Weapons, engines and mods, Oh my!

[thorfrog]

Why are certain weapons good and others totally useless? My problem is with weapons like torpedos. I don't see any benefit to ever researching them. Anyone have any good ideas on how to use some of these useless weapons?

[ June 16, 2003, 23:29: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Ed Kolis]

Yes, torpedoes are useless. But that's OK - you can always mod them so they're more useful! For example, in P&N, torpedoes get around a 10%-20% bonus to hit, depending on tech level, on the grounds that they have a limited seeking capability. Or you could give them longer range or higher damage if you want... the possibilities are endless!

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by atomannj:
Why are certain weapons good and others totally useless? My problem is with weapons like torpedos. I don't see any benefit to ever researching them. Anyone have any good ideas on how to use some of these useless weapons?<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">1) roleplay
2) element of suprise
3) something for ruins to give you that you wouldn't already heave
4) an example for you to mod
5) something which becomes usefull when something else is modded out
6) something beneficial at higher tech levels
7) some tactic you haven't discovered yet

For torpedos, they are the direct fire weapon that you get from the Military Science theorectical tech. Maybe someone doesn't want to go straight for physics I

[ January 29, 2003, 19:21: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[spoon]

Originally posted by atomannj:
Why are certain weapons good and others totally useless? <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Because the weapons haven't been tuned by MM.

[Phoenix-D]

Torps actually do have some uses, along with the WMG.

1. They may have a lower per-kiloton per-turn damage value, but that doesn't matter if your target is killed by the first salvo. The torps aren't so good at this part, since three APBs = two torps in space, but only 5 less damage.

2. Against Emissive Armor and Crystalline armor, a weapon that does higher damage per shot does better. Ex: your opponent has 5 CA IIIs, so he gets 25 (?) shield points every time you do 25 points of damage or more.

Two torps fire. 200 points of damage, 50 shield regeneration.

Three APBs fire. 195 points of damage, 75 shield regeneration.

Phoenix-D

[kalthalior]

I wouldn't say torps are useless -- damage doesn't fall off at range, unlike other DF weapons. As mentioned, you can also mod them to have a small "to hit" bonus to make them more effective (I went w/ +10% on a personal mod). Quantums can be pretty effective in mounts (esp. base/platform). Although ship mount dam/kt (300/80?, someone correct me if I'm wrong) isn't the best ratio in the game, it still doesn't totally bite.

[Fyron]

Crystalline armor is hardly ever used, esp. in PBW games. That is not a good reason to use torpedos in most cases. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif And, you just have to mount those APBs. Large or Heavy Mounted, they pierce right through CA with no problem, unless you use an absurd amount, like 10 or more. In that case, just use some Shield Disruptors to eliminate the shield generators.

Emmissive armor doesn't do enough to matter much, esp. with mounts.

[geoschmo]

Quontum Torpedoes were king in the PBW Grit Tech game. Of course we disabled all the energy weapons at game setup. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Geo

[couslee]

A lot of weapons look like crap, until you put them on a mount. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Not saying I use them, I have yet to really check them out

[PvK]

Torpedoes are good... compared to Graviton Hellbores... ;->

[Andrés]

I've heard people making proposals about a mod to "balance" all weapons and making all of them worth researching, each with its own unique advantages/disadvantages, but I have never seen such a mod.

[thorfrog]

What a great idea. Let's put together a weapons mod that balances all of these weapons out.

[Phoenix-D]

"What a great idea. Let's put together a weapons mod that balances all of these weapons out."

This is not easy. Let me repeat that.

This.Is.Not.Easy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I think the reason you don't see many if any released balanced mods is because people try and fail.

Phoenix-D

[Dralasite]

Perfect balance is hard, but you'd think you could at least avoid having weapons as useless as torps are.

I havn't had much success with cobalt warheads on smaller ships, either. But it might be my lack of skill.

[spoon]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:

I think the reason you don't see many if any released balanced mods is because people try and fail.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think it has more to do with the difficulty of getting people to play a "balanced" mod. Even if you did make the game more balanced, you wouldn't have that big a pool of players to play against, so what's the point. Pure balancing tweaks should come from MM, not the mod community.

[ January 29, 2003, 23:38: Message edited by: spoon ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Two things have disrupted the rather nifty balance between 'beams' and 'torpedos' in SE III. First is MOUNTS as many have already noted. It used to be necessary to have a harder hitting weapon to break Emissive Armor. Now you can just use a mount and your APB can break Emissive Armor just fine. In fact, Emissive Armor is pretty near useless once Cruisers appear. I think it needs more tech levels with greater power so it can continue to be worth using.

But the other thing, which has not been mentioned, is RANGE ATTENUATION. Go back and look at weapons in SE III again. The favored beam weapon was the A-P beam, of course, and it always reduced to 1 or 2 damage at max range. Now look at the current power of the A-P in stock SE IV. It ends at 45, or the equivalent of 4.5 in SE III. This is more than TWICE the damage it did at that range in SE III, proportionally speaking! Maybe this has altered the balance of power between beam weapons and torpedos, which traditionally had the advantage of no range attenuation? I think so...

Consider the various new weapons as well. They show very little range attenuation when they have any at all. There are some that have no range attenuation, of course, like the Telekinetic Projector. But this is arguably a part of the advantage of that racial tech. This is supposed to be a special sort of weapon that doesn't act like 'normal' energy weapons. Most of them, though, should suffer major range effects like the A-P once did. The fact that they do not goes a long way to explain the apparent weakness of torpedos.

So while you're wondering why some weapons are useless, consider that it might be because some other weapons have been over-powered. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ January 30, 2003, 02:27: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[couslee]

Originally posted by spoon:
Pure balancing tweaks should come from MM, not the mod community.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I completly agree, but alas it does not. That is why it's nice that it's a mod friendly game.

Baron, I agree. And a mod that might make someone give up their favorite weapon because it's not overpowered anymore would get razzed. I personally was supprized to see torpedoes were not "seekers" with a double range from what they have now. Sure, the way a DF weapon is mounted could increase aspects of it. but a torpedo is a torpedo is a torpedo. They don't become more powerfull if you stick them in a bigger box, or in a bigger tube.

the other gripe I have about seekers, is the fire, wait a turn, then move........huh? If I launch a missle, it DOES NOT hover there for a hour before proceeding. Alas, it is what it is, and not what I "think" it should be.

Edit in:
I also think mounts should require their own tech branch, and would not be a cheap one either. But I think the freebie mount is a hard code item. not sure if that even can be modded.

