Re: B5 MOD plus B5 mod Beta 2 txt files
 

OK, so since my effort isn't working, why don't you go over what I did wrong?

Do I need to install the facility.txt from the site (since its facilities that are the problem) or is there a facility file floating around somewhere that I'm missing?

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Ron_Lugge:
Upgrade to SE4 Gold 1.91 from patch.
Install "Babylon 5 mod v1.8".
Ignor the facilities file on Rambie's Site.
Unzip B5 mod Beta 2 txt files, copy and paste the 4 folders and overwrite the folders of the same name in the Babylon 5 mod v1.8 folder.
I think thats what I did. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif


Agricultural\Mining Colony

If we keep the current starting facilities as representative of mature planetary settlements, would it not be true to natural tech development that smaller modular colony facilities would be further down the research tree.

Researching Minerals\Organics\Radioactives Extraction would provide us with smaller (say 5th of starting size) modular type facilities that could then be produced on the more remote or alien atmosphere planets, suitable for low population colonies.

When you are starting to get clobbered by the Vorlons or getting ganged up on you could at lest run away and start up again without needing a Homeworld as backup.

Maint Bot. 50kt Only used on Space Stations.

Is it not possible to have this on all ships with enough kT space.
Is it possible to make it dependent on say a Maint Bot Central Control Unit (100kT)
We can then make this "Maint Bot CPU" built (hard wired)into Space Stations and certain Capital ships like Carriers and Destroyers upwards or have it as a separate component that needs to be installed. If you want your capital ships to have repair abilities you have to give up some of your firepower.

The Repair Tug could also have this "hard wired" into its design. As you research more, the Maint Bot CPU is able to control more Maint Bots.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

You could make maintenance bots into repair drones, and have the control unit be a launcher.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Time to go back over my install, because that didn't seem to work... Maybe I copied and pasted wrong somewhere...

Re: B5 MOD General
 

That sounds correct. There is a facilities.txt file in the beta mod that is pretty much completely different than that on Rambie's site.

Yes, but in a sense this is what the colony hub represents. It is expensive and takes some time to establish, representing the time a colony strugles to survive without worrying about exporting anything. I would love to have some facilities that could only be built on homeworlds. The problem with smaller colonial facilities with perhaps an upgrade when the colony gets larger is that the IA cannot handle that kind of thing well.

In essence, that is what the Aggressive mining facilities are: facilities that are cheap to build but which slowly wreck the plant they are on. Use these for those small methane planets and whatnot that you will never use for anything else. Remote mining, rad collecting, and farming satellites to the same thing on a smaller scale.

I toyed with this idea, but finally decided that the show just had to many examples of even big ships limping back to B5 for repairs that it made sense to keep Val's concept of repair bots. I kinda like the idea of the repair tug being filled with bots as oposed to having inherent repair capabilities, and will make it so, using mounts to keep the Maint Bot CPU from being installed in the other hull sizes.

Good ideas here. Thanks for the fedback, and keep it coming.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Ron, if you can be more specific about where the fgame is hanging up, that would help with the trouble-shooting.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

It isn't hanging; I just don't seem to have any facilities. Well, a few, but no ship yards, or mining facilities, and IIRC no research.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Ron,

There are no shipyards. The homeworld and colony hubs give the ability to build spacecraft, but the main construction of spacecraft will occur in orbital facilities, per the series and books.

What is the date and size of the facilities.txt you have in the data folder?

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Did you select appropriate racial traits? You need to select a trait for your race and another, "standard" or "ancient" race or somesuch, if I remember correctly.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Excellent point, IF. Make sure you start with one of the pre-existing empires and just modify it to get you to the race points you want. You must be a B5 Standard Race (none of the other racial categories work right now) plus your own race. You can be B5 telepathic as well, but none of the crystalline or spiritual things work as yet.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Ancient doesn't work? Maybe that was the problem...

Though I could have sworn I tried at least one "normal" race... without the ability to build ships. Will go look harder.

Thanks for the help.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

What is it that determines maintenance costs. I'm thinking mainly of Organics . I don't think I've built another organic producer other than the one that came with the Homeworld, and I'm sitting on a mountain of sprouts with nothing consuming them.

Should not Life Support in ships and Troops and Infantry attract a maintenance overhead. Troops sitting on colonies need to be fed and Life Support should require raw materials.

So far there is little need to produce Organics and thus no limiting factor on Troop/Infantry production. Is it not possible to give these units a maintenance component.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Glad you liked the Tug Maint. Bot thing, but I liked the Drone idea of SJ 's too. Is it not possible to blend the two. I have no experience of drones yet having never encountered them in a game. Drones could be a further development of the former? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

This rar file has bmp's of race portraits that I thought had already been added to the B5Mod. It should be safe to just copy the pictures Folder over the Folder of the same name. Delete any you don't like before doing so.

New Hurr, Abbai, Pakmara, Brakiri and Dilgar http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

Sorry no can do. I have a rar file 181 KB (185,720 bytes)in size. Is there someone I can email it to for consideration? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif I have no Home Page http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Regrettably, it is not possible for units to require maintenance, but I agree 1000% with your feelings on the futility of organics production as the mod stands. I have played with the rads production a bit, to require ever-increasing amounts of rads for engines as they get more powerful. This has not made a big difference though as rad production is esential a "freebie" that comes with mineral production.

The maintenance requirement for ships is based on the initial cost and the maintenance requirements in the settings.txt file. Thus, to increase the maintenance cost for organics, you need to increase the build cost in organics.

I am playing with the idea that colony hubs and (to a lessor extent) other facilities are driven by their organics cost, not their mineral cost. this means that a player would need to maintain a high level of organics production early on while he is building his planets up, but those resources do not translate into resources useful for the big shipbuilding campaigns that charactorise the end of the midgame and the whole of the endgame.

What i want to avoid is having repairs occur too easily. One of the cool things about the game is the way the lack of shields results in trashed fleets even for the winner of a space battle (unless tech diferences are huge). If it is too easy to repair that damage without returning to a base, then that flavor is lost.

But I don't know where the balance lies, and would welcome a discussion on this.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Re: Repair Tugs

If the number of components repaired each turn is dependent on the number of Maint. Bots on a ship,
and the number of Maint.Bots is dependent on the Maint Bot CPU tech level, it should be possible to totally disable a ships repair capabilities if say the Maint. Bot CPU is destroyed. If it is possible to require the CPU to be intact for Maint. Bots to work.

Further to this, it word be prudent to allow the Repair Tug to have a hard wired ability to repair at lest one component, so that if its CPU is damaged in a fleet action you can repair the CPU and then repair the rest of the ship. This would be the unique benefit of having the Repair Tug. It should always be able to repair its self unless completely destroyed.

However if we exclude Capital Ships from having Maint.bots can we at lest allow Carriers to have this ability. It is in Carriers that the drone idea might work as a higher tech level. One can always restrict the number of drones a launcher could carry. After all some of the lager Ships can have 20 or more components. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Re: Ancients and Combat

My understanding of ship combat is that no matter the state of your ships supplies when you enter combat you actually start combat with full supplies based on the supply capacity of the ship.

Would it not be more balanced if the ancients i.e. the Shadows had a heavy power drain if using their "big guns".

e.g. Shadow Cruiser has 3000 supplies. Its "slicer beam" uses 300 supplies each slice, so it can only fire 10 times before it has to quit combat and run. This would balance the battle when engaging a fleet of Destroyers by not allowing one ship to wipe out a group of Capital Ships.

The Shadows from the series always seemed to engage from a position of advantage and hit hard and then vanish. We can infer that the Slicer beam had a great drain on the stored bio energy of the living ship and that a sustained engagement was out of the question?
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Re: Organics.
I notice that Life Support (for Troop/Fighters) and Crew Quarters have no Organics cost. This might result in a maintenance increase if they had? Or have you already said that? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Nomor said:
My understanding of ship combat is that no matter the state of your ships supplies when you enter combat you actually start combat with full supplies based on the supply capacity of the ship.

