Domine's Universe - Work in Progress |
I started out merely tweaking Kwok's BM mod a bit and have since then gotten carried away (not literally, I'm not so far off my rocker the whitecoats are coming yet... 
) and began what can no longer be called a simple adjustment to an existing mod, but a new mod entirely...
Basically, while I was adding "Scientific" achievements to make all Racial technology eventually researchable, I struck upon an idea:
Give "scientific" achievements or advances to most other areas to limit the actual upgrades!
I'll use Space Yards as an example:
In the basic game, Space Yards improve in production capability as well as cost as research into the field occurs... in Kwok's BM this happens less often, but it still occurs where both cost and capability improve.
Realistically, the cost of minor improvements would usually be covered under "maintenance" fees and not tie up the construction facilities for so pronounced a period while production is optimized... so I've decided to make the Space Yards tech area grant a "scientific" achievement that adds Empire wide bonus to Space Yard production every level, with facilities upgrades every 5 (representing major changes that would require extensive refits). So as an empire researches Space Yards, they'll see slight efficiency improvements (+1% to +2%) without tying up their queues and occasionally have a major improvement (+5% to +10% base facility output) which will require effort to emplace.
I'm following a similar standard with other facilities types. For vehicles, basically I'm setting base vehicle sizes in "stone" (a light cruiser will ALWAYS be 400kt) and upgrades to hull construction will see a reduction in cost to produce new ones as materials (to a minimum of 75% original) as well as an increase in the structure (but not capacity) of the hull (to a max of 25% on smaller vessels and 20% on larger ones).
The real change will be components. This will be the improvement area which will cause the most retrofiting... when technology improves in the REAL world, one of three things happen:
1) Cost Reduction
In game example would be the Bridge, not really much optimization you can do here as this is simply a framework for other systems, so as you research Vehicle Systems, you'll slowly learn how to build the same bridge cheaper.
2) Miniaturization
Example here would be the Depleted Uranium Cannon as there's only so much damage that can be inflicted by hurling a chunk of metal at a target, you learn to do the same thing with less bulk. (As a secondary effect, when you miniaturize to a certain point you can make a BIGGER gun to hurl a BIGGER chunk of metal for more damage! - Yes, this does mean I'm doing away with standard weapon mounts and replacing them with other weapon upgrades, like Energy Focus Lens for lasers or Ammunition upgrades for cannons)
3) Efficiency/Effectiveness Improvement
Sensors would be a prime example of this, as you improve tech levels you learn to build a better sensor for the same price (or SLIGHTLY higher) you used to build the original one. Another example would be Smaller Weapons or Troops weapons... they're already so small you can't miniaturize by much so as technology improves to make the same gun smaller, they make the same size weapon for troops/fighters with a minor boost to effectiveness.
Well, that's a small overview of some of what I'm planning... as I said, it's a work in progress and I expect it'll be at least a week before I've finished altering the files enough to test a game. For now, I'm not renaming tech areas/weapons because I don't want to muddle too much with AI scripting until I've gotten the tech the way I want it...
Re: Domine's Universe - Work in Progress
One comment on miniaturization... it may be easier to handle by increasing the hull sizes as they do now. Making components smaller is more realistic, but then you end up with uneven kT amounts and that makes it harder for AI designs unless you have several 1-2kT filler components.
Re: Domine's Universe - Work in Progress
Works fine for ships, but units have limited space in which to exist (cargo storage of ships or planets), so expanding units as they level up to "simulate" miniaturization is one of my pet peeves
It shouldn't be too hard to come up with filler components - who can't use a little extra supply storage or armor? 
Does the AI really get that messed up if it has some leftover space on a design that it can't use??? 
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The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious
Re: Domine's Universe - Work in Progress
One Idea I thought of for units is to give the cockpit/computer core a negative tonnage value. This would, essentially, increase available space. (in theory anyways)
Re: Domine's Universe - Work in Progress
Will you be making any changes to the AI?
Re: Domine's Universe - Work in Progress
Crew quarters that hold more crew? Heh, that's one of my other pet peeves... why in the world would anyone think that cramming 120 crew into a frigate is any better than 100 crew? This is not Star Control, they do not provide extra armor for your ship! This is a SERIOUS game!
About the only thing extra crew are good for in SE5 is keeping the ship functional in case of attacks from toxic injectors and boarding parties... and from a realism standpoint, arent' SMALLER crews preferred because manpower is a resource like any other?
So yeah, crew quarters that hold more crew as they level up just seem weird to me... crew quarters that miniaturize or crew quarters that get cheaper sound much more reasonable! 
Since you want to keep crew quarters at 5kT, leaving little room for miniaturization, how about starting crew quarters / life support off as a really expensive component, but when you research them, they become cheaper? After all, keeping people alive in space is not easy
Also, did you ever notice that your ships can hold more crew than you have life support for? 8-O That's right, for some reason the game calculates the crew capacity of a ship SOLELY based on its quarters, and not on the minimum of its life support and quarters! Perhaps LS/CQ should be consolidated into one component... that would also reduce the boilerplate clicking associated with creating a new design!
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The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious
Re: Domine's Universe - Work in Progress
Perhaps LS/CQ should be consolidated into one component... that would also reduce the boilerplate clicking associated with creating a new design! ;)Re: Domine's Universe - Work in Progress
And that is SO annoying SJ...
It might be tolerable if both the CQ and LS requirements were computed directly from the components on the ship (weapons, engines, etc.) rather than only the CQ being computed from the components and the LS being computed from that!
edit: Domine, you might have some trouble with the weapons... the damage of a weapon is "locked in" at design time, so just researching a weapons upgrade won't "magically" upgrade all your ships' weapons 
However I have posted a message on the beta forums asking for a "Weapon Delivery Type Damage Inflicted Modifier Percent" ability (linking to this thread ) to go along with the existing "Weapon Delivery Type Damage Received Modifier Percent" ability used by the Crystalline Energy Dampener. With a "Weapon Delivery Type Damage Inflicted Modifier Percent" you could do incremental upgrades of weapons - just give each weapon its own delivery type (which is an arbitrary text string )... this would break the Energy Dampeners though, as there would be no more plain old "Energy Beam" weapons! You'd have to add one ability to the dampeners for every weapon that's an energy beam weapon...
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The floating Eee zaps you with an anti-proton beam! You are paralyzed! --more--
Seriously that's what we need, a Space Empires themed roguelike! 
Re: Domine's Universe - Work in Progress
I like those ideas!
Note that you can't really improve the "structure points" of hulls, as hulls have no inherent structure points, despite the Tonnage Structure field in VehicleSizes.txt
All hitpoints of a ship come from its components.
You can however give the hulls some other sort of ability - probably the best bet is the damage reduction ability akin to that used by the Energy Refractor, which would reduce incoming damage by some percentage, netting the same basic effect as increasing the hipoints of all components on the ship proportionally.
~~~
The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious