davea wrote:
Well, I have spent a few hours trying stuff, and I have not found much which both (a) worked, and (b) seems interesting. I have added a fleet tender (repair) module for UE, a smaller seed module for horatio, and changed UE and Sophon so that they are better, and worse respectively, at invasion.



Since you can't mix weapon effects, I was only able to vary the rate of fire and damage of weapons. Without also modifying the graphics, this seems pretty uninteresting. I tried a "rail gun" type kinetic which has low ROF but high damage. Unfortunately, deflectors operate per projectile. So, all the high damage projectiles get stopped and the result is not very much damage. I tried high ROF and low damage. That is nice, but really who cares; it is not different enough to be interesting. For beams, low ROF and high damage does work; with either lower or higher speed, it looks kind of interesting. I made a spinal mount laser: 10x tonnage, 1/2x ROF, 20x damage. It is sort of fun to see one small beam hit a destroyer and blow it up, and if I could add a big, powerful graphic it would be interesting. But since it is still the same basic damage, again who really cares.



So, I have had some success with interesting support modules, but no real success with interesting weapons. Any suggestions?

Get rid of deflection stat completly.

Add to all defensive modules accuracy and absorb.



oh and change localization.

Weapons that have low base damage, a medium critical chance and a very high critical modifier?



Other then that, I am not too sure about much variance unless we can add modifiers to the weapons effects.

@ Hupailija - certainly.

While my work habit is far to hectic for me to feel like I am actually helping you (Its just a 4 hour you-tube video!)



But so far my tests have only shown how I made ships invulnerable to kinetics (I boosted the kinetic defense), but i will be sure to post a working version of my testings once the kinetic weapons work how I want them.

@ igncom1, these are the types of ideas I was thinking of. In order to meet my goal of making combat more interesting, they have to be noticeably different from other weapons. Have you playtested and found this characteristic? If you are interested, we could work together on this.

In a sort of testing mod i have been working on, for kinetic weapons I created 4 variants.



Rapid fire guns that are good at finishing smaller or damaged ships without overkill.



Medium cannons that fire a few but powerful shots.



Chance/chaos weapons that are all about their massive critical hit bonus.



And finally massive one-to-a-ship weapons that can kill a destroyer in one hit, but only fire once a phase, and are still kinda iffy with their accuracy.

Boy am I glad that I have blank slate for each ship, module, weapon and defence in my mod.



I mean I can happily create ships with 11 space and say that it's enough for engine + 1 class 1 small weapon of first type.

Or ships with 1000 space and say that one can put there 1 capital ship weapon or 10 large weapons (or 100 class 1 small weapons if one really wants, but those are rather weak and that ship uses loads of command points)

Hupailija wrote:
Should we move this module conversation to Endless Dream

If you wish to continue there in parallel, that is fine, but I do intend to pursue these ideas. I like the idea of DN-only modules. Today we can only accomplish that by making the tonnage very large. Something like a spinal mount laser could have 20x the tonnage of a laser (roughly 180) and 25x the damage, for example. So it might barely fit in a cruiser, but it would be a bad idea. Unfortunately today we cannot mod different graphics, but this is the kind of thing I was looking for to make the weapons a little less symmetric.

Should we move this module conversation to Endless Dream before I once again manage to hijack another modding thread .



Some of these sounds really wonderful (or atleast gives idea what one needs to think while making modules).



I myself was thinking more in lines of:

Swarm has regenerative ships and they modules upgrades their regenerative skills,

Terran is all about money, their all modules has inbuild moneyleach .. though it can eventually get bit boring to only have huge amount of money. I am trying to build some kind of "mercenary" system as in UE would have to pay higher upkeep for both heroes and ships to balance their huge money incomes.

Pilgrim, they have learned to do everything in space, their modules give FIDS and they have best engines. Though hospital idea is great addon for that.

