Planet-Specific Shipyards

[nightraven1901]

So, we all want more ships in the mod. I want more ships. I have had a taste, now I'd dearly like to be able to build the entire catalogue of Star Wars ships. Now, some are unmodelled, or have no lore to work from to make one from scratch. But, there are a good number of ships for which we have models, and we can't build them, or they're not in the game. Why?

Because for some reason, doubtless relating to the Petroglyph dev team not needing to implement it, we can't scroll the damned build list. So, for most factions, by tech level five, it's absolutely full or close to it. But we have so many worlds limited to a smaller shipyard, and they therefore never come close to filling their build queues, and can't without changing the XML to allow the building of a larger station. Which brings me to my idea:

Why don't we have planet-specific space buildables, using similar scripting as the old Hutt Palace and Cantina buildings so they can't be built on world with access to level three shipyards, which could place another shipyard on the space map, which serve almost solely to allow the purchase of specific ships from planets that are otherwise not strategically relevant? Obviously Corellia have an interesting catalogue of ships, don't have access to a level three shipyard, and could therefore be made to build the Correlian catalogue for the Empire without compromising the build-list issue. In fact, with minimal effort, this could be made happen without shipyard models, or by recycling the asteroid base and other models that aren't being used right now (to any great effect, at least. They're in skirmish but they don't unlock more ships to build) and let many, many more ships fit into the mod. Hutt ships could be available to the controller of Nal Hutta, Mandalorian ships for the Mandalorians- I want to build Kedalbes again. Maybe an appropriate shipwright for Naboo, too. Kuat Drive Yards could theoretically be usable by the Rebellion/Republic, assuming they could have taken it from the Empire, the lore and basic business sense agree that the corporations will serve whichever master pays them- though this a great way to get saboteurs. This would let the Rebels build Imperial-class ships, which they could definitely use for both strategic and lore reasons (the rebels used a shocking number of Imperial ships in the lore; most of their technology was Imperial in design and manufacture)... The possibilities for this are entirely endless. With so many worlds that can't build level-three space stations, we could cram several hundred or even thousand more ship models into the game and have every one be easily buildable (and not subject to that dumb bug where having the Arc Hammer in orbit of a developed world meant things weren't buildable because they "fell off" the end of the end of the build tree).

Thoughts?

[TonPhanan]

Biggest problem is that modeling a ship isn't as easy as it sounds and most of the models available for EAW are made for specific mods, meaning you can't just tear them out of the existing mod without e.g. permission of the author. Next thing would be the overall look, like texture-wise, you'd have to adjust that too. NEXT obstacle would be the balancing, besides multiple ships fulfilling the same role you'd have to take into consideration the slight differences between them and tune their stats and price accordingly. That's a big chunk of work, if you ask me . Though I'd cosign your idea everyday, since a lot of sweet ship types have been thrown under the bus due to these facts and implementing this planet-exclusive thingy is relatively easy (you just have to adjust their build values AFAIK), the next issue is the limited availability of modeling tools for EAW - only way to create the models is with an ancient version of 3dsmax, which even doesn't run properly on modern PC's. Though I wouldn't cramp all the new ships on planets which never had a big space station or yard available (would be weird to have a big variety of starships above Dagobah ), there's also the possibility to diversify the build queue over existing production planets, meaning that special ship types could be exclusive to sectors where the corresponding manufacturer had a big presence. Don't get me wrong, I'd also love to partake in creating such variety, though I have almost no prior modeling experience and thus would need to learn that first and also find someone with a working copy of 3dsmax 9, to at least convert the models into .alo's for me. You wouldn't even need to add any Imperial ships to the NR roster, since there's such a mass of different ships you can easily fill their roster without them.

It's one of the coolest features AotR has (the amount of units), but also IMO its greatest problem. I'd love to see your idea realized someday, but considering the big load of work behind that wouldn't count on it, tbh :s.   

[t78]

The Ai would also find it difficult to use planet only ships. :/


THAT SAID, I am currently working on a post concerning garrison units, which applies to both FotR and ICW, which you might find reflects some of your thoughts here!

[Slornie]

Why don't we have planet-specific space buildables, using similar scripting as the old Hutt Palace and Cantina buildings so they can't be built on world with access to level three shipyards

You can set a minimum space or ground base level for a prerequisite, and/or a specific structure (e.g. barracks) or location(s), but you can't set a maximum space or ground base level (in much the same way you can set a minimum tech level for a unit but there isn't an equivalent maximum tech level).

