Babylon 5 Mod

[Atrocities]

I am all for keeping things simple and easy. Balance is an issue so just make one set of weapons then rename them for each race, adjusting some of the finer aspects of them for each, then your off to a good start.

[Fyron]

Onyx said:
If nothing else was unnecessarily complicated no-one would have felt the need to redo it. The armour system is unnecessarily complicated and that has already been covered in previous posts here.

And those posters were misinformed. Other than possibly the tech gridded nature, it is not unnecessarily complicated at all. As SJ said, it just requires a different way of looking at it. This is a mod, not the stock game, so players _should_ be expecting it to be different...

A simple but elegant, race based system would make it easier for the AI to build something accurate and effective.

The AI can build just as accurate and effective designs as a human player can through the use of AI tags. Simplifying the system by removing many types of armor would not benefit the AI any.

SJ:
Don't make it too simplified... There at least needs to be light and heavy armor, otherwise the game becomes very boring. Structural supports and medium armor can probably go. Medium armor is emulatable by just mixing light and heavy armor. Structural supports are either fairly useless or really gamey if someone wants to add 10000 of them to a ship. Not the most effective use of their time, but still unnecessary...

However, the advanced crystalline/emissive armors need to remain in some form, as they are very integral to the Babylon 5 universe. I personally don't see much wrong with the current system, other than possibly the tech grid. Nothing else in the mod is gridded, so having just the armor gridded seems out of place.

[Onyx]

Could someone please post the address for the latest version available then because what I have got is nowhere near able to do what youre claiming here.
Fyron. You say,

What else is unnecessarily complicated? The armor system is just right.

And then a little later you say,

Structural supports and medium armor can probably go. Medium armor is emulatable by just mixing light and heavy armor. Structural supports are either fairly useless or really gamey if someone wants to add 10000 of them to a ship. Not the most effective use of their time, but still unnecessary...

I have just played a 260 round game aginst 5 AI's with all research done, on hard. The AI has absolutly no idea how to build a competetive design. It built nothing over 300kt, almost always had an illegal number of primary armour components, had no 'stock' armour at all and there wasnt a structural support to be seen anywhere.

The AI can build just as accurate and effective designs as a human player can through the use of AI tags. Simplifying the system by removing many types of armor would not benefit the AI any.

The AI isnt using the armour you have now anyway. Simplify it and make it race based and the AI will be more competetive and interesting. I'm not totally sure on this but arent there a limited number of AI tags. Gonna use them up pretty quick this way when they could be saved for other things.

And those posters were misinformed. Other than possibly the tech gridded nature, it is not unnecessarily complicated at all. As SJ said, it just requires a different way of looking at it. This is a mod, not the stock game, so players _should_ be expecting it to be different...

Were they misinformed or did they have a different opinion...
Never really played the stock game so I dont know how that works. I bought SEIV to play the B5 and Star Trek mods. The Star Trek mod by Atrocities (and others) is outstanding. The races are distinct enough to make the game interesting and the tech tree is not over engineered. The Federation cant use Borg armour and the Cardassian's cant use Klingon cloaking devices etc. Simple and playable enough to make you want to keep going.
The B5 mod I have is unplayable. If there is a newer or better version available already then I will play it and maybe some of my points have already been taken care of.
To those who are undertaking to make the mod better, I applaude you and eagerly await your work.

I have read my 'ranting' here and I wish to add something.
I'm not trying to be overly critical of peoples work. I accept that alot of hard work has gone into this and appologise if I have offended anyone. I just think its a shame that so much effort has gone into this and it still doesnt work as well as I'm sure everyone would like.
Thanks for yor time. Steve (Onyx).

[grumbler]

In the version I am playing right now the AI uses armor just fine (though it lload heavy armor until there is less than 7 left, then light until there is less than 3 tons left, and then loads light, because that is what I told it to do). The AI cannot use structural suports because they have no weight and you have to give the AI design parameters by weight (or tell it to use just one, which would be silly).

The current armor system is not complicated at all, for the player. He knows that research invested in armor will yield incrementally better armor. There is always a new version of armor awaiting amy given investment.

My only issue with the armor system (besides the structural supports, which I think was a neat idea but will not use because the AI cannot use it and it is unclear how the player should use it) is that it is unclear to the new user that you need to research chunks of armor advances at once, or else not at all. Otherwise, all you are doing is creating a huge chunk of components that will be replaced on your ships, but from which you gain little benefit (and battleships with 20% armor have a LOT of armor components).

One way around this is to size armor for the hulls, making each armor worth, say, 5% of the hull size, and scaling using mounts (as is already done for engines). Another way is to create some larger armor components. However, I don't now how either solution would affect the "leakiness" of the existing armor, so I am leaving those considerations for the end of my analysis and hope someone else solves them in the meantime!

IF - thanks for the tip on the tech gridder. It will help a lot.

[Onyx]

Grumbler (or anyone else). Could you post a link to where you downloaded the version of the mod you are using please.
If the AI can at least use armour then that is a good start.
I actually hope I'm wrong on a few things beacause that would mean the mod is in much better shape!

Edit - I found it. Much better but the AI is still producing illegal designs - Multiple Primary Armour. Much better thou. It is even using stuctural supports!

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

SJ, 1, 2 and 4 Y, 3 N. No suggestions.

