Spatial Flux Hull cost and stealth

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MatGB
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Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:45 pm

Spatial Flux Hull cost and stealth

#1 Post by MatGB »

One of the things I definitely need to do is increase the cost of this hull, it's currently far too cheap compared to similar hulls and in some cases incredibly effective, that it's cheaper to build a Flux Troops ship with two pods than it is a Small Troop Ship with one is clearly Wrong.

But if I'm going to mess around with it anyway, an idea occurred. Geoff recently introduced the ability for scripts to do different things depending on the aggression setting of the fleet they're in (currently nothing uses this). The Flux hull has a weird stealth malus if it's in a starlane between turns that adds flavour but is generally pointless, however the description implies it's meant to be a stealthy(ish) ship.

How about when I up the cost I also give it a stealth boost that only applies when it's set to passive? It could keep the existing malus and would make it a more interesting hull while losing some of its current too-cheap ubiquity.

It would have the weird scripting timing side effect that the boost would continue for combat on the turn after you turn the fleet to aggressive, but that's fine, you're ordering your ships to make a strike and decloak while doing so.

Opinions?
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

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Vezzra
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Re: Spatial Flux Hull cost and stealth

#2 Post by Vezzra »

Sounds interesting. We should give it a try.

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MatGB
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Re: Spatial Flux Hull cost and stealth

#3 Post by MatGB »

Done

After a fair bit of testing I ended up with a base bonus of +10 which doesn't change much, but I also gave it a 10 point bonus for every stealth part tech you own which means it goes up enough to avoid Active Radar if you have Electromagnetic Dampener. It's kinda useful and makes those techs worth grabbing if you've RP to spare even if you're not going for full stealth.

Weirdly, there's a parsing strangeness, I initially did the script using "activation = Passive" but found that while this works in the UI/display it wasn't working client side so stealthed vessels were getting hit. Changing it to " activation = Not Aggressive" worked fine though and as it's the first usage of the backend code that works well enough for me.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

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