Wing Commander RPG
- Thread starter Wolfman
- Start date
capi3101
Admiral
Good Monday, Wingnuts. Time for the weekly WCRPG update.
First of all, a big shout out to the Wing Commander Saga folks on the release of their game. Ten years is an awfully long time for any project, and it's good to see that so many people are pleased with the final result. I myself am quite impressed, though I'll admit to not having had as much time as I might like in order to play the game (or to rectify the issues I've had with it, namely with a really slow frame rate when attempting to land on the Wellington).
My goal for this week was the completion of Chapter Five, which unfortunately didn't quite happen. This of course is the last step of the Grand Master Plan I outlined several weeks ago to finish up those sections of the game upon which other sections of the game were dependent first. Last Monday saw the final completion of Chapter 6.2.3 (which happened right after last week's update). After updating the to-do list, I took the time to review the old character-scale weaponry, armor and equipment lists from SFRPG to see what could be translated over and what had to be ditched. I spent the better part of the day working on that but had my notes compiled and ready to go for the initial dump, which happened on Tuesday. The rest of Tuesday was spent cleaning up the junk tags and reformatting text from the dump in Chapter 5.4 (general equipment). On Wednesday, I decided to try a different tack and moved over to Chapter 5.3 (armor). Since that one was such a short chapter, I was able to complete all editing in that Chapter by the end of the day on Wednesday and move it to completed status. Thursday saw no work done on the game, as I was deep in preparation for the "season finale" of an ongoing SFRPG campaign for that evening (which turned out to be satisfyingly dramatic, definitely worth a full day's worth of preparation). Friday saw work on Chapter 5.2 (weaponry). Though not as short as the armor chapter, the weaponry chapter was still much shorter than the equipment chapter and I was again able to get everything edited successfully by the end of the day on Saturday, rounding out that chapter. Last night I turned my attention briefly back to Chapter 5.4, with the intent of getting all the tables to look correctly. That goal was mostly completed, though I still have a substantial amount of work to do in that chapter.
At this point, characters in the game can shoot at one another and have proper defensive capabilities. Once the equipment section is done, Chapter Five will be complete and most of the rules regarding individual characters will also be complete at that point.
With the end of the Grand Master Plan in sight, I've outlined my intentions for the next few coming weeks with the game. Obviously, the next step will be for me to continue with Chapter 5.4 this week. When that's done, I'll be headed back to Chapter Ten for a while to finish the guidelines for the creation of new items (Chapter 10.2.6). After taking the time next to write up the profile for the Varni in Chapter 2.2.4, I should have sufficient information to finish up Chapter 10.6 (the game-play example). With that done, my intention is to then finish up the race profiles, build the full vehicle and capital ship catalogs, fill in the Who's Who, then the navigational data, and finally the bestiary. At that point, I'll have to finalize all submissions for the non-canonical chapters, fill out the appendices and then get the index prepped. Doesn't sound like much, but I'm not kidding myself; there's still a fair way to go before the game will be 100% complete. I should also mention that I expect progress on the game to temporarily drop off sometime in the next few weeks, largely on account of the fact that my wife is due to have our second child on the fifteenth of April.
I am accepting submissions for the non-canonical sections of the game. This will include any fan submitted item; I'll accept new items, characters for the Who's Who, vehicles and capital ships for the non-canon catalogs, and even fan-built sectors, star-systems or planets for the navigational data section. All submissions may be made directly to this thread. While I'd prefer it if y'all attempt to use the in-game rules to build your submissions first, I can also accept a set of desired stats (if building the final product in game is possible, of course). I will be reviewing all entries and anything accepted will be properly credited in the game to whoever submits it.
As of this morning, WCRPG has crossed the three-quarters mark; the game is 75.45% complete.
First of all, a big shout out to the Wing Commander Saga folks on the release of their game. Ten years is an awfully long time for any project, and it's good to see that so many people are pleased with the final result. I myself am quite impressed, though I'll admit to not having had as much time as I might like in order to play the game (or to rectify the issues I've had with it, namely with a really slow frame rate when attempting to land on the Wellington).
My goal for this week was the completion of Chapter Five, which unfortunately didn't quite happen. This of course is the last step of the Grand Master Plan I outlined several weeks ago to finish up those sections of the game upon which other sections of the game were dependent first. Last Monday saw the final completion of Chapter 6.2.3 (which happened right after last week's update). After updating the to-do list, I took the time to review the old character-scale weaponry, armor and equipment lists from SFRPG to see what could be translated over and what had to be ditched. I spent the better part of the day working on that but had my notes compiled and ready to go for the initial dump, which happened on Tuesday. The rest of Tuesday was spent cleaning up the junk tags and reformatting text from the dump in Chapter 5.4 (general equipment). On Wednesday, I decided to try a different tack and moved over to Chapter 5.3 (armor). Since that one was such a short chapter, I was able to complete all editing in that Chapter by the end of the day on Wednesday and move it to completed status. Thursday saw no work done on the game, as I was deep in preparation for the "season finale" of an ongoing SFRPG campaign for that evening (which turned out to be satisfyingly dramatic, definitely worth a full day's worth of preparation). Friday saw work on Chapter 5.2 (weaponry). Though not as short as the armor chapter, the weaponry chapter was still much shorter than the equipment chapter and I was again able to get everything edited successfully by the end of the day on Saturday, rounding out that chapter. Last night I turned my attention briefly back to Chapter 5.4, with the intent of getting all the tables to look correctly. That goal was mostly completed, though I still have a substantial amount of work to do in that chapter.
At this point, characters in the game can shoot at one another and have proper defensive capabilities. Once the equipment section is done, Chapter Five will be complete and most of the rules regarding individual characters will also be complete at that point.
With the end of the Grand Master Plan in sight, I've outlined my intentions for the next few coming weeks with the game. Obviously, the next step will be for me to continue with Chapter 5.4 this week. When that's done, I'll be headed back to Chapter Ten for a while to finish the guidelines for the creation of new items (Chapter 10.2.6). After taking the time next to write up the profile for the Varni in Chapter 2.2.4, I should have sufficient information to finish up Chapter 10.6 (the game-play example). With that done, my intention is to then finish up the race profiles, build the full vehicle and capital ship catalogs, fill in the Who's Who, then the navigational data, and finally the bestiary. At that point, I'll have to finalize all submissions for the non-canonical chapters, fill out the appendices and then get the index prepped. Doesn't sound like much, but I'm not kidding myself; there's still a fair way to go before the game will be 100% complete. I should also mention that I expect progress on the game to temporarily drop off sometime in the next few weeks, largely on account of the fact that my wife is due to have our second child on the fifteenth of April.
I am accepting submissions for the non-canonical sections of the game. This will include any fan submitted item; I'll accept new items, characters for the Who's Who, vehicles and capital ships for the non-canon catalogs, and even fan-built sectors, star-systems or planets for the navigational data section. All submissions may be made directly to this thread. While I'd prefer it if y'all attempt to use the in-game rules to build your submissions first, I can also accept a set of desired stats (if building the final product in game is possible, of course). I will be reviewing all entries and anything accepted will be properly credited in the game to whoever submits it.
As of this morning, WCRPG has crossed the three-quarters mark; the game is 75.45% complete.
capi3101
Admiral
Hey, out of curiosity, does anybody have a link to the old Wing Commander Aces Club ship database? Or at least access to the data that was up there around the time of the King of the Mountain campaign? Or at least a reliable way to get in touch with some of the guys who ran the Club?
capi3101
Admiral
Good Monday, Wingnuts. Time for the weekly WCRPG update.
This last week my focus was on finishing up Chapter 5.4 (general equipment). I already had most of what I wanted to include on those tables selected last week and it was mainly a job that required adjusting the prices and making sure the objects in the table had the set of effects that I wanted them to have. I was able to finish up work on Chapter 5.4 on Wednesday and after making some final adjustments to the prices of some items in Chapters 5.2 (character-scale weapons) and 5.3 (character-scale armor), I was able to finish up all work on Chapter Five. Six of the game's twelve Chapters are now complete, with substantial work completed on most of the rest.
Chapter Five's completion finished up the original Grand Master Plan, which (once again) was to take care of all the Chapters upon which other unfinished sections of the game were dependent. I decided to shift my focus back into Chapter Ten next, and specifically intended to take care of Chapter 10.2.6 (item creation) in which there was a single incomplete section in the long item creation procedure. After reviewing the procedure to assure myself that nothing significant had changed since the initial edits of the chapter, I recalculated the average prices for all the various in-game items that appeared on the chart and the associated die rolls. When that work was done, I moved on towards completing the examples that appeared in that same section. I'm happy to report that this effort only took the better part of the day on Thursday; Chapter 10.2.6 is now complete, leaving Chapter 10.6 (a gameplay example) as the sole remaining unfinished portion of Chapter Ten. Some adjustment to the example in Chapter 10.2.8 (archetype creation) also took place as a result of this effort).
Friday and Saturday were spent cleaning up some outstanding items I had in my notes, including minor changes to the combat speed statistics in Chapters 6.2 and 7.2 (vehicle and capship creation, respectively), the increase in the chances of a nebula in a quadrant as suggested by QuailPilot back in early January (along with a number of other small changes he suggested), the addition of the calculation of the combat speed stat to creatures in Chapter 10.2.7 (creature creation) as well as a corresponding section in Chapter 2.3 (character creation) and the addition of that stat to the existing sapient race profiles in Chapter 2.2, and an update of the Character Record Sheet in Appendix Two. I had also been considering adding a discussion of the Five Room Dungeon model to the game; after careful consideration, I decided a new Chapter was best for that effort and created a new page for it. The discussion is in Chapter 11.1.3 and is already complete.
Of my outstanding notes, I still need to add a step-by-step image of the Sector creation procedure in Chapter 10.2.1 (QuailPilot's suggestion; the only one I haven't implemented yet), go over the equipment lists one last time to make sure everything jives with the price list Bandit LOAF gave me when I started this whole thing, and make my outstanding changes to Chapter Nine (combat); most of the effort there will change the dynamics of Attack actions on the vehicle and capital ship scales, which currently just uses the same system I used in SFRPG.
This week my intent is to finish the changes to Chapter Nine, write the profile for the Varni, and then finish up Chapter 10.6. If I finish up 10.6 this week, I intend to begin work on Chapters 6.3 and 7.3 (the canonical vehicle and capital ship catalogs); I figure some progress on ships may drum up more interest in the game than what I've seen so far. Whether or not I'll get to any of this is in question at the moment; my wife is due to deliver our second child in less than two weeks and she's already had two false labor episodes.
I am accepting submissions for the non-canonical portions of the game (Chapters 6.4 and 7.4 for all homemade craft, as well as any characters people would like to add for the Who's Who in Chapter 12.2). If you have a submission you'd like to make for the game, please either PM me at the CIC forums or simply post your submission to the Wing Commander RPG thread under Fan Projects and Editing, again at the CIC forums. All submissions that are approved will appear in the final edit of the game and their creators will appear in the game's credits.
WCRPG sits at 77.48% complete as of this morning.
This last week my focus was on finishing up Chapter 5.4 (general equipment). I already had most of what I wanted to include on those tables selected last week and it was mainly a job that required adjusting the prices and making sure the objects in the table had the set of effects that I wanted them to have. I was able to finish up work on Chapter 5.4 on Wednesday and after making some final adjustments to the prices of some items in Chapters 5.2 (character-scale weapons) and 5.3 (character-scale armor), I was able to finish up all work on Chapter Five. Six of the game's twelve Chapters are now complete, with substantial work completed on most of the rest.
