Thank you for your ideas, all very good!
As I progress into MD and AI scripts I expand the possibilities of adding these things, because often the limit is in the nuances: I can add as many things I want but for instance how to make them radar-invisible or the hidden gates you suggest?...so on.
BTW
XRSGE already has a lot of hidden pirate bases, and yaki too. They are far away inside clouds that cover them. Of course they are not iconic as those in X3 because they are modular templates, but I redid them all and spread all over the map. XRSGE has also a lot of very big abandoned ships, even destroyers, but they are far far far towards planets
The
specific things to buy are a feature you find if using my other mods:
REM (which adds pirate specific engines and thrusters) and
XRSGE TWEAKS Mod that increases the possibilities to make
piracy the gameplay with a lot of tweaks and
adding special things that are sold only in pirate bases, such as ship modification MK3 and the
mk3 tool to install them (a feature of XRSGE Tweaks Mod: ship mods are not researched, you can buy the tool or steal the blueprint, mk3 is illegal and only pirate sell them..).
I'm increasing the spectrum of immersion and gameplay by adding
several smaller mods, to make the modularity possible (so everybody is happy) but of course one could miss some features that were meant to play together.
All my mods work synergistically into this direction (
Smoke in the Cabin and
REM Hyperdrive are also a must for playing XRSGE at best).
I've been busy silently doing a new big update for XRSGE to be ready for the 7.5 release. Practically I've found new ways to add special regions and make the space be a lot more interesting.
Those playing XRSGE from the beginning will probably remember that first versions of the mod had the huge sun coronas with hazard and damage...this unfortunately added a lot of calculations that were stored in the save so caused massive lag, eventually I removed it.
Now I found new ways to add special effects/interactions in the space regions that require no stored calculation, so created many areas that can do one or more of these things:
disrupt travel engine, disrupt the booster, cause damage to shield, cause damage to hull, cause malfunctioning of steering or thrust, eventually simulating gravity.
So in XRSGE 7.5
ALL planets will have some kind of atmosphere you can enter, changing into white and reddish background, gravity and friction effects, travel disrupt and damages, etc. I also did not use volumetric fog but the old fog model that practically eats NO FPS.
Planets are different from each other,
gas giants have a very large gaseous atmosphere you can enter and mine, with various degree of disrupt up to when you go too deep and gravity/friction starts to destroy shields, etc.
Inside Asteroid field travel drive is disrupted...that makes sense and also prevents the infamous ship bouncing,
gas regions can drain the shields, some can even lightly damage the hull, XENON regions are fearsome.
Sun coronas are back, if you decide to enter the corona (sectors/gates are always at the border of it, not inside the corona) or send a ship of yours you take the risk, of course there is plenty of resources to mine there but
only L/XL ships can venture sofar.
By increasing my expertise in scripts, I am making REM Hyperdrive work as intended so we have now
a functioning hyperdrive that allows instant accelerations and decelerations but long charge and can be used only far from stations or gate and not in asteroid fields etc.
By increasing booster usage in REM the ships have now different strategies so will boost to destination inside the zones (autopilot does it too) but will use travel (hyperdrive) for long distances far from stations.
This ability opens to a version of XRSGE WITHOUT ANY SUPERHIGHWAY. This will be modular too, so one can decide to play
with/without the in-sector superhighways and use instead REM Hyperdrive: ships will travel to destination at 16.000 or even more speed but can not travel around in zones and areas so no bouncing around. They will stop frequently and can be assaulted etc. I will increase the emp missile's speed in REM to cope with these travel speeds.
To be clear, if you travel at hyperdrive speed into a planet or to a station or a field, the travel engine will be disrupted and the speed will return to normal in a blink, so no crazy speeds around, when stations or a planet is close the ship will move at low speed. The proportion of space is safe, and using the hyperdrive is even more immersive than in-sector superhighways because travel is slower (but decently fast to cross a big sector). Also my aim is removing even the latest RANDOM stations generated in the map (now in XRGSE megastations are hand-placed in low orbit, other stations are randomly generated in specific zones, the rest is put randomly by god engine). So economy will work much more INSIDE a single sector, with ships going from low orbit to high orbit, to resources, to other zones. To have a meaning to stay in a sector, instead of entering a gate after another..
Having sectors that are several thousands km wide and no static connections but only ships travelling to/from zones (that are now marked as landmark in XRSGE and radar-visible and sticky on the map), is a totally different experience...it's like Rebirth on streroids with a touch of Elite Dangerous to it
. Description says it's incompatible. Are there any plans to add XRSGE and REM compatibility with Timelines DLC in future?
https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/848
