Travler
 

no, im not makeing a Travler mod, though it would be cool if someone would.

Rather, i have a question about some ship concepts from the game. Specifically, system defense boats. I have already modded engine systems that trade combat movement for real movement, but i want to take it a step further.

in Travler, system defense boats are non-jump capable ships that trade the mass required for jump engines for lots of guns and armor. to get from system to system, they can be ferried about by tenders, which are basically big jump engines that the ships can latch on to.

I would like to make a class of ship that can not jump. I realize that this can be done with fighters, and I would love to make a mod for the game that does away with traditional fighters and makes all ships very large ship-sized fighters. then traditional ships would be non-combat things that only exist to ferry the combat ships from system to system.

The problem with this method, is UNIT STACKS. i dont like the idea of all the ships being part of one huge stack. i dont like that its hard (or impossible) to control the size of the stack when using the launch order outside of tactical combat. i dont like the fact that you cant break up stacks of units once they are launched. ship managment is basically impossible on an individual level, if they are treated like fighters.

so i put the challenge to you: how do we model system defense boats, or non-warp-capable ships in se4? just give them zero strategic movement and call them sector defense boats? but that sort of sucks, and it would be nice for them to at least be able to move within the same system (even if they are towed or carried somehow) even if it is impractical to have them ferried between systems.

i thought about giving them movement, but no supply storage, so they could only move while fleeted. but that would not work for many, many reasons. I am having a really hard time figuring out how to make this happen.

About the only practical thing that i can come up with, is to give all warp points the SECTOR DAMAGE ability, and enough to destroy any ship outright. then give jump engines enough armor to soak the damage up. then make all weapons skip armor. then make all armor have the shield ability. then either do away with the idea of regular shields, or tweak it somehow. this would mean that only specific ships could jump, and dedicated system defenses would have to be constructed inside a system, once spaceyards are Online.

gimme some ideas. gimme some feedback. think of something better.

Re: Travler
 

As you know this is one of the most requested and attempted mod ideas. Everyone's favorite scifi mod from trek to B5 would benefit from some way to make ships that are restrictable from jumping. I just don't see a way to do it that I like.

Your sector damage idea is original, I will give you that much. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Not sure it's practical though. For one thing, wouldn't you have to do that manually? Or is there some way to modify the systemtype file to do that.

What if you just made them really slow in normal space. Only one sector per turn. You'd still have the problem with stacking though.

Although, even if ships could be blocked from warping that wouldn't meet your needs for system boats, cause they couldn't be ferried. What you need really is a class of drones that can be recovered and given orders like a ship.

Geoschmo

Re: Travler
 

Color me stupid but I don't see the point in constructing a ship that can't jump or use warp tech unless its a maintenance bot.

So you have a 'border patrol' ship. Some alien pops through a gate shoots and then pops out. That BP ship better be able to pop through same gate and pop the miscreant.

If you don't want the ship to use a gate - don't send it through one.

Or is that too simple? Help me out here. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: Travler
 

Elowan: Imagine that the jump engines (warp point open & warppoint close) weigh 400kT (same as spaceyard).

It would be the height of absurdity to put jump enignes on all of your ships: if you did, they would be useless in combat.

Instead, like the space yard, you have one ship in the fleet dedicated to the task of ferrying ships through warppoints.

Re: Travler
 

How did you mod the engines so ships have more strategic movement than combat movement?

I haven't been able to figure it out.

Re: Travler
 

I must admit that I have the same question as Elowan:
What would be the use of ships that can't leave the original system? Would this add something to the game we don't already have with the fighters and drones?

Re: Travler
 

For the current game as it is no, it wouldn't add a lot. But for those people that would like to do a scifi mod such as Trek, Traveller, or B5, having ships that are not capable of jumping is important. The mods can be, and have been, done without it. But you have to take "license" with the universe you are attempting to model and make the players do mental conVersions to accpet the SEIV system. Adding this flexibility would help those mods.

Re: Travler
 

Is it possible to create a ship that such that it only had enough supplys to move 12 or 18 sectors?
This won't stop it from leaving a system but it would restrict it's movement such that inter system travel would be impractical.
I personaly don't like to build a resupply depot in every system.

Re: Travler
 

you could do more with supply usage if weapons did not use supplies. then you could make a ship that only holds enough supplies to move one sector, but when fleeted with other ships it can move further.

