A Babylon 5 Mod for the Final Frontier Mod

[PsiCorps]

Wow! how alien does that ship look?

I'm blown away by all the ships you are delivering to the mod. Keep up the good work as long as you can but don't burn yourself out with them.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Wow, 12 new ships in 2 weeks
You are making an amazing job here, Premier Valle!

 

[Parahacker]

>>Could you tell us about your hardware?

4gb ram, intel i7 quad core, G45/G43 express chipset. Not the most blazing system ever built, but should be capable of handling this.

 

[Premier Valle]

Hello everyone!,

Here is a quick one, the Drazi Hunter Raven, meant to be the ELINT Drazi ship.

Poly Count: 634
Animation: FF Invasion Ship
Damage/Glow/Gloss: Yes/Yes/Yes
FX Extra Polys: 100

Civilopedia:


Combat:


Damaged:


Hope you like it.

@Parahacker
Yeah, it seems your system should have no problem at all... how long (in seconds) does the time between turns take?

 

[AbsintheRed]

Of course we like it!
Very nice ship

I love to see the roster table filling up at this rate
Maybe I can really hope that we can see a couple more species as full civs eventually

 

[PsiCorps]

I love to see the roster table filling up at this rate, maybe I can really hope that we can see a couple more species as full civs eventually

I have the same hope but I'm putting no pressure on Premier to do more than he can do. Also, some of the Civ's will never have a full fleet roster as there are just not enough ship designs around for them.

 

[Premier Valle]

Hi,

Of course we like it!
Very nice ship

I love to see the roster table filling up at this rate
Maybe I can really hope that we can see a couple more species as full civs eventually

I have the same hope but I'm putting no pressure on Premier to do more than he can do. Also, some of the Civ's will never have a full fleet roster as there are just not enough ship designs around for them.

Yeah, it would be nice, although as PsiCorps said, there is simply not enough ship designs for every Civ, may be the larger league worlds will, but the minor are likely to remain in a LoNAW faction. We could do our own designs, but in the mean time... well ... we'll see, but first things first.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Yeah, it would be nice, although as PsiCorps said, there is simply not enough ship designs for every Civ, may be the larger league worlds will, but the minor are likely to remain in a LoNAW faction. We could do our own designs, but in the mean time... well ... we'll see, but first things first.

Yep, I remember the conversation we had about this earlier.
IIRC at least the Abbai, Vree and Hyach species have some potential chance for an eventual inclusion
IMO those are the first tier from the current LoNaW nations, based on both available ship designs and importance/influence/power of the factions.
The Cascor, Descari, Gaim, and pak'ma'ra are next tier, altough those have much less ship designs (at least non-imported ones) and/or much less influence in the B5 universe.

 

[Premier Valle]

Hello everyone!,

And talking about League powers, here is another ship for the Hyach, in this case the gunboat that was to appear in the B5 Into The Fire Sierra game. It is meant to be used as an invasion ship.

Poly count: 393
Animation: FF Invasion Ship
FX extra poly: 42
Damage/Glow/Gloss: Yes/Yes/Yes

Civilopedia:


Combat:


Damaged:

 

[PsiCorps]

He's done it again...another ship pulled out of the yard and released to face the fury of eager players.

Loving the work Premier.

 

[Premier Valle]

Hello everyone!,

Here is another one, this time an Abbai Ship, again from the Into The Fire game. The Abbai Gunship is to be used as Tier 2 Support Ship.

Poly count: 767
Animation: FF Invasion Ship
Damage/Glow/Gloss: Yes/Yes/Yes
FX extra poly: 8

Civilopedia:


Combat:


Damaged:

 

[The_J]

You're really doing incredible work at the moment .

 

[PsiCorps]

Hi all
Another ship from Premier Valle to celebrate and some news from me. I have been busy with some projects aimed at making B5 the Mod it deserves to be, something different and unique. To that end myself and J_mie6 have been hard at work introducing some changes to the existing set up. At the moment our primary efforts have been aimed at splitting up the Promotions into Crew Promotions and Equipment Promotions. This work is nearly complete but there are still a few more things we need to do before we can release a new version.

