Balance Mod Available for SE:V

[Baron Munchausen]

We need a distinction between 'systems to avoid' -- meaning ALL ships stay out, and 'systems for unarmed ships to avoid' meaning hostilities are in progress. So, 'combat zone' systems? A two-tiered system of flags isn't very complicated. MM might be able to add it to the next beta.

With combat zone systems flagged, when the colonizer plots its course it could just re-route until it found a safe way to its destination. Meanwhile, warships would be able to go ahead and take a direct route to where-ever they were going, except for 'systems to avoid' which would still be totally off-limits.

[Suicide Junkie]

Captain Kwok said:
A ship will take any supplies/ordnance that it needs from a planet regardless if a Resupply Depot is present, assuming it's in the sector during end turn processing.

I recall having to manually load supplies from farming worlds (organics farms produce ~50 bonus supplies per turn) quite a few times when playing GGmod.

[Captain Kwok]

I tested it out before I posted to make sure. The ship will load supplies/ordnance from the planet as long as long as it's there during turn processing. There was no resupply depot in the system.

[se5a]

if you're just going past during the turn you have to order it to load though. does it use a movement point to do so?

[capnq]

Suicide Junkie said: Cargo for extra population is probably the best, and if you can squeeze on a couple fighters or a platform to defend the new colony, that's great.

Too much cargo space, though, leads to depopulated worlds.

[Sardia]

Not necessarily. Simply send the colonizers to the biggest planet in the system, and then proceed to load up.

[Suicide Junkie]

Why not edit the scripts to have colony ships load no more than 20% of the planet's population before heading out, rather than just using the load-all-and-colonize style order?

[Captain Kwok]

I'm not concerned about planets being depleted of population as it is very unlikely. There's a high population weight in the mod, so it's usually taking less than 15M population and small domed colonies do not often get orders to build colonizers.

[Suicide Junkie]

I suppose if you're building colony ships on breathable worlds it doesn't matter how many people you load, due to migration

[Baron Munchausen]

Suggestions:

Make Organic Armor generate at least a small amount of supplies by solar generation. Isn't it plausible that organic armor could have this capability? Photosynthesis and all that? It would be 'in character' for organic tech and would complement the Ordnance Vat very nicely.

Also, I've been thinking about damage types. Why do we have only these cleanly defined 'technical' damage types? Should a given weapon damage all types of shields or all types of armor in exactly the same degree? How about we have some 'natural' damage types?

I thought of this as I was contemplating the Acid Globule weapons. Acid would be a devastating weapon against plain metal armor, but probably less effective against other organic armored ships, and possibly ineffective against crystalline armor. Don't they store acid in glass containers? So, "Acid Damage" would be 2X against standard, emissive, and scattering armor, normal against organic armor, and 1/2 or perhaps none against crystalline armor.

Similarly, plain old 'Capital Ship Missiles' use a nuclear warhead. The huge flash / EMP from a nuclear warhead in space should do more damage to shields than a plain old particle beam. So maybe there should be 'nuclear explosive' damage that does 120 percent or 150 percent damage to shields and normal damage to armor/components? It also would be much more powerful in planetary bombardment than particle beams, so the population killed should also be ramped up for 'nuclear' damage types.

And there is my original request for a damage type, armor piercing for the 'DUC' because that's what Depleted Uranium is all about. This should also vary by the type or armor. Maybe 50 percent or more penetration for metal armors, organic is hard to say -- more or less? hmm.... -- but crystalline would probably be no penetration at all, just extra damage.

Just some thoughts. I haven't played SE in months and my imagination has started to work on the virtual universe again.