Star Wars Mod - II (Sci-Fi Xover Mod)

[Andrés]

In the discussion about the SE4 Image Neo-Standard (Non standard Hulls thread), my Starwars mod was mentioned.
That mod was made some time ago, it was never completed (I was going to add a Force Sensitive racial trait that was never fully implemented) and it was never updated to work with the Last patch.
Of course that I thought about updating and completing the mod now.
But there's this idea that I've been having for a long time. But only now there are enough race styles and mods (completed or in progress) to make it feasible.
The idea is simple, a simple mod that combines Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5 and maybe some other sci-fi.
Not only the races (shipsets) but everything else that can be modded into the game: weapons, vehicle sizes etc.

This has always been my favorite game theme, I played sci-fi crossover wars since the times of SE3, but creating a mod that adds the actual techs of everyone should give it another proportion.
I know this project is too ambitious and would probably never get the time to finish it all by myself, so I need your help.
Balance will be a difficult topic here.
There's always a trekkie who will point that lasers are useless against their shields and that their superior phasers should be able to bypass sw shields and take down a star destroyer with one shot! (Sorry but trekkies tend to babble more than other sci-fi fans, probably because they think what they hear in the shows is scientifically serious)
That is of course wrong, and our objective must be to make all techs balanced and worth playing. Obviously that every one will have its own advantages and disadvantages over the others.

By now I'm in the research and preliminary design stage.
As you know I'm more a star war fan, and I'm more familiar with that technology, so I may need to be reminded of most important tech of the other SCI-FIs.
A good point of reference will be standard se4 tech. For example the damage/tonnage/firerate ratio of weapons must not exceed that of similar se4 weapons.

In the beginning let's try to keep things simple and use only the most common and representative techs for every race. More exotic technologies can be added once the basic mod is finished.

A good point to start would be the races. The 20 races needed already exist. (There are more, they could be added later but don't think they're really needed right now, and no more than 20 races can be in a game at once):
Star Wars:
1- Empire 2- Rebellion 3- Trade Federation 4- Sith Empire 5- Yuuzhan Vong

Star Trek:
6- Federation 7- Klingons 8- Romulans 9- Borg 10- Cardassian 11- Dominion 12- Ferengis 13- Sp 8472

Babylon 5:
14- Earth Alliance 15- Minbaris 16- Centauris 17- Narns 18- Shadows 19- Vorlons 20- L of N-A Worlds

So the first things I need to answer are these questions for every race.

What weapons they use? What are the most representative ship sizes they use? Tonnage or estimation if possible. How do their shields and armor work? How do they use fighters? What other technologies they have?

Analyzing the answers we should be able to determine which technologies will be available to all players, which will be available to all of the same sci-fi and which will be race-exclusive.

[ June 19, 2003, 05:40: Message edited by: Andres ]

[Atrocities]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>The idea is simple, a simple mod that combines Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5 and maybe some other sci-fi.
Not only the races (shipsets) but everything else that can be modded into the game: weapons, vehicle sizes etc.<hr></blockquote>

I have been considering doing a Trek Mod for sometime. I have several options open to me, including improving upon the TREK MOD, but I would rather just start from scratch.

Another option was to do my Trek Mod according to the New Age Theme. That would be very interesting to do as all of the races would be equal and that is explained.

What you are proposing is huge. Your right, balance would be an issue, but that issue can simply be solved by stating that ALL tech have simular levels. IE, phasers would be as powerful as Lasers, but would have an extra accuracy or range. Lasers would have lower component cost. Things such as this.

Develop the tech for each Race type, Star Trek, Star Wars, B5, and then compare and work out them out.

I have a rather complete list that I have been working on for star trek. Tech based off of the all 5 series, the 10 movies, and all of the games.
I do not have the list on this PC, but can get it in 3 to 5 days from my other PC. (It is out at my fathers house.)

[ 25 November 2001: Message edited by: Atrocities ]</p>

[Val]

Sounds like balance is going to be the toughest issue. A group of us are working on a B5 Mod right now, and it would probably save us all some time if we head towards your goal of a fully balanced system. We have a list of quite a few weapon techs and some non-weapon techs. I'll try to toss it all in an Excel sheet on Monday/Tuesday so you can compare ranges and damage.

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>What you are proposing is huge. Your right, balance would be an issue, but that issue can simply be solved by stating that ALL tech have simular levels. IE, phasers would be as powerful as Lasers, but would have an extra accuracy or range. Lasers would have lower component cost. Things such as this. <hr></blockquote>I would really prefer to make them be different racial ages.

IE. Low tech start gives you the bare minimum for B5 tech. Behind Earth-at-the-beginning-of-series tech. Research gets you up to Vorlon-ey tech, then you develop shields and move into a StarTrek type tech tree. At the top end of that, it merges smoothly with a StarWars type tech.

You start at B5 tech, when you have one planet & a colony. As you grow to include many starsystems, you move slowly into TrekTech, and by the time you can control a large portion of the galaxy, you will have StarWars tech.

It seems pretty natural to me.

As a bonus, you could add a required tech "Trek", and "SW". Then by disallowing the tech in the game setup, you'd have a TrekMod or B5 mod.

[Val]

The different racial ages idea is good, and would make for a much more balanced system.

But I think (and I may be wrong) that the idea is to see how the different races square off against each other. Yes?

[Andrés]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>But I think (and I may be wrong) that the idea is to see how the different races square off against each other. Yes?<hr></blockquote>
I agree with you Val.
What I want are the races portrayed as faithfully as possible going against each other.
I think it’s something many people wants to see and when done will attract new players to se4.
suicide_junkie your idea sounds interesting, but it’s not what we want to do.
Are you implying that ST technology is more advanced to B5’s, and that SW’s is superior to ST’s? That could be true in some tech areas, but not in others.
But your point is good and I see it as a potential problem. In each of the mentioned sci-fi universes some races are portrayed as advanced and powerful while others are weaker and relatively unimportant. Making all of them be faithful interpretations, and also balanced will be difficult.

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</fonArial">quote:</font><hr>Do SW ships even have shields? They're certainly very vulnerable to fighter attacks..and I can't imagine a shield that could stop incoming kinetic energy weapons (slug throwers) yet let fighters through.<hr></blockquote>

Well, in the X-Wing games, cap ships are vulnerable to fighters because it makes the game more fun, but in the movies, fighters can't do squat to a cap ship unless its shields are already down and, even then they can only make pinpoint strikes against exposed targets. I'm not saying fighters are worthless, mind you, after all, once the bridge shields went on the Executor, and a-wing took it out and sent the ship careening into the Death Star. So in response, fighters never got through cap ship shields, they were already down before the fighters started making runs.

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Disadvantages are weaker shields, weak ground troops, and no fighters what-so-ever (probably because you can't put a warp core on a ship the size of an x-wing ). Can't speak for B5, as I know nothing about it.<hr></blockquote>Actually, trek does have fighters, they are shielded, they do go FTL, and they don't have full size M/ARCs.
Shuttlecraft are light fighters.
Just look at the dominion war (DS9).
There, they have the runabouts with torpedo launchers (medium fighter)
And the military designed-to-be-a-fighter fighters. (large fighter)

You don't actually need a Matter/Antimatter reactor (aka warpcore) to run warp drive, but it requires less fuel and is more compact (size:energy output) than the comparable Fusion reactors. Most ships don't carry enough fusion reactors to move at a decent warpspeed.
Shuttles only go warp 2 or so since they have smaller powerplants.

IMO, Trek vs Wars fighters would suffer worse than the capital ships.
Wars fighters are somewhat stronger than Trek fighters, and the Trek fighters can't use FTL attacks effectively on moving targets.
(I believe that the only chance Trek ships have against Wars capital ships would be "Warp Strafing", where they launch torpedoes at FTL speeds, and the enemy can't see them until they've gone past)

[jimbob]

Well, here's my .026 (Cdn$)

It appears that balance play is going to be a problem... at least initially. However, it seems to me that each of the sci-fi realms is looking at 'empires' at different stages of development. By putting the realms together we need to have a "multi-era" view.

Bab 5 - initial era (growing). Several hyper advanced aliens do have better tech, but not by much. Only a few of the empires have peaked, the rest are still 'coming into their own.'

Star Trek - intermediate era (vigorous). Rising empires are in great conflict due to tremendous growth. The tech levels are starting to peak, but the empires have not become static... yet.

Star Wars - late era (decay). The great republic/empire has peaked in maturation, has become static, and has started into decay.

So what? Well, I think that the relative strength or weakness that appears to be a problem is actually due to us comparing empires that are mostly at tech level 2 to empires mostly at tech level 10. We simply need to "fill in" the lost eras for each genre.

i.e.
Bab 5 - add the more powerful top end techs for when they reach the middle to end game. Maybe they should never get shields, but that's okay, really strong hulls and armor can be developed.

Star Trek - develop more fully the early techs (lucky for us, Enterprise should help) and the extremely late techs. Races from this realm will have the advantage of highly manouverable capital ships (special: dilithium crystals), their weakness will be the absolute lack of fighters (except perhaps the dominion)and relatively slow non-combat speed.

Star Wars - develop more fully the very early techs. I don't think that the SW techs are really all that advanced, I think that much of the 'late era' stuff we see in the SW movies is due to specialized development of a few key technology branches. That is to say, their movement rates are extremely high, but their combat movement is not nearly as high as the Star Trek ships. They have developed excellent fighters, but personally I don't think the turbo-lasers are nearly as powerful as say photon torpedoes and phasers(IMHO). The only time we see missles fired is from fighters at incredibly short range (that is, they have no capital ship missles).

Finally, I think it is important to critically define the ships by relative size, not by the names given to them by the genre. The Star'Destroyers' are late empire ships... they are 1400+ metres in length which is slightly bigger than the Enterprise from Next Gen (intermediate era). Both should be defined as 'battle cruisers' because of their absolute size... this lets players compare apples to apples.

-jimbob

[arthurtuxedo]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Actually, trek does have fighters, they are shielded, they do go FTL, and they don't have full size M/ARCs.
Shuttlecraft are light fighters.
Just look at the dominion war (DS9).
There, they have the runabouts with torpedo launchers (medium fighter)
And the military designed-to-be-a-fighter fighters. (large fighter)

You don't actually need a Matter/Antimatter reactor (aka warpcore) to run warp drive, but it requires less fuel and is more compact (size:energy output) than the comparable Fusion reactors. Most ships don't carry enough fusion reactors to move at a decent warpspeed.
Shuttles only go warp 2 or so since they have smaller powerplants.

IMO, Trek vs Wars fighters would suffer worse than the capital ships.
Wars fighters are somewhat stronger than Trek fighters, and the Trek fighters can't use FTL attacks effectively on moving targets.
(I believe that the only chance Trek ships have against Wars capital ships would be "Warp Strafing", where they launch torpedoes at FTL speeds, and the enemy can't see them until they've gone past)<hr></blockquote>
Shuttles are not fighters. As for Tac Fighters and especially Peregrines, well, you can call a boulder a pebble, but it's still a boulder. A tac fighter might be too small to be called a small cap ship, but it's way too big to be called a fighter. Heavy bomber maybe. A peregrine is hardly smaller than the Defiant.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Star Wars - develop more fully the very early techs. I don't think that the SW techs are really all that advanced,<hr></blockquote>
Careful, we're trying to make a mod, not start a vs. debate.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>I think that much of the 'late era' stuff we see in the SW movies is due to specialized development of a few key technology branches.<hr></blockquote>
That's impossible. You can't say someone has extremely advanced weapons (for instance), but everything else is crap. If their weapons are super powerful, they need hull materials and shock absorbers that can take the recoil, you need reactors that can power them, etc. To paraphrase Mike Wong, if you gave Leonardo DaVinci the blueprints for a modern car and explained to him how it worked, he still couldn't build it because technology in a thousand other areas just isn't there.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>That is to say, their movement rates are extremely high, but their combat movement is not nearly as high as the Star Trek ships.<hr></blockquote>
That's true, Trek ships have higher sublight acceleration because they submerge most of the ship's mass in subspace using the warp drive.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>They have developed excellent fighters, but personally I don't think the turbo-lasers

[Will]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Gritsucker:
I would say that the advantages of Star Wars are bigger cap ships (1600 meters for a mere destroyer), lots of weapons, fighters, and the Death Star (if it's included). Disadvantages might be slow cap ships, lack of cloaks, and innacurate weapons.<hr></blockquote>

This just made me think of a quote from one of the movies, I think Empire Strikes Back (Ep.V). It basically goes:

Sensor Officer: "Sir, the ship has disappeared from our scopes."
Captain/Admiral: "Impossible! No ship that small has a cloaking device."

The ship in question was the Millenium Falcon, and it attached itself to the side of the Star Destroyer tower thing, so it couldn't be seen on sensors. So there is such a thing as a cloaking device in StarWars, just not on a ship that small.

[chewy027]

well if you go into the star wars novels, the empire developed cloaking devices but never perfected them. I think it was in the series with Grand Admiral Thrawn that they are used to cloak asteroids around coruscant so the New Republic can't safely use the planet. Also in the rebel assault games. I think the second one had phantom ties in it that had cloaking devices on them. Of course since you're only using info from the movies all this is irrelevant so I will stop my needless rambling http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Andrés]

Gritsucker quoting Mike Wong... That’s a good quote. In general I do like MW’s work ( www.stardestroyer.net (http://www.stardestroyer.net) ), and the scientific analysis he makes, but don’t agree with all of his conclusions. I’d like to see someone scientifically comparing sci-fi as serially as he does with a more impartial point of view.
I feared that trekkies would have delirious of grandeur, but it seems that Mike Wong readers are the ones.
Anyway let’s try to avoid the vs. debate.

About the phaser vs turbolaser discussion. I think they are even, and if they’re not we’ll make them even.
IMHO Turbolasers have shorter range and do less damage, but they shorter reload time and are smaller. Their damage rating may be slightly higher than phasers.
Phasers should have longer range do higher damage and have accuracy bonus, but bigger and with longer reload time. Like with WMGs, the first volley of fire will be powerful, but if you can’t kill the target with it, you’re in trouble.

About SW shields, there are separate ray shields and particle shields. As stated in the rebel debriefing the exhaust port in the Death Star was ray shielded but not particle shielded. That’s maybe because of its normal function, a particle shield would have blocked the particles it was supposed to exhaust.
There’s also the possibility that the Death Star shield worked somehow like the Gungan bubble shield, permeable only to slow moving objects.
Anyway normally ships carry a combination of both shielding systems what protects them from any kind of weapon. I don’t see a reason why in the mod SW shields need to be stronger or weaker than ST shields.
Planetary shields are a different story, and should be much stronger than ruin se4 shields. We have many examples that state that bombarding a shielded planet is useless (and most SW planets are shielded). The rebel shield in Hoth was umbrella shaped, so the Empire was forced to use ground troops, when bombarding from space would have been easier. The more advanced Imperial shield in Endor, not only prevented bombardment and troop landing but also protected the Death Star in orbit.
Such a strong planetary shield may be unbalancing, so I think it should be weakened in the mod, but it should still be strong enough to absorb all damage made by a small enemy fleet.

About ship sizes. In starwars most triangular ships, regardless their size, are called Star Destroyers, and of course have nothing to do with se4 destroyer. And you’re right, star wars ships are very big, according to my estimations imperial star destroyers are far beyond an se4 baseship.

About speed, hyperspace is the fastest FTL propulsion method, and should be represented by ship having more strategic movements. And they should also be relatively slow and not maneuverable in combat. Unfortunately there’s no way to simulate this in SE4, I tried a negative Combat Movement ability but it didn’t work.

There are cloaking devices in star wars, but they are not common because they are very expensive. A cloaked ship is invisible, but also blinded to the visible universe, and you can explode if you attempt to jump into hyperspace while cloaked.

[arthurtuxedo]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Gritsucker quoting Mike Wong... That’s a good quote.<hr></blockquote>
Wouldn't have used it if it wasn't http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>In general I do like MW’s work ( www.stardestroyer.net (http://www.stardestroyer.net) ), and the scientific analysis he makes, but don’t agree with all of his conclusions. I’d like to see someone scientifically comparing sci-fi as serially as he does with a more impartial point of view.
I feared that trekkies would have delirious of grandeur, but it seems that Mike Wong readers are the ones.<hr></blockquote>
Not sure if I'd use the word delusion (I assume that's what you meant when you said delirious). I'm not a vs. debater, I just like to watch the debates, and I've heard a lot of hard-to-refute evidence from the Wars and hardly any from Trek. In fact, I don't think I've seen a single calculation showing weapon/shield, etc. strength to be higher in Trek that hasn't been discredited.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Anyway let’s try to avoid the vs. debate.<hr></blockquote>
I think a little vs. debating is inevitable and healthy, but let's at least try to stay on task and not turn this thread into a vs. thread.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>About the phaser vs turbolaser discussion. I think they are even, and if they’re not we’ll make them even.
IMHO Turbolasers have shorter range and do less damage, but they shorter reload time and are smaller. Their damage rating may be slightly higher than phasers.<hr></blockquote>
Should be less accurate, too. Like -10 mod or something. Sheer numbers will tend to make up for this, though.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Phasers should have longer range do higher damage and have accuracy bonus, but bigger and with longer reload time. Like with WMGs, the first volley of fire will be powerful, but if you can’t kill the target with it, you’re in trouble.

About SW shields, there are separate ray shields and particle shields. As stated in the rebel debriefing the exhaust port in the Death Star was ray shielded but not particle shielded. That’s maybe because of its normal function, a particle shield would have blocked the particles it was supposed to exhaust.
There’s also the possibility that the Death Star shield worked somehow like the Gungan bubble shield, permeable only to slow moving objects.
Anyway normally ships carry a combination of both shielding systems what protects them from any kind of weapon. I don’t see a reason why in the mod SW shields need to be stronger or weaker than ST shields.<hr></blockquote>
There isn't a good reason yet, but if one side ends up being more powerful, we can mess with the shields to even them out.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Planetary shields are a different story, and should be much stronger than ruin se4 shields. We have many examples that state that bombarding a shielded planet is useless (and most SW planets are shielded). The rebel shield in Hoth was umbrella shaped, so the Empire was forced to use ground troops, when bombarding from space would have been easier. The more advanced Imperial shield in Endor, not only prevented bombardment and troop landing but also protected the Death Star in orbit. Such a strong planetary shield may be unbalancing, so I think it should be weakened in the mod, but it should still be strong enough to absorb all damage made by a small enemy fleet.<hr></blockquote>
This isn't easy to balance. SW would end up being too powerful if they got the biggest ships, the best fighters, AND shielded planets.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>About ship sizes. In starwars most triangular ships, regardless their size, are called Star Destroyers, and of course have nothing to do with se4 destroyer. And you’re right, star wars ships are very big, according to my estimations imperial star destroyers are far beyond an se4 baseship.<hr></blockquote>
Not to even mention the Executor and its ilk. We should probably fudge them downward a bit. Have a Sovereign equal maybe a battlecruiser, and an Imperator equal a dreadnought?
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>About speed, hyperspace is the fastest FTL propulsion method, and should be represented by ship having more strategic movements. And they should also be relatively slow and not maneuverable in combat. Unfortunately there’s no way to simulate this in SE4, I tried a negative Combat Movement ability but it didn’t work.<hr></blockquote>
As far as I know, there's no way to create stragetically fast but tactically slow ships. I've tried.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>There are cloaking devices in star wars, but they are not common because they are very expensive. A cloaked ship is invisible, but also blinded to the visible universe, and you can explode if you attempt to jump into hyperspace while cloaked.<hr></blockquote>
I know SW has cloaks, I was saying no cloaks for the purposes of the mod.

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>About speed, hyperspace is the fastest FTL propulsion method, and should be represented by ship having more strategic movements. And they should also be relatively slow and not maneuverable in combat. Unfortunately there's no way to simulate this in SE4, I tried a negative Combat Movement ability but it didn't work.<hr></blockquote>Just go the other way. Make everybody else's movement slower, and give the others built in combat movement bonuses.

Better would be to make hyperspace a WarpPoint opener tech. If we could make unstable warppoints that collapse on the next turn, it would be best.
Or, you could try my FTL map.

Or you could give SW some big emergency movement pods.

[Andrés]

Going the other way doesn’t sound good. You’ll end up with everyone else moving too slow in strategic, or everyone moving too fast in combat.
A warp opener would be too much and leave lots of opened wps. Too bad that those auto-collapsing wps are impossible.

I like the idea of the emergency mov pods, and think it’s our best option. Using it would represent the “jump”. Too bad that now they can’t be repaired. Would it work if it gives more movements than the normal movements of the ship?

Wouldn’t it be great to have a controlled Version of that event that moves your ship to a random location?

