Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

P.S. The Humans traded the Jump Gate technology with the Centauri.
Or more correctly, the Centauri found the Humans in pre-jump gate era, and showed the Humans how to use Jumpgates and later showed them how to make their own. All in return for worthless trinkets, as the Centauri could sell these at home for huge profits as "novelties".

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

The Vorlons and Shadows are two First Ones. The rest are:
- Kirishiac Lords
- Walker of Sigma 957
- Torvalus
- Triad
- Mindriders
- Lorien (the only one left of his race in this galaxy, he is THE first one)

I could also give a full history, but that would require me to type quite a lot and besides it can be found in the books of B5 Wars. I'm not going to type it out, there might be difficulties concerning copyright and stuff.

You aren't very good with names... yeah right... you're giving the whole name, the season and the possible episode number. Sigh...
Now I recall that episode too. I think they just amplified the gravitic field and with that force they tore the Crab apart. Ah well, I'm too lazy to check.
Anyway, in one Version of the stellar map of B5 (in 2258) there are two jumpgates and in another Version there are three jumpgates. Maybe the other Version already took into account the destroyed jumpgate. Who knows...

Edit:
I know about the Centauri selling jumpgate tech to the Humans, but that doesn't negate the fact that the Humans are one of the few races who ever bothered constructing new gates. And that was what I meant.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

heh, Timstone is right. Somewhere i read the a post about the first ones history, who was first and who actually was Last of the first ones. Will haul that up later, just for the fun of it.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Hehe... I've posted that in this thread. Again my omnipotent laziness strikes!
Thanks for the post RagsX!
Oh yeah, right now I'm busy with the general techs (the weapons, I mean)! Woohoo!

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Or in FQM Deluxe to go straight to the source... Note that as in FQM, you can change all warp points to be "unusual" in SystemTypes.txt and allow some of them to have no ability in StellarAbilityTypes.txt to get a wide variety of pictures used for warp points on the maps.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Now that the B5m2 files are available, I thought I would point out a few things and explain the reasoning. I will start with the components (les weapons, which I didn't mess with much except to give every race a fairly decent weapon for playtest purposes).

One of the first things I did was to change the balance of ship production from planet-based to space-based. This is in accordance with the way the series and JMS's short stories show ships being produced. To make up for the lack of population bonus to shipyard production, I added an additional three base shipyard components that can only be built on 1000kt bases. At their peak, this means a player can construct with 8,000 of each resource per turn. It probably will only make sense to have a few of these mega-shipyards, as even with maintenance discounts they still use a lot of maintenance, but the idea was to have these be the yards building the capital ships, while smaller ships are being built in the smaller shipyards.

Another change was to use the component enhancements to handle engines. One engine will cost roughly 10% of the ship's hull size, with the idea that the "typical" ship will have 40% of the hull devoted to engines. Reactor outputs were "tweaked" to result in a 1-1 correlation between the power needs of small, medium, large, and huge ships and reactors.

Within these parameters, "standard" speeds are:
Fission: 4
Fusion: 6
Antimatter: 9
Gravimetric: 12

The same style of engine was given to fighters (so that larger fighters don't become faster Versions of the smaller fighters, but better-armed and armored Versions at the same speed). However, I decided that fighter reactors made no sense - we continually see in the series references to the limited endurance of fighters. So, fighters have to get back to a planet or get recovered by a carrier to refuel.

Standard speeds (normal/combat) for fighters are:
Fiss 6/5
Adv Fiss 6/6
Fus 9/6
Adv Fus 9/7
Am 12/8
adv AM 12/9

I placed all of the inert armors at the end of the file so that they will appear at the far right of the components list in the ship design screen. This makes sense, because shipbuilders are going to fill in any leftover tonnage with inert armor, and the design process should go left to right.

I was playing a bit with the cost/benefit tradeoffs with crew types. Nothing here is hard and fast, other than wanting to avoid Val's overly generous maintenance reductions for non-First Ones.

The cargo modules are a compromise between Val's huge cargo sections (which drove all other design considerations for freighter-types) and the standard game's small cargo sections (which resisted damage too readily and were too easy to tuck into any type of ship). I am still not satisfied with the tradeoffs made for external cargo bays - they seem too good, for reasons I canot quite articulate.

