Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Debido]

Stellar things?

[xenoargh]

Yeah, you know... stuff.  In space.  Not that I wanted to do anything especially weird or anything. 

Most of the really wild stuff has to wait for 0.65 anyhow, when we can finally, finally finally switch out Station graphics and put glows on stuff anyhow.

[dmaiski]

new release must have!!!!

MUST! HAVE!! NOW!!!

I have run out of stuff to do, and im bored of studying... need vacum to amuse self... [vacum sucking noises]... that was less amusing than i imagined it to be... RELEASE VACCUM TO SANITY SAVE ME!

[xenoargh]

Well, I got close. 

I wrapped up renaming all of the ships so that the mod's a lot cleaner internally (it's obvious what belongs to what faction now, etc.) and I also established unique, faction-specific looks for all of the ships' shields and engines, which makes the factions feel a lot more coherent, visually.

But that broke a lot of description texts, which I need to fix... and I still want to write a proper Station battle. 

Oh, and I don't have a graphic / sound for the Transporter Ray yet. 

Other than all that, it's ready; most of the major features are working and I'm happier with the overall balance.  I'm tempted to release it and just say that it'll have a bunch of things that aren't done yet, but meh, it's already been well over a month...

[Ranakastrasz]

The supply cost of fighters I think is an issue, being at zero.

Aside from making them more powerful and spammable, they also seem to lag the ship management screen. I am uncertain if that is the direct cause, but it still seems like a balance problem.

It could be like 1/10th supply per fighter, but not zero.

[xenoargh]

That's part of what got changed for the rebal  

Anyhow, working on Station battles tonight... hope to get that wrapped up, maybe get the Transporter Ray ready.  Then I think it's time for a release and some balance feedback.

[xenoargh]

The Acanthus uses Neutronium Plating / Armor Regeneration / Hardened Shields / etc., properly now.  I got the initial stages of the station-battle stuff done, and I'm pretty excited about what I'm going to be able to do with the code I built for it (amongst other things, maybe more real battle variety, less "just charge in and kill everything that moves"), but I'm not quite ready to show it off yet. 

I'll do my best to get that done tomorrow evening if I can; it's the last major feature that I think I want to tackle before release.

[Ranakastrasz]

One idea (from Gratuitus space battles) is to limit repairs to hull and armor to some set amount, say, half the original hull/armor amount
After it runs out of "repair supplies" it will either stop regenerating, or regen at like 1/10th the normal rate.

Would make the ships susceptible to being worn down, even if you can't immediately take them down.

[dmaiski]

that would defeat the point of regenerative armor...

normal armor: takes damage untill a certain point where it can no longer take damage

redistributing/active armor: moves armor from healthy area to damaged areas, but does not regenerate

regenerative armor: regenerates damage taken over time, allows for extended combat as long as you do not take too much damage


what you just described is active armor, not regenerative, although making an active armor hull mod would be cool

[Farlarzia]

What he is suggesting is not armour that takes from another point, to distribute it to another point, but as he said, like the system from Gratuitus space battles, where armour regenerates completely, and doesn't just move it around, just regens as the current system would, but would stop regenerating after the "supplies" to regenerate are used up.

[dmaiski]

what he described is basicaly redistributing armor with an invisible pool of "extra" armor hidden in the ship, it would probably lead to moment of "huh why did my ship suddenly explode" happening when people put on regen armor, and lots of    
it would make the game needlesly more comlex, but it would not actualy add much gameplay wise


a beter idea would be to tie regen armor to CR and/or flux generation during battle, so regen causes verry slow loss of CR, but this would need balancing for armor boats, capital ships and various other factors so that a single hig doesnt just wipe out the entire CR of certain ship setups

flat rates: would make armor boats run out of CR in seconds
% of total armor: would make lightly armored regen+shield ships run out of CR from a single hit to armor

you see the balancing issues 

[Ranakastrasz]

Ok, now I am confused.

Presumably because I have no idea how armor regeneration actually works.
Nor how Health regeneration works.
I assumed it regenerates the ships hull at the rate of, say, 10 health per second. This being continuous and permanent until dead or at 100% health.

With that assumption, the suggestion was additionally stop regenerating permanently after you regenerate a certain amount of health, likely based on both max health and combat readiness.

Armor, I assumed regenerates each node separately, or possibly focusing on the most damaged section until it is at maximum armor across the board.

With that assumption, the suggestion is that only so many armor points (not nodes) could be regenerated before it runs out of supplies.

Now what I've read suggests armor regenerate in this game is not armor regeneration at all, but rather armor redistribution. IF that is the case, then you will run out of armor eventually regardless, and no problem exists. It will make weak-points slower to form and last for a shorter time, but general armor rating will go down and eventually deplete or fall to the point your hull gets vaporized.

As for "why did my ship suddenly die" that is already the case in many, many cases.
Especially with shields as is, which seem to be like Stargate shields. Highly durable, the ship, not so much, with any leakage resulting in instant death.
Armor can be almost the same, but the hull tends to be more durable than the armor, so really that only happens when any ship has a high damage and kills your ship pretty much instantly.

Death is pretty sudden in this mod. Like insanely so.

The reason I suggested this was that there had been huge discussions earlier on buffing or debuffing armor regeneration to make sure it is reasonable for both heavy and light armored ships, or something like that. This was likely a problem in Gratuious space battles, with ships being able to repair or maintain their shields indefinitely, so in that game, shields going down never came back up, and repair systems ran out of supplies (eventually)

~~~~
Also, why did you massively increase damage and health values?

[dmaiski]

that you have to ask xeno(i dont know the exact model he settled on), but as i said in my realier post, balancing ""limited" armor regen would be a nightmare because there are several drasticaly difrent applications that armor regen can be used for (armor boats vs lightly armored shield boats)

any limited regen would have to take both of these playstyles into acount to not force the player into one mode or the other, and the balancing of that would be hard, not verry transparent and near imposible for the player to understand

i encountered these problems when i initialy though up the armor regen for my mod way back when


"Also, why did you massively increase damage and health values? "
from what i understand xenos mod is meant to be played with ships that use lots of optional modules (to increase and customize stats for the players personal strategies) so uncustomized ships are by nesesity verry weak (some of my customised frigates can take 1-2 reapers and still keep going, so it all depends on how you want to build your ship)

[Selgald]

After trying this mode for some hours, this is what the most time happened:

Start the game -> listen to the guide -> mine asteroids -> ambush -> dead in under 5 seconds
Start the game  -> mine asteroid -> ambush -> dead in under 5 seconds
Start the game  -> mine asteriod -> ambush -> dead in under 5 seconds
Start the game  -> mine asteriod -> ambush -> dead in under 5 seconds
Start the game  -> mine asteriod -> ambush -> dead in under 30 seconds (run!)

Okay different way -> don't mine that !(§$&! asteroid -> kill pirates -> profit

Maybe the guide is a little bit wrong about how good asteroids are for starting money?

[Ranakastrasz]

Eh, I find it best to mod your starting ships to add maximum armor, (usually removing shields for the armor boost) save, and mine asteroids, saving after each round trip, until you have 3-4 frigates. At that point, you are probably killing the ambushes.

Eventually, I buy a higher level ship, and then I try to kill the pirate fleets around. Naturally, Saving before each one, because with so many ways to die in seconds to everything, you kind of need to.