Concepts for neglected craft:
Aeshma: Stealth Attack Craft. Sup tech, requires adv sup and galv blasters. Flies like a stealth fighter, but has smaller missile capacity. Carries sig cloak, shields, booster, a limited missile supply, and twin galv blasters. Obviously it's gonna be more useful if you have a tac, to get sig cloak 2 and energy GAs. Its limited weaponry make it a poor choice for miner hunting, but it presents an alternative to large-scale galv runs.
Astaroth: Naval Interceptor. Exp tech, requires adv exp, interceptors, and allow shipyard. It's essentially an alternative to the heavy interceptor: only two miniguns, not much hull, not quite as maneuverable, but it carries a pair of dumbfires/seekers and can rip to SR. 20 second rip time, but the rip cost is quite small. It's called the naval interceptor because it's much easier to use with a carrier, and all Shivan warships medium class and higher are carriers.
Scorpion: Patroller. An alternative to having the Fighter as a starting ship, this pattie doesn't need to be researched, because the Shivans aren't Giga. Cannonically the Scorpion has a rather low missile capacity, but I'm willing to overlook that in favor of the Giga pattie's moderate capacity. Although slower and not as far-seeing, the Shivan pattie is tougher and more maneuverable than the scout.
Shaitan: Strike Bomber. Sup tech, requires bombers but nothing else. Sort of a slow, weak-hulled, turretless, boosterless figbomber. Useful for a faction that can't nan bombers.
Nephilim: Naval Bomber. Sup tech, requires adv sup, bombers, and allow shipyard. Slower and a little weaker than the standard bomber, but it can rip to small ripcord. This makes carriers and carrier/destroyers more useful, but not as deadly as they would be if the Shivans could nan bombers.
Shivan Faction Idea
Hmm... it seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I realize how incredibly frustrating it would be to wait 20 seconds trying to rip to a carrier, only to find that it doesn't have enough energy. I'm going to have to rethink the naval interceptor. Actually, I think I'll just give it a short rip time and worry about balancing later.
On the whole, however, I think the problem is that carriers are frustrating to work with, and it would be nice if the rip code could be changed, not for my mod specifically but for normal Alleg.
On the whole, however, I think the problem is that carriers are frustrating to work with, and it would be nice if the rip code could be changed, not for my mod specifically but for normal Alleg.
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players
Figbombers are useful as much because they are cheap as for any other reason. You can hand out two for the price of one regular bomber. If you can't nan bombers, then either the bomber must be strong enough to withstand whatever ships can reach it, or you need multiple bombers so that it takes the attackers too long to kill all the bombers. Since the only other cheap bombers available are advanced techs (figbees and stealth bombers), I thought an option available earlier in the game would be good. I'm not sure I'll keep it as a sup tech, it might be more appropriate as a garrison or starbase tech.
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deafzdude1994 wrote:QUOTE (zdude1994 @ Sep 10 2008, 08:47 PM) Aawh, now I see said the blind man to the death woman.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death
New Astaroth concept: Escape Pod. The Astaroth is weak, it has poor turning, unimpressive top speed, and horrible weapon mounts. There's just no reason to make it a combat craft. Besides, no reason to make a custom escape pod when I've got a perfectly good ship. Obviously it would be inappropriate for the ship to have its afterburners, but I'm not certain about top speed. Normal pods travel at 60, Dreg pods have a top speed of 72, and the Astaroth has a top speed of 80 (120 with power to engines). FS2 Terran and Vasudan pods have a top speed of 40, 55 with power to engines (not that there are weapons or shields to power).
Also, scaling is an issue. In FS2, the Astaroth is longer but slimmer than the Dragon (interceptor). Even the big Giga pod is much smaller than any combat craft. I'll have to scale the Astaroth down to around a tenth of its present length if I want it to be similar in size to the other pods.
If I make small craft nannable, how low would I have to make the ship hull modifier so that single-bomber runs aren't quite viable? The mean of other factions' ship hull modifiers is 0.94 (median 0.925), and Giga bombing is still viable at 0.85. Is 0.75 low enough?
Basic miners have only 20% more hitpoints than bombers, and I don't want to make it too difficult to nan miners. On the other hand, I could make Shivan miners/cons shieldless, and give them ship-specific hull buffs to make up for it. I wouldn't want to give them thick shields and normal hulls, that would be unbalanced. The only potential problem I see is that I have no idea whether miner/con AI pays attention to its shield status.
Also, scaling is an issue. In FS2, the Astaroth is longer but slimmer than the Dragon (interceptor). Even the big Giga pod is much smaller than any combat craft. I'll have to scale the Astaroth down to around a tenth of its present length if I want it to be similar in size to the other pods.
