*** Star Trek Mod Discussion ***

[jimbob]

Oh, but of course...

i) make the racial trait give 65% combat bonus
ii) the race only gets "addicted crew" components with the -50% combat bonus. This equals a total of +15%
iii) when the ship is captured it will revert to another race type (neutral or otherwise) and lose the 65% racial combat bonus, but suffer the -50% combat bonus due to withdrawl.

Now unfortunately we've lost the drug synthesis lab component

How about this (does anyone really want this thing besides me? cuz otherwise this is a little pedantic)...

i) racial trait gives 45% bonus to combat. So make it cost the same amount of Racial Points as if the player had bought 15 points of both space combat attack and defense.
ii) can build drug synth lab component (ship and/or base) for 15% bonus to combat. Make it a relatively large component that costs a fair bit of organics.
iii) "addicted crew" components give a -45% combat bonus.

So now the posibilities are as follows:

1) Parental Race owns ship, Drug Synth Lab in sector : the ship has +45% (race trait) +15% (drug synth lab) -45 (addicted crew) = +15

2) Parental Race owns ship, Saying No to Drugs : the ship has +45% (race trait) +0% (no drug synth lab) -45 (addicted crew) = Zero Combat Bonus. However, they paid a heck of a lot of Racial Points, and now have no bonus to combat = tragic consequences to combat capacity.

3) Race X captures ship, Race X has no Drug Synth Labs : -45 (addicted crew) = -45 Combat Bonus. If this ship survives combat, I'd suggest scrapping it for tech or resources.

4) Race X captures a Drug Synth Ship: +15% to all their ships in the sector ... so don't let this happen!! Put a Master Computer on the darned thing, keep it out of combat, do anything but let this fall into enemy hands! Immediately hunt it down and kill it/recapture it when/if one is captured...

Hopefully these scenarios are balanced.. with every strength there should be a weakness.

[ August 24, 2002, 00:49: Message edited by: jimbob ]

[Magnum357]

Hey guys, I do have a question about this mode. I myself, was thinking about making a SFB type mode, but didn't have a lot of time Last year to proceed with the endevour. One thing I like about SFB compared to Star Trek was that the weapons where pretty balanced compared to one another.

Now I know this mode isn't really suppose to be based on SFB, but will this mode make weapons and such balanced compared to one another? I know that a higher tech level weapon for example should have more firepower/capabilities then the its predisesor <sp>, but I'm hoping weapon systems and such are pretty balanced.

Also, shouldn't Technologies of certain components increase in resources? I mean, shouldn't an early Phaser 1 for example be less expensive then say a latter type 10 Phaser or something? I'm not saying make the higher tech level technology vastly more expensive, just enough to give lower tech races a balanced feild (for example, a race may have less technology, but since their tech is somewhat cheaper then higher tech levels, this means the low tech player maybe able to produce more ships).

And what damage values are we giving too components in this? When I was creating my SFB mode, I remember reducing some of the damage outpouts of the weapons and reducing some of the damage resistance of components equivelent to SFB Ratings. I didn't complete the conVersion as it required extensive modification.

Just some questions I wanted to ask on this mode.

[ManOfWar]

Magnum, what ship styles, sets, races, were you planing on using? Original ones, exsisting ones, or other? Most of the Star Trek ships sets that are currently out are not SFB Cannon. I would not use them. However, I am not making this or any mod, so my opinion on the matter is mute.

[Magnum357]

Hey JimBob, I REALLY like your idea for Drug dependent races. A clever system for the Gem Hedar. But may I suggest a revision to the percentages?

How about changing the Percentages of Drug Sythn Lab and Racial trait both too +30%? I remember on Star Trek that once the Gem Hedar where in desperate need for "white drug" they had problems with combat, disipline, even the ability to phyiscally function was a problem. With both at +30%, a ship would operate at -15% (exactly 30 points opposite with a Drug Sythn Lab). You could reason that since their is no drug lab, crews would be severly hamppered and moral and disipline would be difficult to keep control. This would give Drug Races an "Archeles heel" you might say where striking synthn labs would be back breakers.

Just a suggestion.

[Magnum357]

To Manofwar,

Actually, what my plan was too use old SFB style ship pictures of as many SFB races I could get my hands on (Feds, Kling, ROM, Lyran, Hydan, Mirak/Kzinti, ISC, etc.). I was also planning to make the mode have aspects of TNG-DS9, like Cardassians, Dominion and Borg maybe. Although I would have to change things in TNG-DS9 stuff, I was going to make it a "What if SFB was played during TNG universe". It would have been basically a Star Trek universe under the SFB timeline.

Ships were going to be under a radical change. Instead of the system in place for SEIV, I was going to make it where "generations" of ships would be used. Early era ships would be those we see on SFB like the old Constitution class ship for a CA. SFB had ships called "X ships" which where basically advanced forms of ships before it. The Excelcior class ships where one of my favorite so I was thinking of using them as the "Second generation of the CA" or in SFB a "CX" crusier. The Galaxy Classes would be the basically would have been "CX2" Versions in the 24th century. One bold plan I was thinking about doing was learning how to use a 3D modeling system and basically create new SFB ships for the later eras. For example, since I loved the Excelcior class ships, I think it would have been neat if I could design a "CX" that had many features the Excelcior did in the movies yet retained some the design approches that the old CA class did (for example, bussard Ram scoops on nacels). Basically, I wanted to make later era designs look like they had elements of the previous generation, but added design concepts from the movies and TV shows of today. I thought about using Milkshape, but I have no knowlege on making ship graphics and I can't find milkshape (I heard its cheap to buy).

