New Mod: The Art of War Mod - Page 7

geoschmo · #61 May 5th, 2002, 03:57 AM

Ok, I muddled around with this idea for a couple days waiting for inspiration and I think I came up with a combination that I like.

The plan as it is now is to allow all the ship hulls to be built at level one of ship construction. Instead of adding a bunch of hulls though I am doing what was suggested and adding a component that modifies maintenance. I tested this and it does work fine. This will allow designs to be upgraded.

For those that are interesed in the details, I have changed the exsisting Life Support component to "Primary Life Support" and added a One per ship restriction to it. I then am adding a component with life support ability called "Engineering Deptartment" that is also one per ships and is larger and more expensive than the Primary Life Support. In the component description I state that this is required for ships and bases larger than 500Kt. Since the pimary life support can only be added once, people should use the enginering dept for cruisers and above for the second life support comp.

Then I am adding an "Auxillary Life Support" that is also larger and more expensive than the primary life support and Engineering section for the larger ships/bases that require more than two life supports.

At higher levels of ship construction the engineering dept and auxillary life support will be smaller and less expensive, but in the early levels they will be large enough and expensive enough to significantly restrict the effectiveness and efficency of larger ships. Also they will never be as small as Primary life support so they should never be used in place of Primary life support, although there is really no way to prevent that if someone wants to be contrary.

Also at higher levels of ship construction the Engineering Dept will offer progressively larger reductions in maint, which will make the bigger ships much more useable later in the game.

I am also considering furhter penalizing the larger ships early in the game by giving the hull a maint penalty which will be offset later in the game by the engineering dept.

Geoschmo

Fyron · #62 May 5th, 2002, 05:05 AM

quote:
I am also considering furhter penalizing the larger ships early in the game by giving the hull a maint penalty which will be offset later in the game by the engineering dept.

That would be a good idea. Of course, then you could design small ships with the engineering department, and get really low maintainence ships.

geoschmo · #63 May 5th, 2002, 05:48 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

That would be a good idea. Of course, then you could design small ships with the engineering department, and get really low maintainence ships.

True. Early on the Engineering dept will be large enough and offer little or no maint reduction though so that should not be abused. Later in the game though once the eng dept gets small enough to use on the smaller ships and the maint reduction comes into play it could be a valid comp to put on a smaller ship and the lower maint should help to keep them a viable option, which is part of the goal of this whole thing.

Geoschmo

geoschmo · #64 May 7th, 2002, 06:44 AM

Art of War Beta Version .70 is available.

Not everyhting discussed has been added yet. Mainly smoothing out the combat modifiers and wroking on the ship hull ideas. Have not change anything with the propulsion yet, or added any new weapons or tweaked any old ones.

Kick it around and tell me what you think. You should be able to play against the AI, at least to get a feel for it. I haven't totally shut them off yet.

Geoschmo

dumbluck · #65 May 7th, 2002, 11:54 AM

Well, um, I wish I had something productive to add to the discussion. I have been following the thread, and I guess I just wanted to give some moral support. That's it! I'll be the cheerleader!!!

NOT!

Anyway, this should be a cool mod for PBW. More power to ya!

Talenn · #66 May 7th, 2002, 06:15 PM

geoschmo:

I took a quick look through the hull sizes and whatnot at the start of a game. I didnt have time to play it out, but here are a few quick observations:

1) Larger ship hulls arent going to be used at all early on in the current form, even with the Eng Dept. They have to be made a bit more attractive. Maybe certain 'large ship only' components will help. I know the goal is to have them become more useful as time goes by, but they should at least be viable (if expensive) in the early game or there really isnt a choice to build them.

2) CAs appear useless in this build. CLs only lose 100kt, get a defensive bonus, an offensive bonus, and dont get the hideous 50% maintenance penalty. IMO, the CA should be the largest 'standard' hull that people use...ie, the workhorse of the fleet. Anything bigger (Cap ships) should start to cost the hideous maintenance, but start getting the 'power' returns...ie, greatly increased space, components that only they can benefit from, weapon mount bonuses etc.