Providing the Promotions aspect is working as we intend it to and I have all of Premiers new ships in along with their buttons done I will release a new version. Just to keep you all happy and stop the doubters from thinking there will never be a new version. Can't give a definite date on the release, as testing it all works is the priority.

I'll keep you posted on what's happening as usual, right here.

PsiCorps

 

[PsiCorps]

Hi all
another small update for you. The Promotions work is largely done, just some cosmetic work to do and i'll be happy. This work has thrown up some other issues that need to be addressed before we can release a new version. Hopefully it won't take too long.

I'm pretty sure it'll be worth the wait.

PsiCorps

 

[AncientSion]

Its really interesting that you decided to design the League ships by the "outdated" design scrapes found on the thescrolls when they usually have less fancy designs according the SCS (mostly, more boring and/or just retrofitted hulls from the major 4).
In fact, i like it. I have been playing around with the Abbai and Hyach design file as well, but i find it really hard to get a complete look at the coherent design based on just a single ship.
Do you have ideas for more Abbai and Hyach ships like the one the from the scrolls or do you intent to stick with the official SCS outlays ?

so to say: the single ships shown on the scrolls indicate that the lesser races each have really unique designs. I have been bending my head trying to figure out a "look" of Abbai and Hyach fleet ships, but having just one ship to work from is really hard. I wish there were 2 or 3 ships to work from.

 

[Premier Valle]

Hi AncientSion,

Its really interesting that you decided to design the League ships by the "outdated" design scrapes found on the thescrolls when they usually have less fancy designs according the SCS (mostly, more boring and/or just retrofitted hulls from the major 4).

The main reason for using both ITF (Sierra's Into The Fire) and SCS ships is due to the required amount of ship designs, and since as far as I know these sources are considered official (but not cannon). As you have surely noticed league factions tend to be "underdeveloped" in comparison with the major species, there is a lot of stuff and designs for the major ones but little for the minor factions, thats why I use as many sources as possible, some of the ships already in-game are even fan-based designs, and even some of those are my own designs.

In fact, i like it. I have been playing around with the Abbai and Hyach design file as well, but i find it really hard to get a complete look at the coherent design based on just a single ship.

so to say: the single ships shown on the scrolls indicate that the lesser races each have really unique designs. I have been bending my head trying to figure out a "look" of Abbai and Hyach fleet ships, but having just one ship to work from is really hard. I wish there were 2 or 3 ships to work from.

You are absolutely right about this, getting the identity for a species based on a single design is quite difficult (that is another reason of using multiple sources), whenever I have run into this situation I try to get as much data as possible about the particular species I'm working on, not just ship desings, but also the background behind them (history, natural habitats, homeworld, economics, political views, society, etc...).

As mentioned a given species ship design style is based on the species identity, take the Narn for example, their red (aggressive) coloured ships with war-paint that look more advanced than they really are, that look is meant as a display of force, to hinder potential foes from attacking, and to show their continuous growth to the Centauri.

The Minbari ships are a reflection of their homeworld (blue fish-like ships). Human ship style shows the industrious nature of the species. Vorlon and shadow ships are reflections of their own creators. Drazi ships are like birds of prey, showing their aggressiveness, they aren't meant to fight defensively but to be agile and stricke decisively. etc...

There is also the point of difference in styles from SCS and ITF, but that is easily explainable; one of the reasons for the creation of the league was keeping the Centauri at bay, however, when the Dilgar came it became pretty obvious that they were not ready to face a fully determined (and equiped) enemy, a shift in their mindset is understandable, and some of the league races (precisely the Abbai and Hyach) do have the technology required to make such "unique" ships, that - IMHO - are nothing but the first generation of ship designs after the Dilgar war.

Do you have ideas for more Abbai and Hyach ships like the one the from the scrolls or do you intent to stick with the official SCS outlays ?

For the mean time I intend to stick with SCS and some other sources as stated in the ship table; currently we have 3 LoNAW factions, once the mod have all of these and a few other features we have planned we will look into making some LoNAW species into full game factions, at that moment I might need sources or as previously mentioned my very own desings, of course, by that time those factions will already have an identity well defined (or at least a good enough identity to work from).