[Urendi Maleldil]

What about giving the Starwars tech special ship sizes that only allow for two or three engines but have a special component like a regenerating emergency propulsion pod that generates a high strategic movement or something for a "hyperdrive". That would be slow tactically but fast strategically.

Leaving warp points all over the place would be like Borg transwarp conduits.

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Would it work if it gives more movements than the normal movements of the ship?<hr></blockquote>Yep. When you pop the pod, you can get 7/2 movement, or 11/6, whatever.
If you go into combat, however, you will lose any movement over the max, and will leave combat with at most, one less than your max.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>regenerating emergency propulsion pod <hr></blockquote>Just give the ships a space yard with zero production rate.

The only problem is that the ships can then retrofit and scrap & stuff. If you only allow it on capital ships, that's reasonable.

[arthurtuxedo]

How about this? SW gets an emergency pod that generates a lot of movement, and a repair bay that repaires 1 component per turn and weighs and costs nothing, but only 1 can be mounted on a ship. If the hyperdrive is not used in a turn, it would repair something else, and that would be cheating, but I can't think of a better solution.

[ 27 November 2001: Message edited by: Gritsucker ]</p>

[Andrés]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Not to even mention the Executor and its ilk. We should probably fudge them downward a bit. Have a Sovereign equal maybe a battlecruiser, and an Imperator equal a dreadnought?<hr></blockquote>
Actually a Sovereign Class is bigger than an ISD, you’re probably talking about a Victory Class Star Destroyer.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>How about this? SW gets an emergency pod that generates a lot of movement, and a repair bay that repaires 1 component per turn and weighs and costs nothing, but only 1 can be mounted on a ship. If the hyperdrive is not used in a turn, it would repair something else, and that would be cheating, but I can't think of a better solution.<hr></blockquote>
Yes, that’s what we were thinking about, but since Last mod emergency pods can’t be repaired. That was to prevent the supply pod cheat, but was extended also to the mov pod. Only space yards can repair them, that’s why s_j proposed a 0 building (built-in?) space yard.
Maybe giving them ships 120-150% larger than normal, normally slower, but extremely fast when using their mov pods (too bad AI doesn’t seem to use them).
Also most large capital ships are all in one, attack ships, carriers, and troop transports, maybe we should make them all semi-carriers, with a 20-30% minimum fighter bays.

[Val]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Will:

So there is such a thing as a cloaking device in StarWars, just not on a ship that small.[/QB]<hr></blockquote>

They had mentioned cloaking devices on a Super Star Destroyer prototype in some old Star Wars lit in between the release of Empire and Jedi. They also mention it in the Star Wars Role Playing game as far back as first edition and of course it played a big part in the Heir to the Empire trilogy by Tim Zahn (as mentioned by Chewy027). There just appears to be one massive constraint on cloaked vessels, the cloak requires a LOT of power and space and cost a bundle.


Also, I have some workups on the B5 weapons (in an Excel sheer) that we were going to use in the B5 Mod. Does anyone have something similar for the other two mods that we can use to compare/balance?

[Andrés]

I'd tell you to post that excel file as an example, but since attachments don't work yet can you please email it to me?

[arthurtuxedo]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Actually a Sovereign Class is bigger than an ISD, you’re probably talking about a Victory Class Star Destroyer.<hr></blockquote>
Actually I meant the ST Sovereign, like the Enterprise E. Giving the Empire Sovereigns or Eclipses would be unbalancing, methinks.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Yes, that’s what we were thinking about, but since Last mod emergency pods can’t be repaired. That was to prevent the supply pod cheat, but was extended also to the mov pod. Only space yards can repair them, that’s why s_j proposed a 0 building (built-in?) space yard.<hr></blockquote>
Didn't know they did that. Haven't played since v 1.35.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Maybe giving them ships 120-150% larger than normal, normally slower, but extremely fast when using their mov pods (too bad AI doesn’t seem to use them).
Also most large capital ships are all in one, attack ships, carriers, and troop transports, maybe we should make them all semi-carriers, with a 20-30% minimum fighter bays.<hr></blockquote>
That's true. Maybe 30% min. fighters is too much, since the 1.6 km Imperators only housed 6 squadrons, but I'd go for a 15 or 20% min. fighter limit and a 5 or 10% min. cargo limit. How's that sound?

[Val]

I will E*Mail it either tomorrow or Thursday. It is pretty much a list of the various standard weapons with Min/Max/Avg damage values and ranges based off the board game Version (Bab 5 Wars).

[President_Elect_Shang]

Hi, I am new (kinda, well new to Sharpnel but not to SE4. I just left posting a reply to my pley for help. Thanks there Atrocities, you didn't get the "nail on the head" but heck, your nuke was good enough. I also am looking on an "Universal Mod". I had not really given thought to Star Wars yet, but here are my players: B5, Star Trek, Star Wars (now added), and StarFire. It is really very simple to have everyone use difrent types of ships. Ie: StarFire can have the choice to build an Explorer size hull and Star Trek a Galaxy size. The only draw-back would be the ever increasing size of the text files involved. That (to me atleast) is a very small price to pay for what I will get in play-ability. If I can help to make this dream come true than I will give it my all. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/confused.gif

[arthurtuxedo]

What's StarFire?

[Puke]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Justin Flynn:
What's StarFire?<hr></blockquote>

ever read any of the Honor Harington books? David Weber, i think?

[Phoenix-D]

Actually, the Insurrection/Crusade/In Death Ground group of books is more like Starfire.

Starfire's a board game, and reportadly the inspiration for SE.

Phoenix-D

[President_Elect_Shang]

Ok, sorry it took so long to get back. StarFire is an Empire building game that aloows you to break it all down to the tactical level. If you go to the MM website they have a link to the StarFire Design Studios website. That will explain it much better than I can here. If you want a little more SF I think a manual or two that I can E-Mail you, but with out the starter manuals I don't really think they will be much help. Sorry http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif If you need more pointed answers or want a copy of the rough data files I can send them to you. Keep in mind that they are not done and also that they are HIGHLY specialized to the SF universe and my playing style. IE: I got ride of they intellagnce projects as they are based on the concpt that we humans will sell each other out. But we really do this to a bunch of blue skinned andorians that are talking about "here is some cash now blow your supplies into space and die with the rest of the crew? Double Ummm!

[President_Elect_Shang]

OK, my bad. i promise to slow down and check what I type. Just skip the type O's in the below post. Sorry about that all.

[Puke]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by President Elect Shang:
OK, my bad. i promise to slow down and check what I type. Just skip the type O's in the below post. Sorry about that all.<hr></blockquote>

the pencil-and-paper icon lets you edit your post, you know..

[Andrés]

This list is not complete but IMHO it's a good start.

STAR WARS RACES

General SW Tech - tech open to all races (except the Vong)
--------------------------------------
Turbolaser Weapons
all of them are small, short reload
Laser Cannons (for fighters)
Turbolaser Battery
Ion Cannons (disable ships with minimal damage, makes boarding a piece of cake, but the boarded ship would be vulnerable for the rest of the battle, should do normal damage to shields and disrupt movement and fire, or maybe destroy supplies once shields are down)
Since that damage type is not possible, make it a shields only weapon.


Seekers.
Most of the time used against fighters. Anti-unit seekers would be an interesting addition.
They are often fired at point blank (to avoid point defense fire) by other fighters, but in the flight simulators I've seen long range shots and capital ships fire them too.
They carry thermonuclear explosives, what makes them theoretically not as strong as a matter-antimatter explosives.
Concussion missile - very fast and light, specially suited against small fast fighters
Proton Torpedo - heavier general purpose seeker
Heavy Rocker - heavy damage low long reload slow seeker, only good against slow bad point defended capital ships
Heavy Bomb - heavy Version of the rocket, easy to outrun but should destroy a medium ship with 1 shot

Hyperdrives (strong mov pods)
Shields and Planetary Shields

Galactic Empire
-------------------------------
Superlaser (very big, massive damage, very long reload time but not 30, it should fire several times during a combat, also destroys planets)
Big and slow capital ships (semi-carriers?)
Death Star

TIE Fighters (small and cheap, but fast fighters)

Rebel Alliance
-------------------------------
Big (but not as big as imperial) and slow capital ships.
Bigger fighters.

Trade Federation
-------------------------------
Massive Transformed Transports ships.
Droid Fighters (small cheap and fast, but with lower accuracy/defense bonuses. Use some kind of master computer instead of cockpit/life support)

Yuuzhan Vong
-------------------------------
Many big ships up to the size of the Death Star
They abhor any kind of non-organic tech. They should not have any of the standard techs, but have organic equivalents for most of them.
Some of them are:
Dovin Basals (gravitational manipulating creatures) engine + shields, and at higher levels some stellar manipulation e.g. planet destroyers
Yammosk - Sector Combat Bonus, Neural Net
Volcano Cannons (organic Plasma cannons)
Biologic Solar Sails
Shapers - slow build / fast repair space yard comp
Shipwomb Facility

STAR TREK RACES (According to Warp9)
-------------------------------
FEDERATION
Phasers
Torpedoes
Matter Replicator
Warp Core

ROMULAN
Disruptors
Torpedoes
Quantum Singularity Drive

FERENGI
Shield Depleters?
Engine Overload?

BORG
Cutting Beam
Borg Boarding Parties
Borg Armor
Borg Shields
Nanoprobes
Transwarp

8472
Organic
Plagues
Planet Killers

KLINGON
Disruptors
Torpedoes

CARDASSIAN
Phasers
Torpedoes

DOMINON
Disruptors
Phasers
Torpedoes

BABYLON 5 RACES (Originally posted by atomannj)
-------------------------------


General Tech - tech open to all races
--------------------------------------
Laser Weapons-
-Light Laser cannons (long reload, strong)
-Heavy Laser cannons (Long reload, very strong)
-Lite/Heavy pulse lasers (to hit bonus)
-L/H particle lasers (quicker reload)

Missiles-
-Small & Large missile types
-Fusion
-Nuclear

Planetary Bombardment
-Mass drivers (Political backlash penalty)

Plasma (armor penetration)
-torpedo
-cannons (long reload)

Anti-matter
-cannon

Earth Alliance
-------------------------------
Shields
-Defense Grid Energy Projectors (weak d

Projectile
-Railguns (long range)

Centauri
---------------------------------
Particle
-Twin Particle arrays (to hit bonus)

Ion
-Ion Cannons
-Gravimetric Defense Grid

Narn
---------------------------------
-Energy Mine (fighter defense, small, to hit bonus)

Defense shield
-Electromagnetic Defenses

Minbari
-----------------------------------
Gravitic
-Gravitic Neutron Cannons (shield piercing, long reload)
-Gravitic Fusion Beam Cannons (shield piercing)

Neutron
-Cannons (shield piercing)

-Minbari Stealth Device
-Defense Shield Grid

Shadows
---------------------------------
Slicer Beams (shield piercing, armor piercing)
Jump Point Disrupter
Bio-Organic armored hull
Shadow Shields (phased shields)
Tractor Beams
Phased Hyperspace Cloaking Dev
Death Cloud

Vorlon
----------------------------------
Vorlon Shields (phased shields)
Tractor Beams
Vorlon Sensor Jammers
Super Death Ray (planet destroying)
Death Ray Cannons (high damage,sp,ap,long reload)
Flame Beams (shield piercing)
Lightning Guns (armor piercing)

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>BABYLON 5 RACES
...
Shields-<hr></blockquote>Ack! No! Please don't ruin B5 with shields!
See B5 mod (http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=23&t=004079&p=2) (about halfway down the page by now)

I'd still really like to make the SF universes merge as civilization "ages". In order to keep it balanced for play vs other ages, try balancing it by maintenance.
(EG: B5 ships are very low maintenance/ cheap to build, so you can throw lots of 'em at the shielded ships from the other universes (Just imagine how many ships B5's humans could field if they had 30 fully developed worlds(as you might find in an SE4 game), compared to how many ISD's the SW empire could support given only 30 worlds, not the entire galaxy))

[Andrés]

And I still don’t like your ages ideas.
I don’t want to start like present Earth, evolve into B5 Earth Alliance, then into the trek Federation, and then into the sw Empire, then somehow mutate into the Yuuzhan Vong http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif , to finally evolve into the Vorlon to end up being Q! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif
Do you like this ages order?
What I want to do, and think most of the others want is play any of those races and fight against the others.

Your point about B5 lack of shields is well seen. It will be harder to balance that with armor and lower costs, but it’s possible.
I just copied the first post, but I read the others.

[Suicide Junkie]

It dosen't have to be ages, it could be racial techs (or even both). Just disallow the "ages" tech tree, and enable "B5","ST","SW", etc tech trees during game setup.
Please don't homogenize all of the SF universes.

In regards to B5 ships, their weapons are decently powerful, probably within an order of magnitude of Trek. Putting ten B5 capital ship beams into a Galaxy class ship should breach the shields pretty quick, and they could win (with heavy casualties, though)
I'd image the fight to be like a BattleMoon vs 20 DNs, or a bunch of frigates against a baseship.
A completely valid way to fight a war.

In terms of population & morale, B5 races are used to grinding, high-casualty warfare. Trek races would be more sensitive to losses, but have fewer, larger ships, and thus fewer losses to get upset about. Giving a reduced unhappiness from ship losses to B5 races would be a good idea.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Now this is exactly what I am trying to do with my mod? Send me the raw data. I only work three days with four off so I have the time to sort it out and turn it back for testing.
The idea of a racial ability allowing access to say the Star Trek tech tree is how I planned to tackle the problem. Evolving into an ages idea is just not the way to attack this.

Ok phoenix-D has brought up the point that I was missing this thread all together. So someone else is also working on this idea. I will work hand-in-hand with him if he would like the aid. I got the tech ideas from lower in this thread, now how about ship sizes for the deferent players involved. Star Wars, Bab5, and Star Trek?

[ 29 November 2001: Message edited by: President Elect Shang ]</p>

[Andrés]

This is what we were thinking about. Maybe even 2 racial traits, one general for each sci-fi and one for some races.
For example you may need to select the "General Star Trek" + the "Federation" racial traits.

[Andrés]

The raw data, and particulary the balance between the different origin races is what we're trying to agree with.

[Andrés]

Look at what I found!
http://www.red-jack.com/~sfbtng/indexbtw.html

Now all we need is to find a way to convert all that to SE4 and revise it carefully.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Ha, Ha. Now that is what I am talking about! I need help with the ship sizes. If I could make heads or tails out of the website than I would have say that each race will need its own ship sizes. I have no problems creating that, however I do need to get the hull range down. Good job Andres! Now who is going to get that part covered?

I also agree with you on the multi-qualifications (traits). Some will need it so here is my idea, just an example.
1) Star Wars (cost 1000)
a) Rebals (Cost 1000)
b) Empire (Cost 1000)
c) Sith (Cost 1000)
See where I am going here? This can be done for everyone. Taking the Category trait (ie Star Wars) will give you access to the general techs. Taking the specialized trait (ie Rebals) will give you access the that specialzed tech tree. And the bonus is: anyone who wants a real challenge can take two general traits and try to win with the handicap. They will still have some techs and weapons but will lack having the really good stuff!

What thinks thou now!
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ 29 November 2001: Message edited by: President Elect Shang ]</p>

[Andrés]

Yes, that's what we're talking about.
Creating them is not the problem, the problem is defining wich techs will be in each general trait and wich in each race. And that's what we've been discussing here.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Umm, I have to work for the next couple of days. Say I try to get a rough draft to you by next wed or thur? Yo can look it over and see if you think that the techs are going to the proper places/people. This will only be a first draft so don't flip. If you like it than we can post a link to the file and let everyone else rate it?

[Val]

B5 Shields:

We were using some of the Agents of Gaming material for the B5 mod, and also referring to the tech books. While there really aren't that many examples, some races do have 'shields', most specifically the Vorlon, Abbai and Brakiri (also a few other ancients). The White Stars also have some sort of shield and most large EA ships have an Energy Web (mentioned by both Warner Brothers and the B5 game) that acts as a shield.

Even with this being said, I don't really recall too much shield-like tech in the actual series except with the ancients.

[arthurtuxedo]

I was thinking more along the lines of controlling techs with free traits, and you just have to make sure no one takes more than one general and one specific.

[Atrocities]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>FERENGI
Shield Depleters?
Engine Overload?<hr></blockquote>

Can I offer a suggestion here? I would also add alegance subverters as well, as the Ferengi are masters at bribery.

Also other possible ideas for trek races:

Sub Space Weapons
Transwarp Drive
Quatum Slip Stream Drive
Transphasic Weapons
Metaphsic Weapons

[jimbob]

A question on movement:

Didn't someone create a non-warp point mod of SE IV? If so, it could be used to simulate the differences btwn SW, ST, and B5.

[Phoenix-D]

It wasn't a mod so much as a map combined with *extreme* amounts of patience. He used the map editor and placed EVERY WP by hand.

Obviously not really workable for long-term use. A quicker alternative would be making WP openers (and closers) easy to get and really cheap/small.

Phoenix-D

[Val]

I was thinking of doing something like that for the B5 mod for ships with Jump Drives.

Does anyone know if there is a way to set a warp point to "automatically" close a set number of turns after opening.

Also, is there anyone who has figured out how to either create a movement delay/penalty on a warp point or in a Storm (the storm could then be placed over a warp point to simulate the delay)?

[jimbob]

Quote: "He used the map editor and placed EVERY WP by hand."

Holy Crap! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif
That's a bit of work, eh?

Sort of negates what I was thinking, so I'll just keep it to myself.

[Andrés]

I created a new file based in known ship stats, and comps listed in them.
http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/temp/race&ships.htm
It looks better than the other one I had posted here before.

I found a few interesting things I didn’t know:
About Babylon 5 races and shields. Most races have no shields but use VERY HEAVY armor. If I understood correctly, largest Earth Alliance ships have an armor up to 15 meters thick. To represent this in the mod, players would have to put an important amount of armor in their ships to get a decent (balanced) protection.
Vorlons and Shadows seem to have shields, and probably the other First Ones too. Mimbaris have something called "Defense Shield Grid" that I'm not sure if is a shield or some kind of EMC or PDC like EA "Defense Grid Energy Projectors".

Please help me complete correct this file that I think would be great as raw file to make the mod.

[Andrés]

Another interesting thing I noticed is that many B5 ships are comparable in size with SW ships. That is good in two ways: first, SW ships will not be disproportionally big and second similar sizes provide a good reference to estimate tonnage of SW ships. Now it looks like ST ships are relatively tiny.

[ZeroAdunn]

Hey Andres, where are the whitestar and victory class ships?!?!?

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Didn't someone create a non-warp point mod of SE IV? If so, it could be used to simulate the differences btwn SW, ST, and B5.<hr></blockquote> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>It wasn't a mod so much as a map combined with *extreme* amounts of patience. He used the map editor and placed EVERY WP by hand.<hr></blockquote> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Holy Crap!
That's a bit of work, eh?<hr></blockquote>Yep. Yep. Yep. That was me and 12 hours of click-click-clickey-ness.
Grab it from my sig.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Another interesting thing I noticed is that many B5 ships are comparable in size with SW ships. That is good in two ways: first, SW ships will not be disproportionally big and second similar sizes provide a good reference to estimate tonnage of SW ships. Now it looks like ST ships are relatively tiny. <hr></blockquote>Yeah, I followed somebody's link to a site with the silhouettes, and wow. I'm not gonna try to balance that realistically. It must take forever to build those B5 capital ships, and they drop like flies in fleet engagements.

Good luck.

[Andrés]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by ZeroAdunn:
Hey Andres, where are the whitestar and victory class ships?!?!?<hr></blockquote>
Weren't those ships made with different races cooperation and have a mixture of their comps? They wouldn't fit in any race. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif
Actually I missed haven't found data on them, I'll add them later.

[ZeroAdunn]

visit this website: http://hyperspace.isnnews.net/

See also http://www.b5tech.com/index.htm IT's pretty good for getting a good idea of what ships are armed with. I think it's mostly accurate.

And geuss what, tons of info on the whitestar on both of those sites. Man can't believe you had a hard time finding info on the whitestar, its everybodies favorite ship!
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Phoenix-D]

"...As you can see, there is NO visible damage - no signs of gashes, dents, cracks, or even a scratch...
Thus, the kinetic energy of the asteroid impact would have been 1.15E13 joules, equivalent to a 2.4 kiloton bomb."

Yeah, that's armor. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Phoenix-D

[DaftWager]

Andres, the preliminary file looks really good, but I think the Star Trek races’ weapons need some fleshing out.

Off the top of my head, the Feds could use pulse phaser cannon, burst fire photon/quantum torps, and maybe even a phaser cannon.

