thoughts - the source of all problems and disbalances

[Suicide Junkie]

In my experience, one-sided battles rarely result in great numbers of damaged ships.

That is my point exactly.
If battles were made to GENERATE lots of damaged ships, then there would be less problem.

This can be done with leaky shields and armor, where finishing off a burning, crippled hulk takes a significant amount of firepower. If that firepower could be better used disabling another ship or two, the player who concentrates fire will be at a disadvantage.

Think of a situation where one player concentrates his fire on the enemy. He vaporizes one ship in the time it takes his opponent to reduce three of his ships to half capacity.
If decent strategies are in place, those cripples can be left behind, and out of range, while a new set of ships are crippled.
Player 1 has lost no ships, but has 6 ships out of comission. Player 2 has lost only 2 ships!

Now, when both players are dishing out damage in the cripple strategy, both fleets will be crippled first, and then the survivors will weakly duke it out, or be crushed by the remaining undamaged ships from the victorious side.
Either way, both players take a lot of damage.

[PvK]

I know I keep tooting my own horn, but most of these things are dealt with in Proportions mod. The new armor types provide emissive effect that is not shot off immediately, as well as "leaky protection". Costs of small ships are signifigantly less than larger ships, thanks to QNP and reduced prices for required components, and so on.

The main difficulty when you adjust all these things though, is that programming the AI to use them effectively becomes a major chore. The AI assumes that biggest is best unless you really work to make it build mixed forces. Of course, I tend to think the AI will never be as interesting as human players anyway, but still, it is good to have a semi-competant AI for when players miss turns or an independent splinter colony breaks off, or whatever.

PvK

[Taera]

still, consider this, if current Large mount was put for Battleship, Huge for Dreadnought and Massive for Baseship *only*, would it make the game better?

(tactical game hell, though)

^ for this, just maybe make the damage-to-size increase ration 2:2 instead of 2:1.5

[capnq]

I agree; thoughts are the source of all problems...

[jimbob]

Well, then if more thoughts = more problems, let me jump into the fray too!

Why should the size of the vessel limit the size of mount? If the ship designer wants to have a huge-mount, why does it matter if the ship is greater than 1100kT (for example)? As long as the ship is larger than the final kT size/weight of the weapon, it should be fine. Obviously the answer is that the only way to link the mount size to the level of technological advance in non-gold was to have a ship size requirement. But in gold, you can introduce mount types through the tech tree.

My suggestion is to jetison the anacronistic handcuff (ya like that aliteration? wait, was that aliteration? did I even manage to spell aliteration correctly?) of total ship mass to mount requirement altogether. Instead, have a new field of study that allows for better and better mounts, all of which can be placed on ships of any size. That said, I'm sure that some of you out there have already done this in your mods (deathstalkers mount mod perhaps?)

This will give small ships yet another repreave.

I do however think that whacky-impossibly large amounts of damage, increased range and all that should still exist for the larger mounts. I think that mounts should be a big advantage, I just don't think only large ships should have access to them. (the lowered accuracy thing from proportions is a good idea though).

[ December 04, 2002, 23:09: Message edited by: jimbob ]

[Krsqk]

Setting damageze to 2:2 would be effectively the same as setting it to 1:1. It negates one big advantage of mounted weapons--more damage in less space (proportionally). The advantage of mounts would be higher damage per shot=maybe first kill; disadvantage would be you miss, you waste all the damage. With unmounted weapons, you'd do less damage per shot, but have more chances to hit.

[PvK]

Well there is some precedent and reasoning for hull limits for large mounts. A 15" gun might fit on an ocean-going destroyer, but it's going to unbalance and perhaps capsize the whole ship when it rotates or fires, there won't be much room for the ammo, power for the turret traverse, etc. In other words, there are engineering difficulties, which would be different for spaceships but probably it is true that larger weapons would be more practical to mount on larger ships.

On the other hand, it also makes sense that some large mounts could be made for smaller ships. They might not be the same exact mount, however. For instance, a spinal mount on a destroyer is an interesting idea, although it would tend to be less accurate than a turreted weapon, because it would require the whole ship to rotate to aim it. However, a destroyer is more nimble than a battleship (at least in Proportions mod ), so that would tend to balance out.

PvK

[Kamog]

Originally posted by capnq:
I agree; thoughts are the source of all problems...

Hmmm, I'm not so sure about that. Thoughts are the source of some problems, but not all: some problems are caused by the lack of thoughts! I'd say that the real source of all problems is the sun. If there were no sun, there would be no problems.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Kamog:

quote:

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Originally posted by capnq:
I agree; thoughts are the source of all problems...

Hmmm, I'm not so sure about that. Thoughts are the source of some problems, but not all: some problems are caused by the lack of thoughts! I'd say that the real source of all problems is the sun. If there were no sun, there would be no problems.

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No human problems, anyways...

[Gryphin]

In terms of “Realety”, Hm, Yes, large guns on small ships would be a problem on Earth today. Those are weapons with a Recoil.
My itterpretation of the wepaons in SEIV do not use Recoil based weapons. The point about Spinal Tap weapons beling less accurate is certaily valid. I wonder what a 15” gun in a Destroyer hull would have done with WWII technology. Anybody here know the math?
I would think if you could close to within Direct Fire Range that accuracy would be fairly high when aiming at a Cruiser size hull. Imagine 3 direct hits from 15” guns at fairly close range. Too bad we will never know.
I can see a Mod for a “Spinal Tap” weapon
Low to hit
High Damage bonus
1 Per ship
At least a 3 reload time.
At least 50kt.