New Mod: The Art of War Mod

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by Cynapse:
"What the hell is cruiser good for?" LOL
I like em though. Style is everything.

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Exactly! Of all the ship hull names, "cruiser" just sounds the coolest. You have to say it slow, and you can't help but smile... CRUISER

I gotta' find a way to make them usefull in this mod.

Geo

[Cylapse]

*lmao* Right on Geo, I feel ya.
Battle Cruiser sounds forced, ya know? LOL
Light cruiser is cool, but nothing tops that happy median of Cruiser. Engine modifications seem to be the most rational, since it is for cruisen ;-)

[Talenn]

Hey all,

Just a few thoughts from the Peanut Gallery:

Regarding Cruisers and other hull types:

One easy fix to do is to make the 'Hulls' cost significantly more as you go up in size and then climb steeper towards the top...ie, a 'surcharge' if you will on Capital Ships (above Cruiser size). This will encourage folks to make the bulk of their fleet the small fry and Cruisers, but have some Capital Ships available (maybe in mothball) for the inevitable wars.

Also, the artificially inflated costs make the build time longer which I also found to be far more realistic. Of course, for any of this to work, you have to make the Capital ships really worth it. To do that you have to break the basic mold of going up approx 100kt per size. The Capital Ships should have significant size difference to make up for the cost.

There are some other items that can be used to differentiate the big boys too. For example, an Armor component that takes up ~100kt but has a VERY nice ratio can go a long way to making Capitial ships nearly immune to small ships and will guarantee that only they can carry them. Some Weapons can be made to do the same thing...Massive damage and range, a nasty to-hit penalty and a huge size (although maybe a modest cost). Weapons like this would be required to penetrate the 'main armor' on other Capital ships, but would be nearly useless vs smaller, faster opponents.

In other words, the ship would have to have secondary batteries to deal with small fries or else be escorted. If you want some of the small guys to be able to affect Capital ships, weapons like a Torpedo that does good damage but fires once or twice a battle are a good option. Capital Ships wont want em because they can get the same performance from a Main Battery, but people can then design some small craft with lethal firepower at the cost of RoF and having vulnerability to other small craft.

Armor vs Shields can be a trade off between cost and space. Shields can be effective but have a MUCH higher cost (and thus add to the build time and maintenance). Armor is far cheaper, but more mass intensive. Weapons that defeat one or the other can round out the interaction as desired.

The possibilities here are endless if you dont have to worry about an AI.

A few other ideas to throw out:

In my original mod, I made the neglected resources much more necessary. This had a good effect on the game IMO as it required some actual resource management, but wreaked havoc with AIs. One way I encouraged the other two was to make Facilities on planets cost HIGH amounts of Organics and Radioactives...if you want to be colonizing a lot, you will need those two in much larger quantities. If you are simply going to war, you can dispense with some of them. This allows people to go on a 'war footing' by converting planets over and requires a retooling of the econ to go colony-happy...it made for a fairly good 'Guns or Better' decision-making process.

Population can be made to be far more important by adding a lot more early pop-breaks and giving the lower pops a huge resource and building penalty. That, coupled with higher cost facilities slows colonization down to a more 'realistic' level, but without the extreme slowdown of the 'Proportions' Mod.

I also agree with slowing down research a bit on Weapons. IMO, have the breaks come less often, but be more pronounced. I never really saw the point of having 10 levels of a weapon that you could get through all of the early levels in a few turns each. It just made for a micromanagement hassle of having to redesign the ships every few turns anyway.

The Missile/Anti-Missile Defense of the Devnullmod are quite good and IMO, should be a firm base for an AI-less mod. I havent explored all of the ins and outs in detail, but Missiles seem viable early on without being overwhelming and can continue to be viable even into the later game.

If using a Ship Size system as I had above, there is a lot of scope for Missile techs. Smaller Missiles are perfect for scrubbing the 'swarmers' and 'Ship Killers' can be made that are tough to knockdown, fast, and have huge warheads and space requirements. Give them a once or twice a battle RoF and they are good to go. Again, unlimited variety if the AI is not a factor.

Well, anyways, those are just some thoughts. If I had the time and the player-base locally for an AI-less mod to be successful, I'd love to take those ideas and pair them with some of the other great thoughts I've seen here and make a mod. Maybe these ideas will inspire y'all in ways I haven't even seen as well.

Thanx,
Talenn

[PirateRob]

Armor penetration has everything to do with the balistic properties of the ARMOR.. when talking about modern firearms. What makes some people think that the ability to penetrate armor increases with range is the fact that modern Kevlar armors are LESS effective against slow moving projectiles. Hence, at point blank range where projectile speeds are highest, Kevlar armor is effective.. Of course, armor penetration is ALSO effected by the cross sectional area of the bullet (which is why a .22 calibur round penetrates better than a .45 calibur round) so speed isnt the only factor to take into account.