There are some components that I don't really use anymore, but left in because I thought someone else might be able to make sense of them:

1. The IPX module was originally conceived as a way of reflecting the exploration of a ruins planet without the expense of colonization. There is nothing to prevent the sending of colonists to an IPX setllement, though, so this would be a component used only in human-human games with house rules to prevent exploitation.

2. I left in a lot of Raiders and Ancients components because taking them out seemed like too much work. They are never called for because neither Raiders nor Ancients have been added yet.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

I am not really a fan of using "kinetic weapons" anyway, given that they are not part of the B5 universe,* but if we are going to use them we should rationalize them coherently, not by pretending that there is a lot of "non-critical damage" going on in the game that we just cannot see. Kinetic weapons should have very little if any degradation on damage, but plenty on "to hit" so as to make them distinctive from, say, lasers which would have the opposite (at least after the first few salvos, as debris and the like begin to gather around the target and the attacker).

*(outside, perhaps, the B5Wars books that have a number of other canonical problems as well)

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Wasn't the idea to make the ships take a while and a lot of resources to build, but not be insanely expensive to maintain?

It was quite coherent and valid... another way to look at it would be a statistical representation of more shots missing at longer ranges. Combat bonuses are far, far too powerful in SE4 for them to be a very good way to try and balance weapons out... Even something as small as a 10% penalty to hit is not really a 10% penalty to hit. It often ends up being more like a 40% penalty to hit, or more, depending on the exact circumstances. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/Injured.gif

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Anybody noticed.... this thread has 1722 Views and 4457 replies o_O
That is technically not possible as a thread gets a view when you reply (as you have loaded the thread to reply in the first place)

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Since when was it really planet-based?
I don't know about the other players, but when I was playing in the PBW B5 game, at least 95% of my construction power was from BSYs.

It seems like most other people shy away from the idea, but when you have 30-50 bases over your homeworld, you can produce a hell of a lot of ships in no time.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

The forum software was upgraded several months ago. Before the upgrade, forum views were not recorded. Now, they are. Old threads, such as this one, started with 0 views after the upgrade.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

I imagine that variations on the double-posting routine would also produce more Posts than views.

Just save the link to the "reply" page, and you should be able to post without adding a view.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

That would explain it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Suicide: Double posting *can* produce this kind of effect but not on this scale, hence I wondered http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif It just looked rather funny. I imagine the thread views to be somewhere above 10k in any case, this thread is very popular http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif (As it should be, it's about B5 !!)

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

RagsX:
I've finished all the general weapons. Unfortunately I've discovered I can't mail them because there is some sort of replacement of hardware going on. I haven't figured out why I still can post here and not send a mail. Strange stuff...

Oh yeah, I've pulled the weapons straight out of the latest public Version of The Mod, should I "treat" them with my weaponmaker or should I leave them as they are?
If you want me to modify them with my weaponmaker, I won't be done with them untill the end of this week. I have a few other things to attend to in the remaining days for the weekend.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Tim,

would be nice if you could just first send them and still modify them the way you plan to do it. At any rate it doesnt really matter, you can send them later this week as well.


Grumbler: I took a look at the files a few days ago and found things very interesteting. For example the Unique-ship classes are something i really like http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Other than that i really didnt found any totally new things. I noticed the reactors had been placed in different families, which makes sense (i did that in my Version of the mod as well, group reactors of the same size).

Just in case anyone is interested. I recently finished overhauling the sensors/ecm system. I slighty changed the effects of each "tier" and added another group called general sensors, which provide bonuses to offense AND defense, but only 50% each compared to offense- or defense-only sensors. In addition i deleted tier3, all of them now have 2 tiers, thats the reason why i added the general sensors Category.