To achieve what you're describing you'd have to do what we've done with the Golan III, only on a much larger scale - hardcode a list of applicable planets at which the structure is available.  And may I remind you that in ICW we have about 250 planets, most of which are limited to a level 1 shipyard.

or by recycling the asteroid base and other models that aren't being used right now (to any great effect, at least. They're in skirmish but they don't unlock more ships to build)

The Hutt asteroid base has already been co-opted in 2.2 for the Greater Maldrood to provide access to pirate and mercenary forces via Leonia Tavira.  A lack of buildables in skirmish is possibly a bug; I believe we've always intended that things like the Hapan ships and Yevethan thrustship would be available to other factions there (or was that the merchant dock?).

and let many, many more ships fit into the mod. Hutt ships could be available to the controller of Nal Hutta, Mandalorian ships for the Mandalorians- I want to build Kedalbes again. Maybe an appropriate shipwright for Naboo, too. Kuat Drive Yards could theoretically be usable by the Rebellion/Republic, assuming they could have taken it from the Empire, the lore and basic business sense agree that the corporations will serve whichever master pays them- though this a great way to get saboteurs. This would let the Rebels build Imperial-class ships, which they could definitely use for both strategic and lore reasons (the rebels used a shocking number of Imperial ships in the lore; most of their technology was Imperial in design and manufacture)...

Sure, it's a sellers market, but that doesn't mean it actually happened.  Would Imperials or the New Republic really buy from the Hutts? Would the Mandalorians sell their own ships to their former oppressors?  Most of the time we've seen factions give preference to their own designs over those available from third parties as well.

Although the Rebel Alliance definitely made use of whatever they could get their hands on, including Imperial tech through capture or defection, the New Republic in the period after Endor focused much more on production of their own designs such as those from Mon Calamari and the New Class programme over existing Imperial classes.  And even when on it's last legs in 19 ABY there was considerable disquiet in the Imperial navy over the purchase and use of non-Imperial-origin Preybird starfighters.

[nightraven1901]

Slornie: Yeah, I know how much work it could be to implement this to the maximum possible level, but doing it for a few planets isn't too much of a list. I'm specfying Corellia because they did sell to both sides, and private users, and pirates, and pretty much everyone else, but the Mandalorians' and Kuatians' technology certainly did wind up in the hands of different factions often enough, especially during this time period where the New Republic was in its infancy and couldn't source ships and vehicles effectively as they lacked a dedicated war industry, and the Imperial military complex was in disarray and collapsing, and thus resorted to supplementing their forces with increasingly ragtag units. Also, in some cases we're rewriting history in the course of our campaigns, taking Kuat as the Rebellion is something that happens often enough. Given a hypothetical occupation, whether they liked it or not, they'd be building ships for the Republic cause. Military expediency trumps all in war, and the deciding of moral stances is in my opinion is better left to the player than the dev- if possible. I would buy off the Hutts, as either side. And the Hutts would sell, albeit possibly at a mark-up. The Mandalorians are already portrayed as being forced to provide military units to the Empire in several sources, at least one of them modern canon. Besides, they were just examples- there are plenty of other choices, and different specifics of implementation.

I also don't expect a new model if one isn't available, or a lot of work done on the maps- I am learning the hard way how much work they can be, though I'm having a lot of fun doing it- but simply making a shorter version of the list that allows production of Golans, maybe even a separate single-planet list for each world, would not take anywhere near that long, and it's not like every single world offers unique units in canon anyway. There's maybe fifteen or twenty that are priority for this- Incom Industries on Fresia, as they were an Imperial company anyway contracted by the Empire to make fighters (which said Empire could really use a few of) is another big example, and maybe Muunilinst, as they happily sold to anyone and everyone. Hapes could provide access o more than a single small batch of Battle Dragons. There's a lot of planets this could apply to, and most of them are strategically relevant in most galactic conquests, changing hands often. I think it'd add a lot of personalty to them, and some of them need it, especially given the ground maps being repeated makes a lot of them feel samey.

A lot of suggestions I have made have been somewhat offhand; I don't consider them that important, or acknowledge their cost-to-effect ratio is lower than existing projects. This, though: this I believe is well worth it, and worth a little pushing. The planets and shipwrights that did  sell to both sides should be represented if possible, and the implementation for first-iteration testing is marginal compared to some existing projects. First test can be Correlia or Fresia alone, and just test functionality for selling X-Wings and CR90s etc to any owner. Hell, now I think about it, there doesn't even need to be a buildable, just a simple code block, implementing a new planetary bonus type, which permits the construction of new units at starbase tech level, which has a short list. No player interaction or wasting of resources/balancing needed. I think it might be worth a look into, at least.

[Corey]

but the Mandalorians' and Kuatians' technology certainly did wind up in the hands of different factions often enough, especially during this time period where the New Republic was in its infancy and couldn't source ships and vehicles effectively as they lacked a dedicated war industry, and the Imperial military complex was in disarray and collapsing, and thus resorted to supplementing their forces with increasingly ragtag units. Also, in some cases we're rewriting history in the course of our campaigns, taking Kuat as the Rebellion is something that happens often enough. Given a hypothetical occupation, whether they liked it or not, they'd be building ships for the Republic cause.

