Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod) - Page 2

Will · #11 November 27th, 2001, 03:54 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Gritsucker:
I would say that the advantages of Star Wars are bigger cap ships (1600 meters for a mere destroyer), lots of weapons, fighters, and the Death Star (if it's included). Disadvantages might be slow cap ships, lack of cloaks, and innacurate weapons.

This just made me think of a quote from one of the movies, I think Empire Strikes Back (Ep.V). It basically goes:

Sensor Officer: "Sir, the ship has disappeared from our scopes."
Captain/Admiral: "Impossible! No ship that small has a cloaking device."

The ship in question was the Millenium Falcon, and it attached itself to the side of the Star Destroyer tower thing, so it couldn't be seen on sensors. So there is such a thing as a cloaking device in StarWars, just not on a ship that small.

chewy027 · #12 November 27th, 2001, 04:17 AM

well if you go into the star wars novels, the empire developed cloaking devices but never perfected them. I think it was in the series with Grand Admiral Thrawn that they are used to cloak asteroids around coruscant so the New Republic can't safely use the planet. Also in the rebel assault games. I think the second one had phantom ties in it that had cloaking devices on them. Of course since you're only using info from the movies all this is irrelevant so I will stop my needless rambling

Andr�s · #13 November 27th, 2001, 04:22 AM

Gritsucker quoting Mike Wong... That’s a good quote. In general I do like MW’s work ( www.stardestroyer.net ), and the scientific analysis he makes, but don’t agree with all of his conclusions. I’d like to see someone scientifically comparing sci-fi as serially as he does with a more impartial point of view.
I feared that trekkies would have delirious of grandeur, but it seems that Mike Wong readers are the ones.
Anyway let’s try to avoid the vs. debate.

About the phaser vs turbolaser discussion. I think they are even, and if they’re not we’ll make them even.
IMHO Turbolasers have shorter range and do less damage, but they shorter reload time and are smaller. Their damage rating may be slightly higher than phasers.
Phasers should have longer range do higher damage and have accuracy bonus, but bigger and with longer reload time. Like with WMGs, the first volley of fire will be powerful, but if you can’t kill the target with it, you’re in trouble.

About SW shields, there are separate ray shields and particle shields. As stated in the rebel debriefing the exhaust port in the Death Star was ray shielded but not particle shielded. That’s maybe because of its normal function, a particle shield would have blocked the particles it was supposed to exhaust.
There’s also the possibility that the Death Star shield worked somehow like the Gungan bubble shield, permeable only to slow moving objects.
Anyway normally ships carry a combination of both shielding systems what protects them from any kind of weapon. I don’t see a reason why in the mod SW shields need to be stronger or weaker than ST shields.
Planetary shields are a different story, and should be much stronger than ruin se4 shields. We have many examples that state that bombarding a shielded planet is useless (and most SW planets are shielded). The rebel shield in Hoth was umbrella shaped, so the Empire was forced to use ground troops, when bombarding from space would have been easier. The more advanced Imperial shield in Endor, not only prevented bombardment and troop landing but also protected the Death Star in orbit.
Such a strong planetary shield may be unbalancing, so I think it should be weakened in the mod, but it should still be strong enough to absorb all damage made by a small enemy fleet.

About ship sizes. In starwars most triangular ships, regardless their size, are called Star Destroyers, and of course have nothing to do with se4 destroyer. And you’re right, star wars ships are very big, according to my estimations imperial star destroyers are far beyond an se4 baseship.

About speed, hyperspace is the fastest FTL propulsion method, and should be represented by ship having more strategic movements. And they should also be relatively slow and not maneuverable in combat. Unfortunately there’s no way to simulate this in SE4, I tried a negative Combat Movement ability but it didn’t work.

There are cloaking devices in star wars, but they are not common because they are very expensive. A cloaked ship is invisible, but also blinded to the visible universe, and you can explode if you attempt to jump into hyperspace while cloaked.

arthurtuxedo · #14 November 27th, 2001, 05:03 AM

quote:
Gritsucker quoting Mike Wong... That’s a good quote.

Wouldn't have used it if it wasn't

quote:
In general I do like MW’s work ( www.stardestroyer.net ), and the scientific analysis he makes, but don’t agree with all of his conclusions. I’d like to see someone scientifically comparing sci-fi as serially as he does with a more impartial point of view.
I feared that trekkies would have delirious of grandeur, but it seems that Mike Wong readers are the ones.

Not sure if I'd use the word delusion (I assume that's what you meant when you said delirious). I'm not a vs. debater, I just like to watch the debates, and I've heard a lot of hard-to-refute evidence from the Wars and hardly any from Trek. In fact, I don't think I've seen a single calculation showing weapon/shield, etc. strength to be higher in Trek that hasn't been discredited.

quote:
Anyway let’s try to avoid the vs. debate.

I think a little vs. debating is inevitable and healthy, but let's at least try to stay on task and not turn this thread into a vs. thread.

quote:
About the phaser vs turbolaser discussion. I think they are even, and if they’re not we’ll make them even.
IMHO Turbolasers have shorter range and do less damage, but they shorter reload time and are smaller. Their damage rating may be slightly higher than phasers.

Should be less accurate, too. Like -10 mod or something. Sheer numbers will tend to make up for this, though.

quote:
Phasers should have longer range do higher damage and have accuracy bonus, but bigger and with longer reload time. Like with WMGs, the first volley of fire will be powerful, but if you can’t kill the target with it, you’re in trouble.

