Star Wars Mod

[Atrocities]

Thank your Ironmanbc. Your help was very much appreciated.

[Kana]

I'm working on getting some info for you AT. I'm just not sure it will have what you need. Also not sure how long it will take for me to get it.

[Atrocities]

I could use some help with the tech tree. Objectively I would like to keep the tech tree slim. For weapons I don't really know how to differentiate between them. IE Laser, Turbo Laser, Blaster, Laser Cannon, Ion Cannon, etc.

I was thinking about making the lasers have the ability to target fighters and ships, but not planets. I also was going to make them horribly inaccurate.

I was thinking about making turbo lasers far more powerful in size grades like 12", 16", 24". The larger the size the more power and range it has. The larger they are the more KT they take up. They would be able to target planets and ships, but not fighters.

Blasters would be primarily short range weapons. I don't know how accurate to make them or what their power setting or range should be compared to lasers or turbo lasers. I really don't know as of yet how to define them or make them distinctively different than lasers or turbo lasers.

I was thinking about making engine assemblies and or engine clusters instead of single engines. If you look at say a Stardestroyer it has 3 huge engines and four smaller ones. The huge engines would drive the ship through space while the smaller ones would provide combat movement. Or simply the could just be a combination of both, an engine cluster would give both combat movement and standard movement. I am thinking about making a hyper-drive unit but make the component damaged upon use like I did with the warp overdrive in the AST and STM mods.

I will be using a system like SJ's hull mount system to make the larger ships more expensive and resistant to damage. I want to emulate the realism that it takes a long time to build a large ship and those ships can take considerable damage before being destroyed. The larger they are the more they cost to build and maintain. The player will want to protect these ships and build them in limited numbers while building larger fleets of smaller ships. The Rebels would have a bonus for smaller ships, ie the Nebula frigate would be be heavy hulled so that it can stand up longer in a fire fight, have more maneuverability, while say a Victory SD would be strong hulled but less maneuverable.

Fighters are going to play a major part in the mod as they do in the star wars universe. Just exactly how I am going to do that I really haven't finalized yet. I know that when it comes to the Death Star fighters, like the X-wings, need to have a tactical advantage that larger ships do not have.
To that end I intend to give the death star its own shield class and only fighters will have weapons that can penetrate them. I am not sure how this will work yet, make all shields phase shields say for the death star and then make all fighter weapons to function like phased polaron beams. This way fighter beams would penetrate the death star shields but heavy weapons from ships would have to blast their way through. I could use some insight on this idea on how best to implement it.

As to the Death Star... how am I going to do that? Okay, its big, really big, so it is going to take a long time to build and cost a ton. It will have the ability to destroy a world of course, but be horribly slow. Obviously I cannot emulate the actual size of the thing, it is limited to 36x36 in combat view so it will appear to be the same size as other ships, but its visual size won't represent its actual KT and such.

I also want to do something unusual. I want to use the construction yard expansion system to create two separate kinds of facilities. One would be a standard ground based construction yard... accept it has virtually no organic construction ability. The second, would be a troop recruitment or training facility that has very little mineral or radioactive construction ability but a huge organic construction ability. Of course the AI would have standard construction because it can not simulate a human way of playing and this type of system would only serve to confuse it.

A player would have to build a construction base then build a training center foundation then upgrade to a training center. Without a training center players would not be able to build up infantry units.

Infantry and such will be done differently also. Instead of having say a Stormtrooper, and then having to give him a weapon component, players will have Squads, platoons, divisions, and legions. The components will be stormtroopers, speeder bikes, AT AT's and such. I have tested this system out and it works pretty well. Kinda cool actually.

[Kana]

By tommorrow AT, I should have a wealth of reference material in electronic format for you. With this material, you should have no problem with figuring out all you need to know about Star Wars for your mod.

[Atrocities]

The designs of blasters are a fair bit older than that of lasers, becoming less common in newer ships. With their design, blasters have high fire cycle rates, enabling them to multi fire, a mode of fire in which the rate of discharge is increased at the cost of accuracy. Blasters, because they are weaker than laser of similar size, are limited to star fighters.

