Devnull Mod Gold: updates and discussion

[Toryin]

I like that idea...

Smaller, Cheaper, less powerful shields for the smaller ships...
Larger, More Expensive, more powerful shields for the larger ships and bases...

Similar to shielding on fighters.

Either that or a higher regen rate on the larger ships.

[TerranC]

If possible, maybe institute a weapon that will balance the shields?

A weapon that does some kind of percentage based on ship hull, maybe?

IE:

Dreadnought 1000kt has 750 Shields
Escort 150kt has 300 shields

A weapon is fired at the two ships that deals damage half of the hull size.

Dreadnought takes 500, and left with 250 shields
Escort takes 150 and left with 150 shields

And the escort survives longer than the dreadnought.

... if it could be done...

[Rollo]

Spoo - the reasoning behind this is that the shield generator's strength would be diluted more on a bigger ship. I won't use the dreaded R-word, but it kinda makes sense to me. Bigger ships would still be able to take more pounding, simply because they can carry more generators. I just thought it would be cool to have smaller ship's shields more 'concentrated'. I haven't completely made up my mind about the actual numbers, but the plan is to balance the mounts and the shield components in such a way that a battleship with maxed out shields will not actually have weaker shields (still something close to 400), and the shields on a LC with medium tech shields would also be roughly the same as now. But if you stick a max tech shield on a LC or DS, it would have a greater shield strength (maybe 500 on a LC or CR, and 600 on a DS). Making shields cheaper on the smaller ships is a good idea and would go along with my plans.

Toryin - welcome to the forum btw . The sizes of the shield components would always be the same, simply because it causes less headaches with existing AI designs. More powerful shields on the larger ships is not so good IMO. Bigger ships already have the better weapon mounts. What I like to do is giving the player a choice whether he likes to go for the better weapon mounts or stick to smaller hulls for some ships and use more effective shields.

Overall I do not want to make the changes and differnces too drastic and disadvantage the bigger hulls too much. That would just weaken the AI too much, since it usually uses the biggest hull available.

TerranC - that is a very cool idea. I am not aware of any method to change the weapon damage based on the target, though.

Rollo

[Toryin]

Thanks Rollo, actually I've been lurking for quite awhile, just finally had a free day to post *shrug*. Anyways, it was more of a daydream then anything else. The problem would always be the AI and there's not much to fix that. My thought however was more about with the more effective shield mounts on the larger ships, you make it exponentialy expensive, so that its costs a whole heck of a lot more to use a "Captial Shield" then a regular shield.

Then again, in a human vs human game this would be real fun, but in a comp vs human, I'm sure the comp would die quickly to a human battelship.

[Rollo]

Toryin, I see what you mean (I *think* ). Anyway, the shield mounts have been canned for now. Maybe I'll put them in a next Version, maybe not. I'll need some more pondering on this, but want to get next Version out ASAP.

I have some more work to do on a new AI. And after that tidy up things. I estimate that the next Version will be out by the end of this week.

Rollo

[Rollo]

Taa-Daaaa!
Here is the new Version:

Devnull Mod Gold Version 1.70 (about 4.6 MB)

patch from Version 1.63 to 1.70 (about 1.9 MB)

Note: This Version is not compatible with older savegames.

summary of changes for Version 1.70:
* two new races added (United Flora, Sonne)
* overhaul and additions to the racial combo techs
* raised mine limit per sector to 500
* all ship/fleet training is now system wide
* new planet size (extra huge) and new ruins tech
* doubled cargo for domed colonies
* added Fyron's Quadrant Mod 1.13
* updated weapon sounds to Gold
* loads of little and not so little changes and fixes (check readme)

Have fun,
Rollo

[Trajan]

Very nice work Rollo.

Thanks a ton! now my wife will have yet another reason to beat me about the head and shoulders for spending too much time on the computer.



Oh...one question...will the cpu ever choose the monster race as a random cpu opponent, or do I have to place them in the game manually?

Cheers!
Trajan

[ September 06, 2002, 16:59: Message edited by: Trajan ]

[Rollo]

Trajan, I have set the personality number in the monsters_AI_settings.txt file to -1 to make it very unlikely that the Monsters are selected as a random opponent. I wanted the monsters to be an option for the game setup and not a regular race. So if you want to play with them, it is best to select them manually.

If you like them to be added by random more frequently, you can change the personality number to 1, 2, 3, or 4 in the above mentioned file.

If you don't like to play with them at all and don't want them added by random in any case, you can simply remove the monsters folder in the pictures/races directory.

Hope that helps,
Rollo

[Rollo]

So did anybody (besides Trajan) check this out, yet?
Anybody got any errors or oddities?
Or does the 1.70 Version seem to be stable enough to be added to PBW?

Rollo

[ September 09, 2002, 01:14: Message edited by: Rollo ]

[TerranC]

Wow, those imagemod pictures give that sci fi feeling Good job.

but one thing: did you only program Extra Huge planets to use imagemod?