At any rate, i thought a bit abount unique or racial components, will post them in the next post. Please quote the post and tell me what you think. Quite a few are "new", but i have used existing thoughts as well.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Major Race abilites:

EA: Strong telepaths and economics, average combat
Minbari: good telepaths and ecomonics, weapons and facilites above average as well. Different castes offer different abilities
Centauri: standart telepaths, expensive ships, population can easily be influenced. Maybe good trading ability.
Narn: weak economics, strong combat ability, both in space, on ground and when boarding. Above average trading
First Ones: Superior overall, not able to colonize or capture planets. Should be played in PBW rpg-ish, do diplomatics and stuff. First Ones should NOT ally with each other or they would become impossible to beat.
Vree: Superior engines or thrusters, maybe a better science, cool antimatter weapons
Streib: better science and boarding stuff, weak trading
Pakmara: cheap ships
Gaim: cheap ships
Ipsha: expensive and strong ships, especially powerful weapons
Drazi: average ships, maybe better evasion
Hyach ?
Abbai ?





Shadow Phase Shift Generator

Add 2-4 Movement Points, +1 combat movement respecivly, more minor influence on cost and supply usage.
Should be useful on each vessel, therefor scale mounts need to be implented. Should take approximatly 10-20% of total available space.


Vree anti-gravitation thrusters

Add 1-3 combat movement, slightly enhance offense and defense bonus. Usable on every Vree vessel with the help of mounts. Costs and size usage and are not to big, maybe even make them easier to use on small vessels to show the Vree’s superior manoverability.Should take between 5-10% size.


Minbari Religous Caste Bridge

Slightly decreases maintaince and has a rather low cost compared to normal bridge. Gives a slight decrease in offense and defense. Meant to be used within civilian ships, like colonizers and transports. Cant be used on bases though.


Minbari Warrior Caste Bridge

Slighty increases maintaince and has a rather high cost compared to normal bridge. Gives a slight increase in offense and defense. Meant to be used within each warship, weiter conventional or carrier. Cant be used on bases though. Another options would be to create a weaponmount called „Warrior-Caste controlled weapon“, which increases damage and hitchance.


Gaim Crew Quarters, Bridge and Life supports

Has a good decrease in cost and maybe only takes 50% standart size. No change in ship abilites, only to show that the Gaim live in a hive and place or living circumstances are not important.


Earth Alliance Psi-Chor Bridge

Bridge to indicate the vessel is under control of the Earth allliance Psi-Chor. Majorly increases the cost of the Brdige and maybe the size. Gives a good offense bonus to show the ship is supported by several telepaths. Could even give a lvl 2 normal cloak ability to indicate that telepaths are able confuse enemy ships. There should be a quite cheap cloak-detection component for each race, which could easily.“defeat“ telepaths cloaking though.


Pakmara Crew Quarters and Life Support.

A really cheap and small crew quarter and life support component meant for pakamara species who do not care about it.


Streib Tractor Beam

A quite cheap component meant to tractor hostile ships towards the Streib ship in order to make boarding easier.


Streib Abduction Thruster

Special Streib thrusters which enable them to board hostile ships more fastly. They should give +1 or +2 combat movement OR a evasion bonus.


Streib Boarding Parties

Streib boarding parties, which are very efficient while costing the same as other species boarding parties. They are superior compared to other species boarding or defending parties and should be able to overwhelm the enemy almost always.




Shadow Organism CPU

A Master Computer for Shadows. Resembles the lifeform incorporated into a shadow vessel. Should give a slight bonus in offense and defense to show the increases capabilites when compared to standart bridges. Needs to cost a lot. Should make small vessels MORE expensive than other races ships while big vessels are more cheap. This comes due to the amount of life support and crew quarters needed for other races capital ships, while the shadow can still use just one component for the entire ship control thingy. Another idea would be to include normal bridge, lifesupport and crewquarters for the shadows as well, to allow them to construct small ships without the expensive CPU. In addition i dont think small shadow vessels like the fighter and the scout have a grown-in lifeform, since even the Battlecrab only has one.


Shadow and Vorlon organic reparation systems

Repair systems which can easily be incorporated into any ship. Small and cheap. Maybe the ability should be incorporated into special Shadow and Vorlon ship hulls, would require alot of work though. Components would be easier. Another idea would be include the repair ability into the ships Life support, or central component.


Centauri Crew Quarters

Would be quite expensive, to show that the Centauri love to life in wealth and like food and stuff. They offer no benefits.


