S. J. Question/suggestion regarding QNP...

[Suicide Junkie]

SJ,

Now that I finally understand really how and why QNP works, I feel confident enough to make a suggestion or two. Feel free to disregard them if you wish.

My biggest problem with QNP has always been the
extreme number of engines it takes to build one makes the designs very cluttered, and a bit too problematic to repair and upgrade. Larger ships should take longer to build and repair, but it woul be nice if the whole thing could be "shifted" some. I know you have added larger engines to help this some, but that kind of go against the principle of QNP to begin with a bit. With that in mind I worked up a suggestion. Instead of basing the QNP on the speed of an escort with 6 engines, 25Kt per engine, double that and base it off of the speed of a destroyer with 6 engines. The escort would take 3 engines to go 6, the frigate 4, the
destroyer 6, the LC 8, and so one. You'd have to change the MP of the engines to 6 of course. The max speed for each hull size would remain the same, however you would start to see RCE problems with maxed out ships earlier. You'd get them with Cruisers instead of Dreadnaughts. But with the hybrid system you can eliminate that anyway and maintain a constant engines to hull size ratio.

Another thing that I'd like to see is smoothing out of the number of vehicle control components. As it is there is a not much use in going from LC to Cruiser except for specialty ships because much of the newly available space is taken up by engines and crew and life support. What I'd like to see is the "Quasi-newtonian" principle applied there as well. There are two ways I can see to do this. You can start with the escort, and assume that a vehicle of 150Kt requires 30 Kt of Vehicle Control components, or 10kt for every 50Kt. Using this as a ratio we need to add 10kt when we step up to Frigate. I suggest that any time a half step is required the crew compartments be stepped up first. So a frigate would require 1 bridge, 2 cq, and 1 ls. A Destroyer would require 1 brige, 2 cq, 2 ls. LC would add another cq, Cruiser would add another ls, and so one. You can see that actually with this method there would be less space available in the Cruiser, but that wasn't the point. The point was the loss of relative efficency going from LC to Cruiser. This fixes that. It's not too restrctive in the large ships either. A baseship would need an additional 90Kt dedicated to cq and ls under this system. That's one less weapon. I don't know about your moon ship cause I don't have the P&N numbers here with me.

An alternative Version of this idea would be to also base the ratio on the destroyer hull, so each 100kt would require an additional cq or ls. The escort and frigate would still get one of each cause 1 is the minimum after all, unless you go with zero for the smaller hulls, and I don't recomend that. This way the LC would need an additional cq, the Cruiser would be the way it is now, and the rest would increas
gradually instead of large steps. In this format the battle Cruiser and battle ships would need one more each, and the dread and base ship actually would need fewer cq and ls than they do now.

What do you think about adding this feature as part of the QNP when you implement the hybrid idea?

Geoschmo

As to the first point, about how slow the ships are.
Firstly, the example I posted on the forum used an extremely slow scale. I chose the example numbers just to make the math easier, and to highlight the effect of the Hybrid scale "steps"

In P&N, I have escorts require 1 Ion engine to move 1 speed (10kt).
With max engines, these things fly at a speed of 12.
As technology improves, the quantum engines will drive that same escort at a blistering pace of 24.
The light cruisers can go slightly faster, since the C&C takes up a relatively smaller fraction of the space.
The only time the ships start slowing down is when you try to make them haul heavy equipment around

The linear-scaled C&C requirements is also a good idea.
Perhaps crew quarters could be shrunk to 3-4 Kt, and require 1 per 50Kt of ship... LS (centralized) could be left at 10, and require 1 per 200Kt (plus 1 minimum)

I would have to tweak a bunch of the minor racial traits in P&N in order to fit that in, but it should work.

[geoschmo]

[quote]Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

As to the first point, about how slow the ships are.
Firstly, the example I posted on the forum used an extremely slow scale. I chose the example numbers just to make the math easier, and to highlight the effect of the Hybrid scale "steps"

In P&N, I have escorts require 1 Ion engine to move 1 speed (10kt).
With max engines, these things fly at a speed of 12.
As technology improves, the quantum engines will drive that same escort at a blistering pace of 24.
The light cruisers can go slightly faster, since the C&C takes up a relatively smaller fraction of the space.
The only time the ships start slowing down is when you try to make them haul heavy equipment around

Actually my suggestion in the email wasn't abou tthe speed. I did have a question abou tthat in the other thread we had going, but I figured that part out myself. My suggestion was for reducing the number of engines while keeping the same speed. What do you think about idea?

Geoschmo

[Rainstorm]

Suicide Junkie, to follow up on my PM, I started another game and experienced the same problem. I switched to the problem race and noticed a few things:

1) I got some error in the AI file about values for Drone Attack on my first turn.

2) They can't research because they do not have the tech to build research centers, and have none on their starting homeworlds

3) They have Frigate tech, and a bunch of ship designs, but no space yard on their home planet and no option to build one from the list.

Any clue what is going on here?

[Suicide Junkie]

Making fewer engines move ships at the same speed would push that 24-MP escort well beyond the 30-MP barrier in simultaneous games. There would be a wall beyond which adding more engines only improves your combat speed (from 15 to 20 or higher) and your interplanetary speed would be stuck at 30.

As for making a larger standard engine (more powerful, but fewer fit on a ship, so it balances out), that could be done, but it would require reworking the AIs.

[geoschmo]

Yeah, my math was off. I see now that my idea would result in greater speed at max engines.

Since engine structure is already 20Kt, you could double the size of the engines without changing any of the other factors correct? That would have the effect I was looking for, cutting the number of engines in half on those designs, without affecting each engines individual resistance to engine killing weapons.

Of course as you said all the AI would have to be rewoked for that. Or would they? Don't the AI designs all call for a certain number of movement points? Or do they actually call for a spefic numebr of engine components. I am not familier with that particular AI file.

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

They do one of three things at various times during the design process.

1) Add X # of engines
2) Add engines until there are Y movement points produced
3) Add one engine for every Z Kt of space on the ship.

The first two relate to "minimum speed" and "desired speed", but I'm not sure which matches up with which anymore. At a guess, I think it was desired speed -> Y movement points.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Originally posted by Slick:
The other day at the office, I received a piece of mail (the kind with an envelope) containing a PRINTED E-MAIL.

I had to sit down to catch my breath.

Slick.

Right, and a pink elephant followed you home.