Starfleet Battles Mod (SFB Mod)

[PvK]

ESG sounds right as a range = 1 PD weapon that damages all types. A fiddly but accurate way would be to make it small so many can be put on one ship. Make the reload time larger than one though (maybe 4-6 turns?) to represent the time and energy needed to recharge it. I would not give it shields, though, because in SFB it does not protect against incoming fire. Probably not minesweeping either, since it can't be operated all the time to protect against unexpected mines.

In Settings.txt I would adjust ramming damages to zero to reflect SFB's reasonable ruling that no one will kamikaze a starship into another, even if they could manage to hit.

Stasis Field Generators are impossible to mod accurately, but you could have somewhat similar effects from the reload-increasing effect (see crystaline Energy Dampener and not the Psychic weapon, or MC will resist it). or the Warp weapon also is similar in that it removes the ship from combat for a time, both for friendly and enemy fire.

PvK

[Kana]

Warp Weapon ability was considered...but I was saving that for the Andromdean Displacement Device....

Your right on the shields option for ESG...it shouldn't block incoming fire...(except maybe Hellbores) but there is no way to do that. I have to think about it some more...

Kana

[PvK]

Displacement Device and SFG could use the same ability, but have very different properties such as range, rate of fire, cost, size, supply use, to-hit modifier.

PvK

[Kana]

Ok...I have a small question on economics. I have considered simplifing things for the mod similiar to the Starfire mod...but I'm not sure yet. I was wondering how some modders have tackled this problem. Especially like how components and facilities get their 'cost'. What is a good baseline? I assume trying to make things comparable to stock SE4 is one way...but I don't know if really want to do that. I would really like to decrease the numbers in this mod...Yet I know it has been suggested that I don't take certain numbers under 100 due to the abilites modification on percentages...If you have any experience with SFB, I would love to hear input from you. Also any and all suggestions used...will recieve credit in the mod...

Thanks again,

Kana

[Atrocities]

Really depends upon how large you want your fleets to get. If the cost of facilities is high, then most likely your AI will spend more to obtain the growth that it is required to maintain. Sticking close to SEIV norm may or may not be the best thing.

In Facilities you could require the cost in Organics to be higher than other resources, and for ships the cost in minerals is higher than the others, while components cost about equal in all.

The choice is really up to how you want the AI to consentrate its resources, for production, or for maitenance. I hope this rambling helps, if it makes no sense, well thats just me.

[Kana]

Question on Drones...and I guess Engines and Supply as well.

1. Drone engines...like all engines...use up supply during combat...correct?

2. If 1. is correct...How much supply is used?

I'm considering using drones instead of seeking weapons option. But I need to have a limited endurance for combat, and a possible long range endurance for out of combat. Can I get this to work?

Kana

[PvK]

No propulsion uses supplies during combat. All engine supply use is out of combat.

The closest thing that comes to mind would be a drone that has enough supplies to launch a seeker, and then runs out of supplies and I assume vanishes. I'm not sure it would vanish in combat though - it might become a ram-drone at that point. No really good solution comes to mind with the tricks I know of - that's about as close as occurs to me.

I think I would just use seeker weapons.

PvK

[Fyron]

I'm considering using drones instead of seeking weapons option. But I need to have a limited endurance for combat, and a possible long range endurance for out of combat. Can I get this to work?

Kana

Personally, I think that this is a very bad idea. There are a lot of unresolved bugs with drones in regards to launching them, targeting too many at one target, etc. I am not even sure if the bug that caused all drones to be launched on round 1 of combat was ever patched... Additionally, having to restock your missile bays all the time manually is not worth it. Doing so is extremely tedious, especially when you start getting decent sized fleets...

[Kana]

Well crud...I was hoping to make different size and capacity Drone Racks. Which could then be filled with different sized and different type of drones/missles. I would have to make seperate components and probably some form of mount to do this then...hmmm...grrr...blah...

Kana

[Fyron]

Any drone can be loaded into any cargo bay, whether it is a drone launcher or not. Any drone launching component can launch any drone component, irregardless of size.