[ January 30, 2003, 03:14: Message edited by: couslee ]

[Phoenix-D]

Mounts can be modded. And as for torpedo mounts..you can stick a bigger torpedo in, yes? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

If torps were seekers with twice the range they'd be CSMs. Well, almost.

Phoenix-D

[capnq]

Another major obstacle to any "balance" mod is that no two people agree on how to achieve "balance".

[couslee]

I am still early in my current game, but have been checking out torps...they have been mineral cheap so far.

Comparison:
DUC2: 150 min, FR 1, dmg 25/25/25, 30kt&DR,all but seekers
AMT2: 100 min, FR 2, dmg 35/35/35 40kt&DR,ships and planets

Compared to the same level DUC, they do more damage, and are harder to break than the DUC, however you sacrifice fire rating, ship space, and potential targets. For level vs level they could be improved a little, but not too much. considering they are a little more expensive than DUC for tech cost, they should imo be "all but seekers" and a FR of 1.

Can't look at the higher level ones yet, not that far in the game. that, and I am not doing a study on them, just basic observations. i have enough on my plate with this game (being my first SimuTurn game)

[spoon]

Originally posted by capnq:
Another major obstacle to any "balance" mod is that no two people agree on how to achieve "balance".<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's another reason why MM should drive it.

[Gryphin]

I'd like to suggest a few folks:
Agree on all of the factors that go into a wepons system such as Cost, size, Fire rate, Research points....etc..
Then design 2 weapons that are, "ballenced" in SE IV terms.
Not something I'm capable of.

[Fyron]

Torpedoes should not be able to targe all but seekers. They should only be able to target ships, bases and planets. You can't bLast small things like fighters with Torpedoes very well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Arkcon]

Click for a variety of points of view on game balance (http://www.invirtuo.cc/phpwiki/index.php/balance)

[Gryphin]

Fyron you are quite correct.
By todays standards
Torpedos are water born
Fighters are air born
"And never the twain shall meet
Till sky and sea stand presently at Gods great judgement seat"
< with apologies to Rudyard Kipling >

[PvK]

If torpedoes fired every turn and could hit all targets... they'd be just another weapon like most others. It would remove more from the game than it added. The question isn't so much "What should a Twinkie Torpedo do?" but "What combinations of pros and cons are interesting and neither worthless nor clearly better than all other choices?"

PvK

[couslee]

I can agree on that Fyron. But it didn't show ships/planets/bases. only ships/planets.

I have not got to check out fighters yet. But what about smaller weapons? The AMT has a little brother that that looks like a powerhouse. You can't have the "smaller" Version of a weapon when no "bigger" Version is there. Maybe that is their only purpose. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif
well, you can, but people would say "where are the bigger torpedoes?".

I think the problems is in that, earth based torps can go where missles can't (underwater), and visa-versa. There are not limiters like that in this game.

Now, if torp weapons were immune to the effect of nebula on scanners.... they might have that specific purpose. I have only had one nebula battle, and was not looking to see if ship based scanners still worked or not. tis an idea, anyway.

[thorfrog]

Hey all. Well I'm currently working on a mod to tweak things a bit. Here is a list of things I'm changing.

Ship size:
-Allowing Frigate an extra engine.
-Tweaking size of BB, DN, Baseship, Battlestation, and Starbase.

Weapon tweaks:
-torpedos get +15% to hit and and reduced size by 10k
-MIssiles are reduced in size by half.
-Plamsa Missile is reduced in size by 10k and can now peirce armor.
-High Energy Weapons (Ripper,Incinerator,Wave Motion) cause Double damage to sheilds.
-Graviton Hellbores can now pierce all shields
-Making firing rate of relic weapons 5 instead of 30.
Still working on the others. Let me know what you think. I feel now that missiles can truly be used. Torpedoes are finally a valid option. The other weapons also have pluses worth looking at.

[ January 31, 2003, 20:12: Message edited by: atomannj ]

[thorfrog]

Ship size:
-Allowing Frigate an extra engine from 6 to 7.
-Tweaking size of BB to 900kt, DN to 1200kt, Baseship to 2000kt, Battlestation to 1500kt, and Starbase to 3000kt.

Weapon tweaks:
-torpedoes get +15% to hit and reduced size to 40k
-Missiles are reduced in size to 25k.
-Plamsa Missile stays at 50k but can now pierce armor.
-High Energy Weapons (Ripper,Incinerator,Wave Motion) cause Double damage to sheilds.
-Graviton Hellbores can now pierce all shields
-Massive Shield Depleter reload set to 5
-Massive Ionic Disperser reload set to 5
-High-Energy Discharge Weapons (ripper,incinerator,wave motion gun) have the Double Damage To Shields

I will post my completed mod asap. Let me know what you think.

[spoon]

Originally posted by atomannj:
[QB]Ship size:

Weapon tweaks:
-torpedoes get +15% to hit and reduced size to 40k
-Missiles are reduced in size to 25k.
-Plamsa Missile stays at 50k but can now pierce armor.
-High Energy Weapons (Ripper,Incinerator,Wave Motion) cause Double damage to sheilds.
-Graviton Hellbores can now pierce all shields
-Massive Shield Depleter reload set to 5
-Massive Ionic Disperser reload set to 5
[QB]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Could be interesting: I'd recommend the following:

torpedoes: give a higher bonus to hit. Like +30.
missiles: 25kt seems too drastic. I'd make them 40kt and a lot cheaper.

[Fyron]

Bases are ships for many purposes, such as Weapon Target. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif For targeting, Ships/Planets = Ships/Bases/Planets. It does not for the Vehicle Type line (which restricts what vehicle types a comp can be placed on) though.

[ January 31, 2003, 20:22: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Phoenix-D]

missiles: 25kt seems too drastic. I'd make them 40kt and a lot cheaper"

Consider that point-defense cannons are 20kt and can fire every turn, where missiles can only fire every three turns..and often get shot once or twice on the way in.

Phoenix-D

[Fyron]

Now, if torp weapons were immune to the effect of nebula on scanners.... they might have that specific purpose. I have only had one nebula battle, and was not looking to see if ship based scanners still worked or not. tis an idea, anyway.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Some storms interfere with combat sensors (they give a penalty to hit). I think there might be a nebula or two that does that.

If you use FQM, there are a lot of places that will interfere with combat sensors. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[couslee]

Yea, but missles have great range. You can pull into range, fire the missles and back away until the reload time is done. I don't feel anything is wrong with missles. Torps are another issue.

(as is strategic combat) yuk http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

[couslee]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
[QUOTE]Some storms interfere with combat sensors (they give a penalty to hit). I think there might be a nebula or two that does that.

