@CaptainKal

Not much differences yet to an alpha31 release except:

- You start in a random selected system and not in Sol not even close to (usually), it is the basic part of my idea to have a sort of general mission to find back home, even if that is no must i expect anyone will like to find Sol. The systems vary from "shit to start" to "perfect", means; "shit to start" is a single sun system like Sol with short distances between the mission targets, short distance equals to less income for each mission and to many repeating missions until you only can afford a lousy autopilot. "Perfect" mans a system with distances above 1000 AU this will give you the 1400 credits you need for the autopilot right after the first completed mission which is on the other hand not that easy, learn to maneuver your ship manually, this is task no. 1, and to be honest even i can fail i do miss sometimes the "Lagrange point" which is in my version vital because fuel consumption and overall capacity of the ships is tight, if you overshoot you won't have enough fuel to return, if you are to short you are most probably to late. Even if Phoenix is far from reality this brings a little bit of realism to it, manage your fuel consumption. Mission time is tight calculated sometimes to tight also here your experience is requested to know how long it will take you. In effect when you play it for the very first time you will have to experiment with this first, find out how much fuel and time you need for a given distance. However it is no longer a static value of 40 days because this is far to long for a short run to a moon or sister planet and to short for distances above 1000 AU. It took me some time to elaborate a working function for the logarithmic behave of the travel time and it's still not perfect but works quite well in the range of some 100'000km to 1000 AU, probably a mission time of 3 hours for a run to a orbital station seems to short but it isn't, however everything is better as static 40 days for all recently this i only added to interplanetary missions, i have a bit problems to calculate the distance of a target system, it's planned together with the interplanetary taxi missions which are still missing but would be important to make quicker cash at start.

- The ship, you start with a lousy shuttle with nothing except 100 credits, there is near to no way to bargain with equipment or ships. Recently i added a damaged version of the starting shuttles which is a little lower in price but a difference of 50 or 100 credits won't make you rich (Yes the damage is to see, it is in general a failure of the ships electric circuit which is represented by a flickering of the lights and something flashing inside the ship, no it is no big performance hit in fps as i found out most problematic is other dynamic stuff and not a changing of materials billboard lights or local lighting, models can vary much and sometimes i'm not even sure why, worst are my scripted geometry models which i now exchange one by one with wavefront based models, this allows me to add a lot and it's still better in performance, the last model i made i even started without a level of detail and what do you expect? best framerate of all - hmmm.... nonetheless i made the tedious work to add a proper lod to it). Also the Shuttles vary now more in specifications, it is possible to finish missions with the "Space Taxi" but it's by far not as good as to use the "Towboat" since the Taxi has most space reserved for the cabins and highest hull mass while the Towboat is exactly vice-versa and has the lowest hull mass in the shuttle family. Taking a mission which uses up two tons of cargo capacity can prevent the Taxi from completing such a mission since you can load only 5 tons of extra fuel, equipment or cargo, the 5 tons are meant to be reserved for equipment, a Taxi is a Taxi and no multipurpose ship.

side note: it is possible that i will prepare this or that ship for the recent "Pioneer" release since i started the converting to meshes it won't matter much in what format i export them, i already thought of this possibility and planned the models so i can re-use them, but this has no priority to me except one comes along and says "can u please..." then i can - just keep in mind the restrictions of the (not so) SGM are heavy compared to what i can do with the script, it simply means less visible to exchange parts such as the sensor phalanx of my ships or the pilot, standard weapons and sub-models which won't fit at all, even restricted animations in the for games unsuitable collada format, it has just no flexibility and is meant for web presentations and architecture and not for games.

This means for the player a lot of work until you only can buy the autopilot and then the bore really starts, make cash for a ship which will bring you out of the starting system since the interplanetary shuttle series can't have a hyperdrive.

To lower the bore i added a couple of fighters which are good in price but not what one likes to get for something else as fighting, the ships are specialists and will become more and more specialized in future.