About SW shields, there are separate ray shields and particle shields. As stated in the rebel debriefing the exhaust port in the Death Star was ray shielded but not particle shielded. That’s maybe because of its normal function, a particle shield would have blocked the particles it was supposed to exhaust.
There’s also the possibility that the Death Star shield worked somehow like the Gungan bubble shield, permeable only to slow moving objects.
Anyway normally ships carry a combination of both shielding systems what protects them from any kind of weapon. I don’t see a reason why in the mod SW shields need to be stronger or weaker than ST shields.

There isn't a good reason yet, but if one side ends up being more powerful, we can mess with the shields to even them out.

quote:
Planetary shields are a different story, and should be much stronger than ruin se4 shields. We have many examples that state that bombarding a shielded planet is useless (and most SW planets are shielded). The rebel shield in Hoth was umbrella shaped, so the Empire was forced to use ground troops, when bombarding from space would have been easier. The more advanced Imperial shield in Endor, not only prevented bombardment and troop landing but also protected the Death Star in orbit. Such a strong planetary shield may be unbalancing, so I think it should be weakened in the mod, but it should still be strong enough to absorb all damage made by a small enemy fleet.

This isn't easy to balance. SW would end up being too powerful if they got the biggest ships, the best fighters, AND shielded planets.

quote:
About ship sizes. In starwars most triangular ships, regardless their size, are called Star Destroyers, and of course have nothing to do with se4 destroyer. And you’re right, star wars ships are very big, according to my estimations imperial star destroyers are far beyond an se4 baseship.

Not to even mention the Executor and its ilk. We should probably fudge them downward a bit. Have a Sovereign equal maybe a battlecruiser, and an Imperator equal a dreadnought?

quote:
About speed, hyperspace is the fastest FTL propulsion method, and should be represented by ship having more strategic movements. And they should also be relatively slow and not maneuverable in combat. Unfortunately there’s no way to simulate this in SE4, I tried a negative Combat Movement ability but it didn’t work.

As far as I know, there's no way to create stragetically fast but tactically slow ships. I've tried.

quote:
There are cloaking devices in star wars, but they are not common because they are very expensive. A cloaked ship is invisible, but also blinded to the visible universe, and you can explode if you attempt to jump into hyperspace while cloaked.

I know SW has cloaks, I was saying no cloaks for the purposes of the mod.

Suicide Junkie · #15 November 27th, 2001, 05:06 AM

quote:
About speed, hyperspace is the fastest FTL propulsion method, and should be represented by ship having more strategic movements. And they should also be relatively slow and not maneuverable in combat. Unfortunately there's no way to simulate this in SE4, I tried a negative Combat Movement ability but it didn't work.

Just go the other way. Make everybody else's movement slower, and give the others built in combat movement bonuses.

Better would be to make hyperspace a WarpPoint opener tech. If we could make unstable warppoints that collapse on the next turn, it would be best.
Or, you could try my FTL map.

Or you could give SW some big emergency movement pods.

Andr�s · #16 November 27th, 2001, 06:50 AM

Going the other way doesn’t sound good. You’ll end up with everyone else moving too slow in strategic, or everyone moving too fast in combat.
A warp opener would be too much and leave lots of opened wps. Too bad that those auto-collapsing wps are impossible.

I like the idea of the emergency mov pods, and think it’s our best option. Using it would represent the “jump”. Too bad that now they can’t be repaired. Would it work if it gives more movements than the normal movements of the ship?

Wouldn’t it be great to have a controlled Version of that event that moves your ship to a random location?

Urendi Maleldil · #17 November 27th, 2001, 07:42 AM

What about giving the Starwars tech special ship sizes that only allow for two or three engines but have a special component like a regenerating emergency propulsion pod that generates a high strategic movement or something for a "hyperdrive". That would be slow tactically but fast strategically.

Leaving warp points all over the place would be like Borg transwarp conduits.

Suicide Junkie · #18 November 27th, 2001, 08:39 AM

quote:
Would it work if it gives more movements than the normal movements of the ship?

Yep. When you pop the pod, you can get 7/2 movement, or 11/6, whatever.
If you go into combat, however, you will lose any movement over the max, and will leave combat with at most, one less than your max.

quote:
regenerating emergency propulsion pod

Just give the ships a space yard with zero production rate.

The only problem is that the ships can then retrofit and scrap & stuff. If you only allow it on capital ships, that's reasonable.

arthurtuxedo · #19 November 27th, 2001, 12:12 PM

How about this? SW gets an emergency pod that generates a lot of movement, and a repair bay that repaires 1 component per turn and weighs and costs nothing, but only 1 can be mounted on a ship. If the hyperdrive is not used in a turn, it would repair something else, and that would be cheating, but I can't think of a better solution.

[ 27 November 2001: Message edited by: Gritsucker ]

Andr�s · #20 November 27th, 2001, 03:56 PM

quote:
Not to even mention the Executor and its ilk. We should probably fudge them downward a bit. Have a Sovereign equal maybe a battlecruiser, and an Imperator equal a dreadnought?

Actually a Sovereign Class is bigger than an ISD, you’re probably talking about a Victory Class Star Destroyer.

quote:
How about this? SW gets an emergency pod that generates a lot of movement, and a repair bay that repaires 1 component per turn and weighs and costs nothing, but only 1 can be mounted on a ship. If the hyperdrive is not used in a turn, it would repair something else, and that would be cheating, but I can't think of a better solution.

Yes, that’s what we were thinking about, but since Last mod emergency pods can’t be repaired. That was to prevent the supply pod cheat, but was extended also to the mov pod. Only space yards can repair them, that’s why s_j proposed a 0 building (built-in?) space yard.
Maybe giving them ships 120-150% larger than normal, normally slower, but extremely fast when using their mov pods (too bad AI doesn’t seem to use them).
Also most large capital ships are all in one, attack ships, carriers, and troop transports, maybe we should make them all semi-carriers, with a 20-30% minimum fighter bays.