SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

I was wondering, mainly because I lack indepth knowledge of how SE V works, if the ability "One per Empire" is present?

I cannot over emphesis the importance of having such an ability and would hope that this is an ability that SE V does employ.

I would also like to see the ability "Can Fire While Cloaked." This ability could be used to facilitate a new breed of ship class much like a modern day submarine navy.

I put forth a while back a concept for a subspace fleet, I even went so far as to offer up a model of this concept for use with SJ's CB mod.

Having the ability available to give a ship the power to fire its weapons cloaked would inspire a great degree of creative and imaginitive modding possiblities.

Recently I put a lot of thought into how to make ships of every class unique on to their own.

While I am uncertain as to how many people have actually adopted many of the ideas that I am about to list, I am certain that great minds do think alike that most are already in play.

Each hull size would have specialized abilities such as better armor than any other class, better shields, longer range weapons, faster engines, more manauverablity, greater weapons capacity, better stealth, specialized "only this hull" cloaking, "only this hull" cloaking detection, superior electronic warefare technology, etc.

For example, Cruisers would have better armor than other ships, while destroyers would be faster and cheaper to build. Carriers and Dreadnoughts would be expensive to build, hard to kill, and extremely valuable prizes to either capture or destroy.

While SE V regrettably doesn't seem to not set itself apart fighter wise from SE IV, the concept of modern day fighter superiority in naval and world military doctrine would be especially appealing.

The ability to seperate standard movement from combat movement is vital to the success of any fighter based superiority modding concept. In SE IV, and I am not sure if this is so for SE V, standard movement does give combat movement thus a ship will always have combat movements even if the modder does not desire them or wishes to severely limit them.

Case in point a true Star Wars type mod where larger ships stand off and let their fighters attack. The larger ships can engage each other, as in Episode III and VI, but overall fighters care they bulk of the fighting responsiblities.

Fighters should be very fast compared to capital ship. So in combat they should move away from the capital ships with great speed and determination. Fighters should be by their very nature deadly to larger ships thus fighter on fighter tactics and strategies would be required. Unfortunetly I don't see this being possible in SE V. While I am sure it can be implament in some small degree via clever and adaptive mods, presently in stock it is not so.

The way I have been looking at it is that each hull, regardless of escort or carrier, should possess a unique ability that prompts the player to desire them.

How do current world Navy's determine the value of a ship? What is the value and purpose and unique qualifications of an Escort, a Destroyer, a Carrier, a Battlecruise (Such as the Russan ship Peter The Great)?

If each hull has a defined purpose than having a need for each hull becomes more meaningful.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Your cloak idea has merit, kind of like in MoO3, where you could find yourself in a space battle and not see the enemy ships.

I do think fighters should have high combat speed, but as for prowess, it should still take many fighters to damage any type of large vehichle. One thing I think would be neat is the possibilty of using fighters for planatary combat.

I've no idea how the mount system technicaly works in SEV, but if it's like SEIV, it would not be hard to create certain specific hull sized components.

I agree with you thtat it would be good to see some sstem of bonuses and minuses used to encourage multiple Hull size use.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

That would be a scope not an ability. As far as I am aware there is not a “One Per Empire” scope. Although depending on the ability you want to use with that scope only one may be effective. Otherwise (scope or ability) the one per, two per, etc restriction is gone like the wind.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Should of done this in one post, sorry about that AT.

As before this is a scope and the one per, two per, etc restrictions are history. There are other ways to make this sort of restriction depending on what you want.

Nice idea but how would you attack the subs? I don’t see how depth charges could be made.

And headaches, don’t forget the headaches! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

If that’s true why am I here? I’m not great, heck I’m not even sure I have a mind. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

This can be done! Not sure about all of it.

With SE5 you can set the two separately and you don’t even need to make separate abilities, engines or what not. You could set the engines per movement of (for example) small fighter to 1 point per engine then set the movement in combat to 2 points per movement point. In other words your out of combat fighter moves at speed 8 but it can be set to move at speed 16 or more with the change of one line in the vehicle sizes text. I used this to control the speed of my fighters; they need less engines but get faster.

