Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

All right, I'm going to take this one on, ideally to be combined into the SF Crossover. GOLD only however, as it needs elements of the next gold patch, namely the mount changes.

Now, I can do the data files. I can do passable AIs. What I probably can't do is race styles, and I *certainly* can't do race portraits!

Also, if anyone has any input I've love to hear it. I have all the books, and will be using them as referenes (esp. the tech bible section at the end of some!) but any ideas/opinions on exactly how to impliment would be great.

Thus far, concept stage:
-I'll be sticking true to the sizes. In other words, send a BB against a DN, expect the DN to die. Send FOUR BCs against a DN, expect the BCs to die. Quickly. Balanced by the fact that capital ships are much, much harder to build.

-Most missiles will be drones with short ranged one-shot weapons or ramming warheads. Ghost Rider missiles will have *one* strategic movement point, simulating their longer range. All drones with have a very small supply storage; use em or loose em.

-LACs replace fighters. This means LACs can't fire laser-head missiles. Ideas on how to get around this?

-Mounts will be useable on ANY ship- but ideally the larger mounts will have drawbacks that make them prefered in capital ships (large supply usage)

-supply system: reactors will simply be supply storage. This is a reactor+it's fuel supply, so it's assumed that if the reactor goes so does the fuel. Energy weapons and engines will use quite a bit of supply, so the player will have to be careful about budgeting it. Nothing else will store supply, so the ships will always need at least one reactor.

-Propulsion system: right now it looks like this: There are two Impeller Rings, Alpha and Beta. These give standard movement points and are limited to one per ship. The mount system will be used to vary the power levels and restrict access to various nodes (you can't put a SD node in a DD, the thing would tear itself to bits).

-the wedge: I'm out of ideas here..SE4 doesn't seem to allow this. May just have to give the nodes a certain amount of shield generation or ECM.

Inertial Compensators will probably give extra combat movement points. No sails, since there is no hyper in SE4. Alternatively they may be WP openers/closers, but I don't care for this one.

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Well, um, you could get the feel of hyperspace by distributing an edited map with a number of nebulae sectors which render shields useless.

Also, might be nice to stick in the grav lance and the energy torps as in 'The Short Victorious War' (or was it one of the other ones?) So you have a massive shield depleter or something that takes hideous amounts of time to reload, and then torps that do a lot of damage but only to unshielded targets. And make sure everyone has shield tech so they can't complain http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

It would be really cool if you could replicate the effects of the nodes in combat, because in tactical combat at least you would then have to really manoeuvre for ideal firing position. But there aren't any shield arcs in the game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

I would suggest that you mark out the speed difference between the classes for combat, because while the bigger ships survive by sticking to a wall formation and drenching the opposition in missiles, the smaller ships depend on their manoeuverability to survive. Maybe gently nudge their defensive bonus?

I like the idea of the mount system for the propulsion system.... you can buy more speed but it'll cost you space and bucks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif But you might want to give them a heck of a damage resistance because otherwise it will be real easy to cripple ships.

One other thing I like the idea of is adding a Damage Control Parties component to the ship. Sort of a scaled-down Version of a Repair Bay.

That's all the idea I have at the moment....

[EDIT] spelling

[ June 19, 2002, 03:16: Message edited by: Marvin Kosh ]

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

The hyperspace map thing is too limited, really, and still doesn't quite fit.

There is no "can't hurt shields" damage type in SE4. So the energy torps (from On Basilk Station BTW) would have to be toned down in power.

I suppose I could make all weapons EXCEPT the torps do 4x to shields, then have the torps skip armor..

re: the nodes: I'm probably going to make them provide high amounts of ECM, simulating the fact that you can't hit a third of the ship. And after all, in the HH universe if you lose the wedge in combat.. you're screwed. Loosing a lot of ECM would hurt pretty badly too.

The smaller ships do tend to manuver more, probably because the *can* manuver more, where the others tend to close in for massed PD fire. So the smaller ships will have higher inherent ECM, and the larger ships will want to use the Wall formation (or varients) for the extra missile defense.

The nodes will be pretty big; I'm representing the entire system in two parts, so those parts will be bulky. Engine destroyers don't really fit HH tech anyway, so they'll probably be out.