This isn't really a what-if scenario- the New Republic took Kuat incredibly early in canon, and they didn't use it to build Imperial ship classes for the New Republic, the New Republic sued their facilities and engineers to make different ship classes designed to their own needs and specifications.

This, in general, is part of why we've said no every time this idea gets brought up- these factional differences exist for a reason, and a lot of these planets were under the control of those other groups without those ships for the new group- Mon Calamari warships were not designed for or built for the Imperials, instead the Imperials used Mon Calamari shipyards to build their own stuff. Just like places like Sluis Van or Kuat were used to service or even build Mon calamari designs under the New Republic.

The only cases where these places tended to make or have unique shipsets, it's because they were part of a unique faction, like the Hapans, and when that's the case, we typically have that faction as its own thing. We want the Hapan starships to stay Hapan starships. Otherwise, you lose out on the point of having military doctrines and ship rosters for each faction (which we have worked really hard to do by dividing up all the different Imperial ships between Warlords to give them some variety, otherwise they could just as easily be identical) and everything becomes entirely dependent upon what you control as opposed to who you're playing as. It strips any identity away from the factions, it's not just that the work to do this would be especially hard, it's that we believe it would be bad from both a lore and gameplay standpoint.

I'm specfying Corellia because they did sell to both sides, and private users, and pirates, and pretty much everyone else

These, specifically, are pretty much entirely small freighters and corvettes which would be either redundant or not particularly useful. You occasionally hear about the "large Corellian ships" but we've never actually seen one in anything, making a Corellian fleet incredibly difficult to flesh out.

Because for some reason, doubtless relating to the Petroglyph dev team not needing to implement it, we can't scroll the damned build list. So, for most factions, by tech level five, it's absolutely full or close to it.

We have always taken it as a general rule of thumb that if you're overfilling the build bar, you've probably got more units than you actually have unique roles for. By that point, especially when they change over the eras, you're maintaining balance and art assets for dozens upon dozens of units, many of which become pointless to use.Our goal isn't and will never be to represent every single unit in Star Wars. We'd rather, especially at this point, represent what's important to a timeframe or faction, and do it well, rather than piling stuff in simply for the sake of saying it's there.

[nightraven1901]

Ahhh, I see. It's lore-based as well as gameplay-related. I was also unaware the New Republic sued the KDY into making MC80s- I knew they made Kuat produce them, I just wasn't clear on their methods. Most hilarious XD ...

Now, I definitely get the idea of not wanting to make several new ships that don't have a dedicated role within gameplay;  we can already see the effects of this on some existing ships- there's little need for them, or they do their job worse than another unit you already have. But, a very limited number of non-crap fighters would really benefit the Empire- so long as it was kept very limited, so as not to mess with their careful balance. I should also specify I don't mean a lot of these things either- I know the AI is too stupid, and myself too sporting, to overuse such limited access, it would happen and risk generating fleets of identical units. So it would need to be done very carefully if it was- but I don't see an enemy that is often segregated as being able too spread these everywhere, unless they're already winning pretty handily anyway. I would expect, perhaps wrongly, that these ships would naturally cluster around the one world that let you build them. However, an additional build limit could also be implemented- though, I'm guessing the difficulty you referenced would lie in the creation of the new planetary bonus. To that I have a modified proposal:

Adjust the existing planetary rewards for these planets to include a somewhat sizeable chunk of their units. Not a fleet's worth, but say five CR90s for Correlia, a Kedalbe for the Mandalorians, a stack of eight x-wing squadrons that were repurposed by the victorious Empire (Or Zsinj; he's in the right area)- just enough to make the effort worthwhile. Under this paradigm, if there were any new or unique ships added, their value needn't be directly military, but to a degree their novelty and rarity, and secondarily their value as being given for a specific planet's capture offering a strategic element present in AotR that would be nice to see a little of so long as it didn't become a cavalcade of knowing which planet to attack in which order to get a victory bonus and keep snowballing. So with this idea, especially, there would need to be limits, but a healthy chunk of the units I'm suggesting here do have models, and were in canon serving the factions who'd have access to them- it could be done without compromising the lore, at least. As to gameplay balance, I'd think a limited number of ships could be used to add personality without completely compromising the unique feel of the factions. The Remnant will always have a spiked wall of Imperial-class ships, I'm merely suggesting a way to represent the handful of CR90s and X-Wings and various other units who serve to remind us that these ships were Imperial-designed, Imperial-funded operations. I think it takes something away from the game to not see at least one or two of these particular units under Imperial colours. And some vessels are in canon almost specifically to be a shared unit- the Gozanti Cruiser, for example.