The great speed sure, the great determination? Pilots are pretty fickle, maybe if someone offers to make a beer run for them. I know how dry my humor so why do I insist on torturing everyone here with it? Sigh, the strategies could be set and if the fighter components are right this would certainly work. I think my TC will hit this very close to what you are going for.

Ok that is enough for one post, time to get some cookies!

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

The magic line in VehicleSizes.txt is Space Combat Maximum Speed Per Movement Point. In stock ships have a value of 0.001 and fighters have a value of 0.002. Playing with these values could easily give you whatever results you desire.

Another quick note, when working with vehicle speeds the engines per move value does not have to be a whole number, the game will happily use decimal values!

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Electronic Warfare. Destroyers, perhaps even escorts and frigates, would have access to cloak detection technology. YOu can adjust the cloaking to be weak in say passive EM or weak in Gravitic. A weakness that can then be detected with the proper electronic counter measures. (Scanners)

Once a ship "detected" it can be targeted. Have the component that is able to detect a cloaked ship limited to a smaller hull like a destroyer will make destroyers that much more valuable for fleets.

You give only Destroyers a weapon with the abiltiy to fire standard shields while making all other shield generators have phase shielding so that the weapon is useless against them. Or give the Sub superior armor and the Destroy the only armor peircing weapon.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Speaking of fighters it would be a great assest to be able to set uses. For example, what is the advantage of an interceptor, a dog fighter, a fighter bomber, etc.

Interceptors are fast first strike fighters. Their strength is speed, their weakness is armament.

Dog Fighter, great in combat, but lacks long range.

I believe the US Crusader was one of the last truly inspired dog fighting fighters used by the military until the F-15 and 15 were developed. They were developed because the Phantoms were abysmall dog fighters and Vietnam proved the need to have a good solid dog fighting fighter again.

The F-16 is smaller than the F-15 thus more manuaverable but has a lessor range and less weapons. The F-15 is by far one of the best all purpose fighters ever made in the history of flight, but she is big, consumes a lot of fuel, and requires both a pilot and Rio. Her weakness is her size.

Then we have the F-111 stealth fighter. Can only be used effectively at night or else it can be shot down as was evident in Yugoslov wars. A great fighter BOMBER, but not a true fighter. They call it a fighter bomber because its small.

As to bombers, we have the B2, small fast and effective but limited overall range. Then the big bird the B-52, huge long range and deadly, but an easy target.

I guess what I am trying to say is that we need deversity in the fighter ranks. Not just bigger KT size, but decisive advantages and disadvantages.

Every ship in the game should have its own unique useable and desireable qualifications. Be it a slow moving transport with huge cargo capacity to a small elite dog fighting fighter, each should have its own advantages and disadvantages just like in the real world. Well as much as can be given with the games limitations and restrictions.

When I build a fighter, I want to say this fighter is an interceptor and know that it has its own advantages and disadvantages. Its great long range, its semi powerful, but it lacks armor and has weaker manuaverabilty.

I guess knowing what the advantages and disadvantages to real world fighters are would be a big help. Knowing their types and purposes would also be a huge insight. I mean what is the general purpose of an F-15 compared to that of an F-22? What would an F-16 be used for? (Planet defense)

How would one go about implamenting Bombers? Use small KT ship hulls or make them large fighters? I believe the ability for "Can Warp" is present in the game, so having them as large fighters hulls, but named bombers, would work.

Any thoughts?

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

I firmly believe in letting the player's design and strategy determine whether a fighter is a dogfighter, an interceptor or a bomber.

Carrier Battles mod being the prime example of that...
I simply provide Basic fighter hulls, QNP propulsion, and a variety of guns.

