Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

dumbluck; You have been a buzy little beaver, I can see! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

mlmbd http://www.shrapnelgames.com//ubb/icons/icon6.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Excellent! I'll download this and do some testing for you right away! 8)

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

Pax: I'm not entirely certain anymore if I had modded the sizes for the non-Ships of the Line hulls. You might want to double check that.

Edit: Also, be aware that I intend to do a little more modding to the Engines/move of the various hulls (with the intended end result being that smaller hulls will have a higher max speed than bigger hulls).

2nd edit: Of coarse, it might be easier to just add some bonus movement to the hull, instead of trying to adjust the engines per move...

[ December 26, 2002, 22:08: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The best way to do this is, differing caps on how many engines each ship can HAVE. mQNP is baed ont eh premise that X kT of engine will move Y kT of ship at Z speed .... while 5X will move 5Y at 5Z ... in a fairly linear fashion.

Let light ships (escort, destroyer, frigate, maybe light cruiser) have, say, 6 engines; medium ships (cruisers, battlecruisers, battleships) have 5; and heavy ships (dreadnought and up) have 4.

You might toy with a higher EPM for "noncombat ships" -- transports and such -- but even there ...

mQNP doesn't use epm to directly fiddle with X-engine-gives-Y-speed rates.

I modified my local copy of P&N to use mQNP (SJ hasn't been able to check it out yet AFAIK), and I set EPM universally at three, without changing the movement points of the engines. That changes how the engine-tech improvements work, but a given engine, properly mounted, will move ANY hull at the same speed ... the engine simply gets bigger as the hull gets bigger.

I won't mind doing the actual writing-of-datafiles work for the ships, engines, and mounts; you have my email, and I'm often in #se4. Drop by, we can discuss what you want done vs what I can do, then I'll take the grunt work off your hands, and let you focus more on the butter-or-guns parts of AOWar. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

Now, what's the fun of modding if I let you do it all? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I still like my idea, and will prolly toy around with it for the fun of it, just to see if I can actually make it work. If you have serious objections to people tinkering with mQNP, I'll just release your stock Version. I have another idea simmering in the back of my mind that might accomplish what I'm trying to do.

Edit: I forget, did you extend mQNP down into the fighters and drones?

2nd edit: my keyboard can't spell!

[ December 28, 2002, 11:11: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

You know what you need DL? Tech grids. That would add a lot of art to researching. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm not at ALL un-amenable to people tinkering with mQNP ... in fact I *encourage* it. I'm merely offering to take osme fo the grunt work off your hands, in teh process of your using something *I* have been kinda pushing for. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, the sample I sent you was just that, a sample -- based solely on the ship hulls. Okay, a *functional*, useable sample ... but a sample nonetheless.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Heh. Well, I'm posting froma friend's NT box, on a cable modem ... and I am JEALOUS of the modem ... it loads these forums up in an eyeblink ... !

I'll trade my slow-as-frozen-molasses-on-the-moon's-dark-side modem, and my keyboard, for your can't-spell-worth-crud keyboard and (probably) faster net connection!

LOL http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ December 29, 2002, 01:49: Message edited by: Pax ]

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

This looks like it will be really neat! Keep up good work! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

Fyron: (emphasis added)
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This is pretty low on the priority list, right now. I'm no longer even sure if I'm willing to commit that much time and effort into this mod (look how long it's taken me to get this far!!!). But I'm keeping it in mind.

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

Pax: The reason that I like messing with the EPM is that it allows for a high amount of granularity. (is that even a word?) However, another way of (sorta) achieving what I'm looking for is to slowly decrease the efficiency of engines as hull size increases. For example, you have total engine tonnage that are always 10% of the total hull tonnage (I don't recall the actual #s off the top of my head). What if that % slowly increased with hull size? So that an Escort uses 10% for engines, but a Frigate uses 12%, and a destroyer uses 13%, etc. etc. etc. Even better would be to set it up based on tonnage increase, instead of class increase. Now, every time the hull size increases 100kt, the % needed for engines goes up 1%.

Does that make any sense? Of coarse, these numbers are just off the top of my head, atm...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I do? I hope it's in my mailbox, then...

PS: I have a cable modem, too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ December 31, 2002, 14:37: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

Ok. First off, thanx to mumbles I know that I left a minor file out of the Last .zip file. Here is the corrected file:

AoWv0_81.zip

2nd: Pax, if you're still interested in working on this with me, I'm leaning towards the Hybrid model of the mQNP. 9 levels of ship construction is easily divided into 3 levels of Engine sizes. Oh and I can't find your e-mail addy anywhere, so if you could send me a quick email, I'd appreciate it.

