Proportions Mod Versions 2.5.2 and 2.5.3 available

[PvK]

Thanks for the kind feedback, Talenn!

Gosh, heaps of questions to try to cover in everyone's Messages.

Torpedoes are a good weapon in Proportions, and yes one advantage is the relatively low research cost. I had originally thought to reduce their accuracy, but then I might make them a little more hard-hitting. The research cost may be sort of a bargain I suppose. Investing in other heavy anti-ship weapons can yield even more effective weapons, though, eventually. Remember too that torpedoes can't target fighters, drones, or satellites. But yeah, they are good weapons in Proportions. I think most weapons have gotten better, though.

The Emissive Armor discussion from patch 2's release is still correct in patch 3. Emissive armor effects never stack. The highest emissive rating on any undestroyed component on the ship subtracts from the damage done by each weapon hit that gets past shields, unless the damage type is one that skips armor. It does not matter which component is hit. It has been tested and confirmed.

kT in Proportions aren't meaningless, but they are abstract, and not to be taken literally. Of course, the have meaning in that they have game effects. They are almost never actual kiloTons (thousand tons). No fighter is 15-25,000 TONS, and the smallest scout ship is not going to be 100,000 TONS, or a small satellite 80,000 TONS - that's just silly. You could imagine each fighter unit were a squadron or more, and the mass included all the personnel, supplies, and equipment required to keep them operating in space. Mainly though Proportions sticks to the same base values for most things, except population size, cargo capacities, and colony ship size.

That satellites are larger than fighters I think does make sense, given what they do in the game. I have been thinking for a long time though that it would make sense to have dinky satellites, down to 1 kT, although they wouldn't do much, and the main use for them would be recon, and there's no way to mod away their built-in ability to give full system spotting info, so maybe it does make sense to have a minimum 80 kT, to get the minimum abilities. Smaller satellites would be possible, but also would be kind of beneath the scope of the game, sort of like the assumption of small invisible "civilian" ships.

My opinion on ship protection, is that there are many valid choices, which all can be effective. You can go for unmodded-style ships with little or no armor and shields, and they may succeed because they will have a lot more firepower and ability than ships with a signifigant portion of armor. However, they will also be a lot more expensive and may get destroyed or crippled by a hit or two from a powerful weapon. Armor can add a lot of staying power to a ship, and can also make opponents who use a high "damage until" or "target most damaged" tactic waste firepower while healthy ships bLast them. The tricky thing is, there are now many different types of armor, with different trade-offs, and a major one is expense. The best-protected ship may have a bunch of Ultra Armor Structure, redundant plating, and specialized armors, but it will cost as much as a whole squadron, and may have a lot less ability, except at taking damage, and taking lots of hits may not be your main purpose for building ships. It may be a good idea to deploy a variety of designs, too. I don't have a favorite formula, but I do have quite a few designs I like a lot. Usually it's hard for me to decide how much armor and shields to put on, and what types, versus abilties. I usually end up exploring several different designs in every empire.

A "light" armor plating at 50%... I'd probably give half structure compared to full plating, and half cost and size, but would probably not be more than half the emissive value of full plate, and not more than or +2 more than the emissive ability (or defense bonus) of the structure of the same tech level - whichever value is lower. Thinning plating tends to defeat the purpose, but for designs that don't have the tonnage to spare, could be better than all structure and no plating.

PvK