P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

I was wondering what the idea was behind Bucky Tube Gel Armour in P&N. Since it has a size of 0 could you not make a ship almost invincible by adding a whole mess of them??

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

Lots is good, but they are expensive.
They are also lacking the armor ability, so they are NOT hit first.

What they will do is give you a good chance of not losing other important components, like lifesupport.
If you have, say a 30 component cruiser, and you add 70 BTG, you can expect that less than half of the weapon impacts that get through both your shields and armor will actually cause important damage.

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

Ah that's what I was thinking they would do. I was also thinking they might make pretty good suicide ships for busting up mine fields since you could make a ship that can take a lot of damage.

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

Yeah, it is unrealistic for any component to have zero size. Even if it has negligible weight, it's got to be taking up space in order to be able to absorb hits. I think 'ablative' armors ought to have a size of 1 kt no matter what. But whatever. Like anything else in SE IV, if you don't like it you can change it to suit yourself. Which I did with my own concept of ablative armor. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

Ah, but size isn't important in a spaceship. Mass is.
Since this mod uses QNP, the KT "size" of a component is a measure of mass, not volume.

The Buckytube Gel is meant to be a replacement/upgrade for your ship's decks & walls. You won't actually be making the ship that much bigger, and it would acutally get lighter since you're using BT gel instead of solid tritanium (or whatever).

If you add hundreds of them on a little escort, yeah; it would probably look like a giant ball of snot, but you'd be hard pressed to shoot the bridge through all that goop! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
It would still manoeuver like an escort though, since its mass has not increased substantially.

[ October 24, 2002, 02:26: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

Just leaves those nasty snot trails as it flies around http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Where buckytube's rule is, in UNITS.

Satellites, WPlatforms, FIGHTERS.

They don't care about armor-vs-not-armor. They only care about HIT POINTS.

Pack in the high-cost BuckyTubes into your fighter; it mak cost as much as an escort (1 per year per planetary SpaceYard3), but damn, it'llbe near impossible to shoot down ... heh!

But even 1 or 2 of them, really REALLY does a fighter good.

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

Yeah, it can be abused on Fighters... Troops too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

I think I might just limit the zero-mass BTG to 1 per 5kt of hull size or so.
Just one visible mount should do it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

Before you fix it, S_J, let me have just a few more games with my favorite: the special, made-to-order, BuckyDrones... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Cost to manufacture and fire: 265,000 Rad/Min/Org

The look on the enemy crew's faces peeking out the portholes as it sucks up PD bLast after PD bLast after PD bLast while barrelling down on them: priceless

Combat Squirrel

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

I need to come up with a good policy on BTG...
If I have a maximum BTG on ships, with BTGs beyond that costing 1kt, it would be worse than Armor 1's.

For ships, I think I'll allow the below-max BTG to cost a small negative in minerals, since its replacing metallic bulkheads.
Beyond the limit (at which point your ship would be mostly composed of BTG), BTGs will cost more.

BTG for Sats and Platforms seems fine to me, and can be allowed to stand as unlimited.

Troops and fighters, and probably drones, will not get regular BTG. Instead, I'll make it an upgrade component for something else, or a maybe a mount for major structural items (Cockpit, lifesupport, engines, etc). It would add some structural points, and slightly reduced mass if possible without going to zero mass.

Are those usages/effects too different, or does what I'm saying make some sense?

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

What you are proposing makes sense, but it seems like a lot of work to get the effect you want. Why not merely set a max limit on how many BTGs you may have for each vehicle type and possibly re-evalute the cost to build each BTG component. The max limit could represent the fact that although the BTG causes no relative mass increase, the basic hull of any ship still needs some percentage of non-BTG material to provide the skeletal framework.

But then again, I kinda wish no one had brought the darn thing up in the first place... I really enjoyed those darn BuckyDrones... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Combat Squirrel

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You can do that?

If so...

Can you have a ship/unit that costs a negative amount of resources? Could you then have nomads use their spacveyards to build something with negative cost and call it "gathering materials" or somesuch? How long does it take to build something with a negative cost? How many units with zero or negative cost get added to the build queue when you select "one turns worth"?

edit=UBB tags

[ October 25, 2002, 05:27: Message edited by: Spoo ]

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You can do that?

If so...

Can you have a ship/unit that costs a negative amount of resources? Could you then have nomads use their spacveyards to build something with negative cost and call it "gathering materials" or somesuch? How long does it take to build something with a negative cost? How many units with zero or negative cost get added to the build queue when you select "one turns worth"?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That was in the original P&N mod. Nomads could make bases that had negative resource generation, and get unlimited resources (eventually). The only limit is the max number of ships in the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ October 25, 2002, 00:05: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

Hrm, well. I can't remember exactly what happened with the negative cost components, but I do know that the only way to give a vehicle negative maintenance is to add a >100 maintenance reduction ability to a ship/base with a positive cost.

Making the inital BTGs cost zero minerals, and the extra ones cost plenty of minerals would be almost as good, though. It would get the same idea across, I think.

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">One BTG per ship/unit. Ship-size / Unit-size specific mounts. 0kT for the BTG, but, ludicrous costs (10,000 of each resource), and very high reduction rates (1% per 25kT, or fraction thereof, of the unit/ship's size).

Similar to how I'm doing engines for my mod, using "m/QNP" ... in fact, I may steal the BTG component, with the mount idea above ... heh!

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm, negative costs WORK ... ?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The mount idea above, and one per ship/base/unit, would balance the fighters out fairly, IMO.

Also, of course, the mount would need to adjust the structure of the BTG component, I suggest a ratio similar to the 1%/25kT rate. Figure out how much extra hp you want each ship/unit to get, and determine the base component structure from there ...

Re: P&N Bucky Tube Gel Armor
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Are you suggesting a 150Kt escort would get 6% off the cost, and pay $9400 for each BTG?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't think you read that right...
EG:
BTG 1: gives BTG component for ships, and a mount for units: BTG internals - 2x hitpoints, affects non-weapon, non-armor components only.
There would be no BTG component available for units.