MOD: Space Empires V - Babylon 5

[Ragnarok-X]

Im hereby announcing the Babylon 5 / Space Empires V Mod Project




Space Empires V
Babylon 5 Mod



General Concept:

The Mod will likely and obviously be heavily influenced by Val`s original SE IV mod.
Players can chose to play one of many babylon 5-races, both minor and major ones will be included. Adding the Ancients has not yet been decided but is likely to happen at one point or another, bearing a considerable tradeoff for their advanced technology.

Players will start with their respective homeworlds and from there on try to gain control of the galaxy. Econonical and military development will likely happen a bit slower than stock, though still at a reasonable rate (by no means as slow as proportions for example).

Main goal of the mod would be to offer a good gaming experience, delivering flavour and atmosphere of the original TV series. This means every major (Earth, Minbari, Narn, Centauri) and most minor races (Vree, Brakiri, Drazi etc) would be designed with their specific traits in mind, unique races with several race traits offering unique technology. For example, the Minbari homeworld would have a facility housing the Grey Council (given via race trait) while the Centauri would have the Imperial Palace on their homeworld. Expanding on traits, the Minbari would likely have facilites focusing on their psionic/wise/enlighten-theme, while the Centauri would be able to build facilies expanding their sabotage/espionage/warmongering theme. Of course all species would share the same „basic layout“ via mineral/organic/radioactive/research/intelligence facilites (add different names for flavour).

Another goal in planet development would be to create a system less of a no-brainer, making facilites take 1.5 kT or 2-3 kT of size instead of every single facility having the same exact „size“ of 1 kT.

A potential scenarior with facilites could be something where an **off**-atmosphere midsized planet would have ~ 10 kT of development size. Instead of ressource miners taking up 1 kT each, it would be possible to make ressource facilies have a size of 5, perhaps 10 kT each. This would help with managing planets (no more 20 build queues and 20 messages about a finished object in the planet log). I rather have a planet with two huge mining spots then having a planet with 8 small mining spots and 2 research facilites (common sense anyone?).

In addition, maybe there should be new facilty type indicating the amount of „urbanization“ on the planet. Something like „Settlement“, „City“ and „Megalopolis“. This facilites would have a very big size, kT-wise and would produce all kinds of ressurces (metal, org, rad, res, int), but at very low volumed compared to their mono-pendants.

Settlements could then be upgraded to Cities and Megalopolis, though it would make sense to incorporate requires into the upgrade, i.e. You cant upgrade settlement to city unless you have more than 25m pop. Names are pending btw. Just so you get the general idea.


I have not decided decided upon the general pace of development. Will you easily be able to artificially create new homeworlds (production output) like in stock, or will your homeworld always be your capital and have a huge benefit even compared to other fully developed worlds ? For the gameplays`s sake im thinking about something in between. Expansion and development should be pretty important, but a homeworld should always be unique and useful.



Coming next would be ship construction. I dont like how you can build a „space yard“ on your planets in stock, so i would like to make something different. Something i like would be to scrap space yards and give the above mentioned „Settlements“ a small space yard ability (more for higher tier`s of „Settlement“) and from there on work using population modfiers. Settlement with low population = very slow build rate. City with medium pop = good build rate. Megalopolis with maxed pop = overwhelming build rate.

Apart from building ships on planets, i believe that giving orbital space yards (station w/ base space yard) a good construction rate would be the way to go. I cant seem to remember if they ever showed where ships were produced, but i imagine orbial space yards are likely to be the way to go.. Basicly i would like people to build a bunch of orbital space yards using their „settlements“ and population and once done those yards get out ships.

Ship design would use QNP where bigger sized hulls require more propulsion and each engine offers a bit of propulsion. Small ship with many engines = fast, big ship with few engines = very slow. The more space a vessel has, the exponential more engines does it require. Unless you feel like an engine technican on crack, your big vessels will be slower than your small vessel.

Just like in the original mod, engines require power and you will need to fit reactors on your ships. These reactors are pretty big, have a bad size/structure ratio but not only store power, but they even generate power. Maybe there will be different sizes of reactors or different mounts, but bigger ships certainly will require more powerful reactors.

Unlike what stock B5 is suggesting, there will be no ships opening wormholes. I cant imagine the micro involved in outfitting ships with wormhole-generators , opening/closing wormholes etc.

You will still have to use the map-generated wormholes/gates, sorry.

Of course babylon 5 is all about combat (wo needs diplomacy ?) we need to think about space combat.
I want there to be vast amounts of weapons (certainly more than Anti-Proton Beams and Meson Blasters...), both pulse (fast firing energy „bullets“ and particle (think beam) ones. Some races will have unique traits for getting unique weapons, but most weapons will be researchable by every race. Due to the sheer amount of weaponry, in one game no two players should ever use the same weapons (because thats boring).

Even if differences of weapons will only be their look and a marginal chance in stats, i find this to be important.

At this point im thinking about PULSE and PARTICLEBEAM weaponry. Pulse weapons would be able to fire every round (maybe every 2 rounds, think about the gun on babylon 5 when it defended the narn vessel), but have less range and firepower and perhaps accuracy. Beam weapons would only fire all 2-3 rounds but have a good punch (imagine an Omega Destroyers firing its pulse weapons and each once in a while its juicy red beam).

For me it would be important to create a system where players DONT mount 10x the biggest beam they can, but stay canon and use pulse weaponry as well. Im not sure how do that, maybe give a limit to weaponry, depending on the size of the hull used ?

