As for periods of struggle for a race I was thinking just limiting the amount of tech while increasing its cost verses the other times. In addition I think that any tech that does exist should help reinforce things that occur during that struggle that may help them.

For example let us take the EA isolation period: during this time the EA basically kept to itself and developed more advance technology with the help of the shadows. However they greatly hurt their economy so tech in that period could look like this:

Civilian: Treaty break (reduced trade income), Night Watch (Increase resistance to other cultures (requires treaty break))

If possible these upgrades could be tied to ones in the military branch that allow better weapons/armor ect. This way the player is forced to take the economic hits before being able to gain the militaristic rewards of this period.

geez... with these era's in the mix I think this would be a very interesting mod to play!

Pre-checks are entirely possible.  It'd work just like any other prerequisite for later research. Heck, you can even have multiple pre-reqs to gain something, though it may not necissarily display them properly beyond the first.  I've made ships that require both lvl 5 capital ship count, and level 3 total ship count (...I forget the actual names for these...), and it worked fine, but only the first one on the list was shown as unlocking the specific ship.  And obviously those have no relation to the ship itself.  Any of the research should be the same, and which tree it's in doesn't matter.  What you will NOT get, at least automatically, is the little arrows pointing across the trees at the paths.  Those are part of the background, and you'd have to create it yourself.

Btw, the idea of taking hits to economy, or other things as the case may arise, is actually a rather amusing and interesting way to go about getting those much better later upgrades.  You *might* wanna consider trying to counter balance them a little, just so they're not ALL bad (like perhaps the reduced trade income also comes with a slightly resource gathering bonus), but if it doesn't honestly fit the theme of the particular research/timeframe, don't bother.

Exactly this is why in my example I showed one that raised planet allegiance or resilience. This way it would increase tax rates or extraction rates to make up for the trade deficit. Also when you upgrade your fleet you take a permanent % hit for those extra ships. I think it could be interesting to see research do something similar where you may take hits in some places to make gains in others but later down the road there may be another upgrade that eliminates the negative such as after the civil war when order and freedom along with trade are restored.

There are two possible directions I think you can take a mod like this:

1. Just make a simple mod that simulates B5 space combat
2. Create a revolutionary game that recreates the Babylon 5 universe that we all know and love by taking the player into dynamic environments where they experience each of the 6 major races from Babylon 5 in ways that allow them to reconnect with the story though an extremely realistic recreation of those races histories, societies and cultures.

Also thanks for the info on the prechecks

Sigh if only the game engine had a more evolved or more complex event engine where periodically events throughout the galaxy happened besides Artifact discovered, pirate raids, ect... ect... ect...

What that would mean is as our friend above has pointed out, if a Civil War breaks out and such and chaos ensues that the event that likely leads up to this brings the said increases and unlocks something while in another way your hit hard in one area

@ZEROibis
Thats exactly what I was thinking about (Nightwatch, when Diplomacy is out, could even hurt the benefits of Diplomacy)
I want to have a kind of storyarc/timeline so that you feel the universe.

And for pre-checks, a max of 3 (or was it 2?) IIRC is possible. (That rather limits it)

As for Technologies, I did a brainstomring a while ago. IF anything of this is not correct terminology, feel free to correct me

EA Research

Earth Alliance Technology:
Hull Plating 1-5
Laser Beam weapons 1-3
Neutron? Beam
Mini beam
Jump Engine
Advanced Jump Engine
Jumpgate
Puls cannon (light-Heavy, unipuls, mini, gatling)
Plasma cannon (normal, Heavy, burst)
Railgun 1-5
Flight computer
Missiles 1-3
Defence Platform
Battle Station
All Ships

