Basic Tech Mod Info

[Krsqk]

Status files for the basic tech mod are here (changes) and here (will be added).

The biggest changes so far are in Armor. First, Armor tech has been expanded to 15 levels. Second, Stealth, Scattering, and Ablative Armor are now set up in a grid research, similar to the missile/warhead idea posted in the earlier thread.

It works like this: Researching higher Armor tech (in 3 level increments) gives you stronger armor in all types. Researching higher Stealth tech gives you stealthier armor with slightly higher defense bonuses. Scattering Armor has been renamed to Reflective Armor and provides higher defensive bonuses when researched. Researching Ablative Armor gives you a better structure/tonnage ratio. There are 10 levels each of Stealth and Reflective Armor techs, and 3 levels of Ablative Armor tech. There are 5 breakpoints in Armor tech for stronger armor.

A component named Stealth Armor II (8) has level 8 cloaking and second-tier armor (100kt in this case). It requires Armor 4 and Stealth 8. Reflective Armor III (4) has third-tier armor (160kt) and a 40% defensive bonus. Ablative Armor II (2) has a structure/tonnage ratio of 4.67, while Ablative Armor IV (1) has a ratio of 5.25. This grid setup creates a large number of potential paths to full tech for a given area.

Heading out for now; hopefully much more tomorrow!

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"The Unpronounceable" Krsqk

[geoschmo]

Phoenix,

(moving our discussion from the other thread)

quote:

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(like solar panels but doesn't need a star, if possible)
Not possible without a code change.
-You can fudge it. Make emergancy resupply components..that don't destroy themselves on use. It'd give the AI fits though.

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You know, this just might work. We kicked the idea around a long time ago for a component that would generate a limited amount of supplies each turn, but be unlimited in duration, like a Quantum reactor should be. This idea has has merit. (Where were you six months ago? ) The only problem I see is that the emergency resupply ability has to be activated, it is not automatic. Because of that, they can't be used in fleets, only in individual ships. But it would make a nice idea for a long range scout or a colony ship though. Call it a ram scoop or a gas giant skimmer. Both ideas are plausible.

quote:

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sorry, component specific mines are another good idea that can't be done currently
This would be because of :Weapon Type := Warhead: right?

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Actually the problem is way mine damage is calculated (non-combat mode) versus the way weapon damage is calculated (combat mode). Is has been tried and it did not work.Check it out.
It is possible we just missed something back then. It might be worth trying again. But I am pretty sure this would require a code change.

quote:

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What I'd objecting to about the smart bombs is that you instantly know where the facility is, and can kill it in one shot, as I understand it. Same idea as the quantum (chesse) but less impossible.

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Your first point I don't agree with. Combat is not instantaneous. And it shouldn't be that difficult to figure out which facility is the space yard, and which facility is the resupply depot from orbit. Heck we can read license plates now. As far as destroying it in one shot, eh... Maybe a nuke would do it? Even so I can maybe agree that facilities should take damage instead of being destroyed. They are BIG afterall. Maybe the smart bomb incapacitates the resupply depot for a month, instead of forcing them to rebuild it, which takes three. Or it reduces the space yards construction capacity for a while. But unfortunalty we don't have that ability now. All combat damage that does not completey destroy a facility gets erased at the end of the combat round. Again we are talking about differences in scale, not actual new techs and processes we would have to discover. Actually though, of all the things we can do in SEIV, the smart bomb is probably the one we are closest to being able to accomplish today.


Geoschmo

[This message has been edited by geoschmo (edited 18 July 2001).]

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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Actually the problem is way mine damage is calculated (non-combat mode) versus the way weapon damage is calculated (combat mode). Is has been tried and it did not work.Check it out.
It is possible we just missed something back then. It might be worth trying again. But I am pretty sure this would require a code change.

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Uhm. no. Check out P&N v2.0
The Ion/Tachyon/NullSpace mines are really cool.
I haven't tried the Quad2Shields ramming warheads yet, but they should work too.
I was concerned about the ion mines not being destroyed on detonation (since they have no engines & their damage type was engines only), but the game kills each one when they attack.

quote:

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Ablative Armor II (2) has a structure/tonnage ratio of 4.67, while Ablative Armor IV (1) has a ratio of 5.25.

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That stuff can't be anything like my original Ablative armor!
Since you have fractional S/T ratios, the armor is not 1kT in size. And the 5 S/T ratio is pretty low.

There were two things the made the armor what it was:
1) 1kT size. Thus, if you get hurt, you're out of the war for a long time.
2) very high HP/kT (8-15). This way, it provides competitive protection (compared to shields).

