Planetary Assault Mod
 

I can't seem to attach files in the Downlad forums. What do I need to do? It used to work.

Anyway, here is something I've been working on:

Planetary Assault Mod v0.9 11/25/2003

Purpose of mod:
To change the strategic importance of planets and planetary invasion. Inspiration came from the Pacific Theater in WWII

Changes:
Removed the ability to target planets from all weapons. Ships can no longer glass planets from orbit, they must either land troops or blockade. The exceptions are Neutron, Radiation,Virus, and Smart Bombs. The other planetary assault weapons are gone.

Weapon Platforms are removed. I left the tech in to stop the AI from giving me errors. I intend to add massive planetary weapons (think Ion Cannon from Hoth or the Death Star laser) in future updates.

One side effect of changing the targets for the weapons is that ship weapons no longer target fighters. Point-Defense still works. A player must use fighters to engage other fighters.

Another side effect is that I had to divide fighter weapons between targeting fighters and ships. Although I did not originally want this, I think it adds some new dimensions to space combat.

Fighter vs Ftr\Sat\Seekers\Drone weapons:
Small AP Beam
Small DUC
Small Meson BLaster
Small Electric Discharge
Small Telekinetic Projector
Small Time Distortion Burst
Small Incinerator Beam

Fighter vs Ship:
Small Phased - Polaron Beam (to take advantage of the shield skipping)
Small Anti - Matter Torpedo
Small Crystalline Torpedo (I added this. It's essentially an AM torpedo that skips armor and costs more Rads)
Kamikaze Warhead
Small Rocket Pods
Small Shard Cannon
Small Acid Globule
Small Shield Depleter
Small Graviton Beam

---------------------------
In the future I intend to create new one-shot weapons for satellites and massive weapons on planets. I'm also trying to redo the entire troop setup to create larger units with more variety. I need to get the graphics done for that, though.

Any suggestions, bugs, or ommissions? Please let me know, this is only my second mod and I'm still hammering things out.

[ November 26, 2003, 19:15: Message edited by: KnidVermicious ]

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The uploads module was not reinstalled when the server was upgraded. If you can, email the mod to me at admin at spaceempires dot net and I will post it on there for you. Otherwise, we can find an alternate means to get it on there, such as a temporary FTP account. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ November 26, 2003, 19:15: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

I emailed it to you. Thanks Fyron.

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

All I got was a 0 KB text file? Try zipping the mod up instead.

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

You can upload it to ftp://imagemodserver.mine.nu/uploads alternatively.

Just click OK when your browser complains about not having read-permission, then drag and drop your ZIP or RAR file.

I can then move it to the miscellaneous section of http://imagemodserver.mine.nu for you to link to.

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

Will the AI automatically start invading planets with these changes you are proposing or are there other things that you will need to change to make this work? I find this very cool as I also believe that it's more useful to invade then to "glass."

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

Just so you know, you can download the file from SpaceEmpires.net here: Planetary Assault 0.9

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

Cool idea. I have always found it annoying that a tiny little escort with one measly early-game weapon like a DUC1 or APB1 can come in and destroy a colony. Another idea if you didn't want to completely prohibit normal ship weapons from attacking planets would be to adjust the number of damage points required to kill a given number of population - I remember seeing that adjustment in one of the data files, maybe settings.txt?

SpaceBadger

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

The problem with that is that every shot will kill at least one population, regardless of how high the setting is. So colony might take a second combat round to finish off, but that is it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif That, and I don't think that setting modifies how much damage it takes to kill facilities.

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ah, did not know that. Bummer. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah, to make it work you'd also need to go through the facilities data files and make them all tougher - but the "1 shot kills 1 pop" thing you mentioned above pretty much ruins that idea anyway.

SpaceBadger

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

all fine for small colonies and domes, with the one shot one pop kill. I like the porportions method of having shield generation for large distributed planetary facilities - homeworlds are basically immune to early game weapons, and you could combine something like this with your planetary assault mod.. of course, seekers become a problem with cultural centers, so its a trade off there.

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

I like Proportions, too. I think Proportions is a major departure from the original game, and I was trying to stick closer to unmodded (at least for this mod. Rather than making planets more powerful, I want to make it necessary to bring along specialized ships to take care of planets. For a planetary attack to be effective you'd have to bring troopships or planetary weapons ships. I also wanted to avoid the massive problem of conquering a Proportions homeworld.

As for the AI, I haven't run any long tests yet. I was mostly just checking for errors and bugs.

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

Initial testing shows the AI attacking planets and causing 0% damage. Haven't seen any troop building yet. I'm wondering how to make the AI not attack when it doesn't have the weapons/troops to do anything to a planet, or to at least try blockading for some time. The hit and run attacks won't work. Any suggestions?

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

Have them include more Planetary Napalm on their ship designs, and research at least level 2 much earlier.

Oh, and make level 1 Napalm have a range of 2. There is a bug in that range 1 weapons can not hit planets from some sides...

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

I removed planetary napalm entirely from the game. I don't want the ships to attack the planet at all. They still do, but can't do any damage. Irritating, but I can't see how to get around it without changing the whole concept of the mod.

I'm testing a new Version that gives small troop and small fighter from the very beginning. I noticed the AI building troops, though I haven't had them trying to take planets. The AI is also having trouble differentiating anti-fighter fighters and anti-ship fighters. I was considering adding a point defense I at the beginning just to have the AI better able to combat fighters. Still testing.

I've been trying to use the TDM AIs but I keep getting errors having to do with default fleets. Anyone know how to fix this?

I may have to try tweaking AIs later on. I have no idea where to begin. Is there any sort of primer or tutorial on AI tweaking?

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

TDM has a modified Formations file, which causes errors when trying to use a few of the AIs elsewhere. I suggest that you incorporate the Ultimate Strategies Mod into your mod, which has all of the TDM formations, and all of those found in other mods. It also has tons of customized fleet strategies. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Planetary Assault Mod
 

I'm running a game with the TDM AI's and the Jraenar are kicking some serious tail. The current build has small troop, small fighter,a nd a basic point-defense cannon for everyone at the start. I haven't seen any fighters yet, and I think the division between anti-ship and anti-fighters is going to be a problem for the AI. The AI has been building troops, but only defensively; I haven't seen any planetary assaults yet. Sigh.

Removing planets as targets has created two effects I've noticed.

1)Empires can spread better because their isolated colonies can't get wiped out very easily
2)I've seen many more instances of two empires with colonies in the same system. This ups the conflict a little more, I think.