Chapter Five's completion finished up the original Grand Master Plan, which (once again) was to take care of all the Chapters upon which other unfinished sections of the game were dependent. I decided to shift my focus back into Chapter Ten next, and specifically intended to take care of Chapter 10.2.6 (item creation) in which there was a single incomplete section in the long item creation procedure. After reviewing the procedure to assure myself that nothing significant had changed since the initial edits of the chapter, I recalculated the average prices for all the various in-game items that appeared on the chart and the associated die rolls. When that work was done, I moved on towards completing the examples that appeared in that same section. I'm happy to report that this effort only took the better part of the day on Thursday; Chapter 10.2.6 is now complete, leaving Chapter 10.6 (a gameplay example) as the sole remaining unfinished portion of Chapter Ten. Some adjustment to the example in Chapter 10.2.8 (archetype creation) also took place as a result of this effort).
Friday and Saturday were spent cleaning up some outstanding items I had in my notes, including minor changes to the combat speed statistics in Chapters 6.2 and 7.2 (vehicle and capship creation, respectively), the increase in the chances of a nebula in a quadrant as suggested by QuailPilot back in early January (along with a number of other small changes he suggested), the addition of the calculation of the combat speed stat to creatures in Chapter 10.2.7 (creature creation) as well as a corresponding section in Chapter 2.3 (character creation) and the addition of that stat to the existing sapient race profiles in Chapter 2.2, and an update of the Character Record Sheet in Appendix Two. I had also been considering adding a discussion of the Five Room Dungeon model to the game; after careful consideration, I decided a new Chapter was best for that effort and created a new page for it. The discussion is in Chapter 11.1.3 and is already complete.
Of my outstanding notes, I still need to add a step-by-step image of the Sector creation procedure in Chapter 10.2.1 (QuailPilot's suggestion; the only one I haven't implemented yet), go over the equipment lists one last time to make sure everything jives with the price list Bandit LOAF gave me when I started this whole thing, and make my outstanding changes to Chapter Nine (combat); most of the effort there will change the dynamics of Attack actions on the vehicle and capital ship scales, which currently just uses the same system I used in SFRPG.
This week my intent is to finish the changes to Chapter Nine, write the profile for the Varni, and then finish up Chapter 10.6. If I finish up 10.6 this week, I intend to begin work on Chapters 6.3 and 7.3 (the canonical vehicle and capital ship catalogs); I figure some progress on ships may drum up more interest in the game than what I've seen so far. Whether or not I'll get to any of this is in question at the moment; my wife is due to deliver our second child in less than two weeks and she's already had two false labor episodes.
I am accepting submissions for the non-canonical portions of the game (Chapters 6.4 and 7.4 for all homemade craft, as well as any characters people would like to add for the Who's Who in Chapter 12.2). If you have a submission you'd like to make for the game, please either PM me at the CIC forums or simply post your submission to the Wing Commander RPG thread under Fan Projects and Editing, again at the CIC forums. All submissions that are approved will appear in the final edit of the game and their creators will appear in the game's credits.
WCRPG sits at 77.48% complete as of this morning.
capi3101
Admiral
Brain drain this evening. Been working through the combat revisions. Got everything done except the revised vehicle/capship damage resolution section. I know the current system is clunky from playtesting it, but I'm at a genuine loss as to how to fix it. Sucks, because that's the last thing I have to fix in Chapter Nine before I can move on.
Right now, as things stand, shields are depleted first (unless the craft involved is hit by a weapon that bypasses shields, such as Antimatter Guns), followed by armor. Both are rated in either shield hit points or armor hit points, which are equal to one another. Any excess damage points that haven't been accounted for by the time AHP is depleted cause systems damage. When systems damage occurs, a system is rolled to take the damage; up to 100 points of damage are absorbed by the system, with each point corresponding to 1% damage to the system. Concurrently, each individual systems damage occurrence causes 5% Core Damage, with the craft exploding at 100% Core Damage. There are additional Core Damage penalties for craft that take damage in systems that are already destroyed or were never installed in the first place. It's a good system in theory, but in practice, figuring up systems damage takes way, way too long.
Any suggestions would be appreciated at this point; how to fix this has been stumping me pretty damned hard today.
Right now, as things stand, shields are depleted first (unless the craft involved is hit by a weapon that bypasses shields, such as Antimatter Guns), followed by armor. Both are rated in either shield hit points or armor hit points, which are equal to one another. Any excess damage points that haven't been accounted for by the time AHP is depleted cause systems damage. When systems damage occurs, a system is rolled to take the damage; up to 100 points of damage are absorbed by the system, with each point corresponding to 1% damage to the system. Concurrently, each individual systems damage occurrence causes 5% Core Damage, with the craft exploding at 100% Core Damage. There are additional Core Damage penalties for craft that take damage in systems that are already destroyed or were never installed in the first place. It's a good system in theory, but in practice, figuring up systems damage takes way, way too long.
Any suggestions would be appreciated at this point; how to fix this has been stumping me pretty damned hard today.
starfox1701
Petty Officer
Well I know this is not from an RPG but did you ever play Babalon 5 Wars from AoG? It's a tactical starship simulator TT game. Anyway the things from their damage alocation and resolution I think worth considering are
1) The ship is devided up into several sections kinda representing comparmentalisation
2) Armor isn't like a second shield. It negates a flat amount of damage from each incoming shot. This lets the armour be penitrated by incoming fire but also represents the dificulty of placing later shots onto existing damage.
3) Individal compents have Armor Valuse that differ depending on how well protected the system is.
4) Wepons fire can be divided into damage types. I beleive B5Wars had standard, plasma, percing and raking types to na a few.
In execution it works like this. Incoming fire strikes a section of the ship determined by arc. Once it burns through the shields remaing damage is resolved against that section in the following maner. First a system suchas an individual gunn turret is hit determined by random role. The armor for that peice of equipment mitagets a fixed portion of the damge. The rest destroys DPs of that componet. Exceccss damage from that shot "blows throu to the section structure. Once sections structer is destroyed that section is considerd destroyed and damage reaches the core systems and structure. Damage alocation froe the cor is functionally the same ase the outer sections but the core usually contains the larger more durable componets like reactors and jump drive. Destroying the Core structure completly destroys the ship.
Disadvantages to incorperating this system revolve mainly i think around the additional records keeping that will be needed when seting up a ship and in traking damage. You might also have to make som adjustments to how armor points and componete DPs are calculated during construction.
Addvantages are that this setup is reall easy to learn and in my experiance flows fairly well durring play and is very modular alowing new systems and weapons to be added at will.
I am including som links that you might find helpful if you wish to do some further diging. Now in my oppinion you don't need to go as far as making full SCS sheets for the RPG. It is just a nice format for organising the relavent date if you deside to at some point make things that detailed. It could also be translated to ground vehicals and structures too.
http://b5warsvault.wikidot.com/
http://www.tesarta.com/b5wars/aogwarskitchensink.pdf
and these are som SCS sheets and links shoing how the system was addapted to TOS Battlestar Galactica ships
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/pdfs/battlestarnfv1.pdf
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/pdfs/gunstarnfv1.pdf
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/pdfs/battlenova_modern_nfv1.pdf
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/pdfs/vipernfv3.pdf
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/galacticaships.html
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/pdfs/raidernfv3.pdf
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/pdfs/basestarnfv1.pdf
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/pdfs/basestarmvnfv1.pdf
1) The ship is devided up into several sections kinda representing comparmentalisation
2) Armor isn't like a second shield. It negates a flat amount of damage from each incoming shot. This lets the armour be penitrated by incoming fire but also represents the dificulty of placing later shots onto existing damage.
3) Individal compents have Armor Valuse that differ depending on how well protected the system is.
4) Wepons fire can be divided into damage types. I beleive B5Wars had standard, plasma, percing and raking types to na a few.
In execution it works like this. Incoming fire strikes a section of the ship determined by arc. Once it burns through the shields remaing damage is resolved against that section in the following maner. First a system suchas an individual gunn turret is hit determined by random role. The armor for that peice of equipment mitagets a fixed portion of the damge. The rest destroys DPs of that componet. Exceccss damage from that shot "blows throu to the section structure. Once sections structer is destroyed that section is considerd destroyed and damage reaches the core systems and structure. Damage alocation froe the cor is functionally the same ase the outer sections but the core usually contains the larger more durable componets like reactors and jump drive. Destroying the Core structure completly destroys the ship.
Disadvantages to incorperating this system revolve mainly i think around the additional records keeping that will be needed when seting up a ship and in traking damage. You might also have to make som adjustments to how armor points and componete DPs are calculated during construction.
Addvantages are that this setup is reall easy to learn and in my experiance flows fairly well durring play and is very modular alowing new systems and weapons to be added at will.
I am including som links that you might find helpful if you wish to do some further diging. Now in my oppinion you don't need to go as far as making full SCS sheets for the RPG. It is just a nice format for organising the relavent date if you deside to at some point make things that detailed. It could also be translated to ground vehicals and structures too.
http://b5warsvault.wikidot.com/
http://www.tesarta.com/b5wars/aogwarskitchensink.pdf
and these are som SCS sheets and links shoing how the system was addapted to TOS Battlestar Galactica ships
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/pdfs/battlestarnfv1.pdf
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/pdfs/gunstarnfv1.pdf
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/pdfs/battlenova_modern_nfv1.pdf
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/pdfs/vipernfv3.pdf
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/galacticaships.html
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/pdfs/raidernfv3.pdf
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/pdfs/basestarnfv1.pdf
http://ravensbranch.allen.com/pdfs/basestarmvnfv1.pdf
capi3101
Admiral
Crap...was that only Wednesday? Been a busy 36 hours, that's for sure. Anyway....
I appreciate the input. Mainly with that post I was just voicing the problem to myself, and it worked; I was able to come up with a solution I liked fairly fast. Basically, it just incorporated a quick swap of how things had been set up (making systems damage dependent on core damage instead of having core damage dependent on systems damage) and a simplification of systems damage in general. The big thing I wanted to fix there was the fact that once the armor on a ship had been penetrated, the ship didn't die fast enough and rolling out systems damage just took too damned long. Things move much faster now.
I do appreciate the links; I'll check them out anyway, even if I decide not to use any of it. I always like the opportunity to learn about new games/systems.
I appreciate the input. Mainly with that post I was just voicing the problem to myself, and it worked; I was able to come up with a solution I liked fairly fast. Basically, it just incorporated a quick swap of how things had been set up (making systems damage dependent on core damage instead of having core damage dependent on systems damage) and a simplification of systems damage in general. The big thing I wanted to fix there was the fact that once the armor on a ship had been penetrated, the ship didn't die fast enough and rolling out systems damage just took too damned long. Things move much faster now.
I do appreciate the links; I'll check them out anyway, even if I decide not to use any of it. I always like the opportunity to learn about new games/systems.
capi3101
Admiral
Good Monday, Wingnuts! Time for the weekly WCRPG update.
