Pirates and Nomads
 

I downloaded the P&N mod and am starting out, my question is, where can I find information on the basic idea of the mod? I see that I can be a pirate or nomad race, but I'm not sure exactly how this is different from a regular empire.

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">There are many threads on the subject, but I understand they are a little long. Here's my quick and dirty explanation of Pirates.

Normal is just that. You colonize, build miners, send ships out to conqueur the galaxy. Their goal is to rule the entire galaxy.

A pirate can't colonize. And they can't build miners, farms, and refiners. They start with the technology to capture ships and to build small shipyards. They steal ships, scrap them for resources to build ships of their own, deconstruct them to acquire new technology, or just keep them as attack ships. Their goal is to be a perpetual thorn in the side of those normals with their delusions of galactic conquest. Bah, they may rule the galaxy, but they can't take the freedom of space from us. Arrg, matey.

Oh, by the way, propulsion is totally redone to be quasi-newtonian. So load up those swashbucker destroyers of yours with engines, you can get them going much faster than speed 6.

I never tried nomads, but they get a component that allows them to recycle everything, so maintenance is tiny for them. Likewise, they have no colonizing ability. Playing both as a pirate and a nomad is a little cheezy -- but I did it anyway. Pretty cool. Nothing cost me anything. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

Try the bottom of page 2, in the "A Pirate's Life For Me" thread.

The biggest things to watch out for are:
- Quasi-Newtonian Propulsion (Carefully watch the speed of your design as you add engines)
- Racial crossover techs. Buy two racial techs, get a component that uses both!
- Shields/Armor: phased shields come early, and armor can be stronger than shields.
- Some weapons have been tweaked: APB is weaker, Torpedoes have accuracy bonus, WMG is really long range.
-Units use tiny-mounted ship components! Watch out for WMG fighters http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

In addition to what Arkcon said, when playing as a Pirate or Nomad, feel free to use tactical combat, and any move (except cheat codes) that will give you an advantage over the AI. You will need it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ September 16, 2002, 17:45: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

SJ, Are you planning on adding that new style QNP that was discussed a while back? The one that's mount based?

Geoschmo

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

I really like what I've seen so far SJ! Very innovative! I'm really liking the living ships trait.

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

Mount-Based, you say?
I can see a few ways how that could be better; how was it going to work?

Rainstorm:
Yeah, Living Ships is pretty useful, and a good reason to keep your repair trait high http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
The Racial Crossover techs are pretty nifty too (check out the Biocrystal Armor, and the Harmonic Shields)

I like playing a 5000 point game and taking all 6 racial techs, plus living ships http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif You have to take quite a few negative characteristics, but there are a lot of toys to play with http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ September 16, 2002, 19:25: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

Sorry SJ, I thought you had posted in that thread. I see now you hadn't.

It's an idea Pax came up with. Sounds like a good one to me, but I don't know that much abou tthe ins and outs of QNP.

Anyway, here's the link.

Geoschmo

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

That sounds like a great idea.
It might even allow unmodded AIs to play QNP games!

I wonder what a hybrid EPM/Mount system could do...

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

I still don't like that mount-based system. It makes engine damaging weapons either useless, or it makes them require new, heavy mounts to be effective. So, small ships with engine damaging weapons can't hurt the engines of large ships. This stacks combat even more in favor of large ships.

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think you are reading something into the idea that isn't there. And if it is and I missed it you can certainly take it out. The idea as Pax explained it is each engine would move the ship one MP as it does in the stock game, but that as ships get larger each engine takes up more space indiviually. There is nothing that says the structure has to increase with hull size, only tonnage. So basehip engine under this system will be just as suceptible to engine damaging weapons as escort engines.

Geoschmo

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmmm. Good point. I guess a larger Version could be just as fragile as the smaller Version (Though I'd think upscaling size would increase robustness to some degree).

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

True jimbob- but they also make larger targets.

Phoenix-D

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

I do have a question about the mod, SJ. I have run into at least two ship components that have no pictures, and when you click on them for a description, you get a blank screen and an error. Is there anywhere I can download new files for these? I've seen this for Neural Tendrils and the Heavy Bombardment Missile so far.

[ September 17, 2002, 01:10: Message edited by: Rainstorm ]

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

You need the components pack from the Image Mod pack. You can get it HERE.

Geo

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

Thanks Geo. What threw me was I had most of the new components working fine, just a few had no graphics.

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

Argh, sorry to keep posting these problems I am having. I loaded the new images from the image packs, and as the readmes said, I removed the old files like Components in favor of the new files, now my saved games won't load, it gives me an error saying it can't find the Components file. Do I need to rename the newcomponents to just components?

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That may be, but I would still prefer a system using many small engines than just a few huge engines. There is much more flexibility in such a system, allowing for more diversity in movement. With the big engines, you would get movement rates like 3, 6, 9, instead of anywhere between 1 and 9.

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

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

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

"There is much more flexibility in such a system, allowing for more diversity in movement. With the big engines, you would get movement rates like 3, 6, 9, instead of anywhere between 1 and 9."

No. You make an engine that gives 1 MP, and make it, oh, 20000t. (the point is that it's too big to use).

Then you make a mount for each ship size, restrict it to only that ship size. It reduces the engine size to an appropriate number. It's just like standard SE4 movement (minus movement bonuses), only the engines themselves get bigger as the ships do.

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

That's not quite the system Pax had proposed. I'd still prefer to have 30 engines than 3.

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, what Phoenix said actually is exactly the system Pax described in his post. If he revised that somewhere else we missed it apparently. The idea is to have a QNP system where larger ships require more space for engines, while still having each engine move the ship one standard movement point as it does in the stock game. Instead of having many more engines as standard QNP does, you have fewer, larger engines.

Your original complaint against the mount based was that it made larger ships more immune to engine destroying weapons. That was incorrect, under a mount based QNP system larger ships are no more or less susectable to engine destroying weapons. However, under "standard" QNP that you say you prefer the larger ships are much more immune to engine destroying weapons. It takes ten times more damage to kill 30 engines than it does to kill 3, assuming they have the same structure.

Geoschmo

[ September 17, 2002, 13:04: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

To patch the TDM AIs for P&N, I just started the patch program, found the AI files (in the TDM directory) and patched them, is this correct? I have the sneaking suspicion in my current game that the AI is not working for some reason. I'm thinking I should have patched them in the game directory instead, but I'm not sure.

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

There is a difference here between immunity and vulnerability.

What I believe Fyron is saying is that he likes the fact that it takes more hits to disable the engines on big ships. They are much less vulnerable (more hitpoints), but they are NOT immune to smaller engine disruptors (low # hitpoints per engine).

What we need is a Hybrid mod, where the mounts are used to keep the # of standard movement points well below 255, even on big ships, but still requires more engines on the big ships.
The mounts would allow you to make a mod with a separate QNP scale for small ( &lt 400kt), medium ( &lt 800kt) and large ships ( &gt 800kt).
Something like 1mp/50Kt/1speed for the small,
1mp/200Kt/1speed for medium, and 1mp/400Kt/1speed for large ships.

Movement overflows can be controlled better, and the design of ships can remain almost unchanged (just use mounts when adding engines now)

PS: Regarding the patching of AIs...
P&N only uses the AIs that are inside the P&N modfolder... so those are the ones that you have to patch.
You should be able to just copy or move the AIs that you've patched to the proper place inside P&N.

[ September 17, 2002, 15:52: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

Edit: dammit, SJ posted while I was drafting this... now I look I'm just parroting his response...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, what Phoenix said actually is exactly the system Pax described in his post. If he revised that somewhere else we missed it apparently. The idea is to have a QNP system where larger ships require more space for engines, while still having each engine move the ship one standard movement point as it does in the stock game. Instead of having many more engines as standard QNP does, you have fewer, larger engines.

Your original complaint against the mount based was that it made larger ships more immune to engine destroying weapons. That was incorrect, under a mount based QNP system larger ships are no more or less susectable to engine destroying weapons. However, under "standard" QNP that you say you prefer the larger ships are much more immune to engine destroying weapons. It takes ten times more damage to kill 30 engines than it does to kill 3, assuming they have the same structure.

Geoschmo</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think Imperator Fyron's original concern was that, if the larger engines also had higher structure, they may actually become IMMUNE to engine destroyers, since (IIRC) there's a bug that partial damage doesn't actually accumulate against engines. So, an engine with 50 kT structure would take NO DAMAGE AT ALL from an engine destroyer that only did 40 kT of damage. Even if you hit that engine 30 times in the same combat, doing a total of 1200 kT damage (enough to destroy that 50 kT engine 24 times). Now, you addressed that concern in your original response by saying that structure wouldn't necessarily be increased for the "larger mount" engines. I'm not certain why IF still prefers 30 engines to 3 engines, unless it's because he likes the fact that current QNP mods have a larger total structure in engines without being immune to engine-destroyer damage.

In other words, as you pointed out Geo, the current QNP system that allows 30 engines could actually have a larger total amount of structural points; which means we have a choice of:

</font>

1. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The current QNP system, where large ships have lots of engine structure, but can eventually lose those engines to a concerted effort </font>
2. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">A QNP system where large ships no longer have lots of engines to absorb damage, and therefore lose engines just as quickly as the smallest ships</font>
3. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> A QNP system where large ships eventually become completely immune to small- and normal-mount engine destroyers.
   </font>

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

[ September 17, 2002, 15:50: Message edited by: DirectorTsaarx ]

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

Ok, I am not familier with that bug Director, but the rest of what you and SJ makes sense. Even without the bug I can see the point of wanting larger ships to require more damage to disable them, without the individual engines being any harder to knock out.

On top of that more engines for larger ships means they take longer to repair/retrofit, which also moakes sense to me.

