BSG Addons
by thunderfoot006
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INTRODUCTION
Hello! Thank you for downloading this. I appreciate your time and attention. Mike McKeon has released some outstanding BSG ships. Herein are some things I did to make his ships function a little better in my A2 install. Also included are three ships which Mike has not done. The Astral Queen, the Gemenon Trans container ship, and the Olympic Carriers passenger liner.

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NOTICE!

None of this will work at all without having all the BSG ships which Mike McKeon has made and released on A2Files installed. It may work with ships you ve made but since I have no way of knowing what you ve done, I have no way of knowing how to make any of this work with your install.

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CREDITS Everyone you need to know about so you know whom to blame when things go wrong, lol.

Gene Roddenberry - for giving us such a cool place to play.
Glen A. Larson - Likewise.
Ronald D. Moore - For re imagining all of Battlestar Galactica in ways we never expected and then sharing with us.
Coxxon - The original maker of the Astral Queen, Gemenon Trans container ship, and the Olympic Carriers passenger liner.
Chiletrek - for never being so busy he cannot answer a question or ten. Also for being an outstanding role model to follow.
Chiletrek is an excellent modder because he is an excellent human being first.
Dan1025 - for allowing me to thoroughly mangle his beautiful Pegasus model. SB34 has it and should release it soon.
Mike McKeon - for releasing all the cool ships without which this will not work at all.
Rake - for weapon textures ideas. I started with his but then decided to try to do my own as much as I could.
Starfox1701 - for introducing me to the mysteries of MS3D. I owe you a beer, Bro!
Starfleet Kid - for encouraging me to do Pegasus in the first place and getting me to seriously think about BSG in general.
thunderfoot006 - for Admiral's Log pics, build buttons, improved ship odfs, installation instructions, packaging, playtesting, physics, screenshots, wireframes, and weapons.
YOU, for downloading this mod.

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CONTENTS:

1) A ReadMe, which of course no one will bother reading.
2) Installation Instructions. These are provided for you to read AFTER you place this material ingame.
They will allow you to quickly and precisely pin point any errors you made during installation and tell you how to repair them.
3) Admiral s Log pics.
4) ODFs which cover the physics, ships, and weapons.
5) Sounds effects for the new weapons.
7) Textures, which include wireframes and build buttons. The textures are lightmapped(Alphas). No Borg textures are included.

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PURISTS, PLEASE NOTE:

There is not currently a way to truly recreate any of the BSG ships completely within A2 without full access to a software development kit. Also, the A2 game engine is pretty antiquated as well. If you re expecting Pegasus or Valkyrie to do everything they do in the Re Imagined Series, you will be disappointed, I think.

Attention! To those of you whom are about to complain about how weak these ships are and how a group of two Borg Interceptors dropped Pegasus in twenty seconds flat.
NONE of these ships are balanced against anything Star Trek. They are balanced against each other.

There are NO nukes in this mod! I felt nukes seriously unbalanced the game. If you want nukes for these races, you will have to make them yourself. If you are a Colonial officer, you should be able to easily defeat a bunch of Skin Jobs without resorting to weapons of mass destruction. If you are a Cylon, you are already aware God will not thank you for destroying everything He has made just to destroy Humanity.

None of the ships have shielding. However, I found the only way to get these ships to function within A2 with minimal problems while repairing was to give them a one point shield. They all also have one shield generator hitpoint. It looks odd in combat, but it works. Most of the time the shields go down and stay down with the first enemy shot which scores a hit.

There are no Borg textures. Why? The Collective would consider these ships and weapons too antiquated to adapt, improve, or add to their already impressive collection of technology.
They would immediately recycle all of this for the component resources the ships contain. If you want Borg textures anyway, you ll have to make them yourself.

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WHAT THIS MOD IS

An add on pack of things to make the BSG ships available as of 05/16/09 on A2Files function more fully in game. Complete with physics and weapons as true to the series as I could make them.

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POTENTIAL PROBLEMS

The Astral Queen, Gem Trans, and Olympic Carriers SODs are fairly high poly for such small ships. All three are very complex shapes with a great deal of detail. This is because Coxxon s BSG Ship Pack was originally made for Bridge Commander. This may be a problem for older computers or those with smaller processors or vid cards. Spamming any of these ships guarantees severe lag and other problems. I think I got to about four or five Queens onscreen before my laptop began to complain noticably.

I used a variation of A2PP X to recreate the Jump Drive ability. This works, mostly. Jumping a ship from one corner of the map to another or to a point too near an edge guarantees the ship will butt up against the nearest edge and proceed to circle the map until it reaches the nearest harmful nebula or asteroid field. Jumping in a stright line without getting too close to an obstacle works best I have found. Jumping to a point on the map which is already visible or has been so, works perfectly, as long as the Jump isn t too long. Upon reviewing the Jump Drive scenes in BSG episodes, it is possible to recreate in game a sequence of sequential Jumps which is similar to how the ships moved in the series.

This patch has not been tested for compatability with either PP1.2.5 or FLOPs. My laptop cannot play FLOPs so I saw little sense in checking this. I have Yacuzza s Tactical Assault and Achille s Art of War installed. I have not yet run across any problems with either of these but I did not really push either install to the limits of the game engine either.

This patch has been tested only within the SP Campaign and Instant Action vs. my laptop. I do not know if it will work in online Multiplayer. I accept no responsibility for your computer, disc, or application. This patch was checked for viruses and completeness before upload. If it does not work correctly the first time, please go back and read the Installation Instructions. Then, install the mod again AFTER you read the Installation Instructions.

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RELEASE INFO:

If you want to use any part of this in your own publicly released A2 mod, please go right on ahead and do so. I have a free useage with credit policy. Contacting me to ask permission to use any of this may be difficult, because all I do anymore is lurk here and only check my PMs about once every two weeks. If you do attempt to pass any of this off as your own work, good for you. After all, we ll all always know the real truth, will we not?

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CONTACT:

Any doubts, questions or suggestions, please contact thunderfoot006 from here at A2 Files via PM.
All of the people mentioned by name herein are blameless for anything which may be wrong with this mod.
All of the mistakes are mine alone.

Compliments? Well, now! I ll respond promptly to your kind words.

Complaints? The Toasters, led by Scar and Number One, will be right over to fix the problem. And I m pretty sure they will think the problem is you.

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COPYRIGHT AND DISTRIBUTION PERMISSIONS

THIS PATCH IS NOT MADE, DISTRIBUTED, OR SUPPORTED BY ACTIVISION TM & (C) ACTIVISION & PARAMOUNT PICTURES.
Copyright notices: Star Trek, Star Trek Armada II, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager (and the various logo devices used in them) are copyright Paramount Pictures, as are the characters, related images, and sound from the productions.
BattleStar Galactica, Pegasus and all related images, sounds, and other indicia this patch is based upon are the intellectual property of their respective owners.
This patch is released for entertainment purposes only. No profit or commercial useage is intended or allowed.