Which brings me to ship specifications, to have a system behind i use a couple of functions to make it easier and even better lined up, such as a thrust calculator which calculates the to expect thrust for you on either mass; tara, netto or brutto but best is to keep one so you will know in advance how the ship will turn out. For the fuel consumption i use a table which requests the drive type for fuel consumption, i decided here for a table because this will allow you to enter in the table non linear behave of the drive classes, recently i changed all a bit and vice versa to my previous release i now lower the consumption as larger the drive is, in steps of ~10%, while for military drives the behave is vice-versa larger drives use more fuel. Ship-cost is calculated based on two values "mass" plus "drive", again for mass one can use either tara netto or brutto as base and add the cost of the drive which is only a percentage of the total cost but adds in a simple manner a few credits to the cost (looks more reasonable as i.e.  a straight 10'000 which then turns to 9'900 or 10'100). Recently i use the tara mass (hull + fuel + mounted drive) until i used the brutto mass (tara + netto). One could even use the netto mass, while i have the impression that it is isn't as useful, brutto mass leaded to high costs, while the recent use of tara mass is quite balanced. Even for the "angular thrust" i use a small table of three possible mutilpliers, factor 1 is meant for carriers (depending on the ships visual thruster setup, if a ship has not many lateral thrusters it won't have a good angular thrust usually, as example a ship like the FE2 ASP Explorer, it has only a single thruster in each direction such a ship will have bad lateral thrust and even a worse angular, in fact hard to imagine how this ship maneuvers at all with so little thrusters, but just as example i don't have such a ship with so little visible thrusters even if an ASP clone is on the way it will have a full setup), factor 2 for multipurpose ships and factor 3 for fighters, again the table allows to enter here non-linear multiplication values since this needs some experience to find out what is useful (not as much as what is reasonable, this i don't mind here ships should have weaknesses), more as three multipliers won't make much sense to me here. The good thing is once you elaborated something working you can use this for all ships and it simplifies the set-up a lot further one can say it auto-balances them since i use a compliant system.

Usually my ships have a small fuel capacity and i expect that a player knows how much extra fuel he will need and where the balance is between load and consumption, because it's no said that it is always better to load you ship to the rim, sometimes it's fuel preserving and time preserving to load less, it needs experience.

Hint: don't use a calculator - use your guts!

Just one ton more or less can make a big difference on a 1000AU trip.

These are the basic "two" differences and they do make a difference, you will have a goal in Phoenix even if that goal is recently just to get a better ship and to make it to Sol. All this was done without to change a single line of code i just used what is present in a dedicated manner. Or like i say "obstacles make the game - nothing is as boring as a fairway without bunkers".

Perhaps someone remembers the ancient AMIGA game "return to earth" which was a sort of elite clone (in a further sense), the idea to "return to Sol" i adapted from here it makes already a good general task to fulfill. I really liked the game even when it is horrible to play on anything else as a standard A500 without memory expansion (it is to fast else to battle the random flipping around enemies).

Future plans:

The ships will be more specialized one specialization is that fighters won't have cabins and no cargo-bay lifesupport, fighters are fighters and are made to fight and not to carry goods and especially not to carry passengers, for this you will need a "taxi" of some sort which obviously won't be the thing to fight with. This also opens a new sort of mission type "escort", not yet scripted but planned for sure, transporters and taxis will request for escort because they will leak of armor some like the ip shuttles have not even passive. Further i've planned a sort of bonus/malus system, there are good things you can do i.e. to escort a transporter or to explore a planet (can be malus if it is a different faction, already this stands half-ways and Walterar already made the script though you can't finish scout missions to a different faction except your faction you are registered in and independent). Taking a contract for an assassination will lower your reputation which mustn't mean that you will have no offers but as more your reputation will tend to one or the other side as more missions of a sort should appear on the board. I won't need many character points but the ones i have i will use for something, one is enough together with "nil" this makes already two 😉 adding the opposite "minus" makes already three of one - if one uses them instead just to have them. Always keep in mind "zero is a value" in a game, to have no points is a point, based on such the reply will be "oh sorry but you have to little reputation for this escort mission" or "pardon but we need an unscrupulous killer for this mission". One can be enough - if used. I planned to start the players reputation with the first completed mission, this should give you a diploma that you are able to fly a space-ship (quite important to have a sort of medal, "ahhh..."). I've planned to give also medals for "negative" missions such as assassinations, it won't matter what you choose to be good or bad both should be a career and from on a certain point it should not be possible to change this career. Once a Pirate always a Pirate more or less, this is really future music and once i started this i will see what is best.