Klingons could have pulse disruptors, burst fire photon/quantum torp launchers and disruptor cannon.

Romulans could get pulse disruptors, disruptor cannons, and heavy plasma cannon.

The Cardassians should have some kind of torpedo, and maybe a burst fire option for those too.

I’ll probably think of more later, but this is all the stuff I know I’ve seen in the shows. Hope this helps.

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>"...As you can see, there is NO visible damage - no signs of gashes, dents, cracks, or even a scratch...
Thus, the kinetic energy of the asteroid impact would have been 1.15E13 joules, equivalent to a 2.4 kiloton bomb."<hr></blockquote>Sure, thats believable. (This asteroid supposedly hit the ship without PD or anything else responding in time, right? And, for the yield, are they using relative velocity, or just the asteroid's velocity?)
Assuming that's true, how come Sheridan(?)'s little asteroid nuke-mines in the Earth-Minbari war (seen in one of the TV-Movies I believe) shredded that bigass flagship ("dark star"?) from so far away? Nukes aren't particularily effective in space either, since theres no real shockwave.

Unless there's a reasonable explanation, it seems like a continuity error to me. (Not that continuity errors bother my enjoyment of the show much, by definition (Trekkie) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif )

[Andrés]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by ZeroAdunn:
And geuss what, tons of info on the whitestar on both of those sites. Man can't believe you had a hard time finding info on the whitestar, its everybodies favorite ship!<hr></blockquote>
You're right I took most data from that B5 tech site. I missed those ships because they were not listed under the ISA and not under the races.
They are included now.

[ 01 December 2001: Message edited by: Andrés Lescano ]</p>

[Atrocities]

I would be willing to set up the Trek Races Ship Sets. Leave the AI and other component details to those with more skill. But as far as ship sets go, I'd love to set em up.

[Andrés]

Aren't there already shipsets for all mentioned Star Trek races? It's good that you keep working on them anyway.

[arthurtuxedo]

Some of the sizes for SW ships are off.

1. Nebulon B frigate is 500 meters.
2. Executor SSD is 17,600 meters.
3. Not sure where you got fighter sizes, but I'm pretty sure TIE Bombers are bigger than Advanced and Defender.
4. Mon Cal Cruiser is 1300 m, I believe.
5. Not quite sure what a heavy Mon Cal is. If you mean the Home One, that was about 3800 meters.
6. I believe the A-Wing was smaller than 9.6 m.
7. The sizes for the Death Stars I and II aren't listed. They're 160 km and 900 km respectively.

Also, the Sovereigns and Eclipses had superlasers, not just Death Stars.

[Andrés]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>1. Nebulon B frigate is 500 meters.<hr></blockquote>
300 m verified. Where are they listed 500 m?

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>2. Executor SSD is 17,600 meters.<hr></blockquote>
There's contradiction on the size of the SSD. Fist official sources listed it as 8,000 m. Observation of the models used in the movies suggest 17,600 m (think that the 17,500m I found was rounded, less than 1% error). And now official sources list 12,800 m as compromise between both values. If you consider the movies as cannon, you're right and the value is 17,600 m
Everybody agree that no matter wich one is correct it's a very big ship. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>3. Not sure where you got fighter sizes, but I'm pretty sure TIE Bombers are bigger than Advanced and Defender.<hr></blockquote>
TIE Bomber 7.8 m verified. Tried to verify Advanced and Defender but couldn't find them. Only lists that includes data them show all TIEs 10 m, what is obiouly rounded. But you're right a 15m TIE Defender must be wrong.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>4. Mon Cal Cruiser is 1300 m, I believe.
5. Not quite sure what a heavy Mon Cal is. If you mean the Home One, that was about 3800 meters.<hr></blockquote>
Each Calamari vessel is a unique work of artistic engineering, not two ships are the same. There may not be two ships equal in length.

Calamari Headquarters, Command Frigate, Calamari Command Ship, Home One (is that a name or codename, is it the Indipendence?) or whatever is called 3.8 km
MC80 1200m verified
Winged Calamari "Liberty" type 1200m verified.
Couldn't verify the Heavy Mon Cal, but some data suggest the existence of a 1500-1600m Mon Cal ship as big as an ISD.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>6. I believe the A-Wing was smaller than 9.6 m.<hr></blockquote>
9.6m long and 6.4m wide verified.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>7. The sizes for the Death Stars I and II aren't listed. They're 160 km and 900 km respectively.
Also, the Sovereigns and Eclipses had superlasers, not just Death Stars. <hr></blockquote>
120 km and 160 km is what I found.
Already in the list: Forward Axial Superlaser (Sovereign & Eclipse)
in contrast with the bigger and more powerful normal superlaser only on the Death Stars


<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Off the top of my head, the Feds could use pulse phaser cannon, burst fire photon/quantum torps, and maybe even a phaser cannon.
Klingons could have pulse disruptors, burst fire photon/quantum torp launchers and disruptor cannon.
Romulans could get pulse disruptors, disruptor cannons, and heavy plasma cannon.
The Cardassians should have some kind of torpedo, and maybe a burst fire option for those too.
I'll probably think of more later, but this is all the stuff I know I've seen in the shows. Hope this helps.
<hr></blockquote>

I was thinking about making separate "Phasers", "Disruptors" and "Torpedoes" racial traits including all variations of each weapon and make races choose the apropiate ones.

[Andrés]

Created a page about this mod where to host all related files.
http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/files/sci-fi-cross/index.htm

[ 02 December 2001: Message edited by: Andrés Lescano ]</p>

[arthurtuxedo]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>300 m verified. Where are they listed 500 m?<hr></blockquote>
X-Wing Alliance.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>There's contradiction on the size of the SSD. Fist official sources listed it as 8,000 m. Observation of the models used in the movies suggest 17,600 m (think that the 17,500m I found was rounded, less than 1% error). And now official sources list 12,800 m as compromise between both values. If you consider the movies as cannon, you're right and the value is 17,600 m
Everybody agree that no matter wich one is correct it's a very big ship.<hr></blockquote>
I think it was revealed somewhere in the EU (some comic I think) that the 8 km ship was just a battleship, not an Executor.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>TIE Bomber 7.8 m verified. Tried to verify Advanced and Defender but couldn't find them. Only lists that includes data them show all TIEs 10 m, what is obiouly rounded. But you're right a 15m TIE Defender must be wrong.

Each Calamari vessel is a unique work of artistic engineering, not two ships are the same. There may not be two ships equal in length.<hr></blockquote>
That's what the literature says, but in ROTJ, they're all the same.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Calamari Headquarters, Command Frigate, Calamari Command Ship, Home One (is that a name or codename, is it the Indipendence?) or whatever is called 3.8 km<hr></blockquote>
I think Home One is the actual name. The Independence was just a normal Mon Cal cruiser I think.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>MC80 1200m verified
Winged Calamari "Liberty" type 1200m verified.
Couldn't verify the Heavy Mon Cal, but some data suggest the existence of a 1500-1600m Mon Cal ship as big as an ISD.<hr></blockquote>
If you say so...
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>9.6m long and 6.4m wide verified.<hr></blockquote>
OK, coulda swore it was smaller, but I guess not.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>120 km and 160 km is what I found.
Already in the list: Forward Axial Superlaser<hr></blockquote>
That's what the official sources say, but they don't jibe with the movies, and cannon overrides official. Check out Curtis Saxton's site at http://www.theforce.net/swtc/ for more accurate measurments.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>(Sovereign & Eclipse)
in contrast with the bigger and more powerful normal superlaser only on the Death Stars<hr></blockquote>
Sorry, didn't see that.

[Andrés]

I finished with the estimation of starship tonnages (I'll post them later)
and because of the wide range in tonnages, now I need to define a variable scale so it's possible to adapt them to space empires tonnages.

What about this one:

Fighters will be amplified 1000 times so a 1 ton in a fighter will becom 1 kt in seiv.

Smallest non-fighter ships. I sci-fi about 1000 tons in seiv 120 kt

Medium sized ships 200-2000 kt will be converted straight, making 1000 tons = 1 kt

Very big and impressive ship. But small and cheap enough that a powerful race is able to build in large numbers. Ships such as Minbari Sharlins, Earth Omegas and Imperial Star Destroyers should be close to this tonnage.
sci-fi tonnage: 50000
seiv tonnage: 5000

This ship is unconceibably big. Having the avility to build one of these babies is a show of power, and probably a provocation to other races. Ships such as an Imperial Eclipse Star Destroyer and a Vorlon Planet Killer should be close to this tonnage.
sci-fi tonnage: 30000000
seiv tonnage: 20000

The biggest thing ever built, and the maximun alowed tonnage: the Death Star.
Estimated tonnage: 320000000000 kt
seiv tonnage: 65535 kt

Do you agree with these values? Do you think that seiv tonnages fit the description?
Would it be practical to build 5000 kt ships and would the 2200 kt biggest Trek starships be able to handle them. The 2200 kt value is rounded down to keep a coherent scale and have contrast between sizes, they are reduced to more than 1/2 when the others are reduced to 1/10th of their real tonnage.

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Fighters will be amplified 1000 times so a 1 ton in a fighter will becom 1 kt in seiv.<hr></blockquote>Watch out for that bottom end. The very minimum size for a fighter in SE4 would be 5-6 KT, enough for cockpit, lifesupport one weapon, one engine.

Remember that you don't have to have the fighters "mass" in SE4 be smaller than ship "mass".

Since fighter and ship components are quite separate, you could have ship masses range from 120 - 60000 KT, and fighters from 50-600 KT (same as 5-60KT normally). Then you get the full SE4 design flexibility on your fighters without the fact that everything is measured in integers becoming a problem.
Multiplying all fighter stuff by 10 won't affect anything else, and you can then offer more design flexibility, by including some "fractional-KT" parts for fighters.

[Andrés]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Watch out for that bottom end. The very minimum size for a fighter in SE4 would be 5-6 KT, enough for cockpit, lifesupport one weapon, one engine.<hr></blockquote>
Yes I know the smallest fighters I believe are the trade fed droid fighters, I estimate about 5 tons in "real life" and 5 kt in the game. One of the reasons they can be so small is that they replace the cockpit+life support with somekind of master computer.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Remember that you don't have to have the fighters "mass" in SE4 be smaller than ship "mass".<hr></blockquote>
That could be confusing, and I don't see we need to do that by now.
And biggest fighters should not be much bigger than about 80 tons. Uless you calssify some almost 100m long trek ships like fighters as they sometimes do.
But yours is a good idea we can use if we can't get all fighter components tonnage right.

[Phoenix-D]

"Multiplying all fighter stuff by 10 won't affect anything else"

Except for the number that can be stored on a carrier/planet.

And if you change cargo space, than you can carry that much more troops, population, mines, sats, weapons platforms..

Phoenix-D

[Andrés]

Here's an .xls file with my estimated "real" and seiv tonnage for all ship.
Some of the values may need to be revised, please correct any value, but I think that the scale is working fine.

http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/files/sci-fi-cross/sizes&tonnage.zip

[Suicide Junkie]

Make that "unit stuff" then. We could probably use fractional components on troops, especially the infantry.

[Andrés]

suicide_junkie again, that sounds like a good idea but not what we need right now. Maybe it can have some use in your P&N mod.
I think we’ll probably add infantry since most of the races use some kind of footsoldiers, but I was thinking about something similar to the sw-mod and combined with a “handheld weapon mount”


Some races have only 1 or 2 known ships, we may need to add a few more variations.

We haven’t discussed about movement yet. Standard or newtoninan? If every race is going to have exclusive vehicle sizes and engines, every one can have a different methods if resulting movements are logic.

Now that the basic vehicle sizes are done, I’ll try to make the weapons. I didn’t crosscheck but B5 weapons in Val’s xls seem to be the same ones that in BabylonTrekWars site.
Since BabylonTrekWars adds weapons for all sci-fi somehow balanced, that would be my choice. Now I need to find a way to convert those rpg like values into se4 and add other data such as tonnage to complete the comps.

[Val]

I would say go for the Newtonian style of movement, you could then better differentiate different styles of movement between the different sci-fi universes.

Also, Combat Squirrel had a pretty good infantry solution, using multiple mount types for 'Infantry' seems to be the easiest way to go. Making them low tonnage and just requiring a 'cockpit' type component and maybe a choice of armor.

[jimbob]

I agree. I'd prefer Newtonian. It could result in a diverse number of engine types, which would really make it feel like there's been a fusion of different Sci-Fi genres.

i.e.
In the Trek Universe you get these big huge engines, but just one or two (with a few exceptions of four). They're big, and difficult to put out of commission, but once they're gone, the ship is dead in the water - sort of an "all or none" effect.

It seems to me from the pictures that the SW Universe has more (4 to 8?) large engines on their capital ships, so it would be (numerically) easier to lose an engine or two, but the effect on ship movement wouldn't be quite "all or none."

Other genres could have the 20 - 30 small engines per capital ship as found in the P&N Universe. Slowing these ships would be easier because even a small increment in damage can take out an engine or two... but stoping them would be more difficult because they have so many small engine components.

Different genre engine types will also have an effect on ship construction and the variability in ship velocities for each genre, but that's another topic really.

[Rambie]

Ship tonnage: We'll have to be careful not to unbalance the game with the ship sizes. This can be leveled somewhat in the weapon damage and fire rates.

Movement: Exactly how would Newtonian work in SE4? I'm not against it, but it seems strange in a turn based game.

[Phoenix-D]

"Movement: Exactly how would Newtonian work in SE4? I'm not against it, but it seems strange in a turn based game."

See: P&N v2.x. Larger ships take more engines to move the same number of spaces as smaller ships.

Phoenix-D

[jimbob]

But of course you could have different races with different mass to movement ratios. And you could have different ratios at different ship sizes (for non-Newtonian engine types). And you could have different engine types for different races too, resulting in a very complex but niffty multi-genre universe. And that's just the movement points
Finally you can have different components to change the amount of combat speed the ship has. So a race could have incredibly slow but highly manouverable ships! (ie Early Trek. Just the fighters in SWars)

Man, this will be a very cool mod when it's done! (even if the Newtonian movement isn't used of course)

[Andrés]

Take a look at this file I just made
http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/files/sci-fi-cross/WeaponDamage.xls

[chewy027]

thats a lot of guns http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Andrés]

A lot yes, they are based on that Babylon Trek Wars page I posted a link.
I just copied the values there, we still need to revise them, a calssify by race and order by tech trees. And there are other weapons that mey need to be added.

[Andrés]

I'm beginning to code in the racial advantages and the vehicle sizes. I'll post the results once I finish.
I hope that then you can help me fill in the needed techs.

BTW there's someone in the yahooGroups (don't recall name right now) interested in adding Starfire races.

[Andrés]

Take a look at this.
http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/files/sci-fi-cross/sci-ficross.zip
I only added thew ships sizes. Some races will need more ship sizes. Maybe make colony ships available to all players.
They are ordered by size, some sizes may need to be re-ordered to represent advanced small ships with some extra abilities.
Please post your comments and modded data. I'll put them togeather and post them again.

[Fyron]

Do you guys need any help making this mod? I can't really help in the graphics department, excpet maybe facilities for some Trek races (from BOTF), but I can help with racial techs and what-ot.

[Fyron]

Well?

[Andrés]

Don't worry about graphics. There are aleready shipsets, and new component/facilities pics (and even weapon sounds) can be added later.
It would be useful if you can pick a race you're familiar with and start designing their tech tree.
Keep in mind that they will not have acces to most standard techs, so they'll need race-exclusive or group-exclusive equivalents.

[Fyron]

Which races are already being designed?

[Fyron]

You know, the data files for this mod are going to get very, very large, what with all these different components for all the different races and all. Are empire files for each race going to be included? They should be used by all players, especially humans, so that the different races stay true to themselves, and you don't get things like Narns with ancient race or Borg without it. Also, are we going to try and get the resources to be used more evenly? Minerals dominating all sucks and is pretty unrealistic. And speaking of resources, how long should the ships be designed to tak to build? Should Light Cruiser sized ships take 2 turns to build, 4 turns, 12? What? Races with larger ships would definitely have to take longer to build them. I just want to know what sort of standards I should try and stick to when designing a race's stuff for this mod. How is vehicles.txt going to work? Is every race going to get their own custom set of ship sizes, or will this be done by genre type?

[Fyron]

I guess my question about ship classes has already been answered.

Did you copy those values for ship tonnage directly from Babylon Trek Wars? Cause they seem pretty strange for SEIV ship sizes, especially ships with values like 622 and 138.

[ 13 January 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

[Andrés]

AFAIK no one has already started this.
I’m revising my old starwars mod, Bearclaw is working the “Force sensitive” racial trait I never got to add. And some Bab5 techs have been mentioned in the B5 mod thread, IIRC Val and s_j were working on them.
Ship tonnage is based on their known tonnage or estimations of their "real" tonnage and then scaled to make logical SE4 sizes. Some races will need a few more sizes and maybe rounding the values is not a bad idea.
Yep advanced faster space yards for races with really big ships sounds like a good idea.
The 2nd Death Star was build in ~6 months (alright it wasn't finished).

[ 14 January 2002: Message edited by: Andrés Lescano ]</p>

[Urendi Maleldil]

No, don't round the values. It might be a little annoyance if the minimum component tonnage is still 10, but keep the tonnages especially if the minimum component tonnage is 1.

[Andrés]

I'm working on the Yuuzhan Vong tech tree.
These nasty humanoids hate all non-organic technology so they shouldn't share the tech of any other race (with the only yet unlikely exemption of other advanced organic manipulation races such as the Vorlon)
Although they do breath oxygen, they terraform planets optimizing them for their facilities (shipwombs and others) and rendering them toxic to other races. I'm planning to represent this by making them the only or one of the few races that breath some other atmosphere such as methane and giving them some terraforming technologies (Dweebit Beetles, Red Sphere).
They have a wide variety of troop weapons, but only one starship weapon (Plasma Cannon). I was tempted to convert some troop weapons to starship weapons but decided no to.

One of their most interesting living components are the "Dovin Basals", gravity manipulation creatures, they are used as engines, shields, to disrupt enemy shields and weapons and even for stellar manipulation.
They are very versatile, but they can't do everything at the same time, so I was planning to have several Versions, the 1st, engine + shields at higher levels, another shield zapping specialized, and another one for stellar manipulation.
Can the "Sector - Shield Disruption" ability be used in components? I can't make it affect only the enemy, but I can try to compensate with a "Shield Modifier - System" ability.

[Fyron]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Can the "Sector - Shield Disruption" ability be used in components?<hr></blockquote>

Yeah, and I think one of the mods uses it on bases.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> I can't make it affect only the enemy, but I can try to compensate with a "Shield Modifier - System" ability.
<hr></blockquote>

This ability won't lower enemy shields, if that is your goal. It only affects your own ships. I don't know if a negative value would work for it, and I don't know if it would work anyways.

Baron Munchausen posted this a while ago:

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>There are far more 'racial traits' available than are used in the current control files. As an old-time executable snooper I loaded the se4.exe into a viewer ages ago. I've only used one so far, but it works fine.
Name := Natural Engineers
Description := Repairs are made at 150% of their normal rate.
Pic Num := 0
General Type := Advantage
Cost := 1000
Trait Type := Repair
Value 1 := 50
Value 2 := 0
Required Trait 1 := None
Required Trait 2 := None
Required Trait 3 := None
Restricted Trait 1 := None
Restricted Trait 2 := None
Restricted Trait 3 := None

This gives a 50 percent boost to repair rate as you would think. The abilities currently used in the default config are:

Supply Cost,
No Plagues,
No Spaceports,
Luck,
Vehicle Speed,
Galaxy Seen,
Planet Storage Space,
Planetary SY Rate,
Tech Area,
Population Emotionless,
Tech Area (racial techs, of course)

Other abilities listed in the executable, which may or may not all work, are the following:

Troops Bonus
Fighter Bonus
Ship Bonus
Mineral Production
Mineral Storage
Organics Production
Organics Storage
Radioactives Production
Radioactives Storage
Research Production
Intelligence Production
Trade
Ground Combat
Space Combat
Maintenance Cost
Ship Attack
Ship Defense

As you can see, many of them look like duplicates. But some experimentation that I don't have the patience for (Edit racialtraits.txt file, start new game, create race & experiment with new trait...) might turn up some others that are usable. Too bad there's not a "Ship SIZE" ability, huh? Having larger ships at all tech levels would be a cool advantage. <hr></blockquote>

We should try using some of these other racial abilities in the mod. I know that the Resource Storage abilities work, because I tested them before.

[ 16 January 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[ 16 January 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

[Andrés]

Actually I was thinking of a negative Sector - Shield Disruption + a positive Shield Modifier - System to restore the shields in your ships.
Would the two abilities work fine togeather?

