Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Another interesting thing I noticed is that many B5 ships are comparable in size with SW ships. That is good in two ways: first, SW ships will not be disproportionally big and second similar sizes provide a good reference to estimate tonnage of SW ships. Now it looks like ST ships are relatively tiny.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Hey Andres, where are the whitestar and victory class ships?!?!?

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Didn't someone create a non-warp point mod of SE IV? If so, it could be used to simulate the differences btwn SW, ST, and B5.<hr></blockquote> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>It wasn't a mod so much as a map combined with *extreme* amounts of patience. He used the map editor and placed EVERY WP by hand.<hr></blockquote> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Holy Crap!
That's a bit of work, eh?<hr></blockquote>Yep. Yep. Yep. That was me and 12 hours of click-click-clickey-ness.
Grab it from my sig.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Another interesting thing I noticed is that many B5 ships are comparable in size with SW ships. That is good in two ways: first, SW ships will not be disproportionally big and second similar sizes provide a good reference to estimate tonnage of SW ships. Now it looks like ST ships are relatively tiny. <hr></blockquote>Yeah, I followed somebody's link to a site with the silhouettes, and wow. I'm not gonna try to balance that realistically. It must take forever to build those B5 capital ships, and they drop like flies in fleet engagements.

Good luck.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by ZeroAdunn:
Hey Andres, where are the whitestar and victory class ships?!?!?<hr></blockquote>
Weren't those ships made with different races cooperation and have a mixture of their comps? They wouldn't fit in any race. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif
Actually I missed haven't found data on them, I'll add them later.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

visit this website: http://hyperspace.isnnews.net/

See also http://www.b5tech.com/index.htm IT's pretty good for getting a good idea of what ships are armed with. I think it's mostly accurate.

And geuss what, tons of info on the whitestar on both of those sites. Man can't believe you had a hard time finding info on the whitestar, its everybodies favorite ship!
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

"...As you can see, there is NO visible damage - no signs of gashes, dents, cracks, or even a scratch...
Thus, the kinetic energy of the asteroid impact would have been 1.15E13 joules, equivalent to a 2.4 kiloton bomb."

Yeah, that's armor. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Phoenix-D

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Andres, the preliminary file looks really good, but I think the Star Trek races’ weapons need some fleshing out.

Off the top of my head, the Feds could use pulse phaser cannon, burst fire photon/quantum torps, and maybe even a phaser cannon.

Klingons could have pulse disruptors, burst fire photon/quantum torp launchers and disruptor cannon.

Romulans could get pulse disruptors, disruptor cannons, and heavy plasma cannon.

The Cardassians should have some kind of torpedo, and maybe a burst fire option for those too.

I’ll probably think of more later, but this is all the stuff I know I’ve seen in the shows. Hope this helps.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>"...As you can see, there is NO visible damage - no signs of gashes, dents, cracks, or even a scratch...
Thus, the kinetic energy of the asteroid impact would have been 1.15E13 joules, equivalent to a 2.4 kiloton bomb."<hr></blockquote>Sure, thats believable. (This asteroid supposedly hit the ship without PD or anything else responding in time, right? And, for the yield, are they using relative velocity, or just the asteroid's velocity?)
Assuming that's true, how come Sheridan(?)'s little asteroid nuke-mines in the Earth-Minbari war (seen in one of the TV-Movies I believe) shredded that bigass flagship ("dark star"?) from so far away? Nukes aren't particularily effective in space either, since theres no real shockwave.

Unless there's a reasonable explanation, it seems like a continuity error to me. (Not that continuity errors bother my enjoyment of the show much, by definition (Trekkie) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif )

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by ZeroAdunn:
And geuss what, tons of info on the whitestar on both of those sites. Man can't believe you had a hard time finding info on the whitestar, its everybodies favorite ship!<hr></blockquote>
You're right I took most data from that B5 tech site. I missed those ships because they were not listed under the ISA and not under the races.
They are included now.

[ 01 December 2001: Message edited by: Andrés Lescano ]</p>

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

I would be willing to set up the Trek Races Ship Sets. Leave the AI and other component details to those with more skill. But as far as ship sets go, I'd love to set em up.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Aren't there already shipsets for all mentioned Star Trek races? It's good that you keep working on them anyway.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Some of the sizes for SW ships are off.

1. Nebulon B frigate is 500 meters.
2. Executor SSD is 17,600 meters.
3. Not sure where you got fighter sizes, but I'm pretty sure TIE Bombers are bigger than Advanced and Defender.
4. Mon Cal Cruiser is 1300 m, I believe.
5. Not quite sure what a heavy Mon Cal is. If you mean the Home One, that was about 3800 meters.
6. I believe the A-Wing was smaller than 9.6 m.
7. The sizes for the Death Stars I and II aren't listed. They're 160 km and 900 km respectively.

Also, the Sovereigns and Eclipses had superlasers, not just Death Stars.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>1. Nebulon B frigate is 500 meters.<hr></blockquote>
300 m verified. Where are they listed 500 m?

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>2. Executor SSD is 17,600 meters.<hr></blockquote>
There's contradiction on the size of the SSD. Fist official sources listed it as 8,000 m. Observation of the models used in the movies suggest 17,600 m (think that the 17,500m I found was rounded, less than 1% error). And now official sources list 12,800 m as compromise between both values. If you consider the movies as cannon, you're right and the value is 17,600 m
Everybody agree that no matter wich one is correct it's a very big ship. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>3. Not sure where you got fighter sizes, but I'm pretty sure TIE Bombers are bigger than Advanced and Defender.<hr></blockquote>
TIE Bomber 7.8 m verified. Tried to verify Advanced and Defender but couldn't find them. Only lists that includes data them show all TIEs 10 m, what is obiouly rounded. But you're right a 15m TIE Defender must be wrong.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>4. Mon Cal Cruiser is 1300 m, I believe.
5. Not quite sure what a heavy Mon Cal is. If you mean the Home One, that was about 3800 meters.<hr></blockquote>
Each Calamari vessel is a unique work of artistic engineering, not two ships are the same. There may not be two ships equal in length.

Calamari Headquarters, Command Frigate, Calamari Command Ship, Home One (is that a name or codename, is it the Indipendence?) or whatever is called 3.8 km
MC80 1200m verified
Winged Calamari "Liberty" type 1200m verified.
Couldn't verify the Heavy Mon Cal, but some data suggest the existence of a 1500-1600m Mon Cal ship as big as an ISD.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>6. I believe the A-Wing was smaller than 9.6 m.<hr></blockquote>
9.6m long and 6.4m wide verified.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>7. The sizes for the Death Stars I and II aren't listed. They're 160 km and 900 km respectively.
Also, the Sovereigns and Eclipses had superlasers, not just Death Stars. <hr></blockquote>
120 km and 160 km is what I found.
Already in the list: Forward Axial Superlaser (Sovereign & Eclipse)
in contrast with the bigger and more powerful normal superlaser only on the Death Stars


<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Off the top of my head, the Feds could use pulse phaser cannon, burst fire photon/quantum torps, and maybe even a phaser cannon.
Klingons could have pulse disruptors, burst fire photon/quantum torp launchers and disruptor cannon.
Romulans could get pulse disruptors, disruptor cannons, and heavy plasma cannon.
The Cardassians should have some kind of torpedo, and maybe a burst fire option for those too.
I'll probably think of more later, but this is all the stuff I know I've seen in the shows. Hope this helps.
<hr></blockquote>

I was thinking about making separate "Phasers", "Disruptors" and "Torpedoes" racial traits including all variations of each weapon and make races choose the apropiate ones.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Created a page about this mod where to host all related files.
http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/files/sc...ross/index.htm

[ 02 December 2001: Message edited by: Andrés Lescano ]</p>

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>300 m verified. Where are they listed 500 m?<hr></blockquote>
X-Wing Alliance.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>There's contradiction on the size of the SSD. Fist official sources listed it as 8,000 m. Observation of the models used in the movies suggest 17,600 m (think that the 17,500m I found was rounded, less than 1% error). And now official sources list 12,800 m as compromise between both values. If you consider the movies as cannon, you're right and the value is 17,600 m
Everybody agree that no matter wich one is correct it's a very big ship.<hr></blockquote>
I think it was revealed somewhere in the EU (some comic I think) that the 8 km ship was just a battleship, not an Executor.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>TIE Bomber 7.8 m verified. Tried to verify Advanced and Defender but couldn't find them. Only lists that includes data them show all TIEs 10 m, what is obiouly rounded. But you're right a 15m TIE Defender must be wrong.

