Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

The problem with all of these ideas is that they simply carry forward the long-standing conflation of ship size with ship role that has been in SE from the beginning.

Honestly, the actual components are what make it what it is. The size is simply a function of the size it needs to be and your ability to build ships of that size. Battleships of the 1st World War were 18-24000 tons. Battleships of the Second World War were 30,000 and up. Were the old battleships reclassified as cruisers because of this? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

So while I agree that the current tech tree of ship hulls is too rigid in SE I don't think the solution is the right one. I'd stop calling the hulls by any 'class' names at all and use the design names to differentiate the ships. Then ship construction can just let you build bigger ships and you design them as needed for their role. Proper economics of scale in the design system would result in the familiar 'capital ships' and 'escort' classes without any artificial categories needed.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

Yes!

No artificial categories, let the components speak for themselves!
Difficult to do, since you have to carefully balance everything and avoid the pitfalls of ubertechs.

However, not impossible, as the fighters in CBmod show...
As you research fighters, you get not only bigger ones, but smaller ones too. And special ones, like the ER fighter, or the stealth fighter.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

Ummm Baron, nm...

Rollo, nice. I like it. Maybe add a few here or there, but its a good start.

I'm excited about the tech branch. Having the AI coded so it has to choose a path sounds cool. All the AI in the end wont be fielding all the same classes anymore. That'd be cool to see such different stuff at the later stages of the game.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

The purpose of multiple hulls available is so you don't use your big 2000 kT hull with only 400 kT used to make a small ship. This is especially important in any mod that has scaling of any sort (including, but not limited to, QNP). The problem with stock is that there is not any reason to build those small ships... The proposed type of setup absolutely requires a lot of rebalancing to make different hulls meaningful.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

Which is to re-phrase what already said, that the current ship design system doesn't take scale into account. A larger ship ought to be proportionally more expensive to build and maintain because you need more materials or at least more elaborate engineering to make a larger structure work. A larger ship ought to require proportionally more engines, or at the very least the same proportion of engines, for the same performance. But in fact ships become more and more 'efficient' as they become larger in the SE IV system. Using less than the maximum tonnage for a given hull doesn't make your ships faster or more maneuverable either. Bizarre.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

Well, you cant make hulls too much more expensive cuz the AI wants to always build the biggest ships. So you can take advantage of that and build more numerous smaller hulls.

One way to make the gulf narrower between large and smaller hulls would be to nerf the weapon mounts. All the large and heavy and massive mounts would need the same scaling damage equal to the tonnage increase. That way they are no more powerful than smaller hulls.

There is a way to make the engine scaling issue a little better... Speed up the smaller ships somewhat and make the bigger ships a bit slower using the max engines in vehiclesize.txt.

I have an idea for mounts that'd be cool... Since the mounts would be equally scaled no matter the hull size, mounts would need some flavor. I suggest some basic types that give and take. For example, besides the standard scaled mount have 3 others; an Accuracy mount adds to hit but subtracts some damage %, also an Extended range and Overload mount to round it out.

The AI could use AI tags to identify with a particular mount so instead of setting up ALL the AI with standard scaled mounts, we could have some AI that use variety. I.E., the Cue Cappa would use the extended range mounts on all their weapons... cuz with their long eye stalks, they can see farther. Or something. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

This can be worked around. You just need to make use of design types like Defense Ship and Attack Base. You can limit them to a smaller max tonnage to force the AI to build some smaller ships in the presence of large ships.

AI tags can not be used for mount selection. If the mount is available and it can be used on the component, it will be used. Mount selection is ability-agnostic.

Instead, you have to add a bunch of AI-only mounts that are copies of the regular mounts, but are arranged so that they are last in file for particular ship sizes (or ranges of sizes).

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up?
 

My Proportions mod is not the only one that addresses all of this well, is it?

I'm quite happy with what I did, although I have a little more left to add (i.e. scale mounts for small ship control components would be good, and the larger mounts may want to be made a little stronger). QNP, scale mounts for some components, combat and maintenance mods based on size, armor adjustments. Does the job nicely. The Proportions 3.x AI is broken, but Proportions 2.x (or AIC mod) has almost as good handling of ship sizes, and the AI DOES build a mix of ship sizes - you just have to make AI designs by type and script it to build a mix of specific sizes. (Well, it's a pain, which is partly why Proportions 3.x AI is still broken, because I haven't bothered, but it is possible to do.)

