New, alternate means of modelling QNP in v1.78

[Pax]

I was reading Fyron's Modding 101 site the other day, specifically the chapter on QNP propulsion written by Suicide Junkie, and a thought struck me (quite forcefully, in fact I think it may have left a mark! ).

With the new compenhancements.txt capabilities, QNP effects can be produced via mounts, rather than just having to (as an example, in pre-Gold P&N) add 30 or 40 maximum-tech engines to your shiny new 10,000kT-displacement Battle Moon *just* to get a speed of one!

Here's the gist of it. Suppose we decide that 20kT of engine will moe 100kT of ship, at a speed equal to the engines rated MP output. IOW, a single 10kT engine that makes 3 movement points, willmove a 100kT ship at a speed of 3. That's the basic "Scale" for this example.

Now, in the mod I'm slowly working on, I've changed the ships a bit; the classes will have the following names/masses:

Escort, 100kT;
Frigate, 200kT;
Destroyer, 400kT;
Heavy Destroyer, 600kT;
Light Cruiser, 1000kT;
Battlecruiser, 1250kT;
Battleship, 1500kT;
Dreadnaught, 2000kT;

Now, here's the trick: the engien is HUGE in it's raw form, but, it's also not something anyoen will ever willingly use. It masses 1000kT, and costs ludicrous amounts of resources. Sounds silly,right? Wait ...

... we script a mount, specific to each class of ship (minimum and maximum vehicle sizes set to include only ONE class of ship per mount). A reduction in cost and size is set up for each mount -- bringing the engine down to the 20:100 ration we want.

The Escort, for example, would have a mount that reduced engine size and cost by 98% ... to 20kT.

The 1000kT Cruiser would need a 200kT engine, so it gets an 80% size reduction.

All the way up to the Dreadnaught, which at 2000kT, would need an engine that massed 400kT ... thus, it gets a 60% reduction.

Now, mind, I'm sure osme of you are wondering why the engine component in raw form isn't just sized for the biggest ship class. Well, at least in my mod, I'll have other, potentially-larger ships available with the rght racial trait, so ...

Also, the list above isn't all-inclusive; it omits colony ships, transports, carriers, and so on.

Plus 1000kT is easy to figure reductions for.

based on the above list, here's what each engine would be, size-wise:

Escort, 100kT; engine = 20kT; reduction = 98%
Frigate, 200kT; engine = 40kT; reduction = 96%
Destroyer, 400kT; engine = 80; reduction = 92%
Heavy Destroyer, 600kT; engine = 120; reduction = 88%
Cruiser, 800kT; engine = 160; reduction = 84%
Cruiser, 1000kT; engine = 200; reduction = 80%
Battlecruiser, 1250kT; engine = 250; reduction = 75%
Battleship, 1500kT; engine = 300; reduction = 70%
Dreadnaught, 2000kT; engine = 400; reduction = 60%

Now, this can be either with or without a 1-per-ship limit; if you want all ships with a given engine to move at the same speed (I don't personally recommend it, except perhaps for mods aimed at newbie players), make all hulls allow only 1 engine.

Personally, I'd recommend allowign 40% to 60% of a hull to be engine ... since the above ratio works on a 20% of hull ratio, 60% gives a better spread of possible speeds (1, 2, or 3 times the rated MP).

Now, a 100kT Escort with a trio of 3MP engines moves at 9, for only 60kT of it's mass; a 2,000kT Dreadnaught can only make the same speed if it mounts 1200kT of engine (!!).

Such an approach might actually work very well in certain genres -- the star Wars genre for instance, whee the Executor-class Super Star Destroyer has several custom engines, eachof which ALONE outmasses an entire normal-sized Star Destroyer! (Hint for non-SW geeks, the Executor was Vader's personal command ship, and is the big ship that crashes into the RotJ DeathStar 2 during the final battle).

So. Thoughts; sugestions; praise; high-velocity rotten fuit and vegetables?

[ August 20, 2002, 08:22: Message edited by: Pax ]