[Fyron]

Yeah, if the Shield Modification - System ability works on a ship component, then they should work how you are planning.

[Suicide Junkie]

Unless one stacks and the other dosen't.
Be sure to test it with multiple ships at once.

[Andrés]

In my first experiments the combination of the two abilities seems to be working even better than what I expected. I though that shields of low shielded ships would be increased to the amount of the abilities, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. Non of them seems to stack what I think it’s ok.
Another problem I found playing with the Vong is that they don’t have a ship size to use as a practical colony ship, since they jump from a 185 kt Corvette to a 2056 kt Light Cruiser (yes it’s “light” assault and grand cruisers are 5023 and 9954 kt).
I should probably give them one or two intermediate sizes, but the question is: should colony ships be available to all races instead of only the ones with the standard SE4 racial trait?

[Andrés]

I was wrong both abilities do stack, but they were nullifying each other.
I hadn’t try with ships in the system but no in the same sector.
My shields were increased by stacked shield modifiers, while enemy shields were unaffected.
The problem is that as their names state the shield modifier affects the whole system while the shield disruption only the sector.
I think that the best solution would be to forget the fancy abilities and just make it a powerful shields-only weapon.

And again, what do you think about colony ships?

[Fyron]

Every race should have access to a colony ship. I don't think you really need to make a different one for every race, so its fine if you just let all races use the same colony ship.

[ 18 January 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

[Andrés]

Then I'll just remove the Ship Construction 1 tech requirement of the colony ships. (That tech requires the "Standard SE4" racial trait.

[Andrés]

Another thing I found is that the temporary large engine confuses AI that attempt to place it in small ships where they can only put 1 and it doesn't leave space for other components.
I'm removing the temp filler now. And races will get large engines along with the big ships, so that should at least partially sove the problem.
I wish there were engine mounts that worked somehow like weapon mounts increasin their performance and with size limits.

[Andrés]

I added the Babylon 5 engines and reactors posted in the B5 mod thread.
They seem to work fine with the custom ship sizes I had made. Still have to try the "useless ability" solution to the large sized engines proposed in that thread.
Sci-Fi Crossover Mod (http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/files/sci-fi-cross/sci-ficross.zip)

[Suicide Junkie]

Hey, do you guys want me to generate a population modifier scheme for you?

In the B5 thread, I posted a 350KB file (SE4 handles it no prob) to paste into Settings.txt

What it does, is:
a) Plantary construction starts at 10%, and increases by 1% every 50M people. Homeworlds get about 400% Production, while new colonies are very slow builders. (Fear the Sphereworld!)
b) Resource production rapidly increases to 200% production, then fades back to 50% as the population grows into the multi-billions. The actual curve is a streched sine wave.

Any simple pattern you want can be done, and I can generate previews for you to compare.

[Val]

Once we add the 'useless abilities' to the engines, you'll be able to cut and paste it over http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Hoping to have weapons done in the next week or three...

[Andrés]

Those population modidifiers seem to be meant to give more importance to homeworlds. That sounds realistic for B5 and ST, but not for SW where a single planet as unimportant an in SE4. Too bad settings.txt affects all races.
Sounds interesting, but it's not one of my priorities. And even if it is we could just use the same modifiers you posted there.

Yep I was considering making engines of similar sizes for SW races. Maybe they should use the same "useless abilities" to make patching easier.

I'm slowly working on SW techs, and the B5 mod seems to be progressing well.
Now we need someone able to work in Star Trek technologies.
Atrocities? anyone?
Come on I know there are a lot of trekkies out there!
Even if you don't have experience modding you should be able to discuss and give your oppinions here.
I have a few trek weapons copied from that Babylon Trek Wars site. Just need someone to revise them, divide them by race, order them in a tech tree, and add a few more if necessary.
Add Trekkish engines, shields, sensors and other miscellaneous techs.
Many races have too few ship sizes. Some have only 1 or 2.
Propose more sizes to make races more functional. (That doesn't mean giving the Federaion, SSD sized ships. Contrast between races is good.)
Also I had ordered ships by size, but some are supposed to be small and advanced, reorder the techs and give those sizes some advantage such as to hit bonus, speed bonus (less engines per move for their size or mov bonus) or some other built in ability.

[Suicide Junkie]

What kind of spread do you have on weapon damage?
If its not too great, you could try the crystalline effect for trekkie shields.
Get them to deflect 90% of the damage of most weapons back into the shields, but make the shield generators "armor".
When you make ablative armor, it should have fewer hitpoints than the shield generator "armor", so that it gets hit first... that means the ablative components must be smaller in order to maintain a good HP/KT ratio.

PS: regarding the pop modifiers, my point was that I can easily change any of the parameters. If you want SY rate to increase rapidly and reach a max early, no prob. Any function that I can type in to the computer is fair game.
The big thing here is that I can generate 2000 modifiers, so you get smooth production increases.
Only a 1% change between any two modifers if you want.

[ 25 January 2002: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]</p>

[Urendi Maleldil]

Has there been any thought of adding stuff from other scifi universes after the babtrekwars stuff is compiled?

[Val]

Honor Harrington: Puke was talking about this at one point, don't know if anyone is working on it though.

Starfire Universe: Pres Elect Shang was talking about this boardgame (if I remember correctly) that was the inspiration for SE IV, would be fitting to be added at some point http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif No work on this as far as I know.

Battlestar Gallactica: Cyclons and Colonials are both viable, though there aren't any special weapons for them as of yet.

Andromeda: Someone mentioned this in passing, but nothing has been said about it since.

[Phoenix-D]

"Honor Harrington: Puke was talking about this at one point, don't know if anyone is working on it though."

That would be.. hard. HH shields/drives are fairly bizzare- the front and back are *totally unshielded* while the top and bottom are invincible. Plus the laser-head missles (drones?), and of course the dual-FTL system- warp points *and* hyper drive FTL.

EDIT: that and the difference between ship sizes (a dreadnaught has *40 times* the firepower of a destroyer)- at one point, a single dreadnaught kills four battlecruisers in a single broadside. Ow. That was pure firepower, no manuvering..

Not saying it couldn't be done, but it would be difficult. Especially since SE4 doesn't have weapon/ship facing effects.

Phoenix-D

[ 29 January 2002: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]</p>

[Urendi Maleldil]

Adding Wing Commander stuff shouldn't be hard.

[Andrés]

Sounds good. Adding anything is possible if someone is willing to help creating the mod.
We need ships sizes, weapons, engines, sensors, shields or whatever other components they use.

No one has voluntered to help with the Star Trek part so far. I thought there were many Trekkies around.

Maybe we get to add Honor Harrington, Starfire, Battlestar Gallactica, Andromeda, Robotech, Flash Gordon and Wing Commander before. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Andrés]

Here's the starwars Version of ECM.
Since it also works against yourself, it explains (and includes) the "targeting penalty" of sw weapons.
When both sides have jamming sensors, stacked Sensor interference can be quite large.
To prevent abuse of stacking I made it available only to ships and bases and added the One Per Vehicle restriction, so you can only have heavy jamming when large fleets are involved.


Name := Jamming Sensor I
Description := Device used to fill nearby space with static and random signals, blinding combat sensors, however they also work against yourself.
Pic Num := 13
Tonnage Space Taken := 20
Tonnage Structure := 20
Cost Minerals := 600
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 400
Vehicle Type := Ship\Base
Supply Amount Used := 0
Restrictions := One Per Vehicle
General Group := Sensors
Family := 19
Roman Numeral := 0
Custom Group := 0
Number of Tech Req := 1
Tech Area Req 1 := Sensor Countermeasures
Tech Level Req 1 := 1
Number of Abilities := 1
Ability 1 Type := Sector - Sensor Interference
Ability 1 Descr := Makes targeting 10% harder in the sector. Be careful when using many jamming sensors in the same sector since their effect stacks.
Ability 1 Val 1 := 10
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
Weapon Type := None

[Andrés]

We've already discussed about propulsion, most of the other techs are pretty straight forward weapons, shields, ect.
But there are a few techs I'm not sure how or if to add

Ion Beams (and Ionic Torps)
Normal damage against shields, disable unshielded ships (can't move, can't shoot). Used to make boarding by a relative vulnerable shuttle a piece of cake.
Large ion cannon emplacements are the only "weapon platform" weapon seen in star wars.

[Fyron]

You can't have multiple damage types on one weapon, so having ion beams do all of that is impossible. The only way to accomplish that would be to have an Ion Beam A, Ion Beam B, etc, (or some other, better naming device), where each type does one of the damage types you want Ion Beams to do.

I'll try and do some Trek stuff.

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>You can't have multiple damage types on one weapon, so having ion beams do all of that is impossible.<hr></blockquote>Assumption is true, but the conclusion is false.

Use "Only security stations" as a damage type, and add 1 point of security station "boarding defense" ability to any components that should be disabled by the ion cannon. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

[jimbob]

So then I could make a self-destruct device that is specifically destroyed by a specific weapon just by adding "1 pt of boarding defence" to the self-destruct component?

[Suicide Junkie]

Not specifically, since any other defense components, such as defense turrets (and possibly crew quarters) will be destroyed as well.

And the shields will absorb hits from that weapon before the components get wrecked.

I say crew quarters, possibly, because they have an innate 4 points of boarding defense. They don't have the ability listed, but they have the effect.

[Andrés]

Realistic ion beams should do no real damage. They just negate energy to systems rendering them inoperable but leaving them intact. Basically the ship is left completely helpless but intact and will be fully working again once energy is restored. It should maybe be disrupt movements and weapons reload, destroy supplies or something like that.
I already knew that such a damage type is impossible.
The idea of destroying boarding defense and adding that ability to other comps is interesting.
When you destroy what vital component, movs and fire are delayed. Life support? crew quarters? bridges?
It would do some damage but if you can only destroy only one or a few comps you can shoot with ion without fearing destroying the enemy and also disabling it.
Most ships will carry something with repair ability anyway so that limited souldn't be a problem.
There would be no point in having hardly trained stormtroopers tough if anyone that could fight against them would already be dead http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif


Some other techs

Interdictor
The interdictor is a specialized ship that generates an artificial gravity well or interdiction field. That field is used to prevent nearby ships from jumping into hyperspace and is one of the few ways to intercept a ship moving throug hyperspace.


Super techs (if ever included they must be extremely hard to research and build)

World Devastator
Normally used against planets, but can also be used in space.
Ships equipped giant with vacuum cleaners powered by miniature black holes that absorb ships and structures and turn them into raw materials they use in their on board factories to build units, and enlarge the devastator itself.
Short range weapon with negative supply use?

Sun Crusher
Small 6 men ship not only capable of destroying a star and everything inside, but also with a molecular armor strong enough to survive the explosion.
Can't make it survive but a small (maybe built-in) star destroying ship is possible.

Galaxy Gun
Giant space station that shoots hyperspace cruise missiles that can move faster than ships and carry a warhead capable of destroying a planet. Could proably be somekind of special drone.


Centerpoint Station
Not sure about this. It shoud never be buildable but maybe existing in some scenario.
Built eons ago by a forgotten culture, this station is located in the center point between the twin planets of Talus and Tralus in the Corellian system.
It's powerful gravity manipulation components were used to build the corellian system dragging planets from other systems.
It was used lately to create devastating gravity disruptions in far away systems.

[Val]

I was actually having similar problems with the ElectroMag weapons in the B5 Mod, I wound up making some Shield Only, some Engine Only and some mess the ROF delay.

I like SJ's idea about the "Only Security Stations", though it might be better to make it the "Only Engines" (since one of the things the Ion cannons did was disable the ship without damage) and add that to components that should be effected - thereby translated "Only Engines" to "Only ElectoMag/Ion". This way you can add the ion effect to the game without taking away from the boarding parties http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Andrés]

Problem is that IIRC only engine damage type bypasses shields.

[Suicide Junkie]

Plus, you can't add propulsion ability to components that you want the ion cannon to disable without having them count towards your engine limit or push the ship around.

[Val]

Aha, hafta think before I speak...

[ 30 January 2002: Message edited by: Val ]</p>

[Andrés]

Please remind me what’s the difference (if any) between having all your life support, crew quarters or the bridge destroyed. Both during combat an after it finishes.

[Suicide Junkie]

Losing bridge (& aux bridge) in combat: lose half your movement.
Lacking bridge outside combat: lose half movement.
Losing crew quartes: lose half movement.
Losing lifes support: lost 75% of your movement.

These are all multiplicative, so losing bridge and crew quarters has the same effect as losing lifesupport.

If a ship has lost all three, 32 movement points get reduced to 2 MP. (anything less than 32 leaves 1MP)

[Andrés]

How does this sound,
Ion Beams can damage:
*Life Support
*Bridge
*Aux. Bridge
*Shield Regenerators (or shield generators that include regeneration ability)
*Point Defense Cannons
(Different races and Groups may have their own Versions of these comps, and all of them will have to include the boarding defense ability (unless they are specifically invulnerable to ions, eg living ships). Not sure if hide it or make it look like an advantage.)

The "disabled" target will be dramatically slowed down and unable to raise shields or shoot down fighters.
Then a slow and vulnerable assault shuttle (fighter) can safely aproach and board it.
The target woud still be able to fire its main weapons, but their chance to hit a fighter are low.
Boarding parties would still have to overcome crew quarters innate defense to be succesful. (And big ships will have many crew quarters, making them harder to board)
After the battle, (boarded or not) total damage of the disabled ship would be relatively low and could be rapidly repaired.


What about making Interdictors warp point manipulation ships. Not sure if make that a comp or built-in to restrict it only to Interdictors.


BTW I've been looking at the damage types listed in the componentes.txt heading. I couldn't find any other dam type we could use, but I have an OT question. What's the difference between Increase Reload Time (Mental Flailer) and Disrupt Reload Time (Energy Dampener).

I'm working on the propulsions tree, it will be divided into Sub-Light (engines) and Hyperdrives (emergency pods) that will be researched separately.
I want ships to have 4-6 normal movs (no Movement Bonus to any engine) and then use hyperdrives to give them 5-10 emergency movs. So they have 2-3 movs in combat but when using hyperdrives can have 9-16 strategic movs. (they will compensate their low speed in combat and short range in weapons with fighters and longer range tractor beams)
I'll probably use max engines in their hulls to restrict normal speeds. I know I could decrease efficiency of engines or increase eng per move of hulls, but in known ship schematics engines are a small portion of total size.
I like the complex propulsion tree in the B5, and like how you made ships depend on reactors.
I want to make something similar in sizes and the way reactors work, but simpler in tech trees so primitive Atomic Drives and then Implosion Drives are fastly replaced with Hoersch-Kessel Ion Drives (each type with their respective reactor) that only gets slowly better in time.

This would also make starwars sub-light propulsion inferior to others propulsion. HK Ions may get cheaper (and lower manteinance) than any other engine since that's the explanation why they are the the most used engine in the galaxy even if other techs are available.

I was thinking about making Atomic Drives 1.5x price and size, Implosion Drives 2x in price and supply usage and HK Ion Drives equivalent of standard Ion Engines and get cheaper at higher levels.

To give some consistency, it would be nice if Atomic Drives were similar to B5 Fission Engines and HK Ion Drives similar to standard Ion Engines.
You see the problem, Fission Engines in the B5 mod are not only equivalents of standard Ion Engines in performance but also cheaper in price.
That's probably because in that mod Standard engines are still avaiable and they needed a reason to make them worh using, but would you be willing to change / let me change this detail?

[TerranC]

If No One did Star Trek right now I'll add some ideas. (This is for Federation)

Weapons:

Pulse Phasers: Meson BLasters with about 5X damage but crippled accuracy.

Phasers: Anti-Proton Beams with No damage loss with distance.

Photon Torpedoes: Anti-Matter torpedoes with added range and damage.

Quantum Torpedoes: Added range.

Tri-phasic Torpedoes: 2X the quantum torp damage.

Tricobalt devices: 1.5X damage of the QTorp but heavily crippled fire rate and range.

Armor & Shield:

Ablative Armor: Crystaline armor with slight added damage resistance but no shield energy.

Metaphasic shields: Phased shielding with slightly added strength and slight recharge rate.

Ship Systems:

Transporters: Serves as Mine Bay, Satelite Bay and cargo bay with storage area of 50 Kt and can load cargo from ships and planets 1 sector away.

Tractor Beam: Can be used to tractor all spaceborn made crafts to range 1 from the ship.

Replicators: Able to repair damaged/crippled ship in space without the help of space yards or rapair bays, Only effective for engines, weapons and command. Engines recieve half of the storage capability, weapons only 75% effective than original. Half of supplies are used for replication of needed materials. Requires Engineerings.

Warp Core: Quantum Reactor but this generates supplies up to 80% of the original supply capabilities rather than make it limitless.

Computer Core: 1 more movement added to engines. 80% accuracy in weapons. 2 range boost to all scanners inside ship. Size should be ridiculously large to compensate for the tremendous bonuses.

EPS Conduits: 30 Extra shiled strength. Decreased hull strength due to the volatility of the conduit.

Shuttle Bay: Serves as fighter bay but if engineerings is installed, can build fighters ONLY for 50% extra build time rate.

Engineerings: adds ability to repair and build craft without the help of repair bays and space yards.

Deflector Array: Can enter harmful sectors, warp gates, and systems with half the consequences Except black holes. In Black Holes Deflector array can help hold the shields together.

Holodeck: Increased Crew Experience.

Security: Doubles as Boarding party and Security Stations but half the effectiveness of both.

Scanners:

Scanner Array: Long range scanners with boosted range.

Command:

Battle Bridge: Auxillary controls but with added size.

Captain's Yacht: extra 10% combat bonus to ship.

Engines:

Ramscoop: Generates 50 supplies for every storm or sun. Adds 75 supplies to the generation of supplies if Warp core is installed.

Impulse drives: Jacketed-Photon engines with extra supplies capabilities and extra movement bonus.

Nacelles: Adds movement bonus. (Size should be large)

Ship Classes:

Escort: Scout
Frigate: Nova Class
Destroyer: Defiant Class
Light Cruiser: Sabre Class
Cruiser: Intrepid Class
Heavy Cruiser: Akira Class
Battle Cruiser: Sovereign Class
Dreadnought: Galaxy Class

Space Station: Drydock/Regula Starbase
Battle Station: Spacedock
Star Base/Base Ship: Deep Space 9

Light Carrier: Curry Class
Carrier: Yeager Class
Heavy Carrier: Akira Class

Light Fighter: Class 9 shuttle
Fighter: Delta Flyer
Heavy Fighter: Danube Class

Sattlelite: Midas Array

Drone: Genesis Device

Weapons platform: Phaser Turrets

Race Emblem: Federation Combadge Late 24th century
Race Picture: Federation Combadge
Human
Race Flag: UFP Flag

Structures:
Starfleet Academy: Doubles as a ship training facility and Fleet training facility.
Starfleet Command: Extra combat bonuses for every ship fighting in the system.
Starfleet Communications: Extra 10% experience for fleets. Extra 10% combat bonuses for satellites.

Well thats it...

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>What's the difference between Increase Reload Time (Mental Flailer) and Disrupt Reload Time (Energy Dampener).<hr></blockquote>At a guess, either nothing, or:
Increase reload stacks over multiple hits, disrupt does not.
...just a guess.

Re: Trek shields & armor.
I reccommend making both the shield and armor components like the B5 armor mentioned in the other thread. The shields should have a moderately powerful crystalline effect, allowing breaches on most hits, and weakening as the armor & shield emitters are stripped away by damage.

I'll whip up some example components for you guys...

[jimbob]

TerranC,

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif Nice ideas. Looks like the Feds will be fun to play. The only thing I can think to add would be Dilithium Crystals. A very small component that is ultra expensive in radioactives. Somehow this should make the ships faster (move bonus? Emergency speed?)


Some comments on your many many ideas:
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Ablative Armor: Crystaline armor with slight added damage resistance but no shield energy.

Metaphasic shields: Phased shielding with slightly added strength and slight recharge rate.<hr></blockquote>

I'd guess they would have vanilla shields prior to metaphasic shields in the tech tree.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Transporters: Serves as Mine Bay, Satelite Bay and cargo bay with storage area of 50 Kt and can load cargo from ships and planets 1 sector away.<hr></blockquote>

You can do that!


<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Replicators... Only effective for engines, weapons and command. Engines recieve half of the storage capability, weapons only 75% effective than original. <hr></blockquote>

Is it possible to specify which components are repairable? Is it possible to repair weapons partially (only 75% effective)? Perhaps have the Replicators repair just one or two components (see organic armor I think) but use a ton of supplies.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Warp Core: Quantum Reactor but this generates supplies up to 80% of the original supply capabilities rather than make it limitless.<hr></blockquote>

I'm guessing that 80% is for the advanced Version. Maybe the early Versions of the Warp Core would have a lower %?

