Defiant Weaponry

 On my primary Bridge Commander install, I'm coming up against a problem of the Defiant mod I use having too many weapons.  There's a creative alteration for the Remastered version, but even that isn't adequate.

UFP Energy Weapon Rough Draft

Phaser SetMaxDamage can and should vary between Federation ship classes.  Even between two ship classes that shared a type or class or model of phaser emplacement, one can readily imagine that reactor differences and other factors like year of manufacture would change the final yield of the phaser emitter.   The addition or subtraction of simple components (such as an anodyne relay) can have significant effect on weapon output.

Of course, we also bump into the matter of stripped phaser arrays. 

Comparison to TNG Ships Realistic Balanced Hardpoints

So I came across the "TNG Ships Realistic Balanced Hardpoints" and did a quick comparison against my hull numbers.   Suffice it to say, I like mine a whole lot better.   More detail after the jump . . . 

Volumetrics for Federation Hull Strength

 For Bridge Commander, I've been playing around with trying to use my Starship Volumetrics work to calculate plausible values for "Hull.SetMaxCondition" in the Python hardpoint files. 

(Click "Read More" for the jump...)

Introduction

 Just so we're clear, here, I'm not a "gamer".   That said, I play a little, here and there, selectively.

I got to play the Starfleet and Klingon Academy games, way, way back in the day.  They were excellent, for the time.   I had Klingon Academy mods and would tweak the ships to get a proper balance for them . . . ah, I had it tuned like a fiddle.   Then, I saw the "Next Generation Academy" super-mod . . . and somehow, I managed to install it right on top of my perfectly tweaked wonderfulness, and, contrary to my fervent belief at the time, I did not, in fact, have a backup. 

I was crushed.  I had Star Trek ships for days, Star Wars ships, everything, all tweaked just so.

I later got to play Star Trek: Bridge Commander.   The graphics were better, sure, and instead of the old KA "ginsu" damage effects, you could now literally saw through a ship with phasers and cut off little offending bits.  However, the user interface was a hot mess, at best.   Seriously, what the hell?   With Klingon Academy, you flew the ship with the mouse, allowing grace and precision, and there was a well-marked menu system allowing rapid number sequences to execute complex commands.   By comparison, Bridge Commander ships are flown via WASD, and you're clicking the mouse all around the screen to do anything else.   Sure, it's more LCARS-y, but c'mon.

I fiddled with it here and there over the years, but sometime shortly before the pandemic I loaded up the Kobayashi Maru super-mod.  Ah, what a change.   Sure, the UI is still crap (and, to be fair, probably worse now from an organizational standpoint), but from there I started adding more ships and tweaking things for balance again.    It's nowhere near my Klingon Academy wholesomeness, but it serves me.  I've also been trying out the Remastered mod and the epic Quincentennial, but my primary setup is still Kobayashi Maru.

Slowly but surely, I'm learning to modify the ships for balance, trying out mods, and so on.   This blog is for sharing such game-specific details.

Thanks for reading.