Star Wars scenario... no, seriously!

[Broken_Erika]

republic starfighter and trade federation droid ship.

[Broken_Erika]

oops, forgot one,

[Broken_Erika]

updates?
have a nice vacation?

[Alinestra Covelia]

Vacation is looming, once I get the tickets.

There will be more updates but that will be contingent on getting the video card working.

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about this.

[Broken_Erika]

i suppose that video cards do make using a computer a bit easier,

[Alinestra Covelia]

Video card not working.

Allie Cove not happy.

HOWEVER, I did get a slightly newer computer in the mail recently and I'm in the process of evacuating stuff there instead. So yes, it's still something I want to do, but it will take more time than I thought.

Plus, I'm going to China in a few days for a two week holiday, so I imagine scenwriting will be a very low priority for me during that time.

But there will be more - I promise. Right now it's the slog of putting planets where they belong and then equipping them.

I will make several versions of the scenario, randomized for startup. In one variant, for example, most planets will not be able to build shipyards at all, so the Empire is screwed unless they can prioritize for starfighters. In another variant, the Rebels' headquarters will be purposefully vulnerable, perhaps right near the Core systems, so they're going to have to deal with defense and (if worst comes to worst) evacuation of key personnel, rather than just raiding Imperial sectors.

I am toying with including a few nonSW units just for laughs but I don't know if I can be arsed.

[Alinestra Covelia]

The story of the newer computer is so interesting I thought I may as well share it here. Strictly this is off topic but I don't think people will mind too much.

A friend of mine went online to a clearinghouse website and ordered a toaster. The toaster arrived at the friend's house a few days later and was duly opened and inspected.

The friend discovered that the toaster had a 700 MHz Pentium II processor and 20 Gb of hard disk space. As you can see, it was quite a special toaster.

The friend plugged in the toaster and booted it up. The toaster asked for a password. My friend guessed a few times and then gave up.

The toaster continued to sit there, useless for making toast or any other process, until I told my friend I was looking for a laptop.

My friend said "I can help" and gave me the laptop in return for a functional toaster that made bread into toast.

My brother turned up and helped me get the Pentium II toaster to work.

So now I have a new toaster and will be programming Civ2 scenarios on it.

[curtsibling]

That is a tale of a very unique and toasty tale!

And it has a result that is even more tasty that some slabs of cooked bread!

It means you now have a portable CIV2 station, superb!

[N35t0r]

That is some unexpected turnout... I'm wondering how did the people mistake an old laptop for a toaster...

[Alinestra Covelia]

Just got back from Beijing... man, how the capital has changed! I went down to Sanlitun's Bar street, and half the bars were gone! Of all the bars I still remembered, only one was still the same and even their song-and-dance troupe for the very tipsy had changed

Even the bar street near Qinghua university had changed, although the karaoke bars were still there...

Pictures and other stuff about that soon to come on my website bendenweyr.dyndns.org/enixine/

Now onto more Civ2 related stuff.

I was lying in bed this morning thinking about... well, other stuff* - and suddenly an isolated nephron in my brain said "Aha!" and I realized I could reduce the number of techs needed for the units.

It's so obvious I didn't know what I hadn't thought of it earlier. Test of Time has Unit_Advanced slots which control whether civs can build units.

So why not just assign multiple units to a single tech, and make that tech available to everyone? TIE Fighters could still be made unavailable for the Rebels, and Z95s still unavailable for the Empire, while using up just one techslot instead of two.

D'oh!

So that's pretty much all that's new. I'm going to try to find some time over the weekend, in between studying economics and reading the website of the Chinese Ministry of Finance (don't ask), to get back to the scenario and get it going.

Other thoughts:

Maybe a hyperspace map could work if we make "normal" sea (= space) require several movement points per square. That way, the hyperspace map would require only 1 movement point per square and therefore be faster for those units that can enter it. (Most capital ships, some starfighters.)

I like the idea of not allowing Rebels to build, say, Imperial Star Destroyers, but it would be fun to allow them to bribe them for very high sums of money. Fortunately ToT allows this too!

Most of the techs freed up by using the Units_Advanced flag will then be devoted to interfering with the Wonders, etc.




* Precisely, I was wondering whether a loss of mass necessarily equates to a loss of weight, e.g. before you fart, you have a greater mass than after, but AFTER you fart, you have rid your body of lighter-than-air gaseous material, so would it be fair to say you've actually "lost weight"? I hadn't had my coffee and that's my excuse.

[N35t0r]

Ships completely ignore terrain's movement cost, so your hyperspace map isn't feasible.

You could have land-unit teleporters by making straight land paths on the other map with a movecost 0 terrain... you'd then need an 'opening' (transporter) right by each city, or in strategic locations. You could make one big one with multiple entrances, or seveal short ones. I don't know if the AI will use them though... It'd represent a limited airlift...

You could even have two sets (in different maps), one for the Empire and another for the Rebels (and maybe a third one for others) and have differen civs' units only able to 'enter' their corresponding map, thus using the same transporter for all three civs (thus letting you style the different transporters to style teleporters in different places.)

Just some strange idea that poppe dinto my mind...

[Alinestra Covelia]

Originally posted by N35t0r
You could have land-unit teleporters by making straight land paths on the other map with a movecost 0 terrain... you'd then need an 'opening' (transporter) right by each city, or in strategic locations. You could make one big one with multiple entrances, or seveal short ones. I don't know if the AI will use them though... It'd represent a limited airlift...

That idea could be useful but it would only apply to land units, right? A ship unit could probably not use the transporter, and even if it could, the 0-movement terrain on the target map would be useless to it, I'd imagine.

The computer has been fixed and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter is running in all its 10-year-old glory. So this scenario may come back from the dead again.

I wouldn't hold your breath, though, as you might inadvertantly join it.

[willemvanoranje]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia Surely you have been aware that I have tried many, many times to write scenarios but then my goldfish-like attention span moved on to different things?

You gemini?

[kobayashi]

anyone play Empire at War, could be interesting source material

[Alinestra Covelia]

No, sadly I haven't played it. The last Star Wars RTS management type game I've played was the uninspired Star Wars: Supremacy (Rebellion in USA).

My computer is way too feeble to run Empire at War, and I'm so far out of the loop I had barely even heard of the game. I do recall a game called Force Commander or something which came out in the late 90s and not long after Supremacy. It was like Command and Conquer but you spent Command Points or something instead of resources.

Ah, well. The scenario is currently stillborn but I may try tickling the muse and seeing if she'll get back in the saddle, to butcher a perfectly fine pair of bouncing metaphors.

*sigh*