Anyone for a trip to mars?

[greenknightfury]

 

Also be cool to have a inertia suppression field in the ruins as the ultimate armor (one of the smaller versions, like DR 50% or less. Maybe change it to DT since we're in FONV. Perhaps 25 or 30DT, as tough or tougher than the best power armor, but no weight or encumbrance. I can include the comfy clothes enchantment on it (I think it gives you +1 agility or something like htat).

 

Heh there was an easy way around the inertia fields that you may want to check...non-alien energy weapons went right through them, lasers anyway plasma was reduced by about half what normal projectiles were.

[greenknightfury]

 

Hmm... this sounds great, but what's the catch?

Perhaps it would need constant recharging- i.e. it's "condition" depletes while you're wearing it, and you "repair" it with fission batteries/charge packs etc?

Also an inertia field could explain how/why the ruins survived multi-kiloton kinetic impacts... Mars' atmosphere doesn't offer much resistance...

Speaking of which, what sort of countermeasures would the base have in the event of an impending impact? Deflecting it off course while it's farther out seems like the best option, but unlike earth, even a smallish asteroid is deadly...

actually, there could be (or have been) a system for artificially induced, BOMB style meteor-strikes on demand.

 

Could make the inertia field drain AP to run, that would limit it nicely if the rate was high enough, and if it could be made to drain more power when it was struck (perhaps making it consume the same amount of AP as the damage it blocked).

 

As for static inertia fields the could be powered by one of the alien generators. Using a combo of those and anti-impact turrets would work (they'd be much upsized alien turrets or maybe some huge half sphere's that shoot beams when needed).

[TrooperScooperMKII]

Well, what happens when you run out of AP?

given that AP results from agility alone...

that said, draining/halting AP regeneration while moving would be one of the drawbacks in-use, in addition to the decay/recharge mechanism.

Devin, I think that requiring alien power cells as a source is a great and sensible option, but the alien cells should/could be custom to the mars mod; i.e. something you can find/purchase on Mars indefinitely, albeit rarely.

Perhaps it could be a drained alien power cell > recharge on mars/a space ship (can we/ keep one to take home?) every twenty four hours or so...

[devinpatterson]

Heh there was an easy way around the inertia fields that you may want to check...non-alien energy weapons went right through them, lasers anyway plasma was reduced by about half what normal projectiles were.

 

I did see the note about fire and electricity, but havn't actually checked them out in geck. In the talk section someone was saying it may be a two or 3 stage sheild as well. I don't recall that about the energy weapons, but then again I was using a guass rifle a lot.

 

Could make the inertia field drain AP to run, that would limit it nicely if the rate was high enough, and if it could be made to drain more power when it was struck (perhaps making it consume the same amount of AP as the damage it blocked).

 

I'm a little fuzzy on why they'd drain AP. Are you thinking they "lock up" when the shield is hit so you loose a second or two, or.....?

 

 

Devin, I think that requiring alien power cells as a source is a great and sensible option, but the alien cells should/could be custom to the mars mod; i.e. something you can find/purchase on Mars indefinitely, albeit rarely.

Perhaps it could be a drained alien power cell > recharge on mars/a space ship (can we/ keep one to take home?) every twenty four hours or so...

 

I think the alien power cells are the rarest vanilla ammo there is, so it wouldn't hurt to have it available on earth. I don't believe (havn't checked) they are in any of the vendor tiers so you won't be able to buy them. I think the only power cells in teh game are they'r with the alien capt (that crashed up north). So I'm thinking they're rare enough that we could just go with the vanilla ones. Re: purchasing them on Mars, I can see something like that in the ruins, but I don't think that really fits well in rest of mars project. I think it'd be better to find them in research labs that have recovered alien tech and laying about the ruins.

 

We can base the shields strength on how rare the aline power cells are.

 

Here is a really interesting site with space suits from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, really drives home the retro look.

 

Also thinking of making some variations on the gauss rifles, something along the lines of the YCS/186 and based upon it's model (probably close to the same power level). Gotta start on the power armor as well. I think for combat related suits I may go with red simply as camo. Other non-combat suits will stick to our blue/green theme for high visibility in the martian vista.

[TrooperScooperMKII]

Devin, the problem with them only being on earth is that IIRC without the Wild wasteland perk, the alien captain doesn't appear.

Also, the buying/making them is just my being a perfectionist ammo-hogger; I never use any of the mini-nukes/alien cells, because I just... can't bring myself to use a limited (i.e. not restocked in vendors/scripts/crafting/etc) so.... :geek: :psyduck: :wallbash:

never mind.

Yeah, finding them in the ruins is a likely answer... though this brings up an interesting question:

just how much did the government/base actually manage to uncover/research before the bombs fell? As in, did they have enough time to reverse engineer anything, or was it still a treasure-hunt and R & D free-for-all?

