3 levels of Unit Caps

Homeworld Remastered Collection Homeworld Mods and Modding
#8

I renamed Battlecrusiers to Cruisers, that worked just fine, that’s not a problem.

But doing this crashes the game and .log doesn’t offer any explanations:

familylist.lua:

unitcapsSubCategory =
    {
    	-- Cruisers	
    	{
    		name = "Battlecruiser",
    		numParam = 34,
    		stringParam = "$2127",
    	},
    }

scripts/unitcaps/normal.lua:

UC_Family("Capital", 14);
UC_FamilyOverride("Vaygr", "Capital", 15);
UC_ShipType("Destroyer", 7);
UC_ShipType("Carrier", 4);
UC_ShipTypeOverride("Hiigaran", "Carrier", 3);
UC_ShipType("Cruiser",3);
UC_SubCategory("Battlecruiser",2);

and Vgr_Battlecruiser.ship:

NewShipType.UnitCapsFamily="Capital"
NewShipType.UnitCapsShipType="Cruiser"
NewShipType.UnitCapsSubCategory="Battlecruiser"

Are you sure it’s not hardcoded? Because unless I missed something, it looks pretty alright to me.
(As I said, renaming UnitcapsShipType to Cruisers isn’t the problem, that worked. It’s the new UnitCapsSubCategory.)

#9

My solution is to manage this in the gametype lua. See simple example for player 0 and HGN BC only, but it’s easy to expand.

You can do the same in the custom code of your battlecruisers as well. It is probably more efficient.

And in case you wonder, you can tweak the unitcap UI to let it show the cap is hit.^^

function OnInit()
    iCapBC = 1
    Rule_AddInterval("Rule_SpecialUnitCaps", 2)
end

function Rule_SpecialUnitCaps()
    iNumberBC = Stats_SquadronsActive(0, GetShipId("hgn_battlecruiser"))
    if iNumberBC >= iCapBC then
         SobGroup_RestrictBuildOption("Player_Ships0", "hgn_battlecruiser")
         UI_AddToEventScreen("STATUS_UNITCAPREACHED_1")
    else
         SobGroup_UnRestrictBuildOption("Player_Ships0", "hgn_battlecruiser")
    end
end
[MOD] REARM V2 WIP thread
#10

And that would look how? A text printed on a screen saying you reached the cap? Or are we actually talking about visible subcategory here when you press the “I” key?

#11

Have a look at the capinfopopup.lua You can tweak it to add an additional entry that you control from the game type lua.

#12

Are you sure that’s not a mod file? If yes, where is it in the vanilla game?

#13

DATA:\UI\NewUI\UnitCapInfoPopup.lua

I don’t have the game on this computer, only mod files from 8 years ago. But since you’re asking the same questions as I asked myself at that time, this should be it.

#14

Alright thanks. I’ll see whether I’ll be able to get something out of it with my limited to non-existend scripting skills. But as long as it’s in the realm of modifying and not writing it myself, I should be fine.
With that I’m not even exactly sure what I should expect this to do, but I’ll give it a try and see. Or maybe first download your mod and see whether it’s present there. Thanks for the help.

Edit: Would that be PDS?

#15

I worked on unit caps for PDS 7.3.? but I do not think it ever made it into the mod.

I do not remember if I released it standalone as"dynamic unit caps" minimod or something in 2007. Since then none of my HW files survived a couple of HD crashes. The only files I still have about this are wip files exchanged by emails (thanks to yahoo forever mail storage). If I released something “final”, perhaps somebody still has it.

#16

Well if that can get scripted in then by all means please do so. :smiley: everything that makes the game better is a welcome prospect. And if not devs your turn. :blush:

By the way you forgot a category:

Destroyers
Cruisers
Battlecruisers
Dreadnoughts

#18

This should be possible and easy in the next patch.

4 Likes
#19

I love you.

1 Like
#20

Pouk, your designs are gorgeous, so please don’t take this the wrong way… but why do we need a ship class between destroyers and battlecruisers?

Granted: it’s your mod and everything, but if I were gonna do it, I’d want to see cruisers as hybrids between destroyers and carriers – say, half the firepower of a destroyer, half the docking capacity of a carrier – but you get dock-repair capability for your strike craft. So, two cruisers could take a destroyer, but they’d also be able to support a task force of fighters or corvettes.

This would provide an interesting transition for strike-craft-heavy early game compositions, yes?

#21

Battlestar Galactica?

