Pirate aggression levels and tech levels.

from Sins Forums
I'm curious, is there any way to link a pirate's technology level to their aggression level? I'm thinking of giving the pirates a few pieces of research(such as better ships/new abilities), but I don't want them to have it first thing.

From there, I also want their tech level to drop when the aggression goes back down. I know I can make the tech available only if the research level is high enough, so that shouldn't be a problem.
modding
4,494 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Hello Bobucles,

In Heavy Nova 2, I strengthend the pirates by making their ships tougher and their fleet composition more balanced. Gameplay.constants has a section pirateRaidDef that controls their strength determined by the strength of the empire they are raiding. By placing the upgrades in their heavier ships and restricting the heavy ships to the later raid compositions, you should be able to achieve what you want.

That's how I did it anyways.

Hope this helps,
Silvermane
http://letosilvermane.googlepages.com/home
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
That's not exactly what I'm thinking of, but it is one way to do it.

I was thinking of giving the pirates access to stuff like extra hull/damage/armor, based on their aggression level. This would make them individually more dangerous as the pirate level increases. Your mod seems to pull that off pretty well, but it won't allow other things I'm looking for.

I also would use it to give pirate ships some special abilities to work with. Perhaps hull repair for the scout, a cripple for the bigger one, I dunno. But these are abilities I want to have locked out early in the game, as they're supposed to be fairly effective and dangerous in the later stages.

The main reason is I want to control the level of capital ships produced by the pirate fleet.(Still working on getting them caps, though!) By using a rigged tech similar to the advent's mass transcendence, it'd pop the capital ships up to the desired level before they went out raiding.

A tall order, I'm sure. I doubt that it would be possible without some serious digging, or until modding tools come out.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
There is a way to make it. Just edit the FrigatePirateShip.entity.

Ex: FrigatePirateMedium.entity
Make 5 copy of this one, Such as FrigatePirateMedium1/2/3/4/5.entity, and edit Hull/Shield/Armor/Ability..... in each FrigatePirateMedium.entity as you think.
After finish this, just edit Gameplay.constants about pirate raid composite, I Know you can do it. ;) 

BTW, if you want to these pirateship appear in PirateBase, Remember add planetItemType and change planetItemTypeCount in GalaxyScenarioDef.galaxyScenarioDef.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
That's actually a pretty good way to do it. That's probably the way I'll make it work. I'm still working on other issues I'm having with pirates, though.