Phoenix-D

[ June 19, 2002, 03:22: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

First of all, great news that you are taking on this diffcult task. I can't wait to try it out. I would be glad to help, but I have no SE4 mod experince. I could beta test or anything else to help. I love the books and have read it twice through. One question, I thought a DN was bigger then a BB (only the Peep's used BB, and they were for system garrision. Only massed for space combat as an idea to give the Peep's some fodder.) But in your example you said DN vs BB, DN dies ?

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't think that you would be able to get around this with missles being drones, sense units can't launch stuff (though i could be wrong). What you might have to do instead is just have a normal missle for fighters (rocket pods), lower the amount of damage and lower the to hit % so ships could still doge. Remember that LACs wheren't realy use effectivly till the Manties came up with the fore and aft side walls and the LAC carrier. Not to mention the stealth techology so they could get in close to be effective. Till then, they where mostly Last ditch, system defence ships.

I like the Missle = Drones idea. Don't forget that each ship class has a diffrent size missle (not to mention how much ammo they hold) which relates to the damage the missles do. Example would be that a DDs missle is way smaller than a DNs. But where a DN would laugh if a DDs missle hit it, the DD would more or less just disapair if hit by a DNs cap missle. I know one of the books (hard cover?) shows the relations of ship to each other and the size relation of missle for the diffrent ship sizes.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">RWittman, right. the BB would lose to a DN. BBs are smaller than DN, but bigger than BCs. You are right about the 4 BC vs a DN. I love that account where Edward Pierre and his 2 BC division got wiped out by that lone DN (see: The Short Victorious War).

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

"But in your example you said DN vs BB, DN dies ? "

Uh.. TYPO! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Yeah, you're correct.

"Remember that LACs wheren't realy use effectivly till the Manties came up with the fore and aft side walls and the LAC carrier. Not to mention the stealth techology so they could get in close to be effective. Till then, they where mostly Last ditch, system defence ships."

Right, but it's those LACs that relied more on the missile launchers. Eggshells with sledgehammers.

"I know one of the books (hard cover?) shows the relations of ship to each other and the size relation of missle for the diffrent ship sizes."

Got it, using it. They'll be different sized drones, with different sized warheads, ECM mounts, armor/shield (probably shield) etc. Nothing will stop a DD from using a SD's missiles, but it won't be able to carry many of them.

"I love that account where Edward Pierre and his 2 BC division got wiped out by that lone DN (see: The Short Victorious War)."

In one salvo no less..oopsie on their part. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

OK, mounts cannot effect engine speed.. time to think up another propulsion system.

EDIT: got it. This system won't be able to stop a DD from using an SD's nodes.. but I can probably just make the SD's nodes HUGE, so the DD can't really use them.

The 'one per vehicle' restriction works by component family, and it works even if the components are seperated by unrelated components.

So it'll look like:
Small Impeller Drive I-V
Small Beta Node Ring I-V
Impeller Drive I-V
Beta Node Ring I-V
Large Impeller Drive I-V
Large Beta Node Ring I-V
Capital Impeller Drive I-V
Captial Beta Node Ring I-V

The larger the system, the more speed you get, and the worse the supply usage is. And you won't be able to mount more than one Impeller Drive or Beta Node Ring, because they're all the same family. This will confuse the living hell out of the AI, but oh well.

Suggestions on names?

Phoenix-D

[ June 19, 2002, 21:18: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Um I think I'm lost. I'm think that the Impeller Ring and Nodes (the drive) are 2 diffrent things. The Ring holds the Nodes right?

What about doing it this way.

Have you concidered using SJ Propulsion system (forget the name. Bigger ship = more engines needed for same movment). IMO this would work well concidering that, while all ships in HH are suppose to reach the same top speed, smaller ships are able to accelrate faster than bigger ships (its in the tech bible).

So propulsion would works like this.

Each ship has to have an Alpha and Beta Impeller Ring (required) that gives you a standard +1 movment point. The size could very depending on the size of the ship or not. I think thats what your getting at with the Small Impeller Node Ring, Imperller Node Ring and Larg Impeller Node Ring, right? If so you could simply name them; DD Impeller Rings, BC Impeller Rings, DN Impeller Rings and so on. While I don't know how to stop someone from using a DD ring on a DN you can make a minaiml size requirement so it can not fit on a smalle ship (which might be a good reason to just have them all the same size, but where the fun in that http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ). You could also think about having a Impeller Drive reasurch field which is seperate from the normal propulsion field.

