quote:
All ships would require a 'max number of engines' much lower than it is at the moment. Strategic move engines would provide both tactical and strategic movement, but ships can only get a certain amount of tactical move from their engine (note, only one engine). Change all engine tech levels to provide 5 move, 50kt, cost of 5 normal engines. All ships to have max strategic engines 1.
It shouldn't matter how many engines the ship has, tactical movement would be 1/2 strategic movement +afterburner bonus.
With 5 movement on the map, the ships would get 3 in combat, which is the usual speed of ships in normal SE4.
With the map editor, it would be possible to make a hyperspace system of wormholes, so ships could go five or six squares on a budget of two strategic movement points (into hyperspace, then out). An instant death black hole effect in hyperspace would prevent ships from hiding there, so every living ship would be in normal space.
It would be a ton of work to make warp points like that, but it might work.
1) create a new system beside each normal system. Give it a black hole movement of 10, and a damage of 10000.
2) make a warppoint from every sector in the normal system to the equivalent sector in the hyperspace system.
3) make a pile of wormholes from each hyperspace sector to the 9x9 grid of sectors in normal space closest to the "in" point. You can skip squares that are closer than 2 movement points from the in point. (Leaving 56 holes to make for each sector)
4) This allows capital ships to go 4 squares on 2 movement points. So they effectively have 4 movement strategic, and 1 movement combat. (But its a damn big job, and requires the edited map)