Pirates and Nomads

[DavidG]

Originally posted by Rainstorm:
Do I need to rename the newcomponents to just components?

Yup.

[Phoenix-D]

"There is much more flexibility in such a system, allowing for more diversity in movement. With the big engines, you would get movement rates like 3, 6, 9, instead of anywhere between 1 and 9."

No. You make an engine that gives 1 MP, and make it, oh, 20000t. (the point is that it's too big to use).

Then you make a mount for each ship size, restrict it to only that ship size. It reduces the engine size to an appropriate number. It's just like standard SE4 movement (minus movement bonuses), only the engines themselves get bigger as the ships do.

[Fyron]

That's not quite the system Pax had proposed. I'd still prefer to have 30 engines than 3.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
That's not quite the system Pax had proposed. I'd still prefer to have 30 engines than 3.

No, what Phoenix said actually is exactly the system Pax described in his post. If he revised that somewhere else we missed it apparently. The idea is to have a QNP system where larger ships require more space for engines, while still having each engine move the ship one standard movement point as it does in the stock game. Instead of having many more engines as standard QNP does, you have fewer, larger engines.

Your original complaint against the mount based was that it made larger ships more immune to engine destroying weapons. That was incorrect, under a mount based QNP system larger ships are no more or less susectable to engine destroying weapons. However, under "standard" QNP that you say you prefer the larger ships are much more immune to engine destroying weapons. It takes ten times more damage to kill 30 engines than it does to kill 3, assuming they have the same structure.

Geoschmo

[ September 17, 2002, 13:04: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Rainstorm]

To patch the TDM AIs for P&N, I just started the patch program, found the AI files (in the TDM directory) and patched them, is this correct? I have the sneaking suspicion in my current game that the AI is not working for some reason. I'm thinking I should have patched them in the game directory instead, but I'm not sure.

[Suicide Junkie]

There is a difference here between immunity and vulnerability.

What I believe Fyron is saying is that he likes the fact that it takes more hits to disable the engines on big ships. They are much less vulnerable (more hitpoints), but they are NOT immune to smaller engine disruptors (low # hitpoints per engine).

What we need is a Hybrid mod, where the mounts are used to keep the # of standard movement points well below 255, even on big ships, but still requires more engines on the big ships.
The mounts would allow you to make a mod with a separate QNP scale for small ( &lt 400kt), medium ( &lt 800kt) and large ships ( &gt 800kt).
Something like 1mp/50Kt/1speed for the small,
1mp/200Kt/1speed for medium, and 1mp/400Kt/1speed for large ships.

Movement overflows can be controlled better, and the design of ships can remain almost unchanged (just use mounts when adding engines now)

PS: Regarding the patching of AIs...
P&N only uses the AIs that are inside the P&N modfolder... so those are the ones that you have to patch.
You should be able to just copy or move the AIs that you've patched to the proper place inside P&N.

[ September 17, 2002, 15:52: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[DirectorTsaarx]

Edit: dammit, SJ posted while I was drafting this... now I look I'm just parroting his response...

Originally posted by geoschmo:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
That's not quite the system Pax had proposed. I'd still prefer to have 30 engines than 3.

No, what Phoenix said actually is exactly the system Pax described in his post. If he revised that somewhere else we missed it apparently. The idea is to have a QNP system where larger ships require more space for engines, while still having each engine move the ship one standard movement point as it does in the stock game. Instead of having many more engines as standard QNP does, you have fewer, larger engines.

Your original complaint against the mount based was that it made larger ships more immune to engine destroying weapons. That was incorrect, under a mount based QNP system larger ships are no more or less susectable to engine destroying weapons. However, under "standard" QNP that you say you prefer the larger ships are much more immune to engine destroying weapons. It takes ten times more damage to kill 30 engines than it does to kill 3, assuming they have the same structure.

Geoschmo

---

I think Imperator Fyron's original concern was that, if the larger engines also had higher structure, they may actually become IMMUNE to engine destroyers, since (IIRC) there's a bug that partial damage doesn't actually accumulate against engines. So, an engine with 50 kT structure would take NO DAMAGE AT ALL from an engine destroyer that only did 40 kT of damage. Even if you hit that engine 30 times in the same combat, doing a total of 1200 kT damage (enough to destroy that 50 kT engine 24 times). Now, you addressed that concern in your original response by saying that structure wouldn't necessarily be increased for the "larger mount" engines. I'm not certain why IF still prefers 30 engines to 3 engines, unless it's because he likes the fact that current QNP mods have a larger total structure in engines without being immune to engine-destroyer damage.

In other words, as you pointed out Geo, the current QNP system that allows 30 engines could actually have a larger total amount of structural points; which means we have a choice of:

1. The current QNP system, where large ships have lots of engine structure, but can eventually lose those engines to a concerted effort
2. A QNP system where large ships no longer have lots of engines to absorb damage, and therefore lose engines just as quickly as the smallest ships
3. A QNP system where large ships eventually become completely immune to small- and normal-mount engine destroyers.
   

[ September 17, 2002, 15:50: Message edited by: DirectorTsaarx ]