StarFire Mod v-Beta 2

[Growltigger]

Ooooh, you is a smug person aren't you Mr Wubbles - look forward to seeing if the Beta is as grand as you are promising - expectations are running rather high!

[President_Elect_Shang]

The problem I ran into is when I brought two missile armed corvettes together to fight; the regenerative ability of the interdiction effect prevented either one from damaging the other. I have a possible solution but I will accept suggestions.

Keep those expectations up as I have a fairly good “hunch” that you will not be disappointed. Also keep in mind that this is a Beta Version, look for problems no matter how pleased you are.

[Growltigger]

Nah, I am just going to run off with the beta, play to it my enjoyment, make sarcastic remarks and bare my broad buttocks at the lot of you.

I am certainly not going to help.

Hmmm, not sure what to suggest about the interdiction field regenerating. My immediate thought was to turn off the regeneration ability, but then that wont work if other weapons can knock down the shields attributed to the engines.

Let me have a think.

As to the sheer plane, not bothered that you havn't included it, as I dont think I ever designed a starfire ship that had it....

Brilliant

[President_Elect_Shang]

I have just had my first major fleet action, both sides involved were HTL1 and I must say that I was rather pleased. How many of you have tried to role play against yourself and with no less than 5 empires? It is the craziest thing I have ever done, I have role played in the past (D&D, etc) but this is something else. The new solution I implemented for the interdiction effect seems to be working good enough. I have unfortunately run across a new problem that I think will have to be accepted as a “necessary evil”. Even after all of the engines where blown out on one of the destroyers it still had combat movement. This is because I moded the combat movement onto the hull as it would not have worked on the engine. Comments, questions or concerns?

Yummy, buttocks!

[Dan Kochheiser]

Originally posted by President Elect Shang:
I have just had my first major fleet action, both sides involved were HTL1 and I must say that I was rather pleased. How many of you have tried to role play against yourself and with no less than 5 empires? It is the craziest thing I have ever done, I have role played in the past (D&D, etc) but this is something else. The new solution I implemented for the interdiction effect seems to be working good enough. I have unfortunately run across a new problem that I think will have to be accepted as a “necessary evil”. Even after all of the engines where blown out on one of the destroyers it still had combat movement. This is because I moded the combat movement onto the hull as it would not have worked on the engine. Comments, questions or concerns?

Yummy, buttocks!

Is there a way to use the hull engine power to be divided/multiplied into the engines used? In this way, as engines are lost, speed would reduce.

Dan K

[President_Elect_Shang]

Actually Dan it is doing that now, unfortunately there is a limitation to this effect. Namely that it does not apply to any “abilities”. To give the ships their extra speed in combat but keep there cruising speed down I had to add in the “combat movement” “ability”. As the engines are lost the ships are loosing speed, but this is only to the extent of the natural speed (the non “ability” speed) provided by the engines. Let me give you an example (not from the mod).

You have a ship with 6 engines and the hull of this ship has the ability “combat speed” set at 2. Out of combat the ship will move at speed 6 (assuming 1 engine per movement point). In combat it will move at speed 5. Formula:

Out of combat: 6 engines at 1 point each = 6 movement points.
In combat: 6 engines at 1 point each = 6/2 (all non-combat movement is halved) = 3 + 2 combat movement = 5.

So when all engines are destroyed if the combat movement is added to the engines the ship stops. If however, as is the case here, if the combat movement is added to the hulls the ships keep moving but at a reduced speed as it is no longer getting the first portion of the In Combat formula:

As above:
In combat: 0 engines (all destroyed) at 1 point each = 0/2 = 0 + 2 combat movement =2

Did I just confuse you? The upside to this is that a ship with one or more working engines can out run a ship with no engines even though the ship without engines can still move, and once combat is done the ship is “dead in the waters”, you will not be flying it home for repairs. The downside to this is that you still can move and thus ramming takes on a new light. I could reduce or even eliminate ramming damage to offset this, if I do reduce/eliminate the Sr will still work as it does damage on top of any caused by the ramming attack.

[Fyron]

You could build the combat movement bonus into the engines. It would not be reduced until all engines are out, but it would prevent ships from being able to move once their engines are down. Of course this leads to the problem that it can not be tied to ship size. So, you can add a special engine with nominal strategic move and the combat movement bonus, and make it really big. Then use scale mounts for each hull size to get it to be the appropriate size for each hull. It would take up a bit more space on each larger hull, thus simulating a reduced effectiveness on larger, more massive hulls.

[President_Elect_Shang]

I could overcome this by making multi-class engines. For example:

A class 1 engine would only work on the EX and ES
A class 2 would only work on the FG and DS

Something along those lines, I would have to pull out the UTM 1.1 to see how it would actually divide up; but you can get the jest of the idea from the above. Should we take a vote?

A) Play test Beta as engines are now, knowing the below problem.
B) Create (for lack of a better term) “Multi-Classed Engines” and Beta test them.

I will not be voting on this one, I can do either before Friday, heck one is already done!

I posted this after Fyron, but it is basically the same principal that he is talking about.

Edited in:
There is no such setting as a negative “combat movement” bonus. If we go with option B above than we will have to accept that freighters can move at the speed of warships in combat or I can reintroduce the commercial engine, however we will NOT need multi-class Versions of it. No one said this would be easy or perfect. Thus I will introduce part 2 of the vote.

If you choose B above than do you want to:

1) Accept warship speed on freighters in combat.
2) Re-introduce the Commercial engine (Ic).

[ February 11, 2004, 20:31: Message edited by: President Elect Shang ]

[clc19k30]

Actually thinking about the engines being blown and the continued movement caused me to regress to high school physics. No friction in space, ergo no slowing down. So the engine problem is not a real concern. Not blowing the crap out of the other guy is. Must fix so death can be dealt. I say go with what we have and fix problems as they occur. Hey that is why it is a Beta Test.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Originally posted by clc19k30:
Actually thinking about the engines being blown and the continued movement caused me to regress to high school physics. No friction in space, ergo no slowing down. So the engine problem is not a real concern. Not blowing the crap out of the other guy is. Must fix so death can be dealt. I say go with what we have and fix problems as they occur. Hey that is why it is a Beta Test.

Clc you raise a very good point, however in StarFire (cannon) a ship only moves because of the inertial field generated by its engines. So when a ship losses its engines (once again by cannon) it comes to a sudden and often violently damaging halt. Dan K will be able to explain it much better than me, he should drop in tomorrow. Dan can you fill us with a little high quality explanation please?

Also clc as to your point of “going with what we have got” that is true, except when all of you beta testers where at work today I was here creating an alternate Mod using the B2 selection below. It came out to 7 Versions of the Military engine and 1 Version of the commercial engine. As a fact I am play testing the alternate B2 Version right now and I must say that I am very happy with it. So it is up to you beta testers which you would like to try out.