New Mod: The Art of War Mod

[Cylapse]

PDF - I do agree on one aspect, I would prefer to have -some- AI support, but thats an extremely daunting task.... If at all a possibility, Geo, you may need to hire an outside contractor for AI work ;-)

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by Cynapse:
PDF - I do agree on one aspect, I would prefer to have -some- AI support, but thats an extremely daunting task.... If at all a possibility, Geo, you may need to hire an outside contractor for AI work ;-)

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As with almost all SE4 mods, this one will be a hodgepodge of ideas of my own, and stuff borrowed from others. If when I have it completed someone wants to take it upon themselves to make the AI useable with it, that is fine with me.

I am going to have fun with this and use some ideas that I think will give any prospective AI designer real headaches.

Geoschmo

[LGM]

I have never liked the fact that you have to know how to build mines in order to clear them. I propose mine clearing devices available outside of the mine building tech tree.

I would like to see mine clearing technology in a separate tree from mine building technology. Make Mine clearing components avail in their own tree with something like a 50K base. Perhaps in order to get a more effective mine clearing device, you need to have at least level 1 mine building.

Secondly, give the common direct fire weapons intrinsict mine clearing ability of 1 mine to DUCs, MC, Point Defense Cannons, and APB).

Third, there should be some sort of scanner that can detect mines.

Keep mines cheap enough so the counters above still give players an incentive to develope special mine clearing devices.

[Taz-in-Space]

While you're modding weapons you could add a little variety by adding weapons that only damage at certain ranges.

for example: 0 0 10 20 40 70 40 20 10 0 0 0 0
or
0 0 0 0 0 10 10 20 20 40 40 70 70

I know that the AI's might not handle this kind of
thing well, but in a non-AI game...

[LGM]

Here is another suggestion that I have seen other propose: Change the Supply Container to be recognized as a Cargo container for freighers (Allow Fuel Ships on Transport Hull). Do this by giving Supply Cargo a Cargo capacity of 1 unit on top of the 500 units of Supply space.

Create 5KT Versions of Cargo, Supply, and Armor so that space is not wasted early on when you have that odd 10KT you do not know what to do with and later, when you have that odd 5 KT when using a large mount weapon that has a size that is a multiple of 5.

[Baron Munchausen]

LGM:

I've already made most these changes to mines in my own personal 'mod'... mine sweepers are a seperate area from mines, and mines have only level 2 cloaking so you can see them once you get advanced sensors. I've still got to test whether the 'stealth armor for mines' works or not to improve their inherent cloaking ability a little bit. I have considered putting mine sweeping ability into PDC cannons but I'm afraid the AI might then use those instead of true sweepers in a mine sweeper design, or might start treating other ships as mine sweepers.

Geo:

Multi-unit launchers may cause the same problem as mine sweeping on a PDC. The AI might get confused about the roles of certain ships. Other than that, it might be considered a 'cheat' of sorts that reduces the value of the specialized bays and makes some aspects of the game too easy. It's worth a try. Only play testing will tell.

As far as armor piercing weapons, I've been requesting a 'lesser' weapon ability than the 'skips armor' since before the game was released. Simply have a 'double damage to armor' ability like the 'quad damage to shields' ability. I'd give this ability to the DUC (Mass Driver) because it's a solid projectile rather than a beam. A few simple extra abilities like this would make the game so much more fun! We can only keep asking for them. :-/

[ 30 April 2002: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[LGM]

Make weapon research costs higher. The 5K base for most of them means you do not bother deploying them until you max out the level. Does anyone ever deploy a ship with a PPB I? The always research to 3 to 5 before actually deploy it.

It seems silly that you sepend 155K of research to get PPB I but for another 10K you get PPB II. The weapon improvement should be much more difficult. Make weapons something like 15K or 20K and racial weapons 30K or 40K instead of 20K. Especially make the good weapons like Null Space and PPBs be larger bases.