And, and, and... i.e. restriction of ship equipment based on system crime or population (or whatever), restriction of ship types based o factions, more mission types such as "hunt a space beast" vs. "save a space beast", "repair satellite" vs. "shoot down satellite", in general to each mission should be a counterpart. Linking of missions, generated linked chains of missions, for this i needed to rewrite all, simplify them so i can connect them and for this i will remove the translator it only complicates all uselessly for me. To me it is no question that in 3200 no other language will be spoken as English, perhaps one would prefer Esperanto as world language but i'm pretty sure it will be English, the evolution in this direction started with electronic media is irreversible. Also i like to use the possibility that you can write tables and scripts from within the game, which means that one could explore unexplored systems, name them by choice and receive a reward for it, probably even can expand a faction.

MOST IMPORTANT CHANGE TO ME: GODDAMMIT I NEED A DIFFERENT ARCHITECTURE FOR HOSTILE WORLDS! Skyscrapers on a moon look damned shitty.

A short reply to you ChromeDNA, the "transparent station walls" are "solved", solved means what you use is i guess already two years old, the station model was an unfinished test model to test the animation (which still has problems, they made a change from alpha30 to 31 in this to respct the leakage of collada that it can't interact with the game, this simplification gives me headaches, precise there is a problem now with the "dock one at a time" setting and it prevents now to have a proper working docking animation with one door and multiple docking bays - like i said collada is unsuitable and the workarounds didn't made it better). However the three recent orbital stations have now no "transparent walls", respectively that is now covered by a proper docking bay of which it leaked before i tested out the problems with the animation. The stations orbital and ground stations need further testing i still noticed sometimes problems if a bay is occupied by another ship and still sometimes hanging ships can lock up an orbital station, both isn't proper solved yet, probably for this i will have to return to alpha30 which haven't had this issue.

Couple of years ago a programmer called me up (a silent observer of the project) to work on Pioneer because he thought i'm on the proper path, however he also decided for alpha30 as a base to start our project because of such issues. Unfortunately and really unfortunately i lost any contact to him because my provider lost my e-mail address, how such is possible is a riddle to me (flipper machines in the office aren't the proper thing - i guess of a slave driver goddammit! and recently they top all, two weeks ago they claimed "even craftsmen can do the work from home" - "oh fine" i thought now we should all stay at home, all industrial and construction workers and all in the transport business, maybe then they will understand that money isn't enough, yeah truck drivers stay at home and play truck driving with your daughter or son i wonder how long it will take until they find ground, three days? "Dann ist's fertig mit Gipfeli und Kaffee am Morgen" But as long as we "idiots" are willing to offer our health and life for nothing they won't change, i mean they even have forgot where the bread comes from, the plate fork and knife, the electrical power, the heat and the covering roof over their hollow heads, while they fear a chance of 0.003 per thousand we offer our health to 100% daily! - decadent assholes! They forgot the basics that you live so others have a life), however this lost cost me any contact i had except the ones in the forums i was subscribed to, in fact they killed a web presence in this manner. This stroke so heavy because we started this in a closed team his intention was to monetize our project and losing of my e-mail cost me contact, address to the closed group and worst of all my identity. In fact this loss of my e-mail was a harder loss as all the broken HD's and computers in all, after this i was destroyed, really flattened to the ground. He really had convinced me that it is better to make a little money with it and leave the open-source project even if i told him that it "makes me weak in the knees" if i have to guess of to fulfill expectations for a pro-game. "Don't you think your ip is worth to be protected Gernot?" - "erm... well".