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>EPS Conduits: 30 Extra shiled strength. Decreased hull strength due to the volatility of the conduit.<hr></blockquote>

Very cool. I like the idea of the fragile hull strength... very accurate I think to the Star Trek realm. ONce the shields are down.. yur ded!
Super vulnerability to shield bypassing weapons, which I think is just fine http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I'd guess that this would be an integrated component (ie. type of hull) rather than the plug-n-play type of component.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Holodeck: Increased Crew Experience.<hr></blockquote>

I'd just suggest making this an energy expensive component to make, and that it would gobble up supplies like crazy.


<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Ramscoop: Generates 50 supplies for every storm or sun. Adds 75 supplies to the generation of supplies if Warp core is installed.<hr></blockquote>

Very nice. I'm not sure you can set supply generation per storm, but a great idea!


<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Nacelles: Adds movement bonus. (Size should be large)<hr></blockquote>

I always thought of Nacelles as just the plating that shielded the warp engines... sort of a "don't cook the crew" structure.


I love the ideas, and please just take my yammerings as constructive discussion. If you can make these techs, components and ship types happen, I guarantee I'll play the Feds.

jimbob

[Suicide Junkie]

TerranC: You've got some good ideas, but no implementation experience. For starters, read the ability.txt http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

- The tri-cobalt you describe would never be used. Make it 7x the damage, same size launcher, but one shot per combat, and there will be some use for it.
- All the "one sector away" things will never happen, and you can't tractor you own ships. however, the multifunction abilities can easily be done.
- Also, stay away from any construction ability on minor components. You can only have one per ship, and will be able to build full size ships, not just units.
- Repairs are always perfect. Components are all or nothing in SE4. Anything you can build can be repaired anywhere, except for emergency propulsion & supplies, which are hardcoded to require a full-fledged space yard.
- For the warp core, I would suggest letting it store a year's worth of supplies, rather than generating supplies. Describe it a package deal with some antimatter pods http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .
- Computer: everything but the +2 is possible.
- EPS: can't reduce hull strength unless you give it negative hitpoints, and Last I checked, SE4 chokes on stuff like that. Try this one out yourself with the latest Version
-Shuttle bay & engineering: spaceyard dealy as above.
- Deflector: harsh reality time.
- Holodeck: that ability would spread to other ships in the same sector, unless you mean a fixed, one-time boost. In that case, make it a 3% bonus for to-hit offense & defense.

Mostly great stuff, I just had to point out the problematic points. Very impressive overall.


+++++++++++++++

These should be a good start for the trek defenses:
Obviously, shield tech should be cheaper/faster improvement than armor tech.
Also, note that having lots of trek shields does not make you invincible. Once the initial 100% resistance is worn down and the crystalline starts to kick in, then the shields only block 50% of the damage. This then rapidly decays to zero as the generators get smashed for being "armor".

Name := Ablative Armor I
Description := A multi-layered material designed to selectively vaporize during weapon impacts, carrying energy away from the hull.
Pic Num := 211
Tonnage Space Taken := 1
Tonnage Structure := 5
Cost Minerals := 30
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 0
Vehicle Type := All
Supply Amount Used := 0
Restrictions := None
General Group := Armor
Family := 5301
Roman Numeral := 1
Custom Group := 0
Number of Tech Req := 0
Number of Abilities := 1
Ability 1 Type := Armor
Ability 1 Descr := Is hit before most other components.
Ability 1 Val 1 := 0
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
Weapon Type := None

Name := Trek Shield Generator I
Description := Generates an intense, but localized gravitational distortion, disrupting incoming weapons fire.
Pic Num := 211
Tonnage Space Taken := 10
Tonnage Structure := 25
Cost Minerals := 100
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 300
Vehicle Type := All
Supply Amount Used := 0
Restrictions := None
General Group := Shields
Family := 5401
Roman Numeral := 1
Custom Group := 0
Number of Tech Req := 0
Number of Abilities := 4
Ability 1 Type := Shield Generation
Ability 1 Descr := Can withstand upto 50 ADU before weakening.
Ability 1 Val 1 := 50
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
Ability 2 Type := Shield Generation From Damage
Ability 2 Descr := Can withstand upto 20 ADU impacts without significant damage.
Ability 2 Val 1 := 20
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0
Ability 3 Type := Shield Regeneration
Ability 3 Descr :=
Ability 3 Val 1 := 20
Ability 3 Val 2 := 0
Ability 4 Type := Armor
Ability 4 Descr :=
Ability 4 Val 1 := 0
Ability 4 Val 2 := 0
Weapon Type := None

Edit for clarity.

[ 01 February 2002: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]</p>

[Andrés]

Hey TerranC good to see your enthusiasm and someone thinking about the Star Trek part.
Some things:
*Think of wich of these technologies should be shared with other star trek races.
*Be careful with balance!!! All what you're suggesting looks super-powerful. It doesn't need to be better to be worth researching since they will not have access to standard techs. Most technologies should be custom variations with their own advantages and disadvantages.
*You don't have to copy the engines+emergency pods model I suggested for starwars. Star Trek ships are fast both in strategic and in combat. Or you were refering to the mov bonus ability used in engines and solar sails?
*I already made a set of custom ship sizes for the federation. Note that tonnage of some ships is scaled because they were too big or too small. Please revise it and suggest changes/more sizes. I'll update my trek shipset to match with not included pics for those sizes later (or allow someone else to do it for me).
http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/files/sci-fi-cross/sci-ficross.zip

[ 01 February 2002: Message edited by: Andrés Lescano ]</p>

[Val]

Andres:

You mentioned using the Assault Shuttles to capture ships, can you put boarding parties on fighter class ships? I know you can't do cargo (had tried that). I thought I tried this in the B5 mod (made a breaching pod class fighter) and it didn't work correctly.

[Fyron]

Trek ship engines:

Most Trek ships should be able to have 3 "engines". They should have a Warp Core, which would be one per ship and give from 4-6 movement points. The Warp Core should store 10,000 suppplies and should be large. Then, add Warp Nacelles, which make from 1-3 movement. Ships will have a Core and 2 nacelles. Some ships, like the Heavy Destroyer, will have 5 "engines", allowing for 4 nacelles. Add Impulse Maneuvering Thrusters, which generate from 1-3 combat movement.

Add a Fusion Reactor/Anti-matter Storage Pod that stores 500 supplies and generates from 50-150 per turn. Add Bussard Ram Scoops that generate 100-300 supplies per star, and add some stars to the Nebula Systems.

I'll type my ideas on Trek ECM in the afternoon.

[Val]

For B5 I split it up into Reactors and Engines (thrusters).

The engines/thrusters were only for movement and held no supplies, the reactors handled all supplies. Kinda sim to IF's idea for trek.

[TerranC]

Well I really don't have experience as a MODer... They were just ideas that I sorta put together from Star Trek Canon info.

Thanks for the "Positive" input http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I have some ideas about Klingons and Romulans but I think Ill read some technical info before I post them up.

edit:
Now... Based on everybody else's part, I take back My idea of Transporters and Tractor Beams and Deflector... at least the ideas that are crazy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I guess my ideas seemed too strong because most federation ships have "all eggs in one basket" doctrine. I'll think of some penalties.

Holodeck Idea is dead. I guess I was being to vague with the idea of Replicators.

Replicators can only repair First 3 Priority components, if that is possible, that you have set, And it should use a LOT of supplies.

Engineering is also scrapped. Deflectors also... But for warp points only... Frankly I think it should give some bonuses in fighting in storms. (Just to put some Canon facts in)

And Suicide_junkies idea of Tricobalt devices sounds better than My idea http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Weapons and Shielding could be shared, along with transporters, Since all the other races seems to have phasers, torpedoes and transporters in the Series.

And I didnt copy off your ideas. If I did, Mucho sorry. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

And I'm not so sure what you've said about the ship sizes andre.

And Imperator... In Trek facts Bussard scoops were only designed as an emergency measure so it could limp back to a starbase. I guess the amount of supplies it generates could be increased but no more than 100.

Ok... whew... That was one heck of a rant.
Thanks for looking over my Ideas.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ 01 February 2002: Message edited by: TerranC ]</p>

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Add a Fusion Reactor/Anti-matter Storage Pod that stores 500 supplies and generates from 50-150 per turn. <hr></blockquote>Is there any reason why a "fuel tank" would fill itself up?
Last I checked, there were no perpetual motion machines in StarTrek http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .

[Fyron]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>And Imperator... In Trek facts Bussard scoops were only designed as an emergency measure so it could limp back to a starbase. I guess the amount of supplies it generates could be increased but no more than 100.<hr></blockquote>

That's true, but if they don't generate enough resources, then nobody will use them.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Is there any reason why a "fuel tank" would fill itself up?<hr></blockquote>

I typed this in a hurry this morning, so I didn't think enough about what I was writing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif I should have called it a Fusion Reactor/Dueterium Storage Tank. The component is supposed to represent both the reactor and the fuel storage compartment for that reactor. They could be separated into a Fusion Reactor comp and a Dueterium Storage Tank comp, but that would just be silly. You can't fuel a reactor without some fuel, and storing fuel without any reactors would not get you any power.

Adding a separated Anti-Matter Storage Tank that gave some supplies would be fine, cause the anti-matter is used in the matter/anti-matter fission reactor that powers the engines. The dueterium fusion reactors are used to power other on-ship systems.

The warp core should eat up a moderate amount of supplies, and the nacelles should use tons of supplies and have 0 storage. That way, people would be more likely to use some reactors and storage tanks on their ships.

And now for ECM:

In Trek, ships hardly ever miss. When they do miss, it's usually because the target out-maneuvered the attacker. ECM devices don't seem to be useful or in existance. You can't get rid of ECM in SEIV, however. So instead, lower Trek ECM devices effectiveness, and add some "ECM" to the warp nacelles. About 5-15 should be good. Then, give the Impulse Maneuvering Thrusters 10-30 ECM. This does create the problem of Trek ships getting extra ECM in the beginning of the game. Any suggestions on how to balance this?

[TerranC]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>
ECM devices don't seem to be useful or in existance.<hr></blockquote>

I Heard somwhere that Defiant Class use ECM generators against the Borg.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

[ 01 February 2002: Message edited by: TerranC ]</p>

[Suicide Junkie]

Fyron:
What exactly are you trying to do with the supplies here?

Way back when, me and Magnum came up with a nifty Trek propulsion emulator for SE4.

Impulse drives give combat movement.
Nacelles give 1 standard movement.
The M/ARC (aka warpcore) provides 4-7 "bonus" movement.
Escorts & frigates require 1 Engine per move
Most ships upto say Battleship size require 2 engines per move.
Battleships take 3, dreadnaughts take 4.

- Any ship with too few functional nacelles is dead in the strategic water, no matter how good their reactor is. (bonus movement is useless without at least 1 standard movement)
- Putting four nacelles on an LC is fine: you get 1MP more, and backups incase of combat damage.
- Include an "internalized" nacelle design for ships like the defiant, where the nacelle is more expensive, but much more resistant to damage (or is perhaps not counted as "armor")

[Phoenix-D]

I've started work on a Battletech mod while I wait for SE4Gold (unlike TechMod, I don't think BT will use many, if any, of the new stuff).

So, should I try to make it mesh with this mod as well? If so.. is there anything I can download to get an idea on what I need to balance against? I don't have a heck of a lot of information available, so I can be decently flexible..just trying to get the feel of it down, not the numbers.

Would it even add anything to the mod? BT focues more on ground invasions, so strong troops. Good fighters as well, and if I can figure out a way to model them, dropships (large shuttles, esentially- they do all the lifting to and from planets).

Other characteristics:
-No shields
-Ablative-type armor (the troop armor can be damaged by rifle fire, yet take direct hits from hypersonic slugs..the warpship armor is similar)
-Fairly slow on a strategic scale, middling speed in combat (hard to do, seeing that afterburner abilities don't stack)
-Weapons are powerful but fairly inaccurate

More later..

Phoenix-D

[Val]

There is also all the stuff in BattleSpace - gives a bunch of ships to move the troops and stuff around as well as slug it out.

There are also a lot of (aerospace)fighters in BTech.

[Fyron]

SJ:
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>What exactly are you trying to do with the supplies here?<hr></blockquote>

I don't really know at this point. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I was throwing out some ideas to get the Trek part of the Mod jump-started.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Way back when, me and Magnum came up with a nifty Trek propulsion emulator for SE4.<hr></blockquote>

Did this ever get past the drawing-board? Do you have a text file with some sample components? If not, don't worry about making a new one, I'll do it. What was the max number of engines you let ships have?

TerranC:
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>I Heard somwhere that Defiant Class use ECM generators against the Borg.<hr></blockquote>

Where did you hear that? I've never heard it before.

P.S: How do you make the quote tag say who originally made the post (short of manually typing in "posted by...")?

[ 02 February 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

[Suicide Junkie]

RE: quote author thing:
If you click the double-quote button, you'll see:
[ quote]originally posted by Mr X.
[ qb] quoted stuff
[ /qb]
[ /quote]
I suppose those stand for "quote body" or something.

+++++++++++

With the supply thing, either go with the Standard SE4 "unmeasured reactor power and limited supplies", or convert it to "limited reactor power and unmeasured supplies" by making "reactors" store supplies and have the ship's supplies maxxed out at the beginning of each turn.
You can't really go halfway, 'cause then it dosen't make sense http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

In this mod, the races are different enough to make using both methods acceptable (as long as a particular race only does it one way).

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Did this ever get past the drawing-board? Do you have a text file with some sample components? If not, don't worry about making a new one, I'll do it. What was the max number of engines you let ships have?<hr></blockquote>All the datafiles have been lost to the mists of time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif , but not the memory...
The engines would have no hardcoded limit.
Their limits would be set by combat and economic worthyness. Spending 50kT on two nacelles to get one more MP is not usually worth it, but can be used in certain situations for a tactical advantage.
The economic limit is the minimum required, but you could design a really fast 6 nacelle Frigate if you really wanted (+5 movement, no room for luxuries) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
(did I mention I hate arbitrary limits? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif )

[Phoenix-D]

"There is also all the stuff in BattleSpace - gives a bunch of ships to move the troops and stuff around as well as slug it out."

Right, but I don't *have* Battlespace.. I'll have to ad-lib it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Phoenix-D

[Andrés]

Sithspawn!!!
You're right Val, assault shuttles don't work. When you give it the order you get a "This vehicle cannot capute." error or something like that. Not sure why.
I already knew that transport fighters wouldn't work, something carring cargo inside a another cargo bay sounds pretty werid.

Ion Cannons seem to work fine though. So unless I make some small shuttle sized ship, capital ships will have handle the boarding (maybe I can describe them as short range fast shuttles http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ).

Hyperdrives are working fine, to repair them I made a 0 building 1 repair space yard called "Hyperdrive Motivator" and I also gave it an armor because it always seems to be damaged first.

Ok basics of these mod are:
Most standard techs are moved into a "Standard SE4 tech" (that once all races get their own techs should never be selected) and every race has acces to exclusive techs via for example a "Star Trek tech" plus a "Federation tech" racial traits.
That's why I asked wich techs would be shared with other races, those go to the "Star trek tech".
If necesary we can add a racial trait to add techs shared by a sub-group but not all Trek races.

About shipsizes:
One of the technologies only available to races with the "Standard SE4 tech" is Ship Construction, so each race gets a set of custom ship sizes under their exclusive techs.
That's also one of the few techs I already started for all races, since I want it to increase the contrast between races.

For example the Federation gets
Saber Class Starship (310 kt), Defiant Class Escort (355 kt), Norway Class Starship (622 kt), Miranda Class Starship (655 kt), Intrepid Class Starship (700), Excelsior Class Starship (2022), Akira Class Starship (2066), Sovereign Class Starship (2075), Nebula Class Starship (2082), Galaxy Class Starship (2156)
Peregrine Fighter (27), Danube Runabout(83)

Note that tonnage was made using known tonnage or estimations and scaled up or down using a variable scale to make logical SE4 sizes.
(I used the same variable scale for ship from all races, big federation ships like a GCS are half of its real size, but bigger ships form other races such as Earth Omegas or Imperial Star destroyers to a 10th part (~5000kt), and bigger ships are even more reduced, so don't complain)

It needs to be revised to correct:
1- I had ordered ships by size not by tech, that need to be corrected and add some penalty to big low tech ships and bonus to small high tech ships.
2- There are many some needed sizes missing, including stations missing. Some other races have only 1 or 2 starships.
I'll update my ST-Fed shipset to include all needed pictures once revision is finished (using neo-standard names if necessary, like I'm doing with THE Empire).

At least I'm trying to make things balanced with original SE4 techs, so you are not in a great advantage or disadvantage when playing against someone with the "standard SE4" racial trait.

I had posted a link to an old Version that includes all racial traits and ships sizes. I'm revising the starwars size and added sw and b5 tech, but the part that concerns startrek hasn´t changed.
http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/files/sci-fi-cross/sci-ficross.zip
I'd post an updated Version but I'm having a little FTP problem with my site and I'm still awaiting for my host's reply. And I'm too lazt to post it here or somewhere else.


Some ideas that may help:
Torpedos can be different from standard SE4 topedoes.
If you make beams like APB (wich is very strong among SE4 weapons) but better, compensate it with some disadvantage like bigger size, or longer reload rate.
Giving Transporters fighter/sat/mine lay/load abilities sounds like a good idea, but I'd make it small and just let it put the cargo in normal cargo bays.
Unless it stacks, it't ok to have Holodeck training bonus in all the sector, crews beam on board to use the it.
ECM can be replaced by just making their ship hulls have lower to-hit chance compared with ships of the same size of other races.

[TerranC]

I Have Some ideas about those Ship scales.

Sabre - +40
Defiant - +95
Norway - -122
(The fact is Norway is "classified" as a diplomatic frigate... thats what the writers at Star trek says.)
Miranda - -55
(Old ship.)
Intrepid - 0
Excelsior - -522
(Also OLD ship.)
Akira - -16
Sovereign - +25
Nebula - -38
(Since its a Kitbash (Shipkit + Bashed-up) of Galaxy and older than Sovereign)
Galaxy - +44 (144 if you are thinking of using Galaxy Refit)

Peregrine - -7
Danube - -13

Now these are merely an IDEA. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Fyron]

I'm not sure about all of TerranC's modifications, but I agree with decreasing the Excelsior's size. It is an old ship. And besides, you have a HUGE 1300 point gap between the Intrepid and the Excelsior/Akira. You need something to fill in that gap.

[Suicide Junkie]

Why would you need to reduce the size? If it is available early, but requires more crew and has a poor ECM hull rating, no worries.

I don't think you need to name the hulls that strictly, either: "Excelsior" is a class of ship, not a hull size.

You could encourage the use of hulls with newer images just by continually reducing the crew requirements, improving the base ECM, and basic supply/cargo storage.

Even if the ship is smaller, players will choose it for the side-effect advantages, and just build more of them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Andrés]

That's what I suggested order them by tech and give big early ships some dissadvantage such as more life support/crew quartes more engines-per-move than other ships their size, to-hit penalties , ect. and go the other way giving some advantage to small high tech ships.
The sovereign can still be smaller than the galaxy but have advantages to make it better, or even have more usable space inside by using less crewq/lifesup.

[Suicide Junkie]

Right. What about getting the AI to choose the best available hull from among the big old hulls...
Would a separate design for each hull, listed in the proper order in the AI_design_creation.txt work?

[Andrés]

Leave that problem until we want to patch the AI.
BTW, we still didn't try the "useless ability" for big engines.

[TerranC]

BTW, There are some sites on the web that offer schematics, graphics and specs of Trek universe ships.

One of them is:
www.ditl.org (http://www.ditl.org)

Just to let y'all know.

[Andrés]

This is an answer of what was posted in the B5 mod thread.


<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>From what you posted before, and what I've translated, the difference between the Fission engines and the HKIDs would be the fact that the HKIDs can store 1000x more supplies<hr></blockquote>

If you're talking about B5 fission engines, they have 0 supply storage. 1000*0=0
Their dependance on reactors is something I like and you were probably refeing to supplies stored in their reactors.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Atomic drives == fission engines.
Basic average engine.

Implosion drives == gravitic drives
More MP/KT, but much higher cost, maybe lower fuel efficiency.

HK Ion drives ?? fission engines
(SW only) Slightly more MP/KT than Atomic drive, but nearly unlimited supplies, and almost zero maintenance.<hr></blockquote>

I'm revising numbers.

