Range Attenuation!

[Baron Munchausen]

Yes, the Meson BLaster presents a challenge because it cannot be easily 'balanced' by Emissive Armor as it was in SE III. Mounts come along with light cruisers and throw the balance out. MM has got to do something to improve armor, and Emissive Armor in particular. I'd prefer that there be mounts FOR armor, which increase Emissive Ability in the same proportion as weapon power. We've been requesting it, and there have been some new extensions for mounts recently. We'll just see what happens...

Apparently the shorter range was supposed to be the new 'balancing disadvantage' for the MB. It used to be the longer range weapon in SE III. If the AI was smarter in combat and actually executed strategies like 'maximum weapons range' properly it might have worked. I don't think it does, though. We need armor fixed/improved.

[ July 02, 2002, 05:27: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Marvin Kosh]

I like the idea of Emissive Armour actually turning away some damage. Remember the Excalibur in the Crusade series? Deflects 90% of incoming weapons energy. I would give my right arm for a ship like that

And as for the Vorlon-enhanced main guns, well..... I think there's enough weapons already in the game that you could pick to represent those, except they don't have the after-effect of killing ship movement for the equivalent of a minute.

I think there should be additional tracks on the Chemistry tech tree to allow for new types of alloy which would either introduce new armour types, or enhance existing ones. For example, you could use a thinner armour that allows for more space inside the ship's hull, but provides the same protection as a much more primitive alloy. And costs more

[Baron Munchausen]

Well, it's easy enough to mod lots of new armors and tech trees to reach them. The problem is that you also have to create huge numbers of individual components for each variation in the tech tree. I hope that the new mounts will allow much cleaner tech variations in armor especially. The primary characteristic of armor is its 'size/damage ratio' after all. Mounts have been able to modify these characteristics all along. Now that you can restrict mounts to certain component families it will be possible to have a tech tree of stealth armor or emissive armor based on one set of components and have several researchable mounts to create the variations in size or size/damage ratio.

And I'd still like to see now abilities for armor. I just recently had a 'light bulb' go off about the 'skips armor' damage type, for example. Why should all armor be the same? If we had 'levels' of armor and armor skipping like we have cloaking and sensors we'd be able to create some really cool armors and weapons. So I emailed MM about possibly making 'armor 1', 'armor 2', 'armor 3', etc., and 'skips armor 1', 'skips armor 2', skips armor 3', etc...

Plain old armor like steel or titanium starts at '1' of course. Crystalline armor could start at 2 and go up from there. Other armors like 'neutronium' might be impenetrable with level 9 or something.

[ July 03, 2002, 23:53: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Marvin Kosh]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Other armors like 'neutronium' might be impenetrable with level 9 or something.

I was thinking about that actually.... if you had like, a superdense armour (like neutronium for example, you can't get much denser that that) maybe there should be a movement penalty.... even though it wouldn't need to be really thick, it would add a heckuva lot of mass

[Fyron]

The same should be done with Shields and Phased Shields.

[Spuzzum]

In my mod, the supply usage and research cost of a weapon is closer related to the damage it inflicts. Rather than adjusting damage up or down, I adjust the price and don't touch the damage.

I haven't tested it (either against the AI or against other players) just yet, so I don't know how good of a balancing strategy it is.

[ July 04, 2002, 07:55: Message edited by: Spuzzum ]

[jimbob]

Baron:

I like the idea of attenuating the direct fire weapons, it seems the direct fire weapons are so powerful and have such a long range that heck, who uses missiles?! And what's the purpose of having torpedo weapons if they're useless?

But instead of increasing direct fire attenuation, wouldn't it just be easier to increase torpedo range (with little attenuation) and keep the direct fire weapon ranges "short" relative to torpedo range? The modding would go quicker anyway...