[Mod-AP][In-Dev] X-Timelines: The Syndicate

[TrixX]

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Time changes things...
by the X-TL Dev Team - TrixX, Jack08 and Litcube

Website to report bugs/ask questions etc:
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NOTE - Not compatible with the Mac version of X3 Albion Prelude

Synopsis:
The goal of X-Timelines is to create a living universe where every action taken by the player and the AI has an impact on the game world in both positive and negative ways. Were are attempting to accomplish this by making every ware in the game seed from the economy and not spawned from thin air.

We are a dedicated team, this is more then just a mod to us - its also a proof of concept. We have put so much effort into making this mod feel fresh and new, to the point that each game will literally develop organically. Hopefully everyone will get as much enjoyment out of it as we have had making it.

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Features Coming in R1:

• Murdered God.
• Unemployment at an all time high! ( Disabled Jobs )
• Brand new Military based economy
• A new universe to support the requirements of the new economy.
• New wares and ship upgrades
• Drone & Refinery Based mining ( Concept from Eve Online )
• A Brand new class system consisting of 24 non-numerical classes
• 81 New Weapons + Military and Advanced Variants for most of them! (Yes, that's right, ~200+ Weapons!)
• Rebalanced Shields + Military and Advanced Variants giving a total of 18.
• An Unknown Amount of new missiles (This is still in development )
• A Completely new AI written from the ground up to be far more intelligent then before.
• A Completely new Script Engine based Mission system, the MD has been disabled - this new system allows for rapid development of highly dynamic missions based on in game events.
• A New UI system with LUA support for advanced menus, including the new mission menu
• A New modern game style "Action" hot-key for those common events like claiming a ship, or picking up cargo, etc. Which changes function depending on your current target.
• A brand new way of ordering ships from shipyards, allow for ordering of ships that are fitted by the shipyards own traders.
• Faster ship speeds, lets face it who likes 60m/s fighters? But with fast speeds comes a need to fix the autopilot issues, so...
• Built in Bounce 2.0: Its more reliable, and it runs on AI ships. Without the need for a wall file!
• A New Bounty System.
• Plus other things that will make this list to long...

The New Economy:
We have been designing this new economy for the better part of the last year and a half, here is an overview of how it will function (the design hasn't changed much from the original concept we drew up almost 2 years ago now).
Mining drones extract 3 new types of ore from asteroids which is then transported to the refinery and refined into 6 new minerals & elements. These minerals & elements are common to everyone in the universe. The minerals and elements go on to become components, which then become weapons, shields and missiles, or ship components, which are then transported to a shipyard in order to construct ships. There are two additional ore types which serve a special purpose, but that is out of the scope of this description.

Features Coming in R1+
Features that may not make it into R1, but will be patched in ASAP after

• Weapon Retrofitting: Military. Retrofit your weapons to military grade hardware, if you can find the components you need.
• Extension of the ship ordering feature to allow for ordering of entire fleets
• Ship Weapon System Retrofit: Allows you to retrofit a ships weapon systems from Race to Race (Argon to Paranid, for example)
• A Unique New Bounty System, based on a ships actions in the universe, including trading as well as military actions.
• A new UI, giving a cleaner and smoother view of all menu's and icons ingame.

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Features Coming in R1++
Features that will likely not make it into R1 or R1+ and will be pushed back to R2

• Area Based Passive Missions
  Area based missions don't need to be accepted, you simply need to be in the right place to participate in them, which adds to the exploration element of the game. You will know when a mission is nearby due to a new overlay on the left side of the screen.
  • "Skirmish"
    A Skirmish mission can occur when two enemy forces are in an engagement that is not driven by chaos, these missions appear from time to time, and usually appear at border sector as hostile races attempt to sabotage another races trade infrastructure.
  • "Escort"
    A TL or Trader is about to enter space that has had high hostile activity reported by racial scouts, This create a passive escort mission which you can join in just by following the trader or TL
  • "SOS"
    A Trader or TL has fallen under attack, but was not part of an escort mission, and has requested assistance. Bounty hunters, police, and privateers (such as yourself) will all respond.