[TrooperScooperMKII]

As for the AP thing:

the shield cuts inertia, right? So shouldn't that cause increased air resistance/etc. and thus impede movement?

The agility factor would reflect the player's ability to... well... flow... with the air?/currents/etc.. and perhaps the movement speed could be reduced along the basis of endurance/strength, or just a flat penalty.

[devinpatterson]

Devin, the problem with.....the alien captain doesn't appear......I never use any of the mini-nukes/alien cells

 

Sure I understand where your coming from, but I'm just saying that if we're looking for game balance the alien cells are very rare and they could offset the power of the shield. I mean I figure we have two ways to go;

1. is a very powerful item with limitations (the alien power cells can be part of that limitation). The disadvantage here is it looks like we have to add a lot of infrastructure to make some realistic charging scenario. Plus it will probably take some game testing to balance the dt vs our limiting factor.

or

2. a powerful item, but roughly on par with other high end armors. This is a more simplistic solution. It's advantages are we peg the DT up around 27 which is the strongest power armor, remnant power armor (plus or minus a few DT) and make it weightless. It's disadvantages are we don't add anything to the formlist so it can only be repaired by vendors (or a second shield if we have more than one) and it has no resistance to fire or electricity. On the face of it, those seem pretty balanced. Plus it will save the alien power cells for alien weaponry, and honestly probably save me a lot of time.

 

Yeah, finding them in the ruins is a likely answer... though this brings up an interesting question:

just how much did the government/base actually manage to uncover/research before the bombs fell? As in, did they have enough time to reverse engineer anything, or was it still a treasure-hunt and R & D free-for-all?

 

I think we should have stuff available in teh mars project research facilities and lots of unexplored areas in the ruins. I'd like for their to be examples of a lot of the alien tech in various mars labs. Cryo (both weaponry & cryostasis), alien weaponry, FEV (and possibly frozen abominations). And I'd like this stuff to have been found back in 2075, a couple of years before the war so it ties into our modified timeline. To have that in the labs it would mean they (humans) would have explored at least some of hte ruins by then.

 

As far as the treasure hunt, the FEV is pretty much locked in (the data had to be given to West Tek in 2075 to begin their experimentation), but other tech we have flexibility with. Xera (the AI enhanced spec ops armor) relies on some cyro plot themes, so I'd say the cryo stuff is somewhat locked in too.

 

Oh on a aside, I found your suggestion about Xera being Chinese interesting, and definitely worth considering. Both me and AG played with the idea, but in the end it's a lot trickier than our current setup. Part of it is the storyline, which is pretty in depth and already complete (and works surprisingly well with the Mars setup, with just a little tweaking). AG thought of a compromise, where Xera was U.S. but was found in hte Chinese base, and that could have worked well, except for the upgrades. Xera has a upgrade system, composed of several open "slots". There are a lot of upgrades which are attained by killing the spec ops forces with similar suits (although theirs is not equipped with AI). You have a choice on what upgrades to install from those your recovered. This lets the player tailor Xera to his/her playstyle. If you a tank you get armor upgrades, for example. Needless to say the upgrades are very important, so I think we'll probably be sticking with our original story line.

 

But I believe the majority the ruins should be unbreached, so the player can be the first explorer. Maybe because of excavation taking a long time, maybe some areas are sealed/protected and the players skills will grant him/her access (force fields, locked doors, defeating alien turrets and drones etc). Maybe other reasons as well.

 

There are few things I don't think the mars project should have acquired (or I'm at least iffy about), especially large objects, like a saucer. It's heavy and kind of nerfs are storyline as the main base being the only way off the planet. I was also thinking of keeping the sheild just for the ruins (as a reward).

 

On a related note, Kibblesticks makes a good point about "cheese" in Zeta, and to me the little grey/green babbling idiots are incredibly annoying (don't let that stop you from playing zeta though, still a good DLC). So I thought we'd just sort de facto assume all the aliens were long dead, with only their tech left behind. I mean there is always the possibility to have a living or several dead ones in cryo, but that would be the exception and I don't even think we need that. That leaves drones, alien turrets and abominations (if they are in the FO-NV bsa) as alien enemies, but the majority of the challenges in the ruins could be FEV horrors. I figure this way we can keep the cool stuff and dump the lamer junk. Plus I think all of the static stuff and tilesets are in the BSA, so that gives us a lot of variety. For instance the alien medical machinery will go a long way in the alien labs.

 

But if you guys want to go a different route (like the white walls, light forms etc) we can do that instead or in addition to. I'm just thinking the original zeta assets will be less work.