General Race Mass Catapult

Mass Catapults are anti-planet weapons. They should deal major damage to planets and have a very long range. Unless a planet has mobile defenses it should be able to destroy a planet while staying out of WP range.
Fighters or ships or drones would be needed to defeat a siege ship. Should have a quite long reload though, 4 seems to be fine. Should be big and expensive as well. Apart from Drakh bio-viruses, the Shadow Deathcloud and the Vorlon planetdestroyer it should be the way to handle planets, at least for not-first-ones http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif Valid target oc only planets.


Centauri Mass Catapults

Improved Version of the general mass catapults. Smaller and less expensive would be the only change.


Earth Alliance artifical-gravity generators

Some kind of component to indicate the not-so-advanced artificial gravity systems of the earth alliance. Should be able to slightly enhance combat ability or something like that. It should indicate that a starships crew is more comfortable when having
AG generators.


Earth Alliance Cobra-Bay launch systems

Cobra-Bays replace standart fighter and drone bays. They are superior, a bit smaller and less expensive, but have a slightly better launch-ability, overall they are the way to go.


Earth alliance telepath on board

A component which should indicate a certain status, which would be that a telepath is on board as well. Should cost a lot, but gives a nice bonus in offense and defense. Each major race should get a component like this, with the EA being the most effective. The Narn get some kind of „mercenary telepath on board“ which is more expensive because the narn naturally have to telepaths. Maybe there could be different telepaths, some who give combat %, and some who can analyse hostile ships from several sector range, i dont know but i like the idea.


Captains

Similar to startrek mod captains. You research stuff and get access to different grades of captains which cost nothing to put on a starship or base but have MAJOR influence on the ships combat abilites. More researching means better captains to choose from. Somewhat unrealitc, but after all ist cool to have an EA Major commanding your omega destroyer and beating the [censored] out of that lower-grade Minbari commander. Then again, how are minbari ranks called anyway ? Well who cares, they are minbari after all:

Maybe Tim can help here with his AoG books.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

It is also very old and concentrated. I bet the Posts that have been made about the Star Trek Mod outweigh the ones in here. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

First let me point out that I have no plans to implement the First Ones just yet. They should be implemented when all the other races are done.
They're tricky buggers to put into The Mod.

Furthermore I would like to help making the weapons, the rest of the components are not really my cup of tea. I could give advise about it though, and with a little help of my B5W Books and the excellent support here we can go a long way.


I hope these remarks are helpful. Expect me to work on the weapons for each race steadily. Although my graduation period is getting more and more stressful, so untill april I won't do one race in one week. Maybe one race every three weeks. Sorry, I just can't help that.
But I can and will give input whenever I'm Online and that is almost every day (about 10 hours a day).

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Some notes on weapons:

Quad to Quarter damage to shields will divide or multiply the effect advanced armors have against the weapon.

Shield or Armor or Both skipping weapons will all ignore the advanced armor effect.

Shields only damage will have an insignificant effect, and is basically useless.

Shield Generator only will need to be fairly high powered to have any effect, but once it hits the advanced armor HP it will quickly strip the ship of advanced armor.
You will probably want to match the damage to the advanced armor hitpoints, so there is an arms race between advanced-armor-crackers and armor invulnerable to the old crackers.

other Only-X weapons work normally.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Thanks for the notes Timstone. I knew some of those ARE already implented, but i plan to redo almost everything so i just wrote up whatever was floating in my mind. About your weapons/time problem. No problem here. I still have a lot to do as well but its getting forward after all ! I will write you an email about the file you send me, but you will to wait until tomorrow.

SJ: Thanks for the hints, i guess they will help TS http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Looking for more opinions, especially more suggestions to create racial thingies are welcome !

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

SJ:
Thanks for the suggestions. If I/RagsX encounter problems, we'll post them here.

RagsX:
I've received your e-mail. I've read it, but haven't done anything yet. I'll do that tonight.
And absolutely no hard feelings, all is worth it for this mod. I'm glad you took a good look at it. And my apologies for the errors. I forgot to mention my obsolete techarea.txt.
I'll send you e-mail when I'm done at work. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/Injured.gif

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Well as mentioned, it wasnt your failure. It was more mine, since i didnt send you "my" techarea file. Anyways, good work !

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

I've taken a look at your files and tomorrow I'll write a comment on it (at work).
This evening is reserved for a potential GF. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif
Keep your fingers crossed!