Features Coming in R2

• Research & Development Stations to allow reverse engineering of advanced technology
  • Deep Space Exploration:
    This is not in any way tied to the UFJD, Deep space exploration sites actually reside in known space, and can be very dangerous for any who get too near. But they hold surprises and prizes for those bold enough to seek them. Beware, They will be guarded.
  • Weapon Retrofit: Advanced
  • Ship Retrofit: Advanced/Enhanced/Prototype
  • Shield Retrofit: Advanced
• Privateers & Bounty Hunters: They accept the same missions you do, and grow over time. They have independent relations and you can seriously annoy them if your not careful.
• Racial R&D: They compete for Deep space resources in order to build advanced technology for there own corporate fleets (Nothing is allowed to exist in XTL that does not have a purpose for both the player and the AI)

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Credits:
Thanks to:

• Jack08 for his amazing coding skills and urge to push the team forward
• Litcube for his excellent scripts, backgrounds and special effects and his personal mod as a base for X-Timelines
• sms_747 for her stunning universe created from some badly drawn pics and random ideas
• shuulo for supplying tons of help, a load of starting plots and being one of the best testers a mod team could ever ask for!
• Sorenson for opening my eyes to fast gameplay with his Naval Shuffle Mod
• Blueshade_Zero for helping me realise the ideas of this mod
• urbanfreak for some great ideas and helping fix my attempts at modelling!
• Checkertwo, Blueboar & Shaddie for obvious reasons...
• Cadius/Axeface/Killerog/Killjaeden/+any others who contributed models to this game (this list will get long...)

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[TrixX]

Soon to be FAQ but here are some screenies in the meantime

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[Jack08]

2 Years after the events that led up to the rediscovery of the Terran colony Aldrin, The Terran's discovered a jump-gate on the outskirts of the Aldrin system that had been dormant for well over 600 000 years. The gate itself was of unknown design and origin, pre-dating the gates connecting the Commonwealth together. Despite the immense age of the gate, it was abundantly obvious that the gate’s technology and design was very similar to that of the gates in the rest of the network.

After several weeks of examination and research of the gate, which they had by then designated Aldrin-UnkZY42, they discovered that its destination was over 2.5m light-years away in M31, or the Andromeda galaxy. This piece of information gave an incredible shock to the scientific community, as travelling such a distance in one jump had previously been considered unfathomable.

Aldrin-UnkZY42 was in remarkable condition; the only reason it was inactive was because its generators, despite being extremely advanced, had gone offline, though there was no clear indication as to why this was. Terran Scientists adapted one of the fusion generators from their flagship, Valhalla, in order to attempt to jolt the gate to life. Their attempt was successful, and as Aldrin-UnkZY42’s generators came roaring alive, the gate’s connection was almost immediately restored.

Scout teams were immediately dispatched, and soon after the Valhalla followed. Beyond the gate, was a 3 planet system orbiting a binary pulsar. The only signature in the system was a strange energy reading coming from the 3rd planet which, to no-one’s surprise, didn't match anything in the Terran’s database. A science team accompanied by a light escort was sent down to the planet from the Valhalla to investigate; what they found forever changed the course of history.

Before they had even broken atmo, the Terran’s could see an immense structure of some kind jutting out from the planet’s surface, the only real remarkable thing about the terrain. It was not long before they were able to make out what it actually was; a giant ship. Roughly 80km long, shown by initial scans. However, the scans showed nothing of life or power, or anything coming from the ship – it was just sitting there, lying dormant. All that was there was the thing that had directed them to the ship in the first place, the energy signature, coming from somewhere within the ship.

As the Terran team drew closer to the enormous ship, there was a blinding flash of light, and a powerful electro-magnetic pulse followed. When the Terran’s instruments came back online, the ship’s power readings were off the charts, and it was powering up. In barely seconds, its guns had turned on the Terran science shuttle and obliterated it. Knowing they would not be able to face this unknown threat by themselves, the Valhalla and its escorts set course for the gate that would take them back to Aldrin at full speed, but the now hostile capital ship was fast on their tail, with smaller escort ships flying out of launch bays and heading straight for the Terran forces.

