Mod Request: Improved PJI's

On it.

EDIT: Done, testing.

Tell me how well it works.

Done, click here to download. It's about 700kb, when I tried deleting everything but that file it crashed so I included all the other files in their text form. If you want me to make it pure-binary let me know.

EDIT: Made it pure binary for speed optimization reasons. Checksum is changed but reflected in the readme.

Wait, what?

Did they release the modding tools already?

They released some of the more basic stuff, check out the entity editing thread. It's unfinished, but Blair and Craig wanted to get it out since people have been itching for them. Soon they'll put it up on the site officially, and have it be more complete

I paid the 1200 creds and leveled up in Clairvoyance.

If anyone else has a minimod request let me know. This one took all of five minutes.

If you did what I think you did, how do you stop the AI from just hanging at the phase threshold, trying to phase forever while you rip their fleet apart? Simply increasing the delay PJI's inflict does not, I think, tell the AI how much trouble they are in... unless I am mistaken and the system is made way smarter than I thought?

I thought of that, was going to just increase the delay like you said, but realized what'd happen and made it so that the PJT simply turned it off like the ion bolt does.

Ah, I see, so the AI does not even attempt to phase out?

Though for the future I hope there will be a way to mod AI behaviour to prioritize destruction of phase inhibitor units/structures (and appropriate building of the same). Otherwise this can create an unfair advantage for us humans.

For now, my version simply doubles the vanilla delay, as it is more useful that way. I plan to combine it with buffed versions of defense turrets. Should make it possible to blockade a sector without having AI just get stuck in it like a fly in a spider's web.

trying to incorporate this into my own personal mod. May i know which files you edited and exactly what you did? thanks

Funny, I was considering doing the same thing. Increase the PJI delay and increase the range and ROF of defense turrets. Nothing that'll completely lock down a system, but something that'll make them painful and worth the money invested.

I will upload my version of the mini-mod later today, and also post here what you need to change to make your own version, if someone doesn't beat me to it. Its actually quite a simple process.

Also, for the sake of limiting the size of your uploads/downloads, you can upload just the files you changed with the install instructions telling people to copy the vanilla files to the appropriate mod folder themselves. Saves time and bandwidth.

Change the EntityModifiers to 0, delete the block, entityBoolModifiers to 1, make a entityBoolModifier "DisablePhaseJump".

I'm currently working on a mini-mod tentatively titled Sins of a Blockade Runner that will implement a interdictor, "hit-and-run" and blockade runner ships for all the races.

Right then.

To edit the capabilities of your defense batteries, you have to find their files. Vasari missile bays are described in the PLANETMODULE_PHASEORBITALMISSILEDEFENSE.entity file, for example.

Under the Weapon section, find the lines

DamagePerBank:FRONT 150.000000 - this controls the damage
Range 7500.000000 - range, obviously
PreBuffCooldownTime 7.500000 - I believe this controls the time between shots

Editing the way PJI's behave is a bit more complex (well, not actually once you know *which* file to edit). Without boring you with details, go to the BuffHyperspaceDisruptionTarget.entity file and change the line

Level:0 -2.5000000 (250% increase in phase-out time)
to
Level:0 -4.5000000 (450% increase in phase-out time)
or whatever you like.
This will change the PJI's for all races.

no way, then we wont be able to escape!

One quick question, would it be possible to either

a) make a new turret type

or

modify the PJI

so that we have a turret which fires something similar to the gravity missile? or some other form of system disabling missile? do I just change what a turret fires to be BuffGravityWarheadSpawn or something like that? I think the PJI would work much better if it was something like a gun that shot at targets and stopped 'em individually rather than a field that just slowed everything down, or stopped everything til it was killed.

Check the modified dates.

There is already a ship ingame which fires phase resetting missiles. So I suppose porting that ability to a turret and then modifying it should result in the turret firing phase-disabling missiles...

Hmm.

For a quick test I just took the file PLANETMODULE_PHASEORBITALJUMPBLOCKER.entity

changed

ability:0 "AbilityHyperspaceDisruption"

to

ability:0 "AbilityGravityWarhead"

and gave it some antimatter and antimatter regen.

I was able to cast the ability from the ability panel, and get it to shoot at things after I'd cast it at something, but with the default-on autocast on it seemed extremely reluctant to actually shoot at anything. The one time I ever saw it shoot at something on its own was after I'd already got it to shoot at a target manually. The default range of 6000 was way too short to hit something trying to leave at the edge of the well. So I made a copy of AbilityGravityWarhead.entity and changed over the PSI to use my copy of AGW.e, and changed the ability range in the copied file to 15000, but it still didn't seem to automatically shoot at things trying to leave the system.

So it .. sort of works, if you micromanage it, but there has to be something in the behaviour of the CapitalshipPhaseColony.entity that makes it sensibly chose when to cast it that is not making it over to the PSI. Still, extremely pleasantly surprised at how incredibly easy it is to chop and change bits around without anything breaking outright.

Try tweaking the AI use and autocast variables in the ability.