New modder curious about lore and a possible mod

[Alandauron]

Hello pilots!

I am a modder from other games, XCom: Enemy Unknown mainly right now, and am still trying to familiarize myself with the history of the X Universe and how things work. I've been doing a good amount of reading because I like to create lore friendly mods when I do create something. One thing I haven't been able to wrap my head around is the boarding system, where do all the pods come from? Are they jumped in or something? There's no way 50 pods fit on the Albion Skunk.

Anyway, one thing I was curious about was whether or not the lore has ship types specific to Troop Transport. I am currently digging through the code in the hopes of being able to detach the Marine recruitment as a static max number for only the Albion Skunk and instead attach the amount of Marines you can have to the amount of Marine Officers that you have in your fleet.

Marine Officers would no longer be stationed on the Albion Skunk, except maybe one, but instead a Troop Transport vessel that can be destroyed to prevent the boarding. I intend to write some new AI to ensure that the Transport avoids the combat but remains close by so when you call for the boarding assault the transport will fly to the ship and launch the pods(animation would still have them appearing out of thin air because I'm not an animator, only difference is you need the transports).

On top of that I want to rework the boarding system to require higher amounts of Marines for larger ships and stations, so I would implement a minimum Boarding Defense rating and you would have to bring enough Marine Officers, in their Troop Transports, in order to capture stronger targets.

I have already started looking into the code for the fleet boarding mod by MM as a great place to start so mainly I was just wanting to know if there was anything in the lore of the X Universe that detracts from this design idea. Right now I am still getting familiar with the code so this isn't gonna be an overnight mod or anything.

Main differences between my concept and MM's:

• -Marines will only be able to be recruited after hiring a Marine Officer
  -Marines will only be able to be hired after purchasing a Transport
  -Number of Marines will be determined by amount of Transports + Officers
  -Marine Officers will be in charge of less Marines each

Marine Officers can hire:

• -1 & 2 Star = 15 Marines
  -3 & 4 Star = 20 Marines
  -5 Star = 25 Marines

This is still in concept phase just figured I'd share the concept while I wait for responses on the lore question.

TL/DR: I want to know if the lore supports the use of "Troop Transports" because it puzzles me where all the pods come from when boarding a ship.

Thanks in advance for any lore related responses!

[Alandauron]

Forgot to add that I'm considering adding boarding as an option to smaller craft, I think S/M are the only ones that don't allow it, I would only add boarding for the M vessels. Still not sure about this, but if I reduce the amount of Marines per Officer I might need to adjust this, either that or allow recruiting Elite Marines the way you do other crew members, one at a time in random stations.

[Axeface]

Boarding in rebirth is an example of believability taking a second seat behind gameplay. When I first launched all those pods from the skunk I thought the same thing, its very silly. Not sure why they didnt just reduce the number of marines to a believable amount and use a pod like a missile.

As to your question (its been a long time and some of this might not be accurate), yes there is 'lore' for that kind of thing. IIRC boarding actually first came about in a mod, that added a dedicated boarding ship (m7m Sirokos iirc). The Sirokos was I suppose what you'de call a troop transport.

You could board with a 'Passenger Transport' ship also, or larger ships that also supported passengers such as M6's or higher to 'launch' marines but they wernt as good and unless you swamped the enemy ship with a lot of missiles, distracting the turrets, you'de lose a lot of marines. The boarding pods could only be launched from the dedicated M7M ships and a few others. Normal passenger transports (TP's) would just eject the marines into space in their suits and they would float to the target and laser their way in.

Making boarding better and more believable would be great, so I like your ideas. have you played the previous games? Ide suggest taking a look at how it works in those.

[Alandauron]

Awesome! So now I just need to find the Sirokos and see if something already exists that I can "borrow"(not an artist) to be used as the Sirokos. I'll likely look into making sure it's compatible with the Carrier mod so that you can launch them from a carrier later on in the game or with different starts.

If anyone else has anything to add I'm all ears, been having trouble tearing myself away from actually playing the game, but the more I play the more I want to get into modding it.

[Alan Phipps]

Moving to the XR S&M forum.

[Marvin Martian]

Forgot to add that I'm considering adding boarding as an option to smaller craft, I think S/M are the only ones that don't allow it, I would only add boarding for the M vessels.

internal i have also created a Hymir based vassel simple with 30 slot dronebay without storage as small boardingship

on the other hand you could add the marines on such a ship and send this with an modified boardingpod AI (add undock) directly to the target, drop marines and return to carrier - but then you need to change some MD stuff to handle drones instead of pilots

[Alandauron]

Hey MM! I'm looking at your ships from [MOD] Some Ships thread, I don't see the one that you're referring to, the boarding ship. Do you have a link to the ship that you're talking about?

Also nice work on those ships, mind if I re-purpose some of them when I finally get around to creating mods for X: Rebirth? Also, are any of them M Class ships, or are they all L & XL?

