[MOD] The Collective (Version 1.14)

Gratuitous Forum Gratuitous Modding
1

[size=200]The Collective[/size]

 For decades, us scientists have been wasted under the rigid, wasteful bureaucracy of military research divisions - the best and brightest minds forced to toil at producing a slightly more powerful beam laser, or a slightly cheaper deflector shield.  Research for its own sake has stagnated, and the joy of new discovery has been lost to us.  The blind and regimented factions cannot see things any other way - they cannot understand us, they can only force us into their industrial machine.

 But no more!  We stand as an independent gathering of theorists, researchers and engineers, united in our desire for research for its own sake.  We fund subspace exploration, quantum-gravitic field theory, and hyper-energy physics not because they are militarily useful (though they are), but because they are the next frontier!  We are the Collective!  We stand for every research forced under the heel of the Great Powers!  We will defend our freedom to expand the boundaries of knowledge with the very knowledge we have gained!  For Mathematics!  Physics!  Chemistry!  Biology!  Nanobiochemistry!  FOR SCIENCE!

[size=150]DOWNLOAD[/size]

dl.dropbox.com/u/73603960/Collective1.14.zip

Here’s the Mod DB link for the latest version:
moddb.com/downloads/collective-version-114

To install, just extract the zip folder to your Gratuitous Space Battles directory (merge the data folder with the main one).

[size=120]Requirements:[/size] Tribe, Order, Swarm, Nomads, Parasites
[size=120]Contents:[/size] Four fighters, four frigates, four Cruisers, two Stations, a Battleship, five scenarios, and a whole bunch of modules!

So yeah, the Collective are a big group of scientists from various races, with a set of compressed, powerful, and expensive ships, which can mount many advanced new systems. Right now, the mod is nearly done - I just have to finish adjusting the lighting for some ships, adjust the [targets] and [explosions] sections for the individual hulls, and do a bit more balancing. For now, I’ll be using this topic for updates - once the mod is released, any feedback would be appreciated. I guess you can also comment on the ships in the image above - it contains everything except the Collective’s two stations, and the tiny Minima drone.

[size=150]Screenshots[/size]

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Looks cool, my favorite is the frigate (i assume it’s a frigate) in the front batch of ships.

Race description is good too, just the right amount of gratuitous humor, haha.

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Not sure which one you’re referring to - the largest ship in the lower-left group is the Catalyst Cruiser - which focuses on reaching very high speeds.

In the meantime, just updated the OP with some screenshots, and it should only be a few days at most before this is ready to release!

4

Very cool stuff! I want to see the target of all those beams in the second and third combat shot, though - it looks like they’re all converging on a single ship! Cooooool. :slight_smile:

5

If you look in the very bottom left of the second screen shot you can see what appears to be a Federation Eagle Cruiser having a very bad day. But yes, I have to agree that is a ton of combined firepower. .

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THE BEAMLORDS. Scary… I think I just attracted ‘beam-phobia’ :stuck_out_tongue:

7

AAAAAAAAAANNND IT’S DONE!

Finally finished adding the 100+ targets to the Horizon Station, cleared out unnecessary files from the Collective folders, and synced the eventual zip file to drop box. This has been months in the making, and quite fun to produce - I’ve created ships, effects, explosions, sounds, music, and more modules than I can count. Hope you enjoy it!

Any feedback would be appreciated!

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Downloaded! Now I just need to find the time to extract, install, and experiment. -_-

I am looking forward to fiddling with this mod though. As soon as I get the chance I’ll do my best to provide some good feedback, promise.

9

Dang it i do no thave the Parasites but i want to try this, What is used from the Parasites that i can edit out in my own mod copy so that i can try out the epic beam race??

10

There are a couple of different AoE weapons - the Cruiser Columnal Rip Field, the Station Flak Repeater, and the Station Pulsed Subspace Disruptor(which is used in the Armageddon Engine Scenario). So you’d need to edit out those weapons and that scenario.

And remember, while the Collective does have epic beams, they also have lots of other neat stuff (and I really hope you can get parasites sometime, since Armageddon Engine was meant as a concluding scenario) :slight_smile:

11

Ah ok, I will try to get it as soon as I can afford it. But I have to get both my trucks fixed up Get tickets to my Anime convention and pay bills sadly this take high priority than getting the parasites. I’ll not try that scenario without getting it first.

12

Just updated to version 1.1 - corrected an issue with fighter hulks, shortened some module descriptions that were overflowing, and made a few small balance changes. Saved designs shouldn’t be affected, so you can update anytime.

In the meantime, hopefully some of you have had a chance to play it, so I’m eager to hear what you think so far. First impressions?

13

Huh. It’s been five days since I released the mod, and I still don’t have any feedback, not even first impressions. Is everyone stuck on the first scenario or something? This is kind of dispiriting :frowning:

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Its normal, when i released PI Mod there was just a little bit of feedback. As fast as i get some free time to make a full test to your mod i will write you here :slight_smile:

Also i suggest you to post your mod in Moddb.com ,there you may get more feedback and even more downloads.

15

yea I got this from almost all my mods, Archduke Astro did do a beautiful write up for my homeworld mod I did/still working on. But i have got used to getting no feedback back and a lot of lechers. I’ve not reworked the mod files so that i can play without the Parasite expansion just yet as i have been very very busy in real life. That and my main pc is in the process of a hard-drive backup/wipe/reinstall I will be downgrading to Windoze XP Home from Windoze Seven Pro due to issues with only 2 gig ram. So I am working off a backup pc at the moment and i hope to get back up and running by the end of this week.

