sirius

the brightestst star in the night sky of early human civilisation

home of sirius corperation a multi national conglomerate into weapons manufacturing

siriuns are known for their blue skin, white hair squat muscular forms (due to their homeworlds high gravity) and their very short temper

proxima centauri

closest star in the sky to early human civilisation

home of wright shipyards

also federation naval base on 3rd planet and biggest fleet dock in the galaxy

ha ha just a few ideas that you could mention the race of the inhabitants like behado home of the goldskins and have the planet broken up by colour to combat the affects of the naturaly occurring gold lol (read frontiers gazzeteer on frontier astro for more info) lol

Yes thats the sort of thing I was talking about, we already have one for Sirius but we can always add to it. We should also have some discussions here about the type of history we should go for in the galaxy.

Are we going to mimmick Frontier and FFE? Empire, Alliance and Federation?

There is no harm in using Frontier as a basis for our (tom's 😉 ) galaxy, but we shouldn't make it identical.

Lets say we use the Alliance FEd and Empire, but instead we change the Home-Base worlds, Earth is federation, but perhaps we could change Alliance from Alioth to Polaris or something. In order to spread these main worlds out a bit.

Spread them out and give them their own territories.

Same with the empire, send them far down south.

I think it would be also wise to reduce terran planets to about 10% of what there is now. To make these productive Earth-like worlds few and far between.

We just have to have the Thargoids back too 🙂 Witch-space killers would be great.

I'd also like to add in a lost faction of humans, pehaps they left the known galaxy and headed towards the galactic center to start the new human experience 😉

Alien ruins is another pretty cool thing that we could add.

What do you guys think?

There would still be plenty of colonies everywhere, but they would be set-up mainly as underground bases to supply the main worlds. I say underground because they will mostly be on in-hospitable planets where you couldn't have an outside city.

i like the multi ratial concept and have been thinking of getting my ideas down for years

this is a chance for me to finaly get them out i suppose

so here are some of them

difering races of differing strenghts and weaknesses and tech somtimes two or three differing races on one system or planet depending on the planetary bodies within a system

and perhaps one race owning 5 maybe 6 systems

we could take the best concepts from everything

example

race size notes

GALACTIC FEDERATION AND GALCOP

terrans universal colanys 1 major system sol everywhere as earthers are primarily

explorers

sirius 1 major system high gravity dwellers tribal warlike

draconians inhabit sigma draconis 3 small species

proxima 1 major system seat of learning and naval acadamy

rigel kentaurus first out of sol colony indiginous species also 3 seperate lifeforms and earth colonys

+ others like barnards star ,beta hydri,and wolf365 who joined after the first alliance and during the great expansion

standardised navy also known as galcop who have 3 main branches

GPF = galactic federation police force

CNMC = colonial navy and marine corp has a internal affairs section known as GNIS=galactic naval investigative service

GNI = galactic naval intelligence spys and supterfuge based in londons former MI6 headquarters

also has a branch of the GPF known as GBI galactic federal beurau of investigation

ALLIANCE OF INDIPENDANT WORLDS

set of breakaway federal worlds who were fed up of the attitudes towards cloneing and gene manipulation

alioth old holiday resort with 10 beautiful planets seat of goverment

polaris key star to earth who broke away following a dispute over the genetic modifaction of life for

doing new tasks modified race for land sea and air

make great incurrsion troops

altair popular safari destination all kinds of dangourous life but mainly an

ex earth colony

+ states that refused the federations terms and have opted for less stringent conditions

rag tag navy with some new cruisers built recently with the intent of standardising

internal police force that works rather like the one in britain and with each state having its own branch and markings and 1 main headquarters on alioth also the american law system of each state sets its own laws so what is legal in 1 state could be illeagle in another

ACHENAR STAR EMPIRE

achenarians 20+ systems imperial ruled colonys and worlds many races with a lax attitude to most things the federation frowns upon

subjugated many worlds and species (wiping some indigionous life out the achenaarian huminoids are more prevailant with other spicies being relegated to slaves or secondary society) but in general has a peacefull (tho not without border disputes) co existance with the federation

IAN = imperial achennarian navy has standardised ships with its own military police section the DISCPO or department of internal security and civillian protection and order more commonly known as the snatchers

Tal shiar = intelligance agency (couldnt think of a name so i used the star trek romulan one) into gene manipulation and other techniques the cloaking tech used as standard on all achenarian vessels is a closly guarded secret

and achenarians are know to self destruct a ship rather than see it fall into anemy hands

