' Wrote:Gallia still seems rather large, are you going to resize the systems a bit or is it going to stay that way?
Isle de France, like all house capitols, will remain huge (but as you can see, those double lanes have been removed). All other Gallic systems are being compressed into 50K by 50K grids, more or less - which is about average for a Sirian system. It's not exactly easy to do this while keeping the lanes long enough so pirates have a chance to snip a trader but I'm giving it my best shot. The base count in those systems is... excessive. My hope is that with the Tau and Rishiri gates, Gallia will become more accessible to your average joe trader. Once there's traders there, there'll be pirates. Once there's pirates, the lawful factions will get their chance. As you can see in the map, Languedoc and Lyonnais will be key bottlenecks to catch intra-house traffic. I've also tried to position the jumpholes in such a way that smuggling will be fun as well out there.
Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.
Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.
Dev update:
I've been working on implementing various ships in the shiparch files (and solararch where needed). The Hessian ship replacements, the reduced size Sarissa, the Outcast snubline, the Zephyr, the updated Coalition ships and the Liberty Carrier have been pushed in. Coalition capital ship turrets have been created using the models they have provided (nice looking turrets). I've also created the MK2 version of the BH Reaver Laser Turret at the request of that faction. All assigned to the balance team for final tweaking, but they're functional and buyable.
I've also begun balancing out the encounters throughout Sirius. People have commented that they'd like to see all the houses somewhat equal in terms of difficulty. I'm trying to meet that request: The house capitols will be the simplest difficulty, then branching out from that the difficulty scales up, to quite hard in the borderworlds and edgeworlds. I'm also replacing the various fighters-as-traders you see on the unlawful faction side with freighters - so that if players want to do cargo piracy versus unlawfuls, that will be possible. Combined with an overhaul of the various NPCs available, I'm hoping this will make for a more pleasant NPC experience.
Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.
Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.
Does that mean that capital systems will have lower leveled forces than in more distant systems of that house?
In my opinion forces should be strongest in the capital and weaker in border systems, while unlawful NPCs - viceversa - weakest in capital system but strongest in independent worlds. This would simulate the ability of house forces to ensure safety.
Also, I suggest to minimize Military NPCs in capital systems but substitute them for police NPCs to simulate how the things should be in reality.
Even Cruiser patrols can be police ones.
Hel, Vidar and gunboat replacements by Massdriver. Snub replacements by him and the Jormugand reskin. They all follow the same texturing now, and look nice as well.
As for an imbalanced NPC grouping - would be difficult. Where do you draw the line? Who gets what difficulty? I'd the sooner just use the chances of NPCs of a specific faction spawning, as well as the location where they spawn, to indicate that the borderworlds are a dangerous place. Putting NPCs throughout a system at a certain level keeps that aspect of it simple. If we want an asteroid field dominated by Mollies, but raided by Bounty Hunters, I'd set it to a 50% chance of the scavenger spawn for faction mollies, and 10% chance for the Bounty Hunters using spawn Assault. This would generate a 5 to 1 ratio of Mollies versus Bunters at the same difficulty. Naturally, this would usually be bad news for the bunters...
Dev update:
- Begun work on Bretonia. NPC difficulty levels and encounters in New London and Manchester adjusted. Also tweaked lane orientations - some were off by as much as a single degree, which on huge lanes can make quite a difference. I've tried to bring all lanes into an accuracy rounded to the tenth of a degree which should prevent the lane tunnel sometimes not being aligned to the lane nodes. It also allows for accurate use of the tradelane spawnzones as asteroid exclusion zones. Quite handy.
- Reworked Dundee after moving Battleship Embrun (Gallic) into the system, near the Edinburgh hole. Toughest NPCs available in this system on both ends. Gallic and Bret capital ships clashing hard. The Mollies also come to the party. This system is intended for Gallic, Bret and Molly players to be able to take missions against the other side, much like New Hampshire is for Liberty versus Rheinland.
Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.
Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.