If you design the fighter with a small engine, light defenses and a very big gun (or missile launcher), then it is good for anti-ship bombing, but weak vs fighters and useless vs missiles.
If you design the fighter with good speed, light defenses and a large variety of small weapons, then it is great for intercepting missiles, but mediocre at anti-fighter action and completely useless for anti-ship.
If you design the fighter with medium speed, heavy defenses and efficient weapons (as opposed to high damage-per-shot or many small shots) then it becomes great at anti-fighter action, weak vs missiles and weak vs ships.

The player is, of course, free to make a design with compromises between these main types, but since each type has conflicting requirements, the dual-role fighters will be less effective tactically.
(Which isn't to say they can't be effective strategically, due to the fact that having a combo interceptor/dogfighter design means that supply lines are simplified.)

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

If I wanted to create dedicated bombers I would adjust the hull size to be slightly different than the other fighters and create a mount with use for certain weapons; the bombs. I would create a range of bombs for different tasks too. Also you can use the Get_Design_Ability_Component_Count("Movement Standard") with an equals as I did so the fighters must have a certain speed and thus number of engines. This is how I managed to make one fighter size yet give it different weapon and component capacity from over 7 generations. I would make the dedicated interceptors small (i.e. 8kt) the duel role medium (i.e. 9kt) and dedicated bombers large (i.e. 10kt). Now if you really must have them all one size than create three vehicle types and then it is as simple as saying this component can work on all three, or just the bomber, etc.

I’m really starting to get hooked on this idea.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

May I inquire as to why you two guys seem to like the idea of iron-fist control over fighter designs?

You could give the player the freedom to do whatever they want, and let the separate fighter roles emerge naturally from the pressures of combat.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

I wouldn’t call it iron fist; that seems rather harsh. I see it as a way to provide guidelines, not as a matter of micromanagement. The player would have the freedom to design an interceptor with the components for an interceptor. When you have one vehicle size which can use any set of weapons you tend to get a “middle-of-the-road” vehicle. To put another way in RL I can’t build a Harrier, strap twenty 1,000lb blockbusters on it, use vertical take off, and fly as fast as an F-15. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

I see what your saying SJ and that is a good way of doing it. But as PES suggested, using mounts to scale some components for use with only one sized hull is an excellent idea as well.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

And how about unique “run ways”? Bombers need this type, interceptors need that one? Maybe by using an AI Tag but without any real problem solving I couldn’t say if it would be possible or not.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Besides SJ isn’t that how everyone is modding fighters now? “Here is your hull selection pick one. Here is your engine selection pick one. Here is your component selection pick one. Now what do you want to call it?” With AT’s idea the player would need to make a series of choices based on what they wanted and those choices would in turn regulate the selections offered for the next choice. For example I want to make a fighter:

1) I have to pick the type of fighter so I choose Interceptor.

2) Next I load the base equipment which has been designed to give the Interceptor limited endurance but bonuses in other areas.

3) I pick the engines I want next. All Interceptor engines are fast but some are faster than others. Still even the slowest provide more movement than the best engines in the next class, the Duel Role Fighter. Point is Interceptors should be the fastest in my opinion.

4) Now I pick the weapons and any other extra components I want such as chaff shells, ECM, etc. Because I picked Interceptor I only have X number of slots. Less than had I picked Dule Role and far fewer than if I had picked Bomber. However, none of my weapons can target ships, bases, or planets; only fighters, mines, and satellites. Or maybe a few of them can target ships and so forth but they are weak compared to the choices for Duel Role which are still weaker than those for the bomber.

