Babylon 5 Mod

[Goatfoam]

I have a facility.txt that's mostly finished, if you'd like to look it over, Grumbler? Could at least give you some ideas. It only includes facilities for the Narn, EA, Centauri and Minbari, but it's a start.


Just so long as you're aware that it's designed for the RP-heavy mod I'm in the process of building, so it probably won't apply directly to your own. Neither has it been tested for balance, which is a side-issue with my mod anyway. But hopefully the ideas will be there for you to draw from.

[grumbler]

Goatfoam,

Sure, put it up. Anything is better than a blank piece of paper!

Status:
I converted all of the general weapon types to race-specific ones (i.e. the lasers were still the same, they just were been labelled Minari Lasers, EA Lasers, and the like) and modified the TechAreas to allow for race-specific weapons and get rid of all "general" weapons and weapons technologies. Quick run of the game on max tech indicates that all of this is working okay.

I am now plugging in the specialized weapons by race (i.e making Minbari molecular weapons of the same type better than, say EA ones or one of the other races not specializing in molecular weapons). There have been a few problems - the Drazi weapons crept into everyone's tech tree, for no discernable reason, but this was easily fixed by using the racial numbers for Drazi tech.

There should be a beta version of this components file ready in a week or so, and if anyone would like to volunteer to take it for a spin, that would be great. I know that there have to be a ton of typos and copy-n-paste errors in there, but I don't have the morale to go back in and try to scan a coupla tens of thousands of lines of text for the boo-boos. Getting people to play the game will reveal where these errors lie.

A quick question for the Ancients in here: I do not recall the reason why Val set up the weapons files as:

Abbai Light Weapons
Brakiri Light Weapons
Centauri Light Weapons
....
Abbai Medium Weapons
Brakiri Medium Weapons
Centauri Medium Weapons
....
etc

I have reformatted them as

Abbai Light Weapons
Abbai Medium Weapons
...
Brakiri Light Weapons
Brakiri Medium Weapons
...
Centauri Light Weapons
Centauri Medium Weapons
....
etc

so that if you want to add a new race, you just need to add it at the end, rather than inserting it in dozens of places.

Now, I suspect that the way it was done before was a product of the software used to build the list, but if it was not, and there is a really good reason for keeping the existing structure, now would be a really good time to remind me!

[Goatfoam]

I've attached the current facility.txt to this post, Grumbler. The ones currently in there are mostly copies of the same abilities, just with different values for each race. Like I said, they all likely need tweaking, and there's a few that grant race-specific abilities, which haven't been added into the file yet. I'm trying to finish off the basic components and mounts at the moment, but as soon as I've finished that lot I'll close off the facility file and put them up too.

As for the status of my own mod, it's a couple of weeks away from beta. If you give it a bash and see anything in it that you like the look of, Grumbler, feel free to take the idea and run with it in your own work.

Also, on the testing, sure. I'll keep checking back here for the components file.

[grumbler]

Okay, I think I have gone as far as I want to without giving someone the chance to see if this mod makes sense the way it is going.

I am attaching the "vanilla" version of the updated mod (B5 Ver 2 vanilla.zip) as a beta test of sorts. It is vanilla because every race has the same weapons and facilities, they all use the same AI files (only modified as necessary to account for the different race names), and so they will all look and behave very much the same. There are no improved or advanced weapons inserted yet, and every race has the full 10 levels of each weapons tech (later races will get enhanced weapons and lose access to some of the weapons they can access in the beta version).

What I need is to have people help me ensure that the tradeoffs between weapons techs make sense - i.e. that it is not clearly superior to have molecular weapons vice laser ones, for instance. Research costs should figure into this (matter weapons, for instance, cost little to research but are inferior in performance to later versions of the more costly weapons.

I also could use some help in calculating min, org, and rad costs for the weapons. I have not rationalized them all because I really do not have a system yet. If anyone has a rational-sounding system let me know.

Pictures are the other incomplete element. I did a cursory search of component pack 25 and changed a few weapons images, but in a lot of cases large and medium weapons share an image. Somebody with some familiarity with the components image pack might have better luck settling on appropriate images where they do not exist.

Note that, since all 20 races have the exact same weapons at this point, comments need only refer to the weapon and not the race.

To use this mod, you will need to download it, unzip it into its own folder, and then move the files to the appropriate folders, replacing those with the same name. Obviously, this will incapacitate the mod as it stands, so if you want to use the existing version of the B5 mod, create a new version for this beta test version. You need to have B5 mod version 2 installed first and overwrite the applicable files with these files.

Report any findings of note here (even if it to say you think things look okay so far). The sooner I can get feedback, the sooner I can add the finishing touches and specialize the weapons and facilities.

[Timstone]

Grumbler:
Like I said before. I have made a little spreadsheet that covers everything for the weapons. So when I'm done with the sheet I will send it to you and all your problems concerning the weapons will melt like a snowball in Hell.
But as you noticed, I'm running late with the sheet. I promissed to send it to you late last week. Sorry, graduating... I'll try to do it this week. This wek should be possible, because this week I'll have to hand in my concept report. So most of the work has been done then.

[grumbler]

Well, Tim, I look forward to getting the spreadsheet, but, alas, you approached the weapons the same way Val did (starting with damage and getting weight, etc from that) while I am apporaching it from tonnahge and deriving evrything from that. The difference between the approaches occurs because I am primarily interested in getting the AI to build competitive shhips, and Val was looking to make a competitive human-human game.

In any case, I think the supply values you come up with will be extremely useful (as I am staring at a "blank page" right now as far as methodology is concerned). If the spreadsheet can be modded (i.e. it isn't locked like the last one) I can change the tonnage values to be fixed and not variable and use the sheet as it is designed to be used.

BTW, I found out with a bit of checking that the beta mod:
1. doesn't allow the AI to properly build units, and
2. uses the wrong hull size for designs (and so ends up with less armor than planned).
I am fixing and will post the fix here (it is a combination of AI_D_C, component_enhancement, and component file errors).

[Suicide Junkie]

Damage per shot is very important for any leaky shield/armor system.

It does need to be balanced against weapon power, but if you pick reasonable sizes, the fire rate can be adjusted to make that balance.

[grumbler]

Yep, SJ, that's one of the reasons I want some others to play with the beta version, because that kind of balance isn't easy to test for.

Right now, it looks like 10% armor seems to work best (less, and you cannot take a turn's worth of shots without being crippled - more, and you cannot deal out the damage). But that is just from testing one type of weapon (lasers). I wanna see how that balance works in other opinions using more weapons.

It also seems to scale - 12 v 12 gives outcomes favoring less armor than does 6 v 6. The smaller the fleet, it seems at first blush, the more critical the armor is. That is, I think, due to the "first salvo" effect, which in small fleets can cripple one ship and leave that side at a permanent, and increasing, disadvantage.

[Suicide Junkie]

You could also send in a very heavily armored ship as the leader. It would be the decoy, absorbing a ton of damage, while the next ships in line dish out the hurt after the enemy has locked onto your leader as the "nearest" ship

[grumbler]

SJ, how does the AI decide which ship in a fleet is the leader, do you know?

If it does it by tonnage, that would be doubleplus good, because in any general ship class (escort, destroyer, cruiser, battleship, dreadnought, base ship) the distinction between "light" normal, and "heavy" is armor - they generally have the same components otherwise. If the AI makes the largest ship the leader, this would result in the most heavily armored ship becoming the leader, which is the way you say it should be.