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New SJ mod
Ok, so what I want to include is:
- QNP, naturally. - Finite repairs: Drones can be launched to repair 1 point per turn, and Last about 5 turns without moving, or 2-3 turns with movement. Allows SYs to remote-repair ships, and means you have to spend money to repair your ships. - Partial-effect mines: No sweepers, but mine deployment more limited... Good for slowing down the enemy, but not all-or-nothing anymore. - Limited Planetary Bombardment: Most weapons will not target planets. Weapon platforms limited in scope to compensate. Ground combat almost required. - Long-term GC : as in P&N PBW, 1 GC turn per combat, tough (30 hp) but wimpy (1 damage) militia and lots of 'em (1 per million people). - Everything Tech Gridded: Everything... missile tech depends on armor tech, propulsion, warheads etc, and so on. Not a huge difference to gameplay, but enhances the research side. - Leaky Shields & Armor: Gotta be leaky http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Everybody gets hurt somewhat during combat. - Balanced Resource Costs: As in P&N. - Heroes and Cannon Fodder: All ships will have roughly the same maintenance costs independent of size. Strength goes up linearly, and cost to build goes up as the square of the size. Allows you to build a pile of small cannon fodder ships quickly, or slowly build large ships for an overall stronger army when you're done (but it takes forever). Should encourage a health mix of ships... more large "hero ships" after long stints of peacetime, and hoards of small cannon-fodder ships during war. Middlesized ships for turbulent times where you're not sure how long peace will Last. - Possibly - Reduced Point Defense... fighter escorts can shoot down missiles for you until they're shot down themselves by enemy fighters. Any other suggestions and comments? [ December 21, 2003, 13:50: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ] |
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How does leaky work again?
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Shields use CA ability, rather than sheer hitpoints.
Thus, they absorb 20/33/50/66/80 percent of the damage depending on damage type. (Maximum... large shots can overwhelm it) Leaky armor is just non-armor components with lots of hitpoints so they are often, but not always hit first. With lots of them, you reduce the rate of loss of your critical components like engines weapons and lifesupport. |
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In an unmodded game, you already spend resources to repair ships via the maintenance costs of the hull + components of the repair vehicle. You pay for that capacity whether it is in use or not. To stop paying, you mothball or scrap the repair vehicle. Using a repair drone system mod, overall costs might not be that different than a standard game. However, what a mod like that will do is force you to dedicate your shipyards to new construction or repairs. As it is, shipyards can both build and repair, but neither action effects the capacity of the other action. With this system, shipyards can perform only one action at a time. I like that concept. In addition, you can stockpile and/or transport repair capacity (just like supplies and units). This adds an interesting twist and more depth to SEIV logistics. Potential problems: You can not recover drones. Drones can be prematurely launched (and wasted) due to combat. My solution was to not allow drones to launch during combat. For example: Ability 1 Type := Launch Drones Ability 1 Descr := Can launch drones into space. 0 drones can be launched per combat turn and 4 drones can be launched per game turn. Ability 1 Val 1 := 0 Ability 1 Val 2 := 4 Add this ability to a “Repair Drone Launcher” component. Another issue is the “all or nothing” Launch Units Remotely command during simultaneous games. You may want to add a variety of “Repair Drone Launcher” components with different launch capacities to help the player work around this issue. My preference would be for repair drones to have an endurance of only one turn and not be mobile. Since they can be carried in cargo, they can be mobile without being autonomous. In this case, set the Drone Supply Usage Per Turn = to the supply capacity of the repair drone. -Gecko |
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If you have a "quarter damage to shields" weapon, then you do 100 damage to the hull, generate 100 shields, and the next 4 hits do 25 shield damage each. Thus, 4 of 5 shots did effectively no damage, and the shields blocked 80%. Geckomlis: I agree with all of that except the one-turn lifetime. In order for the drones to remotely repair a ship, they need to be able to move, and then sit at the target and do their thing. Also, if each drone Lasts 5 turns then you can get situations where you might want to waste some repair capacity in order to reush the repairs. (E-Repair, sort of like E-build) EG: Your fleet has 25 damaged components. You can: A) Launch 5 drones, and completely repair your ship(s) in 5 turns. B) Launch 13 drones, and completely repair your ship(s) in 2 turns, but waste 40 potential repair points. If there is an enemy fleet 3 turns away, B may be a better choice, as you need your ships in peak condition for combat, and the cost of 8 "wasted" drones is acceptable. |
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In regards to the mobility issue: From a practical standpoint, repair drones will only be able to be used in the sector they were launched in or at the far side of a warp point they are ordered to attack. Impracticably, you could order them to attack an enemy planet in anticipation of needing the repair capacity in that sector. You could also order them to attack an immobile enemy ship or base for the same reason. Gecko |
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No repair sats, since they would never "run out".