As for weapon systems, I was going to use the damage values used in SFB. I was even thinking about using Drones/Missiles soly used with the Drone units in SE4 (sure am glad MM put those in their finally). I would eliminate Cap Missles since they have no ammo limt and Drones do in SE4. Drone limits would be esential if your going to design an SFB mode with the Mirak and Klingons in SFB.

Cardassians and Dominion where going to be a bit tricky though since we don't know what their early designed ships looked like back during the 22nd and 23rd century looked like, it was going to be difficult to make pictures for them. Also, I'm still confused what to use the Cardies for weapons. Since all races in SFB use Phasers (guess they are kinda like the "Laser" in the SFB world, even the Andromadians use them), I plan to implement them for the Cardies. But what to use for heavy weapons? I've heard people say they use torpedos, yet I swear I have seen the Cardies on DS9 use Plasma Torps (especailly on Defense Satilites).

I was also going to make Phasers unique compared to otehr Star Trek modes. Phasers in SFB where basically made in 4 types... Type 1 Offensive, Type 2 Offense-Defensive, Type 3 Defensive, and Type 4 Heavy Phasers. Since Star Trek has a completely different naming convention for weapons, I was thinking about naming each type of Phasers with Letter instead of Numbers. For example, Type 1 Phasers where going to use the Designation of Letter "Class A Phaser". These would the best Phasers avialble for ships, and mostly the Feds would be the only ones available to use them. Type 2 Phasers where lettered as "Class B Phasers" because in the SFB game, these Phasers are cheaper and more efficent then Class A Phasers, but have less range and firepower, used widly buy other races like Klingons, Romulans, Lyrans, etc. that don't have huge budgets or good research labratories. Type 3 Phasers where going to be designated as "Class C Phasers", the least powerful of all the Phasers and short range. But their advantage would be very cheap and some Point Defense capability to them. All Phasers would have the ability to target Fighters and Drone/Missiles, but Class C Phasers would have the special ability for Point defense and a must for any ship going against seeking weapons. Type 4 Phasers would of course be classed as "Class D Phasers". I was having trouble trying to find as sytem too keep Class D Phasers from being able to be put on ships (they were not allowed in SFB) but I was thinking just making them very large weapon systems and hard to implement on a ship. Class G Phaser would off course be the Gatling Phasers (would have double the firepower of a Class C and able to fire twice a turn) and Class P Phasers would be the all famous Pulse Phasers used by the Defiant (A special Fed Design similar to the Class G phaser except a little more powerful and longer range). With the letter class system in place, this would allow me to add numbers to the Phaser types to indicate what tech level they are (example, a Class B1 Economy Phaser compared to a Class A2 Offensive Phaser). Also, Tech was going to follow a forumla where you could only sqeeze so much juice out of it. For example, today guns are more powerful then they were a Hundred or two hundread years ago. We might be able to make them a little more powerful, but its likely this could be the limit to how powerful we can make an Cartrige round today. Next genertion of guns would use a different physics for shooting projectiles (like mass driver weapons). My mode would show the same thing, Phasers would reach a certain point of firepower but it wouldn't make much sense to keep researching it because you would hardly get any more firepower out of it. you would be forced to find new technologies in order to find a weapon more powerful then Phasers yet have similar functions with Phasers.

Just some ideas I had in my head when I was trying to design this massive project. I might still do it, but I would prefer to know how to make 3D images because I would like to make my own ship pictures for it.

[Captain Kwok]

Greetings.

It has been a hectic couple of weeks for me with work and trying to overcome a few computer problems - so I haven't been doing much in regards to the TNG Mod. I look forward to getting back to it though with the new modding possibilities from patch 1.78.

Magnum357 - just to avoid confusion - perhaps you can open a new thread describing your Mod ideas just so it doesn't mixed up with the TNG Mod.

Thanks!

[jimbob]

Magnum357: Well thanks. I hope that this would be a usable sub-mod. I've since seen the idea of drug enhancement/dependency races in STS9, FarScape, and I think Andromeda (which I'm quite ashamed to admit that I watch on the occassional slow Saturday afternoon), so maybe this is becoming a standard Sci-Fi motif (Ronny Regan should be turning in his grave now - er, did he die yet?)

How about changing the Percentages of Drug Sythn Lab and Racial trait both too +30%? I remember on Star Trek that once the Gem Hedar where in desperate need for "white drug" they had problems with combat, disipline, even the ability to phyiscally function was a problem.

I thought that the racial trait and drug lab bonuses should be symetrical at first too (both +30% for example). However, if the drug synth lab bonus is too big, then it will help "non-GemHedar" ships far too much in case of captures (either way I might add). So, I wanted to make the Racial bonus bigger because it doesn't transfer upon capture.

With both at +30%, a ship would operate at -15% (exactly 30 points opposite with a Drug Sythn Lab).

Sorry, but I missed what your negative modifier would come from (a required component like what I had suggestd?), and how much of a penalty it would levy against the crew (your math suggests -75%)

Regardless, I'd love any ideas and/or help in making this become a reality in a full blown mod somewhere (why have it for just my 'in-house' mods... it's not like the AI would know what to do with it anyways )

[ August 26, 2002, 16:10: Message edited by: jimbob ]

[Magnum357]

To Captain Kwok,

Sorry for making such a long message about my mode ideas. I was actually just trying to explain to ManofWar my project, not too suggest anything to your Mode. I suppose I could use my own message thread for my discussions on an SFB mode, but to be honest, I'm not sure if their are many SE4 fans even interested in an SFB mode. I will consider it.

P.S. I love you 3D ships models you have made so far. What 3D program did you use to make them anyway?

[Captain Kwok]

I used Moray/Pov-Ray to make the models. However, I have since learned some new techniques to help improve them when I get some time to do so!

[minipol]

i'm looking forward to this mod. however, a have dumb question so don't nuke me why aren't the vulcans included? i think it would be fun to have them together with the romulans.