 

[PsiCorps]

Another minor update for you. We've run into a problem with the Mod that we are currently seeking a solution to. Until this is resolved I cannot give you a firm or even vague idea of when the next update will be.

 

[thevoiddancer]

Hi,
I recently got back into Civ IV mods and I'm loving the work you did on B5. Love the show, love the mod even more.

But I ran into a glitch in the mod that I thought was significant. Negative military production modifiers (MPM - iMilitaryProductionModifier) don't work as expected. At first I thought it was MPM itself, but positive modifiers work. Then after two days of tweaking XML files of other mods and googling, I came upon the revelation that negative MPM works by having a minimum of base production.

In other words, negative MPM (such as -50 on Pacifism) can only counteract positive modifiers, it can't reduce production below base. Maybe that should be pointed out somewhere? Or a workaround figured out if Pacifism was meant to further reduce the production of military units.

Also, regarding negative MPM, are shipyards really supposed to have a negative MPM? They slow down the production of ships? Or is that an oversight? Paedia says they speed up the construction, though. So I'm guessing an oversight?

 

[PsiCorps]

Hi,
I recently got back into Civ IV mods and I'm loving the work you did on B5. Love the show, love the mod even more.

But I ran into a glitch in the mod that I thought was significant. Negative military production modifiers (MPM - iMilitaryProductionModifier) don't work as expected. At first I thought it was MPM itself, but positive modifiers work. Then after two days of tweaking XML files of other mods and googling, I came upon the revelation that negative MPM works by having a minimum of base production.

In other words, negative MPM (such as -50 on Pacifism) can only counteract positive modifiers, it can't reduce production below base. Maybe that should be pointed out somewhere? Or a workaround figured out if Pacifism was meant to further reduce the production of military units.

Also, regarding negative MPM, are shipyards really supposed to have a negative MPM? They slow down the production of ships? Or is that an oversight? Paedia says they speed up the construction, though. So I'm guessing an oversight?

Thanks for the feedback thevoiddancer, as you may have noticed there is a major problem with a new version coming out. However, I'll have a look into the issues you've described and endeavor to get a fix out for it over the weekend.

Glad you're enjoying playing the Mod. If we can get the new version operational I'll include the fixes generated for this with it so the issue is no longer a factor. I may have to change the default starting civic from Pacifism to either Defensive or Traditional. Alternatively there may just be no starting civics to select if it can be done for FF/FF+.

 

[thevoiddancer]

Thanks for the feedback thevoiddancer, as you may have noticed there is a major problem with a new version coming out. However, I'll have a look into the issues you've described and endeavor to get a fix out for it over the weekend.

Glad you're enjoying playing the Mod. If we can get the new version operational I'll include the fixes generated for this with it so the issue is no longer a factor. I may have to change the default starting civic from Pacifism to either Defensive or Traditional. Alternatively there may just be no starting civics to select if it can be done for FF/FF+.

No, I think Pacifism, as it is, is ok. As long as one understands that it doesn penalize beyong the basic production. In that sense, Pacifism cancels out the bonuses given by other buildings. For instance, solar system with 6 Planetary Shipyards and Pacifism has the total +0% to military units (6*5% = 30% - 50% = -20% capped at -0%). To get a bonus from shipyard you either need 11 of them (so 6 Planetary + 5 Orbital) or you need to get off Pacifism. And I like how that works. (You might, depending on your perspecitve, lower the penalty to -25%, which means that you still get some bonus for having 6 Planetary Shipyards in a system - I'd call that militarized system.)

It's just that, upon first checking it out, I expected my system to build twice as slow, instead of, say, 4 production to have 2 production. But it just cancels out the bonus I would've gotten from Shipyards, back to the basic 4. Though, to be honest, I've no idea where to put that info. Sorry.

As for other things, just do a search and replace in XML/Buildings/CIV4BuildingInfos.xml. Replace "<iMilitaryProductionModifier>-" with "<iMilitaryProductionModifier>". It will remove negative production modifiers from shipyards and make them actually speed up the production, as per paedia entry.