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If the lifetime is only one turn, you waste at most part of one drone, and you would have to waste it no matter how rushed or relaxed your repairs are. Except in cases of poor launcher-ship design, which we can ignore here. |
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If the lifetime is only one turn, you waste at most part of one drone, and you would have to waste it no matter how rushed or relaxed your repairs are. Except in cases of poor launcher-ship design, which we can ignore here. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, you are correct. I did not think that one through enough. Although launcher-ship design will be the devil in the details. IMO, you are forcing an unnecessary inefficiency on the player. But… I understand what you want to achieve (E-Repair) and you seem happy with it, so go for it. I am looking for something different (Spare Parts stockpiles) and that fits in better with my mod. In any case, I thought the dialogue was both productive and enjoyable. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Gecko |
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You know, it's pathetic how I get these Ideas for the AoW mod, then the Mod Monsters like SJ think of them themselves, but implement them better...
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif sometimes I wonder why I'm even bothering... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif [ December 22, 2003, 01:34: Message edited by: dumbluck ] |
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Will you be including a system for repair sats?
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Well, of the things in that list,
I know I came up independently with: QNP Finite repairs Supershort GC Leaky Shields/Armor I know others came up with: PD Fighters Tech Gridding Mixed/Unsure stuff: Partial Mines Planetary Bombardment Hero/Cannon Fodder ships system I certainly don't want to claim its all original ideas, and if you've already started something very similar, do let me know now before I get started. [ December 22, 2003, 02:59: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ] |
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Some numbers I've come up with so far:
Maintenance = Constant Cost = Size<sup>3</sup> Ship size : build cost multiplier : maintenance multiplier</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> 200 : 1 : 1000 400 : 4 : 125 600 : 9 : 37 800 : 16 : 15.6 (16) 1000 : 25 : 8.0 1200 : 36 : 4.6 (5) 1400 : 49 : 3.0 1600 : 64 : 1.95 (2) 1800 : 81 : 1.37 (???) (multiply all by 3, maybe) 2000 : 100 : 1.00</pre><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">For Cost=Size<sup>2</sup> Ship size : build cost multiplier : maintenance multiplier</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> 200 : 1 : 100 400 : 2 : 25 600 : 3 : 11.1 800 : 4 : 6.25 1000 : 5 : 4.0 1200 : 6 : 2.77 1400 : 7 : 2.04 1600 : 8 : 1.56 1800 : 9 : 1.23 2000 : 10 : 1.00</pre><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> [ December 22, 2003, 03:33: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ] |
Re: New SJ mod
I'd like to see kamikazies more affective and used by the AI, espeically with fitrs... movable bases like in Delvemod, mount variations as well, my 2 bits http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
just some ideas Mac |
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http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif |
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I was not planning to support AI in this mod... many of the changes would be nearly impossible to handle.
Cranking the storage space is a good option... Using the my popmodifiers file (peak resource production at 500m) would also make domed colonies very useful. I hadn't planned anything about colonization until now: - I'm thinking gritty tech, so I'm going to look into making the colonization techs unchoosable racial traits... Your home planet choice should (untested) force the pickup of one colony tech even though its racial, and you then wouldn't be able to trade OR research the others. I'm also thinking it would be good to have rock/ice shared colony techs, with your off-colony costing 10x more (in rads for heating/cooling) than the home surface type. Gas giant colonies would be cranked way up in size to keep it fair. 50 facilities on a huge breathable, gobs of population, etc. |
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And in order to make huge gas planets get extra population & facility space, wouldn't you need to either give that to huge rock/ice planets as well, or prevent rock/ice planets from being huge? (Which is actually something I was thinking of as a mod idea... if gas giants can't be small, why can rock and ice planets be huge? A ball of rock the size of Jupiter would likely (I haven't done any calculations) be hot enough at its core to be a brown dwarf, not a planet!) |
Re: New SJ mod
A cool thing from the fantasy mod was to give each ship hull its own research branch. For example, in this mod, after you discover "Frigates" through regular Ship Construction research, you could open up a branch of research called "Frigate Improvements". Improvements could be along the lines of cheaper hulls, slighter bigger hulls, more engines allowed, higher defense/offense, hull specific mounts, etc etc...