I think this has potential.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

I would love to see this kind of idea in game, both the different fighter designs and the in combat cloak. I know the argument against this is "everyone will just build cloaked ships and destroy everything" but what if the cloakable ships were limited to a certain size range? Lets just say 100 KT to 300 KT (I'm not sure the actual sizes in the game so this is just hypothetical). Now, the size of sub goes up as you get higher techs. Also, since the sub can "fire while cloaked" lets even this out by making it so the "Sub" can only carry a certain type of weapon (not sure if this is possible) that once it fires, it takes forever to reload. Lets say it's a missle that does 5 dmg, and it takes 3 seconds to reload, higher tech, 15 dmg, 20 seconds reload (again, not sure it can be done, really haven't looked into modding it yet). You could also limit the sub's speed so it's not allowed to run away from combat (unless it's against something like a dreadnaught). So in combat this now happens, Sub needs to get into range, anything without detection ability is going to end up running away (not knowing if it's just 1 sub or 500) the subs got limited speed so if it's against something like a CL it MAY get 1 shot at best before the combat ends. Against a DN it may be able to just follow it firing into the rear of the DN, but if your stupid enough to let a DN go away from a fleet with det then you need your brain checked esp. if you know the enemy CAN have the subs. Also love the more "personalized" fighters. Special components for special sizes of hulls. I was thinking of modding in bombers, as a vehicle, then I found out you can use the "can warp" feature, so now it would be a unit. So now you can have a war and not even have to use ships. Build some bombers, (along with some escort fighters for defense against fighers, and some torpedo bombers in case the enemy has some ships) send them through the warp point, move to the enemy planet and start to conduct bombardment. And not sure if this is possible, but it would be cool but what it a unit can transport another unit? Paratrooping special forces anyone? Or even if it's not, still, a transport being escorted by fighters, bombers and things like that, while your main fleet is busy somewhere else....man, the possibilities are endless.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Yeah the 'sub' is the only way I could see that not being abused in any game. Yet for SFB, the Romulans very much use a cloak in tactical combat. It is an important portion of their strategy, yet they are not allowed to use any weapons while they are under cloak. There defintely has to be some downside to using the ability of a cloak to offset the advantages...

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Yes cloakable ships would be limited to a specific size limitiation. Think of them like submarines. You have your boomers, and your sub hunters/killers.

Boomers would be the largest, with each race having its own unique size limitations if the modder so desired to set it up that way.

I would hope that such weapons as Drones could be used as both a cruise missile weapon, and or a tactical or strategic interstellar weapon of mass destruction simular to our ICBM's.

Tactical is when something is used against a military asset, strategic is when it is used against a civilian target such as a major city or "planet."

Torpedo's would also be as the mainstay of this class of ship with them being semi powerful, fast, and as technology improves, semi to deadly accurate. Of course counter measure components can be researched and put on ships like Destoryers and or other vessels. (Destroyers having the best defense against Torps, while Carriers and Dreadnoughts have the worst.)

Would it be possible to make only missile weapons be able to destory ISBW (Inter Stellar Balistic Weapons) and cruise missiles?

The US and Russan Navy's love to use cruise missiles because they are so hard to kill.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Yep easy, its just a matter of limiting the target types either by name (ISBW) or by unit type which will be either drone or ISBW if you changed it. This is just like it is in SE4...except we can actually add new unit types and add them to the target/nontarget list.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Like I said, a downside to the cloak is a slow speed, and slow reload rate, so you get your primary shot from cloak, and depending on the target, lets say a DD with anti cloak technology, if you dont do enough dmg you could end up dead, you would need to run untill you have another shot loaded. Against say a DN (assuming it has no "anti sub" weapons and detection)it becomes a race, the DN tries to retreat and you need to follow it trying to get in as many shots as possible. I'm not sure if it's possible to use a component in combat, like say, a emergency movement pod, but you could have that to help give you a chance to either get away, or try to get in one extra shot. Not to mention the fact that you could always make a anti cloak detector for fighters and make a specific fighter to be used for ASW warfare, suddenly those big, fat, easy target carriers aren't so easy to kill. anymore. I don't know about using the drones, I hate that you can't control them yourself. Also, if you made them as unit type, you can use WP's, so sit on a WP into a enemy system, send some ICBM's through along with maybe some additional 'regular' missiles (to be used against defending ships), clear a path to your target and move in the fleet....but wait, oh oh, here comes a small fleet of enemy subs that was cloaked moving in on your transports, will your escort fighters be enough? Are the anti cloak sensors you have installed on your ASW bombers going to be powerful enough to get the subs? Is it time to bring in your Torpedo boats? (Large units, with AA capabilities as well as torpedos and fast) One other question I wonder about though, is can you make it so that in combat, sensors have a "range"? So lets say your sensors have a 10 ls range, and the enemy sub is 12 ls away, your sensors won't pick up something? Man, it would just add so much more value to the smaller ships.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

My point is that you DON'T get middle of the road fighters if you do it right.
You can build such multirole fighters in CBmod, but they simply are not as good in battle as efficient specialized designs.