 

A third alternative that might work well, and shouldn't be too much additional work. We could do some re-textures and minor model tweaks on the original assets. We change them enough to give them a different look, but they still look similar enough to Zeta assets that they fit in the same alien theme. That could simulate alien tech that was 100's of years earlier (or even older). We could do this with the alien weapons as well, little tweaks and such. The aliens are apparently very long lived* so it's difficult to say how much their tech may have changed or even if it does change in any substantial way over the years.

 

*at least that's the theory on the wiki, since they've been in orbit from at least Samurai times. But I'm not sure that's the only explanation. I think it's possible they may go into and out of cryo so that they have only been active a few decades over the centuries.....who knows....

 

As for the AP thing:

the shield cuts inertia, right? So shouldn't that cause increased air resistance/etc. and thus impede movement?

 

It doesn't really seem to in Zeta. The little guys are just as spastic with or without a shield. I think if it worked that way it would probably only appreciably affect very fast moving objects (aka balistics.) Maybe something like Dune shields, where a knife can go through but a firearm can't.

[TrooperScooperMKII]

I agree, cheesy aliens are a no-no. The "remnants of a great and terrible civilization" vibe is just too much fun for any super-evolved comical blue blobs to stick around in.

 

 

As with the storyline for the Xera, how many of the spec. ops. upgrade do you have? This is a big shot in the dark, but what if Xera could be part of a team sent into the Chinese base pre-war, with the other squad mates being bill-posse-type unique encounters;.

Could you PM a run-down on what you have in mind?

[devinpatterson]

As with the storyline for the Xera, how many of the spec. ops. upgrade do you have? This is a big shot in the dark, but what if Xera could be part of a team sent into the Chinese base pre-war, with the other squad mates being bill-posse-type unique encounters;.

Could you PM a run-down on what you have in mind?

 

A fair amount. Xera uses trauma harness tech, so she's able to affect/control the body. It allows us to throw in a lot of tech and cybernetic related perks (ie nueral stimulation for increased muscle strength or agility). I'll try to work a preliminary list.

 

re: Bill posse encounters, sorry not quite catching your drift. Do you mean like have other black ops scattered throughout the mars project or am I reading that wrong?

 

Sure I can summarize the Xera notes for you, it might take a while because we have 13 pages of PM's, but I'll try to put together a somewhat concise outline.

[greenknightfury]

 

I'm a little fuzzy on why they'd drain AP. Are you thinking they "lock up" when the shield is hit so you loose a second or two, or.....?

 

Well if you want a reason that makes sense rp wise: The energy field slows movement due to particles in the air not enough to be noticeable while walking or such but impedes the swift motions of your arms that the VATS firing requires (or sprinting as some mods allow for which also uses AP). The reason it would drain AP equal to what it stopped if we went with that option would be the shock causing the entire field to become totally rigid to compensate for the sudden hard impact. Basically I based the suggestion over how well a certain perk object "Fading Fingerprints" worked as a balanced constant stealth field, it was an AP powered stealthboy that at highest possible vanilla AP lasted about twice as long as a regular stealthboy unless you used VATS and then it drained very quickly without something like Reaper's Sprint perk.

Devin, I think that requiring alien power cells as a source is a great and sensible option, but the alien cells should/could be custom to the mars mod; i.e. something you can find/purchase on Mars indefinitely, albeit rarely.

Perhaps it could be a drained alien power cell > recharge on mars/a space ship (can we/ keep one to take home?) every twenty four hours or so...

 

I think the alien power cells are the rarest vanilla ammo there is, so it wouldn't hurt to have it available on earth. I don't believe (havn't checked) they are in any of the vendor tiers so you won't be able to buy them. I think the only power cells in teh game are they'r with the alien capt (that crashed up north). So I'm thinking they're rare enough that we could just go with the vanilla ones. Re: purchasing them on Mars, I can see something like that in the ruins, but I don't think that really fits well in rest of mars project. I think it'd be better to find them in research labs that have recovered alien tech and laying about the ruins.

 

We can base the shields strength on how rare the aline power cells are.

 

You might want to keep a few mods in mind though for those with a lot of mods, both "Craft Alien power cells" and the "Cheat Boy" are (or were when I downloaded them) very popular. So if you really want it to be a very controlled item for everyone it either needs to run off something harder to overpower (like my AP suggestion) or make unique powercells with a charger of some type, or perhaps the device itself would just build charges over time, like the chem duplicating implants.

 

Also thinking of making some variations on the gauss rifles, something along the lines of the YCS/186 and based upon it's model (probably close to the same power level). Gotta start on the power armor as well. I think for combat related suits I may go with red simply as camo. Other non-combat suits will stick to our blue/green theme for high visibility in the martian vista.

 

Some desert camo is already orange-tan and red-brown which would fit very well.

Edited February 29, 2012 by greenknightfury