Next the Nodes, which if I understand it right, will be like (and work like) normal SE4 engines, just change the name. You could either keep the same size for all the node regardless of the ship size or not. But I don't remember their being any diffrent sizes for DD nodes or DN nodes. I could be wrong, but if i remember correctly how fast a ship was able to accelrate related to not how big its nodes where but how they where placed on the Impeller Ring (you could only space them so close together, but you only had so much hull space to work with). Any of that make sense? My guess is that you would want Alpha and Beta Nodes in which case you might be able to have a requirment of equal number of Alpha and Beta Nodes on the ship. (But the only thing diffrent between Alpha and Beta Nodes is the name)

Thier would have to balance with price/size and how fast you want the ships to move. But I think it could work.

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

"Um I think I'm lost. I'm think that the Impeller Ring and Nodes (the drive) are 2 diffrent things. The Ring holds the Nodes right?"

Yes, but right now they're combined into one unit for the sake of simplicity.

"Have you concidered using SJ Propulsion system (forget the name. Bigger ship = more engines needed for same movment). IMO this would work well concidering that, while all ships in HH are suppose to reach the same top speed, smaller ships are able to accelrate faster than bigger ships (its in the tech bible)."

This results in higher top speeds with more engines; I'm not sure you can just slap more nodes in the HH system..you can make them more powerful but add more?

"ship has to have an Alpha and Beta Impeller Ring (required) that gives you a standard +1 movment point. The size could very depending on the size of the ship or not."

Can be varied depending on the NODE size, but not the ship size. SE4 doesn't go there.

"I think thats what your getting at with the Small Impeller Node Ring, Imperller Node Ring and Larg Impeller Node Ring, right? If so you could simply name them; DD Impeller Rings, BC Impeller Rings, DN Impeller Rings and so on. While I don't know how to stop someone from using a DD ring on a DN you can make a minaiml size requirement so it can not fit on a smalle ship (which might be a good reason to just have them all the same size, but where the fun in that )."

Can't restrict them based on ship sizes other than making them not fit; it's why I'm calling them small-Capital rather than DD-SD. It would look a little weird seeing a SD with a DD impeller drive..

"You could also think about having a Impeller Drive reasurch field which is seperate from the normal propulsion field."

The impeller drive field IS the propulsion field in this mod http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Well, I suppose there are reaction thrusters, but those are so limited I'm not going to bother moding them.

"Next the Nodes, which if I understand it right, will be like (and work like) normal SE4 engines, just change the name. You could either keep the same size for all the node regardless of the ship size or not. But I don't remember their being any diffrent sizes for DD nodes or DN nodes. I could be wrong, but if i remember correctly how fast a ship was able to accelrate related to not how big its nodes where but how they where placed on the Impeller Ring (you could only space them so close together, but you only had so much hull space to work with)."

It depends on the node's *power* IIRC; and I think you're right in that you can't just go slapping nodes wherever you want. Which is why the node ring idea; it doesn't feel right to me to just put in more impeller nodes for more speed. You could have a DN filled with nothing but alpha nodes that way.

"Any of that make sense? My guess is that you would want Alpha and Beta Nodes in which case you might be able to have a requirment of equal number of Alpha and Beta Nodes on the ship. (But the only thing diffrent between Alpha and Beta Nodes is the name)"

Can't be done- you can't require a ship to have anything other the Bridge, Life Support, Crew Quarters, Fighter Bays, Cargo Bays, or colony modules. The Alpha and Beta nodes are different according to Ashes of Victory's tech drawings- the betas are much smaller.

Not sure I follow your system though. If all the impeller drive unit did was provide one movement point.. why bother mounting it?

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

I thought that the real limiting factor on acceleration was the inertial compensator. I'm thinking that most warships could push a much higher gee level, but the inertial compensator can only produce so much "compensation" else the crew turns to goo.

I remember that as nodes were damaged in combat, the ships speed would be reduced. I belive that you could lose a few nodes with no loss of acceleration, but after that it would have an impact.

