Minor Modding |
Nothing too great, just stuff like making meson blaster and shard cannons shoot projectiles that move so fast that they look as if they are travling at .9 c. So, I just have a few noob questions.
How do you change the range for weapons?
Can you change it so that higher level engines move your ships faster? As in, can my quantum engine ships zip around the battlefield like fighters?
Because I really want to see my dreadnaughts zip around like fighters, my fighters zip around like blurs, and my bullets and beams and missiles to be traveling at light speed velocities.
Can this be done?
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All you need to accomplish that is to push the "increase time multiplier" button in-combat...
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Thanks.
Nice! My ships move 105 spaces in one turn, and reach 110 km/s in combat!
Now I need to change the firing speeds of all the guns, since the ships overshoot each other on every single pass 
Thanks again.
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110km/s?
that's what, 396,000 kph or 246,000 mph?
That's a bit... extreme...
I highly disagree with installing a "Ludicrous Speed" setting on a ship's throttle... just don't go to plaid... and be careful of commanding officers with large helmets flying across the bridge during rapid deceleration maneuvers.
On a side note, check VehicleSizes.txt, that's where the 'turn rate' for ships/units are listed.
Maybe delete a 0 from the values to increase their turning capability by a factor of 10? (maybe, not sure)...
Then you could have even baseships outflying and out maneuvering the stock fighters... (not that I understand why someone would want things like that...)
I will now go weep at the thought that someone fails to see the elegance and grace inherent in regular naval combat and which goes in favor of a turning even capital ship combat into a furball only crazed fighter jockies usually experience...
Although I am curious of how the game even handles ship combat at such speeds, especially if a large number of ships were involved.
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Look more closely in the VehicleSize.txt data file.. Nearly everything is moddable.
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Are you by any chance the subject of this thread?
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Why make stuff smaller?
I would prefer to simply increase the size of vehicle hulls, so they can hold more space...
As is, the level 1 DUC is probably akin to shooting a 70mph train wreck worth of impact force at enemy ships.
The only real limit for size is 10,000kt, which I think is supposed to be the max limit a warp point can handle... unless that were edited also...
I can admire ubertech, but not super fast combat...
It seems odd that it would take several hours of super slo-mo replay for the populace to see the glory of a 5 second long space battle in a speed their brains could comprehend...
Now, uber shields and overkill guns on a ship, or spaces with trans-finite parrameters (having a door frame and door with a huge wharehouse 'inside')... yeah, I can see that...
Like Master of Orion II...
Watching nuclear missiles and heavy lasers do nothing to a ship with class X shields, or class VII shields with hard shields... or watching planetary Barrier Shields render all form of attacks up to fusion bombs as next to worthless and preventing even bio-weapons and plantary invasions...
or packing a battleship with a planet killing gun... and watching it not do much to the main 'bad guys'...
The other stuff is a bit far fetched even for me... (heck with light speed bodies, I would go with a 'star gate' type approach... without needing a star gate at the destination... or Heroes Unlimited RPG, got a super power for light speed flight and 'space native' type ability in one of the books, no replacement body needed...)
I'll be truly impressed when you get the game to ignore the silly 'go fast and overshoot' bit and get the values to be an effective inertialess drive, so they are across the map in a split second, and stop on a dime and turn on a dime, and do it so fast that you have to spend time after the battle putting planets back in orbit and pulling stars back together because the battle gave the localized space time continuim an interdimensional wedgie.
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*shakes head*
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Planets as weapons?
Reminds me of War Planets/Shadow Raiders (right name?)
Had an entire planet turned out to be a space station (Death Star is to small), and had a huge as 'Beast Planet' that 'ate' planets... whole... with a planet sized 'claw' to pull them in... but it was so big it could apparently only travel between systems using a strong gravity well, which gives a cool effect of seeing something many times larger than Earth flying out of a star, because it happened to be the 'nearest' gravity well strong enough for it to travel to the system... (or something to that effect, stupid TV station dropped the series before they got more than halfway through the series)
Anyways...
I am 'against' things of the 'common people' having such advanced stuff... no sense of balance or amazement when EVERYONE is able to use Q as a punching bag without ill effecct (excluding ill effect of Q...)... If it is just a few individuals that have it, or it is limited to stuff like military special forces, I am all for it.
as for firepower... take a page from anime...
blow up entire star systems seems to be no problem, or failing that, build a dooms day weapon to wipe out the entire freaking galaxy...
Have an all powerful item you need to keep out of the enemy's hands, but they have stolen item and fled to another galaxy?
Take out the entire galaxy with a several hundred km long ship that is more like a huge weapon that just happens to have engines and crew quarters attatched, likely stolen uber item would likely be the only thing capable of surviving the blast... meanwhile, the common folk are 'superior', but not capable of excessive feats of effective miracle working at a moments notice.
"It's a nice crescent galaxy!"
"Actually, it was a binary galaxy... half of that one got in the way of the other one being blasted into some fifty trilling different dimensions and time zones at the same time..."
Another idea I had, other than a battle messing up an entire star system...
Con: "Sir, something on screens..."
Captain: "Report, what is that... jumbled mess..."
Science Officer: "Cosmic filliment sir, with 3.7 to the 12 power assorted knots... seems we did more than just knock planets out of orbit in adjacent star systems... we have apparently turned the local space time continum into a... really huge knot..."
Captain: "That might explain why the computer was spitting out answers backwards, and why the replicator created a new universe in my fishtank when I ordered tea this morning... and why I had to fly to work backwards and slightly sideways... Computer, fix the cosmic fillament."
Computer Officer: "Sorry sir, it's stuck in a loop playing tic tac toe with itself... and it refuses to loose... because even if it wins, it looses... 137 temporal races are complaining that it is mixing up their realities because of it..."
*nearby galaxy explodes as ship makes sneezing like sound*
Computer Officer: "And the now the computer has a virus..."
Comm. Officer: "Q Continuum on line 25688345, Q, Q, Q and Q are complaining that we just messed up a game of galactic pool, it seems the computer just blew up their 9 ball..."
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I can't believe this insanity is actually being discussed! *shakes head*
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You want crazy?
I want a 10,000kt ship that uses a graphic of a planet with the sphere world skin... 
And ship weapon mounts that actually increase range...
and a weapon mount made for seeker weapons...
and point defense systems much more effective against fighter spam...
and the ability to make ring worlds and sphere worlds before having to master the ability to wipe out everything possible, from nebular to star systems to black holes to create nothing but 'empty' systems... all before I can make a stupid sphere world...
and ship yards that aren't so pointless with the 1 sy per planet limit, because, quite honestly, even with a max level temporal space yard, it will take an insanely long time to build up a sphere world...
(oh, wait, I forgot, I deleted that part of the requirements! Muahahahaha! Ring World with 8 space yards! Muahahaha! *spams base ships with massive mount wave motion guns and hefty torpedoes and PDs*)
Now, some space folding would be nice, just 'be' where you want to be, no need to fly or take a ship... an enemy fleet attacks, you park a pocket sized black hole generator on each enemy ship, then move your planet (or sphere world) elsewhere to avoid the impending mess of dozens of black holes forming and being slammed into each other, resulting in a massive implosion to such a degree they implode to the point of exploding as the energy release massively overwhelms the intense gravity in an instant, causing a massive explosion as if planets worth of nuclear material just chain reacted at the same time... (mixed and matched idea)
or just use guns that shoot quantum singularities... (Andromeda, among others)
or organic based disruptor weapons that have infinite energy because they use a dimensional system that taps into a dimension of pure anti-matter (blame that one on X-Com Apocalypse... also had mines that used anti-matter... and a 'happy puppy' mine, as I called it, that 'hopped' towards any sort of movement that isn't another such mine...)...
