A Potential mod. |
Greetings everyone, it's me again, the guy who made the semi-crystalline Shield Generators a while back. Here
I've decided to go into full Mod-mode, but I'll need help, mostly because I'm currently trying to revamp the Racial Techs.
Currently, the Organic ships are completed, and I am partway done with the Crystalline.
Should I re-do the TEMPORAL trait and grant them special ships?
In this case, they'd have more room that their normal brethren, and be naturally more resistant to damage. (yes, from the hull up) But, as a partial compromise, they'd have appoximately 5% higher maintenance costs.
The Working title is Project Sannikov.
I'm allso including the general notes I've made so far, please forgive their haphazard nature.
I've had most of my ideas (new, pulled from Balance, pulled from IRM) written down for a while, just never found the interest to actually work on them.
Regardless, the first generation of Crystalline Hulls is working, though far from done.
Y'see, I've tied in Crystal hells to the Shields tech. You research shields, and your ship gains a permanent, regenerating, is-bolstered-by-damage shield.
It's kinda wimpy though, but a free life-time shield is still free.
Research Phased shields, and the free shield upgrades to Phased.
There will be 2 kinds of ORGANIC ARMOR. A bark/bone type, and the standard "fleshy" kind.
I plan for all of the organic components to regenerate. The Organic Hulls will bolster this regeneration.
As per Inter-Related Mod, they'll take slightly more damage than other component types.
The Bark/Bone armor will regenerate slowly at best, but provide superior damage negation.
The "fleshy" armor will regenerate quickly, take at least double damage from all weapons, and act as a low-level Solar-Collector.
All armor will negate some damage, though I've yet to learn EKolis' trick to make it stack.
All armor can be bypassed, though generally only by the heavy weapons.
Point-defense, will feel more like a defense than an afterthought. They'll be in differing sizes, with varied damages.
More important, PD weapons target everything. Whether they can hurt the target is a whole different matter.
SOME SEMI-BAKED PD DESIGNS:
0.2sec reload, 1kt, PD Cannon Light-battery.
0.3sec reload, 20kt, Flack-Missile battery.
0.2sec reload, 3kt, "Porcupine" Shard-gatling battery.
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I'll make one later.
Re: A Potential mod.
Short term fix: Create two hulls. One Hull is standard shielding and the 2nd hull for Phase shielding becomes available when you reach XYZ research levels. The player decides what hull he builds. This gives you the option to customize their resource costs as well.
Re: A Potential mod.
Just put the Get_Tech_Level function in the ability formulas. Something like this for regular shield ability:
iif(Get_Tech_Level("Shields") < X, 30 * [%Level%], 0)
And this for phased shield ability:
iif(Get_Tech_Level("Shields") >= X, 30 * ([%Level%] + X), 0)
Assuming both types of shields come from the same tech area, and X is the point where they become phased, anyways. Modify as needed for what the actual tech reqs are.
Re: A Potential mod.
If you're gonna tweak the temporal guys, change their special shipyard to be an enhancer for the normal shipyard. Thus eliminating that irritating "scrap and rebuild" feature.
Re: A Potential mod.
Romulus68: Aye, that's the plan if I can't get the coding to work.
There is no resource difference between the shielded types. Tey do, however, cost a bit more than normal Crystalline hulls.
Fryon: Thank you, I'll test those right away.
marhawkman: That is a good idea. I'll put it straight into my notes.
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I'll make one later.
Re: A Potential mod.
Grrr, I hate to rag, but, Fryon, according to Devnull's Editor, the formulas provided are invalid. Even changing them to accomodate the required techs. (and replacing the X's with numbers)
General problem: iif function requires 3 parameter(s)
General problem: Function * requires 1 parameter(s)
General problem: Unmatched Parentheses. (No matter how I match them)
Did a test run anyway, and the game can't understand them. I have a feeling it's my limited understanding here that's killing everything.
I'll say this again, as it seems to be a major part of the problem.
I am very, very, bad with Formulas.
For now, I'll use the fall-back plan, and just make several versions of the Shielded ships, and put in requirements for Shields to use the hulls.
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I'll make one later.
Re: A Potential mod.
Greymon,
The most difficult part is learning the iif statement. The rest is pretty logical.
iif (condition, value_if_true, value_if_false)
hope that helps.
Re: A Potential mod.
Hexxon:
Some, though is each value a self-contained formula? And if so, how do I write out the entire statement?
On a related note:
Fryon, it seems I was wrong. I put the provided formulas in the wrong place. Gods I feel like such an idiot.
Still haven't gotten it working yet, but at least it's reporting as a valid formula now.
Onwards to making it work correctly.
____________________
I'll make one later.
Re: A Potential mod.
Did a test run anyway, and the game can't understand them. I have a feeling it's my limited understanding here that's killing everything.
I'll say this again, as it seems to be a major part of the problem.
I am very, very, bad with Formulas.
