Well, I *think* I came up with a solution for how to parse and evaluate the expressions in C# without using type reflection, and it *might* even let me use true variables in expressions (e.g. compute 3*x + 4*x to be 7*x), but it's all on paper now and I haven't got a chance to implement it yet...
I did find, though, that part of the reason the program was running so slow was that I'd been running it with the debug symbols enabled for some time
... it's somewhat improved though still a bit slow now that I switched to the release Version
Back to the Antares Mod, I was testing out some weapons the other day in the combat simulator but they wouldn't fire and the AI ship I was fighting against would just move really slowly around the map in no particular direction... well, it took me until today to figure out that that was because I'd forgotten to add supply storage into the mod yet!
Speaking of supply storage, though, I was thinking about all the stupid scale mounts and such that are going into making this mod look like MOO2... for one thing, there are six types of crew quarters, one for each size of ship, and each size requires five crew quarters of its own type - AND of all smaller types! (So a cruiser requires 5 cruiser crew quarters, 5 destroyer crew quarters, and 5 frigate crew quarters.) If you're wondering why I made it 5 instead of 1, it's because of Neutron BLasters - I want even the weakest... HEY, wait, in MOO2, only hits of 5 points or above did any damage to the crew (aside from random casualties)! So I can just give the crew quarters 5 hitpoints each... or I could change the damage of neutron bLasters, since I can't make them do normal damage in addition to the neutron damage anyway, or I can do both in order to tweak the chance of crew being killed by stray shots of other weapons!
And in case you're wondering why all the fuss about crew quarters, it's because in MOO2, crew could perform boarding actions without the need for any special boarding party equipment; there were Troop Pods which doubled the crew capacity of a ship but aside from combat enhancements like Plasma Rifles (hmm, maybe I need to add multiple levels of crew quarters with enhanced boarding combat abilities?) that was it...
But what I was really talking about is scale mounts - because so many components in MOO2 are scaled to the ship, either in size or in effect amount, I'm going to need a LOT of scale mounts, even for the "essential" systems. The problem is, I can't scale everything with size, so for instance I can't make a deuterium fuel tank carry more supplies for a battleship than for a frigate. I suppose it doesn't matter because I could always make all engines use the same number of supplies and all weapons use zero supplies, and that would even be consistent with MOO2
But anyway, back to the scale mounts again... I'm going to have too many, even though I'm trying to consolidate them, and I'm afraid it will be too confusing for the player... so far I have a crew quarters scale mount and an armor/structure scale mount (which is used for the armor (hit first) and structure (leaky armor with equal hitpoints) of the ship), but I foresee the need for a shield scale mount, (possibly) an engine scale mount (though if I use the idea I mentioned before with the supply tanks I guess I won't need it), a fuel tank scale mount, a special systems scale mount (for things like Cloaking Devices and the like), and a computer scale mount. I suppose a good number of these scale mounts can be consolidated into one, but I haven't figured out which yet, and it would seem rather confusing to have a Shield/Armor/Special Systems scale mount and a Crew Quarters/Computer/Fuel Tank scale mount, now wouldn't it?
But we'll see, they'll probably consolidate in some sort of logical fashion, or so I hope
Oh, and I think I'll do something different than I originally was going to with the ancient techs... I was originally going to have them scattered around as unique ruins techs, but rather underpowered, but I was facing the prospect of duplicating all of them (not that there are many
) for the Antarans... then I figured, hey, why bother with the unique techs, I never liked them anyway as they were too easy to get, so I'll just put them in at full strength techs available only for Antarans, but captureable... except that, since each Antaran ship analyzed only gives a 25% chance of giving a tech in MOO2, the first ship analyzed will simply open up a new research area and more analyzed ships will be required to get any useful tech
I'm still trying to figure out whether or not to make the research cost of the ancient techs so huge, though, that after analyzing the first ship and getting the new tech area it would be impractical to research the other levels... hmmm....
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