Starfleet Battles Mod (SFB Mod)

[Kana]

Question on Leaky Shields/Armor....

What I would like to emulate is SFB like shields. Basically they have six seperate shields any single one of which can be knocked down, then weapons fire will affect the ship. Since there is no arcs of fire or anything like that in SE4...I would assume a form of Leaky Shields could be used. With the "Leaky" random change emulating the possibility that the an individual shield is knocked down, or if there is already shield damage, the possiblity that damage gets through a "down" shield.

I am already planning on having a form of leaky armor (Hull), which is basically free damage hits. Plus in some instances actually armor. Also some form of Power absorbing shield/armor, which can repair itself.

Any Ideas or thoughts...?

[Fyron]

With leaky shields, you have to get past the initial shield points before any leakiness comes into affect. This essentially has that affect, where you have to take down part of the shields before damage can be done to the hull. Not by generator component, but instead by shield points.

[AMF]

Yeah, would be true to SFB but you could probably come pretty close to it by having different drone rack components - that fire their type of drones (seekers) with special damage types and different speeds (can't wait to launch a volley of speed-32 drones!)

As an old SFB fanatic, I'm gonna enjoy wathcing this develop. If I had ANY modding ability, I'd offer to help...as it is, I can probably just kibbitz.

How do you think you might handle:
* the use of Andro displacement devices on themselves?
* regular v. overloaded weapons?
*

I would offer that ships in SFB mod should generally have a lot of shield regeneration capability.

Man, I'll have to find all my old SFB stuff and refresh my memory. I threw a LOT of money at that game, and many years of my life...I hope I kept it all...

Good luck with this. Watching with eager anticipation...

Alarik

EDIT: ooh,what about Wild Weasels? Can ECM effects be applied to other ships? What about scatterpacks?

Kana said:
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

[tesco samoa]

I have the SfB manuals at home. Blue and red one...

If anyone needs info from them let me know.

[Kana]

Imperator Fyron said:
With leaky shields, you have to get past the initial shield points before any leakiness comes into affect. This essentially has that affect, where you have to take down part of the shields before damage can be done to the hull. Not by generator component, but instead by shield points.

Not sure I'm following you here...basically what you are saying is I can't do anything like this and use the shield component...Because the shield points are all or nothing...I wonder if I could mod something similar to leaky armor, but call it shield or something...hmmmm

Kana

[Fyron]

Kana said:

Not sure I'm following you here...basically what you are saying is I can't do anything like this and use the shield component...Because the shield points are all or nothing...I wonder if I could mod something similar to leaky armor, but call it shield or something...hmmmm

Kana

No, I am telling you that leaky shielding acts very similar to what you were wanting... In practice, it has the same effect. Generally, leaky shield systems have the abilities set up so that the components might generate something like 2 times the shields from damage ability (as an example). You can imagine that this represents the various starting shield levels around the ship. Several shots might just damage the shields, and not have any leaky effect. This can represent collapsing a few areas of shielding. Once all initial shield points are gone, a hole has been created in the shield layer and the leaky effect kicks in. Each shot generates some shield points, and the ship gets some damage to internals. The next shot is reduced in damage by the generated shield points from the Last shot. Overall statistically, this represents partial reduction in damage to the ship from each shot from "deflector" type shields (which is how Star Trek shields function). Each shot will either be doing full damage, or no damage, or some percent of damage (depending on the exact values of shields from damage totals, weapon damage per shot, etc.), but it averages out.

[Kana]

[/quote]No, I am telling you that leaky shielding acts very similar to what you were wanting... In practice, it has the same effect. Generally, leaky shield systems have the abilities set up so that the components might generate something like 2 times the shields from damage ability (as an example). You can imagine that this represents the various starting shield levels around the ship. Several shots might just damage the shields, and not have any leaky effect. This can represent collapsing a few areas of shielding. Once all initial shield points are gone, a hole has been created in the shield layer and the leaky effect kicks in. Each shot generates some shield points, and the ship gets some damage to internals. The next shot is reduced in damage by the generated shield points from the Last shot. Overall statistically, this represents partial reduction in damage to the ship from each shot from "deflector" type shields (which is how Star Trek shields function). Each shot will either be doing full damage, or no damage, or some percent of damage (depending on the exact values of shields from damage totals, weapon damage per shot, etc.), but it averages out.

[/quote]

So I would have to use the shield points from damage ability to 'regenerate' the shield to a certain percentage of coverage. The points not gained up to maxiumum shield would represent the 'downed' shield facing...and the remaining points will represent the other shields. I guess I'm a dope...I would have to see it written out in mod form or something to really see it...It does sound abit complicated...I may just not include it, and use the regular shields...and keep the hull internals as a means to absorb damage....

Kana

[Fyron]

I was operating under the assumption that you knew how leaky shields work from a modding standpoint. It is actually a very simple concept, and very easy to implement. I can not imagine a Star Trek mod without leaky shields, as they very closely replicate the functionality of shields in Star Trek (not per shot, but on average)...

Basically, you give the generators a low level of shield generation, and a similar level of the Shields From Damage ability. This makes the shields function almost identically to the stock Crystalline Armor, other than the shield generators are not "armor." Any damage that damages the ship, when the shield points are 0, causes an equal amount of damage (up to the maximum abilities of the total Shields From Damage abilities of all components on the ship) to be added to the shield totals. The next shot (or two, depending on the exact values in play) hit these shield points.

Note that any partial damage left on a component (ie: damage that was not enough to destroy whichever component was pseudo-randomly selected to be hit) will be added to the damage total of the next incoming shot that hits the shields. This odd behavior is a result of SE4 not storing partial damage on a per-component basis. It also applies to partial damage left on a component being added to the damage from the next incoming shot of, for example, and Ionic Disperer. The extra partial damage becomes the type of the next weapon that hits the ship. But I digress...

Once all of the shield points are gone, more damage is done to the components of the ship. Points will be added to the shield totals, based on the damage done as before. This goes on until a shield generator is destroyed, at which point the shields added is (potentially) reduced, or until the ship is destroyed.

I have attached an example of a leaky shield system, from Adamant Mod. Copy these components into a mod and run some combats with them.

[Kana]

The leaky shields may work for what I want but it doesn't seem quite what I want. If you are unfamiliar with SFB combat...here is a quick synopsis:

Each ship has shields. The shields have shield facings. Each representing an individual shield area that can be knocked down, and then shot through without hitting any shields. There are 6 facings (like a hex grid). So basically your number 1 shield facing (front) can be shot down to nothing, but the 5 other shields are still intact. So basically we say that a individual facing has 30 shield points. 6 of those will equal a total of 180 shield points. 30 points of damage reduces a single shield to zero. Leaving 150 shield points remaining, with one area vulnerable with no shields.

It seems that 'leaky shields' might work...but the degredation of the shields doesnt seem right...I'll have to look at it in simulation...but I hope this help explain what I'm looking for...

Kana

[Fyron]

Ok. Look at the combat statistically, not per shot. In an abstract manner, leaky shields are the only way to roughly simulate hitting different shield facings. With normal shields, it is all or nothing. All facings have to be knocked down before any damage can be done to the ship. With leaky shields, you do not quite get a shield facing system, but on the average, it works out to have similar affects on combat. SE4 ships do not have a facing, so the shields added from damage can represent one shot hitting a facing without shield points, then the next shot hitting the ship from a different angle, where there is energy in the shield layer. Certainly, shots from the same ship would probably hit the same facing each time in a round. Taken abstractly, it can represent shots from different ships hitting the same target from different angles, thus different facings. It is not perfect, but it is the closest you can get in SE4, and it does make combat far more interesting...