Each Calamari vessel is a unique work of artistic engineering, not two ships are the same. There may not be two ships equal in length.<hr></blockquote>
That's what the literature says, but in ROTJ, they're all the same.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Calamari Headquarters, Command Frigate, Calamari Command Ship, Home One (is that a name or codename, is it the Indipendence?) or whatever is called 3.8 km<hr></blockquote>
I think Home One is the actual name. The Independence was just a normal Mon Cal cruiser I think.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>MC80 1200m verified
Winged Calamari "Liberty" type 1200m verified.
Couldn't verify the Heavy Mon Cal, but some data suggest the existence of a 1500-1600m Mon Cal ship as big as an ISD.<hr></blockquote>
If you say so...
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>9.6m long and 6.4m wide verified.<hr></blockquote>
OK, coulda swore it was smaller, but I guess not.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>120 km and 160 km is what I found.
Already in the list: Forward Axial Superlaser<hr></blockquote>
That's what the official sources say, but they don't jibe with the movies, and cannon overrides official. Check out Curtis Saxton's site at http://www.theforce.net/swtc/ for more accurate measurments.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>(Sovereign & Eclipse)
in contrast with the bigger and more powerful normal superlaser only on the Death Stars<hr></blockquote>
Sorry, didn't see that.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

I finished with the estimation of starship tonnages (I'll post them later)
and because of the wide range in tonnages, now I need to define a variable scale so it's possible to adapt them to space empires tonnages.

What about this one:

Fighters will be amplified 1000 times so a 1 ton in a fighter will becom 1 kt in seiv.

Smallest non-fighter ships. I sci-fi about 1000 tons in seiv 120 kt

Medium sized ships 200-2000 kt will be converted straight, making 1000 tons = 1 kt

Very big and impressive ship. But small and cheap enough that a powerful race is able to build in large numbers. Ships such as Minbari Sharlins, Earth Omegas and Imperial Star Destroyers should be close to this tonnage.
sci-fi tonnage: 50000
seiv tonnage: 5000

This ship is unconceibably big. Having the avility to build one of these babies is a show of power, and probably a provocation to other races. Ships such as an Imperial Eclipse Star Destroyer and a Vorlon Planet Killer should be close to this tonnage.
sci-fi tonnage: 30000000
seiv tonnage: 20000

The biggest thing ever built, and the maximun alowed tonnage: the Death Star.
Estimated tonnage: 320000000000 kt
seiv tonnage: 65535 kt

Do you agree with these values? Do you think that seiv tonnages fit the description?
Would it be practical to build 5000 kt ships and would the 2200 kt biggest Trek starships be able to handle them. The 2200 kt value is rounded down to keep a coherent scale and have contrast between sizes, they are reduced to more than 1/2 when the others are reduced to 1/10th of their real tonnage.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Fighters will be amplified 1000 times so a 1 ton in a fighter will becom 1 kt in seiv.<hr></blockquote>Watch out for that bottom end. The very minimum size for a fighter in SE4 would be 5-6 KT, enough for cockpit, lifesupport one weapon, one engine.

Remember that you don't have to have the fighters "mass" in SE4 be smaller than ship "mass".

Since fighter and ship components are quite separate, you could have ship masses range from 120 - 60000 KT, and fighters from 50-600 KT (same as 5-60KT normally). Then you get the full SE4 design flexibility on your fighters without the fact that everything is measured in integers becoming a problem.
Multiplying all fighter stuff by 10 won't affect anything else, and you can then offer more design flexibility, by including some "fractional-KT" parts for fighters.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Watch out for that bottom end. The very minimum size for a fighter in SE4 would be 5-6 KT, enough for cockpit, lifesupport one weapon, one engine.<hr></blockquote>
Yes I know the smallest fighters I believe are the trade fed droid fighters, I estimate about 5 tons in "real life" and 5 kt in the game. One of the reasons they can be so small is that they replace the cockpit+life support with somekind of master computer.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Remember that you don't have to have the fighters "mass" in SE4 be smaller than ship "mass".<hr></blockquote>
That could be confusing, and I don't see we need to do that by now.
And biggest fighters should not be much bigger than about 80 tons. Uless you calssify some almost 100m long trek ships like fighters as they sometimes do.
But yours is a good idea we can use if we can't get all fighter components tonnage right.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