If you use FQM, there are a lot of places that will interfere with combat sensors. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Exactly. If torps were the best weapon in a nebula, they would have a great, but limited use. and not much other balancing would have to be done then. maybe. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Fyron]

Technically, combat sensors are unaffected by storms. The ships just get a penalty to hit.

Seekers are the only weapons that can be unaffected by storms.

[Phoenix-D]

"You can pull into range, fire the missles and back away until the reload time is done."

And watch as they all get shot down? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Phoenix-D

[dbt1949]

I'm still pretty new here but I for one like torpedoes. I'll put about 3 of them on a destroyer and go up point blank and fire away. The A I is usually concentrating on the bigger ships which I load with weapon,engine and shield destroying type weapons as well as the null space weapons.

The torpedoes are especially effective after the enemies shields have been eliminated by the other ships.

[Fyron]

PPBs, APBs, etc. do a lot more damage than those torpedoes per kiloton though.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Technically, combat sensors are unaffected by storms. The ships just get a penalty to hit.

Seekers are the only weapons that can be unaffected by storms.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Urk? I think the assumption is that even when you don't have a CS component in the ship there are combat sensors of some sort involved. The ability is named 'Sector - Sensor Interference' after all.

Explain to me how seekers are affected by storms?

[Phoenix-D]

"Explain to me how seekers are affected by storms?"

They aren't, which is what Fyron said.

"Seekers are the only weapons that can be unaffected by storms."

Since they never miss, a negative to-hit doesn't affect them. So storms have no effect.

Phoenix-D

[LGM]

I tend to favor weapons that have the highest ratio of Damage/KT Space/ROF or Damage/KT Space (First fire advantage). The problem with looking at Mineral cost of space when evaluating a weapon, is the space used has a hidden cost for the support components (ECM, Sensors, Engines, LS, Crew, Bridge, MC, etc.). If a weapon does costs 300KT less in Minerals, but does 75% the damage/KT of another weapon, the savings are probably not a good del because you need 4 ships for every 3 of the better weapon. One extra ship will cost about 4000+ KT of Minerals. Also, if you hit the ship limit in a game, optimizing your damage/KT because much more important than the cost of building a ship.

I would propose that you balance weapons by using Damage / KT Space / ROF. A highly effective weapon should have a ratio of about 2. Starting weapons should be something like .5. Weapons with special properties should have the efficiency multiplied by a factor. Make the ration times 1.5 if it skips shields and times 1.5 if it skips armor. If it skips normal shields consider it 1.5 as an early game weapon and a 1.0 as a late game weapon. Make to hit bonuses also multiply the efficiency. Currently in the game, PPBs top out over 2 and they are achieved early on. There are some Racial weapons that exceed that. When figuring out efficiency, always go by the Max damage. Range attentuation matters some, but assume players will send their ships to their highest damage range to fire. It is hard to deny an enemy from closing. If you move up to shoot first, they will move up even closer if they have to.

Another interesting thing to note: Small DUC IIIs do 5 KT of damage per KT of space! They are a very efficient fighter weapon compared to most others considering the tech to get them is easy to acheive.

Some weapons appear to be good because they have a large number, but when you divide by the big space, they are less effective (e.g. Graviton Hellbore or Torpedos). Removing Weapon Mounts might turn that affect around using Emissive armor as some have suggested.

[spoon]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
missiles: 25kt seems too drastic. I'd make them 40kt and a lot cheaper"

Consider that point-defense cannons are 20kt and can fire every turn, where missiles can only fire every three turns..and often get shot once or twice on the way in.

Phoenix-D<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The "a lot cheaper" part covers that, since you can make more missile ships. On a pure ship-to-ship ratio, that makes it so a "pd" ship would have twice as many pd's than there are missiles, which seems about right to me.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Technically, combat sensors are unaffected by storms. The ships just get a penalty to hit.

Seekers are the only weapons that can be unaffected by storms.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Urk? I think the assumption is that even when you don't have a CS component in the ship there are combat sensors of some sort involved. The ability is named 'Sector - Sensor Interference' after all.

Explain to me how seekers are affected by storms?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ships only have combat sensors if they have a Combat Sensor component on them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif You wouldn't say that a WWI biplane had radar on it, would you? It can still track things by sight and fire upon them. A SE4 ship without combat sensors can still fire at and hit targets, just not as well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Ships only have combat sensors if they have a Combat Sensor component on them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif You wouldn't say that a WWI biplane had radar on it, would you? It can still track things by sight and fire upon them. A SE4 ship without combat sensors can still fire at and hit targets, just not as well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No I would not say that a plane has radar if it does not. But radar is only one specific kind of sensor. A plane without radar, a biplane if you will, DOES have combat sensors. They are called eyes. The pilot is the combat sensor system. Similarly, even a primitive space ship will have some means of detecting where the enemy is and firing on them. Maybe it will be radar, maybe it will be some sort of visual system. That's their combat sensors. The component just represents stages of increasingly more advanced sensors.

[ February 01, 2003, 15:35: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[couslee]

I am half blind anyway, can I obtain and install "advanced eyes"?
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
No I would not say that a plane has radar if it does not. But radar is only one specific kind of sensor. A plane without radar, a biplane if you will, DOES have combat sensors. They are called eyes. The pilot is the combat sensor system. Similarly, even a primitive space ship will have some means of detecting where the enemy is and firing on them. Maybe it will be radar, maybe it will be some sort of visual system. That's their combat sensors. The component just represents stages of increasingly more advanced sensors.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I did say the biplane tracked things by eyes. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Combat sensors represent sensors specifically designed for use in combat. If a ship has no combat sensor component, it does not have sensors specifically designed for combat, or combat sensors, if you will.

[Baron Munchausen]

There is no 'computer' component in a ship either unless you add the MC. So you would say that ships in SE don't have computers? Are all the races in SE instinctive pilots and navigators? (Not to mention marksmen.. err, marks-creatures?)

If it didn't have combat sensors it wouldn't be able to hit anything. You are playng semantic games.

[Fyron]

Of course they have computers. There is no "computer" component. They just don't have a Master Computer unless they have one of those components on them.

[thorfrog]

Still testing.

Ship size:
-Allowing Escort an extra engine from 6 to 7. They are now very useful scouts.
-Tweaking size of BB to 900kt, DN to 1200kt, Baseship to 2000kt, Battlestation to 1500kt, and Starbase to 3000kt.

Weapon tweaks:
-torpedoes get +15% to hit and reduced size to 40k
-Missiles are reduced in size to 30k.
-Plamsa Missile stays at 50k but can now pierce armor.
-High Energy Weapons (Ripper,Incinerator,Wave Motion) cause Double damage to sheilds.
-Graviton Hellbores can now pierce all shields
-Massive Shield Depleter reload set to 5
-Massive Ionic Disperser reload set to 5

I will post my completed mod asap. Let me know what you think.

[PvK]

Originally posted by atomannj:

Ship size:
-Allowing Escort an extra engine from 6 to 7. They are now very useful scouts.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

Better than nothing. I still think there need to be some more comprehensive changes to make smaller ships worthwhile (e.g. Proportions mod).

-torpedoes get +15% to hit and reduced size to 40k
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Torpedoes are 40kT in the unmodded game.

Mostly sounds good though.

PvK

[ June 13, 2003, 23:17: Message edited by: PvK ]

[JLS]

Originally posted by PvK:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by atomannj:

Ship size:
-Allowing Escort an extra engine from 6 to 7. They are now very useful scouts.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

Better than nothing. I still think there need to be some more comprehensive changes to make smaller ships worthwhile (e.g. Proportions mod).

Mostly sounds good though.

PvK</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Smaller ships also should have a good Combat To Hit Defense Plus as well

[Andrés]

Lone scouts are one of the few realistic roles left for small ships.
In SE4 you never need to transport a few people or small amounts of cargo.
There are no limited-conflicts or wild space where you'll have to defend with small weapons, you have either safe systems or heavily defended enemy territory.
Small lone combat ships are pointless because they are only likely to face massive enemy fleets.
IMHO Proportions overcompensates this lack of roles for small ships forcing the player to use small ships to make his as massive as possible combat fleets.

I like that there is more contrast between large and small ships.

IMHO torps need a better damage ratio in adition to that to hit bonus. Either decrease their tonnage or increase their damage.

[Taera]

I'd like to add to the original topic. While many (esp. fyron) will argue with me there is no useless weapon in this game. Let me review some:

Torpedoe weapons - that tech tree is available early and starts off cheap but goes up to level 10. Initially same points put into DUC will give you a better result. Torpedoes are generally useless untill Quantum. Then the weapon becomes quite the useful. True, it doesnt have the best dkt ratios and ROF 2 but its one of only three heavy-duty weapons. It has an advantage over WMG for coming earlier, IIRC being easier to research and having lower ROF and tonnage. Those things, when put on large or better - massive - mounts they can down ships with few shots. Those weapons are also the ultimate long-range because they lose no damage. In my tests a LC with torpedoes and shield depleter beats a LC and sometimes a CR armed with PPM and NSP. Overall it provides a relatively unique strategies that can give great benefits in the long run. Never a short-term weapon.

Graviton Hellbore - tell me what you want about how weak and useless it is, two salvos done in short range and your all-powerful APB killer-ship is toast. ROF of 2. This one is ultimate melee weapon, but especially fefective at WP defense - you get to fire and move first, and you're up close already. Just set appropriate strategy, back it up with some lower ROF weapon and it'll take some effort to breach those WP's. Besides researching Astrophysics 2 gives some other benefits, and GH is cheap to research or build.

Anything more?

[JLS]

Originally posted by Andres:
IMHO torps need a better damage ratio in adition to that to hit bonus. Either decrease their tonnage or increase their damage.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Agreed

[PvK]

Originally posted by Andres:

IMHO Proportions overcompensates this lack of roles for small ships forcing the player to use small ships to make his as massive as possible combat fleets.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Seems to me Proportions just makes small ships a valid choice, but doesn't force players to use them. What am I missing?

PvK

[Andrés]

I just don't like arbitrary unrealistic rules that make large ships a poor choice only to make smaller ships more used.

As I had tried to explain smaller ships are not used because there is no role for them in late game, and that cannot be changed without chaging the whole game structure.

[PvK]

What's arbitrary or unrealistic about Proportions' settings for ship sizes?

I still don't see why you wouldn't use large ships in Proportions - I know I do when I play.

PvK

[Taera]

i think hes saying the other thing, that smaller ships are useless

[oleg]

I think there is some misunderstanding here about small and big ships in Proportions/AIC mods. PvK simply made smaller ships harder to hit than bigger ships - perfectly sensible idea ! Also, Proportions uses QNP, hence smaller ships can run faster and use less supplies. Otherwise, large ships are still better than smaller ships. It is just there are some roles that smaller ships would perform better even in late game !

[Fyron]

He may have been refering to things like maintenance penalties on large ships, which realistically do not make sense. Why would something cost more to maintain just because it is housed in a larger hull? It would not. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Also, with proper QNP, small ships do not actually go faster, they go the same speed with the same fraction of hull space devoted to engines. They use the same fraction of total fuel per turn for that movement too. They do use more supplies per sector of movement, yes. But, they also store more supplies. A ship 2x the size uses 2x the supplies. But, it also stores 2x as many supplies, so it evens out. The advantages of small ships are that they require fewer resources spent on engines to get the same speed and they require fewer solar collectors to get infinite range (or fewer solar collectors to extend range by the same amount), although again, the same portion of hull space is required to get the same effect on max range of the ship.

Here is an example:

2 ships size 300 and 600 require, say, 10% of hull space to get 6 movement from engine type X.

6 engines x 10 supplies used = 60 supplies per sector
6 x 500 supplies stored = 3000 supplies
3000 / 60 = 83.3 sector range

12 engines x 10 supplies used = 120 supplies per sector
12 x 500 supplies stored = 6000 supplies
6000 / 120 = 83.3 sector range

So as we can see, you can get the same speed and range out of any two different size ship hulls in a QNP system. Of course, there will be very slight variations due to rounding in integer math, but those are not significant in the big picture.

[PvK]

I'd like to hear what Andres meant.

Fryon, your two points are just insisting on simplifications where I intentionally added more detail:

Small ships are cheaper to maintain because that's how they are in real-world engineering, which is massively more complex than SE4. Maintaining a massive vehicle is more expensive than maintaining a bunch on smaller vehicles. This is one of the major reasons why smaller ships are more common in real-world naval and commercial fleets. Large ships are more powerful, and can win battles by their presence and over-powering the enemy large ships and then stomping on the smaller ones, but a fleet that only builds large ships is probably going to be less efficient on a cost basis.

As for speed, yes a simplified system could do that, but it's not by mistake that I made smaller ships capable of greater speeds. It's entirely reasonable that engineering limits would, for any level of technology, be able to make something smaller go faster than something larger. That is, if you accept the premise that building a working enormous ship is an engineering problem (the existence of the Ship Construction tech), then it is reasonable to assume that if your technology lets you make the largest ship you can build go at speed X, that you could use engineering trade-offs to achieve a higher speed with a ship that isn't so large. Again, there are tons of real-world and sci-fi comparisons where the same is true, and I think most consistent and detailed physical models would bear this out.