16

Agreed. I rarely get any feedback before a two-week period from release, often not even then. Have patience, and feedback will come your way.

IMO, part of the problem is that the serious modders who are inclined to give detailed, constructive feedback (the most helpful, though even a brief “this is so cool!” is nice to get) are A) quite busy in many ways, and B) disinclined to give throwaway feedback so they wait until a proper test run can be given. (I do count myself in this category, by the way. And I do intend to run this mod, but it may be a couple weeks before I can really get to it).

17

Okay, I had a chance to play around with this mod (though not in a lot of depth), so here’s kind of a quick, first-impressions kind of thing. This applies to Version 1.11.

Positives
Graphics: The ships and turrets look really good, and I like the effects I’ve seen.

Balance: Not quite sure how this all works out, but I think it’s probably OK. The extremely high costs of some of the modules and the positive cost boost on most hulls may serve to offset the extremely high penetration and damage values I’ve seen on some of the modules.

Scenarios: I ran through the first scenario briefly. It seems reasonably well balanced from what little I could see, and the battle lasted longer than I expected against my nasty EMP skirmishers.

Negatives
Variety: I think this may be too much of a good thing. The Collective has a lot of new modules, but from a glance over some of the stats, I saw more than a few that weren’t all that different from their vanilla counterparts. Too many options tend to make the eyes glaze over and the brain shut off.

Hull Balance: I haven’t looked at all the hulls exhaustively, not by a long shot. The one that does stick in my mind is the Drone hull: with 1 hardpoint/1 standard slot and 2 power, I could not find anything interesting to do with this hull. Also this plays into the variety option above - it’s a lot of hulls to look at.

Ship Design Screen: This one sounds kind of superficial, but it does have an impact. The largest hull has so many hardpoints I couldn’t even see them all. If I can’t see the slot, there’s no way I can get a module into it. It sucks that the design screen limits how much we can do, but there it is.

I know this sounds more negative than positive, but I haven’t had a chance for any real in-depth testing (I did find it’s a bit difficult to really test some of the larger ships, since once they’re loaded up they’re too expensive to deploy in half the vanilla scenarios). I still plan to give this a more detailed test, but since I’m not sure when that will happen I thought I’d toss out my preliminary impressions. I encourage some of the more experienced players/modders to give the Collective a whirl so that we can see some intelligent feedback alongside my ramblings. :slight_smile:

Overall, I do like what I’ve seen so far!

[size=50]Please note that the opinions expressed in this post are not representative of the GSB player base or modding community.[/size]

18

Glad you could take a look, here are my responses.

Happy that the mod makes a good impression here, I put a good deal of effort into balancing.

I suppose I have a number of Cruiser Laser substitutes. I could remove the Pulsed Energy Propagator, which would leave Mesonic Warheads as a high-damage variant with countermeasures and the Plasma Beam as a 2.3 tracking variant. I suppose the Missile Ram might bear some resemblance to fast missiles, but the shorter range and much faster delivery seems to differentiate it - in my mind, it’s what Cruiser Rockets should have been. Were there any other modules you thought were too similar to vanilla versions?

I recommend you play the Drone Assembly survival scenario and see if this changes your mind - it uses nothing but Minima Drones :slight_smile: I’ve been able to get at least six different useful variants.

I’ve found that switching to the ship exterior view mode and then dragging modules onto the outer edge (away from other hardpoints) of the hardpoint you want allows effective placement onto all of the available hardpoints. Of course, this isn’t readily apparent, and I’m not sure how to fix that - would a readme help?

Glad you like it!

19

Hey there, don’t have much to report. I redid my GSB drive so I could focus on JUST your mod, no other mods applied, but a quick scan gave me a little issue that you might want to look at. Again, I have no other mods, so I assume its from your mod, but when I try to access the Hulls option on Fleet HQ, it crashes every time…
I wanted to let you know early, as I’ll probably spend a couple of days playing around with your mod to give you a better review. Thanks for modding! Your stuff looks great, and I can’t wait to mess with it!

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A couple quickie responses (quickie because I’m not at my GSB comp at the moment, but I’ll forget what I’m thinking if I wait too long).

Really, the CL variants were the ones that caught my eye - by the time I got to the missiles the aforementioned eye-glazing was kicking in (that happens when one tries to do intellectual exercises after a day of work). I will hopefully have some time to look at things more in-depth before the weekend.

In terms of looking at the drone alternatives, I’ll probably cheat and look at the scenario files directly. But the point is made. :slight_smile:

I’ve found that switching to the ship exterior view mode and then dragging modules onto the outer edge (away from other hardpoints) of the hardpoint you want allows effective placement onto all of the available hardpoints. Of course, this isn’t readily apparent, and I’m not sure how to fix that - would a readme help?
[/quote]
My first suggestion would be to tweak the hardpoint design locations to separate them on the design screen, then set the turret locations to where you want them. Downside of that is the game considers the design screen location as the “center” of the turret, from which its ranges are measured. But that is probably a minor issue, since you should be able to keep most hardpoints pretty close to their turret locations. It did look like there was enough space to shift the slots apart a bit - some overlap is fine (e.g., the Alliance Python Cruiser, which I still have problems with) but ideally it should be kept to a minimum. The only problem with designing from the exterior view mode is that to my knowledge, very few players do that habitually (truth to tell, I didn’t know you could do that until you mentioned it) so it’s less-than-optimal to plan around it.

Shifting topics:

Normally I’d leave this to the OP, but I feel helpful at the moment. :slight_smile: Since there have been two released versions of this mod so far, can you specify which version you’ve got? I’ve been working V1.11, and have not encountered this problem.