Recruiting for Renegade Legion MOD

[Noble713]

I'm currently working on a Renegade Legion mod. I own virtually every RenLeg supplement (except for Circus Maximus, and maybe another 1 or 2 I can't think of), so I have a vast wealth of information to work from and have tried to convert various components with exacting detail. Unfortunately, there is very little technology in the RL universe and many things are different from the SE4 game mechanics so the tech tree has been pruned back a bunch, which in turns limits your options for ship design.

Today I started to work on TOG and Commonwealth ship sets, but the simple shapes means that the hull plating and textures must be incredibly detailed to make them look like more than plain boxes, and I'm not accustomed to making images that look good at 128 x 128 resolution; I typically render my work in MAX at 640x480.

I'm also working on including a Shannedam County scenario. I have the relevant sourcebook, which has planet, moon, asteroid belt, and order of battle lists for every system in the county. Making the map has been really tedious though (ARGH! I would KILL for a randomized min/rad/org button!)

What kind of help I could use:
-Shipset modellers. Not familiar with the RenLeg universe? Doesn't really matter. I have the rare Leviathan Capital Ship Briefing with has images of every major ship class in the TOG and Commonwealth navies. I have no problems with scanning the ships I have planned and sending them to you. As for the S'Sorra and Kess'Rith, races which I didn't even think of including until I started typing this message, you would pretty much have a free hand in the style as long as it bore some resemblance to other ships in the universe. (generally long and sleek, with small wings or fins)

-Component icon artists. There aren't too many icons that really need to be created, but if I can find someone else willing to do them, that frees me up to focus on coding and whatnot.

-Technology and facility ideas. The tech tree is REALLY small right now. There are less than 10 weapon research areas. The game currently focuses heavily on combat (especially ground combat) and very little on research. I'd also like to see an increase in governmental or civilian areas, like economic buildings or something. Although SE4's economic system is so basic there isn't much that you can do with it.

If you're interested, um...reply!

[Noble713]

Oh yeah, here's a game concept question I've been debating for a while now:

Which would be a better way to handle ground units?

Method A:
-Troop types are "Infantry" "Light Tank" "Medium Tank" "Heavy Tank", all of which are fairly small (less than 50kT)
-Components are individual weapons, such as lasers and missiles, or shields and armor.
-Allows for detailed vehicle design, and ground casualties will be more apparent with smaller units.

Method B:
-Troop types are "Platoon" "Century" "Cohort" "Legion", all of which are fairly large (not sure how large yet, but a large transport shouldn't be able to move more than 1 legion.
-Components are entire infantry and vehicle formations, such as Anti-Tank Platoons, Grav-Mounted Infantry Centuries, Heavy Tank Cohorts, etc.
-Has a more epic and engrossing sense of scale knowing you are dropping 2 Strike and 1 Infantry Legion on a planet rather than 368 Trajan tanks and 13,402 Infantry.

Thoughts?

[Ed Kolis]

What, doesn't 13,000 infantry sound epic enough?

Not to mention in the second system a legion fights at full strength until it is annihilated, and 100 centuries can't be combined into a legion...

How about a compromise - make troops small in size and equippable with components such as weapons and armor - say 2 to 10 kT - but call them legions anyway (a legion is 10,000 men right? 10,000 men x 100 kg / man = 1,000,000 kg = 1 kT, and a legion of infantry might carry equipment equal to its mass, while a legion of tanks might be 90% machines and 10% men.) I know it seems weird to have a legion so small, but really, these are PLANETS we're conquering, right? A legion just won't cut it, it's not like we're invading Pottsylvania

[Suicide Junkie]

-Component icon artists. There aren't too many icons that really need to be created, but if I can find someone else willing to do them, that frees me up to focus on coding and whatnot.

Check out the imagemod (see sig)
Over a thousand images in the component pack alone, so it should be all you need Plenty of gritty-looking tech that was developed with the B5 mod in mind, and sound similar enough to what you want.

[Dawn Falcon]

So um.

I had some of the stuff but I was made an offer for most of it I couldn't refuse, and rest isn't here.

Weapons:

Lasers
EPC
NPC
Gauss Cannon (ground only as I recall)
hardpoint w/various missiles w/different warheads
MDC

hmm...what am I forgetting?

