New mod, looking for ideas
 

Ok, I know everyone and their grandmother is working on a new mod, but I seriously got a good one I'm working on.

I am rewriting the entire Data Files... That's right, the entire data files.

The major changes I am working on are as follows:

Ships and fighters now use pretty much all the same components, in my mod fighters will be short range combat ships, smaller guns shorter range, incredible maneuvarability, whereas ships will be long range combat platforms, bigger guns longer range slower less maneuvarable.

Ships and fighters will use the same weapons, ships will get mounts that increase the range size and damage, fighters will get mounts that decrease the range size and damage.

Fighters: 50-100 kt
Ships: 200-2000 (normal ships, carriers will be done away with, their pictures will be used for something else)

Fighters will have no shields, shields will be massive components generating somewhere around 1000 shields. There will be no phased shields, only phased weapons. Since if you add a phased shield ability comp to a ship, there will be a component under AI "Shield Adapter" which will add phased ability. There will be missiles and torps called siheld fraggers that will take out 1000 shield points per hit.

Engines have ben devided into two comps, engines (standard movement, higher levels less feul, no feul storage) and drive systems (bonus movement like solar sail higher levels more feul storage greater speed)

Feul storage decreased in size.

I will also be reworking the facilities to give less resources so fighters will be even more important. ships will be very expensive and thus very very valuable.

Combat sensors: Lidar
Ecm: stays ecm

There will be various other tracking devises.

Cloaking will stay, but as stealth armor and what not.

Facilities will take longer to build, thus planetary raids will be more important.

I am also looking for more ideas and advice.

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

Apparently, system-wide abilities will work if modded into components.

How about having only 10 or 20 shield points directly generated by each shield generator component. For a ship to have more shields than that, it must be supported by a ship with a "Shield transmitter" component, which uses the "Energy Transmission Lens" ability to add shield points to every friendly ship in the system.

Your mod is also starting to sound a little like my "Space is Big" suggstion. Zip down to the long post I made on http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/For.../002664-4.html


Can't wait to play it...

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SE4 Code:
L GdY $ Fr- C- Sd T!+ Sf-- Tcp-- A% M>M+ MpD! RV Pw Fq+ Nd- Rp+ G-
/SE4 Code
Go to my meagre SEIV pages to generate your own code.

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

Ok, new info:

As stated fighters will have no shields whatsoever. Shields will be a ship defense thing (going along with the whole ships are mainly intersteller transports/heavy guns platforms)

shields will still generate aroud 1000 (maybe lower once I actually finish shielding) shield points (one per ship) then there will be shield enhancer comp (very very large) will be available. This will beef up shields big time (shield dusrupters will still be in) There will be no shield regenerators, regen disrupts the whole view of shields in the mod. Armor will play a major role.

Ships will have a lot less importance in space combat (you could make a massive battleship, but in the end it would probably lose out to a carrier) Fighters will have really good offense/defense bonus so it will be really hard to hit fighters with anything but other fighters and flak cannons (pretty week)

Armor will be a lot more prevelant. A lot. Probably going with three types of armor:
10 space 20 hp
1 space 15 hp
5 space 18 hp

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ZeroAdunn:
10 space 20 hp
1 space 15 hp
5 space 18 hp<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

holy rusted metal, batman! what are the resoure costs on those things?

edit: im guessing repair is a big part of the mod as well. if shield generators give 1000 points each, what does the booster give? 5K? what are the mainstray of weapons, and can their resource consumption Last them thru more than one battle?

------------------
"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

[This message has been edited by Puke (edited 24 September 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Puke (edited 24 September 2001).]

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

It depends, haven't decided yet. Probably cheep, maybe equall to the hit points. Why?

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

it just seems that at those numbers, no one would take the 10KT armor, and if they had very good repair ships traveling with the fleet, they might not even take the 5. If you are sticking with those numbers, i would consider makeing the resource cost porportional to a power or multiple of the protection value, to ballance out the less efficient armors a bit more.

