Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

Try my new Light Weapon Mount...

Long Name := Light Ship Mount
Short Name := Light Mount
Description := Lighter sized weapon mount which decreases damage from the weapon by 1/2 times. Requires a vehicle size of at least 150kT. Can only be used on Direct Fire weapons.
Code := S
Cost Percent := 50
Tonnage Percent := 50
Tonnage Structure Percent := 50
Damage Percent := 50
Supply Percent := 50
Range Modifier := 0
Vehicle Size Minimum := 150
Weapon Type Requirement := Direct Fire
Vehicle Type := Ship

While it halves weapon damage, it frees up needed space for shields, ECM/ECCM, or other vital electronic gadgets on those smaller ships. It was just a thought I had, haven't used it yet though, only tested to see that it works.

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

Sounds like a mount I had earlier, but scratched b/c the AI was having problems with it (unfortunately, there are no priority or flags in the AI design file to tell the AI which mounts to use in what hull classes) but that was in Version 1.02. Do you have any observations as to how the new AI (1.19) is using this mount?

[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 21 December 2000).]

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

i have not tested this, so pardon me for talking out of my behind:

the computer seems to prioatize things by what order they are in (when not given a roman numeral or something) so weapons fire from left to right, and it always uses the heaviest mount it can. heavy mounts are at the bottom of the list, and at the end of the file. put your light mount at the top of the list, and it should use it all the time for any ship not large enough for a heavier mount. that may be lame if frigates and LCs all use the light mounts when they can truck bigger "standard" guns though (which there is probably no way around).

or, if anyone has actually TESTED this.. please put me in my place.

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

someone may have covered this, but would it not be cool to have engine mount sizes as well? make those 2 engines on a base ship 2 really big engines and double its movement. you would have to make them obnoxious to be ballanced, like 5x tonnage for 2x move, otherwise what is the point of limiting engines on a large hull. im not sure if there is a point to putting smaller engines on an escort: just use less, right?

im not sure there is a way to do this in a mod either. probably just a pipe dream.

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

Worgaus:

As others have suggested, I have actually seen in fact, the AI will use any mount it can on any weapon/ship it can. So, you won't see this in just escorts but everything up until the next mount size becomes available. The primary annoyance of it is that the AI will still fill the same amount of SPACE in its designs with weapons because that's what the script tells it to do, and this doubles the amount of time spent watching weapons fire in combat. It can get really tedious.

I wish there was a way to control the percentage of ship space used by various components rather than the "spaces per one" method. You could then get more efficient AI designs for the extreme small/large ship sizes.

Puke:

Think carefully. Do the math on this idea. How many movement points will a cruiser get with "doubled" engine power? Twelve? Eighteen? Yikes! Remember, the design restrictions allow controlling the NUMBER of engines but not the tonnage used by engines. So, the mount effectively bypasses a major design control in the game. The increased movement grows greater with larger ships if you've increased the "engines per move" and added engine capacity. It can get ridiculous very quickly. I was planning on creating a special tech field that have engines with a standard movement of 2, and after looking at how it would work out dropped the idea...

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 21 December 2000).]

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

While engine mounts might cause some balance issues, I *would* like to see shield mounts, as some other players have brought up. Light shield mounts on up to heavy.

If these Light Weapon Mounts become a problem with the AI, and you'd really rather use them then normal mounts on your lighter craft anyway, you might be able set the Normal Mount value limit at 300 or so. The only drawback to this is you won't be able to use normal mounts for direct fire weapons under whatever tonnage you put there. I can't test if this 'fix' will work though, since the game is at home and I'm at work. Its a quick solution and may not be the best. Feel free to give it a shot and let me know =)




[This message has been edited by Worgaus (edited 22 December 2000).]

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

This is interesting idea. Reminds me of MOO2 point defence mounts. I'll give it a try.
Btw. you have forgotten this line:

Weapon To Hit Modifier := 0

Also, you could consider giving it some to hit bonus too (would be like another type of point defence weapon to take out fighters).

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

Ok, I checked the comp enhancement file and there isn't a slot for normal mounts, so I made one http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif This should clear up any AI issues, though I don't think light mounts on destroyers would have been that big a problem.

Long Name := Light Ship Mount
Short Name := Light Mount
Description := Smaller sized weapon mount which decreases damage from the weapon by 1/2 times. Requires a vehicle size of at least 150kT. Can only be used on Direct Fire weapons.
Code := S
Cost Percent := 50
Tonnage Percent := 50
Tonnage Structure Percent := 50
Damage Percent := 50
Supply Percent := 50
Range Modifier := 0
Weapon To Hit Modifier := 0
Vehicle Size Minimum := 150
Weapon Type Requirement := Direct Fire
Vehicle Type := Ship

Long Name := Standard Ship Mount
Short Name := Standard Mount
Description := Standard sized weapon mount which does normal damage. Requires a vehicle size of at least 300kT. Can only be used on Direct Fire weapons.
Code := N
Cost Percent := 100
Tonnage Percent := 100
Tonnage Structure Percent := 100
Damage Percent := 100
Supply Percent := 100
Range Modifier := 0
Weapon To Hit Modifier := 0
Vehicle Size Minimum := 300
Weapon Type Requirement := Direct Fire
Vehicle Type := Ship

There ya go folks, if you don't want the AI's destroyers running around with light mounts, this should clear up that issue =)Have fun.

