True Solar Sails

[rdouglass]

I like the solar sail idea as well, but you said earlier you'd eliminate supply usage from all other components. Are weapons and shields included? IOW, do we have unlimited ammo for weapons? IMO, weapons should not fire at all if you have no supplies.

Also, it kinda' goes against my way of thinking to be able to transverse Warp Points using just inertia. Shouldn't you have to use some kind of active propulsion, if nothing else for vector control, when going thru WP's? Remember, warp lines are not 'in space' so they don't have solar radiation to act as passive propulsion.

It would be nice if SS's were truly sails and not a modified engine component / bonus feature. I can envision Intra-system ships being able to use zero supplies with a Master computer and a solar sail running repeat orders indefinitely. Should be slow movement when compared to active propulsion, but not use any supplies.

Nice ideas nevertheless. I for one would use something like this in my games if available.

[Ed Kolis]

Originally posted by J.:
For making speed depend on the number of stars in the system, would this work:

Make the solar sails give triple the movement, like 18 instead of 6 for example. Also increase the supply storage, but only make them generate enough supplies for 6 points of movement to be possible. This way, when you have a system with three stars, the ship would generate three times the supplies and could use all the 18 points of movement.

Or, is there a problem with this theory?

That would suffer from the little "inertia" problem I mentioned earlier. And ships would show up with triple their normal movement points at the beginning of their turn, confusing the player. But those are minor issues

[Ed Kolis]

Originally posted by rdouglass:
I like the solar sail idea as well, but you said earlier you'd eliminate supply usage from all other components. Are weapons and shields included? IOW, do we have unlimited ammo for weapons? IMO, weapons should not fire at all if you have no supplies.
Yes, I do mean weapons and shield regenerators. I suppose it might work if they did use supplies and thus drained your movement immediately instead of just when you would normally run out... that would certainly be interesting
edit: and yes, it's hardcoded that weapons do require supplies to work, no matter if they actually use any or not... so I guess a ship at the end of its movement won't be able to fire?

Also, it kinda' goes against my way of thinking to be able to transverse Warp Points using just inertia. Shouldn't you have to use some kind of active propulsion, if nothing else for vector control, when going thru WP's? Remember, warp lines are not 'in space' so they don't have solar radiation to act as passive propulsion.

I always thought of warp points as acting like they do in Starfury - you fly into one and you just magically appear on the other end a little while later... Unfortunately there is no way to restrict warp point travel to certain ships, other than to make those ships into fighter hulls, as has been done with the Highliner Mod...

It would be nice if SS's were truly sails and not a modified engine component / bonus feature. I can envision Intra-system ships being able to use zero supplies with a Master computer and a solar sail running repeat orders indefinitely. Should be slow movement when compared to active propulsion, but not use any supplies.

Possibly one of the original intents of Drones...

[ May 07, 2004, 16:22: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]

[Parasite]

I would like to have a Ground based laser facilty. Using this would give a boost to the sail's movement. It would also allow it to work in systems with no stars You would still need a planet, so there would still need to be a star there except for special cases.

Hmmmm. Remote beamed supplies. Interesting.

I could also see them operate in pairs. One could be destroyed to "Fold it up" and have it not have the movement or the defense penalty. Organic armor ability could then "Unfold" it.

[Fyron]

I like the solar sail idea as well, but you said earlier you'd eliminate supply usage from all other components. Are weapons and shields included? IOW, do we have unlimited ammo for weapons? IMO, weapons should not fire at all if you have no supplies.

If you have 0 supplies, no weapons can fire, not even those that use 0 supplies.

I would like to have a Ground based laser facilty. Using this would give a boost to the sail's movement. It would also allow it to work in systems with no stars You would still need a planet, so there would still need to be a star there except for special cases.

Hmmmm. Remote beamed supplies. Interesting.

There is no way to do this in SE4.

I could also see them operate in pairs. One could be destroyed to "Fold it up" and have it not have the movement or the defense penalty. Organic armor ability could then "Unfold" it.

Organic armor only repairs components during combat or immediately afterwards. It does not do any other sort of repair.

[ May 07, 2004, 20:50: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Even ships with no supplies were gunning down my fighters with 0-supply use PDLs in P&N.

And weapons stop firing before you are totally out of supply. They won't work if there isn't enough supply for a full shot.

[Will]

Perhaps if you change it slightly to the solar sail generates X supplies per turn (with X supplies needed for full movement), and can store X+1? That way, 0-supply weapons would still have the one supply unit to work with.