Stealth Armor

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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Errr... wait a sec here. If I have a fleet of say 10 cloakable ships, and I turn on the cloak on 2 of the ships, ....

...If any of your units in a sector are detected by enemies in that sector, combat will occur and include all your units in that sector, even if some of them are cloaked. ... Thus, you can have a cloaked defense fleet over your planet to ambush attackers, for instance.

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Story time:
I had a small, superhigh-tech empire. Two colonized systems, but every one terraformed to perfection. Eight active military ships, half of them undergoing repairs at any one time.

A phong attack breached my minefield to the north, at the same time as a Jreanar force came through in the south. Since there was only one phong dreadnaught, I sent my $100,000 (mineral) dreadnaught out to crush it, while the rest of my active military fought back the Jreanar.
When I entered the sector, and began combat with the one Phong, nine more cloaked Dreadnaughts were waiting .

An epic battle later, the Phong fleet was decimated, and my Dreadnought was disabled. The 30 turns ended, a pair of battlecruisers came to clean up the remains, and my dreadnaught limped home.

[Gryphin]

Cynapse ,
A "Tech Tree" is the series of techs that must be learned in consecutive order to get from one to another.
I don't have the exact vocabulary handy but:
On a simple level:
Missle I leads to Missle II etc
In many cases Reasearch in one tech area leads to Discovery of a new Tech area.
Reasearching Physics opens up 3 or 4 other areas.

Folks feel free to help me out here. My notes are at home. (Ok, the dog ate my homework)

EDIT: Grammar

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Gryphin ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Hard to show in a non-graphical form:
(Note: This is for P&N v2.5 PBW)

Military Science 1
=> (Area) Combat Support
=> (Area) Torpedo Weapons
=> (Area) Point Defense Weapons

Military Science 2
Requires:
<= Military Science 1
Provides:
=> (Area) Advanced Military Science
=> (Area) Weapon Overloading Weapons
=> (Area) Ship Capture

Combat Support 1:
Requires:
<= Military Science 1
Provides:
=> (Component) Basic ECM I

Combat Support 2:
Requires:
<= Combat Support 1
Provides:
=> (component) Basic ECM II
=> (1 of 2) (Area) ECM Support

ECM Support 1:
Requires:
<= Combat Support 2
<= Sensors 2
Provides:
=> (component) Advanced ECM I

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Cylapse]

Gotcha... now you said you wanted to map it, does that mean ya wanna trace it down and see what opens what, or ya wanna throw in your own stuff? (Dude, forgive me, I know you're not some newbie *LOL* I am the noob here, but I just wanna make sure we're on the same page... I think I know whatya need, but I dont wanna answer and be talking about something else *lmao*)

[Gryphin]

Cynapse,
Yes I want to trace the series of techs required to get to "Stealth Armor". What would also be helpful is how to do it on my own. That is: What files to I need to check and cross reffrance in order to put together this "path" or "Tech Tree"
I just can't put it together in my head.

BTW: I am a newbie when it comes to trying to learn the Tech Trees. Up to now I have just played and tryed to remember them. that was because I was playing against the AI. Now I have to get serious to play competatively against humans in Play By Web.

SJ,
Thanks, I apriciate the help. Now lets see if I can use it effectively.

EDIT 2: I guess what I mean is there a general concept for deriving a tech tree? What file/s do I read and how do I read them.

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Gryphin ]

[Cylapse]

Oh okay *LOL* Aside from using the built in tech tree in research, I check the TechAreas text file as well as Components.... Im pretty sure that for stealth armor all ya need is Armor 4 or above... (or is it 3?) Coz I noticed that emissive, stealth, and scattering armor all seem to come around the same time... Level 5 gets you II in all 3 armors, and Level 6 I think gets you model III... Tracing it was easy from the built in tree, but crawling thru the TechAreas, while tedious, is a good way to figure out what opens what...coz each one has certain "Requirements".. and those requirements can be defined easilly in the file... Offhand I dont think there is a field for "open this tech up..." but rather, on the tech you want it to open up, you need to have a the "Requirement" field say that the other tech be a certain level... Am I making sense? My buzz is gone so I should be a little more clarified *LOL*

PS - If I still am nowhere near the mark, then I am not buzzed ENOUGH. So therein would lie the problem

Careful though, I added a custom tech to be found on planets, and I positioned in the file below Massive Shielding and Above Solar Sails, and since it was an existing game, my solar sails disappeared *LOL* Now I only append new stuff to the end of the data files... Id rather not gut them and play with the order of components... I cant be without my sails now....

EDIT - TechAreas has the requirements of all tech areas and tech levels bunched together, I think... Its a hefty file.

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Cynapse ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Cynapse:
When your solar sails dissapeared, that was probably because you inserted a double blank line when pasting in your new components.

SE4 quits reading as soon as it hits two blank lines in a row.


If you know what you want to research:
1) open components.txt
- search for the component in question
- look at the tech requirements
2) open techareas.txt
- search for the tech areas mentioned in #1
3) Follow the requirements for step #2 recursively.

Amongst all the other projects I'm doing, I'll see about creating a quick graphical tech tree this weekend.