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         USS Frontier’s GravityFX v1.0
                                  by Fernando Aluani aka USS Frontier	 
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DESCRIPTION
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This mod will add gravity effects to BC (honestly, what kind of space simulation game doesn’t have gravity?), and of course other nice features. As their list is kinda big, and I need to explain them, let’s just jump to the list of some of the features of the mod:
	-Makes Planets and Suns in the game generate an gravity well, which will pull ships whithin it's radius.
	-Includes the set called "Psi's Blackhole", which contains a blackhole.
	-Has an menu in UMM to set some options of GravityFX.
	-Can make torpedoes create an gravity well upon impact, with the use of plugins.
	-Can make ships have an gravity well, if they have an gravity generator subsystem.
	-Can also make ships not to be affected by any gravity well, with the use of plugins.
	-Includes the System Map, which is a window opened in the science forum, that shows a map of the surrondings of the player, including planets, ships, etc.
	-Includes another menu in science called "Gravity Sensors Menu", which shows gravity-related info about ships, and also has some other features.
	-Includes a menu in enginnering called "Gravity Generator Options" which shows the status of the player's ship gravity generators, allowing you to change the power of them aswell.
	-Can show information about some objects on the BC 3D map.

And some other options and features, covered deeper in following topics on this readme.

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REQUIREMENTS
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- BC 1.1
- Foundation
- EarthFX (also know as "Planet Classification Script") [included]
- Unified Main Menu  [optional (strongly recommended)]
With this you'll be able to set some nice settings for GravityFX in the game configurations menu.

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Installation Instructions
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To install this mod simply extract the contents of the folder "Manual Install" contained in this mod's RAR file to your Bridge Commander Directory, Windows will probably ask if you want to override the existing folders in BridgeCommander Directory, so just choose "Yes to all".
Or, use the .EXE installer contained in the "Automatic Install" folder.

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How To Use  
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Simply install, and then in the game menu turn on the mutator "USS Frontier’s GravityFX" and "Planet Classification Script". 
Then start QB, or a QB match, or QBR, in some system which have planets/suns to "feel" the gravity, or to use some of the other features of this mod check out the following topics.

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FOR MODDERS
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Some other things, not covered here, relative to modding the game and taking into consideration GravityFX are covered in the “For Modders – README” contained in this pack. 
A suggested reading for those that want to mod the game, taking into consideration GravityFX, and what it does, how it does, info on the plugin tool, and some other things.

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Configuration Options
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With UMM you can set some settings of GravityFX, they are the following:
	-Gravity Force Multiplying Factor: this is a number from 1 to 2000 that you can set to increase the gravity force, with 1 being the real gravity value, and 2000 being just an very big number that multiplies the real number, my advice to you if you set to 2000: have the Engage Warp button, BCS:TB ACO mod, and a good impulse engine ready, and NEVER shut down your engine =P.
	-System Map Scale: this is just the initial value of the scale of the system map, goes from 1 to 100000 Kms, you can increase/decrease the scale in-game by pressing + or – in the NumPad.
	-Set System Map Scale to 1 Lightyear: Pratically just to say you can set the map scale to 1 lightyear, considering that in Star Trek, the ships sensors generates a map a couple of hundreds bigger than 1 lightyear… but in BC, the chance to you be in a situation that a ship is so this much far away it is very low.
	-Set Stock Planets Random Density: if on, GravityFX will set a random density to stock BC’s planets/suns based on their classes.
	-Gravity Damage Factor: This bar sets the factor of gravity damage. 0% means that there WON'T be any gravity damage, while 100% means that the radius in which you take damage form gravity will be the same than the radius of the gravity well.
	-Produce Logs about GravityFX Activities: it’s a menu with other buttons to select which main features of GravityFX will log their activities.	
	-“Gravity will affect Stations?”: if on, gravity will affect stations as well, if they aren’t able to sustain orbit anymore.
	-Initial Thruster State: Set the initial value of the option “Toggle Thrusters to Counter Gravity” from the Gravity Sensors Menu.
	-Save Configuration: this will save the configuration selected, to effectively change the configuration of GravityFX.

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Plugins Info
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The plugins are simple python script files, put in an determined folder, normally created using the GravityFX Plugin Tool, tho it’s possible to make them manually. 
Their purpose is to set a special gravity effect for a ship or an projectile(torpedo).
The gravity well of torpedoes are called “Torpedo Gravity Effect”. 
This is covered deeper in the “For Modders – README”.

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Gravity Sensors Menu Info
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The Grav Sensors Menu is an double window you can open by clicking on an button with the same name on Miguel’s (science officer) menu. Here’s some info on it’s features:
	-On the “Gravity Sensors Output” window (it is the one to the right), the info about gravity on your ship is shown. The info that it displays are: how many gravity well are affecting the ship, which gravity wells and the force on which they are affecting the ship and if your ship has an gravity well it will show the info about it.
	-“Toggle Thrusters to Counter Gravity” button: this will make the player’s ship, if her impulse engines are working properly, to not be affected by planets/suns gravity wells.
	-“Toggle Map” button: opens the 3D map from Bridge Commander.
	-“Show Gravity Wells on 3D Map” button: if on, you’ll see pink glows on some objects. These are meant to graphically show an gravity well.
	-"Enable Astrometrics" button: this will enable the Astrometrics view on the BC 3D map, check out the Astrometrics section on the readme.
	-“Show Gravity Info on All Ships” button: if on, makes the Gravity Sensors Output window show the gravity info on ALL ships in the set, instead of just showing the info on the player.
	-“Close” button: will close the Gravity Sensors Menu.

