Weekend Update

I was able to add in the Gladiator-class Star Destroyer with some effort, and switched Admiral Screed from an ISD to his Demolisher. It still needs to be tweaked and tested some more so that it gels with the rest of the fleet.

One non-canon thing I did was keep it as a Rendili product instead of a KDY one, since it is an outdated ship like the Victory/Dreadnaught models and was an original Walex Blissex/Rendili design. I may end up making it canon, but KDY has  full list of ships and Rendili is much smaller.

With that ship I think I am done with the Imperial Navy. There is a bug with the Golan 2 model showing green, I need to add in a shader I think for it. Other than that I am pretty happy with the selection and balancing of the Imperial Navy. I still have to go through all the ships and setup strong against/weak against parameters - they are broken due to my internal naming of the Rebel ships.

I also modified Darth Vader. There are now two versions of him, a Tech Level 0 where he is on the Exactor and a Tech Level 2 where he is on the Executor. I was going to put his starfighter on each but a horrible bug caused me to just add in a squadron of TIE Advancedx1 for now to each. I hope to fix that soon.

'Warlords' Implemented

Last night I finished implementing the Warlords feature from my unreleased version of the mod - lots of Imperial characters added, mostly of the minor flavour variety.

• Captain Gilad Pellaeon with the ISD-II Chimaera and 3 of the ISDs in the Thrawn series such as Captain Brandei
• Piet, Ozzel and the rest of Imperial Death Squadron for Vader
• Admiral Daala and the Star Destroyers of the Maw Facility
• The traitor admirals Grand Admiral Zaarin and Admiral Harkov
• Warlord Zsinj and the Iron Fist
• Grand Moff Adrus Kaine
• Most of the Grand Admirals including their special abilities and ships

Lots more of the minor heroes to do for the Empire, I'll be ignoring the land based ones for the space demo release.

Once the heroes are done I'll add in the Gladiator-class Star Destroyer if I find a good model and then focus more on the Rebels. I did some of the Rebel stuff, I have to add in some of their larger vessels and then make sure their starfighters (snubbies) are given their proper due.

Rounding Out the Imperial Navy

The modding progress continues...

I've gotten the shipyards working and am now adding in the space heroes for the Empire.

In the previous personal only incarnation of my mod I implemented an idea called 'Warlords'. They were basically unique versions of a unit based on a SW character, such as Admiral Daala having an ISD Gorgon with her escort of 3-4 other ISDs or Zsinj's Iron Fist with TIE Raptors as the starfighters.

In this version of the mod I am switching to a major/minor/misc hero system that will incorporate regular heroes, unique units as heroes and misc heroes such as probe droids and bounty hunters and fleet admirals.

Heroes can be spawned one of two ways, either through the spawning system (when you increase tech levels or conquer a certain planet or conquer a number of planets) or by building them (one time only special builds.) For the buildable heroes they usually have unique properties to the base unit so they tend to cost at least 10% more - they are primarily there for interest and story purposes.

I also figured out the X-Wing bug, I was including the old squadrons.xml file and it was overwriting my changes. Whoops! I got rid of it from the GameObjects file and it is working properly now.

Once I finish the Imperial space heroes I will decide if I want to implement any other ships. I still haven't done the Gladiator-class Star Destroyer, I should probably add it in but haven't got around to it - it was not a high priority item. Right now the space hero Admiral Screed is using an ISD but he is known for bumming around the Outer Rim in his Gladiator-class vessel.

I have the 8km Bellator-class Star Dreadnaught implemented, I'm thinking do we really need the larger 12km Mandator III-class? There are already five classes of super expensive Star Dreadnaughts for the Empire, I love choice but will it really be needed? Between the Executor, Vengeance and Bellator that is a lot of choice for conventional style SSDs.

I still haven't found a model for the YT-2400 Light Freighter so I might have to drop it. Was using the M Falcon for the YT-1300 but it has a weird bug with invulnerability that I still have to fix.

I'm thinking about not doing the Bavos-II Military Space Platform and Bavos-I Military Space Platform - the Golans already offer nearly the same functionality.

Once I get those issues resolved the Imperial Navy will be done in all its glory and I can start finalizing the Alliance Navy and the Pirate/Neutral ships that will be available to fight against.

Figuring Out Shipyards... and a Modding Lesson

I had a productive weekend modding so here is a quick update.

I spent most of the time cleaning up Imperial Navy / space structures including adding in a new shipbuilding system. There are some nice complex ones in other mods but I wanted to keep to something simple if possible while still making holding key planets of great strategic importance.

Please see the previous posts on the types of shipyards and a list of shipyards by planet / manufacturer.

I have implemented the light and medium shipyards and tonight I will finally finish the heavy shipyards then test the system with a mini run-through.

I ran into some serious engine bugs trying to get this to work the way I wanted but I eventually found a compromise.

Space structures and ships must have a <Space_Station_Minimum> value set to 1 or higher to show in the proper build area. If not they show in the ground buildables section, which is bizarre - hard coding ftw! I was able to work around that though without having to implement anything crazy, you need at least a lvl 1 space station to build them - the space station hold population (ie. the workers who will be building structures or ships)

For example:

1. To build a Vindicator-class Heavy Cruiser you need a SFS aligned planet + at least 1 Medium Shipyard.
2. To build an Imperial-class Star Destroyer you need a KDY aligned planet + at least 1 Heavy Shipyard.
3. To build a Tartan-class Patrol Cruiser (corvette) you  need a Damorian aligned planet like Esseles + at least 1 Light Shipyard.

I think that is a good compromise solution that works well. I will do some more testing after finishing the XML for the heavy shipyards tonight.

Making More Progress...

After a long hiatus I am back in modding mode and making really good progress.

Currently working on implementing space stations for both sides and finishing up the Rebel Fleet.

This morning I started implementing the Dauntless-class Heavy Cruiser, one of the Rebel's more capable larger vessels. Next on the list will be the Lucrehulk-class Battleship and the Bulwark-class Battlecruiser Mark 3. I need to resize the Dauntless, add in an icon and then get the hardpoints and squadron spawns working. Hope to do that tonight after work.

In terms of smaller vessels I still have to add the MC40a Light Cruiser and the Acclamator II-class Assault Ship. Then I have to fix a bug with the X-Wings that limits them to 6 per squadron - limiting their usefulness until they are bumped up to 12 per squadron.

I recently gave the Z95 Headhunters and the A-Wings multiple versions, default vanilla versions and enhanced versions with concussion missiles. (ie. the Z-95-AF4 Headhunter)

XQ and Golan Platforms have bugs where the models are showing as green, I've had that issue before and it is a pain to fix. I think right now the XQ6 and Golan 2 variants are the ones with the issues.

All in all good progress and I'm aiming to release the space-only demo in November sometime. Stay tuned!!

Long time... no update...

After a long hiatus I have started up the mod again.

Right now I am getting a space-only alpha ready.

Today I am working on cleaning up ship descriptions and when/where they can be built for the Empire.

Tracking Down Assets

During the long, long development of this mod I have been very poor at keeping track of where I got models from.

The last few weeks I've been looking at the mod's assets and compiling them - especially for the ship models. Once I figure out who created what I have to try and track down the model creator and see if it is ok for me to use the model in the release of the mod.

Then I have to do the same with the land assets.

Then I have to put back in all the planets I've removed and get the galaxy map working again.

The Imperial Navy is very close to being ready as is, its been much more enjoyable for playing this version than the default version and many mods.

Once that is ready I hope to do an initial release of the mod.