3rd: If you read the Alpha tester thread, you may have noticed that I mentioned a departure from the standard SY model. This is what I was thinking of:

---3 levels of SYfacilities, with very low build/repair rates, researchable thru the SY tech field.
---9 levels of base mountable SYcomponents, small and with low build rates. Components increase in size as tech levels advance (but the build rate/kt ratio improves with tech increases). They are researched thru the Ship Construction tech field. They have minor repair abilities. Base SYcomponents are NOT limited to one per ship. So their buildrates are stackable. (If I understand the game mechanics correctly)
---3 levels of ship mountable SYcompontents, larger than and with faster build rates than Base mountable Versions. However, they are intended to be considerably less effiecient than a dedicated Base SY. The build rate/kt ratio improves with tech increases; or alternately, increased tech levels may just reduce the maintenance penalty (see below). They're limited to one per ship. They might also include a minor repair ability. They are researched thru the SY tech field. I haven't yet decided whether they will be more or less efficient than Planetary SYs.
---Each SY tech level (or possibly Base Construction instead of SY tech) also yields mounts that reduce the size of Base SY components slightly.
---I'm also considering adding a maintenance penalty to the components to make them cheap to build, but expensive to maintain and run. I have yet to decide whether to make the penalty decrease with tech level, remain steady, or tie it to the buildrate/kt ratio.

The general idea is that Planetary SYs would be just about useless. You need them (or a ship based SY) to build your first orbital Base SY, but after that, you'd probably be better off scrapping it to open up the facility slot. Most ship construction would occur at Base SYs. Mobile SYs give up a lot of efficiency in exchange for that mobility, and would probably have steaper maintenance penalties than the stationary variety (after compensating for the base hull mainteance bonus).

I'm hoping to keep it down to about 5 SY components per base in order to avoid absurdly high repair rates. Thus the gradual size increases, to somewhat keep up with the implementation of larger base sizes.

Of coarse, this whole concept hinges on the assumptions that SY build rates stack and that I can remove the one per ship tag on the SY components. Assumptions I haven't tested yet.

OK, are there any questions/comments/observations?

[ January 20, 2003, 12:49: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

You can not have a ship or base design with more than 1 SY. Only planets can be set to use the SY Expansion Projects.

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

Fyron is correct there DL. The Space Yard component doesn't have a one per ship restriction to remove even. If you look in the components file it says none on that line. The one per ship limit is a hard code thing.

You could simulate it though by having several different space yard comps at each tech level, with progressivly more construct ability and progresivly larger size as well.

Geoschmo

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

"The one per ship limit is a hard code thing."

So is the one per planet thing, but SJ found a way around that. The retrofit code is probably a bit tighter though. More easily abuseable.

Phoenix-D

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

So I discovered. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif It was a cool idea, though (in my admittedly heavily biased opinion). Oh well, that just saves me the trouble of trying to balance the new SY system! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

Is it possible to mod a componet/facility that has ship building ability, without it being a shipyard?

<font color=purple>mlmbd http://www.shrapnelgames.com//ubb/icons/icon6.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif </font>

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, the ability is what defines it as being a shipyard. That is what the game is looking for when limiting the number of them allowed. It's not simply looking at a name or something.

Geoschmo

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

geo, OK, Thanks! Was just wondering!

<font color=purple>mlmbd http://www.shrapnelgames.com//ubb/icons/icon6.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif </font>

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

Dumbluck,

Please see my post in the Alpha testing thread.

KirbyEF

[ January 30, 2003, 21:53: Message edited by: kirbyef ]

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

No, I haven't forgotten. I've just been a little busy in the Real World. I did have one other thing I wanted to do with the economic issues before moving on to Fighter/PDC/Missle balance: Population bonuses.

If any of you programming gurus would like to help with this one, I'd greatly appreciate it. I can describe what I want the production/construction curves to look like, but I'm not relishing the 3 hours it would take me with a hand-held calculator to figure it all out for every step up...

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

Have you checked out the pop curve SJ has on his site? It's ~700KB, IIRC.

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

Send your ideas to SJ. He has a little program he wrote to generate the data for pop curves. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

Krsqk: Yes, I'm a big fan of P&N on PBW. (it's 2 of my 3 PBW games http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ). However, I was looking for something not quite so.... steep with this mod... for now at any rate. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

IF: Thanx, I should have known to ask him first... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

You really thought he wrote a 700 kB settings.txt file by hand? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

Fyron:Well, you never know.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

All: And no, I haven't forgotten about this mod. I've just been doing a lot of "conceptual" work instead of actual modding... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: New Mod: The Art of War Mod
 

Always helps to have the concepts laid out ahead of time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif