To Suicide Junkie

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Geo's got it.

*blush*

The reason I knew that is because that exact point is what took me so long to get and why I didn't understand the QNP for the first year your mod was out.

I kept looking at "Engines per move" and thinking "ENGINES per move" and it was confusing me big time.

Geoschmo

[ArchAngel7]

No offence SJ, but is there anyway I can change the engine movement back to the regular SEIV. It's killing me to take up one third of my available kts to move maybe 8 or 9 movements. Actually I did indeed try to adjust it, but it seems that even though there were restrictions showing on engine allowance and I had to abide by them in ship design the races AI were able to bypass them somehow. IE I made engines per movement 1 and max. engine requirements 2 or 3 depending on ship size. These restrictions did show up on ship design, but during the game I noticed some races with 15-20 engines anyways and I wondering how they were able to do that with the new engine restrictions I created?

[Pax]

Originally posted by ArchAngel7:
No offence SJ, but is there anyway I can change the engine movement back to the regular SEIV. It's killing me to take up one third of my available kts to move maybe 8 or 9 movements.

You'll hate exopdus, then. It uses a new "m/QNP" format ... I posted the idea some time back, but in essence, Se4 v1.78 allows form mounts specific to certain ship sizes, and even specific to a single component family (or a list of them), like say ... only engines.

Using those, Exodus sets engines to be 40% of ship mass, to produce their rated movement (2 to 6 apiece). While you can have up to 2 engines -- and solar sails which give 1 to 5 bonus movement points -- on a single ship, that leaves not much room for aught else.

The concept is, a bigger ship should require more engine to move at X speed, than the smaller ship did.

Actually I did indeed try to adjust it, but it seems that even though there were restrictions showing on engine allowance and I had to abide by them in ship design the races AI were able to bypass them somehow. IE I made engines per movement 1 and max. engine requirements 2 or 3 depending on ship size. These restrictions did show up on ship design, but during the game I noticed some races with 15-20 engines anyways and I wondering how they were able to do that with the new engine restrictions I created?

First off, editting datafiles after a game starts, might leave some designs already in place for the AI ...

Second off, to change it back, you need to (first) hunt down every Last Engine's entry in components.txt, and change their abilities back in line with stock SE4 (1 MP each, ascending bonus move levels, etc). You will then have to go into vehiclesizes.txt and modify each and every entry there, to reflect stock-se4 style movement values.

[Suicide Junkie]

It's killing me to take up one third of my available kts to move maybe 8 or 9 movements.

Woah, 9 movement! You must be in a hell of a hurry. (well for a warship, anyways. For a scout design, that's quite slow)

If you can't afford the speed, simply go slower! Take off a few engines, and cruise around at 6 to 7 MP.

In standard SE4, speed is life. Always put the max engines on. Boring, no thought required.

QNP fixes that, and forces you to consider the tradeoffs. More speed is good at first, but then starts to impact your combat worthiness. Decide what's best for you!
The point of QNP is that you get to find your own balance of Speed / Weapons / Defenses.

In games with my family, my Dad goes for super-fast, defenseless ships. My brother likes slow, lightly protected, Weapon-heavy ships. I load up on defense.
The strategies, respectively are: "Win by being everywhere at once, and never getting hit", "Blow 'em away before they can fight back", and "Win by never dying, outlive your enemy"
Which one is best has yet to be determined.

The only Version of P&N that has regular SE4 style movement is P&N classic, and that's for SE4 v1.49 (pre-gold)

In order to change QNP back to standard SE4 propulsion, you'd have to:
1) Change all ships to have 1 engine per move, max engines 6, or whatever their normal max is.
2) Delete all engines, solar sails, and replace with normal SE4 drives.
3) Replace all AI_design_creation.txt with the files for unmodded SE4.
4) Clean up the mess that makes in things that depend on the QNP. Battlemoons, for one. Probably lots more.

[ October 22, 2002, 19:01: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Phoenix-D]

"These restrictions did show up on ship design, but during the game I noticed some races with 15-20 engines anyways and I wondering how they were able to do that with the new engine restrictions I created?"

AIs don't care about restrictions, and they don't abide by them unless you design them to.

Phoenix-D

[ArchAngel7]

I prefer speed, warp speed!. I'm playing with Fyron's maps and it will take 3 or 4 years to see the galaxy at 9 movements per turn ! There's no way I'm going to go through the procedure you just outlined to change it back Possibly I can change the kt size of the engines to leave more room for other things, or increase the size of the ships. Why did you put a limit on the number of movement points per ship anyways? Just curious.

[Suicide Junkie]

The limit on MP per ship is a hardcoded thing. The movement points on a ship are stored as a single byte in memory, so 255 + 1 = 0 (overflow)

Also, how does FQM affect the distance from one side of the galaxy to the other? Its 13 moves max from one side of a system to the other, and warppoints are instantaneous to the next system.

You can always develop warppoint manip if you're really in a rush!

[ October 22, 2002, 20:24: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]