"Multiplying all fighter stuff by 10 won't affect anything else"

Except for the number that can be stored on a carrier/planet.

And if you change cargo space, than you can carry that much more troops, population, mines, sats, weapons platforms..

Phoenix-D

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Here's an .xls file with my estimated "real" and seiv tonnage for all ship.
Some of the values may need to be revised, please correct any value, but I think that the scale is working fine.

http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/files/sc...es&tonnage.zip

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Make that "unit stuff" then. We could probably use fractional components on troops, especially the infantry.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

suicide_junkie again, that sounds like a good idea but not what we need right now. Maybe it can have some use in your P&N mod.
I think we’ll probably add infantry since most of the races use some kind of footsoldiers, but I was thinking about something similar to the sw-mod and combined with a “handheld weapon mount”


Some races have only 1 or 2 known ships, we may need to add a few more variations.

We haven’t discussed about movement yet. Standard or newtoninan? If every race is going to have exclusive vehicle sizes and engines, every one can have a different methods if resulting movements are logic.

Now that the basic vehicle sizes are done, I’ll try to make the weapons. I didn’t crosscheck but B5 weapons in Val’s xls seem to be the same ones that in BabylonTrekWars site.
Since BabylonTrekWars adds weapons for all sci-fi somehow balanced, that would be my choice. Now I need to find a way to convert those rpg like values into se4 and add other data such as tonnage to complete the comps.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

I would say go for the Newtonian style of movement, you could then better differentiate different styles of movement between the different sci-fi universes.

Also, Combat Squirrel had a pretty good infantry solution, using multiple mount types for 'Infantry' seems to be the easiest way to go. Making them low tonnage and just requiring a 'cockpit' type component and maybe a choice of armor.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

I agree. I'd prefer Newtonian. It could result in a diverse number of engine types, which would really make it feel like there's been a fusion of different Sci-Fi genres.

i.e.
In the Trek Universe you get these big huge engines, but just one or two (with a few exceptions of four). They're big, and difficult to put out of commission, but once they're gone, the ship is dead in the water - sort of an "all or none" effect.

It seems to me from the pictures that the SW Universe has more (4 to 8?) large engines on their capital ships, so it would be (numerically) easier to lose an engine or two, but the effect on ship movement wouldn't be quite "all or none."

Other genres could have the 20 - 30 small engines per capital ship as found in the P&N Universe. Slowing these ships would be easier because even a small increment in damage can take out an engine or two... but stoping them would be more difficult because they have so many small engine components.

Different genre engine types will also have an effect on ship construction and the variability in ship velocities for each genre, but that's another topic really.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Ship tonnage: We'll have to be careful not to unbalance the game with the ship sizes. This can be leveled somewhat in the weapon damage and fire rates.

Movement: Exactly how would Newtonian work in SE4? I'm not against it, but it seems strange in a turn based game.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

"Movement: Exactly how would Newtonian work in SE4? I'm not against it, but it seems strange in a turn based game."

See: P&N v2.x. Larger ships take more engines to move the same number of spaces as smaller ships.

Phoenix-D

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

But of course you could have different races with different mass to movement ratios. And you could have different ratios at different ship sizes (for non-Newtonian engine types). And you could have different engine types for different races too, resulting in a very complex but niffty multi-genre universe. And that's just the movement points
Finally you can have different components to change the amount of combat speed the ship has. So a race could have incredibly slow but highly manouverable ships! (ie Early Trek. Just the fighters in SWars)

Man, this will be a very cool mod when it's done! (even if the Newtonian movement isn't used of course)

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Take a look at this file I just made
http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/files/sc...aponDamage.xls

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

thats a lot of guns http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

A lot yes, they are based on that Babylon Trek Wars page I posted a link.
I just copied the values there, we still need to revise them, a calssify by race and order by tech trees. And there are other weapons that mey need to be added.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

I'm beginning to code in the racial advantages and the vehicle sizes. I'll post the results once I finish.
I hope that then you can help me fill in the needed techs.

