Tired of not having room on those escorts? =)

[Baron Munchausen]

Worgaus:

As others have suggested, I have actually seen in fact, the AI will use any mount it can on any weapon/ship it can. So, you won't see this in just escorts but everything up until the next mount size becomes available. The primary annoyance of it is that the AI will still fill the same amount of SPACE in its designs with weapons because that's what the script tells it to do, and this doubles the amount of time spent watching weapons fire in combat. It can get really tedious.

I wish there was a way to control the percentage of ship space used by various components rather than the "spaces per one" method. You could then get more efficient AI designs for the extreme small/large ship sizes.

Puke:

Think carefully. Do the math on this idea. How many movement points will a cruiser get with "doubled" engine power? Twelve? Eighteen? Yikes! Remember, the design restrictions allow controlling the NUMBER of engines but not the tonnage used by engines. So, the mount effectively bypasses a major design control in the game. The increased movement grows greater with larger ships if you've increased the "engines per move" and added engine capacity. It can get ridiculous very quickly. I was planning on creating a special tech field that have engines with a standard movement of 2, and after looking at how it would work out dropped the idea...

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 21 December 2000).]

[Worgaus]

While engine mounts might cause some balance issues, I *would* like to see shield mounts, as some other players have brought up. Light shield mounts on up to heavy.

If these Light Weapon Mounts become a problem with the AI, and you'd really rather use them then normal mounts on your lighter craft anyway, you might be able set the Normal Mount value limit at 300 or so. The only drawback to this is you won't be able to use normal mounts for direct fire weapons under whatever tonnage you put there. I can't test if this 'fix' will work though, since the game is at home and I'm at work. Its a quick solution and may not be the best. Feel free to give it a shot and let me know =)




[This message has been edited by Worgaus (edited 22 December 2000).]

[Worgaus]

Ok, I checked the comp enhancement file and there isn't a slot for normal mounts, so I made one This should clear up any AI issues, though I don't think light mounts on destroyers would have been that big a problem.

Long Name := Light Ship Mount
Short Name := Light Mount
Description := Smaller sized weapon mount which decreases damage from the weapon by 1/2 times. Requires a vehicle size of at least 150kT. Can only be used on Direct Fire weapons.
Code := S
Cost Percent := 50
Tonnage Percent := 50
Tonnage Structure Percent := 50
Damage Percent := 50
Supply Percent := 50
Range Modifier := 0
Weapon To Hit Modifier := 0
Vehicle Size Minimum := 150
Weapon Type Requirement := Direct Fire
Vehicle Type := Ship

Long Name := Standard Ship Mount
Short Name := Standard Mount
Description := Standard sized weapon mount which does normal damage. Requires a vehicle size of at least 300kT. Can only be used on Direct Fire weapons.
Code := N
Cost Percent := 100
Tonnage Percent := 100
Tonnage Structure Percent := 100
Damage Percent := 100
Supply Percent := 100
Range Modifier := 0
Weapon To Hit Modifier := 0
Vehicle Size Minimum := 300
Weapon Type Requirement := Direct Fire
Vehicle Type := Ship

There ya go folks, if you don't want the AI's destroyers running around with light mounts, this should clear up that issue =)Have fun.

[DirectorTsaarx]

Just an observation - the (damage mult) to (mass mult) ratio is greater than 1 for all the other mounts. In other words, the damage multiplier is always more than the increased mass.

In keeping with that thought, you might want to make the damage multiplier something like 60% or 75% rather than 50%.

Of course, maybe making the mount lighter reduces damage even further, and the multiplier should be more like 40%. But that would lead to VERY weak weapons.

How's this been working in playtesting?

[This message has been edited by DirectorTsaarx (edited 22 December 2000).]

[Worgaus]

Unfortunately I between work and everything else, I haven't found the time to test this out. I'll probably be able to sometime this weekend. What time I do have I've been spending trying to figure out why the components I'm trying to add aren't showing up.

As far as how much damage light weapon mounts should do, my view of it is, if 2 of them do more damage then the next level up, then it really defeats the purpose of that type of mount. In all fairness, the damage of 2 light mount weapons should be less then a single normal mount. The only problem is, if you reduce damage too much, you can drag battles out interminably. So I think 50% is pretty safe to go with for balance purposes.

[This message has been edited by Worgaus (edited 22 December 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Worgaus (edited 22 December 2000).]

[Courageous]

One idea would be to have larger weapon mounts have increasingly higher difficulty targeting smaller ships. For example, a "spinal" weapon mount might do enormous amounts of damage, but be very poor at targeting escorts and destroyers, and be utterly incapable of targeting fighters and satellites.

C//

[Daynarr]

I was thinking about the same thing. In MOO2 player could only shoot ships and planets with large mounts. If you give negative chances to hit with those mounts in SE4 you can make fighters almost impossible to hit by large mounts.

However, I dropped the idea when I remembered that AI uses mostly maximum size ships and maximum mounts on them. It would make human fighters even more deadly against them.

[This message has been edited by Daynarr (edited 22 December 2000).]