Tell me my dear friends why to all the hell i offered my health in a nuclear power plant?

The rest of your points ChromeDNA i will answer tomorrow, now it is 0400 and quite early in the morning.

Perhaps a few of what i do best:

Recently still "Sagittarius Vampire" but i decided to change the brand to "Gemini" since i planned to restrict the threes ships to two seater and they will need a co-pilot, this to restrict a little the else quite good ships.

---

Scripted i started a sort of Krait clone with the small difference that the rear isn't pointed and the ship is less wide therefore higher (rather a Viper with Krait typical outrigger). It was named until "Cyrapi" which proper read means Piracy, the name i made to a brand of a couple of ships which are heavy leaned on FE2, so following ship turned to "Cyrapi Raptor". The brand Cyrapi will be all single seater fighters with the restriction of no passenger cabins and no cargo-bay life support. Fighters which are on the limit of capacity, as soon as you mounted all equipment not much space will be left for cargo. The Raptor has unique wide "dual lasers" which are mounted on the rigs, how well this is in a fight i can't tell yet, the ship is quite light and the maximum is a 4MW laser then the capacity is exhausted, therefore it has a super hyperspace range and an outstanding thrust for my else "low in acceleration" ships (still far from reasoning and you would be chili sauce with such G values) while it is a little weak in angular thrust because of the thruster setup (only one lateral thruster to hover side wards and for angular turns).

Since i decided to have a set of FE2 clones it was followed by the most classic of all FE2 ships, the Eagle on which i blatantly added the pods of the Courier to vary it a little from the Eagle but it can't hide it the shape is to unique. Since this is a fusion of the Eagle and the Courier it is simply named "Cyrapi Fusion". Imho the best Eagle clone i ever made. The hull is slightly lifted to be less sharp on the tip and it is also tilted a little more to the front to give more space for pilot and recess. This is recently the ship with the best angular thrust, not as "fast" as the Raptor but very agile. A little heavy the hyperspace range is the weakest point of this ship. It is an inter planetary fighter type.

Another such airplane like from the set of FE2 ships is the "Cyrapi Phantom" a blend of the Falcon and the Kestrel, while everybody will say "Kestrel" the fuselage and fins are from the Falcon, i don't like the flattened fuselage of the Kestrel, i guess the idea was to let it look closer to a SR-71 (guess also of the leaned in fins of the Kestrel exactly like on the SR-71) which i didn't even wanted to reach else i would have started the model from scratch and not from existing scripted geometry i have. Perhaps, i thought of it because a use of bezier shapes would help me to reach the fluid shape of the SR-71 exactly. What it became is a heavy fighter which looks like a heavy fighter or bomber.

@gernot66

OK! That was an epic reply!! It seems to me, that you opted for a "more" puzzle like aproach to your mod. I hope that I can alt/tab it, in order to have an matlab script running fuel/orbit calculations!!! Any official release day? 

Perhaps someone remembers the ancient AMIGA game "return to earth"

I thought that I knew every space based AMIGA game, but this came oit of nowhere. Now I will have to find it!!!!!

Posted by: @gernot66

As first the updated "Phoenix"

Phoenix 20190319

(i moved the stuff to my one drive because i have a lot more space there as on drop box. i hope you have no troubles downloading it)

@crux_72

Here is the last version of this mod (i guess).

Hi Gernot and all people of this topic!

As a programmer with 28 years experience, I can help (what I can) with optimizing, balancing and improvement of LUA-codes in this mod to make this mod more, more, more, more, more interesting with its gameplay. More different events, more unpredictable situations in space, more maybe some surprices and of course - more attracting Gernot's models. Also I'm going to upload here tons of space music (with my program of the music folders selector you can manage to changing music with random selections every day and without huge game delaying after running executable of the Phoenix).

For now, I'd like to introduce (briefly at this moment) starting things of my sub-mod named "The Phoenix career. From $50 to $50M".

