Pirates and Nomads

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
That's not quite the system Pax had proposed. I'd still prefer to have 30 engines than 3.

No, what Phoenix said actually is exactly the system Pax described in his post. If he revised that somewhere else we missed it apparently. The idea is to have a QNP system where larger ships require more space for engines, while still having each engine move the ship one standard movement point as it does in the stock game. Instead of having many more engines as standard QNP does, you have fewer, larger engines.

Your original complaint against the mount based was that it made larger ships more immune to engine destroying weapons. That was incorrect, under a mount based QNP system larger ships are no more or less susectable to engine destroying weapons. However, under "standard" QNP that you say you prefer the larger ships are much more immune to engine destroying weapons. It takes ten times more damage to kill 30 engines than it does to kill 3, assuming they have the same structure.

Geoschmo

[ September 17, 2002, 13:04: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Rainstorm]

To patch the TDM AIs for P&N, I just started the patch program, found the AI files (in the TDM directory) and patched them, is this correct? I have the sneaking suspicion in my current game that the AI is not working for some reason. I'm thinking I should have patched them in the game directory instead, but I'm not sure.

[Suicide Junkie]

There is a difference here between immunity and vulnerability.

What I believe Fyron is saying is that he likes the fact that it takes more hits to disable the engines on big ships. They are much less vulnerable (more hitpoints), but they are NOT immune to smaller engine disruptors (low # hitpoints per engine).

What we need is a Hybrid mod, where the mounts are used to keep the # of standard movement points well below 255, even on big ships, but still requires more engines on the big ships.
The mounts would allow you to make a mod with a separate QNP scale for small ( &lt 400kt), medium ( &lt 800kt) and large ships ( &gt 800kt).
Something like 1mp/50Kt/1speed for the small,
1mp/200Kt/1speed for medium, and 1mp/400Kt/1speed for large ships.

Movement overflows can be controlled better, and the design of ships can remain almost unchanged (just use mounts when adding engines now)

PS: Regarding the patching of AIs...
P&N only uses the AIs that are inside the P&N modfolder... so those are the ones that you have to patch.
You should be able to just copy or move the AIs that you've patched to the proper place inside P&N.

[ September 17, 2002, 15:52: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[DirectorTsaarx]

Edit: dammit, SJ posted while I was drafting this... now I look I'm just parroting his response...

Originally posted by geoschmo:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
That's not quite the system Pax had proposed. I'd still prefer to have 30 engines than 3.

No, what Phoenix said actually is exactly the system Pax described in his post. If he revised that somewhere else we missed it apparently. The idea is to have a QNP system where larger ships require more space for engines, while still having each engine move the ship one standard movement point as it does in the stock game. Instead of having many more engines as standard QNP does, you have fewer, larger engines.

Your original complaint against the mount based was that it made larger ships more immune to engine destroying weapons. That was incorrect, under a mount based QNP system larger ships are no more or less susectable to engine destroying weapons. However, under "standard" QNP that you say you prefer the larger ships are much more immune to engine destroying weapons. It takes ten times more damage to kill 30 engines than it does to kill 3, assuming they have the same structure.

Geoschmo

---

I think Imperator Fyron's original concern was that, if the larger engines also had higher structure, they may actually become IMMUNE to engine destroyers, since (IIRC) there's a bug that partial damage doesn't actually accumulate against engines. So, an engine with 50 kT structure would take NO DAMAGE AT ALL from an engine destroyer that only did 40 kT of damage. Even if you hit that engine 30 times in the same combat, doing a total of 1200 kT damage (enough to destroy that 50 kT engine 24 times). Now, you addressed that concern in your original response by saying that structure wouldn't necessarily be increased for the "larger mount" engines. I'm not certain why IF still prefers 30 engines to 3 engines, unless it's because he likes the fact that current QNP mods have a larger total structure in engines without being immune to engine-destroyer damage.

In other words, as you pointed out Geo, the current QNP system that allows 30 engines could actually have a larger total amount of structural points; which means we have a choice of:

1. The current QNP system, where large ships have lots of engine structure, but can eventually lose those engines to a concerted effort
2. A QNP system where large ships no longer have lots of engines to absorb damage, and therefore lose engines just as quickly as the smallest ships
3. A QNP system where large ships eventually become completely immune to small- and normal-mount engine destroyers.
   