In regards to weapons, there would as well be the need for interesting armor.
I would like to do something where armor soaks up good amounts of damage, but every hit has the chance to damage internals. Think „LEAKY“. In addition, Each armor would be able to negate a small amount of damage.

Example:
Big Beam: 100 damage per hit
Pulse Gun: 25 damage per hit.

Armor
size 10 kT, structure 100 kT, negates 10 damage per hit.

In this example we have a decent armor with 1:10 size/hp ratio, Still, the beam hitting it would likely be able to deliver a small amount of damage to the internals (say, 30 damage). Against this armor, the beam would have an effiency of 90 % (10 damage are negated). Sounds good to me.

The weak pulse gun on the other han, has only an effiency of 40 %. Of the 25 damage it could do, 10 are negated by the thickness of the armor plating. However, the pulse gun fires every round, so which one would be more effective (not taking into account cost and size of weapons) in breaking the ship ?

Researching armors would result in better size/hp ratios and in more „negation“.
I want ships to fire their pulse guns with minimal effect. I want players (and myself) to be happy once your beams have been cooled down and you can unleash more considerable firepower, if only for a moment, vaporizing their armors and destroying parts of their internal system.

Talking about hull design, i was always a fan of stocks „research bigger hulls“ system. You start with scouts and frigates and as you research you will be able to construct destroyers and cruisers (think Olympus, Nova, Omega, Warlock). Bigger ships would have more room for weapons and armor, but be slower and be more „clumsy“ in combat.

There may be new components indicating „crew“. For example, you may add an „Captain/Admiral/whatever“ component to the a ship. These components would not be stackable but give considerable boni to space combat. In order to make them less spamable, i would like to restrict them to „only X times per empire“. I dont want to see 50 Olympus corvetes with Admirals on board. In addition, these „components“ would give an incredible hefty maintaince disadvantage (i.e. Maintaince *500%).

While these vessels would be pretty powerful (20+% evasion and to hit for example?) they would be rare and mainly be added for flavour (think a fleet of 30 ships under the fleet command of a Warlock w/ Admiral)

Apart from shadows phase-shifting there will be no cloaking technlogy.
Im not sure about adding remote mining. Might be interesting i guess.
At this point i dont know about sensors (long-range), where they of any importance in the show ?
Psionics (i.e. Psi-corps, natual psionics like the Minbari ) will likely work like „captains“, being a „component“ and giving combat boni.









I would appreciate any comments or cristism.

[Raapys]

I've always liked the 'Settlement' idea, where you just really drop facilities as such and turn the entire colony into one facility which produces more and more as it grows.

Perhaps as an addon to this there could be facilities called for example 'Focus Field - Research', which would basically let you choose a specific area that colony should focus on. Makes sense on planets with a high mineral rating to focus on gathering those minerals, for instance. Or perhaps you want the colony to focus on building ships, so you build the 'Focus Area' that increases construction for that colony.

About the ancients, you could just pull them back to the stoneage and let them join in with everyone else. Stuff like Organic Technology could be something everyone would eventually get access to, if technologically advanced.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

So...Are the minbari going to go genocidal if you so much as scratch the pain on their ships?

[Santiago]

FYI
Arpeegy over at the official forums has also been working on a B5 mod based on B5 Wars. Good luck with your version.

http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/5448

[Baron Munchausen]

If it produces a good Vorlon shipset, that alone will be worth it. The Vorlons had such cool ships. I wonder why they are so rarely made by all the ship makers. We've got all the other B5 races, even the Shadows. Aren't the Shadows' ships at least as difficult as the Vorlons' ships?

[Fyron]

I'd recommend veering away from the 80000 weapon setup of B5Wars, aka what the SE4 mod did and the route Arpeegy is taking. You only need a few flavor weapons for each race, all of which can serve unique and useful roles. When every race as 20 weapons to pick from, all you have accomplished is wasting a lot of modding time, since real choices will boil down to a handful of best weapons anyways. Plus, its actually possible to balance a smaller number of weapons.

[Suicide Junkie]

Check out the CB-B5ism mod variant for one way to get a good atmosphere and a fair, playable game.


As far as ancients go, what about simply having a racial trait which reduces reproduction to zero?
Spend all the racial points you get from that on tech-boosting traits instead, and hey, you look like an ancient now.

PS:
I really hope you're not going to have a racial trait called "Minbari" as part of your scheme... that's really iron-fisty.

The more space a vessel has, the exponential more engines does it require.

Unless the exponent is 1.0 (IE linear increase in requirements), it is not QNP. A ship twice as massive should require exactly twice as many engines to perform the same.


As far as armor...
You'll need the SE4 damage mechanics to get the leaky armor you want.
In SE5, you have a choice between percentage based leaky (Always the same fraction leaks through, no randomness) or directional armor (distribute armor to the front, back, left and right)

[Ragnarok-X]

Before i begin actual work on my mod, can you tell if any of the things i have mind are not realizeable from a technichal point of view ?

Secondly, can you tell where the starting planets facilites are stored ?

[Captain Kwok]

HomeworldStartingFacilities.txt has a list of the facilities that are added to player's homeworlds.

[Atrocities]

Captain Kwok said:
HomeworldStartingFacilities.txt has a list of the facilities that are added to player's homeworlds.

But making changes to it doesn't really do anything at all.