Modular Ship Hull Proposal

[utilae]

I think powerplants (generate power) is all we require. Batteries are needed (but the player should not have to worry about them) and are probably built into the beam weapons anyway.

So 1 laser component requires 1-5 power units (a min and a max, minimum power needed to operate and maximum possible to do the most damage/best firerate). We add a Powerplant Lvl 2, generates 3 power units. If a beam weapon requires 0-5 power units, then it has a built in powerplant, so the minimum is already met. Powerplants would not be useless to this weapon though, because extra powerplants would boost damage/firerate (whatever it would boost).

It would be cool with powerplants needed for beam weapons. Now powerplants can be used to improve beam weapons, though at the cost of space. Some beam weapons may not need powerplants, but could still use them for boosting puposes. You could have very interesting varieties.

[discord]

utilae: actualy batteries(or energy banks, or whatever) could be well used, it would give the ship some extra punch early on, and the pure generators more of a staying power, wich is a very nice idea imho.

so, batteries for extra alpha strike? or use the space for some extra generators, to get better lasting power?

not to forget, you could script power routing, making ships even more effective then before.....'divert power to shields!'

//discord

[Impaler]

I think we want to keep a clear distinction between the beam weapon which always and only consumes power and the Power Generator which always and only produces power at a constant rate.

I idea of putting the Capacitor IN the weapon is viable and would be a bit simpler then seperate ones. I would work like this the Power planet is producing 3 units of power each unit of time. The Beam weapon is "charged" when it has 15 power and it has a cool down of 2 time units. This weapon would be able to fire every five time units. If I added a second power generator so I now produce 6 power per time unit then I could fire that weapon every 3 turns. If I can generate 8 power per turn then I can fire the weapon at the maximum rate of once every 2 turns (any faster and the weapon overheats and melts).

Seperate Capacitors would make redirecting power a more easily managed task and would keep power from being wasted (it can get held over to the next turn and eventualy used). And dont forget that almost EVERY THING on the ship will be using power. Its a lot like StarFleet Command in that respect.

[That Guy]

If you are going to do that, I think that you also need to have power output going to shields too. But maybe you could have some power coming from the Sublight engines, like they claim in MOO3, which sould be used to power the shields. Also, I think the power design should stop there, the power grid should iether be automatic or predesigned in a hull design, cause if officals can't design one that works (Thursday's Blackout), then I bet I can't either.

[utilae]

I think all we really need is powerplants (generate power). We should assume batteries are built into shields and weapons. We should not get too complex here, it's not simcity.

When you place a powerplant, there could be variable associated that determines what the power goes torward. You would choose, weapons, shields, engines, sensors.

So:
Powerplant A generates 5p (power) - set to Weapons
Powerplant B generates 3p - set to Shields

5XLaser requires 1-5p (per laser), so we have emough to meet the minimum (1p per laser).

Shields require 2-4, so we have enough to put 3p into shields meanign they are stronger then if we put 2p into shields.

[Impaler]

Not only is that NOT simpler. It defeats most of the point. If each power plant is only operating a limited group of components then all I am doing is trying to get to 2 totals to match closly so I am not wasting space on un-used components. Thats just Tedium not design.

A lot of your ship design proposals seem to be in this direction.

Your ship design consist of the player picking some kind of "optimum" arangment or selection of components to minimizes waste of space or money. Fun design should be a balancing of one advantage vs Advantege not an optimization of progressivly less wastefull designs. Not only is this going to get tedius and borring but the player will ultimatly figure it out and stick with a single "perfect" design.

It would be best to just total all the power being produced on the ship each "tick" of time and subtract from that all the power being used. I simple In and Out function.

If we want to have a "Battery" it can hold power over from one turn to the next. If we dont want batteries then power gets reset to zero each "tick". Continuosly operating systems subtract power everyturn at their flat power consumption levels. Charged Components like lasers absorb as much power as is avalible to them untill they are charged up to their charge level atwhich point they becaome avaliable to fire. If your using Battery components then these are added up for a ship total and the weapons take a big "bite" out of the stored energy in the battery each time they fire.

How sheilds operate depends on how we want sheilds to work, should shields be startrek like (they absorb all damage untill they are depleted then they "drop" and now your armor your only protection). Or Classic Moo style of a subtractor on all attacks (shields of strength 4, your hit with a 7 damage laser, you take 3 damage). I am not familar with Moo3 and dont particularly care what system is used but we cant say much about shileds untill we know how they work.

[utilae]

@Impaler
My idea is way simple.

I haven't factored time units in and batteries are not considered (though they could be used to save a weapon for the next combat turn as you suggest).

My idea is that:
Powerplants create power (ie +5)
Weapons and Shields use power (ie -2)
-Though I go further saying you can focus powerplants to power something specific (either weapons, shields or engines).
-Essentially it means you have different 'stores' from which to draw power, ie power to weapons, shields and engines.
-Weapons, shields and engines already use power from the powerplants focusing on them.

Also I have minimum and max power requirements for weapons, shields and engines, ie laser 1-5 meaning must have 1 power min. However, if you allocate more power to a weapon (up to the max), so laser gets 5, then it assumes a firerate and damage according to how much power it uses. So laser using 5 would have more damage and faster firerate then laser using 3. If there are 3 lasers (1-5) and 1 powerplant (focused to weapons) creating 3 power, then that power is split between all weapons, so each laser would get 1 power, meeting the minimum. If there were two powerplants (focused on weapons), they would create 6 power, so each laser would get 2 power, meaning it would have more damage and a faster firerate.

