Modding SEV Thread Questions

[Kana]

Might as well start asking questions, and getting answers, so that we can easily start putting together the mods that will make SEV a great game. I ask that you bold your question, normal type any other explanation or text, and if you have an answer please Quote the Bold, and then Italics your answer.

Thanks...

[Kana]

Can you pick different models for each level increase in a ship class?

This would facilitate the improvement and upgrade of certain vessel classes. A Frigate from WW1 is completely different from a Frigate of modern times. Or another example would be like the progression of a the Enterprise in Star Trek, from the TV version to the Movie version.

[Jarena]

Kana: I don't want to think about how much work that would take to make a complete shipset. Even if it is possible, I don't think you'd find much support.
My question:

Can you impliment action-specific experience types?

I was looking through experience types earlier, and noticed a lot of different catagories. This may be a well-documented feature I've just missed, but I think it would be cool if, say, after n kt of damage towards a planet, a ship gains a "seige experience" modifier. Or picks up "green/experienced/veteran Sniper" after n# successful beam hits.
Something like that.

[jowe01]

Are there any overarching scaling factors for building prices and maintenance somewhere in the text files?
In SE4, I always found that the price of ships was much too low compared to their maintenance cost(or maintenance too high comp. to building cost), meaning that it did not sufficiently hurt to loose a ship. Basically, every 4 turns you paid the building price again through maintenance cost. Why bother to bring back a damaged ship to repair, when during the time you drag it to a shipyard, you spend more resources than it would take to build a whole new ship?
Therefore, I approximately doubled the building cost and time for all hulls and components and halfed maintenance cost. However, while cutting maintenance in half was very easily done in the SE4 text files, doubling production cost requires touching every single hull and component - several hours of work each time a major patch came out.

In SE5, is there a general scaling parameter for production cost, too?

[bearclaw]

Is there a master list of all abilities/restrictions for SEV like SEIV's Abilities.txt file?

[Puke]

bearclaw said:
Is there a master list of all abilities/restrictions for SEV like SEIV's Abilities.txt file?

I saw references to one in some of the data files, so its probably safe to say that one exists but is excluded from the demo.

[Fyron]

jowe01:
You know, with a simple python script, you could double all costs in SE4 in a matter of seconds. See attached file. You will need Python 2.4 installed to run it.

For SE5, it would have to be a little more complex to handle formulas, but that will be easy enough to do.

Of course, it will indiscriminately double unit component costs as it is, but there are a lot of components that can be used on ships, satellites, and drones in stock.

[jowe01]

Thanks Fyron. Now Python is completely new for me (actually I have not written a program or a macro in 20 years). Where can I get it? Any good newbie documentation you know of?

[Phoenix-D]

Kana said:
Can you pick different models for each level increase in a ship class?

This would facilitate the improvement and upgrade of certain vessel classes. A Frigate from WW1 is completely different from a Frigate of modern times. Or another example would be like the progression of a the Enterprise in Star Trek, from the TV version to the Movie version.

Can't be done.

You could however make new ship classes available, but you'd have a very cluttered ship design screen.

[Noble713]

Can anyone decifer the weapon damage and range formulas?

I'm referring to stuff like this:

Weapon Space Min Damage Modifier Formula := (5 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 2)) - iif([%Range%] > Min(30, (([%Level%] - 1) * 20) + 10), 10000, 0)

I'll try to explain my understanding, taking it piece by piece:
(5 + (([%Level%] - 1) * 2)) Gives a damage rate based on the level of the component.

Min(30, (([%Level%] - 1) * 20) + 10) Compares a number to the value of a function based on the weapon level and returns the lower of the two?

- iif([%Range%] > ..... ,10000, 0) If the range is greater than the value returned above, return 1st number. Otherwise return the 2nd number?


Geesh. I think I'm going to need Excel graphs to tweak damage formulas for my mods.