CIS commonwealth of independant states communist grouping of worlds peoples republics and communistst systems high use of propoganda ministrys and internal millitary police no technilogical trade agreements with the outside has resulted in outdated (like cuban cars)and cheaply made tech tho some worlds ARE rich (like china)

THE OLD WORLDS ALLIANCE AND TRADE FEDERATION a grouping of independant single planet systems (from elite) and some multi planet systems including

lave

reidequat

reorte

zaonce

leesti

orerve

ross 128

use of droids in the armed forces (like starwars) high trading agreements (some with ferengi mentality and aquisition laws) no official defence agreement ties tho and law and order is down to that particular systems armed forces with most preferring droids but some preffering clones and others geneticly enhanced sodiers and warriors ross 128 better known for the ice world of merlin

leesti are the best cloners in the galaxy (like Kimino)

THARGOIDS

(i have had a idea to merge the thargoids with the borg a little with elements of species 8472 and the warhammer 40k tyranids thrown in for good measure)

not much is known about them origionaly

only they are a race of telepathicaly connected insectoids who inhabit a host lifeform and upgrade the host with mechanical parts and operate using a hive mind it is not know weather or not a host can be changed back to its origional form

assimilation is inevitable and resistance is futile you will adapt to serve them

living in wichspace they can attack without warning using transwarp technoledgy these are the most intelligent of the bug like creatures they harvest systems for their rescources (minerals and atmosphere) leaving planets as a dying husk

XENOMORPHS space is big so the chances of coming across a hive of these voracious predators is rare but these are the known facts (yes they are pretty much creature from alien mixed with starship troopers bugs and tyranids)

they take you alive to use as incubators for their young they have no eyes but instead use a veriety of enhanced senses (bio electricity and others)

they operate like ants or bees with a queen as head (whos royal jelly is sometimes farmed using a sence in hibitor to mask the presance of humanoids to them)

and they colinise by way of young queens can hitch rides in star freighters

they build nests and if not discovered can quickly grow into a swarm

they are highly armoured and have sutch units as broodwyms (30ft bioelectric worms used to guard hives experts at tunneling) and tanks (huge 30 ft tall beetles who spray acidic plasma and can be used to shoot down capital ships in orbit)

usualy when a swarm gets to this point tho ihe planet is considered lost tho somtimes attempts to claim it back are made and their are some records of imperial forces launching en masse to reclaim boder worlds from this race (note this race could just be added as a few missions including a few big planet reclaiming ones)

other small empires ,alliances,a few facist dictatorships and anarchistic systems (tatooine like planets maybe not nessicarily deserts tho) including religous sects (van mannens star is either federation or alliance) and prison colonys (beta hydri is within the federation and faecce is the imperial equivilent tho they are differant in ideals where as federal prisoners are treated well imperial prisoners are used as forced labour on a barly habitable planets)

whaddya think lol

also generational ships in deep space is a good one ships like voyager where they have constantly added tech to them and are now unrecognisable from the ship they where

New bases, moons and planet changes:

[attachment=251:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-25 07-45-50-25.jpg]

[attachment=250:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-25 07-50-22-92.jpg]

🙂

Spike, sorry I never got back to you. I left this on the backburner until I could compile the code, which I have managed to do now. So if you have any more descriptions I can add them now.

Man s20dan ... that is one sweet looking small moon/asteroid with a lovely embedded/'hidden' base to boost ... niiiiice!

Stuff like this will really add to the game.

I was thinking ... is it possible to have a base with no name (or simply not present) on the galactic map and then also with no name when looking out through the in flight cockpit 'HUD' or whatever it is that gives us names on all objects when flying in the game? You know ... so maybe the player would get information via rumors, hints, news papers, mission briefings etc., but had to go find the base or even the moon/asteroid him/herself using just the information given but without the aid of the autopilot or even the 'HUD'. Then after having found the moon and/or base, it would be available via autopilot and 'HUD'.

The above could also be used to for hidden bases on already named regular planets.

Thank you s20dan ... looking real good!

All the best

Well Im testing that at the moment 😉 , look:

[attachment=252:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-25 17-55-23-14.jpg]

But I was unable to find the base on the asteroid its too well hidden 🙂 So either it just doesnt work, or it works too well 🙂

Edit, I think it does work, here we have shanghai still in the game with no name:

[attachment=253:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-25 18-06-32-00.jpg]

Here, you might as well have a go for yourself. Try and find phobos base, if you can 😉

[attachment=254:pioneer-msvc-9.0_release.7z]

Hah! cool, it actually works.

I guess we will need some substantial hints like approximate distance from planet and plane of orbit to have a chance of finding it, and even then we might consider showing the name if you get within a certain distance or some other aid like a radio message or something. But I really think that this would add something to the exploratory aspects of the game. It feels right that skills in other fields than combat gives value and yields rewards for the player.