Well, the concept started pre-beta balance mod, when the BCs had 240 000 HP and DDs 85 000 HP and the Cruisers served as a buffer for the allmighty Battlecruisers. The gap was really big there, both in firepower and in simply just size:

image
Vgr_Cruiser_27.jpg1920×1050 562 KB

Now in the balance mod the transition is softer. Yet it still takes two Destroyers to kill a Cruiser and two Cruisers to kill a Battlecruiser. So as you can see, the gap is stil noticeable.

Another thing is that if it has half the firepower of a Destroyer, I can’t possibly justify calling it a Cruiser in the first place.

Plus I can’t imagine how this could be an early unit. If you wanted it in the early game, would you have it without any research, like the Carrier?

What you describe here would be a battle carrier. Some extra carriers are planned for the second wave of ships post realease.

#22

Sorry it took so long to get back to you – life went crazy.

Yeah, a “battle carrier” (without the construction capabilities) is PRECISELY what I was talking about, regardless of pre- or post- patch balance. The way I saw it, it would be on the same research tier as destroyers, but occupy a more flexible niche, which would help players support their strike craft into the late game.

As for ship nomenclature, there’s an extent to which Homeworld is all over the place – frigates are small, destroyers are medium, and carriers/CCs (battlecruisers)/CHs (heavy cruisers) appear to all be super-heavy. Moreover, they also seem to be distinguished by subsystems: frigates have no subsystems; destroyers and heavy cruisers have engines that can be destroyed; and CCs and carriers have all kinds of subsystems that can be built and destroyed.

I tend to see ships in terms of role:

  • Destroyers are frigate-killers (mostly)
  • Carrier manufacture things, drop off resources, and dock strike craft
  • Heavy cruisers kill destroyers and other capital ships; battlecruisers have the same function but they also dock strike craft

To me, adding a “battle carrier” into the mix on the same tier as destroyers would really shake things up, because you could project force with it but also support (or transition out of) an early game that was heavy on strike craft.

Again, though: YOUR IDEAS. YOUR WORK. YOUR MOD. I cannot emphasize this enough – I am a deplorable tinkerer and busybody.

True story: at one point, I considered getting into Warhammer 40K tabletop… and abandoned the idea when I realized that the basic rules weren’t good enough for me. Instead, I designed a homebrew module that allows me to use Dream Pod 9’s Silhouette rules to play Shadowrun. Much better use of my time. =)

#23

If something like that would be made, it would be quite later. But let’s discuss it further.
I’d like to hear your solid placement of the ship within the Homeworld 2 framework, considering I see my mod as an expansion.

So, the building prerequisities and unitcaps, what’s your idea?

If you want it early game, in the Destroyer’s timing, I would make it unlocked automatically when Destroyers are researched. It has half the firepower according to you, so it doesn’t break anything.
Yet I would really put it into the Carrier unitcaps. Firstly, they never fill up anyway, secondly, you don’t want to block your Destroyer’s caps by weaker ships, DD’s firepower is too important for that.

Or would you have it as a cheaper separate research next to the Destroyer research? So you could have it even earlier?

#24

If we’re going to call it a battle carrier instead of a light cruiser, then I would almost certainly add it under the carrier’s unit cap. I agree with you: they never fill up anyway – the only time I remotely approach that is as the Vaygr, since they only get one production subsystem per carrier.

I see it as very cheap destroyer-tier research – something you could research and build very quickly after building your first capital ship subsystem (or, if Taiidan/Kushan, available as soon as you research Super-Capital Ship Drive; note that Ion Cannon Research is now a requirement to unlock Destroyers in the new patch).

I see the Battle Carrier as having roughly half the docking capacity of a carrier, so it could literally carry strike craft into a hot zone and deploy them there.

With regard to weapons, I see them as having mid-range armament at roughly half the firepower of a Destroyer:

  • Kushan/Taiidan: 6x assault frigate turrets (for anti-corvette coverage), 4-8x plasma bomb launchers (for anti-frigate work)

  • Hiigaran: 2x Destroyer turrets, 2x Pulsar turrets

  • Vaygr: 2x missile tubes, 2x Plasma Lances

This gives it enough punch to be a threat against corvettes and frigates, but not enough to seriously threaten a destroyer on its own. I imagine its speed and maneuverability to be slightly better than a Destroyer’s.

The real trick would be finding the right balance of durability.

It’s funny – in writing the above specifications, what I’m basically describing is a destroyer-sized assault frigate with a docking bay. =D

Thoughts?

