Mod Ideas (submit your idea)

[Tethys]

What kinds of things would the people of this great community like to see? Looking for ideas, links to ideas, anything really that could pique my interest

[King Class Scout]

an easier way to create and add systems for use and exploration, and a little more diversity in crew species.  I have several ideas for bringing in TAS species.  also;Kzin

[KrrKs]

Some thing I wanted to try but never got around to or never got to work include a 'HoloEmitter' function for specific ships. Like the one the Romulan Shadow has in the Armada series, or the Defiant offshot in the ST:Away Team game.

Also: There is a mod that lets Borg ships assimilates other ships. (At least i think there is one), I wanted to make that assimilated status not only be a team switch, but add additional 'borgified' hull parts to the assimilated ships. These may include additional weapon hardpoints, such as the launchers Yoyager got in 'Scorpion', or may just be visual borg-stuff added to the hull without functionality.

[Tethys]

Some thing I wanted to try but never got around to or never got to work include a 'HoloEmitter' function for specific ships. Like the one the Romulan Shadow has in the Armada series, or the Defiant offshot in the ST:Away Team game.

Also: There is a mod that lets Borg ships assimilates other ships. (At least i think there is one), I wanted to make that assimilated status not only be a team switch, but add additional 'borgified' hull parts to the assimilated ships. These may include additional weapon hardpoints, such as the launchers Yoyager got in 'Scorpion', or may just be visual borg-stuff added to the hull without functionality.

I could see all these working. Holo Emitter you'd want to change the model and keep your ship's hardpoint; seems simple enough (I'm going to give this a try today). Assimilated ships would be a similar set of code, except you'd also change the hardpoint associated with the new (Borgified) model. This would, however, require a new model and texture for every model you'd want to appear Borgified.. Unless there is a way to attach some kind of universal texture which can then be overlayed onto the existing ships texture via scripting.. or attach models to the hull (which would be beyond my ability at the moment)

Holo-emitter: Rather than trying to project a bunch of models and switching up all the teams (for ease of use and coding as well) I will be attempting a self-projecting holo-emiter (making you appear as a member of the enemy race/fleet). I would like to code in some checks to see what race the attacking ship is, either pTarget or GetRaceFromShipType, so we know from which race we should pick our random ship model. Update the model (if possible) but remain using the original hardpoint (may need to load new hardpoint then reload the old hardpoint to the new model). A switch of your team to FriendlyGroup, with event timer on shield hit to change back to original team (but keeping the emitter active). A timer for how long the effect will last uninterrupted. If I want to get fancy with it, I will code in a chance to appear as Neutral (Marauder, Freighter etc.) And if I wanna get REAL fancy I'll see about adding a modified cloaking effect (or call the cloaking/decloaking code for a split second while the model changes). 12/23/19: Upon examining several files I believe grabbing code from Defiant's Abandon Ship.py will ultimately yield our Holo-emitter. I've got the interface button and some supporting code, just need the beef and potatoes now. The idea that instead of launching a set of escape pods, you instead launch a duplicate of your current target. Although I do have access to Self Manheim mod, perhaps I should have a look there as well for clues
12/24: Once I figure out how to manipulate PodModel feature of AbandonShip I will have a ship with a crude holo-emitter. Worked on it all day until my brain hurt, gonna give it a rest for a few days

an easier way to create and add systems for use and exploration, and a little more diversity in crew species.  I have several ideas for bringing in TAS species.  also;Kzin

I had this thought just last night, and it's a big reason why I created this topic. As it is now, I believe the console allows you to place ships and planets, suns etc... But it would be nice to have some kind of added menu, perhaps in the main menu, that when clicked on, brings you to a system building menu where you can design your own star system or even set of star systems, ships on the map, planets, and anomalies (black holes, nebulae). Perhaps even go a step further and add planet size, density, etc etc...

Great ideas so far

[Tethys]

Something I have been wanting to do for a while now for multiplayer is figure out how to manually assign host attributes. So if a host can no longer host the server they can assign a new host via some menu (in the esc screen maybe ?) I have an idea how to do this as I remember seeing some SetHost attributes in one of the files somewhere

[Lurok91]

There were a couple of scripting mods I partially succeeded with but wish had cracked, using JB2005's initial mod ideas

1. HAIL ANY SHIP CAPTAIN - you come across a friendly or enemy ship and using menu button, can hail relevant captain of that ship and they will appear on viewscreen!   vonfrank also came up with a cool new nif animation method of placing captains in respective bridges which was different to my SPMod procedure.

2. ACTIVATE SPACEDOCK DOORS - in the old days we had a couple of spacedock models with animated doors (I think Baz did one?) and I spent a while figuring out how to script button that would activate the doors to open on approach.   Think I experimented with red/green alert states and MVAM.   But none of solutions were very elegant.