PvK

Edit: Oh, and Fryon, Proportions does meet your criteria for "proper" QNP. The only difference is that the maximum proportion of engines allowed to ship mass is greater for smaller ships, for the reasons mentioned above.

[ June 16, 2003, 01:31: Message edited by: PvK ]

[Fyron]

The first "point" was just positing an example of what the problem might be. If you take a look at Adamant Mod, you will see that larger ships have increasing maintenance penalties. I believe that speaks for itself as to my position on that issue. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Actually, with QNP, there should be no limit on how many engines you can put on any ships. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif This is why Proportions does not use QNP, it uses pseudo-QNP (wow, that name is getting really really clunky... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ). I don't recall saying that that was a bad thing at any point... although, the term "proper QNP" does connote that if you take it the wrong way, so I can see where the problem arises. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ June 16, 2003, 03:18: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Andrés]

Yes it was something about those lines.
It may be related the only time I tried to play in proportions I went bankrupt under the manteinance of my ships and the micromanaging hell pf my colonies. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

But no, larger sizes should REDUCE, not increase cost and manteinance.
Of course that building and mantaining large ships cost much more than building a small one.
And in many cases using a ship only as big a needed is a good way to save.
But in real-world economies, large scale does significantly reduce costs. For example jumbojets and supertankers.
Why do you think they keep trying to make those things even larger?
They may be harder to build, require more technical refinenemts than smaller vessels, and of course each one needs a much larger inVersion to be built, but in the large picture they save money.

[oleg]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

...
Actually, with QNP, there should be no limit on how many engines you can put on any ships. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif This is why Proportions does not use QNP, it uses pseudo-QNP (wow, that name is getting really really clunky... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ). I don't recall saying that that was a bad thing at any point... although, the term "proper QNP" does connote that if you take it the wrong way, so I can see where the problem arises. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Sorry, IF, but IMHO, the Proportions have proper QNP. The system you are advocating is IMHO, the pseudo-QNP for reasons outlined very clearly by PvK.

[Phoenix-D]

"Actually, with QNP, there should be no limit on how many engines you can put on any ships."

QNP..quasi newtonian propulsion. Why would there not be any engine limits? the Shuttle runs under newtonian system, and you can't go strapping 30 engines on. Engineering limits. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

That's cause the shuttle is a really small ship. That's where the engineering difficulty lies.

Check out the shuttle on launch... its a little teeny bridge, a cargo bay to make it useful, and the rest is all engines.

There is no reason why you can't have a ship that is a little bridge/lifesupport/crewquarters combo, sitting on top of a huge pile of engines.

Just look at any Earthly launch vehicle these days. 95% engines.

Even with a low-surface area ship, you can put the fuel tanks in the middle and have lots of tubes running to the nozzles at the back http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
QNP..quasi newtonian propulsion. Why would there not be any engine limits? the Shuttle runs under newtonian system, and you can't go strapping 30 engines on. Engineering limits. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Limits past the size of the ship...

Oleg:
See SJ's post. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Specific hull-based engine limits are counter to the goal of QNP, as they strictly limit the possibilities for propulsion designs for your ships.

[ June 16, 2003, 20:03: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[geoschmo]

We likely could strap 30 engines on the shuttle if we assembled it orbit.

Actaully in reality I think their would be no concrete limit to the number of engines you could put on a ship. Although what would happen, and I think this is what Fyron and SJ were trying to say, is that putting an engine on a ship by itself increases the mass of the ship. In SEIV terms there is a limit to the number of engines for a specific hull size becasue once you reach a certain number of engines you have in effect changed the hull to the next size up. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Geoschmo

[ June 16, 2003, 20:10: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[PvK]

Originally posted by Andres:
Yes it was something about those lines.
It may be related the only time I tried to play in proportions I went bankrupt under the manteinance of my ships and the micromanaging hell pf my colonies. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">
Yeah, many players get surprised/disappointed by the smaller fleet size that is maintainable in a standard Proportions game. Ideally, there should perhaps be two Versions, or altered settings for people who want to be able to have massive fleets. Actually it's a simple change which I did mention in some long-lost thread: just increase the planet values by say 10x, or whatever increased bankroll you want everyone to have. (Ideally, the resource storage values would be increased similarly, but that's not that big a deal, nor hard to do).

But no, larger sizes should REDUCE, not increase cost and manteinance.
Of course that building and mantaining large ships cost much more than building a small one.
And in many cases using a ship only as big a needed is a good way to save.
But in real-world economies, large scale does significantly reduce costs. For example jumbojets and supertankers.
Why do you think they keep trying to make those things even larger?
They may be harder to build, require more technical refinenemts than smaller vessels, and of course each one needs a much larger inVersion to be built, but in the large picture they save money.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Larger ships can be more efficient in Proportions too, in the same way they can in real life - by being able to do more. Many of the same factors that multiply the ability of larger ships in the unmodded game are still present in Proportions. Large capital ships can be quite devastating, and larger transports can carry multiples of what smaller ones can, etc. In Proportions though, the attributes of larger hulls aren't ALL advantages.

Mainly, reality is much more complex than SE4, and it seems to me from considering real-world examples, that one of the constants is that bigger is almost universally more expensive per unit measure rather than less - it's up to the larger and more expensive designs to realize their worth through even better performance.

Detailed rambling musings on same, for those interested:

Smaller ships can use many more standard components, while larger ones require much more specialized large-scale equipment and infrastructure to build and maintain, as well as special skills and technologies developed to deal with their special problems.

For example, when the US re-commissioned WW2 battleships in the 1980's, there were many specialized skills for using their equipment which had been completely lost.

Building and maintaining a brand new fleet of gunboats of equal mass to a single battleship would be much less expensive, because it can be done with relatively standard industry and equipment. Whole new facilities and technologies need to be developed and supported in order to build and operate massive ships, in part because many of the required items (materials, facilities, know-how, and technologies) don't exist for any other purpose. Also, in reality, the more times you build the same device, the less the total effort, and not only are small ships generally built in more numbers, but there would be more of the required items that duplicate with existing non-military items. Such things can't be directly represented in SE4, but the maintenance cost seems like the most applicable place to me.

PvK

[PvK]

Well yes, that's sort of my view, as well. Ship classes don't just represent to me the ability to build a ship of a certain size, but the ability to build a certain design, or which size is only one part. I have 1800kT colony ships available from the start, but I don't think that includes the ability to build a 1700kT propulsion system for a 100kT command module, and have it be linearly efficient compared to a more reasonable design.

