Mod Idea: Simulating surfaces -> Borg Technology -> Twinkie Physics -> Worldviews

[PvK]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
...To add to your idea, though, how about giving all "surface" components the Armor ability so they get hit first, thus protecting the inner components and possibly balancing the two ship styles?
...

Hmm, except then it would have the same logical error that the "hit first" armor suffers from in SE4 - it ALL has to be destroyed before ANY non-hit-first components are. So there is no way to penetrate armor - it all has to be completely vaporized first. Which, is entirely not how actual armor works. Which is why I modded armor the way I did in Proportions mod.

PvK

[Kamog]

There needs to be some way to balance out the disadvantage of having a sphere or cube shaped ship with large internal volume. These ships are penalized by requiring to have more cargo %, so you are at a disadvantage because of the heavier restrictions you have on ship design and the fewer weapons that can be included. So you wouldn't want to play a race with such a ship set.

To balance things out, how about giving these ships more structure strength to resist damage, for example?

[Suicide Junkie]

One might also argue that a Borg Cube is so large, there is still more surface area than any other ship.

Exactly: the 30% surface area on a Cube of 2000kt is still bigger than the 80% surface area on a 600kt spindly battleship.

Kamog:
For a trek mod, the disadvantage of borg shape restrictions is compensated for by the vastly larger size of the ship

[ November 28, 2002, 02:21: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Krsqk]

Give the surface components much higher hitpoints, so they're hit first more ofter--a la Proportions' armor.

I think this is an awesome idea, though. I did like the SE3 armor/outer hull/inner hull design setup; once a layer was pierced, the next layer could (but not necessarily would) be hit. This is the closest we can get with the SE4 model.

[Escaflowne]

Ships with large internal volumes and relatively small suface area may have fewer places to mount weapons. But due to their large size they are more then likely able to mount guns that would shred the smaller ships, even if the smaller ships have more weapons.

Plus there's the fact that you have all that internal space. You could have armored belts on the inside. Not sure we could represent that except maybe have some armor with cargo to represent 'internal' and some armor without cargo to represent 'external'. Of course the downside is you can't have any fancy armor on the inside of your ship. But you also have plenty of space for supplies, cargo, magazine capacity (if some mods use it), and of course SHIELDS.

So a Borg cube can't mount many individual weapons. But each of those weapons it does mount could crack a small starship in half. Plus it could have nearly impenatrable shields and several internal armored belts to make it extremely tough.

[ November 30, 2002, 14:30: Message edited by: Escaflowne ]

[Ed Kolis]

Don't Borg ships lack shields? I never understood why, surely they've assimilated someone who knows how they work, they seem to be a common enough technology... Maybe the shields are incompatible with some other aspect of their technology... kind of like how the Antarans didn't use shields in MOO2 because they had Damper Fields which reduced all damage by 75%...

[Suicide Junkie]

The Borg do have shields...
The're just very specific, and they just don't plan ahead, getting surprised a lot

The fmog