Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)

[Andrés]

This is an answer of what was posted in the B5 mod thread.

quote:

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From what you posted before, and what I've translated, the difference between the Fission engines and the HKIDs would be the fact that the HKIDs can store 1000x more supplies

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If you're talking about B5 fission engines, they have 0 supply storage. 1000*0=0
Their dependance on reactors is something I like and you were probably refeing to supplies stored in their reactors.

quote:

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Atomic drives == fission engines.
Basic average engine.

Implosion drives == gravitic drives
More MP/KT, but much higher cost, maybe lower fuel efficiency.

HK Ion drives ?? fission engines
(SW only) Slightly more MP/KT than Atomic drive, but nearly unlimited supplies, and almost zero maintenance.

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I'm revising numbers.

I'm not sure if a ship using implosion drives should be faster than one with ion drives. Maybe only sligtly more but consume much more supplies (making it require more reactors than usual).

BTW I couldn't find a way to make a Hyperdrive (emergency energy) + a Hyperdrive Motivator (0 building, 1 repair SY) consume a lot of supplies as they are supposed to.

Every turbolaser gun is fired by 1 or 2 exclusive gunners each with indipendent sensors and computer assisted targeting. (some even have their own small redundadnt power source to continue firing if central power fails)
As I see it every weapon should be able to target enything without a multiplex tracking. But that's impossible, so I'll give them a built-in insanely strong multiplex tracking (and ISD carries ~150 weapons) or maybe included in a targeting computer (combat sensor).

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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If you're talking about B5 fission engines, they have 0 supply storage. 1000*0=0
Their dependance on reactors is something I like and you were probably refeing to supplies stored in their reactors.

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Right. So once HKIDs come out, you also get a BEC (hypermatter) reactor as a simultaneously required tech.
You could install the reactors on any ship and use them to power a more efficient drive, but the fact that the HKIDs are almost free means that the other drives remain viable in only a small range of uses.

quote:

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I'm not sure if a ship using implosion drives should be faster than one with ion drives. Maybe only sligtly more but consume much more supplies (making it require more reactors than usual).

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Also a higher maintenance cost per MP, right? That would leave you the options of:
- small fleet of slightly faster ships
- jaw-dropping numbers of slower ships.
- piles of slower ships, and a few special forces speedships.

quote:

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BTW I couldn't find a way to make a Hyperdrive (emergency energy) + a Hyperdrive Motivator (0 building, 1 repair SY) consume a lot of supplies as they are supposed to.

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You've got it as an emergency movement pod already, right? Try making it an emergency supply pod too, providing -9999 supplies.

"(some even have their own small redundadnt power source to continue firing if central power fails)"
SE4's got that down already
Building the multiplex into the weapons is a good idea.
Beware of stacking combat sensors on different component families!

[Andrés]

Mov/Ton of all engines

Standard:
Name

Ion Engine
Tonnage: 10
Movs: 1
Ratio: 0.1

Contra - Terrene Engine
Tonnage: 10
Movs: 1
Ratio: 0.1
+ 1 bonus

Jacketed - Photon Engine
Tonnage: 10
Movs: 1
Ratio: 0.1
+ 2 bonus

Quantum Engine
Tonnage: 10
Movs: 1
Ratio: 0.1
+ 3 bonus

B5 Fission:
Size: Light - Medium - Heavy - Huge
Ton: 10 - 60 - 100 - 200
Mov: 1 - 7 - 12 - 25
Ratio: 0.1 - 0.116666667 - 0.12 - 0.125

B5 Fusion:
Size: Light - Medium - Heavy - Huge
Ton: 5 - 30 - 50 - 100
Mov: 1 - 7 - 12 - 25
Ratio: 0.2 - 0.233333333 - 0.24 - 0.25

B5 Anti-Matter:
Size: Light - Medium - Heavy - Huge
Ton: 5 - 30 - 50 - 100
Mov: 1 - 7 - 12 - 25
Ratio: 0.2 - 0.233333333 - 0.24 - 0.25
+1 bonus

