Carrier Battles Mod

[Suicide Junkie]

Main Idea:
- Fighters and their carriers will be of key importance.

Key Planned Features:
- Ship-based PD will be limited to missiles only.
This will drastically improve fighter survival without completely neutering PD.
- Fighter components and hulls will be set up to encourage specialization into bombers, interceptors and space-superiority (fighter-vs-fighter) fighters.
- Ship-to-Ship weaponry will be generally nerfed to encourage fighter use even more.

Other Planned Features:
- Semi-QNP system, including both bonus move and hull-scaled standard move.
- Ship weapons based mostly around missiles. Anti-ship, anti-fighter, anti-missile, mixed use, various warheads, etc.
- Direct-fire weapons limited to range 2-4 or so.
- Leaky shields & armor.
- Prototyping Hull tech - Hulls above your current tech level will be available, but cost more to build the more advanced they are. (Allows pricey super flagships)
- GritEcon style troops (long ground combats, mix of large and small troops required for success, tough to glass planets)

-----

Suggestions and comments welcome.

[Kana]

Interesting idea...For a total mod, might make and intersting game...different.

Ideas: ships weapons, could be very short ranged, and low powered, or can't affect some form of shielding, or weak versus shielding or armor, or very inaccurate at longer ranges, alot of supply usage...?

I like the prototyping hull tech idea...

Will all ships just be fighter transports, or will there be stuff like small (escort-frigate) torpedo boats, escort ships (destroyer-light cruiser), for Point Defense...?

Are you going to use Drones, Weapons Platforms, Satellites, and Mines of any type?

Kana

[Atrocities]

Tried this before and no one was interested. Worked for weeks on the mod. Posted and it was not even downloaded ONCE. Not once. Really made me wonder why I spent so much time on it. Good luck.

[Fyron]

Wha? I thought you never posted it...

[Atrocities]

I posted the mod. It was posted for a good three weeks before I wrote it off.

Too many mods. I am not surprised that no one was interested in it. It was only a beta. I might still have a copy if around.

[Atrocities]

SJ if you pull this off, can I use it in the New Age Mod? (Formerly the Conquest mod.) If I choose to revive it.

[Emperor Fritsch the Dense]

Id like to play a mod like that. Keep the capital ship weapons the same just none of them can lock onto the fast agile fighters! Maybe slow down Cap ships even more in the combat map so if you want to be sure to take out an enemy fleet youd have to use the fighters to do so....man i love this game!

[AMF]

This sounds good - I have one question so far: would the QNP for it result in very fast fighters and slow capital/carrier ships?

[Suicide Junkie]

Atrocities:
Sure. I'm getting a lot of stuff from my other mods already, and my regular policy holds here too.

Emperor/Alarikf:
I'm thinking fast fighters in combat, with little to no strategic move. Perhaps one speed outside of combat at best.
Ships can be fairly slow all around, but they'll actually have decent strategic move.

Combat move is always at least (strategic move)/2, so the carriers can't be made superslow in combat. It'll have to be a relative thing, with carriers running 2 or 3 in combat and 4-6 outside, while fighters go 0-1 outside and 4-6 in combat.

[AMF]

I think it would be cool to see CVs going 3-6, but fighters going 10-20 - that would be more akin to the dynamic we see today, wherein fighters are so powerful in part because they operate in an entirely different medium, and are, compared to naval vessels, exponentially faster...meaning they can zoom up, unload ordnance, zoom back, reload and do it again...

fun!

But, just my two cents, of course...

Thanks,


Alarik

[Suicide Junkie]

But the combat map is only 50 squares wide, and in practice there is no reloading except between combats. The scale has to be kept down to match that.

Anti-ship fighter missiles will probably be the only single-shot fighter weapon, with guns firing rapidly and anti-fighter missiles going every few turns to allow the previous shot to hit and new targets to be chosen.

[Ed Kolis]

More varied missiles? Have you considered turning missiles into drones? I've been working on a mod I call the "RC Mod" (RC is for Radio Control, as in RC cars, RC airplanes, etc.) in which all the missiles are removed and a ton of new, smaller drone hulls and warheads take their place... just never got around to filling in all the rest of the wonky damage type warheads and removing the seeker launchers http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

A total drones thing wouldn't work too well for this mod, unfortunately.
A key reason to switch to missiles is their natural tendency towards overkill with no re-targetting.

A swarm of drones would keep killing and killing, while with missiles the first two or three in the volley will kill, and the rest will fizzle with no target to hit.
Its that built-in diminishing returns on the volume of ordnance fired that I'm going for.

Now, that's not to say some super-missile drones wouldn't be handy... I'll have to see how it fits later.

[Arkcon]

Just recently I was wishing for a mod like this. Off and on people ask for a good fighter-based race, but you do need a good mod to make fighters more effective in SE4.

This has come up before. Consider Star Trek, with its using a "ships of the line" model, where ships line up, even though space is 3-D, and slug it out. That's how SE4 is run. Now, Battle Star Galactica, Star Wars, and Babylon 5 favor the fighters model -- its like watching a WWII in the Pacific movie, except in space. And that's always more fun to watch.

Some things I'd like to see:
- Give the biggest ships a weapon they can use against each other. Not too powerful, since armor and shields are leaky, but good range. Give it a high cost, make it big so only one fits on a decent battleship, and give it a long reload time. I'm envisioning something like the Incinerator Beam, but with a reload of 3 turns (or more, 5 or 6). Let a lucky shot turn the tide for someone, or maybe it will be a big waste, you never know until you try it.

- Lots of variations in point defense and fighter weapons. You've got those in other mods -- an example is active armor, give it a range 1 weak point defence ability. To model it blowing itself up to defect a missile.

[Suicide Junkie]

Oh, something related to that whole WWII in space thing...

What does everybody thing of this mount idea:
Take your basic DUC, laser cannon, APB, etc.
The mounts will scale it up and down without massively altering the damage/kt/turn like stock. Some change, but not insane.
The mounts would be named things from "9mm" to "8-inch"

Giving you 9mm DU pistols and 8-inch DU cannons from the same component, with a military flavour.

[geoschmo]

The same component being used on a troop and a battleship, just with a different mount? That's interesting.

So could you mount your dreadnaught with 900 9mm pistols if you wanted? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Kana]

Arkcon said:
an example is active armor, give it a range 1 weak point defence ability. To model it blowing itself up to defect a missile.



Never thought of this...does it work? I was working on ideas for ESG's (expanding sphere generators) for an SFB (star fleet battles) mod. I was going to use the point defense ability, with a big weapon, so that it could also be used against big ships that get to close...does the PD ability work on other component types?

Kana

[geoschmo]

I think you can give the point defense ability to pretty much any component, but the "oppotunity fire" that you are trying to gain wont work against ships. Even if the weapon can target ships, the point defense ability will only use the opportunity fire phase to shoot at seekers. Missles, fighters, drones.

[Ed Kolis]

Ooh, very realistic! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

edit: this was in response to SJ's post about the mounts

[Nodachi]

SJ said:

Combat move is always at least (strategic move)/2, so the carriers can't be made superslow in combat. It'll have to be a relative thing, with carriers running 2 or 3 in combat and 4-6 outside, while fighters go 0-1 outside and 4-6 in combat.



You can easily set it up so that even a ship that is fast on the strategic map is slow in combat (Imperial Star Destroyers come to mind). Just give the hulls the Combat Movement ability with a negative value (or a positive one for smaller ships). That's how I'm trying to do it in my mod.

[geoschmo]

Nodachi said:
SJ said:

Combat move is always at least (strategic move)/2, so the carriers can't be made superslow in combat. It'll have to be a relative thing, with carriers running 2 or 3 in combat and 4-6 outside, while fighters go 0-1 outside and 4-6 in combat.



You can easily set it up so that even a ship that is fast on the strategic map is slow in combat (Imperial Star Destroyers come to mind). Just give the hulls the Combat Movement ability with a negative value (or a positive one for smaller ships). That's how I'm trying to do it in my mod.

Yeah, I don't think that works. You can set up the file with a negative value and all, interestingly it doesn't give you an error. But in combat it doesn't seem to have any effect. Ship still moves at strategic speed/2.

[VaultDweller]

Here's an idea:

Have weapons for fighters divided between ones that can attack seekers/fighers/small stuff and can attack ships or planets. This is working off of using either fighters or bombers, which I think adds a level of finesse to tactical fighting. Anti-ship weapons would take up large space on a fighter encouraging a specialized design, where anti-fighter/seeker weapons would be smaller allowing for more flexiblity.


I don't think that nerfing Point Defense or ship based weapons is a good idea.

Think about it like this: point defense weaponry is meant to be small, agile, and flexible. It would be insanity for large ships not to field it in some catagory or another. I'd think in a carrier focused environment there would be ships that their sole purpose is point defense to protect carriers and support ships from missiles or fighters that slip past your fighters.

In an environment like this I'd think that ship based weaponry would be longer ranged with higher damage. Reload times would be higher and the weapons themselves would be heavier though. Also, in this enviroment seekers need to be more flexible. Perhaps ships should be able to launch more of them and certain technologies could make them faster, more armored, or some combination of effects. It would keep non-carrier ships important for combat, IMO.

Imagine it like this: Fighters would either play fleet defense or provide cover for bombers. The bombers would attempt to destroy ships before they can fire their deadly long range weaponry and missile volleys at your fleet.

Sorry if that dragged on a bit.

[Nodachi]

Geo, I just checked it, you're right. It'll take a positive value and use it but not a negative one. Back to the drawing board for me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[ZeroAdunn]

Well, I currently play a mod with similar ideas to this (though, it isn't as in depth as I want, so maybe your mod will be better)

First off: To encourage carrier use I made resource production far lower then normal SEIV, but cranked storage, then I made fighters slightly cheaper to build, while making ships much more expensive. I made two types of point defense, interceptor cannons for targetting just missiles/drones, and interceptor missiles that target any unit but are smaller and do less damage then regular missiles. Fighter defense is generally handled VIA a mount, the point defense mount that reduces size and range of weapons, but keeps damage the same. Then there are the "slugger mounts" which are standard ship to ship mounts, while they increase the damage (not on par with SEIV standard mounts, but increase them enough) they increase the cost exponentially.

Drones are similar to SEIV drones except they are half the size and have a mount that reduces component/weapon cost and size by one half. Makes them much more valuable.

I use leaky shields, but not leaky armor. Leaky shields are more easily penetrated by fighter weapons as all weapons fire as one for a group of fighters.

Fighter hulls have a combat movement bonus, however, I am currently modding fighters as follows:
Two components,
Standard fighter engines: 1kt, 1movement (plus bonus for high tech) 5 per fighter, must have 1. At most a fighter will have 8 system/4 combat.
Fighter Thrusters: 4kt, 6 combat movement (at max), one per ship.
Fighter hulls: small 6kt, medium 10kt, heavy 14kt. Weapons will range from 1kt (small guns) to 2kt (heavy weapons/missiles), fighters will only need cockpit (1kt), but can have a life support system that provides additional supplies (1kt). And then of course sensors. So a medim fighter could have:
1 Engine 1kt
1 thruster 4kt
1 cockpit 1kt
1 combat sensor 1k
1 ECM 1kt
1 heavy weapon or two light weapons.
(Short range fighter/bomber)

5 engine 5kt
1 cockpit 1kt
1 Combat sensor 1kt
1 life support 1kt
1 heavy weapon 2k
(long range bomber, or fighter if you replace the heavy weapon with a light weapon)

One question: Does anybody know for sure if the Combat Best Experience ability works for fighters. I had planed to use it on fighters to simulate the experience or training of a ships pilots, but don't know if it works.

