MOD: Space Empires V - Babylon 5

[Fyron]

Then one could in theory carefully craft the slot layouts and design placement routines to program the AI to handle directional armor just fine. They'd need to always use the same number of armor components on each hull size. Certainly a lot more work than simple leaky armor, but doable.

[Fyron]

Relevant shipset updates:

http://home.spaceempires.net/article350.html

[Ragnarok-X]

Can someone do a quick explanation on the different armor abilities (normal, emissive) ?

Normal = nothing special, needs good size/hp ratio
Emmisive = in addition to size/hp ratio, the ability function will force the armor to negate X damage of every hit ?
Do these stack ?

Im not quite sure about what to make out of the stuff i posted a sentence earlier in conjuction with this quote from SJ:


"
In SE5, you have a choice between percentage based leaky (Always the same fraction leaks through, no randomness) or directional armor (distribute armor to the front, back, left and right)
"

[Fyron]

"Percentage based leaky" armor means using the DamageTypes.txt file to give penetration percentages for (all) weapons vs. armor components. Directional armor refers to ditching regular armor, and using high hp/kt components in outer hull slots (possibly ditching inner hull slots as well, to avoid the magic wall layer effect). Refer to Gritty Galaxy mod for directional armor.

All of the various abilities used by special effect armors in stock are defined in the modding doc. For example, Emissive Armor uses:

Component - Damage Resistance
This ability provides a damage resistance amount for a component. Any damage that is done to the component has this amount subtracted before it is applied.

[Ragnarok-X]

So, why cant i use the Scattering Armor ability in conjuction with an overall damage modifier ? (i.e. combine percentage based leaky w/ component - damage resistance) in order to achieve what my initial post suggested ?

[Fyron]

There is no Scattering Armor ability per se; its just armor with to hit defense bonus and scanner jamming.

You can do whatever you want.

[Ragnarok-X]

Dont get me wrong, i was just trying to understand why my initial idea wont work out, from a technical point of view. I believe someone said it wouldnt be possible in SEV.

"
Example:
Big Beam: 100 damage per hit
Pulse Gun: 25 damage per hit.

Armor
size 10 kT, structure 100 kT, negates 10 damage per hit.

In this example we have a decent armor with 1:10 size/hp ratio, Still, the beam hitting it would likely be able to deliver a small amount of damage to the internals (say, 30 damage). Against this armor, the beam would have an effiency of 90 % (10 damage are negated). Sounds good to me.

The weak pulse gun on the other han, has only an effiency of 40 %. Of the 25 damage it could do, 10 are negated by the thickness of the armor plating. However, the pulse gun fires every round, so which one would be more effective (not taking into account cost and size of weapons) in breaking the ship ?
"


Im asking once again, is this possible without TOO much work involved (i.e. scripting) ?
I really havent worked with armors at all. At this point im finishing the basic facilites and the QNP plus the economic model in general.

Thanks a bunch for your patience

[Fyron]

What SJ meant wasn't possible was SE4-style leaky armor with randomized damage penetration, since the component damage mechanics are different... Even SE5 directional armor is not quite randomized.

Your idea will work except for a random chance to damage internals. You could accomplish 10 damage negation via the Component - Damage Resistance ability, and a 30% penetration to internals via the Damage Types file (make sure to apply it to every "regular" damage type). There is no randomness involved in such a setup, however; every shot has the same damage reduction applied, and the same penetration percents.

Note that each piece of armor is treated separately. Damage is always applied in the order Armor components are laid out. If you have 5 armors, the first one reduces a 100 damage shot to 90, takes 90*.7 damage, and 90*.3 damage hits the next piece of armor. It applies 10 damage reduction and 30% of whatever hits it penetrates, and so on.

Note further that you can (and should!) make weapons do random amounts of damage, for some abstracted lucky hits and such.

Regarding scripting, there is no support for calling script functions mid-turn, or altering anything that already happens during the turn. There is certainly no scripting support for modifying anything that happens during-combat, sadly. All that is available is modding the AI, modding the effects of intelligence projects, and a once-per-turn run Events script. The Events script is used in stock to handle random game events, but it can be coopted to script other effects.

