Engines per move follies...

[Tenryu]

Ok, it's Saturday! I can mess with SE4 ALL day!

Sinapus, I started a new high tech game, maxing everything, except 3 planets. I used 2 races, a 'new' player(mine), and Mephs Earth Alliance from 1.60 (I did not install that, just added the dsgname file, empire, and race stuff).

In the EA AI files, I changed only the fighter Min speed from 6 to 2 and Desired speed from 6 to 16 in the EA DesignCreation.txt file. I disabled all the create random neutral and random computer races options. I started the game.

I did nada, turn one. I checked the EA after the first turn. They had no fighters but were building some CLs and a CVL.

I reset them to computer control and clicked through 5 turns. I checked them again. They had a a carrier loaded up with 32 heavy fighter 2s and a bunch more fighters on the main planet.

So the AI is building the little buggers.

Last night, I ran the Abbidon for about 30 turns and they never built any, however they did design a heavy fighter and (oddly) redesign it, {the same???!!!}, and set the old one to obsolete, hmmm.

So maybe the problem is in the AI files.
The Abbidon just seemed to like super monitor hulls, not unexpected, but, at least while I was messing with them never did build a fighter. hmmm.

The base bridge thing I have never seen. I am going to try and figure that one out next today.

I am not so wedded to the multi-targeting on/in them anyway, if it is causing problems such as you note I'll probably just remove that ability.

It does sound like you may have found a bug. I doubt that any ability should or was intended to over-ride the 'one only' limit, at least for bridges.

Let me know if you find any other interesting
behavior. Thanks again.

[Sinapus]

Odd. What Version of SE4 are you using? I was using the 1.27b patch...

Oh, in vehiclesize.txt, under the extra movement generation. I think value 1 is the extra movement amount and value 2 is supposed to be 1, judging from looking at the stats for Solar Sails. (Which don't give movement bonuses based on the stars anyway...)

I was getting some lockups after starting up a game with these mods. I'll change the value 2 amt to 1 and see if it still shows up.


[This message has been edited by Sinapus (edited 04 March 2001).]

[Sinapus]

Hm. Looks like the EA is designing overly fast colony ships. Or more engines than is legal. Looks like it's because of the "standard movement" part in the misc components. Mephisto probably didn't detect it because the max amount it can load into a hull is five, which is the colony ship's max in the regular game. :/


The population transport is putting in a ship bridge, probably because of the 500 supply it provides. I tried increasing the supply storage to 600, but it wouldn't use it. It might be because it has about 10kt left and bridges have 10kt. I'm removing the supplies from the bridge units.

Still doing it. Argh. It's because of the extra movement generation. *sigh*

Maybe the bridge movement should be changed to combat movement or something or removed?

*sigh* I'm also getting freezes in the game when I colonize a planet for some reason. Or after the 2nd turn. I have no reason why, but it seems to go away when I remove the mods for this. :/

But you're right, the AI *is* designing things. It's just the race I was using that wasn't doing that for some reason.



[This message has been edited by Sinapus (edited 04 March 2001).]

[Tenryu]

[quote]Originally posted by Sinapus:
Odd. What Version of SE4 are you using? I was using the 1.27b patch...[quote]

??? Version 1.27b here, too.

[quote]Oh, in vehiclesize.txt, under the extra movement generation. I think value 1 is the extra movement amount and value 2 is supposed to be 1, judging from looking at the stats for Solar Sails. (Which don't give movement bonuses based on the stars anyway...)[quote]

Be careful when playing with the second value on the extra movement. I had a bear of a time getting each of the components with it working. It needs to be a unique identifier to add with the other extra movements on other components or hulls. It seems to be either something to do with family of components or type, like hulls. I think you have to assign a unique ID number for each speed and for each component family and the hulls. I think that is what I did to get them adding together.

[quote]I was getting some lockups after starting up a game with these mods. I'll change the value 2 amt to 1 and see if it still shows up.[quote]

Hmmm. :/

[Sinapus]

Ah, okay. So the Bridge movement bonus (if I can keep Mephisto's small transports from adding a 2nd bridge to get the bonus) is one number, the hull bonus is another and the solar sails are another so they'll add up?


------------------
--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

[Tenryu]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Sinapus:
Ah, okay. So the Bridge movement bonus (if I can keep Mephisto's small transports from adding a 2nd bridge to get the bonus) is one number, the hull bonus is another and the solar sails are another so they'll add up?

---

Yes. I think. It took me a few days to figure it out, but I'll explain a little more what I think I did to get it working.

It seems that if you have a component, lets call it "bridge", and you want to give it an extra movement of 1, you need to give the component a unique ID. So I think for our purposes here we can give it a val 2 of say 1.

Now if we want the "bridge" type units to also have a variation with a speed of 2, we can set that component with a val 2 of 1 also, since the "bridge" are the same unit.

Now lets say you want to get "bridges" to add their extra movement to "engines" extra movement and you want two 'flavors' of engines, one with 1 extra move and one with 2. You then have to set that val 2 not to 1 like the "bridges". You need to use another number, so why not 2, then 3 for the next component, etc.

Watch the solar sails though, when I first thought I got everything working, I had missed them and 'reused' their number. They then didn't add. I fixed that by changing the solar sail component val 2s to something else.

Anyway, that's what I think I did. It was 2 months or more ago now and I haven't messed with it since.

Without more extensive testing or some documentation from MM, I'm just guessing. To tell the truth, I really wonder whether or not even MM knows whats going on when you start using complex interactions of multiple abilities on single components interacting or compounding with similar effects. Makes a good arguement for not doing stuff like that, but them, that's a lot less fun.

Let's keep in mind that the reason I, and I suspect you also to some degree, went/are going through all this:

1. Battleships should have bigger, tougher, more costly engines then Torpedo boats.
2. Battleship engines shouldn't fit in torpedo boats.
3. Bigger ships generally have longer range, or at least can more easily have.
3. Ships very rarely go 'dead in the water' permenantly. The crew either gets it making way again, or it sinks. So killing all a ships engines in battle shouldn't 'freeze' the ship in space, slowing it down significantly is ok.

If MM gets some new abilities going it may make it way simpler to achieve these effects.

[Sinapus]

Well, I figured out why my adjustments weren't working on the race I use. The .emp file is set to use the default AI files and I was editing the wrong thing. It looks like increasing the desired speed to a number past the number of engines required will get the Design Minister to put more engines in. So my engines per move idea will end up working, hopefully.