I would also suggest using a proportions style economy, I use a watered down Version (way more watered down then I would like) and I think it works well.

[Nodachi]

I thought experience of any kind did not appy to units.

[Suicide Junkie]

Point defense does have to be nerfed significantly... Stock PD is an impenetrable wall.

Note: Just to be clear - Point Defense is comprised of Fighters, missiles, fighters and more fighters http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
An unopposed fighter screen should shoot down 95% of what the enemy capital ships can throw at you.

The way I see it working is the following:

A first wave of fast fighters from both sides will meet, and start duking it out.

The bombers will tend to be slower, and by the time they get through the skirmish zone your second wave of interceptors should be gunning for them. If they fail, and the bombers get in range, your capital ships will certainly take critical damage.

The capital ships could take down a few bombers with anti-fighter missiles, and should also be able to shoot down a few of the bombers' missiles with their own anti-missiles, but not many. Any remaining close-in fighter screens will have a small window of opportunity to shoot down the missiles as well, after which it is down to how much armor you have.

Once the bombers are spent, the remaining fighters will continue to dogfight and the capital ships will lob supporting missile fire into the fray.

When one side gains an advantage, their fighters may press on to strafe the hopefully crippled enemy capital ships.
The small fighter guns will certainly be much less effective than the bombers, and the missile fire will slowly whittle down the fighters, but they will keep shooting until the battle is over.

Your 50-200kt support ships should be positioned to protect your big expensive carriers as long as possible, but once your fighters are gone, you're in deep trouble.

Small numbers of fighters getting past the main lines are not too much of a threat.
Assuming the ships have good strategies, a group or two of fighters sneaking in will quickly find a pack of missiles locked on.
Missiles are most effective against small numbers of large stacks, so these situations are advantageous to the defender. The capital ships are shooting different enemies than the fighters are, and there is less wasted ordnance.

---

Allowing ship-to-ship weaponry to target fighters as well is reasonable, but the accuracy should be pitiful. Only the smallest guns would have much chance beyond the 1% minimum.

It is the carrier battles mod, and fighters should be the primary weapons and defenses in combat http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.
Once your fighters have been defeated in space, your capital ships are all but lost.

[Kana]

geoschmo said:
I think you can give the point defense ability to pretty much any component, but the "oppotunity fire" that you are trying to gain wont work against ships. Even if the weapon can target ships, the point defense ability will only use the opportunity fire phase to shoot at seekers. Missles, fighters, drones.



Are you sure...? Most of the material I've read on the abilities and such says it is possible...it would suck if it isn't...cause then I would defintely wait until SEV comes out before finishing the mod...hopefully with user definable damage...

Kana

[tesco samoa]

The only thing I can see as a real problem to this mod is the micromanagement that will come in the later stages of the game.

To over come this i suggest you have the transport ships cargo increased quite a bit to ferry fighters up to staging areas.

Mind you i am assuming that the player would build a cargo ship and set it to load fighters from fighter producing planets and drop it off where your fleet is being trained.

This would help with the running out of space problems that players would have to hunt down on 100 + planet empires.

[Arkcon]

Here's another thing. In standard SE4, your carriers have to have loads of fighter launchers, and not waste too much space on big guns or shielding. For this new mod to be significantly different from SE4, we'll want to change how fighters are launched. They'll have to press the attack, and orbit the carrier on CAP.

One suggestion, the standard fighter group is 5 (some people use 10 or more, I know). The standard fighter bay launches ... 4. Now, I know, you just need 5 bays to get an even multiple, but I want the carriers to degorge fighters at the start of combat, so maybe its useful if the standrd bay could launch 10, or more.

[Suicide Junkie]

Arkcon said:
Here's another thing. In standard SE4, your carriers have to have loads of fighter launchers, and not waste too much space on big guns or shielding. For this new mod to be significantly different from SE4, we'll want to change how fighters are launched. They'll have to press the attack, and orbit the carrier on CAP.

One suggestion, the standard fighter group is 5 (some people use 10 or more, I know). The standard fighter bay launches ... 4. Now, I know, you just need 5 bays to get an even multiple, but I want the carriers to degorge fighters at the start of combat, so maybe its useful if the standrd bay could launch 10, or more.


Aren't those conflicting requirements, for the most part?
If you spew the whole lot of them on turn 1, then they'll all be zooming away to the main fight.

If you have slower launches, you'll get waves of fighters, and always have some nearby for defense.

Although, I suppose you could just design some that use the smaller engines, so they are the same speed as the carriers, and add heavier guns and/or armor...

---

I suppose it would be really easy to have some regular-style bays, plus a superbay component that allows you to launch massive numbers at a time at the expense of some space and cargo.

[ZeroAdunn]

Actually, I would set it up so each fighter bay can basicly hold one fighter of the corresponding highest available tech for the bay. That way, you can have two doctorines, either disgorge all your fighters at once, or relly on larger fighter numbers being disgorged in waves.

That is basicly the way it is in my mod, my friend I was playing against developed a tactic where he used massive baseships with hordes of fighters, but instead of ever seeing combat he used long range fighters entered a system launched all his fighters and then various targets in system, with his carriers never even seeing combat.

[ZeroAdunn]

Also: in regards to scaling components up and only having certain base components, I love it!

[Fyron]

Kana said:

geoschmo said:
I think you can give the point defense ability to pretty much any component, but the "oppotunity fire" that you are trying to gain wont work against ships. Even if the weapon can target ships, the point defense ability will only use the opportunity fire phase to shoot at seekers. Missles, fighters, drones.

Are you sure...? Most of the material I've read on the abilities and such says it is possible...it would suck if it isn't...cause then I would defintely wait until SEV comes out before finishing the mod...hopefully with user definable damage...

Kana

Which materials are those? They need to be corrected, because they are wrong. Geoschmo is quite correct.

SE5 will have user definable damage.

[Arkcon]

Yeah, that's the thing. Suppose I'm playing standard SE4, and I'm playing with fighters. I try to make attack fighters and interceptors with max engines and 1, maybe 2 tiny antiproton beams. The CAP fighters have the rocket pods, and that leaves space for only one engine, so they stay closer to the carrier. *SIGH* It doesn't matter really, in standard SE4, its hard to get enough fighters on a carrier -- much less enough of two types, and then they combine into groups at random.

But if you mod is inroducing new weapons, engines and propulsion rules, you could fine tune this some more. Give fighters specific anti-ship weapons, and specific anti-fighter weapons, to try to give them individual roles.

Another idea, when you get a halfway working mod. Setup a PBW game around it. That way it stays fresh in people's minds. For example, like with the small ships mod.

[ZeroAdunn]

I would also add combat to hit bonuses for smaller ships (escort - destroyer) to represent small antifighter gunboats that support the fighter screens.

[Kana]

Imperator Fyron said:

Kana said:

geoschmo said:
I think you can give the point defense ability to pretty much any component, but the "oppotunity fire" that you are trying to gain wont work against ships. Even if the weapon can target ships, the point defense ability will only use the opportunity fire phase to shoot at seekers. Missles, fighters, drones.

Are you sure...? Most of the material I've read on the abilities and such says it is possible...it would suck if it isn't...cause then I would defintely wait until SEV comes out before finishing the mod...hopefully with user definable damage...

Kana

Which materials are those? They need to be corrected, because they are wrong. Geoschmo is quite correct.

SE5 will have user definable damage.



If I remeber correctly it was the FAQ/instructions for the SE4 Modder by DavidG. I don't remeber seeing it in the Modding Manual, and if you say it isn't in there, then it probably isn't...well that sucks...I'm defintely going to have to wait till SEV comes out then...Bah!!!!

Kana

[sachmo]

I would like to play this mod...someday. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

An update:

Added the cannon mounts. From 20mm to 100mm in 5 steps. -10% accuracy per level, variable increases in damage power up to +70% for the biggie. The biggest two get a range increase as a bonus.
Weapon size scales as radius squared, so you get the whole gamut from 2kt guns to 50kt guns.

Been working on some scale issues between C&C, engines and cargo requirements.
More work still to be done, especially on balancing damage vs shields/armor on the 4-way fighters/ships interaction.

[douglas]

Suicide Junkie said:
-10% accuracy per level


Just for that, I would never use the larger mounts unless I had a ridiculously high combat bonuses advantage over all my enemies. With the way combat bonuses work in SEIV, that is much too large a penalty for the larger mounts to be viable unless they give a damage bonus of around +200% to +300% at a minimum for the largest. Yes, that's triple to quadruple damage/space, and even then the largest might not be useful.

[Suicide Junkie]

Keep in mind that the ranges are only 2-4 for these capital ship weapons. The zero-point will be in the middle, too.

So the 20 and 40 mm guns should have some chance of hitting fighters, and the 100mm gun should have about 40% to-hit even at the doubled max range.
Also, the additional punch of the big guns will be more effective than it looks, since the captial ships will be using leaky shields. The smaller guns will end up doing no damage to most capital ships, and much of the medium guns' damage will be negated.

[VaultDweller]

Suicide:

The more you describe your idea, the better it sounds. Can't wait to check it out.

[PvK]

Suicide Junkie said:
...
Added the cannon mounts. From 20mm to 100mm in 5 steps. -10% accuracy per level, variable increases in damage power up to +70% for the biggie. The biggest two get a range increase as a bonus.
Weapon size scales as radius squared, so you get the whole gamut from 2kt guns to 50kt guns.
...



Hmm. Doesn't this mean that 2kT guns have much more firepower AND accuracy than the same tonnage of larger guns? Or is the 70% firepower advantage calculated per kT, so the 50kT gun actually does 50/2 x 1.7 = 42.5 times the damage of a 2kT gun?

PvK

[Suicide Junkie]

+70% in damage/kt/turn
Plus the fact that they're huge makes them do tons of damage

so the 2kt gun might do 2 damage, while the 50kt gun does 85 ish.

[Nodachi]

Don't quote me on this, but isn't that true in reality? Take a .22 caliber rifle and scale it up to a 16 inch bore and (ignoring physics) it'll outperform a 16 inch battleship gun.

[ZeroAdunn]

So, how are missiles going to be handled?

[Suicide Junkie]

Could you be more specific?

[Atrocities]

Suggestions for weapons.

Rock slinger I - X gives way to
Space Bow I - X gives way to
Star Bow I - X gives way to
BB Gun I - X gives way to
Enhanced BB Gun I - X gives way to
Slug Gun I - X gives way to
Bore Gun I - X gives way to
Cannon I - X gives way to
DUC I - X gives way to
Gas Laser Gun I - X gives way to
Chemical Laser Gun I - X gives way to
Phased Energy Cannon I - X gives way to
Phasers I - X gives way to
Enhanced Phasers I - X gives way to
Poloron Beam I - X gives way to
Phased Poloron Beam I - X gives way to
Wave Motion Gun I - X

[Suicide Junkie]

The way I see weapons is a set of advantages and disadvantages...

Eg:
DUC: average
Ripper - very short range, + high damage
Laser: + Long range, - less damage, + low supply use
Torpedo: + accuracy bonus, - less damage
and so on.
SE3 style, sort of, with it being mostly a balanced tech hedge rather than a tall tech tree.

---

Missiles will be the only things with serious range, probably 20 + no fizzle.
There will probably be a comparable number of missile types to DF weapon types, with tradeoffs in:
- damage vs speed vs hitpoints vs warhead type vs reload rate vs cost and such.

