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- Space Empires: IV & V (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=20)

- - mQNP (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=8184)

Quote:

Originally posted by Will:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Taera:
whats mQNP?

Quasi-Newtonian Propulsion (a la the P&N model), utilizing mounted engines. The actual component size of the engine is god-awful huge, forcing mounts to be used to bring them down to size. The point is pretty much to prevent the need for huge numbers of engines on large ships (such as P&N Battlemoon).<hr /></blockquote>Got it in one ... and P&N's battlemoons, with their thirty-to-fourty maximum-tech engines just to move at speed 1 were exactly the inspiration behind mQNP, heh! I shudder to think how many ION drives it'd take to move a battlemoon.

Actually, I know that -- IIRC the Battlemoon in P&N needs 200 engines per move, so ... sixty-seven (67) Ion Drives, generating a total of 201 move points, will do the deed.

Quote:

The discussion on it started somewhere in the middle of the AoW mod thread, I think. I only glanced at it, since I don't have much skill or interest in the area of mod creation at the moment http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Actually the mQNP idea came up within days of the release of the current Gold Version patch (v1.78 IIRC). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

The mQNP idea originated (from Pax) in the #se4 IRC channel. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif See what can come of hanging out in there? Maybe you all should come by sometime! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Yep, and then I suggested a "Hybrid" system, such as pax describes: "Set the mQNP to use mounts for entie CLASSES of ship, and vary EPM within that class..."

I still need to figure out how to squeeze it into P&N while all of maintaining a reasonable amount of flexibility in number of engines, preventing unmounted engines from being used, and keeping a nice design ambiance.

I know! Set up 2 tech areas, and have one of them be removed for each game. Have one be classic QNP, and the other be mQNP! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Can AIs use the system as it is intended?

Sure, if you set them up to use it. Though, I suppose my suggestion wouldn't work very well with the AIs. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

They best thing IMHO about the mQNP that Pax originally proposed was that, at least in theory, the stock AI could work with it as normal. since the AI will automatically select mounts if they are available it should use them correctly. Of course since it's never actually been play tested there is always a chance of some unexpected glitch.

Geoschmo

Quote:

Originally posted by geoschmo:
They best thing IMHO about the mQNP that Pax originally proposed was that, at least in theory, the stock AI could work with it as normal. since the AI will automatically select mounts if they are available it should use them correctly. Of course since it's never actually been play tested there is always a chance of some unexpected glitch.

Geoschmo

Actually it has been playtested. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Sort of. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I cobbled a P&N with a mQNP-conVersion together on my local drive (wrote the mounts, appended them, hunted down all the engines and made them BIGGER, then tweaked some hull sizes to maintain uniformity of hull-size:engine-size ratios.

I didn't bother to see how the AI took the changes, though. Heh.

Quote:

Originally posted by Pax:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by dumbluck:
Really? How would you accomplish that? Aspiring modders want to know!!!

Set the mQNP to use mounts for entie CLASSES of ship, and vary EPM within that class, for example:

Basic engine = 1000kT

"Light Engines"; 2% mount, or 20kT engines
100kT Escort ... 1epm
200kT Frigate ... 2epm
300kT Destroyer ... 3epm

"Medium Engines"; 6% mount, or 60kT engines
500kT Light Cruiser ... 1epm
700kT Cruiser ... 2epm
900kT BattleCruiser ... 3epm

"Heavy Engines"; 18% mount, or 180kT engines
1300kT Battleship ... 1epm
1700kT Dreadnought ... 2epm
2100kT Baseship ... 3epm

Alternately, add +1epm to all the Medium-engine ships (for 2, 3, 4), and +2epm to all the Heavy-engine ships (for 3, 4, 5).

Thus, only three mounts:

Light
for ships 1kT to 499kT

Medium
for ships 500kT to 1299kT

Heavy
for ships 1300kT+<hr /></blockquote>Oh, sure, you'll let him fiddle with the EPM, but you throw a fit when I mention it... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif (j/k)

Quote:

Originally posted by Krsqk:
Of course, you could always just change the tonnage used percentage in an unproportional way. A 500kt engine knocked down to 2% for a frigate and 5% for a light cruiser would result in 60/200=3/10 used for frigates and 150/400=3/8 used for light cruisers (proportional increase would be 2% and 4%).

Well you COULD, but that's a bit contrary to the basic premise of QNP (and by extension, mQNP). The basic premise of QNP as I understand it is, you should need a given amount of thrust, per kT of ship, to move at X speed.

Standard QNP calculates this per ship hull by setting an engine-thrust:ship-mass ratio -- adjusting the EPM of that hull, so that you need more and more of the same engine components to achieve a given speed, as hulls get larger.

mQNP does this instead, by setting an engine-mass:ship-mass ratio -- adjusting the size / mass of the engine, to fit the needs of each hull size.

A hybrid system tries to balance between the two approaches; I'm not, personally, entirely satisfied with such an idea, but other mod writers may disagree. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif