Devnull Mod Gold: updates and discussion

[Mylon]

I just thought of another idea: separate Versions of ship and base engineering bays. The base Version offers maintenance reduction, the ship Version doesn't. I don't like the idea of maintenance reduction for ships because I generally tend towards playing defensively.

[ September 13, 2002, 20:49: Message edited by: Mylon ]

[Rollo]

Emergency propulsion does work for bases and the movement points can be raised above the maximum standard movement. But only, if their standard movement is already greater than zero. The same is true for ships, btw. Meaning that if you have a ship that has all engines destroyed, the emergency propulsion will not work. Bug, y/n? I tend to say yes.

Trajan, the emergency propulsion already can only be repaired by space yards (fac. or comp.) and not repair bays/engineering components. That is the (hardcoded) way it works.

So, in order for the rocket boosters to work, the base must have the ability to move in the first place. Hrmpf.

What do you (all of you) reckon would be a good requirement to make the base engines available? (if they get put in): right from the start? very high tech? something in between? or maybe an ancient ruins tech?

Mylon, I like the idea of adding solar supply generation to the engineering component, but have to be careful not to cause any conflicts with the solar collectors. Maintenance reduction of 5% seems a little low. I think I like the 10-20% better . Have to check that out, how it works with crystalline. Of course the components would be for bases (maintenance) and ships (repair) only. If bases get strategic movement, they will also be able to warp. No way to restrict that. Hehe, the image of 50 battlestations closing in with some turns to prepare the defense, is kinda cool, IMHO.

Comments on fighters? Yes, they are a lot more useful at first than in the stock game. If you don't have the anti-fighter-missile, you are pretty much toast. But of course battleships will still bLast quite a few of them away. Have you tried the maximum level (50kT) fighters, yet? With the heavy mounts and a couple of shields a small stack of them can be very dangerous even to capital ships.

Rollo

[jimbob]

What do you (all of you) reckon would be a good requirement to make the base engines available? (if they get put in): right from the start? very high tech? something in between? or maybe an ancient ruins tech?

It seems to me that the biggest problems to moving a whole base would be

1) total thrust must be rediculously high... so just needing a huge engine = higher kT. This requires a brute strength solution rather than a technical solution. So I'd say this should be available from the start.

2) rapid exceleration and manouverability would rip the base to shreds... so more than one mp per turn should require very advanced technology (inertial dampeners and the like).

That's what I think.

[geoschmo]

Rollo,

I have a request from someone that want's the 1.70 setup as a Version on PBW. Were you going to be putting out a new Version soon or should I go ahead and set that one up.

Geoschmo

[Mylon]

Well the power plant idea wasn't a solar panel idea. It would be something regardless of the number of suns in a sector. Like say a nuclear reactor on board that gave a constant +100 supplies per turn. You could theoretically remove bridge components entirely and give power plants the "bridge" flag so that they're required. Likewise, you could also have fusion reactors, singularity reactors, quantum reactors (not to be confused with the unlimited supply component!) to represent different levels of power generation. Solar generators would probably be a good addition as well, but I would think the solar panels would have to be modified in some way to prevent a proliferation of supplies and make sure that large ships with good reactors are still capable of running out. You could even experiment with removing resupply depots totally, but I think that would be a bit too drastic of a change to make without a _lot_ of extensive testing.

I also think the prospector hull is broken. It provides 80% maintenance reduction, and a crystalline race can easily turn that into a cash cow if >100% reduction = resource production.

[Mylon]

Nevermind! I have a Crystalline restructuring plant (+20%) plus a prospector hull (ship design says 80%, ability tab says 90%. Typo somewhere?) and a racial trait of +5% to maintenance reduction. I'm paying approximately 1.6% of it's cost in maintenance versus the 17.4% I'm paying for other ships in other sectors, so I think it's pretty safe to give relatively large bonuses of maintenance reduction to bases, but I still defend the idea that maintenance reduction component shouldn't be allowed for ships.

[geoschmo]

I tested all this a while back. IIRC the ship maintenance reductions for the hull and the components if any will add together before being calculated. So you could get a negative maintenace if you weren't careful.

But the total maint reduction for a ship would be calulated separatly from any maintreduction due to empire characteristics,culture, or system facilities. So if your ship had a comp that gave it a 90% maint reduction and a faciliity that gave all your ships in that system a 90 % maint reduction you wouldn't get 180%, it would do the first 90%, and then take another 90% off the remaining 10%. In effect the reduction in that system would be 99%.

Geoschmo