[Suicide Junkie]

I think a thickness mount for armor will be good too:
EG:
Steel Armor Plating I
size - 1
HP - 3

Then we have mounts:
1-inch plating: size x1, hp x10
2-inch plating: size x2, hp x18
3-inch plating: size x3, hp x24
4-inch plating: size x4, hp x32

The rationale being as follows:
Thicker plating is less efficient in hp/kt, however the large hp per component makes it less leaky, and also improves the performance of any leaky shields which are still operating.

For example, the 1-inch steel plating (when shields are not destroyed) will be immune to weapons of less than 30 damage per hit.
4-inch plating, on the other hand, will have 80% the structural strength of the thin armor, but will be immune to weapons of less than 96 damage.

[Ed Kolis]

I suggested something like this for Adamant a while back (well, I suggested standard armor and then light and heavy armor mounts) but Fyron said it would be too complicated; he only wanted 2 types of armor http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Just a silly question... why are you measuring the gun bores in millimeters but the armor in inches? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

edit: oh, and maybe it would be good to have a "default" thickness for armor - in other words, instead of your scheme where the armors have 3 HP unmounted and the mounts raise their hitpoints by factors of 10-32, have the armors 30 HP unmounted and have the mounts raise their hitpoints by factors of 1 (no raise) to 3.2. That way if you forget to use a mount on your armor you're not screwed, you just get a "default" 1-inch armor http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

I dunno.

What's a good armor thickness to use, anyways?
20 to 100 in cm?

[ZeroAdunn]

I think with armor mounts you are getting a few too many mounts.

[Suicide Junkie]

http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/miscellaneous/CarrierBattles_prealpha.zip

Strategies make a huge difference.
I just tried a simulator combat, small carrier loaded, vs 7 anti-fighter destroyers, which should be roughly balanced construction and maintenance costs wise.

With default strategies, the destroyers lose only one ship, and have only one or two damaged.

With smarter fighter strategies (not tactical combat - actual strategies), those destroyers all get disabled by the fighters. Although the fighters all die, the destroyers are worse than dead http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
In the combat I ran, the destroyers were left with weapons mostly intact, but immobilized and bleeding supplies.

In this case, the whole fighter load was set up as heavy dogfighters. Anti-Missile action was not a priority for any of them, though they did take some pot shots at missiles when there were no ships in range.

Note: Most of the tech levels are not finished, and race design has not been looked at yet.
This is just a Pre-alpha peek http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Arkcon]

Suicide Junkie said:
"I think a thickness mount for armor will be good too:
EG:
Steel Armor Plating I
size - 1
HP - 3

Then we have mounts:"

*SNIP*

This is very exciting, thickness mounts for armor. Now you'll be able to decide if you want light armor to provide some defense, or build a massive flying brick of a warship.

If only the armor had another detriment -- say, making to ship too very massive would rob you of some propulsion. Can you give armor a fractional minus to propulsion? So piling armor onto a large ship robs you of some movement, but the average amount of armor on a smaller ship wouldn't notice it at all.

[Suicide Junkie]

Arkcon said:
If only the armor had another detriment -- say, making to ship too very massive would rob you of some propulsion. Can you give armor a fractional minus to propulsion?


QNP does that automatically.

If you want to spend 10% more space on armor, you have to take the tonnage out of engines (or guns), and thus reduce your speed (or firepower).

If you want to allow some "free" armor, you can add some 0-kt components with a 10-per-ship limit.

[Nodachi]

Suicide Junkie said :

Anti-Missile action was not a priority for any of them, though they did take some pot shots at missiles when there were no ships in range.



Would putting a level of Multiplex Tracking on the hull solve this, assuming that the anti-missile weapons can't target anything else?

[Arkcon]

Oops, didn't really think that through, did I? Sorry, I was stuck in the standard game rules late last night. Hee.

But the free space armor is always nice. P&N has buckytube gel armor, maybe you could call the free armor in this mod "re-enforced bulkheads", if you feel like being original.

I always wanted that as an option when building an important warship -- one specificall designed to stand up to punishment.

[Suicide Junkie]

Nodachi said:
Would putting a level of Multiplex Tracking on the hull solve this, assuming that the anti-missile weapons can't target anything else?


There were no missile-specific weapons on the figthers, so no.

I'm not sure if fighters get free multiplex, but I think I'll add some to the hulls just to be sure.
There are lots of fighters in the stack, so multi-targetting should not be a problem.

[VaultDweller]

Suicide

Hows the progress going, I'm really interested in this idea and wanted see if the idea is still alive.


VaultDweller

[Suicide Junkie]

Lots of progress I think.
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/miscellaneous/CarrierBattles_alpha.zip

Almost all of the base missiles are in, plus four standard guns.
Only one level of each weapon for now: the tree can be extended once the balance is right.

The balance between fighter and ships still needs work...
The stacking of small fighter guns is a problem.
Making the fighter guns do quarter to shields might help, but having some really high damage anti-fighter missiles is probably nessesary in order to force the fighter group sizes down.

---

One odd glitch I've noticed in the simulator; only one missile in a stack actually dies when the stack is hit, unlike normally where PD toasts a handful of missiles per hit...

PS:
Beware of the strategies... they're only half-decent and shouldn't be used in public http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[ZeroAdunn]

So far I like it, definately like it. Can't wait to see the finished product.

[Suicide Junkie]

Fired up a live-combat exercise just now, with some anti-fighter cluster missiles.

Interesting stuff...
The two carriers were optimised for defense, and were loaded with lots of anti-missile and anti-fighter weaponry.
Fighter loadout included some bombers, heavy attack and armored interceptors. With Maxrange/CAP/Point Defense strategies.

1) The fighter-launched missiles only die one at a time, max. Odd, since they still hit as a stack for one big damage punch.
The interceptors were crucial to the defensive effort, since they fired multiple shots from the various stacks, and whittled down the incoming missile stack one missile at a time.
2) AI targetting of the Anti-missile missiles is good.
It fired about enough missiles for a 4x overkill on each target, then moved to the next with its remaining missiles. When it ran out of targets, it would save some shots for the next round of combat.
3) Since the combat was pretty balanced, it was down to the two carriers in the end. Without direct fire guns to worry about, and the other carrier's missiles to attract them, the two carriers ended up side by side with a thin haze of fighters dogfighting around them.
Both carriers were launching volley after volley of anti-missile missiles, shooting down the enemy anti-fighter missiles as fast as they could be launched http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif.
4) Supplies were way out of whack.
Engine usage has been cut by 10x and ship's supply storage has been increased by 10x.
The 600kt carriers took about 2000 supplies to cross about 3 systems, and cooked off 7000 supplies worth of missile fire during the battle.
Considering that this happened with no extra supply storage components, I'll probably reduce the supply storage by half.
Fighting a battle like this will then require one or two supply bays or a supply tanker ship to restock from after battle. You'll definitely also need cargo ships with a fresh batch of fighters. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
5) The final score was all but 5 fighters lost (half a wing of bombers successfully ran after firing), and a handful of components damaged on both carriers. Mostly armor, with 1-2 spare engines knocked out.
6) Maintaining the carriers from the homeworld was hard... some economic tweaking will probably be next.

I've updated the zip.
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/miscellaneous/CarrierBattles_alpha.zip

[ZeroAdunn]

Suggestion for drones:
Make them on par with fighter sizes, make it so components allow them to either be short range weapons delivery systems, or long range scouting vehicles (lrscanner component)

Or they could simply be similar to automated fighters.

[ZeroAdunn]

Sorry, just gotta give this thread a bump.

[Urendi Maleldil]

This mod looks cool. It will be nice to see some all-carrier battles.

[Suicide Junkie]

Just finished a busy week, but I'm back.

For race setup, I'm thinking that it could be interesting to have almost all of the variations built into the culture, and leave the characteristics for minor tweaks. Should make it easier to balance the traits I think...


Some example cultures I've been thinking of:
Berzerkers:
-25% to production, construction and repair, for 20% more combat prowess.

Preservationists:
-50% to production and construction, for maintenance free ships.

Disposable Society:
-5 to combat. Double maintenance. -100% to repair. Doubled SY rate.
(Handy for replacing those fighters, may be a bit too powerful in practice)

[douglas]

Suicide Junkie said:
maintenance free ships.


Can't be done with cultures or characteristics. There's a hardcoded minimum of 5% maintenance cost, and the only way to get around it is a racial tech like the Pirates&Nomads mod's Ultra Recycler Node.

[Suicide Junkie]

I'm using the 100% base maintenance rate, and dropping the maintenance further with hull abilities.

In practice, you'll be paying 95% less than everybody else, which is close enough to maintenance free http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[ZeroAdunn]

In regards to disposable economy:

Would be good, except when you show up to a planet that is filled to the brim with fighters, launching thousands at you. I suppose to prevent this you could fiddle with planetary storage and cargo facility storage.

[Suicide Junkie]

A disposable economy race would have an advantage on defense due to the rapid replacement of units, yes, but they'd also be at a disadvantage on offence, since they can't field as many carriers. And we all know, fighting a strategic defense is bad news.

I would also expect everybody's planets to be chock-full of fighters and troops, regardless of their culture. Most of the time, at least... you could always attack early after colonization, or right after a large fleet has restocked and moved out.

---

It'll all come out in playtesting, though, and I'm expecting to have to change the numbers at least a bit.

[Suicide Junkie]

Updated the posted zip on imagemodserver...
I'll probably be writing out the weapon level II to X components soon, and adding the Masochistic happiness type from GritEcon http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I think Preservationists could be more indepth. I mean what that really says to me is that their stuff is built to last, right? Well it stands to reason that it would be tougher, too. Just something that struck me.

[Yef]

The problem with capital ships shooting at fighters, is that the AI always shoot to whatever is closer, so it waste all its shots on fighters that cna rarely be hit because of the size bonuses.
That's why I believe ship weaponry should not be capable of shooting at fighters at all. Only PD cannons and/or missiles should.

The AI behaves like a WW2 battleship prefering to fire its 14 inch guns at a fighter flying close-by than at the big enenmy battleship half a mile away.

[Suicide Junkie]

Actually, that depends entirely on your strategies.

You can make your battleship run and try to chase down missiles if you set them to do so.

If you check off the "use type priorities" option, you can sort the targetting priority by ships/fighters/missiles/planets/etc.

---

PS:
In this mod, you really don't want your capital ships running through the cloud of fighters in the hopes of getting into range of a ship across the map. They'll just get cut to shreds by the sheer volume of tiny guns.

---

Re: Preservationists
The culture settings don't have an option for scaling hitpoints.
It could perhaps be simulated with a small combat bonus, but I think the culture is already quite powerful.

[ZeroAdunn]

In regards to expanding out the weapons levels:

Couldn't you just use the tech gridder to automaticly do this?

[TurinTurambar]

As I said earlier, I've never even bothered to install a single mod before, but you can bet I'll cut my teeth on this one!

I'm positively giddy with anticipation!

Umm... can you say "giddy" without sounding totally gay?

(Not that there's anything wrong with that...)

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gifTurin

[Suicide Junkie]

ZA:
Sure, but the gridder can't pick balanced numbers for you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Turin:
You may want to download and install the imagemodpacks while you wait, since this will definitely need the combatpack, componentpack, and probably the facilitypack.
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/imagemod/

[Sivran]

They'll just get cut to shreds by the sheer volume of tiny guns.



This sounds like a problem to me, at least at first glance. Let me know if I'm right, because the impression I get from this statement is that of a swarm of Wildcats being able to strafe the Yamato to death. That's something I don't think should happen, so perhaps some emissive armor is in order. (Or just targetting restrictions. Might be easier)

A swarm of Dauntlesses dive-bombing the Yamato to death, well, that's a different story. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

The leaky shields do help a LOT against the tiny fighter weapons, and if you force them to spread out into smaller stacks with anti-fighter missiles, then the leaky shields work even better.

