Narf's Mod: Almost done shredding the Facility.txt. Basic stuff only.

[Alneyan]

Erh, it seems like a good idea Narf. At least, if all these formulas are not necessary to play the mod.

Glad to see I am not the only one who cannot understand all these equations Renegade.

[gregebowman]

I'm glad you guys understand all of that. I almost flunked algebra in high school and college. Just couldn't grasp it, I guess. I didn't even want to try the higher math classes. Once I realized I had to study physics, I ditched my plans on becoming an astronomer. I'll wait until the mod is finished to see how it all comes out.

[Ed Kolis]

Now wait... did you say the size of your ships increases by 10% per level, you have 200 hulls, and you're using engine mounts?!?

I don't thinkn that will work with SE4... for one thing, your largest ship will be 173 million times the size of your smallest, and SE4 only allows a range of 1-65535 kT; for another, to use engine mounts, your largest ship must be no more than 100 times the size of the smallest, because you can't have fractions of a percent in mount sizes, and if you make the larger ships use percents greater than 100, then people will just use the unmounted engines

Are you sure you didn't mean 20 levels of ships (6.1x factor between largest and smallest), or 1% increase per level (7.2x factor)? Maybe I read your post wrong... In any event, both those ratios are smaller than SE4's baseship/escort ration of 10, and isn't the purpose of this mod to make technology and strategies MORE specialized, so shouldn't the ratio be as large as possible so you can have one UberDoomNaught versus 10,000 MiniPeashooterGnats?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

not as specialized as 10,000 to 1; on a weight for weight basis small ships should be just as usefull as big ships; although they couldn't got toe to toe without a larger wieght, they can run circles around the larger ships.

also, that's 180 ships divided by 9 ship classes, in which case the baseship comes out at over 9000.

yes, people could blatantly cheat by not using an engine mount on the larger ship sizes; the engine mount for the largest baseship is a little bigger than 1500, the size of the smallest baseship. however, i think the people i've met on the forums are smart enough to realize that cheating isn't winning. and for those that do cheat, since engines are a large part of the ship, 33% at default movement rate 11-2, it wouldn't be to hard on PBW to see if someone's cheating, even if your not researching the same, you can load up a max tech game and try to build their ship.

unless you can see mounts in enemy ship design's. i don't know if you can.

[ October 28, 2003, 16:17: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Alneyan]

You can see the mounts used in enemy ships designs, if you do know the designs that is. It can be useful to check if the enemy is using regular WMG or Massive WMG for instance.

As for this matter, well, I am no modder so I cannot really help you. Could you create different families of engines, a mount working for each one? I assume you cannot, it would be too easy.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

the mounts are based of off ship sizes.

if you can see mounts, then all you have to do is look for an E in your enemy's ship's engine's. so that problem is no longer an issue, except for singleplayer. that is, if it's ever singleplayer compatable. and i don't care if you cheat in SP, although i don't think it's healthy to cheat all the time.

can you specify a mount to be used with a certain component family in the AI files?

[Alneyan]

What I meant was to use two engines families, one for small ships, and the other after the 100th ship, when the percentage is above 100%, and so two different mounts based on the ship size. I am not sure if I do make sense though, or even if it would work fine.

There is only a problem with checking, it could be done on non-fighting ships, that is, the ones that you are not supposed to see. But cheating should not be that much of an issue in MP. (Or am I too naive?)