Babylon 5 Mod

[Val]

Ok, unless I hear otherwise, I am going to make the change to the VehicleSize.txt to require 1 engine per 50 tons of ship to move a ship 1 space. I will save a second VehicleSize file with the old SE IV style in it for those that prefer the 1 to 1 ratio.

Does anyone want me to post what we have so far for group review? It is playable, but like I said, it does not yet have any specialized B5 tech yet.

Is anyone interested in rendering the components (or at least some of them)?

What else would everyone like to see added to this?

[Val]

Ok, I finished the VehicleSize file and gave most of the ships a 50 ton to 1 thrust/engine value, though I did give the Scout and Fast Courier a 1 to 1 value (would normally be 2 and 3 to 1) to represent their speedy designs. I also gave all fighters a 1 to 1 with the exceptions of the Shuttles and Large/Massive Fighters (which have 2 to 1).

Please feel free to download this and let me know if you think anything should be changed.
1007595665.txt

Also, in the data folder on the mod I added a sub-folder with both the Q-N style and the normal style of movement (as well as adding the same two files with the neostandard shipset names).

[Fyron]

All of the ship sizes in your file have zero max engines! Doesn't this prevent them from having any at all? I think that you need to set the max engines to 99 (that's what they are in P&N, anyways).

[Val]

I found (quite by accident) that 0 engines max and Requires Engines is set to True then you can put an unlimited number of engines on board (at least in my copy with the 1.49 patch). If someone else is having trouble, or if this doesn't work with Gold SEIV then I would up the Max number of engines to the highest I could (it takes a LOT of engines to move the planet killer).

Another question for y'all: Since we are using the Q-N system for our drives, this forces you to get multiple engines to get each movement point, but components that give bonus Movement points negate this to a degree. For example: 1 Quantum Engine on a destroyer would give the destroyer a 3 movement right off, while it would take 18 Ion Engines to achieve the same effect (6 Quantum Engines would give it a move of 4, 18 Q-E a move of 6).

So I was going to propose three things/ideas:
1) Only Gravitic and Ancient drives will get a bonus move (1 for Gravitic and 2 or 3 for ancients).

2) Drives tonnage will be reduced to half as you research better drives to help ease size constraints - this will represent better tech.

3) Agile ships (represented with extra movement) can be created with either "Agile Drives" with bonus movement or just a single component that gives bonus movement.

Opinions?

[ 06 December 2001: Message edited by: Val ]

[Phoenix-D]

" I would up the Max number of engines to the highest I could (it takes a LOT of engines to move the planet killer)."

Careful on this. The max engines you can have is ~ 255- IF you use standard values for engines. If you use higher-propulsion engines (like in Pirates and Nomads) you'll run into problems earlier. If total move value given by the engines goes over 255, you'll get a Range Check error.

Phoenix-D

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

---

So I was going to propose three things/ideas:
1) Only Gravitic and Ancient drives will get a bonus move (1 for Gravitic and 2 or 3 for ancients).
2) Drives tonnage will be reduced to half as you research better drives to help ease size constraints - this will represent better tech.
3) Agile ships (represented with extra movement) can be created with either "Agile Drives" with bonus movement or just a single component that gives bonus movement.

---

1) seems ok on the surface, but more engines reduces efficiency. (1 QE gives 4 (1+3bonus), but 3 QE gives 6(3+3bonus). Adding those two engines reduces the power of individual drives by half!

2) Silly, reducing size is pointless. As drive tech goes up, you increase their thrust. You get the same effect. (thust per KT improves) Also, offering larger engines as tech goes up would be good.
EG: By the time you get up to an LC, you're putting 20 engines on your ship, but we can replace 7 10KT engines with a 65KT Capital Ship Drive. Less clicking when building a ship.

3) Rather than bonus movement, which applies to straight-line strategic map flying, add the Afterburner ability from fighters, so they only get the bonus in combat. However, like bonus movement, it is not affected by ship size, so beware large values like three.

[Val]

quote:

---

Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
1) seems ok on the surface, but more engines reduces efficiency. (1 QE gives 4 (1+3bonus), but 3 QE gives 6(3+3bonus). Adding those two engines reduces the power of individual drives by half!