Mere seconds before the Valhalla reached the wormhole, the alien ship’s weapon systems fired a beam of coherent tachyons which cut right through the Valhalla's shields and sliced the hull in two. The Valhalla’s explosion sent shrapnel in every direction, tearing up the smaller ships around it. The only ship that made it through the gate, Kalvin, did so on its last legs – no shields, barely 10% power in its engines. When they reached Aldrin, the surviving Terrans ordered that the gate be immediately shut down.

The newly discovered aliens came to be known as the Zenith, due to the planet they were discovered on being locked in a permanent sunset with a constant aurora borealis as the waves of electromagnetic energy washed over the atmosphere from the binary pulsars in the systems centre.

Aldrin-UnkZY42 remained sealed for only a few moments; when it reactivated, smaller alien vessels began pouring into Aldrin, ranging from fighter-class to frigate-class. Though these smaller ships were not nearly as powerful and advanced as the super-capital ship remaining in the Andromeda galaxy, they were still a formidable match for the Terran forces. The War at the gate lasted for months, with huge amounts of reinforcements from both the Terran and eventually other races in the Commonwealth scrambling to the gate to stem the tide of aliens. The Zenith sent skirmish forces in consistently, and larger battle groups at irregular intervals, never allowing the Commonwealth forces to rest.

Just when it was thought that the Zenith numbers were dwindling, with fewer and fewer forces being sent through Aldrin-UnkZY42, the aliens were suddenly spread wide across the known galaxy, attacking all the races of the Commonwealth: a full-blown war had erupted. It was theorised that the Zenith had constructed the gate system, and were thus able to replicate it to reach other points within the Milky way.

The Terrans reached out to the other races of the galaxy proposing a new Commonwealth charter, as well as offering technology created from studying destroyed or captured Zenith ships, which would enable the Commonwealth civilisations to retrofit their shipyards to produce better ships and be able to use resources common to every race in the galaxy. Thus, with the galaxy united, the new Commonwealth began building the largest fleet in recorded history, and once complete, the Commonwealth would strike at the Zenith's heart.

The fleet took over half a year to build, and even then they had to cut production short due to the war with the Zenith. The Commonwealth set off with what they had, heading straight to the Aldrin gate where everything had begun. They had decided to end the war that they had been waging for almost a year at all costs...

After hastily pushing through the gate and destroying what little Zenith forces were left in the system, the bulk of the Commonwealth fleet was tasked with distracting the Zenith super-capital, allowing a small task force to reach the Binary Pulsar star in the Zenith System. The Team made it to the binary pulsars and launched a massive gravity warhead as close to them as possible. The resulting gravity wave was enough to slightly destabilise the twin stars’ orbits of each other, as well as briefly incapacitating the Zenith capital ship. The Commonwealth fleet retreated back through the gate just before the binary pulsars collided with each other. Once back in the Aldrin system, the Terran Command Ship, Valhalla Mk2, ordered that Aldrin-UnkZY42 be shut down.

The Zenith, realising what the Commonwealth forces were attempting, sent a single frigate through the gate’s wormhole and stopped it halfway – the gate’s safety protocols preventing a ships destruction had activated. The panicked Terran commander ordered all ships to fire on the Zenith frigate. Nothing remained of it within seconds, but by then, the gamma radiation resulting from the pulsar stars’ collision had already started pouring through Alrdin-UnkZY42. The gate’s capacitors overloaded, frying its’ circuitry. All systems and protocols within the gate went dark, completely offline, and the gamma radiation swept through the wormhole into the Aldrin system, completely obliterating everything inside of it.

The connection to M31 was closed and the Zenith threat eliminated for the time being. The war was over, but it had left all the races of the Commonwealth in a severally weakened state. The New Commonwealth charter quickly turned to ashes. Alliances were formed, and war one again looms over the Commonwealth systems.

