Engines per move follies...
 

Hm. I guess I should have gone and re-adjusted all the minimum speeds for the AI's attack ships and any other ships that I might have wanted to go a little faster after increasing the number of engines per move for larger ships.

They aren't going above speed 3 for cruisers right now. *sigh* Oh well. I'll adjust and try again later.

------------------
--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Sinapus:
Hm. I guess I should have gone and re-adjusted all the minimum speeds for the AI's attack ships and any other ships that I might have wanted to go a little faster after increasing the number of engines per move for larger ships.

They aren't going above speed 3 for cruisers right now. *sigh* Oh well. I'll adjust and try again later.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


Here, Sinapus, I have been using these for a long while and have had no problem. Check out the Vehiclesize file and look at the engines, fighter engines and afterburners in the component file.

Maybe this will help you figure out what you are trying to do. Some of the movement stuff is a bit tricky to use. If you have any questions I will try and answer.

Hope this helps.

** I included the techarea file so the other two will work correctly.**

***** Removed components.txt and vehiclesize.txt files from this post. New ones posted elsewhere in this thread. *****

[This message has been edited by Tenryu (edited 25 February 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Tenryu (edited 26 February 2001).]

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Tenryu:

Here, Sinapus, I have been using these for a long while and have had no problem. Check out the Vehiclesize file and look at the engines, fighter engines and afterburners in the component file.

Maybe this will help you figure out what you are trying to do. Some of the movement stuff is a bit tricky to use. If you have any questions I will try and answer.

Hope this helps.

[This message has been edited by Tenryu (edited 25 February 2001).]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Interesting... and I was going to just increase minimum speed for ships to 6 or so, check to see if it would design battleships or dreadnoughts, and then add an extra attack ship entry or two with minimum speeds set to five and four, and minimum tonnages set to match the battleship and dreadnought hulls.
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

I may try to use the approach you are, since that requires less editing of racial files. My approach would require that I edit all the design.txt files. I guess I still have a nasty habit of making things much more difficult than I have to. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/shock.gif


------------------
--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

Sinapus,

The Ship Bridges also give an extra movement. I felt if you lose your bridge, even if you have an Aux helm, you should slow down.

Also there is a small annoying but harmless bug,(mine), in the Fighter Life Support II component. I have fixed it on the file I am playing with these past few days but I didn't want to stick that component file up here yet as I added a bunch of new stuff and haven't had a chance to fully play it to see if anything is stupid in it. Besides none of the new stuff effects movement so you don't need it. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

So, was the glitch something to do with both fighter life support I&II being set to Ship Construction lvl 1? If it's a quick fix I can probably just make it myself. Hm. I'll have to go into the race research files and stick in research to construction lvl 4 or increments of that somewhere so the AI can get supermonitors.

I probably will try to copy the parts from your file to the components file I'm using since I have a lot of stuff I'm using here and there that I don't want to waste time adding them in. I like having supply storage be considered cargo for transports and small phased shields, after all. (Especially against the Sergetti in Daynarr's mod. Ow.)

The techarea file and vehiclesize file look like they can be easily copied over.

BTW, I noticed that the Small Troop entry in your vehicles.txt had "Launched from Ship" set to True. Is that a typo or can you use that to board ships?

I'm probably going to have to modify the space yard ships files in the design files for the AI just so the will use solar collectors since the Last time I checked the other races I found several SYS's getting warnings that a ship constructing something can't move... they were almost out of supplies and the resupply minister was trying to send them to a depot.

I do like the movement bonus for ship bridges and the damage control abilities of the crew quarters, but noticed that master computers don't have any such abilities. What a bummer.

Oh cute. More projectile weapons stuff and you altered that wonderful small rocket pod's tech requirements around even more. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif


------------------
--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

*** Fixed the small anti-matter torp 3 required techs ***

Here's my most recent components.txt file posted.

Be careful, this is not a Mod. I am not sure if I have flushed all the typos out of it but it has fixes for the things you mentioned as well as other new things I've been working on, mainly small armors and small shield generators. It also has some improved troop cockpits. I was playing it yesterday and today. No problems so far.

As you can see, the files are a conglomerate of ideas and Mods from many others here and is, as always, work in progress.

I have attached the component enhancement file,( I think this is mainly Derek's work), I use also, so you now have the core of the stuff I have been using.

I have a lot of fun with it. God Emperors point defense Mod ideas seem to really work well with this so far.


[This message has been edited by Tenryu (edited 26 February 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Tenryu (edited 26 February 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Tenryu (edited 26 February 2001).]

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

Er... the fighter types in the vehiclesize.txt files... shouldn't the heavier fleet fighters have a ship construction level along with the fighter level? It goes up to Ship Construction 8 and Fighter 2, then suddenly only Fighter 3 is required for the next fighter hull...

As for typos.. it looks nothing more than a few spacing problems so far. Unless viewing the file in Netscrape is the cause of that. I'll go through it in wordpad and see what is needed.

------------------
--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Sinapus:
Er... the fighter types in the vehiclesize.txt files... shouldn't the heavier fleet fighters have a ship construction level along with the fighter level? It goes up to Ship Construction 8 and Fighter 2, then suddenly only Fighter 3 is required for the next fighter hull...

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I know it might seem odd, but for me, I just figured by that time fighter tech is all that's really important, for better fighters.

I have the earliest fighters not requiring any fighter tech.

You pretty much have to research 3+ fighter tech to get your good carriers, and of course, they need ship tech too. Hmmm, I guess it probably reflects the feel I like.

You'll notice that you need to keep researching small weapons as well as the weapon specific weapon tech to get better fighter weapons too.

If you have any new cool ideas or changes, I'm game to borrow them! LOL!

Re; spacing problems? I don't seem to have any here. I've been playing with this file for 2 days now. Seems ok here.

Nighters

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

Did you modify the design.txt files for the computer races when you made that vehicle.txt file? I ran a test game with the design manager on and it won't design any attack ship smaller than a destroyer, defense ship or transport designs. It seems to take 'minimum speed' as number of engines, and since the hulls below destroyer on that vehiclesize file you provided have less than 4 engines it won't design them.

Similar thing for fighters. The two-engine fighter hulls in it won't get designed by the AI because it's minimum speed is 6 or so.

Worse, unless I did something wrong those minimums are hard-coded. I changed the minimum speed for the attack ships on the race I was using down to 2 and started a new game and let the design minister work a few turns. Still no attack ship designs using that hull.

Ah well. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

------------------
--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

Hmm, I did reduce min speed to 1 and set max to 10 in my 1.19 files. I forgot to do that since putting 1.27. Mainly did this because of the big ship speeds.

You know, I haven't noticed the fighter thing. I, once upon a time, had planetary fighters, {launch from planet only}, but I think the AI would load them on carriers and then not know what to do with them. So I removed them. I tried to use troops to board too. Nada. So many things I wish the darn thing would do.

AS to your other questions, I was able to play a few days Last week and week end, http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon9.gif, with 1.27. Since then have not had any time.

I will check some more this week end Sinapus. I was going to clean out everything and just run the Modpack 1.60 and make some minor PD changes in line with GE's work.

I haven't messed with the AI files much. I generally try to Mod around them since I don't understand them that well nor feel I have the time to get into them right now. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon9.gif

Our problem would be solved if we can get some of them non-working abilities working.

Sorry this didn't help ya. If you find a solution I would love to know about it.

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

I guess I'll try altering the files on the race I tend to use and test it out, using ctrl-money to speed through research here and there. Maybe I didn't reload the game or something like that.

I don't particularly mind altering AI files, since I've been doing that to the research files for awhile and I added a change to the facility construction files. (They didn't have the entry to build atmosphere converters and such)

Just hoping to keep from breaking things too much. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

------------------
--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

I just checked my ongoing game, 1.27, yup no fighters for the bad guys. You were right.

I changed the min fighter speed to 1 in the Abbidon Designcreation file and then started them as a computer player in a new high tech game. They had a large fighter design this time.

I trashed my 1.19 files a week ago so I will have to re-edit everything again.{groan} I think I will set all the ship speeds to Min 1 and Max 12 this time and the fighter to 1 and 20.

Oh yeah, one other thing I noticed, you need to set the min tonnage on mines to 5 as the small mines are that size.

I believe this should be OK or at least get the fighters for the AI.

If you have any suggestions, let me know.
I am always a bit shy about changing the AI scripts.

Sorry for wasting any of your time.

[This message has been edited by Tenryu (edited 03 March 2001).]

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

It seems like the upper limit is six drives as well, no matter what you set the desired speed to. I changed the max engines for fighters to something higher than four and it started designing ships after that point.

I guess I'll have to modify things a bit further.

You didn't waste my time. I just need to modify the files a bit and maybe email MM and ask them what's up with this or something.

I hadn't thought of adding supplies to the hull as a method of getting more supplies for bigger ships.

------------------
--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

Ok Sinapus, I spent some time again reviewing and testing some junk.

Here's what I think might work for the fighters. I found that in some cases setting the minimum engines to 1 for them made them make a 1 engine fighter. That's pretty lame, so I have changed the fighter files as per the attached fighterhulls.txt.

