Supply Ships?

from Sins Forums

I know this has been brought up, probably a hundred times already, but i was thinking if it would be possible to uncouple? Is that the word? Resources from automatic, to something based more on ... well... hmmm... what am i thinking of? Well... From planets and ships, i guess.

What i mean is what if anti-matter had to be produced somehow, instead of having ships regenerate it automatically? What if ammunition came in sizes, 1000, 5000, etc? What if fuel ran out and ships stopped and had to be refueled by the player doing something? Like maybe having resource asteroids that only produce xx amount of useable fuel and then running out?

I'm not saying everyone would like to play this way, but it would be interesting as an option. Something the player could choose to do. I have tried some of these ideas in test mods, and have been moderately successful in some and horrible failures in others.

But with a system like this, tugboats and re-fuelers and re-supply ships, say each ship consumes air, and foodstuffs and water as basic components that are on timers that count down when a ship is launched into orbit? That could mean of course that a "Docking Hangar" could be a new structure where ships would park when in orbit of their home planet or a colony planet they controlled so as to not use their resources.

What it would do of course is give the player more options, and more to do, there would be battles of course, but now i would have to watch my resource levels, or how far i am from one of my planets that has fuel converters that are feeding tiny re-fuel ships, or how much air each of my ships have before they go red and belly up in the middle of a battle because i didnt pull them out and re-air them?

It may sound stupid, haha, but i get these ideas, you know? Where i'm doing like 3 or 4 or 5 things at once just to keep the game rolling, and it strikes me that this would be fun!!  :)  Haha, anyway, that is just my take, i will go back to trying some of these in mods, seeing if i can simulate what i want somehow, haha, ask a couple hundred more questions and see if i can get closer to that model im shooting for in my head.

Anyway, take care, i have homework this weekend, so will likely not be back on til next week, have a good one if you can relax and not worry about things like that, haha, im jealous!!

Keep Gaming and Keep Modding!!!!

-Teal

 

modding
6,343 views 16 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

I didn't read anything cept the title (sorry!) but all I have to say is:

Conquest: Frontier Wars

Great game, good supply ship use etc.

 

-Phal

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Pirates have a steal resources ability, maybe u could use that somehow. Also the drain planet ability could be useful. Or u could try and make a campaign map with players not being able to construct buildings, but being able to capture neutral buildings in a gravity well.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

In my personal non-released mod animatter is not generated. You have to build supply centers which have a radius for antimatter regen all ships around it. I also have supply ships which you can add to your fleet that will also transfer antimatter supplies.

It does bring a whole new level to the game. You have to be careful and make sure you are supplied before commiting an attack.

 

The problem i encountered was this really messed up the AI effectiveness. Supplying is such a manual process and the AI isn't equipped to handle it.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

I think having to resupply things like food and air is a little extreme, but I do like the idea of finite antimatter stores, and of normal weapons using a tiny amount of antimatter.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Will, reply 4
I think having to resupply things like food and air is a little extreme, but I do like the idea of finite antimatter stores, and of normal weapons using a tiny amount of antimatter.
End of Will's quote

 

Question is, do ships convert matter to antimatter onboard? In view of the equation of E=mc^2, both anti-matter and matter are "matter" in the sense of containing the same quantity of energy per mass (just that anti-matter and matter have opposite charges.) The conversion process between matter and antimatter is probably wasteful, but the annihilation reaction is 100% efficient (since all of the mass is being converted to energy) and very fast (making it useful for bursts of energy), however the collection of energy from an annihilation reaction would probably be grossly inefficient.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

This is not a problem: simply add ability AbilityAntiMatterRechargeModule on supply ship [any] and with big amount antimatter onboard ~ 2000. But better use in manual mode<_<  I try this mode - very interested.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

I tried something like this way back, version 1,5 of Sins, I think. It went well, I gave the Hoshiko and the other races support ships anitmatter regen ability, and disabled the ships own regeneration. It was cool, the Ai had some difficulty with it, because it didnt use that much support ships, but i made it autocast and added huge reserves of antitmatter ~3000 i think. You had to think ahead because ships used antimatter for jumps too, so you hade to calculate every move!

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

:)  Sounds very very interesting!!  I am going to look at Conquest Frontier Wars as you suggested, and thank you to everyone for the nice ideas. I like the anti-matter recharge thing and disabling it on the ships, KillerKid, sounds like you worked it out. 

As to air and water and foodstuffs being extreme, i suppose it is, however, i used to play Empire Earth and some of the strategy games where you have to keep watch on everything!  And i loved it. I thought it would be interesting here, not for everyone of course, but if it were an add-on, or a mod with foodstuffs and air and water and fuel and ammunition, well... i would be one happy camper! 

Thanks for the feedback, take care

 

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Conquest Frontier Wars
End of quote

Damn good game

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Air and food i dont know if thats possible with current Sins version, but the ammunition is doable. I think the guys at Dawn of victory use something like this, or it was there intetion.

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

Well, we were considering it, but jettisoned it in favor of a Power attribute that has a little bit more subtle of gameplay effects. I mean, I love the idea, but the fact is you only get one chance to hijack the Antimatter variable and while it's great to run supply ships and have that mechanic, that means you have to do a lot of changes elsewhere to make it work (like making all abilities based on cooldowns only, no "mana"). I think there were a couple people that had either implemented it or seriously discussed it in other mods, though, so I'd definitely keep on the lookout.

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

I dont know about resupplying antimatter as I would imagine that would be reproduced in the ships Engine...But I can see supply ships for ordinance, food, gear, and personell to replace dead or severly injured crew. As of right now the ships seem to pull its ordinance out of thin air.............err space. also it be cool to see the actual crew population on a ship as when it takes heavy damage I can only imagine the majority of the crew is lost and the closer the HP gets to 0 the less and less of a crew there is to man battlestations and actually keep the ship running.

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top

I wasn't talking about ridiculous canon hypotheticals, I was talking about what is physically possible to do in the game. None of what you say is possible.

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

also it be cool to see the actual crew population on a ship as when it takes heavy damage I can only imagine the majority of the crew is lost and the closer the HP gets to 0 the less and less of a crew there is to man battlestations and actually keep the ship running.
End of quote

If and when there is a Sins 2 there should be a realistic game mode...every minor detail is accounted for...it would take some fun out (maybe!) and make it more strategic. AI may suck in this game mode tho lol.

-Phal

Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top

who was talking to you I was responding to the OP..........So there was no need for your ridiculous response.

I didnt mean these supply ships would actually carry gear and and ordiance but that the idea was after every battle a group of supply ships from a near by Friendly GW would jump in do the Trade ship trick and swing past the ships, it wouldnt take much to add these ships in, infact you can pretty much build them off of the Tradeship design. As for the Crew #'s would be in the ship info bar with the HP bar and all other essential info. It be pretty easy to tie it to the Ships Health and for every certian HP lost will subtract a certian number of Crew as well.

Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Allegiance86, reply 15

I didnt mean these supply ships would actually carry gear and and ordiance but that the idea was after every battle a group of supply ships from a near by Friendly GW would jump in do the Trade ship trick and swing past the ships, it wouldnt take much to add these ships in, infact you can pretty much build them off of the Tradeship design.
End of Allegiance86's quote

No, you can't. The Trade ship behavior is hard-coded, there is no way to modify how they move or when they move.

As for the Crew #'s would be in the ship info bar with the HP bar and all other essential info. It be pretty easy to tie it to the Ships Health and for every certian HP lost will subtract a certian number of Crew as well.
End of quote

Again, there is absolutely no way to do this. You cannot just invent a variable and throw it in the HP bar, this is all hard-coded. You would have to use the antimatter system, then decouple it from every other usage (abilities, phase jumping, etc), and then write a OnDamageTaken buff that decrements it. But since OnDamageTaken is only fired sporadically, there would be no way to realistically & proportionally tie it to how much damage is taken. In short what you are proposing can only be implemented through a hack at best and not at all at worst.

Just because something seems cool doesn't mean it's possible nor should people be asserting that it's "easy" to do without any knowledge of how the game works. It's not as if this system is ridiculously complex and it's easy to make a mistake about what and what isn't possible, there are very clear examples of what you can and cannot do mostly because the engine is so inflexible.