I'm not sure if a ship using implosion drives should be faster than one with ion drives. Maybe only sligtly more but consume much more supplies (making it require more reactors than usual).

BTW I couldn't find a way to make a Hyperdrive (emergency energy) + a Hyperdrive Motivator (0 building, 1 repair SY) consume a lot of supplies as they are supposed to.

Every turbolaser gun is fired by 1 or 2 exclusive gunners each with indipendent sensors and computer assisted targeting. (some even have their own small redundadnt power source to continue firing if central power fails)
As I see it every weapon should be able to target enything without a multiplex tracking. But that's impossible, so I'll give them a built-in insanely strong multiplex tracking (and ISD carries ~150 weapons) or maybe included in a targeting computer (combat sensor).

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>If you're talking about B5 fission engines, they have 0 supply storage. 1000*0=0
Their dependance on reactors is something I like and you were probably refeing to supplies stored in their reactors.<hr></blockquote>Right. So once HKIDs come out, you also get a BEC (hypermatter) reactor as a simultaneously required tech.
You could install the reactors on any ship and use them to power a more efficient drive, but the fact that the HKIDs are almost free means that the other drives remain viable in only a small range of uses.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>I'm not sure if a ship using implosion drives should be faster than one with ion drives. Maybe only sligtly more but consume much more supplies (making it require more reactors than usual).<hr></blockquote>Also a higher maintenance cost per MP, right? That would leave you the options of:
- small fleet of slightly faster ships
- jaw-dropping numbers of slower ships.
- piles of slower ships, and a few special forces speedships.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>BTW I couldn't find a way to make a Hyperdrive (emergency energy) + a Hyperdrive Motivator (0 building, 1 repair SY) consume a lot of supplies as they are supposed to.<hr></blockquote>You've got it as an emergency movement pod already, right? Try making it an emergency supply pod too, providing -9999 supplies.

"(some even have their own small redundadnt power source to continue firing if central power fails)"
SE4's got that down already http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
Building the multiplex into the weapons is a good idea.
Beware of stacking combat sensors on different component families!

[Andrés]

Mov/Ton of all engines

Standard:
Name

Ion Engine
Tonnage: 10
Movs: 1
Ratio: 0.1

Contra - Terrene Engine
Tonnage: 10
Movs: 1
Ratio: 0.1
+ 1 bonus

Jacketed - Photon Engine
Tonnage: 10
Movs: 1
Ratio: 0.1
+ 2 bonus

Quantum Engine
Tonnage: 10
Movs: 1
Ratio: 0.1
+ 3 bonus

B5 Fission:
Size: Light - Medium - Heavy - Huge
Ton: 10 - 60 - 100 - 200
Mov: 1 - 7 - 12 - 25
Ratio: 0.1 - 0.116666667 - 0.12 - 0.125

B5 Fusion:
Size: Light - Medium - Heavy - Huge
Ton: 5 - 30 - 50 - 100
Mov: 1 - 7 - 12 - 25
Ratio: 0.2 - 0.233333333 - 0.24 - 0.25

B5 Anti-Matter:
Size: Light - Medium - Heavy - Huge
Ton: 5 - 30 - 50 - 100
Mov: 1 - 7 - 12 - 25
Ratio: 0.2 - 0.233333333 - 0.24 - 0.25
+1 bonus

B5 Gravimetric:
Size: Light - Medium - Heavy - Huge
Ton: 5 - 30 - 50 - 100
Mov: 1 - 7 - 12 - 25
Ratio: 0.2 - 0.233333333 - 0.24 - 0.25
+1 bonus

(most advanced engine of each tech gets a little smaller size and a slightly increment in ratio)

So basically all B5 engines come in these "mounts"
Mount - Ton/Cost/Sup - Movs
Light - 1x - 1x
Medium - 6x - 7x
Heavy - 10x - 12x
Huge - 20x - 25x

I'll add a new scale called Massive (50x - 80x) but I'll have to be careful not to pass the 255 movs limit (before dividing by the eng per move).
That's really a bad restriction to newtonian movements in really big ships.

My idea of SW
Atomic Drives
Size: Light - Heavy - Massive
Ton: 12 - 120 - 600
Mov: 1 - 12 - 80
Ratio: 0.083333333 - 0.1 - 0.133333333

Implosion Drives
Size: Light - Heavy - Massive
Ton: 10 - 100 - 500
Mov: 1 - 13 - 85
Ratio: 0.1 - 0.13 - 0.17
(Ratios are lower than HKID, but since max engines are by number not % you can get higher final speed, supply consume will also be very high)

HK Ion Drives
Size: Light - Heavy - Massive
Ton: 8 - 80 - 400
Mov: 1 - 12 - 80
Ratio: 0.125 - 0.15 - 0.2

So I hope this explains my original point with numbers.
I made HK Ion Drives slightly better than standard ION ENGINES, and I'm also too close to the maximun limit to make them any better.
I can't show progress in propulsion if I make SW atomic drives == B5 fission engines

As I see it we have to option.
Make B5 fission engines worse (are they supposed to be primitive anyway?)
Or forget about this little idea of making similar techs have similar performance.

BTW gravity manipulation hasn't been left behind in starwars, Repulsorlifts (anti-grav engines) are still very used and the best choice within a planet. They are used not only by ships but also by land speeders atmospheric fighters, and droids. I didn't mention them because they'd have no use in SE IV. Interdictors can project planet sized gravity wells, and tractor beams operate with a combination of gravitic and magnetic pull.

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>I made HK Ion Drives slightly better than standard ION ENGINES, and I'm also too close to the maximun limit to make them any better.
I can't show progress in propulsion if I make SW atomic drives == B5 fission engines

As I see it we have to option.
Make B5 fission engines worse (are they supposed to be primitive anyway?)
Or forget about this little idea of making similar techs have similar performance.<hr></blockquote>Or break up the B5 fission engine into two: Normal and advanced fission engines.

With the first bit of propulsion tech research, B5 goes to advanced fission, while SW goes to implosion.

[Andrés]

Why is it so important to make Fission Engines good?
All races have at least Fusion and you hardly ever see primitive fission tech, just make it something bad that is quickly left behind.

maintenance per MP?????
Manteincance is determined by cost, isn't it?
They'll be expensive then.

Another detail is that "sub-light speed" matters very little in final speed and range once hyperdrives come into play (better get a faster hyperdrive rather than faster sub-light engines).
The bigger more expensive engines would only make a difference in combat.

Making it also a negative supply pod. I didn't think of that, but it doesn't seem to work in my tests.

It would be cool to give each gun a +1 multiplex tracking. But multiplex tracking does not stack.

Targeting Computers would be the only combat sensor for SW races (besides something related with The Force), making them combat sensor+multiplex tracking ain't that bad.
I'm more worried about balancing the staking Jamming Sensors (Sector - Sensor Interference + weak Combat To Hit Defense Plus)

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>maintenance per MP?????
Manteincance is determined by cost, isn't it?
They'll be expensive then.<hr></blockquote>Yeah. It is something to consider when building a ship. Do you want to pay $1000 per turn for 8MP, or $400 per turn for 7MP?

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Another detail is that "sub-light speed" matters very little in final speed and range once hyperdrives come into play (better get a faster hyperdrive rather than faster sub-light engines).
The bigger more expensive engines would only make a difference in combat.<hr></blockquote>There's your reason why SW fission engines can be less efficient than B5 drives. They are used to go everywhere in B5 except for the hyperspace transition, while in SW you don't need them during FTL travel, right?

I think these races should be beyond fission drives by the time they meet. How often do you fight with Ion I's in SE4?

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Why is it so important to make Fission Engines good?<hr></blockquote>The B5 fusion engines have double the speed of the fission drives. Isn't that bad enough? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Andrés]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>There's your reason why SW fission engines can be less efficient than B5 drives.<hr></blockquote>
SW later engines are less efficient, and hulls will have restrictive max engines, it's just that fission engines are the same technology. They could even share the same components, and if we add a custom pic the same pic.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>The B5 fusion engines have double the speed of the fission drives. Isn't that bad enough? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <hr></blockquote>
Fission is still 24% cheaper than standard Ion Engines. And 1000% more resistant to damage but that might be to make vital comps more difficult to kill and compensate lack of shielding, so it's ok with me.
So if as you said races should be beyond fission drives by the time they meet.
Why do they have to start with better engines?
Besides the consistency issue, B5 races would have an advantage if for example two races start in the same system

I can try to go the other way and revise SW to make atomic drives == fission engines and the others a little better. But if engines have too many movements I'll pass the 255 limit in the big ships, and will have to make them use very little engines and lower their eng per move.

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Fission is still 24% cheaper than standard Ion Engines. And 1000% more resistant to damage but that might be to make vital comps more difficult to kill and compensate lack of shielding, so it's ok with me.<hr></blockquote>Actually, the components with higher damage resistance are much easier to kill (or at least hit).
Anything higher than about 250 hitpoints will not be protected by even the "Heavy" basic armor, as I have it set now.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>I can try to go the other way and revise SW to make atomic drives == fission engines and the others a little better. But if engines have too many movements I'll pass the 255 limit in the big ships, and will have to make them use very little engines and lower their eng per move.<hr></blockquote>You could scale down the heavy/massive drives from 10x and 50x, down to 5x and 25x. That would give you plenty of room to bump up efficiency and even increase the engine limits to 6.

[Val]

The engines are being reworked (or should I say retrofitted?) as we speak http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif lowering their HP to around what SJ had suggested in the B5 thread.

Also, one thing to note : I had put the fision engines in the B5 mod for the 'under developed' races (Grom/Hurr) or as a spring board into higher tech engines if you are playing a game from scratch. Ideally, most races will start with a level of Fision tech and basic Fusion tech. In the scenario (I am still hoping for a scenario builder so I don't have to do it the long way) some races would even start with Anti-Matter and Gravitic drives (Vree/Centauri and Brakiri/Minbari) to be more true to the series.

Just re-reading the Posts, the 1000% increase in HP for the basic engine was due to the way we were going to do armor and repair originally in the B5 Mod. At first everything was going to be x10 (struct ton, damage, etc.) so we could simulate simple repairs for ships. This way crews could be working on repairing an otherwise crippled ship to get her underway again. But, unfortunately, the organic armor ability doesn't quite work the way we would like it to, ah well!

[ 04 February 2002: Message edited by: Val ]</p>

[Andrés]

I added the B5 comps posted yesterday. (still have to check what was posted today)
I added the racial trait to tech areas, but I forgot to rename "Propulsion" to "Babylon 5 Propulsion" as I had done Last time, and discovered 2 interesting things
(maybe these are old news and already being used in some mod but I don’t remember any post about them before)
1- the game doesn’t have a problem with 2 technologies named the same.
2- Races with B5 tech gained standard engines. So any of the 2 technologies with the same name can be a prerequisite for components (and presumably other game items). In this case it’s a bug, and I’ll have to rename the tech area but that feature can be deliberately used to make a more complex tech trees where the same tech can be gained in different ways.
It may be very useful to allow certain technologies to be shared by a few races, and allow races starting with some higher level without having to make an exclusive racial trait for that tech.

I promise to post the data files and the .xls file I’m using as mailmerge source soon.

[Val]

The engines for B5 have been reworked for structure and such, so you may want to hold off on integrating them yet http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Also you need to add the Fission, Fusion, Antimater, Gravitc and Hyperspace Techs (these are corrected in the updated TechArea file in the B5 Thread as well). They should all be at the end of the TechAreas in the B5 Mod.

There are also some new test weapons for B5, the other weapons couldn't hurt the ships for anything!

Neat discovery, do you know which level it takes? The first listing of the tech or the second?

[ 05 February 2002: Message edited by: Val ]</p>

[Andrés]

I had added all the tech areas, and also added them the racial B5 racial trait number (7 IIRC).
But since no ene else has techs with the same name there was no conflict

[Andrés]

I tried turning on "Standard SE4" and "B5", both propulsion tech areas appeared in the research window, but all comps appeared in the second one and no one in the first.
The same happened when I only turned on "Standard SE4", propulsion tree was empty.
Once again I was jumping to conclusion too early without proper observation. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/blush.gif
That's why no one has ever posted about this. It doesn't work! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[Val]

AH well...

Anyway, I fixed the Engines/Reactors and posted some test weapons on the B5 Mod thread. SJ also posted some ECM components. Armor and the other 190 weapons will be soon to follow if tests go well. Then all we have to do is the AI http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Andrés]

Preliminary SW comps, need more revision and changes to be made, my ships were outgunned by ships with DUC I! And there are some more still to add such as all fighter stuff that should be really important in starwars.
But I like how they're working so far.
I also included the excel file I use as mailmerge source.
http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/temp/Starwars.zip

[Val]

WHat was the final decision on the following two issues:

Ion Beams - the extra ability for them to disable will be?

Engines - What 'useless' ability are we standardizing for use?

[Urendi Maleldil]

Ion Beams - Shouldn't they just kill supply. I' kinda certain that damage type is available, but I haven't checked in some time.

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Ion Beams - the extra ability for them to disable will be?<hr></blockquote>That has to be boarding defense, because of the damage types available.

Otherwise you can't shut down weapons and shields at the same time.

[Andrés]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Ion Beams can damage:
*Life Support
*Bridge
*Aux. Bridge
*Shield Regenerators (or shield generators that include regeneration ability)
*Point Defense Cannons
(Different races and Groups may have their own Versions of these comps, and all of them will have to include the boarding defense ability (unless they are specifically invulnerable to ions, eg living ships). Not sure if hide it or make it look like an advantage.)

The "disabled" target will be dramatically slowed down and unable to raise shields or shoot down fighters.
Then a slow and vulnerable assault shuttle (fighter) can safely aproach and board it.
The target woud still be able to fire its main weapons, but their chance to hit a fighter are low.
Boarding parties would still have to overcome crew quarters innate defense to be succesful. (And big ships will have many crew quarters, making them harder to board)
After the battle, (boarded or not) total damage of the disabled ship would be relatively low and could be rapidly repaired.
<hr></blockquote>

[Val]

Ok, now what was the final call on engines?

[Andrés]

All we have to do is choose a different "useless ability" for each engine size.
I made SW engines of the same sizes of B5 engines (at least the same sizes of fission engienes) so they could use the same abilities.
I also made different sizes of shields, so we may need to add them other "useless abilities"

Take a look at these pics:
http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/temp/sw_pics.zip

[Val]

Engines and reactors changed a little in the B5 Mod. I also took your advice and gave the different engine types a facelift (each group looks different now). The reactors will have to wait until after I finish the rest of the weapons and components (another 78 to go) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

All the latest data files are now compiled in the latest update - though it does not include any components from standard SE IV that the mod won't be using (such as the SE IV weapons). Med Bays have also been updated.

B5ModUpdate.zip (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/newuploads/1013380549.zip)

[Val]

Before anyone points this out, just realized I accidently genned out the Med Bays to X and Advanced Med Bay to 15. To make the Drahk plague work properly, delete Med Bays V-X and in the text for the Advanced Med Bay change all '15's to '5's. In effect, this makes a plague level 5 the Drahk plague and it can only be cured by finding the 'Cure for Nano-Virus' in a ruins. Another thing to mention, the plague bombs go from I-X, but only achieve Plague 4 (with varrying damage and range) and the Drahk Plague I-X goes from Plague 3 to 5, allowing them to start with a more powerful plague than anyone can easily cure right away (if they choose to use it) and lets them develop the dreaded Plague 5.

Not sure how you want to handle this in the Sci-Fi mod, it's too bad we can't increase to Plague 6 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Andrés]

I like it.
Other races such as the Y Vong and the 8472 should also have plagues as an important part of their arsenal. Maybe even the dreaded lev 5.
Finding the cure in ruins sounds good, too bad the plague can't remain dormant for some time. If someone else finds the cure first you may be forced to do some crazy trade to get a working med ship with the cure.

Hmm races with "Standard SE4" would still get normal plague weapons/med bays, maybe I sould lower that to lev 4.

[Val]

I was hoping you might lower the standard to Level IV med bays, makes the Drahk plague (and others) more deadly.

I left it as a ruin tech so it could only be found, but there is no reason we couldn't make the medical tech absurdly long (like up to level 50) and if someone really wants to research it all the way out, knowing there is no other bonuses in between 4-49, then let them spend the time and $$ to research a cure. This way the ruins are still there for a quick fix - plus it may give someone a valuable trade commodity, or make their ships target for takeover!

[Val]

Will we be including 'hyperspace' drives that will actually allow units to create warp points?

[Andrés]

I'm not sure, but warp manipulation components probably won't work on sats or fighters.

[Val]

I was thinking of a 'ship only' component, and if I get some light shed on the Unique component thing then we can limit it to larger ships!

[Andrés]

Sorry but ISTR those restrictions were something only mentioned in the headings and never implemented.
The only way to restrict a comp to big ships would be to make it very big or need so many supplies that con only come from a large reactor.

[Val]

The supply thing is a good idea! Though a person could use a fleet pool supplies, they would still have to seperate to activate the gate and would need extra supplies! Pure genius! Could also make a slightly heavier reactor with a bit more supplies for jump cabable ships.

Now next Q. Can we program the AI to close the gate after going throguh? Would have to rely on humans to be honest though, unless they finally make a Warp Point that will auto collapse after X number of rounds (in this case 1)! Would love that ability and the ability to make delayed arrival Warp Points!

[Andrés]

AI seems to handles warp openers and closers in a very chaotic way.
At least you have jump gates in B5.
There's nothing similar to warp points in star wars. You have hyperlanes, known and well cartographied routes where hypredrives can be faster, but you can basically move freely in any direction if you're craeful to plan a route that does not get too close to large stellar bodies.
I can't make an Interdictor that doen not allow enemies to jump warp points or use emergency movement "hyperdrives". Since the only way to block a warp point is by closing it I'll make it a warp closer (and opener at higher level), but the wp won't automatically re-open once the interdictor is destroyed.

[Val]

Check out the B5 Mod thread for a vote on what we are doing with racial/weapon techs. Would like y'alls input http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Andrés]

Death Star Superlaser and weapon mounts Q:
Besides its planet destroying ability, I want the death star main weapon to be the strongest possible weapon, able to destroy almost any ship in a single shot. Maximum damage allowed by the game is 65k. But to avoid overflow (specially if I want AI to handle it) it will have to be 65k using the best weapon mount available.
Since we have many ships that will be larger than baseships, it makes sense to have more weapon mounts. I was temporarily using the weapon mounts from my "ultimate vehicle size" mod, but I think those are too much and too big. At least in Star Wars very big ships carry an impressively large number of relatively small weapons.

Capturable Techs Q:
If you give a tech area a race exclusive requisit, but don't add it the racial number, only those who have the racial trait can start to research it, but others can gain it by analyzing captured ships or using intel.
In a full tech start all will have it.
It would be nice to have a few "capturable" race-exclusive tech areas, something that is not too alien to another race or sci-fi.

Wished Abilities List:
A list of all new abilities (and damage types, restrictions, changes to existing abilities, etc.) we'd like to have to make this mod more complete and realistic. And then send it to MM, I understand some would require major changes and are not worth it, but IMO at least some of them would be relatively easy to add.
These are the ones I can recall now, but I'm sure there a lot more:
* Limited reactor ability: Like Solar Supply generation, it generates a limited amount of supplies every turn, but independent from the number of stars.
* Make the "cannot be repaired except by a space yard ability" in emergency pods, a separated ability from the pod ability, so it can be removed or used in other comps.
* Repair bays that can only repair a specific type of components. (Probably by specifying custom group)
* Open Temporary Warp Point: A wp that automatically collapses after the ship has crossed or at the end of the turn.
* Spatial Anomaly ability: it works like the Spatial Anomaly "Ship - Moved" event type, but it can be triggered on purpose by activating a component or something like that. At lower levels your ship ends up anywhere, but later you start to learn how to control it and you're able to specify system and even sector you want to go.
* The ability to use non-damaging weapons such as tractor beams against your own ships. If possible even to pull a damaged ship or a station outside combat.
* Warp Point Interdiction: When a component with this ability is turned on in the same sector of a warp point, the WP is unusable. No ship can cross the WP from the side, until the interdictor component is destroyed, turned off or leaves the sector.
* Disable damage type: Normal damage against shields, once shields are down it disrupts all ship functions leaving it dead in space (the ship can't move, can't fire weapons and can't regenerate shields) but without any real damage. After the combat finishes, the ship will be fully functional again, maybe it loses all supplies or something like that, but components are not damaged.
* Space Cities / Populated Stations / Artificial Planets: Something between a planet and a space station. It holds population not only as cargo, it needs population to run resource-generating small facility-like components.

