New Mod: The Art of War Mod

[Talenn]

geoschmo:

Unfortunately, those files are long gone. I had given up SE4 long ago (before Gold was announced). All of my old stuff was on a PC that I no longer have....In retrospect, I should have backed them up onto something in case I ever wanted to mess with 'em again, but they had been so outdated by patches that the work required to get them working again was just staggering, especially once I had been away from the game for a while and couldnt even remember whatall needed to be changed...oh well...

As for some other thoughts, I agree that To-hit and Defense bonuses should be in smaller incremental chunks (I believe SE3 DID do it by 10s instead of 20s and 25s). I'd also be really careful about things like the Religious techs that give auto-hit etc. They could potentially screw up balance horribly, especially if you are looking at mods like my own where a lot of weapon to defense interactions are being based on size and 'agility' of the target. Having what should be a VERY low accuracy 'Ship-killer' weapon hitting 100% could be too ugly to contemplate.

Phoenix-D:

Yes, IMO, Capital ships should be very tough to kill. Realistically, only overwhelming numbers, specially designed 'torpedo craft' (or whatever), or other Capitals should really be the only way to deal with them.

In line with that, I also think that everyone should START with ability to make ships of most sizes. It just doesnt make sense to me that people cant build larger combatants earlier in the game however inefficiently. For the most part, the 'technology' doesnt change, just the scale of the project.

Incentives to research Ship Construction could be cheaper hulls of the same size (especially if the starting hulls are very questionable in cost effectiveness), better defense bonuses, or simply better efficiency in engines...ie a 'Cruiser' hull in the early game could be 500kt and cost 800/100/250 while a later game one could be 550kt, cost 500/75/150 or have -5% to be hit instead of the extra 50kt. The scope there alone is nearly endless. Add in differentiations in max speeds and whatnot for even more variety. My vision of it would be that everyone can build a FG,DD,CL,CA,BC,BB of some sort at the beginning. Refinement of the Tech could open up other classes and modify those classes.

Hand in hand with that is the max speed/hull. It is my firm belief that smaller ships should have higher movement maxes and they shouldnt have to burn as much mass percentage to achieve the higher moves. This alone would go a long way to ensuring their longevity in the game. Having nothing but Ships of the Line that can only go 3 or 4 on the strategic map is going to be a serious liability against someone who has a Cruiser squadron capable of going speed 6-8 in strategic. Sure, you can stack the warp points, but if they DO get in, you'll never be able to track them down.

Finally, I definately dont like the feel of outrunning MOST Missiles. Sure you can add some slow but extremely long ranged ones for the initial salvos and whatnot, but when the push comes to shove, I like the missiles going about speed 12+. This is what actually makes them viable. With PD getting TWO shots at every salvo, they are quite worthless.

Another thought on Missiles is that nothing says that they HAVE to be huge, menacing, low Rate of Fire, all or nothing affairs. Smaller missiles that dont do ungodly damage could still be incredibly useful if they have long ranges. There is plenty of scope for Missiles that have varied characteristics.

My vision of would be that most fleets dont go either guns or missiles, but they mix them up a bit. Guns can be more lethal, but shorter ranged and less accurate overall (especially vs smaller combatants) while missiles are long range duelers that can hit anything if they can get through the PD fire. Of course certain exception weapons can exist in that environment as well. Its all really just a matter of how you want to see combat pan out.

More thoughts to follow....

Talenn

[PDF]

I like the idea of larger, "inefficient" hull designs at lower Ship tech levels.

It should be easy to implement : for each hull size up to 2 "inefficient hulls" have to be defined, and each tech level could allow "next" hull size inefficient-1 and 2 sizes larger inefficient-2 (more inefficient than 1).
Inefficient-1 will have some 10% less usable space than normal, inefficient-2 15% to 20% less, and perhaps lower speed constraints (larger hulls still have to get more room than smaller one, so a Frigate should have more than 150 Kt useful !)

So for example ship tech-1 will allow :
Escort
Frigate inefficient-1
Destroyer inefficient -2

then ship tech 2 will give
Normal escort and frigate
Destroyer inefficient-1
Lt Cruiser inefficient-2
etc etc

It'll be particularly useful in high start/low progress games such as Proportions.

[dogscoff]

Here's an idea on the ECM/ combat sensor debate... how about doing away with the ECM and CS components completely, and building the bonuses into ships / weapons respectively.

