Unusual New Propulsion Idea

[Ed Kolis]

Just an idea I had... what if instead of just researching Propulsion and getting faster and faster engines, your engines were split into multiple families (i.e. Retro Rockets, Ion Thrusters, Solar Sails, and Jump Drives), and you could only have one of each engine type on each ship? So if you want a really fast ship you'll have to use one of each and let each of their cost/supply/tonnage/etc. advantages and disadvantages average out, but if you want the specific benefits of one type, you'll have to settle for a slower ship overall? To make things interesting, engines would use mQNP-style scale mounts, just so that all ships don't end up the same speed, which would be boring.
Any thoughts?

[Atrocities]

An excellent idea.

[QuarianRex]

What would you propose the specific abilities of each type of engine to be?

[Karibu]

Great Idea!! I would do like something like this:

1.Retro Rockets: Fastest engines, usable in combat only, heavy use of supplies, takes lot of space. Later technologies increase minimization and decrease supply usage.

2.Ion Thrusters: Fastest system engines, low use of supplies when moving slowly, heavy use when moving fast (movement could be done so, that turn's first movement square takes ie. 10 supplies/engine, second movement point takes 20, third take 40, fourth takes 80, etc.) and later models would increase the efficiency. Takes little space. Generates 1 movement point in combat.

3.Solar Sails: No use of supplies, generates extra movement points like now. Needs sun to work (ie. doesn't help movement in nebulas, black holes, asteroid systems, etc.), takes little space. Does not generate movement points in combat.

4.Jump Drives: Heavy use of supplies, works only in warp points. Takes a lot of space, later technologies increase minimization and decrease supply usage. Does not generate movement points in combat.

Of course, this is just a thought and needs some refinement to be good. However, this would make it possible to make actually 2 class of ships: System ships and Star ships. Star ships would only take one retro engine (because of the space it takes) and move like 1 movement point in combat, when system ships would have no warp engines and would move fast in combat. Something like MOO3, but better This idea starts to fascinate me more and more

[ February 02, 2004, 05:48: Message edited by: Karibu ]

[Paul1980au]

Jump gates ? allowing planet to planet immediate transport.

[Karibu]

Jump gates could also be nice addition. Of course, they would require one building on a planet and it should be quite expensive to build. Not as much as system shield, but near. It could allow transporting cargo (not population?) like troops, wp's, mines, satellites, fighters and such.

Actually it would provide some defence for small player against a big one. To transport all your defence fighters and platforsm into attacked planet.

[Ed Kolis]

Well, I just made up those names as placeholders; there's not much you can do outside varying the resource cost, tonnage, research cost, supply usage, and speed of the various engines. You can't, for example, make some engines only work for traversing warp points. I just wanted names that sounded different enough that you wouldn't wonder "why can I install an ion engine and an antimatter engine on a ship but not two ion engines? they both function basically the same way" Also to create more interesting tech names than "Ion Propulsion", "Antimatter Propulsion", "Photon Propulsion", and "Quantum Propulsion"

[Suicide Junkie]

Perhaps names more along the lines of:
"Ion injectors" (smaller size)
"Secondary Accelerators" (bonus movement)
"Thrust Baffles" (reduced supply use)
"Vectoring Actuators" (combat movement)

[ February 03, 2004, 01:19: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Karibu]

But these kind of engines would create interesting palying tactics and extremely vast models of ships (not only different names, but different types totally) unlike today. Has anyone tried to mod a game like this? Is it actually possible?

I could think that code change for solar collectors would not be very difficult. Basically something like this and the code would be executed at the beginning of every sector when moving (ie. you are in nebula system, you get no bonus movement but if you warp through warp point, you get bonus movement at the other side if there is a sun):

If amount(suns in system) = 0 then
ship.movement.bonus = 0
else
if ship.equipment.solarpanel.level = 1 then
ship.movement.solarpanel.bonus = 1
end if

if ship.equipment.solarpanel.level = 2 then
ship.movement.solarpanel.bonus = 2
end if

if ship.equipment.solarpanel.level = 3 then
ship.movement.solarpanel.bonus = 3
end if

end if

[Ed Kolis]

The problem is, we don't have any sort of scripting language to do that with, just the static data files. There IS no way to put an "if" statement in the data files. That's why I've been bugging Aaron to put scripting and/or plugins into SE5

(btw, no offense intended but you might want to brush up on your programming... wouldn't

If amount(suns in system) = 0 then
ship.movement.bonus = 0
else
ship.movement.solarpanel.bonus = ship.equipment.solarpanel.level
end if

be easier? )