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Replying to PR v 1.1 Ship design Discussion


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Phoenix Rising

Posted 06 February 2009 - 12:18 AM

First things first: Great mod. I've tried just about all the popular EAW mods out there and this is the only one that's held my interest for any length of time.

Well, thanks for playing it and joining the forums. I'll try to answer what hasn't been touched on yet.

The DP20s are canonically tough and cheap, but if necessary, we can make them build longer. DP20g Gunships versus an equivalent population of Imperial I-class Star Destroyers isn't exactly a good matchup for the ISDs though, especially from long range.

2. What are the definitions of the various armor types?

Basically, all you need to know for practical purposes is that bigger ships have more armor. It's sort of a balance compensation for them being so big and easy to hit. I'm toying with doing an armor type revamp, but I haven't fully worked it out in my head yet.

Out of curiosity, why not give some of the pirates upgraded ships? Would it be that much harder giving some of them Acclamator IIs? Well, beyond the scope of it anyway... :p

Mostly because it wasn't appropriate for the GFFA setting of 18 BBY. They will be upgraded in the later campaigns though, so watch out.

The -hard- part is the whole "armor_dr_etc" part. It takes what ... looks like? raw weapons damage and reduces based on the armor_dr_etc, but I can't find armor_dr referenced anywhere else.

That's because those are used for land units.

feld

Posted 02 February 2009 - 01:16 PM

So I've clearly got a lot of learning to do. I've been browsing through the XML files and have more (always more with me) questions.

1. Energy capacity and energy refresh seem to correspond to energy per shot in the projectiles file. I assume that the weapons which do energy damage reduce the combat effectiveness of the target vessel, but by how much?

Actually, they do not. One of the consequences of removing hardpoints from the game is that the combat capability of the starships in PR is contstant until they die. No one likes this but it was a design decision necessary to implement the large numbers of weapons actually found on canon ships but avoid some problems inherent in the existing EAW/FOC hardpoint system. See the Hardpoints FAQ for more info.

Kaleb Graff

Posted 02 February 2009 - 01:40 AM

DR is RPG shorthand for damage reduction. I know he based land armor off of that, and I think he did the same with space armor. The variance is sort of small, but it's after shields, and DR 60 is about 40% of a standard turbolaser.

Tropical Bob

Posted 01 February 2009 - 10:33 PM

Well, I had figured that PR had disabled the whole energy system, or that it was not actually used by the engine. It would be an interesting thing, but a tough one to implement now.

I think it was decided a while back that the energy system was something that wasn't finished by the developers, but was left in the game. Apparently, we ran into a little road block where the ISDs' shields weren't restoring how they should, which led to a looking in to of the effects of that coding.

Or something like that.

Kitkun

Posted 01 February 2009 - 07:48 PM

Well, the Armor_DR doesn't appear in the FoC GameConstants file, but I haven't seen it used anywhere either.
The balance of the ships is mostly in the number and type of weapons, along with cost and health. Speed and maneuverability also play a part.

Radio Star

Posted 01 February 2009 - 06:37 PM

I've been reading over the petite gameconstants.xml with particular attention to armor types. I'm getting a handle on it but I do have a question or two. PR seems to ignore the many different arguments for damage type, basing all the weapons on DT_0 vs the various armor types. That's the easy part. The -hard- part is the whole "armor_dr_etc" part. It takes what ... looks like? raw weapons damage and reduces based on the armor_dr_etc, but I can't find armor_dr referenced anywhere else. The following is an example:

<Damage_To_Armor_Mod>Damage_4, Armor_DR_2_O, 0.5</Damage_To_Armor_Mod>

Not only can I not find armor_dr anywhere else, but there's armor_dr_x_O and armor_dr_x_D and sometimes ..._x_V. Is this just legacy from the original EAW then?

Finally, the range of armor coverage on various craft seems a bit ... off. There's not much variation in capital ships, with the separation between a lowly mc30 and a mobile fortress like a star destroyer of .. a little over ten percent? Tweaking those values will have a significant impact on balance of course, but it seems like there should be a larger gulf between capital classes.

coinich

Posted 01 February 2009 - 02:14 PM

Well, I had figured that PR had disabled the whole energy system, or that it was not actually used by the engine. It would be an interesting thing, but a tough one to implement now.

There is one xml that states the armor types. GalacticConstants.xml?

Out of curiosity, why not give some of the pirates upgraded ships? Would it be that much harder giving some of them Acclamator IIs? Well, beyond the scope of it anyway... :blush:

anakinskysolo

Posted 31 January 2009 - 11:52 PM

So I've clearly got a lot of learning to do. I've been browsing through the XML files and have more (always more with me) questions.

1. Energy capacity and energy refresh seem to correspond to energy per shot in the projectiles file. I assume that the weapons which do energy damage reduce the combat effectiveness of the target vessel, but by how much? What's the correlation here? In a somewhat related question, how is a weapon's rate of fire calculated? Hardcoded?

2. What are the definitions of the various armor types?


You might want to check this thread. Although the rate of fire of each weapon is something that PR created, and only he can explain fully, but its mostly based on canon.

Kitkun

Posted 31 January 2009 - 09:01 PM

Last I heard, energy only effects shield refresh. Ship energy values are on a ship class basis. Beats me what the engine does with it other than that.


Rate of fire is determined in the hardpoints files. Open hardpoints_space.xml up and see the truly insane amount of code within.

Anyways, the general convention PR has applied is that lasers/ion cannons fire every 2 seconds and turbolasers/turboion cannons/mass drivers fire every three second. Slugthrowers appear to fire three rounds every three seconds. Disruptors fire at four seconds apart, and turbodisruptors fire every six seconds.
The exception are weapons marked 'quad'. They fire a projectile a level weaker and shorter ranged, but have an extremely high rate of fire. Eg., a quad turbolaser fires light turbolasers at 0.375 seconds.

Missiles, rockets, torpedoes and bombs are a bit different. The first number in the description is how many launchers it has, and so determines how many fire at a time. The number in parentheses is how many reloads per launcher the ship has. Due to the way the game works, it's set so that each launcher fires off it's full load every two minutes. So a unit with 2 (10) will fire two missiles every twelve seconds.


The armor and damage types are defined in the Game Constants file. I've never noticed a different damage type being used, so I don't know what effect it actually has.

Radio Star

Posted 31 January 2009 - 07:51 PM

So I've clearly got a lot of learning to do. I've been browsing through the XML files and have more (always more with me) questions.

1. Energy capacity and energy refresh seem to correspond to energy per shot in the projectiles file. I assume that the weapons which do energy damage reduce the combat effectiveness of the target vessel, but by how much? What's the correlation here? In a somewhat related question, how is a weapon's rate of fire calculated? Hardcoded?

2. What are the definitions of the various armor types?

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