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

[/b] yes, but when one doesn't need to expand resources at all to support all the ships one could want, the balance is not "insane' in the direction of expensive. I think the first Version of the mod went to far in the direction of believing that a turn really represented one tenth of a year. While the game could survive the idea, it proved too slow in testing. If you really want to spend 30 turns building a battleship, you can adjust all the values, of course.

I would accept "valid" but not "coherent." We are not talking, in actual combat representations, about "statistical representations." Shots hit or miss. They do discrete damage or not. They impact the next tactical turn or they do not. Combat in the game is mechanistic, not statistical.

I understand the desire to avoid the accumulation of unrealistic modifiers, and the point of the "point of diminishing returns" representation of armor, ECM, and sensors.

However, I don't like the representation of game effects that are frankly counter-intuitive as "subtle effects" that only make sense to the initiated.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Yeah, but that left you with the idea that it was realistic in B5 terms to have 30-50 ships in production at a time... but that space-based yards were much less efficient than planet-based ones. Which lead to the old problem of planets being restricted artificially to one ship at a time. The space-based yards basicallt just completed "hulks" to be finalized by "modernization" upgrades. Made the whole design system suck, since the bulk of designs would be obsolete when finished.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

RagX,

It soundslike you have some good "racialization" ideas, and that is what has been missing in the components and facilities. I agree with Tim that you need to forget the First Ones for now. Get the basic races down pat and you will have gone a long way.

My ideas on the races, in general:

1. EA is good at diplomacy but is poor in research (witness the use of the same Sensors that failed in the EM war ten years later, plus look at the fleet that went out in Into the Fire and not that ONLY the EA ships still had rotation for gravity).

2. Minbari should be better than EA at telepathy and economics (b/c money never enters into any minbari decision-making) but ships should be much more expensive to build and maintain (after all, the whole race knew about the destruction of ONE FLIPPING SHIP!)

3. Pak'ma'ra should have cheap ships and great intel, but poor research. No one "officially" notices the Pak'ma'ra.

4. I think the Drazi would be diplomatically limited but economically advantaged.

5. The Narn semed a bit militarily hapless, but bred like rabbits.

6. The Centauri, on the other hand, should have little pop growth except under the most favorable circumstances, but plenty of bite when pushed.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Actually, I only had very minor upgrades to do by the time I finished.
Most of the time it was not worth the cost to upgrade once complete, but still nice to build new ones with the better tech.
I'd rotate ships off the front line and upgrade -A mods to -D mods and such, though. Whatever my repair capacity could handle.

PS:
The artificial restriction to one ship per turn did not factor into it. The ships I was building took about a whole turn to complete at the planet anyways, and the sum total of 50 BSY way outstrips any possible population modifiers and the larger base rate from the facility.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Is there any intention of looking at the components that change size and the effects these components have on the upgrade design feature?

On ship construction, I would suggest a maximum of 20 turn for ship production by the best shipyard facility or component.[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Flag_NewZeland.gif[/img]

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Okay RagsX, I've taken a look at the work so far.
It's a good idea to post the whole mod here at the forum, it isn't that big. Add a little text file with instructions and voilá!
This way everybody can say something useful about your work so far.
I'll kick off with some comments. Please don't take these comments the wrong way, I never intended to scorn your hard work and impressive effort you've put into The Mod. I only want to give constructive advise. Don't be mad with me.

1) Reactors
Why did you implement a biomatter reactor? I mean, It's okay for bio races (Vorlon, Shadow, not Giam (they aren't advanced enough)), but it isn't very in it's place for the regular techs. You might consider adding it only to the races with organic tech.
What happened to the Hyperspace Tap? Where did it go?

2) Sensors
I'm no biggie on this subject, so I'll give my oppinion, but it isn't very professional (I don't have to pretend I know all of this subject). I like the way you've split up the offensive and defensive sensors. Also the adding the general sensors is a nice touch. I haven't lookad at when they are introduced into the techtree, but I assum you first have to research all the offensive and defensive sensors and then the general sensors. A minor fix would be to make the general sensors a little bit less powerful than the fully offensive and defensive sensors.

