New, alternate means of modelling QNP in v1.78

[Nodachi]

*Bump*

No other comments?

[Baron Munchausen]

Very good idea! This 'open source' pooling of ideas is what has made SE work out to be such a great game even though MM hasn't got the ability to fully develop it. There's just no way he would have had the time to develop and play balance all the fancy options he has programmed into the game. With clever ideas like this, and lots of 'hobby' players testing for themselves, we're making it into quite a nice game.

[jimbob]

Well, yeah, now you can have basemoons running around with 3, 4, and more movement by using the "movement bonus" type movement instead of the "movement points" type of propulsion. You can abandon QNP, only to re-introduce it in the ship mounts.

I was thinking it would be great to introduce an Ancient Tech technology tree that offered non-Newtonian movement so that large ships could by-pass the Range Check Error. Then I was going to use the 'max ship size' mount limitation to allow the creation of a few smaller non-Newtonian drives. Any takers?

[Puke]

i was thinking that this would be a great way to modle QNP for bonus movement, as well as for combat movement.

[Pax]

You don't have to revert to bonus movement (one of the aspects of propulsion in SE4 I never did like overmuch).

Specify a movement-point rate for each engien type; then, specify that all ships require 1 engine to move. Now, one engine component will -always- produce the same number of movement points, regardless of what hull it's mounted in (like stock SE4).

HOWEVER, more akin to QNP-mods, more and more of the ship will be used up, to maintain that same speed. Then you can reintroduce pure-bonus-move c0omponents (like Solar Sails), similarly adjusted for mass relative to the hull in question.

Also, you can impose an ever-decreasing speed limit by specifying an ever-dwindling maximum number of engines allowed ... say, all adding up to generally the same total tonnage, representing the biggest engine array that can be built.

Thus, given the same mass of engine, smaller ships will move faster ... and with an upper ceiling, the bigger ships cannot simply spend more and more of THEIR space, to keep up with smaller ships *determined* to go faster.

[Baron Munchausen]

Be aware that this will have the side-effect of making engine-destroying weapons much less effective against larger ships. Some may think this is 'logical' since larger ships would have larger engines. Some may not like it, though. Something to consider while 'balancing' your changes.

[Pax]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Be aware that this will have the side-effect of making engine-destroying weapons much less effective against larger ships. Some may think this is 'logical' since larger ships would have larger engines. Some may not like it, though. Something to consider while 'balancing' your changes.

Change the structural damage resistane at a slightly different rate than the size, so that damage resistance increases half as fast as size, perhaps.