Zippy's SE IV Mod (Note: It's HUGE!!!)

Phoenix-D · #1 January 13th, 2002, 09:30 PM

"Static defenses aren't as good as ships in real life anyway. Have you heard of the Maginot Line? Not as great as a massive army of tanks."

Uh, I dunno. It was good enough to prompt the German army to go AROUND it.

That's the main disadvantage of static defenses- they don't move.

Phoenix-D

Skulky · #2 January 13th, 2002, 11:24 PM

my point

Phoenix-D · #3 January 13th, 2002, 11:50 PM

Right.. but static defenses, where you can't go around them or otherwise exploit their immobility, tend to be pretty nasty customers.

Tangent:
"Retrofit Max Percent Difference in Cost := 10000"

Ran into this line from settings.txt..not sure this is a good idea unless you want to drasticlly shorten build times from the human player. This could let you build an empty ship, then retrofit it to an attack or even stellar manipulation ship much faster than those ships would have been built on their own.

Phoenix-D

zippy · #4 January 13th, 2002, 11:59 PM

Skulky: Thank you very much for the feedback. I'll strongly consider your suggestions in the next Version. I still have one question though -- Are you referring exclusively to Torps when you say "the nearly impossible to overcome to-hit odds?" I can see how the Torp bonuses might be a tad too high, but I'm not sure what I could do to improve Beams and Missiles. Also, do you have any suggestions for the Torp bonuses (assuming that this is your area of concern)?

Thanks again!

zippy · #5 January 14th, 2002, 12:27 AM

Phoenix-D: Darn, I never considered your point. I set Retrofit Max Percent Difference in Cost to 10000 back in Version 1.7 of my mod because the AI doesn't retrofit often enough to avoid the original 50% limit. The biggest problem is with Bases which the AI upgrades every 10 turns or so. If the cost of upgrading a base exceeds Retrofit Max Percent Difference in Cost after 10 turns, then the AI will never upgrade the base! Unfortunately, I don't see any way to address your concern AND insure that the AI will always upgrade ships and bases. Personally, I think the best solution is to keep things the way they are so that AI bases don't become obsolete; human players will just have to refrain from building empty ships. I'd appreciate any other ideas

Phoenix-D · #6 January 14th, 2002, 12:31 AM

Well, the easiest/hardest solution is to play with the number until it's low enough to make it a little more difficult to abuse, but high enough so the AI will retrofit.

Phoenix-D

Husky65 · #7 January 14th, 2002, 01:19 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
"Static defenses aren't as good as ships in real life anyway. Have you heard of the Maginot Line? Not as great as a massive army of tanks."

Uh, I dunno. It was good enough to prompt the German army to go AROUND it.

That's the main disadvantage of static defenses- they don't move.

Phoenix-D

The Maginot line also took a massive amount of money out of productive defence procurement (Tanks, AFVs, Aircraft, effective mobile communications, etc) and put it into pouring concrete for about 10 years and resulted in a very passive defensive doctrine on the part of the French, which contributed a great deal to their collapse.

It was an unmitigated disaster for France.