This last week turned out to be mostly focused on the changes I was making to the combat system in Chapter Nine; it turned out I had a lot more to take care of there than I had first suspected. After reviewing the price list Bandit LOAF gave me when I started out (and adjusting prices/adding new items to Chapter 5.4), fixing the rules for repeating weapons in Chapter 5.2, and adding a new rule for skill specializations in Chapter 3.0, I moved in to Chapter Nine, where I stayed for the better part of the week. Monday saw an expanded alternate range roll system for grid-less combat and expanded hex grid rules in Chapter 9.1, as well as altered AB rules and the addition of degrees of arc to the required weapons station information in Chapter 6.2.3 and 7.2.2. Refire rules were updated in the main combat Chapters for all scales (Chapters 9.2-9.4) on Tuesday, along with rules for commodities ejection by destroyed pirate and transport craft. A critical miss override rule for high HDs was added for the three scales of combat on Tuesday as well. Wednesday saw the completion of the commodities ejection rules and the designations of relative bearings for weapons arcs; these started off in Chapter 9.3 but were ultimately moved to Chapter 6.2.3 and referenced in Chapters 7.2.2, 9.3 and 9.4. This work included a series of visuals for the designated firing arcs (which I still need to put into the table there). I also began consideration of how best to alter the damage resolution system in Chapter 9.3 and 9.4; my ultimate solution (implemented on Thursday) was to swap out the functionality of Core Damage and Systems Damage, and to simplify Systems Damage from a full percentile system to one with set levels of damage (light, moderate and heavy; like what you see in the WC games). This was the last piece of Chapter Nine that needed work, and I'm happy to report that aside from the need to update the bearings table in Chapter 6.2.3, the revised combat engine is now fully implemented.
My main goal of last week was to attempt to finish up Chapter 10.6 (the short example of game-play); in order to do that, I wanted to have a Varni character in the group, so I went ahead and composed the Varni profile in Chapter 2.2.4. I used the procedure for creature creation in Chapter 10.2.7 for the initial stages of their profile, and it turned out to be a good thing that I did: a couple of my edits from last Friday didn't make it into the game (I think Wikia was having some technical issues or installing updates at the time, something I should've considered). I was able to re-implement these edits and complete the Varni profile on Friday, at which point editing on Chapter 10.6 began in earnest. I already had the gameplay scenario I wanted to write about in mind, so the first major issue I had to deal with in that chapter was the creation of a few extra generic characters. I selected the characters along with archetype templates late Friday, and spent time on Saturday calculating their stats. I still haven't fully finished assigning their skill specializations but I did complete enough of them to continue editing the chapter. At this point, 10.6 is edited up to the planetary transit section, which is actually not that far into it.
Wednesday also saw the initial formulation of autoslide rules for capable craft, though those rules may need to be made a little more formal; I'm thinking of adding a piece of equipment that will say "yes, this craft can autoslide". Technically with the way the rules are written, all Fightercraft are capable of autosliding maneuvers if their pilot can successfully complete enough Vehicle Piloting Checks in a row; these rules would make it a lot easier for certain craft to perform them (reducing the number of successful piloting Checks to one in all cases).
I made it through this week without a new baby in the house; my wife is due on Sunday, so I definitely can't guarantee this state of affairs will continue for very much longer. Plan is still to finish up Chapter Ten this week. I'll probably make a sidetrip to finish the table in Chapter 6.2.3 for firing arcs, and then it's on to the vehicle and capital ship catalogs in Chapter 6.3 and 7.3. How much I can get to will depend on what happens.
I'll close out this week's update with another reminder that I am accepting submissions for the non-canonical portions of the game (Chapters 6.4 and 7.4 for all homemade craft, as well as any characters people would like to add for the Who's Who in Chapter 12.2). If you have a submission you'd like to make for the game, please either PM me at the CIC forums or simply post your submission to the Wing Commander RPG thread under Fan Projects and Editing, again at the CIC forums. All submissions that are approved will appear in the final edit of the game and their creators will appear in the game's credits.
WCRPG sits at 78.38% complete as of this morning.
This last week turned out to be mostly focused on the changes I was making to the combat system in Chapter Nine; it turned out I had a lot more to take care of there than I had first suspected. After reviewing the price list Bandit LOAF gave me when I started out (and adjusting prices/adding new items to Chapter 5.4), fixing the rules for repeating weapons in Chapter 5.2, and adding a new rule for skill specializations in Chapter 3.0, I moved in to Chapter Nine, where I stayed for the better part of the week. Monday saw an expanded alternate range roll system for grid-less combat and expanded hex grid rules in Chapter 9.1, as well as altered AB rules and the addition of degrees of arc to the required weapons station information in Chapter 6.2.3 and 7.2.2. Refire rules were updated in the main combat Chapters for all scales (Chapters 9.2-9.4) on Tuesday, along with rules for commodities ejection by destroyed pirate and transport craft. A critical miss override rule for high HDs was added for the three scales of combat on Tuesday as well. Wednesday saw the completion of the commodities ejection rules and the designations of relative bearings for weapons arcs; these started off in Chapter 9.3 but were ultimately moved to Chapter 6.2.3 and referenced in Chapters 7.2.2, 9.3 and 9.4. This work included a series of visuals for the designated firing arcs (which I still need to put into the table there). I also began consideration of how best to alter the damage resolution system in Chapter 9.3 and 9.4; my ultimate solution (implemented on Thursday) was to swap out the functionality of Core Damage and Systems Damage, and to simplify Systems Damage from a full percentile system to one with set levels of damage (light, moderate and heavy; like what you see in the WC games). This was the last piece of Chapter Nine that needed work, and I'm happy to report that aside from the need to update the bearings table in Chapter 6.2.3, the revised combat engine is now fully implemented.
My main goal of last week was to attempt to finish up Chapter 10.6 (the short example of game-play); in order to do that, I wanted to have a Varni character in the group, so I went ahead and composed the Varni profile in Chapter 2.2.4. I used the procedure for creature creation in Chapter 10.2.7 for the initial stages of their profile, and it turned out to be a good thing that I did: a couple of my edits from last Friday didn't make it into the game (I think Wikia was having some technical issues or installing updates at the time, something I should've considered). I was able to re-implement these edits and complete the Varni profile on Friday, at which point editing on Chapter 10.6 began in earnest. I already had the gameplay scenario I wanted to write about in mind, so the first major issue I had to deal with in that chapter was the creation of a few extra generic characters. I selected the characters along with archetype templates late Friday, and spent time on Saturday calculating their stats. I still haven't fully finished assigning their skill specializations but I did complete enough of them to continue editing the chapter. At this point, 10.6 is edited up to the planetary transit section, which is actually not that far into it.
Wednesday also saw the initial formulation of autoslide rules for capable craft, though those rules may need to be made a little more formal; I'm thinking of adding a piece of equipment that will say "yes, this craft can autoslide". Technically with the way the rules are written, all Fightercraft are capable of autosliding maneuvers if their pilot can successfully complete enough Vehicle Piloting Checks in a row; these rules would make it a lot easier for certain craft to perform them (reducing the number of successful piloting Checks to one in all cases).
I made it through this week without a new baby in the house; my wife is due on Sunday, so I definitely can't guarantee this state of affairs will continue for very much longer. Plan is still to finish up Chapter Ten this week. I'll probably make a sidetrip to finish the table in Chapter 6.2.3 for firing arcs, and then it's on to the vehicle and capital ship catalogs in Chapter 6.3 and 7.3. How much I can get to will depend on what happens.
I'll close out this week's update with another reminder that I am accepting submissions for the non-canonical portions of the game (Chapters 6.4 and 7.4 for all homemade craft, as well as any characters people would like to add for the Who's Who in Chapter 12.2). If you have a submission you'd like to make for the game, please either PM me at the CIC forums or simply post your submission to the Wing Commander RPG thread under Fan Projects and Editing, again at the CIC forums. All submissions that are approved will appear in the final edit of the game and their creators will appear in the game's credits.
WCRPG sits at 78.38% complete as of this morning.
capi3101
Admiral
Good Monday, Wingnuts! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.
Well, this last week was heavy in events in real life, most of which kept me from making substantial progress on the game. My wife had an early labor episode last Tuesday and finally induced on Thursday, with our second son born that afternoon. Those of you keep up with the news and who have glanced at my profile page will also know that the town I live in was hit by a tornado Friday afternoon; I personally had no damage from the storm and nobody died, but there is damage to a good chunk of town. The birth of my son puts this week in doubt as far as work on WCRPG goes, as I'll only be working half days and will likely be using my sole break during those days to go walking. In other words, my time to work on the game this week is going to be extremely limited and I don't anticipate making much progress, which is unfortunate considering where the game's at at this point.
So, work this last week was largely centered on finishing up Chapter 10.6 (the game-play example). Monday was spent finishing up work I was doing on the sample characters for the scenario last weekend, as well as the creation of a new scenario based on what was carried over from SFRPG. The new scenario is supposed to be based on the rescue of Dr. Severin from Alcor V, though I never come out and say it directly (thus avoiding continuity issues). By the end of the day Monday, I had finished enough pre-work to continue editing the chapter. It became obvious early on that the encumbrance rules as they were written were not going to work, so I spent some time on Tuesday revamping and simplifying the system. I also discovered a need to clarify the rules for determining a creature's base HP in Chapter 10.2.7 and added the base HP stat to the existing race profiles, and clarified the rules for base attack values in Chapter 2.4. By this time, I knew my wife was due to be induced on Thursday, so I worked like mad on Wednesday to try to finish up editing of the rest of the chapter. Unfortunately, I didn't make it; the final edits on the chapter had to wait until yesterday, after reviewing what had been written on Wednesday. I am happy to report that Chapter 10.6 is done at this point, and that the only piece of work remaining to be done in Chapter 10 is the step-by-step Sector creation imagery suggested a few months ago by QuailPilot. I am content to call Chapter Ten complete as of yesterday. Other things that happened yesterday evening include the addition of the base HP and combat stats to the remaining (unedited) race profile pages, the addition of the arc coverage pictures to Chapter 6.2.3 (vehicle equipment) and an update to the over-the-shoulder firing arcs, and the initial set of edits to Chapter 6.3 (the vehicle catalog).
The plan for the coming weeks is to work on the vehicle and capital ship catalogs. Wing Commander is largely about the ships in it; it's about time I started adding a few. While I don't anticipate getting much work done this week, I might be able to get a few craft in and done. This is a pretty large piece of work ahead of me and I haven't got much of an idea of when it might be finished - I'll be sure to keep y'all apprised of my progress. After all the ships, work will go on to finishing the remaining race profiles.
I'll close out this week's update with another reminder that I am accepting submissions for the non-canonical portions of the game (Chapters 6.4 and 7.4 for all homemade craft, as well as any characters people would like to add for the Who's Who in Chapter 12.2). If you have a submission you'd like to make for the game, please either PM me at the CIC forums or simply post your submission to the Wing Commander RPG thread under Fan Projects and Editing, again at the CIC forums. All submissions that are approved will appear in the final edit of the game and their creators will appear in the game's credits.
WCRPG sits at 79.28% complete as of this morning.
Well, this last week was heavy in events in real life, most of which kept me from making substantial progress on the game. My wife had an early labor episode last Tuesday and finally induced on Thursday, with our second son born that afternoon. Those of you keep up with the news and who have glanced at my profile page will also know that the town I live in was hit by a tornado Friday afternoon; I personally had no damage from the storm and nobody died, but there is damage to a good chunk of town. The birth of my son puts this week in doubt as far as work on WCRPG goes, as I'll only be working half days and will likely be using my sole break during those days to go walking. In other words, my time to work on the game this week is going to be extremely limited and I don't anticipate making much progress, which is unfortunate considering where the game's at at this point.
