or easily found throughout the system, due to the "uncommon" attribute. You will not encounter more than four Hurin Destroyers in that system where this code is used.

<Encounters> Encounters frequency="uncommon">
<Ship count="1"class="&scHurinDestroyer;" orders="wander"maxShips="4"/>
</Encounters>

Again, are you sure about this? Systems have their own encounter tables, so it would be cool to know how these encounters relate to the station that defines them.

{As far as I can tell, this makes the name of the navigational beacon: "NavBeacon." There is a zero percent chance of it being named anything else.}

<Names>NavBeacon %s-%0%0%0</Names>

The %s-%0%0%0 is more likely C printf string interpolation. I would like to know how the station actually ends up being named, and what else can go in there.


The wiki is also available to be edited by us all, so please feel free to contribute and expand sections

.]

[Bobby]

multi hull means that a station won't take as much damage from low wmd weapons, the multiple hulls can withstand lighter weapons easily, and require a wmd to take full damage

beacons map stations around them, probably when they are created, but i can't say for sure

hitpoints is self explanatory
maxhitpoints is how high the station will fix itself too, if possible(other attribute needed). these two can create an already damaged station if hitpoints is lower than the max

maxstructuralhitpoints has to do with the structure of the station, i'm not sure on the details, but when a wreck is left these become the hitpoints of the wreck, and once exceeded the wreck will be destroyed

[alterecco]

Thanks for the info Bobby, ive added the multihull data to the wiki, the others i have some comments for
( always with the commets, eh!! )

beacons map stations around them, probably when they are created, but i can't say for sure

Hmm, sounds possible. I think this will have to be tested a bit to gain a precise explanation. Or maybe somebody else cares to chime in

So, on the whole hp thing, here are my assumptions at this point. Please correct me if i'm wrong;

Hitpoints: the starting non-structural hp of the station.
MaxHitPoints: the maximum hp this station can have. If hp is lower than this, the station registers as damaged.
MaxStructuralHitpoints: HP that keeps the station from being destroyed. Can probably only be damaged by WMD. If the station is immutable, this has no effect.

Now that we are at it, i'll post some more questions for the wiki here. Have at it people!!

------------------

repairRate="1"
-- Other vales possible here? What is the effect

immutable="true"
-- as stated above, i suppose this renders the station indestructible.

backgroundObject="true"
-- iirc makes the station not block bullets/missiles.

ejectaType="&vtWreckEjecta;"
-- this is the small flying bits that come off it, right?

`creditConversion` in the <Trade> tag
-- i just don't know

`replenish` in the <Trade> tag
-- does anyone know the rate at which this ticks?

------------------

So, these are all open questions. If any of you are bored one day, feel free to hack up a station that test one of them and post the answer here. I will delete them from this post as they get answered.

Thanks in advance.

alterecco

.]

[Bobby]

scale="world" is used on planets, stars, and asteroids, it makes them impossible to target, they show up on the map as how they look rather than a dot, and i believe have no name on the map and may be indestructible. i recall my experiments with this a while back had them not as versatile as a normal station, some things didn't work but i don't recall exactly how, and it could have been poor coding.

noFriendlyFire="true" is used to allow something to shoot through their allies without hitting them. it is present on the penitent stations, outlaw turrets, sung satellites and walls, teraton defenders, and the ares turrets.

[Prophet]

fireRateAdj="10"
The station uses the weapons firerate, lower numbers (1-9) are faster, higher numbers means the station shoots slower than the weapons firerate.

<Names> tag
You can have a station pick it's name out of this list. hence why most vanilla stations use "(objGetName;" as it's name in the dockscreens. I believe the "%s" are markers for combining/modfiying the name with multiple strings.

I believe beacon means that the station's location is known whether it has been reconned or not, as some major CW stations are.

creditConversion dosn't seem to have any effect on the player (ie items do not change price if it is changed) so really, I have no idea.

the encounters in a station will spawn ships that the player will encounter, ontop of and including the normal encounters. This is best shown in Charon where you are attacked by vikings and corsairs every 1-2mins.


I've done quite alot with stations and muddled them into piles of unparseable nonsense. I have also made a few useful stations. A few pointers...

armorID is necessary for telling the station what resistances it has but no bearing on HP. A station with LightTitanium has no resistances, where as a station with BlastPlate has the same resistances as that armor.

unique tag is useful if you want to limit the appearance of the station. It will accept unique="InSystem" (one per system) and unique="true" only one per game.

Stations also make use of <Events> Some are hardcoded like <OnCreate> or <OnDestroy> but you can create custom tags for use in scripts. This is used in Korolov.xml for use in missions.

Stations can also use <StaticData> tags to store useful information. This is used alot in the Tinkers, Teraton Fabricator, Raisermesser Lab and Korolov.

Stations can be as simple or as complex as you want to make them. George did a great job making them extremely versatile.

Check out my Player Stations mod here -> http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=413 (shameless plug)
I can't think of anything else right now so I'll leave it at that.

[alterecco]

Thanks guys, i updated the wiki page and my previous post to reflect the changes.
Some of the grey areas (beacons, <Names>) i have left unedited, to see if we can
get some clear explanation. Thx Prophet for noticing `unique` was missing. I've
added it to the wiki. Also missing was repairRate, but im not 100% sure of it's
effect.

I also added a section on player mods dealing with stations, so if you have any
good suggestions to which mods should go in there, please post it here (or just
update the wiki, hint hint). ATM there is Prophets Player Stations mod, and Betels
Storage Stations mod.

Events i feel should have their own page on the wiki, since they are common to both
ships and stations... well... that's my 25 cents anyways

.]

[alterecco]

noArticle I believe removes the "a" or "the" from a station.
definiteArticle makes the station "the" station rather than "a" station.

Actually makes sense now that i see it in writing. Updated...

the system name is substituted %s for ingame, while %1 and %0 substitute numbers (not sure of the difference between them).
Hope this helps.

Hah! That's very cool. Thanks for the info 12Ghost12. Added to the wiki.

Keep it coming...

PS. Darth... I was wondering if you think this is helpful enough. Would a more normal tutorial be still better?

.]

[Darth Saber]

Thanks, alterecco. What you have given me on the wiki, and the help from those who have posted have been most helpful. I am in the process now of creating a station mod, which I will soon be able (I hope) to upload to Xelerus. AS to a full blown tutorial, that would be great, especially if we could get George in on it, since he did create the game after all....