New Mod: The Art of War Mod

Baron Munchausen · #1 April 30th, 2002, 06:57 PM

quote:
Originally posted by 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...

Not the AI, the combat system itself doesn't handle a weapon that does 0 damage at any range before its final range. You'll have to start with some sort of non-zero damage. And yes, others have already modded weapons that do increasing dmaage with range. The DUC is a logical choice since the projectile gains momentum with range.

Phoenix-D · #2 April 30th, 2002, 07:11 PM

"Armor - Regular armor is really not viable in the longterm: It's damage/kT ratio is lower than shields and it requires repairing after combat. I have always thought it should have a better damage/kT ratio than shields *because* it needs to be repaired. Hopefully armor can be improved so that there is a real choice between shields and armor in the mid to late game."

Easy enough to do..

By that same token, I cannot think of any non-racial armor-skipping guns except for the null-space cannon and of course the special weapons (engine/weapon/computer killing). The problem with nullspace is that it skips shields too. It would be nice to have some more armor-skipping weapon choices. They should be at least as expensive as PPB's. And consideration must be made for crystalline/organic races. If everyone gets armor-skipping weapons real easy then these races would suffer."

Yeah, they would. I like having more armor (and shield!) skipping weapons though.

Geo: this is like what I was doing for techmod, only explained better!

Hopefully you can pull it off better. I got bogged down in the missiles section of the tech tree (5 missile levels, 7 warhead types, ~50 entires PER WARHEAD TYPE.. ug)

Phoenix-D

Sinapus · #3 April 30th, 2002, 07:42 PM

Re: armor.

I created some extra standard armor levels for Armor 4-6, though am still tweaking the amount of protection to give them.

Oh, and I made a "lvl 0" armor called "basic armor" that takes up 10kt and has 10kt of structure. Like I said, basic armor that everyone has.

I also have a "lvl 0" point defense weapon called a "point defense cluster" that has pathetic performance, but is better than nothing.

Other things I'm testing are some lvl 0 facilities. Mainly an intelligence center and an atmosphere converter. The intel center has a low cost and low amount of intel points generated. The converter takes 200 turns to convert an atmosphere. Both are mainly for the AI since I've noticed they just don't build those things on their worlds very well, so I might as well use them as place holders.

Oh, and I'm still testing what I like to call the Seekers From Hell suite of seeker weapons. Basically, more levels of CSMs, Plasma missiles, seeking parasite and crystal torps with higher damage and higher seeker damage resistance so those designs w/tons of point-defense cannons aren't completely invulnerable. Muahahaha.

geoschmo · #4 April 30th, 2002, 07:58 PM

LGM, I think I see what you mean. Give the weapons techs higher tech costs but take them out of the higher branches of the theoretical sciences. To put some distance between the levels, but keep the higest levels from becomeing astronimcaly expensive?

Baron,

quote:
The DUC is a logical choice since the projectile gains momentum with range.

Not that it matters for game purposes, but wha?

How does a projectile with no internal propulsion gain momentum with range? Projectiles won't decelerate in a vacuum, but they won't acelerate either.

Phoenix, I remember your "modular" missles. I was disapointed when you couldn't complete that, it sounded way cool. I may add a simplified Version of it. I don't have to teach the AI to use them, so that helps a lot.

And now for an idea of my own, sort of. Devnull mod has tacheyon armor that protects weapons from the weapon damaging wepons that skip normal armor. I will be adding something similer that protects the engines, if I can pull it off. I think I have it figured out, just have to test it.

Geoschmo

Baron Munchausen · #5 April 30th, 2002, 08:36 PM

quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:

Baron, Not that it matters for game purposes, but wha? How does a projectile with no internal propulsion gain momentum with range? Projectiles won't decelerate in a vacuum, but they won't acelerate either.

Geoschmo

Well, my physics is not up to snuff at this time so it's hard to give the correct technical explanation. But this is a fact of armor and armaments from armor-piercing anti-tank weapons down to 'bullet-proof' vests and ordinary handgun bullets. The closer you are the LESS effective the round is in penetrating the armor. Granted, beyond a certain range there is a drop off in power due to loss of velocity to friction. But momentum is somehow related to the distance traveled before hitting the armor and it does make the weapon more powerful to travel a greater distance.

Baron Munchausen · #6 April 30th, 2002, 08:39 PM

quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:

And now for an idea of my own, sort of. Devnull mod has tacheyon armor that protects weapons from the weapon damaging wepons that skip normal armor. I will be adding something similer that protects the engines, if I can pull it off. I think I have it figured out, just have to test it.

Geoschmo

I've been wanting to verify how to make 'decoys' for all of the standard 'special damage' weapons, shields only, weapons only, and engines only. Does Devnull mod have all three of these? If not, what other mods have these so I can see exactly how it's done?

Bman · #7 April 30th, 2002, 08:47 PM

DUCs: Maybe they are emitting a stream of particles behind them which would propel them forward. Or maybe they are launched in a super-energetic state or something and as they travel this energy converts back to matter making the projectile have more mass, and thus more momentum.

Engine Armor: Good idea. I am guessing you make a new "engine component" which is just a damage sink? It might get tricky with the "all the engines need to be the same type to get the bonus" rule of se4.

quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:
LGM, I think I see what you mean. Give the weapons techs higher tech costs but take them out of the higher branches of the theoretical sciences. To put some distance between the levels, but keep the higest levels from becomeing astronimcaly expensive?

Baron, Not that it matters for game purposes, but wha? How does a projectile with no internal propulsion gain momentum with range? Projectiles won't decelerate in a vacuum, but they won't acelerate either.

Phoenix, I remember your "modular" missles. I was disapointed when you couldn't complete that, it sounded way cool. I may add a simplified Version of it. I don't have to teach the AI to use them, so that helps a lot.

And now for an idea of my own, sort of. Devnull mod has tacheyon armor that protects weapons from the weapon damaging wepons that skip normal armor. I will be adding something similer that protects the engines, if I can pull it off. I think I have it figured out, just have to test it.

Geoschmo