I know the warp point damage thing hurts ships warping thru, and the system-center (black hole) damage only hurts ships *stopping* on that sector. how does storm sector damage work? if it only damages ships stopping there, 1MP ships could not move through, but 3 MP ships could move in, jump, and move out without taking damage.

I think the warp point damage is the best way to do this, but it has some real problems. to make a ship capable of passing through, since there is no component that protects ships from natural disasters, you will need lots of armor. enough to make a ship 'unkillable.'

so say you make a large component called a jump-engine or some such, that provides movement and also a few tens of thousands of armor points. to be able to fight these ships, you would have to get rid of normal armor in the game, and make all weapons skip armor. then you could use shields to represent armor, and phased shields to represent shields.

thats all workable, but here are the problems:

you wont actually be able to kill jump ships in any practicle fashion. you will leave them as hollowed out hulks with an in-tact engine. this would not be bad, if not for two things. one, they will continue to cost the owner maintenance. two, they will continue to blocade a planet if left in orbit of it.

as for what this adds to the game, it creates another choice for ship building. you will have to decide between having a ship with long range mobility, or having a ship that devotes all of its resources to combat. imagine if warp engines took up 1/2 or 2/3s of the space of a ship. then ships without warp engines would have double or tripple the mass to devote to armor and weapons. much more formidable in combat, but they cant leave home.

like i said, the ability to ferry these ships is entirely secondary to stoping them from leaving home. they could just be given a strategic movement of one or two, but then they would not have much of a chance of intercepting anything in-system.

Re: Travler
 

Storm damage hits when the ship enters the sector.

You could mod all the waepons so they don't use supply. If you do the supply thing you don't need the sector or warp damage. Then your "Warp Engine" is really just a standard engine with a huge amount of supply storage. Make it really big so you don't have room for anything else on the ship. Or make a hull with the storage built in and room for only engines. You'll want to disallow standard supply comps and definetly QR if you do this. You might even want to disallow or radically increase the cost of supply facilities. If the supply facs were disallowed you would have a "Warp Ship" that had a finite usable life span. You'd just have to destroy them when they were out of fuel. Your weapons ships wouldn't have to be destroyed though.

If you went with the damage idea instead I wouldn't have a problem with the damaged warp ship hull costing you maintenance because the rest of your navy would be zero maint units, correct? But personally I dislike the unit Version of this idea a lot because of the stacking issue.

Geoschmo

Re: Travler
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">no, this would be seperate from the unit thing. this would just be big warp engines that can suck up damage, and regular ships without armor that would get killed by the warp point. they would still cost you maintenance.

Re: Travler
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ah, ok.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Hey, give the Warp Engine the Destroy Planet ability, but with a zero for ability amount so it can't really destroy any planets. Then give players a reasonabley priced weapon with the damage type of "only planet destroyers" and some really horrendous damage amounts. So then they can destroy the warp engines. Or if they want to starve the enemy they couldd leave them to rot causing a maint drain.

Geoschmo

[ August 26, 2002, 20:46: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Travler
 

I've never tried this, but it is something I suggested for another mod.

If I understand correctly you want ships that can ferry other ships through jump gates. Some large ships do the ferrying for all other ships which can't jump?

Like I said, I don't know if this works.

Take out all of the events under the weakest Category of events. Either do away with them or put them in one of the other categories. Then fill it with the warp point close events...lots of them, and make it to where 100 such events happen every turn...something like that. I am pretty sure this can be done. I remember looking at the data files quite a while ago to see if it could and the likelihood was pretty good.

Then add warp point openers to the game which will only fit on certain ships using the new mounts. Open the warp point, fleet your ships with the what-did-you-call-them, and go through. Theoretically all warp points created will close the next turn.

Only problem I can see if it works is that you will have to keep a planet or a ship in all systems with other races to keep treaties with them. But that might be kinda cool, if you think of them as embassies. Can even mod in a Base that functions as an embassy.

Like I said, if it works.

Re: Travler
 

Base won't work. It has to be a planet or you lose contact. But you could mod the system files to produce systems with a lot more moons and allow those you want to remain friends with to colonize them. You don't even have to allow them in your homesystem, you just have to share at least one system with them.

I think someone tested this and couldn't get more than one event per turn per player, no matter how many they added to the file. I could be wrong about that though.

Geoschmo

[ August 26, 2002, 20:58: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Travler
 

hey, that warp point thing is a GOOD IDEA!

i think it would work, but the question is when they would close. in a simultanious game, would they close the same turn they are opened, or the next turn before movement, or at the end after movement.

events usually happen at the end of the turn, and stelar manipulation happens at the start. the question is if you have a turn in between, or not.

this would not stop other ships from going through, but it could stop them from opening their own warp points.

hey, this is good stuff, i will have to give it a shot.

