True Solar Sails

[Ed Kolis]

With Salvo! coming out soon, I was thinking about a possible "Age of Sail" mod for SE4... and THAT got me thinking once again about the Solar Sails in SE4 and how to make them more realistic!

Recipe for more realistic solar sails:
1. Remove all engines but solar sails from the game. (They don't fit into the new engine paradigm we're going to set up)
2. Take away supply usage from all components.
OK, we're done with what you have to give up for this to work. Now on to the fun stuff!
3. Limit solar sails to One Per Ship
4. Give solar sails lots of standard movement (remove the bonus movement) with mQNP applied
5. Give solar sails Supply Storage, Supply Usage, and Solar Supply Generation of some arbitrary amount - it doesn't matter what as long as they're all equal.
6. Optional - For added realism, give solar sails the Armor ability so they tend to be hit before other components, unless you heavily armor your ship

So what does all that do? What you get is, now solar sails will ONLY function in systems which actually have stars to produce the solar winds!

Now if I could figure out how to make the movement depend on the number of stars... could increase the supply capacity of the sails and change the movement back to bonus movement, but then they would continue to function for several turns after leaving a multi-star system for a no-star system... I guess that represents inertia or something...

[gregebowman]

Very interesting concept. I'd like to see the final product. Of course, to help with your solar sails, you can research the heck out of stellar manipulation and create your own stars eventually in the systems you control.

[Spoo]

Wouldn't this make blackhole systems impossible to cross?

You could change engines to be emergency propulsion pods, then have a component called "reactor" or "engineering" and make it a spaceyard with zero build rate and repair ability of 1.

Hmm... is it possible to give emergency propulsion the organic armor ability? Then it could repair itself each turn.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Or just have engines be really slow.

[Fyron]

Regeneration only repairs after combat, not from being damaged by stuff outside of combat or from being destroyed by using an emergency propulsion type ability.

[General Woundwort]

While we're on the subject, here's a sneak preview of how I did solar sails for my (hopefully) forthcoming Mother of All Mods mod...

(NOTE: Quasi-Newtonian movement rules in effect)

Name := Solar Sail I
Description := Uses solar winds to generate movement for a ship.
Pic Num := 129
Tonnage Space Taken := 20
Tonnage Structure := 200
Cost Minerals := 400
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 100
Vehicle Type := Ship
Supply Amount Used := 0
Restrictions := None
General Group := Engines
Family := 42
Roman Numeral := 1
Custom Group := 0
Number of Tech Req := 1
Tech Area Req 1 := Stellar Harnessing
Tech Level Req 1 := 4
Number of Abilities := 2
Ability 1 Type := Standard Ship Movement
Ability 1 Descr := Generates 6 standard movement.
Ability 1 Val 1 := 6
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
Ability 2 Type := Combat To Hit Defense Minus
Ability 2 Descr := Large size makes ship 75% easier to hit in combat.
Ability 2 Val 1 := 75
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0
Weapon Type := None

Comments?