So, work this last week was largely centered on finishing up Chapter 10.6 (the game-play example). Monday was spent finishing up work I was doing on the sample characters for the scenario last weekend, as well as the creation of a new scenario based on what was carried over from SFRPG. The new scenario is supposed to be based on the rescue of Dr. Severin from Alcor V, though I never come out and say it directly (thus avoiding continuity issues). By the end of the day Monday, I had finished enough pre-work to continue editing the chapter. It became obvious early on that the encumbrance rules as they were written were not going to work, so I spent some time on Tuesday revamping and simplifying the system. I also discovered a need to clarify the rules for determining a creature's base HP in Chapter 10.2.7 and added the base HP stat to the existing race profiles, and clarified the rules for base attack values in Chapter 2.4. By this time, I knew my wife was due to be induced on Thursday, so I worked like mad on Wednesday to try to finish up editing of the rest of the chapter. Unfortunately, I didn't make it; the final edits on the chapter had to wait until yesterday, after reviewing what had been written on Wednesday. I am happy to report that Chapter 10.6 is done at this point, and that the only piece of work remaining to be done in Chapter 10 is the step-by-step Sector creation imagery suggested a few months ago by QuailPilot. I am content to call Chapter Ten complete as of yesterday. Other things that happened yesterday evening include the addition of the base HP and combat stats to the remaining (unedited) race profile pages, the addition of the arc coverage pictures to Chapter 6.2.3 (vehicle equipment) and an update to the over-the-shoulder firing arcs, and the initial set of edits to Chapter 6.3 (the vehicle catalog).
The plan for the coming weeks is to work on the vehicle and capital ship catalogs. Wing Commander is largely about the ships in it; it's about time I started adding a few. While I don't anticipate getting much work done this week, I might be able to get a few craft in and done. This is a pretty large piece of work ahead of me and I haven't got much of an idea of when it might be finished - I'll be sure to keep y'all apprised of my progress. After all the ships, work will go on to finishing the remaining race profiles.
I'll close out this week's update with another reminder that I am accepting submissions for the non-canonical portions of the game (Chapters 6.4 and 7.4 for all homemade craft, as well as any characters people would like to add for the Who's Who in Chapter 12.2). If you have a submission you'd like to make for the game, please either PM me at the CIC forums or simply post your submission to the Wing Commander RPG thread under Fan Projects and Editing, again at the CIC forums. All submissions that are approved will appear in the final edit of the game and their creators will appear in the game's credits.
WCRPG sits at 79.28% complete as of this morning.
capi3101
Admiral
Good Monday, Wingnuts! Time for this week's WCRPG Update.
Well, as I mentioned in my last update, this week was fairly rough going, on account of a much busier RL schedule than I've been having up to this point. For most of the week, I stayed at home half-days helping my wife out with our baby, which limited the amount of time I had to work on the game. That said, I did make some progress. Work is now pretty much full on Chapters 6.3 and 7.3 (the catalogs) at this point. Monday saw the creation of the initial craft lists for both Chapters; I say initial because I found a few craft missing later in the week (mainly the Prophecy-era capital ships), and added them in when I discovered they'd been skipped. Tuesday saw the incorporation of the initial list into each catalog, the building of the basic craft table templates, and the initial entries of my outstanding notes into each chapter. Tuesday also saw the very first completed craft in the game, the F-36 Hornet (appropriate given that it's the first ship you fly in WC1). On Wednesday, I filled in the names of craft for the section headers on each page (allowing each individual craft to be selected from the Wikia page TOC) and began consolidating a few of the tables (basically, this entailed removing redundant entries, mainly for craft that appeared in WC4 that first appeared in WC3 without substantial updates). Thursday and Friday saw the addition of the Size Class calculation data I'd accumulated to date (a substantial amount, to be sure, but still not for every craft as yet). More craft did not get churned out until Saturday, when I filled in stats for the Ferret, Rapier-II/G and Sabre. I did go ahead and do some work yesterday; this involved an edit to the hero point section in Chapter 2.3 (character creation), updates to the Gatling qualifier and arc coverage definitions for weapons stations in Chapter 6.2.3 and 7.2.2 (equipment), the addition of the Autoslide Thruster Assembly to Chapter 6.2.3 - formally introducing the autoslide rules, and an update to a couple of the Neutron Gun entries in 6.2.3. Sunday also saw the addition of stats for the WC2 Broadsword and the Scimitar. While I was going through the Scim, I noticed a mistake I'd made with the craft added up to this point, and will need to work through each craft individually again before I continue with new craft. I'm still hopeful to get a good number of ships finished up this week (and if nothing else, to start in on some Kilrathi craft). I'd also like to at least get the preambles up for the non-canonical craft chapters (6.4 and 7.4).
Not a lot to report this week. I did want to say a quick word of thanks to the WC CIC News staff for the update on the front page this last week. I'll go ahead and remind y'all that I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 79.28% complete as of this morning.
Well, as I mentioned in my last update, this week was fairly rough going, on account of a much busier RL schedule than I've been having up to this point. For most of the week, I stayed at home half-days helping my wife out with our baby, which limited the amount of time I had to work on the game. That said, I did make some progress. Work is now pretty much full on Chapters 6.3 and 7.3 (the catalogs) at this point. Monday saw the creation of the initial craft lists for both Chapters; I say initial because I found a few craft missing later in the week (mainly the Prophecy-era capital ships), and added them in when I discovered they'd been skipped. Tuesday saw the incorporation of the initial list into each catalog, the building of the basic craft table templates, and the initial entries of my outstanding notes into each chapter. Tuesday also saw the very first completed craft in the game, the F-36 Hornet (appropriate given that it's the first ship you fly in WC1). On Wednesday, I filled in the names of craft for the section headers on each page (allowing each individual craft to be selected from the Wikia page TOC) and began consolidating a few of the tables (basically, this entailed removing redundant entries, mainly for craft that appeared in WC4 that first appeared in WC3 without substantial updates). Thursday and Friday saw the addition of the Size Class calculation data I'd accumulated to date (a substantial amount, to be sure, but still not for every craft as yet). More craft did not get churned out until Saturday, when I filled in stats for the Ferret, Rapier-II/G and Sabre. I did go ahead and do some work yesterday; this involved an edit to the hero point section in Chapter 2.3 (character creation), updates to the Gatling qualifier and arc coverage definitions for weapons stations in Chapter 6.2.3 and 7.2.2 (equipment), the addition of the Autoslide Thruster Assembly to Chapter 6.2.3 - formally introducing the autoslide rules, and an update to a couple of the Neutron Gun entries in 6.2.3. Sunday also saw the addition of stats for the WC2 Broadsword and the Scimitar. While I was going through the Scim, I noticed a mistake I'd made with the craft added up to this point, and will need to work through each craft individually again before I continue with new craft. I'm still hopeful to get a good number of ships finished up this week (and if nothing else, to start in on some Kilrathi craft). I'd also like to at least get the preambles up for the non-canonical craft chapters (6.4 and 7.4).
Not a lot to report this week. I did want to say a quick word of thanks to the WC CIC News staff for the update on the front page this last week. I'll go ahead and remind y'all that I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 79.28% complete as of this morning.
capi3101
Admiral
...and now it's time for the WCRPG's next crisis.
I've been spending the last few days entering stats into the Vehicle Catalog; at this point, the game's got all the fightercraft from WC1, WC2 and the two prototypes from Academy (the Wraith and the Jrathek). I even got the Gothri from Privateer done and in (did it about the same time as the WC2 Gothri).
Which brings me to the craft from Armada.
I just got done calculating the size of the Phantom and the Wraith. Based on my calculations, both fighters are larger than the Banshee by quite a good amount (which up to this point had been the largest fighter discovered). Moreover, they are larger than what's currently allowed by the vehicle creation system for a Fightercraft. It's because of their design - both the Phantom and the Wraith have a longer wingspan than front-to-back overall length, and given their lengths...
I'm left with three options here: A) I can put them on Transport Chassis (a solution I think I may have to do for some of the craft from Privateer already), B) I can adjust the maximum allowable Size Class for fightercraft upwards again (which I don't want to do since it may affect every craft that's been done up to this point), or C) I can lie about their size (an option, but not a good one).
Looking for some input as to what I oughta do in this case. Meantime, fighter creation is on hold.
I've been spending the last few days entering stats into the Vehicle Catalog; at this point, the game's got all the fightercraft from WC1, WC2 and the two prototypes from Academy (the Wraith and the Jrathek). I even got the Gothri from Privateer done and in (did it about the same time as the WC2 Gothri).
Which brings me to the craft from Armada.
I just got done calculating the size of the Phantom and the Wraith. Based on my calculations, both fighters are larger than the Banshee by quite a good amount (which up to this point had been the largest fighter discovered). Moreover, they are larger than what's currently allowed by the vehicle creation system for a Fightercraft. It's because of their design - both the Phantom and the Wraith have a longer wingspan than front-to-back overall length, and given their lengths...
I'm left with three options here: A) I can put them on Transport Chassis (a solution I think I may have to do for some of the craft from Privateer already), B) I can adjust the maximum allowable Size Class for fightercraft upwards again (which I don't want to do since it may affect every craft that's been done up to this point), or C) I can lie about their size (an option, but not a good one).
Looking for some input as to what I oughta do in this case. Meantime, fighter creation is on hold.
capi3101
Admiral
Good Monday, Wingnuts! I bring greetings from the land of the generally sleep-deprived...
Work this week continued in Chapter 6.3 (the vehicle catalog), with pretty much no work done in 7.3 (capital ships) this entire week. Monday saw the corrective work I indicated in the last update, mainly re-figuring costs, correcting typos and swapping out Mass Drivers on the craft that had been finished to that point. I also got initial work done on Chapters 6.4 and 7.4 (the non-canon catalogs) on Monday, adding in the preambles for those two chapters and creating the list of initial craft I intend to seed into both. I still haven't received any submissions from the community aside from starfox1701's Vanguard-class, but I'm still hopeful things will pick up soon. I also updated the cost of the Wake-class example in Chapter 7.2 to reflect the re-calculated cost of her onboard fighter compliment. Tuesday saw more corrective work, this time to deal with the effects of ECM on hit difficulties; stats for the Rapier-II/A, Crossbow, Epee, Morningstar and prototype Wraith were completed by the end of the day. On Wednesday my attention turned to Kilrathi craft, with stats completed on the Salthi, Dralthi-I, Dralthi-II, Krant, Jalthi, Gratha, Hhriss, Sartha, Drakhri and Jalkehi. I also decided to explictly list out the Tachyon Radar and Ion Engine accessories for all craft (as they are always part of the general Fightercraft chassis). I also took the time to extract information from the WC3 macro stat spreadsheet; I don't remember who initially posted that sheet to CIC, but thank you. Finally, on Thursday, I completed stats for the Grikath, WC2 Strakha, WC2 Gothri, Privateer Gothri, and the prototype Jrathek from Academy, wrapping up all small craft up to the end of the WC2 era.
That put me towards the end of the craft I had sized up to that point, so I began in with the Armada craft and hit a snag in regards to the size of several craft. Ultimately, I decided that the length stat there represented a "long dimension" rather than a proper length, and treated it as such; for many of those craft, that meant treating the listed length statistic as wingspan. Not a great solution and I'm not happy having done it, but it did get me back on track with sizing quickly. The last craft I was able to size on Thursday was the Darket; I had to request 3D views from the community on the Ekapshi, which was the next craft on my list (this in turn has lead to a on-going discussion of ship sizes in Privateer, which was not my intent and which caused me some further headaches, though the issues raised have been resolved to my satisfaction at this point) . Thursday also saw the removal of redundant craft entries from the WC4 and Prophecy craft lists.
