New Mod: The Art of War Mod

[Captain Kwok]

SJ:

I think you should post how you get those percentages! Just so everyone can follow along and see what you mean.

[dumbluck]

Hmm. The armor I can understand; just take away the "armor" ability.
But how do you do that with shields???

Edit: And to answer your question, I don't plan on using leaky armor or shields at this time. It might be neat for later (much later, at this rate), but I've got other things I want to put in first.

[ November 21, 2002, 12:34: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

[dumbluck]

A few questions from my to do list (Man, it just keeps getting longer and longer...)

---Make planet glassing with normal weapons next to impossible.

Can anyone point me to some threads/mods that demonstrate how this is done? I vaguely recall that it involved increasing the damage to kill 1m population and increasing the damage of planetary weapons. But I'm looking for specific explanations/examples to study.

---Balance the Cultural Modifiers.

I remember that someone did this, once upon a time. Would that person mind if I incorperate their work? Oh, and I'd need a pointer to that mod...

edit: One Last question: Anyone care to share their impressions of v0.80?

To Do list:

playtest v.80 !!!

+++Maintenance+++
X-P&N maintenance settings.
X-Maint reducing components & ship specific mounts;
---Adjust maint. reduction of Crew Areas.
X-Rebalanced # of Lifesupport and Crewquarters with shipsize.
X-Adjust ship hull costs to 1.2$/kt.

+++Miscellaneous+++
X-Add no-AI mod files.
X-Add TDM Formations
---Add some P&N mounts.
---Balance the Cultural Modifiers.
---Add empty Racial Traits slots for future expansion.

+++Damage Allocation+++
---Small racial armors.
X-Add OA ability to all hull sizes. (excluding units)
---Base shields and armor on P&N style.
---Various weapons balancing issues.

+++Ground Combat+++
X-Ground combat down to 3 turns.
---Make planet glassing with normal weapons next to impossible.

+++Space Combat+++
---Change space combat to 50 turns.
---Rebalance the tohit%/ecm% (increase costs of characteristics, ala P&N)
---Add Manuevering thrusters.
---Ship/Fleet Training components ala P&N

+++"Weapons or Butter"+++
X-9 levels of SY, researched thru ship construction, along with Temporal counterparts.
---extend resource extractors down to 10 levels (9 researchable)
---Adjust Research Center and Intel Center points generation.
---Adjust Citizen Database and CCC bonus %s.
---change monolith research to be dependant on resource extraction research. (ala P&N)
---Adjust Robotoid Factory bonus %s.

+++Engines+++
---Smaller vessels can mount more engines than larger ones (ala dreadnaught and baseship).
---Supply usage decreases with engine tech level ala P&N, Exodus
---Reduce Capital Ship combat movement rates by 1/2. (missles, fighters, and drones(?) remain normal). Strategic movement rates remain normal.
---Extend tech tree (ala Exodus mod)

Note: mQNP is out, for the time being. One of the reasons is that I've got too many other things I want to experiment with (heck, I'm still coming up with ideas!). Another is that it might restrict the number of players interested in the mod. Once I get most of the basics worked out, I'll add it in (or perhaps make 2 Versions of the mod, on with mQNP, and one without). Of coarse, if there is a large public outcry, I could probably be persuaded to put it back on the to do list... ;P

[ November 22, 2002, 12:47: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by dumbluck:
A few questions from my to do list (Man, it just keeps getting longer and longer...)

quote:

---

---Make planet glassing with normal weapons next to impossible.

Can anyone point me to some threads/mods that demonstrate how this is done? I vaguely recall that it involved increasing the damage to kill 1m population and increasing the damage of planetary weapons. But I'm looking for specific explanations/examples to study.

---

Here is one. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...=001062#000014

Basically though you have the idea with your comment above. Raise the damage to kill one pop to a very high level. High enough that standard ship to ship weapons have little or no effect. That change alone will make glassing planets almost impossible. Since planetary shields, weapons plats and other untis on the planet are damaged before any damage is applied to population, they will still be susceptable to orbital bombardment as normal. Then if you want players to have an option to glass the planet with specialized weapons, you raise the damage levels of the neutron bomb accordingly, or create some other weapon with the population only damage type. I do not suggest rasing the damage of other planetary wepons like the Napalm, cause that would make them extremely powerful against the weapons platforms. That's not what you want I think. You want the ship V Waepons platform combat about the same, but make it more difficult to glass the population once the planetary defenses are gone. Corrrect?

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

The leaky shields are achieved with the crystalline ability.
Given a large amount of crystalline ability points, shots impacting the ship will have on average 50% of their damage absorbed.
0% = shield skipping OR armor skipping damage
20% = Quad to shields damage
33% = Double to shields damage
50% = Normal
66% = Half to shields
80% = Quarter to shields.

In some cases, such as vs very low damage weapons, the absorption percent can be higher that that.

If you make the shield generators "armor", or have leaky armor, you can have the absorption percentage fall as the shields take damage, and the crystalline ability value becomes important.

[dumbluck]

Geo: Correct. Thanx.

SJ: Ummm... so what do you put the CA ability ON? The hull itself? Armor? Shield generators (that would have to have the armor tag as well, right?)? All of the above?

[Captain Kwok]

SJ never really explains how he comes up with those darn numbers.

Dumbluck:

You would give the ability to only the shield generators for leaky shields.

Leaky armor is created by getting rid of the armor's damaged first ability and reducing regular components structure size. That way, the armor is still most likely hit first, but not always.