Don't avoid generic hulls because you worry they will lead to a single generic uberdesign.
Balanced components will prevent that without you having to add restrictions.

"Fighter" in SE is IMO very equivalent to "Aircraft" in naval battles.
A bomber is the same basic thing as a dogfighter, just with less speed/engine (QNP is critical), less armor and big, slow bombardment weapons.

In a similar manner, a missile ship, a point defense ship, and an assault gunship are all the same; ships. Battleship size hulls, for a typical example. What you put on them determines what they are.
You can put missiles on an assault ship, but because all that close-quarters armor is a drain and missiles work best from max range, it just dosen't work as well. Mixing the guns is bad too, since you won't be able to use all of them effectively at the same time.
Instead, you have dedicated missile ships and dedicated assault ships and dedicated PD ships. They are individually more efficient, and each design complements the others by covering their weak points.

Because of this, those three designs emerge naturally in any game. A single wanna-be uberdesign fails because a mixed force of more efficient designs can win more battles given the same resources.

---

Allowing flexibility and generality does not result in one omnifighter design, provided that you have appropriately balanced components.
It does work in practice. I see it every day in PBW games of CBmod. Dogfighters, interceptors, bombers and eventually decoy fighters are very very distinctive, even though there are no restrictions on what you install, and the hulls are generalized.

In stock, everything is about making the one uberdesign, plus some logistics.
Proper balance allows or even requires multiple designs to coexist in a highly competitive environment with extremely generic and unrestricted hulls.

/end rant of the day

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

@SpecterOfDeath: I will need to read your post over when I am a little less worn out (long day and all); however, most of what you asked about can be done. Such as the sensor range is very easy to mod.

@ SJ: I had no idea this was such a stickler for you (/end rant of the day). You say specialized designs will emerge than fine. You don’t think the idea of this mod is a good one because it is an “iron-fist” approach than that’s cool to. I think it’s a fine idea with lots of potential. So lets agree to disagree and move on.

@Atrocities: I am open to fielding ideas and laying the ground work for you to review if you like. My TC isn’t going anywhere until Aaron does something about the generational components.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

On the subject of Unit Specialization, Weapons, and Cloaking...

(See Attached Graph)
Links
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...spaceguide.htm

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Nothing to do with the mod, just that you've got a fancy design screen available... why not use it to its full potential rather than going towards mostly predefined "tokens".

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Well.....I'll just say this, I would support a mod like this. Obviously there are others as well. Just as obvious is that some people DON'T support the idea. Which is fine. To each their own and all that. It's not like anybody said SEVI was going to be that way, we're just talking about a mod to SEV to allow the players who WANT to play this way, this way. AFAIK nobody talked about this being added into the Balance mod or anything, just a seperate, stand alone mod. In reality we don't even need this to be a mod, someone could just figure out how to do it and paste a "what to do" list to make it work for the ones who want to use.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

@SJ: Sorry but I didn’t get that at all? Was that meant for me?

@SpectarofDeath: Man I have got to come up with something shorter for you. Typing out your name is like typing mine out! Nutz! Do you have a preference? Anyway I don’t think SJ was saying making the mod was a dumb or pointless idea. He was just arguing that optimal fighter designs in each category will surface. While I don’t agree and feel a middle of the road design will come to dominate, everything is still good. I respect his opinion and feel enriched for having read it. I’m sure he will agree that he too took something positive out of this.

