I was thinking overnight last night, about the possability of adding an in game ship designer that not only allows you to create new Ship weapon and module layouts as the current style. But also allows you to create whole new ships using predesigned Parts. for example you could have several different parts designed and in the editor you pick a part and move it into a position.
When it comes to hardpoints on the ship. It could be designed so that each part of a ship has a predefined number of hard points etc. So for example a wing piece might give you 2 Weapon slots, and 2 hardpoints. and then have extra benefits like 300 HP and 20 Armor.
I expect you are wondering what kind of ecomonical benifits this might give you. To be honest I am not a businessman but I do think that with this expansion you could create new DLCs containing hundreds of extra ship parts and weaponry. It would enable players to create their own Ship hulls easily, and it would create a much more Diverse game.
Only problems I see are that it’ll pretty much render modders useless (except in creating scenarios and bitmaps), and, also, the sheer complexity in both the amount of code and in the amount of bitmaps that would have to be created.
Personally, i dont think having a ship building template will render modders useless, if anything it adds another string to our bow
But I agree that it would add a degree of complexity the the ship building process (but again i think it will be worth it)
If you look at the unity mod, you will see somthing similar to what UTC1990 is describing with the drones (fighters)
As an example, I have attached images of the light drones, you will see that the fusalage & engines are the same and i have only changes the wings to create a different look.
(I used the same method for the medium and heavy)
Once you have a template established it was very easy to make more ships.
Shylo I strongly disagree with you, this does not render modders useless infact if anything it gives Modders more to play with. For example you could create and code your own ship parts.
It makes the game much more diverse and interesting, becuase there is a limitless number of ship designs.
Another point to this Expansion in the campaign could be that whilst playing when you capture an enemy ship you could take it appart and use the alien technology in your own ship designs.
Darkstar, i always wanted to ask something to you, What is your definition of drone?
For me, a drone is (normally) a small AI Controlled ship, sometimes more advanced than a normal fighter, used for Suicide missions, recon missions, automatized defences and things like that, i can be bigger than a fighter, but different…
But seems like you call drones to super-sized tripulated super-fighters, or in other words, corbettes
I’m right??
I say this because the “drones” above have chockpits o.O
I dont have any hard and fast rules about what is a drone. In the case of Uni-T (who is after all an AI) the definition of a drone is anything that does not use crew (so fighters). You may notice that when building your drone the modules come in fighter and corvette flavours.
Nah they are not cockpits, they are the sensor domes for the AI. (some imagination is required)
And, now that I think about it, modders could create new parts/modules/weapons.
Intersting Campaign idea. Granted, lot of code, but could make for interesting ship appearances (try to imagine a buffalo + a utopia + that nomad red ship (whose name I forget) + a swarm cruiser, and add a few imperial “rings”)
A note of caution: too much of a good thing can be terrible instead of great. There’s a world of aesthetic difference between “a few new additions of alien hull structure that make a ship look cool” and “so THAT’s what a rhino looks like after it’s fallen off the top of the Empire State Building”.
Well I am happy to see that a lot of people like my idea however I am not seeing any posts from cliffski. Is that a sign?
Either way as for bonuses, I think that the bonuses should be generic for each type of ship in a given race to avoid people making ship parts that can give say infinate energy. It would get quite stupid with that kind of thing going on.
Balancing is the issue but I am sure people can come up with suitable figures for everything in the end, especially experianced Modders.
Don’t take his absence personally. It’s only a sign of his commitment to developing the next Positech game, as sales of GSB have since ceased being his bread and butter. This means that most suggestions here for “kewl new add-on XYZ, please!” are going nowhere.
Remember that Positech is a one-man shop; nothing new or shocking about that. We veterans here have been observing this ever since the Nomads DLC race came out early last autumn. The only add-on of any note since then has been the Galactic Conquest campaign, which is more properly considered a separate companion game alongside GSB instead of an addition to GSB itself. Therefore, it’s very unlikely that any further signifigant content is going to be added to GSB’s codebase. It isn’t an indicator that yours is necessarily a good or a bad idea. It just means that Cliff is functioning within a fundamentally different set of limits that the casual players here don’t perceive, and more expansions for GSB isn’t a part of his priorities.
Me and Wasabi of IP were throwing this idea around a while back but he moved on to something else, and I couldn’t do anything other than add it to the long list of possible future GSBEdit features. I do think a mix-and-match ship builder could make some people’s lives a lot easier.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, please – I agree fully with you guys. I just get wistful when I realize that an official version of such isn’t going to happen. Just sayin’.
Hi all.
I don’t read all of the modding discussions, because there are just too many, but I thought I’d chip in on a few points.
Firstly, I agree that a ship editor that allowed visual ship design would be awesome, but it won’t be added to the existing GSB game. The main reason for this is self-shadowing.
If you look at the ship hulls, you will see that a relatively neutral light source is still casting shadows on the ships. some components cast shadows on others, and the end result looks very nice. The minute you cut and paste bits of the ships as sprites, you can lose that, and you have to fiddle for ages to get it to look right. It will never, sadly look as good as a stupidly high-poly model rendered in lightwave.
However, there are possibilities for my next game to feature a lot more in the way of unit customisation. Not on the level that modders currently provide, but more than just selecting hull A or hull B.
Also, do not be 100% sure that there will not be another GSB expansion pack. I’m very seriously considering another new race. I imagine the only people who will buy another race expansion will be hardcore players and modders, but as long as it pays the art costs, I don’t care. There are always very vocal people who scream at me for being evil if I release an expansion pack, but those people don’t buy it anyway, so I don’t see why they should stop me making stuff other people do want
I think it could be cool to add one more race, along the same lines as the nomads, where it’s primarily new ships, rather than new modules.
Fortunately 70-80% of the work in a race-expansion is done by someone else, so it’s just about viable to do it at the same time as working on the new game, which will be much more mod friendly, if all goes well. I hope the GSB community lasts long enough to still be alive when it gets released
I just get wistful when I realize that an 