You have the supply levels you had before entering combat when entering it. You do not get filled up at the start of combat.

However, the B5 Mod causes supplies to be refilled completely every game turn, so running of of supplies in combat in one game turn will not translate to the next. This may be what you are seeing. The first combat of a new turn, especially for a defender, can very easily start with full supplies. But if there are more combats involving those ships in the same game turn, they will have reduced supply levels.

Personally, I do not like this system, as it eliminates supplies from being a necessary strategic consideration...

Nomor said:e.g. Shadow Cruiser has 3000 supplies. Its "slicer beam" uses 300 supplies each slice...

This would also result in the ships being crippled for the rest of the turn. 0 supplies leads to 1 movement both in combat and on the strategic map. Their ships would become sitting ducks for the rest of the combat and game turn, unable to escape. While a human player in tactical combat could keep enough supplies to run, the AI would never be able to handle it.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

"Personally, I do not like this system, as it eliminates supplies from being a necessary strategic consideration... "

But that is the point. In the show, supplies were NOT a major strategic consideration. Ships routinely spent years "out on the rim" and the only apparent supply consideraton was the lack of fresh fruit!

My thinking is that damage, not supply, was the limiting factor that ties fleets to bases. That is why I am so interested in getting the ship-based repair capacity "right." Ancients have self-repair capabilities and thus are not tied to bases at all.

As an aside, I have been playing with the Shadows and Vorlons as non-player races (no research, no colonization, no population growth) and have most of the bugs worked out. My current plan is to have one each of the "full" races and one each "outposts" that are neutral race versions of the full race. The ancients wil;l kick *** locally but will eventually be swampable through numbers. Thoughts?

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Ok, been thinking on this all day:

0 supplies leads to 1 movement both in combat and on the strategic map. Does this also apply to Bonus Movement points as Abilities?

If we treat the Ancients or Vorlons and Shadows differently and make their combat moves more dependant on Bonus Combat Movement Points , we could then use the supplies side for their weapons. The Slicer Beam can then fire each turn, but stops when exhausted, and the Shadow can still retire by using the Bonus Combat Movement side.

We can either make the Bonus Combat Movement part of the Ship Hull, or related to the Slicer Beam, or as a new component: Bio Battery or Cell: that provides Bonus Combat Movement, as long as there are Engines.

Of course if you make it part of the Engine and the engines are destroyed then the ship stops.

This is all meaningless if "no supplies" cancels Bonus Combat Movement. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Grumber: Did you get the new Race portraits?

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Nomor said:
Does this also apply to Bonus Movement points as Abilities?

Yes. Look at the stock game for an example. Design a ship with 6 Quantum Engine IIIs and a Solar Sail. Get it to run out of supplies. Movement will be 1. This ship uses both bonus movement and extra movement points.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Personally, I like the way that reactors store supplies. It means that you have to really worry about "lucky" hits. In earlier versions, I remember cursing on several occasions as my rather large, powerful reactors got hit early on (by accident) and leaving my ultra-powerful ship dead in the water. Its a nice dichotomy.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Yeah, having the supplies stored only in reactors and not the engines themselves is a nice affect. I personally don't like the supplies being completely refilled every turn, but that is just me.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

IF, it is a signature part of the mod that supplies are restored after each turn. I have not touche it for that very reason. It would take some justification to make any change, but that just means the ball is in your court. Why should energy supplies NOT be restored every turn, given what we know of the B5 universe?

Re: B5 MOD General
 

If you set engines to use 0 supplies, do you still drop to 1 movement when the supplies are gone?

After all, if supplies are filled up each turn there's little point to the engines having supplies at all..

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Phoenix-D: Hey; might that work? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif


I note that most of the info on Listening Posts and Military Outposts is missing so we have to guess all of their relevant functions.

I can remember though that there was no range to the scanning levels which I thought made things too easy. Can we not make the scanning based on range , starting at say 2 sectors and increasing with tech level.

Also I hoped that ships sitting in an Asteroid Belt ,and not moving, could be invisible to the opposition, unless they were in range of say a Listening Post or a Ship with some level of scanner.

This would fuel the need for overlapping Listening Posts or stationing a ship or satellite to watch your local Asteroid Belt. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Ships could hide in Asteroid Belts for ambush or if damaged and in hiding pending the arrival of a Repair Tug.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

I think the AI might even be able to use this as there were sectors in the basic SEIV game that where opaque to some types of scanners. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Phoenix-D said:
If you set engines to use 0 supplies, do you still drop to 1 movement when the supplies are gone?

Yes, movement still drops to 0. Check out solar sails in mods such as Pirates & Nomads and Adamant. They are exactly that, "engines" with 0 supply usage and 0 supply storage (at least in Adamant; I forget whether they store supplies or not in P&N). You must add a supply storing component to get more than 1 movement, even though the solar sails will use no supplies when the ship moves. When the ship later runs out of supplies through weapons fire (or cloaking devices, etc.), the movement rate will drop to 1.

Grumbler said:
IF, it is a signature part of the mod that supplies are restored after each turn. I have not touche it for that very reason. It would take some justification to make any change, but that just means the ball is in your court. Why should energy supplies NOT be restored every turn, given what we know of the B5 universe?

Ships still have to go back for supplies periodically in the B5 universe. Anyways, I wasn't speaking from any canonical viewpoint, more of the gameplay aspect. I personally think that gameplay is always far more important than canonical concerns. The replenishment of supplies every turn removes one of the important strategic aspects of the game. In other mods and the stock game (to a lesser extent), managing supplies can be a crucial factor in overall strategy. Sure, you can run out of supplies during a turn in the B5 mod, but this is not really relevant when you can just add another reactor or two to get far more supplies than you need. This is also why I am not too fond of the "quantum reactor" ability... That's just my opinion; take it as you will.

Nomor said:
I can remember though that there was no range to the scanning levels which I thought made things too easy. Can we not make the scanning based on range , starting at say 2 sectors and increasing with tech level.

Sadly, the long range scanner ability with range limits (ship LRS in stock) is not useable on facilities. The facility LRS ability has no range limit. Further, the cloak detection abilities (ie: tachyon sensors) have no functionality for limited range; they always affect the entire system.

Nomor said:
I think the AI might even be able to use this as there were sectors in the basic SEIV game that where opaque to some types of scanners.

I do not believe the AI is capable of making effective use of cloaking storms (or asteroids or planets, etc.).

Bold lettertypes
 

Everybody seems quite fond on bold lettertypes these days... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Re: Bold lettertypes
 

It makes more compact posts than using the quote tags. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: Bold lettertypes
 

I thought to would help you to see the wood in all the trees . http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Are you just trying to up your post count again? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif Colonel? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: Bold lettertypes
 

Yeah sure, why not. Posting useless posts are one of my strong points. How do you think I got this amount of posts? I sure as hell haven't posted that many usefull comments... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

I really like it that this thread is living up again. Quite soon I'll start work on the weapons. I just need to figure out a nice formula for the accuracy. Maybe someone has a few good ideas?

Re: Bold lettertypes
 

But of course....corporal http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

I understand what you are arguing, but my point is actually a bit different.

What I am saying is that one of the signature elements of this mod is precisely that it does away with the whole supply management issue, so long as ships are well-designed. Now, it could certainly be argued that eliminating the "max range from base" consideration adversely effects gameplay, but I have not seen that argued. Ships in the B5 universe literally went years without returning to resupply (remember Captain Sheridan's lust for freash fruit after having been out among the League worlds for over a year?).

Given all the thought and work that so many have put into this mod without changing the supply system, I am very reluctant to change such a crucial design feature without a pretty good justification.

This is not to say that you are wrong - quite the opposite. However, it is to say that even though you are right I don't feel empowered to make such a change. This is really not my mod. If Val wants that change made, he can make it (or, for that matter, so can you by just eliminating the supply regeneration capability of the reactors and increasing their storage - Homeworld hubs and colony hubs provide supply).

Re: B5 MOD General
 

You could try making weapons use much more supplies, in which case if a certain ship sees a lot of action, it'd need to re-supply more frequently as you'd expect...

Re: B5 MOD General
 

You'll probably have to reduce engine supply usage by a lot too.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Kwok/anyone:
Could you give me some advise then regarding the supply useage of weapons? I'm in the process of making a suitable equation for the supply useage of the weapons.
I would like to base it on damage, the more damage a weapons does, the more supplies it will use. This is couteracted (or balanced) by the ROF (Rate Of Fire). This way you can still have a fastfiring deathspewer and a slowfiring peashooter.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Before you start on the supply usage for weapons it might be better to establish the amount of supplies you start with and work back.

As things stand you can have as many reactors as you wish so any value you put on a weapon's consumption is almost meaningless.

If you limit a ships design to say 2 reactors then the whole choice of using say 2x 5kT or 1x 5kT and 1x 20kT has more impact on what kind of ship you want. One that can travel far or fight longer.
It might be better to limit the engine choice as well, between the various classes. e.g.

Scouts, Escorts, Corvette : 2 to 4 engines
Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser : 4 to 6 engines
Battleships and Carriers : 4 to 6 engines*

*The Larger Capital ships can have more reactors, say 3 or 4 so that they can act as supply vessels for a Fleet.

Specialist Vessels such as the Repair Tug can have more reactors by default and maybe more engines to enable them to travel further on rescue missions.

If we decide on a mean average supply storage for any particular ship class, which we know is replenished each turn, we can then decide how far a ship class can travel before exhausting all it's supplies by setting the consumption of a mean number of engines.

This might have to be achieved by setting the reactor supply generation to a value less than the supply storage.

Say your Ship has Supply Storage of 5000 , but the reactors only generate enough to replenish 1000 , and each turn, if your ship uses all its movement points it consumes 2000 supplies, a net loss of 1000 supplies result. After five turns your ship would have to rest to refill its supply capacity. This would be your effective operating range. i.e. 5 movement turns from your base.

Ideally it might be better to lower this to say three movement turns or three systems distance. Having Supply Bases in settled systems would act as top ups so that you can operate at full efficiency.

This might simulate the reactor/ mission duration scenario of B5 whilst making local support bases more essential to successful campaigning.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Now none of this takes into account weapons consumption on any given turn, and as pointed out if you are out of supplies your movement is reduce to 1 space. Is this such a bad thing? Can it be crooked by providing emergency movement points for some vessels e.g. Ancients so that they can out run a Young Race if both sides have exhausted supplies in battle.

Making the Ancient's Slicer Beam and say EA Heavy* Lasers eat up supplies means you can set the number of shots each class is able to make in combat. *They can also then take up less kT so that you can have three Heavy Lasers, not just one. Otherwise what is the point of having Multiplex Tracking . If you fire three Lasers in three directions, you just run out of supplies sooner and are then left with your no supply usage weapons.

Your weapon supply use can then be regarded as your battle fatigue rating. If you have bigger reactors/supply capacity and the lower number of engines, your ship should in effect be able to fight longer with it's capital weapons before having to rely on it's secondary weapons systems.

This creates a better pro verse cons choice for some of the crappier medium weapons some of which can have no supply usage.

I don't know why medium lasers can not be used to target all types of target. After all it still has to hit the target, and fighters and seekers have a "to hit advantage".Makes use of developing Targeting computers.

Other weapons such as point defence can perhaps use no supplies .

Missile and Torpedo weapons can be assumed to have their own supplies and be restricted by reload/range and seeking speed .
Hows that? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gifhttp://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Limiting engine choices would in my opinion be a very bad move. QNP is a great system to keep around. It allows the player to choose how to use ship hulls, rather than being forced into arbitrary predefined roles. Also, it immediately creates balance between larger and smaller ship sizes by making all ships require about the same percentage of hull space devoted to engines to get he same movement rate.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Engines don't (or at least shouldn't) store supplies.
Don't go breaking the QNP in your quest for supply balance.

Just remember that big ships will be using more supplies per movement point since they are heavier.

Question:
Why do you want to limit the number of reactors per ship?

- One or two big reactors should be more efficient in supplies per KT, and thus be good.
- Small reactors would be less efficient, but can't be killed by a lucky hit in combat. (Remember the leaky armor!)

Thus both big and small reactors are useful.

Note:
On a small ship, "big" refers to the medium reactors.
On a large ship, "small" refers to the medium reactors.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Nomor:
Thanks for the info and suggestion to work backwards. Very useful. I think I can do something with that. I already have a nice equation for the supply useage (based on the system Val laid down). Download the weapons sheet listed in my sig to see for yourself.

The only thing not incorporated into this sheet is an equation for the accuracy of the weqapons. I'm busy with that right now and I have some good idea how to do it, but I'm still curious to your opinions. Please feel free to give me some advise.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Would it be possible to place some gravity wells in the Hyper Space Systems, that acted like the black holes , in that they pulled you towards them.

Rather than being destroyed, could they not just warp you to another system ( ideally another Hyper Space system?)
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

The movement and destruction parts of a black hole system are seperate abilities, so you could do the first part. However, I know of no auto-warp ability.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Sounds very cool, but I think it can't be done with SE IV. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Too bad, it sounds cool.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

The problem with black hole-type effects in this mod is that colony ships are usually too slow to escape them, with the AI will continue to send colony ships into the black hole until its entire population has been sent down the drain. A black hole that the AI could escape from (i.e. one with a pull of one) seems too trivial to bother with.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

That's fine, but using grumbler's current mod as a test bed I find that the margin for engine choice has been reduced anyway to the options I gave.
If you go over the higher number I listed you basically have a ship that is all engine. Which I suppose makes my limiting things a bit meaningless. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif

I was not implying engines store supplies. My figures were based on the supply capacity of the reactors. But by making the generation of supplies within each size of reactor less that its supply capacity , you have a ship that will eventually run out of supplies if it uses more supplies than it generated in a particular turn.

If however the ship does not use all it's movement points in a turn then it will have more supplies when it starts it's next turn.

This will still allow a ship to travel right around the map, only it would need to rest whenever it was over stressing the supply management. However looking at the reactors again one is more or less restricted by available ship space to throw reactor limitation out. However this might be an opportunity to make the efficiency of the reactor size more telling.
(Of course this only really applies in systems with one star.)

Not if your fleet is suffering from battle damage. It would allow some players to form strategies for capturing other races ships if they could use one fleet to damage engines and then move in with another fleet to board ships that suffer from the movement penalty. (But this is not such a priority at the moment.) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Well, my version assumes that you want to devote 30%, 40%, or 50% of the space on most ships to engines. Given that the rest of the command and control stuff generally takes about 10% of the hull (and tha6t is why some small hulls don't need Crew Quarters or life support) that leaves you with 60%, 50%, or 40% of hull space for everything else.

Some ships, like scouts, will probably be unarmed and unarmored, and so have more speed, but by and large the tradeoffs between speed and everything else are pretty linear. With a few classes, minimum requirements for, say, cargo or fighter launch facilities limit engie choices more severely, but this was intentional, as the human player can exploit the speed versus capacity tradeoff more than the AI (and a ship with twice the speed but half the capacity is generally much better for the human than one with normal speed and capacity, at least for hauling cargo and pop). Extra speed is of very limited utility to ships that will e in fleets, of course, unless you give every ship the additional speed.

Still, there is always room for tweaking. Any thoughts in this area are worth looking at. In particular, I am wondering if the early-game advantage of propulsion expertise (which increase your colony ships by a full 50% in speed) is not unbalancing.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

I have just D/Led this mod and have found that some tech is not there, is this for a reason or have I just not researched enough to see it? also seams like a long time to build anything.

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Exactly what most ppl are bragging about...

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Ragnarok-X, that is nowhere near the truth...

Re: B5 MOD General
 

Examples would be useful. Everything is researchable or findable in the version i am running myself, except a few non-active race techs and some leftover SE4 techs like crystalline which i left in because I didn't know if they were to be used.

The ancients are not active, and you should not use any of the ancient races. However, anything other than that should be available and i would appriate feedback on techs that seem not to work.