After inputting the calculated data early in the day on Friday and making a slight change to the remaining empty tables, I worked up a list of remaining fightercraft to be sized, and began sizing them. I was able to complete sizing all small craft through WC4 on Friday. I also was able to add information to my notes on the lengths of Nephilim ships, thanks to the efforts of the WCPedia project (I owe a tremendous word of thanks to whoever added the shipsalien.doc information to the Nephilim entries in particular). The weekend was spent inputting sizing information into the tables as it became available, shooting side-shot screenshots of the craft from Arena and Prophecy (had the top downs of these already from the work I was doing with silhouettes late last year), and pixel hunting. As of this morning, I have measurements for all small craft that will be in the game except for the Privateer 2 craft; no size data is available for those craft, so I may ultimately get stuck there. If that happens, that happens; I can always move on to capships and come back to the P2 craft if I need to. I have reason to be hopeful that some size info on the P2 craft will become available soon.
Plan for this week is to continue in 6.3, of course. With most of my pixel hunting done at this point, determining size classes for the remaining craft will be simple enough (again, excepting the aforementioned P2 craft). I intend to get that information put into the tables and to continue to build craft statistics in sequence. I'm hopeful that I'll make substantial progress again this week, and perhaps be able to move on to capital ships soon.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 79.28% complete as of this morning.
Work this week continued in Chapter 6.3 (the vehicle catalog), with pretty much no work done in 7.3 (capital ships) this entire week. Monday saw the corrective work I indicated in the last update, mainly re-figuring costs, correcting typos and swapping out Mass Drivers on the craft that had been finished to that point. I also got initial work done on Chapters 6.4 and 7.4 (the non-canon catalogs) on Monday, adding in the preambles for those two chapters and creating the list of initial craft I intend to seed into both. I still haven't received any submissions from the community aside from starfox1701's Vanguard-class, but I'm still hopeful things will pick up soon. I also updated the cost of the Wake-class example in Chapter 7.2 to reflect the re-calculated cost of her onboard fighter compliment. Tuesday saw more corrective work, this time to deal with the effects of ECM on hit difficulties; stats for the Rapier-II/A, Crossbow, Epee, Morningstar and prototype Wraith were completed by the end of the day. On Wednesday my attention turned to Kilrathi craft, with stats completed on the Salthi, Dralthi-I, Dralthi-II, Krant, Jalthi, Gratha, Hhriss, Sartha, Drakhri and Jalkehi. I also decided to explictly list out the Tachyon Radar and Ion Engine accessories for all craft (as they are always part of the general Fightercraft chassis). I also took the time to extract information from the WC3 macro stat spreadsheet; I don't remember who initially posted that sheet to CIC, but thank you. Finally, on Thursday, I completed stats for the Grikath, WC2 Strakha, WC2 Gothri, Privateer Gothri, and the prototype Jrathek from Academy, wrapping up all small craft up to the end of the WC2 era.
That put me towards the end of the craft I had sized up to that point, so I began in with the Armada craft and hit a snag in regards to the size of several craft. Ultimately, I decided that the length stat there represented a "long dimension" rather than a proper length, and treated it as such; for many of those craft, that meant treating the listed length statistic as wingspan. Not a great solution and I'm not happy having done it, but it did get me back on track with sizing quickly. The last craft I was able to size on Thursday was the Darket; I had to request 3D views from the community on the Ekapshi, which was the next craft on my list (this in turn has lead to a on-going discussion of ship sizes in Privateer, which was not my intent and which caused me some further headaches, though the issues raised have been resolved to my satisfaction at this point) . Thursday also saw the removal of redundant craft entries from the WC4 and Prophecy craft lists.
After inputting the calculated data early in the day on Friday and making a slight change to the remaining empty tables, I worked up a list of remaining fightercraft to be sized, and began sizing them. I was able to complete sizing all small craft through WC4 on Friday. I also was able to add information to my notes on the lengths of Nephilim ships, thanks to the efforts of the WCPedia project (I owe a tremendous word of thanks to whoever added the shipsalien.doc information to the Nephilim entries in particular). The weekend was spent inputting sizing information into the tables as it became available, shooting side-shot screenshots of the craft from Arena and Prophecy (had the top downs of these already from the work I was doing with silhouettes late last year), and pixel hunting. As of this morning, I have measurements for all small craft that will be in the game except for the Privateer 2 craft; no size data is available for those craft, so I may ultimately get stuck there. If that happens, that happens; I can always move on to capships and come back to the P2 craft if I need to. I have reason to be hopeful that some size info on the P2 craft will become available soon.
Plan for this week is to continue in 6.3, of course. With most of my pixel hunting done at this point, determining size classes for the remaining craft will be simple enough (again, excepting the aforementioned P2 craft). I intend to get that information put into the tables and to continue to build craft statistics in sequence. I'm hopeful that I'll make substantial progress again this week, and perhaps be able to move on to capital ships soon.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 79.28% complete as of this morning.
capi3101
Admiral
Greetings, Wingnuts! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.
This week was pretty much like last week, with the only notable exception being that it was closer to a normal work week for me in RL (which meant a little more time to work on the game). The focus of the game remains in Chapter 6.3 (the vehicle catalog). Monday saw the end of my pixel hunting efforts for all remaining small craft as well as the calculation of size class and volume information for the craft I'd done over the previous weekend. Before I got back into vehicle creation on Tuesday, I went ahead and created a list of capital ships for which I had yet to gather size information; that'll be my next area of focus once all the fighters are finished. I also finished up the headers of the remaining blank tables; not really that big of an achievement, but for some reason it still made it into my log notes. On Tuesday, I had to fire up Armada one more time to retrieve data on afterburner speeds for those craft (information I need to share with the WCPedia folks, incidentally). On Friday as I was moving into the WC3 and WC4 craft, I made the decision to create a new vehicle accessory that would allow vehicles to mount capital ship-scale shields; it was the easiest way to handle the substantially larger shield strengths listed for those craft. I also made a note to remove a restriction to hardpoints for ordnance only.
The rest of my time was spent building ships. Finished craft this week include all ten craft from Armada, the vast majority of craft from Privateer (everything except the four playable craft, for which I've realized the need to create basic "stock" models - something I've also considered doing for the Privateer Demon), the WC3/4 Arrow, the Excalibur (which turned out to be a royal pain; got as far as putting values into the table for the WC3 version when I had to recalculate the cost of the WC4 and Secret Ops versions from scratch), and the Hellcat-V. Topped off the week by finishing up all stats on the Thunderbolt-VII very late last night. So a fair amount of craft were done this week.
Plan for this week is to continue in 6.3, of course. I need to finish up the Privateer craft, then continue with the WC3/WC4 craft. I've about got all the Confed craft there completed; still need to do the Longbow, the Bearcat and the Shuttle before moving on to Cat craft. I hope to be into the Prophecy craft at least by the end of the week. Still no idea about how I'll handle the Privateer 2 craft, but at least at this point I have their pixel information calculated.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 79.28% complete as of this morning.
This week was pretty much like last week, with the only notable exception being that it was closer to a normal work week for me in RL (which meant a little more time to work on the game). The focus of the game remains in Chapter 6.3 (the vehicle catalog). Monday saw the end of my pixel hunting efforts for all remaining small craft as well as the calculation of size class and volume information for the craft I'd done over the previous weekend. Before I got back into vehicle creation on Tuesday, I went ahead and created a list of capital ships for which I had yet to gather size information; that'll be my next area of focus once all the fighters are finished. I also finished up the headers of the remaining blank tables; not really that big of an achievement, but for some reason it still made it into my log notes. On Tuesday, I had to fire up Armada one more time to retrieve data on afterburner speeds for those craft (information I need to share with the WCPedia folks, incidentally). On Friday as I was moving into the WC3 and WC4 craft, I made the decision to create a new vehicle accessory that would allow vehicles to mount capital ship-scale shields; it was the easiest way to handle the substantially larger shield strengths listed for those craft. I also made a note to remove a restriction to hardpoints for ordnance only.
The rest of my time was spent building ships. Finished craft this week include all ten craft from Armada, the vast majority of craft from Privateer (everything except the four playable craft, for which I've realized the need to create basic "stock" models - something I've also considered doing for the Privateer Demon), the WC3/4 Arrow, the Excalibur (which turned out to be a royal pain; got as far as putting values into the table for the WC3 version when I had to recalculate the cost of the WC4 and Secret Ops versions from scratch), and the Hellcat-V. Topped off the week by finishing up all stats on the Thunderbolt-VII very late last night. So a fair amount of craft were done this week.
Plan for this week is to continue in 6.3, of course. I need to finish up the Privateer craft, then continue with the WC3/WC4 craft. I've about got all the Confed craft there completed; still need to do the Longbow, the Bearcat and the Shuttle before moving on to Cat craft. I hope to be into the Prophecy craft at least by the end of the week. Still no idea about how I'll handle the Privateer 2 craft, but at least at this point I have their pixel information calculated.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 79.28% complete as of this morning.
capi3101
Admiral
Good Monday, Wingnuts! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.
This week was like last week; next week's going to be more of the same. That's it for this week's update.
No, not really.
This last week was finals week for the Spring semester at OU, which for me meant overnight shifts at the campus Main branch library - four of them in a row to be precise. With little else assigned to do besides check IDs as folks drifted in, this left me with plenty of time to work on the game. Naturally my focused remained with Chapter 6.3, the vehicle catalog. Finished craft his week included the remaining craft from WC3 (specifically the Longbow and all the Kilrathi craft), the WC2 version of the Bloodfang, the four player craft from Privateer (with the addition of a set of "stock" stats for the Demon, assuming Bounty Player characters might want to purchase them), the entire set of unique craft from WC4, the Piranha, Tigershark and Wasp from Prophecy along with their major variants (from Secret Ops and their alternate loadouts), all Nephilim fighters (including variants and cluster fighters), the Arrow Eclipse from Arena (as an experiment, one I'll need to revisit) and the Straith from Privateer 2 (again, as an experiment). I rounded out the week by preparing a set of statistics for Prophecy's Condor and Hercules, though I did not have sufficient time to post those craft - a first order of business for today.
I did have to do a bit of improvisation on some of the craft this week. A big obvious one from the list of craft completed (notably the Straith) is the conversion of volume data for the Privateer 2 craft, which happened on Monday. I had pixel volumes for each craft already, but with no length data available I was going to have to make a judgment call here no matter what (with so much of a vehicle's base stats being dependent upon on its size). I elected to do a one cubic meter per thousand cubic pixel conversion, which I intend to use unless real data ever becomes available on those craft. Meanwhile, I've added a disclaimer note to each of those craft, with the calculated volumes, corresponding size classes and chassis added to each of the tables on Tuesday. The size disclaimer wound up being added to a number of craft for which the same situation existed - such as most of the Privateer 1 craft, the Bloodfangs, etc. A similar "unofficial" size note was added to the Nephilim designs, due to the size of those craft coming from one of Prophecy design documents (the size data itself was never published). For the Ekapshi, I realized late in its design - as I was uploading its stats to the wiki - that it technically was not a Fightercraft; it in fact should've been designed as an Aeroplane (to denote the fact that it wasn't supposed to be a spaceworthy craft). I had the option of either completely reworking the design (a process that takes thirty minutes at a minimum as a rule) or improvising a solution. I decided to save time to improv the solution; I may still rework the Ekapshi if I get some free time this week. Meantime it has a penalty if it leaves atmo. Finally, I had to make the decision to move the WC4 Confed Shuttle out of 6.3 to the noncanonical vehicle catalog in 6.4. Simply put, I didn't have any data on it at all, which meant anything I came up with was going to be my own interpretation of the craft. The noncanonical chapters are set up to handle "canonical craft with ill-defined stats", so that seemed appropriate to me.
