PBA???????


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The TLA PBA may stand for:

Pacific Buddhist Academy
Palm Beach Atlantic University
Professional Bowlers Association
Partial-birth abortion
Philippine Basketball Association
Pantip Basketball Association
Patrolmen's Benevolent Association
Prevent Blindness America
Provincetown-Boston Airlines
Police Benevolent Association
Thalys PBA, a European high-speed train derived from the French TGV.
Programmable Base Address
PbA stands for lead-acid battery

PBI. sorry, a typo. for poor bloody infantry. Heinlein, being a navy man himself, felt the need to give this underappreciated part of the military some small portion of the credit they deserve for the excedingly unpleasant job they have to preform. in the Navy he never had to worry about a warm bed, regular bath, or most of the other acoutriments of 'civilization', just sudden death. infantry get the sudden death but few of the comforts of home, and they get to live right in the middle of the problem, worry about 'slow' death, capture and torture, and several other sorts of unpleasantness while being viewed by the general public in the same esteme as your average sailor, if that. seems RAH wasn't content to let this gross inequity slide. while i DO love the book(hated the movie) i don't see any way to bring any reasonable aproximation of it to this, basically naval, game.

Dune on the other hand gives them pretty much equal time, such that it concerns itself with warfare at all. now that i think of it tho you prob can't simulate some of the aspects mentioned very accuratly, but you should be able to come close enough to make an enjoyable gaming experience for any Dune fan who is willing to accept a few minor compromises

i see. i took the 'not tv show' part a bit too literally. if your wanting orininal content the way to go is prob just wait for dark avatar and the customizable ai and see what sort of personality/style you can work into it and go from there. build up a collection of ai setting that work resonably well, then build up a story from there, rather than the other way around. let your mod grow organicaly as it were.

about shipbuilding. while i do like shipbuilding(alot) for many, if not most, mods it should be disabled. on some even research should as well. while it clearly does not take full advantage of the programmed resources it WOULD give the mods the appropriate character. using the full game for a, say Babylon5 mod, actually only gives you the visual flavor of the namesake. you don't have to play the Narn like Narn, you just do whatever you normally do but with Narn looking ships. if you are forced to use actual Narn ships on the other hand you have to be the best Narn you can be . it's all too easy to fall back into old habits. putting the lockdown on shipbuilding, race customization, and tech takes that option away, making it almost a new game, even if a somewhat lesser one. the fixed ships would be useful more often than the fixed tech. for some mods it would make perfect sense to 'unlock' more advances ships by gaining tech. B5 is a prime example of that. they DID have tech trading and research over the course of the show. but a shadow 'doom ray'on a starfury, that's just...wrong. which is not to say that i disaprove of ppl using custom ships in the base game, far from it. but a mod, that's another matter entirly. on the bright side, it is the easiest thing it the world to have it both ways if you've done the work to make a unrestricted mod it should only take moments to edit it to produce a restricted one, assuming Stardock included the option in the first place, of which i am uncertain. can you restrict research and shipbuilding in a mod?

for your pending mod tho this doesn't apply in the slightest. original content should use as much or as little of the game engine as your vision dictates.
oh god, i better get off my soapbox before i talk myself into a hell of alot of work, lol. your wanted the pot stirred? i think this should do it.

somewhere burried in all that text i point out you CAN have it both ways with just a few minutes extra work . the main point is i was suggesting was SOMETHING DIFFERENT. not just GalCiv with some makeup. selectivly limiting research, shipbuilding, whatnot can produce a very different gaming experience, one that potentially catches much of the flavor of the source material. you KNOW that if you are having a little trouble your game you will want to fall back on the strategies that worked with your drath/yor/insert-favorite-here and pretty soon it IS just more of the same. removing options can foster variety, you see? and those that want free rein, more power to them, they can have it too. some literary works are fairly static, to allow research fundamentally alters the character of the simulation. others are technologically highly dynamic, to remove it from those mods would be a travesty. ocasionally tech trading fits even if research doesn't.

i guess what i am trying to say is with control of just these functions you achieve more of a total conversion mod, and that would be a good thing i think. anything that milks a few more hours of enjoyment out of the game must be a good thing, right? and changing a few 0's back to 1's is all it takes to make it freeform, good old fashioned GalCiv2 with a facelift;)


here's hoping you just came from work at the hospital, not some sort of crisis

well, basically the more factions the better. and the factions need to be distinct, not just 3 copies of faction x with different names. if you have just one alien race you MAY want to try to work out multiple factions within that race, pro-human and anti-human perhaps?

and if you do a custom map as being integral to your mod you will limit the number of ppl that will play it. some ppl only play small, fast maps while others mostly stick the the large ones. granted, this is not a part of any contest or anything(is it?) so a take it or leave it approach may be just fine

Thanks, on voicing your opinion, thats what I'm really hoping for, I see your point, and I think I may even use part of it, possibly release two mods, one a strict level and one on a freeform.