[Val]

To get around the limited reactors problem of needing stars, we were going to include "invisible stars" in Black Hole and Nebulas - even made a center piece from the Black Hole BMP to overlap.

Would love to see the "Can't be repaired bit" as an ability.

Temporal one turn Warps would be great too - or even the ability to set the number of turns as the variable.

Wouldn't the interdictor just stop a ship as it enters it's gravity well? So ships could warp in, but they couldn't warp out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Andrés]

I know about the getarounds, to work properly mod all systems to have 1 and only 1 star.
But adding that ability should be really for thosue that can alter the source code. And would make reactors something different from strong solar colectors.

[Suicide Junkie]

Acutally, you just need "at least one star", since the reactors have generation = capacity, and the generators are the only supply storage on the ship.
You can still have binary & trinary systems.

[Andrés]

Laser colors:
Apparently the color (wavelength of the visible part) has nothing to do with strength of the weapon, but it's only used as an ID method.
Rebels use red lasers and Imperials use green ones in all sizes and weapon mounts, from a fighter or mechanized troop small cannon to the Death Star main weapon.
The question is: is it worth it to make different Versions of the same weapon that only fire in different colors?

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>The question is: is it worth it to make different Versions of the same weapon that only fire in different colors?<hr></blockquote>Is it worth it in order to get really cool looking battles?
Since its only a cut-and-paste thing, I'd say go for it.

[Andrés]

I'm thinking about the facilities.

It has been pointed before that killing planets and pop is too easy. Some ideas about that were adding planetary shields, increasing power of weapon platforms and increasing hitpoints of pop.
Now IIRC you were considering appliying some of these ideas in the B5 mod, right?

But in starwars killing pop seems to work very similar to SE4.
It's easy to kill all pop using standard weaponry, and if the planet is shielded,bombarding it is completely useless.
Many attack on planets depend on sabotage missions to take down the planetary shields before the attack. Eg Camaas, and even Endor (although the attack wasn't on the planet itself)

But neither Bab5 or Trek have planetary shields.

This is what i was thinking, Bab5 and STrek have some shields as a second ablity in normal facilities, while SWars have special facilities. That way SW planets will be more vulnerable and easy to kill if unshielded but better protected shielded, while still having their "unique" planetary shields.
Putting numbers to all planetary shields would be the ral problem.

[Andrés]

BTW what happened with Terran's and Fyron's interest in the Trek part?
Are you trying some things?
Don't feel intimidated by our opinions/suggestions. Not enough time?

[Val]

Whichever idea y'all like would be good.

I was thinking about upping the pop damage, but haven't done anything as of yet. I had also wanted to make it so you would need to use planetary weapons to attack planets, so normal lasers couldn't do anything. Maybe the planetary shields built into all facilities are the best idea, then upping the damage on planetary barrage weapons. Meshes pretty well with the SW shield idea.

[QuarianRex]

Hey there, I noticed that you are a little light on the Trek side of things so I figured that I might as well toss in a couple thoughts.

I saw some very good ideas on trek propulsion a few pages back that seems perfect (posted by SuicideJunkie I think). Only problem was that those designs were based on standard movement (more appropriate for trek I think)not Q-N. Is that a problem? Can you have multiple propulsion types like that in the same mod?

The way you seem to be doing things (with each race having its own tech trees and such) this doesn't seem to be too much of a problem. Then again, what do I know, all I have to play around with is the demo (at least until gold comes out). Though, if you could maintain both types it would go a long way towards giving a unique star trek feel to their races.

I was also wondering if there was a way to have central tech areas where each of the individual races could branch off of instead of having multiple redundant tech areas for each race. For example, instead of having Federation ship construction, Empire ship construction, etc., you could have every race research "ship construction" (modifying the tech area so that it is empty, ie. provides nothing for researching it by itself) and have each ship require the appropriate tech level of ship construction *and* a single level in "Klingon Tech", "Rebel Tech" or whatever.

These race techs could be limited to only one level (or more) that is automatically given to a specific race (starting level 1). This could also be used to tie other techs together, like beam weapons, propulsion, etc.

By now you may be asking yourself "Why in Hell would I want to do that?". Well I'll tell ya. So far as I've seen you've gone to a great deal of effort to balance out the various techs while allowing each race to maintain its own style. This is good and is the entire point of doing a crossover mod. The problem that I see is that with the current setup one of the key aspects of the game has been removed. You can no longer trade/steal/reverse-engineer tech. If all tech areas are racial then they cannot be shared with other races.

I have heard that if you remove the racial number from a racial tech area then it can be learned by anyone who gets their hands on it ( though they can't initially research it). While this option might be a good idea for certain techs I think that it would be a bad idea for the basics. After all, having Ferengi cruising around in star destroyers of their own design is just wrong. Not to mention that you could wind up having ten different ship construction areas in your research areas. That could get annoying.

However, if you have things based off of a single tech tree (as I tried to describe above) you could have the Narn analyze a captured galaxy class ship to give them ideas on how to create bigger ships of their own. Also, I figured that beam weapons could also be a good crossover option. After all, the main difference between lasers, bLasters, and phasers is aplication (phasers slow and accurate, bLasters fast though less accurate, etc.). Granted, I know that the actual tech behind them may differ quite a bit (I haven't read the tech manuals or any such) but that is less important than you might think.

Some of you may wonder whether this applies "story"-wise. I think it does. Take Star Trek for example (mainly because it is one of the few shows that tried to show adaptation or integration of tech). Many times has the crew of the Enterprise (or Voyager, etc.) encountered a new, previously unknown tech (or a more advanced Version of a known one) and, after analysis, have used this knowledge to upgrade their own weapon systems without changing them (they didn't change their phasers to disruptors, just cranked their phasers).

Please consider this option, I think that it would add a lot to the mod. Though I may just be acting out of selfishness, since I am working on a Borg mod (they currently have a -80 on research and some racial techs that are appropriately lowered in cost) and if they have nothing to assimilate then what is the point? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Joking aside, I do think that this is a good idea. I just hope that I said it coherently. It is very early in the morning...

[Andrés]

There's no problem in having multiple prop types. Unless someone "cheats" when selecting racial traits, you'll never see b5 engines in trek hulls.
I admit I'm tempted to abandon q-n movs for the sw ships in order to be able to restrict standard movements more easily.

I like your idea of common tech trees and I admit I had thought about it and discarded it as too complicated (what means that I was too lazy to implement it at that time)
But I’d go for a mixed system, it works nicely for “ship construction”, but I’m not sure about beam weapons, it’d sound strange to research “Energy Stream Weapons” to get phasers, disruptors or turbolasers.

[Val]

The tech tree that is setup in the ever evolving B5Mod is actually setup so the initial trait to start researching any racial tech (other than Ancients) is Racial only, but then that is a requirement for the other techs within that race (weapon, special facilities, bioengineering, etc.), this way another race can capture a ship, reverse engineer, and then start building them. The only exception to this are the Ancients. Right now their technology is restricted to their specific Ancient race - though I made add another racial trait called "B5 Ancient" and have some of their generic stuff (for all Ancient Races) in there. Even with that being said, both the Vorlons and Shadows have a special Tech called "Vorlon/Shadow Based", which will allow races to build things like a Shadow Omega or White Star. Once all the weapons I am currently working on are done, I plan to go back and add some more "Shadow/Vorlon" specific weapons for the other races (right now any race can get them, but I would like the current ones limited to EA, Minbari and IA).

I had originally thought about making the tech tree in such a way that all races theoritically had the ability to research along any given tech path. But, that kind of took away from the feel of the B5 universe - so now it is done as described in the first paragraph.

[Andrés]

I just rendered this pic:
http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/temp/intro.jpg

It's still work in progress, I want to add another capital ship behind the Omega (I'm not sure wich, choice will also depend on the models I can find). I will add small explosions, more beams and some torps everywhere, not only that lonely X-wing but lots of fighters from different races.

[Richard]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Andrés Lescano:
I just rendered this pic:
http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/temp/intro.jpg
<hr></blockquote>


This looks cool!

Sorry for the interruption, first time checkingn this thread and I see the above http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .

[Suicide Junkie]

I realize its tough to fit lots of ships on the screen at once, but it looks like all three of those ships are about to ram each other http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
The galaxy is quite flexible for attack orientation, and the B5 Omega could be shooting at something farther away...

I don't know how easy it would be to also change the nametags on the Enterprise-D and the Agamemnon. The history of those ships dosen't really work for a crossover.

[Andrés]

Well I wanted close ups of very big ships so the only way to make them fit was to put them very close.

BTW details of the Agamemnon's cannons would work great for components.

Changing the names would be easy. There are just text in texture maps all I need to do is find a matching font and type another name. Any suggestions?
And BTW you cannot read Enterprise, the tag number is hard to see and you can only recognize it if you're already know it.
But wait why should I change the names?
Many crossover stories (fan-made of course) include those ships http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
So that ISD could be the "Devastator" (Lord Vader's ship in ANH) and that X-Wing be piloted by Luke Skywalker and Artoo-Deetoo.

The ships ramming each other:
The Agamemnon rams the Devastator, and is destroyed taking most of its shields.
The Enterprise would have been able to avoid the explosion with more ease, but Picard waited until the Last second to order the evasive maneuvers so it's impacted by a few debris that bounce harmlessly from its shields.
As the star destroyer's shields are down, the Enterprise beams a small team to the Devastator's bridge.
Vader slices Worf in 2 with his lightsaber while the stormtroopers finish off the rest of the invaders.
The Enterprise has problems targeting the many small and fast TIEs that swarm around it.
The good old method doesn't work:
"Ensign, prepare to fire phasers on the nearest fighter on my mark."
Pircard stands, straightens his uniform and orders "Fire!"
On the other hand there are more than 60 trigger happy gunners shooting at the Enterprise, computer programmed evasive maneuvers are no match for them.
They are too distracted by the easy target that they fail to see the X-Wing approaching from the bottom until it's too late.
Luke fires two torpedoes directly into the star destroyer main reactor.
Vader had escaped in a shuttle but the nor crippled Enterprise is able to take down his shields and beam him on board before he can jump into hyperspace.
The dark lord of the sith makes his way out of the brig by making a hole in the wall with his lightsaber and starts slaying anyone he finds.
Vader forces Geordi to freeze Riker in carbonite.
Troy: "I love you."
Riker: "I know."
Luke lands in the shuttlebay and hurries to help.
Lightsaber duel, Vader cuts Luke's hand off.
Vader: "Luke I am your father. Join me together we will rule this galaxy as father and son."
Luke: "Nooooo!", and he jumps into the warp shaft.
Then the Falcon comes and helps Luke can get away.

Ok that was too much and I was getting nowhere.

[ 01 March 2002: Message edited by: Andrés Lescano ]</p>

[Val]

Neat pic http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Maybe add a few Tie fighters and Starfuries/T-Bolts.

What did you use to render? Do you have any other ships - esp B5 stuff I could use for weapon samples?

[Andrés]

Here's latest update:
http://se4kdy.cyberwars.com/temp/intro2.jpg

Val you asked that a millon times and I always answered I use 3ds Max.
Moved the ships around, and added more. It's getting a little overcrowded, but that was the intention.
I couldn't find a good StarFury model. Maybe Rambie knows, I'll have to ask.

[Val]

Wasn't sure if you used the same thing to render the whole ship or not - I am nothing if not predictable http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[TerranC]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Andrés Lescano:
BTW what happened with Terran's and Fyron's interest in the Trek part?
<hr></blockquote>

Well I have a job http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Trek Ideas... Hmm...

Star Fleet (added)

Starfleet Medical: (at top level) Prevents level 4 plague in the system.

Daystrom Institute: +50 research

Chronowerks: Causes your system's sun to explode at the year 3000 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif (Don't take this one seriously.)

TCARS: (Ship Component) (Only works if you've selected the Temporal Tech tree) (stands for Temporal Computer Access System.) Gives the ship 20% increase in combat and 20% increase ECM.

(actually it would be 100% both but for the sake of balance...)

Soliton Wave Generator: Creates Warp Gates. Can ONLY create gates to systems that have SWGs in place. (Ineffective but it's trek.)

+5 Combat-General
+5 trade
+5 Research
-10 cunning

Mobile Emitter: Acts as a Master Computer.

Temporal Knowledge
Propusion Experts

Romulans:
Tal Shiar: Acts as Intelligence Center with the bonus capabilities as Citizen Databank Complex.
Only one may be placed per system.

Cloak: Ordinary Cloak with only 75% supplies used.

Plasma Torpedoes: hmm... Works like Plasma Missles but with about 20% damage. But decreased range and added supplies.

+5 Cunning
-5 Tolerance

Klingons:
Distruptors: Mesons with x3 damage (Normal Mount)

Heavy Distruptors: Wave-Motion guns with decreased range but +70 damage (Normal Mount)

Bat'Leth: +20 Security turrets and boarding turrets. (idea from Dominion wars)

+20 Space Combat
-5 happiness
+15 Ground Combat
+5 Tolerance

Cardassians:
nothing special about these folks, really.
No special weapons, No special ships, No strong points. And they wonder why they lost the war.

+10 Space Combat
+10 Ground Combat
+5 Mining in all areas

Hardy Industrialists
Advanced Storage Techniques

Ferengi:
Latinum Storage: 10000 additional storage space with anything. Only 1 per planet.

+10 trade
-10 Space Combat

Natural Merchants

Breen:
Organic Armor: ... Organic Armor really, but with some slight added resistance.

Energy Draining Weapon: Destroys everything that creates supplies or carries supplies.
(I don't know how you can limit this to a specific race so I'm not gonna say Klingons Exception.)

CRM-14 (I think): 10 Anti-personnel turrets.

-20 Trade

Borg:
(Oh boy how do i do this...)

Well for first thing, bigger ship sizes.

Assimilator: +200 boarding parties.

Tractor Beam: Added Damage to the Tractor beam. (WAY more than just 5 or 20.)

-50 trade
Emotionless
Mechenoids
+50 Tolerance
-50 Cunning (a drone as a spy on earth...)
+50 Combat General

(I'd like to say -50 on reproduction then the borg would be helpless would they?)

Dominion:
Nothing special about these folks too.

Cloning Vats: +50 Jemhardar population http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif (could you put in a little weyoun in the picture?)

Ketracel White: +30 to Combat, Construction and Tolerance.

Changeling: +50 to Cunning.

+15 Cunning
+10 combat
-10 Repair
-10 maintenance (all those suicide attacks must do something about their economy.)

Species 8472:
Planet Killer: Cannot be put on a mount. 1000 damage on anything Null Space.

In order to compensate for this, the damn thing's size should be around 400-600K and use a lot of supplies so that it can only be used once. Also, the cost of the cannon should be HUGE.

-50 trade
Xenophobic
Organic Manipulation

[Suicide Junkie]

I'd bump up the Tolerance of the Klingons, and the Romulans should have a positive Tolerance modifier.
They are a branch of the Vulcan race, after all.

[TerranC]

Oh BTW, Just to put some reality into it:

Planetary space yards shouldnt really be allowed to create anything more than destroyer.

Some research stations should be put in space as Zero-G have some interesting effects to... well things.

Weapons testing should be allowed.

More Flexible treaty options and minister ideas should be put in.

Some diplomacy options should be diabled if you picked Merchants or Xenophobic or Traders or Politicians.

[Phoenix-D]

"Planetary space yards shouldnt really be allowed to create anything more than destroyer." Can't be done.

"Some research stations should be put in space as Zero-G have some interesting effects to... well things." Can't be done.

"Weapons testing should be allowed." Other than the combat simulator, can't be done.

"More Flexible treaty options and minister ideas should be put in." Can't be done (sensing a pattern here..)

"Some diplomacy options should be diabled if you picked Merchants or Xenophobic or Traders or Politicians." Can't be done.

Phoenix-D

[TerranC]

Yes, Well I knew that they can't be done actually. Too bad really.

Because those limitations (In my opinion) could have created new strategies.

Well... Gold still awaits http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Fyron]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Andrés Lescano:
BTW what happened with Terran's and Fyron's interest in the Trek part?
Are you trying some things?
Don't feel intimidated by our opinions/suggestions. Not enough time?<hr></blockquote>

I have been pretty busy lately.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Plasma Torpedoes: hmm... Works like Plasma Missles but with about 20% damage. But decreased range and added supplies.<hr></blockquote>

Those would be really pointless weapons.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Cardassians:
nothing special about these folks, really.
No special weapons, No special ships, No strong points. And they wonder why they lost the war.<hr></blockquote>

Umm, no. Cardassian ships are heavily armored. They should get weakened shield generators and higher hit point armor.

Andres:
Where can the latest Version of the data files for this mod be found? I'll make some Trek stuff this weekend if i get a chance to do so.

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>"Planetary space yards shouldnt really be allowed to create anything more than destroyer." Can't be done.<hr></blockquote>CAN be done, but comes at a price:

- All ships destroyer or below require ZERO organics.
- Planetary space yards build with zero organics.

You'll also have to eliminate organics cost from facilities and units, so that space yard worlds can still build them.

[Phoenix-D]

Hmm, what about the default planet construction? Can THAT be changed?

Phoenix-D

[Suicide Junkie]

No, but they can't build ships anyways.

[Andrés]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Andres:
Where can the latest Version of the data files for this mod be found? I'll make some Trek stuff this weekend if i get a chance to do so.<hr></blockquote>

Sorry but I don't have functional data files right now. I try to get them sorted and posted asap.

The Version I had posted in my site is a little old, but it includes the Trek hull sizes I had made.

One of the things that needs to be changed are racial traits numbers.

If we agree with this list, you can start making new the techareas and components/facilities/vehiclesizes using those techs.

This is how it should look now:

1 - Psychic
2 - Deeply Religious
3 - Temporal Knowledge
4 - Crystallurgy
5 - Organic Manipulation

6 - Standard SE IV

7 - Star Wars tech
8 - Imperial tech
9 - Rebel tech
10 - Sith Empire tech
11 - Trade Fed tech
12 - Yuuzhan Vong tech
13 - Force Sensitive
14 - Light Side
15 - Dark Side
16-19 - reserved for other SW techs

20 - Star Trek tech
21 - 8472 Tech
22 - Borg Tech
23 - Cardassian Tech
24 - Dominion Tech
25 - Ferengi Tech
26 - Klingon Tech
27 - Romulan Tech
28 - Federation Tech
29-48

49 - Babylon 5 Tech (most of new stuff available to all races in the B5 mod)
50 - Abbai Tech
51 - Belt Alliance Tech
52 - Brakiri Tech
53 - Cascor Tech
54 - Centauri Tech
55 - Dilgar Tech
56 - Drahk Tech
57 - Drazi Tech
58 - Earth Alliance Tech
59 - Gaim Tech
60 - Grom Tech
61 - Hurr Tech
62 - Hyach Tech
63 - Ipsha Tech
64 - Kirishiac Lords Tech
65 - Llort Tech
66 - Lumati Tech
67 - Markab Tech
68 - Minbari Tech
69 - Moradi Tech
70 - Narn Tech
71 - Orieni Tech
72 - Pak'ma'ra Tech
73 - Raiders Tech
74 - Shadow Tech
75 - Streib Tech
76 - Third Space Aliens Tech
77 - Torata Tech
78 - Torvalus Tech
79 - Vorlon Tech
80 - Vree Tech
81 - Yolu Tech
82 - Descari Tech
83 - Shag'Toth (Soul Hunters) Tech
84+ - other B5 techs or other Wars/Trek races that don't fit in the space left above
(IMHO this is overdone, I don’t think that every minor race needs an exclusive tech set, they should have be one or a few common tech trees or share some of the “major races” ones)

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>- All ships destroyer or below require ZERO organics.
- Planetary space yards build with zero organics.

You'll also have to eliminate organics cost from facilities and units, so that space yard worlds can still build them.<hr></blockquote>

You'd also need to remove organic cost from components.
That would also change the resource balance when you reach destroyers.

Restrict standard space yards to "standard se4 tech" and make alternative yard techs for each group or race.

I'd swear I've seen ships as big as Mon Cal Cruisers, Imperial Star Destroyers and even Super Star Destroyers being built in planetary yards.
I was considering to mod them different for the Imperials, but using the same kind of tricks.
A super space yard (base - very expensive - only comes with the hard-to-research DS2) used to build the DS2 in about than 6 months, but that cannot be used to build thousands of TIEs every turn (BTW, DS means Death Star not Deep Space)

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Species 8472:
Planet Killer: Cannot be put on a mount. 1000 damage on anything Null Space. <hr></blockquote>
I think I discovered the trick to make that, will use it for Superlasers, make the weapon type Point Defense instead of Direct Fire.
As long as we don’t add any pdf mount they will have none and I didn’t notice any difference in the way they work.

