In line with their prime credo, Star Hackers' Industrial Technologies is pursuing higher competitive tuning of "standard equipments," primarily of civilian-accessible ships.
In addition to the 8 Lightning and now 8 Corvette Bays (to allow some room for field captures, which provide a dough-saving incentive), this version spruces up both ships and weapons quite a bit. The ships, esp the fighters, are much faster, and all are better shielded, but missiles and proton bolts are quicker too. Among others, and so on. Makes for some good speed challenges in battles, along with good practice in fleet deployments. Ships handle "like a dream."
Works under EV 1.0.2, and should work well with Marc Cooper's Velocity Plus plug, which also adds some nice things. As noted before, the SDS Modules are an excellent fleet enhancement, but you might want to modify the oütf resource for them with ResEdit, to allow more than one (req'd with 1.0.2's elimination of bay-packing by repeatedly unloading, landing, and buying more). May need a '~' in front of my plug's name, so it loads last, to get the outfitting strings right. But they're all there.
Ship room is substantially increased to allow more flexibility in the increasing assortment of the "heavy" bays, weapons, and other ship enhancements, esp those added by V Plus as well.
Another good one is Mark Young's Gundrones, but this requires some ResEdit adjustment to eliminate conflicting ID's with mine right now. This is easy to do (V Plus's are grouped higher, but I felt that a "std eqpmt" Vette Bay should be grouped lower, and this is where the conflict arises). I'd suggest throwing in an extra proton turret and kicking up the speed (shïp resource) to about 250 or so, and maybe shields just a bit, to "play ball" better with the other firepower out there. These Gundrones are tiny "ships" that show as targets and are an inexpensive way to provide "decoys" (and distractions) without wasting your escort slots, which you can then use to pick up some heated Rapiers if you like, etc. Have to move the res ID's, and then deal with outfitting mini-pics and the short strings, to complete full compatibility, but that's not so bad. It's a good addition for fleet flexibility (and low cost too).
Another good one, esp for the "Recession Velocity"(!) retrograde pricings if you don't happen to like so much chasing around for dough each time you start a new pilot, is Phillip Mak's (Phillip78@aol.com) ParrotsAtTauCeti, which provides a "better financial opportunity," and which you may wish to adjust for 1.0.2's price spreads (hint: also add a jünk res for banderfrog hides for the return trip, and you've got your funding alternatives max'd and max simplified). Also, allow just a little room for the multiplication of cargo en route when you're filling up (I crashed a couple times starting in with 1.0.2 from what may be related to this). Hey, why crunch a few freebies?
These plugs are availible at several sites, including Jay Tingley's (Req's Netscape 2.0.x..)
http://www.globalnet.ca/ev/
Be interested in a little feedback on how nicely these particular (0.6b3) "adjustments" work out (or fail to) on other machines. After the beginning stages in the game, it's good to "tune" to one's developing abilities, at least as far as the hardware and software will allow. But ya only got the machine(s) ya got, right?
Hava Blast. Send some traces.. ;]
Steve George
CEO and Primary Employee, Star Hackers'
("Where ya pay yerself by moving yer wallet from one pocket to another, and then the Feds wanna' tax it as 2 transactions each time!!")