But when there are hundreds of fighters zinging around, some with mini-torpedoes, you'll simply get crushed by the massive volume of fire... one of those hits will leak through to a shield generator and your defenses will start to crumble.

The distraction may be worth it, and allow your fighters to get a few rounds of free hits to turn the tide of the fighter war, or the enemy fighters may just ignore your ship in favour of blasting at your cloud of fighters.
It all depends on the strategies you each have set, really.

[TurinTurambar]

Uh... hate to sound dense... but remind me what program opens a .rar file...

Turin

[Phoenix-D]

Speaking of strategies, what happens if two types of fighters in a stack have different strategies?

[douglas]

TurinTurambar said:
Uh... hate to sound dense... but remind me what program opens a .rar file...

Turin


WinRAR (http://www.rarlab.com)

[Suicide Junkie]

In combat, they'll be launched as separate stacks, I'm pretty sure.

Strategic launched mixed stacks would probably use the strategy of the first fighter to be launched.

However, since large stacks of fighters are bad for combat, and for the most part, fighters don't have strategic movement, this shouldn't come up too often.

[Suicide Junkie]

The zip has been updated on imagemodserver (under miscellaneous mods)

I've fleshed out the direct fire weapons tech, and picked out some nifty images for them all.

---

Suggestions and comments are welcome.

PS:
For winamp users, I made this the other night:
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/nick/tempstuff/SJ_Niagara_Sunset.avs
Pretty nifty.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

SJ, if you're planning to add more cultures, take a look at this. Adds a helluva lot of cultures. Some may be too powerful/too weak for Carrier Battles, but check it out.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Inter-Species Intelligence Agency?

For a culture? That seems kind of silly. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

I've dome cultures of all kinds - societies, government types, and even corporate structures. Now, an independent organization COULD be working as an inter-species intelligence agency... hiring themselves out to the highest bidder or simly trying to grab power by means of intelligence.

Note, however, that this was part of the Cultures and Demeanros Add-On, which also explains the 40% maint reduction as it has a modified Settings.txt with 50% standard manintenance.
The full C&D version 1.01 zip file can be found here:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB23&Number=330609&fpart= 1&PHPSESSID=

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I can see that, but it seems unlikely that an entire species would comprise a multi-species intelligence agency..that's all http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

I'm not too worried about cultures at the moment.
I will take a look at the link, though.

What I'm interested in at the moment is making sure the weapons are reasonably balanced, and that there are no major gameplay problems.

I think facilities will be next, followed by intel projects. That should cover the core mod files.

After that, the extra cultures, random map balancing, funky racial techs, default name files, etc will be extras.

[ZeroAdunn]

As I have said before, I love this mod. Now all I want is a working AI and a finished off component tree.

[Suicide Junkie]

AI is my weakest subject in modding.
Would you be willing to help get them started?

[Atrocities]

AI modding is not easy. In fact its a PITA.

[ZeroAdunn]

Uh.... I would love to. But I every attempt I have made at making a truly custom AI (keep in mind I also use a mod centered around fighters) has failed, especially getting them to use carriers consistantly.

And I really don't have the time right now, currently working two jobs, don't have a lot of spare time.

[Atrocities]

I am working on my own new mod so I cannot help at this time SJ. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Look at fyrons Adamant mod, it still needs help with its AI and its over a year old now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif So I know you will get 'R' done. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[VaultDweller]

It kind of makes me feel better to know that the AI file is just as daunting to the veterans of this game as it is for me.

Keep the faith though SJ, I'm really looking forward to this one getting done.

[ZeroAdunn]

In reality is all you would need would be one AI, that uses the basic functions of the mod, and then to tweak it for each race. You know, I have about an hour that I was planning on spending watching BSG, but I think I might work on an AI for your mod. I'll post whatever I come up with.

[ZeroAdunn]

SJ: I have started modding the AI, but ran into a problem. All of the missiles occupy the same weapon family number.

Secondly: I am still at it, but I can't seem to get the AI to build carriers for some reason. I'll let you know if I come up with something.

[Suicide Junkie]

Oh, coolness.

Just tell me what you need tweaked to help the AI, and I'll get it going.
Unique weapon families coming right up!

---

http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/miscellaneous/CarrierBattles_alpha.zip
Updated with unique weapon numbers, plus the Test1 savegame has a nice set of pre-made designs to play with.

[Raging Deadstar]

Was just checking this out.

The Heavy Carrier class is using the wrong ship image. Using a Light Carrier instead of a Heavy Carrier http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I'll report any other mix-ups I notice

[Suicide Junkie]

Updated.
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/miscellaneous/CarrierBattles_alpha.zip

- Fixed heavy carrier pic
- Tweaked support ship image use towards bigger, cooler hulls.
- Reduced fighter weapon damage by 50%
- Decreased fighter hitpoints
- Teched out the missile trees.
- Reduced missile speeds at the low-tech end.
- Added -1 speed to external-mount missiles.
- Added a "Launch figthers in groups of 3" strategy. The strategy editor dosen't allow you to select groups of three, but you can copy this entry if you want them.

Support ships now stand a better chance of survival against small fleets of fighters. With decent shielding and small weapon mounts, your support ships should be able to survive for a little while in fighter-infested territory.

Appropriately used, the launch-3 strategy can cause some havok. Cluster missiles will be horribly inefficient against such tiny groups, thus discouraging their use. With fewer cluster missiles around, your larger groups will be able to survive, and can penetrate capital ship shielding with thier combined firepower.

[Suicide Junkie]

The posted zip has been updated again.

You will need the imagemod CombatPack v11, which has also been updated with 25 new beam animations.

- New planetsizes. Adjusted domed/breathable stats. Micro moons added. Random colonies will now have +50% to population limit or -20% (approx) facility space.
- Added training facilities and medical facilities.
- Updated weapon animations.

[ZeroAdunn]

Still no luck with the AI, I will be out of town all day, but when I get back I will spend an hour or two trying to get something working.

[mac5732]

SJ, found some stuff, don't know if bugs or whatever

1st, built DD (150) and ftr, in design, does not show attack, defense, fighter etc, only Boarding ship, Space yard, heavy Bomber, civil defense base and elite troop. so unable to give them right type of design, or doesn't it matter ?

2nd built Basic ftr. shows I have to have 5% cargo, only thing listed is supply pod, I put l on and warning went away, then after I put the cockpit etc on, l ftr combat drive X, 1 arm, 1 shield, there was only 5kt left, no room for weapon. So I took off armor and shield, left enough only for the em capital missle which only fires once. no other weapon listed small enough to be put on the ftr. other then the em missles, everything else was listed at 50-150, ftrs to small for that cost.

3rd. Built DD (150), only weapons it was capable of using were missles after you put armor and shields on it. All the beam weapons other then missles, were in the 50-100 range. to big for the DD. Is this supposed to be this way.? If you strip everything off the DD, you might get 1 or 2 beam weapons only, no room for anything else.

example; DD built, had 2 arm, 2 shields, 1 anti missle missle, l anti ftr cluster missle, l anti ftr missle, 1 cap ital missle. no room for beam weapon you could eliminate some and maybe put a DUC on it, but eveything else 100-150 again don't know if this is the way its supposed to be.

[ZeroAdunn]

Use mounts for fighter weapons.

[Suicide Junkie]

Hi Mac.

The first one there:
You can click "add new type" when you're selecting a design type. The type names are arbitrary and have no effect on the game other than to sort your designs into handy categories when building and designing.
I have improved the default types in the latest version, though.

The rest, ZA's got it.
You have to choose a weapon mount. The guns range from 20mm to 100mm, with accuracy bonuses on the small guns, and range bonuses on the big guns.
The 20mm mount guns will cost only 1-3kt of space, so there will be plenty of room for them.

[Suicide Junkie]

Updated again. Now 150kb.

- fixed some family conflicts.
- lobotomized AI files to the point where they don't cause errors on startup. They also do not cause crashes if you hit end turn with AIs in the game.
- Split the carrier's fighterbay/cargo requirement. Fighter bays no longer count towards the cargo requirement, and the numbers have been adjusted accordingly.
- Fixed default design types. Its pickier than I thought about spacing.
- Added a fifth support ship hull size, 250kt.
- Added AI tags for handy components. List of Tags can be found at the top of components.txt, and in-game with the component ability description (description will be removed when the mod is done).

[Suicide Junkie]

http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/miscellaneous/CarrierBattles_beta.zip

Updated again.
- Tweaked cluster missiles to be a little more inefficient.
- Added more facilities, including some legacy cities for the homeworlds.
- Added AI tags to the resource facilities, and extended the tree a bit.
- Added Planet Plague intel attacks.
- Enhanced existing intel projects. Some log message enhancements, plus with +2 levels in applied intel, you get a "Stealth" version of the project. This allows you to attack without the enemy knowing it was you.
- Switched to the "Active Defense" style counter-intel. Counter intel is now "destroy intel project" instead of the standard defence. Increased levels in applied intel increase the stealth factor of defense from 0% to 80% to 95% to 100% at level 4.

[Suicide Junkie]

After some live testing thanks to Combat Wombat:
- Fixed another component family conflict
- Fixed roman numerals on medical labs
- Reduced build rate of medium start Spaceyards.
- Roughly doubled the thrust from engines.
- Fixed some intel op tech requirements.

PS:
There is also a readme file attached with the mod, which lists the critical differences, and the things you're most likely to have trouble with. It also includes some hints and tips at the bottom, in case you need them.

[Suicide Junkie]

News:
I'm currently trying out a new planet storage system.
Most planets will start with only a few thousand cargo spaces.

That'll be good for only a handful of troops and fighters.

Now, most facilities will have some amount of cargo space ability. Build farms, you can feed lots of troops. Build almost anything and your increase in infrastructure allows some more troops.
Build a city facility, and your support limit rises even more.

There are also military base facilities, which provide tons of extra storage space, and are good for staging areas or frontline planets which may come under attack.

---

I've got back and corrected the stock Methane bug in secttypes.txt.

Currently I'm working to improve the value of Ice to something at least reasonably fair.

[geoschmo]

Suicide Junkie said:
News:
I'm currently trying out a new planet storage system.
...



Oooo, I like this. I like this a lot. I wonder if we should suggest something like this for stock SE5?

[Atrocities]

I have to agree, this is a brillant idea.

[Suicide Junkie]

Wow!

This map analysis looks pretty fair to me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Ice/Rock are equivalent in all categories.
Gas overcomes a facility deficit with population bonuses to end with an equal resource production.

Micro and tiny moons give the vaccuum breathers back what they lose in the larger planets.

[Urendi Maleldil]

I like that idea. Finally, an easy way to represent a planet's infrastructure.

[Frederick_d_Ohlmann]

By the way... Replacing Life support by "Crew" that give combat bonus can be good.
On little fighter it would be (I don't know how to say it in english) an optional additional crewman that fire weapon resulting in more accuracy (you know, like in WW1 fighter). On bomber it would be the crew and may not be optionnal...

[Suicide Junkie]

If you mean just on the fighters, I think I may just do that... though it wouldn't really replace lifesupport.

Not requiring an explicit lifesupport component on the short-range (no strategic move) fighters would be quite reasonable I think. And having an optional double-cockpit for some small combat bonus would be good.

[Suicide Junkie]

Here's what I've been working on this week:
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/miscellaneous/CBintro.png

[mac5732]

awesome screen SJ, excellent looking, can you make it a screen saver as well ?

[Suicide Junkie]

Screensavers usually have some action in them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I could strip off the title text to make a desktop background though...

[Suicide Junkie]

To Do:
- Add helpful intel projects.

This adds a lot of potential. Some things you should be able to do:

- Slip an ally some resources (negative resource steal op). This saves you the hassle of sending a political message and waiting for the acceptance message.
- Refuel a stranded ship, or provide a small boost to a warfleet.
- Insidiously lower their guard against you, allowing you to sneak in attack projects while they think you are helping them!
You can even accuse your enemy of the attacks via comm message, and hopefully provoke your "friend" into attacking your real enemy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[douglas]

Suicide Junkie said:
To Do:
- Add helpful intel projects.

This adds a lot of potential. Some things you should be able to do:

- Slip an ally some resources (negative resource steal op). This saves you the hassle of sending a political message and waiting for the acceptance message.
- Refuel a stranded ship, or provide a small boost to a warfleet.
- Insidiously lower their guard against you, allowing you to sneak in attack projects while they think you are helping them!
You can even accuse your enemy of the attacks via comm message, and hopefully provoke your "friend" into attacking your real enemy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


Now that could get interesting. I can just imaging sending a whole bunch of officers to train a friend's flagship (modded crew rotation project) and then crew insurrecting it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif. One brand new top-of-the-line ship with 50% experience in a position to do some major damage to your too-trusting ex-friend http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif.

[Suicide Junkie]

I like the sound of an officer exchange program.
Exchanging more and more officers until they exceed the original crew and then mutiny is delightfully evil http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Captain Kwok]

I like the idea, but how would one prevent negative projects from other empires, while allowing these ones to pass from an ally?

[Suicide Junkie]

This mod abandons the all-or-nothing counter intel projects.

Instead, you must use really cheap intel sabotage projects to discover and stop the attacks before they start.
Unless you have a lot of defending sabotage projects going against one player, you'll have to get lucky to hit their big attack. But you do have multiple turns to catch it, since the costs are pretty high.

You and an ally can also work together to prevent an enemy from attacking.

[Captain Kwok]

Yeah, I'm totally stealing this intelligence setup for my mod. But it'll have to wait until I at least release what I have!

[Suicide Junkie]

http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/CarrierBattlesv1.0.zip

- Plugged in the intro screens.
- Added an improve planet conditions intel op, among the ones mentioned previously. The Un-steal supplies op dosen't work unfortunately.
- Reduced fighter ECM % a bit, so ships will have a decent chance with the 20mm guns.
- Filled out the systemnames file with 10 names for each letter.

I've also built up a nice set of ships in the demo test game.

[Kana]

Says there is nothing there from the link...and I'm not a dummy... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Edit: Yet I was smart enough to find it though...link is still broke...

Kana

[Suicide Junkie]

*SJ makes a sacrifice to Dmeon Lrod Tyopo and all is returned to normal.

[Suicide Junkie]

http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/

Updated again.
- Until the combat replay generation code is fixed, I've pulled the anti-missile tech, and scaled down the CSM damage.
- Added a few tweaks to component families, so the "only latest" view is handier.
- Added command pods for the 50kt troops at max tech, which provide combat bonuses. I'll probably lower the tech requirements in a later version.

Your carriers will have to carry more interceptors to fully compensate for the lack of AMMs.

PS:
The default settings are to use 10 system maps. Feel free to increase this once you get the hang of it.

[Phoenix-D]

"- Until the combat replay generation code is fixed, I've pulled the anti-missile tech, and scaled down the CSM damage."

What was the problem here?

[Suicide Junkie]

Some sort of debug error while writing to the file, it kills the host process.

---

If you want, you can go into settings.txt and set:
Create combat replay := False

Then go into techarea.txt, to the "Point Defense Missiles" section, and set:
Maximum Levels :=5

If you are playing a game without replays, there will be no problem, and you can take advantage of the expanded design options.

[Suicide Junkie]

Thanks to Geo, the Carrier Battles Mod is installed and playable on PBW already!

I'm going to open a couple small PBW games for people to join.

NOTE:
Be sure to play single player against the "AI"s in order to get yourself aquainted with the system.

They won't offer any resistance, but make sure you can get a new colony established, and design a warship capable of moving to, and attacking a neutral planet.

And read the Important!Readme.txt http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif It has many tips, and lists the pitfalls you are likely to encounter.

----

Carrier Battles #2
==================
- Four player slots.
- Medium tech start to get things moving.
- 2000 racial points.
- Small map, 5-10 systems per player.
- # of homeplanets, value to be determined by players. Probably either 1 good planet, or 3 medium/poor planets.

[Combat Wombat]

I have posted a review of the Carrier Battles mod on my site http://www.secenter.org/

[Suicide Junkie]

BTW, the Null planets thing has already been fixed.

[Kana]

I don't know if these are bugs or not...but a few turns into the CB#2 i've noticed the following...

Most FTR weapons not using supplies...is this intended? IE Laser Cannons, Plasma Cannons...These same weapons also apply to regular ship weapons as well...

Multiple FTR enignes displayed...FCD 1,3,4 all at once...

Are FTR drive operating like ships engines...multiples of type allow faster in combat movement?

If FTR weapons/components are not using supplies (other than torps, missiles, DUCs), then what use is the required supply pod?

Kana

[Suicide Junkie]

Without supply you'll be stuck at one speed, even if your engines don't require supply.
Its a safety net so you don't design useless fighters.

Only one fighter drive is effective per vehicle.
However, the more powerful engines are also larger.
You will commonly wish to use an older, smaller drive on your heavy bombers in order to cram another missile launcher on them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The energy weapons do not use supply, but have a correspondingly massive cost in radioactives to power them.
They are a bit weaker and more expensive, but will be pretty much required for any extended sortie into enemy space.
Meanwhile, if you are sitting on a resupply depot, you are free to expend the cheap and powerful ordnance without worring about running dry. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Kana]

Then wouldn't the display progression be 2,4,6...if the next corresponding engine is slightly less space?

Also on the EM-Missiles...Yes they have supply cost...but I would see these as more of a one shot single missile, like a harpoon, or hellfire...especially considering their rate of fire...so why a supply cost? Seems redundant...just my opinion...

Kana

[Suicide Junkie]

On the fighter, perhaps. They are also usable on ships and bases, which need to account for the shots spread over multiple combats.

The EM-CSMs can be fired a second time in combat if you have enough supply points and survival time.

---

The fighter drives alternate bigger/faster, then smaller/tougher
They are grouped by speed. The level 2 is faster than level1, while the level 3 is the same speed as 2 but smaller.
Thus #3 obsoletes #2, but not #1, since #1 is still smaller than #3

[Fyron]

Wouldn't it be far, far less confusing to just have two separate lines of engines for that? Complete with different names...

[Suicide Junkie]

Its a progression...

level 1 = speed 2
level 2,3 = speed 3
level 4,5 = speed 4
etc.

Where the advanced version at each speed is miniaturized yet still bigger than the slower drives.

[Fyron]

Right, it is a progression... it would still be a progression with two separate lines of components. You have your big, cutting edge engines for blazing speed and your smaller, more efficient engines. Is something wrong with giving them separate names and families to make the distinction more clear? The same goal would be achieved, minus any possible confusion.

[Puke]

i dont see any confustion, nor do i see how you could seperate it into two trees.

speed and size are both variable, so you would need a seperate branch for each speed. which is what there is, for fighter engines.

[Fyron]

Look back in the thread... There is most certainly confusion.

[Suicide Junkie]

There aren't two branches to work with here...

It is simply a semi-QNP system for the fighters.
You can get 2 speed with 3kt of engine, or 6 speed with 9kt of engine, or various middle options.

Only the best engine of each speed is shown. Pick your fighter speed from the list of options, and pay the tonnage cost.

[Suicide Junkie]

Some expanded fighter tech, to level 5.

Added:
- Stealth Fighter: Huge defense bonus, small attack bonus.
- ER Heavy Fighter: Strategic movement AND big!

[Suicide Junkie]

A truly massive battle, which turned the tide in Carrier Battles #4 (v1.1):
Over 500 fighters, and 100 ships at a devastating warppoint assault.
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/CBmodSuperbattle.png

[Atrocities]

Some one is about to get spanked, and spanked hard!

[DeadZone]

Yea I did
Kinda kinky too... lol

It was more or less a draw, but my fleet got damaged enough for SJ to sweep up a few turns later

[Suicide Junkie]

Actually, both did http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

The Jraenar fleet was wiped out over about 70 rounds of combat total, but the Xiati fleet suffered badly too; three quarters of the ships ended up crippled with 50-70% damage, and about a fifth of the force was destroyed.

[Atrocities]

This just goes to show you, never go up against the guy who made the mod...... you loose every time. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[El_Phil]

"What I didn't tell you about that clever component/tech tree/facility? It must have slipped my mind AND the documentation. I'll have to fix that for the next release!" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

History of Carrier Battles #1 (part 1)
Note: Game time has been multiplied by ten to make it sound more plausible http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

2410 - 2420: Dawn of the Carrier Age
-------------------------------------------------

In the years leading up to 2410, the Cult of SJ had colonized most of the planets within reach, and explored enough to know that there was no hope of habitable systems further out along the northeastern galactic arm. With each system less habitable than the last, the galactic core began to look more and more appealing. The subsequent push for coreward explorations would change the course of galactic history.

In 2410, an exploration fleet was commissioned and began construction on the Cult homeworld of Udix VII. The original plans called for a great number of missile-armed support gunboats and supply tugs to escort a flagship. The impracticality of this was soon apparent however, and the plans were repeatedly scaled back. By 2415, the grand exploration fleet was comprised of only a single Heathen-class anti-ship bombardment frigate and the flagship carrier, CSX Assisted Suicide. Sporting ten missile tubes with a wide range of small warheads, it would theoretically be able to destroy whatever the Heathen and its heavy missiles could not.

Command staff were under an ever increasing amount of pressure from above to locate more colonizable worlds, and late in 2415 they decided to halt construction of more ships and launch the expedition ahead of schedule. With only a single escort, and a mere third of the carrier's fighter complement loaded, the exploration fleet was quite underpowered. However the expected risk of an exploration mission is typically quite low, so the fleet was launched anyways.

In what may be the shortest exploration mission in recorded history, the Cultist explorers made their very first warp transit in 2417, and emerged right in the middle of a hostile fleet. Although the warppoint was unexplored at the time, we now know that it led directly from Udix to Narcisston. Many of you will recognize Narcisston as the homesystem of the Memnorak, and that is quite correct. Back in 2417, the Memnorak had been busy building a fleet of their own, and those ships were all positioned right where the Cultists were headed.

Now, in order to understand how the subsequent conflict played out, we must take note of early Memnorak design theory. Pre-reformation warships were completely under manual control. The bridge crew is much the same as today, however behind the scenes, tasks were done almost entirely by hand. Reactor stabilization, thrust vectoring, weapons management, they all were done by real people in the bowels of the ship. The other thing to note is the emphasis on weapons over defenses. The Memnorak Crusader, which is not to be confused with the later Cultist design of the same name, had four medium laser cannons, a depleted uranium cannon, and a cluster missile tube. Absolutely bristling with weapons for a frigate sized ship. However, in fitting all of those guns they completely neglected armor or shielding; the Memnorak battle plan relied instead on the ability to destroy their targets before the enemy could fire back.

Once the warp transit began, conflict was inevitable. The Memnorak could see the gravitational wake of the Assisted Suicide approaching, and knew that they could not afford to hold back. If any sigificant incoming object turned out to be a hostile warship, they needed to fire first or take heavy casualties. Memnorak commanders gave the only order they could; fire on sight. The Cultists on the other hand, were not under such pressure. Whatever the situation was, they needed to pull back and put room between them and the targets. The long range missiles carried by the Cultist ships would be only half as effective at point blank, so regardless of whether the sensor blips were friendly or hostile, a rapid retreat to weapon safe range was mandatory.

From surviving logs of the event, we know that the CSX Assisted Suicide emerged from the warppoint just south of the Memnorak fleet, while the escort emerged to the east. As ordered, the seven Memnorak ships immediately opened fire with their laser cannons on both ships. The Heathen was destroyed so quickly by the Memnorak ships that there are no recordings of the actual event. The Assisted Suicide, on the other hand, managed to deploy its defensive ice field in time and suffered almost no damage. The Memnorak laser cannons were refracted and diffused by the field, and what little energy did reach the hull was harmless. Since the Cultist carrier had no anti-ship weaponry, the Assisted Suicide had to launch fighters in the hopes of stopping the assault before a Memnorak ship got a lucky hit through.

This is when the design flaws of the Memnorak caught up with them. Orders are said to have come down from the Memnorak captains to target the fighters. However, the gunnery crew misunderstood, and opened fire with their cluster missiles only; the laser cannon batteries continued to target the carrier. Missiles were what the Cultist fighters were designed for, and the missiles were shot down almost before they could leave the tubes. Then, while the carrier's defenses glowed with the laser bombardment, the fighters were able to use their small anti-missile weapons to pepper the unprotected hulls of the Memnorak ships with fire. A short time later, the Memnorak fleet was debris and 90% of the fighters were back aboard the Assisted Suicide.

Although the Cultist military denies any damage to the Assisted Suicide in the first battle of the Zezzis warppoint, crew members serving on the carrier at the time say that one of the Memnorak laser beams did in fact manage to penetrate the ice field and start a fire in the port side crew quarters. Many Cultist museums have picked up on this story, and half-melted trinkets are sold by the thousands daily in gift shops across the empire.

Shortly after the warppoint battle, the CSX Assisted Suicide was attacked by four more Memnorak Crusaders which were en route to the warppoint, presumably to join the now-destroyed fleet. The incoming ships were swiftly destroyed by the Cult fighters long before they could close to anywhere near laser cannon range. This devastating loss of 80% of their standing navy over a mere two years was the driving force behind the Memnorak design reformation. By 2420, the Memnorak would be finishing the emergency construction of their first defense carrier, and with that, the Age of the Carrier had truly begun.

[Combat Wombat]

Does this mean that I am famous now that I am the co-star of a story?

[Captain Kwok]

I sure hope you do better next time CW, it'd make for a better story. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

The battle was far from over at turn 20.

At that point, I have a quarter carrier load of fighters, and CW was pumping out loaded carriers and had a fair number of support ships undergoing retrofits.

The second battle of the Udix warppoint was quite long and destructive, lasting almost 10 turns.

It is just the Dawn of the Carrier age http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Puke]

wow, i dont think that i have EVER seen a year long battle in SE4 - not counting planetary seiges, of course.

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, it wasn't really continuous, but there was a constant stream of just-in-time reinforcements before one side gained control http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

SJ, I want to officially Thank You for sprouting the idea for this mod. I read a few early posts, and immediately started to implement a similar system of fighter combat in Capship (note: this was some time back, perhaps as much as 2 months). Therefore, hereby, I Thank You for this wonderful idea.

I customized it in Capship, however (didn't DL the actual mod);
-Fighter hulls are generally split up between Interceptors, Space Superiority Fighters and Bombers.
-Interceptors are the fast lot, they're the smallest but are excellently suited for swarming SSFs and bombers.
-SSFs are larger and slower, and can carry more potent weaponry. They are the principal means of defending your fleet against Bombers.
-Bombers are massive, lumbering craft which can strike hard at warships.
-Most fighter weapons can only target fighters and other small stuff, the anti-capital ship weapons are so large that only Bombers can mount them. These weapons are comparatively extremely powerful, so that Bombers remain useful and perhaps essential into the later game eras.
-Stock PD can only target seekers now, some/most ship-based weapons can also target fighters but are generally less effective than Interceptor/SSF escorts, because of the defense bonus of the fighters, and also because fighter armor is pretty strong. For truly effective fighter interference you're going to need your own strike craft escort.

There is nothing to stop you from placing masses of Interceptor weapons on a Bomber, that's a choice you'll have to make for yourself. It's not recommended or discouraged, but Interceptors were specifically meant for the light anti-fighter weapons, while Bombers should mainly be used as capital ship killers. Bombers have the potential to be more dangerous to powerful warships than a Dreadnought. It's always recommended you take at least one carrier stocked with ample supplies of all three fighter types when you send a fleet out on a (prolonged) campaign. This way, you'll have protection from enemy Bombers (which can utterly devastate a fleet if it isn't well-protected) as well as a means of performing quick, powerful strikes on an enemy fleet.

Strike craft are relatively cheap and fast to produce (though a powerful Bomber could take three or so turns to build), and the fact that they're real killers makes it easier for an empire under attack to build a modest fleet of Bombers to drive the enemy out. Said enemy could then build swarms of SSFs to counter the Bombers. Said Bombers would be generally useless then, but they can quickly build entire swarms of Interceptors to swarm the enemy SSF escorts and overcome their defenses, to cover for the Bombers.

Whoops, turned into a (promotional) rant there, sorry 'bout that! But still, Thank You SJ for this idea.

[Suicide Junkie]

You know, you really don't need to force a split between interceptors, superiority fighters and bombers.
I simply used a generic set of fighter hulls, and let the components speak for themselves.

- If you want anti-missile defense, you simply add lots of tiny mount guns and a big (QNP-style) engine to chase missiles with. More guns == more missiles shot down per turn.
- If you want a bomber, you use a smaller engine and cram the hull full of big missiles or heavy laser cannons for that big initial punch through the leaky shields. (You need to overload the quasi-emissive effect)
- Superiority fighters on the other hand, need heavier armor and the most efficient guns rather than the high damage-per-shot bomber weapons or the array of high accuracy weapons on the interceptor. (Make a wall, and chew up fighters without letting them pass)


In CB#2, Axel caught me by surprise with a squad of half-bombers.
They launched fewer missiles, but then followed up on the attack by picking off my lightly armored interceptors with guns as they rushed to the missiles.
I loved it. It didn't conform to my expectations, but made perfect sense in action http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Next time I'll have to bring some superiority fighters to take the hits and protect the interceptors while they do their job.


Getting rid of stock Point Defense altogether was one of the key features, too.
The autofire makes them essentially unbalancable.
Instead, you have to carry some sort of antimissile fighter type, or mount a bunch of short range 20mm cannons with lots of multiplex tracking to back them up. Or just armor up, and take the blows http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


It seems my ships have been resorting to the third method way too much in CarrierBattles #1 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
Massive assaults, running out of interceptors, and then being brutally pounded by bombardment ships. Its quite fun though, and I'll soon have some ships decked out with fifteen 20mm cannons just for point defense duty.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

As I said, there's nothing to stop you from building Bombers filled to the brim with Interceptor weaponry. It's just that each type of fighter is larger than the previous one, and therefore can mount larger weapons. The Interceptors are small - tiny, even - fighters that cannot use many weapons, but are very cheap and can be produced and transported in droves, and can be used to overcome larger fighter's defenses to cover for the hard-hitting Bombers closing on the capital ships. SSFs can use larger, heavier, longer-ranged anti-fighter weapons, and are mainly useful (I think) for defending fleets against Bombers. Bombers are the only attack craft capable of using anti-ship weapons, and the Bomber anti-ship weapons are very powerful. A modest amount of Bombers can be more dangerous to a (2500kT!) Light Cruiser than a Dreadnought (somewhere between 15 and 20MT! There are currently three types of DNs). Bombers can be utterly devastating in the early game, if you research them you could gain a significant tactical advantage, however Interceptors and SSFs are far easier to research than Bombers and you could find yourself losing entire flights of expensive Bombers to swarms upon swamrs of dirt-cheap Interceptors.

Yes, attack craft (as I call fighters in Capship, since the Fighter denomination is mainly used to refer to SSFs) do have armor, and it can deflect most capital ship weapons.

Point Defense has practically been castrated, stock PD can only shoot seekers. You'll have to rely on other weapons (most notably Weapons Batteries) if you want to take on attack craft with a capital warship, but still the most effective way to counter Bombers - both economically and militarily - still remains Interceptors and SSFs.

[Suicide Junkie]

Ah, but my point is that you don't need to force those roles.
They come naturally given the appropriate components, and it allows a lot more freedom of design for the player.

The autofiring ability of point defense is the big kicker.
You always get to shoot the missiles, and the only way to get hit is to run out of shots.
Simply removing the autofire makes combat far more interesting, and missiles do not need to be uberly powerful and plentful in order to be a threat.

[Puke]

i think bomber just means heavy fighter, in this case.

[Suicide Junkie]

Superiority fighters work well as heavy fighters too, though. Especially if you are going to arm them with supply-sucking DUCs instead of the energy based Plasma Cannons.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Only problem is, SSFs can't use anti-ship weaponry. Only Bombers can. I know I'm limiting players in their design choices, but it's what I want. I simply like it that way. It makes sense to me. This way, fighters are still useful in the late game (as Bomber weapons are simply too powerful to be true - did I point that out yet?) yet are still quite easy to counter. If an enemy kills off your fleets all the time because they've got a fighter base sitting on a WP launching flocks of Bombers every time, you can simply mass-produce entire clouds of dirt-cheap Interceptors and load them on Carriers. They'll be able to eliminate the Bombers quite effectively, and this'll leave the way open for your warships (or Bombers!) to destroy the enemy space station.

[Suicide Junkie]

Strategia_In_Ultima said:
Only problem is, SSFs can't use anti-ship weaponry. Only Bombers can. I know I'm limiting players in their design choices, but it's what I want. I simply like it that way. It makes sense to me.

Ah, but see? If you put anti-ship weapons on it, then it is by definition a bomber http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif If you don't put anti-ship weapons on, then it becomes something else, SSF or interceptor or something else depending on the configuration and the mood of the player http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

In CBmod, SSFs can't use anti-ship weaponry simply due to the fact that by definition, a SSF needs to have shields, armor and efficient guns, leaving no room for the bulky and inefficient anti-ship cannons and missiles.
All of the weapons you would consider for a fighter that will attack ships have to be high damage per shot at the expense of all else (reload, cost, ammo use) just to overcome the leaky shields on a warship. CSMs combine that with quad-to-shields damage for massive penetration of leaky shields, keeping them effective even at high tech, with shields reaching the hundreds of points.

[Suicide Junkie]

Carrier Battles v1.2 is now up.
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/CarrierBattlesv1.2.zip

- Homeworlds no longer start with a useless spaceport and resupply depot. Instead they get two more legacy infrastructure
- Torpedoes now have a reload rate of 3 for more punch.
- Ship reactors slowly (solar) generate supplies.
- Larger supply factory components are available to generate suppies.
- Repair bays reworked to use a smooth size decrease and all 10 tech levels. Useless nano-fab labs removed.
- Facility cargo space generation divided by 10. The cargo limits should actually matter on small worlds now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
- Level 2 colonization tech required in order to colonize foreign-surface planets. This avoids excessive colony tech trading and makes those other 2 surfaces appropriately hard to acquire.
- Normal computers no longer require organics.
- Stripmining facilities now available. They reduce value by 1%, but provide tons of resources. Can be upgraded to a normal extractor facility.
- Pollution from heavy industries (especially stripminers) reduces planet conditions. Cheap planet and system environmental facilites are available to heal the damage, but you can always just turn the planet into a deadly hell-hole and then just drag some hippies from the optimal farming paradises in to work the mines.

