Mod Idea: Simulating surfaces -> Borg Technology -> Twinkie Physics -> Worldviews

[Suicide Junkie]

For simulating shapes and surfaces of ships in mods:
Make all "internal" components have the cargo ability (amount-zero)
Make all "surface" components, such as weapons, engines, and fighter launch bays NOT have the cargo ability. (Fighter storage would have to be separated from fighter launch components)

Add a cargo % restriction to every hull size.
The actual value would depend on the shape and size of the hull.

For a simple shape like a sphere, the cargo % would be high. For a complex shaped ship with wings, skinny sections, and open areas, the requirement would be much lower.

Relating this to the TNG-mod:

Think of various ships in the TNG universe.
A romulan warbird is very open, with the wings and such. The only blocky area is the bridge-section. Such a ship would have a cargo requirement of somthing like 5%

A borg Sphere, on the other hand, is mostly internal space. In fact the sphere shape has the least surface area for the most volume.
It would have a cargo requirement of something more like 60% Fusion cubes would be even worse.

The fancy shapes and high surface area of the standard ships allows them plenty of room for weapons and other such things that need to poke through the hull.
The borg cubes, on the other hand, have a lot of internal volume that can't be used for weapons or other surface objects!

[ December 11, 2002, 04:45: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Ed Kolis]

SJ, you are simply a genius at modding SE4! I hope that talent pays off in the real world

To add to your idea, though, how about giving all "surface" components the Armor ability so they get hit first, thus protecting the inner components and possibly balancing the two ship styles?

Then you could also say that bigger ships a greater proportion of internals than smaller ships do, and really get fancy! Maybe you could make the different hull types separate tech areas, as well - after all, it is a different kind of engineering to hold together a spindly Excelsior class cruiser or X-wing fighter than is is to build a sturdy Borg cube or Death Star!

[Fyron]

You know, I just might have to steal that idea for Adamant mod...

[Taera]

An interesting idea you have there, SG.
Would love to see it implemented.

[Captain Kwok]

This is similiar to how ships were built in SE:III.

One nitpick is that the main parts of a weapon may be in the hull and not directly mounted on it. One might also argue that a Borg Cube is so large, there is still more surface area than any other ship.

It's still a cool idea though.

[ November 28, 2002, 01:17: Message edited by: Captain Kwok ]

[PvK]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
...To add to your idea, though, how about giving all "surface" components the Armor ability so they get hit first, thus protecting the inner components and possibly balancing the two ship styles?
...

Hmm, except then it would have the same logical error that the "hit first" armor suffers from in SE4 - it ALL has to be destroyed before ANY non-hit-first components are. So there is no way to penetrate armor - it all has to be completely vaporized first. Which, is entirely not how actual armor works. Which is why I modded armor the way I did in Proportions mod.

PvK

[Kamog]

There needs to be some way to balance out the disadvantage of having a sphere or cube shaped ship with large internal volume. These ships are penalized by requiring to have more cargo %, so you are at a disadvantage because of the heavier restrictions you have on ship design and the fewer weapons that can be included. So you wouldn't want to play a race with such a ship set.

To balance things out, how about giving these ships more structure strength to resist damage, for example?

[Suicide Junkie]

One might also argue that a Borg Cube is so large, there is still more surface area than any other ship.

Exactly: the 30% surface area on a Cube of 2000kt is still bigger than the 80% surface area on a 600kt spindly battleship.

Kamog:
For a trek mod, the disadvantage of borg shape restrictions is compensated for by the vastly larger size of the ship

[ November 28, 2002, 02:21: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Krsqk]

Give the surface components much higher hitpoints, so they're hit first more ofter--a la Proportions' armor.

I think this is an awesome idea, though. I did like the SE3 armor/outer hull/inner hull design setup; once a layer was pierced, the next layer could (but not necessarily would) be hit. This is the closest we can get with the SE4 model.

[Escaflowne]

Ships with large internal volumes and relatively small suface area may have fewer places to mount weapons. But due to their large size they are more then likely able to mount guns that would shred the smaller ships, even if the smaller ships have more weapons.

Plus there's the fact that you have all that internal space. You could have armored belts on the inside. Not sure we could represent that except maybe have some armor with cargo to represent 'internal' and some armor without cargo to represent 'external'. Of course the downside is you can't have any fancy armor on the inside of your ship. But you also have plenty of space for supplies, cargo, magazine capacity (if some mods use it), and of course SHIELDS.

So a Borg cube can't mount many individual weapons. But each of those weapons it does mount could crack a small starship in half. Plus it could have nearly impenatrable shields and several internal armored belts to make it extremely tough.

[ November 30, 2002, 14:30: Message edited by: Escaflowne ]