MacMatt I love the idea, and I have to agree with P0rc    Just try to really involve a different style for each faction so they do not just turn out just as copies...I also would say I love the idea of having the aliens also be divided in to factions too many times you see an alien race totally allied with each other as us low humans being the only civilization that can't get along with each other....(dark avatar - going against that, love it, klingons having the same problem, love it)

if you like the pro human/anti human dichotomy you need to preset the attitudes of the facttion toward all the human factions. and decide if any of your human factions will be xenophilic while you're at it. since you seem to intend to do this before Dark Avatar will be released i guess you will have to pick 2 of the current ai to represent them. or they can be the same ai but with different bonuses, that would make more sense i think. give the pro human a bit more diplomacy and maybe influence, the anti should prob get a bit of military production and weapon and/or defense, they are headed for war after all. keep the bonuses small tho, they are not THAT different.

as to your human factions, i would make a list of candidates and compare what i knew about the character of the various ai and try to match them up. put up a fresh thread to sample more experienced players take on the character of the various ai unless you figure you know the differences between them well enough.
fit your story line to match the 'nations' you can reasonably match. and use the racial bonuses to bring the ai closer to your concept of the nationalities.

I currently have the

americans
british
french
italian
german
eu
the New Soviet Union (a creation of my own
I am now going to put the japanese in it as well.

One question, how do I preset attitudes?

while i don't personally know how to set the initial attitudes i know it can be done. maybe check out the torians who i believe hate the drengin by default, and i thing the drath and the altarians have a coded beef too. i haven't done any modding and don't intend to until dark avatar comes along and opens up more ai flexibility.

I'm currently working my way through a new tech tree that will give each race individual technologies, and allow the custom player to choose a mix of the different races technologies, one race's propulsion tech, and another race's ship building and research techs for instance.
Unfortunately tech stealing somewhat messes up individual techs, but I'm hoping there will be an option to turn off all tech stealing added in the future.
As I plan on having every race being recreated as a unique new race with a unique tech tree, if anyone has a good idea for an unusual tech tree and/or a race to go with it, I'd be open to suggestions.
Also, would this idea really appeal to anyone?

Well, it's not exactly an ideal solution, but I'm doing it like this. I remove Xeno Ethics from the tech tree, so no one can ever be good, evil, or neutral. I then make my individual tech trees, and give each one a starter tech, say "Standard Tech Tree" for example.
I then make "Standard Tech Tree" require a good, neutral or evil alignment (it doesn't matter which). You then need to set the race to have that tech as a starting tech. As no-one can research Ethics, no-one else will ever be able to research it, but the race can start with it. This also means that the custom race can choose a starting tech, and research off from it (because you can choose techs that need alignments as starting techs).
I've also set universal translator and alliances as starting techs with no cost, because I'm not sure if you can make more than one universal translator tech for example.
Does that help? If anyone has a better way, let me know.
This method also has the side effect of stopping ethics flipping. Now if you want evil bonuses from planets, you have to stay evil.

Wonder if anyone considered a FireFly mod where a full gammit of custom designed ships would fullfill the alien ship we get asked for ethics some worthless some not... cludged and ugly for Reevers and dangerous. Also the Reevers would actual parts-out your wreck and steel tech plus the damaged engine cores would damage your ship even on a flyby because of no core containment. The roll of the dice on "flyby" and "investigate" would add a level of unpredictability AND reprocussions for ethical choices. Your scavange operations would leave your ship vonerable... etc. Also trade deals gone bad... Watch the series you'll get the idea. FYI The series was dumped in favor of more politicaly correct, fuzzy shows. This would create a dicodamy for clear ethical allignments and would need considerable planning for ethics spectrum. Great game though guys even if you fudged the square root of 521.

I have seen mods for the Star Trek Series and movies but is anyone working on the ships and races from Star Fleet Battles? There are more than enough Major and Minor races and a wealth of scource material for an alternate tech tree. Just wondering.