B5 Gravimetric:
Size: Light - Medium - Heavy - Huge
Ton: 5 - 30 - 50 - 100
Mov: 1 - 7 - 12 - 25
Ratio: 0.2 - 0.233333333 - 0.24 - 0.25
+1 bonus

(most advanced engine of each tech gets a little smaller size and a slightly increment in ratio)

So basically all B5 engines come in these "mounts"
Mount - Ton/Cost/Sup - Movs
Light - 1x - 1x
Medium - 6x - 7x
Heavy - 10x - 12x
Huge - 20x - 25x

I'll add a new scale called Massive (50x - 80x) but I'll have to be careful not to pass the 255 movs limit (before dividing by the eng per move).
That's really a bad restriction to newtonian movements in really big ships.

My idea of SW
Atomic Drives
Size: Light - Heavy - Massive
Ton: 12 - 120 - 600
Mov: 1 - 12 - 80
Ratio: 0.083333333 - 0.1 - 0.133333333

Implosion Drives
Size: Light - Heavy - Massive
Ton: 10 - 100 - 500
Mov: 1 - 13 - 85
Ratio: 0.1 - 0.13 - 0.17
(Ratios are lower than HKID, but since max engines are by number not % you can get higher final speed, supply consume will also be very high)

HK Ion Drives
Size: Light - Heavy - Massive
Ton: 8 - 80 - 400
Mov: 1 - 12 - 80
Ratio: 0.125 - 0.15 - 0.2

So I hope this explains my original point with numbers.
I made HK Ion Drives slightly better than standard ION ENGINES, and I'm also too close to the maximun limit to make them any better.
I can't show progress in propulsion if I make SW atomic drives == B5 fission engines

As I see it we have to option.
Make B5 fission engines worse (are they supposed to be primitive anyway?)
Or forget about this little idea of making similar techs have similar performance.

BTW gravity manipulation hasn't been left behind in starwars, Repulsorlifts (anti-grav engines) are still very used and the best choice within a planet. They are used not only by ships but also by land speeders atmospheric fighters, and droids. I didn't mention them because they'd have no use in SE IV. Interdictors can project planet sized gravity wells, and tractor beams operate with a combination of gravitic and magnetic pull.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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I made HK Ion Drives slightly better than standard ION ENGINES, and I'm also too close to the maximun limit to make them any better.
I can't show progress in propulsion if I make SW atomic drives == B5 fission engines

As I see it we have to option.
Make B5 fission engines worse (are they supposed to be primitive anyway?)
Or forget about this little idea of making similar techs have similar performance.

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Or break up the B5 fission engine into two: Normal and advanced fission engines.

With the first bit of propulsion tech research, B5 goes to advanced fission, while SW goes to implosion.

[Andrés]

Why is it so important to make Fission Engines good?
All races have at least Fusion and you hardly ever see primitive fission tech, just make it something bad that is quickly left behind.

maintenance per MP?????
Manteincance is determined by cost, isn't it?
They'll be expensive then.

Another detail is that "sub-light speed" matters very little in final speed and range once hyperdrives come into play (better get a faster hyperdrive rather than faster sub-light engines).
The bigger more expensive engines would only make a difference in combat.

Making it also a negative supply pod. I didn't think of that, but it doesn't seem to work in my tests.

It would be cool to give each gun a +1 multiplex tracking. But multiplex tracking does not stack.

Targeting Computers would be the only combat sensor for SW races (besides something related with The Force), making them combat sensor+multiplex tracking ain't that bad.
I'm more worried about balancing the staking Jamming Sensors (Sector - Sensor Interference + weak Combat To Hit Defense Plus)

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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maintenance per MP?????
Manteincance is determined by cost, isn't it?
They'll be expensive then.

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Yeah. It is something to consider when building a ship. Do you want to pay $1000 per turn for 8MP, or $400 per turn for 7MP?

quote:

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Another detail is that "sub-light speed" matters very little in final speed and range once hyperdrives come into play (better get a faster hyperdrive rather than faster sub-light engines).
The bigger more expensive engines would only make a difference in combat.

