Proportions Version 2.0 available

Mephisto · #1 April 5th, 2002, 04:19 PM

quote:
Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:
Is it ? This would not be consistent with ship components to be hit chances.

PvK is right, the smallest unit gets destroyed first. Always.

PsychoTechFreak · #2 April 5th, 2002, 06:48 PM

Yes, but Damage Resistance is the important point regarding this issue:

Name := Basic Life Support
Description := Mechanical means to generate a livable atmosphere on a starship. This system is not built for compactness, or to withstand battle damage, but is less difficult to manufacture.
Pic Num := 5
Tonnage Space Taken := 15
Tonnage Structure := 1

This component is extremely hard to hit. And if I carry over this idea to the proportions troops, with an extremely higher damage resistance, they would be easier to hit than they have been before.

oleg · #3 April 5th, 2002, 07:48 PM

QuarianRex has a point. Cultural facilities need some cost adjustments. To keep the spirit of this mod, namely the supreme importance of Homeworld, it would be nice to make some changes to decrease the cost of low level facilities but keep cultural center as it is. It takes only 3-4 turns to research Construction I and make Cities obsolete. At the same times it takes years and years to build even one city on any colony. I don't think it is right. Every unique and important steps in colony development needs some game time window to be useful and worthy to be build. I suggest to increase the research cost of megapolis (construction II ?) and decrease a bit the production cost of cities.

PvK · #4 April 5th, 2002, 08:49 PM

The situation is different with planet cargo under bombardment than it is with ship system damage. Ship system damage is allocated in a far more varied fashion, which is why the armor components in Proportions work so well.

The smallest ship component is only rarely damaged first. A ship with a large proportion of structure in high-strength Proportions armor components (that lack the "always first hit 'Armor'" ability) will tend to get hit in the armor, and frequently absorb the blow until accumulated damage is enough to destroy the entire armor component hit. Sometimes a small ship component will be hit first, though, but it's rare, apparently in proportion to its structure compared to the rest of the components left on the ship.

For planetary cargo, however, the weakest total-damage-capacity cargo items get bLasted first, which is why troops without boosted strength get shot off first. It also means that if you build a "shield base" weapon platform, it won't protect your weaker-damage-capacity, armed weapon platforms! (Small shield platforms combined with larger armed platforms may work out, though - compare their total strengths.) This is on the suggestion list to change, though. At which point, I would take another look at Proportion troop strengths.

PvK

quote:
Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:
Yes, but Damage Resistance is the important point regarding this issue:

Name := Basic Life Support
Description := Mechanical means to generate a livable atmosphere on a starship. This system is not built for compactness, or to withstand battle damage, but is less difficult to manufacture.
Pic Num := 5
Tonnage Space Taken := 15
Tonnage Structure := 1

This component is extremely hard to hit. And if I carry over this idea to the proportions troops, with an extremely higher damage resistance, they would be easier to hit than they have been before.

ZeroAdunn · #5 April 5th, 2002, 08:58 PM

I had an idea recently to solve the long city build time and make it more realistic at the same time:

Why not create different levels of the city center? Each one could be about a year or two build time difference, with the first taking something like 5 years. Each one would get progressively more advanced, slowly adding the new areas and increasing the already existing abilities.

PvK · #6 April 5th, 2002, 08:59 PM

QR has some good points, which I'll get to here, and I agree it would be good to add more big facilities. However I tend to disagree that the City is made obsolete by the Metropolis, or the Metropolis by the Megalopolis. Cities are better that Metropoli in the same sort of way that facilities are better than Cultural Centers - they take much less time to build, and so start producing much earlier, and tie up the planetary construction queue for much less time. This is why the AI was hopeless in 1.3 - it went straight for CC's on almost every colony. Generally, I think it makes sense to build several facilities on a planet, then build a city or two, then maybe build (or, in later patches, upgrade) to a Metropolis, etc.

BTW, the reason Metropolis and Megalopolis require any research is because of the technological difficulties of establishing space age ones, and everything needed to support them, on another planet that may not even be in the empire's home system. Existing technology for building large cities on the homeworld would be for the homeworld's familiar gravity, atmosphere, weather, and so on. It's not a massive research leap, but it does require some development of new technologies.

However, I'm not completely against re-examining the city build costs. When I've built them in my games, though, I didn't think the time was way off what I'd wanted it to be.

PvK

quote:
Originally posted by oleg:
QuarianRex has a point. Cultural facilities need some cost adjustments. To keep the spirit of this mod, namely the supreme importance of Homeworld, it would be nice to make some changes to decrease the cost of low level facilities but keep cultural center as it is. It takes only 3-4 turns to research Construction I and make Cities obsolete. At the same times it takes years and years to build even one city on any colony. I don't think it is right. Every unique and important steps in colony development needs some game time window to be useful and worthy to be build. I suggest to increase the research cost of megapolis (construction II ?) and decrease a bit the production cost of cities.

PvK · #7 April 5th, 2002, 09:00 PM

Yes, I think this is a probably very good idea. Thanks!

PvK

quote:
Originally posted by ZeroAdunn:
I had an idea recently to solve the long city build time and make it more realistic at the same time:

Why not create different levels of the city center? Each one could be about a year or two build time difference, with the first taking something like 5 years. Each one would get progressively more advanced, slowly adding the new areas and increasing the already existing abilities.