Final Frontier Mod planning

[Mylon]

I'm planning a new mod for Final Frontier that will be pretty radical, but I need some ideas.

So far the game design will include discrete resources. Cities will produce metal, crystal, and at least one other resource. Power may exist, but be discrete. Hammers will still exist, but these represent the manufacturing power available. That is, there may be some labor intensive projects, but still be cheap. Likewise, there may be some projects that are expensive, but quick to build.

The first question that I need to answer for my game design is going to be how buildings and population tie into everything. I'm tempted to make the game a bit like Stars! where there is only one planet per system, mostly for simplicity's sake. But short of that, buildings will be repeatable, with increasing cost based on planetary size (which will be modified with terraforming, building habitation domes and later, planetary rings and even ringworlds even later on).

But what does population do? They could provide the base yields, much like in Civ4 and even Final Frontier, modified based on the planet and buildings. Or perhaps they are the modifier to the buildings, akin to Space Empires 5. Or I could go the MoO3 route and each building would require some population, and if a population goes below the amount required the whole city takes penalties, representing a skeleton staff in factories and such. Certain techs could reduce this requirement or provide more food to help fill the requirement.

And then there's the concept of ships. I'm tempted to add a fleet mechanic. The basic idea is a stack of units would fight another stack of units all at once. Ships would choose their target randomly and fire each "round", with the battle lasting a set number of rounds. The defender will get a chance to flee, as the battle may only end with his units at 80%. Units could very well acquire "promotions" from hits to represent damage. A significantly larger stack would suffer from some ships not firing and even a risk of friendly fire. Thus larger stacks would ideally suffer from diminishing returns, encouraging the use of multiple fleets. Also, these special damages would not be cured unless the ship is drydocked, or maybe a great engineer is put on the ship/fleet. Larger ships would likely be crippled before they are destroyed, offering a chance to capture. This battle could even be controlled manually (using a dialog system) for single player games, but the automatic one will come first.

And I do plan on bringing back great people. This shouldn't be too hard to do if I go with the one planet per system model, or significantly change how the UI works. I could very well treat the entire solar system as a single "planet" and just assume people and buildings span over the different planets.

So what are your thoughts? I need input, as this will all change how the game is designed!

 

[Fanatic Demon]

My suggestion would be to make it more like MOO.
- Spaceships should be limited up to a maximum distance outside your curltural borders depending on certain techs, and certain other units should be able to travel further (like assault ships).
- Red Stars going supernova or creating a new black hole
- Evil aliens with superior technologies
- Space creature like Space worms and exotic Cristal life forms
- Stable and instable temporary shifting worm holes, connecting 2 location in the universe.
- Space anomalies, like rifts in space time continium causing your ships to disapear a reapear into the future

 

[Mylon]

Sorry, the only bit there I plan on adding is wormholes. Though I am interested in another terrain type that obscures vision and placing that liberally. Ambushes, anyone?

 

[Mylon]

I can't believe why it's so hard to understand just how this mod does building. So far I've managed to find out how it allows multiple buildings in the same city and understand how it scales the cost for buildings. However, I have not yet figured out how it restricts/allows buildings based on the currently selected planet.

 

[Jon Shafer]

I can't believe why it's so hard to understand just how this mod does building. So far I've managed to find out how it allows multiple buildings in the same city and understand how it scales the cost for buildings. However, I have not yet figured out how it restricts/allows buildings based on the currently selected planet.

Check out the "cannotConstruct()" function in CvGameUtils.py.

Jon

 

[keldath]

hey,

why not helping the star trek mod? by deanej....he done somenice work tilll now.

 

[Mylon]

Check out the "cannotConstruct()" function in CvGameUtils.py.

Jon

I found it, thanks.

hey,

why not helping the star trek mod? by deanej....he done somenice work tilll now.

Sorry, Star Trek just isn't my thing. Once I get some of the core functions of my mod done, I'd be more than happy to help Deanej incorporate some of the features into his own mod.

I have the building schema updated and I think the SDK changes to support it. Now I have to add in the functions that add and subtract resources. And then do this for units! Then comes the task of updating the UI gut out the planetary code (since I'm going to go with a unified solar system model) and add in this resource information. The UI is probably going to be the hardest part.

My plan for population so far is to have "generic specialists" that represent different labor focuses. Each pop point can focus on areas like agriculture (+3 food, +1 commerce), production (+3 hammers, +1 commerce), and commerce (+4 commerce). Later on in development, Planets can have traits that boost these effects, like a tropical planet that provides +1 food for the first 3 agriculture labor points. Certain buildings will provide specialist slots which allow more specific areas of focus, like engineers will provide +2 hammers, +1 research (a small step down from production, but they also produce GPP), artists provide culture and a small amount of wealth, and so on. The number of slots for these generic specialists will depend on the planets in the system, though this can be increased with buildings. With proper investment, it shouldn't be hard to provide plenty of jobs for your workers.

