New Mod: The Art of War Mod

geoschmo · #1 May 3rd, 2002, 03:25 PM

Yeah D, that's an idea. I don't think I will totally eliminate ECM/Sensors, but by reducing the effectivness of them, it will give more of an incentive for people to choose the weapons with inherant bonuses. More tradeoffs like that is what I am looking for.

With the reduction of combat sensor and racial to hit bonuses, I am concerned that the Tailsman may become even more powerful. I am considering changing it so that instead of a guaranteed hit, maybe it will have like a 60% bonus to hit or something like that. It will still be way better than regular sensors, as it should be for the cost involved, but not quite so overwhelming. That's not a final decision. I need to test that a little. Perhaps I will add some Religious only weapons that do have the guaranteed hit (If that's possible that is without transfering the ability to everything on the ship) but that has a limited rate of fire. Maybe two or three times per combat.

All these ship hull ideas are great. One thing I have run up against though is the lack of families and supercedences with vehicle sizes. Unfortunatly there is no "Only latest" in the hull list, so it's going to get kind of cluttered. But oh well.

Also, since I will be slowing down and capping the ship and fleet training facilities, I will probably make the Combat Neural net researchable by everyone . Maybe put it up high in the computer branch. I think that is a cool component that just doesn't get enough use. Probably because it's so easy just to train all the ships the regular way.

Geoschmo

[ 03 May 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

DirectorTsaarx · #2 May 3rd, 2002, 03:41 PM

quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:
<snip>
I will also be modifying the racial attack and defense characteristics to make them much more expensive<snip>

Comments?

Geoschmo

Don't forget that you can get attack/defense bonuses using various cultures, and those are free. You may want to either reduce the bonuses in the respective cultures, or just eliminate the cultures that provide attack/defense bonuses...

geoschmo · #3 May 3rd, 2002, 03:47 PM

Yes, I wasn't planning on eliminating those, but I was planning on reducing them and adjusting the culture file to make them a little more painful in other areas to choose. Just so it's not basically "free" like it is now.

IIRC someone put out a "balanced" culture file a while back that calculated the number of points that would be needed to get the advantages from the culture files and assigned negatives that were equal in value. That sounds like a good thing to me. I'll probably do something like it for AOW.

Geoschmo

Quikngruvn · #4 May 3rd, 2002, 05:59 PM

I like the idea of multiple hulls, but could you retrofit, say, a Frigate Inefficient-1 to a standard Frigate? My gut tells me no, but I haven't tested this.... I like the idea of having multiple, progressive hull types, but I don't like the idea of being stuck with an inefficient hull if I build it.

Otherwise... this looks to be a really nice mod once it's fleshed out and finished.

Quikngruvn

Baron Munchausen · #5 May 3rd, 2002, 07:23 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Quikngruvn:
I like the idea of multiple hulls, but could you retrofit, say, a Frigate Inefficient-1 to a standard Frigate? My gut tells me no, but I haven't tested this.... I like the idea of having multiple, progressive hull types, but I don't like the idea of being stuck with an inefficient hull if I build it.

Otherwise... this looks to be a really nice mod once it's fleshed out and finished.

Quikngruvn

As I recall, the 'modified maintenance ability' is effective when placed in a component. So, rather than have various hulls with different maintenance levels, have all hulls with higher maintenance costs initially and have an 'engineering' tech field that produces crew quarters with increasing levels of maintenance reduction ability. Just retrofit your old ship with the newer crew quarters (standing for newly trained engineers who will save your resources).

geoschmo · #6 May 3rd, 2002, 07:23 PM

Nope, once you build a hull you are stuck with it or you can scrap it. You can retrofit components, but not to different hulls, even of the same size. You can see this youself in the stock game if you try to retrofit a smal transport to a colony hull.

Geoschmo

Phoenix-D · #7 May 3rd, 2002, 11:14 PM

"As I recall, the 'modified maintenance ability' is effective when placed in a component. So, rather than have various hulls with different maintenance levels, have all hulls with higher maintenance costs initially and have an 'engineering' tech field that produces crew quarters with increasing levels of maintenance reduction ability. Just retrofit your old ship with the newer crew quarters (standing for newly trained engineers who will save your resources). "

Very good idea. One thing to keep in mind is that the hull selection window has NO obselete function. In other words, if you have a tech area that gives 10 ships, each a replacement of the Last.. those ships will always show up. It gets really cluttered, really fast.

Phoenix-D