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[Tenryu]

This post was moved from geoschmo's ppb poll thread because I was an *** to put it there.

My 2000000 cents worth.

I voted, again, to do nada. I didn't do this not because I love ppb or in someway think the weapon is perfectly balanced. I have always felt that ALL the weapons need to be reviewed and rebalanced. I have, in fact, tried to do this several times myself, but I have always been entirely dissatisfied with my end product.

I have also read the Posts and debates here on what should be changed and why in the component or component enhancement files. The debates are endless and opinions unlimited, even though they make some interesting reading and have resulted in some useful changes. So, what's the problem?

I think the Mod community needs to review and rethink just what it is that MM has given us, what they have not given us, what we can do with what we have, and what we could do if they would give us other things.

So, what do I think we have? We have a computer conflict simulator that allows for a fair amount of user value tweaking that came with a strategic space conquest sample scenario and an artificial opponent.

Surprise! And most of us thought we were buying a cool space game! LOL! Well, we were, or at least, most of us I guess, and it is a pretty good game at that, but many of us still remain dissatisfied with the limitations of the prepackaged scerio, thus we Mod and thank MM for allowing us to change so many factors impacting on game play.

What has MM not given us. LOL! I am sure this list is pretty long, however I'll keep it short (yeah, sure, prolly impossible), and focussed on the two files, (components and component enhancements ), I started to discuss, and sum it up as: They have not given us much control over resource usage or resource expenditure, nor "combat" results, nor component enhancements.

For example:
Resource usage: We can moddify how much something costs, but if you go and build it at either a planet or a spaceyard any remaining capacity there is lost rather then applied to the next item in the que.

Resource expenditure: We can set the global maintenence percentage of intial cost for ships, but not units nor facilities nor the maintenence costs for 'individual' components.

Combat results: We can modify weapon range, power, chance to hit, to some degree, what things weapon will effect and what effect it will have on the target. However, we can not randomize damage, it is always a set amount at a given range.

Component enhancements: These make it easy to modify the costs, ranges of effect, chance to hit, and power of certain classes of weapons. They do not provide the same utility for other classes of components.

Now, what can we do with what we have?
Quite a lot actually. Much has been to improve the AI behavior with the given prepackaged set of ships and components. This effort has been very succesfull. Also, vast amounts of high quality user created artwork, ( shipsets, components, planets), have been made available. Additionally, some alternative sound effects(TampaGs) can be found in the Modpak forum. I don't think there is anyone who thinks this stuff sucks.

We also have numerous example of component file and or component enhancement file mods usually including changes in the tech area and vehicle sizes files. These, regardless of vast effort on the part of their authors, are not nearly as successful as the other types of mods.
Why is this so?
Speaking personally, I suppose, at first glance, and maybe second and third too, it looks easy and, after all, the game does allow us change things fairly easily. So what are usually the first things I do? I tweak a weapon I think sucks, then another looks useless or too powerful. So I 'fix' it. Then I go add a component or extend a component line. I am not happy with the costs of certain things. I change them. Then other costs need to be 'balanced'. I work on that. I wish I had more ship types and bigger ships. I add some ... and on, and on it goes. In the end, I get frustrated and scrap the whole idea. So now, like many of you I think, I sit waiting for someone else to do it right. Devnul, Derek maybe, Pvk, someone else ...who knows!?

Something's wrong. We are hitting around the mark, but still missing it. So I think we have to look at the fundamentals of the simulator we are dealing with and ignore the 'noise' generated by the things we have.

Fundamentals( according to me)
1. Space, tonnage capacity on ships, planets, as well as units. It is a FIXED finite value underpinning all else in the game.

For ships, your maximum, is the KT of you largest hull times the maximum number of ships permitted.
You can control this amount between #KT x 1 to #KT x 20000.

For planets, your maximum, (unless you use the same quadrant over and over), varies from game to game but will be the total of all the planets capacities plus any planets you can make. You can control these values in the planet data and the settings files.

For units, there are two types, units on planets and units in space. The maximum space of the units on planets equals the maximum storage space on the planets. The maximum KT capacity of units in space is probobly, 20000 x (largest unit KT). This could be, interestly, as much space as Ships. You can control the capacity value in vehicle size file and their maximum numbers either in the game setup selections for units in space or the planet data file by messing with the planet storage capacities.

2. Stuff(money, labor?)=Resources
It looks like you have three types. Well, build a converter. There is only one. Making sure you have sufficent stocks of the 3 STUFF subcatagories is a minor and annoying inconvenience. (I wonder at the point really. Oh well, leave this for the things we want section.)
Stuff is unlimited(without limited resources set to true). You use it to make and maintain ship space and build unit and facility space. It has only one other use. If you give enough to an AI it might do something you want.(Pretty neat that. Giving something, in unlimited supply, to someone(something) that also has an unlimited supply of it to get'm to do something!) It appears you can control, to some degree gross, the amount of stuff, in the setting file or during game set up by turning on limited resources. Other than that I am not aware of any real control on its availability.

