Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

I was wondering, if I have the following 2 cloaking components:
Cloak 1:
EM P 4
EM A 4
Temp 0
Grav 0
Psy 0
Supply used: 40/turn

Cloak 2:
EM P 2
EM A 2
Temp 5
Grav 2
Psy 5
Supply used: 60/turn

I activate cloaking. What will be my cloaklevel and how much supply will i spend?

Would there be a difference for supply consumption if the components would be:
Cloak 1:
EM P 4
EM A 4
Temp 0
Grav 0
Psy 0
Supply used: 40/turn

Cloak 2:
EM P 6
EM A 6
Temp 0
Grav 0
Psy 0
Supply used: 60/turn

Thanks in advance for help to a newbie modder...

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">An easy way to test this would be to have Stealth Armor use 5 supplies, give a ship some Stealth Armor and a Level 2 or greater Cloaking device, then...Cloak.

In best-case scenario, when you activate cloaking, you'll get the same sort of situation as when you try to Warp in a sector that has two warp points - a box will pop up and ask you which one you'd like to use.

Worst-case scenario? Both are activated, both use supplies.

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

You get the highest level of each cloaking ability for components you have on your ship (and for any built-in abilities). I think that all cloaking components will use up supplies each turn, so yours would use 60 + 40 = 100 supplies per turn.

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

Thanks for the answers.
That's what I thought, but good to have confirmation from specialists.

By the way, do you know whether it's possible to have a negative value for "Supply Amount Used:" for a component so that it would generate supplies independent of the number of stars?

Imperator Fyron, I use your website about modding, very informative. Sometimes there is a lack of information on some very specific topics, but maybe because it is not addressed by MM as well...
EDIT: yes I realized it is becuase these abilities are not implemented, sorry.

EDIT: In the same subject, about cloaking, when cloaking is inserted as Hull ability, is it always on, or does it need to be activated as well? Am I right to think that in that case it uses no supply?
I looked at P&N mod, and it seems all Hull have gratitic cloak, so it seems that if one doesn't have a gravitic detector, anyship can be invisible?

Very useful anyway! Thanks for doing it.

[ May 09, 2003, 11:18: Message edited by: StarBaseSweeper ]

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

"By the way, do you know whether it's possible to have a negative value for "Supply Amount Used:" for a component so that it would generate supplies independent of the number of stars?"

Umm... supply usages is only invoked when the component is used. The only things that use supplies each turn automatically are active cloaking devices.

"Imperator Fyron, I use your website about modding, very informative. Sometimes there is a lack of information on some very specific topics, but maybe because it is not addressed by MM as well..."

Specific examples?

"EDIT: yes I realized it is becuase these abilities are not implemented, sorry."

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

"EDIT: In the same subject, about cloaking, when cloaking is inserted as Hull ability, is it always on, or does it need to be activated as well? Am I right to think that in that case it uses no supply?
I looked at P&N mod, and it seems all Hull have gratitic cloak, so it seems that if one doesn't have a gravitic detector, anyship can be invisible?"

Cloaking on ship hulls requires the use of the Cloak order to be activated. Cloaking on unit hulls (eg: mines) is automatically used, and can't be disabled.

If you can detect any type of cloaking on a ship, you can detect the ship. So, if the ship only has gravitic cloaking, all ships can see it, because all ships have EM Passive Scanning level 1 built in (I think it's Passive, could be Active). If you have level 100 cloaking in all areas except EM Passive (no cloaking ability at all for it), any ship can see you without any special comps. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Also, level 1 EM Passive Cloaking is completely pointless.

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

cloaking component with negative supply and 0 cloak. call it a reacter.

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">But, it only works when the cloaking is on, which makes no sense. Your sweepers won't be able to sweep mines. Any other cloaking abilities you have will be activated. You will not be able to generate supplies while decloaked. None of these are good side effects of doing that.

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

Actually, whether or not you agree with Fyron's points I don't think it works. I tried giving a cloaking device a negative supply usage and it didn't add or subtract supplies fomr the ship.

Geoschmo

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

I tried negative supply use on cloaks and they do nothgin. I tried them on engines and I get an overflow error. Also, in both cases they show up screwy in the component readout. Instead of -x, they show like 49543723 as the supply usage. Obviously negative supply use isn't going to do it.

