Proportions mod 1.5 released

E. Albright · #1 March 18th, 2002, 08:33 AM

quote:
Originally posted by PvK:
Where is the crew quarters resistance accomplished/moddable in the data files? Is it cumulative per crew component on a ship?

[...]

Edit: I should've said, "a ship with two crew quarters." I.e., in unmodded, a single boarding party 1 can almost always capture a battlecruiser or smaller if the target ship has no security stations.

This reminded me of some research I'd done on this long, long ago, and prompted me to go out and look at the Gold demo to see if it still seemed to hold true. Lo and behold, it did (tho' I couldn't really put it through its paces w/ higher-level BPs and SSs).

To summarize my old-time research (which agrees w/ what SJ said, to be sure), the "value" of a boarding party must exceed that of the boarded vessel, with the "values" for relevant components as follows: a crew quarter (CQ) is worth .8, a level of boarding party (BP) is worth 1, and a level of security station (SS) is worth 2.4. Thus, Ship A (BP I x 4, or BP IV x 1) will be able to capture Ship B (CQ x 4) or Ship C (CQ x 1, SS I x 1), but not Ship D (CQ x 5) or Ship E (CQ x 2, SS I x 1).

Oh, and IIRC, Master Computers don't help at all, but the Last time I messed with this I was getting screwy results w/ 'em, so figuring out if they are in fact w/o value in this respect is left as an exercise for the reader...

E. Albright

Edit: thread w/ old research summarized above is here.

[ 18 March 2002: Message edited by: ealbright ]

Rlaney · #2 March 18th, 2002, 09:32 AM

Did you actually manage to change armor so that it isn't "destroyed first" but actually blocks some damage in 1.5? How did you manage to do that? I may just be missing an obvious but I've been starin at the screen so long editing AI files that it's all a blur to me.

PsychoTechFreak · #3 March 18th, 2002, 10:14 AM

Rlaney, as far as I understand, PvK has removed the traditional armor ability from emissive armor and the yellow plain armors. He raised the resistance points of the armor against the resistance ability of the other components, then it is a kind of more chance to hit the armor, but still a small chance to hit another component.

PvK · #4 March 18th, 2002, 10:48 AM

quote:
Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:
Rlaney, as far as I understand, PvK has removed the traditional armor ability from emissive armor and the yellow plain armors. He raised the resistance points of the armor against the resistance ability of the other components, then it is a kind of more chance to hit the armor, but still a small chance to hit another component.

Yes. It's not a change in 1.5 either - it was that way from the beginning. I really like the way it works, except that armor-skipping weapons don't skip it.

ealbright, when you write "a level of boarding party," you mean every 5 points of the "Boarding Attack" ability, right?

And, "a level of security station" would be 15 points of "Boarding Defense"?

PvK

dogscoff · #5 March 18th, 2002, 12:05 PM

PvK- Will you be releasing a "wrinkle-fixed" 1.5x before we start our multiplayer, or shall I just download 1.5 from this thread?

E. Albright · #6 March 18th, 2002, 06:51 PM

quote:
Originally posted by PvK:
ealbright, when you write "a level of boarding party," you mean every 5 points of the "Boarding Attack" ability, right?

And, "a level of security station" would be 15 points of "Boarding Defense"?

Uh, yeah. I (not being a modder) never thought to look at the components.txt file.

So, um, yeah. Everything I said still goes, except that one must replace the numbers I gave with 4 (CQ), 5 (BP), and 15 (SS). So if one is counting, one can note that this makes SS even more powerful (in comparison to CQ, and recalling that 1 CQ = 10kt v. 1 SS = 20kt) than I'd noted: SS I is 1.875 times better, SS II is 3.75, SS III is 5.625, SS IV is 7.5, and SS V is 9.375. IOW, it would take an amount of CQ equal to twice any of the above numbers to provide matching protection (e.g., to equal 1 SS I, you need 3.75 CQ).

Oh, and methinks my long-ago confusion re: Master Computers may have been caused by fuzzy math based on the notion that a CQ was worth 1/3 of a "level" of SS rather than 1/3.75. Further experimentation with this in mind has shown 'em to be utterly worthless at defending v. BPs.

E. Albright

PvK · #7 March 18th, 2002, 08:28 PM

ealbright, did you figure out what (if any) random chance was involved in boarding combat results?

Dogscoff, since I expect we will wait until the 30th for Rollo and Gorgo before we start, there should be another patch before then. If you want to get a preview, though, do take a look at 1.5. It's only a 128K download, and I don't think it will be very different from the next Version, unless people find something important.

PvK