GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

As you may or may not know, Grid Techs are where one component has multiple tech areas that improve it.

For example, you might make an armor component where research into 'industry' makes it 5% cheaper to build per level, and 'armor design' which gives it 10% more hitpoints per level.

With my tech gridder program, it is easy to make really big tech grids, and the multiplicative nature of them starts to show.

For my GritEcon mod, I was thinking of doing 3 dimensional tech grids. 10 levels in one area, and 20 in two others.

10x20x20 = 4000 levels of a component (turn on 'show only latest' http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif)
4000 levels of DUC, for example equates to 4.7 megabytes of text file.

If I did this for all of my planned weapons, the components.txt file would end up at approximately 160 megabytes in size.

However, due to the magic of compression algorithms, the download ZIP of the entire mod would be only 2.5 megs in size, enough to fit on just 2 floppies.

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

Who worrys about a measly 160 mb THESE days????

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

I'd take it down to 10x10x10 myself. Or maybe 20x10x10.

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

I see no problem either; compressing the file back would be enough if you did need the space (unless you are playing SEIV every single hour of your life, and only SJ's mod).

Oh, and it looks like I misunderstood your plan quite a lot. Are you saying there will be an insane number variations of *each* component? I thought it would be only for weapons; so does it affect the other, non-weapon components as well?

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

There would only be 4000 Versions of each weapon, since they're 3-dimensional gridtechs.

I do plan on making a few more levels of the other components, but they'll be insignificant next to the weapons.

Knocking it down to 10x10x10 for 1/4 the space would be feasible too.

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

What impact does this have on the ship design in-game? I wouldn't want to have to sort through 4000 variations of a weapon to get to the one I want...

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

"show only latest" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

It'll be better or equal in every way to the lower tech Versions, so no worries there.

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

GO for it, I would go the 10X10X10 to see how it goes, I like the Idea of more weapons http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/stupid.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image.../firedevil.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/Injured.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

Ah, for some reason I was assuming that the resource cost on a component would be going up as the tech went up.

Just be sure to but all the things you might want to take "lesser" Versions of before the stuff that only gets better as the tech level rises -- if anything falls into that Category at all!

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

Isn't there a maximum number of components that SE4 can support? (Or is it millons?)

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

I would guess at least 2^16 for max number of components, so that's about 64000. Most likely it's 2^32 theoretical max, so four billion. But then you start running into memory issues. 1000-4000 levels of weapons should be fine as far as the game being able to load it, but if it's all kept in memory, then there could be some issues on older machines...

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

Everyone, let's bug Aaron to put tech grids into SE5, at least as a moddable feature - seriously, all it would take is for one data field to be calculated from ANY other data field, not just from the level field, so you could calculate for instance your weapon damage from the Weapon Damage Enhancement tech level requirement and the hitpoints from the Component Reinforcement tech level requirement and the size from the Miniaturization tech level requirement and the...

(Oh no... are we turning SE5 into GalCiv with its tiny incremental bonuses to everything? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif)

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

That issue came up in the IRC chats, and I believe he was somewhat open to the idea...

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

Its not so much incremental bonuses, as directed research...

Forget power and range, we just need cheap nukes to hand out to everybody before the Drushocka get here! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

Sounds like a great idea! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif It will make research and ship design more interesting, allowing for more variations in ship designs and creating more choices and trade-off decisions to be made in what area to research.

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

The HDD space is not an issue, but RAM... 160 mb components.txt will load terribly long time on slower machines and swap in and out constantly.

Also, it's not always good to have Show latest only ON, ie, sometimes I want to fit price of my new design to SY build rates and turn "Latest only" off to pick obsolete but cheaper/smaller component. Scrolling through 4000 DUC/ECMs/whatever will be somewhat painfull in this case.

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

I believe SJ wrote that the latest components will be equal or better to their previous Versions, so that will likely include price as well (the hull size will be the most important factor when determining the final cost of your vessel, unless you are toying with Stellar Manipulation).

Ram may be quite a problem though, or perhaps even processor speed when launching the game. I recall I had some trouble with Adamant with my old computer, so 160 mo would be a *ahem* slight problem in this case. Perhaps make the full 4,000 Version, and a "low weight" with a much smaller tech-grid SJ?

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

One decreases cost, one decreases size, and the third increases damage.

None of them have side effects, so the only reason you'd ever want to use an old component is during retrofits. In those cases, you just copy the old design and replace only the parts you want to replace.

Re: GridTechs, compression and HD space.
 

Actually, you might want to use old comps if you want to trade away tech but not give TOO much away http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif