System Ships and warping

Nice idea reminds me of Traveler the RPG where you had system defence boats (SDB) some times as big as battle ships which couldent jump (pass a warp point) and various classes of Battle carrier imagine a base ship which could launch a squadren of light cruisers the base ship could jump but the cruisers (battle riders) could not and would be stranded if the Carrier was lost. the other isue was that SDB's could carry more weapons and armour than jump ships bec ause the jump drive was heavy and bulky and consumes hefty amounts of fuel (suply)

Dayum... I sure look forward to the day your mod is complete and a reasonable number of bugs/balance is dealt with. This sounds like an elite idea yes. Whether you can do it with a "does this ship have a warp component?" or whether you'd have to do it the long winded way of "you need this other hull to pass through warp point"... you'll find out I guess.

What's your mod going to be called btw?

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

my version of htis would be to do it the same way but just make that inherent in the engine weight?

i dunno.

you could always do it that way and then mod fighters (change name to system ship) where some are HUGE.

A Base ship would work fine as is given that the fastest I have managed with one is speed 7 in a game where a frigate managed speed 19 the launch bays for a light cruiser would be big enough to limit the other systems on board a great deal to perhaps a few defensive weapons and perhaps a repair bay

Ahahaha, docking whole ships inside a 'warp carrier'... I like it, but I do wonder about the logistics of it. Tell me if it works and whether supplies/cargo gets screwed while doing this.

Mind you, if it really doesn't work, then take the alternate option: 2 hulls for each size. A warpable hull and a non-warpable 'system' hull. In fact, why not simply get rid of Organic and Crystalline hulls and give them some other compensation in return? Otherwise if you implemented this idea we'd be absolutely cluttered in ship sizes.

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

All this seems really cool, but erm... wouldn't this make warp point defense WAY too easy?

The system ships will always have the advatage with more space due to the large size of the warp drive, and the fact that the attacking ship just used up a ton of supply.

Warp size would make it impossible for an attack, if you can only send through 3 frigates at a time, and there's a dreadnough on the otherside... it's time to give up the war.

As for gigantic warp carriers, with the cargo requirement for the system ships, and 1 movement, they are practically sitting ducks.

Of all the ideas, the warp engine component seems the best balance wise, as it will still be possible to mount an attack, even if the odds are stacked against you.

Gigantic ship carriers might work with a lot of modding. For example, if you set the galaxy to no warp point, and give the carrier the warp creation ability, and somehow script the warp point to auto-close after 1 turn or something. That way warp point will open randomly, and it will be hard to defend, as the defenders will have to scramble, giving you time to launch your ships, basically mimicking battlestar galatica's jump drives system. Though it would take a lot of work (especially the auto close part).

The warp size thing, while cool, just begs the warp fortress strategy, and I have no idea to make it plausible. As it is, once you secure one, it's as good as closing the warp down completely.

Silly question couldn't you just alter the (forgot the name of the weapon that opens warp points)to not be destroyed after one use? That would allow a ship to open as many warp points as it wants. I'm starting to experiment with modding and am just asking.... Please spare me from the flaming abis. =)

been tried but all stelar manipulation components seem to be hard coded to break when used. The code which goes with them to do this is redundent though you can use it to break other components on use.

I'm not sure if you were refering to my post, but if it is:

The problem is not that the component gets destroyed, if it's just that, you could always just put a repair bay on the ship. Or heck, you could just give the warp ship both abilities inherently. While it's not a problem for a player to do this, I don't know if it's possible to make the AI understand that it needs to load ships, open warp, close warp, etc. Of course all of this is assuming that we can open warps to random sectors too...

Like I said, the idea is far fetch, and requires a lot of work.

The only plausible one is the system ship approach, in which you could have multiple version of a ship, one without warp ability, and one with it. Then require the warpable ships to carry a worthless component call "warp drive" that have negative supply... (not very elegant, but it works)

Y'know ... I like the idea of warp point size actually limiting the amount of tonnage that can pass it in one turn. Its rather strange finding a 500kt warp point and being able to send through it, all at once, 10 Battleships with around/over 1000kt each.

As for the argument that it creates a warp point fortress ... what about Drones? I've never bothered with them in the games I've been playing, but they can warp, can't they? Make it so they can transit once, fight whatever's on the other side, and then they're lost (siimilar to missile pods in the Crusade, In death Ground, The shiva Option, and Insurrection books) without counting towards the warp point size limit (effectively, fighters and drones are supposed to be very small craft - measuring them in terms of kt just makes them seem too freaking big. Fighters cannot warp, but enough drones launching missiles at the rate of one per launcher on the drone would be enough to discourage the warp fortress, or at least make it extremely dangerous to use).

Not sure if its actually working, but there is a 'Warp Point - Ability Required To Get Through' in MainStrings. So systems ships might be doable...?

Unfortunately, that one says "Not used." in the modding document.

I, on the other hand, would like to see some sort of 'intergalactic' ships which could actually traverse the space between solar systems without the use of warp points. Obviously the trip would take a fair deal of time, but it would add alot of interesting possibilities.

I agree with that - Gravitational Shields should prevent star destruction. It shouldn't stop warp point manipulation - or storm manipulation for that matter (I like to cause them for camouflage or other strategic reasons).

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

You can still block new WP creations at all but chokepoints through WP creation and destruction. You can't create a new WP Into a system that has 10 WPs already. It takes a little more planning, but it is still quite feasible to turtle invincibly with limited WP transit amounts.

In practice that doesn't happen all that much except in full-tech games.