Proportions mod 1.5 released

[Osweld]

I found a bug, where if I upgrade a ship design that has combat sensors II (I haven't tried it with any other Versions of it) the computer switches them to a fire control center which is meant for weapon platforms, and isn't normally available to ships.

[PvK]

Confirmed. SE IV isn't checking the vehicle type restriction when upgrading, because they have the same family number. I changed the family numbers, which fixes this, so it won't do this in the next Version of the mod.

PvK

[PsychoTechFreak]

1) Other than the supplies of the engines, the lowlevel QRs actually do nothing, I have built a Cruiser with QR I (claims: generates 15000 fuel between re-energizings) but nothing else than the engine supplies are displayed, and after they (about 1000) are gone, the ship runs out of fuel.

3) I think you are right about the cost balance. Actually what I have tested was in the simulator, fully human control. The base was without any armor or shields, I just wanted to observe what armor-skipping weapons do under the changed rules of armor physics. One massive Null-Space weapon destroyed one or two armor 4 (I did not use the costly 5,6 or 7) and nothing happened with the engines or board controls of the ram ship. So Null-Space is not armor skipping at all in your universe ? Actually I would like to learn what particularly you have modded to get a not-always-first-armor-peeling physics in your mod. Could you explain it to a Modding greenhorn like me ?

[PvK]

quote:

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Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:
1) Other than the supplies of the engines, the lowlevel QRs actually do nothing, I have built a Cruiser with QR I (claims: generates 15000 fuel between re-energizings) but nothing else than the engine supplies are displayed, and after they (about 1000) are gone, the ship runs out of fuel.

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Ack! You are right - I neglected to put in the actual ability value! I just fixed this - thanks!

quote:

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3) I think you are right about the cost balance. Actually what I have tested was in the simulator, fully human control. The base was without any armor or shields, I just wanted to observe what armor-skipping weapons do under the changed rules of armor physics. One massive Null-Space weapon destroyed one or two armor 4 (I did not use the costly 5,6 or 7) and nothing happened with the engines or board controls of the ram ship. So Null-Space is not armor skipping at all in your universe ? Actually I would like to learn what particularly you have modded to get a not-always-first-armor-peeling physics in your mod. Could you explain it to a Modding greenhorn like me ?

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Sure. While the organic and crystal armors and stealth/scatter are I think essentially unchanged, the standard and emissive armors have had their ability to absorb damage before all other components removed, but their damage capacity greatly increased. The effect actually works really well, and is much more like actual ship damage and armor. That is, on a heavily-armored ship (one with a lot of and/or good quality armor components), most damage will go against armor components, and a lot of it will even "bounce" (be accumulated until there is enough to destroy an armor component; the remainder is ignored when combat ends). But it is still possible to damage equipment without "shooting off all the armor first." Some shots will hit useful components rather than armor, possibly before any armor components are destroyed. Again, quite realistic and interesting.

The sacrifice, however, is that armor-skipping weapons don't skip standard armor in Proportions. (Standard armor does not have the "Armor" ability - it just has a high structure/size ratio.) They do skip the other armor types, though, and have had their damage upped a bit, to try to balance this out.

PvK

[PsychoTechFreak]

I guess you are aware of this, but just to avoid a possible misunderstanding in my sometimes poor wording... The setting event frequency medium (10%) and the "Change Bad Event Chance - System" at -15 does not exclude events absolutely AFAIK. My guess about these modifiers is: Either -15 means -1.5% or the 10% of the event frequency will be reduced by 15%.

[E. Albright]

quote:

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Originally posted by PvK:
Where is the crew quarters resistance accomplished/moddable in the data files? Is it cumulative per crew component on a ship?

[...]

Edit: I should've said, "a ship with two crew quarters." I.e., in unmodded, a single boarding party 1 can almost always capture a battlecruiser or smaller if the target ship has no security stations.

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This reminded me of some research I'd done on this long, long ago, and prompted me to go out and look at the Gold demo to see if it still seemed to hold true. Lo and behold, it did (tho' I couldn't really put it through its paces w/ higher-level BPs and SSs).

To summarize my old-time research (which agrees w/ what SJ said, to be sure), the "value" of a boarding party must exceed that of the boarded vessel, with the "values" for relevant components as follows: a crew quarter (CQ) is worth .8, a level of boarding party (BP) is worth 1, and a level of security station (SS) is worth 2.4. Thus, Ship A (BP I x 4, or BP IV x 1) will be able to capture Ship B (CQ x 4) or Ship C (CQ x 1, SS I x 1), but not Ship D (CQ x 5) or Ship E (CQ x 2, SS I x 1).

Oh, and IIRC, Master Computers don't help at all, but the Last time I messed with this I was getting screwy results w/ 'em, so figuring out if they are in fact w/o value in this respect is left as an exercise for the reader...

E. Albright

Edit: thread w/ old research summarized above is here.

[ 18 March 2002: Message edited by: ealbright ]

[Rlaney]

Did you actually manage to change armor so that it isn't "destroyed first" but actually blocks some damage in 1.5? How did you manage to do that? I may just be missing an obvious but I've been starin at the screen so long editing AI files that it's all a blur to me.

[PsychoTechFreak]

Rlaney, as far as I understand, PvK has removed the traditional armor ability from emissive armor and the yellow plain armors. He raised the resistance points of the armor against the resistance ability of the other components, then it is a kind of more chance to hit the armor, but still a small chance to hit another component.

[PvK]

quote:

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Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:
Rlaney, as far as I understand, PvK has removed the traditional armor ability from emissive armor and the yellow plain armors. He raised the resistance points of the armor against the resistance ability of the other components, then it is a kind of more chance to hit the armor, but still a small chance to hit another component.

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Yes. It's not a change in 1.5 either - it was that way from the beginning. I really like the way it works, except that armor-skipping weapons don't skip it.

ealbright, when you write "a level of boarding party," you mean every 5 points of the "Boarding Attack" ability, right?

And, "a level of security station" would be 15 points of "Boarding Defense"?

PvK

[dogscoff]

PvK- Will you be releasing a "wrinkle-fixed" 1.5x before we start our multiplayer, or shall I just download 1.5 from this thread?