A mod idea :)

[Starhawk]

Well in "canon" the Hra-Thrall harbringer was just over 12.9km long 4.8km high and about 1.8 km wide so yeah that is a BIG Hra-Thrall starship, though not the biggest the biggest is actually the "Legacy" ships which I haven't modled yet.

I was going for the aquatic look since the Hra-Thrall basically look like giant walking squids (on land they swim like our squids when in their own environment). and the first thing that popped into my head was what I saw of his designs and they looked organic and aquatic so I did the best I could to copy his designs.

[Starhawk]

Okay some details I've decided for what I'm going to do:

Fighters: Some races will NOT have them and others will have them purely for fighter and interceptor (as in MISSILES people ) duty others like the swarmers will use them extensively including "destroyers" which are actually going to be the SIZE of a destroyer but under the fighter classification.

I am increasing the capital class ship weights MUCH larger then the smaller ships for example:

Icaran:
Frigate= 300kt
Destroyer=350kt
Light Cruiser= 425kt
Heavy Cruiser=500kt
Battlecruiser= 1,000kt
Dreadnought= 4,000kt
Super Dreadnought= 6,000kt
Commandship = 8,000kt
Battlemoon = 10,000kt

Hra-Thrall

Supressor Frigate= 350kt
Light Destroyer = 400kt
Heavy Destroyer = 500kt
WarCruiser = 4,000kt
Harbringer = 5,000kt
Legacy = 7,000kt

Terrenesi:
Frigate = 250kt
Destroyer = 300kt
Fleet Destroyer = 500kt
Heavy Cruiser = 800kt
Battlecruiser = 3,500kt
Dreadnought = 10,000kt
Super Dreadnought =15,000kt

The reason you are seeing such DRASTIC changes is because it's hard for me to see Space Empires fleets compared to those of "real" fleets, you don't see such tiny changes from size to size a modern Destoryer is MUCH larger then a frigate and a modern cruiser is MUCH larger then a destroyer and a modern Carrier is orders of magnitutde larger then a cruiser.

So basically as your ship classes go up they get to be TRUE capital ships as opposed to skirmishers and lightweight combat ships.

Also I am modding in shield mounts so that a SD mount will be MUCH more powerful shield generators then say a battlecruisers (that's per shield generator not just because the mass of ship you have available for shields).

I'm also lowering the average weapon fire from 1 to 2 turns per cycle.

Basically I want people playing to see REAL naval slugging matches where a battle can last several GAME turns and where if they see even 30 Dreadnoughts entering their space they get a wee bit squimish

Of course with AI this will also be easy to pull of because I can put say 5 battlecruisers to his 1 dreadnought so even if your one of those players who goes for quantity over quality your going to regret it when his 1 dreadnought chews your battlecruiser formation to peices.

[Black_Knyght]

Starhawk said:
Well here my friends is the Hra-Thrall Harbringer (Dreadnought) sized vessel

Very Nice !!!

[Starhawk]

Ladies and gentlemen the Hra-THrall Legacy (superdreadnought) starship.

[Starhawk]

Okay I was thinking to make this more realistic especially considering the tonnages of the ships (10+ megaton components plus probobly hundreds of megatons in hull weight) I would make it so that you can only build starships of the larger sizes in oribtal shipyards.

My questions on this are:

1: Is there anyway to make it so you HAVE to build a certain hull size from a certain shipyard type?

2: If there is is there anyway the AI would be smart enough to know it has to build orbital yards or would it be dumb enough to build destroyers the whole game?

3: If it's NOT possible is there anyway I could still execute this style change without it hurting gameplay?

[Ed Kolis]

1. You can't make it so you HAVE to, but you can make it EXTREMELY inconvenient not to - say you want highliners to be buildable only in space - then give planetary space yards 1 build rate in rads and make only highliners use rads to build! Or just have "gradations" of spaceyards which have vastly different build rates and costs, so it's impractical to use a micro yard to build a highliner but wasteful to use a mega yard to build a scout!

2. AI tags perhaps?

3. I don't think you'll reach this point - SE4 is quite moddable and the community is quite innovative

[Starhawk]

1. SO basically make it so that the orbital yards are the only thing that can build to X amount of say Radition while the small hulls dont use or need RADS at all.

The problem is that don't all weapons require a certain amount of Radioactives when bought/resupplied?

[Phoenix-D]

Not unless you make them need it, no.

[Starhawk]

Well see now I've actually come to a slight problem, I am unsure of precisely WHERE the tech tree should start for each race.

I mean if I went the route of the original SEIV tech tree then we could have some issues as hra-thrall have NO armor technology and swarmers have no ship to ship combat weaponry besides that of their "fighters".

And since the Union of Man is a missile heavy nation they would utterly dominate the other races early on as they have the best fastest and deadliest missiles.

So I am not quite sure where to start the tech.

Any suggestions based upon the description I've given of each race so far?