Other work this week included an adjustment of the Speed Enhancer accessory in Chapter 6.2.3 (equipment), the removal of the "single shot only" restriction for Ordnance Weapon Stations in Chapter 6.2.3 and 7.2.2 (necessary as the craft started becoming better armed), the addition of the Capship Shield Adapter accessory to 6.2.3 (necessary as the fighter craft started moving into the hundreds of centimeters on their shield strengths), the addition of Nephilim ordnance to 6.2.3, the addition of tables for the Seahawk SWACS, Condor SAR and Hercules Assault Shuttle to Chapter 6.3, and a long-awaited recheck of the Rapier-I example in Chapter 6.2.
Plan for this week is to continue in 6.3, of course. I need to add the stats for the Hercules and Condor first, then finish up the remaining Prophecy craft - I still need to do the Panther, Vampire, Shrike, Devastator and Seahawk. It'll be on to Arena craft at that point and Privateer 2 craft from there. If I can maintain the pace at which I'm churning out craft, I anticipate being done with 6.3 in another two to three weeks.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 79.28% complete as of this morning.
This week was like last week; next week's going to be more of the same. That's it for this week's update.
No, not really.
This last week was finals week for the Spring semester at OU, which for me meant overnight shifts at the campus Main branch library - four of them in a row to be precise. With little else assigned to do besides check IDs as folks drifted in, this left me with plenty of time to work on the game. Naturally my focused remained with Chapter 6.3, the vehicle catalog. Finished craft his week included the remaining craft from WC3 (specifically the Longbow and all the Kilrathi craft), the WC2 version of the Bloodfang, the four player craft from Privateer (with the addition of a set of "stock" stats for the Demon, assuming Bounty Player characters might want to purchase them), the entire set of unique craft from WC4, the Piranha, Tigershark and Wasp from Prophecy along with their major variants (from Secret Ops and their alternate loadouts), all Nephilim fighters (including variants and cluster fighters), the Arrow Eclipse from Arena (as an experiment, one I'll need to revisit) and the Straith from Privateer 2 (again, as an experiment). I rounded out the week by preparing a set of statistics for Prophecy's Condor and Hercules, though I did not have sufficient time to post those craft - a first order of business for today.
I did have to do a bit of improvisation on some of the craft this week. A big obvious one from the list of craft completed (notably the Straith) is the conversion of volume data for the Privateer 2 craft, which happened on Monday. I had pixel volumes for each craft already, but with no length data available I was going to have to make a judgment call here no matter what (with so much of a vehicle's base stats being dependent upon on its size). I elected to do a one cubic meter per thousand cubic pixel conversion, which I intend to use unless real data ever becomes available on those craft. Meanwhile, I've added a disclaimer note to each of those craft, with the calculated volumes, corresponding size classes and chassis added to each of the tables on Tuesday. The size disclaimer wound up being added to a number of craft for which the same situation existed - such as most of the Privateer 1 craft, the Bloodfangs, etc. A similar "unofficial" size note was added to the Nephilim designs, due to the size of those craft coming from one of Prophecy design documents (the size data itself was never published). For the Ekapshi, I realized late in its design - as I was uploading its stats to the wiki - that it technically was not a Fightercraft; it in fact should've been designed as an Aeroplane (to denote the fact that it wasn't supposed to be a spaceworthy craft). I had the option of either completely reworking the design (a process that takes thirty minutes at a minimum as a rule) or improvising a solution. I decided to save time to improv the solution; I may still rework the Ekapshi if I get some free time this week. Meantime it has a penalty if it leaves atmo. Finally, I had to make the decision to move the WC4 Confed Shuttle out of 6.3 to the noncanonical vehicle catalog in 6.4. Simply put, I didn't have any data on it at all, which meant anything I came up with was going to be my own interpretation of the craft. The noncanonical chapters are set up to handle "canonical craft with ill-defined stats", so that seemed appropriate to me.
Other work this week included an adjustment of the Speed Enhancer accessory in Chapter 6.2.3 (equipment), the removal of the "single shot only" restriction for Ordnance Weapon Stations in Chapter 6.2.3 and 7.2.2 (necessary as the craft started becoming better armed), the addition of the Capship Shield Adapter accessory to 6.2.3 (necessary as the fighter craft started moving into the hundreds of centimeters on their shield strengths), the addition of Nephilim ordnance to 6.2.3, the addition of tables for the Seahawk SWACS, Condor SAR and Hercules Assault Shuttle to Chapter 6.3, and a long-awaited recheck of the Rapier-I example in Chapter 6.2.
Plan for this week is to continue in 6.3, of course. I need to add the stats for the Hercules and Condor first, then finish up the remaining Prophecy craft - I still need to do the Panther, Vampire, Shrike, Devastator and Seahawk. It'll be on to Arena craft at that point and Privateer 2 craft from there. If I can maintain the pace at which I'm churning out craft, I anticipate being done with 6.3 in another two to three weeks.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 79.28% complete as of this morning.
capi3101
Admiral
Good Monday to you, Wingnuts! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.
Well, this week turned out to be far more productive than I could've possibly anticipated. It probably helped matters when, after doing craft for most of the games by hand, I finally broke down and built a spreadsheet to help me figure up costs and build specific weapon and accessories lists; that happened on Tuesday as I was muddling through the stats for the Vampire (I mean the thing had six different configurations, ten if you count the shield upgrade separately - that's like ten different craft in one). The sheet really sped things up when it came to the Arena and Privateer 2 craft, to the point where I could ready and post up to about twenty craft a day by the end of the week. Work on the remaining Prophecy craft was finished Tuesday, work on all eighteen Arena craft began on Tuesday and was finished up by the end of the day on Wednesday, initial data collection began on all thirty-six Privateer 2 craft Thursday, and their stats were posted late last night. This morning I can proudly announce that Chapter 6.3 (the vehicle catalog) is 100% complete. If you ever thought about taking a wing of WC1 Salthi against a Broadsword Behemoth, WCRPG is now set up to do that.
(Incidentally, I worked out that Strength Index comparison this morning - 200 Salthi are the equivalent of 1 Broadsword Behemoth in WCRPG based on their respective SIs. Which means according to the game's rules, 200 Salthi should give the single Behemoth a fair fight...not particularly relevant to anything, I just thought that was interesting.)
Work didn't deviate from 6.3 at all this week, so I don't have a lot else to report. I did go ahead and revisit the Ekapshi and for a brief time on Monday it was an Aeroplane instead of a Fightercraft, but then I reread the restriction on Ion Engines (namely, that they could only be applied to space vehicles) and decided I wasn't going to change that rule for one craft, so it got reverted back to the way I had it originally. Other than that, the only thing I have in my log notes is a note regarding the update of my to-do list (and that was simply to remove 6.3 from that list).
So the next order of business for WCRPG is Chapter 7.3, the Capital Ship Catalog. I have a number of craft for which I haven't calculated size data as yet, so that'll be the first order of business for this week. I'll also need to retool my spreadsheet for capital ships and revisit the master list of craft - there are a couple of ships there that I know will have to be shunted over to the Non-Canonical Ship Catalog in 7.4 due to "ill-defined stats" (the Belleau Wood and Jakhari immediately come to mind, as well as the Steltek craft). I probably also need to better define some of the "starbase" entries in the list (calling something a Confederation or Kilrathi Starbase is all fine and dandy, but it'd be helpful to know which permutation is being referred to). I also have the task of figuring out weapons placements (i.e. firing arcs) and fighter compliments for various ships - something for which I've already started up a new thread under the "General Wing Commander Chat" board here at the CIC forums. Finally, I'm thinking about revisiting the equipment lists; I got to looking at the accessory costs in 7.2.2. again and some of them seem ridiculously cheap as they are. We're only talking a little less than a hundred ships in total, so hopefully overall things will go a little faster with capships than they did for fighters. I'll need to revisit where I want to go next after capships are done I think - my current plan has me finishing up races at that point but I've also got maps and characters to consider - but that's a decision I don't have to make just yet.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG sits at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
Well, this week turned out to be far more productive than I could've possibly anticipated. It probably helped matters when, after doing craft for most of the games by hand, I finally broke down and built a spreadsheet to help me figure up costs and build specific weapon and accessories lists; that happened on Tuesday as I was muddling through the stats for the Vampire (I mean the thing had six different configurations, ten if you count the shield upgrade separately - that's like ten different craft in one). The sheet really sped things up when it came to the Arena and Privateer 2 craft, to the point where I could ready and post up to about twenty craft a day by the end of the week. Work on the remaining Prophecy craft was finished Tuesday, work on all eighteen Arena craft began on Tuesday and was finished up by the end of the day on Wednesday, initial data collection began on all thirty-six Privateer 2 craft Thursday, and their stats were posted late last night. This morning I can proudly announce that Chapter 6.3 (the vehicle catalog) is 100% complete. If you ever thought about taking a wing of WC1 Salthi against a Broadsword Behemoth, WCRPG is now set up to do that.
(Incidentally, I worked out that Strength Index comparison this morning - 200 Salthi are the equivalent of 1 Broadsword Behemoth in WCRPG based on their respective SIs. Which means according to the game's rules, 200 Salthi should give the single Behemoth a fair fight...not particularly relevant to anything, I just thought that was interesting.)
Work didn't deviate from 6.3 at all this week, so I don't have a lot else to report. I did go ahead and revisit the Ekapshi and for a brief time on Monday it was an Aeroplane instead of a Fightercraft, but then I reread the restriction on Ion Engines (namely, that they could only be applied to space vehicles) and decided I wasn't going to change that rule for one craft, so it got reverted back to the way I had it originally. Other than that, the only thing I have in my log notes is a note regarding the update of my to-do list (and that was simply to remove 6.3 from that list).
So the next order of business for WCRPG is Chapter 7.3, the Capital Ship Catalog. I have a number of craft for which I haven't calculated size data as yet, so that'll be the first order of business for this week. I'll also need to retool my spreadsheet for capital ships and revisit the master list of craft - there are a couple of ships there that I know will have to be shunted over to the Non-Canonical Ship Catalog in 7.4 due to "ill-defined stats" (the Belleau Wood and Jakhari immediately come to mind, as well as the Steltek craft). I probably also need to better define some of the "starbase" entries in the list (calling something a Confederation or Kilrathi Starbase is all fine and dandy, but it'd be helpful to know which permutation is being referred to). I also have the task of figuring out weapons placements (i.e. firing arcs) and fighter compliments for various ships - something for which I've already started up a new thread under the "General Wing Commander Chat" board here at the CIC forums. Finally, I'm thinking about revisiting the equipment lists; I got to looking at the accessory costs in 7.2.2. again and some of them seem ridiculously cheap as they are. We're only talking a little less than a hundred ships in total, so hopefully overall things will go a little faster with capships than they did for fighters. I'll need to revisit where I want to go next after capships are done I think - my current plan has me finishing up races at that point but I've also got maps and characters to consider - but that's a decision I don't have to make just yet.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG sits at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
capi3101
Admiral
Good Monday Wingnuts, and a pleasant Memorial Day to one and all. I know everybody on these boards got up at the butt crack of dawn to help your local VFW put up the flags at the cemetery this morning, right?
