New Mod: The Art of War Mod

[geoschmo]

If you add in the ECM bonus for Stealth and Scattering armor it's not nearly as bad for the sensors. But I still wanted the sensors to have tha advantage.

One of my biggest problems with combat in the stock game is that with a slight edge in ECM+Stealth+Scattering Armor your ships become almost unhittable. Throw a couple PDC's to hanlde the missles, and a couple shields to soak up the few lucky shots that do manage to get through, and you have a ship that all to often will escape a battle completely undamaged.

It's not even uncommon for battles to be so lopsided that 10 ships with said ECM advantage can wipe out 50 or even more that are otherwise equal in tech, without losing a single ship, or even suffering much damage.

By giving sensors the advantage, or less of a disadvantage at least, those battles have a different dynamic. You should still expect to win with superior tech and equal or nearly equal numbers, but you should at least suffer some casualties and damage and have to be more selective about when and where you fight.

What I was going for with the slow progression of the combat modifying techs is to make it take more of a comitment from an empire to develop them. To keep anyone from getting a big advantage very early. However one side effect of this is that if a race ignores these areas long enough it will be next to impossible for them to catch up. Not sure if I have the balance right yet.

I also wanted experience to be more of a determining factor, because that's something I can't really control since it's hardcoded. But I weakened the training facilities so you have to earn the experience the hard way.

Geoschmo

[ May 19, 2002, 23:37: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[dumbluck]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
I also wanted experience to be more of a determining factor, because that's something I can't really control since it's hardcoded. But I weakened the training facilities so you have to earn the experience the hard way.

Geoschmo

I wish I had more time, I'd like to check out the beta. So when I make suggestions, keep in mind that it's kind of like the blind leading the blind. But anyway, have you looked at SJ's P&N for inspiration here? The way he handles it (numbers are rough estimates, I haven't used his training facilities for a while) is that level one goes up to 15%, with 3% gained per turn (maxed in 5 turns). Level 2 goes up to 20% but with only 2% gained per turn (maxxed in 10 turns). Level 3 goes up to 25%, with only 1% gained per turn (max in 25 turns!). So to get the higher % takes much more time. I thought that was a pretty cool idea. Maybe you could plagerize, or at least use it as inspiration? Or not, I don't know. Hell, maybe you already have!

[Phoenix-D]

"I haven't used his training facilities for a while) is that level one goes up to 15%, with 3% gained per turn (maxed in 5 turns). Level 2 goes up to 20% but with only 2% gained per turn (maxxed in 10 turns). Level 3 goes up to 25%, with only 1% gained per turn (max in 25 turns!). So to get the higher % takes much more time. I thought that was a pretty cool idea."

Or if you build all three it's maxed in 23 turns, total.

Phoenix-D

[dumbluck]

Hey, quick question: Do those facilities stack? If not, how does it choose which facility is "active"? (does it pick most increase per turn, or highest max?)

Edit: sorry for taking this thread OT. It won't happen again, I swear!!!

[ May 20, 2002, 08:09: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

[Phoenix-D]

even if they don't, just put them on nearby planets.. I haven't tested it.

[geoschmo]

I am not aware that these facilities stack. According to the description they do not. Phoenix appears to be saying they do however. There may be a bug. I haven't tested it.

P&N is a nice way to do it, however it wasn't what I was looking for. In AoW I made five levels of each instaed of three. In all five levels they rate of experience is 1% one per turn. The lower levels can only gain 6% percent max, the highest levels only 10%. I wanted to limit the amount of experience you cold accquire "artificaially" an make the ships earn it the hard way through combat.

One thing I did change to help in this area though is I made the Combat Neural Net a researchable component, instead of making you find ruins to get it.

Geoschmo

[Batman]

Hello,

A couple of things I thought about while reading this thread:

1) Change the ship construction costs so that smaller craft are much much cheaper compared to the larger. Also, give larger ships an inherent bonus to damage resistence. I've always been a little annoyed when I compare Se4 navies to modern navies. Take WW2 naval distributions: battleships took forever to build/repair, but were very tough to knock out (and even tougher to destroy outright). By comparision, destroyers etc were pumped out 'en masse'. In the game, maybe a single shipyard could construct more than one small ship per turn. Captial (Cruiser and up) ships should take a really really long time.

If the modifications suggested below to increase the late-game usefulness of the smaller hulls were included then Se4 fleets would start to resemble real life fleets, with a capital ship never being put to sea/space without attendent destroyers to use as scouts/screens.

(Sorry that rambled on a bit)

2) Ancient ruins. I think it would be interesting if ancient ruins not only supplied a new tech level, but perhaps opened access to an entire tech tree; imagine scientists finding a piece of technology that is initally useless, but allows access to whole new concepts/branches (Think of the broken arm and chip found in Terminator 2)