But it was a good idea I think.

Geoschmo

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

The negative supplies for the engines seem to get subtracted from the maximum value of the integer variable used, just like what happens with standard move points. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

MM apparantly took the lazy way out and made a lot of variables unsigned integers instead of signed integers, so negative values can not possibly work. I hope he doesn't make this same mistake with SE5. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[ May 09, 2003, 20:09: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

To be fair, unsigned integers allow ~double the max value--0 to 255, for instance, instead of -128 to 127. Still, I would have liked to see longs, or even floats or doubles, used. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif RAM's cheap these days. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

OK, so no negative value.

Thanks for the detailed information about activating cloaking, Imperator Fyron.

So no non-solar supply generator, better be lots of stars then http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Do you know if a solar panel (generate supply from star) uses supply if a "Amount of supply used" is given ?

(to do like generate 1,000 supply /star, and spend 900 supply, so that only 100 is generated for 1 star, making system with no star very difficult to travel, and the one with 2 or 3 stars very effective)

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

Krsqk, integers are more than one byte. And even if they were only 1 byte, 128 points is way more than enough for most abilities. Why do you need more than 128 bonus to happiness? Or reproduction rate? That's kinda absurd. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

64 byte doubles... ooohh.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">There's actually one way I can think of that will give you a non-solar supply generator - but it's rather odd, tedious, and enables ships to repair themselves:

1) Give all bridges the ability 'Repairs 1 component per turn'.
2) Mod the rules, to allow Repair Bays to repair Emergency Resupply Pods (see where I'm going?)
3) Get rid of the 'Resupply' Research Path, effectively ridding the game of ERPs.
4) Mod the Stats, Size, etc. of Emergency Resupply Pods, into whatever you want Generators to be; the amount of Supplies 'Generated' per turn, should be how many supplies the ERP (now called a Generator) gives a ship when it is used.

Having done that, every turn a ship uses a Generator, it'll gain supplies, and the Generator will be destroyed - and the next turn, it'll be repaired, thanks to the Bridge. Having the bridge repair one component per turn shouldn't be all that bad, and could add some strategy to the game. For example: If your ship gets damaged, you'll have to stop using the Generator while everything else gets repaired. If your bridge gets destroyed, not only is your movement reduced to 1 - but your Generator won't 'recharge' anymore!
So, as long as you don't mind having to manually use the Generator every turn, the above solution should work well http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

[ May 13, 2003, 07:20: Message edited by: Dingocat85 ]

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

That solution quickly becomes impractical as you start getting 100s of starships. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

Moreover I don't think you can make resupply pod be repaired by repair bay. Should be by shipyard, shouldn't it?

Maybe if remove the "Destroy component on use" the emergency ressuply would not be destroyed? But anyway it is not practical as Imperator Fyron said when dealing with high number of ships, and AI won't be able to use it.

Thanks for the idea anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">There's actually one way I can think of that will give you a non-solar supply generator - but it's rather odd, tedious, and enables ships to repair themselves:

1) Give all bridges the ability 'Repairs 1 component per turn'.
2) Mod the rules, to allow Repair Bays to repair Emergency Resupply Pods (see where I'm going?)
3) Get rid of the 'Resupply' Research Path, effectively ridding the game of ERPs.
4) Mod the Stats, Size, etc. of Emergency Resupply Pods, into whatever you want Generators to be; the amount of Supplies 'Generated' per turn, should be how many supplies the ERP (now called a Generator) gives a ship when it is used.

Having done that, every turn a ship uses a Generator, it'll gain supplies, and the Generator will be destroyed - and the next turn, it'll be repaired, thanks to the Bridge. Having the bridge repair one component per turn shouldn't be all that bad, and could add some strategy to the game. For example: If your ship gets damaged, you'll have to stop using the Generator while everything else gets repaired. If your bridge gets destroyed, not only is your movement reduced to 1 - but your Generator won't 'recharge' anymore!
So, as long as you don't mind having to manually use the Generator every turn, the above solution should work well http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Why not use the quantum generator?
(I'm sure I missed something in this thread..)

Re: Multi-Cloaking and supply
 

The quantum reactor generate an infinite amount of supply per turn.

The goald would have been to generte a limited amount of supply per turn, not related to number of star in system..
But still if cannot do, I will just rely on stars.