my "tournament-style" mod is resurrected.

[smiloid230]

I've finally got back to developing my total-mod for SEIV. It is as yet, nameless. But the basic idea behind it is creating a 'tournament' style mod that emphasizes the war skillz of the players. At the current stage, combat is the emphasis as it is what the game is geared towards.

So far, basic ships are broken down into three Groups: Tactical, Siege, and Capitol.
-Tactical>Siege>Capitol>Tactical-

Tactical (escort) small, fast and maneuverable, average armor and weapons. Hard to hit and fast moving, these ships can close the gap with weak siege ships and tear them apart.

Siege (cruiser) average size and speed, very weak structure, extreme damage, long range. Think accurate artillery that rips the capitol-class tanks to shreds at extreme range.

Capitol (dreadnoughts) are big with average speed and strong, powerful weapons. Tactical weapons are no match for the armor of these tanks.

So far, its balanced. Tests are reasonable but I'm not ready to finalize any of the settings anyhow. Things work the way I intended. My thought on incorporating fighters into the mix are thus:

Bombers: Bombers that will make short work of most ships, with the exception of some specific variants (most of which are tactical)

Superiority: Perfect for wiping out bombers. I hope to make them an important essential to any fleet that wants to avoid being cut to pieces by bombers. Too weak to do very much damage to ships.

Corvette: Possible multi-purpose unit that is effective against everything but dominates none. As yet I have nothing solid planned for them.

I'm just focusing on how the various units and ships will interact on the battlefield. Still a work in progress. The working of the game should be similar to vanilla SE4 so the AI (With a bit of tinkering) should adapt well enough.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Did your test include a swarm of tactical against a capitol? I can get half my swarm built in the same time it takes you to build one capitol? It also depends on the tech you are putting in. What losses me is this? These are the ONLY three sizes that you will have to choose from?
Maybe this is an idea for your superiority fighters. Weapons that do damage against fighters/sats etc but not ships. I have it in my StarFire Mod and it works just great if you want to fly a CAP for your slower fighters (and ships).

[smiloid230]

I tested.

A capitol will typically cost as much as 4 tacticals. 5 tacticals have a chance to bring down a capitol, 6 tacticals do it consistently.

4 capitols were able to obliterate 18 tactical rather frequently with zero losses. 20 tacticals was a draw.

There are three chasis varieties for tactical and capitol. Two for siege.

Tactical-class

• Escort - faster, agile. least space
• Frigate - cheap/cost-effective. medium space
• Destroyer - expensive. most space

Siege-class

• Siege Frigate (Light Cruiser) - cost effective
• Siege Cruiser (Cruiser) - expensive, more space.

Capitol-class

• BattleCruiser - agile. least space
• Battleship - cost effective. medium space
• Dreadnought - expensive. most space

A lot of what I'm doing directly relies on AI strategies used during strategic combat.

Which reminds me, "Maximum Weapons Range" is buggy and doesn't work properly. I e-mailed MM about it awhile ago but got no responce. If you test it, Max Weapons Range ships will always close to distance 7 or 8 regardless if their max range is beyond that. Give it a go, and let me know if you can get around it. I've tried with no success.

I'm leaning towards not locking anything in. My major goal is to leave the players of the mod with as much room to be creative and diverse as possible. A major factor in this is a big balance in the to-hit spectrum. High to-hit nessecary to bring down weak fighters will barely dent the armor on big ships. High-damage weapons with low to-hit will only really be able to kill big ships. Enough low-damage can bring the big ship down, or a lucky shot with a high-damage will wipe out a fighter group. Tho its up to how you set your strategies up that will determine whether your units do this or focus on their specific task in battle.

Prod me more, I need criticism to improve this.