New Mod: The Art of War Mod

Deathstalker · #1 May 1st, 2002, 06:38 AM

Geo,

I've got an old mod gathering dust in the download sections (the 'D-Mod'), you are welcome to use/incorporate/change any of it (new ship classes, anti boarding party weapons etc), as well as the Mount Mod.

The D-Mod had lots of 'extra' weapons as well as some funky facilities. (Decoy missiles to soak up PDC, shield skipping missiles, low damage weapons that can strike VERY far away, Shields that incorporate PDC, regenerating engines, solar engines, Knowledge shrines, etc, etc, etc,).

Cargus10 · #2 May 1st, 2002, 07:08 AM

Some ideas that may or may not have merit:

- All direct fire weapons have many penalties to hit (say, -50 or so base). Warships will need fire-control sensor arrays (low mass and damage absobtion, high cost) to offset this. Kill the firecon, and the ship is in trouble. Multiple levels are possible, plus hardening, etc. Alternatley, split this to hit bonus between the firecon sensors and the firecon computer (on the bridge). Gives the aux con a reason for being.

No limit on engines per hull. Go as as fast as you want, but if you are all engines, you have room for little else. Also, make engines powerful, but big. A frigate might have only one engine and still go speed 8. Once it's damaged, though....

As weapons improve, don't nessescarily make them longer-ranged or more damaging...lots of improvements are in miniaturization....The APB I is 30Kt, maybe the APB II has the exact same stats but is 25kT.

Wish there was a way to handle MIRVed warheads for missiles, but can't think of one off-hand.

Engines that have zero (or near zero) inherent supply. Requires supply to be put in as "fuel tanks".

I'm sure I'll come up with more, but sleep is overtaking me now <L>.

Phoenix-D · #3 May 1st, 2002, 08:57 AM

"Wish there was a way to handle MIRVed warheads for missiles"

Drone. It's pretty much the only way.. then again, drones launched in tactical have unlimited range and you can't pick the targets.

Phoenix-D

PDF · #4 May 1st, 2002, 11:48 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:

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.

Definitely *not* true ... AP penetration is a game of energy, E=1/2 Mv�, M is given, v decreases with range (grav + air), so penetration too, always ! Only tweak is that "discarding sabot" rounds could have problems at point-blank range...
Where did you read that ?

PDF · #5 May 1st, 2002, 11:54 AM

And another idea : why not have "armored cargo/supply" comps, which will have more damage resistance but less free space ?
At the limit we will have "totally armored" comps which will just have damage resistance and no free space, sort of "damage soaking compartments", immune to armor-skipping.
So I'll go for 4 types of comps : normal/lt armored/hv armored/armored only.

This can be setup for any mod, perhaps armor tech requirements should be needed.

Feedback ?

geoschmo · #6 May 1st, 2002, 04:10 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Cargus10:
Engines that have zero (or near zero) inherent supply. Requires supply to be put in as "fuel tanks".

This is something I am considering. I need to be careful though as this will again put a strain on the smaller ship sizes to be useful later in the game. I may give the smaller ships some inherant fuel supply to counter this. Haven't decided yet.

I have done some more number crunching and I don't like making Destroyers need two engines per move. I am currently leaning towards following the levels of SEIII closely in that respect. i.e Cruiser, 2 per move, Drednaught, 3 per move. Basically the engines per move will match with the number of life support/crew comps currently.

This does make the Cruiser a little weak. Going from LC to Cruiser and keeping the same speed will only net you an additional 20Kt of space after the required comps. Add to this the reduction in defense bonus (Allthough that will be chonged a lot in this mod anyway) and you don't have much incentive to build cruisers. Honestly I am not sure this is much different in the current game, it woulld just be a little more pronounced. I rarely build cruisers in the stock game, prefering to wait for the Battle Cruisers before shanging hull sizes. I may try to come up with some things to counter that. Maybe giving the Cruiser extra fuel storage, or adding a mount for the 500kt design. Haven't decided yet.

I could also make the cruiser a little larger. Looking at the SEIII hull sizes compared to the SEIV ones the Light cruiser in SEIV is proprtionaly much larger than the Light Cruiser in SEIII and the Cruiser in SEIV is proportionally a little smaller. That accounts for the differance. Since I am modeling the propulsion system to SEIII it may make sense to tweak the hull sizes accordingly.

I am also strongly considering adding some "advanced" hull sizes, say for example when you get to Ship constructiuon lev 4 along with the 400Kt LC hull you also discover a new 150Kt ES hull, but that has an inherant speed of +1? That would make the smaller ships more usefull right? A little anyway.

Geoschmo

Bman · #7 May 1st, 2002, 04:24 PM

quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:

I am also strongly considering adding some "advanced" hull sizes, say for example when you get to Ship constructiuon lev 4 along with the 400Kt LC hull you also discover a new 150Kt ES hull, but that has an inherant speed of +1? That would make the smaller ships more usefull right? A little anyway.

Geoschmo

Oh yes that would be sweet. You can do some very interesting hulls based on ideas I've seen floating around this board recently:

Reach Ship Construction-? and Propulsion-? and you get a FastEscort hull.
Reach Ship Construction-? and Cloaking-? and get a CloakedEscort hull.
Reach Ship Construction-? and Sensors-? and get a hull with increased accuracy.
Ship Construction-? + Shields-? gives hulls with builtin shield generators.

Higher levels of the required techs would give you the advanced Versions of the bigger hulls. This kind of thing would basically increase the usefulness of smaller-sized hulls later in the game since they would essentially get some "free" space.

I'm sure there are more interesting hull abilities that could be given also...maybe one with a built-in bridge.