Carribean mod

[dogscoff]

...gunboats... but for game purposes I wouldn't see a problem given the small number that could be launched this way. You could also have fireships launched in this fashion or as drones.

You could have them launched from ports onlly.

One of the main problems with converting se4 to a ships & sea game (apart from the extensive graphical modifications) has been the difficulty of representing "coastline". You can get round this, of course, by having nothing but open sea witrh a number of small islands (planets) in it. This seems to be the approach you are going for.

However, I wonder if it would be possible to
generate all non-oxygen planets with a massive sector damage ability, so that any ship sailing into "land" is instantly destroyed. You could have huge blocks of "mainland" like this, with oxygen planet "ports" on the edges (ie "the coast"). You could also have uncolonised "ports" which could be settled (caves and harbours to be turned into pirate/smuggler hideouts) and which, over time, would grow into full towns/ ports. (Assuming you build the right facilities and cargo units.)

Of course getting the map generator to place all these items sensibly would probably be nigh-impossible, so these maps would almost have to be hand-sculpted.

[JLS]

Dogscoff, your suggestion is far more practical for a quad map

Hunting Images and then resizing; although, not a priority - will take time. However, what is several days effort compared to the overall effect it will have on the Vehicles, Components and Facilities.

[Goatfoam]

I was thinking about that sort of thing Last night (the large areas of land that destroy ships if they run aground, I mean). I'm not sure how frustrating it would get, but different systems could have different wind factors, which would essentially move a ship in a random direction each turn (probably no more than 2 sectors, with the average being 1). That might turn out to be a dumb idea in the context of fun, though.

Anyway, yes, one thing at a time. I won't have a lot of time to look at it until Thursday, but I've started on the components.txt.

Oh, and also, I had some ideas about cloaking/scanners I'd like to throw out to see whether they would work or not. Remember, these are just ideas for the time being:

I was thinking that cloaking would be an inherent feature anyway, since they wouldn't have had system scanners or anything like that, and often they didn't know the enemy was upon them until they were literally upon them. If there is some way to add a range to sensors then that might be a way to do it - I'm thinking Crows Nest components and Lookout Tower facilities. That would cover visual cloaking.

The other kind I had in mind would be mainly for the pirate races, and would represent infiltrating ships. These wouldn't be as powerful as warships, and it would be inherent in the VehicleSize rather than an added component, with pirate vessels posing as trading ships that would go unmolested until their cargo and manifests were checked out at a checkpoint or a port (some sort of Security Technology tree for the colonials). This would be a good way to provide targets for Piracy Intel, and to check out any aforementioned "trade routes" that may or may not be added later.

I know I'm getting way ahead of myself, but I'm getting quite excited and ideas keep cropping up.

The focus at the moment is still on the basic components, vehicles sizes and facilities, though, definitely. No really!

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I'd be willing to run through your standard system file and make second Versions of them with wind or vice-versa.

[Goatfoam]

That would be great, Narf. Cheers.

JLS- I'm a little confused about the sails. Would a ship require one of each type of sail? I suppose you could restrict each sail type to "one per vehicle", with the mainsail perhaps being the most important (most movement) and the others perhaps adding one movement (or combat movement) each. I was against this, originally, since it seemed to overcomplicate the matter, but the more I think about it the more I'm liking it.

The Salt Water Displacement factor can just be added into the vehiclesizes.txt - I'd imagine a negative "Movement Bonus" ability would work for the larger ships, though I'm not sure if it will work. I'll go test it.

[Goatfoam]

Yeah, that works.

[Goatfoam]

Also, I've been thinking a lot about crew components. Me? I love crew. I'd love to see more crew in SEIV period. Call me nuts, but watching a battlecruiser take out the life support on my Dreadnought is pretty annoying, but it doesn't really bother me. Having my oarsmen wiped out by grapeshot, my first mate taking a bullet in the face or (god forbid) watching my Ninja Pirates get decimated by scatter guns, well... it may just bring a tear to my eye.

And the beauty of this sort of time period is that crew are very vulnerable and very valuable - no master computers here. So, er, yeah, I just wanted to share that with you, and expect to see a lot of crew components.

One quick question regarding repair, though:

Okay, so you can set it so that certain components can only be repaired at a space yard. This would include most of the ship's structure, considering the difficulty they would have in repairing the ship's hull. But - could you have two different types of repair? I'm thinking "Ship's surgeon" for crew types, and "Jury Riggers" for simple ship components. Possible? Doesn't look like it, but maybe someone knows a way.