New Mod: The Art of War Mod

[Suicide Junkie]

Hey, are you going to include some leaky shields/armor for the first few levels of the appropriate tech?

[Captain Kwok]

SJ:

It's always about the leaky shields, isn't it?

[dumbluck]

Huh? How can they "leak"? WHAT can they "leak"??? You totally lost me on this one...

[dumbluck]

Oh, hey SJ. I guess I really ought to make this official: Do you mind if I use parts of your mod (P&N) in the Art of War? Some are being used as insperation, some as a starting point, and some parts are just being ripped from your mod and stuck into this one...

[Suicide Junkie]

Huh? How can they "leak"? WHAT can they "leak"??? You totally lost me on this one...

Leaky Armor:
Allows some damage from enemy weapons to penetrate, and thus damage the internal components before all armor is destroyed.
Adding more and more armor to a ship will decrease the rate at which internals are destroyed by enemy fire.

Leaky Shields:
Allows some damage from enemy weapons to penetrate, and thus damage armor and/or internals before the shields are completely eliminated.
Depending on implementation, shield absorption rates can be set to 0%,20%,33%,50%,66%,80%. Or set to range between zero and any of the values above as the generators recieve damage.
In some circumstances, especially VS very low damage weapons, the absorption can be higher than the expected value.

DL:
I don't mind if you use parts of my mod, as long as you end up with something reasonably different.

CK:
Yes. Yes it is.

[Captain Kwok]

SJ:

I think you should post how you get those percentages! Just so everyone can follow along and see what you mean.

[dumbluck]

To Do list

+++Maintenance+++
X-P&N maintenance settings.
X-Maint reducing components & ship specific mounts
---Adjust maint. reduction of Crew Areas.
X-Rebalanced # of Lifesupport and Crewquarters with shipsize.
X-Adjust ship hull costs to 1.2$/kt.

+++Miscellaneous+++
X-Add no-AI mod files.
X-Add TDM Formations
---Add most P&N mounts.
---Balance the Cultural Modifiers.
---Add empty Racial Traits slots for future expansion.

+++Damage Allocation+++
---Small racial armors. (ala P&N)
X-Add OA ability to all hull sizes. (excluding units)
---Base shields and armor on P&N style.
---Various weapons balancing issues.

+++Ground Combat+++
X-Ground combat down to 3 turns.
---Make planet glassing with normal weapons next to impossible.

+++Space Combat+++
---Change space combat to 50 turns.
---Rebalance the tohit%/ecm% (increase costs of characteristics, ala P&N)
---Add Manuevering thrusters.

+++"Weapons or Butter"+++
X-9 levels of SY, researched thru ship construction, along with Temporal counterparts.

+++Engines+++
---Smaller vessels can mount more engines than larger ones (ala dreadnaught and baseship).
---Supply usage decreases with engine tech level ala P&N
---Reduce Capital Ship movement combat movement rates by 1/2. (missles, fighters, and drones(?) remain normal). Strategic movement rates remain normal.

Note: mQNP is out, for the time being. One of the reasons is that I've got too many other things I want to experiment with (heck, I'm still coming up with ideas!). Another is that it might restrict the number of players interested in the mod. Once I get most of the basics worked out, I'll add it in (or perhaps make 2 Versions of the mod, on with mQNP, and one without). Of coarse, if there is a large public outcry, I could probably be persuaded to put it back on the to do list... ;P

================================

So, has anyone taken a look at v0.71? Any thoughts? Version 0.8 is pretty much done, I just need to bugtest it first.

Edit:

v0.80
-Added 9 levels of Space Yard(facility) and SY(component), researched thru Ship Construction and Space Yards(tech), along with Temporal counterparts.
-Added Armor Regeneration ability to all hull sizes. (excluding units)
-Cosmetic bug fix on abilities displays for hull sizes.

v0.71
-Ship Sizes changed in preparation for mQNP addition.
-NoAI mod files added.
-TDM Modpack formations.txt file added.
-Added Maint reducing components & ship specific mounts.
-Added P&Nv3.1b Maintenance settings.
-Ground combat changed to 3 turns.
-Space combat changed to 20 turns.
-Adjusted ship hull costs to $1.2/kt.
-Rebalanced the number of Crew Quarters and Lifesupport with vessel size.

Second Edit: Here it is. didn't have time to test it though, let me know if it crashes!
AofWv0_80.zip

[ November 20, 2002, 12:45: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

[dumbluck]

Hmm. The armor I can understand; just take away the "armor" ability.
But how do you do that with shields???

Edit: And to answer your question, I don't plan on using leaky armor or shields at this time. It might be neat for later (much later, at this rate), but I've got other things I want to put in first.

[ November 21, 2002, 12:34: Message edited by: dumbluck ]

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by dumbluck:
A few questions from my to do list (Man, it just keeps getting longer and longer...)

quote:

---

---Make planet glassing with normal weapons next to impossible.

Can anyone point me to some threads/mods that demonstrate how this is done? I vaguely recall that it involved increasing the damage to kill 1m population and increasing the damage of planetary weapons. But I'm looking for specific explanations/examples to study.

---

Here is one. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...=001062#000014

Basically though you have the idea with your comment above. Raise the damage to kill one pop to a very high level. High enough that standard ship to ship weapons have little or no effect. That change alone will make glassing planets almost impossible. Since planetary shields, weapons plats and other untis on the planet are damaged before any damage is applied to population, they will still be susceptable to orbital bombardment as normal. Then if you want players to have an option to glass the planet with specialized weapons, you raise the damage levels of the neutron bomb accordingly, or create some other weapon with the population only damage type. I do not suggest rasing the damage of other planetary wepons like the Napalm, cause that would make them extremely powerful against the weapons platforms. That's not what you want I think. You want the ship V Waepons platform combat about the same, but make it more difficult to glass the population once the planetary defenses are gone. Corrrect?

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

The leaky shields are achieved with the crystalline ability.
Given a large amount of crystalline ability points, shots impacting the ship will have on average 50% of their damage absorbed.
0% = shield skipping OR armor skipping damage
20% = Quad to shields damage
33% = Double to shields damage
50% = Normal
66% = Half to shields
80% = Quarter to shields.

In some cases, such as vs very low damage weapons, the absorption percent can be higher that that.

If you make the shield generators "armor", or have leaky armor, you can have the absorption percentage fall as the shields take damage, and the crystalline ability value becomes important.