Also

cone laser
safeguard
MDC-G
autoloading hardpoint
TPC
EPC/laser (I think? - it was in a fighter briefing)

The hardest bit I think is dealing with the way which damage was done in RL. Hmm...maybe inner/outer armour (ala shield/armour in the engine)? (i.e. some weapons would have to scour through the entire armour, while say lasers would only hit the inner armour).

But then you have the RL shields, which work differently by blocking SOME shots and letting others pass through unharmed. Sigh.

Anyway, that gives you two particle, one laser, one kinetic and one missile (with lots of different warheads) for space combat, plus the side-specific specials and a type of PD for both sides.

[Suicide Junkie]

But then you have the RL shields, which work differently by blocking SOME shots and letting others pass through unharmed. Sigh.

I suggest the leaky shield system.

What you do is:
1) Drop shield generation amounts as nessesary (eg: 1/10th to 1/40th for standard SE4)
2) Add a "shield generation from damage" ability (the crystalline armor ability), and set it equal to the shield generated.

This means the shields will block half the damage coming in instead of 100% or none. They will also keep protecting your ship until the generator is hit.

By using the "X damage to shields" abilities, you can have various weapons penetrate more or less than others.

Quarter damage to shields = 80% absorbed, 20% penetrates.
Half damage to shields = 67% absorbed, 33% penetrates.
Normal = 50% absorbed
Double damage to shields = 33% absorbed
Quad damage to shields = 20% absorbed
Skips all shields = 0% absorbed.

[Malagon]

Very familiar with the RL universe and I to have a copy of that Leviathan ship book, but alas I have just started playing SEIV and wouldnt even know where to start on making suggestions.

So new to this game overall I just made a major blunder Last night. Played 14hours straight when the game glitched, I thought no problem as I had autosave turned on.... Wrong! I had turned it on for a previous game but didnt realize it didnt save that state Oh well at least I learned some of the tech tree.

Hmmm thinking on tech.... TOG is based off the Roman empire and the Commonwealth is... hmmm loosely based off of Great Britian? Anyway at least for TOG if your really serious you could study up somewhat on the Roman empire and what they managed to build and their general state they took technology and modernize it.

Sorry remembering as I type. ToG preferred missle weapons so you could focus tech in that area and RL\commonwealth liked lasers and MDC's if I remember right.

OT kinda. Playing with the idea of learning programming and putting Centurion and Interceptor on my comp. Loved Centurion and I have source books for vehicles so maybe one of these days.

Malagon

[Noble713]

Ok, been offline for a few days but I'm back. Good suggestions all around.

I hadn't thought of using the crystal armor ability, I think I'll definitely mod than in there and see how it works. The current shield system I just pulled outta my @$$ as a stopgap measure, which doesn't suit me at all as I spent so much time and effort tweaking other things to perfection. For example, the shipboard laser bays have their mass, damage, ranges, and costs matching those in the Leviathan books almost exactly, and the same can be said for many other parts of ship design.

As for the different weapon types, I've looked into adding them but I had trouble making them distinctive enough. In other words, there isn't really any way to differentiate between an EPC and a 7.5/6 Laser at the scale that I'm using without making them grossly over-effective compared to capital ship weapons.

For ground stuff:
Right now I'm kinda going with a middle ground but it can still be altered. I went through the TO&E for a Strike Legion, and, using the typical TOG vehicles for each Century type, came up with a size 110kT for the combat strength of a legion. Grav tanks are HEAVY. I made the Legion troop size 200kT in case someone would want to design an all heavy-grav tank legion. Ground components default to Century size, but there is a cohort-size mount to speed the design of Legions. Cohort is also the starting ground vehicle size, with Auxilia being the medium troop size. Troop components include Headquarters units, Foot, Mechanized, and Grav-Mounted Infantry, and Light, Medium and Heavy Ground and Grav Tanks. I decided to leave out artillery. I also added a new unit, the Supply Century, which has a very high organics cost. It behaves as life support for ground troops. This was done for several reasons. 1)I wanted supplies, and the increasing supplies needed to support larger ground units, to be represented. 2)I wanted to expand the utility of organics, and it seemed right to me that the vast majority of supplies will probably be organic in nature (FOOD, water, replacement organs, people, etc.). I also jacked up the organics costs of crew quarters with the same logic.

Ok, I'm off to take a look at this imagemod. Sounds very useful.