3) Engines
I fitted a dreadnought (or dreadnaught, what is the correct spelling of it?) with as many engines as I could (the best fusion engines), but still the ships could only had 2 movement and the the imfamous flip-over pouint came, I couldn't go further than 31 engines. More than enough engines I think, but still far too slow to be of use in the game.

4) Buildings
Nice buildings, almost no complaints here. But I don't think you've fully tested that bit. There is one starting building (I think it's called the Megalopolis) and the description of that building also states it's only found on homeworlds. Unfortunately I found it nowhere. This is caused simply because the computer looks at the different functions it needs to include on a startingplanet. The Megalopolist doens't have any of those things.
I'll give a list of what the computer always tries to implement:
- Ship Yard
- Resupply Dock
- Space Dock
It searches for those things according to researchpoints. So if the computer has to chose from two buildings with the same stuff on it, it choses the one wich costed the most researchpoints.
Maybe the problem is easily solved by giving the Megalopolis one of these qualities, the best one is the resupply quality. I'll do some test with that tonight.

5) Fighters
Where are they? Haven't you implemented them yet? I also missed the fighter reactors. Or is this because of the limited stamina of the fighters?


I hope these little bits of comment help you.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Reactors

Well i simply felt like it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif I thought there should be something between gravimetric (younger races advanced reactor) and hyperspace tapper (first ones reactors). So i hadded biomatter reactors. They are indeed ment to be used by shadows and vorlons, just that tech requirements arent done yet.


Sensors

Tech requirements are setup yet, too. But it SHOULD work in a way that you have access to general sensors. You develop them until level 3 or 4 and get access to standart offensive and defense sensors. Each one needs a different sensor tech area, and at level 6 each of them can be enhanced by a second tier, called "AI-Addon" which gives another offense or defense or both bonus.


Engines

Oh well. Firstly, Dreadnoughts come at the end of the techtree. They are DEFINITLY not meant to be used with superior fusion engines. Doing that would mean to try to load a western-gun with an ak-47 magazine.
Dreadnoughts should be used with antimatter or gravimetric engines. Those are more effective. In addition im planing to create hyperspace-jump-devices for capitalships, like i mentioned in my above post. They work like a solar-sail or warp-core and given an immediate 1,2,3 movement bonus. Capital ships should move slow anyways, i think movement 5 is quite fast for them.


Buildings

Well, the starting buildings DO work. Just not with a full tech game. I know about the requirements for homeworld facilites and set them up the right way. When using full tech though, standart research buildings and stuff are more efficient than homeworld complexes. Do a normal tech game and it WILL work.


Fighters
Not done yet, apart from Engines and reactors. They are no vehicle-sizes yet.



About your points that certain reactors, namely hyperspace tappers dont appear. I have attached an updated DATA folder to this post. Indeed you were right, a few things didnt worked due to overlapping family numbers, now they do.


p.s. About that 31-engines thingy you mentioned. I dont understand. I just created an dreadnought with 50 engines without any problem at all. Then when i went to add the 52th engine, it lost 2 movement points ??! Bug ?! Could someone explain the deal here ?!




Edit: Uploaded PROPER data files which fixes the reactor problem with hyperspace taps and families in general. In addition sensor families were corrected as well. I recommend everyone to download the new zip, its only 160 kB

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

1 - Don't forget the Humans are a much much younger civilisation than the Minbari when it comes to Space Faring & Space Combat. Tho technologically slightly inferior to the Minbari in the series, the Humans catch up really quickly.
EA should have slightly less research then the Minbari, but not much. EA's strength (in my opinion) would indeed be in the direction of Diplomacy and Trading as well as Ship Offense. Intelligence should have a slight penalty as the human's have an open democratic society which is very open for infiltration. And easely forgotten, humans seem to have a natural gift for stripping worlds dry of their resources, being very skilled miners/refiners.
Just my 2 cents tho.

2 - Minbari should be Psychic.

3 - I would agree with you on the Pakmara http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

5 - I don't agree there. Narn are very skilled warriors and very dangerous as they have a complete disregard for their own safety. I would say they are Deeply Religous + Zaelots in that perspective. I would give them a high Ship Offense bonus but a Ship Defense penalty. Not sure on the breeding, perhaps there are details on their exact biological cycle somewhere in JMS works, I haven't really looked into that. A ground combat bonus would possibly be a good idea for Narn.

