Honor Harrington Mod Discussion

[Phoenix-D]

Nice site, though it's slightly out of date.

"I thought all SY were orbital anyway. If you want the pop mod you need to be on a high pop planet."

I can't make them ALL orbital, otherwise you'd never be able to build ships! Probably the first thing a player will want to do is build a space yard. The planetary yards will be quite slow except on large worlds with large amounts of space devoted to shipbuilding.

RWittman: there is another problem with the yards. Most HH universe yards produce more than one ship be yard; they've massive beasts.

Space Empires ship yards can only work on ONE thing a turn. Haven't figured out how I will address that yet..

Phoenix-D

[jimbob]

How about more efficient space yards for bases? 400-450kT to keep 'em off ships for the first bit of the game, but allow them on space stations. Have a build rate of 2000-3000 min/org/rads per "month". Now your planetary yards have a "reasonable" build speed to get players going, but then the "good" build speed will be acheived from those gargantuan space yards.

[ July 10, 2002, 00:33: Message edited by: jimbob ]

[Phoenix-D]

Probably what will happen.

Mines: in The Short Victorious War, these things sound like missiles with quick-burn engines and cloaking devices. I dislike the standard SE4 mine system, so I probably will do one of two things:

-Make components that let drone missiles be used as mines
-Make the SATELITES the mines

they both have their problems. Sat mines won't be able to move, and will be unable to attack unless the enemy is stupid enough to get in range. Drone mines will enable any ship with missile launchers to "fire" mines. No dedicated minelayers.

I'm waiting to see what the new component mounts can do before going too far; I may just make three sizes of armor and then use armor mounts to make them bigger for larger ships.

Sidewalls are STILL giving me problems. The crystalline ability would be ideal, but it's not playing nice; it's only regening the shields when a hit reduces the shields to 0 and damages something inside. OK, fine; but I've also managed to make ships totally invulnerable this way..ooops. Crystalline ability plus no-breach component damage = component damage VANISHES. In other words, if you pound an 90 Kt armor component down to 1 KT, the shield regnerates 89 KT. Fine, works as expected. The thing is, if the next shot doesn't breach the shields, that damage disappears. ARRRRRRRRG.

Weapons: "Down the throat" and "up the kilt" shots will be represented by special components that totally skip shields. On the bad side, they'll also have a really obscene negative to-hit- probably an average of 30% less chance to hit than the equivilent normal weapon. Each weapon will have several size variations.

Energy torpedos: these are useless against sidewalls. SE4 doesn't have a damage type that works like that! Two options: either make every other component 4x damage to shields and the torps *not*, or the energy torps will be inaccurate and skip shields- in other words, "down the throat" weapons only.

Grav Lance: will burn out sidewall generators totally.

One thing: on the weapons and armor, they're two options. 1: use mounts to represent the more powerful armor and weapons on larger ships. Two: use the same system as the sidewalls. I.e. each type of armor or weapon has variations in size, say:
Laser 50cm 1-10 (or 50cm Laser 1-10)
Laser 100cm 1-10
Laser 150cm 1-10
Laser 200cm 1-10
Laser 250cm 1-10
Laser 300cm 1-10
etc
I'm using 1-whatever because that seems to fit the universe better.. and because I'm going to have really obscene numbers of tech levels for some stuff. Hence the lack of Roman numerals. XII is bad enough. Imagine XXX. or worse, XXXXVIII. Looks like a freaking Bolo novel..

The early game will be cheap, and tech will come fast and easy.. but once you start getting into the upper 20s you'll be feeling the hurt even on Low tech cost. Not sure how high I'll go.

Opinions on any of this?

Phoenix-D

[Skulky]

{EDIT} WOW IM STUPID, Shiva Option is from Starfire, wow im figured out now! Gotta go read two sets of books haha

Sadly, I've only read "The Shiva Option" but i think it would be really cool, once this is all done to some scnearios, like the start of the bug war (before Shiva) and then some mini scenarios, like the battle for Justin (and put these mini battles in 3 or 4 system galaxies) or the attack on Home Hive 1 and the retreat/ambush. or the battle where they meet the "old enemies" Star Federation?