[Ragnarok-X]

I require a detailed tutorial on weapons lol. Compared to SEV, modding SEIV was a friggin piece of cake.

Im using Devnullicus Modtool and i basicly have no real clue what these do:


At Range Distance Increment
Min / Max damage at Range
Hit modifer at Range


What "range" are these single entries referring to ?

Im missing something like in SEIV where you could specify the exact damage range for each single square...doh.


What should i do if i want to make weapons work like in SEIV, i.e. they do 100 damage at point blank and drop 10 points for each square beyond.
How do i actually set up the range of a weapon ?

(20 + ([%Level%] * 5)) - (([%Range%] / 10) * 0.00) - iif([%Range%] > Min(80, (([%Level%] - 1) * 10) + 40), 20000, 0)

This formla drives me insane.

I realize it states the weapons damage (20 + level*5) lowered by range (10 less per range) but those if-function i dont quite understand. I assume its a modifier based on range, but thats it.

The SEV wiki was not of much help





EDIT: Will component placed in the ARMOR slot always act as armor and soak up all damage ? Because i had components placed in ARMOR but without the actual "component is armor" tag/ability and the ship did not suffer any hull damage before the actual armor component was destroyed.


Beam colors: I have a beam that should be colored red 255/0/0 but is actually colored green in game (beam 10)


In addition, will component in the outer section always be destroyed before stuff in the inner section ?




Regarding the armor thingy:

Number of Armor Types := 5
Armor Type 1 Name := Normal Armor
Armor Type 1 Penetration Percent := 20
Armor Type 1 Damage Percent := 0
Armor Type 2 Name := Organic Armor
Armor Type 2 Penetration Percent := 20
Armor Type 2 Damage Percent := 0
Armor Type 3 Name := Emissive Armor
Armor Type 3 Penetration Percent := 20
Armor Type 3 Damage Percent := 0
Armor Type 4 Name := Crystalline Armor
Armor Type 4 Penetration Percent := 20
Armor Type 4 Damage Percent := 0
Armor Type 5 Name := Scattering Armor
Armor Type 5 Penetration Percent := 20
Armor Type 5 Damage Percent := 0
Internal Damage Percent := 100
Facility Damage Percent := 100


Is this what you are suggesting in conjunction w/ the damage resistance = x components ?



Lastly, can designs be saved ? I always thought that saving your empire will save your designs as well, but it seems they wont appear once you make a new game with the .emp file ?

[Fyron]

Ragnarok-X said:
I require a detailed tutorial on weapons lol. Compared to SEV, modding SEIV was a friggin piece of cake.
...
The SEV wiki was not of much help

Was this article not helpful?

http://wiki.spaceempires.net/index.p..._Formula_(SEV)

Ragnarok-X said:
Will component placed in the ARMOR slot always act as armor and soak up all damage ? Because i had components placed in ARMOR but without the actual "component is armor" tag/ability and the ship did not suffer any hull damage before the actual armor component was destroyed.

It would appear so.

Ragnarok-X said:
Beam colors: I have a beam that should be colored red 255/0/0 but is actually colored green in game (beam 10)

Without knowing which bitmap file you are using, or what the bitmap effect is set up like (eg: RGB brightness levels), its hard to say.

Ragnarok-X said:In addition, will component in the outer section always be destroyed before stuff in the inner section ?

Yes, outer layer is a magic wall over the inner layer. We referred to this effect when discussing SJ's directional armor setup in GG mod.

Ragnarok-X said:Is this what you are suggesting in conjunction w/ the damage resistance = x components ?

Yes, that will cause that damage type to "leak" 20% of the damage through each armor component.

Ragnarok-X said:Lastly, can designs be saved ? I always thought that saving your empire will save your designs as well, but it seems they wont appear once you make a new game with the .emp file ?

IIRC that functionality is still broken. Given the much more complex relation between tech areas and components than in SE4, its probably going to take quite some work for Aaron to fix.