A patch is never enough...

Ed Kolis · #1 August 15th, 2002, 12:40 AM

Yep, the latest patch is definitely great, but whenever ya give me stuff it only makes me think of ideas for even better stuff! So here goes...

The [%ShieldPointsGenerated] was a good idea - it will help clear up nasty bugs caused by accidental typos where it says 40 shield points but really generates 60. Why not implement things like [%CombatModifier] or just a generic [%EffectAmount] as well?

Comma separated list of weapon types (direct, seeking, etc.) for mounts would be nice

I created a ship in an QNP mod (mine, actually, that I was testing)that was almost entirely filled with engines... it showed up as having 20 or so movement in the design window, but when I ran it in a combat simulation it only had 3! Is this some kind of overflow error?

Good thinking - a component with 0 damage resistance still takes a hit to be damaged - it's not perpetually destroyed, and the ship is not made invincible (it's never hit, since bigger/tougher (I forget which it is) components are hit more it might seem logical to assume that components with 0 HP are hit never!)

Weird... my homeworld shows up as Ft and St (fleet/ship training facilities available) even though it has no such facilities! nope that's only in my mod... weird...

Damage Percent and other weapon-based fields should be optional in CompEnhancement, since shield-specific fields are optional for weapons...

Still this is one of the best patches yet! I especially like when new features are added, and this one had 2 big ones - mount enhancements (weird, enhancing something that was itself added in a patch - yes, when you installed SE4 from the original CD it had no mounts! that was added in the 1st patch if you don't remember!) and enhancements to the system display (fleet training facilities, etc. show up on planets)!

Baron Munchausen · #2 August 15th, 2002, 03:43 AM

Yes, adding the substitution to the ability description obviously took some modification of the way the game displays the component info. But now that it's done there is room for more such goodies and they will be much easier to add.

Are you sure that your homeworld is showing ship and fleet training flags without actually having the facilities? You're not mistaking the flags for some other ability? They can be hard to read. I asked MM to change the text color for those flags somehow but he didn't do that. If you're sure than you've found a bug. Report it to MM.

DirectorTsaarx · #3 August 15th, 2002, 10:27 PM

Did your mod have new facilities? And, if so, did you re-use the facility family number from the ship/fleet training facilities? That could explain the glitch...

As for the movement thing, did you add in components with negative bonuses to combat movement? That's the first explanation that comes to my mind - SJ and/or PvK should be able to give much better pointers on implementing QNP...

capnq · #4 August 15th, 2002, 11:54 PM

Quote:

I asked MM to change the text color for those flags somehow but he didn't do that.

You can change that yourself: open <yourRace>_main.bmp, then change the color of the solid rectangle under the small Version of your flag. That controls everything that's color-coded to show that it's yours.

Suicide Junkie · #5 August 16th, 2002, 12:04 AM

Quote:

I created a ship in an QNP mod (mine, actually, that I was testing)that was almost entirely filled with engines... it showed up as having 20 or so movement in the design window, but when I ran it in a combat simulation it only had 3! Is this some kind of overflow error?

This may be caused by the following:
Your ship was designed with a standard movement / engines per move = 20. The design therefore showed as 20 MP.

However, if there was no lifesupport components required or added, then the ship would suffer a 1/4 movement rate in the real world.

20/4 = 5 and in combat, 5/2 rounds up to 3 mp.

THe same thing would happen if you had lifesupport but no bridge or crew quarters.

Baron Munchausen · #6 August 16th, 2002, 12:35 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by capnq:

quote:
I asked MM to change the text color for those flags somehow but he didn't do that.

You can change that yourself: open <yourRace>_main.bmp, then change the color of the solid rectangle under the small Version of your flag. That controls everything that's color-coded to show that it's yours.

Which would change the color of EVERYTHING. The 'flag' on your fleets, population bars, etc. You'd end up with everyone using white because it's the most readable color against the background of planet images. We need a 'special case' for those ability flags so we can still have distinguishing colors in other aspects for ID purposes.

[ August 16, 2002, 00:14: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

capnq · #7 August 16th, 2002, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Which would change the color of EVERYTHING. The 'flag' on your fleets, population bars, etc. You'd end up with everyone using white because it's the most readable color against the background of planet images.

Whenever I've done this, I've always changed the color to a shade of what it was to start with, usually just a bright color from the race flag. It doesn't matter what "everyone" uses anyway; the change only effects your own computer.

I don't think I've needed to do it for more than half a dozen shipsets; off the top of my head, I can only recall three that I know I've changed.

Ed Kolis · #8 August 16th, 2002, 07:32 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
This may be caused by the following:
Your ship was designed with a standard movement / engines per move = 20. The design therefore showed as 20 MP.

However, if there was no lifesupport components required or added, then the ship would suffer a 1/4 movement rate in the real world.

20/4 = 5 and in combat, 5/2 rounds up to 3 mp.

THe same thing would happen if you had lifesupport but no bridge or crew quarters.

SJ, I think you hit the nail on the head. My ship was an Escort, and I modded the game so that Escorts and Frigates don't need any life support or crew quarters. (It's a long story

) So you're saying that even though the ship doesn't NEED LS/CQ, it still takes penalties from not having them? Sounds like a bug to me... too bad a patch was just released so we probably won't see that fixed for a long time! (Now how'd you ever manage to guess what the problem was???)

Suicide Junkie · #9 August 16th, 2002, 07:40 PM

All you have to do is to give the hull a built-in lifesupport and crew quarters ability.
Dead easy to mod = not worth patching.

"Now how'd you ever manage to guess what the problem was???"
Well, I'm one of the ancient ones of this forum, and I've been modding SE4 in two millennia so far.

Basically, I know how the game thinks.

Ed Kolis · #10 August 18th, 2002, 03:59 AM

Thanks! I'll try that!

Edit: I was actually going to say something slightly more substantial here:

A few more ideas I had...

Multi-Orders - give lotsa ships in different sectors the same orders by shift-clicking them in the ships list!

Transports could show not the generic population icon but instead an icon for each race that's on 'em! That way you know if you have oxygen breathers or whatnot.

Cloak-penetrating scanners with a limited range like long range scanners! (Or would that just cause too much confusion?)

[ August 18, 2002, 03:03: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]