[Phoenix-D]

"(IMHO this is overdone, I don’t think that every minor race needs an exclusive tech set, they should have be one or a few common tech trees or share some of the “major races” ones)"

Err, yes, I'd say that's way, WAY overdone. Especially when it comes time to pick traits or look at the traits screen in-game..

Phoenix-D

[Fyron]

Umm, Star Destroyers cannot be built in an atmosphere. Their mass would crush them. I don't think it would be a good idea to restrict their construction to space-bound ship yards. This would encourage the construction of these types of ships in deep space regions and nebulae, which would be unrealistic, to say the least.

[Val]

Sorry, the EXTREAMLY overgrown Racial Tech list for B5 grew out of a desire to make specific weapon Groups available only to specific races - each one of those races has anywhere between 12 and 80 weapons restricted to their race alone - though many of the weapons can be captured and reverse engineered. There are also some specific non-weapon components that will be controlled by that list (and with time, some facilities as well). Of the list, there are only 4 races that I don't yet have anything for, but will (Grome, Hurr, 3rd Space Aliens & ShogToth-Soulhunters).

If y'all can think of another way to approach this... PLEASE let me know http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Another option is just to limit the races imported from the B5Mod into the Sci-Fi mod to just the major races - or those with ship sets...

[Urendi Maleldil]

To do that you could just make planetary spaceyard facilities build slower so they're only good for building small ships and units and make starbase shipyards build faster (more resources per turn) so it's more economical to build large ships in space. That would also solve the startrek ship building problem.

[Fyron]

Here are a few Trek facilities I threw together:
What do you guys think?

Edit:
Link removed. Check newer Version in newer post.

[ 02 March 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

[TerranC]

Replicators... Why didnt i think of that?

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

But tell me, why do the Med lab need Holotech?
Pretty pointless if you ask me.

[Fyron]

Well, the Medlabs use Holodecks to help find cures for really deadly diseases. They can set up tests on fake people in the holodeck, instead of experimenting on animals or on real people.

Also, they are supposed to require Medical Technology, not Biology. I forgot to fix that.

[Fyron]

New Version of my Trek stuff found above.

Edit:
Removed link cause newer Version is posted above.

[ 05 March 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

[QuarianRex]

I'm currently working on a Borg mod, complete with tech tree etc. Tech tree looks something like this:

Assimilation Studies 1

-Assimilation Weapons - giving things like
shield depleters(as temporal shield
accelerators), cutting beams (skips
armor), tractor beams (longer range),
boosted boarding parties (x2 strength
and regenerating to reflect drones
being reallocated to ship
assimilation), boarding cannon (to
take out those pesky self-destruct
devices), and assimilation tubules
(troop weapon) stretched over about 10
levels.

-Assimilation Tech - maturation chambers (as
organic replicant center with some
more levels), solar assimilator (as
crystaline solar generator, though
this depends on how resource
generation works on constructed
planets), restructuring node (as
crystaline restructuring plant), borg
troops (from 10 to 25kt), assimilation
node (as a shipyard with 0 resource
utilization weighing 10kt, for on-site
assimilation of captured tech and
adaptation of cube design), and small
borg armor over @10 levels.

-Borg Ship Tech - Borg cubes (lowered maint
cost and speed remaining high
throughout the sizes), regeneration
nodes (5kt repair bays starting at 1
component/turn), vinculum (as neural
combat net, 5kt), Borg scanners (as
long range scanners), security
stations (x2 strength), neural link
(as master computer with regeneration
to reflect the adaptive borg comand
structure) over @10 levels.

-Borg Adaptive Defenses - borg armor
(regenerating and such), adaptive
shields (slightly reduced strength
shields that regenerate) over @10
levels (to account for the shields).


Assimilation Studies II

-Borg Stellar Engineering - as stellar
manipulation. Included to give them
access to warp point creation, s
phereworlds, etc., innately. The Borg
always seemed to be ahead in such
things.

A lot of the items in these techs will only become available after other techs have been assimilated [eg. the carrier cube (interceptor?) will only be accessible once fighters I is assimilated, while adaptive shields III is only available once shields III is assimilated, etc.].

I'm also creating an assimilator culture (designed using the racial characteristics window to keep it balanced with existing cultures) that, among other things, would give the Borg a -80 on research (when combined with racial penalty). This should give the Borg player a pretty big incentive to loot other races (and generally act like a Borg). Also, their racial techs are reduced in cost (though still high so it takes some time to get it all) so that they are not completely outclassed.

Also, most of the Borg shipset won't be Borg at all. There will only be four or five actual cubes (from borg shiptech, not ship construction, though those after the first will require levels in SC as well) while most of the ship sizes will be made up of other races (I want to eventually get around to 'borgifying' the picture of each ship but time and talent constraints may delay this), with the exception of the escort (I'll use a borg scout) and colony ship (standard borg cube).

When it comes to racial creation I was renaming and slightly reducing the costs of emotionless and mechanoids (giving the new Versions a prerequisite of Borg Tech) so that they can actually have some racial points to put into characteristics. For characteristics , besides the obvious ground combat/aggression/defense/etc. upgrades, they should have bottomed out reproduction and environmental resistance (from what I've read the only effect that ER has is on reproduction) to slow pop growth to a crawl without the use of maturation chambers.

Also I decided to go with very small repair components instead of trying to make a Borg-exclusive components list where every component gets regeneration added to it, though a few components do regenerate (like boarding parties for the possibility of multiple ship take-overs, etc.). Also this helps with faster retrofitting to reflect adaptation.

So far this is being designed as a player race since I don't know how well the AI analyzes captured tech (from what I've seen it doesn't) and I have a feeling that it would get stalled at the lower tech levels and die a pathetic death, at least not without some major rewrites to the AI, if even then.

How well this is going to work I do not know since all I have is the Gold demo (for the love of God I hope Gold ships tomorrow). Once I get it worked out I'll post it for review. But till then are there any comments or suggestions?

[ 04 March 2002: Message edited by: QuarianRex ]</p>

[TerranC]

I remember playing the Birth of the Federation some time ago and... Quite frankly, The borg were immensly powerful and killed every ship and race UNLESS they were at their pinnacle.

Its gonna be hard to fight a ship that would have inpenetrable shileds and regenerating armor.

[Fyron]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>When it comes to racial creation I was renaming and slightly reducing the costs of emotionless and mechanoids (giving the new Versions a prerequisite of Borg Tech) so that they can actually have some racial points to put into characteristics.<hr></blockquote>
In normal SEIV (pre-gold), prerequisites for racial traits don't work. Also, the restrictions don't work. I hope Gold fixes this bug.

[ 04 March 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

[Fyron]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Its gonna be hard to fight a ship that would have inpenetrable shileds and regenerating armor.<hr></blockquote>
Null-space cannons.

[QuarianRex]

Damn. I thought that I saw something in the racial traits text, but maybe not.

Also, I don't plan on giving them impenetrable shields or anything like that. The regeneration would probably be at about half the rate of an equivalent tech level shield regenerator. My plan here is not to create some uberpowerful engine of destruction with which to browbeat AI's and other players alike. Instead I am trying to create a playable race whose inherent advantages and disadvantages are balanced with other races, yet still accurately portraying the Borg.

Granted I haven't been able to test any of this out yet so it will probably go through some major revisions before I get a playable race.

[ 04 March 2002: Message edited by: QuarianRex ]</p>

[Fyron]

Those fields are in the data files, but they just don't do anything.

[Andrés]

Imperator Fyron:
I'll try to merge your stuff with a newer Version of what I have and upload it asap.
I didn't check all details yet, looks like a good start for facilities.
Should I give standard SE4 research and intel facilities a second req tech to make them available only to Standard se4 races?
One thing I discovered is that replicators have Resource Manipulation as a req tech, but now that tech is going to be Standard se4 only. Remove that req and maybe increase cost to compensate.


QuarianRex:
What about a relatively low shield with a high crystalline armor ability? First shot can do considerable damage, but then shields adapt (regenerate from damage).

Note that Borg ships are much larger than standars SE4 ships. According to my ship scale, (estimation of real tonnage and later scaled down to make coherent SE4 sizes) Borg cubes and Tactiacal Cubes (their largest ships?) are 7067 and 7283 kt.
Considering their size maybe it's not necessary to make all comps so small.
What about if their repair bays always repair 1 but get smaller with tech.

[Fyron]

Andrés:
About the research and intel facilities, yeah, that would be good. I was making different ones for each race to simulate their population working for your empire if you conquer them. I figure that there's no reason for Romulans to suddenly lose their natural talents at intelligence operations just because they are living under a new flag. In some ways, I am shooting for a BoTF style.

[TerranC]

BoTF... yeesh.

I'm going be guessing that some of the graphics are going to come out from the game?

[Fyron]

Andres:
Don't restrict the generic Compter Complexes or the Citizen Databanks. I am not going to make any of those that are worse than the standard ones, just a few that are better.

TerranC:
Whats wrong with BOTF? It was a good design, just implemented poorly. And if you check the Images Modpack, you'll see that I have already submitted all of the BOTF facilities to it. I see no problem with using them for this mod.

[ 04 March 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

[QuarianRex]

Andres:

The shields that I have right now are @ one level behind in raw power [ie. lv 1 adaptive (normal) shields have 30 shield pts and regen of 5, while lv 5 adaptive (normal) shields have 225 pts and regen of 15] and I have kept the regen low so it has an effect but not an unbalancing one.

The crystaline armor effect is an interesting idea (and one that I had previously considered) but I did some reading on its actual effects and I thought that it would be too unbalancing. Besides. that would have to be a modification to the armor (or make the generators act as armor but I don't like that idea) and it already regenerates, so I don't want to make any one component overly powerful. Also, I am making the defense tech area a capturable tech so that other races lucky enough to capture a Cube can get something nifty for analysis (so the tech should eventually spread out). Though I am toying with the idea of giving the armor some minor emissive abilities at extremely high levels (depending on how the ability is working in gold).

As far as size goes, I have already at least doubled the tonnage of most of the primary components (I admit my initial estimations may have been a bit off). And these aren't to actual Borg scale either. From what I found at Daystrom Institute, etc. was a basic Cube wieght of @ 9 million kt. Even divided by 20,000 to get a somewhat reasonable SE4 tonnage of 4,500kt seems somewhat excessive.

Right now I'm basing it on a maximum Cube size of @ 1200-1400kt, equivalent to some of the baseships I've seen. The Tactical Cube will be equivalent/a little bigger (probably going to designate it as a carrier).

Also, I'm making this with an eye towards game balance relative to the standard game (both for testing purposes and for compatibility against a friends proposed mod). As such there is somewhat of a progression of Cube sizes etc. for the sake of playability. When the sizes get finalized for the crossover-mod then I can rescale some of the items.

Please note that this subject to change once I start testing it out. Once Gold finally gets to me then I can see what actually works.

[TerranC]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Whats wrong with BOTF? It was a good design, just implemented poorly. And if you check the Images Modpack, you'll see that I have already submitted all of the BOTF facilities to it. I see no problem with using them for this mod.

[ 04 March 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]<hr></blockquote>

Nothing is wrong with it.
But as you said, it was implemented POORLY.

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Though I am toying with the idea of giving the armor some minor emissive abilities at extremely high levels (depending on how the ability is working in gold).<hr></blockquote>Proper Emissive armor can be simulated by low levels of crystalline ability.

Make a one-per-ship component that gives 60 crystalline points at max tech, it dosen't even have to be armor.

(60 points is not much at max tech, consider that every ship will have Large or Heavy mounts, so that blocks meson bLasters at best)

[QuarianRex]

Interesting. I always thought that the companent with the crystal ability had to get damaged, but if not then I might be able to use it.

[Fyron]

Here is the latest Version of my Trek stuff:
Trek Data.zip (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/newuploads/1015288527.zip)

Having read this post, you are now legally obligated to download this file and to provide feedback. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Seriously though, all constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.

[QuarianRex]

Nice work, though I do have some questions.

Does each race really need its own research/inteligence facilities? Couldn't this be better handled just through racial modifiers? Though using the Daystrom Institute, etc., instead of the usual computer facilities was a good idea.

Why have the fleet/ship training totals been boosted to 60%? Is that to make up for Treks lack of ECM/combat sensors? Because it always seemed to me that Trek had some of the weakest pilots in sci-fi. Though I do like the idea of having different values for ship and fleet training. Shouldn't the values be reversed for the Klingons? Their glory seeking warior culture seems more inclined to individual ship prowess than team tactics.

I noticed that other facilities (holodecks, Jem-hadar breeding facilities, etc.) have ship/fleet bonuses as well. Do they stack? Won't that get a little excessive?

Overall, pretty good. Your interpretation of holodecks, medlabs, and industrial replicators, etc. are all good and (dare I say it?) even accurate. It can be a pain to try to adapt tech between genres and I'm glad to see that you're having some success.

[TerranC]

Constructive Criticism:

Gem'hadar: It's J.

Mercenary Training Center: Ferengi's used Privateers... But doesn't matter really.

Replicant Center: Maybe just bring it down to 6%? (Since (at top level) 30%+9%+3%=41% Immediat Experience.)

Research Centers: Klingons and Romulans aren't as... slow really... so maybe up the points that the research centers provide?

Dominion Intel: Founder's Hand? The Shapeshifter's Guild? Just something other than Dominion Intel Facility IHMO.

[Phoenix-D]

A few comments:

-A few of the sci-fi races sound like they'd be more or less immune to intelligence actions, right? (borg, maybe shadows, etc) There is a way to do that.. give them intelligence points out of EVERY facility, but don't give any intelligence actions other than counter-intel. So they're defensive nightmares, but have no offensive punch.

Phoenix-D

[Fyron]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Does each race really need its own research/inteligence facilities? Couldn't this be better handled just through racial modifiers?<hr></blockquote>
Yes, it could. However, I wanted to make it so that conquered populations remain more unique, instead of functioning exactly as your own people go.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Why have the fleet/ship training totals been boosted to 60%? Is that to make up for Treks lack of ECM/combat sensors? Because it always seemed to me that Trek had some of the weakest pilots in sci-fi. Though I do like the idea of having different values for ship and fleet training.<hr></blockquote>
I think that the max experience for ships and fleetd is 50 (each), so I wanted to have the training facilities go a little higher than they do normally. I keep forgetting to request that the normal training facilities be increased to reflect the standard that I have set up.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Shouldn't the values be reversed for the Klingons? Their glory seeking warior culture seems more inclined to individual ship prowess than team tactics.<hr></blockquote>
Not really. Klingon ships are weak by themselves. They function better in packs than on their own.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>I noticed that other facilities (holodecks, Jem-hadar breeding facilities, etc.) have ship/fleet bonuses as well. Do they stack? Won't that get a little excessive?<hr></blockquote>
Their are four possible experience adding abilities (planet v. system and ship v. fleet). Only the highest level of experience added per turn by each of these 4 types is added to a ship. So, if you have 2 ship training facilities, only one adds its experience to a ship, not both. System-wide and planet training facilities both stack. Each facility adds no points after its maximum training level has been reached. The Jem'Hadar replicant facilities won't add any points after the first turn. A Replicant Center III will add 10 ship experience on the turn the ship is constructed, but it won't ever add any more.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Overall, pretty good. Your interpretation of holodecks, medlabs, and industrial replicators, etc. are all good and (dare I say it?) even accurate. It can be a pain to try to adapt tech between genres and I'm glad to see that you're having some success.<hr></blockquote>
Yeah!

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Gem'hadar: It's J.<hr></blockquote>
Really? I thought it was G. Guess I'll have to fix that. Won't take more than 2 seconds to do.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Replicant Center: Maybe just bring it down to 6%? (Since (at top level) 30%+9%+3%=41% Immediat Experience.)<hr></blockquote>
Not really. Look above for the explantion.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Research Centers: Klingons and Romulans aren't as... slow really... so maybe up the points that the research centers provide?<hr></blockquote>
Romulans have a 50 point bonus. Klinogns aren't really known for their researching abilities. They are warriors, not scientists. And besides, I only gave them a 25 point penalty.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Dominion Intel: Founder's Hand? The Shapeshifter's Guild? Just something other than Dominion Intel Facility IHMO.<hr></blockquote>
All of the "Research Centers" and "Intel Facilities" are just place-holder names that I will replace when I have better ones.

[Fyron]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>-A few of the sci-fi races sound like they'd be more or less immune to intelligence actions, right? (borg, maybe shadows, etc) There is a way to do that.. give them intelligence points out of EVERY facility, but don't give any intelligence actions other than counter-intel. So they're defensive nightmares, but have no offensive punch.<hr></blockquote>
Thats good for Shadows and Vorlons, but its not really a good idea for the Borg (assuming we want to stick closely to the shows). It is really easy to penetrate a Borg vessel. Just beam over and don't appear to be a threat, and they will ignore you. Its happened numerous times in the shows. Of course, if we want to be more realistic, then making them immune to intel is a good idea.

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>It is really easy to penetrate a Borg vessel. Just beam over and don't appear to be a threat, and they will ignore you<hr></blockquote>Sure, as long as you're just looking around, they don't bother you, but the instant you try to pull something, you'll have three dead drones, and a thousand invulnerable ones coming down on you like a ton of bricks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[QuarianRex]

It might be an idea to leave the Borg some intel capabilities. After all, just a few rogue nano-probes left over from a Borg attack can cause a lot of havoc (cargo explosion, supply leak, etc.), and can even spark off a new round of assimilation (crew insurection).

It could go either way, but they should definitely not be left open to intel attacks.

[Val]

The Intel points idea is pretty good for the B5 ancients, though I can't picture the shadows being 'defensive only' in their Intel. Always kind of pictured them making lots of little things happen and manipulating the events to their advantage.

[Fyron]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Sure, as long as you're just looking around, they don't bother you, but the instant you try to pull something, you'll have three dead drones, and a thousand invulnerable ones coming down on you like a ton of bricks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <hr></blockquote>
Well yeah, that is true if the survival of the operative is important. If not, then all he/they have to do is set up their bomb(s) and such and detonate them. Voyager has proven that the Borg will allow you to set up bombs throughout their ship with no interference. Or, you could genetically engineer someone to produce a virus that kills borg really quickly and then let them get assimilated. Or, just teach a drone to be an individual and then give him back to the collective and he'll cause a huge uproar, leading to 1000s of drones becoming self-aware and leaving the collective, all to become the personal army of a Soong-type Android's evil brother. The Borg are probably the worst designed race in any semi-reasonable Sci-Fi universe.

[jimbob]

[sigh]

Yes, the Borg were cool in the ST:NG universe. Dangerous, rabid, intelligent and ultra-adaptive in their own way.

But instead of remaining an (occassional) Uber-evil race, the creators/writers made them into a run of the mill sort of race... and unfortunately familiarity breeds contempt (rather than fear).

But the unforgivable literary sin was that the writers made them stupid... In the beginning the borg can modulate their shields to become impervious to photon torpedoes after only two hits = smart. By the time we get to Janeway and the Fur Trading good-ship lollypop, the borg just can't seem to jam those transporters! By my calculations, three out of every four borg cubes we see ends up destroyed by boarding parties.

Either the borg e-mail system isn't routing Messages, or the ST writers' guild needs a health round of kick-butt firings

[comisar]

I am new to SE.
THis mod sounds exactly like something that I want! I am surprised something like that does not exist yet. This would be so sweet when it is all done!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I just got SEIV Gold. Will this Mod work with it? How long will it take to finish this Mod?

Shrapnelgames should be paying you guys for this!

[comisar]

Wow I am member #2500! Do I get a coupon or something http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif . Anyways have anyone thought about adding another classic race? Kilrathi from Wing Commander.

[TerranC]

That is a Whole lot more work.

I'm not saying that it's not a good idea: I'd love to play kilrathi's... Somehow maniac annoys me.

But then we'd have to add the Terran Confed, then the Aliens from Prophecy, The Border worlds, then maybe someone will ask us to include all the pirates from Privateer.

... Thats another columm of AI sheets.

[Fyron]

Well, this mod is supposed to combine as many sci-fi genres as possible. As long as somebody is able and willing to make any/all of those, they can be included.

[TerranC]

Hmm...

You know what, The Prophecy aliens sounds nice... Maybe I'm gonna have a look at that.

As Soon as i get me pot o' gold...
at the end of the rainbow that leads to North Carolina...

[Urendi Maleldil]

Stuff I'd like to see in the Crossover Mod:

Warhammer 40k stuff (go necrons)
Wing Commander stuff
Space Quest stuff (roger wilco for fun)
Dune stuff
Foundation stuff
a crap load of anime stuff
-Gundam stuff
-Macross/Robotech stuff

The technomagi from B5

I might be able to dig up some weapon lists and stuff with prelim stats for different things.