Now as for the mod Atrocities and I have spoken a little by PM and he has expressed an interest but lacks the time to dedicate right now. Did I get that right Atrocities? Anyway I am interested in this and have even gone so far as jotting down a few short notes focused on ship classes and what role they may best serve. Kana has posted this excellent graph which would create a wide range of flexibility, maybe even outside the scope of a mod like this. I would envision his graph best applied to one or two limited hull sizes and those few would be specialty classes. If another person is willing to head up this mod; with Atrocities blessings of course, I would certainly be willing to work on it. Currently I have another project underway and fear getting into this as a solo project.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

The empirical evidence in CBmod does show that you *can* make the specialized designs come to dominate... but its not nessesarily easy.

The important point is that you have to set up the underlying physics carefully; all the roles have to be of roughly equal importance. (Focus on balancing point defense, leaky PD too, in order to keep missiles fighters and ships all useful throughout the game.)
The weapons that are good for one should be mostly incompatible with use in the other roles. Not only the weapons, but engines, and defenses too.
It helps to allow things to take up huge amounts of space. A good anti-ship weapon could take up 80% of a fighter, naturally leaving you with a slow, lightly armored bomber design.
The best anti-missile weapons could be short ranged, thus requiring powerful engines to intercept successfully. Engines taking up half the space on your fighter, plus the guns, leaves little armor.
And if you want a fighter that can stand up to return fire, you'll need moderate guns and a moderate engine, giving you a dogfighter.

In SE5, you have the additional dimension of shot speed to play with, but you lose the weapon-stacking mechanism.


Its not easy, but IMO, it is worth it.

PS:
Would you like to play a game of CBmod to see the theory in action?

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

SJ I just realized we are talking apples and oranges here. Your observations are based on MP and mine on Solo. From each of our respective POV’s we are correct. Thanks for the offer but I don’t play online games, never have, given it some thought but haven’t been persuaded yet.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

From what I gathered from that portion of the website. The chart is setup in such a way to show the balance between ship types/sizes/roles. Basically for a whole design (100%), you have to dedicate a certain percentage of the design size/weight/space whatever it is to either offensive/defensive and propulsion components. So if you want a fast ship, it will have a lot of space dedicated to engines and such, say 60%, which only leaves 40% of the remaining space for weapons and defenses. This could be a even split 20%/20%, or 10%/30%, or even 30%/10%. I'm not sure how this relates to SEV, and the ship components, but I would assume that 10 ktons of engines is the same as 10ktons of defenses, and 10ktons of weapons. So bigger guns take up more space, more tonnage dedicated to armor or shielding will allow you to absorb more damage, and more or bigger engines will allow you to manuver away from the enemy quicker, but you can't do all exeptionally well, or dedicated more space/tonnage to one specific function.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

The same thing applies in solo if the AI is smart enough to recognize it.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Spec or Spectar is fine, it's what other ppl use.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

How about a simple idea:
Leaky point defense.

Since SE5 dosen't have any concept of multiplex tracking or autofire, we need a new way to make PD leaky.

1) Make each PD shot capable of taking out a missile in one hit, maybe 2 for a heavy missile.
2) Make the PD refire rate 50ms.
3) Give the PD -999% chance to hit.
4) PD shots should be very fast. Beams are good too. There should only be one or two shots from each gun on screen at any one time.
5) For varing PD resistance on your missiles, use *speed* rather than hitpoints or ECM.
6) For varying PD techs, reduce size and cost, increase range.

This gives you a poisson distribution of PD hits...
One missile can get lucky and penetrate 5 PD guns, or one PD gun could get lucky and shoot down 3 missiles at once.

For example, if PD guns have a range, fire rate and incoming missile speed such that they can each fire 50 times, then:
- One PD gun has a 40% chance of shooting down at least one missile. A 9% chance of shooting down two or more missiles, and 1.5% chance of shooting down three missiles.
- Two PD guns have a 63% chance of shooting down at least one missile. 26% chance of shooting down two or more, 8% chance of shooting down three or more, and 2% chance of shooting down 4+
- Four PD guns have a 87% chance of shooting down at least one missile. 59% chance of shooting down at least 2, 32% of shooting down 3 or more, 14% for 4 or more, 5% of 5 or more, etc.