Some kind of hybrid system would be the answer, but the problem is making the step gradual so you don't have hull sizes that are way underpowered compared to the next smallest hull size, the way we sort of have now with LC to Cruiser in the stock game because of the extra crew and life support required.

The engines per move can only be done in whole numbers right? I don't remember if I ever tried using a decimal there. So that is what causes the steps, and the granularity.

We could modify the hull sizes so they are more in line with some kind of hybrind QNP steps, but nobody seems to want to do that, myself included.

Geoschmo

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Which was why I mentioned that the QNP scale would change.

Make a set of "light ship drives" that are only allowed on small vessels (due to the required mounts). These would use a QNP scale of 1mp/50Kt/1speed.
Make another set of "medium ship drives" that are only allowed on 500-800 KT ships (again due to the required mounts). These would use a larger scale of movement, and provide half the normal thrust; the ships hulls in theis range would require half the EPM.

End result is that nothing changes on the surface, but the medium hulls can hold twice as many engines before they cause an RCE.
Since all of the medium hull sizes are nicely divisible by 2, the EPM still works out to a legal integer number.

[ September 17, 2002, 17:43: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

I see that is what needs done SJ, I am merely podering a way to do it effectivly without large "steps" of scale change that cause the hulls right after the steps to be inefficent. I never really got the hang of the original QNP, so that is probably why I am having trouble with the hybrid idea. It probably makes complete sense to you and I am just not connecting the dots.

Do you have an idea of where the other scale changes would be, or would there just be the one? If I can write it all down maybe I can get a handle on it.

Geoschmo

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

OK, imagine that the standard QNP system has engines that produce 15 thrust points for every 10kt engine. Escorts could have an EPM of about 15 (so one ion engine gives them a speed of 1)
The frigate would have EPM of 20, and so on.

Jump up to a cruiser sized hull: 50 EPM, and the maximum speed before an RCE is only 5.
Because of that, we want to put a step before the Cruiser.

So, for these types of "Medium ships", we will reduce the scale. Division by 5 will work nicely in this case.
So instead of 50EPM, the cruiser now has 10EPM.
Instead of 15 thrust, the "medium ship-mount" engines only have 3 thrust.

Our cruisers can now hit a top speed of 25 without causing an RCE. (255 / 10 EPM = 25)
They also appear no different on the surface:
The old engines were 10kt, and it took 10 engines to move at speed 3. The new engines are still 10kt, and 10 engines will move you at speed 3. The only difference is that you have a higher max speed without an RCE!

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

So under this system how many engines would you need on a LC and a Cruiser to move them the same speed, and how much space would they take up? I am sorry I am so dense. For some reason this QNP stuff just never seems as easy for me as the rest of you.

Geoschmo

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

Lets just pretend that the LCs count as "Small ships" and the cruiser is the first "medium ship"

An LC weighs 400kt, so it would have 40 EPM.
The cruiser weighs 500kt, so it would have 50EPM. Since it is in the Medium ship Category, we divide by 5 and get 10 EPM.

The LC can only use "Small ship engine mounts", so it can only use the 15 thrust point engines.
Eight engines x 15 thrust gives 120 MP, divided by 40EPM gives 3 speed.

The CR can only use "Medium ship engine mounts", so it can only use the 3 thrust point engines.
Ten engines x 3 thrust gives 30MP, divided by 10 EPM gives 3 speed.

Note also that 400/500 =.8 and 8/10 = .8
Neither ship gets an advantage in speed due to the QNP scale step that separates them.

The QNP scale only affects the details of implementation, and has no effect on what the player sees (other than the required mounts)

PS: as for space taken up, both engine types would be the same size. Using 10kt per engine, that would be 80KT and 100KT respectively.

[ September 17, 2002, 18:36: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Here's a link to one thread that mentions it (in reply #2:)
Questions, Part 4

And another link to a thread (see reply #10):
Rumors, Suggestions, Features on the next patch

That's all I've found so far. I think the initial report is back even farther...

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

Ok, I think I am getting it. Sort of. 80KT worth of engines on a LC and only getting 3 spaces of movement seems very low though. Are you using numbers different than actual so that I can understand the principle better or something? How would you get a LC go the typical 6 spaces per move?

Geoschmo

Re: Pirates and Nomads
 

Ok, I had a lightbulb moment on the way home from work and scrubbled som stuff down and I finally understand how the QNP works. And I understand now why the larger ships get RCE's as well.

I also now understand what you are saying SJ about the hybrid system. I see how you can use the new mounts to restrict engines to certain hull sizes, and by changing the EPM and the MP's of the engines you can change the MP scale and keep a constant ratio of engines to ship hull size and eliminate the RCE's in the larger ships. It's quite brilliant SJ.

I also ran some tests and confirmed that the engine only damage type does not store up. The level I ionic weapon only does 15 damage without a mount and the standard engine is 20Kt of structure. So higher structure points really will make engines imervious to engine killing weapons mounted smaller ships.

Geoschmo