GridTechs, compression and HD space.

[Will]

I would guess at least 2^16 for max number of components, so that's about 64000. Most likely it's 2^32 theoretical max, so four billion. But then you start running into memory issues. 1000-4000 levels of weapons should be fine as far as the game being able to load it, but if it's all kept in memory, then there could be some issues on older machines...

[Ed Kolis]

Everyone, let's bug Aaron to put tech grids into SE5, at least as a moddable feature - seriously, all it would take is for one data field to be calculated from ANY other data field, not just from the level field, so you could calculate for instance your weapon damage from the Weapon Damage Enhancement tech level requirement and the hitpoints from the Component Reinforcement tech level requirement and the size from the Miniaturization tech level requirement and the...

(Oh no... are we turning SE5 into GalCiv with its tiny incremental bonuses to everything? )

[Fyron]

That issue came up in the IRC chats, and I believe he was somewhat open to the idea...

[Suicide Junkie]

Ed Kolis said:(Oh no... are we turning SE5 into GalCiv with its tiny incremental bonuses to everything? )

Its not so much incremental bonuses, as directed research...

Forget power and range, we just need cheap nukes to hand out to everybody before the Drushocka get here!

[Kamog]

Sounds like a great idea! It will make research and ship design more interesting, allowing for more variations in ship designs and creating more choices and trade-off decisions to be made in what area to research.

[Aiken]

The HDD space is not an issue, but RAM... 160 mb components.txt will load terribly long time on slower machines and swap in and out constantly.

Also, it's not always good to have Show latest only ON, ie, sometimes I want to fit price of my new design to SY build rates and turn "Latest only" off to pick obsolete but cheaper/smaller component. Scrolling through 4000 DUC/ECMs/whatever will be somewhat painfull in this case.

[Alneyan]

I believe SJ wrote that the latest components will be equal or better to their previous Versions, so that will likely include price as well (the hull size will be the most important factor when determining the final cost of your vessel, unless you are toying with Stellar Manipulation).

Ram may be quite a problem though, or perhaps even processor speed when launching the game. I recall I had some trouble with Adamant with my old computer, so 160 mo would be a *ahem* slight problem in this case. Perhaps make the full 4,000 Version, and a "low weight" with a much smaller tech-grid SJ?

[Suicide Junkie]

One decreases cost, one decreases size, and the third increases damage.

None of them have side effects, so the only reason you'd ever want to use an old component is during retrofits. In those cases, you just copy the old design and replace only the parts you want to replace.

[Ed Kolis]

Actually, you might want to use old comps if you want to trade away tech but not give TOO much away