3. Time: Time has value. It is a multiplier. All other things being equal. A weapon that can shoot twice as fast or often as another is twice as good. The same logic applies to movement per turn etc. We can control the time factor with the ROF and movement setting in the component file.

4. The derivative Products: There are three; research points, intell points, and supplies. What to say about these?

Research and Intel are generated endlessly and automatically at no cost after the initial investment in space, stuff, and time to build them. This kinda sux(I think), but since they are only semi-controlable in the facility file and I'm focusing on the component and enhancement files it's beyond the scope of this rant.

Supplies: Well, they seem to be important. It looks like ships can't move or use their weapons without them, however, you can turn this off by setting supplies used to zero in the component files. It looks like we can control them; but I think this may be a mirage.

They are generated endlessly in unlimited quantities at no cost at planets with a resource 'maker' facity. Bases also have an unlimited suppy, for some strange reason, and there is also a component ability that generates them endlessly; the notorious 'quantum' factor. On top of this, many units don't need/use them nor do facilities.

Ok, what good are they then other then to bust your chops by making you think about their specific local availability and a generating 'thing-a-ma-bob'?

Actually, they might be rather useful, even though we have little control over their creation or generation, we can use them for some cool things. First off, we can control, at least for components, how many units of supply a component uses when it does something. Since a ship's supply capacity is controlable and component supply usage is under our control, we have rather significant tools here.

The only major monkey wrench is the 'quantum' factor. I recommend not using it, as to do so gives you LESS control. Here's an example why.
While I haven't seen any Modder post something like this yet, consider the following:

There is no quantum reactor. You have to get your supplies for your ships at bases or planets. You mod some weapons to use 10,000 suplies to fire. It is now a base only or planet only weapon, regardless of size, unless the ship has a really big supply capacity.

To sum up, supplies are magically generated at certain locations in the game, yet we can control how many are used by ships. This allows us to limit some things ships can do. That translates to control, unless we toss the tool away by giving them cheap, light, quantum reactors, lol!

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To be continued:
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OT stuff

BTW - I haven't tried this yet, however, maybe with what we know now aboput AI behavior and creative manipulation of our components we could get those big ship engines so many of us wanted long ago.

What if Ion engine I was left alone, Ion Engine II was 50kt, and Ion engine III was 250KT. We increase their respective supply usages. Maybe tweak the ship sizes some. Would the ES,FG,DD,and CL use only the 10 KT modules because thats all that will meet their must have requirements, while the cruiser would go for the II Version because it's 'better' but the III too big?

Anyway, I have to get to work again. I'll try and continue later.
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ok back, Blah continues below:
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5. Hard coded AI behaviors. We have all been surprized and amused at times by this. It is not good or bad it just IS. Sometimes you can work around it, sometimes, NOT.

Well, I guess that's it. Have I missed anything? Proboly, but I'm getting sick of listening to myself so let's get this over with.

So we come to the final section.

What could we do if MM would give us some other things.

We all have wish lists and pet peaves here, at least I know I do, but if we review all that we already have wrapped up and prepackaged we see we have an aweful lot of great stuff.

What is reasonable that we should ask MM to add and what should we not ask MM to do.

Well, I believe that we should not be asking Malfador change or add or modify anything under our control.

On the other hand, it may be reasonable to ask for addtions or changes that add to our control of the game environment. Here, I stress MAY be reasonable.

So what's the problem with this? Three things, mainly:
1. You already "gots what ya paid for".
2. Different modders want different things. Even when we do agree, we may have different priorities. On top of which, I am not always sure when we use the same words we are talking about or envisioning the same thing.LOL!!!
3. Who's going to pay for it? MM and Shrapnel are businesses. They don't create value out of nothing. It costs something.

So, what can we( the customers, modders, fans, suckers, etc.)do to get more of what we want?

Plan A: Standard model: Send emails, post on the BBS and beg, whine, complainthreaten and hope.

Plan B: Non-standard model: I suggest we figure out a way to PAY for it. (Pirate scum, and anyone else offended by this thought, can pucker-up and Kiss My Backside)

How do we pay for it?
Plan A: Standard model, wait for SE5 and hope.
Plan B: Come up with another model. LOL!

Ok, so now I'm stuck proposing a fancy new way to pay Shapnel and MM. What has my big mouth got me into again?!

How about this?
Plan X:

We take some polls of customers here, regarding just exactly what we want MM to change. I think we should keep the types of changes to "things that give us more control". We sort the results from most wanted to least in demand.

Then we ask Sharpnel to tell us how much the top three most wanted 'features' will cost to add.

We send Shapnel money. Send whatever you think you can depending how important it is to you.(yeah, I know there are parasites out there licking their little sucker lips right now. So, what else is new.)

Shrapnel Posts a list of people who send them money and the combined total collected, on some regular basis here on the BB. When they have collected enough money, MM puts the features into a patch. If Shapnel can never collect enough to make the changes, we get the value applied against a future release of SE5 or some other Shrapnel product.

If it works for the first 3 'features', we redo the process until noone is willing to pay enough.

I'm glad I'm soooo done! I'm never writing a post this long again!

[ June 06, 2002, 11:47: Message edited by: Tenryu ]