Upgrade/Rankup ODF Proposal

posted on August 26th, 2012, 12:22 am

I got this idea from the way rFactor allows you to upgrade your vehicles. And from another thread about having cloak as a separate system.

For rank-up, have the rankup ODF command point to an upgrade file that changes the ships stats by the desired amounts. Also, add "upgradeX" and "upgradeXLevel/Max" commands to keep track of which upgrade is being used and how many times it has been used and prevent over-upgrades. The upgrade file can look something like this:

Code: Select all


[Unit]
RequiredRankLevel=2  // Rank level required to activate the upgrade.
maxHealth+=10
maxShields+=15
maxSpecialEnergy+=15
healthRate+=0.15
shieldRate+=0.18
specialEnergyRate+=0.15
rankPointsNeeded+=25
rankPointValue+=10
upgradeX_add="rank_veteran"  //ID of the level being added (eg:  1 would indicate the first upgrade being added, not overriding the already existing upgrade 1)
upgradeXLevel_add=0
upgradeXMax_add=1

[Weapon1]
RequiredRankLevel=2
shotDelay0*=0.9

[Weapon1Ord]
RequiredRankLevel=2
damageBase*=1.1  //Multiplies all values listed by this amount.



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Upgrade ODFs could look something like this:

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dilithiumCost=85
latinumCost=28  //Tritanium
biomatterCost=4  //Supply
buildTime=7

[Upgrade]
RequiredUpgradeXLevel=1
dilithiumCost*=1.1  //If costs increases by this much for all levels until overridden by a higher level.
latinumCost*=1.1
biomatterCost*=1.1
buildTime*=1.15

[Unit]
weaponX_add="new_weapon"  // ID for the weapon being added.  A 1 identifies as the first weapon being added, not that weapon 1 on the ship is being overridden.
weaponXhardpoints_add="hardpoint" "hardpointb"



Probably isn't practical at the moment, but it would allow for upgrading even when weapon systems are down. They're probably going to be "down" anyways while upgrading. It would reduce the number of ODF files down to pretty much 1 file per object (2 weapons = 4 files + 1 upgrade = 1 file + 1 ship = 1 file * 2 avatars = 12 ODFs per ship). Currently, it's (2 weapons = 12 files + 1 upgrade = 6 files + 1 ship = 6 files * 2 avatars = 48 ODFs per ship). Just as an example on how many ODFs would disappear. For this example ship, it would be 36 ODFs gone just like that!

posted on August 26th, 2012, 11:48 am

the syntax to express upgrades is not the problem. The implementation is

posted on August 26th, 2012, 1:49 pm

changes to improve readability for ranking vessels and reduced number .odf files are planned.