Engines and Movement

Once the "Get Vehicle Size" function is implemented for modding, it will be easy to do exactly as you want.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

The one engine equals one movement no matter the size ship was one of my biggest complaints with SEIV so I always would make a mod to fix the problem. I was hoping they would address that in SEV since otherwise you always make just the largest ships available and there is no use for the smaller ones once you research a larger hull. I also would greatly increase the cost of larger ships so that fleets of smaller ones would be cheaper and larger ones should be made mainly as flagships, task force leaders, etc. Unfortunately I never managed to get the AI to build according to my adjustments, so it made the already weak AI even weaker.

Big ships should be EXPENSIVE to build, but CHEAP to maintain (otherwise there would be only small ships).

I like the way the strategic level board game “Federation and Empire” based on “Star Fleet Battles” handled it back in the early 80’s. Ships had a command rating. Big ships were much more expensive to build, but you could only fight with as many as the flagship could control at one time even if more were present so you always needed one in every battle. That made for a more realistic mix where you might have a command cruiser or heavy carrier with some light cruisers, destroyers, frigates etc. to protect the more expensive ship.

I guess I think the way real life navies operate with smaller ships screening the expensive capital ships. In real life you can build and maintain a LOT of escort ships for the cost of one aircraft carrier or aegis cruiser.

Actually I plan on doing the opposite, maintenance wise, for big ships and making them available at the start. In space, there's really no limits to construction size. But research makes the logistics and management better.

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As for the get-vehicle-size, I think that would be a great thing for modding. Each ship could get the same benefit from engines, but need more size based on the tonnage of the ship.

Accelerational forces generally aren't that big of a deal. If anything, any civilization that can build a space yard can likely build a mile high skyscraper at 1g. Shorten the skyscraper and increase the gees and you have a very similar scenario, structure-wise. Space ships can be skyscrapers for all that aerodynamics cares, since it doesn't apply. But I agree with you in that engine tonnage should be different on a per-movement basis.

I do also think the idea of ordinance being an explosive hazard is nice...

I agree about larger ships needing to have more engine tonnage to move the same speed as a smaller ship.

Also, I like the idea about some things being explosive hazards. Ordnance Using Weapons, Ordnance storage, Ion engines ONLY, and maybe a few others.

The reason I say Ion engines only, is because I believe contra-terrane engines are anti-matter type engines. And so they would use anti-matter as fuel. Which, actually would produce the propulsion for the ship by harnessing the energy it releases when it comes in contact with the exact opposite type of matter and explodes. It really only reacts when it comes in contact with its exact opposite type of matter. Im sure also, that once you reach the higher level engines, they would ahve similar systems, and maybe even less volatile.

This actually brings up another thing I would like to see. It annoys me that all the engine types use just "generic supplies" as do weapons. I would love to see you actually have to match supply and engine/weapon types. Such as anti-matter supplies for anti-matter engines, and photon supplies for jacketed photon engines. Same with supply usage weapons, which might or might not have the same supply type as the engines, depending on the launcher/beam type in the weapon.

On a side point having seen games where stored ordinance was explosive I would add that it would tend to balance the running away shooting missiles tactic (I like Pathians and shooting backwards with bow at the gallop requires one hell of a lot of riding and archery skill to do)if a penetrating hit on a ship packed with ordinance for these missiles could cause it to explode catastrophically.

Ship that never gets hit will never explode from ordonance hit.

Parthian ships usualy die fast once being hit.

I agree, and it'd end my habit of putting ordinance right next to my bridge, life support, and crew quarters=)

Isn't this issue addressed with the balance mod?
I know I was able to create a mod that handled this by changing the "Movement per engine" value.

....or am I missing something?

I did it too in my mod (mostly using Kwok codes). Basically, larger ship uses more engines. It is possible to create larger engines for the larger ships (and limit the availiability to thoses), but it just add more entries to the componment file and require more lines of code in the scripts so the AI can use it. No, it's way easier to just make the larger ships use more engines, not much extra coding nessessary.

Lo All,

I think you guys are approaching this from the wrong angle. Instead of adding new components and new technologies for bigger-engines, why not use the existing parameter "Engines per move" that's in the VehicleSizes.txt file?

Correct me if I'm wrong, right now that value is set to 1 for all vehicle sizes meaning 1 engine = 1 movement. Well, if we were to change that to 2 for larger hulls (like Cruisers), it would require 2 engines to move 1 hex. Ergo, you have your increased engine tonnage to move bigger ships.

A frigate would only require 12 engine to move 12 hexes wheras a Cruiser would now require 24 engine in order to move that same 12 hexes. Also, if the frigate takes 3 engine hits, its movement is reduced to 9 hexes wheras a cruiser taking 3 engine hits would only be slowed down to 10 hexes. Bigger ships cost more to move but take more damage to slow them down. Makes sense to me.

"Do not be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DVader

The advantage of having larger engines is avoid forcing the user into the tedious task of adding 24 engines to a design...

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

The autocomplete can add them for you, so it's not a serious issue. But lots of low tonnage items on a ship mean less design slots for other things on larger ships. In my mod, the larger ships can carry a lot of tonnage, but can run out of slots to put more equipment once you have added many low tonnage items...

Oh, okay. I see what you mean. I just thought we could make use of the mechanisms in place without having to do extensive modding to create new techs and whatnot.

I'm still relatively new to the game. Found the demo just before Christmas and played it to death over the holidays; I was very fortunate enough to find the boxed game available on the shelf. Since then, I've played SEV everyday and done some minor modding of my own - no scripting yet.

"Do not be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DVader

The modding isn't hard, but sometime you have to change lots of lines of code and it can become tedious to make sure everything work as intended (a small typo can go a long way in screwing things up). Changing componments is easy, but making the AI make use of them is much more troubles.

Modding this game can take a lot of time, but the results can be amazing. There is so much that can be modded, we are just scratching the surface...

You get fractionnal movement rate. You have to edit the scripts to make the AI add the right amount of engines.

Yeah, Badger, I found that out too.

It works fine for the Human designs but AI doesn't know to add the right number of engines to account for the "Engines per Move" ratio. You have to reset the values in Script_AI_GlobalSettings.txt.

BTW, how do you re-compile this script? I keep getting errors saying variable name not found. I think it's something to do with missing global variables or declarations but there's no makefile for the Script_AI_??? scripts. Thanks in advance.

"Do not be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DVader

The value set in globalsettings just give the maximum the ship design is allowed to put on a ship, but actual limits must be set in another way. Just look how Kwok did it in his mod...

Simple, you can't compile this alone. It's just one script...

"Do not be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DVader