For now, I'll use the fall-back plan, and just make several versions of the Shielded ships, and put in requirements for Shields to use the hulls.
____________________
I'll make one later.
Devnull's editor is version 1.58 of SEV compatible. Some of the new functions added in 1.66 are not Devnull recognized. Trying loading the mod in a game and testing the options Fryon gave you.
Re: A Potential mod.
I wrote them off the top of my head, so there might be spacing issues with SE5's silly formula parser. 
Re: A Potential mod.
Hrmm, new question.
How do I make an OR command work? Do I need to encapsulate the entire command, or have I simply missed something?
By the way, the first half of the string works, I just can't get the second, really important bit to work.
Including the currently faulty command.
Get_Empire_Tech_Level("Innate Crystallurgy") >= 1 OR Get_Empire_Tech_Level("Aquired Crystallurgy") >= 1
On another note, I've begun implementing the multiple hulls plan. Sooo much work, even with Devnull's editor.
Allso, what do you guys think of having the "traditional" Racial techs be nothing but shortcuts?
Thus, the Or command above. The Crystallurgy trait would allow an empire early access to Crystalline tech, but at a severe Racial points penalty. Say, 2500? or should I make it an even 3000?
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I'll make one later.
Re: A Potential mod.
You really shouldn't implement multiple hulls... It only creates design problems for the player, and massive maintenance problems for the modder.
SE5's parser sometimes has issues with order of operations, and its easiest to get in the habit of encapsulating the operands for logical operators (OR, AND, NOT) in parenthesis. eg:
(GETL("A") >= 1) OR (GETL("B") >= 1)
Re: A Potential mod.
would it cause issues with the ai? (multiple hulls that is)
Re: A Potential mod.
Fryon:
Yes, I'm aware of that, that's why I wanted the IIF operator to work.
So that, when you gained Shields theory, your hulls would gain a weak shield.
At Shields lvl 1 or greater, it would have increased output.
At Phased shields, it'd be making Phased shields.
You get the point. (I hope.)
Sadly, even with copying an IIF command I found, I still haven't gotten it working.
Thus, Multiple (but very clearly labeled) hulls.
Should I get an IIF command working though, then it's back to twinned hulls. (1 unshielded, and 1 shielded for each type of hull.)
Afterall, there are going to be space disadvantages, as well as increased cost.
Thank you, that got the OR command working.
Pyroman:
Quite likely, but then, the way I've altered the tech tree will probably cause it difficulties. Nearly everything causes difficulties for the AI.
Thus, Initial release will be, (like several others) a Multiplayer Only.
Likely several releases actually, since I have to learn how to script the AI. (however simple some make it seem, I'm well aware that it's dificult.)
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I'll make one later.
Re: A Potential mod.
Space and cost formulas will accept the get tech level function too.
Re: A Potential mod.
A new update.
I'm severely altering fighters.
As in, I'm hoping to make each fighter be roughly 10 to 35 Tons.
The formulas will accept 0.025 as it turns out.
This will make it even easier to "fighter-spam" someone, especially with the Launch-rails (like a fighterbay, but doesn't hold or recover fighters, just launches them rather often), but then, that's where the PD re-design really shines.
Allso, the existing fighters are simply being renamed as Bombers. I've allso added in a Bomber unit type, and altered a few fighter weapons so only a Bomber can use them.
Again, I'm aware this makes fighters & Bombers one nasty weapon, but you still can't launch all of them at once.
EDIT: While it accepts the numbers, it doesn't work correctly. just displays everything as 0, and acts as though that's the set weight/space.
I'll just make them 10 to 20 KT then. Dissapointing, but better to know this now than to be whammied with it after a week or so.
EDIT: Reason found in a different thread:
So that's what happened. Now how to turn it off.
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I'll make one later.
Re: A Potential mod.
I have a new problem, for whatever reason, I cannot pull the duplicate techs trick with Organic Manipulation.
I've sucessfully duped Crystallurgy, though the problem is likely something simple like failing to change the name of the original. I'll be trying that this time.
EDIT: I doub't I'll know just what I did that made it work, but i now works.
I'll get to work deciding what precious few technologies are racial only.
Still, back to the other issue.
How can I force SE:V to use the exact number provided? (I really want my 22ton fighters, instead of the 20,000ton suedo-fighter Corvettes)
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I'll make one later.
Re: A Potential mod.
you might be able to work around the decimal truncation.
If the desired result is .35 + .7 = 1.05
you can do it as ( 35 + 70 ) / 100 = 1.05
Of course SE5 will still truncate the result, but at least it'll do the figuring first.
Re: A Potential mod.
Grrr, a conundrum.
I have most of the crystalline ships, but I need help crafting a formula to make it work.
Basically, when I obtain shields, the crystal ships need to have a shield generation ability activate.
Then, when I achieve phased shields, the normal shield generation must stop, and a phased shield generation activate.
Please, Help me out here.
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I'll make one later.