Re: Ship and ship parts balancing and flavor ideas
Posted: Thu Feb 27, 2014 1:15 pm
That....
Would be a major rewrite of pretty much everything, the knock on for AI coding and similar would be similarly big. Not saying it's a bad idea mind, just that it'd be a much bigger project.
I need to tidy up a few text file entries for my robotic parts patch, which I've been putting off for no real reason, it does duplicate some of the stuff you've done subsequently elsewhere but that's not a major problem, we both agreed independently that tidying up and reordering the ship hulls techs was needed.
The agreed plan was a series of incremental changes to the current structure, for the simple reason that a) it would have less impact per change and b) it wouldn't require Dilvish to completely rewrite the AI code given his limited availability and I think we can all agree that making the game unplayable by breaking the AI would be a bad thing even if the basic idea was good.
My current plan is to go through each hull type and reasses the costs to bring them more into line, that's fairly straightforward number crunching that a) I'm good at and b) doesn't actively break anything, it merely makes some strategies more or less optimal.
While that's happening, others have been working on parts and other flavour ideas. One thing I definitely want to do is make every hull in teh game either a valid choice to play with or removed, and I'd much rather see the former than the latter. I also, personally, see no problem in adding more hull types over time, as long as it's not too much clutter, but it would be good to rationalise the tech tree a bit as we go—but a tech tree change by necessity requires an AI rewrite, that's something to avoid if unnecessary so I'm putting that off until I'm happy that the current hull lines are roughly on a par with each other in terms of cost/benefit and relative power.
Definitely like the idea of expanding core slot usage, but that's a longer term project for me as it'd need too much, I'd like to get the costs readdressed before 0.4.4, but more radical rewrites such as Ta'Lon's would need serious work after 0.4.4 I think.
(BTW, never written the name before, taken from Farscape perchance? Rewatching from the beginning on Netscape at the moment, it stands up a LOT better than most other shows of its era I think).
Would be a major rewrite of pretty much everything, the knock on for AI coding and similar would be similarly big. Not saying it's a bad idea mind, just that it'd be a much bigger project.
I need to tidy up a few text file entries for my robotic parts patch, which I've been putting off for no real reason, it does duplicate some of the stuff you've done subsequently elsewhere but that's not a major problem, we both agreed independently that tidying up and reordering the ship hulls techs was needed.
The agreed plan was a series of incremental changes to the current structure, for the simple reason that a) it would have less impact per change and b) it wouldn't require Dilvish to completely rewrite the AI code given his limited availability and I think we can all agree that making the game unplayable by breaking the AI would be a bad thing even if the basic idea was good.
My current plan is to go through each hull type and reasses the costs to bring them more into line, that's fairly straightforward number crunching that a) I'm good at and b) doesn't actively break anything, it merely makes some strategies more or less optimal.
While that's happening, others have been working on parts and other flavour ideas. One thing I definitely want to do is make every hull in teh game either a valid choice to play with or removed, and I'd much rather see the former than the latter. I also, personally, see no problem in adding more hull types over time, as long as it's not too much clutter, but it would be good to rationalise the tech tree a bit as we go—but a tech tree change by necessity requires an AI rewrite, that's something to avoid if unnecessary so I'm putting that off until I'm happy that the current hull lines are roughly on a par with each other in terms of cost/benefit and relative power.
Definitely like the idea of expanding core slot usage, but that's a longer term project for me as it'd need too much, I'd like to get the costs readdressed before 0.4.4, but more radical rewrites such as Ta'Lon's would need serious work after 0.4.4 I think.
(BTW, never written the name before, taken from Farscape perchance? Rewatching from the beginning on Netscape at the moment, it stands up a LOT better than most other shows of its era I think).