[Atrocities]

This site has pretty much all the info I need for weapons now. Even gives some points on what weapons go on what ships.

Link

[Noble713]

Atrocities said:
IE Laser, Turbo Laser, Blaster, Laser Cannon, Ion Cannon, etc.

Blasters have a really short range but usually a high fire rate to compensate. They are older tech and aren't used much anymore. Laser Cannons are your typical light weapons, with a short range. Turbo lasers are massive weapons, easily 5x the power of a laser cannon (and up), with a long range. Still, all of them use the same basic technology, just ever-larger and more refined versions of it. I'd stick 'em all in the same tech area of Laser Weapons, with blasters topping off early in the progression, laser cannons ending about halfway up the tree, and turbolasers going all the way to the max level.

Note: In the Star Wars universe guided ordnance (proton torps and concussion missiles primarily) have a shorter range than energy weapons, but can skip ray shields.

I was thinking about making turbo lasers far more powerful in size grades like 12", 16", 24". The larger the size the more power and range it has. The larger they are the more KT they take up. They would be able to target planets and ships, but not fighters.

The power output of a turbolaser isn't really dependent on the size of the barrel, but on the output of the ship's reactor, which can't be accurately modelled in SE4/5. A classification system based on output in Megatons/Gigatons/Teratons of firepower would be an acceptable compromise.

I am thinking about making a hyper-drive unit but make the component damaged upon use like I did with the warp overdrive in the AST and STM mods.

This is the method used in the existing SW mod. It makes using hyperdrives on ships in a fleet a real pain, so much so that I stopped bothering. Much like the reactor output issue, a VERY fast strategic/slow-medium tactical movement dynamic isn't really feasible in SE4.

The Rebels would have a bonus for smaller ships, ie the Nebula frigate would be be heavy hulled so that it can stand up longer in a fire fight, have more maneuverability, while say a Victory SD would be strong hulled but less maneuverable.

Nitpick: The Nebula-class Escort Frigates are produced by Kuat Drive Yards; in other words, it's an Imperial ship, not a Rebel one. The Rebel's only manage to get their hands on them through theft/desertion/capture.

Fighters are going to play a major part in the mod as they do in the star wars universe.

The importance of fighters fluctuates depending on which sources you examine. If you use the original trilogy or any of the games (which are at the lowest level of canon) you get the impression that fighters are the end-all be-all of space combat. Parts of the Expanded Universe, particularly the Clone Wars material, emphasize the importance of capital ships (rightly, IMO). Think about: if it only takes a few squadrons of hyperspace-capable fighters armed with proton torpedoes to blow up a Star Destroyer, why would anyone build capital ships at all?

I'd suggest swinging by stardestroyer.net's Pure SW tech debates sub-forum. Anything and everything you need to know about SW has probably been discussed there. How "realistic" you want to make the mod is up to you though. My feelings are that Empire At War and Rebellion, while fun, are horrible simulations of the SW universe and overly "gamey". Part of the problem is that SW canon is convoluted and oftentimes contradictory. Combine that with the huge variances in scale (from 15-meter fighters to 20km capital ships) and making an all-encompassing mod that possessess any degree of accuracy, realism, and continuity becomes insanely difficult and frustrating.

Good luck.

[Schattenkanzler]

Originally Posted by Noble713

Note: In the Star Wars universe guided ordnance (proton torps and concussion missiles primarily) have a shorter range than energy weapons, but can skip ray shields.

Thats not right. Missles are fired in a range up to 2,5 km and Lasers are fired up to 1,5 km

[Noble713]

Schattenkanzler said:
Thats not right. Missles are fired in a range up to 2,5 km and Lasers are fired up to 1,5 km

Only in the X-Wing/TIE Fighter series flight simulators. Games are at the lowest level of Star Wars canon, and are therefore superceded by any other source that conflicts with them (i.e. novels, technical books like the Incredible Cross Sections, etc.).

[Ironmanbc]

so how's the mod coming along?