[Fury]

In this topic you can find unofficial downloads made by Blue Planet team. Please note that while we try to support them properly, sometimes changes to mission balance are significant. That said, these downloads are made available because they usually improve one or more aspect of gameplay.


Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius 3.6.12 Feature Pack

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== OPTIONAL AND UNOFFICIAL 3.6.12 FEATURES FOR BLUE PLANET: AGE OF AQUARIUS - THE DIRECTOR'S CUT ==
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?board=169.0


== FS2_OPEN 3.6.12 RELEASE CANDIDATE 1 OR NEWER IS REQUIRED TO USE THESE FEATURES ==
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?board=50.0


= Following features are included =

- AI mod (bp-3612-ai.vp)
* High-performance AI for all ships.
* Tweaked difficulty level scaling. Difficulty progression is more even across all difficulties than retail.
* Exception to above is that hostile AI receives penalties to their rate of fire and turning on very easy and easy difficulties.
* Fighter and bomber turrets now target independently like capital ship turrets do, instead of trying to shoot whatever hostile player has targeted.
* This AI is much tougher than normal, expect a challenge.
* Compatible with Blue Planet, mediavps 3.6.10, retail FreeSpace 2, multiplayer and any other mod that uses same AI classes and AI profile as retail FreeSpace 2.

- Glide mod (bp-3612-glide.vp)
* This mod should only be used if you also use the AI mod.
* Allows fighters and bombers use glide, which allows traveling to one direction but facing another.
* For player to use gliding, you must first assign a key to it. In main hall, press F2. Go to Control Config and select SHIP. Assign a key to "Glide when pressed", then Accept.
* Enables newtonian dampening on fighters and bombers, which gives turns and acceleration newtonian elements.
* Includes velocity indicator script which should help player to grasp his ship's current velocity and heading.
* Compatible with Blue Planet, mediavps 3.6.10, retail FreeSpace 2, multiplayer and any other mod that uses Blue Planet and retail FreeSpace 2 ships. Gliding won't be enabled on any other ship other than retail FS2 or BP.

- Rebalance mod (bp-3612-rb.vp)
* This mod is highly recommended if you are using the AI mod.
* Standard flak fire wait increased from 0.15 to 1.0.
* Vishnan flak fire wait increased from 0.15 to 1.0.
* Tweaked beam miss rates.
* Shivan fighters and bombers have slide and reverse disabled. Retail slide and reverse velocities are so low that Shivan craft are essentially sitting ducks when they use sliding or reverse.
* Artemis D.H has slightly better performance than Artemis.
* GTB Artemis, GTB Artemis D.H., GVB Sekhmet, GVB Bakha, SF Aeshma, SB Nahema and SB Seraphim had zero, negative or over the top engine overclock. Now they have +20% engine overclock.
* SB Nephilim, SB Taurvi and SB Seraphim now have afterburners. Nephilim and Seraphim have same afterburner stats as GTB Sekhmet and Taurvi same as GTB Bakha.
* Compatible with Blue Planet, mediavps 3.6.10, retail FreeSpace 2, multiplayer and most mods.

- Special effects mod (bp-3612-sfx.vp)
* All weapons have hull piercing effects.
* All ships have been given an armor type for finer control over when hull piercing effects trigger.
* Improved flashy explosions script.
* Karuna's Point Defense turret and Apocalypse torpedoes use $Burst flags instead of $Swarm, making them behave as intended and same as in BP2.
* Compatible with Blue Planet, mediavps 3.6.10, retail FreeSpace 2, multiplayer and any other mod that uses weapons included in Blue Planet, mediavps 3.6.10 and retail FreeSpace 2 and does not use armor types. Special effects are not added to any other weapon.


= Installation =

Extract blueplanet-3612 folder from this 7z-file to your FreeSpace 2 folder. This is a mod of its own, it is NOT to be installed to either mediavps or blueplanet.


= Usage =

By default all optional mods are enabled. If you want to disable any one of them, move its vp-file to blueplanet-3612\disabled mods folder. If you want to enable a mod again, move it back to blueplanet-3612 folder.