If I make small craft nannable, how low would I have to make the ship hull modifier so that single-bomber runs aren't quite viable? The mean of other factions' ship hull modifiers is 0.94 (median 0.925), and Giga bombing is still viable at 0.85. Is 0.75 low enough?
Basic miners have only 20% more hitpoints than bombers, and I don't want to make it too difficult to nan miners. On the other hand, I could make Shivan miners/cons shieldless, and give them ship-specific hull buffs to make up for it. I wouldn't want to give them thick shields and normal hulls, that would be unbalanced. The only potential problem I see is that I have no idea whether miner/con AI pays attention to its shield status.
Last edited by Compellor on Thu Oct 16, 2008 1:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players
It occurs to me that I can make Shivan ship shields recharge at roughly the same rate they do in FS2. All FS2 retail ships' shields recharge at 2% per second if the energy transfer system is set to default levels. Small Shield 3 recharges at 1.67% per second, so all I need is for the ShipShield repair modifier to be 1.2 times the ShipShield modifier. I was originally going to make ShipShield 1.3, which would make ShipShield repair 1.56. This may be excessive.
Trying to do the same thing for energy recharge would require tweaks to individual ships, and I don't want to do that. It doesn't make sense, anyway, because FS2 doesn't have ammo-based weapons.
Trying to do the same thing for energy recharge would require tweaks to individual ships, and I don't want to do that. It doesn't make sense, anyway, because FS2 doesn't have ammo-based weapons.
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players
Aaand another idea for the Astaroth: SR scout. Must be researched, so Rix stays unique. Makes sense, because the Astaroth performs similarly to the Manticore (scout). There's a couple ways I could do the tech. First, I have to decide if I'm going to have just one kind of SR scout, or if I'm going to have basic, adv, and heavy. If the latter, does researching SR scout once do the trick, or would I have to research each one separately? The latter sounds cumbersome. This is clearly a garrison tech, but is it basic garr or starbase? If I go with just one kind of SR scout, I think it would have to be a starbase tech, make it similar to an adv scout, and make adv scout a prerequisite. This would sort of make the SR an alternative to researching heavy scouts.
Their usefulness, and tech balance, would depend somewhat on whether I include my naval bomber idea. It would be similar to TP2 with basic bombers, or really more like a very weak assault ship. TP2 requires starbase and adv sup, while naval bombers require av sup, so this should be easy enough to balance. It would take a full minute just to rip in two nbbrs if your energy starts empty, and ripping in more SR scouts with nans, though less time consuming, is equally expensive, and not at all effective (thin or unnannable hulls, never mind if the enemy has hvy ints). Actually, ripping multiple bombers to SR scouts is probably rather foolish. A hvy SR scout with shields down could get as close as 2.3k to a basic tech base without being seen, 1.9k with sig GAs. That's very little time to respond to a nbbr or two right on top of your tech base. You'd have to hunt down any SR scout you saw, the way you would a stealth bbr or TP2 scout. They're much easier to see than either of those, though.
Their usefulness, and tech balance, would depend somewhat on whether I include my naval bomber idea. It would be similar to TP2 with basic bombers, or really more like a very weak assault ship. TP2 requires starbase and adv sup, while naval bombers require av sup, so this should be easy enough to balance. It would take a full minute just to rip in two nbbrs if your energy starts empty, and ripping in more SR scouts with nans, though less time consuming, is equally expensive, and not at all effective (thin or unnannable hulls, never mind if the enemy has hvy ints). Actually, ripping multiple bombers to SR scouts is probably rather foolish. A hvy SR scout with shields down could get as close as 2.3k to a basic tech base without being seen, 1.9k with sig GAs. That's very little time to respond to a nbbr or two right on top of your tech base. You'd have to hunt down any SR scout you saw, the way you would a stealth bbr or TP2 scout. They're much easier to see than either of those, though.
Last edited by Compellor on Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players
Current stumbling blocks: Something is causing a crash when I attempt to enter the ship loadout screen. I'm pretty sure it's related to the what in ICE is labeled "model," because changing it to e.g. ironleague makes the problem go away. Unfortunately it does not appear to be a problem with the bmp.mdl files, or at least not an obvious problem.
Last edited by Compellor on Sun Nov 09, 2008 9:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
Any job worth doing with a laser is worth doing with many, many lasers. -Khrima
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players
Beyond a shadow of a doubt if you don't watch them like a hawk they will stack their collective balls off - MrChaos on Alleg players