Proportions Mod Versions 2.5.2 and 2.5.3 available

[Aloofi]

Yesterday one of my BattleCruisers got pounded to death by 15 Drushocka Destroyers, and by the end the only thing left in my ship was the armored structure. It looked like an empty egg shell....
is it that way how its suppose to work?

By the way, do the AI always build the latest avaliable hull or the most cost efficient, or maybe a balanced mix?
I'm worry cause I added to the price of larger hulls.....
Maybe I should have added maintenance penalties instead of price......

[oleg]

What AI builds is dictated by interplay of Construction_vehicles.txt and design_creation.txt files
Several Proportions' AI are programmed to build a mixture of hulls.

[Aloofi]

Originally posted by oleg:
What AI builds is dictated by interplay of Construction_vehicles.txt and design_creation.txt files
Several Proportions' AI are programmed to build a mixture of hulls.

Hey, that's great news. I'll take a look into those files to see how it works.
Dam, I hate being a newbie....

[dogscoff]

I installed the new AI files posted recently and the Druks have started sending new-generation Dreadnoughts against me. They are ridiculously hard to kill now.

PvK, I have noticed that on the design screen some obselete components still show up even when better Versions have been researched. So far I have noticed this with solar collectors and temporal weapons. Is this deliberate or is it an error?

[oleg]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
I installed the new AI files posted recently and the Druks have started sending new-generation Dreadnoughts against me. They are ridiculously hard to kill now.

PvK, I have noticed that on the design screen some obselete components still show up even when better Versions have been researched. So far I have noticed this with solar collectors and temporal weapons. Is this deliberate or is it an error?

Glad you like them

As to obsolete components - it is an artefact of PvK' desire to keep existing games compatiable with new Versions: If you insert a new component into old components.txt file, it will srew up existing designs completely. But if you add the new component at the end of file, SE does not group it with old but now separated components.

I sincerely hope that very soon PvK will release a brand new Version (3.0 ?)that will clean up this mess

[ February 20, 2003, 15:21: Message edited by: oleg ]

[PvK]

There are also a few things that aren't really obsolete, which are that way on purpose, but ya, the order is a little mixed up to allow upgrading old games.

PvK

[PvK]

As for massive fighter stacks (unfortunately not moddable away) and large weapon mounts, yes as I said, these are good against armored shells. For the large weapons it's intentional, and makes perfect sense. But even for the fighter stacks, it's not really a balance problem except perhaps against the AI, which isn't programmed to realize how to counter it.

100 fighters in a stack may be able to dwarf the emissive ability of an armored shell, but it also forces the fighters to fire one giant shot at once. This will be a disadvantage if the enemy has fighters in smaller Groups, because the 100-stack will only be able to fire at one enemy group per turn, wasting any excess firepower, while incoming fire against the stack won't waste any firepower until the very end.

Moreover, as oleg mentioned, small ships remain viable throughout the game - a squadron of smaller ships with lighter weapons can often evade the less accurate big-mounted capital ship weapons.

Which is not to say that every ship should have an armored shell against all opponents. The whole point is that there are choices with trade-offs, and not just "X is better than anything else in all ways", moreso, I think, than in the unmodded game.

As for hulks with only structure remaining, that can certainly happen, tough it's pretty varied how ships take damage, and depends on the armor and the weapons used and, with armored structure, a lot on chance. Usually the armor pretty effectively protects the useful components, but sometimes the components get nailed before armor. Usually it's a mix.

PvK