BTW there's someone in the yahooGroups (don't recall name right now) interested in adding Starfire races.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Take a look at this.
http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/files/sc...ci-ficross.zip
I only added thew ships sizes. Some races will need more ship sizes. Maybe make colony ships available to all players.
They are ordered by size, some sizes may need to be re-ordered to represent advanced small ships with some extra abilities.
Please post your comments and modded data. I'll put them togeather and post them again.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Do you guys need any help making this mod? I can't really help in the graphics department, excpet maybe facilities for some Trek races (from BOTF), but I can help with racial techs and what-ot.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Well?

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Don't worry about graphics. There are aleready shipsets, and new component/facilities pics (and even weapon sounds) can be added later.
It would be useful if you can pick a race you're familiar with and start designing their tech tree.
Keep in mind that they will not have acces to most standard techs, so they'll need race-exclusive or group-exclusive equivalents.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Which races are already being designed?

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

You know, the data files for this mod are going to get very, very large, what with all these different components for all the different races and all. Are empire files for each race going to be included? They should be used by all players, especially humans, so that the different races stay true to themselves, and you don't get things like Narns with ancient race or Borg without it. Also, are we going to try and get the resources to be used more evenly? Minerals dominating all sucks and is pretty unrealistic. And speaking of resources, how long should the ships be designed to tak to build? Should Light Cruiser sized ships take 2 turns to build, 4 turns, 12? What? Races with larger ships would definitely have to take longer to build them. I just want to know what sort of standards I should try and stick to when designing a race's stuff for this mod. How is vehicles.txt going to work? Is every race going to get their own custom set of ship sizes, or will this be done by genre type?

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

I guess my question about ship classes has already been answered.

Did you copy those values for ship tonnage directly from Babylon Trek Wars? Cause they seem pretty strange for SEIV ship sizes, especially ships with values like 622 and 138.

[ 13 January 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

AFAIK no one has already started this.
I’m revising my old starwars mod, Bearclaw is working the “Force sensitive” racial trait I never got to add. And some Bab5 techs have been mentioned in the B5 mod thread, IIRC Val and s_j were working on them.
Ship tonnage is based on their known tonnage or estimations of their "real" tonnage and then scaled to make logical SE4 sizes. Some races will need a few more sizes and maybe rounding the values is not a bad idea.
Yep advanced faster space yards for races with really big ships sounds like a good idea.
The 2nd Death Star was build in ~6 months (alright it wasn't finished).

[ 14 January 2002: Message edited by: Andrés Lescano ]</p>

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

No, don't round the values. It might be a little annoyance if the minimum component tonnage is still 10, but keep the tonnages especially if the minimum component tonnage is 1.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

I'm working on the Yuuzhan Vong tech tree.
These nasty humanoids hate all non-organic technology so they shouldn't share the tech of any other race (with the only yet unlikely exemption of other advanced organic manipulation races such as the Vorlon)
Although they do breath oxygen, they terraform planets optimizing them for their facilities (shipwombs and others) and rendering them toxic to other races. I'm planning to represent this by making them the only or one of the few races that breath some other atmosphere such as methane and giving them some terraforming technologies (Dweebit Beetles, Red Sphere).
They have a wide variety of troop weapons, but only one starship weapon (Plasma Cannon). I was tempted to convert some troop weapons to starship weapons but decided no to.

One of their most interesting living components are the "Dovin Basals", gravity manipulation creatures, they are used as engines, shields, to disrupt enemy shields and weapons and even for stellar manipulation.
They are very versatile, but they can't do everything at the same time, so I was planning to have several Versions, the 1st, engine + shields at higher levels, another shield zapping specialized, and another one for stellar manipulation.
Can the "Sector - Shield Disruption" ability be used in components? I can't make it affect only the enemy, but I can try to compensate with a "Shield Modifier - System" ability.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Can the "Sector - Shield Disruption" ability be used in components?<hr></blockquote>

Yeah, and I think one of the mods uses it on bases.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> I can't make it affect only the enemy, but I can try to compensate with a "Shield Modifier - System" ability.
<hr></blockquote>

This ability won't lower enemy shields, if that is your goal. It only affects your own ships. I don't know if a negative value would work for it, and I don't know if it would work anyways.