1)-> 40x longer to repair than shields.
2)-> 50% more hitpoints than shields.
This was supposed to be "the best protection around, but one battle only".
Good for defense ships (which you can mothball for a year while they repair), but useless on non-kamikaze attack ships (since attack ships are not close to the powerful repair facilities).

As an example, an LC with 20% of its size going to defenses (equiv of 2 shield generators -> 750 shields), you get 1200 hitpoints using Ablative Vs.
However, you have 80 armor components, so if your ship gets into a battle, it will take 10 turns for a high tech repair bay 3 (80kT) to finish (8 per turn).
And, since you do not fight with single ships, you will need one repair base for every 2 or 3 LCs in order to repair them all in one year.
IMO, this balances the high hitpoint value of the armor quite nicely; you survive the first attack, but have to spend a very long time under repair afterwards.

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[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 18 July 2001).]

[ZeroAdunn]

Sorry, I could be completely wrong about this but...

Shouldn't laser weapons be long range, I thought that was the whole point of lasers, they never lose power because they are just light? I think lasers should be very long range low power.

[geoschmo]

SJ,

Downloaded the P&N mod. Lots of cool sounding stuff in the components.txt file, but does it all work?

You've tested the weapon only and engine only mines and they do what they are supposed to?

Geo

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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Shouldn't laser weapons be long range, I thought that was the whole point of lasers, they never lose power because they are just light? I think lasers should be very long range low power.

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IMO: Long range, low power, and accuracy bonus (since you don't have to lead the target by quite as much).

quote:

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Downloaded the P&N mod. Lots of cool sounding stuff in the components.txt file, but does it all work?
You've tested the weapon only and engine only mines and they do what they are supposed to?

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Almost.
Yes.

Known stuff that dosen't work:
-Shield regeneration for units. SE4 just dosen't check for regen on units. The shields still work fine, and whenever Aaron gets SR for units added, the bonus abilities will kick in.
-Swashbuckler Pods. SE4 dosen't even try to capture a ship using a fighter-mounted boarding party. Unfortunate, really, but I left them in for now. Hopefully one of the future patches will enable them.
-Emissive Armor. Well, it dosen't work right in original SE4 either.

Unknown at this time:
-Quad2Shields ramming warheads

Known (& modified) stuff that works:
-Core mount guns (boy do they ever)
-Engines (basic property of my mod)
-Ablative Armor
-BuckyTube Gel Plating (even works with AIs)
-Nomadic Resource vehicles (Gets resources from space)
-Pirate Tech restrictions
-Swashbucklers (Very Wimpy! You need 2 to capture 1 crew quarters, so a solo 'buckler is nearly useless)
-Harmonic shielding
-Temporal cloning vats
-BattleMoons
-Drop Pods & Bio-enhanced Fanatic
-Healing Crystal.
-Psy armor
-Bio-Crystal armor
-Spirit Crew Quarters
-Living ships racial trait
-Heavy Bombardment Missiles
-PDC vs PDL
-Small space Yard
-Heavy Fighter, Massive Fighter
-Tachyon Dampener.
-Heavy Shield Generator
-Hardened Mini-Shield Generator
-Mini shield regenerator
-Tachyon mines
-Ion Mines
and more...

------------------
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-<Download V2.0>-
-<Download V1.6>-
-<Download compatible EMPs for P&N v1.6>-
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[Krsqk]

SJ,

quote:

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That stuff can't be anything like my original Ablative armor!
Since you have fractional S/T ratios, the armor is not 1kT in size. And the 5 S/T ratio is pretty low.

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Ablative TL 1 armor is 4kt; TL 2 is 3 kt; TL 3 is 2kt. I did this to make the tech "grid" possible. Here are the S/T ranges for each level:

A.A. I (1): 15/4 (3.75); A.A. V (1): 23/4 (5.75)
A.A. I (2): 12/3 (4.0) ; A.A. V (2): 22/3 (7.33)
A.A. I (3): 9/2 (4.5) ; A.A. V (3): 19/2 (9.5)

Stealth armor is 30kt and goes from 2.67 to 5.33 max; Reflective armor is 50kt and goes from 2.4 to 4.0 max. Reflective may need to be reduced to 40kt to make it more competitive with Stealth Armor. Ablative beats these types out at all levels, though.

***Note: I just checked Std. Armor. Armor I is 50/10 (5.0) and goes up to 120/10 (12.0) for Armor XV, so I need to drop Armor a little (or increase size to 15kt) and up Ablative.

quote:

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There were two things the made the armor what it was:
1) 1kT size. Thus, if you get hurt, you're out of the war for a long time.
2) very high HP/kT (8-15). This way, it provides competitive protection (compared to shields).

