The Star Trek Mod - v1.9.7.5 (Oct 07)

[Ragnarok-X]

Captain Kwok said:
"Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!" - Message from Andorian Ambassador to Cardassian scum.

Ok now THAT is really pi**ing me off.

[Ragnarok-X]

Hey AC,
sorry to bother again, but i cant seem to find the point-defense-phasers you mention. Im playing the Cardassian, the only think against fighters i can see are the standart PDC-Cannons with their weak damage. What do i have to research ?

Secondly i think i found another bug which is quite annoying as well. Here it goes. Each shield saps a bit of damage and created shield energy from hit. While a lvl 1 shield saps 10 damage per hit, a lvl 3 saps 15 damage.
Now the average lvl 5 weapon does like 55 damage. Now, if a player has a ship with 300 kT size, he can easily mount 3 of those shields. Now given he ONLY has lvl 3 shields, EACH hit will be reduced by 3*15 damage. -> 55-45 = 10. This means a single hit will now do 10 damage. Its a little few i think
Now to exploit this, imagine a players put 4 of those shields on his ship. Now he will be invincible. Since even the best beam weapons only offer 55 damage (mounted 120% = 66-70), it is easily possible to create ships or bases which can not be hurt by those weapons.

You should consider SERIOUSLY lowering the "shield-generation-from-damage" ability on shields.
I hope i aint talking crap here, but i think several of those abilites DO stack, which is the problem. If they dont, forgot by point.

Ty.

[Fyron]

This isn't so much a bug as exactly how leaky shield systems are meant to work. Of course, STM shields aren't the typical brand of leaky shields, but they still have the shields from damage feature. The shields are added after the damage is done to the hull. Unless you have very high hit point per component armor (such as 150 points), some components will be damaged with each shot that hits the hull. Then, the next shot will have to go through the shields.

Typically, high damage per shot weapons are the most useful in a leaky shield system, especially when larger ships come into the fray.

Any weapon that skips armor will prevent the shields from damage ability from triggering. This includes stock game null space projectors and shard cannons.

More information on leaky shields can be found in SEIV Modding 101.

[Ragnarok-X]

I know that, Fyron, but if you take a look at the shield and weapon components, you will notice a single shield just takes up 20 kT of size, while offering 10 - 35 shield-generation-from-damage-ability and at least 50 shield points. Now if your average weapon (compared to the level of the shield) does, lets say 30 damage, then you literally only need to pack 3-4 shields on a vessel to make it invulnerable.4 shields offer at least 200 shield points and 40 - 140 !! shield-generation-from-damage-ability. No ordinary weapon can ever do more than 70-80 damage, which makes it quite hard to kill anything. To make it worse, consider pumping a station with just 100-120 KT (5-6) shields and it will become impossibly to beat as well. Of course im only talking about the standart weapons in the mod, from which each races has 2, one with a slightly higher damage, one with a slighly better hitchance. Im looking forward to hear ACs thoughts on this.

[Fyron]

I'm looking at 1.9.1.2 data files and shield generators only have 10 shield generation from damage. 8472 shield generators and Tholian CA go up to 15. Borg energy barriers go up to 20.

I am not sure you understand how it works. Components will be destroyed when the shields are at 0 points. Then points will be added to the shields. A weapon that does 30 damage will be able to destroy 30 hit points of components, then 30 points will be added to the shield layer (assuming you have at least 30 total shield generation from damage ability). Having an excess amount of shields from damage does not provide any benefit other than redundancy if some shield generators are destroyed. The hit points per component of the armor components is typically far more important than the shields from damage ability. Shields from damage ability amounts only determine how small of a ship you need to get the high levels of it.

The only problem for most races I can see is when emissive armor comes into play. Emissive Armor III requires weapons doing at least 65 damage to destroy an armor component (50 hit points + 15 emissive ability). Ships with 65+ shields from damage and EA III will effectively become invincible against ships with weapons that do less than 65 damage. Ships with 131+ shields from damage and EA III will effectively become invincible against ships with weapons that do less than 65 damage. Assume the current shield level is 0 and you are armed with weapons that do 64 damage. You hit the ship. 49 damage is done to the armor, 49 shield points are added to the shield layer. On the next shot, the 49 damage to the hull is simply added to the incoming hit. So, the hit will do 114 damage. 49 points of it will hit the shields, exactly the amount of excess partial damage from the last shot. 64 damage will be applied to the hull. The EA lowers it to 49. 49 points are added to the shield layer. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

Now, if you have a weapon that does 65 points of damage, it will be able to destroy an entire component, assuming the shield levels hit 0 at some point. Easy to do with a shield depleter. You can stagger shield depleters amongst your weapons. This will tend to eliminate all of the shields that were generated by the previous weapon hit, allowing the next to simply damage the armor. Of course, it is better to have more than a 0 point margin, but 65 will do.

If a ship just has regular armor, you only need weapons that do 30 damage per hit to be effective.

The Tholian Crystalline Armor might be too powerful at higher levels. It effectively has 80 hit points per component, including the EA ability of 10. To destroy it with normal damage type weapons when there is plenty of leaky shielding on the ship, you need weapons doing 80+ damage per hit...

