Weapons, engines and mods, Oh my!

[Geckomlis]

FYI:
The (unpublished) mod I am working on is based around 100 kT/2 MP engines. It uses a mixed system to scale the engines:
The baseline is a 1000 kT ship.
Mounts for ships ranging from 10 – 900 kT.
Engines numbers/Engines Per Move for ships ranging from 2000 - 9000 kT.
I removed the supply storage ability from the engines so that a ship’s supply capacity was smoothly scalable and more under player design control. To compensate, I added more supply storage component options (normal, conformal, and drop supply storage) and in a variety of sizes. I also tweaked the kT/supply storage ratio for supply components. The % of kT and other attributes to move any ship speed = X is constant through all the ship sizes. I also did the same for the vehicle control components.

I am happy with this approach as it meets most desiderata.

Very minor problems with this approach:
Some casual (to me) rounding errors.
The hard-coded repair system does not scale.
You need to scale-up engine damaging weapons w/mounts for them to work against all but the smallest ships.
The ship design process is more challenging and intolerant: you need to remember to use mounts for ships <1000 kT and to add supply storage to all designs. I have done everything I can to minimize this issue, including extensive documentation.

The idea is relatively mature at this point in the mod process, so I would be open to sharing specifics and accepting criticism if anyone is interested.

Gecko

[Fyron]

Originally posted by oleg:
Surprisinly, nobody mentioned yet the wonderfull idea of using engine mounts insted of engine numbers to achieve "realistic" ship movement.

I forgot what mod uses this idea, but I really like it !

PvK mentioned it, actually. It was Pax that came up with M-QNP, and it would have been in Exodus (or it is IIRC...), but he seems to have disappeared for the most part.

[Chronon]

I have never attempted a mod, and so I have no clue if this is even possible, but I thought I would toss out my idea anyway. I'm sure you'll let me know if it's impossible.

Could you keep the number of engines the same for all ship sizes but add another component that is necessary for them to work?

Perhaps this component could be called an "ion generator," and you would need more of them to power the larger ships (one for an escort, two for frigate, three for a destroyer) etc. Each one would cost a certain amount of resorces (perhaps high on rads, medium on mins, and low on organics) and take a certain amount of supply. They could be part of the propulsion tree, and they could become more efficient at higher levels (Ion Generator I costs more resources and uses more supply than Ion Generator II). That would give players an incentive to move up the propulsion tree - otherwise you would be powering your larger ships with fuel-hogging low-tech "ion generators."

[Ed Kolis]

How would those "ion generators" be any different from the current engines, then?

[Fyron]

You could make engines store no supplies, which would force players to use supply storage comps (and can add a lot more design options). Check out Adamant, which has engines at 5 kT and then reactors that are 5 kT and store supplies (supply pods are gone). The B5 Mod does something similar, except that it's reactors generate something like 3000 supplies per turn and store 3000, so supplies are changed to power per turn instead of feul.

I don't think there is a way to make your idea work that is any different than just using engines as they are now (or in a QNP system).

[ June 17, 2003, 21:32: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[PvK]

Well, maybe if you did something with the life suport, bridge and/or crew quarters components, because those affect movement if they are missing. You could decide one or more of them was unnecessary, and then use that ability as a required widget for the engines, probably.

Or you could use bonus movement for your engines, and standard movement for your widget-that-makes-engines-work, because the ship needs to be able to travel at at least speed 1 via standard movement, before it will move at all via bonus movement.

PvK

[Chronon]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
How would those "ion generators" be any different from the current engines, then?

They would take up more space, cost more, and use more supplies for the larger ships. So, bigger ships would still have the advantage of using the larger weapon mounts, but would not have all the extra room they presently have left over after installing the same six engines that the escorts use (to get the same speed!). In other words, the number of weapons on each type of ship would be more equal (though their power would be greater on the big ships, which is as it should be), and fleets might be more diverse (not all DN's).

Fyron, from your description of Adamant, it sounds like you've already got something like this working.

PvK, that's a fascinating idea about the crew quarters, bridge and life support. Crew quarters could be modded to include life support (can't really have crew without it), and the life support could be changed to the engine widget.

Perhaps one of these days I'll give in to my temptation and dig into the data files...