Or an intergalactic business that tricks people into buying what they can't afford with rigged contracts that result in them repossessing entire planets, populations and all, as payment... (by stuff for your high tech kingdom, next thing you know, the entire planet is repossessed and everyone sold off into slavery, because you missed paying some secondary obligatory tax of a hidden fee on part of a contract that had micro-writing they never told you about, or some such clause or loop hole made to exploit customers) (Rifts RPG, mainly the Naruni... who WOULD likely sell their mothers for spare pocket change...)
Oh, cannot forget nanotech... (System Shock series, Deus Ex series, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, any number of other sci-fi games/settings...). Toss a can on the ground, come back a minute later to a fully armed and loaded hover tank... and no more unsightly garbage, junk, debris or broken equipment (or dead bodies) to worry about disposing of... or a 'weapon' that is a gun that can transform into a sword...
*shoots borg drone with energy gun with no effect*
"We are Borg, resistance is-"
*morphs gun to sword, stabs drone with sword*
"A crazy mad man you say? Not really, I'm quite relaxed and content right now... *laughs maniacally*"
(not sleeping well + sugar = me being odd ball)
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Some of that stuff has been done...
"I want a 10,000kt ship that uses a graphic of a planet with the sphere world skin..."
that's something I'm working on for one of my mods. 
the catch of course is that it'll be restricted to using half it's capacity for non-combat stuff.
"And ship weapon mounts that actually increase range..."
I think BM has those.
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10,000 kt ship with planet graphics is an old idea, first seen in Pirates & Nomads. 
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Death Stars, and Battle Moons, and War Planets, oh my!
Speak of War Planets, how about a 100,000kt ship using huge planet model with sphere world texture and its own 'super sized' weapon mounts and the design screen just being jammed full of slots along with something like dozens of armor slots? per layer, that is... >:)
I wonder what 200 Massive Mount Meson Blasters firing would look like...
Basically I was thinking of planetoid things due to things like Star Wars, the Master of Orion II PC game (Doom Stars and planetary construction), and the War Planets/Shadow Raiders cgi series (the 'Rock' faction having their Battle Moons (moons turned into massive 'warships', iirc, and of course the fact the Beast Planet forces apparently like to turn entire planets into an uber-station/ship of some sort.)
Although, I think I have read a topic in the past about the pirates/nomads thing.
Weren't there some 'functions' of planetary facilities that did not work right if applied to ship/base components?
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SE4 patch 1.91 added new abilities that generate resources or research arbitrarily, on any object type. SE5 has nothing equivalent to them, though.
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Why can't anyone stick with classic, wholesome sci-fi stuff like quantum foam shell armor that gets much of its protection from an artificial event horizon effect (as in black hole type event horizon) or backpack sized power packs that generate massive power by burning quarks?
(stuff from War Inc. PC game and Gamma World RPG, respectively, might be off on the second one, I know it has something to do with quarks...)
Why would a reactor generate solid ammo or repair a ship?
what kind of rift are you talking about exactly?
The uber armor makes me think of Fielded Kelarium (sp?) from Stars! PC game. (armor with shield element, there was also a shield with an armor element iirc... but slightly worse than similar armor/shield and with a modest shield/armor value, and mystery trader items had crazy stuff, like a 4-5 diffent items crammed into one, or super efficient items with a few extra effects, but nothing so massive in overall overblown effects)
No need to go so far out of hand with some of the numbers after thinking about Master of Orion 2.
Master of Orion 2 has Nuke missiles with a damage rating of 8, fusion bombs upwards of 12, and all mighty anti-matter bombs only had a damage of upwards of 40, and a planet killer had a damage of 400 (1600 considering it hit all 4 facings at once with equal force and big ships could possibly get shields strong enough to have a ship survive a single shot from the weapon).
So, instead of just entering in absurd numbers for shields, armor and weapons, just pretend the numbers already represent uber power stuff and don't crank them to very high numbers.
Er... huh? sock what?
*checks wikipedia*
Oh... wtf...
possible potential borderline munchkin, perhaps, power gamer, yes, sock puppetry, no.