3) The smaller hulls probably dont really need a To-hit bonus AND a Defense bonus. I think the two together are working against what you wanted originally by trimming the bonuses back on the Sensors/ECMs etc. If the rest of the mod is in place, I dont think they will be necessary and could unbalance things farther down the road. As it is now, without missiles, some of the larger cant hit the small guys at all, but receive no real benefit in return.

All of this is just my opinion. I applaud your efforts and I wish I had more time to tweak with it and send you some working data. Please dont take any of this as an 'attack' on your work.
I have thought the hull size interactions through a bit after my Last mod and I can probably work up some other rough numbers for you to look at if you want.

Thanx,
Talenn

geoschmo · #67 May 7th, 2002, 07:19 PM

Taelenn. No ofense taken. The reson I posted them is that I wanted feedback. Yours especially as a lot of what I am doing is based on comments you have already made in the thread.

Personally I like all the hulls having defensive and offensive bonuses or penalties, depending on the size. I think it fits with the overall feel of the mod, and with the goal of keeping the small ships viable later in the game. I may have gone a bit high with them though. I went with the exsisting defense bonuses/penalties and just filled in the gaps for ths ships that didn't have them in the stock game. With the other combat modifieing comps though I decresead these, and I probably should have with the hulls. I will probably cut the pluses and minuses in half for the next Version.

The attack bonus is already half of the defense bonus for the hulls. This balances wiht the ECM-Armor/Combat Senosrs though, as currently I have the sensors with an advantage. This is planned though as I want sensors to be stronger than ECM to lessen "Hot kinfe through butter" effect of a slight sensor tech diparity now in combat. Yes the higher tech should win, and destroy the enemy, but they shouldn't walk off the field without a scratch.

Also the larger ships have the turret mount that increases chance to hit, did you see that?

Personally I don't think the maint for the larger ships is an issue. I didn't intend to make them viable early, just available for someone if they wanted to pay enough for them, since in the stock game they aren't even evailable.

However the lack of space is an issue. The need for the engineering section and additional crew quarters does limit the Cruiser, and that's without implementing my proplulsion changes, which will futher cramp things for them. I think what I may do there is raise the size of the Cruiser, or add an other step or two in there. Maybe Light Cruiser, Cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, battle Cruiser? And maybe shuffle the sizes of the smaller ships some. I don't know. I'll have to think that one over.

Keep the comments coming.

Geoschmo

Baron Munchausen · #68 May 7th, 2002, 07:30 PM

Geo:

Why did you use the life support instead of the crew quarters? It seems to me that the crew quarters represent the real maintainers of the ship.

Also, what about Master Computers? Should they have the same bonus or maybe a higher bonus than whatever crew components you make into an 'engineering component' to control maintenance costs?

It's too bad we can't use the 'restrictions' abilities in the vehiclesize.txt to control how much of various other components besides engines and cargo bays can be put into a given hull. We could have cruisers able to carry a higher proportion of armor or weapons than a light cruiser and so have an advantage even if it's only slightly larger.

[ 07 May 2002: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

geoschmo · #69 May 7th, 2002, 08:13 PM

Not sure why I used life support instead of crew quarters for the egineering section. Just did. Could have been either.

Yes, using a master comp as is instead of the engineering section would put a severe crimp on the maint for larger ships. I suppose there is nothing stopping one from using a master comp and an engineering section.

I will have to work on that. Perhaps the master comp will have tech reqs in computers and ship construction, and the higher levels of ships construciton, you will get a master comp with a better maint reduction. Keep it equal to the same level of engineering section. That could work. Of course then you'd have people using master computers on small ships and getting free maint. Maybe I don't want to do that afterall.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Geo

[ 07 May 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Phoenix-D · #70 May 7th, 2002, 08:36 PM

Also remember that unless the maintance bonuses don't stack, people will probably put both a master computer and engineering section on, just to get the enhanced maintance reduction.

EDIT: you never did tell me if you wanted the "warhead + body" missile types I made. I'll assume that's a no

Phoenix-D

[ 07 May 2002: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]