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There's your reason why SW fission engines can be less efficient than B5 drives. They are used to go everywhere in B5 except for the hyperspace transition, while in SW you don't need them during FTL travel, right?

I think these races should be beyond fission drives by the time they meet. How often do you fight with Ion I's in SE4?

quote:

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Why is it so important to make Fission Engines good?

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The B5 fusion engines have double the speed of the fission drives. Isn't that bad enough?

[Andrés]

quote:

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There's your reason why SW fission engines can be less efficient than B5 drives.

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SW later engines are less efficient, and hulls will have restrictive max engines, it's just that fission engines are the same technology. They could even share the same components, and if we add a custom pic the same pic.

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The B5 fusion engines have double the speed of the fission drives. Isn't that bad enough?

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Fission is still 24% cheaper than standard Ion Engines. And 1000% more resistant to damage but that might be to make vital comps more difficult to kill and compensate lack of shielding, so it's ok with me.
So if as you said races should be beyond fission drives by the time they meet.
Why do they have to start with better engines?
Besides the consistency issue, B5 races would have an advantage if for example two races start in the same system

I can try to go the other way and revise SW to make atomic drives == fission engines and the others a little better. But if engines have too many movements I'll pass the 255 limit in the big ships, and will have to make them use very little engines and lower their eng per move.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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Fission is still 24% cheaper than standard Ion Engines. And 1000% more resistant to damage but that might be to make vital comps more difficult to kill and compensate lack of shielding, so it's ok with me.

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Actually, the components with higher damage resistance are much easier to kill (or at least hit).
Anything higher than about 250 hitpoints will not be protected by even the "Heavy" basic armor, as I have it set now.

quote:

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I can try to go the other way and revise SW to make atomic drives == fission engines and the others a little better. But if engines have too many movements I'll pass the 255 limit in the big ships, and will have to make them use very little engines and lower their eng per move.

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You could scale down the heavy/massive drives from 10x and 50x, down to 5x and 25x. That would give you plenty of room to bump up efficiency and even increase the engine limits to 6.

[Val]

The engines are being reworked (or should I say retrofitted?) as we speak lowering their HP to around what SJ had suggested in the B5 thread.

Also, one thing to note : I had put the fision engines in the B5 mod for the 'under developed' races (Grom/Hurr) or as a spring board into higher tech engines if you are playing a game from scratch. Ideally, most races will start with a level of Fision tech and basic Fusion tech. In the scenario (I am still hoping for a scenario builder so I don't have to do it the long way) some races would even start with Anti-Matter and Gravitic drives (Vree/Centauri and Brakiri/Minbari) to be more true to the series.

Just re-reading the Posts, the 1000% increase in HP for the basic engine was due to the way we were going to do armor and repair originally in the B5 Mod. At first everything was going to be x10 (struct ton, damage, etc.) so we could simulate simple repairs for ships. This way crews could be working on repairing an otherwise crippled ship to get her underway again. But, unfortunately, the organic armor ability doesn't quite work the way we would like it to, ah well!

[ 04 February 2002: Message edited by: Val ]

[Andrés]

I added the B5 comps posted yesterday. (still have to check what was posted today)
I added the racial trait to tech areas, but I forgot to rename "Propulsion" to "Babylon 5 Propulsion" as I had done Last time, and discovered 2 interesting things
(maybe these are old news and already being used in some mod but I don’t remember any post about them before)
1- the game doesn’t have a problem with 2 technologies named the same.
2- Races with B5 tech gained standard engines. So any of the 2 technologies with the same name can be a prerequisite for components (and presumably other game items). In this case it’s a bug, and I’ll have to rename the tech area but that feature can be deliberately used to make a more complex tech trees where the same tech can be gained in different ways.
It may be very useful to allow certain technologies to be shared by a few races, and allow races starting with some higher level without having to make an exclusive racial trait for that tech.

I promise to post the data files and the .xls file I’m using as mailmerge source soon.