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Right, but try modeling that in SE4.. I haven't come up with a way yet. SE4 doesn't do acceleration, and the IC allows fast acceleration.

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

OK, it's going.. I have the propulsion system set up, and I'm working on getting the armor and sidewalls right.

The hardest part is the scale; I've already bumped the size of the smaller ships up a bit, but creating components to go in ships that range from 80 kt to 8000 kt is a pain!

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Sidewalls are still being a pain in the butt.

Question: what's the amount of time you'd consider reasonable to make a high-tech SD? Right now I've got SDs that take upwards of half a decade to build (when filled with standard SE4 tech and my Impeller system)

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

I think it should be more like 2-3 years. The space yards in HH are much larger then in SEIV, can the limit of one per planet be changed or maybe just the total amount of resources built per turn be raised.

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Can be done. Aren't most of the major yards off-planet? So the faster yards will probably be space station based.

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

It can be done. SJ did it for P&N. Basically, you build something called a "Space Yard Extension" or some such. Then you UPGRADE the extension into a full shipyard. You need to talk to SJ for the details, though.

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

I didn't say "can't" dumbluck, but that doesn't really fit anyway.. at least from what I can tell

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

I thought all SY were orbital anyway. If you want the pop mod you need to be on a high pop planet.

If you look at the Grayson Space Navy as an example. They have few SY (Blackbird being the largest) yet they produce lots of SD's and the like. Remenber that the GSN had more SD(p)'s than the RMN and all of those were produced in just a few years.

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

I don't know how much this might help in the race designs or anything, but it might give some help with components...
Anyway, I stumbled across this site and thought I would post it in case it would be of help to someone!

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~tpope/misc/...ious-list.html

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

I don't know how much this might help in the race designs or anything, but it might give some help with components...
Anyway, I stumbled across this site and thought I would post it in case it would be of help to someone!

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~tpope/misc/...ious-list.html

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Nice site, though it's slightly out of date.

"I thought all SY were orbital anyway. If you want the pop mod you need to be on a high pop planet."

I can't make them ALL orbital, otherwise you'd never be able to build ships! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Probably the first thing a player will want to do is build a space yard. The planetary yards will be quite slow except on large worlds with large amounts of space devoted to shipbuilding.

RWittman: there is another problem with the yards. Most HH universe yards produce more than one ship be yard; they've massive beasts.

Space Empires ship yards can only work on ONE thing a turn. Haven't figured out how I will address that yet..

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

How about more efficient space yards for bases? 400-450kT to keep 'em off ships for the first bit of the game, but allow them on space stations. Have a build rate of 2000-3000 min/org/rads per "month". Now your planetary yards have a "reasonable" build speed to get players going, but then the "good" build speed will be acheived from those gargantuan space yards.

[ July 10, 2002, 00:33: Message edited by: jimbob ]

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Probably what will happen.

Mines: in The Short Victorious War, these things sound like missiles with quick-burn engines and cloaking devices. I dislike the standard SE4 mine system, so I probably will do one of two things:

-Make components that let drone missiles be used as mines
-Make the SATELITES the mines

they both have their problems. Sat mines won't be able to move, and will be unable to attack unless the enemy is stupid enough to get in range. Drone mines will enable any ship with missile launchers to "fire" mines. No dedicated minelayers.

I'm waiting to see what the new component mounts can do before going too far; I may just make three sizes of armor and then use armor mounts to make them bigger for larger ships.

Sidewalls are STILL giving me problems. The crystalline ability would be ideal, but it's not playing nice; it's only regening the shields when a hit reduces the shields to 0 and damages something inside. OK, fine; but I've also managed to make ships totally invulnerable this way..ooops. Crystalline ability plus no-breach component damage = component damage VANISHES. In other words, if you pound an 90 Kt armor component down to 1 KT, the shield regnerates 89 KT. Fine, works as expected. The thing is, if the next shot doesn't breach the shields, that damage disappears. ARRRRRRRRG.

Weapons: "Down the throat" and "up the kilt" shots will be represented by special components that totally skip shields. On the bad side, they'll also have a really obscene negative to-hit- probably an average of 30% less chance to hit than the equivilent normal weapon. Each weapon will have several size variations.