It makes all fighters have 2 engines max. I think we need to set the fighter hull in design creation to min 2 and max 2. Yes, no typo, 2 and 2, otherwise I'm afraid it will do some damn thing next like design a fighter with only engines!

Next , groan, all the designcreation files need to be edited. Maybe I'll do it if I'm crazy enough this weekend. Hmmm, should I get drunk before or after I do it?

I know I'll start before and finish after!
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

BTW, i have attached a recent colonizer component set that the AI uses OK I think, we don't need the 3rd class Gas and Ice ones, but I think the AI does, and it makes it real easy for old men like me to remember what colony component to put on what colony ship to send where ... always any highest number.

Thanks for noting the fighter thing. I would have wasted days playing that damn game before I noticed something was wrong.

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Tenryu:
Ok Sinapus, I spent some time again reviewing and testing some junk.

Here's what I think might work for the fighters. I found that in some cases setting the minimum engines to 1 for them made them make a 1 engine fighter. That's pretty lame, so I have changed the fighter files as per the attached fighterhulls.txt.

It makes all fighters have 2 engines max. I think we need to set the fighter hull in design creation to min 2 and max 2. Yes, no typo, 2 and 2, otherwise I'm afraid it will do some damn thing next like design a fighter with only engines!
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, when I set the min speed to 1 in designcreation.txt for fighters, it wouldn't build a fighter until max engines in the vehiclesize.txt file was at least 4. Try it out.

I did email MM to see if they can confirm whether or not those values are hard-coded.

Just out of curiosity, have you tried testing out an Allegiance Subverter on a ship that has both a master computer -and- a bridge, crew quarters, life support?


Oh, I forgot to mention another thing: the base bridges you made in that component file, the ones w/multiplex tracking added in? The AI adds more than one of them to defense bases. I think because it only sees the multiplex tracking in the bridge and adds it in. Sorry to keep bringing you this bad news. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/shock.gif

------------------
--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

Hmm, I'm getting them to design fighters, before with one engine and now with 2.

Is it designing and just not building? Or, is it not even designing for you? It's designing for me. Haven't played it to know if it is building any, maybe tommorrow.

Look at the fighter hulls I have posted. They all have 2 to 4 extra combat movement. Maybe that is what the darn thing wants. I won't know until tomorrow

The base bridge is weird! I was afraid when i designed it that it would waste space with a Multiplex component that it doesn't need. I think those effects are supposed to be limited to only one effect per ship, the highest.

Why that would make the AI add multiple bridges in spite of the one bridge limit sounds like a bug to me.

Regarding the allience subverter, no, anything interesting there?

BTW, i take it back on the 2/2 for the engines probably 2/20 is ok. Was thinking the second was max engines, duh, it's speed.

And this is not bad news. It helps make the game better as we figure out what is happening and what is not. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Oh, I also missed setting one of the min engines on one of the hulls to 2, it is at 3, think it was fleet fighter II or III.

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

Ok, it's Saturday! I can mess with SE4 ALL day!

Sinapus, I started a new high tech game, maxing everything, except 3 planets. I used 2 races, a 'new' player(mine), and Mephs Earth Alliance from 1.60 (I did not install that, just added the dsgname file, empire, and race stuff).

In the EA AI files, I changed only the fighter Min speed from 6 to 2 and Desired speed from 6 to 16 in the EA DesignCreation.txt file. I disabled all the create random neutral and random computer races options. I started the game.

I did nada, turn one. I checked the EA after the first turn. They had no fighters but were building some CLs and a CVL.

I reset them to computer control and clicked through 5 turns. I checked them again. They had a a carrier loaded up with 32 heavy fighter 2s and a bunch more fighters on the main planet.

So the AI is building the little buggers.

Last night, I ran the Abbidon for about 30 turns and they never built any, however they did design a heavy fighter and (oddly) redesign it, {the same???!!!}, and set the old one to obsolete, hmmm.

So maybe the problem is in the AI files.
The Abbidon just seemed to like super monitor hulls, not unexpected, but, at least while I was messing with them never did build a fighter. hmmm.

The base bridge thing I have never seen. I am going to try and figure that one out next today.

I am not so wedded to the multi-targeting on/in them anyway, if it is causing problems such as you note I'll probably just remove that ability.

It does sound like you may have found a bug. I doubt that any ability should or was intended to over-ride the 'one only' limit, at least for bridges.

Let me know if you find any other interesting
behavior. Thanks again. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

Odd. What Version of SE4 are you using? I was using the 1.27b patch...

Oh, in vehiclesize.txt, under the extra movement generation. I think value 1 is the extra movement amount and value 2 is supposed to be 1, judging from looking at the stats for Solar Sails. (Which don't give movement bonuses based on the stars anyway...)