(No, I didn't do that this year, on account of being out of town.)
This was a short and non-productive week for WCRPG for the most part. Work was centered in Chapter 7.3 (the capship catalog) and mainly involved pixel hunting the sizes of ships I hadn't done already; Monday saw work on the ships I had good data on, and Tuesday was the day I spent making up crap for the ones that I didn't have. All that data was added to the wiki on Tuesday, along with notes for the ships for which I had to make estimations and outright guesses (Behemoth, Durango, the WC3 Kilrathi Starbase, Ella, Pasqual and all P2 craft). Wednesday, I didn't get a lot of chances to do any work on the game due to a professional development day at work; I had a single break where all I was able to do was determine what chassis might be needed given the size classes represented and prep a worksheet with data on those chassis; I further sorted that list by size class. Initial work was to commence on the WC1 capships that morning and got as far as shield selection, but the workstation I was on went BSOD and I lost my progress there. Haven't had another opportunity to try again yet. Meantime, I've continued the discussion on weapons placement/configuration in earnest here at CIC. So far, I've been going off the line drawings from Claw Marks and the Janes Supplements for WC1 craft; looking ahead to WC2, I may have to change my mind and just go with what craft actually had in-game. That's a decision I haven't really made just yet.
The plan for this week is to continue in 7.3 after today; going to be headed home sometime today and I don't really foresee getting any work done until then. Things to do are pretty much the same as they were last week (with the exception of finishing up the sizing of everything and the shunting of ships to 7.4 due to ill-defined stats; apparently that happened without me logging when I did it). That's going to entail continuing the discussion on weapons emplacements and a possible re-visitation of the equipment lists. Hopefully I can start churning out ships this week at some point.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
(No, I didn't do that this year, on account of being out of town.)
This was a short and non-productive week for WCRPG for the most part. Work was centered in Chapter 7.3 (the capship catalog) and mainly involved pixel hunting the sizes of ships I hadn't done already; Monday saw work on the ships I had good data on, and Tuesday was the day I spent making up crap for the ones that I didn't have. All that data was added to the wiki on Tuesday, along with notes for the ships for which I had to make estimations and outright guesses (Behemoth, Durango, the WC3 Kilrathi Starbase, Ella, Pasqual and all P2 craft). Wednesday, I didn't get a lot of chances to do any work on the game due to a professional development day at work; I had a single break where all I was able to do was determine what chassis might be needed given the size classes represented and prep a worksheet with data on those chassis; I further sorted that list by size class. Initial work was to commence on the WC1 capships that morning and got as far as shield selection, but the workstation I was on went BSOD and I lost my progress there. Haven't had another opportunity to try again yet. Meantime, I've continued the discussion on weapons placement/configuration in earnest here at CIC. So far, I've been going off the line drawings from Claw Marks and the Janes Supplements for WC1 craft; looking ahead to WC2, I may have to change my mind and just go with what craft actually had in-game. That's a decision I haven't really made just yet.
The plan for this week is to continue in 7.3 after today; going to be headed home sometime today and I don't really foresee getting any work done until then. Things to do are pretty much the same as they were last week (with the exception of finishing up the sizing of everything and the shunting of ships to 7.4 due to ill-defined stats; apparently that happened without me logging when I did it). That's going to entail continuing the discussion on weapons emplacements and a possible re-visitation of the equipment lists. Hopefully I can start churning out ships this week at some point.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
capi3101
Admiral
Good Monday, Wingnuts! Starting this update just slightly later than normal this week; I was reading the opening article of Dundradal's WC-vs-History series on the Battle of Midway; it's a good read and I hope y'all take the time to read it.
Got a bit sidetracked this week, as is apt to happen from time to time, and having a shortened week did not help matters much. I didn't get any work done on Monday because (as I mentioned last week) I was returning home from visiting in-laws, and on Friday I had some of my family in town to see my two-month old son for the first time. I did do a fair amount of work on capital ships this week, though much of that effort was behind the scenes. Specifically, I went ahead and determined the engine and shield classes that are going to be required for each capital ship in the game along with armor type and thickness. This puts me in a position where all I need to do at this point for capital ships is to determine what accessories they're going to need and set their armament. I do have preliminary chassis set for each ship, though it remains to be seen whether or not my selections will be sufficient or not and whether or not I'll have to make any systemic changes. I'm worried that I may have things not expensive enough when it comes to capital ships. On the plus side, however, I am now ready to get serious with capital ships; two ships, the Drayman-I and the Diligent, were added to the game on Saturday. I hope to get the other WC1 capships done and up sometime in the next few days.
The other work I did this week involved some boilerplate work for Chapter 8.5 (Navigational Data), specifically the preparation of navigational maps for the Gemini Sector. Since the completion of Chapters 10.2.1 and 10.2.2 (sector and nav map creation, respectively), I had known that I would probably have to perform some manner of conversion from what's been published to how things work in WCRPG's system. This week, I decided to get started on that effort, which began with pixel hunting the Gemini Sector nav maps. Basically, I was looking for the rough center of where each nav point appeared on each map. I was using WCPedia for this effort and in a couple of cases I came across instances where the articles were missing the maps or simply didn't exist, so I decided to help out the WCPedia by filling in that data (this even involved firing up Righteous Fire to get a few of the missing maps). I can report today that I was able to get all the data I need and perform the conversion calculation on Thursday, though I've yet to sit down and see if this effort was successful or not. At a glance it is, but I want to make sure. Meantime, I've decided to move nav maps up in the order of things I still need to accomplish with WCRPG; I'll be finishing up that chapter prior to resuming work on races.
The plan for this week is to continue in 7.3 and see if I can reconstruct the full Gemini Sector map in WCRPG's system; if I can do that, I may begin splitting my time between 7.3 and 8.5 (there are thirteen Sectors to map out, after all, though any further work is likely to be just Sectors so I may be able to knock it out pretty quickly). I've got four identifiable capital ships that I can shunt over to 7.4, which I'll probably do today. After that, I just need to keep churning out ships. Hopefully this week will be slightly more productive on the capship front.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
Got a bit sidetracked this week, as is apt to happen from time to time, and having a shortened week did not help matters much. I didn't get any work done on Monday because (as I mentioned last week) I was returning home from visiting in-laws, and on Friday I had some of my family in town to see my two-month old son for the first time. I did do a fair amount of work on capital ships this week, though much of that effort was behind the scenes. Specifically, I went ahead and determined the engine and shield classes that are going to be required for each capital ship in the game along with armor type and thickness. This puts me in a position where all I need to do at this point for capital ships is to determine what accessories they're going to need and set their armament. I do have preliminary chassis set for each ship, though it remains to be seen whether or not my selections will be sufficient or not and whether or not I'll have to make any systemic changes. I'm worried that I may have things not expensive enough when it comes to capital ships. On the plus side, however, I am now ready to get serious with capital ships; two ships, the Drayman-I and the Diligent, were added to the game on Saturday. I hope to get the other WC1 capships done and up sometime in the next few days.
The other work I did this week involved some boilerplate work for Chapter 8.5 (Navigational Data), specifically the preparation of navigational maps for the Gemini Sector. Since the completion of Chapters 10.2.1 and 10.2.2 (sector and nav map creation, respectively), I had known that I would probably have to perform some manner of conversion from what's been published to how things work in WCRPG's system. This week, I decided to get started on that effort, which began with pixel hunting the Gemini Sector nav maps. Basically, I was looking for the rough center of where each nav point appeared on each map. I was using WCPedia for this effort and in a couple of cases I came across instances where the articles were missing the maps or simply didn't exist, so I decided to help out the WCPedia by filling in that data (this even involved firing up Righteous Fire to get a few of the missing maps). I can report today that I was able to get all the data I need and perform the conversion calculation on Thursday, though I've yet to sit down and see if this effort was successful or not. At a glance it is, but I want to make sure. Meantime, I've decided to move nav maps up in the order of things I still need to accomplish with WCRPG; I'll be finishing up that chapter prior to resuming work on races.
The plan for this week is to continue in 7.3 and see if I can reconstruct the full Gemini Sector map in WCRPG's system; if I can do that, I may begin splitting my time between 7.3 and 8.5 (there are thirteen Sectors to map out, after all, though any further work is likely to be just Sectors so I may be able to knock it out pretty quickly). I've got four identifiable capital ships that I can shunt over to 7.4, which I'll probably do today. After that, I just need to keep churning out ships. Hopefully this week will be slightly more productive on the capship front.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
capi3101
Admiral
Good Monday, Wingnuts! Time for the weekly WCRPG update.
Well, at this point I've got two active projects going on, WCRPG and a specific WCRPG mission (entitled "Prelude to Goddard") designed as an offering for Free RPG Day this year (which has its own thread going on here at the CIC forums). Free RPG Day is this coming Saturday, so I'll probably be focused on Prelude for the bulk of this week. Just saying.
Work on WCRPG remains focused on the capital ship catalog in Chapter 7.3. I finished a total of ten capital ship classes this week, including the Venture, Exeter, Bengal, Dorkir, Lumbari, Ralari, Fralthi, Sivar, Snakeir and Concordia-classes (the Concordia is a jump ahead, of course; I mainly did it to see if I needed to adjust equipment prices). Monday I made the painful decision to move the Behemoth and Durango-classes to the non-canonical catalog page in Chapter 7.4. Simply put, I'd have to make up most of the stats for them myself, so what would result would be my interpretation of what I think they should be capable of. Draknor and Kastagan stations were also dropped completely; I had up until early this past week thought I'd seen statistical entries for them in the P2 cluebook, which turned out not to be the case. Thursday I introduced a new "wide" firing arc definition to Chapter 6.2.3 (basically these are 135-degree firing arcs), which required me to revisit fighters in 6.3 and the few capships that had been done up to that point to adjust the wording (there weren't that many fighters that needed adjustment; bombers predominantly). I started in on the Star Post on Friday; as I was working, I discovered that the old ship's database had crew compliments much lower than what I'd figured for the Sivar and Snakeir (I'd been going off of WWII Japanese craft for the compliments of Kilrathi ships up to that point). I'm debating as to whether or not I want to go with the ship's database figures or simply leave things like they are; I'm leaning towards the latter. I still haven't quite finished the Star Post to my satisfaction as of this morning (and I need to button it up, as it's a key element in Prelude).
Other work this week included a check of the work I did in previous weeks on the translation of the Gemini Sector nav maps to the WCRPG system; that worked out most excellently, so I've got a leg up on that chapter when the time comes. For the hell of it, I also went ahead and translated Gemini's Sector Map to WCRPG's system. What came out there is.....close. I'll definitely have to post a picture of that one when I get an opportunity. On Monday I also realized I had the portside and starboard labels for firing arcs in Chapter 6.2.3 backwards; I went ahead and corrected that. After reading through some of the history entries again on Tuesday, I went ahead and adjusted the timeline to better account for discrepancies in the settlement of Gemini and added an account of the formation of the Landreich. I also adjusted two WCPedia entries this last week and worked on a spreadsheet to help me build the probability tables more rapidly (I'm still farting around with this; to be honest, my contributions to WCPedia have been limited this week and probably will continue to be limited this coming week).