--
See, this idea makes the player decide between allocating more power to weapons or more to shields or evenly to both. So there a sense of 'balancing one advantaqge vs another advantage'.

[That Guy]

I agree with impaler, these designs are way too complex. It should just be an imput output thing. I think that fitting everything in the hull is also too complex, you might like it, but other might not and most others won't even get it. The internals should be a list that take up space accordingly, like MOO2. Then external weapons should either be placeable in pre set slots on a premade hull or anywhere, still on a pre made hull, either way taking up some space inside.

That I think would be the best to have the most customization while being abit newb friendly.

[utilae]

The module idea is best implemented as a list system as you suggest, I aggree with that.

As for the powerplant thing:
-You would add a powerplant to the lists (represents power 'in').
-Any weapond added to the list use power (power 'out').
Each powerplant can however have its power focused at either weapons, shields or engines (a drop down box perhaps).

-The rest is automatic:
If each laser has a minimum and maximum power requirement (ie 1-5), then that is done automatically, according to how many powerplants you have and how many are set to weapons.

All weapons have power based boosts automatically applied (ie if all lasers get 3 power, then they automatically assume the right damage and firerate for that amount of power).

Really it is just in and out, though with 1 extra player interactive feature, focusing a powerplant to a system (via drop down box). Then there are automatic features that relate to weapons, shields and engines. These features are the minimum and maximum power usage (ie 1-5). So a laser requires 1 power to run (minimum). A laser can have 5 power max. If a laser is using more power then the minimum (ie more than 1, such as 3), then a boost effect is applied to the weapon. The laser would get a bonus to damage or firerate, based on the power it uses.
ie
laser: damage = 5 X power
if power is 1, then
damage = 5 X 1 = 5
else if power is 2, then
damage = 5 X 2 = 10

[discord]

utilae: actualy you are making it more complex then it has to be....i dont believe i said that. *grin*

powerplants produce power, period.

capacitors store temporary power, period.(these ARE in, wichever way you are looking, since they are inside the weapons/shields, the only thing 'extra' capacitors would do, is create more variation on ship design.)

i like the idea of 'variable damage' depending on amount of power allocated(same works for shields), so you want to relocate power? well, just use sliders(or percentile values with added 'recomended minimums'), since power grids would make transportation of power to any part of the ship 'easy'....that's the whole idea of power grids.

my point with extra 'capacitors' would be that the ship uses as much as it CAN the first round or two, giving extra punch to weapons/shields, the 'overboost' is over when you run out of stored energy, then you operate from the 'standard' level of your ship, if for some reason the ship does not fire for a couple of turns(time units) the excess energy would be stored for another 'boost', but wich is better? quick punch or stable performance? and ofcourse relocating of energy is just a matter of sliders/percentile, why dedicate a entire generator to a single function? that's not how it usualy work, you use however much power you need from the available pool of energy.


//discord

[utilae]

While it would be good to be able to realocate power during a battle (is that what you are suggesting?), it may get too complex.

Allocating power (as I have said) would be done during ship design. As simple as choosing a power generator and then selecting an option for it to power weapons or shields. And that's it, you could only change it when you upgrade your ship.

[discord]

utilae: and as i said before, that makes it to easy to optimise things, not enough variation....and why in the name of all that is holy would i put a dedicated generator for each sub system? totaly illogical.

and although i did point out the ability to change mid battle, using a 'classic' interface that could(and would) get very micro, wich is not something good on a general basis, in accordance to my idea of battle(where you use scripting/battle orders in junction with macro orders, it could work out very well, although ONLY if you spend the time/effort to create good plans(scripts) for good performance of the fleets.)

ahwell, as i said, to damn complicated, i'll prolly just wait for HW2 and see if i can work with that engine instead.

//discord

[utilae]

utilae: and as i said before, that makes it to easy to optimise things, not enough variation....and why in the name of all that is holy would i put a dedicated generator for each sub system? totaly illogical.

It wont be a generator dedicated to each sub system, but all weapons. So a power generator would give power to weapons, which means all weapons (5 laser cannons, 10 plasma cannons and 2 neutron cannons) would share power. When designing a ship you decide whether to allocate power to weapons, shields, engines. If you decide to allocate more power to weapons, then yay firepower. If you decide shields, then protection.

[Pembroke]

Which ever way this is decided I hope that the ship sub-light engines go in the equation, too. Either as simply "your engines are you power plants" or alternatively "you engines consume energy from the power plants like weapons and shields".

One of the design flaws in MOO3 was that the best missile and carrier ships were those with a sublight speed of 1 point (out of 1500+ points), i.e. the lowest possible figure the game accepted. This was just plain ridiculous. Sadly it really was the optimum choice as you could cram in the max amount of missiles and fighters. Essentially these ships were just stationary missile platforms and fighter bases. Which would be fine, except that your Class VII shields were equally well powered with that lousy 1 point engine as those in your long range capital ships with a 2200 point engines...

I would like it to be a trade off all the way: divide the power usage any way you like but increasing one part (weapons, shields, engines) is always a deduction from somewhere else.

[discord]

utilae: weapons/shields/engines/generators(and lifesupport) are generaly the primary subsystems, since this is about relocation of power, generators are not apart of the picture, lifesupport was taken out earlier, so the different subsystems are? weapons shields and engines, again, why would i want to dedicate generators to the different subsystems?

since making it the way i proposed is not that much harder for the programmers, would not create any more lag on the game engine, and using the battle system i proposed(wich is not much different from yours, except in how controls are handled.).
all in all, you are just against any kind of 'reality' or detail in the game, eh?

//discord