Proportions Mod Versions 2.5.2 and 2.5.3 available

[oleg]

Agree. You spend a fortune of research points and get an expensive component that makes your ships a sitting duck. Not to mention computer virus. The only argument is the protection against psychic races but it basically makes MC a very specialised thing worthless 90% of the game.

[PvK]

For the AI's sake I agree it would make sense to make master computers a seperate tech.

I should proabably revisit master computers a bit, but the point of the penalty is that I do not agree that a computer makes as good a warrior as a martial-minded biological. As we all know, AI's tend to be predictable and unable to adapt to the unpredictable complexities of an evolving tactical situation.

This has nothing to do with target tracking. That is covered by combat sensors and multiplex tracking, which can be used by humans or computers alike. The combat penalties for MC represent the very real factors that are beneath the scale of SE4's combat engine to represent in detail, but which would in my opinion make experiencd biological crews more formidable than computers. Ingenuity, innovation, unpredictability, will to survive, etc.

Also, I think master computers should definitely NOT have the "ability to gain experience". Relative ability arguments notwithstanding, with a computer, if it could learn, there would be no reason you couldn't download and broadcast its data to other computers, and have all master computers at the same experience level. It's not possible to mod that, nor to mod away their learning ability. The penalties therefore also compensate for this silly ability of master computers.

However, if you do climb to the top of the master computer tech tree, the penalties are only -5/-2.

PvK

[Spoo]

Originally posted by PvK:
if it could learn, there would be no reason you couldn't download and broadcast its data to other computers, and have all master computers at the same experience level. It's not possible to mod that, nor to mod away their learning ability.

What about the neural combat net (I think that's what it's called). That allows sharing of experience.

[Phoenix-D]

Spoo is right I think..just give any MC the same ability the Neural Combat Net has, and any MC in combat will have the same experience as the highest-rated MC..at least until that MC is destroyed.

Phoenix-D

[PvK]

Well, except that:

1) It would only apply to ships in the same battle. In reality, it computer data should be transmittable throughout an empire, or at least permanently shared by physical transfer.

2) When the most experienced ship is destroyed, all the others would decline in experience, which wouldn't make any sense.

3) It would allow computers to use the experience of biological crews, and it would also allow empires who have an actual neural combat net, to use the computer ships' experience for their biologically-crewed ships.

PvK

[Ed Kolis]

Hmm, I see that the remote miner components still say they decrease asteroid value, even though you turned that off in settings.txt...

[Fyron]

PvK, that is assuming that those biologicals are never able to develop more effecient computers than we have today. The first Master Computer component does not represent a computer of today's technology, it represents a far more advanced and sophisticated computer.