The plan for this week is to take the week off from WCRPG proper to work on Prelude. I'm hoping to have it ready for public download on Friday, but I still have a fair amount to do. We'll see if it happens or not. Basic mission parameters are down and I've got a lot of work done on characters (though I'm not nearly as far along as I would've liked; I've got to learn I can't count on getting anything done at home on the weekends). I hope to begin typing up the actual product (read: copy the relevant sections I need from WCRPG) later today. Keep your fingers crossed.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
Well, at this point I've got two active projects going on, WCRPG and a specific WCRPG mission (entitled "Prelude to Goddard") designed as an offering for Free RPG Day this year (which has its own thread going on here at the CIC forums). Free RPG Day is this coming Saturday, so I'll probably be focused on Prelude for the bulk of this week. Just saying.
Work on WCRPG remains focused on the capital ship catalog in Chapter 7.3. I finished a total of ten capital ship classes this week, including the Venture, Exeter, Bengal, Dorkir, Lumbari, Ralari, Fralthi, Sivar, Snakeir and Concordia-classes (the Concordia is a jump ahead, of course; I mainly did it to see if I needed to adjust equipment prices). Monday I made the painful decision to move the Behemoth and Durango-classes to the non-canonical catalog page in Chapter 7.4. Simply put, I'd have to make up most of the stats for them myself, so what would result would be my interpretation of what I think they should be capable of. Draknor and Kastagan stations were also dropped completely; I had up until early this past week thought I'd seen statistical entries for them in the P2 cluebook, which turned out not to be the case. Thursday I introduced a new "wide" firing arc definition to Chapter 6.2.3 (basically these are 135-degree firing arcs), which required me to revisit fighters in 6.3 and the few capships that had been done up to that point to adjust the wording (there weren't that many fighters that needed adjustment; bombers predominantly). I started in on the Star Post on Friday; as I was working, I discovered that the old ship's database had crew compliments much lower than what I'd figured for the Sivar and Snakeir (I'd been going off of WWII Japanese craft for the compliments of Kilrathi ships up to that point). I'm debating as to whether or not I want to go with the ship's database figures or simply leave things like they are; I'm leaning towards the latter. I still haven't quite finished the Star Post to my satisfaction as of this morning (and I need to button it up, as it's a key element in Prelude).
Other work this week included a check of the work I did in previous weeks on the translation of the Gemini Sector nav maps to the WCRPG system; that worked out most excellently, so I've got a leg up on that chapter when the time comes. For the hell of it, I also went ahead and translated Gemini's Sector Map to WCRPG's system. What came out there is.....close. I'll definitely have to post a picture of that one when I get an opportunity. On Monday I also realized I had the portside and starboard labels for firing arcs in Chapter 6.2.3 backwards; I went ahead and corrected that. After reading through some of the history entries again on Tuesday, I went ahead and adjusted the timeline to better account for discrepancies in the settlement of Gemini and added an account of the formation of the Landreich. I also adjusted two WCPedia entries this last week and worked on a spreadsheet to help me build the probability tables more rapidly (I'm still farting around with this; to be honest, my contributions to WCPedia have been limited this week and probably will continue to be limited this coming week).
The plan for this week is to take the week off from WCRPG proper to work on Prelude. I'm hoping to have it ready for public download on Friday, but I still have a fair amount to do. We'll see if it happens or not. Basic mission parameters are down and I've got a lot of work done on characters (though I'm not nearly as far along as I would've liked; I've got to learn I can't count on getting anything done at home on the weekends). I hope to begin typing up the actual product (read: copy the relevant sections I need from WCRPG) later today. Keep your fingers crossed.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
capi3101
Admiral
Greetings, Wingnuts! Time for this week's WCRPG Update.
As I mentioned in the last update, I took time off from WCRPG this last week in order to get Prelude to Goddard ready to go for Free RPG Day on Saturday. The game wound up taking the entire week and I almost didn't make my self-imposed Friday deadline, but I'm happy to say that I was able to finish the game with all the features I had intended to put into it (if it's lacking anything, it's more detailed character bios for the pilots; hopefully my intentions for the characters are reflected in their stats). Prelude is available for free PDF download via Lulu, and I've also made it available as a perfect-bound paperback. As best I can tell, so far up to three copies of the paperback have been purchased. The sales stats are kinda difficult to read at Lulu, since they only show total sales figures (i.e. I have no idea if three of the four copies that have been bought since last Friday are copies of Prelude or copies of SFRPG - one of them I know is the copy of Prelude I bought for myself). Just in terms of pitching the thing, the paperback of Prelude only cost me a little over $10 including S&H, it's got a lighter version of the full WCRPG rules included and a sample WC1-era mission.
Prelude is not the only thing I have on my logs for this week. Friday night I happened to be on #wingnut around 0230Z when Bob McDob mentioned to LOAF that he had some figures from 3DS Max for the size of P2 craft. So let that be a lesson to y'all: eavesdropping pays off. I have yet to parse all those figures but it probably does mean some adjustments to those craft in the near future - particularly to the P2 capships. I also decided on Saturday to scrap the WCTB project. Simply put, I didn't think I was ever going to go back and finish it up and I'd made enough changes to the WCRPG combat system that it no longer accurately served as a testbed. I may go ahead and pick it back up once WCRPG is done, simply so that there's an "arena" version of the game. That won't be until well into the future at this point.
This week I've got to get back to work on capital ships (Chapter 7.3). The WC1 materials are all done, so it's time to move on to WC2, where I've already identified a major problem when it comes to weapons. I hope to be able to resolve those soon. I've also got Bob McDob's data to sift through - I'll need to determine fairly rapidly if I need to move some of those craft back over to the vehicle catalog, and if so I'll have to go re-edit portions of that chapter again. Means switching out chassis for some of those craft, which hopefully won't be too big of a pain.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
As I mentioned in the last update, I took time off from WCRPG this last week in order to get Prelude to Goddard ready to go for Free RPG Day on Saturday. The game wound up taking the entire week and I almost didn't make my self-imposed Friday deadline, but I'm happy to say that I was able to finish the game with all the features I had intended to put into it (if it's lacking anything, it's more detailed character bios for the pilots; hopefully my intentions for the characters are reflected in their stats). Prelude is available for free PDF download via Lulu, and I've also made it available as a perfect-bound paperback. As best I can tell, so far up to three copies of the paperback have been purchased. The sales stats are kinda difficult to read at Lulu, since they only show total sales figures (i.e. I have no idea if three of the four copies that have been bought since last Friday are copies of Prelude or copies of SFRPG - one of them I know is the copy of Prelude I bought for myself). Just in terms of pitching the thing, the paperback of Prelude only cost me a little over $10 including S&H, it's got a lighter version of the full WCRPG rules included and a sample WC1-era mission.
Prelude is not the only thing I have on my logs for this week. Friday night I happened to be on #wingnut around 0230Z when Bob McDob mentioned to LOAF that he had some figures from 3DS Max for the size of P2 craft. So let that be a lesson to y'all: eavesdropping pays off. I have yet to parse all those figures but it probably does mean some adjustments to those craft in the near future - particularly to the P2 capships. I also decided on Saturday to scrap the WCTB project. Simply put, I didn't think I was ever going to go back and finish it up and I'd made enough changes to the WCRPG combat system that it no longer accurately served as a testbed. I may go ahead and pick it back up once WCRPG is done, simply so that there's an "arena" version of the game. That won't be until well into the future at this point.
This week I've got to get back to work on capital ships (Chapter 7.3). The WC1 materials are all done, so it's time to move on to WC2, where I've already identified a major problem when it comes to weapons. I hope to be able to resolve those soon. I've also got Bob McDob's data to sift through - I'll need to determine fairly rapidly if I need to move some of those craft back over to the vehicle catalog, and if so I'll have to go re-edit portions of that chapter again. Means switching out chassis for some of those craft, which hopefully won't be too big of a pain.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
capi3101
Admiral
Good Monday, Wingnuts! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.
This week was a fairly busy one for WCRPG, with work focused in Chapters 6.3 (the vehicle catalog) and 7.3 (the capship catalog). I started off last week working on affecting changes to the P2 craft (as per the last update). As I'd anticipated, some of the craft required some major overhauling - the shuttles in particular had to be moved back to 6.3 from 7.3 and for a few days last week I had to put 6.3 back on draft status. I finished affecting changes to the existing P2 craft on Tuesday, with work on shuttles and a few of the transports (specificially the two Geas and the Ogan) finished on Wednesday. I will note that I made a conscious decision not to go with Bob McDob's figures on the Faldari Mk-II; the calculated Size Class would've been too small for any of the Fightercraft chassis, and once again I'm loathe to change my system for one craft. The changes to the Ogan required some minor adjustments to the examples in Chapter 8.4 (interstellar travel), as I'd already used an Ogan for the example craft in that chapter. That work was also completed on Wednesday. The rest of my time this week was spent getting stats ready for the WC2 capital ships in Chapter 7.3. I spent the rest of Wednesday and Thursday going over the VDUs of each of the WC2 craft in turn and making notes on each one. Doing this allowed me to churn out stats on each ship quickly - by Friday, I had readied stats for all of the Confederation capital ships, with the Kilrathi ships ready by Saturday.
Which is when I hit a big snag - while working out the statistics for the WC2 Kilrathi Starbase (i.e. K'Tithrak Mang), I discovered that the spreadsheet I'd been using to calculate the cost of capital ships was not adding in several accessory entries. The ones being skipped were fairly important - ITTS, Tracking Computers, Pod Mounts, and Hangar Bays. It'll be necessary for me to recalculate the cost of each capship done up to this point - about two dozen ships. The rest of the stats should be correct, but I'll need to deal with this before I can proceed much further. I'm hopeful I'll have corrections affected later today or tomorrow at the latest.
Plan for this week - fix the capships that need fixing and then start posting new ones. I hope to be into the WC3 ships by the end of the week if not further.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
This week was a fairly busy one for WCRPG, with work focused in Chapters 6.3 (the vehicle catalog) and 7.3 (the capship catalog). I started off last week working on affecting changes to the P2 craft (as per the last update). As I'd anticipated, some of the craft required some major overhauling - the shuttles in particular had to be moved back to 6.3 from 7.3 and for a few days last week I had to put 6.3 back on draft status. I finished affecting changes to the existing P2 craft on Tuesday, with work on shuttles and a few of the transports (specificially the two Geas and the Ogan) finished on Wednesday. I will note that I made a conscious decision not to go with Bob McDob's figures on the Faldari Mk-II; the calculated Size Class would've been too small for any of the Fightercraft chassis, and once again I'm loathe to change my system for one craft. The changes to the Ogan required some minor adjustments to the examples in Chapter 8.4 (interstellar travel), as I'd already used an Ogan for the example craft in that chapter. That work was also completed on Wednesday. The rest of my time this week was spent getting stats ready for the WC2 capital ships in Chapter 7.3. I spent the rest of Wednesday and Thursday going over the VDUs of each of the WC2 craft in turn and making notes on each one. Doing this allowed me to churn out stats on each ship quickly - by Friday, I had readied stats for all of the Confederation capital ships, with the Kilrathi ships ready by Saturday.
Which is when I hit a big snag - while working out the statistics for the WC2 Kilrathi Starbase (i.e. K'Tithrak Mang), I discovered that the spreadsheet I'd been using to calculate the cost of capital ships was not adding in several accessory entries. The ones being skipped were fairly important - ITTS, Tracking Computers, Pod Mounts, and Hangar Bays. It'll be necessary for me to recalculate the cost of each capship done up to this point - about two dozen ships. The rest of the stats should be correct, but I'll need to deal with this before I can proceed much further. I'm hopeful I'll have corrections affected later today or tomorrow at the latest.
Plan for this week - fix the capships that need fixing and then start posting new ones. I hope to be into the WC3 ships by the end of the week if not further.
I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.
WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.