Open launcher, go to MOD -tab, select blueplanet-3612 as your mod. You can then enjoy Blue Planet, mediavps, FreeSpace 2 and multiplayer with these features.

If you want to use this in other mods, it is recommended to make a copy of blueplanet-3612 folder, rename the folder to something else and then modify its mod.ini accordingly. If you need more help, HLP modding board is a good place to ask: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?board=8.0


[Fury]

3.6.12 Feature Pack updated

Changelog:

General
- Readme updated (see first post in this topic)

AI mod
- Significantly tweaked $Get_Away_Chance
- Increased $Max Aim Update Delay of all AI classes

Glide mod
- Velocity indicator is now white instead of blue for better visibility

Rebalance mod
- Added afterburners to SB Seraphim, SB Taurvi and SB Nephilim as they had none
- Removed all previous tweaks related to flak damage
- Increased Standard Flak fire wait from 0.15 to 0.9
- Increased Vishan Flak fire wait from 0.15 to 0.9
- Removed all previous tweaks related to AAA beam shield piercing and damage
- SAAA, S-AAA-Weak and AAAh more likely to miss on Insane difficulty
- AAAf more likely to hit on Insane difficulty

Download link is in the first post in this topic. Extract blueplanet-3612 folder from this 7z-file to your FreeSpace 2 folder, overwrite existing files if present.

[Fury]

3.6.12 Feature Pack updated

Changelog:

AI mod
- Numerous tweaks to AI to address issues brough up by feedback.
- Coward AI class now customized like all others, except None obviously.

Rebalance mod
- Increased standard flak and vishnan flak fire wait by 0.1.
- Beam miss factors have been edited to be same across all beams of same type. For some reason Volition had decided to use different beam miss factors for GTVA and Shivan beams, unlike what's the case with all other weapons.

Special effects mod
- Variance in piercing effects are now disabled. Variance controls how much dispersal there is in particles generated by piercing effect.
- Beam width, impact explosion radii, beam flash radii and beam piercing radii changed to match width of beams core.
- Detonation radius multiplier and detonation multiplier values have been reduced. Explosion script produces fewer and smaller explosions.

Download link is in the first post in this topic. Extract blueplanet-3612 folder from this 7z-file to your FreeSpace 2 folder, overwrite existing files if present.

[Fury]

3.6.12 Feature Pack is no longer maintained. Backporting BP2 bells and whistles to separate mod is no longer worth the time and effort.

Renaming and non-stickying this topic. Might just as well unlock this too, as it is no longer a release topic.

[Topgun]

is it currently stable? I don't care if its not updated anymore, as long as the current release is stable.

[General Battuta]

Yes.

[Bonehead]

I am a little bit confused.. Does this feature pack work only with the original Age of Aquarius or does it also work with the director's cut version?

Secondly, where can I download the individual AI, Glide and Rebalance mods for retail Freespace?

[General Battuta]

You should have the Director's Cut version. There's no reason to play the original BP with it about, and it might cause a lot of problems.

I'm not totally clear on how to apply these features to retail FS2.

[The E]

Well, one of the things Fury is very proud of is that you can play the retail campaign with BP as the active mod. Same goes for the special 3.6.12 feature pack.

[General Battuta]

Will the AI profile changes carry over? The retail FS2 missions don't have the Fury AI profile set.

I know that AI class changes will, but the profile itself does a lot of important things.

[Fury]

Retail AI profile is included in the feature pack.

[General Battuta]

Oh, wow, kickass.

[Scourge of Ages]

I'm finding this very entertaining, but it adds a lot of difficulty to FS1 and ST:R. I still like it though.

Yes, it works fine with FS1 and ST:R. Did you test it with those, Fury?

EDIT: It actually made regular ST almost impossible without dropping the difficulty or disabling AI features.

[Fury]

This does not support FSPort or ST:R, no AI profile for those is included. The only difference you see is what comes directly from AI classes, which do not work as intended without AI profile.

[Scourge of Ages]

Hmmmm. I could be partially imagining things then. But I know that at least it unlocked AI glide mode on those fighters which also appear in FS2, such as the Ursa, Herc, Uly, etc.
And I think I saw some Shivans using lateral thrust.

