"With the new SEIV patch, does the AI take advantage of the new mounts? Or do you still have just AI specific mounts only? Because I am not really sure what the significance of the new patch is... However, I can that everyone is quite excited about it. Please fill me in.
Thanks "
Devin
As long as the AI has researched the required tech it will use the mounts that are availible to it (still the biggest it can fit on a ship though. If it can use and Extended Range mount or a Pulsed Mount on a ship it will use a Pulsed Mount due to the fact that it is farther down the list in the .txt file, not because it is a better mount).
The beauty of the new patch is the 'Mounts by Tech' and 'Mounts by Components'. Now we can make mounts that are for certain components only (ie Torpedo only mounts or the Computer Mount AJC made for his mod). The 'Mount by Tech' means we can have 'Researched Mounts', you only have access to the mounts after you discover 'X and X' research, you could have specific mounts that you only get after discovering TWO racial techs! (ie an Organic Crystalline Mount that does massive damage or something).
Also the other good thing is that you can now make 'Roleplaying Mods'.
By this I mean you could make a 'Mount Mod' that HEAVILY favors Organic tech, make the weapons/Shields/armor etc massively more powerful than anyone elses tech. Then set up a game with only the AI using it (or a certain player who is the 'uber-badguy' in a PBW game) and play away. You could use this to really make an AI a challenge. (easy way would be to allow the AI's ships have earlier access to the mounts, ie Large mounts on Frigates, Heavy mounts on LC's and the Massive used on BattleCruisers. Make sure the size of the mounted weapon is not too big though, otherwise the ship won't have enough weapons!!)
Well, I've babbled on enough here but this is just 'some' of the potential of these new options.
Future options I wish for:
1)ability to affect seeker damage/range etc by mounts.
2)ability to add new damage types in addition to the weapons normal damage ('boarding parties only', 'quad shield damage', 'engines only' etc.)
3)ability to affect cloak level and sensors by mount.
4)ability to affect armor abilities (regeneration, emissive or crystalline)
5)ability to allow 'stacked' weapon mounts and other mounts (ie a 'Hardened-Extended Range-Spinal Mounted-MarkIV Torpedo Launcher'). And allow which mounts are 'stackable' and which are not by a line of 'yes' and 'no' (or true/false).