As I gradually received fewer demands on my time, I decided that I could not return to the public eye without having accomplished something significant, realizing that the time I have left as an "unemployed" student is coming rapidly to a close. So, despite my extended disappearance from the forums, this mod is not dead, not even close. Quietly, behind the scenes, I've been putting the finishing touches on space combat.
First and foremost, after two setbacks and two jury-rigged fixes, starbases levels have been torn asunder. Now, in order to build from the entire spectrum of ship classes at a single planet, you will need to construct one of each of the five starbases there. Specifically, Level 1 produces utilities, fighters, and bombers; Level 2 produces transports, freighters, and corvettes, Level 3 produces frigates and cruisers; Level 4 produces destroyers and capitals; and Level 5 just produces dreadnoughts.
The impetus behind doing this was to reduce the likelihood of units falling off the right of the interface, but more importantly, it allows for specialization previously unseen in Empire at War: if you build two of the same starbase level at a single location, all of the corresponding ship classes will be built in half of the time. It is now possible to, for example, dedicate a planet entirely to churning out new capital ships by installing five Level 4 starbases there. The only exceptions to this are research and upgrades, which take the same amount of time regardless of how many duplicate bases there are; however, you will still need the proper starbase in orbit in order to make such developments.
One of the improvisations I had to make to get this to work properly was to introduce a central, logical starbase to the game because the actual starbases could no longer serve in that function and other orbital structures seem to require exactly one to be present. Therefore, I came up with a space colony concept to serve as the focal point of your orbital presence. Space colonies work just like vanilla starbases in that higher levels replace lower levels, except they're cheap, totally defenseless, and only provide additional population. You must build a space colony in order to put any other structure in orbit; that's just how the engine works. Furthermore, if you lose the space colony in combat, all other structures will be lost as well at the end of combat. You've been warned.
The remaining majority of my work has been on revisiting the existing content from v1.0 and ensuring that it's as good as it can be. That could mean anything from redoing the previously-estimated stats for a ship based on new source material to devising a more interesting or fair upgrade branch to improving art assets. In the latter case, I'd like to unveil the new look for the Lancer-class Frigate:
I was never completely happy with the model that's currently in use, so I took the opportunity to bring in this one by Axingus and it's nearly perfect. Also, if you look closely, you can see a couple of the new projectile damage particles that I've come up with. Remember, the more feedback you as the player can give me as to what's off in the current release, the better I can respond to it in the next. Everything is still on the table.
Of course there is more, but it's not all ready to be revealed just yet. Hopefully that's enough for now though. I'm going to attempt to catch up on responses to posts and messages over the next few days, so I may not get to everything right away. Thanks for your patience. If you tried to contact me recently and I obviously didn't reply, you have my sincerest apologies. There's really no excuse for it whatsoever, but I'll try to get back with you shortly, if possible.
Edited by Phoenix Rising, 21 July 2008 - 06:00 AM.