Sowers: big clunky ships, almost like factories, their special modules eats food production from planet they are completly (doesn't affect to sowers)

Sophon: as surprising as it is, in my mind these small little fellows aren't most intelligent specie of world. Their special modules are mostly build to prevent damage by forming different kind of forcefields. (wonder how absorb missile damage works)

Horatio is hard, Either one thinks that they are normal humans or that they are clones. In first case they can benefit from almost anything and in later they benefit from almost nothing (what clones need?).

Amoeba I hate this race, mostly because I just can't understand it. Therefore I am not thinking it :P

Hissho even though this would be fun, I did give this away too

That is interesting. While it does not make anything possible, that still leaves a lot of options. Maybe the way to go would be to create one or two racial techs for each faction - that fit "story" and are careful not to "break" that faction. There are 8 factions, really... Some of the above ideas basically work like "counters". The rest seem to be "bonus for using committed ship design".



Here is a first pass at the idea:



UE - Big ships and Extra Tax Income



"Marine HQ"



I'd lean "Marines" here, as it fits the story and runs "counter" to how many players play them - economic victory.



Sophons - Tech and Support Ships



"Melee Beams"



"Sniper Beams"



Round headed aliens and beams have always gone together in my mind. I wouldn't want to give them a support item .... because that works too well with their existing theme. I'd have one earlier in the tech tree and one later.



Hissho - Violence and Missiles



"Decoy Missiles"



Hissho already has one racial missile tech. I am not 100% on this as it might help them too much .... but it seems to fit. I'd put it later in the tech tree.



Amoeba - Exploration and Trade



"Jump Drive"



Use story along the lines of "developed jump drive technology to move cargo fleets".



Cravers - Strip Mining and Large Fleets



"Piloted Missiles"



Cravers seem more then willing to risk the lives of individuals. What better way to improve guidance then to stick some guy you don't like inside it?



"Unstable Engines"



Engines (no fleet effect) that reduce defenses. I'd make it available later to avoid it effecting early colony ships.



Horatio - Cloning and "Tall" Systems



"Rockets"



Doesn't really fit the theme exactly, but I'm running out of ideas. I don't think it would "break" the faction though.



"Coordinated Response Grid"



Power module that gives small bonuses to everything. Story related to coordinated efforts/using extra human labor - clones etc



Sowers - Industry and Robots



"Flak Cannon"



Robots and huge doomsday weapons seem like a good match to me.



Pilgrims - Evacuation and Trade



"Hospital Module"



The kind of people that learn to evacuate entire worlds seem like the kind of people who would have big portable hospitals.





Free Ideas = You get what you pay for

Another thought: I know you can only put one offensive/defensive tag on a module - can you put both an offense and defense tag on a module?

You can't add offense or defense tags to module in a format of:







since game allows just 1 per module (well ok, it allows multiple but not similar)



But you can make module which points to any / all of those values and increases those accordingly.



As in you could add shield which would increase your critical chance or powermodule which would rise your absortion against damage.





And I think that it's possible to make module which lowers time it takes for missile to reach to target... it just affects to own missiles and not opponent (imagine if you could affect to enemy ships/fleets) :/

Other Easy "Themes"



Rockets - low accuracy missiles with low weight

Rail guns - high accuracy kinetic with fewer projectiles

Decoy Missiles - low weight missiles that do negligible damage



Another thought: I know you can only put one offensive/defensive tag on a module - can you put both an offense and defense tag on a module?



ie - A kinetic weapon that also adds missile defense (phalanx cannon) or a beam weapon that adds kinetic defense (force beam)?

Copperwire1632 wrote:
A good way to limit the "game breaking" effects of the above would be to insert them as racial techs. This would create opportunity for weaving them into "story" as well as create opportunity for using factions in new ways. ie:



If the "Jump Drive" was only available to Amoeba and was only available in late mid game, it might tempt players into trying custom factions based on late game destroyer spam with Amoeba.



Also, it might be good to make sure certain affinities, say the ones that already excel at violence, do not get pushed into overpower.

