Modifying Ship Speeds
 

Modded the "VehicleSize.txt" file as follows; "Engines per Move" = +1 per 300 kt (tonnage) & all ships have a maximum engine requirement of 20. Example, Dreadnought (1000 kt) would need 16 low tech engines to allow a movement of 4. Have been playing this way for awhile & like the "feel" of this. Would appreciate immensely, thoughts & ideas on this method of determining movement for different size ships. Thank you.

Re: Modifying Ship Speeds
 

Try searching for "QNP" (Quasi-Newtonian Propulsion) to get more on this type of thing.

I reccommend about 1 EMP per 50 kt of ship size, so that engine requirements are directly proportional to mass.

To get a good balance, you'll need to increase the standard movement provided by the engines to at least 3 for low tech drives.
To get a full QNP, you'll also need to replace all the "bonus movement" abilities since they have nOnlinear effects. Solar sails work quite well as slower but zero-supply use engines.


There is also mQNP, in which mounts are used to scale the engines to the hull size. (IE, a light cruiser engine is twice the size of a frigate engine)
This has the advantage of simpler ship designs (no need to add 20 or 30 engines to huge warships), but the large engines don't take partial damage and start to act like leaky armor on the large mounts.

There is also the idea of a hybrid system, in which mounts are used to provide small, medium and large engines, and the engines per move setting distinguishes between ships in each size Category.
It has yet to actually be implemented though, so there are no examples.

Re: Modifying Ship Speeds
 

Thank you for that info. Sounds like a lot of work http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif! I will check out those ideas. Again, thanks.