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Actually he's thinking of having people use tech like the monolith in 2010: a space odysey.
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Sufficiently advanced?
I think you left the sufficient part way behind... like in another dimension, in another time, and knocked way out of phase.
I myself like a good challenge, having a ship be able to fullfil every possible role in the fleet (resupply, reordnance, repair, building, etc) within a single component just doesn't seem right to be done on such a huge scale.
To many big numbers kind of defeat the purpose for me, no real balance, even if the baseline concepts sound nifty.
I like stuff like Star Wars or Babylon 5, where space battles are impressive things to behold, lots of stuff going on, big ship gracefully cruising (or not so gracefully wallowing) through space, ships actually taking a few hits and showing a litle damage as they slowly slug it out untl a ship either is damaged or retreat...
...and not just a few ships that zip in and have a single ship leave a few seconds later with half the galaxy devestated in something that resembles a later episode of Star Trek Deep Sspace 9 with
Alpha Quadrant vs. Dominion battle in fast forward.
But then again, I guess I am a bit old school at times.
To heck with strait sci-fi, I'll take sci-fi/fantasy anyday, with the sci-fi including tech more than just 'technical' stuff, but also biological (I like Organic tech more than Temporal tech in SE V, with the possible exception of the Temporal facilities, otherwise I love Organic tech more... hmm... Tyranid/Zerg knockoffs... or geneticlaly engineered psychic cyborgs hellbent on genocide of anything humanoid just because it is humanoid or that associates humanoids in any way that does not involve killing or enslaving them, all with a sort of illogical irrational hatred behind it all, and with their idea of a joke being to use humanoid robots to help them kill humanoids...)
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Following the context of the conversation, that is why it's within the realm of science fiction, instead of fantasy...
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No, but you could make the domed space values the same the same as the regular values in PlanetSizes.txt.
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If you can make spehreworlds, you are going to have research output needed to get Planet Utilization tech to its maximum level fairly quickly and allow access to an Atmospheric Modification Plant that can change a planet's atmosphere to the right type within 5 turns of it being built.
As is, it is going to take some time to fill up even a domed sphere world (unless you relocate entire star systems worth of population), so if you did dump something like 8 billion people on a sphere world the moment it was colonized, it would take only 4 turns (estimate) to build a space yard and two more turns to build a max level Atmospheric Modification Planet, and then 5 turns for it to change the planet's atmosphre to the right type.
As for domes...
As a fan of shows like Babylon 5 and Star Trek, and of games like Outpost and Master of Orion, I find domes... a waste of space for general use. Take a building, make it the same way as a space station module, and boom, a structure that needs no dome to keep a breatable atmosphere inside, and domes can be limited to 'open air' areas, such as parks or other community type areas. Or better yet, build underground, seal the buildings instead of making huge waste of space domes and ignoring everything outside of (and under) them.
SE V could use some sort of tech or facility that 'eliminates' the need for domes, or else allow domed planets to have more available space, by having structures that don't need a large dome for protection, basically akin to space stations but built on the ground.
About Ring/Sphere worlds and their size.
They are pathetically small in SE V IMO.
I got my own personal mod (mainly race stuff, planet sizes, minor facility tweaks, doubled the size of of population sizes and bonuses in settings), one of the things I did was give planets more facility space, with domed space being 1/4 of undomed space.
Ring World has been increased to a max facility space of 200,000 with a max population of 128,000.
Sphere World has been increased to a max facility space of 800,000 with a max population of 512,000. (my mod settings file now has population sizes that big listed for production/sy bonuses)
Both have domed space as only half of normal space.
Compare those sizes to stock Huge planet, 25,000 facility space and population max of 8,000.
For size comparisons...
Earth (medium size planet?) has 197,000,000 square miles of surface area, 51,000,000 of which are land area.
That is a LOT of space to put stuff...