Civil Research:
Psi Corps
Telepath Modification Project
Telepath Weapon Project
FreeMars
ISN
ISN Broadcast Range Extention
ISN Hyperspace Broadcast
ISN Propaganda Campaign
ISN News Freedom Act
IPX
IPX Deep Space Exploration
IPX Rim and Beyond Project
Trade Station
Nightwatch
HomeGuard
Suppresive Colony Policy
Police State
Alien Shadow Technology
Interstellar Diplomacy
Diplomatic Station
Ambassadors
Restored EarthGov
Psi Corps Restructuring
ISA Membership
Independent Mars Government
Mining Coalition
Dockworkers Guild
Declaration of Independence ( Stations )
Technological Intertrade Agreement
Deep Space Radar
Hyperspace Radar
M Class Planet Terraforming 1-4
Ice Planet Terraforming 1-3
Vulcanic Planet Terraforming 1-3
Black Market Ties
Illegal Alien Technology Trade
Torture Lifestealer Device
Telepath CPU Usage




Minbari Research

Religious Caste

Valen Council
Child of valen
Breaking of the Staff of valen
Warrior caste centric Council
Civil war
Worker caste Council
ISA
Holy Rage
Triluminary
Cryssalis
Vorlon interferance
Telepath creation
An la shok
Entil zha
Anlashok war Training
Diplomatic efforts
Diplomatic Station
Telepath war Training
Self Sacrifice

Hmmm gonna keep it simple eh and not use any of the fancy modded planets other mods have? :p

Very nice models!

EDIT for Zvezdochets 4/10/09

WTF ? I not see other message after post ZEROibis from 30 sep, whats wrong ? May be i banned in this thread ?

Others threads - no problems.

Not sure what's wrong, but the threads have been quiet lately ... we are at post #275 - You shouldn't have been banned, maybe a problem with the forum ...

Received an ability from EvilTesla-RG which I requested and he made in record time! I still need to test it, but this ability should allow a ship (we still have to specify) to tow a starbase around in the gravwell. This ship should be slow as hell, and the starbase is not operational while being towed, but this would end the idiocracy of destroying a starbase on one side of the planet to rebuild it on the other side.

Thanks! TobiWahn_Kenobi, image Cronos and Apollo take here ?

http://s49.photobucket.com/albums/f252/CanisD/Shipyard/Drawings/Size/

WTF ? I not see other message after post ZEROibis from 30 sep, whats wrong ? May be i banned in this thread ?

Others threads - no problems.

I don't know, they are very small so I cannot verify that the details are correct. The Explorer for example does not look a bit like that on the show. (but I could mistake one ship for another here)

Here are miniature pics of orestes, cronos and apollo

http://www.agentsofgaming.com/ofaea.htm

Here are picture of many a ship in good resolution (I would prefer that versions - Delphi and Apollo from Mongoose - as they look more EA like than the ones from B5Wars)

http://www.star-ranger.com/ACalltoArms.htm

Great Mod!  Thanks to all that are working on it!  I do have a slight problem....the AI doesn't do anything.  The enemy ( Minbari ) just sits in their starter planet system and builds one Sharlin and a Colony ship and doesn't do anything else.  If you've addressed this or i've overlooked the answer in the "Read-Me" then I appologize.  Great work though guys....i'm very excited to see future updates.

Wow that one site has some ships for EA that I have not even heard of before!

Also another idea that I wanted to recommend was the use of planet bombardment. I think that missile animations should some how be changed to look like landing craft because with the exception of the mass drivers and the planet killers actually landing troops was way more common in Babylon 5. As stated in earth minbari war there were tons of battles fought on the ground and I think it would be interesting to see this mod reflect that. So for example things that improve planet health say that they improve ground defenses and station additional ground troops.

In addition I would like to suggest a new idea for planet health restoration. What if there was a way to some how land your own forces on your own planet to help it regain health faster. This would be sort of like bombing your own planet except your dropping reinforcements instead of bombs. I do not know if this would be possible but it would affect the game tactically in the following way:

Enemy attacks a planet with “landing craft” this ability does damage to the planet over time so that even if that ship leaves the planet continues to take damage until the effect wares off (ie the army that landed was defeated). This could be accomplished by giving the ships that would attack planets a special ability that allows such a thing to occur every so often, perhaps reliant on anti matter. However such ability is not required as you could possibly tie some other effect into the normal “weapon” of the given ship.