Should fit well with your tech gridding you're already planning... |
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[ December 22, 2003, 17:22: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ] |
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Still, I'd like to do it, if there's enough support... except then we might end up taking away all of Malfador's customers should we ever get anything playable... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif |
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If you're looking for ideas to throw in (though I certainly don't want to see all mods become the same http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif ) you could always use my Colony Tech Mod (prevents cheesy colony tech trading between empires of different planet types)...
edit: and to curb cheesy population trading, you could make breathable planets *different* from nonbreathables, not just better - maybe you get more pop space, but you get less cargo and/or facility space since the population tends to spread out? [ December 22, 2003, 12:36: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ] |
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Value improvement plants:
Planetary Radiation Filter: +1% minerals, -2% rads per year. Planetary Neutron Pump: -2% minerals, -1% organics, +2% rads per year. Organics Seeding Project: -1% minerals, +1% organics, -1% rads per year The cost=size<sup>3</sup> for ships and bases with constant maintenance is now in place. Bases range in size from 1000 to 4000 kt. More debugging going on... Now the mounts are in, and the maintenance scales right. Mounts usable on weapons and non-weapons... Almost time to hit the components, and then cleanup afterwards. Preview at: http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/Miscel...jmod_alpha.zip [ January 04, 2004, 00:39: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ] |
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by the way, I can't wait to play this game... [ January 04, 2004, 15:44: Message edited by: dumbluck ] |
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BTW, the unchoosable racial trait colony tech thing didn't pan out.
Instead, I've gone with 2500-point racial traits for "Rock/ice/gas natives" You should have to make some fairly big sacrifices to take a second livable surface... I'm also certain that more balancing will be needed in that area. Shields, I've decided, will have four variants; - Phased vs Non-phased - Fully Leaky vs Semi-leaky The first is obvious, the second not so. What I have at the moment is "Shields" -> "Semi-leaky" and "Deflector shields" -> "fully leaky" The deflectors have shield and crystalline effect of 2-14 points depending on tech level, at 40kt each. The shields have 20-100 shield points and 4-20 regen per turn, per 40kt. Combat sensors and ECM are downgraded to 5-15% effects, but I'll probably add more levels and use "add-on" components to boost their power a little bit. Racial combat bonuses have tighter limits, and the base to-hit is only 60% -3%/square. There will be no weapon mounts like in regular SE4, so damage will remain manageable with respect to the deflector shielding physics. There will, of course, be some weapons with large punch and long reload or large size. Heavy hits tend to overload and pierce shields, while small hits will tend to feel the full effect of the deflector's absorption %. Mixing up weapons is also a known way to weaken shields. Alternating size and damage types can reduce the effectiveness of shielding. Only during repeated hits from the same weapon will a shield reach its theoretical potential. |
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At the moment, there is "Naturalists" at -3000 points for 60% of normal planet space.
Plus "Endemic Wastefulness" which doubles supply use at -2000 points. |
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Those are in no way free points SJ. 2500 points required to even play is going to rule out 0 point games as an option, and make 2000 point games really tight... The point is to not be allowed to take the other colony tech traits at all. You have to research the other colony techs, not start off with them.
[ January 04, 2004, 17:16: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ] |
Re: New SJ mod
Fyron, you make it sound like reducing racial characteristics is impossible.
Heaven forbid that people would ever reduce an important characteristic or take a penalty trait in order to buy something else! Taking Naturalists in order to buy another colony tech is quite reasonable, for example. You double your colonizable worlds, and using 60% of them gives you 20% more facility slots, 500 racial points, a weaker homeworld and you spend twice as much on colony ships. BTW: I'm not too worried about things like "everybody chose rock". Empires typically put their borders at the system level, and that one player that chose gas isn't going to be welcome in most systems. You'll still have to fight for the territory before you can colonize it. [ January 04, 2004, 20:15: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ] |
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Not regular shields, but the leaky shields.
Since each hit generates shield points, you'll want to alternate your fire with a heavy hull hitter, then a smaller shield sapper to clear the way for the next hull hitter. Hrm... mixing large and small wouldn't really work, except for the partial damage effect. If you have a low-efficiency heavy weapon, and a high efficiency small weapon, it might work... 60 hitpoint armor... 90 damage Heavy weapon... size x 4x30 damage light weapon... size x total Alone, the light weapons can't hurt the armor. 1) 30 hull damage, 30 shields 2) ditto 3) ditto ... Total, 30 partial damage, 30 shields, enemy never dies. ZERO damage per x Kt With all heavies, you get 1) 30 hull, 90 shields, 1 armor destroyed 2) 30 hull, 30 shields 3) 0 hull, 90 shields, 1 armor destroyed 4) 0 hull, 0 shields Total, 120 hull damage, per 4 tonnage x's 30 damage per x Kt With alternating, you get... Two heavies, and 4 light for total 3x's of tonnage. 1H) 30 hull, +90 shields, 1 armor destroyed 2L) 0 hull, 30 shields 3L) 0, 0 4H) 30 hull, +90 shields, 1 armor destroyed 5L) 0 hull, 30 shields 6L) 0, 0 Total, 120 Hull damage, per 3 tonnage x's 40 damage per x Kt [ January 28, 2004, 23:17: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ] |
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Other than Psychologically, how is picking characteristics to increase any different from picking traits to decrease (or not decrease)
If the game started with all the characteristics at 80%, and you had a pile of racial points which could just barely bring them all up to 100%, would it be any different? |
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Decreasing a few traits is not at all the same as min-maxing.