So, for a DU Cannon in space, range is going to have no effect on armor penetration.

Now I think the MESON bLaster is the item that should do more damage at range reason being that mesons pass right through normal matter without effecting it.. until the meson decays into a normal particle (neutron? I don't recall the exact physics involved) So, over time, more mesons in the beam decay into high velocity neutrons that DO effect normal matter when they hit the target.. longer range means more time has passed = more mass the beam hits with = more damage. Technicaly, the meson could decay into a neutron IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SHIP and thus skip over any armor. Only a small percentage would though so most of the damage would be to the outer parts of the ship. Shields should be effective against a meson beam though.

Rob

[Talenn]

IIRC from my 'Traveller' days, that's exactly how the Meson Cannons worked. They ignored armor completely but were subject to a 'Meson Screen' that caused the premature decay of the meson before it hit the hull.

The end result was you had a Spinal Mount that basically was a ship killer regardless of the size and armor of the ship. If the shot hit and penetrated the Screen, the ship was essentially dead.

The upshot for fleet design was that even the largest of combatants were very vulnerable to opposing capital ships with spinal mounts. Smaller ships were harder to hit with those mounts, but they couldnt carry a spinal big enough to penetrate the larger ships' screens. Groups of smaller ships, however, could overwhelm the missile defenses on the larger ships and scrape weapons,sensors and screens off of the Caps making them more vulnerable.

Overall, it gave very interesting fleet and ship design mechanics for a game that was primarily a role-playing game.

Talenn

[Taz-in-Space]

While we are talking about things to put in a mod,
I had a thought about a new component. While playing P&N I thought how nice it would be to have a COMPONENT that would store resources. I
haven't checked out it the program will recognize
a COMPONENT with resource storage, but if so it would have been nice to have in a P&N game!
SO YOU GURU'S OUT THERE, IS THIS POSSIBLE?

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by Taz-in-Space:
While we are talking about things to put in a mod,
I had a thought about a new component. While playing P&N I thought how nice it would be to have a COMPONENT that would store resources. I
haven't checked out it the program will recognize
a COMPONENT with resource storage, but if so it would have been nice to have in a P&N game!
SO YOU GURU'S OUT THERE, IS THIS POSSIBLE?

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I believe that it did not work the Last time it was tested. We have been asking for this for ages, since it is necessary to make 'nomadic' races work properly. This, and research/intel from components and a 'habitat' module to grow populations in space. MM needs to know this is wanted. Keep asking.

[geoschmo]

Taelenn, I like the sounds of your ideas. I hope to incorporate some of them. If you still have the files availabel somewhere I would love to see them. You could email me.

Ok, since combat +/- has so much impact on combat, and since all the bonuses add, instead of multiplying, I am looking at some major changes in these areas.

First of all, ECM. I am looking at ten levels of ECM instead of 3, but topping the maximum defense bonus at 10% (Maybe 20) instead of the current 60% for ECM III.

I will also be modifying the racial attack and defense characteristics to make them much more expensive. And I have some thoughts about changes to the training facilities.

The goal of these changes is to slow down the progression and lower the top end of these types of combat modfiers, so that combat doesnt' get so out of whack so early in the game. This will hopefully put more of a premium on the number and overall quality of your ships. You shouldn't be able to destroy 50 enemy ships with 5 of your own and not even get a scratch just because you have a level or two more of ECM tech. At least that's my opinion.

Comments?

Geoschmo

[Gandalph]

quote:

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Originally posted by geoschmo:
You shouldn't be able to destroy 50 enemy ships with 5 of your own and not even get a scratch

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I agree. ECM 3 and religious talisman = victory without a scratch unless extremely outnumbered(20 to 1?).

[Phoenix-D]

Combat bonuses are tricky. They need to be powerful enough to be useful, yet not so much they are an insurmountable advantage, agreed? So researching improved weaponry rather than improved sensors should be a viable option- miss more, but make up for it with better weapon performance. You can't really do that in standard SE4. Extending the ECM/CS tree while lowering the actual benifits sounds good.

Something else I've thought about, inspired by the proportions mod: better sensors/ECM, but they are bigger than the normal type and non-stackable. Again, it becomes a choice between increased accuracy (or defense) and firepower/direct defense. Proportions doesn't go far enough with it IMO; the components are always small enough that except on very small ships you aren't sacrificing much combat capability to go with the best.

Stealth and Scattering armor are a good example here IMO. You get 15% more defense plus a few other stuff- it's not the best cloak, it's not even the best armor. And it's fairly big; sticking both plus ECM on a ship makes you pretty hard to hit, but you pay a nasty price size wise.

Two other thoughts:
-making ships tougher? So that who gets the first shot in matters less.
-should ships really be able to *outrun* missiles? How about running away to give PD more shots?

Phoenix-D