Re: Travler
 

There is an effect amount of 1 under the warp point close. Wonder what happens if you change that to 100?

Or if you up the % in the settings file to over 100%?

Any ideas. Can't try them at work, sorry.

Re: Travler
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Fighter afterburners do that already - just use the same ability to create a combat-only movement bonus.

Re: Travler
 

"Fighter afterburners do that already - just use the same ability to create a combat-only movement bonus."

Except you will always have strategic/2 movement points PLUS any combat movement in combat.

Phoenix-D

Re: Travler
 

Tried my own suggestion and no matter what, I cannot get it to close one single WP. WTF?

Are these fields in events.txt and settings.txt just for show?

Anyone know how this works?

Re: Travler
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">yeah, but thats no problem. make some engines slow on strategic movement (1-3 points) and fast on combat movement. they will still get some carry over, and can be faster than ships with purely strategic movement engines.

Re: Travler
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">i know it can be done, there was a thread on it a while back. it might not be event chance in percent, but rather in 1/10 percent or something like that. PvK might know, i know he was able to add the 10x bad event chance racial trait, and he participated in the original thread that i am remembering.

Re: Travler
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">yeah, but thats no problem. make some engines slow on strategic movement (1-3 points) and fast on combat movement. they will still get some carry over, and can be faster than ships with purely strategic movement engines.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's easy to do. The unmodded game does that already with afterburners and solar sails. The question I have is how do you do it the other way: how do you make a ship slow in combat, but swift in system?

Re: Travler
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I must be missing something. I raised the percent chance to 10,000 and ran 30 turns and nothing happened.

Re: Travler
 

"I must be missing something. I raised the percent chance to 10,000 and ran 30 turns and nothing happened."

Depends. Going way over might have broke it; then again there could have been events going on, just not ones you could see! What settings did you test on?

Phoenix-D

Re: Travler
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">simple. you do it the easy to do way, and by definition also acomplish it the other way around. once you set a baseline, ships are either slow or fast as compared to the existing precident. so you make the slow system ships that are fast in combat, and the other ships that move full strategic speed of 10 or so, and 5 or so in combat are by comparison fast in system, and slow in combat. even if they would regularly be average in the normal game.

Re: Travler
 

Well, I took out all events but the warp point close. Set highest event to low (changed warp point close to low). Set frequency to high, but that doesn't matter because I changed all levels to the same. I tried it at 100%, 1000% and 10000%

All nada.

Other than that, was a normal game.

Re: Travler
 

I have tried searching for the old thread about this. Someone tried this and IIRC was having the same experience you are Mensch. It may be it just doesn't work, or at least not the way we think it does. Of course testing is a good thing. You learn what doesn't work, right? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Geoschmo

Re: Travler
 

In still not giving up....

The Lucky trait is a specific thing. I don't recall off hand how Proportions does its Cursed trait, but I suppose Lucky could be given an extrememly high positive number, everyone take the trait and try it all over again.

The figuring for events must be counter-intuitive as you say Geo.

Just a guess

Re: Travler
 

So it's still impossible to make a ship with a combat movement of only 2 and a strategic movement of 12?

Re: Travler
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Has anyone tried a component with a negative combat bonus? That's the only way I can think of to have strategic movement of 12 and combat movement of 2...

Re: Travler
 

the Last time i tried to put a negative value in the comonents.txt, it crashed the game. i have not tried it in that perticular field, so it might be worth a shot.

Re: Travler
 

Ah, frickin' hah!

Spent the Last 30 mins combining my idea with Geo's about the unstable WPs and I think I have the system working satisfatorily...

Findings:
-I think no events happen during the first 20 turns, no matter what. However, I have only the WP close event in the file, so others might happen before the 20 turn mark. Inconclusive.
-I am still not sure how often events can happen per turn. I think only once per game turn (not player turn), but I could be wrong.

I am running a test game now between two empires with a no warp point start. So far, I create WPs and in no longer than 2 turns are they closed. Some close as soon as you hit end turn of that empire.

I am building more openers and will report back once I see if the system can handle a mass of openings and still retain the same flavor.

If such a system were used, yes, your WP might stay open for a few turns depending on how many other WPs are out there, but it wouldn't indefinitely, so you would still have to carry your ships around in with a Jump ship. I actually like it better this way. Unpredictability in the system is few and far between in SE4.