Larry Niven's Ringworld, being roughly 186,000,000 miles in diameter and 1,000,000 miles 'wide' band (with 1,000 mile high 'mountain walls), has roughly 600,000,000,000,000 square miles of surface area.
By these numbers, even my large increase in space and population size of Ring/Sphere Worlds is nowhere near what a Ring/Sphere would could theoretically hold.
Since it has 'walls' a thousand miles high to 'hold in' the atmosphere, similar should be possible to seperate/isolate entire areas to 'contain' differetn atmospheres on a Ring/Sphere World, so they could have different atmospheres for different populations.
Because of that, I agree with Fyron's suggestion to simply make the domed space of a ring/sphere world the same as the undomed. There is definately plenty of space to do so on something that massive, and thousand mile high mountains should be child's play compared to building a Ring/Sphere world in the first place.
I might make such changes myself to the Ring/Sphere World sizes in my personal mod.
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Well, they are called 'domed' colonies, not much else to work with. I do know if a few settings, domes can extend to cover an entire planet, or at least take up a whole lot of area.
Then there should be some sort of facility (even if it is expensive to build and/or maintain) that helps to 'negate' the reduced population effect of a domed colony.
With some planets, paying a bit extra to more facility and population space could be well worth it IMO, especially if it is a planet that has some high resource values, or a planet in a trinary system when crystal tech is involved.
I came across some stuff for Warhammer 40,000 (I own the Dawn of War game for PC, so I have interest in the setting), and found mention of things called hive worlds, which apparently happen to have had domes built on top of domes built on top of domes, resulting in a huge honecomb network of domes and support structures that can extend miles into the sky, resulting in some rather large and impressive dystopian arcologies. This is what I meant of domes covering an entire world (or at least a good chunk of it)
Now that would be an interesting idea for SE V...
A facility that adds population, facility and cargo space to a planet (perhaps with some limit of the facility amount based on planet size), to allow for some truly massive enclosed cities, with the added population limits not effected by if the planet is domed or not, since they are enclosed in the first place.
Or even just to be able to use facility space to build stuff like housing, or some sort of Arcology that adds living space and also has some minor resource and sy values (not be a shipyard) to represent its industrial capacity.
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They are just arbitrary bits of text.
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Hi, the Crimson Concept Mod has something like this in it. It adds more space to planets for pop, facilities, and other stuff. In the current setup about 2 times more spaceis added w/out the planet shell, ex 25,000 = 75,000. Now with the planet shell, ex 25,000 = 150,000, I believe. Plus I got the AI to uses the feature, and in the next mod I'm changing the size of the facilities to fit more facilities on the planet.
He ponders the dangers inherent in the advantages, and advantages inherent in the dangers. - Ts'ao Ts'ao
highlighter/User define lang for NOTEPAD++ for SEV
Crimson Concept Mod for SEV
Crimson
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They are just arbitrary bits of text.Well, I don't view Kt to be to arbitrary. I view the Arbiter from Halo 2&3 to be arbitrary (it's sort of his job)
Okay, so maybe I do agree that the term tonnage could be arbitrary, they got enough definitions for it, to say the least...
The most basic one seems to be 100 cubic feet.
The origins were measured on tuns of wine, which weighed, a long ton (a 1 ton tun?)
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kT is neither a real nor a consistent unit as used in SE. If you take it to resemble naval tonnage (water displacement), the house of cards immediately collapses upon consideration of the cargo bay: 20 kT can somehow contain 2-400 kT. The only logical conclusion is that Aaron just appended it to everything that needs a unit of measure, without consideration for math or reality. I'm amazed that planetary population is not measured in kT!
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"I'm amazed that planetary population is not measured in kT!"
Actually it is. It's just that it usually displays it as a number of people rather than their equivalent weight. (or is it the other way around?)
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You are thinking of population in cargo, not planetary population.
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Oh, It stores planetary pop as number of people?
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Yes.
Heh. Play around with the components.txt file. Weapon range (and speed) and the number of movement points generated by engines are all in there.
Also see the wiki