The reason that I thought the AI had affected ST:R was because the Scorpion fighters fly like Dragons suddenly, and deactivating the bp-3612-ai.vp makes missions at least one difficulty level easier.

[General Battuta]

What you're seeing in the latter case are AI class changes, but the AI profile table hasn't been changed correspondingly.

[Fury]

Here's AI profile support for FSPort and ST:R. I don't get why they decided to use separate profile for ST:R as they're identical.

Put contents into fsport-aip.tbm and save it to blueplanet-3612\data\tables. Formatting looks weird because this was done in Notepad++. And note, FSPort and ST:R mission balance will be severely affected and not necessarily in a good way.

Code: [Select]

#AI Profiles

$Profile Name: FS1 RETAIL
+nocreate
$Player Afterburner Recharge Scale: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
$Max Beam Friendly Fire Damage: 0, 5, 10, 20, 40
$Player Countermeasure Life Scale: 2, 1.75, 1.5, 1.25, 1
$AI Countermeasure Firing Chance: 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0
$AI In Range Time: 2, 1.0, 0.5, 0, -1
$AI Always Links Ammo Weapons: 60, 50, 40, 30, 20
$AI Maybe Links Ammo Weapons: 60, 50, 40, 30, 20
$Primary Ammo Burst Multiplier: 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0
$AI Always Links Energy Weapons: 60, 50, 40, 30, 20
$AI Maybe Links Energy Weapons: 60, 50, 40, 30, 20
$Max Missles Locked on Player: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
$Max Player Attackers: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
$Max Incoming Asteroids: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10
$Player Damage Factor: 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1
$Player Subsys Damage Factor: 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1
$Predict Position Delay: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
$Player Shield Recharge Scale: 2, 1.75, 1.5, 1.25, 1
$AI Shield Manage Delay: 4, 2,0 1.0, 0.5, 0
$Friendly AI Fire Delay Scale: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1
$Hostile AI Fire Delay Scale: 3, 2, 1, 1, 1
$AI Turn Time Scale: 3, 2, 1, 1, 1
$Glide Attack Percent: 50, 60, 70, 80, 90
$Circle Strafe Percent: 50, 60, 70, 80, 90
$Glide Strafe Percent: 50, 60, 70, 80, 90
$Stalemate Time Threshold: 15, 15, 15, 15, 15
$Stalemate Distance Threshold: 150, 150, 150, 150, 150
$Player Weapon Recharge Scale: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
$Max Turret Target Ownage: 99, 99, 99, 99, 99
$Max Turret Player Ownage: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10
$Percentage Required For Kill Scale: 0.30, 0.30, 0.30, 0.30, 0.30
$Percentage Required For Assist Scale: 0.15, 0.15, 0.15, 0.15, 0.15
$Percentage Awarded For Capship Assist: 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5
$Repair Penalty: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50
$Delay Before Allowing Bombs to Be Shot Down:  1.5, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5
$Chance AI Has to Fire Missiles at Player: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
$Max Aim Update Delay: 0.2, 0.15, 0.1, 0.05, 0

$big ships can attack beam turrets on untargeted ships: YES
$smart primary weapon selection: YES
$smart secondary weapon selection: YES
$smart shield management: YES
$smart afterburner management: YES
$allow rapid secondary dumbfire: YES
$huge turret weapons ignore bombs: YES
$don't insert random turret fire delay: YES
$hack improve non-homing swarm turret fire accuracy: NO
$shockwaves damage small ship subsystems: YES
$navigation subsystem governs warpout capability: NO
$ignore lower bound for minimum speed of docked ship: YES
$disable linked fire penalty: NO
$disable weapon damage scaling: YES
$use additive weapon velocity: YES
$use newtonian dampening: NO
$include beams for kills and assists: YES
$score kills based on damage caused: YES
$score assists based on damage caused: YES
$allow event and goal scoring in multiplayer: YES
$fix linked primary weapon decision bug: YES
$prevent turrets targeting too distant bombs: YES
$smart subsystem targeting for turrets: YES
$fix heat seekers homing on stealth ships bug: YES
$multi allow empty primaries: YES
$multi allow empty secondaries: YES
$allow turrets target weapons freely: YES
$use only single fov for turrets: YES
$allow vertical dodge: YES
$force beam turrets to use normal fov: YES
$fix AI class bug: YES
$turrets ignore targets radius in range checks: YES

