[Atrocities]

I could use some help with the tech tree. Objectively I would like to keep the tech tree slim. For weapons I don't really know how to differentiate between them. IE Laser, Turbo Laser, Blaster, Laser Cannon, Ion Cannon, etc.

I was thinking about making the lasers have the ability to target fighters and ships, but not planets. I also was going to make them horribly inaccurate.

I was thinking about making turbo lasers far more powerful in size grades like 12", 16", 24". The larger the size the more power and range it has. The larger they are the more KT they take up. They would be able to target planets and ships, but not fighters.

Blasters would be primarily short range weapons. I don't know how accurate to make them or what their power setting or range should be compared to lasers or turbo lasers. I really don't know as of yet how to define them or make them distinctively different than lasers or turbo lasers.

I was thinking about making engine assemblies and or engine clusters instead of single engines. If you look at say a Stardestroyer it has 3 huge engines and four smaller ones. The huge engines would drive the ship through space while the smaller ones would provide combat movement. Or simply the could just be a combination of both, an engine cluster would give both combat movement and standard movement. I am thinking about making a hyper-drive unit but make the component damaged upon use like I did with the warp overdrive in the AST and STM mods.

I will be using a system like SJ's hull mount system to make the larger ships more expensive and resistant to damage. I want to emulate the realism that it takes a long time to build a large ship and those ships can take considerable damage before being destroyed. The larger they are the more they cost to build and maintain. The player will want to protect these ships and build them in limited numbers while building larger fleets of smaller ships. The Rebels would have a bonus for smaller ships, ie the Nebula frigate would be be heavy hulled so that it can stand up longer in a fire fight, have more maneuverability, while say a Victory SD would be strong hulled but less maneuverable.

Fighters are going to play a major part in the mod as they do in the star wars universe. Just exactly how I am going to do that I really haven't finalized yet. I know that when it comes to the Death Star fighters, like the X-wings, need to have a tactical advantage that larger ships do not have.
To that end I intend to give the death star its own shield class and only fighters will have weapons that can penetrate them. I am not sure how this will work yet, make all shields phase shields say for the death star and then make all fighter weapons to function like phased polaron beams. This way fighter beams would penetrate the death star shields but heavy weapons from ships would have to blast their way through. I could use some insight on this idea on how best to implement it.

As to the Death Star... how am I going to do that? Okay, its big, really big, so it is going to take a long time to build and cost a ton. It will have the ability to destroy a world of course, but be horribly slow. Obviously I cannot emulate the actual size of the thing, it is limited to 36x36 in combat view so it will appear to be the same size as other ships, but its visual size won't represent its actual KT and such.

I also want to do something unusual. I want to use the construction yard expansion system to create two separate kinds of facilities. One would be a standard ground based construction yard... accept it has virtually no organic construction ability. The second, would be a troop recruitment or training facility that has very little mineral or radioactive construction ability but a huge organic construction ability. Of course the AI would have standard construction because it can not simulate a human way of playing and this type of system would only serve to confuse it.

A player would have to build a construction base then build a training center foundation then upgrade to a training center. Without a training center players would not be able to build up infantry units.

Infantry and such will be done differently also. Instead of having say a Stormtrooper, and then having to give him a weapon component, players will have Squads, platoons, divisions, and legions. The components will be stormtroopers, speeder bikes, AT AT's and such. I have tested this system out and it works pretty well. Kinda cool actually.