SEIV Modding 101: A Tutorial

[Fyron]

The Tutorial has a new home at http://se4modding.spaceempires.net/ . This link might not yet work properly, but it should be in operation soon. The files are on the server.

[Fyron]

I have updated the tutorial. There is now a table in the first chapter that lists the files and states which will cause incompatibility issues with savegames and which will not. You probably need to visit it with this link: http://www.spaceempires.net/se4modding/

[Fyron]

Ok I updated it again. Chapter 17 is now entitled Advanced Tips and Tricks rather than Quasi-Newtonian Propulsion. So far, it has sections on QNP and Leaky Armor.

[Fyron]

Added updated info on the Happiness abilities in the Abilities chapter.

[Captain Kwok]

Did you make the other corrections that I mentioned in the thread at se.net?

[spoon]

Is this really true (in Leaky Armor):

Let's take a system with two types of leaky armor as an example. Light Armor is 1 kiloton in size and has, say, 20 structure (hit points). Heavy Armor is 10 kilotons in size and has 100 structure.

In this system, the Light Armor has twice as many hit points per kiloton of space taken as the Heavy Armor. This means that it should create ships much stronger than Heavy Armor can, right? Well, not quite. Even though the Light Armored ships can take a lot more damage, you will find that the heavy armored ships tend to win more often. This is because weapon hits are more likely to strike a component of Heavy Armor than other internal components with the HA ship than they are to strike a component of Light Armor than an internal on a LA ship. The large amount of hit points that the Heavy Armor has individually gives it a greater chance to be struck. So while the LA ships can take more damage overall, they tend to be more leaky, so vital internals (engines, weapons) tend to be struck more quickly than they do on the HA ships. The Heavy Armor has more hit points than any (unmounted) weapon, after all. Of course, it turns out that the best design is a combination of LA and HA.

Say you had two 200kt ships. One had 100kt of LA, the other had 100kt of HA. Wouldn't the leaky armor on the LA ship be twice as likely to be hit than the armor on the HA ship, since the LA ship has twice the amount of Structure?

[ August 04, 2004, 18:52: Message edited by: spoon ]

[Atrocities]

I am not sure, but have you added a section, or just a note, about how the AI uses the racial points in the General file. When it runs out as it goes down the list (Characteristics / Advanced Characteristics, it will stop when it reaches 0 points even if the Last item is free?