*** Star Trek Mod Discussion ***

[Ed Kolis]

I guess what's bothering me about the bonus movement is that what if you design a ship without its full complement of engines? (Will there be limits on engines or can you just fill three quarters of the hull with them and go at insane speeds like in P&N? I think P&N ships are slower for their engine/tonnage ratios to make up for that...)

Anyway, so you've got an Escort with 1 engine and an Escort with 6 engines.

1 engine / 1 eng/move = 1 move + 5 bonus = 6
5 engines / 1 eng/move = 5 moves + 5 bonus = 10

The ship with 1 engine, while devoting only 1/5 the space to engines, is getting over half the movement of the 5-engine ship! Maybe it's just me, but this seems to go contrary to the principle of QNP (Force = Mass * Velocity)... I don't want to tell you how to make your mod and I won't whine and complain if you don't do it this way, but how about giving each engine an increasing number of standard moves (say 3,4,5,6, to borrow from P&N, or 2,3,5,8, using Fibonacci numbers to get a relatively constant ratio between any two classes of engine, as well as a BIG jump between tech levels) and give an Escort 3 engines per move (or 2 in the Fibonacci example) instead of 1?

Another way to look at it is this:

200kT Frigate, 1 eng/move:
With basic engine, no bonus: 5 moves with 50kT of engines = 5% of space per move
With advanced engine, +5 bonus: 10 moves with 50kT of engines = 2.5% of space per move

OK, you say... Well look at this:

1000kT Dreadnought, 5 eng/move:
With basic engine, no bonus: 1 move with 50kT of engines = 5% of space per move
With advanced engine, +5 bonus: 6 moves with 50kT of engines = 0.83% of space per move

Why should more advanced engines be less efficient with larger ships??? I guess you could come up with some technobabble reason why this would be the case ("the lower-energy warp fields are more easily spread across the volume of a large ship due to their low subspace tension ratio") - and I'd buy it! - but on the face of it it just doesn't seem to make sense.

Just my 0.02 tons of mineral ore...

(Come to think of it, don't most Star Trek ships have only 1-4 engines? At least the Federation ones... can't really tell with some of the alien ships. Maybe you could use the engine mount system that someone (forget who) proposed so that each ship has only a few engines, but scaled appropriately to fit the hull size?)

[Captain Kwok]

Ed:

Let's address some issues.

The engines in the TNG mod are not engines in the traditional SE4 sense, but engine ("warp") coils within a ship's nacelle or structure. This was done for two reasons. The first reason was to eliminate problems with equating ship nacelles (not all ships got 'em) to engines and secondly, to avoid using mounts and additional engine sizes, which are troublesome for the AI and confusing for some players.

The propulsion model is only pseudo-QNP and is intended to roughly equivalate the amount of space engines take up on a given ship. I used movement bonuses instead of standard movement for good reason. It keeps the number of engines constant on each ship, while increasing performance with improving tech levels. For example:

Low Tech Engine Coil:

Bonus: Ship with 5 Level I engines (1 Std + 1 Bonus) has 6 moves.

Standard: Ship with 5 Level I engines (1 Std) has 5 moves.

Improved Tech Engine Coil:

Bonus: Ship with 5 Level II engines (1 Std + 2 Bonus) has 7 moves.

Standard: Ship 5 Level II engines (2 Std) has 10 moves!

You see the problem? Using standard moves increases performance too much! It also limits the variety of speeds available!

Why does more engine coils result in lower engine efficiency? Here is a reasonable explanation: The amount of power needed for increased "warp" speeds is not proportional, but exponential. In order to attain higher velocities, it requires exponentially more power and therefore many more engine coils. Make sense?

I think that sums it up.

[Phoenix-D]

"You see the problem? Using standard moves increases performance too much! It also limits the variety of speeds available!"

You can negate this effect by using larger numbers..

Ship with 4 engines per move, standard engine gives 3 move
1 engine: 0
2 engines: 1
3 engines: 2
4 engines: 3

Level 2 engine, 4 move
1 engine:1
2 engines: 2
3 engines: 3
4 engines: 4

Look at P&N for more examples. Just as an FYI..

Phoenix-D

[Suicide Junkie]

The current / planned Kwok-Coil system does have its own advantages.

For one, damage to the engines will slowly reduce your speed, until they get down to a critical point, whereupon they go offline.
At higher tech, you still get a decent speed while the engines are starting to break up.

Q:
Where is the engine supply use modded in?
It would be nice if the engines used just as many supplies per movement no matter how many coils you have.
(Since we can't have it decrease with more coils)

If you set all ships to require 2 engines per move, and then set all engines to give 2 standard movement points, you could give the WarpCore 1 standard movement point, and a large supply usage.
That way, the core would not provide any speed without having intact engines, and the power used to travel would not decrease as you take damage to the engines!

[Captain Kwok]

I always assumed that it was all or nothing with the "engines per move", I didn't know that it allowed for partial move points!!! I guess I should have played more P&N!

Hmm. I could easily duplicate my current system under this method - let me crunch some numbers and I will post again later.

[TerranC]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
(Come to think of it, don't most Star Trek ships have only 1-4 engines? At least the Federation ones... can't really tell with some of the alien ships.

Technically, all races have only 2 engines; sublight impulse and warp; what they have are engine ports, nacelles, and maneuvering thrusters.

[Suicide Junkie]

I always assumed that it was all or nothing with the "engines per move"

You mean like:
5 engines per move
+ 50 engines with 4 movement points
= zero movement
?

[Captain Kwok]

No.

I thought for 5 engines/move, you needed at least 5 engines (+2 Std MovePts) to get 2 movement points. If you had 4, it was zero, but Phoenix tells me it's 1!

[ November 27, 2002, 04:18: Message edited by: Captain Kwok ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Ah, the tragic mistake of applying common sense

[Phoenix-D]

"I thought for 5 engines/move, you needed at least 5 engines (+2 Std MovePts) to get 2 movement points. If you had 4, it was zero, but Phoenix tells me it's 1!"

Just from reading the files, this makes sense..except that "engines per move" is mislabeled. It's really THRUST per move.

It works like so:
-add up the "standard movement" given by all the engines
-divide by the ship's "engines per move" value
-round down

Phoenix-D