Captains and Governors

[Kadste]

Some of the areas that I am working on in my mod are crew grade, starship captains and planetary/system governors. Crew grade is done with 6 grades. New facilities include Training Centers. Also included are grade of fighter pilot with new facilities including Fighter School. I am happy with them, so I moved on.

Next was starship captains. Captains are modeled after conmponents. Here is an example:

Name := Jean Luc Picard
Description := Legendary Starship Captain that will positively affect System/Combat movement and Combat Offensive/Defensive abilities.
Pic Num := 308
Tonnage Space Taken := 1
Tonnage Structure := 1
Cost Minerals := 1000
Cost Organics := 1000
Cost Radioactives := 1000
Vehicle Type := Ship\Base
Supply Amount Used := 1
Restrictions := One Per Vehicle
General Group := Vehicle Control
Family := 7000
Roman Numeral := 0
Custom Group := 0
Number of Tech Req := 0
Number of Abilities := 4
Ability 1 Type := Combat Movement
Ability 1 Descr := Generates 1 additional movement point during combat.
Ability 1 Val 1 := 1
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
Ability 2 Type := Movement Bonus
Ability 2 Descr := Generates 1 bonus movement points.
Ability 2 Val 1 := 1
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0
Ability 3 Type := Combat To Hit Offense Plus
Ability 3 Descr := Gives a 20% attack bonus in combat (only 1 component per ship effective).
Ability 3 Val 1 := 20
Ability 3 Val 2 := 0
Ability 4 Type := Combat To Hit Defense Plus
Ability 4 Descr := Gives a 20% defense bonus in combat (only 1 component per ship effective).
Ability 4 Val 1 := 20
Ability 4 Val 2 := 0
Weapon Type := None

This seems to work, but will require testing.
How about it, you can be the first kid on your planet to command your very own starship, your picture included! I used Jean Luc's picture at this time, but do not know how to how to include his portrait on the component bitmap image. Anybody know how?

Next I will tackle Planetary Governors and System Governors. Not sure if they should be a facility (leading in my opinion right now), a unit, or some other thing. Need restrictions to work, but the facilities.txt says they will not work. I will try a one per planet and one per system ability to see if they will work.

Comments, opinions, suggestions welcome.



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In difficult ground, press-on;
In encircled ground, devise stratagems;
In death ground, fight.
Sun Tzu (circa 400 B.C.)

[Phoenix-D]

The thing is, with this idea you can have many many Picards *in the same fleet*, to say nothing of the same sector, system, or quadrent!

Phoenix-D

[Urendi Maleldil]

WOW! Picard weighs 1 kiloton! He must've gotten really fat after Insurrection. Too much Antarean Chocolate Cake. With those food replecators one can really lose control.

[Phoenix-D]

He's got a point. Just call it support staff, if you need to.

You CAN make components weightless, though.

Phoenix-D

[Suicide Junkie]

Ther is a problem with the bonus movement ability:
it will eliminate the bonus from JP and Quantum engines, and will not stack with CT engines.

You need to change:
Ability 2 Type := Movement Bonus
Ability 2 Descr := Generates 1 bonus movement points.
Ability 2 Val 1 := 1
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0

Into
Ability 2 Type := Movement Bonus
Ability 2 Descr := Generates 1 bonus movement points.
Ability 2 Val 1 := 1
Ability 2 Val 2 := 995

[Taqwus]

Nifty idea, 'tho might be hard to balance -- perhaps they should cost more Organics and fewer Radioactives? An unbalanced resource cost would increase build (training) time...

I notice that you don't have a technology requirement; the most obvious candidate in the default tech tree seems to be Advanced Military Science.

Other ideas, although I haven't checked whether or not the abilities would work --

- Engineering experts.
[AMS + Ship Construction + Repair]

Provides some repair ability (damage control).
MAY provide a tiny maintenance bonus, but be very careful balancing it.


- Astrogation experts.
[AMS + Astrophysics ]

Provides bonus movement points.

- Recon experts.
[AMS + Astrophysics + Sensors]

Advanced form of above. Bonus move, plus
basic passive ECM sensing, MAYBE long-range scanning at a very short range.

- Tactical combat experts.
[AMS]

Possibly bonus combat move, and some +att /
+def.


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[dmm]

I love these ideas. Are they really do-able? I also like how they can be easily destroyed by chance in battle -- just like real life. (E.g., King Harald was killed by an enemy arrow in his eye during the Battle of Hastings, which saved the day for the Normans, who were losing to the Saxon infantry.)

[Suicide Junkie]

All those suggestions are doable. The only thing wrong is that concentrating the cost into organics and radioactives will not increase the build time.
For any ship in most mods, the only construction bottleneck is minerals.

Making the specialist crew components use organics and radioactives much more than minerals is a good idea.

The one per vehicle restriction is important, and I suggest complementing it with the "can't be repaired" ability when the next SE4 patch comes out.

[Mad_Lear]

I really Like the idea of having specialist crew components, especially the graded captains. I think that certain racial techs should produce specialized crew/captains. For example, psyhic races should be able to get captains whose vastly superior psychic powers act as a 40 odd member security squad for boarding defense and also maybe a free level one psychic sensor ability for the ship. Organic races could produce "genetically engineered" or even "genetically perfect" (think 5th element) captains who also provide extra security (being able to single-handedly massacre whole squads of lesser creatures) and provide extra bonuses combat bonuses to the whole ship (due to naturally superior intellegence and the whole biological computer thing). Of course, a high level of research in the appropriate racial tech along with whatever research is necessary to get high-grade captains in the first place would be required to get the racial tech captains, and the point cost of the racial techs might have to be tweaked a bit for balance.
Anyway, just a few quick ideas....

[Kadste]

The idea is to inject another element into the game and that is the quality of the crew and captain.

I am leaning towards a generic captain (and staff) who will positively influence the ship. They will be graded like my crews; green, regular, experienced, crack, elite. With higher mods per grade. Also toying with the idea of having abilities other than movement and combat to hit off/def.

Did you notice Jean Luc near the end of the series, I think he might have weighed 1 kiloton. Phoenix, thanks, I will try out weightless components.

SJ, Thanks for the tip on the engines

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In difficult ground, press-on;
In encircled ground, devise stratagems;
In death ground, fight.
Sun Tzu (circa 400 B.C.)