Longer range gives more shots before the missile hits, until the point where the second wave starts coming into PD range before the first wave of missiles has hit.
Smaller PD guns, lets you fit more guns to increase your fire rate for more shots total again.

Key features of this system:
- One missile CAN sneak in occasionally. (13% chance vs 200 enemy PD shots)
- Graceful degradation of PD as the number of missiles increases (unlike stock where the first X missiles are shot down, and the rest all hit)

Downsides:
- Lots of shots make the CPU work a little harder
- ECM and combat sensors do not affect PD. (But there are other ways to do it; speed, range, etc)

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

The AIs that Rollo made for CBv1.5 should fit that bill. As AIs, they are pretty limited in flexibility, but they should be able to show you how it works.
(Use no bonus setting. Low bonus = steamrolling)

Humans are the ultimate opponents, though some more than others. Myself, I'm a good ally, but a weak opponent http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

I love it...

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

I haven’t seen it yet Phonix-D. Then again as SJ pointed out (man am I glad I read all the new posts first) the AI is only as smart as the modder who tells it how to build those designs. For me I just find the hole in the design and build ships to deal with it. Then you are right back to an optimal middle of the road design. Sorry Phoenix-D but I’m not buying it till I see it. “It” being an AI that can recognize the flaw in my middle of the road design and adjust its designs to counter and exploit that flaw.

SJ at a -999% chance to hit I’m not seeing how you are calculating such good odds for the P-D to hit. Can you drop your formula here? I might try the CBMod again when it comes out for SE5.

Maybe I should dust off SE4 and try a MP game after all… MP experience allowed Kana to point out a flaw in one of my component ideas and I haven’t even finished the TC yet! Or maybe when I get far enough I can do a MP to track errors in the TC!

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

The odds are good because the fire a lot. At 50 fire rate you get 20 shots a second. That means even with a -999 hit chance you still get an average of one hit every 2 seconds.

I see a few problems, though:

-In Starfury, very fast projectiles had a tendency to randomly explode before hitting. This might have carried over to SE5.
-SE5 might not calculate very low hit possibilities correctly

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

-999% should still equal 1% minimum.

The chance of scoring no hits at all in a volley of 50 shots is (0.99^50) = 0.605 Therefore the chance of scoring one or more hits is 39.5%.

The Poisson distribution will quickly find the value for exactly 1 hit, the probability of two or more hits is equal to the probability of one or more hits, minus the probability of exactly one hit.
Recursively, that finds all the probabilities I quoted.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

If your changing the stock file, you'll have to change the Bomblet missle PD weapon to use no ordinance, otherwise, at the high rate of fire you'll soon be shooting blanks.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Missiles are not part of this system.
They fail the 1% accuracy requirement.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

I’ll take your collective words for it especially since I am not a math type person. To me -999% is equal to -9.99 which multiplied by anything (but another negative) is still negative. If you are saying SE5 will force a round off to 1% because it won’t accept a negative number that large; than I will have to accept what you say as I certainly have no way of telling different without some type of testing. All I know about the way SE5 handles negatives now is that -90 (the largest negative I have used thus far) is calculated as a negative and not rounded off. Now why and more to the point what are you trying to make here? Leaky PD to me is PD which allows some missiles to get through and others are stopped cold turkey. As far as I know that is what is in the game now; it is certainly what I have created with my system for StarFire. It works fine on the fighters, shuttles, pinnace, IDW, and HAWK Pods I use and especially those large swarming missile (seekers) barrages. Let me stop and go back to my coffee! First cup-o-d-morning!

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Nono, after all the modifiers are added together (in this case, the -999% means that the result is ALWAYS negative), the game restricts the accuracy to the range of 1% to 99%.

