SEIV Modding 101: A Tutorial

[spoon]

Is this really true (in Leaky Armor):

Let's take a system with two types of leaky armor as an example. Light Armor is 1 kiloton in size and has, say, 20 structure (hit points). Heavy Armor is 10 kilotons in size and has 100 structure.

In this system, the Light Armor has twice as many hit points per kiloton of space taken as the Heavy Armor. This means that it should create ships much stronger than Heavy Armor can, right? Well, not quite. Even though the Light Armored ships can take a lot more damage, you will find that the heavy armored ships tend to win more often. This is because weapon hits are more likely to strike a component of Heavy Armor than other internal components with the HA ship than they are to strike a component of Light Armor than an internal on a LA ship. The large amount of hit points that the Heavy Armor has individually gives it a greater chance to be struck. So while the LA ships can take more damage overall, they tend to be more leaky, so vital internals (engines, weapons) tend to be struck more quickly than they do on the HA ships. The Heavy Armor has more hit points than any (unmounted) weapon, after all. Of course, it turns out that the best design is a combination of LA and HA.

Say you had two 200kt ships. One had 100kt of LA, the other had 100kt of HA. Wouldn't the leaky armor on the LA ship be twice as likely to be hit than the armor on the HA ship, since the LA ship has twice the amount of Structure?

[ August 04, 2004, 18:52: Message edited by: spoon ]

[Atrocities]

I am not sure, but have you added a section, or just a note, about how the AI uses the racial points in the General file. When it runs out as it goes down the list (Characteristics / Advanced Characteristics, it will stop when it reaches 0 points even if the Last item is free?

[Fyron]

Originally posted by spoon:
Is this really true (in Leaky Armor):

Say you had two 200kt ships. One had 100kt of LA, the other had 100kt of HA. Wouldn't the leaky armor on the LA ship be twice as likely to be hit than the armor on the HA ship, since the LA ship has twice the amount of Structure?

The formula that determines which component is hit from a particular shot is biased towards higher hit point components. The more hit points a specific component has compared to other components on the ship, the greater the bias becomes. This is based upon empirical evidence, mostly from testing by Suicide Junkie. Make some sample components and test them out in the simulator. The ship with heavy armor tends to win much more often than the ship with light armor.

[Raging Deadstar]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

quote:

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Originally posted by spoon:
Is this really true (in Leaky Armor):

Say you had two 200kt ships. One had 100kt of LA, the other had 100kt of HA. Wouldn't the leaky armor on the LA ship be twice as likely to be hit than the armor on the HA ship, since the LA ship has twice the amount of Structure?

The formula that determines which component is hit from a particular shot is biased towards higher hit point components. The more hit points a specific component has compared to other components on the ship, the greater the bias becomes. This is based upon empirical evidence, mostly from testing by Suicide Junkie. Make some sample components and test them out in the simulator. The ship with heavy armor tends to win much more often than the ship with light armor.

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So would i be right in assuming that the ship with Light Armour would although have more hitpoints in general would be more prone to components inside being destroyed while Heavy Armour while not affording as much protection hit point wise would stop internals being destroyed as much...all in theory of course

Just curious as i never understood the leaky armour thing

[ August 04, 2004, 22:18: Message edited by: Raging Deadstar ]

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Raging Deadstar:
So would i be right in assuming that the ship with Light Armour would although have more hitpoints in general would be more prone to components inside being destroyed while Heavy Armour while not affording as much protection hit point wise would stop internals being destroyed as much...all in theory of course

Correct.

[Fyron]

Tutorial is finally up to date. A few errors corrected here and there, new abilities and such from 1.91 added, etc.

[Captain Kwok]

[quote:Imperator Fyron]
Tutorial is finally up to date. A few errors corrected here and there, new abilities and such from 1.91 added, etc.

[/quote]

It's about time. :P

I have a copy of it at work that I use during work on my SFEmod and I kept noticing little things that I'd post in your SE.net forums. I find the abilities chapter most useful.

[Captain Kwok]

Error!

I can't find descriptions for the new abilities added in 1.91 in chapter 16 where they should be!

[Fyron]

Captain Kwok said:
Error!

I can't find descriptions for the new abilities added in 1.91 in chapter 16 where they should be!

Well look harder!

[Fyron]

Tutorial has been updated!

http://se4modding.spaceempires.net/