I was getting some lockups after starting up a game with these mods. I'll change the value 2 amt to 1 and see if it still shows up.


[This message has been edited by Sinapus (edited 04 March 2001).]

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

Hm. Looks like the EA is designing overly fast colony ships. Or more engines than is legal. Looks like it's because of the "standard movement" part in the misc components. Mephisto probably didn't detect it because the max amount it can load into a hull is five, which is the colony ship's max in the regular game. :/


The population transport is putting in a ship bridge, probably because of the 500 supply it provides. I tried increasing the supply storage to 600, but it wouldn't use it. It might be because it has about 10kt left and bridges have 10kt. I'm removing the supplies from the bridge units.

Still doing it. Argh. It's because of the extra movement generation. *sigh*

Maybe the bridge movement should be changed to combat movement or something or removed?

*sigh* I'm also getting freezes in the game when I colonize a planet for some reason. Or after the 2nd turn. I have no reason why, but it seems to go away when I remove the mods for this. :/

But you're right, the AI *is* designing things. It's just the race I was using that wasn't doing that for some reason.



[This message has been edited by Sinapus (edited 04 March 2001).]

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

[quote]Originally posted by Sinapus:
Odd. What Version of SE4 are you using? I was using the 1.27b patch...[quote]

??? Version 1.27b here, too.

[quote]Oh, in vehiclesize.txt, under the extra movement generation. I think value 1 is the extra movement amount and value 2 is supposed to be 1, judging from looking at the stats for Solar Sails. (Which don't give movement bonuses based on the stars anyway...)[quote]

Be careful when playing with the second value on the extra movement. I had a bear of a time getting each of the components with it working. It needs to be a unique identifier to add with the other extra movements on other components or hulls. It seems to be either something to do with family of components or type, like hulls. I think you have to assign a unique ID number for each speed and for each component family and the hulls. I think that is what I did to get them adding together.

[quote]I was getting some lockups after starting up a game with these mods. I'll change the value 2 amt to 1 and see if it still shows up.[quote]

Hmmm. :/

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

Ah, okay. So the Bridge movement bonus (if I can keep Mephisto's small transports from adding a 2nd bridge to get the bonus) is one number, the hull bonus is another and the solar sails are another so they'll add up?


------------------
--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

Well, I figured out why my adjustments weren't working on the race I use. The .emp file is set to use the default AI files and I was editing the wrong thing. It looks like increasing the desired speed to a number past the number of engines required will get the Design Minister to put more engines in. So my engines per move idea will end up working, hopefully.

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Sinapus:
Ah, okay. So the Bridge movement bonus (if I can keep Mephisto's small transports from adding a 2nd bridge to get the bonus) is one number, the hull bonus is another and the solar sails are another so they'll add up?
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes. I think. It took me a few days to figure it out, but I'll explain a little more what I think I did to get it working.

It seems that if you have a component, lets call it "bridge", and you want to give it an extra movement of 1, you need to give the component a unique ID. So I think for our purposes here we can give it a val 2 of say 1.

Now if we want the "bridge" type units to also have a variation with a speed of 2, we can set that component with a val 2 of 1 also, since the "bridge" are the same unit.

Now lets say you want to get "bridges" to add their extra movement to "engines" extra movement and you want two 'flavors' of engines, one with 1 extra move and one with 2. You then have to set that val 2 not to 1 like the "bridges". You need to use another number, so why not 2, then 3 for the next component, etc.

Watch the solar sails though, when I first thought I got everything working, I had missed them and 'reused' their number. They then didn't add. I fixed that by changing the solar sail component val 2s to something else.

Anyway, that's what I think I did. It was 2 months or more ago now and I haven't messed with it since.

Without more extensive testing or some documentation from MM, I'm just guessing. To tell the truth, I really wonder whether or not even MM knows whats going on when you start using complex interactions of multiple abilities on single components interacting or compounding with similar effects. Makes a good arguement for not doing stuff like that, but them, that's a lot less fun. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Let's keep in mind that the reason I, and I suspect you also to some degree, went/are going through all this:

1. Battleships should have bigger, tougher, more costly engines then Torpedo boats.
2. Battleship engines shouldn't fit in torpedo boats.
3. Bigger ships generally have longer range, or at least can more easily have.
3. Ships very rarely go 'dead in the water' permenantly. The crew either gets it making way again, or it sinks. So killing all a ships engines in battle shouldn't 'freeze' the ship in space, slowing it down significantly is ok.

If MM gets some new abilities going it may make it way simpler to achieve these effects.

Re: Engines per move follies...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Sinapus:
So my engines per move idea will end up working, hopefully.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Great!