I did consider adding a "Faster Ships" tech area, to allow developing engineering for ship designs with more propulsion capacity. I also considered other tech areas for other types of ship classes. However SE4's interface starts getting clunky when there are tons of ship classes, so it seemed like more clunk than it was worth, although I did add a couple of areas for specialized "Fast Colony Ships" and carriers, due to fan requests.

There are also issues to consider from the very abstract SE4 movement and combat systems, as well as from a game balance perspective. Most basically, if a ship design has enough of a speed advantage over its enemies, it can do silly things in combat compared to weapon ranges. This can cause imbalances with unrealistic tactics that take advantage of the lack of opportunity fire in the combat engine, such as ramming or hit-and-run without the enemy being able to fire back at all. Moreover, it can imbalance the need for research into (and ship design related to)propulsion if speed increases can be acquired by tacking on an extra engine for 10kT, compared to having to do extensive research and costly deployment of advanced engines.

Now, there might or might not be a way to re-design the entire set of values for combat and propulsion components in order to address all of this in a different way, for the purpose of satisfying a desire for more flexibility in the number of engines that can be stacked on a design, but that wasn't what I was trying to do.

PvK

Originally posted by geoschmo:
We likely could strap 30 engines on the shuttle if we assembled it orbit.

Actaully in reality I think their would be no concrete limit to the number of engines you could put on a ship. Although what would happen, and I think this is what Fyron and SJ were trying to say, is that putting an engine on a ship by itself increases the mass of the ship. In SEIV terms there is a limit to the number of engines for a specific hull size becasue once you reach a certain number of engines you have in effect changed the hull to the next size up. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Geoschmo<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

[Fyron]

PvK, in mods like P&N and Adamant (those that use full QNP), researching more propulsion technology is certainly necessary. It takes a large chunk of hull space to even go 6 movement. More propulsion means you can lower the amount of space needed to get going at 6 movement, or you can make the ships go faster, while still taking up as much space for engines. Just tacking on one more 10 kT engine often has no effect because it requires several of them to get one movement point on all but the smallest of ships. In P&N, a Destroyer requires 12 Ion Engine Is to get 6 movement points, which takes up 120 kT (40% of the hull). Researching Contra-Terrene Engines means that you only need 9 of them to get 6 movement. So as we can see, researching more propulsion technology is certainly a very good idea. With large ships, the amount of kTs freed up only gets larger.

[PvK]

Thanks. I haven't really absorbed much of what P&N does, though I think it's really a wonderful mod. I haven't yet studied much of Adamant mod either, though I will one of these days. What you say demonstrates that yes, unlimited QNP engines can avoid some of the issues I mentioned, with certain values.

Certainly that sort of system has some advantages, but I think using engine limits also has some of its own, as I've rambled about enough.

I still like the trade-offs and limits created by Proportions. I'd probably sooner add more engine types and variants, or go to a scale-mounted engine system, rather than unlimited QNP, because that would allow me to retain more appropriate to-hit modifiers for engines. Scale-mount engines is a cool alternative, but not entirely perfect either. Ah well.

PvK

[Fyron]

Well, P&N and Adamant use small numbers for Standard Movement (3-7 or so), whereas Proportions uses big numbers. Engines per move for a ship size is equal to tonnage structure / 50 (which you have in Proportions). If you double (or triple) both of these sets of numbers, you can get slightly more precise movement scales for ship sizes, but you hit the 255 cap on max standard movement points much more quickly. Basically, it boils down to whether you want to require a handful of engines to go "fast" or if you want to require a lot of engines to go "fast".

[Suicide Junkie]

I have 1800kT colony ships available from the start, but I don't think that includes the ability to build a 1700kT propulsion system for a 100kT command module, and have it be linearly efficient compared to a more reasonable design.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Of course it dosen't... after putting on the colony module, and all the required cargo bays, how much space do you have left?
40%? ... 20%? How much will you use for engines, supply tanks, defenses?

Most basically, if a ship design has enough of a speed advantage over its enemies, it can do silly things in combat compared to weapon ranges. This can cause imbalances with unrealistic tactics that take advantage of the lack of opportunity fire in the combat engine, such as ramming or hit-and-run without the enemy being able to fire back at all. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The thing to note is that, yes, speed should be an advantage! In tactical, it may be abused vs AI, but not vs humans. In strategic its AI vs AI, and thus perfectly valid, IMO. The second thing to note, is that in order to get a really good speed, you will have to strip out almost all of the armor/shields and guns...

Sure, you can fly circles around the enemy, but you can't do much damage, and your ships will drop like flies as soon as the enemy gets a chance to fire on you.
PS: Don't expect super-speedy rammers to be very effective, since you'll have no armor to bulk up your impact damage, and you just spent thousands of radioactives to build those precious engines.

In any case; I played many games like this at home with two other people... Each liked their own tactics, and are solidly convinced theirs is best.
(Me = big on defenses - if you can't kill me, I can't lose)
(Brother = Big on Weapons - boom, you die, I win)
(Father = Big on engines/speed - weak attack, and no defense, but if you can't hit, it don't die.)

[Taera]

this topic deserves a rename

[Fyron]

In Adamant, colony ships are 3300 kT and the colony module is 3000 kT. I treated them as roughly 900 kT mass ships for purposes of engines per move, mostly just to make them slower than if they were 300 kT mass (without having no chance to move, as 300 kT is not enough to move much with a mass of 3300 kT). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[PvK]

Again, from what SJ says, it sounds like it is possible to get around most of the issues I anticipated with unlimited-engine QNP, if you use different sorts of values from the ones I used in Proportions. P&N seems like a great mod - I'm really hope I get more time so I can give it more of a shot (I've only started one game of it so far, though I've been tempted by the mentions of replacement players needed for PBW games).

I wouldn't say either system is better - they're both good and interesting (way more so than the unmodded system).

I still rather like the results of the Proportions QNP. I wouldn't change Proportions to unlimited-engine QNP, although it might make an interesting racial advantage. Proportions offers a nice range of propulsion designs possible with different combinations of engine types, with interesting trade-offs in cost, speed, fuel consumption, and combat mods. Those things could still exist without engine limits, but the engine limits add some baseline abilities to ship classes which give the classes themselves performance differences to consider. I like that small ships can go quite fast with just a few low-tech high-output engines (but can't go insane speeds by tripling the number of engines, even though they have "room" to do so), while massive ships take a lot to keep up to speed, and usually can't keep up with the fastest small ships. If you really want a fast large ship, though, you can spend a lot and develop gravitic drives (which isn't as efficient for smaller ships, so there is an interesting backwards efficiency effect there if that tech is developed) and/or deploy scale-mount emergency propulsion (which can be a nasty surprise for enemy light ships if mounted on a heavy interceptor ship).