Also, how are you going to do things like primary packs? i wish you could specify what something targets. What is the grav lance? Is it the little projectile that accelerates to something like 30% of c?

While anyway, i'm terribly confused as to which universe shiva is set in and where all the rest of the books fall in. If someone coudl please set me straight that would be lovely.

And one Last thought... You could make gunboats (jump capable of course, but not able to be held in ships racks ) by requiring only a bridge, or a specific component (cause you really don't need to living comps, you could make one of them into Life +crew quarters, and the other into something else you want to require) adn then set them at a low size with inherent move bonus' and other stuff.

More questions, i just can't stop... how about suicide riders, both SRHAWK and the bug Versions that are LC's(?) and what about interpentration? I guess some of this has to be given up because this just can't be done with the current engine.

ahhhh, of to find more of the books...

[ July 12, 2002, 03:21: Message edited by: Skulky ]

[Phoenix-D]

I am going to have to hurt you. I haven't read Shiva Option yet!

Phoenix-D

[geoschmo]

Honor Harrington is a girl?!?

I heard some much about these Weber books from you people on the forum and decided to check it out. Weber and his publisher, Baen Books, has graciously (and smartly I think) put the first book (Basilik Station) in the series on their free Online library. Read the first couple chapters and it looks very interesting. Probably going to have to pick this one up.

Geoschmo

[ July 12, 2002, 19:03: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Heh...

I just read those two free books in the Last few days. Interesting technical universe. I like it. It's much more realistic then Treknology, but it's different from the usual 'gritty' war story universe like Starship Troopers.

Honor Harrington herself is Horatio Hornblower recast (note the initials!) if the books hold true to the form of the first two through the entire series. She keeps getting promotions to 'unusual responsibility' for her age and sets to work uncovering the secret machinations of the enemy or enemies. Once she's figured things out, the enemy has to play his hand and it's broadside after broadside until both sides are reduced to shreds, with Honor Harrington winning by a smidge. She's gonna need a new ship for every novel. She always finds a reason to use her superior strength (from growing up on a high gravity world) to smack some men around, too.

[ July 12, 2002, 19:59: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Trajan]

If you have not read the Harrington novels, and you are a fan of Military Sci-Fi, then you are missing out on some very good books.

In a nutt-shell, Honor (chick hero) gets into some really bad situation(s), kicks someones butt, gets deeper into the bad situation, gets her own behind kicked, finds and implements a nearly impossible solution that will get a lot of people killed yet save the world/star system/galaxy and then gets a promotion or somehow becomes a significant politician/ruler/leader on a planet that she saves. Occasionally she gets her eye shot out or an arm broken/amputated, but basically she wins in every book.

Oh....one more thing...She has a six legged cat that enjoys eating celery and killing Honor's enemies.

I really look forward to the HH mod but I am wondering how they will implement the Tree Cats into the Mod.

Cheers!
Trajan

[ July 12, 2002, 20:10: Message edited by: Trajan ]

[Hiruu]

Hey Geoschmo,

Honor Harrington isn't a girl, she's a War Goddess!!!

Anybody hear anything about the next book in the HH series, it's due out in Nov...War of Honor!!! I just started playing Space Empires again,...alot, and I also just got done reading Shiva Option (I read almost all of Weber's stuff!), so I thought to myself, this would make some great mods, but somebody already thought of it!

The Fifth Imperium series would be cool as well, with those huge planetiods. Dalhak would cool!

[Phoenix-D]

"She's gonna need a new ship for every novel."

Pretty much. As far as mass destruction goes, you ain't seen nothing yet..

And no, I'm not touching the treecats with a ten foot pole.

Phoenix-D