Tereanan Empire Mod - CANCELLED!

posted on August 17th, 2010, 9:17 pm

What about an obscene supply cost to open in the first place?

hmmmm it would be worth a large supply cost though. imagine defending harassment, then quickly bypassing their fleet to smash an expansion.

on large maps it would be insane for the tereanans to instantly go anywhere.

i dont think vanilla style conduits should ever come back.

the fo style of only allowing small ships to transwarp for a short distance is a really nice idea.

posted on August 17th, 2010, 9:17 pm

Thats what I would do.  That or have it run on dilithium crystals, so it costs like 2000  dil to open it in the first place

[TChapman500]

posted on August 17th, 2010, 9:41 pm

Last edited by TChapman500 on August 18th, 2010, 2:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well, I figured out how much special energy the conduit is going to use per second.  And I've figured out how long it's going to take to recharge the special energy.  It'll take 4 seconds to regain enough special energy to open the conduit for just 1 second.

I like the resource suggestion.  I think I will make it cost some resources to open the conduit.  Make that, a lot of resources.

posted on August 18th, 2010, 4:03 pm

Okay, I think I've figured out something.

The transwarp conduit will use up the following resources just to open:
650 Dilithium
75 Supply

To keep it opened, you'll use the following resources per second:
4 Special Energy
125 Dilithium
8 Supply

The special energy recharges at a rate of 1 unit per second.  There are 360 units of special energy total.  You'll use the following amount of resources to keep the gate opened for the full 2 minutes:
15,650 Dilithium
1,035 Supply
480 Special Energy

It'll take 8 minutes to recharge that energy.  If you close the conduit early, and reopen it somewhere else, you'll be spending a lot more resources to keep reopening the conduit.  This will require a very good economy.  Plus, the starbase requires a level 1 offensive upgrade in order to get a transwarp generator.  Which will add the following resources to the cost of the first conduit opening:
600 Dilithium
100 Tritanium

posted on August 19th, 2010, 12:46 pm

Hmm, but if you need 480 energy to keep it open for that long, and you only have 360, how does that work?

the balancing also sounds good, but I would also make it only 25 dilithium per second.  not 125.  That is, unless this race has some way go getting thousands of dilithium every 30 seconds.

posted on August 19th, 2010, 1:08 pm

Hmm, but if you need 480 energy to keep it open for that long, and you only have 360, how does that work?

If you take into account the 1 unit per second recharge rate, that's 120 SE over 2 minutes.  120SE due to recharge + 360SE from energy stores  = 480 SE total over 120 seconds.
Or at least that's how I see it.

[TChapman500]

posted on August 19th, 2010, 5:02 pm

Last edited by TChapman500 on August 19th, 2010, 5:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's exactly how I figure that I only need 360 units of special energy.

There is a way to do that.  It would require holding 9 dilithium resources with no upgrades on any of those resources, but it can be done.  Although, if that's not possible, upgrade the mining stations quickly.  They'll pay for themselves after a few seconds.  I also think that 125 is a bit steep.  If I go with 25 per second, then I you'll only use 3,650 units of dilithium for those 2 minutes.  The extra 650 is to actually get the conduit opened.

By the way, although the Tereanan empire is Earth in origin, some of the vessels can cloak.  Some of the vessels that can't cloak will hide themselves in a subspace, or rather, transwarp bubble.

posted on August 19th, 2010, 7:04 pm

But I don't think it recharges energy while the weapon is in use.  I"m not sure though.

posted on August 19th, 2010, 7:33 pm

In the stock A2, they did recharge while the weapon was in use.  With the exception of cloak.

posted on August 19th, 2010, 8:33 pm

Okay, I've completed mapping most of the starbase.  I only have to map out a few more polygons, then I'll start to apply a texture.  Here's a screenshot of the base.  The sides have not been mapped out yet (with the exception of the transwarp ring), however, that is going to be a whole lot easier to map out than the transwarp ring was.  The base should be about the same size as the Federation base, but with a different orientation on the footprint.  Overall, it shouldn't take up as much space as the Federation outpost does.

Attachments

posted on August 20th, 2010, 1:16 am

The starbase is just about complete.  Once the base is complete, the scout, and the construction ship, the priority of this project will be dropped below the priority of my race tracks.

The scout is the best unit to find cloaked ships.  It can cloak and send out tachyon pings without being detected or de cloaking.  I'll automatically send out a tachyon ping every couple of seconds.

The construction ship will build 8 stations, and the framework for 7 of the 11 vessels used by the Tereanan Empire.  The rest will be built either at the shipyard, or at the starbase.  The vessels that are built on frameworks will can be used for certain operations like hiding in a damaging nebula or a nebula that disables shields.  Although, don't count on the cheaper cruisers lasting that long in a damaging nebula.

The Tereanan ships and stations have windows that let light in, but they don't let light out.  As a result, you will not be able to see any lights that are within the ship or station.  And because there is a coating over the warp nacelles, you won't be able to see those glow either.  As a result, Tereanan ships and stations will be hard to find on dark maps.

posted on August 20th, 2010, 9:17 pm

The starbase works now.  The un-upgraded weapons are a couple of pulse phasers that are in a state of chroniton flux.  They will deal damage directly to the hull.  Weapons upgrade 1 will give you transwarp capabilities and will add some phasers to the base which will be stopped by the shields.  Weapons upgrade 2 will give you chroniton torpedoes which will deal damage directly to the hull.  The defensive upgrades will increase system repair rate, hull repair rate, and shield recharge rate and will increase the rate of fire.

The lighting seems to work now except for one small detail.  The smoothing isn't what it's supposed to be.  Some areas have been smoothed that shouldn't have been smoothed.  Other areas seem to be smoothed correctly though.

Despite that the weapons go right through the shields, a medium to large fleet of cruisers should be sufficient enough to destroy the station if the station hasn't been upgraded.  I'm having trouble upgrading the station though.

posted on August 20th, 2010, 9:24 pm

is it textured?

posted on August 20th, 2010, 9:33 pm

The base, technically is textured, however, I'm not very good at making textures, so I'm compiling a template.  Hopefully, someone can help me on that.  The texture coordinates have been mapped out.

I'm working on getting the starbase upgrades working.  So far, I don't have any working.  Without the upgrades, the starbase will bite the dust quickly.  I don't think I have enough ODFs for the starbase to have the upgrade.  As a result, the "weapon" button isn't showing up.  Is that the case?

posted on August 22nd, 2010, 12:20 am

I hit a snag with the starbase weapons upgrade.  They won't appear when I select the starbase.  I made sure that the techtree was correct, but it's not doing anything.