6 - The Centauri should be skilled traders/merchants with a high maintenance reduction to their ships.

Just my opinions, feel very free to disagree http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

RagsX:
Hahahaha!!! You've just run into the infamous point where the one becomes a zero again. The veterens here have dubbed it a propper name which I do not know, but the effect is quite clear to me. Bleh...
Ask Pathfinder for the whole history of his solution, this NORMAL game function (it is absolutely no bug)drove him almost insane (a flare for the dramatic....).

I'm off to bed now, I'm exhausted. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/Injured.gif

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

This is wrong. Like many other things, the actual selection of homeworld facilities can be found in SEIV Modding 101:

http://se4modding.spaceempires.net/M....html#Chapter6

There is a limit of 255 standard movement points that a ship can have. If you go over 255, the value resets to 0 and starts over. You will want to read the chapter on Quasi-Newtonian Propulsion:

http://se4modding.spaceempires.net/M...orial.html#QNP

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

My dear Fyron,

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't I just said that too?
(About buildings on the homeworld).
Anyway, If I didn't put too clear, I still meant that.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

No, because you said it chose based on research points, which is wrong. It is merely tech levels and position in the file that determine what is used for the valueless abilities, and _only_ production capability for the valued abilities (well, and technology in the sense that you have to be able to build the facility for it to be a homeworld facility).

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

In this thread I posted a message a long time ago (about a year ago) and I said the exact same thing about the buildings. Back then I didn't hear you about it, so I assumed I was right.

I was lead to this conclusion (about the buildings) because of the B5 mod. I did some simulations with different buildings and I discovered when I had two excactly the same buildings, the computer chose the one wich required more researchpoints. Maybe I pulled the wrong conclusion, because your statement can also be true.
One building higher in the researchtree also requires more researchpoints (unless you've modded it to be cheaper).

Hmm... maybe worth doing some more experiments... if I had the time.
Ah well, doesn't really matter who is right (well it does, but not tonight).
Sorry if I sound a bit angry. I'm really tired and I want to go to sleep.
Signing off for the night (it's really early here; 21:15), but I'm really tired. See ya guys!
Thanks for the pleasant conversation Fyron!
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon14.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Once in a while, do a test game with low tech start and it will work http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif In the meantime, please reply to my email, especially about my deletation of your weapons (partly)

cya

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Sorry for not responding to your e-mail. I was content with your explanatiopn, so I didn't reply to it. Monday I'll reply to it.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

No big deal. Apart from that, i just made small with high tech start and made a few combat simulations. One 1100kT ship, heavily armored and 8x massive sized medium laser weapons against two fast, high defense 200 kT ships, loaded with shortrange bLast cannons and one 500kT with medium sized lasers. Was really funny. Great weapons so far. Im looking forward to see Heavy lasers and stuff http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif GREAT !

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

The weapons you've received are the only weapons every race is able to get. Every race will have his own weapons (there might be shared weapons, but that will be only a few), this to put presurre on the player to research it's racial weapons.
This week I'm very busy with two final tests, so next week will be the week when I get back to the B5 Mod again.
Have you choses a start screen yet? Maybe our resident masterartist David Gervais is willing to make one?

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Ill write him a message. Once again, i cant await to get my hands on heavy lasers woohoo http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif You you will pass your test, and get a good note !! Its most important for the future.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

I already have a nice title (in Dutch it is ing.), but I wanted to go for one step higher (in Dutch ir.). These Last tests are quite dificult. Today I had one, and I don't think it was very good. Ah well, doesn't matter. If I pass the next test I'll be homefree.

I can't wait untill I have the chance to get back to the weapons for the B5 Mod. I really like making weapons and figuring out all the (most of the time useless) equations.
I'll mail you as soon as I have something new for you.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Well, as soon as you reply, i will send you updated files. I managed to assemble a quite cool NARN ai to play against. I wasnt sure which weapons narn use, but i decided to give their ships light and medium plasma weapons, in addition to plasma PDF. While im at it, i have a small concern. To me it seems like lasers are quite powerful. They outrange almost all non-seeker-weapons and actually deal a friggin lot of damage. At close range they become very deadly. I was thinking maybe laser should have decreased firepower in close range and they need to hold a certain range to show a good effect. What do you think ?