[Marvin Martian]

no isn't in a release yet, simply in lack of use

i only have one smallship with an universal storage in the mainpackage but this also won't patched into productions in an existing game

[Alandauron]

I was just curious if there's a mod that fixes the randomness of the dialog options. I mean where the "Stay on this ship" is always middle right, "Show me your skills" is always middle left, "Back" is always bottom right, etc.

Did know if there was something that was already out there that organizes this, or if it's possible. I noticed some things that are:

Code: Select all

<add_player_choice text="{88888,100}" section="cMarine_stayhere" position="top_right" comment="Stay on this ship"/>

actually appear middle right, the position is supposed to determine where the dialog option shows up right? If one mod positions things in one spot and another positions it somewhere else is this where the conflict will come in?

[euclid]

Yes, if the same position is used by different mods. However, if you do not specify any position then any available position is used. The trouble starts if all possible positions are taken already (then you need to define a submenu).

Cheers Euclid

[Alandauron]

Yes, if the same position is used by different mods. However, if you do not specify any position then any available position is used. The trouble starts if all possible positions are taken already (then you need to define a submenu).

Cheers Euclid

Awesome, thanks! Yea I have downloaded several different mods both for QoL changes as well as to look at how things were done. Even in vanilla though it irritates me how the crew stats aren't always in the same location...maybe it's just me. Wonder if CWIR makes this uniform since that seems to be the major overhaul being worked on currently?

I'm just trying to go through all the wonderful stuff already created to make sure the concepts I want to work on haven't already been done. With every new mod I get I gain interest in playing again, haven't made the leap to CWIR yet since I haven't completed the story lol. I built the station in the wrong system though so had to dl the Construction Vessel re-purpose mod to try and fix that, then got sidetracked with Reinforced Metal Plating so downloaded the Ledda Industrial, etc. etc. So many great things already modded into this game!

[UniTrader]

well, i am working on a Dialogue Overhaul for better Consistency, but this is only part of a bigger overall project for replacing all AI Stuff and i dont plan on relying on any Vanilla Scripts in the end, so it might take a while. but at this point the Layout of the Root Dialogue Menu for Employees is pretty much decided:

Dialogue Tree - rough concept (for all Entity Types)
1. Orderlist Access (allows Manipulation of Orders performed one after another; if there are no outstanding orders new ones will be added based on Parameters)
- - - - - -
2. Settings Managment - Entity Specific (changes Parameters after which Orders are Followed, like Jump Behavior, Range for Managers (New Menu for that which is WiP*), Default Orders if there are no outstanding ones)
- - - - - -
3. Connect to other People - Maybe also include an Option to connect to Subordinates with no consistent Position (move around as necesary)
-> note that Station and CV are counted as the same in this Menu
3.1 Defense
3.2 Engineer
3.3 Architect
3.4 Superior
3.5 Captain/Pilot/Manager
3.6 Subordinates
- - - - - - -
4. Subordinates Handling
4.1 Take all my direct Subordinates
4.2 Take all Subordinates of ***
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
- - - - - - - -
5. Personal Managment
Opens a new Menu specifically for that (currently WiP)*
- - - - - - - -
6. Goodbye

This is a complete rewrite from scratch of everything though, not just some (minor) QoL Changes. thats why it may take a while between Release of new Functions (for bugfixes i am usually faster if reported in a meaningful manner ^^)


* both actually the same Menu called with diffrent Parameters (the whole Menu is basically defined by the Parameter, because this saves me much messing with lua)

[Alandauron]

well, i am working on a Dialogue Overhaul for better Consistency, but this is only part of a bigger overall project for replacing all AI Stuff...

That sounds awesome! I can't wait to see the direction you're taking with it, there a forum or guide up somewhere that you talk about it?

You plan on releasing it in intervals or just hanging onto it until it's mostly complete?

[UniTrader]

well, i am working on a Dialogue Overhaul for better Consistency, but this is only part of a bigger overall project for replacing all AI Stuff...

That sounds awesome! I can't wait to see the direction you're taking with it, there a forum or guide up somewhere that you talk about it?

You plan on releasing it in intervals or just hanging onto it until it's mostly complete?

Planning on releasing Stuff every time when a Part of it which could be Self-Containing is somplete. also might include the Stuff for that into Vanilla if doing it is at a trivial level. I have already Released these Parts:
=> Navigation Scripts (and a glue mod for usage of them in Vanilla)
=> Defense Officer Script
=> Advanced Renaming - the Framework i will use for Ship Names
=> Platform(Bridge) Commands - just a small side-project i did to get back to scripting after a 2-month hiatus
=> Manager Module (and by Extension Architect and Captain also, as part of it)
note that the last one is not Modularized yet, but just all dependent Modules combined - currently working on this, but this Work has been further delayed today because i noticed some Internal Re-Structure is needed to achieve Fluent Personal Transfers and Role Changes. I personally wouldnt mind to link the Github Repo, but the Repo isnt in the best shape because of the Modularisation.. (Wiki needs some love, master branch contains the months-old Version from before i started Modularisation, dev-0.30-branch contains my latest dev Version which is very unstable, the other branches are iirc abandoned) - i am planning on cleaning this up when everything is Modularized properly, but thats unlikely to happen in the near future...)