Narf's Mod: Almost done shredding the Facility.txt. Basic stuff only.

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
shouldn't there be brackets? from what i remember from science, there should
F = (G * M1 * M2) / r^2

so, since my gravitic engine idea currently works by generating a gravity field, that would be
F = (G * M1 + GF) / r^2, where GF is gravity field.

No; if the GF simulates a mass at some distance, then it should be F = (G * M1 * GF) / r^2, or A = (G * GF)/r^2 - although it is a rather moot point, as SE doesn't allow you to model acceleration, only set velocities. There is a catch to the equation, however - bigger ships are bigger, and r is the distance between the effective center of gravity between the two objects; the GF must be generated beyond the hull to have full impact; otherwise, the portion of the force on the portion of the hull beyond the GF is countering some of the force on the portion of the hull not beyond the GF. Thus, larger ships require a larger r to be effective, but that reduces the force on the ship (bigger r -> slower ship for same drives). If r is constant for all ship sizes, then the exact same gravity drive that moves your worldship will move your frigate at the same speed. Otherwise, the frigate would be faster.

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:

so, the additional pull provided by a larger ship would be balanced out by the additional inertia. so same movement for all ships. works.

Essentially.

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:

what i'm not looking forward to is reworking all the supply usages so a baseship uses more supply than an escort.
ok, Jack's managed to confuse me.

Sorry about that; mathmatical symbol manipulation confuses a lot of people. I'm not really sure how to make myself clearer; I used essentially the same symbols Fyron did, if that helps any.

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
hey Jack, can you take a look lower in the thread and tell me if you understand my math there? because i'm not sure if i do.

Is this one the one you mean?

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
i just finished putting in 20 'normal' engines, based off of Ion Engine I with 10% increase. the size, costs and supply usage are modified by engine speed with (INT(E)/E)*#. supply usage decimals are ignored. maybe i should compensate for having a second ability which is close enough to 100% of actual number to be considered 100% by (((INT(E)/#)+100)/2)*#?

... if so, I haven't tried my hand at modding these, and am unfamiliar with what you mean by each symbol (E, INT(E), and #); a word translation table would be useful there.

[Renegade 13]

Is everyone here a math/physics expert? All those computations and equations....makes my head hurt

Renegade 13

[narf poit chez BOOM]

i just finished putting in 20 'normal' engines, based off of Ion Engine I with 10% increase. the size, costs and supply usage are modified by engine speed with (INT(E+0.5)/E)*#. supply usage decimals are ignored. maybe i should compensate for having a second ability which is close enough to 100% of actual number to be considered 100% by (((INT(E+0.5)/E)+1)/2)*#?

i thought i explained what they where lower? oh well. E = engine efficience - speed. # is cost, supply, size. the equation should make it so that if your engine speed doesn't increase due to a fractional increase in speed, the # will decrease. it seems to work. i fixed some problems with the second equation and updated for what i'm using now. the 0.5 is to round off rather than chop, which is what INT does - programing term i maybe shouldn't have used.

Renegade, perhaps this will cheer you up.
X - undefined quantity
spurt - a drip, under presure
so, phonetically, X-spurt...

[ October 28, 2003, 00:28: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Jack Simth]

Makes more sense now.

[Alneyan]

Erh, it seems like a good idea Narf. At least, if all these formulas are not necessary to play the mod.

Glad to see I am not the only one who cannot understand all these equations Renegade.

[Ed Kolis]

Now wait... did you say the size of your ships increases by 10% per level, you have 200 hulls, and you're using engine mounts?!?

I don't thinkn that will work with SE4... for one thing, your largest ship will be 173 million times the size of your smallest, and SE4 only allows a range of 1-65535 kT; for another, to use engine mounts, your largest ship must be no more than 100 times the size of the smallest, because you can't have fractions of a percent in mount sizes, and if you make the larger ships use percents greater than 100, then people will just use the unmounted engines

Are you sure you didn't mean 20 levels of ships (6.1x factor between largest and smallest), or 1% increase per level (7.2x factor)? Maybe I read your post wrong... In any event, both those ratios are smaller than SE4's baseship/escort ration of 10, and isn't the purpose of this mod to make technology and strategies MORE specialized, so shouldn't the ratio be as large as possible so you can have one UberDoomNaught versus 10,000 MiniPeashooterGnats?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

not as specialized as 10,000 to 1; on a weight for weight basis small ships should be just as usefull as big ships; although they couldn't got toe to toe without a larger wieght, they can run circles around the larger ships.

also, that's 180 ships divided by 9 ship classes, in which case the baseship comes out at over 9000.

yes, people could blatantly cheat by not using an engine mount on the larger ship sizes; the engine mount for the largest baseship is a little bigger than 1500, the size of the smallest baseship. however, i think the people i've met on the forums are smart enough to realize that cheating isn't winning. and for those that do cheat, since engines are a large part of the ship, 33% at default movement rate 11-2, it wouldn't be to hard on PBW to see if someone's cheating, even if your not researching the same, you can load up a max tech game and try to build their ship.

unless you can see mounts in enemy ship design's. i don't know if you can.

[ October 28, 2003, 16:17: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Alneyan]

You can see the mounts used in enemy ships designs, if you do know the designs that is. It can be useful to check if the enemy is using regular WMG or Massive WMG for instance.

As for this matter, well, I am no modder so I cannot really help you. Could you create different families of engines, a mount working for each one? I assume you cannot, it would be too easy.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

the mounts are based of off ship sizes.

if you can see mounts, then all you have to do is look for an E in your enemy's ship's engine's. so that problem is no longer an issue, except for singleplayer. that is, if it's ever singleplayer compatable. and i don't care if you cheat in SP, although i don't think it's healthy to cheat all the time.

can you specify a mount to be used with a certain component family in the AI files?

[Alneyan]

What I meant was to use two engines families, one for small ships, and the other after the 100th ship, when the percentage is above 100%, and so two different mounts based on the ship size. I am not sure if I do make sense though, or even if it would work fine.

There is only a problem with checking, it could be done on non-fighting ships, that is, the ones that you are not supposed to see. But cheating should not be that much of an issue in MP. (Or am I too naive?)