Thank you for the WIP build with the Phobos base, I will give it a try as soon as I get Pioneer installed.

All these proof of concepts you are doing s20dan are much appreciated.

Thank you and best regards

its ok about the no reply mate i just hope you liked my ideas on the subject lol 😎

I like most of it yes, but I don't think the different kinds of humans would work well for this game as its only set 1200 years in the future. Now if it was more like 20000 years or so, like the timespans in the Dune universe, then I could see something like that being cool. Unless of course there is a race of engineered humans, Advanced humans if you will... Ok when put that way I suppose various humans would be possible in that timeframe.

Also I don't want to change what has already been put in the game, as some people have taken the time to add it, its only fair we try and build on that.

But most of your ideas would fit in very nicely.

Also, the name CiS, did you get that from Pioneer or is that a coincidence? Because there is an organisation called that. They are sort of like the Alliance from FFE. I have added in Alioth and joined them up to the CiS.

This will all work nicely, we could either add in a new organisation for worlds like this like a trade federation perhaps? Or just has them as Independant states.

This is the sort of thing that would be good for a description I think.

For now though I'm not going to attempt to add new organisations or aliens as its a lot more work, especially as this stuff takes me a very long time as I'm not a developer and have very minimal coding experience.

So for now we basically have 3 organisations:

CiS

Independant

So we need to better distribute the systems to these organisations, as its all rather random at the moment. For example it makes sense to me that most worlds surrounding earth would be under earthfed control, but currently almost all systems around earth are independant.

Any other worlds that you think should also have their own organisation, such as the trade worlds ect we should just cal independant for now, to differentiate them from the fed and coalition worlds. Then later when more organisations are in they can be changed to the correct organisations.

Btw Im adding this in now:

Let me know if you have anything to add to that description.

Hopefully I will be able to get it to auto generate some bases in the correct place, otherwise it means making a whole custom solarsystem, and I dread the thought of that and all I did was add to the SOL system 😆

A replacement for IO and other Volcanic worlds:

[attachment=258:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-27 03-30-45-18.jpg]

Original:

[attachment=259:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-27 03-37-22-03.jpg]

Real:

What do you think?

Yes, the yellow texture is good! 🙂 Very volcanic looking. It reminds me of that shot of Io in the film 2010 were the abandoned Discovery spacecraft is covered in orange dust from Io's volcanoes. It would be great if it had lots of smoking volcanoes too, maybe at a later date though once other more important things have been added.

In your last image (the real Io) most of those little black dots are volcanoes, if you look real close, you can even see smoke! An angry moon if there ever was one!

Thanks. I've always had a certain fascination with that angry little moon 🙂

As per your suggestion I have added the crater function to it, which I think has a nice effect. Still not volcanoes, but close:[attachment=260:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-27 04-14-14-98.jpg]

Heres one from in the massive crater, which you can see on the horrizon:[attachment=261:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-27 03-59-25-17.jpg]

I think I'll try and add a base inide that crater. Might be a bit hot there though 🙂

🙂 Those bright orange spots are fresh lava flows too I think

Here we go:

[attachment=262:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-27 07-29-19-04.jpg]

no imperials?

i won't play any game have no imperial forces, no!

who can i work then for, who should i enslave and with what should i test the cargo jettison function?

Ok it looks like its a hell of a lot easier to add in new factions than I thought it would be, so I have now included the empire. All I had to do was add them in and the game takes care of the rest and places them for you, the code is very easy to work with 🙂

[attachment=263:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-28 00-15-43-56.jpg]

That is a 'Military' type world, there is also an Empirical Rule type world for the Empire, like Democracy for the Federation.

Does anyone else remember the terraformed worlds you used to get in FFE? May have been in Frontier as well but I'm not sure...

Anyway I had a go at adding them in:

[attachment=264:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-28 01-38-44-81.jpg]

[attachment=265:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-28 02-18-27-13.jpg]

[attachment=266:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-28 02-32-54-03.jpg]

Am I alone in thinking that this is a cool thing? (It wouldnt be the first time 😉 )

You are not alone...