PvK

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

Nah, many other mods address these issues as well. P&N, CB, Adamant, the Art of War mod that was never finished, etc.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

In my mount mod, I added all the standard mounts last so by default the AI uses these. However, it would be easy to mod it rather than use ability tags, my bad, you can require a tech area specific to that mount and that race. That'd set them up to use that mount. For instance, Pulse mount technology. Have a race research that and they'd use that mount instead of the default. All you need is a few of the races using various mounts and you have tons of weapons variety out there.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up?
 

In older times, it was true that bigger ships were better. Frigates could fight other frigates, but when a cruiser or lesser ship of the line came around, they had to run (and hopefully had the speed to do it.) Bigger ships meant first more, then bigger and longer range guns to hit others before you could be hit. Big battles were for ships of the line to fight, frigates were just used to pass messages.

Later improvements in weapons like the torpedo allowed a small ship to destroy large ships, but could not be used on other smaller very maneuverable ships. This lead to the rock, paper, scissors game where a small ship could kill a big ship, a medium sized cruiser could kill small ships but not really hurt bigger ones and a big ship with large slow guns could kill a medium ships easily, but had a hard time with the small darting destroyers. Later still came fighters and carriers, but that is another thread.

Small ships could be made much more useful with the introduction or modification of a small powerful short range weapon restricted to small hull types or even better with mounts to make them hit better on smaller ships. A reload rate of 10-15 turns and damage in the 2-4000 range might be good. A to-hit adjustment of -90% for a base ships and slowly reducing to zero on smaller ships. Using the opposite adjustment as it takes for fire on the ship has symmetries to it.

A torpedo shot at a cruiser whould be wasted if battleships were around, yet a ship's guns would clear the area around it of smaller enemies if given half a chance. I suspect this would be hard for the AI and firing priorities to build and handle correctly, but it might be interesting to try.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up?
 

See Heavy Torpedoes and Anti-Matter Torpedoes in Proportions 3.x. With some research they can be quite powerful, but the mount is based on _warhead_ technology rather than ship size, so larger ships tend to use longer-ranged weapons with size-based mounts, but a small inexpensive ship can mount these weapons. Very similar to what you were suggesting, and again, I think it works well.

PvK

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

I've added a new Small Ship Masters racial trait to the next version of the Masters Mod. It should yield a race that can effectively negate the "bigger is better" strategy. Right now, ship construction is researched like it is in the stock game, but research in other areas gives additional small hull sizes with certain bonuses.

I'd like to add a few more though, and I was wondering if you guys had any suggestionson what I could add. Here's what the Small Ship Masters have so far:

Hulls:
Ship Con 2 + Propulsion 3 = Fast Escort (+50% defense, +4 combat movement)
Ship Con 3 + Industry 1 = Cheap Frigate (0 hull cost)
Ship Con 3 + Mil Sci 1 = Stabilized Frigate (+30% offense)
Ship Con 4 + Armor 1 = Hardened Destroyer (30 emissive)
Ship Con 4 + Mil Sci 1 = Stabilized Destroyer (+30% offense)
Ship Con 5 + Shields 1 = Shielded Light Cruiser (50 shields)
Ship Con 5 + Armor 1 = Hardened Light Cruiser (30 emissive)
Ship Con 6 + Resupply 1 = Endurance Cruiser (10000 supply storage)
Ship Con 6 + Shields 1 = Shielded Cruiser (100 shields)

Mounts (for 100-500kT ships):
Ship Con 7 + Mil Sci 1 = Stabilized Ship Mount (+30% offense)
Ship Con 5 + Sensors 1 = Miniaturized Electronics Mount (50% size, 150% cost increase, only for electronics)
Ship Con 6 + Shields 1 = Small Geometry Shield Mount (150% shield strength)

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

Say what?
50 shields?!? Unless that's leaky shield points, its not worth the space in the hull selection screen.