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1) I tried to preserve this aspect; I think that it will provide an alternative to Std. Armor, once I balance that.
2) There are no shields, so I felt justified in modifying the concept a little. I agree that the very high S/T ratio is necessary when shields are allowed. BTW, I started with the values in Devnullmod and didn't look at the P&N comps.txt file; that may change what I see as reasonable/necessary.

ZA,

quote:

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Shouldn't laser weapons be long range, I thought that was the whole point of lasers, they never lose power because they are just light? I think lasers should be very long range low power.

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I see your point. I took the fading laser idea from another post in the previous thread, but on second thought, I'll probably follow your line of thinking. Light does fade out over time (at least theoretically); but probably not over the comparatively small space of combat.

Hope that answers your questions. Now some more questions for you all.

What do you think about 1) engine disabling warheads/missiles, 2) weapon reload increase/disruption (i.e., EMP weapons), 3) monoliths, and 4) damage-reducing components? I think 4) was mentioned in the previous thread, but I don't remember the rationale or the response it got. Also, what about short range, low damage, high reload AP weapons? Would players load up on those? Or is it feasible to have a seeker with Skips Armor, so PD has a chance to kill it? We already have multiple-explosive projectiles, multi-layer reactive armor, etc.; something similar might be possible with a missile payload.

That's it for now. Gettin' crackin' on it!

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"The Unpronounceable" Krsqk
Basic Tech Mod

[This message has been edited by Krsqk (edited 23 July 2001).]

[Phoenix-D]

"4) damage-reducing components? I think 4)"

OK, how this works again:

Take a shield. Remove all the shield graphics from the races. Call it Damage Control. Now, give it a shield strength of about 10 and a regen of the same. Poof, it reduces damage by that number per turn.

Phoenix-D

[ZeroAdunn]

Engine damaging weapons: Sure, just make them missiles, you could say they lock onto the exhaust fumes of a ship, then seek and destroy.

Reload disruption: Not sure how you would explain that away.

Monoliths: Keep monoliths, just mod them to be a lot weeker than reg. facilities. Enough to balance it at least, you can produce 300 of each with one monolith (maybe call it an outpost, or central complex) or you can produce 1000 of one type with a specialized facility. It doesn't sound like it's worth it but if you land on a planet that can produce all three well, then a monolith would be usefull.

Make armor piercing weapons, we have armor piercing weapons now.

I think you should mod missiles too. Make them one fire per round and maybe 20 kt (it doesn't sound usefull, but it is). Then make torpedoes pretty much missiles with multiple fires per combat but less damage... did I mention that earlier.

[This message has been edited by ZeroAdunn (edited 18 July 2001).]

[Krsqk]

Phoenix,

I understand (at least now) how to implement the Damage Control comps; I'm just wondering what excuse I can give for them. What systems do we have today/in the near future that would approximate this effect?

RE: Armor Balance. After looking at the P&N comps.txt, I modified the Std. Armor and Ablative Armor families to better reflect the original intent of the tech. Here's where it stands now:

Std. Armor raised to 15kt; structure runs from 30 to 100.
Armor I = 2.0 S/T
Armor XV = 6.67 S/T

Ablative Armor ratios reworked. Researching a higher tech gives, on average, a 1.25x better S/T ratio (was 1.125x). Increased starting ratio of A.A. I (1) to 4.75 (was 3.75). S/T ranges are now:

A.A. I (1): 19/4 (4.75); A.A. V (1): 27/4 (6.75)
A.A. I (2): 17/3 (5.67); A.A. V (2): 25/3 (8.33)
A.A. I (3): 14/2 (7.00); A.A. V (3): 21/2 (10.5)

Hopefully, this will correct the imbalance.

RE: the Limited Unlimited Supply Generator, I don't know of any way to generate supplies without requiring either 1) component use, or 2) solar generation. Am I missing something? I think a limited Quantum Reactor comp would be good, but these are the only solutions I can think of.

RE: Emergency Supplies, I removed them for exactly the reason expressed elsewhere: If they were built into the ship, they might as well be part of the general supply system; and if they can hold more supplies/kt, then why not exclusively use those components for supply storage instead of bulky cargo containers?

RE: Solar Sails, I don't think they should be included due to conflict/abuse with P&N style propulsion. Giving bonus/extra movement doesn't work in this situation, and giving standard movement can be abused (ships with 40 Solar Sail III--much greater range, minimal supply usage than with best engines in P&N). I may include one level, but it would probably not add much movement; today's solar sails are quite large and would take a great amount of time to generate significant speed. They're probably better off not included, just to keep with the thrust of the mod.

Krsqk out.

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"The Unpronounceable" Krsqk
Basic Tech Mod

[This message has been edited by Krsqk (edited 23 July 2001).]