EDIT: Okay, just for funzies, art suggestions to follow =)

1 Like
#25

Okay, here goes:

image
battle_carriers.png1920×1080 497 KB

Some design notes:

  • All four battle carriers are designed with mid-range firepower in mind; they each have weapons systems that are good against corvettes and weapons systems that are good against frigates or even destroyers. The Vaygr battle carrier has two dorsal missile launch tubes that behave similarly to those of the Vaygr Missile Frigate; it also has dorsal and ventral plasma lance turrets for defense against corvettes and close assault against frigates. The Hiigaran battle carrier has dorsal and ventral heavy turrets comparable to those of the Hiigaran Destroyer, as well as flank-mounted pulsar turrets, again for defense against corvettes and close assault against frigates. The Taiidan and Kushan battle carriers have four nose-mounted plasma bomb launchers that are a serious threat to frigates; likewise, they have six assault frigate-style turrets that are dangerous to corvettes and capable of pecking frigates to death or occasionally sniping fighters. All four ships are envisioned as vessels intended to face their targets when attacking (none of this cumbersome broadside stuff!).

  • The Vaygr battle carrier’s plasma lances are mounted in enlarged Vaygr Assault Frigate turrets with some red elements added to distinguish them (and maybe a lopsided barrel sticking out?). The battle carrier is intended to be highly mobile, so I’m not comfortable with the limited fire arc of the Battlecruiser flank-mounted pulsars/plasma lances. Hence: turrets. From its profile, the battle carrier mostly resembles a slim Vaygr Carrier with a triangular nose. Design-wise, it hits all the Vaygr staples: dorsal and ventral carapace; love of 45-degree angles; hexagonal “core” near the engine; rear-set bridge structure; and emphasis on the vertical (vertical launch of both fighters and missiles). It also gets a little plump around the docking bay, much like the Vaygr Carrier.

  • The Hiigaran battle carrier draws a lot of inspiration from the Hiigaran Destroyer, with the docking bays drawn from the Hiigaran Battlecruiser, but it retains the nose panels of the flak frigate, marine frigate, and battlecruiser. Again, the pulsar beams are mounted in turrets, these drawn directly from the Pulsar Gunship; in case it isn’t clear from the drawing, they’re mounded on either flank in front of the docking bay. Potential trouble spot is that the dorsal carapace might interfere with the pulsar turret rotation; if you were gonna model that, you’d have to play with it. Alternatively: exchange the pulsar turrets for twin torpedo tubes (though this runs the risk of making the battle carrier a little TOO MUCH like a destroyer).

  • The Kushan battle carrier was, to put it mildly, a real pain. It is essentially a hybrid of the Heavy Cruiser and Carrier, with the six-gun configuration of the Heavy Cruiser and the overall shape of the Carrier, which is to say it’s a flying brick. The hexagonal section that contains the flank-mounted turret is narrower on top than it is on the bottom; likewise, the dorsal carapace is narrower in front of this hexagonal section than it is aft of it, which creates two “wings” from which launching strike craft emerge. Fluff-wise, you could say that it is a lightweight offshoot of the Heavy Cruiser design, with the power conduits and engineering spaces normally devoted to the ion cannon turrets replaced by docking and repair systems for strike craft.

  • The Taiidan battle carrier is, again, a hybrid of the Heavy Cruiser and the Carrier, but this one was extraordinarily easy to envision. Basically, the two forward “prongs” house the plasma bomb launchers, and the gun turrets are housed farther back in a similar configuration to that of the Heavy Cruiser. Fluff-wise, you could explain it as a field upgrade for carriers, sacrificing manufacturing capability and some docking space for weaponry and increased maneuverability.

I apologize for the quality of the drawing; it’s the first picture I’ve drawn in over two years.

4 Likes
#26

Very well laid out. I don’t agree with the maneuverability though… I don’t think they should be more maneuverable than a destroyer.

#27

Your Kushan and Taiidan designs are the best of the four, they are quite spot on (I might have some comments on the Taiidan engines, but other than that they’re really good). Too bad I can’t touch Kushan and Taiidan in order to keep myself focused.
The Vaygr doesn’t look too good, but what counts is the idea. But even then I have some things to say, I wouldn’t put a turret right above the bay area, I mind the internal spaces the gun and the hangar has to occupy, so that turret would be shifted forward or back. But your written description says clearly what you want the ship to be.

In general it’s an interesting idea. They could have a role in the battlefield, there does seem to be a niche there. I’d like to explore that sometimes. There really could be a place for an early game support with some punch.

#28

I think they could. DDs are heavy hitters in comparison to them.