SFTC

[Derek]

Cool. Like I said, I haven't played SE5 much, still waiting for the bugs to get worked out.

[President_Elect_Shang]

As P-D said SE5 handles that nicely enough with the only exception being there is no way to simulate coming to a readiness state; so all the defenders are ready all the time. That is a small hick-up that doesn’t really rob from the game since (as I’m sure you recall from the books) the attackers should have a brief moment were there systems are getting over the effects of a warp jump and they can’t engage. In the end the two balances out since neither is a factor. Also you may recall from the books the chance for interpenetration seems a bit higher than 10%. It is actually 30% and I have adjusted (modded) this into the game, it was an easy one line change. Did you read Insurrection? You may recall the Terran Rim Federation used an un-Godly weapon called the Heavy Bombardment Missile Launcher. <cue evil laughter> He-He-He-He…

I can’t find a line that controls the zoom out so I am going to try it at 55x55 and then 44x44. What I may end up having to do is cut ice planets out. By canon they are far out there and it takes a significant amount of time to complete a round trip. Also they can’t be settled but the moons can be under extreme conditions so settling them is only useful when you trying to set up an observation outpost for those once in a blue moon warp points that appear that far out and actually connect to something meaningful. Most games I played ignored them completely anyway. Still cutting the system down to 55x55 is only 20.8% of the actual area and that means (strictly by the book) most planets in the sixth orbit and all planets from the seventh orbit ring out will be removed. Then again if I was going strictly by the books over half the components would have been tossed out already.

[Derek]

Oh, I remember the HBM's. I modeled those just by taking cap missiles in SE4 and making them much more damaging, and much, much longer ranges. Of course, the launchers were really bug.

I was able to somehow get the AI to use them occasionally, and extra long range missile duels became quite interesting!

As for the interpenetration, that works great, and yes, you are right, it does more or less cancel each other out (readiness vs warp disorientation)

Datalinks could be modeled by giving ships components that increase the entire fleets defense percentage, but making them extra large, so that it is only cost effective to give them to one or two ships in a fleet... Not perfect, but should come close. Also not sure if this is possible under SE5, I think it was under SE4.

Gunboats shouldn't be too hard to do at some point in the future, either. The warp capability is going to be the sticking point, I think.

[Phoenix-D]

The datalink thing is possible in SE5; see the Golden Eclipse mod for an example.

Units can be made warp-capable in SE5.

[Phoenix-D]

Post deleted by Phoenix-D

[Derek]

Dayum! So much possible in 5 that wasn't in 4! I'm verrrrrra happy 'bout that!

[President_Elect_Shang]

Another update with my expansion of the system hex. I found out that if you want to keep the map looking “right” (as opposed to box-ish) you need to make the width 130% the height. Naturally that means more real-estate to play with when making out systems. My final testing came out with a 62x48 map and 984 radius from center. So I came to about the same map size as Fyron but for aesthetic reasons. As noted before the slow FPS seems to have of been related to another issue which was fixed by one the patches between his testing and mine (v1.20). That is 18% of the SF system map, I should be able to include most all planets but a few of the larger systems will be put on a diet. Fair compromise in my book for now, I will decide what I want to do when I get to that point as I do have a few ideas bouncing around. One thing at a time!

I think I am getting everyone confused, my bad. I have datalink, what I meant to say is that don’t have all the version in canon because there is no similar SE5 ability. The big thing is the blind spot and firing arcs, neither one SE5 has and that was really what later generations of Datalink were for overcoming. Also gunboats are way to easy and I can make them like did the SBMHAWK Pods or even the Pinnace which was a for-runner of the gunboat line. The difference is the Pinnace couldn’t deliver the punch of a small ship and that is way to powerful for such a small and cheap ship to be able to accomplish. A squadron sure, but the early gunboat could take out destroyers one on one with the right weapons load. And as I said I haven’t looked to see how they have been adjusted since those early days.