[Ragnarok-X]

Well, firstly, the version im talking about is 1.9.0.2. I told i didnt knew if this was fixed in later versions, but the one im playing on PBW has shields with 10-35 shield-generation-from-damage abilities, each 2 level increase by 5.
Its strange, i thought that those works another way. Here is how i think it works (which is wrong, if you are right)

Lets say i have 3 shields. Each one provides 50 shieldpoints and shield-from-damage abilities of lets say 20. This comes to a total of 150 shield points and a total of 60 points to shields per damage.
Now lets say my average weapon does 75 damage points (which is about the maximum a weapon can do, considering shields can get far better than those in this example.
Now, one weapon hits the ship: 150 shields points are reduced to 75, but immedialy increases by 60, effectivly doing only 15 ! damage. Now if i had just one more shield, that my high-end weapon does no damage at all, since the 75 point it at first does are immediatly negated by shield-from-damage-ability, effectivly even creating more shieldpower than damage was done, up to the maximum shield amount.

Could you please (taking my numbers) do another explanation at how combat at this stage would work ? Because i was pretty sure this is the way it does..I even remember combats were lesser weapons were actually POWERING UP the shields (indicated with a "-" before the damage offset in the combat, for example a -5 damage setting was driving up the shields by 5 points, though this was happening in my mod which was using a similar system)

[AngleWyrm]

If you've seen the latest episode of Enterprise (4x17 - Bound), they bring some new light on the Orion Syndicate. So Here's a modded set of three racial pictures for them

[AMF]

Does anyone out there have a copy of the data files for the Star Trek Mod 1.72? That's 1.72, NOT the most recent version. I (well, Alneyan really) needs a copy of them so he can run my empire in the QCOnflict game which uses them and not the latest version (see, I;m out of town, and he's running my klingons while I'm gone....oh, nevermind, it's all very complicated...I'm just looking for a copy of the mod fils for that version...)

thanks!

Alarik

[AngleWyrm]

Any one of your opponants playing in that QCOnflict game that you are playing should have a copy?

[douglas]

Ragnarok-X said:
Lets say i have 3 shields. Each one provides 50 shieldpoints and shield-from-damage abilities of lets say 20. This comes to a total of 150 shield points and a total of 60 points to shields per damage.
Now lets say my average weapon does 75 damage points (which is about the maximum a weapon can do, considering shields can get far better than those in this example.
Now, one weapon hits the ship: 150 shields points are reduced to 75, but immedialy increases by 60, effectivly doing only 15 ! damage. Now if i had just one more shield, that my high-end weapon does no damage at all, since the 75 point it at first does are immediatly negated by shield-from-damage-ability, effectivly even creating more shieldpower than damage was done, up to the maximum shield amount.

Could you please (taking my numbers) do another explanation at how combat at this stage would work ? Because i was pretty sure this is the way it does..I even remember combats were lesser weapons were actually POWERING UP the shields (indicated with a "-" before the damage offset in the combat, for example a -5 damage setting was driving up the shields by 5 points, though this was happening in my mod which was using a similar system)

Ok, 150 shield points, 60 shields from damage, 75 damage per shot. First shot: 75 damage to shields, shields reduced to 75. No damage was done to the hull, so shields from damage is not triggered. Second shot: 75 damage to shields, shields reduced to 0. Still no hull damage, so no shield regen. Third shot: 75 damage to hull, 60 shields from damage. Assume all damage always gets absorbed by 50 hp pieces of armor. One armor got destroyed by this shot, and another took the remaining 25 damage. Fourth shot: 25 partial damage added to shot for 100 total damage. 60 absorbed by shields, 40 hull damage - only partial to one armor. Only 40 shield points are generated, even though the total shields from damage ability value is 60, because the amount generated cannot exceed the amount of hull damage dealt. Fifth shot: 40 partial damage from previous shot takes out shields, 75 hull damage dealt, destroying one armor, dealing 25 partial damage, and generating 60 shields.

The net effect of the shields from damage ability is to nullify partial damage and make non-partial damage have to be dealt twice, up to the maximum of the total ability value per shot. Since this mod uses leaky armor, it is entirely possible for some shots to destroy internals, even shield generators, on the occasions when the shields are down and awaiting a recharge. Shields from damage can only make a ship completely invulnerable if you have a component with the armor ability that has more hit points than the enemy can deal damage in one shot.

Edit: Oops, just looked some stuff up and I was wrong about the leakiness of most of the armors. Seems like everything except standard and emissive armor actually does have the armor ability. Most of the armors max out at 50 hp each or less, and the highest emissive (20) is only available on ablative armor, which peaks at 30 structure, so most of it isn't a major problem. However, crystalline armor goes up to 70 structure, and emissive armor III has 15 emissive ability but lacks the armor ability, so the combination of these could completely block any normal weapon that does less than 85 damage per shot. This is enough to completely negate most normal weapons. Atrocities, you might want to consider eliminating crystalline armor IV and V.