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What exactly is the problem? ----- You mean we can actually have competitive races with all negative racial modifiers? Burn the heretic! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif |
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I'm speaking as a devout minmaxer though, so weight my opinion accordingly... |
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Actually, ignore my Last post! If you drastically reduce the amount of points available, I think there will still be room for variation. Like you say, the variation will be from what you reduce rather than what you buy. If you create your mod with that in mind, I think you can do some neat things with it. I'd suggest using costs along the lines of the PvK balance mod for characteristics - maybe even max out aggressive/defensive/maint reduction earlier. Make advanced traits cheaper (change adv storage to +10% instead of +20%?) and make racial traits cheaper (750 points?). And come up with more Negative-cost advanced traits as well. Those are cool.
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And if you reduce the number of points, you change the min/maxing equation. These empires would be competing against each other- if getting to 125 Aggressiveness takes 5000 points, it won't be done by anyone, and it won't be suicidal not to.
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I believe I mentioned somewhere in the thread that I've clamped down the to-hit modifiers.
I'm thinking a max of 10% due to racial setup, and steep prices all around. Repair skill has the potential to go double or triple (max 999%) with a pretty low cost per point. Should come in handier with the repair drones and leaky everything, too. ----- Ship training only goes up to 6% at level 3, proceeds at one percent per planet. It also takes up two facility slots per planet, so its a bit more expensive. If you want 2% per turn, you can always do the planet/moon thing, but then you need a small or better moon, and you use Four facility slots on the project. ----- At the moment, I've axed all the racial Tech areas. Religious did have some cool stuff, so there is still a "System Ecological Center" and a System Counter-intel facility with some name I forget already. They're going to be standard techs though. I will probably add some more in later. Possibly making the "solid" shield tech racial, and perhaps some leaky organic armor style stuff would be cool as a racial tech. The minor racial techs from P&N will probably find room here. "Tiny race", "Advanced Automation", and "Think Big" are pretty universally useful. [ January 05, 2004, 03:45: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ] |
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Then there is an "Academy Lab", which provides zero maximum, and 1% rate. On any particular planet, you get the best of each. So if you have only one facility, you get squat, but if you have both you get 1% rate up to 3/5/6% |
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heh, early contender for clever modding trick of the year...
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Except that I came up with it at least a year ago, but never got a chance to use it...
I have updated the preview mod thingy. http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/Miscel...Jmod_alpha.zip |
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Yes... SJ and I were talking about that long ago when I noticed a peculiar way to get around his intended path for training facilities in P&N, where you get higher max training levels but slower rates with higher tech level (so max of 10 with +3/turn to max of 20 with +1/turn).
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What was a bug, became a feature http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
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You are starting to sound like a game developer there SJ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif
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Well, it now runs.
I've yet to do the weapons, as they'll be a deep grid tech forest, and I think I should do a bunch of work on paper first. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Just using stock weapons to play with the hulls and shields and stuff... Combat goes pretty slowly, so I'll probably be cranking up the number of combat turns. 90 perhaps... Torpedoes definitely win out over APBs here... at least against large ships. The big guys have so much shielding, you need the punch of a torp to hurt 'em at all. The little 200kt drones get swatted real quick with the APBs though. Should be a cool effect. Match the weapons to the size of ship you're facing... if you run up against the wrong type of ship, you'll either be harmless (little gun, big baddie), or inefficient(big guns, little baddie). The accuracy settings look pretty good so far... Uber-experienced ships will be much trouble, though. Since 'Normal' accuracy is 50%, legendary ships will be like the heroes on TV and movies, striding through warzones and picking off snipers with a chain gun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif I guess that'll be when you break out the missile ships and mine layers http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Even with stock missiles, they are quite effecive in combat. (I'll be moving the serious missiles up the tech tree) The 100% hitrate and uber-stacking pierce damage will really hurt the big experienced guys if they run out of cannon fodder ships. |
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SJ, one problem you might want to address is moons. With your training scheme, a player that has breathable moons will have a pretty big advantage..
Consider: 1 Huge Methane rock planet 2 Tiny None Moons (rock) Methane Breather: Big breathable. 2 training facilities there. No-breathe moons. 1 each. 4 training facs total (2 classes, 2 labs) None Breather: Big non-breathable. 2 training facilities there. Breathable moons. 2 each. 6 training facs total (3 classes, 3 labs) Hmm. Not -quite- as bad as I thought, but still an advantage. |
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