This time however, you have the power. You can control the destiny of an entire civilisation, or a single ship. Whether you amass a huge army and declare war on the galaxy or become a pirate waiting for that next trader to come along, every action you take, every ship you kill, has a measurable effect on the galaxy. Be careful of your choices... They may just come back around and bite you in the arse.

Trade, Fight, Build, Think... Explore! - Welcome to a True Sandbox; Welcome to X-Timelines.

[cheakytoast]

Sounds awesome! How soon is soon?

[Shuulo]

Deleted

[Requiemfang]

closed beta, which means testers will be needed

[navetta]

looks like you put a lot of work in this mod, im awaiting to see what the final product will look like although i think i will stick with XRM for the time being.

[TrixX]

Once closed beta is complete there will be approx 3 days before open beta while we collate all the files into a more manageable install.

If you want to take part in the closed beta PM me or Jack08. We are looking for about 3-5 more closed beta testers

Currently we have 2 confirmed closed testers other than the team members.

[knowbuddyuno]

I'm here as an IR refugee. My schedule's too hectic to be able to be a useful closed beta tester, but I am exceedingly excited for this mod.

[Cadius]

souns exciting, especially these

New Class system (non-numerical including 24 classes)
New Variant system
New Defence systems
New Mission System based on ingame events

I've always thought those things were hardcoded. Can't wait to see what you guys came up with

[Treelor]

Well, either they mean pseudo classes (where instead of actually replacing it, its just different ships with strengths) or they've followed those Russian guys and done an obj edit.

Also, the way pirates are handled in vanilla X3TC really bothers me. It forces them to act as a contiguous faction, and all pirates are friendly to one another. Further, I highly doubt pirates would name themselves "Pirate Falcon" or some such. Does your mod address this?

[TrixX]

souns exciting, especially these

New Class system (non-numerical including 24 classes)
New Variant system
New Defence systems
New Mission System based on ingame events

I've always thought those things were hardcoded. Can't wait to see what you guys came up with

The mission system is now being dealt with by a dll Jack08 originally hooked in to show extra info, but has proven to be very robust in it's abilities.

Well, either they mean pseudo classes (where instead of actually replacing it, its just different ships with strengths) or they've followed those Russian guys and done an obj edit.

This may or may not be true, I'm going to let Jack08 spill the beans for that

Also, the way pirates are handled in vanilla X3TC really bothers me. It forces them to act as a contiguous faction, and all pirates are friendly to one another. Further, I highly doubt pirates would name themselves "Pirate Falcon" or some such. Does your mod address this?

Unfortunately that's hardcoded into the race setup. If we could have corporations having cold/hot wars within a Race faction we would and it's not entirely ruled out, but it definitely won't be in for beta. Our first task was to make the Pirates work as Pirates, rather than just randomly spawn for missions or randomly have a base and do pretty much nothing but drink Spacefuel and smoke Spaceweed...

As for the naming they do have the ability to use covers, we are seeing what we can do to utilise that more so in core sectors they will attempt to hide their identity more.

[Jack08]

Well, either they mean pseudo classes (where instead of actually replacing it, its just different ships with strengths) or they've followed those Russian guys and done an obj edit.

This is rather difficult to explain because its 50% true, Internally the game still recognizance's things as M4,5,6... ect
But we have the ability to make the front end, the end the player sees, look like this:

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Scripts can also pick out ships from each individual class, its is not entirely sudo. Its real to the player, and Semi-Real to the script engine, but fake to the C++ Engine

OBJ editing was involved but we technically didn't follow the Russians we were doing the edits before we even knew TOTT existed

[Treelor]

Well then I eagerly await this. TOTT was pretty disappointing to say the least.

[TrixX]

Well after about a week of bug hunting the closed beta is almost ready. We should have a public release about a week or two after the closed beta starts

Not long to go folks (all twelve of you )

[Happyblue]

13!

[Drockt1]

14.. im sure there are more looking in, but i didn't even notice you had a new thread till this last week.

[Shuulo]

730 views, 14 people must spend hours to make this many)))

[TrixX]

We hope so at least

[TrixX]

Features updated