im glad you like my ideas mate ifyou need any more elaboration on anything let me know

actualy with the cis i got the name from old russia after the soviet unions break up

commonwealth of independant states

change states to systems and bingo

also i figured seeing as in star wars the cis is the trade federation it fit in nicely with the demographic of the old systems of lave and sutch so i added those aswell (one idea was borne from the next if you know what i mean) but no i dident know the alliance was called the cis in pioneer i just gave them that name cos it sounded cool

so thats when the galactic trade federation was born i just followed on from the alliance with a set of worlds like the ferengi aliance of star trek ya know commercialism at it hight with multi systems dettering against pirates by forming trade aggreements

the dutch east india company of space if you will

i guess i got fed up of only having 3 major powers in the galaxy i mean surly humans arnt the only ones with alliances and empires ...................i never said the achenarians had ti be human did i

i mean siriuns have blue skin and are heavy set

draconians are lizardine humanoids

they are only linked to earth by the federal charter

whereas achenarrians are an imperial state who conquered their territorys

i think each seperate entity could have any kind inhabitants......i kinda leave it open to disscussion

Lave and many old worlds arent in yet, Tom hasn't put them in yet.

But somewhere I have a file with all of the old worlds co-ords and startypes written down which should make it easy to add them. So if he doesn't mind I'll have a go at adding them all in.

I have an idea for adding in aliens and factions:

If there was a way to specify a co-ordinate in space for the center of the faction and a range outwards in lightyears, then you could have clusters of factions, instead of them being randomly spread.

For Example. Federation center is 0,0 (SOL) range maybe 100 LYs

Thargoid civ: Center is Polaris (Co-ords?) range 50LY

Other random alien: Center -2000, 500 (some very far off place for the explorers) range ..

But as it stands in the game now if you add aliens they will still appear around the human systems.

hehe, for some reason a cheesy house track has just popped into my head 🙂

I was also thinking last night that I havent seen any proper water worlds or desert worlds. I think the terran/02 world gen settings are capable of making them but I havent seen any like that.

So have any of you guys seen water worlds that arent below freezing that actually have a decent amount of water or desert worlds like Arrakis?

Because if no-one has found any I'll have a go at adding in desert, water and ice worlds(without pools of water 😉 )

EDIT//

God, I can see why Tom didnt add all the stars now 🙂

[attachment=267:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-29 00-04-03-61.jpg]

[attachment=268:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-29 00-01-57-76.jpg]

ross 128 has merlin as an ice world orbiting a gas giant

pluto could go down as an ice planet

but it depends on weather your doing them hoth style or polis massa style (snowy as well as icy) or just having pluto as rocky with a cold temperature

personaly tho merlin like planets should have a frozen sea as well as snowy land and the description should mention the atmosphere (how thick it is) i mean their must be reasons how snowy planets come about

as i mentioned in my ideas post i like tatooine style worlds or worlds made up of just one thing but for these to work they would have to be in orbit around a A class hot white star or have 3 suns like tatooine itself or just be like venus and have a thick atmosphere

other possibilitys could be jungle/forest planets (like altairs biggs colony)

perhaps not all of them have to be planets .............but instead they could be moons of gas giants (like yavin 4 or the forest moon of endor or ross 128 merlin) maybe a gas giant could have more than moon like this (it would create incredable planetrises in some systems where the orbits are close together and the moons are big enough) ya see one of my fave places to visit in frontier was wolf 630 with the 6 suns (including a white dwarf and a brown dwarf in binary orbit of one another)

Well I've seperated ice and water worlds now, so that there will be no more ice above freezing and no more liquid water below freezing.

Liquid water worlds now have thick atmosphere and are in the 0 - 100C temp range.

Ice worlds have a very thin atmosphere and are below 0C.

Thats what I've tried to do, some planets will have mainly frozen water others mainly snowy mountains, its all up to how the game places the planets randomly so there should be plenty of variation. But the description is the same for all ice worlds at the moment, I didn't think to seperate them out. Its a good idea I'll do that.

In this pic you can see both mountains and glaciers:

[attachment=269:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-29 06-55-34-98.jpg]

another ice world

[attachment=270:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-29 07-06-03-33.jpg]

water world with possibility of small islands for fun 🙂

[attachment=271:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-10-29 07-06-21-81.jpg]

Those pics are taken without shaders so they should look even better with them on.

wowzers they look cool

Cheers. Gonna have a try at some other planet types when I get back on monday.

Heres how my attempt at desert/dead worlds is coming along:

[attachment=274:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-11-01 01-59-36-56.jpg]

Dried out ocean/river:

[attachment=275:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-11-01 01-50-18-84.jpg]

Sand dunes (This is random I havent yet figured out how to force sand-dunes for every desert world, although there should at least be more than on life-bearing worlds):

[attachment=276:pioneer-msvc-9 2010-11-01 01-48-22-96.jpg]

The strong red and yellow colours are actually chosen by the game randomly, it seems to like bright objects.

You can set colours yourself but it removes a random element from the planetary generation.