1. Start with the crumpled $50 banknote that you had unexpectedly found in your left pocket. 😉 

2. The game is ended when you will have $50,000,000 account. Long live your unpredictable business!

3. After starting a new game, you also will get:

• New pack of random faces and backgrounds behind them (so, each time you start new game you will see always different faces everywhere in the game). The huge amount of new real names (from all over the world) will complete this interesting combinations in the game.
• 1 of 5 random starting ship without hyperdrive that have not only unique ship model but also with unique possible modules and parameters of ship making it to do starting business in its individual way. (For example, for the starting ship "Interplanetary Lander" - there will be only 2 modules available: autopilot and radar mapper, so the speciality of this ship will be "The Local Scout" - and so on).
• New unique random seed for autogenerated factions. Before the game used only one RND-seed, so factions always were the same and had the same starting homeworlds. Now the quantity of factions will be increased (from 150..160 to 200..220 aprox.) and also they will use Z-coordinate by random in the 3D star map. This seed will be always different each time you start new game.
• Unique random pack of illegal goods traders. Now, after each new game it's unpredictable to detect fake police (under cover). You always have 50% chance of fake police for each trader. But - with each new game that traders (and its faces with names) will be different. This moment of the game is balanced by me to make the interesting "live and changing" mechanism with random price splashes (or discounts) sometimes and variable stock quantity (it maybe not so rare zero quantity or maybe up to 200 or 250 for radioactives) for each unique illegal market trader.
• If you have a huge amount of space music assorted by folders (more than 10 folders) (for example - I have 45 folders for now) then you will randomly get 10 folders from all amount of music. This issue solves the problem of big delaying of game while its starting. And also you always will get your random music any time at your hand. The 10 random folders of space music are changing (to new random pack) after 00:00 of local time (real time, not game time).

About music - my collection totally changes the music atmosphere in the game. For instance, near orbital stations, you will hear (sometimes, not always) cosmonauts speeches from real orbital stations (ISS, for example), that i'd downloaded many years ago from NASA website. Besides, other 55 music tracks (mostly of them - tracks from the deepspace italian band "Bad Sector") of orbital stations theme will greatly change the music atmosphere as well. I will give (in some period of time - when I upload that music to the web) you all links to download my music too.

Examples:

Here is the example of my final piece of mod that related to DELIVERIES section of the game:

• All delivery adverts randomly created roughly once per 10 hours.
• All delivery adverts randomly removed roughly after 640 min. (560 min. - if delivery type is IX, see below).
• Now you sometimes can see outdated deliveries (but never this happened with "newborn" deliveries in BB). Don't worry - they always will be removed in some period of time.
• Deliveries with distances less than 400K km have less time to execute (but almost always executable). So, from Moscow to Paris you have only a couple of hours (sometimes it could be increased) to deliver a package.
• Slightly expanded random range in times of due of all deliveries.
• Slightly expanded random range in rewards of all deliveries.
• Deliveries with cargo. I'd found out that optimal type of cargo will be fertilizer. Bio crates and bio containers - in the game. The low price of that cargo doesn't make the player to sell cargo instead of its delivering (as was with consumer goods before 😀).
• New and old types of deliveries (with non-equal chances of appearing its in BB if the delivery is local).

The total list of delivery types:

To other systems:

1. GOING TO the {system} system? Money paid for delivery of a small package. (cargo = 0)
2. LONG-RANGE COURIER. Delivery of biological crates to the {system} system. (cargo = 2)
3. URGENT DELIVERY. Fast ship needed to deliver a crate with newest biomaterial to the {system} system. (cargo = 1)
4. POSTAL DELIVERY. Documents to the {system} system. {cash} to an experienced pilot. (cargo = 0)
5. POSTAL SERVICE. We require a ship for the delivery run to {system} system. (cargo = 0)
6. DELIVERY FROM FACTORY. Several containers to the {system} system, {cash} to a responsible pilot. (cargo = 5)
7. FARSCAPE DELIVERY. A small package for the delivery run to {system} system. (cargo = 0)