Energy torpedos: these are useless against sidewalls. SE4 doesn't have a damage type that works like that! Two options: either make every other component 4x damage to shields and the torps *not*, or the energy torps will be inaccurate and skip shields- in other words, "down the throat" weapons only.

Grav Lance: will burn out sidewall generators totally.

One thing: on the weapons and armor, they're two options. 1: use mounts to represent the more powerful armor and weapons on larger ships. Two: use the same system as the sidewalls. I.e. each type of armor or weapon has variations in size, say:
Laser 50cm 1-10 (or 50cm Laser 1-10)
Laser 100cm 1-10
Laser 150cm 1-10
Laser 200cm 1-10
Laser 250cm 1-10
Laser 300cm 1-10
etc
I'm using 1-whatever because that seems to fit the universe better.. and because I'm going to have really obscene numbers of tech levels for some stuff. Hence the lack of Roman numerals. XII is bad enough. Imagine XXX. or worse, XXXXVIII. Looks like a freaking Bolo novel.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

The early game will be cheap, and tech will come fast and easy.. but once you start getting into the upper 20s you'll be feeling the hurt even on Low tech cost. Not sure how high I'll go.

Opinions on any of this?

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

{EDIT} WOW IM STUPID, Shiva Option is from Starfire, wow im figured out now! Gotta go read two sets of books haha

Sadly, I've only read "The Shiva Option" but i think it would be really cool, once this is all done to some scnearios, like the start of the bug war (before Shiva) and then some mini scenarios, like the battle for Justin (and put these mini battles in 3 or 4 system galaxies) or the attack on Home Hive 1 and the retreat/ambush. or the battle where they meet the "old enemies" Star Federation?

Also, how are you going to do things like primary packs? i wish you could specify what something targets. What is the grav lance? Is it the little projectile that accelerates to something like 30% of c?

While anyway, i'm terribly confused as to which universe shiva is set in and where all the rest of the books fall in. If someone coudl please set me straight that would be lovely.

And one Last thought... You could make gunboats (jump capable of course, but not able to be held in ships racks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif ) by requiring only a bridge, or a specific component (cause you really don't need to living comps, you could make one of them into Life +crew quarters, and the other into something else you want to require) adn then set them at a low size with inherent move bonus' and other stuff.

More questions, i just can't stop... how about suicide riders, both SRHAWK and the bug Versions that are LC's(?) and what about interpentration? I guess some of this has to be given up because this just can't be done with the current engine.

ahhhh, of to find more of the books...

[ July 12, 2002, 03:21: Message edited by: Skulky ]

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

I am going to have to hurt you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I haven't read Shiva Option yet!

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Honor Harrington is a girl?!? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

I heard some much about these Weber books from you people on the forum and decided to check it out. Weber and his publisher, Baen Books, has graciously (and smartly I think) put the first book (Basilik Station) in the series on their free Online library. Read the first couple chapters and it looks very interesting. Probably going to have to pick this one up.

Geoschmo

[ July 12, 2002, 19:03: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Heh...

I just read those two free books in the Last few days. Interesting technical universe. I like it. It's much more realistic then Treknology, but it's different from the usual 'gritty' war story universe like Starship Troopers.

Honor Harrington herself is Horatio Hornblower recast (note the initials!) if the books hold true to the form of the first two through the entire series. She keeps getting promotions to 'unusual responsibility' for her age and sets to work uncovering the secret machinations of the enemy or enemies. Once she's figured things out, the enemy has to play his hand and it's broadside after broadside until both sides are reduced to shreds, with Honor Harrington winning by a smidge. She's gonna need a new ship for every novel. She always finds a reason to use her superior strength (from growing up on a high gravity world) to smack some men around, too.

[ July 12, 2002, 19:59: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

If you have not read the Harrington novels, and you are a fan of Military Sci-Fi, then you are missing out on some very good books.

In a nutt-shell, Honor (chick hero) gets into some really bad situation(s), kicks someones butt, gets deeper into the bad situation, gets her own behind kicked, finds and implements a nearly impossible solution that will get a lot of people killed yet save the world/star system/galaxy and then gets a promotion or somehow becomes a significant politician/ruler/leader on a planet that she saves. Occasionally she gets her eye shot out or an arm broken/amputated, but basically she wins in every book.

Oh....one more thing...She has a six legged cat that enjoys eating celery and killing Honor's enemies.

I really look forward to the HH mod but I am wondering how they will implement the Tree Cats into the Mod.

Cheers!
Trajan

[ July 12, 2002, 20:10: Message edited by: Trajan ]

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Hey Geoschmo,

Honor Harrington isn't a girl, she's a War Goddess!!!

Anybody hear anything about the next book in the HH series, it's due out in Nov...War of Honor!!! I just started playing Space Empires again,...alot, and I also just got done reading Shiva Option (I read almost all of Weber's stuff!), so I thought to myself, this would make some great mods, but somebody already thought of it!

The Fifth Imperium series would be cool as well, with those huge planetiods. Dalhak would cool!

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

"She's gonna need a new ship for every novel."

Pretty much. As far as mass destruction goes, you ain't seen nothing yet..

And no, I'm not touching the treecats with a ten foot pole. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Yes, my universe was very much influenced by the Honorverse, but it seems to have taken a bit of a turn. The dang game won't cooperate! All the action keeps happening where Jager isn't!

[ July 12, 2002, 23:09: Message edited by: sachmo ]

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

this is being one momumental PITA..

Right now I have a serious problem. If I keep the launchers small enough that little ships can use them, the BIG ships can fire a really obscene numbers of missiles. SE4's combat system doesn't handle that very well..

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Phoenix, with the next patch there is something that should help. It gives you the capability for a mount to have a max tonnage as well as the minimum you are used to using. You could make a mount for the seekers that only works for smaller hulls and reduces the size of the missle component. This is exactly what we had in mind when we suggested this change.

If you don't like that though you could also put an arbitrary limit on the number of missle comps allowed. The most you can do there is ten per ship. That would keep the big ships from cramming them on. That's in the next patch too, if it's not already enabled in 1.67. I can't remember right now.

Geoschmo

[ July 14, 2002, 15:18: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

But it isn't normal missile comps he is using. He has modded drones so they are now missiles.

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Zero is correct, the ships are firing drones. And since a drone launcher will fire a 15kt drone just as easily as a 3kt one, I'm having problems getting things right.

Limiting the launchers to ten per ship or five per ship would help somewhat, but that's still 5 missiles fired *per combat turn* per ship. It ends up with so many drones that they not only slow things down drasticlly, they get in each other's way!

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Ok, well you can also use the mounts for the drone launchers. Same principle. The launcher would launch the same number, but the smaller ships would have a mount that made them take up less space on the ship. You can use mounts for non weapons now. And with the new patch you will be able to specify families that mounts can only be used for, so you could limit the mount to only the launcher comp.

Geoschmo

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Hmm. That has potential.

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Make it one component per ship,a nd have increasing tech levels make the component larger and larger, with more and more capacity for per-turn launches.

IOW, DroneMissile Launcher I is 20kT, launces one per turn.

Launcher II is 30kT, launces two per turn.

Launcer III is 40 kT, launches 3 per turn.

And so on, maybe up to a Launcher X, which pops out ten each turn, but weighs over 100kT. Back them up with enhanced cargo capacity, and you get low ROF, high-ammo ships.

Just as an idea ...

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Basiclly combine all the launcher on the ship into one? Also a possibility, though I'm not sure I like that one very much..

I'm not using mounts for weapons, except maybe the missile launchers. The Grasers, for example, currently are:

100cm Graser
150cm Graser
200cm Graser
400cm Graser
600cm Graser (which weighs 300kt and does 1300 damage http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif )

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

This is an example of the sort of situation where seperate 'supplies' and 'ordnance' would be useful. You could have 'missile magazines' and 'missile launchers' as seperate components. Only the magazines would have ordnance storage. The launchers would just have the ability to fire. You could then play the same 'fire power or staying power' balancing game as you see described in the HH books. But we'd also need a far larger combat map and a vastly greater missile range to account for the differences between missile and energy weapons in the HH universe.

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Baron, I already have everything you've mentioned.

-No storge in the launcher, so you must have space for the drones you fire.
-Drones can be fired from anywhere in combat, so they greatly outrange the longest seeker or beam weapon
-Missile range can be extended by giving the drones strategic move- allowing missile bombardment from one or two sectors away.