I suggest that instead of making new hulls for that, you create a Shield mount, which would provde +10% to shield generation. Better effects, and dosen't use a hull.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

Isn't Resupply 1 a starting tech?

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

Oh, why so it is. Resupply 2 will work.
... and increased shields to 75 and 125.

There already is the shield mount, farther down the list.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

How many shields does a typical ship have? If it is anything like stock, then 75 points is still insignificant... one, maybe two hits.

Perhaps you should consider making it 50 points of shield regen? That would be somewhat useful, pretty unique, and make the ship hard to capture as a bonus.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

75 extra shields for a Light Cruiser is like having an extra shield generator onboard. 0kT, for free. The hull costs exactly the same as the regular Light Cruiser hull, and the shields don't use up any kT.

Plus you get it at Shields 1, where Shield Generator I only generates 50 shields. You can combine the shielded hull with Small Geometry Shield-mounted generators later on down the line and end up with a tough little ship.

This is just preliminary, and I'll have to test it to make sure it's a good enough shield bonus. If it's too weak, I can always make it stronger.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

Compare it to shields 5+, though.
Nobody is going to sit around with shields level 1, and you can't obsolete hulls.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

Also, unless you make the built-in shields phased, any ship made with that hull will have problems. Did you take a look at the example hulls and small mount I posted? I realised that with small ships (and small mount weapons), weapon overloaders will just gut your ships. Haven't figured a way around that yet...

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

The movement on the ships isn't quite Quasi-Newtonian. I call it Improved Quasi-Newtonian. Quasi-Newtonian propulsion is based on the idea that it takes a proportional increase in thrust to move a proportionally larger vessel (a little artistic license must be allowed as thrust would actually affect acceleration rather than speed directly, impossible given the hard-coding of the game). This premise with the stated license is correct. However, the thrust of proportional rockets only squares as mass cubes, (thrust is largely a function of the cross-sectional area of the rocket nozzle). Thus: proportional, but larger, ships would accelerate slower. I have simulated this by having larger ships require more movement points even relative to their size. The end result is that smaller ships are generally faster, but weaker pound for pound.

I hope that's helpful

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

The "Quasi" part of QNP is the fact that it works as
F = MV
rather than
F = MA

It should also be noted that engine sizes are measured the same way that other components are.

In QNP the sizes are presumed to be masses, rather than volumes or some other unit of measure. Doubling the mass of your engine room means doubling the number of engines, and thusly producing twice the thrust. Twice the thrust means being able to move twice the amount of ship at the same rate.

Newton says: Twice the engines + twice the ship = same speed

Your system as described would indicate that component sizes are linear dimensions, and that would disconnect a ship's "size" from its mass.

As far as gameplay, your system does sound like a quite nifty (and creative) way to diversify the hulls used in a game.
Some people tend to think that everything good has been done already after 6 years. Congratulations for proving them wrong! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

...And someday, sometime in the future, there will be only one member of the forum who *hasn't* worked on a mod at some point...

...Said condition will last for a whole five seconds past their forum registration date.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/PointUp.gif[/img]

OK I have not worked on a Mod yet. I've thought about it. Taken some rough notes on paper. However, I have not yet actually made a Mod or editted files. I've played for years and years and years... actually I don't think my 13 year old daughter was in school when I started playing.

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

Hey, I didn't say the that point is now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

The fact that Space Empires models speed, not acceleration, suggests that the method of propulsion is entirely non-Newtonian, e.g. a slower-than-light version of the "stutterwarp":

http://www.freelancetraveller.com/fe...utterwarp.html

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up?
 

Suggests to me the game designer is non-Newtonian... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

The thing that always struck me as odd is that there is no penalty to hit for speed of target and shooter. Only range is considered. Why?

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

That's because the movement ability only grants movement points, not defense. Also, ships move one side at a time and remain still for as long as another side's ships move. (Yes I know, but it's how the game works.) On their next turn, they might move in an entirely different direction, or in the same direction but less distance, so the "speed" of the previous turn imparts exactly nothing on the ship the next turn.

There are however at least several mods who adress this, by giving engines a defence bonus ability. Btw..... I always thought the highest-level defence bonus of a component in the same family worked on a ship? So the bonus won't stack, right?

Re: Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up
 

No, they won't stack.