[Fyron]

- Stripmining facilities now available. They reduce value by 1%, but provide tons of resources. Can be upgraded to a normal extractor facility.

This is probably going to cause many headaches. It will make the "upgrade all facilities" button as bad to press as in Proportions... Do they really need to upgrade?

[CovertJaguar]

I wouldn't think they would need to upgrade. If you don't want them anymore, then scrap them and rebuild. Normal resource facilities don't take that long to build.

[Suicide Junkie]

The upgrade all button is already bad to use because of the industrial zone -> legacy infrastructure path.

CJ does have a good point though. Even with the half-off upgrade price, the mid to high tech resource extractors will still take about a turn each.

[Kana]

Found a possible bug in 1.0c...

Researched Planetary Bombardment Missles. Got all 5 levels with one research level, and in the Ship build area it seems to only list the version #1....

Kana

[Suicide Junkie]

Fixed in both v1.2 and v1.0
Will be updating the PBW games to v1.0d, which will also provide the extra-distictive roman numerals on the advanced drive reactors.

[Kana]

Running 1.0d...have VI reactor, and pic says its an XIII. I assume this is fixed in 1.2...?

Are we going to move the game to 1.2?

Kana

[Suicide Junkie]

Anything other than a v1.0 would break the savegames.

Reactor level 5 gives you a speed 3 engine (hence the roman III for the component)
To distinguish the level 6 (which is only cheaper) from the level 5, I added the X.

So its an X-tra cheap version of the speed III engine. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Carrier Battles #5 is now open for players on PBW!

Everybody who missed out on the last four, now's your chance!

PS:
Spots are going fast; 50% sold out!

[Atrocities]

So break the save games and start a new PBW game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

That's Carrier Battles #5 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Atrocities]

Suicide Junkie said:
That's Carrier Battles #5 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



See, great minds do think alike. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

One last slot available in Carrier Battles #5.

We will be starting it very soon.

[Arkcon]

Some casual poking around on my part sugests that there are no cloak penetrating sensors in this mod. Which is fair I 'spose -- there are no cloaking devices. But that does make every nebula and storm sector a "free space" for anyone to hide in. Not to say that's not fun in its own right, but I find myself wondering if that's really the way you intend to leave it.

[Suicide Junkie]

It does make you a little bit paranoid, yeah http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
Once the enemy has gotten in there, though, you'll never know how many might be left lurking.

However, the build rate of mobile spaceyards is very very poor when working on ships, so there will never be hordes of enemy flowing out of a nebula or storm.

What I tend to do is build a modest defense net of satellites at all the exits, so when they do come out, they will be crippled or destroyed, and then my local ships can handle the cleanup and repair duty.

The Fetid Nebula in Carrier Battles #2 is a good example. It sits on the border of three races, and everybody has a zillion sats everywhere... except in the east warppoint, where (from admittedly second hand reports) an invasion swarm was halted with major casualties.

[Suicide Junkie]

By the way;
Carrier Battles #6 is now open to join on PBW.

A one-planet start, for those who prefer it.
Homeworlds should become less important, and you'll have to start building resource extractors on your colonies a lot earlier.

[ZeroAdunn]

Two things:

First: I thought I would bump this thread because I love this mod,

Second: Has anybody done any work on AI for this mod? I tried my hand at it and failed miserably.

[Suicide Junkie]

ZA:
For AI modding you definitely need some help with mount selection.
I've got a plan to add tech areas that the AI can research so as to pick which mounts to use on its ships. You just need to let me know which mounts on which hull sizes you want, since there aren't enough mounts to do all the permutations.

Your AIs should probably also go missile-heavy just to keep things simpler.

Basically, talk to me while you're working on AIs, so I can bend the mod in places to make the AI fit in http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[ZeroAdunn]

It's not just mounts though, the AI's don't build carriers, and I couldn't get them to do it routinely.

[Suicide Junkie]

New version available:
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/

Carrier Battles v1.3
- Space Combat rounds reduced to 30. (Battles have been quicker than expected)
- Seeker defense modifier increased by 20 points
- Maximum planet value increased to 200%
- All ship maintenance abilities reworded to "X% per month" for easier understanding.
- Carrier maintenance reduced to 10% per month
- Larger base maintenance all reduced.
- Crew requirements for bases reduced.
- Torpedo damage decreased slightly
- Torpedo reload increased to 3 turns (with matching damage increase)
- Multipurpose missile tech increased to 10 levels.
- Capital Ship Missile hitpoints increased for better PD penetration.
- Random Plague level now depends on severity chosen in game setup. Catastrophic plagues can hit level 4.
- Berzerker combat bonus decreased. Small combat modifiers added to the other cultures for flavour.
- High tech shield costs and ability amounts tweaked.
- Bloodthirsty Happiness type tweaked for more difficulty; they now have a small penalty for seeing too many allied guard ships.
- Racial tech costs tweaked.
- A second speed trait added: Savant Navigators

[Suicide Junkie]

I have created a "Carrier Battles Newbie Game" on PBW for those who are interested in trying out this mod.

Only first-timers will be allowed in, and you will have permissions to read the forums in all the existing CBmod games for tips.

I will also check the game forum regularily to answer any questions you may have.

[Suicide Junkie]

I've finally realized how the Repair priorities work http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

And, to celebrate, I've updated v1.3 with bonus default ship strategies, and a repair priorities system stupendously better than the last version.

[Captain Kwok]

Perhaps you can enlighten us with your new insight on repair priorities?

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, firstly, it is not intended to be a sorted priority list.

The stuff on the right gets repaired before the stuff on the left... other than that its in order of placement on the ship.

I got lazy in one of my games, leaving some of the categories unprioritized, and later realized a ship was getting fixed out of order.

[douglas]

Are you sure about that? My tests from a while back were pretty conclusive that the order of ships that get repaired is by ship ID, which is coincidentally the same order ships are listed in the fleet transfer screen. I didn't specifically test it, but I seem to recall some instances from PBW games that indicate that the repair priorities list really is a sorted priority list and it is followed for the order of components repaired within a ship. I'd go ahead and test that now, but I don't have SEIV on my work computer.

[Suicide Junkie]

That was my original assumption, but ships were always being repaired from first component to last component until I stopped adding all of the component types to the repair priority list.

[Suicide Junkie]

Another little update:

Advanced Colony tech has been fixed, and is now close to what I originally intended.

Native races get the standard colony module from the start.
After research, native races get the "Advanced Colony Module", which is half price, smaller and has more cargo space built in.
After research, non-natives get a "Primitive Colony Module", which is bigger, more expensive and has less built-in space.

[Colonel]

This is great mod great job SJ, just thought Id say that

[Suicide Junkie]

Thanks, Colonel http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


And hey, Everybody!
The PBW Carrier Battles Newbie game is still open.

If you haven't played CBmod online yet, this is the perfect chance to try!

[Suicide Junkie]

There is only one last spot available in the Carrier Battles Newbie game!

[Suicide Junkie]

Golden Opportunity!

We have had a slot open up in the CarrierBattles #6 game due to real life issues.

The empire is solidly in *FIRST PLACE*, with the most ships, the most units, and an empire almost twice the size of the other players.

[Suicide Junkie]

Last chance to take over a 1st place empire!

Carrier Battles #6 on PBW!

[Seik]

I m interested but never played the CB Mod - make it sense?

[Suicide Junkie]

There is a lot to learn; I made the mod basically from scratch.
Perhaps you could join the CBmod newbie game as well as taking over in CB#6...

As one of the old school players, I'd say if you read over the "important!readme.txt" file http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif, use the simulator a lot, and email me with any questions, you should do just fine.

[Seik]

Ok, I'm in ... but I ve get an error message while taking over the empire:

Error: 500
Location: /GamePlayer
Internal Servlet Error:

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Null filename to Game.load?
at cc.dpf.pbw.seiv.Game.load(Game.java:508)
at cc.dpf.pbw.servlet.seiv.GamePlayer.processRequest( GamePlayer.java:276)
at cc.dpf.pbw.servlet.seiv.GamePlayer.doGet(GamePlaye r.java:339)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet .java:740)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet .java:853)
at org.apache.tomcat.core.ServletWrapper.doService(Se rvletWrapper.java:405)
at org.apache.tomcat.core.Handler.service(Handler.jav a:287)
at org.apache.tomcat.core.ServletWrapper.service(Serv letWrapper.java:372)
at org.apache.tomcat.core.ContextManager.internalServ ice(ContextManager.java:797)
at org.apache.tomcat.core.ContextManager.service(Cont extManager.java:743)
at org.apache.tomcat.service.connector.Ajp13Connectio nHandler.processConnection(Ajp13ConnectionHandler. java:160)
at org.apache.tomcat.service.TcpWorkerThread.runIt(Po olTcpEndpoint.java:416)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.ThreadPool$ControlRunnable. run(ThreadPool.java:501)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:484)



Any ideas?

[Fyron]

Use the "text" mode of PBW to join games. PBW was only coded for Internet Exploder bugs, so it has features that do not work well in standards-compliant browsers. The "graphics" mode tends to have more issues than the "text" mode. The problems are mostly involved with the functions that control players joining and leaving games.

[Suicide Junkie]

I have just kicked myself from the newbie game so you can take over that spot too.

[Seik]

PBW-Text-version works fine - thanks for the hint!

[Colonel]

Hey SJ, can you post a link to the newest version of the mod, I try downloading it at PBW but the files are incompatiable. for the newbie game Im in.

[Suicide Junkie]

Use these files for the current turn of CBng #1:
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/CarrierBattles1.3b_newbie.zip

PBW had a wierd half-version when it processed, but it will be fixed by next turn.

[Colonel]

Suicide Junkie said:
Use these files for the current turn of CBng #1:
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/CarrierBattles1.3b_newbie.zip

PBW had a wierd half-version when it processed, but it will be fixed by next turn.



Whatever is wrong with it is still messed up, everytime I get a new turn, the files are incompatabile

[Suicide Junkie]

You needed those files for the last turn only.
PBW and the game have been updated to use the latest version, which has some bugfixes.

For the forseeable future, the game will be running on the latest version; these files here:
http://seiv.pbw.cc/Download/filelib/1193/CarrierBattlesv1.3bR2.zip

[Kana]

Speaking of games whats the holdup in CB#2...? Not that I'm actually complaining...just curious...

Kana

[Zaamon]

Cannot download. File not found.
Ok. Just found what was incorrest. You must login first. So direct libnks may not work.

[Suicide Junkie]

Kana said:
Speaking of games whats the holdup in CB#2...? Not that I'm actually complaining...just curious...

Kana

Puke seems to have dissapeared off the face of the planet.
I know he occasionally has RealLife rudely intrude into his gaming time, but this is the longest he's been gone, and I haven't been able to get in touch with him yet.

I'd have temporarily taken over his empire, except for the fact that I'm in the game already http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

-

Speaking of which, it is about time to open up the replacement position to anybody who wants it:

Puke's Empire is in Excellent Position!
- 2nd place in ships
- 1st place in units and bases
- Allied with everyone he isn't dominating in what is basically a protectorate. (Of course, most of the galaxy has trade alliances with everybody else... we're a bunch of crazy Xenophiliacs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )
- Disposable Society! Double build rate, double maintenance, no repairs. (This means you can lose your entire navy, and rebuild it from scratch a couple times a year!)
- Colonies across half the galaxy! Combined with the disposable society, you have the unique ability to raise an fleet of scary size anywhere in the galaxy on very short notice.

[Fyron]

Zaamon said:
Cannot download. File not found.
Ok. Just found what was incorrest. You must login first. So direct libnks may not work.

