Modding Questions (especially need help for AI)

[LostCommander]

Yet another question... How exactly is the final maintenence value of a vessel determined? Say with the original maintenance set at 50, a 1K resource cost base (-50% maintenance bonus) of a race with a 125 maintenance aptitude is 250 resources in maintenance per turn. If a component is added (base still costs 1K) that reduces maintenence of a vehicle by 10%, when and where is it applied? Would the base's maintenance be 225, 200, or 75 resources per turn in maintenance costs (or something else entirely)?

Thank you very much!

[Fyron]

Originally posted by LostCommander:
Yet another question... How exactly is the final maintenence value of a vessel determined? Say with the original maintenance set at 50, a 1K resource cost base (-50% maintenance bonus) of a race with a 125 maintenance aptitude is 250 resources in maintenance per turn. If a component is added (base still costs 1K) that reduces maintenence of a vehicle by 10%, when and where is it applied? Would the base's maintenance be 225, 200, or 75 resources per turn in maintenance costs (or something else entirely)?

Thank you very much!

The Maintenance Aptitude trait bonus is subtracted from the base 25% value. 120 MA means you pay 5% maintenance for ships. 50 MA means you pay 75% maintenance. Maintenance reduction abilities on vehicles and components are multiplicative instead of additive. Bases get 50% maintenence reduction. So, a base owned by a race with 120 MA pays 2.5% maintenance.

Note: Ships are hard-coded to have a minimum base maintenance cost of 5%. If you take 120 MA and Merchants culture, you still pay 5%, not 0%.

The maintenance trait can be fixed (made multipilicative instead of additive) by making the base maintenance cost be 100 and giving all ships 75% maintenance reductition (and bases get 95 IIRC, check P&N for the exact value). The MA trait should then have its max increased, and cost per % lowered.

[Rollo]

Originally posted by pathfinder:
Rollo: So, B5 is QNP, which means I shouldn't take those standard movement lines out...what value would it be? I dropped it to 10 (from 25) and seem to have gotten rid of the RCEs in B5 due to the "many engines" syndrom; however, now some of the small ships have movements with 1-2 while larger ones have 4-7 (nothing bigger than Light Cruiser researched yet)...warships/attack ships seem to be better off while specialty ships (assult ships, mine layers, troop transports, etc) seem to suffer.

Note: B5 has the attack ships broken down to class (eg destroyer, scout, frigate, escort carrier, assult ship, etc)

wish Val would get off holiday so he'd be getting these headaches

I don't know enough about the B5 mod to suggest any values. IMHO having a 'standard movement' line in the designs is asking for trouble with the AI, though.
I am willing to help out. Please look and answer into my post in the B5 thread.

Rollo

[LostCommander]

Thank you very much Fyron and Rollo for info.

Bumping this topic to hopefully get answers to the Last 3 questions:

Where in the component enhancement file should tech pre-reqs be placed? (or is this not enabled, saw differing opinions in previous threads)

Do seeker weapon missile mounts work? I have tried and it seems to DISPLAY the change (and the size and dmg cap are changed), but damage and range seem to be unaffected in practice...

Would the program snap if I had several components with the same family and, say 0 for the roman numeral? How about if there were duplicate racial tech component entries with the same family number and same roman numerals (say 2 racials and the standard ion engines I-III)? What would it do for the upgrade button when more than one component is better?

Thanks very much everybody!

[edit: had to add a question]

P.S. is there a limit to the number of engines a ship can have / that max engines can be set at?

[ January 05, 2003, 18:09: Message edited by: LostCommander ]

[Fyron]

Where in the component enhancement file should tech pre-reqs be placed? (or is this not enabled, saw differing opinions in previous threads)

If you look in the file header, it appears that those lines go at the end. But looking in the latest P&N mod, it seems to work when you place them before Vehicle Type. eg:

code:

---

Number of Tech Req		:= 1

Tech Area Req 1			:= Troop Weapons

Tech Level Req 1			:= 1

Vehicle Type                   := Troop

---

Do seeker weapon missile mounts work? I have tried and it seems to DISPLAY the change (and the size and dmg cap are changed), but damage and range seem to be unaffected in practice...

No, they do not work.

Would the program snap if I had several components with the same family and, say 0 for the roman numeral? How about if there were duplicate racial tech component entries with the same family number and same roman numerals (say 2 racials and the standard ion engines I-III)? What would it do for the upgrade button when more than one component is better?

Upgrades would replace it with the Last entry in the file of the same family number. The game would not snap. Check the Proportions Mod facilities file. I believe it uses a similar system to what you describe.

P.S. is there a limit to the number of engines a ship can have / that max engines can be set at?

Ships can not have more than 255 move points before engines per move is calculated. In the latest Gold patch, having more move points causes the game to roll over the movement, going back to 1 and starting over. Before, it causes a Range Check Error.

[Phoenix-D]

"Where in the component enhancement file should tech pre-reqs be placed? (or is this not enabled, saw differing opinions in previous threads)"

Doesn't matter- it can be placed after any other entry. You won't see the mount listed in the results of research entry, and you won't get a log item saying you got it, but it will be there.

"Do seeker weapon missile mounts work? I have tried and it seems to DISPLAY the change (and the size and dmg cap are changed), but damage and range seem to be unaffected in practice.."

Mounts work for seekers- but only the launcher. In other words you can change size, damage resistance, cost, and supply used but not range, damage, seeker damage resistance.

"P.S. is there a limit to the number of engines a ship can have / that max engines can be set at?"

The max Standard Move a ship can have is 255. After that SE4 sets the move to 0 and re-starts the counting. The max a ship can move in a Simultanious game is 30 squares.

Phoenix-D

[LostCommander]

Thank you all very much! All questions finished.