Big ship supremacy... Can little ships keep up?

[Atrocities]

You would have to mod them to be useful.

[Dizzy]

Hi atrocities. I LUV your shipsets and mods. Big fan here. I've DLed a bunch of your work... Very cool stuff. I've modded for SFC Orion Pirates and I know its TIME consuming... wtg.

narf poit chez BOOM said:You could also give them a to-hit bonus.

Hello, and welcome to the forum. Cheese?

Like what bonus? And thx for the info!

I'm slowly grasping the intricacies of modding this stuff. Rollo gave me some points tonight. Nice guy. Very knowledgeable.

I think I'll throw together some of these ideas and see where they lead. Anyone else have anymore ideas? Any suggestions would be very helpful.

[Atrocities]

Thank you. Glad you are enjoying the sets.


A lot of people have considered adding bonuses to smaller ships such as abilities added to the hull sizes like more manuverablity, built in ECM or armor values. Added movement ability. Added combat movement ability... assuming that it does not interfer with stock engine component.

Lower maintenance costs.. on the flip side make larger ships way more expensive.

Give smaller hulls the ability to hit offense, with the defense hit bonus... Less likely to be hit.

[Suicide Junkie]

I like the system I made for gritecon.

Using required mounts and maintenance modifiers on the hulls, the build cost is made to rise FASTER than the size of the hull. Maintenance is made to rise SLOWER, taking into account the higher cost of the components.

In Gritecon, build cost is equal to size cubed.
So an 800kt ship takes the same amount of time to build as eight 400kt ships.
However, that 800kt ship costs about the same as a single 400kt ship.

Big ships are thusly great to have around, but they're really hard to make.
Overall, you've gotta find a balance. If you are at peace, or winning with relatively few losses, then you build bigger ships so that you can increase your tonnage-in-the field without paying more maintenance. If you start losing, then you can build smaller ships, and get more tonnage per turn to throw into the meat grinder.

[Makinus]

Suicide Junkie said:
In Gritecon, build cost is equal to size cubed.
So an 800kt ship takes the same amount of time to build as eight 400kt ships.
However, that 800kt ship costs about the same as a single 400kt ship.

If i mod these alterations in the game, would the stock (or TDM) AI work ok? Or they would be at a severe disvantage from the player (assuming a medium bonus).

My skill level: I can beat AIs with low bonus 90% of the time (never make any teatries with anyone, but don´t select AIs x humans), at medium bonus i can beat the ais 50% of the time... and at high bonus i can beat the ais only 10% of the time. Normally i play with medium bonus.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Hmm...You might have too much bonus there.

Dunno. You can always test them in-game.

[Suicide Junkie]

The stock AI assumes that the biggest hull is always the best.
Making any of the changes suggested in this thread would falsify that assumption, and the AI would go down hard.

It would be entirely possible to change the AI files so that it will build a decent mix of smaller ships, however.

---

Combining the gritecon with the other things suggested would be much too far, indeed.
Gritecon's changes stand on their own to make a nice utility curve in which all sizes can be useful depending on the situation.

Long term, you can't support much of a fleet with small ships. Short term, you can't build much of a fleet with big ships.
The shorter the term you are considering, the smaller the ships you will build.

[Dizzy]

I think the following things could easily be done in a balanced fashion that would really make keeping around smaller class vessels something you'd really consider doing. Plus is all this stuff can be done relatively quickly and easily all in the VehicleSize.txt making it quick and painless and something the AI wont have trouble taking advantage of.

Atrocities said:Built in ECM. Ships harder to hit/easier to hit enemies.

Found these Abilities:

Combat To Hit Defense Plus
Combat To Hit Offense Plus

Added movement ability.

Found this Ability:

Extra Movement Generation (dont think I'd go here... Maybe allow use of more engines instead so it's an advantage that'd have to be paid for by structure.)

Added combat movement ability... assuming that it does not interfer with stock engine component.

Found this ability:

Combat Movement

Lower maintenance costs.

Found this ability:

Modified Maintenance Cost

Probably the last thing to do... to make it really balanced... would be to sift thru all the mounts in your mod and adjust them so that bigger ships dont get all these glorious percentage mount advantages over the littler hulls. I think that'd complete the package.

I also see what you're saying, Suicide Junkie, but I'd probably not want to go there. I surely wouldnt want to wait that long to get a bigger ship. I dont think there's enouigh payoff in it in the short term... or the long term for that matter. Especially if you do what I'm suggesting to the vehiclesize and mounts.

[Fyron]

Make sure to skim through SEIV Modding 101.

[Dizzy]

Imperator Fyron said:
Make sure to skim through SEIV Modding 101.

Skimming, I miss something?