Epic release 3E - faction war

This release has the first prototype of the faction war code.

Factions will plan actions against each other that will happen days in the future.

These actions will be offered to the player as jobs. (but the player does not need to take them.)

Actions not taken as jobs will complete by themselves. If the player is nearby, they will show themselves to the player. If the player is far away, they will record results and complete.

A News reporting system will report on all Actions that complete. It will customize stock scripts based on who attacks who, and where. The news is biased. Factions the news reporters do not like will get poor reviews, those they like will be made to sound more heroic.

The news and jobs are currently very primitive protypes with just the bare information needed for proper testing. Still, this is a major milestone and has taken quite a bit of work to get here.

The next release will be in about 2 weeks. It will have a few real player missions, and be more polished overall.

[Edit, old release removed from site]

You will need a new copy of the cluster. Planet textures
not included in this release (copy over the images and models
directories from the old middle states cluster file) I
promise to sort out this cluster mess in the next release.

[Edit, old release removed from site]



-Gtrout

Oh no! Just checking this forum before leaving on a trip - and what do I see? The release I was so long looking for!!

Good work GP! At least, back from the trip, I will be able to enjoy that other release...

It's funny, by the way, but over at the VegaStrike project, they just implemented exactly the same thing, even the news system is in there!

cya, Runner

is it possiable to make some kind of link the player can experience between the 'broadcasting space stations' and the news chanel...

In the normal single player you only ever experience interacting with the news statation when you hack into it to get infomation on where the Navy ships are

ooo...heres a plot building mission

infiltrate one of 3 broad-casting stations to make them transmit what you want them too (e.g. false infomation on attacks) to make some kind of affect in the bigger picture (e.g. make a large squadron of corvettes to leave the *something* they are guarding)

Jwk...comander of =HEMP HUNGRY MONKEY=
www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=310

A link? Like making one station owned by the BBC and have BBC news reports, and another owned by CNN and have that one produce CNN news reports? It is a good idea. And would be good polish to add on the mod. Because you really want to be able to show different viewpoints of the same events. One of the bits of social commentary of Epic might be that good and evil are very hard to find in absolute terms. And a medal of honor winner in one country can be a murderer in another.

Right now the news changes editorial viewpoint when you change star system. The thought is that whoever rules a star system has some influence on how the news is reported there. But it is a pretty small step to let the owning communication company provide the viewpoint. But how would the player get multiple channels? Would it be like a subscription? And all the channels you subscribe with would send you news? Or would it be that you get news from all broadcasting stations in the system? (like if there were 5 broadcasters, you would get 5 reports of the same station attack).

infiltrating the broadcasting stations is a good mission idea. There is already a mechanism for sending distress calls (from NPC ships). It could be used to have this effect - tie up police forces (or something) for a little while.

One mission idea I was kicking around was that if you sabotaged the comm relay, then FTL transmissions would be blocked, and ships would be sending slow communications. That would give you time to do whatever mission you were trying to do. Essentially, that transmission station is needed for fast distress call responses.

Interesting stuff.

-Gtrout

Installed Epic 3E.

Nice work, Idea about faction news well worked out.

I see in another thread you are thinking about the ecomics too. Will that determine which trade routes npc cargos take?

Will that be like X-tension from www.egosoft.com
I loved the way they solved the problem of the economics, I hated the way they created Space.

When you will activate the NPC activities (pirates and cargo haulers)

Firstly, my email is working again, so ill post my first idea.

i was thinking that one would sneak in and dock to Station 1 (the target) and then hack its main frame...and using its reports as data segments to latch on to...would feed in the 'false news' into Stataion two. The defences at station 1 would bugger off, leaving the Stataion 1 defenceless. A 'troop carrier' would then hit the station and it would take it over, killing the people inside. You then get your reward and feel guilty (better make the sound file sound REALLY bad)

if at any point in time you fuck it up, the station 1 defenders shoot down your ship, once they have left the mission is pretty much completed.

oh, and can someone studie the way the news is presented in IW2 carefully so that the way it is presented (its format) is pretty much identical. Layout, header footer etc etc

Jwk...comander of =HEMP HUNGRY MONKEY=
www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=310