I'm not going to forget this idea, though. The call for new ships is eternal, and always will be.

[DarthRevansRevenge]

you really obsessed with this? play the NJO Compilation mod when it comes out. should satisfy all you mega-massive numbers of ships needs

[nightraven1901]

Not at all- just really want to see some representation for things like the CEC and Incom Industries being Imperial, the Mandalorians working for pretty much whoever pays, etcetera. The world and lore of Star Wars is pretty rich with little ironic nuggets of truth after many people have added to it- some of them are are simply cool though I will check out the mod- cheers for the tip,

[Jorritkarwehr]

Incom's Imperial loyalties are already represented by the I-7 Howlrunner and the Theta-class barge, and there are currently CEC ships in Zsinj's and the Duskhan League's rosters.

Unique ships have been part of the planetary capture rewards for a while. Hapan and Yevethan ships can be aquired by conquering their respective territories, for instance.

Finally, tying basic units like quality fighters to specific planets puts awkward constraints on GCs. Fresia isn't in the Stars Align, and wouldn't fit all that well if it had to be placed just so the Imperial Remnant could access an important unit. Filling the role with Imperial ships (the TIE Defender in this case) allows more natural GCs.

[nightraven1901]

Oh, yeah- the planetary capture rewards are awesome; I'd just love an extra one for Fresia to give whomever captures it some X-Wings and Correlia some CR90s. Maybe a Kedalbe for Mandalore and a MC80b for Mon Calamari.

As to making Fresia able to produce X-Wings: I certainly didn't mean any changes to the normal way the Rebels get them- they should keep their capacity to build them anywhere, in this idea- just allow whoever holds it to also build a few. But, it does seem that the concept of multiple planet-specific buildlists has been explored and dismissed though; so that isn't too likely.

Meh; I just like the realism of it. The Russians turned a great many Panzers around and painted red stars on them- Germans did it to T-34s in return. Incom was making those fighters for the Empire; it just makes me feel good to see the odd mirror match between them. The GC that makes me most nostalgic now is the hunt for Zsinj- despite me preferring the multi-era ones gameplay wise- merely because seeing mixes of Nebulons, CR90s, and Star Destroyers is very cool and reminds me of the old X-Wing/TIE Fighter games where such ships could be working for either side (modified CR90s are notorious for it; can never tell if those buggers are hostile or friendly until they open fire) On a semi-related note, are the Imperial forces supposed to have no access to dedicated anti-fighter in that GC? Because they can build Nebulons but not either IPV-1s or CR90s. Odd... Perhaps they're going to get the Raider corvette instead and that's why they lack one now? I don't think we're expected to use Nebulons for anti-fighter work; they're bad at it.

Look, it's not critical, just flavourful. I know the Muuns sell to anyone and I do hate the Alignment and their Praetor spam so it'd make me happy if I could make Munificents while holding it. I mean, I'd offer to code it myself, but I know how much I need to learn to do that. Right now I don't even know how to implement story elements into the maps so I can allow C3PO and R2 use droid panels to blow up turrets from a remote location (something I'd love to implement on my current map) so the concept of doing a submod for this is somewhat daunting. That said, I will have between-map downtime, so, I might look into the code, watch some more tutorials. But that's for another time- I have enough work to do

[Legostarwarseu]

My New Jedi Order Compilation submod is based on planet-specific build lists. Major planets like Corellia, Mon Calamari, Hapes, Sullust, Bothawui and Kuat have their own rosters to supplement the New Republic’s core unit roster. Some of them have so many ships they are essentially full faction rosters in their own right (and it all fits on the build bar!)

Check it out on ModDB: http://www.moddb.com/mods/new-jedi-order-compilation

[Corey]

We already have a boarding mechanic, so we don't really need to find extra ways to inject simulations of certain factions like the NR using captured hardware- they can already cvapture the hardware. What we absolutely do want to avoid is diluting the factions.

[Illidan Stormrage]

Sure, it's a sellers market, but that doesn't mean it actually happened.  Would Imperials or the New Republic really buy from the Hutts? Would the Mandalorians sell their own ships to their former oppressors?  Most of the time we've seen factions give preference to their own designs over those available from third parties as well.

Well Mandal Hypernaitcs did sell Crusader Corvettes in the hundreds to the Imperial Remnant following their use by Admiral Dalaa against the NR.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Crusader-class_corvette

[t78]

Have you tried Phoenix Rising? They have pretty much every GCW ship there could possibly be.

Nonetheless, with the IR losing ships, and the NR pursuing a standardization program, I'd argue that after Endor, there isn't as much variety as previously- the imperial era is essentially a military industrial complex gone mad, and the NR tries to change that. Its not the availability, its what the factions choose to have, and in what number. If properly represented to scale, the crusader gunship purchase would be a single gunship.