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System Map Info
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The system map is an window that is the size of the screen that contains a 2D map of the surroundings of the player, also opened by clicking on an button with the same name on Miguel’s (science officer) menu. His features are:
	-Show all objects around an user-defined range (called “the system map scale”) of the player.
	-Objects are show as icons, classified as the objects type. (ships, station, planets, etc) 
	-Also shows the player’s target, the radius of the gravity well of objects that have one, differentiates ships that have an gravity well from normal ships and Waypoints that are the point in space where a torpedo gravity effect is located, also shows the allegiance(friendly-enemy-neutral) of ships and stations.
	-By left-click creates an NAV Point on the space, after creating the NAV Point, left-clicking will target an object, if you clicked on the icon of an object.
	-Turning the “Show Objs Info” Yes/No button on the map will show the object’s name and Z axis value (on space, relative to the player’s Z axis) on the right side of their icons.
	-When the map window is focused (open the system map window and click on it), pressing Numpad’s + or – keys will increase or decrease the scale of the map by an user defined factor. This factor you set on an bar located on the map, the range of the bar is 1-1000, with it’s marker being on 100.
	-“Close” button to close the map when clicked.

*I’ve included a image in the pack to show what symbols are what.*
Note that some icons may appear differently when you’re using a high scale on the map, but with some “training” you’ll get used to it.
Also note that the system map will most probably be best-viewed on 1024x768 resolution.

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Astrometrics
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When Astrometrics is enabled, BC 3D Map will contain text paragraphs showing information about some objects, the top-left corner of these paragraphs will appear just where the objects are located in the screen

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Gravity Generator Options
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The Gravity Generator Options menu, located in engineering, containg information about the gravity well being produced by your ship, the the gravity generators of your ship. Inside it there's another window which contains bars, one for each generator of your ship, that allows you to select the amount of power that generator is using, and to see if it is online/disabled/destroyed/offline.
The more power you give for the generators, the more stronger the gravity well will be, and also the more power it'll spend.
You need to have at least 1 working generator to generate the gravity well.

Gravity Generators are specially named hull-subsystems of ships, adding one of them to a ship will make it have a gravity well. This is covered deeper in the For-Modders readme.

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Psi’s Blackhole Info
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This set was made by me, it contains 1 blue sun, 1 planet, 1 NAV point in between the planet/sun, 1 asteroid field (with a NAV point in it’s center), and 1 blackhole (which is a ship, done by Nighthawk).
The initial idea was to make the blackhole gravity well have a radius of 1 million KMs, but then playing in the set was really difficult, so I lowered that to only 250000 KMs. Opening the Blackhole’s Hardpoint script, and changing the blackhole generator attributes, just like it is said on the topic “Gravity Generator Info” above, can increase or decrease the strength of the gravity well of the blackhole.

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Logger Info
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GravityFX features an logger. It’s an script that gather information sent to it, and creates an log (an text file). It’ll log the activities of some parts of GravityFX’s code, and on some parts, it’ll prevent errors on the code, simply logging the info on the error that happened on the log of that part of the code.
The log it generates contains information about how GravityFX is running, with the sole purpose of helping me debug it better, thus helping me make an better mod. ;)
However, due to the nature of logging (writing to a text file), this may cause slowdowns sometimes. So I recommend setting GravityFX to log it’s activities only if you want to debug it. Normally if someone reports an error to me i'll ask for the logs (or an specific log).

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More Info – Curiosities, Advices and just some other ramdom stuff
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GravityFX will load at the start of BC, but you’ll probably just “feel” it when you’re on a game.
It was tested on QB and QBR, working fine on both. If it will work on single player or multiplayer I do not know, that aspect wasn’t tested, so if any of you can, give it a try and report your findings to me.
Another note of curiosity is that if your impulse engines are disabled/destroyed/without power (or in other words, if you’re dead in space) the ship will get pulled more faster at each moment towards a gravity well, because the ship doesn’t have a engine to try to remain at the speed you want, still there maybe times that even with an working impulse engine you’ll be pulled very fast, so just use you imagination commander, and i’m sure you can save your ship from crashing on an planet or worse.
This mod was made following real world physics formulas and stuff, with just some minor aspects of it adapted for BC because of BC’s Engine limitations. But you can still slingshot around a well if you get the right speed and angle (then shut down your engine to drift), you’ll be differently affected if there are 2 or more wells acting upon you, and it is not just you, the AI will also be affected in the same manner. Unfortunately, until this version at least, the AI won’t try to flee from the wells if it is very near one, or take any actions taking the gravity wells into consideration.

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Bugs
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None that are known.

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Contact me
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Go to the GravityFX board over at the BCS:TNG forums (http://bcscripters.com/forums/index.php/board,28.0.html), I’m pratically always there.
Or contact by email, my email is: fernandoragnarok AT hotmail DOT com
         (this is for anti-spam issues, change "AT" for "@" and "DOT" for ".", and you have my email)

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Credits
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MEdelen, on BCU, for the idea of giving gravity to BC.
MLeo, for some help on programming when this mod was in the early stage of development.
BCS:TNG, for help and advices, letting me use their Planet Classification Script and by allowing me to have an board dedicated to GravityFX on their forum.
Rob Archer, for giving me some sound files to play when you’re being damaged by a gravity well.
Nighthawk, for the astonishing blackhole ship model.
And everyone at the BCS forums which gave a comment or idea to this mod!

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Copyright
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THIS MATERIAL IS NOT MADE, DISTRIBUTED, OR SUPPORTED BY Activision TM & (C) INTERPLAY & PARAMOUNT PICTURES.

Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager
and related properties are Registered Trademarks of Paramount Pictures
registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
All original designs are copyright © Paramount Pictures.
No infringement of Paramount's copyrights is intended.

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Distribution
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All files in this zip are for personal use only and cannot be bought or sold. They also cannot be modified or released in any way without the author's permission.