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Stars! MOD proposal Sat, 30 July 2005 07:32 Go to next message
joxang is currently offline joxang

 
Crewman 2nd Class

Messages: 14
Registered: July 2005
A MOD proposal using Starsed

These are the only two things which I do not like about Stars! :
1) How can starships and starbases use less resources and minerals than some components?
2) Endgames often see ridiculously large fleets of super battleships and super nubians. Surely larger ships should be very very expensive so they can act as 'flagships' while smaller ships can be relatively cheaper to facilitate their being the main components of a fleet?

I propose modifying price and power of ship hulls so that there are two main classes of ships (warships especially):

Escort ships - very cheap, suitable for making up the bulk of an armed fleet in the early game (ie. no change).

Scout
Fighter (instead of frigate)
Corvette (instead of destroyer)

Capital Ships - Extortionately expensive, but very very powerful. Takes perhaps several years to construct one ship, but act as very powerful 'flagships'. Very heavy and very slow in battle, so require escort ships to prevent 'swarming' by fast beam weapon escorts.

Cruiser
(B-Cruiser)
Battleship
(Dreadnought)
Mobile Starbase (instead of Nubian)

Would such an idea work in practise? I believe this would make Stars! more 'realistic' military strategy wise, e.g. Naval forces dominated by single powerful aircraft carriers.

O Yeah - and starbases will be made very very very powerful to compensate.

is this a) viable and b) is anyone interested?

Joe

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Re: Stars! MOD proposal Sat, 30 July 2005 09:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
donjon is currently offline donjon

 
Lt. Commander

Messages: 808
Registered: November 2002
Location: Benque Viejo del Carmen, ...

joxang wrote on Sat, 30 July 2005 05:32


Mobile Starbase (instead of Nubian)

Erm,... we are talking Stars! here? There is no allowance in the code of the game for ships to have resources, and therefore they cannot build.
Quote:

O Yeah - and starbases will be made very very very powerful to compensate.

Very quickly overflow problems occur with shielding/armour.

This has been established in a few mods presently being tested.

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Re: Stars! MOD proposal Sat, 30 July 2005 10:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
joxang is currently offline joxang

 
Crewman 2nd Class

Messages: 14
Registered: July 2005
what does 'overflow problem' mean? sorry...im a bit of a newbie.

I am talking about Stars!. it doesn't have to be 'mobile starbase' lol. I just thought something really powerful that's mobile.

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Re: Stars! MOD proposal Sat, 30 July 2005 10:23 Go to previous messageGo to next message
donjon is currently offline donjon

 
Lt. Commander

Messages: 808
Registered: November 2002
Location: Benque Viejo del Carmen, ...

It seems to me, that to "enhance" the powers of a starbase and avoid overflows, one would have to decrease the strength of all weapons, and decrease the efficacy of armour and shields... then one could increase the number of slots on a starbase and the plies per slot.

But, one would have to be careful with multi-purpose devices... ie. MT devices, and sharmour and fielded kelarium and depleted neutronium because the secondary strengths may in fact become primary strengths.

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Re: Stars! MOD proposal Sat, 30 July 2005 10:39 Go to previous messageGo to next message
crr65536 is currently offline crr65536

 
Chief Warrant Officer 3

Messages: 180
Registered: June 2005
Many things in Stars have powers-of-two limits. What happens is that the programmers, who tried to make things as efficient as possible, used bit-packing to try to minimize the amount of resources used up. For example, there is a maximum of 512 (2^9) fleets per player. The maximum number of minefields per player is also 512. The maximum number of ships of one type in a fleet, IIRC, is 32767 (2^15 - 1). The maximum initiative a ship can have is 63 (2^6 - 1)

Now, the armor and shields fleets have are stored, typically in 16-bit or 32-bit numbers. 16-bit numbers can have a maximum of 32767 (2^15 - 1) or 65535 (2^16 - 1), depending on whether the numbers used are signed or unsigned (unsigned numbers can't be negative - instead the bit that would control the sign is used to allow 2* as many positive values). If you exceed a limit, the value will either be reported as negative (if it's signed) or zero or very small (if it's unsigned).

Indeed, this is the basis of a bug that was found a little while back: a space dock's armor is stored as a 16-bit signed value, and so when exceeding 32767 armor (by using Superlatanium) strange things were found to happen.

Anyways, a 32-bit number can go up to 2147483647 (signed) or 4294967295 (unsigned). While these are out of reach for Death Stars or Nubians, depending on how cool these "very very powerful" starbases are you may run into these sorts of limits.

Also, one more thing: in Stars nowadays people generally see starbases as a vehicle for making ships, not as strong defensive installations themselves. Empty starbases are common, and full starbases typically find themselves firing on chaff only before being destroyed. I'm not sure if you realize it, but your suggestions would change the game probably much more than you think. Not that it's a bad thing Wink , but there are quite a few things to like about this game too Very Happy .

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Re: Stars! MOD proposal Sat, 30 July 2005 14:20 Go to previous messageGo to next message
joxang is currently offline joxang

 
Crewman 2nd Class

Messages: 14
Registered: July 2005
lol...ok coolio Smile . I'll mess about a bit with StarsED anyway...I think you're right - any MOD thing like that can probably only be played without chaff Confused .

Thanks!

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Re: Stars! MOD proposal Sat, 30 July 2005 15:02 Go to previous messageGo to next message
dethdukk is currently offline dethdukk

 
Chief Warrant Officer 3

Messages: 200
Registered: June 2005
In the first post you said what you wanted stars to be like. If that is what you want then try Homeworld. More advanced graphics, and it seems to be what you are looking for.

[Updated on: Sat, 30 July 2005 15:02]




If you cannot love, you will always hate, and in hate there is only death.
[img]http://dragcave.net/image/XIJh.gif[/img] <--- is teh dragon!

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Re: Stars! MOD proposal Sun, 31 July 2005 05:51 Go to previous messageGo to next message
joxang is currently offline joxang

 
Crewman 2nd Class

Messages: 14
Registered: July 2005
hmmm...not really. I hate Homeworld.

I think you misunderstand....I love Stars!, I've been playing it for 4 years continuously. It just struck me that there were some little things in it that didn't make sense, or didn't seem viable. E.g. Massive fleets of super ships, and resource + mineral costs of components being greater than ship and starbase hulls.


[Updated on: Sun, 31 July 2005 05:52]

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Re: Stars! MOD proposal Sun, 31 July 2005 12:54 Go to previous message
dethdukk is currently offline dethdukk

 
Chief Warrant Officer 3

Messages: 200
Registered: June 2005
True. However, if you think about it, if the components were not so expensive there would be even BIGGER fleets of superships. And perhaps a good excuse for the starbase cost is that we are building them already, so future starebases would be easier to build, less expensive. (The tech advancements and miniturization, doncha know Very Happy.


If you cannot love, you will always hate, and in hate there is only death.
[img]http://dragcave.net/image/XIJh.gif[/img] <--- is teh dragon!

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