[Tethys]

I prefer function over elegance. I will make a file 3000+ lines to get a desired effect lol

An idea crossed my mind the other day when I came across a video for a mod that repairs destroyed systems. I'm sure someone already made a similar mod, but I will be making a Cargo Bay feature for Brex that will hold spare ship parts. Large, medium, and small repair parts will be available. I may go so far as to code in a cargo capacity or additional cargo bays using the ship GetRadius and/or GetMass and assign each spare part and bay according to size/mass (Large parts consuming more space, but quantities being limited). If the ship is (this big) add (this many cargo bays). If each Cargo Bay has a maximum space of for example 10, small parts would take 1 capacity, medium 2 capacity, and large would take 3 capacity, until you reach the cap of 10. So 2 large part + 2 medium part = 10 capacity: full. Obviously these arent that values that would be used, as each cargo bay would have its own capacity value depending on Radius/Mass. This would then be tied into the repair destroyed systems by consuming the parts cache before repair options become available, and dynamically setting buttons to activate/deactivate during conditions where parts are available/not available.

[Flowrellik]

I've always wondered if BC can ever have some sort of mod where bump mapping can happen, or perhaps shielding that's less of an oval and more like shields around a ship.

[Tethys]

I've always wondered if BC can ever have some sort of mod where bump mapping can happen, or perhaps shielding that's less of an oval and more like shields around a ship.

Kinda like polarized hull plating on the NX-01? I'm not sure if those things can be done with scripting, but perhaps... I believe for bump maps it's just an additional texture over/underlay, similar to alpha maps... I'm clueless as to how the shield bubble operates, but I'm tempted to say its mathematically generated and will therefore be very difficult to perfect

[FekLeyr Targ]

A few ideas from my end.

Breach Pods:
An extension to DS9FX Xtended's Life Support feature could be sending troops to enemy ships via breach pods, which penetrate shields and also cause damage to the hull.
Examples are the Grigari's from "DS9: The Fallen", the Klingon SuQ'Jagh-class' pods from "ST: Armada" and the Krell's swarm ships from "ST Beyond".

Environmental hazards:
One thing BC has always been lacking compared to "Klingon Academy" is environmental hazards.
There have been mods in the past which partially addressed this like GravityFX, which introduced black holes.
But I think BC could use more of these.
For example:
-Atmospheric re-entry and close proximity to stars actually damaging your ship
-Enterable Gas Giants. That could be accomplished by making the planet model non-collidable and placing a nebula inside it. That "interior nebula" would jam sensors and cause damage the deeper you fly into it. KA's gas giants work in a similar way. And I think that was also done for the "30 Days" water planet in the "Delta Quadrant Pack".
-Planetary rings slowly weakening shields, hull and sensor effectiveness
-Black holes appearing randomly, like in "Starfleet Command"
(-Any other spatial anormaly we could think off)

Planetary assaults:
Games like "Starfleet Command", "Klingon Academy" and "Armada" let you bombard planets and even capture them by sending marines. KA even allows for targeting specific locations for bombardment.
I think something like this would also be nice for BC.

[pyratCPTN]

I like all of ya Ideas folks.
would be nice to have a KM2020! with much of that stuff!

Me for my part would like to recreate the voyage home
from Delta Quadrant of the U.S.S Voyager.

I would like to chop every single Episode ( Audio )
and do an interactive voyage home mixed witth canon
events and open decisions to either do it like Janeway or
go your own way.

Want to use the Caretaker to try to go home instead of
blowing it up? No problem, but then i will throw you another
1000 lightyears in the wrong direction.

Want to murder and mayham? No problem but the crew will revolt and
put you in the brig.

Want to try to use Omega? No problem, lets give it a 0.3% that it works
but only 3 times to trie and 4 possible side effects muhaha.

Want to deal with the devil?(Borg) No problem but as soon as you hail them
they will locate and try to assimilate your ship. After you survived them 15 minutes
or destroyed something particular on their ship an negotiation option will pop up.

And so on..

This opens the possibility to change the script how i want it
to bring the player in moral problems but also in the hype of the series..

With a multiple choice menue
like in Dragon Age Origins and some story telling Audio to lead you
to travel, scan, explore, trade , fight and so on.


--->  Or at least take some canon Audio and give the game at a little more spirit.
But i like the idea of Storytelling. I loved the mini missions from DS9extended.

[FekLeyr Targ]

I love the idea of recreating Voyager's journey that way.

Here's another smaller idea: Per-ship shield impact textures.

Right now, all ships and stations share the same shield-impact texture file.
But what if a custom shield texture for each ship could be defined via the ship plugin files?
It's something small but certainly still neat to let ships have different looks for shields.

Rob Archer made a similar mod for per-ship Cloaking Device SFX:
http://www.bc-central.net/forums/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=30

[King Class Scout]

fek: that'd take some fancy scripting of the MLeo/Mario level.  Tethys better get on THAT one.  right now the shield system shares the same texture with the bridge damage smoke (the 'sphere' texture).  it's not setting up the addon script to the ship plugins, it's writing in the replacement script to go into the appropriate library slot for the FX to do it that's gonna be the hard part.

[Tethys]

Purpose of this topic is to more or less see what people want, and if what they want is possible. As more people show up, possibilities begin to open.