It would create a huge mess of new components (meson bLaster II + CS I, meson bLaster II + CS II...) but you might find / write a script to generate them automatically. Would the game engine be able to handle such a huge components.txt file?

Not sure what this would achieve in termms of game balance, bnut it could be interesting. It would certainly give the modder more control over the whole combat bonus system.

[geoschmo]

Yeah D, that's an idea. I don't think I will totally eliminate ECM/Sensors, but by reducing the effectivness of them, it will give more of an incentive for people to choose the weapons with inherant bonuses. More tradeoffs like that is what I am looking for.

With the reduction of combat sensor and racial to hit bonuses, I am concerned that the Tailsman may become even more powerful. I am considering changing it so that instead of a guaranteed hit, maybe it will have like a 60% bonus to hit or something like that. It will still be way better than regular sensors, as it should be for the cost involved, but not quite so overwhelming. That's not a final decision. I need to test that a little. Perhaps I will add some Religious only weapons that do have the guaranteed hit (If that's possible that is without transfering the ability to everything on the ship) but that has a limited rate of fire. Maybe two or three times per combat.

All these ship hull ideas are great. One thing I have run up against though is the lack of families and supercedences with vehicle sizes. Unfortunatly there is no "Only latest" in the hull list, so it's going to get kind of cluttered. But oh well.

Also, since I will be slowing down and capping the ship and fleet training facilities, I will probably make the Combat Neural net researchable by everyone . Maybe put it up high in the computer branch. I think that is a cool component that just doesn't get enough use. Probably because it's so easy just to train all the ships the regular way.

Geoschmo

[ 03 May 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[DirectorTsaarx]

quote:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:
<snip>
I will also be modifying the racial attack and defense characteristics to make them much more expensive<snip>

Comments?

Geoschmo

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Don't forget that you can get attack/defense bonuses using various cultures, and those are free. You may want to either reduce the bonuses in the respective cultures, or just eliminate the cultures that provide attack/defense bonuses...

[geoschmo]

Yes, I wasn't planning on eliminating those, but I was planning on reducing them and adjusting the culture file to make them a little more painful in other areas to choose. Just so it's not basically "free" like it is now.

IIRC someone put out a "balanced" culture file a while back that calculated the number of points that would be needed to get the advantages from the culture files and assigned negatives that were equal in value. That sounds like a good thing to me. I'll probably do something like it for AOW.

Geoschmo

[Quikngruvn]

I like the idea of multiple hulls, but could you retrofit, say, a Frigate Inefficient-1 to a standard Frigate? My gut tells me no, but I haven't tested this.... I like the idea of having multiple, progressive hull types, but I don't like the idea of being stuck with an inefficient hull if I build it.

Otherwise... this looks to be a really nice mod once it's fleshed out and finished.

Quikngruvn

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by Quikngruvn:
I like the idea of multiple hulls, but could you retrofit, say, a Frigate Inefficient-1 to a standard Frigate? My gut tells me no, but I haven't tested this.... I like the idea of having multiple, progressive hull types, but I don't like the idea of being stuck with an inefficient hull if I build it.

Otherwise... this looks to be a really nice mod once it's fleshed out and finished.

Quikngruvn

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As I recall, the 'modified maintenance ability' is effective when placed in a component. So, rather than have various hulls with different maintenance levels, have all hulls with higher maintenance costs initially and have an 'engineering' tech field that produces crew quarters with increasing levels of maintenance reduction ability. Just retrofit your old ship with the newer crew quarters (standing for newly trained engineers who will save your resources).

[geoschmo]

Nope, once you build a hull you are stuck with it or you can scrap it. You can retrofit components, but not to different hulls, even of the same size. You can see this youself in the stock game if you try to retrofit a smal transport to a colony hull.

Geoschmo

[Phoenix-D]

"As I recall, the 'modified maintenance ability' is effective when placed in a component. So, rather than have various hulls with different maintenance levels, have all hulls with higher maintenance costs initially and have an 'engineering' tech field that produces crew quarters with increasing levels of maintenance reduction ability. Just retrofit your old ship with the newer crew quarters (standing for newly trained engineers who will save your resources). "

Very good idea. One thing to keep in mind is that the hull selection window has NO obselete function. In other words, if you have a tech area that gives 10 ships, each a replacement of the Last.. those ships will always show up. It gets really cluttered, really fast.

Phoenix-D