PvK

[Fyron]

Again, from what SJ says, it sounds like it is possible to get around most of the issues I anticipated with unlimited-engine QNP, if you use different sorts of values from the ones I used in Proportions. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That is what I was hinting at. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Also, I never said that either system was intrinsically better, just that I prefer unlimtied QNP. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I think that all resulted from a word being taken differently than it was intended (proper-QNP). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Andrés]

Mainly, reality is much more complex than SE4, and it seems to me from considering real-world examples, that one of the constants is that bigger is almost universally more expensive per unit measure rather than less - it's up to the larger and more expensive designs to realize their worth through even better performance.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't know where you get that impression from.
I think you may be comparing a group of tiny ships that is actually smaller than the massive one. If they are enough for the job, then yes the big ship would be overkill, but that does not make it less efficient.
That logic does not make any sense.
In general bigger designs are more efficient BECAUSE they are bigger.
Buying a large bottle of Coke is cheaper than buying many small cans.
Installing central air conditioning in a building is cheaper than installing an individual unit in every room (specially when it comes to usage and mantenance cost)
The same goes for ship systems.
Building a heavy baseship must be much cheaper than an equivalent tonnage of frigates.
Frigates will have their advantages, harder to hit, can be built faster by using many SYs. When it comes to use they can be much more flexibe being able to operate in many places at once.
Heavy baseships advantage is only being cheaper and more efficient.
Yes there are many technical details such as specialized parts, facilities, and support know how and technologies.
That is what's why you have to research to get larger hull, anyone that can design a certain ship can easily design something twice as big, research means solving all those technical issues involved in the larger design.

[PvK]

I tried looking for cost figures today, but haven't found a great source yet. My impression mainly comes from various books and discussions of naval design, which have often mentioned the great expense and difficulty of producing capital ships, which could only be justified by their ability to deliver ship superiority (usually, for semi-modern navies, by virtue of superior range).

I am entirely certain of it being true for the example of WW2 tank design. Both the Germans and the Americans considered different designs which were either relatively small weak and cheap, or large and powerful but much more difficult to produce and maintain.

Coke bottles and Coke cans are both common and cheap. The six-pack is a little more like the battleship anyway, because it's got slightly more complex and expensive ingredients and manufacturing process.

Knowledge is only part of the challenge of producing something.

Here is a good example of the sorts of problems that appear when building building massive ships, from an excellent web site describing the Japanese Yamato class battleship (http://www.warships1.com/JAPbb08_Yamato_specs.htm):


"When the construction of the Yamato class was planned, there was no shipyard in Japan capable of building such ships without expanding it's building facilities.
Since the Japanese Navy intended to build four Yamato class ships in succession, special preparations for their construction had to be made in selected shipyards.
Some of these arrangements consisted of expanding dock capacities, building a special transport ship capable of carrying an 18 inch gun turret and hiding such a vessel behind sisal rope curtains for security reasons.
The depth of the building dock at the Kure naval yard, in which the Yamato was built, was deepened about 3 feet so that the hull could be floated in the dock.
The capacity of the gantry crane straddling the dock was increased to 100 tons in order to lift heavy armor plates. Furthermore, about a quarter of the dock at the landward end was covered with a roof to prevent it from being seen from a prominent hill nearby.
In the Yokosuka district a large dry dock was specially built and the third ship of the Yamato class, later named Shinano and converted into a carrier was built there.
The Nagasaki Yard of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. was the only other shipyard capable of building a Yamato class battleship. even with some expansion of it's facilities.
Unlike Kure's building dock a slipway was to be used for the construction there. Needless to say, the launching of a vessel weighing 30,000 tons raised various problems technically. Not only was the slipway strengthened but workshops and piers were also expanded or strengthened. The overall area of the expansion of the workshops reached a total of almost 787,401 square feet. Floating cranes of 350 tons and 150 tons were built and installed to lift heavy armor plates and gun fittings.
At Sasebo, one of the three major naval bases in Japan, a dry dock capable of accommodating a Yamato class battleship was also built.
Some measures taken to safeguard the security of the Musashi were interesting.
The slipway on which she was built was covered by a sisal rope curtain.
The total length of rope used reached 1,683 miles and it's weight totaled 408 tons. This great consumption of sisal rope caused a temporary shortage of this item on the market, and caused complaints among fishermen.
One more thing to be mentioned was the construction of a transport vessel to carry the 18 inch guns and turrets from Kure to either Nagasaki, where the Musashi was being built, or to Yokosuka, where the Shinano was to be built.
These 18 inch guns and turrets were manufactured at the Kure naval yard and they could be transported only by this specially-built vesse
Even in accommodation the Yamato had remarkable features.
She was the first Japanese warship to be equipped with an air conditioning system.
Although this comfort was not afforded to all the living quarters, the Yamato and her sister Musashi had a favorable reputation among sailors as the most comfortable ships in the Japanese Navy."<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">These are just some of the sorts of issues that come up when undergoing massive engineering projects, which don't tend to have to be considered at all for building smaller craft. However, except for WW2 tanks, I'm not entirely sure how well the numbers back up these ideas. I'd like to know, so I'm going to try to dig up some good figures.

PvK

[oleg]

Surprisinly, nobody mentioned yet the wonderfull idea of using engine mounts insted of engine numbers to achieve "realistic" ship movement.

I forgot what mod uses this idea, but I really like it !

[Suicide Junkie]

Good point.

There is also the mQNP system, which uses mounts to decrease the size of engines for small ships.
You get almost the same physics, with engine space used <--> speed, etc...
The only differences are:
1) players MUST remember to use a mount when adding engines.
2) damage to engines is not as smooth, but with a 1 engine = 1 MP, the differences will be relatively minor. (Although for large ships, the engines will act like armor)
3) The 255 MP limit is no longer an issue. Instead, you have to worry about the 1%-100% range of possible engine sizes, and the prevention of players from using unmounted engines accidentally...
4) And stuff like supply storage, repair rates, etc...

In addition, there is also the Hybrid-QNP option, which has yet to be developed fully.
1)a) Use the mQNP to make engine classes (Light, Medium, Heavy)
b) Use Engines Per Move to separate ships in each Category, and give them whatever values result in the correct momentum.