Aaaah, another teaser! You are just as bad as Igncom1 when it comes to suggesting me things what sounds fun, does wonderful things and requires both me and my project -.-



I mean almost everything what you have suggested works wonderfully in Endless Dream and can be added with little to no effort

Cross-pollination:

/#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/12369-side-effects-of-weapons-and-armors

A good way to limit the "game breaking" effects of the above would be to insert them as racial techs. This would create opportunity for weaving them into "story" as well as create opportunity for using factions in new ways. ie:



If the "Jump Drive" was only available to Amoeba and was only available in late mid game, it might tempt players into trying custom factions based on late game destroyer spam with Amoeba.



Also, it might be good to make sure certain affinities, say the ones that already excel at violence, do not get pushed into overpower.

Copperwire1632 wrote:
One easy option would be to make modules that only fit in larger ships that "bend" the standard rock, paper, scissors. ie:



Interceptor Missiles - Fast / Hard to intercept missiles with less potential damage for the weigh used

Melee Beam - A lower accuracy beam weapon with higher potential damage

Flak Cannon - Kinetic weapon with an absurd number of projectiles that do lower damage



By changing the behavior of a weapon (ie. which rounds they are effective in, how they interact with defenses) and leaving it with the same "elemental damage type" a lot of options are possible.



Sizing them to fit dreads, and sometimes cruiser/battleships, would keep them out of early play and off of destroyer spam fleets (something that may need a little tweak anyway). If a module takes 60% of the available space in a battleship it would force creating specialized ships that are not "omni".



Of course, this could be applied to support modules as well. ie:



Marine HQ - An invasion module that barely fits in a cruiser available in mid game.

Hospital - A repair module that barely fits in a mid game cruiser that only works out of combat.

Jump Module - A engine module with ridiculous bonuses that will only fit in a late game dreadnaught.



This would basically reward committed ship designs - rather then including one invasion module in each ship in your fleet etc.

Do want more ideas of these modules... and also can I use these on my mod?

One easy option would be to make modules that only fit in larger ships that "bend" the standard rock, paper, scissors. ie:



Interceptor Missiles - Fast / Hard to intercept missiles with less potential damage for the weigh used

Melee Beam - A lower accuracy beam weapon with higher potential damage

Flak Cannon - Kinetic weapon with an absurd number of projectiles that do lower damage



By changing the behavior of a weapon (ie. which rounds they are effective in, how they interact with defenses) and leaving it with the same "elemental damage type" a lot of options are possible.



Sizing them to fit dreads, and sometimes cruiser/battleships, would keep them out of early play and off of destroyer spam fleets (something that may need a little tweak anyway). If a module takes 60% of the available space in a battleship it would force creating specialized ships that are not "omni".



Of course, this could be applied to support modules as well. ie:



Marine HQ - An invasion module that barely fits in a cruiser available in mid game.

Hospital - A repair module that barely fits in a mid game cruiser that only works out of combat.

Jump Module - A engine module with ridiculous bonuses that will only fit in a late game dreadnaught.



This would basically reward committed ship designs - rather then including one invasion module in each ship in your fleet etc.

Igncom1 wrote:
lol Outstanding!

Scary part is that I started to instantly think how hard it would be to make Endless Space meets Pokemon mod...

you would start with 1 hero and fleet, each new planet would have either enemy fleet OR would be gym, you could recruit new heroes along the way and train them to higher level.

Goal would be to get to middle and beat 4 unbeatable planets with your 6 heros and their ships.

Hupailija wrote:
Hupailija summons bahamuth zero!

*Tera Flare*

Enemy takes 9999 damage!



did I got it right? :P



or did you mean more like:



I choose you smallship1mon,

Use Missile1,

Use Kineticshield1,

good now use Laser1,

great now I use shipball and catch that mediumship1mon

lol Outstanding!

I think the current setup of "pure" defense modules magnifies small differences in tech, heroes, resources, etc. too much. When I get back to my main computer, I want to try diluting defense modules; for example, instead of having a deflector module counter, say, three kinetic modules, have it counter only one but give it a side bonus like increasing hit points. This would make it much harder to have undamageable ships, which would hopefully help bring armor modules into play. Repair mechanics would probably have to be overhauled though.