And no, I'm not just trying to pad my post count!

[Fyron]

Onyx said:
And then a little later you say,

This is what happens when you don't finish a post up right away. Just reread that as "the armor system is mostly right" and it all fits together.

Onyx said:
The AI isnt using the armour you have now anyway. Simplify it and make it race based and the AI will be more competetive and interesting. I'm not totally sure on this but arent there a limited number of AI tags. Gonna use them up pretty quick this way when they could be saved for other things.

There are plenty of AI tags to go around. Any ability that does not work serves as one. The "AI Tag" abilities are a rather recent (1.91) feature.

Onyx said:
Were they misinformed or did they have a different opinion...

They did not understand how the armor system works. They were misinformed. I don't blame them; it isn't documented very well in the current version of the mod.

Onyx said:
Never really played the stock game so I dont know how that works.

You really should play at least one game of unmodified SE4 to put it all in perspective...

grumbler said:
The AI cannot use structural suports because they have no weight and you have to give the AI design parameters by weight (or tell it to use just one, which would be silly).

Not quite true. The parameters in the design file have no relation to the size of the components. Tell the AI to add 1 Structural Support per kT of ship hull and it will definitely do so. You might need to add this requirement near the beginning, as I am not sure when exactly the AI stops reading the misc ability list.

One way around this is to size armor for the hulls, making each armor worth, say, 5% of the hull size, and scaling using mounts (as is already done for engines). Another way is to create some larger armor components. However, I don't now how either solution would affect the "leakiness" of the existing armor, so I am leaving those considerations for the end of my analysis and hope someone else solves them in the meantime!

They could have dire affects. Armor would behave quite differently on different sized hulls. In my assessment, each leaky component (of the same class) should have the same size and hit points. Another option would be to remove the tech grid aspect. This would enable each level of armor techs researched to have a significant gain, rather than a very minor, very costly (in terms of retrofit cots) gain. Tech grids are nice, but bewildering, and out of place when there is only one thing in the entire mod that has a tech grid, in my opinion.

[grumbler]

Imperator Fyron said:
Not quite true. The parameters in the design file have no relation to the size of the components. Tell the AI to add 1 Structural Support per kT of ship hull and it will definitely do so. You might need to add this requirement near the beginning, as I am not sure when exactly the AI stops reading the misc ability list.

D'oh! I was thinking of using them as armor, when of course they could be miscellaneous abilities. Still, I think maybe the structural supports might be overkill - I never use 'em myself since they delay the ship's completion, and all they really do is provide a hulk to draw the AI's fire.

They could have dire affects. Armor would behave quite differently on different sized hulls. In my assessment, each leaky component (of the same class) should have the same size and hit points. Another option would be to remove the tech grid aspect. This would enable each level of armor techs researched to have a significant gain, rather than a very minor, very costly (in terms of retrofit cots) gain. Tech grids are nice, but bewildering, and out of place when there is only one thing in the entire mod that has a tech grid, in my opinion.

I was afraid the effects were built into the size of the armor. Well, this is not a crucial point right now, and we have some time to think of a workable scheme to keep the armor system as much as it is as possible. As you note, maybe the grid effect is not necessary.

[grumbler]

Spaceempires.net appears to be down. That is where I got used to tracking where the mod (including my contributions) was. Anyone know where the latest version is hung, for Onyx to download?

If that becomes too hard, I will hang it here, because it isn't really all that long. All images and whatnot are the products of others and available though the image mods. I only have data and AI file changes.

[Fyron]

Spaceempires.net appears to be down. That is where I got used to tracking where the mod (including my contributions) was. Anyone know where the latest version is hung, for Onyx to download?

SpaceEmpires.net is currently being reconfigured. I will post a link to the file when it is available, which should hopefully be in less than an hour...

grumbler said:
D'oh! I was thinking of using them as armor, when of course they could be miscellaneous abilities. Still, I think maybe the structural supports might be overkill - I never use 'em myself since they delay the ship's completion, and all they really do is provide a hulk to draw the AI's fire.

None of the leaky armors can be used as the "armor" category. All of them are misc ability useable.

I was afraid the effects were built into the size of the armor. Well, this is not a crucial point right now, and we have some time to think of a workable scheme to keep the armor system as much as it is as possible. As you note, maybe the grid effect is not necessary.

They are built into the hit points of the armor. The size is used as a balancing device. Light armor has more hit points per kiloton than heavy, but due to being so small (each piece has a far smaller amount of hit points), it ends up offering more easily penetrated defense than heavy armor does. Really big armor would have the same affect that heavy does to light (and medium).

If you use scale mounted armor components (each hull has the armor take up 5% of the space or whatever), it would make large ships have vastly superior armor capabilities compared to small ships. Not only could they potentially have more hit points, but their single armor component would have far more hit points per component than a smaller ship's would. This would make the armor act more and more as stock armor the larger the ship hull is (due to having more hit points per component as compared to "internals"), which in my estimation is contrary to the whole purpose of leaky armor.

Remember, the more hit points a component has, the more likely it is to be the one selected for being damaged. The more hit points a component has, the more biased these algorithms are towards selecting it. This is the cornerstone of the leaky armor paradigm. Also, it is what really allows heavy leaky armor to be stronger than light leaky armor in the B5 Mod.