2)a) Use mQNP for light to medium ships, and then start cranking up the EPM for larger ships, which can use the unmounted engines.

[ June 17, 2003, 17:49: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[PvK]

Hey, I mentioned scale-mounted engines as an option. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

SJ, I don't quite follow all of the details you mention. Seems to me though that one basic way to do it would simply be a scale mount (like Proportions uses for several types of components) which have size/cost/structure proportional to ship mass, and the unmounted Version is so large that it either can't be used, or is really impractical except for large ships.

That's an elegant idea that has several benefits, but it seems like there are a few issues to get around, too.

* One is the size range that can be supported using scale mounts - it's pretty big, but might keep a mod from having really distant extremes.

* Another is that IIRC, mounts can't change supply storage, so if your engines carry supplies, the smallest one will carry the same amount as the largest one using scale mounts.

* Another is the hard-coded repair system, based on number of components repaired per turn. If an escort and a battleship have the same number of engines, then they'll take the same time to repair or retrofit.

PvK

[ June 17, 2003, 16:41: Message edited by: PvK ]

[Geckomlis]

FYI:
The (unpublished) mod I am working on is based around 100 kT/2 MP engines. It uses a mixed system to scale the engines:
The baseline is a 1000 kT ship.
Mounts for ships ranging from 10 – 900 kT.
Engines numbers/Engines Per Move for ships ranging from 2000 - 9000 kT.
I removed the supply storage ability from the engines so that a ship’s supply capacity was smoothly scalable and more under player design control. To compensate, I added more supply storage component options (normal, conformal, and drop supply storage) and in a variety of sizes. I also tweaked the kT/supply storage ratio for supply components. The % of kT and other attributes to move any ship speed = X is constant through all the ship sizes. I also did the same for the vehicle control components.

I am happy with this approach as it meets most desiderata.

Very minor problems with this approach:
Some casual (to me) rounding errors.
The hard-coded repair system does not scale.
You need to scale-up engine damaging weapons w/mounts for them to work against all but the smallest ships.
The ship design process is more challenging and intolerant: you need to remember to use mounts for ships <1000 kT and to add supply storage to all designs. I have done everything I can to minimize this issue, including extensive documentation.

The idea is relatively mature at this point in the mod process, so I would be open to sharing specifics and accepting criticism if anyone is interested. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Gecko

[Fyron]

Originally posted by oleg:
Surprisinly, nobody mentioned yet the wonderfull idea of using engine mounts insted of engine numbers to achieve "realistic" ship movement.

I forgot what mod uses this idea, but I really like it !<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">PvK mentioned it, actually. It was Pax that came up with M-QNP, and it would have been in Exodus (or it is IIRC...), but he seems to have disappeared for the most part. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[Chronon]

I have never attempted a mod, and so I have no clue if this is even possible, but I thought I would toss out my idea anyway. I'm sure you'll let me know if it's impossible. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Could you keep the number of engines the same for all ship sizes but add another component that is necessary for them to work?

Perhaps this component could be called an "ion generator," and you would need more of them to power the larger ships (one for an escort, two for frigate, three for a destroyer) etc. Each one would cost a certain amount of resorces (perhaps high on rads, medium on mins, and low on organics) and take a certain amount of supply. They could be part of the propulsion tree, and they could become more efficient at higher levels (Ion Generator I costs more resources and uses more supply than Ion Generator II). That would give players an incentive to move up the propulsion tree - otherwise you would be powering your larger ships with fuel-hogging low-tech "ion generators."

[Ed Kolis]

How would those "ion generators" be any different from the current engines, then?

[Fyron]

You could make engines store no supplies, which would force players to use supply storage comps (and can add a lot more design options). Check out Adamant, which has engines at 5 kT and then reactors that are 5 kT and store supplies (supply pods are gone). The B5 Mod does something similar, except that it's reactors generate something like 3000 supplies per turn and store 3000, so supplies are changed to power per turn instead of feul.

I don't think there is a way to make your idea work that is any different than just using engines as they are now (or in a QNP system).

[ June 17, 2003, 21:32: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[PvK]

Well, maybe if you did something with the life suport, bridge and/or crew quarters components, because those affect movement if they are missing. You could decide one or more of them was unnecessary, and then use that ability as a required widget for the engines, probably.

Or you could use bonus movement for your engines, and standard movement for your widget-that-makes-engines-work, because the ship needs to be able to travel at at least speed 1 via standard movement, before it will move at all via bonus movement.

PvK

[Chronon]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
How would those "ion generators" be any different from the current engines, then?<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">They would take up more space, cost more, and use more supplies for the larger ships. So, bigger ships would still have the advantage of using the larger weapon mounts, but would not have all the extra room they presently have left over after installing the same six engines that the escorts use (to get the same speed!). In other words, the number of weapons on each type of ship would be more equal (though their power would be greater on the big ships, which is as it should be), and fleets might be more diverse (not all DN's).

Fyron, from your description of Adamant, it sounds like you've already got something like this working. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

PvK, that's a fascinating idea about the crew quarters, bridge and life support. Crew quarters could be modded to include life support (can't really have crew without it), and the life support could be changed to the engine widget.

Perhaps one of these days I'll give in to my temptation and dig into the data files...

[Taera]

here goes the realism.... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Krsqk]

You can't give the LS ability to the CQ, or else the engines will still function normally without ion generators/reactors. IIRC, complete loss of LQ only drops engine movement by half; complete loss of CQ by half; and loss of bridge by half; and all three modifiers multiply.

[Fyron]

Well... sorta. Having none of them gives 1 movement no matter how much movement you generate. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Suicide Junkie]

Lifesupport loss gives 1/4th normal speed, only 1/2 speed for the other two.

Also, though you can require a design to have any number of widgets, the ship will not lose speed until ALL the widgets are dead http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

It sounds to me like you want the effects you get with simple mQNP

[Chronon]

Taera, you have a good point.

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
It sounds to me like you want the effects you get with simple mQNP<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">SJ, given the restraints of code, mQNP does sound like the most elegant solution.

Ah well, I guess my idea really won't work. But thanks for giving it thoughtful consideration; I do appreciate it.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
You can't give the LS ability to the CQ, or else the engines will still function normally without ion generators/reactors. IIRC, complete loss of LQ only drops engine movement by half; complete loss of CQ by half; and loss of bridge by half; and all three modifiers multiply.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not quite what I meant. Set the LS requirement of all ships to 1. Remove LS components entirely, and rename the CQ to CQ/LS, doubling cost/size or whatever. Then add the new widget component and secretly give it the CQ ability. Therefore, every ship must have a widget component, or else its speed with be down to 1/4.

PvK