[ September 17, 2002, 15:50: Message edited by: DirectorTsaarx ]

[geoschmo]

Ok, I am not familier with that bug Director, but the rest of what you and SJ makes sense. Even without the bug I can see the point of wanting larger ships to require more damage to disable them, without the individual engines being any harder to knock out.

On top of that more engines for larger ships means they take longer to repair/retrofit, which also moakes sense to me.

Some kind of hybrid system would be the answer, but the problem is making the step gradual so you don't have hull sizes that are way underpowered compared to the next smallest hull size, the way we sort of have now with LC to Cruiser in the stock game because of the extra crew and life support required.

The engines per move can only be done in whole numbers right? I don't remember if I ever tried using a decimal there. So that is what causes the steps, and the granularity.

We could modify the hull sizes so they are more in line with some kind of hybrind QNP steps, but nobody seems to want to do that, myself included.

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

Some kind of hybrid system would be the answer, but the problem is making the step gradual so you don't have hull sizes that are way underpowered compared to the next smallest hull size, the way we sort of have now with LC to Cruiser in the stock game because of the extra crew and life support required.

Which was why I mentioned that the QNP scale would change.

Make a set of "light ship drives" that are only allowed on small vessels (due to the required mounts). These would use a QNP scale of 1mp/50Kt/1speed.
Make another set of "medium ship drives" that are only allowed on 500-800 KT ships (again due to the required mounts). These would use a larger scale of movement, and provide half the normal thrust; the ships hulls in theis range would require half the EPM.

End result is that nothing changes on the surface, but the medium hulls can hold twice as many engines before they cause an RCE.
Since all of the medium hull sizes are nicely divisible by 2, the EPM still works out to a legal integer number.

[ September 17, 2002, 17:43: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[geoschmo]

I see that is what needs done SJ, I am merely podering a way to do it effectivly without large "steps" of scale change that cause the hulls right after the steps to be inefficent. I never really got the hang of the original QNP, so that is probably why I am having trouble with the hybrid idea. It probably makes complete sense to you and I am just not connecting the dots.

Do you have an idea of where the other scale changes would be, or would there just be the one? If I can write it all down maybe I can get a handle on it.

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

OK, imagine that the standard QNP system has engines that produce 15 thrust points for every 10kt engine. Escorts could have an EPM of about 15 (so one ion engine gives them a speed of 1)
The frigate would have EPM of 20, and so on.

Jump up to a cruiser sized hull: 50 EPM, and the maximum speed before an RCE is only 5.
Because of that, we want to put a step before the Cruiser.

So, for these types of "Medium ships", we will reduce the scale. Division by 5 will work nicely in this case.
So instead of 50EPM, the cruiser now has 10EPM.
Instead of 15 thrust, the "medium ship-mount" engines only have 3 thrust.

Our cruisers can now hit a top speed of 25 without causing an RCE. (255 / 10 EPM = 25)
They also appear no different on the surface:
The old engines were 10kt, and it took 10 engines to move at speed 3. The new engines are still 10kt, and 10 engines will move you at speed 3. The only difference is that you have a higher max speed without an RCE!

[geoschmo]

So under this system how many engines would you need on a LC and a Cruiser to move them the same speed, and how much space would they take up? I am sorry I am so dense. For some reason this QNP stuff just never seems as easy for me as the rest of you.

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

Lets just pretend that the LCs count as "Small ships" and the cruiser is the first "medium ship"

An LC weighs 400kt, so it would have 40 EPM.
The cruiser weighs 500kt, so it would have 50EPM. Since it is in the Medium ship Category, we divide by 5 and get 10 EPM.

The LC can only use "Small ship engine mounts", so it can only use the 15 thrust point engines.
Eight engines x 15 thrust gives 120 MP, divided by 40EPM gives 3 speed.

The CR can only use "Medium ship engine mounts", so it can only use the 3 thrust point engines.
Ten engines x 3 thrust gives 30MP, divided by 10 EPM gives 3 speed.

Note also that 400/500 =.8 and 8/10 = .8
Neither ship gets an advantage in speed due to the QNP scale step that separates them.

The QNP scale only affects the details of implementation, and has no effect on what the player sees (other than the required mounts)

PS: as for space taken up, both engine types would be the same size. Using 10kt per engine, that would be 80KT and 100KT respectively.

[ September 17, 2002, 18:36: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]