If your planet is taking heavy damage and you do not think it can hold on or if it is at low health you can use your own “landing craft” to help boost planet health and thus recover or negate the effects of an enemy attack.

Let us take for example two ea landing craft attack a planet one from team A the other from team B. The planet from team A is attacked by team B using a landing craft. The planet will now take X damage over the course of X time. To negate these effects team A uses its own landing craft on the planet and restores X damage over X time. This assumes that both have the same upgrades for ground combat training and ground based weapons.

I am not sure if such a thing is possible but I think that it will greatly impact the combat in the game and make it more similar to how things work in the Babylon 5 universe. Some races like the vorlons and shadows would not be really affected by this and that would also lead to more dynamic tactics as they have no way to negate landing craft by using their own to defend because they have none. Other races like the Cintari would have more of a hybrid tactic as they can utilize landing craft like the other younger races but also have access to weapons that destroy planets like the older ones do.

As for the tech trees that seems promising and having a limit of 3-4 pre requirements is good to know. I will look into trying to make a flow chart of the ones stated here along with my own this weekend.

@ZEROibis
Thanks for working on the research trees. As for the Bombardment - I had this idea myself (well, at least the first part of it) but as a very low priority. Still, if someone else wants to do this, he's more than welcome. And I will probably send it to EvilTesla-RG as well, he is out most gifted ability-maker!

@Archangle1980
I was told so, thanks for testing. We need to look into this further to see how we can get the AI to work with our research trees. I hope we can work this out as it would be a tragedy if all that work turns out to be unsucessful

Oh yea, that is defently not something to be trying to implement right now but I did want to get an idea of if it would ever come to the game so that I can come up with some tech for it and jsut leave it out of the trees until the ships are updated in the future for it to work.

I send it to EvilTesla-RG, and he seems to be working on it now!

And btw SteinerX, My I encourage you to disable the colored skyboxes? Would give better impression of vast space (but thats just my preference )

Behold the vastness of space

EDIT: Yes, the ships look better in it!

Today I came up with 7 major periods in EA time line based on the dates provided. I have compiled a list of technology and changes each period containes. Next I will take the list of recommended tech and apply it to the list then I will take that along with my own ideas for tech and create a full tree this weekend. The fist two periods will give EA most of its early tech and ships while the second gives them better relations to make up for the EA-min war in period two. In periods 4-6 things will be harder for EA as there are few new ships however better weapons and other specal abilities are found in these times to make up for trade losses. In the seventh preiod the EA gains the last of its tech but has a few final hits to keep it in check.

Sounds good! Just try to keep the ship release date in the general timeline correct.

Thanks for helping us and welcome to the team!

Really looking forward to seeing this in action! Thanks for your time and effort!

Tobiwahn: I'll set up a new thread for this at 7DS and on the blog if you want?

Tobiwahn: Any thoughts on Entrenchment 1.04 ... to upgrade or not to upgrade that is the question (for the next release 0.34)?

Loading Screen 8

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Hi guys,

looking forward to this MOD, Babylon 5 is perhaps my favourite Sci-fi TV show alongside DS9. If you are interested, I found on my drive Centauri Vorchan model, i started to do few years ago and never finished. So i am willing to finish it now and then if you want its all yours. Right now it looks like this:

http://s260.photobucket.com/albums/ii21/dusanko/?action=view&current=centaurivorchanWIP.jpg

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Sorry for the  confusion with  " alt="" /> thing in the previous post, i tried to insert image, but i didnt work and  it cant be removed now. Anyway, if you copy-paste the link, it should work correctly.

Nice loading screen!!

As to the Vorchan - Well, help is appreciated, but unfinished models will not be of help I think, as for everything to fit together, I feel it is better to start from scratch or have a model where there are just some Details missing. Thanks nevertheless.