Except in the case of SE4's talisman, which gives you 100% accuracy.
Even against planets, 1 in 100 shots will miss completely, but its fun to razz somebody over it anyways when playing hotseat http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

It does? Now that’s not so good, I have one weapon which falls into the negatives at >=220. No wait that is fine, if I follow you correctly this weapon will have a 1% chance to hit which is how it should be if the mounting unit can’t bring the negative to a positive. Good that actually puts one concern to rest. Now what is the difference between leaky PD and the current PD? Both appear the same except you are using volume to stop rounds, which might look cool on screen but as you pointed out all that flak flying may stress the system and have a negative impact. On older systems like mine that may mean the irritation factor would be high enough that I wouldn’t play a mod of this sort; depends on the actual impact.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Uhm, I thought I spelled the main benefit out very clearly...
(Lots of people quoted the post in its entirety too)

One missile might (13% chance) get through a storm of 4 PD. One PD gun might clear a pack of three missiles (1.5% chance).

With stock PD, it (almost) always kills the first N missiles in a pack, where N is proportional to the number of PD guns. All the rest get through... no luck or chance involved.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Almost is another way of saying sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.

And what you are proposing is leaky because? It just sounds like over engineering a very simple problem to me. The end effect is still the same and I have already done what you are proposing in my TC but I did it without the added complexity of 50ms fire rates and -999% to-hit ratios. Leaky to me is component A should always stop weapon X but with modding Weapon X may get through component A sometimes. Do I have this wrong? Is leaky in fact component A will stop weapon X sometimes and now with modding component A will stop weapon X sometimes but just not as much?

Now for the third time I am asking what is the difference between your leaky PD and the current PD. And note that I am not asking what is the benefit. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

In other words think of the HH universe where one side fires a missle broadside, the defending side fires counter missles and decoys and jammers preventing SOME but not all of the offensive missles. Rather then how it is now, where you just build a frigate or destroyer with nothing but PD and it can basically "clear the sky" of all (or at least most, depending on how many ships of the design you have in the battle) of the weapons. As it stands now it's like 1 pd will kill 1 missle, no questions asked. What he's proposing is a Phalanx type system that throws up a wall to stop incoming weapons where the PD may get lucky and stop it, or the missile may get lucky and still hit. And for the record, this is how I belive PD should be handled.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Well crap why didn’t he just so in the first place the first time I asked?_! I agree that is how it should work and by that standard (well it should be the standard in stock but its not) the current system is broke.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

I said "almost" because there are overkill issues and poor targetting strategies that can affect it.

Did you not read the statistical distributions I posted?
Compared to 99% chance of shooting down the first N missiles and then 0% chance of shooting down any more, that's pretty obvious.

I figured you were getting confused on something more subtle.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

No that would be it, nothing exciting or wonderful or colorful. I figured you were fudging the whole 99% hit thing due to frustration with me. If that is stock it needs replaced ASAP. No wonder I don’t play it.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

The underlying idea is that more shots with less accuracy is what is needed to spread the probability curve.
That combined with the fact that a small accuracy bonus becomes very significant when the total accuracy is low (consider 10% vs 5% accuracy) because of the accursed additive modifiers.

The only safe, low accuracy value is -999% to ensure everybody gets exactly 1%, and not 2% or 5% due to racial bonuses.

If only Aaron had gone with a better accuracy calculation, such as Accuracy = (Offense / (Offense+Defense))

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Is Aaron going to fix the problem with the most beneficial bonus not being used for some of the abilities? For example I have the engine in my TC that cuts missile damage down -90%. I also have a component that should reduce missile damage by -95%. The problem isn’t that SE5 is stacking (thank God!) the problem is that it doesn’t see the -95% is better and instead it uses the -90%. I reported it to Aaron but figured maybe something had been mentioned since I don’t see it in the patch log.

Re: SE V: Unique Abilities And Ideas
 

Heh. I betcha it is just using the biggest value, even though biggest isn't always best.