If you do not log out of PBW and leave the cookie there, you can use direct links without trouble. Otherwise, they do not work.

[Seik]

I don't know why but that does not work for me!

- I'm logged in (PBW)
- opening another tab and paste the link = ERROR
- using the same (PBW) tab and paste the link = ERROR

Where is my mistake?

EDIT:
<font color="red"> Found the problem! </font>
It's a browser problem. I've tried it again with the Internet Explorer ... and it worked!
Normally I'm using Mozilla Firefox and that's the problem. *gnarf* http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Well, you can always go and browse the PBW mod library manually, or visit imagemodserver:
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/

[Fyron]

PBW was designed for Internet Exploder bugs. The "text" mode tends to work better in standards-compliant browsers.

[Seik]

That's true.

But I thought that I'm damned to stupid to use that links ... *pfuh* http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Mozilla Firefox seems to be bad for these kinds of things.

Non-firefox mozilla stuff works fine, as do most random browsers.

[Zaamon]

I get it work with firefox.

[Seik]

How?

[Suicide Junkie]

Does anybody want to replace Puke in CB#2?

Empire details (recap):
- Strong stats; first in units and bases, second in ships.
- Essentially allied with everyone at the moment.
- Colonies all over the galaxy. Easily the largest empire.
- Strong Core Defenses. The vulnerability of the wide ranging colonies is unknown, but his core worlds are well protected by vast WP satellite networks.
- The empire is a Disposable Society. That means double build rate, so if you screw up a design you can replace it with a fixed design almost instantly.
- *NOT* at war with the mod's creator http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

This position has been filled, thank you.

Carrier Battles #8 (competitive) has 4 positions left to fill before starting

Carrier Battles Newbie Game #2 (practice) has 4 positions left as well. Only players who have not yet started a CB on PBW are allowed.

[Atrocities]

This mod should be listed as EXPERT only. The learning curve is quite steep. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Seik]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Yes, it's incredible what SJ did with our good old SE4! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif Nearly everything has changed, strategies developed over years will not function in his universe.
But I really like what I saw so far!

[Kana]

Bug Report

Version 1.0f

Capital Ship Missile III - Damage is Normal
All other CSM are Quad Damage to Shields...

Kana

[Will]

Yeah, CBM looks very interesting. It's kinda stripped down, except with the propulsion, projectile weapon, and missile areas. And I've barely scratched the surface with the few hours I spent going over Puke's spot.

I kinda get the feeling that his/my empire won't be the biggest once the fighting starts. Definitely gonna take some getting used to... especially since I haven't played against a human since... version circa 0.6x. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Kana said:
Bug Report
...
Capital Ship Missile III - Damage is Normal
All other CSM are Quad Damage to Shields...

Yep. Looks like another full round of mod updates for Eorg to install http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Fyron]

Have you actually tested the pollution setup? I have seen no decrease in conditions after several hundred turns. I increased the settings to -10 on the facilities, no change. -100, no change. -300, no change.

[Suicide Junkie]

Bah, that sucks.
I thought it worked... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Attached is a UI update for any version of CBmod (extract to the CBmod folder, not the SE4 folder)

Tell me what you think!

[Emperor's Child]

I saw a few bugs when looking over the CB files (v1.3):

In the intel projects file:

Order Snafu (80% stealth) is set only to read the first of the 5 target message lines. Recommend changing the number target messages value to 5.

I also thought that the large cargo bomb should be detected since you get the 100% stealth small cargo bomb at the same level. Seemed out of sequence to me.

In the vehicle size file:

The battlefortress has the ability "combat to hit defense minus" entered twice, one at 50%, the other at 40%. I’m pretty sure that one of those should have been a combat to hit offence plus since the battle fortress does not have any defined, but the 2 small fortresses do have this.

[Suicide Junkie]

Fixed.

Time to make more work for Eorg http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Atrocities]

I want more. I want super powerful carriers that are hard to kill. I want carriers to become the center of the fleet and fighters the focus. I want my fighters to be like real world fighter in that they are a weapon platform and the carrier is their home. Carriers are easy to kill in SEIV but in RL they are a ***** to take out. I want more.

[Emperor's Child]

AMEN!

I do wish that either the CB for newbies #2 or the CB #8 would kick off... I've been noodling through the files for some time now and want to take a crack at this mod.

[Suicide Junkie]

I'm going to start booting people who don't upload their EMPs in order to make room for those who are more serious about this.

CB#8 has four players at the moment.
Its enough for a small game, but it would be nice to have enough players to form multiple alliances. Now's your chance to join.

---

Atrocities:
Carriers are quite difficult to kill, particularily if you devote the appropriate tonnage to a good ratio of shields and armor.
Although when empty, a carrier is barely worth its tonnage in warships and can be easily overwhelmed, its fighters can be designed to make up for all of its deficiencies (point defense, mainly, but sheer firepower is good too).

The only thing a carrier and its fighters are not so good at, is missile bombardment. For the best bombardments, you want a constant stream of missiles with which to saturate the enemy ranks and avoid too much overkill.

A carrier which has lost its fighter complement has been essentially neutered. Unless its fighters dealt severe damage to the enemy before dying, the carrier dosen't stand a chance. It can certainly take hits, and may dish out enough damage to finish cripples, but its cargo bays are now empty, and support weapons should not have been a high priority.
Support weapons are for support ships.
Carrier weapons are the cargo bays http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

---

PS:
Perhaps I should make a graphical "Fighters 201: Design and Strategy" and post it up on imagemodserver.

[Suicide Junkie]

School's Open!
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/CBmodTutorial/

[Emperor's Child]

I've found two show-stopping bugs in CB1.3D. It turns out that now that the Order Snafu (80%) is using all of the message lines an old typo is now coming to light. There are two lines named Message title 3, and this hangs the mod when it loads. If you change the second one to Message title 4, it loads correctly.

The second bug is a typo in the Battle fortress area of the vehicle text file. The "Combat To Hit Offence Plus" line needs to change offenCe to offenSe.

Once those changes are made the game loads.

[Suicide Junkie]

The files have already been fixed and updated on PBW.
Thanks!

PS:
New courses at CBschool:
FIG 340 : Bomber Design
FIG 380 : Interceptor Design

[Emperor's Child]

Those are great courses! Nice info to consider, and some unique insights I hadn't thought about.

[Slick]

I think I'll try this mod. It looks very well done and polished. Questions (sorry I haven't read the entire thread yet; working on it):

By assigning different strategies, can different carriers have different fighter launch stack sizes? (after the battle, the ships would have to redistribute their respective fighters since fighters won't necessarily return to the ship that launched them)

How important are non-carrier hulls in this mod?

Do drones have any differences in this mod? Are there any advantages to using drones over fighters?

[Atrocities]

It has a steep learning curver that might turn off some players but otherwise is an excellent mod. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif A solid 10/10

[Emperor's Child]

Slick, You ought to jump in on the PBW Carrier battles for Newbies, one slot left for us new guys learning the mod. CB #8 is filling up too, you could be in both, the newbies game according to SJ will go rather quickly, so you could do it parallel with CB#8 and not suffer in the latter.

[Suicide Junkie]

Slick said:
I think I'll try this mod. It looks very well done and polished. Questions (sorry I haven't read the entire thread yet; working on it):

By assigning different strategies, can different carriers have different fighter launch stack sizes? (after the battle, the ships would have to redistribute their respective fighters since fighters won't necessarily return to the ship that launched them)

How important are non-carrier hulls in this mod?

Do drones have any differences in this mod? Are there any advantages to using drones over fighters?

Ah, questions http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

1) Yes! Launch groups depend completely on the carrier's (or fleet's if you are not breaking formation) strategy.
The DEFAULTS have been set to launch in groups of 3.
Three is not an option in game, so if you ever change the strategy, you can't change it back. (5 is the minimum the game will let you change it to)

2) Carriers should take their fighters back in the same order and distribution they launched them in I think. I haven't tested it, but you will often leave combat with three half-filled carriers.

3) Non carrier hulls provide a lot of the flavour. Point defense, assault, missile tugs, transports, even micro-carriers.
Carriers are usually quite tough, and can have some support weapons, but they typically provide the variety vicariously through the mix of fighters they carry.
You need mixed fleets in order to do well. Some bombardment, some assault, some PD and lots of interceptors, dogfighters and bombers to fill in the gaps.

4) Drones do not exist as such.
The only hull types used are Ship, Fighter and Troop.
Satellites are available, but use the ship hull so that they require repairs and resupply after combat.
Mines do not exist; its honourable, stand up fights all around. Satellites fill the role of blocking warppoints.

5) Mixed use is the key here.
Ships need both shields and armor to minimize damage.
Short-range, long-range, ammo-using and energy-based direct fire weapons all have their niches. Mounts from 20mm antimissile popguns to 100mm shield-busting howitzers.
A wide variety of missiles are also available; everything from planetary bombardment beasts, to itty bitty anti-missile missiles (SE4 deluxe only http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif) CSMs, multipurpose, antifighter, cluster missiles fill out the middle.

[Suicide Junkie]

We will soon have a course taught by Ekolis.

Sometime this weekend, I will get out of this zombie state that two weeks of solid overtime work has driven me into...
Then I will be reorganizing the course list and uploading the new stuff!

In other news, "Carrier Battles Mod #8" on PBW will be starting this weekend as well.
This is your last chance to sign up. Have your EMPire file ready.

[Atrocities]

Hey SJ, Lets end the CB game that I am participating in. There are only 2 or 3 players and to be honest, I have no ships, and am just researching. When I design ships they say they have movment, so I build them. They are built, but have no movement. It is just an excersize in frustration for me now.

[Suicide Junkie]

See: SHP 200: Principles of StarShip Design. (Chapter 3 - Propulsion Systems) (http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/CBmodTutorial/SHP200.html#propulsion)
You did not put any/enough engines on your ships.

Drive Reactors are *NOT* engines. They only provide bonus movement, and you need at least one movement point worth of engine ports in order for the reactor to help.


We talked about this on email back in August, but that was a long time ago.

PS:
In that game, there are two huge empires, and two tiny ones.
I think I should suggest that the big empires partnership with their adjacent small empire. Should keep the game balanced, and let you try out some combined-fleet co-op action.

[Atrocities]

I have no fleet. I cannot colonize. The largest ship I can make has no room for anything once engines are added.

[Will]

AT: Be sure to use the "Small Ship Reactor" mount for the non-carrier ships. That frees up quite a bit of space.

[Atrocities]

My problem is that I never took the time to play the mod to the degree that I know what in the hell I am doing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

The mod is not for new players of SEIV that is for sure. It is one of the most complex comprehensive mods I have seen since Adamant. Job well done SJ.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

You only need one MP worth of engines, but two is good.
The engines should take up only about 10% of your space per movement point.

[cshank2]

I want to try this so bad, but alas, I have no idea how to work PBW. Oh well. (Plus, I like to play my games at my own pace of 15 turns an hour http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif)



Edit: Changed Minutes to Turns... like it was supposed to be... before the sleep elves changed it... yeah.

[Suicide Junkie]

Once you have an account, log in.

In graphics mode, you can mouse-over all the buttons to see what they do (text appears on the right)

Click the "attack" icon to go to the games screen. By default you see your current games, colour coded by status.
Click the fleet icons to view "open games" or "all games", and then choose one from the left.

When you see a game you like, select it by clicking, and then click the resupply-at-nearest lightning bolt to join.

During the game, you use the cargo-load and cargo-drop to upload your turns (and empire file) or download the next turn.

[Suicide Junkie]

The Carrier Battles Page on imagemodserver has been updated.
Nifty new stuff!

http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/Mods/CarrierBattles/