Inside this system (9 types with different chances of appearing in the BB):

1. FOR COURIERS-NEWBIES. Regular, not fast delivery to {starport}. (chances = 1/6, slightly increased due time but decreased reward)
2. SHORT-RANGE COURIER. Delivery of a small package to {starport}. (chances = 1/6)
3. INTER-PLANETARY CARGO. Freight of local cargo to {starport}. (chances = 1/8, cargo = 1)
4. FAST LOCAL COURIER. Need to deliver scientific blueprints to {starport}. (chances = 1/8)
5. NEARBY DELIVERY. Require quick delivery of an item to {starport}. (chances = 1/8)
6. MOVING LAB. Moving of biological crates to {starport} from the closing lab. (chances 1/12, cargo = 2)
7. LOCAL COURIER. Delivery of some documents to {starport}. (chances = 1/12)
8. PACKAGE DROP. Urgent dispatch of bio crates to {starport}. (chances = 1/12, cargo = 3)
9. X-FILES UNKNOWN DEVICE. Urgent delivery of the alien device to {starport}. (chances = 1/24)

About last type. When I played unmodded version after starting new game, I've noticed a very very long time for accumulating 19K money for buying Natrix - a first cheap ship with the hyperdrive. Besides, the new moments with illegal goods traders and some new specializations of the starting ships lead to necessity of creating the "cool-reward" delivery mission. Of rare chance, of course! Because of the game balance in the game. Not all starting ships now have a radar mapper allowed (due their prophecy). So that ships (and others too, i'm sure :)) now will "hunt" for type-9 delivery to boost their money. Besides the type-9 delivery is not will be always possible. Sometimes it will be outdated, sometimes it will have too short due. Now I test this issue and do this moment my best. The balance will be excellent, I sure. The reward of type-9 delivery is random too. It varies in range [2K - 9.5K] and some part of this reward may be spent for bribes to found out true illegal goods traders (not fake police). Especially, if starting ship is Local Garbage Mover (with 200 tonn cap) - the model is ffe_lifter. Thus, this Garbage Mover in some period of its business will switch from the moving out of rubbish from starports to the moving out of radioactives (they now have random splashes of prices and stock quantity sometimes!). The moving of radioactives is the alternative path of second business (instead of local system's bodies scouting) for the Garbage Mover ship because this ship also has no radar mapper in my edition of Phoenix. The Local Hydrogen Tanker will scoop hydrogen from local gas giants and the Interplanetary Miner will mine ore from local asteroids. But all 5 types of ships will seek this interesting "type-9" missions. I checked this moment in the game. It adds some adrenaline while browsing the adverts in BBs.

But all of these modded parameters and elements may be changed if somebody offers interesting ideas or something else to make this mod more and more interesting.... Shortly - i'm open for suggestions. Soon I will give the link for downloading this my edition when I tested some last things of it. And later - links for music packs too.

I hope Gernot supports me in my wishes of doing more different things in this great (and endless!) game. Because, in fact, space is boring thing. But. The life in space isn't. Because we will not make it boring. Through different events, surprises, amazing music and nicely done many models of ships and spacestations.

I have spent several days for solving nasty bug with game crush when you are on scouting mission.

Who played - they noticed that in 5-10% cases of mapping missions they watched a red screen with game crush info: "LUA object xxxxxxxx is not found in the registry". (as i remember - approx,)

I have somehow solved this problem via the "mapper delay system". In other words, you will have 60 minutes delay after the interruption of mapping (it occurs when you fly out of the surface - you know). You may simple land on the mapping planet's surface and wait using time FF. The mapping interruption often occurs when an enemy ship appers to attack you. And as I noticed the game crush more likely happens after this moment (after severeal minutes of battle with that ship).

Also I've expand the variety of possible attacking ships (all ships with allowed lasers fitting and have capacity >= 25 and <=200).

I will continue to test this issue... but now it works.