New Mod: The Art of War Mod

[Talenn]

geoschmo:

I took a quick look through the hull sizes and whatnot at the start of a game. I didnt have time to play it out, but here are a few quick observations:

1) Larger ship hulls arent going to be used at all early on in the current form, even with the Eng Dept. They have to be made a bit more attractive. Maybe certain 'large ship only' components will help. I know the goal is to have them become more useful as time goes by, but they should at least be viable (if expensive) in the early game or there really isnt a choice to build them.

2) CAs appear useless in this build. CLs only lose 100kt, get a defensive bonus, an offensive bonus, and dont get the hideous 50% maintenance penalty. IMO, the CA should be the largest 'standard' hull that people use...ie, the workhorse of the fleet. Anything bigger (Cap ships) should start to cost the hideous maintenance, but start getting the 'power' returns...ie, greatly increased space, components that only they can benefit from, weapon mount bonuses etc.

3) The smaller hulls probably dont really need a To-hit bonus AND a Defense bonus. I think the two together are working against what you wanted originally by trimming the bonuses back on the Sensors/ECMs etc. If the rest of the mod is in place, I dont think they will be necessary and could unbalance things farther down the road. As it is now, without missiles, some of the larger cant hit the small guys at all, but receive no real benefit in return.

All of this is just my opinion. I applaud your efforts and I wish I had more time to tweak with it and send you some working data. Please dont take any of this as an 'attack' on your work.
I have thought the hull size interactions through a bit after my Last mod and I can probably work up some other rough numbers for you to look at if you want.

Thanx,
Talenn

[geoschmo]

Taelenn. No ofense taken. The reson I posted them is that I wanted feedback. Yours especially as a lot of what I am doing is based on comments you have already made in the thread.

Personally I like all the hulls having defensive and offensive bonuses or penalties, depending on the size. I think it fits with the overall feel of the mod, and with the goal of keeping the small ships viable later in the game. I may have gone a bit high with them though. I went with the exsisting defense bonuses/penalties and just filled in the gaps for ths ships that didn't have them in the stock game. With the other combat modifieing comps though I decresead these, and I probably should have with the hulls. I will probably cut the pluses and minuses in half for the next Version.

The attack bonus is already half of the defense bonus for the hulls. This balances wiht the ECM-Armor/Combat Senosrs though, as currently I have the sensors with an advantage. This is planned though as I want sensors to be stronger than ECM to lessen "Hot kinfe through butter" effect of a slight sensor tech diparity now in combat. Yes the higher tech should win, and destroy the enemy, but they shouldn't walk off the field without a scratch.

Also the larger ships have the turret mount that increases chance to hit, did you see that?

Personally I don't think the maint for the larger ships is an issue. I didn't intend to make them viable early, just available for someone if they wanted to pay enough for them, since in the stock game they aren't even evailable.

However the lack of space is an issue. The need for the engineering section and additional crew quarters does limit the Cruiser, and that's without implementing my proplulsion changes, which will futher cramp things for them. I think what I may do there is raise the size of the Cruiser, or add an other step or two in there. Maybe Light Cruiser, Cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, battle Cruiser? And maybe shuffle the sizes of the smaller ships some. I don't know. I'll have to think that one over.

Keep the comments coming.

Geoschmo

[Baron Munchausen]

Geo:

Why did you use the life support instead of the crew quarters? It seems to me that the crew quarters represent the real maintainers of the ship. Also, what about Master Computers? Should they have the same bonus or maybe a higher bonus than whatever crew components you make into an 'engineering component' to control maintenance costs?

It's too bad we can't use the 'restrictions' abilities in the vehiclesize.txt to control how much of various other components besides engines and cargo bays can be put into a given hull. We could have cruisers able to carry a higher proportion of armor or weapons than a light cruiser and so have an advantage even if it's only slightly larger.

[ 07 May 2002: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[geoschmo]

Not sure why I used life support instead of crew quarters for the egineering section. Just did. Could have been either.

Yes, using a master comp as is instead of the engineering section would put a severe crimp on the maint for larger ships. I suppose there is nothing stopping one from using a master comp and an engineering section.

I will have to work on that. Perhaps the master comp will have tech reqs in computers and ship construction, and the higher levels of ships construciton, you will get a master comp with a better maint reduction. Keep it equal to the same level of engineering section. That could work. Of course then you'd have people using master computers on small ships and getting free maint. Maybe I don't want to do that afterall.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Geo

[ 07 May 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Phoenix-D]

Also remember that unless the maintance bonuses don't stack, people will probably put both a master computer and engineering section on, just to get the enhanced maintance reduction.

EDIT: you never did tell me if you wanted the "warhead + body" missile types I made. I'll assume that's a no

Phoenix-D

[ 07 May 2002: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[geoschmo]

I believe maint bonuses do stack. So that about clinches it. You will still need to have an engineering section on you ships with master computers, ubless you have pleanty of money and don't care about the maintenance reduction. But for a large ship the 40Kt sholdn't be that critical.

I am still interested in the missles. I just haven't got to that point in the mod yet.

Geoschmo

[Phoenix-D]

OK. I'll try and clean them up a bit, balance them out better.

Are you planning on adjusting weapon damage any? Because these were based on the standard CSM damage and changed from there. PM me when you get around to wanting them, and I'll send over what I have.

Phoenix-D