The extra evil ship design fails its test... |
So my empire just discovered some new weapons, and after making myself a nice solid design, I put it for a test-drive in the simulator.
What's the goal of the ship? To knock out my enemies' weapons and engines, leaving a maintenence-costly broken hull of a ship, that's what! (This tactic owned in SE4!)
But the tachyon cannons and ionic dispersers are all but useless in SE5, because, not only do they no longer penetrate armor, but they can't deal damage to it. I put said ship design against itself in the simulator - all the two ships did was dance around each other until the time expired, because the shots they fired did nothing.
The dispersers/tachyon canons work against un-armored ships, but then I have to reasearch normal weapons to get that far. What's the point of getting the engine-only or weapon-only weapons then? I sure hope this is a bug that will be fixed...
ps - I don't know what these weapons do to sheilds yet, I hadn't gotten the tech.

You should be able to give
You should be able to give the X-only damage types 100% shield and armor piercing effects, like in SE4. I haven't looked through the damage types that much, but I get the feeling this is very possible.
With all these people, you would expect one of them to carry an iguana around...
Unfortunately not.
The X-only damage types use Special Effects.
From the top of the damagetypes.txt file:
1. If there are special effects, execute them. Skip all remaining steps.

They need to skip armor
The special types should skip armor by default though - I'll add that to my list for MM.
-----
They need to be modable. :P
It'd be best to have the special effects modable as to whether they skip shield and armor or not, like all the other damage types.

Here's an iguana for
Here's an iguana for ya:
Damage Type Name := Only Weapons Description := Damage which, once armor and shields are penetrated, only causes internal damage to weapons. Picture Number := 5 Cannot Penetrate Any Kind Of Shields := TRUE Cannot Penetrate Any Kind Of Armor := TRUE Number Of Vehicle Types := 0 Number of Shield Types := 0 Number of Armor Types := 0 Internal Damage Percent := 100 Facility Damage Percent := 100 Population Amount Killed Per Damage Point := 0.25 Crew Amount Killed Per Damage Point := 0 Is Viral Weapon := FALSE Number Of Special Effects := 0 Number Of Requirements := 1 Requirements Evaluation Availability := TRUE Requirements Evaluation Allows Placement := TRUE Requirements Evaluation Allows Usage := 1 Requirement 1 Description := Only destroys components that are weapons. Requirement 1 Formula := Is_Component_Weapon() Number Of Abilities := 0
Yes, that's the type
And oddly enough it CAN be modded. The way the top of the file reads, modding shouldn't work..but it does, sorta. The cannot penetrate fields are read, and if they are false the weapon skips ALL of that type (you can't make a PPB style weapon damager, in other words).

That's a weird looking
That's a weird looking iguana...
--------
With all these people, you would expect one of them to carry an iguana around...

I want weapons that can
I want weapons that can target the self destruct device. Unless there is and I missed it somehow.
______________________________________________________________
Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe.
Weapon/engine destroying
Weapon/engine destroying damage types can be modified to skip armor and shields. At present it is useless, since it would only damage weapons and engines after you have already blown through shields and armor, but then you don't need a special weapon type to cause internal damage!

Weapon/engine destroying
I agree, but for balance purpose I guess it would be better if they could just skip armor (not both armor and shields), or maybe these weapons ability to pass thru armor and shields should depend of their tech level.
-------------
Feel lucky earthling ?
I'm not sure what you're
I'm not sure what you're agreeing or disagreeing with, since I basically only stated that the present weapons were useless without making any statement on the balance merits of anything. It would make more sense if they damaged shields normally and ignored armor, as logically weapons and engines would need to be exposed to the outside or else they'd be unable to function properly.

Well, this is more or less
Well, this is more or less what I meant.
-------------
Feel lucky earthling ?

Ship Engines
Would someone PLEASE explain to me why engines "have" to be on the outside of the ship? Sure, ROCKETS need to be... but names like anti-matter and quantum leave me thinking they're reactionless drives. I. E. instead of spewing a junkload of stuff out your rearend to move forward, you create movement in some other manner. And said other manner by no means has to require contact with the skin of the ship.
Reaction Drive: Uses physics as we understand it, newtons third law for every reaction yada yada yada.
Reactionless Drive: Cheats and somehow produces movement without shoving stuff outside the hull at high speeds. Advantages are (or should be) obvoius.
_______________________
There are 10 types of people in the world:
Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

random thought
Just a random thought, maybe the energy created for movement still needs to go somewhere and better it be as far away from the ship as possible?
---
Designing an advanced, diplomatic AI + shipset
Consult the great SEV Wiki

Movement
Just a random thought, maybe the energy created for movement still needs to go somewhere and better it be as far away from the ship as possible?
---
Designing an advanced, diplomatic AI + shipset
Consult the great SEV Wiki
Its applied directly to movement 
_______________________
There are 10 types of people in the world:
Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Getting these weapons to work
I was frustrated when I first came across this problem too. Went to DamageTypes.txt today and changed it to "FALSE" for "cannot penetrate shields/armour". So now they can at least damage shields and armour before only damaging certain components. You could further mod that so that shields and/or armour is completely ignored and damage done straight to internals.
ugh
hehe I found that too cheesy in SE:IV myself... massive null space cannons were god weapons hehe... I have 15,000 shields ... well I have 4 massive null space cannons so KABOOM yer toast lol.
Basically I wouldn't mind X destroying weapons being able to bypass armor IF the X item was in the outer hull (and weapons and sensors should be outer hull only) engines might be based on type... ION is definitely reaction driven so outside it goes lol... others who knows. but it would cripple shields even more to make them so useless... however they should definitely take damage from being hit with an X destroyer.
Nullspace Weapons Still Do That
Engines
DimmurWyrd wrote:
All engines generate energy: Ion engines are probably either super-chemical or fusion, Contra-terrene ones use matter-anti-matter reaction, Jacketed-photon engines harness photons to move the ship and Quantum engines produce the energy with a quantum singularity. All of these are "rockets" and require a way for the energy to get out, the only way to get around this is coherent brownian motion used in the Heart of Gold in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Instead the engines don't all need to be in the outer hull, only the one which lets the ions or particles out and the others being installed in front of it like this:
XX
XX engines in inner hull (will keep ability to move longer when
XX damaged, but vital interiors will be hurt earlier)
XX
II outer hull in the rear of the ship
II
Re: Nullspace Weapons Still Do That
Null space weapons in V are seekers now, so they can be defended against.
My personal suggestion would be to make the Engine/Weapon destroyers ignore armour, but impact on shields, so that they can be protected against somewhat, but once shields are down(which stop things further away from the hull)

Re: The extra evil ship design fails its test...
I believe they should not ignore shields but should do some damage to them. I also think they should ignore only normal armour, not armour derived from special technologies, such as organic.
Aurore
Re: The extra evil ship design fails its test...
If it doesn't pierce org/crys armor then it must at least damage them because this would add another unfair advantage to org empires. As I posted here earlier, engines can't be completely covered by armor and engine-damaging weapons will be targeted to those parts so they should skip armor. Of course there could be a penalty to damage like "does only 50% dam to engines if ship has armor", to simulate the relatively small non-protected areas.




It does say exactly that in the description
The idea I suppose is if you have a BIG ship with a lot of internals. Or something. :/
That's one part of the damage types that sadly can't be modded. I think.