2) Silly, reducing size is pointless. As drive tech goes up, you increase their thrust. You get the same effect. (thust per KT improves) Also, offering larger engines as tech goes up would be good.
EG: By the time you get up to an LC, you're putting 20 engines on your ship, but we can replace 7 10KT engines with a 65KT Capital Ship Drive. Less clicking when building a ship.

3) Rather than bonus movement, which applies to straight-line strategic map flying, add the Afterburner ability from fighters, so they only get the bonus in combat. However, like bonus movement, it is not affected by ship size, so beware large values like three.

---

1) Right. The cost doesn't have to be much higher, but this bonus move would give older races a little edge that the young races don't have.

2) I was thinking about making engines at 5tn instead of 10tn so we can have a bit more varience in the different hull types for speed. 1 Bridge/LS/CQ & 24 Engines on a Destroyer gives you a speed of 4 and only 30 tns left for other stuff. We could accomplish the same thing by halving the number of engines required though.

65 Ton Capital Ship Engine : Can you give me an example component? How would this work when you require X # of engines/move? If you lowered the # of required engines per move then people would use the smaller engines, wouldn't they?

3) Sounds like a reasonable idea.

Finally, does anyone know if we can require ships to have a different component? If so we could require the ship to have a reactor (and a set type or number if possible) and then just use engines as thrusters.

[ 06 December 2001: Message edited by: Val ]

[Val]

SJ - I think I may have answered one of my own questions.

Would you have the larger engines simply generate more standard movement? So by making an engine that generate 7 standard movement, a ship that requires 7 engines per movement will only get 1 movement for each engine added.

Just tested that and it works

[Suicide Junkie]

Exactly.
Say 50KT = 1 EMP.
And the basic engine gives 3 MP. So the CSE gives 21 MP.
If you stuffed a Captial Ship Engine onto an ES, which requires 3 EMP, you'd get 7 movement, and save 5KT over lots of small engines.

"Engines per move" is inaccurate, really it means "standard movement points per actual in-game movement point"


PS: to shipset designers
Could you design the "shield" effect to look like a hull bLast of some sort?
I'm using a small amount of SE4 shield to simulate SE3-style emissive armor effects, and I wouldn't want anybody to get the wrong impression.
This is mainly for shadow ships, but everybody should have one or two SE3-EA points to their armor, and it would look silly to have a phong-shield image pop up every time the ship gets hit.
Some electric arcs, or white firey flare (will always occur just before a hull-damage explosion animation) would look good.


Example armor:
Note that the values are quite small, since they will be used in large quantities to achieve the "Armor holes" effect (where shots can occasionally hit internals before the armor is gone)
Also, note that hitpoints & damage are multiplied by 10x, to slow down in-combat repair rates.

Name := B5 Normal Armor
Description := Normal hull type protective material. Easily pierced if thin, the more the merrier.
Tonnage Space Taken := 1
Tonnage Structure := 90
Number of Abilities := 0

Name := B5 Shadow Armor
Description := Able to resist moderate amounts of incoming fire, but can be overloaded if too much is brought to bear at once. Completely protects internals.
Tonnage Space Taken := 10
Tonnage Structure := 1000
Number of Abilities := 4
Ability 1 Type := Shield Generation
Ability 1 Descr := Has a maximum emissive capacity of 100 ADU per hit.
Ability 1 Val 1 := 100
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
Ability 2 Type := Shield Generation From Damage
Ability 2 Descr := Can emiss up to 20 ADU between hits.
Ability 2 Val 1 := 20
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0
Ability 3 Type := Shield Regeneration
Ability 3 Descr := Can emiss up to 50 ADU between combat turns.
Ability 3 Val 1 := 50
Ability 3 Val 2 := 0
Ability 4 Type := Armor Regeneration
Ability 4 Descr := Can be healed during combat.
Ability 4 Val 1 := 1
Ability 4 Val 2 := 0

[ 06 December 2001: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]

[Val]

Ok, I'm working on the Engines and Reactors now, should have something for everyone's approval by Monday at the latest.