Baron Munchausen posted this a while ago:

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>There are far more 'racial traits' available than are used in the current control files. As an old-time executable snooper I loaded the se4.exe into a viewer ages ago. I've only used one so far, but it works fine.
Name := Natural Engineers
Description := Repairs are made at 150% of their normal rate.
Pic Num := 0
General Type := Advantage
Cost := 1000
Trait Type := Repair
Value 1 := 50
Value 2 := 0
Required Trait 1 := None
Required Trait 2 := None
Required Trait 3 := None
Restricted Trait 1 := None
Restricted Trait 2 := None
Restricted Trait 3 := None

This gives a 50 percent boost to repair rate as you would think. The abilities currently used in the default config are:

Supply Cost,
No Plagues,
No Spaceports,
Luck,
Vehicle Speed,
Galaxy Seen,
Planet Storage Space,
Planetary SY Rate,
Tech Area,
Population Emotionless,
Tech Area (racial techs, of course)

Other abilities listed in the executable, which may or may not all work, are the following:

Troops Bonus
Fighter Bonus
Ship Bonus
Mineral Production
Mineral Storage
Organics Production
Organics Storage
Radioactives Production
Radioactives Storage
Research Production
Intelligence Production
Trade
Ground Combat
Space Combat
Maintenance Cost
Ship Attack
Ship Defense

As you can see, many of them look like duplicates. But some experimentation that I don't have the patience for (Edit racialtraits.txt file, start new game, create race & experiment with new trait...) might turn up some others that are usable. Too bad there's not a "Ship SIZE" ability, huh? Having larger ships at all tech levels would be a cool advantage. <hr></blockquote>

We should try using some of these other racial abilities in the mod. I know that the Resource Storage abilities work, because I tested them before.

[ 16 January 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[ 16 January 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Actually I was thinking of a negative Sector - Shield Disruption + a positive Shield Modifier - System to restore the shields in your ships.
Would the two abilities work fine togeather?

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Yeah, if the Shield Modification - System ability works on a ship component, then they should work how you are planning.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Unless one stacks and the other dosen't.
Be sure to test it with multiple ships at once.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

In my first experiments the combination of the two abilities seems to be working even better than what I expected. I though that shields of low shielded ships would be increased to the amount of the abilities, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. Non of them seems to stack what I think it’s ok.
Another problem I found playing with the Vong is that they don’t have a ship size to use as a practical colony ship, since they jump from a 185 kt Corvette to a 2056 kt Light Cruiser (yes it’s “light” assault and grand cruisers are 5023 and 9954 kt).
I should probably give them one or two intermediate sizes, but the question is: should colony ships be available to all races instead of only the ones with the standard SE4 racial trait?

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

I was wrong both abilities do stack, but they were nullifying each other.
I hadn’t try with ships in the system but no in the same sector.
My shields were increased by stacked shield modifiers, while enemy shields were unaffected.
The problem is that as their names state the shield modifier affects the whole system while the shield disruption only the sector.
I think that the best solution would be to forget the fancy abilities and just make it a powerful shields-only weapon.

And again, what do you think about colony ships?

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Every race should have access to a colony ship. I don't think you really need to make a different one for every race, so its fine if you just let all races use the same colony ship.

[ 18 January 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Then I'll just remove the Ship Construction 1 tech requirement of the colony ships. (That tech requires the "Standard SE4" racial trait.

Re: Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)
 

Another thing I found is that the temporary large engine confuses AI that attempt to place it in small ships where they can only put 1 and it doesn't leave space for other components.
I'm removing the temp filler now. And races will get large engines along with the big ships, so that should at least partially sove the problem.
I wish there were engine mounts that worked somehow like weapon mounts increasin their performance and with size limits.