Attack of the Ankle-Biters - Replacment player needed.

[Pax]

I'm actually going to work on this small-ships mod; it'll be a nice break form bashing my head against the "wth weapons do I give each paradigm" brick wall I've reached with Exodus, and it sounds like a real fun game in it's own right.

On the subject of stellar manipulation: methinks I shall have to work on those too; get most of 'em at least able to shoe-horn into a bulk freighter with minimal engine/control components ... hmm, giving them 1kT of cargo would work.

[Slynky]

Originally posted by Slick:
Oh oh... It's beginning to happen... Must resist... I may (repeat may ) rethink about working on something along these lines. Excuse me while I go soak my head to get this foolish idea out of my head.



Slick.

Hmmmm, I thought I "saw" some digital drooling there, Slick .

[Fyron]

Pax, if you give a comp the Cargo ability with 0 cargo space, it still counts as a cargo space to satisfy vehicle requirements.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
You'd just start having 2-ship "mini-fleets" for stellar manip. One with the opener/closer, one with the repair. Not as pretty or convenient, but still functional. Of course, I get the idea that's the whole point of this mod.

Actually a repair bay would be a pretty tight fit on a frigate. It would be so slow it might be more efficent to send your faster warp opener or closer ship back to a planet for repair.

Geoschmo

[Pax]

Well, I'm almost done ... I'm just finishing up the VehicleSizes.txt file now.

I got a touch ambitious,and tweaked a few other ocmponents -- more range for torpedoes, gave the GHB armor-skipping, cut the range of the PPB by one, upped MB range by one ... the general sort of things being discussed in the Stock Balance mod. Tweaked the unit-launch components to have their launch rate be porportionate to their tech level (1/2, 2/4, 3/6 respectively). Lowered PDC range. Improved the Shard Cannon slightly. A few things like that.

Also a couple minor stylistic/concept things (TK Projectors now skip all shields ... their cost may need to be tweaked later).

OH, yes: upped armor hp/kt significantly for normal armor, and slightly for most others.

Added a couple neat toys:

MultiColony
Twice as big and costly as any one module, but, can do the work of all three. Need to have all three colonisation techs to build it.

Advanced Bridge
10% sensor/ECM bonus and small antiboarding defense.

Advanced Crew Quarters
Does double-duty as CQ and LS.

Advanced Fighter Cockpit
As Advanced CQ, for fighters

Drone Fighter Control Computer
MC for fighters

Lastly, I co-opted Deathstalker's Mount Mod, adjusted a few to be useful for the smaller ships, trimmed out all miniaturising mounts (except those aimed at remote mining), and chopped off the bigger mounts.

As for changes to Technology, the only real changes (other than organising things a bit differently in the research screen) are these:

code:

---

Ship Construction

  Old = 9; cost = 10,000

  New = 6; cost = 20,000



	SC	Hull(s)

	1	Scout, Light Transport

	2	Probe

	3	Frigate, Fast Courier

	4	Destroyer

	5	Fast Frigate

	6	Heavy Destroyer, Bulk Transport



Base Construction

  Old = 3; cost = 100,000

  New = 3; cost = 100,000



	BC	Hull

	1	Spacedock

	2	Outpost

	3	Starbase

---

Hull sizes, ECM, EpM, etc are all per my table below. I should probably be ready to upload a beta Version in a couple hours (gonna break for supper ... a man's gotta eat, after all! ).

[Pax]

Originally posted by Slick:
That's where the inventive designs come in. If you want 5 launch bays on a Frigate, it can be done. One option would be:

1 MC
1 Engine
5 Fighter Launch Bays
1 Solar Sail

Slow but viable. If the engine was a QE and a Solar Sail III, the speed would be 7 which isn't too bad. I would envision trading engines for space in lots of designs. This goes back to the idea of having to pay much more attention to managing supplies.

Slick.

Unarmored, unshielded, and naked of PDC ... nonviable, IMO. You'd have to lose three launch bays, toss a shield, a PDC, some emissive armor, and maybe a cargo bay on.

But then, you're down to three fighter bays, each one with not a WHOLE lot of cargo capacity in and of themselves. You can launch, what, twice? Three times? In Groups of three?

No thanks. Give me ~100kT more, so I can pile on two more launch bays, another cargo bay, and a second PDC ... and we're beginning to talk "Carrier" rather than "auxiliary Fi-Con" ...

[Fyron]

TK Projectors now skip all shields

Why would they skip shields? The weapon creates a force just like any other force, and would be inhibited by the energy barriers of the shields.

[Pax]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

quote:

---

TK Projectors now skip all shields

Why would they skip shields? The weapon creates a force just like any other force, and would be inhibited by the energy barriers of the shields.

---

As I see it, the weapon generates kinetic energy directly at the target point. The energy does not cross the intervening space between the generator and the target point. That, at least, is how I have always envisioned telekinesis as operating. So as I said, a stylistic sort of change, based on how I envision the TK projector working.

The weapon, as a result, will almost definitely need to be adjusted to be more costly, both in terms of research and price to build. But it better fits how I "see" telekinesis working.

[Pax]

File uploaded (sucker compressed to under 90KB, lol):

Small Ships mod, v 1.0a, Beta 1.

Feedback and such will be welcome.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Pax:
But then, you're down to three fighter bays, each one with not a WHOLE lot of cargo capacity in and of themselves. You can launch, what, twice? Three times? In Groups of three?

No thanks. Give me ~100kT more, so I can pile on two more launch bays, another cargo bay, and a second PDC ... and we're beginning to talk "Carrier" rather than "auxiliary Fi-Con" ...

That the point though Pax. If your enemy is only using frigates then that small number of fighters can make a significant difference. It's part of the whole package deal.

But your mod idea is cool too. I like them both.

Geoschmo

[ July 28, 2003, 00:05: Message edited by: geoschmo ]