The other big issue right now is how do I stop the player from putting 50000 missiles on a planet then firing them all at the first enemy to come by..

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

So a drone launcher is called a 'missile tube' in your mod, huh? You could add a small missile component that only targets drones and call it 'anti-missiles' or 'point defense missiles' too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif But I hope your missile launchers are all only one per turn, with possibly a 'special tech' that allows a large and expensive launcher to do more than that.

How big are the drones in your mod? Have you shrunk them to fighter size or are they still 100+ kt?

The thing about using drones as missiles is that they have no range limit at all, so anywhere on the combat map is 'in range' for missiles. Kinda messes up the strategic maneuvering issue. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I hope MM will extend missile range another 10 squares even in SE IV, and of course expand the combat map and all weapons ranges even more in SE V.

The AI problem is another reason that drones as missiles is not such a good idea. I have noticed that ALL drones will be launchd on any planet when it is attacked. Argh... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

"So a drone launcher is called a 'missile tube' in your mod, huh? You could add a small missile component that only targets drones and call it 'anti-missiles' or 'point defense missiles' too. But I hope your missile launchers are all only one per turn, with possibly a 'special tech' that allows a large and expensive launcher to do more than that."

Counter Missiles actually. Along with PD lasers and (early tech) PD Autocannons.

"How big are the drones in your mod? Have you shrunk them to fighter size or are they still 100+ kt?"

3-15kt. (Keep in mind the ship sizes are 100-8000kt)

"The thing about using drones as missiles is that they have no range limit at all, so anywhere on the combat map is 'in range' for missiles. Kinda messes up the strategic maneuvering issue."

"I hope MM will extend missile range another 10 squares even in SE IV, and of course expand the combat map and all weapons ranges even more in SE V."

Yup. I STILL would have to use drones though. You can't make a standoff missile warhead, it has to come into contact.

"The AI problem is another reason that drones as missiles is not such a good idea. I have noticed that ALL drones will be launchd on any planet when it is attacked. Argh... "

Oh great. It's still the only way though.

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Grav Lance? Energy Torpedo? ECM that works on seekers?

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

ECM working on seekers is taken care of because I'm not USING seekers.

Grav lance is easy- it kills sidewall generators.

E Torps are.. a pain. SE4 doesn't have a "can't hurt shields" damage type..

Right now I'm waiting on the patch because as SE4 is right now this isn't working.

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

so how do sidewalls work? just as shields? do drone warheads (missiles, i presume) skip shields? maybe they should be shields that regenerate 100% per turn. do engines generate their own shields?

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

1. Currently sidewalls work like so:
They generate, say, 200 shield. (Capital ships use Phased shields)
They RE generate equal to half their initial level (so, 100)

The drive components have crystaline shield ability. Bigger the drive, the higher the effect, and it's big effect. So when your shields are breached, they'll be restored.. IF the shot didn't damage an engine component. If it did, you are in serious trouble.

2. Drone warheads are direct-fire weapons that fire from 4-5 spaces out (laser heads) to 1 space (contact nuke). They don't skip shields.

3. Most any weapon can be made to skip shields by using a special varient component. This simulates a shot down the open throat of the ship's wedge. The problem is these components have a nasty negative to-hit.

Phoenix-D

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

Let me rephrase that. ECM that works on missiles

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think he's referring to some sort of ECM that affects seekers ability to hit. We've been asking MM to do this for a long time. He doesn't seem to want to do it.

The next patch will have a damage type 'Quarter Damage to Shields' which will provide quite a serious penalty against shields. This sounds like a good simulation of 'sidewall' deflection of energy weapons.

And... you could use the 'Only Shield Generators' damage type to create a Grav Lance. Too bad SE doesn't have shield facings and you have to knock out ALL of the shield generators to get a clear shot.

[ July 27, 2002, 19:58: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Honor Harrington Mod Discussion
 

"I think he's referring to some sort of ECM that affects seekers ability to hit. We've been asking MM to do this for a long time. He doesn't seem to want to do it."

Again, I'm not using seekers so this is no problem. The missile (drone) warheads are direct fire..

(in other words, if you want to rant on unrelated stuff, please don't hijack this thread with it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif )

Phoenix-D