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

Just an observation - the (damage mult) to (mass mult) ratio is greater than 1 for all the other mounts. In other words, the damage multiplier is always more than the increased mass.

In keeping with that thought, you might want to make the damage multiplier something like 60% or 75% rather than 50%.

Of course, maybe making the mount lighter reduces damage even further, and the multiplier should be more like 40%. But that would lead to VERY weak weapons.

How's this been working in playtesting?

[This message has been edited by DirectorTsaarx (edited 22 December 2000).]

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

Unfortunately I between work and everything else, I haven't found the time to test this out. I'll probably be able to sometime this weekend. What time I do have I've been spending trying to figure out why the components I'm trying to add aren't showing up.

As far as how much damage light weapon mounts should do, my view of it is, if 2 of them do more damage then the next level up, then it really defeats the purpose of that type of mount. In all fairness, the damage of 2 light mount weapons should be less then a single normal mount. The only problem is, if you reduce damage too much, you can drag battles out interminably. So I think 50% is pretty safe to go with for balance purposes.

[This message has been edited by Worgaus (edited 22 December 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Worgaus (edited 22 December 2000).]

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

One idea would be to have larger weapon mounts have increasingly higher difficulty targeting smaller ships. For example, a "spinal" weapon mount might do enormous amounts of damage, but be very poor at targeting escorts and destroyers, and be utterly incapable of targeting fighters and satellites.

C//

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

I was thinking about the same thing. In MOO2 player could only shoot ships and planets with large mounts. If you give negative chances to hit with those mounts in SE4 you can make fighters almost impossible to hit by large mounts.

However, I dropped the idea when I remembered that AI uses mostly maximum size ships and maximum mounts on them. It would make human fighters even more deadly against them.

[This message has been edited by Daynarr (edited 22 December 2000).]

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

One quick solution to that is to require the AI to put a few more point defence on their ships. That would take care of the satelites and fighters. Heavy mount weapons and point defence its a lot like MOO2 designs then. Now all we need are MIRVed missles to overwelm the point defences.

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

Yeah; I'm with that idea. Perhaps it's just me, but as it is right now, the PD weapons make missile technology a dead end. For that matter, PD ought to be a mount, IMO. This is sounding more and more like MOO2 all the time. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

BTW, am I the only one who really likes Null Space weapons?

C//

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

You know, this discussion of "small" mounts reminds me of something. Wouldn't it be nice to have a "minimum size" restriction for all components? As it is, you can only set the requirement for mounts, not for the component as a whole. Maybe the "Capital Ship Missile" should not be mountable in a destroyer at all? Maybe the "Null-space" weapon should not be mountable in anything smaller than a cruiser? Things like that. There are such things in RL as recoil effects (with projectile weapons) or reasonable balance/maneuvering tolerances fo the ship carrying the weapons.

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

The "to hit bonus" for Point-defense weapons is set in the components along with all the other standard weapon characteristics. It's called "Weapon Modifier" and for point-defense cannons it's:

Weapon Modifier := 50

Fifty percent boost cancels the fifty percent loss at a range of five (the PDC max range at it's final level). So, it still has 100 percent accuracy (discounting ECM or any bonuses that a seeker or fighter might have) at maximum range! Might be an interesting experiment to remove it, and see if this considerable loss of accuracy restores more "balance" to the effects of point-defense. Remember, it DOES still get the benefit of any combat sensors or crew bonus that your ship has, anyway.

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

The biggest problem I would have with reducing the accuracy of point defence is that the higher level point defence automatically go off at a longer range therefore making the lower tech point defence more accurate. So if I changed this I would also increase the accuracy as the distance and level goes up.

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

Adding larger numbers of PD weapons to the AI's ships brings problems of its own. It then gives them a distinct disadvantage when dealing with players who dont use missile or fighters at all. I dont think there is a 'right' answer to this as long as the AI is going to be scripted and with no 'reaction' ability.

Personally, I would have no problem with an AI 'cheating' to see what ships a player has and then choosing some 'counter ships' to build. It would make the game far more challenging IMO, but would negate the 'AI doesnt cheat' aspect of the game altogther. So at this point, its pretty much deciding on which is the lesser of two evils. And I think MM is more inclined to go with the 'no cheating' option.

Barring that, its possible to insert a few 'PD ships' into the AI's queue and hope that it bothers to keep them close to the main ships. I havent experimented with things like that quite yet, though.

Talenn

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

Another problem with decreasing the accuracy of the point defence weapons is that the fighters have an inherent defence bonus and the point defence needs a bonus to make them better to fight fighters than beam weapons. Is it possible to give the missles and satelites defence bonuses in line with fighters to balance out the accuracy of point defence? This would have the bonus of making point defence the prefered method of taking out satelites and make them harder to fight with beams.

Re: Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)
 

Well, over Christmas weekend I had the chance to test my mounts out. I hadn't realized the damage would be rounded up, so 50% ends up being too much. So I went with DirectorTsaarx's suggestion and reduced it to 40%. This seemed to work out better, and seemed more balanced/fair. Without the Standard Mounts I made put in, the AI, as a few have stated, would put these on their ships all the way up to the destroyer.

Messing with this has really given me some thoughts on custom mounts. Personally, I think if there is more than one type of mount available for the weight, the AI should compare the numbers rather than just sticking whatever on, you might be able to really screw the AI over by making some mount that has all penalties and does next to no damage, and it would mindlessly stuff its ships with them. Barring that, though, I like the idea of having a lower limit as well as an upper weight limit.