One of the great things about fitting ships is the variety of ways you can fit them. I wanted to have a widely configurable set of units. Today, I completed two more types of modules: ECM and Ship Modifications.
ECM
Let's start with this one because I think we all know what electronic counter measures do. There are two types of ECM in BoS:
- Focused - This EWAR only affects one target, but I have set it up to have an extremely high jam chance.
- Non-Focused - Also called area of effect (AoE), this has a significantly lower jam chance but affects a wide area of units.
EWAR is not a part of the friendly fire formula because that would make it kind of useless. Jamming is only good if you are the one who can still fire. Let's look at a real world example (You can click to enlarge)
Isn't that amazing? AoE may have a low jam chance, but when you have 70 units trying to jam you're quite likely to hit a soft spot. Notice the magenta circles indicate the unit has been jammed. Jamming simply means that a unit cannot fire any offensive modules, including any form of ECM.
ECM has been balanced by adding long cycle times (20-25 seconds) and low jam times (if a jam occurs, it lasts about 2-5 seconds).
Ship Modifications
These slots are unique in that they can't fit any offensive or defensive weapon, in fact they can only change an existing stat on your unit. They are extremely powerful when used to reinforce your unit's fitting strategy, however.
The following properties can be affected by ship modifications:
- Max Velocity
- Shield Strength
- Energy Pool Size
- Energy Pool Recharge Rate
- Total Powergrid Capacity (Fit more stuff)
If you've ever played EVE you know how powerful these are, especially a fitting limit increase.
AI Module Integration
I figured out a way to get the AI to fit modules quickly and painlessly: Fitting templates. Implementing a the complex decision process involved in choosing your modules proved ineffective to code. So, the AI can read some fittings out of the unit file of the unit it built and use them. Adding new fitting templates for the AI is extremely easy. Once I figure out the good fits, the AI will have them.
Comments
What do you think of this news? Do you have a suggestion? Send me a message here or email me at masternerdguy@yahoo.com ! If you don't speak up, I don't know what you want.
sounds very nice!