------------------
"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

i like that idea, but it would need some tuneing. if you make shield generators minimal, and put the majority of the power on the transmitters, then all your ships will have the same shields. frigates will have the same shield rating as a baseship.

of course, larger ships could make up the difference with regenerators or armor or something. but would this not also make for some hella-strong fighters? maybe you could take away shields for fighters, but that might spoil the spirit of the original mod.

------------------
"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

Planet WP's should have larger shields, more and heavier armor and gun mounts with farther distance then ships.
Since they are planet bound, they wouldn't have the space limitations of ships. I know one of the other mods, (can't remember off hand who's) increase range of planet bound WP's so seekers couldn't just sit off and glaze a planet. This is one area that should be patched in SE4, planets should make you pay to take them out. Don't make your anti ftr PD's to weak or your ftrs will be to strong and take away from the game. Maybe look into anti-ftr seekers, short range, Ships costly ok, but it sounds like your making it into a ftr vs ftr mod. If you can't afford large ships, then your ftrs have no one to fight except other then ftrs the majority of the time. You need the ships, what you might want to do is keep cost down on say up to BC's, BB's, DN's, BS',
cost more long time to build but butt kickers. this way your fleets would have Task forces built around a few of the heavies

just some ideas mac


[This message has been edited by mac5732 (edited 25 September 2001).]

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

I see your point about the armor. I will go in reverse hitpoints order. the easiest to repair will cost 10, the next 13, the next 16. (trust me it adds up)

Secondly I am making repair yards a little larger. Possibly more expensive too.

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>10 space 20 hp
1 space 15 hp
5 space 18 hp

easiest to repair will cost 10, the next 13, the next 16<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
That gives you:
&lt;Armor&gt;: &lt;protection&gt;, &lt;cost&gt;, &lt;repair rate&gt;
10KT armor: 2.0 hp/KT, $0.5/hp, 160 hp/turn
5KT armor: 3.6 hp/KT, $0.72/hp, 144 hp/turn
1KT armor: 15.0 hp/KT, $1.06/hp, 120 hp/turn

You definitely need to boost the protection Ratings of the big armors, or lower the 1KT armor.
- the 10KT armor has the same hitpoints as an engine!!!
- the 5Kt armor is twice that, but still won't have much effect defensively.
- the 1KT armor is unnaturally strong (relative), with no penalties at all.
Also, if the point of the small armors was to make them harder to repair, you haven't accomplished that yet.
- I suggest that you decide what HP/KT rating you wish to give the armor, then decide what the cost to repair should be.
Then, Size is proportional to 1/ &lt;repaircost&gt;,
and Hitpoints = &lt;size&gt; X &lt;HP/KT rating&gt;

P&N has:
10KT: 5hp/KT, $1/hp, 400 hp/turn (Tech level 3)
3KT: 8hp/KT, $3/hp, 192 hp/turn (tech level 6)
1KT: 14hp/KT, $2/hp, 112 hp/turn (tech level 11)

EDIT: reworded, since it seemed a bit ... "aggressive".

PS:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>shields will still generate aroud 1000 (maybe lower once I actually finish shielding) shield points (one per ship) <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>You've got the "One per vehicle" restiction in mind for this, right?

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 26 September 2001).]

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

Yes, one shield per ship. (like I said there will be shield reinforcers) Also planetary shields will be very powerfull and if it is possible I will 1. Decrease the number of planets and 2. create another type of construct that doesn't require a sun (don't know if that is possible yet, if push comes to shove I will just make it a ship with low maintanence but takes for ever to build.)

I see what you mean about the armor. As for the enginge/armor thing, what makes you think I am going with the same engine setup?

I think I am going to go back down to just two types of armor, strong and weak.

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

My point is:
a) your 10KT armor is only as strong as standard SE4 engines.
b) those Standard SE4 engines are insignificant in terms of damage resistance.

