ship designs boring and too similar

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by macjimmy:
I agree that the ships are too similar, but not because of weapons or firing arcs. I think that it is odd that the Fazrah cruiser is billed as the king of fast attack ships, while the Abbidon Crusiser 2 is described as slower than its Terran counterpart. However, top speed, acceleration, etc, are same for all cruisers, destroyers, battleships, and carriers (within the classes I mean). I am messing with modding some of this stuff to be different, such as making the Fazrah ships faster than the others, adding built-in armor & hull regeneration to Amonkrie ships, making the Abbidon ships slower, but maybe with increased resistances, and adding extra base cargo capacity to pirate ships. Only race I am having trouble coming up with an idea for is the Xiati... maybe added shield regen? Hopefully, these kinds of modifications would make the ships a little less generic.

All of the AI ships need some sort of 'base' level repair to compensate for their lack of a 'character' with skills like you get. Different races could have different levels of ability in various areas, of course, like the Amonkrie having higher armor regen.

The nearly identical maneuverability is a problem, as well as the arbitrary caps on speed. The only reason a destroyer is faster than a battleship is that the battleship has been capped. Both of these factors need to be adjusted, but hopefully MM will find a way to tweak the propulsion system to make it more realistic.

The Xiati could be given a 'unique' ability with some weapon modding. They already use Meson BLasters and Plasma Missiles, which are both relatively fast-firing weapons but do less damage per hit than others of similar type. You could speed them up further while decreasing the damage proportionally -- then a Xiati attack would consist of a hail of little fleabites that would be very hard to stop and add up to serious damage over time. This in itself is an advantage of sorts. The big, hard hitting Graviton Hellbore does lots of damage if it hits (it should do more, though... another mod needed) but you can hit that single torpedo with your PDC and make it useless. A huge number of little bullets from Meson BLasters and quick-firing Plasma Missiles is much harder to stop.

[ October 10, 2003, 22:42: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Phoenix-D]

Speaking of bullets, I really hope MM makes bolts able to miss in a patch; right now they're tracking is so pathetic they always miss, but when they're able to lead, not being able to miss might be a bit unbalanced. And strange!

And can you adjust the length of beams anywhere?

[macjimmy]

While I'm here, a quick question about guns...
I've got 2 PDC on my ship. When I get shot w/ 2+ torps, only one is shot down because both of my PDC target the same seeker. I don't suppose there is any way to make the PDCs target different seekers?
Are beam/bolt weapons allowed to be heavy? Can you make light torps? I suppose I could mod it and find out, but feeling too lazy

[macjimmy]

Another question:
Several component types from SEIV that took awhile to research are avaliable pretty much from the start. The engines are the main thing I'm thinking about here. In SEIV, quantum engines represent quite a bit of research. In SF, they are available from the start. Is there any way to change this, so that certain components are only available for sale after a certain stardate, or something along those lines?

[Suicide Junkie]

Bolts don't track, they only lead...
So, if you're far enough away, any changes in heading or speed by the other vessel can cause your whole volley to miss.

When I'm being chased by an angry squadron of meson bLaster carrying fighters in my mod, a series of zig-zags helps reduce the damage since when I zig, the bolts already in space are leading against my zag
In practical terms, at best I can avoid maybe a half to a third of the fighter swarm's attack. Against a single ship with a single incoming fire vector, I can do much better

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You can't change the length of beams... They have fit the distance between your ship and the enemy...
Moddable duration would be very nice, and I'm suggesting it now.

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Any weapon will fit only in slots where the component says it is allowed.
Go to main_components.txt, and just add the names of other slots to the comma-separated list of allowed placement locations.

Or, you could just make a second "Heavy Mount" component, that is identical except that it fits in heavy wepaon slots, does double damage and is 50% bigger

Which, incidentally is what I did for my mod...

[Suicide Junkie]

Originally posted by macjimmy:
Another question:
Several component types from SEIV that took awhile to research are avaliable pretty much from the start. The engines are the main thing I'm thinking about here. In SEIV, quantum engines represent quite a bit of research. In SF, they are available from the start. Is there any way to change this, so that certain components are only available for sale after a certain stardate, or something along those lines?

There is a minimum level setting in the components.
Currently, the main difficulty in getting the advanced engines is price and simply them not showing up very often in stores.

You could also make some of them extremely rare by only giving them out as payment after particularily difficult missions.
Perhaps a "deliver-the-scientist" type mission.

[ October 11, 2003, 01:45: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[clark]

Engines... or certain stuff can be modded to appear based on skill level (experience).

There is a percentage chance for appearance in the spacedocks... play with that.

edit-beat to the punch

[ October 11, 2003, 01:45: Message edited by: clark ]