Re: Travler
 

Tested in same game:
-2 empires
-Each with 4 Jump ships
-Opened 8 WPs in one game turn.

Results by Empire:
Empire 1:
WP A - Soon as I close this turn.
WP B - 2
WP C - 4
WP D - 9 turns

Empire 2:
WP A - 1
WP B - 5
WP C - 13
WP D - 20+ It eventually closed but I lost count.

Think it will work? I think so, if you couple it with expensive jump ships. That you can't afford a horde of jump ships, and WPs won't be open en masse every turn. Perhaps in lulls, the system will catch up and close everything.

Unless you cart your fleets around with more than one jump ship, you can't open more than one per turn.

I won't say my test is an average, but even if it is close, if 5 or 6 are opened in one turn, they will all close in one year.

Dunno...maybe it's useful.

Re: Travler
 

cool. what were the lines you used in settings and events.txt to make it happen?

Re: Travler
 

Couple new findings:

Has to do with Simultaneous games.

Seems that stellar manipulation happens before events. When I opened two WPs at once...least half of the time, one of them closed the same turn, thus negating the possibility of someone using their WP whatsoever. However, I could not get the system to close one WP on the same turn when one only was created.

Odd

Re: Travler
 

Let me see if I can get it all:

Events.txt
-Took out all other events except WP close.
-Added several dozen repetitions of this event(not sure if this helps, but hey...)
-Made some of there multiples have "medium", "high", and "catastrophic" tags. (again, not sure if this helps)

Racial Traits.txt
-Made an Unlucky trait, with the value set to a high positive number. Not sure it matters over 100, but I think I set it to 10,000,000 just to make sure.

SectType.txt
-Changed all Warp Point entries to have the following line.
Unusual := TRUE

SystemTypes.txt
-Changed all system types to have:
WP Stellar Abil Type := Unstable Warp Point

Settings.txt
-Changed the following lines to:
Event Percent Chance Low := 1000000
Event Percent Chance Medium := 1000000
Event Percent Chance High := 1000000

I think that is it.

I added two races in a small galaxy, no warp points, and view all systems. I gave each race the unlucky trait. Set events to high frequency and set the max type to catastrophic.

If you can't get this to work, I'll zip what I have and send it wherever you want.

Mensch

Re: Travler
 

Two things regarding warp points closing in the same turn you open them.

One, if you give the order to open a warp point, and give your fleet orders to move to and click in the destination system your fleet will move through the warp point as soon as you open it. You don't have to wait for the next turn. Works even if you have never been to the system you are warping into.

Secondly, can't you give the event a time till completion of 1 so it will never close the same turn the event hits?

And just so I am clear, you say no points close before the first 20 turns?

EDIT: Also, does changing the Effect Amount have any effect? Can you get each event to close more than one warp point this way?

Good work.

Geoschmo

[ August 28, 2002, 00:52: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Travler
 

The Effect Amount doesn't seem to matter on the close event. Least I can't see a difference.

Also, I don't think a timed event will much matter, because the timing is just until it happens...not the lenght of its existence.

Also, I can't seem to get the warp through you mention. In a simultaneous game I click create WP to a specific system, and then I click, move to, somewhere in that system. Next turn, whether the WP has closed or not, the ship didn't move into the other system. Dunno.

And no, I ran a bunch of games with WPs from the beginning, and none disappeared before 20. Most games they started disappearing on turn 21 or 22. So I think the first 20 turns are eventless.

Of course this doesn't matter in a game this mod is for. To build a frigate with an opener takes 19 turns. But that is with stock components.

Re: Travler
 

Oh, and one other little side discovery:

The line in setting.txt for minimum resource production of each type.

You only get that as resource income if you have no facilities of that kind producing. I set it to 200,000 to fund the openers from the start, but I didn't realize I had to scrap all the min, org, and rad facilities to get that income.

Kinda stupid.

I wonder if there would be any uses for this...taking out all resource facilities and giving everyone a baseline of resources.

Re: Travler
 

yeah, SJ uses it in the pirates and nomads mod. its sort of a wellfare stippend until you build or conquer a colony with resource production.

and you are not supposed to set up any colonies until you are darn sure they will more than off-set your free stippend.

Re: Travler
 

Yep... Some things you can do without giving up your welfare check:
- remote mining.
- building resource extractors in a system without a spaceport.
- negative maintenance income.