Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

I really like the P-Mod, but it has a lot of extra tech that can be a tad over kill when first playing the game. Too many selection for things.

I want to take the best of all the ship hull mods, add some things, and keep it all simple.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

Atrocities, here's what I've done with the mod I'm working on. I've got eight ships ranging from 150 tons to 500 tons. These are Small Craft. The next level of hull sizes are Capital Ships; 1000, 1500, 2000, and 3000 tons. For the small craft I've given each one an extra 100% to defense and offense and left the description blank to make it transparent. I'm using a QNP system so the smaller ships are naturally faster. Capital ships are slower but tougher and a whole lot more expensive to build and maintain.

Using this set-up small craft fight each other normally and are almost guaranteed to hit capital ships. With mounts capital ships outrange the smaller ships but have a hard time targeting them. When they do score a hit, however, it can be catastophic for the smaller ship.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

I think the real disparity is all about the mounts. Without any mounts at all, larger ships are more advantageous because they use a smaller percentage of their space to control facilities and propulsion. (Escorst spend 65% each while a dreadnaught only uses 10%. this means 6 escorts only have 360 kt to mount weapons/shields and armor while the dread still has 900kt lieing around.)

The small ships gain the advantage that they can be in 6 places at once while the dreadnaught, obviously, can't.

Mounts totally blow this out of the water, however, as one "Massive Mount" is worth 6 escorts easy. Mounts are a cool thing to play with, but without balancing (any any direct balancing of the mounts themselves leads to the AI being unable to use them correctly) they are far to overpowered.

Chris Woods

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

And another way to make the balance - ship size does not grow with the technology. Ex:
Ship Construction 1 : 150kt
Ship Construction 2 : 400kt
Ship Construction 3 : 800kt
Ship Construction 4 : 250kt with mounts, combat speed bonus and reduced maintaince
Ship Construction 5 : 600kt with mounts, combat speed bonus and reduced maintaince
and so on...

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

I know this is probably well nigh impossible to mod, but wouldn't dread naughts need more C&C (bridge) stuff as compared to a frigate? Make dread noughts carry 2x the bridge or something.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No problem:
1) Pick a nice scale, that evenly divides all of your ship sizes. 50kt is typically good.
2) For each hull size, set the engines per move to [mass] / [50]
3) Bump up the standard movement points (thrust) of your engines to something around 3 to 7 points per 10kt. Higher tech engines should have more thrust.
4) Remove bonus movement abilities, since they mess up the system. Solar sails can provide lower thrust and use no fuel, to keep them useful.

An escort (150kt /50kt = 3) requires 3 E.P.M. so if you add a single engine with 3 standard movement points, it will have a speed of one.

Note: "Engines per Move" really means "standard movement points per move". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

The alternative method is via mounts (mQNP)
1) Scale up all engines to enormous cost and size.
2) Add an engine mount for each hull, which reduces the size (and cost) of the engine appropriately. 1% per 50kt should do nicely.
3) Again remove bonus movement abilities.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

Thanks SJ. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

CNC I do remember the game. I find it very interesting how much that game mirrors SEIV. (IIRC I wrote it in September 98.) I may have an old copy of it on my P2 400, but that no longer works. PS or MB went out.

Random might have a copy it too. I will see if I can get one from him, but I have not seen him on line in over two years.

If you have printed copy, send it buy. I would love to read it.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Make the Bridge 1000 kT. Give each ship a mount that can only be used on the Bridge to scale it's size and cost appropriately.

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

One thing that I always wanted to see was inherent abilities for the specialized hulls. Like giving the carriers a fighter launch abilitiy of 5/20 or somesuch. It would give a concrete reason to pick the carrier hull when there are larger alternatives available.

Here are some comments on previous ideas. Increasing the cost of the larger ships? Whether this is done through increasing hull cost or boosting maintainance I say thee nay. Making a fleet of dreadnoughts break your galactic bank isn't realistic and is even less fun to play. I don't think anyone likes being forced to make smaller ships. How about giving a severe maint. reduction on the smaller ships. They may have the lifespan of gnats but you could support a horde. That would be a reason to keep the smaller sizes around.

Mounts can be a problem. If you want to go the MOO2 heavy mount route (2x size, 1.5x damage, additional range) then for the love of god don't give them to-hit penalties. Penalties actually shorten the effective range, and besides, you need something to offset the lowered damage ratio. I think that a +10% to-hit bonus per +1 range is needed to make the range increase usable as opposed to being a cruel taunt. Of course this type of mount is really effective when you can combine it with higher damage ratio weapons to give that long/short range punch.

Another problem is that the AI blindly uses the lowest available mount on the list. How to get around that? Perhaps by limiting certain mounts to certain weapons? Maybe the MOO2 heavy mount would be limited to energy weapons while the high damage/low accuracy would be more appopriate to slug throwers and the like? Then you could have a mix of mounts in a given design.

[ March 23, 2003, 22:06: Message edited by: QuarianRex ]

Re: Revamping SEIV Ship Hull Sizes & Features
 

Here is a sample of the CompEnhancement.txt file (just ship mounts) from Adamant Mod. What do you think?