Stargate Mod.

i'm afraid i have no information or answers to offer, but i like the idea, more than that, i'd like to see an actual stargate mod, as in stargate the movie and tv series, atleast as much of one as there could be. i'm sure certain elements would have to be left out, like the ancients and the ori, maybe the wraith could be brought in( a race that feeds on other races poses interesting situations from a playing standpoint, even if they are forced to be an npc type monster)

a thought, could you have special circumstances, for instance say gating into a system with a black hole might have very bad, or atleast unexpected consequences?

no idea how to mod this game myself either.

the limitations of this game i expect will give quite a bit of difficulty. for example the wraith should really just be ship based, on one of their hive ships. maybe start out in orbit around a planet with a neutral and edible population to sustain them till they find another food source. with other hive ships possibly in hibernation, and the ability to hibernate part of your population as needed, but i don't think that would be possible.

o'neill said the furlongs are fury if that helps. really i'm guessing on par with the asgard technologically, maybe a little more, since in the stargate world the more advanced you are, the less you have to do with anyone else, unless you're evil. while you didn't see them, if i'm not mistaken you saw a bit of their architecture atleast in the ep where o'niell and mayborne where looking for what mayborne claimed was a weapons cache, but ofcourse wasn't.

you could do something similar to the recent atlantis story line, have a group of coporeal ancients who were otherwise indisposed for the last few millenia, reemerge to rebuild their empire. you could handicap them with a limited starting population, but in this game that doesn't appear to be much of a handicap. or maybe, if possible, just a warship capable of colonizing a planet, or make them capable of colonizing a single world if it has ruins on it?

a few other races,

were you planning on including the replicators? not my fav

theres also the ashen, those little buggers who come in peace, and sterilize your population when you aren't looking, to let you die off slowly and quietly.

theres also the armoured red guys who took over the sgc, and used devices to make them look like the sgc personel. though all we saw was them, no ships, not even a name as i recall

the reeto? i know i didn't spell that right, but the little invisible terrorists who want to kill all humans so the goauld will have no hosts.

marty's(i thinks) race, the 5 deserters who fled to earth when the goauld attacked their world. he's the one who made the wormhole extreme series. atleast you saw one of their ships.

theres also whoever karen blacks character tried to trade the prometheus to for weapons grade whatever-its-call, naqueda?, but now i'm really reaching, so ill stop. but i just wanted to throw out another actual alien looking race.

I can help out with the modding bit on WPs: Yes you can target Wps to open in a specific place, every time. WP don't stack in SEV. You can't 'move' or 'transport' WPs on ships. However, for an alternative 'method' you might say deploy your Stargate using ships and bases and you can also gather them back up to 'move' them to another location to be re-deployed.

I do a similar set up in my BSG mod except the FTL drive is my WP device and it stays with the ship and is only open for one turn, its listed as a navigation marker on the screen in game. You could easily change the graphic of the WP to that of the Stargate. You have to tweak your menu commands so they mask the SEV original mechanics behind the WP but its doable.

Oh, and one other point, you can limit the system to only one stargate at a time (would make for an interesting game...), this way no one else can 'dial in' while your using the gate to that address.

There are some nice ideas here!

The Jaffa could be another race, either as rebels or as a nation, like in the end of the series. The Wraith could be a nomad race, and the replicators from the Pegasus Galaxy would be interesting as well. They would have the mechanoid racial trait, but normal, although advanced, ships.

A balanced mod would eliminate some problems, but I think it would be more interesting to play a game similar to the series, with powerful Asgard shields and not so powerful weapons for the Tauri, for example. One of my favorite battles was that when the Daedalus fought the Hive ships above Atlantis. They couldn't damage them, but the shield was holding long! It would be cool to see the Tauris with more than 2 ships at the same time

One thing I always thought would be interesting was the ZPM. Suppose the more powerful weapons and shields used a lot of supplies. If there was a way to create a (very expensive) component with lots of supply, but that would not be refilled in a resupply depot, it would look like the one in the series. Maybe it could be a emergency ressuply component. But if it can be repaired, it would be too powerful.

I think the main problem is that you won't be able to have AI layers. As far as I know, no one has written an AI to deal with warp point technology.

Like the idea though.

This is definetly doable, just some component code and soe empire script code to make sure no abuse use. Just set a script function to search for damaged ZPMs and remove them permanently from the ship inventory so they are truely destroyed or used up.

Then the problem is building them.

How expensive would the component be? If it's expensive, building a ship with one would be hell and probably not worth it.

I think a way to do it would be that you create a "fake" supplies counter represented by the damage to the ZPM. Such that supplies used would be deducted from the module by giving it damage, when completely destroyed, remove it from inventory.

Soultion?

Give it an ass-ton of structure, hardly any size, moderate cost, couple thousand rads. We want the ship to be built fairly easily. Limit one per ship/etc.

Script wise, it should dole out supplies on a constant basis--if the ship needs them, give it 1000, afterall, the ZPM powers things, right? Then hit it for whatever you think 1000 supplies is to it's structure (1%?)
Your uber-weapons could either cost real-supplies, with the ZPM granting supply regeneration durring combat somehow. Or could do direct "damage" to the ZPM (first checking that it is there and that it has enough structure left).
For taking damage, do something akin to the opposite of crystal armor: make it take TONS of damage when hit.
Anti-repair is the hard part.
I suppose you could have a script that could keep track of its damage and if it ever goes up, change it back.

Nice, so it can be done. I have not checked the components file, but if change a value in the crystal armor to negative or invert it, it will take a lot of damage instead of reducing it, right?

Is there any way to "find a component" with ruins? That would be the best way to get a ZPM, exactly like they do in Stargate.

Unless you make the ZPM a unit type and put the abilities on the size type. For those that play the game more than me, can units give supplies to fleets/ships? If so your zpm would be a unit that would just be put in a cargo hold (or a special cargo component that only takes zpm's).

If a unit could be utilized to be the ZPM itself, then this becomes much easier, is it possible to "spawn" units via a script?

Bugger. If only.

another possible method would be to script the cheat codes to assist the empire to make a ship/unit, then take it away for whatever script event you want (currently that is how I'm testing it). Its messy and leaves allot of room for error...

Hunh... nobody added the Tok'ra or Replicators(either version?) to the list?

Erm... the ZPM issue... you can't find units. you find tech fields. Then you build tech from them. So best case scenario, you script the game so that you can find ZPM tech on a special planet type. Adding it as a "unique" tech wouldn't work as only one race would be able to get it. Spawning it randomly wouldn't work either.

Also what is to prevent you from simply repairing the ZPM?

A event script that checks to see if it's damage has gone up, and if so, deal out the correct damage again.

Um... How would it store the "damage" seperately from the actual damage? and more importantly, what is to prevent this fix/break cycle from tying up your repair facilities indefinately?

There is some event storage script functions that will allow this idea, it would be tedious to script the process, but not impossible.

I think I have a method for the Stargate mod. Using WP nullifier ability on a stellar object in every solar system to keep WP from working and also using stellar manip devices until research in a certain stellar map area is reached, once reached it sets of a script code to 'destroy' or deactivate the WP nullifier ability and allows WP travel to that location. This would also allow ruin tech to give tech for other WP addresses.

With an end of event all WP close order, no Stargate stays open for more than a turn. Give the Stargate a unlimited range to any system and each empire has one in there solar system.

I may do this in a quick mod style...

Good news! Have you found a way to allow the empires to communicate with each other when the warp points are closed?

I haven't tried it yet, but I think I can get some of the racial traits set in so every empire has ancient trait. However, you could always assume that you need a stargate connection to communicate

It makes sense, but it would be difficult to have treaties.