$Profile Name: SILENT THREAT REBORN
+nocreate
$Player Afterburner Recharge Scale: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
$Max Beam Friendly Fire Damage: 0, 5, 10, 20, 40
$Player Countermeasure Life Scale: 2, 1.75, 1.5, 1.25, 1
$AI Countermeasure Firing Chance: 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0
$AI In Range Time: 2, 1.0, 0.5, 0, -1
$AI Always Links Ammo Weapons: 60, 50, 40, 30, 20
$AI Maybe Links Ammo Weapons: 60, 50, 40, 30, 20
$Primary Ammo Burst Multiplier: 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0
$AI Always Links Energy Weapons: 60, 50, 40, 30, 20
$AI Maybe Links Energy Weapons: 60, 50, 40, 30, 20
$Max Missles Locked on Player: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
$Max Player Attackers: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
$Max Incoming Asteroids: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10
$Player Damage Factor: 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1
$Player Subsys Damage Factor: 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1
$Predict Position Delay: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
$Player Shield Recharge Scale: 2, 1.75, 1.5, 1.25, 1
$AI Shield Manage Delay: 4, 2,0 1.0, 0.5, 0
$Friendly AI Fire Delay Scale: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1
$Hostile AI Fire Delay Scale: 3, 2, 1, 1, 1
$AI Turn Time Scale: 3, 2, 1, 1, 1
$Glide Attack Percent: 50, 60, 70, 80, 90
$Circle Strafe Percent: 50, 60, 70, 80, 90
$Glide Strafe Percent: 50, 60, 70, 80, 90
$Stalemate Time Threshold: 15, 15, 15, 15, 15
$Stalemate Distance Threshold: 150, 150, 150, 150, 150
$Player Weapon Recharge Scale: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
$Max Turret Target Ownage: 99, 99, 99, 99, 99
$Max Turret Player Ownage: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10
$Percentage Required For Kill Scale: 0.30, 0.30, 0.30, 0.30, 0.30
$Percentage Required For Assist Scale: 0.15, 0.15, 0.15, 0.15, 0.15
$Percentage Awarded For Capship Assist: 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5
$Repair Penalty: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50
$Delay Before Allowing Bombs to Be Shot Down:  1.5, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5
$Chance AI Has to Fire Missiles at Player: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
$Max Aim Update Delay: 0.2, 0.15, 0.1, 0.05, 0

$big ships can attack beam turrets on untargeted ships: YES
$smart primary weapon selection: YES
$smart secondary weapon selection: YES
$smart shield management: YES
$smart afterburner management: YES
$allow rapid secondary dumbfire: YES
$huge turret weapons ignore bombs: YES
$don't insert random turret fire delay: YES
$hack improve non-homing swarm turret fire accuracy: NO
$shockwaves damage small ship subsystems: YES
$navigation subsystem governs warpout capability: NO
$ignore lower bound for minimum speed of docked ship: YES
$disable linked fire penalty: NO
$disable weapon damage scaling: YES
$use additive weapon velocity: YES
$use newtonian dampening: NO
$include beams for kills and assists: YES
$score kills based on damage caused: YES
$score assists based on damage caused: YES
$allow event and goal scoring in multiplayer: YES
$fix linked primary weapon decision bug: YES
$prevent turrets targeting too distant bombs: YES
$smart subsystem targeting for turrets: YES
$fix heat seekers homing on stealth ships bug: YES
$multi allow empty primaries: YES
$multi allow empty secondaries: YES
$allow turrets target weapons freely: YES
$use only single fov for turrets: YES
$allow vertical dodge: YES
$force beam turrets to use normal fov: YES
$fix AI class bug: YES
$turrets ignore targets radius in range checks: YES

#End


[Valiran]

For some reason the glide mode isn't working for me.  I've done exactly as the readme said, but still no gliding.

[The E]

Have you assigned a key to the "Toggle Glide" control in the options menu?

[-Norbert-]

Or "glide when pressed", which I find more usefull.
Both are under the "ship" tab.