At any rate, could you explain why plasma weapons are so much weaker than laser weapons ?! I thought plasma and laser are almost equal, maybe a bit more firepower offset by a bit less range or something. Are laser weapons more advanced than plasma weapons, at least in the B5 universe ? In our mod it seems so, since laser require physics 2.
No critism !!
Im so excited lol http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Anyways, looking forward to hear from you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Thanks for waiting with the next e-mail with the updated files. I get distracted very fast by exciting things like the B5 Mod. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Like I said before (in an e-mail to you), I haven't put these weapons through my homemade weaponcreator. As soon as I have time, I'll put them through it and mail you the results. If there are any overpowered weapons, we sort them out later on.
Since you've been playing with the Narn, I'll make the weapons of the Narn first.
Also I'll go ahead and finish the racialtech.txt (the one with all the descriptions of the races).

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

wonderful http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Oh, while im at it. I came up with a few new things, racial based facilites. I can just post them here, maybe someone is interested and offers his/her opinion. Unfortunally i dont know a lot about the Narn, except they are prasing ONE god, G`Quan, while the Centauri offer more gods, like the old romans, they have gods for each sin and stuff.



Racial-specific Facilites


Earth Alliance Psy-Chor Outpost
Replaces standart intelligence centers and offers ~ 10% more intel output. In addition has a research outpot of 10% the value of intel generation

Earth Alliance Psy-Chor Center
Replaces the planet-intel-output facility and offers 10% more intel output. Increases planet-wide intel production by 20% more than standart planet-intel facility.

Earth Alliance Psy-Chor Systen Headquarters
Replaces the system-intel-output facility and offers 10% more intel output. Increases system-wide intel production by 20% more than standart system-intel facility.

Earth Alliance crew academie
Replaces standart ship and fleet training facility. Trains with the same rate but has a slightly higher cap. Does ship and fleet traning all in one.

Minbari Worker Caste Emmigration
Facility which is available from the start and increases mineral, organic, radioactive output by 6% +3%. Is made obsolete later on.

Minbari Warrior Caste Emmigration
Facility which is available early on. Increases spacecombat system-wide by 4/7/10%.

Minbari Religous Caste Emmigration
Facility which is available early on. Increases population happiness planetwide (not possible -> systemwide) by 5/8/11%.

Minbari Grey Council
One on each homeworld. Generates alot of research and intel, and has several abilites to make intel and events appear less often in those homesystems. Not rebuildable at all.

Minbari An‘la-Shoc Training Grounds
Replaces standart ship and fleet training facilites. Has the same rate per turn but has higher cap. Does ship and fleet training all in one

Centauri Imperial PaLast
One on each homeworld. Generates alot of research and especially intel. It greatly increases the populations happiness. Needs to incorporate the resupply depot or space port ability in order to work ?!

Centauri Imperial Shipyard
Replaces standart construction yard. Highly efficient shipyard, work supported by slaves or war refugees, something like that. Construction output 15/25/30% higher.

Centauri Intelligence Complex
Centauri are sneaky and treacherous. They are superior at backstabbing with a bomb or a dagger. Centauri Intelligence Complexes replaces standart intel centers and generate more intel. That, or they cost less. Whatever.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

I don't think G'Quan was a god or prophet per se; a great and wise hero of the people certainly...
However, by the end of the series the Book of G'Kar seemed to be on a similar pedestal.

I think a good earthly comparison would be Einstein, rather than Jesus, for example.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Yeah, of course you are right. It soomehow was G`Quan who guided the narn someplace sometime..anyways.. More a prophet, you are definitly right.

More opinions like this, please !

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

No not a prophet... A prophet requires that he is preaching the words of some god or another. G'quan was the leader of the Narn telepaths that managed to bring down entire Shadow vessels. He and the other telepaths, as well as all of their relatives, were annihiliated for this ability, which is why the Narns have no natural telepaths in the B5 era.

Re: Babylon 5 Mod
 

Interesting. i really didnt knew that. So i suppose it wasnt shown in the series, since i own all 5 seasons. Where did you got that information from ?! Tim, can you confirm this, maybe some bit is written in the AoG`s ?!