Still, the armor is only twice as strong as any other internal component.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>I think I am going to go back down to just two types of armor, strong and weak.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>There is no need to make it simpler; why not have many types of armor, with each type having one great attribute at the cost of the others:
- Hitpoints/KT
- Cost/HP
- Repair rate
- resistance to specialty weapons (weapon/shield/engine destroyers, or even null-space)
- alternative resource cost (eg. organic armor/radioactive armor)

What I'm trying to say is that with the new shield thing you've got going, you need to keep the defensive options open.

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

Some ideas for players MODS to consider;

(1) CREW COMPARTMENTS ; Damage Control Training (Astro-Engineering). All crew members are trained to perform quick emergency repairs on damaged equipment.WORK IN NON COMBAT AS WELL.

(2) CREW SUICIDE &gt; boarding crew will sabotage ship making it explode. WEAKNESS - 3 spaces on ships.

(3) Anti Terrists Crew &gt; (Intell Engineering). negates all insurrections & rebellons acts by 90%. WEAKNESS - 3 spaces on ships.

(3) BOMBARDMENT WEAPONS &gt; Besides of normal weapons these BW do max damage ,ATOMIC DRIVER Example ; 1 shot destroyes 1 facility + pop + WP (all at the same time). Can only use in planetary damage.WEAKNESS &gt; SIZE & COST & SHORT RANGE.

(4) Optimized Hull Design. The opposite of NORMAL Hull Design, Optimized Hull Design is a process of squeezing the Last iota of efficiency out of a given configuration. The result is an effective increase in space on the ship. However, refits and repairs cost twice as much as normal, because the ship has been so heavily fine-tuned for its present design. Races whose military techs advance slowly and who do not often engage in battle are most likely to use this approach.

(5) Industrial Hardening. By applying this tecknologie, facilities are hard as diamond, which make it
seldom suffers from collateral damage by sabotage/earthquakes/etc?.

Anybody interested in some of these ideas, or making in a mode?.

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

i actually had an idea regarding the fighters using ship component thing, and the FTL travel / combat movement discussion below.

what if fighters as such were completely done away with, so that the concept of a small fighter no longer exists. turn fighters into ship sized things, that use ship components. essentially, take all the current ship hull sizes, and make them fighters. this means they can 'land' on planets, and 'dock' with stations and such. i dont know what happens when you try to have a fighter cary cargo, so transports and colony ships might have to be real ships.

so you have all these sub-light ships now, and they cant leave home. now you make some jumpships, using real ship hulls, that are massive (or at least have a massive cargo capacity) that can traverse warp points with your other ships in cargo. maybe the system-shield-booster thingy can only mount on real ships, so you have to stick it on one of your jumpships, but it boosts the shield of all the combat ships that are with it (ships that only have the little shield-reciever component)

what do you think, ZeroAdunn? anybody?

------------------
"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

Puke,

Excellent idea. I did a mod like this some time ago. Using the concept of motherships, very big, very slow, very fragile. The motherships were the only warp capable ships. I made jump engines size 500 for 1 movement point, consumed 500 supplies so they had to be refuelled a lot. Also very fragile engines, tonnage structure set really low, at 25. Space left over was mainly used for cargo. Big open spaces that did not help in defense (tonnage structure).

The motherships really did not have any weapons to speak of. They typically had a couple of engines and lots of cargo space to carry things. Oh, yeah usually some space dedicated for supply.

Their only use was to carry things through warp points. Since they were the only warp capable ships, they were very valuable.


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In difficult ground, press-on;
In encircled ground, devise stratagems;
In death ground, fight.
Sun Tzu (circa 400 B.C.)

Re: New mod, looking for ideas
 

Here's sorta what I am going for with fighters:

"Ultimately it was discovered that while the larger intersteller ships packed a punch and could take a hit, they were slow in combat and had trouble maintaining weapons lock as well as the older, system ships. The greater speed as well and increased maneuvarability gave them a greater chance of avoiding hits, and an even greater chance of hitting their targets."

Unfortunately these ships would require larger carriers to take them across warp points...