[QuarianRex]

I just finished reading through this entire thread (what an undertaking that was) and have been following the progression of the mod. I noticed that your original idea was to make every component regenerating and up the damage scale by a factor of 10 (10!), but gave up due to a bug that negates regeneration in every component when a single component type gets wiped out. I believe the example used was when a ship equiped with, say, organic armor I and organic armor II receives enough damage to completely take out OA I (but still having OA II remaining) this would negate the regenerative capabilities of OA II.

Do I have that right?

Well, I was fiddling around with the Gold demo and it seems that this bug has been fixed. I ran through several combats with mixed armor (OA I and OA II) ships to see if regeneration would continue and indeed it did. Even when reduced to a single OA I or OA II component regeneration continued normally.

Now that that is said, please do not go back to the previous design! While I can see that you were trying to capture the desperate feel of a drawn out space battle, this is not the way to do it. If all a ships components are set to regenerate this completly negates the concept of after battle combat damage. Either a ship must be completely destroyed during combat or it is fully healed upon combat completion. The inability to cripple a ship would take so much away from the game that it makes me shudder to think about it.

No more suicide missions to cripple the engines of the advancing Uberfleet, allowing your struggling empire the time to crank out a Last ditch resistance force as the said Uberfleet repairs itself. No more hard fought running battles to return a crippled cruiser to a repair base so that its heroic (and experienced) crew might fight on another day.

These kinds of situations are just as much a part of B5 (perhaps a greater part) than the actual battles themselves (which are handled quite nicely already). Not to mention that it would completely nullify any chance of a sci-fi cross-over (and that would be a terrible shame, the Centauri have as much right to be assimilated by the Borg or crushed by the Empire as anyone else).

Please do not think that I am trying to slam anyones ideas (they are good in theory) but I do enjoy B5 and would like to be able to use it in conjunction with other mods, and the standard game as well, without sacrificing other aspects of the game for the sake of prolonged combat (and since I myself wouldn't have the time or pateince to retrofit all the work that you guys would have done).

I do agree that the use of repair crews and such could make things more interesting. how about a 60kt component that repairs 1,2, or 3 components at levels I, II, and III. Granted, this does seem a bit heavy but makes it comparable, though a little less efficient (as it should be, less centralised facilities and all) than the standard repair bays (and so not making a key piece of game tech obsolete - 1 repair bay = 150kt-repairs 8 components/turn, 3 repair crews = 180kt-repairs 9 companents/turn). This would allow most capital ships limited self-repair capability yet not removing the utility of a dedicated repair ship in your fleet. As you can see, I like things to be balanced overall.

I hope that this can be of some use.

[ 27 February 2002: Message edited by: QuarianRex ]