 

[Marnid]

Looking forward to trying this mod out when your finished the first version,

I like the three types of assigned jobs for population, this is like master of magic, makes it easier than having to micromanage which planet pop is on or programming governors.

I have no clues about modifying the city screen interface but I think it would be nice if instead of showing the star in the 'picture part' of the city the city screen the list of planets and the specialists could be shown there. A mouse over or right click could give information about each planet (mainly which buildings and general info about planet type)

regarding production/population system:

One idea I had is that you could restrict the number of 'buildings' capable of being built on each planet based on the size. This would add some strategy as you can't just build everything anymore and have to make choices as to what to build. If you resource assosicated building you have modifiers and/or restrictions based on the type and size of planet

examples:
you can only build basic farming building on green and blue planets (cheaper to build than nutrient facility which can be built on any planet) but blue green planet also the only type capable of holding archology building (+2 max pop) so have to decide between short term and long term growth.

on the gold and grey planet a mining facility will get a +15% hammer bonus but it is also the only type of planet you are able to build the uranium processor building (which allows nukes and gives bonus to power generator buildings) so you have to decide which to build if it is a small planet
.

 

[Mylon]

Here's how it works so far: All workable planets in the system have their size multiplied by their yields and this number is tallied up. It is divided by three and this is how many slots are available for that yield type. Thus, if a planet is large (size 3) and provides 3 food and 1 production, it provides 3 food slots and 1 production slot.

Buildings are set to work on this formula (For both production cost and resource cost): Each planet provides a set number of building slots. Once that number is exceeded, the cost ramps up for each additional building, based on space available. Multiples of the same building count less towards this total (as they're easier to cram together). Potential building choices will include methods that increase this. Habitation domes, terraforming, planetary rings, and even an option later on to make a ringworld (hopefully I can get the graphics working for this, I do have an idea), though this will likely destroy all buildings in a system but provide nearly limitless building space.

 

[Mylon]

I'm finally starting work on my mod.

I'm having trouble justifying using 3 resources. I think one resource, plus cash, will be plenty, but I'm programming in 3 resources anyway with relatively easy means to expand that further. At least, as easy as adding espionage was.

The basic idea is planets have a mineral and a commerce value. Mines produce minerals based on the mineral value, which in turn adds to that system's minerals. A space port allows a portion of that system's minerals to convert to player-wide minerals each turn. In this way, an outlying colony with mines and a space port can fuel inner systems with manufacturing capital. Gold is not restricted similarly.

Producing just about anything costs minerals _and_ gold. To maintain a healthy rate of expansion, 100% of commerce cannot be spent on research. I may add penalties for exceeding 40% commerce in any one area, similar to SMAC. That is, past 45%, 1% per 5% is lost. Past 60 2% per 5% is lost, past 70 it's 3% per 5%, and so on.

Spaceships additionally cost minerals and gold to maintain. Laser based weaponry might be low cost and maintenance since the weapons themselves don't have moving parts, for example, but they could be more expensive to manufacture.

Spaceships themselves will be presented as basic hulls. When the ship is finished, promotions are chosen to outfit the ship. One can pick armor, weapons, engines, or special items (engineering bays, for example, for repairing in space). Combat itself will occur entirely differently. Fleets will engage each other as groups, with each ship picking a random target each round of combat. Damage will knock out components on the targeted ships (with a preference towards armor first).

Later on I may redesign ships to have a real unit designer, but I'll also want to change the UI for city building to be able to collapse groups for easier browsing.

Planets can be improved using a successfully more expensive structure that allows more building (and population) space. Later on they can be replaced with a ringworld, and even later, a sphereworld. These would cost huge amounts, however.

The idea is to give the mod a very Space Empires flavor, if anyone is familiar with that series.

If anyone is interested in joining the project, I would appreciate the help.

 

[Mylon]

Components:
Ship components are scaled to the ship. All ships have the same number of components, but larger ships take less damage and deal more. Large ships have a hard time hitting small ships and especially fighters. Components are destroyed by taking damage. So ships will get progressively weaker as combat goes on. One goal is to design combat such that combats do not end with total annihilation of one fleet.

Missile weapons. Gas power, but can be countered.
Beam weapons. Relatively weak, but long range, might get one free shot per combat.
Projectile weapons. The old standby.
Engines. Used for getting around. If no engines are present, the ship will get a huge maintenance discount and will act as a system defense ship. This can represent a space station or even a weapon platform.
Point Defense, beam. Has a chance to counter one missile, above, but works for the entire fleet.
Point Defense, self. Counters two missiles, above.
Engineering bay. Repairs one component per turn, increases maintenance cost, slightly reduces damage taken in combat, might allow a promotion that allows it to work even when 'destroyed'.
Backup Bridge (All ships have a bridge by default. If this gets destroyed, the ship ends it's ability to participate in combat.)
Fighter Bay (for fighters, which will not have any range/movement but will participate in combat)
Armor (more likely to be destroyed compared to other components as well as reducing damage taken)
Planetary bombs. Normal ship weapons are ineffective at clearing a planet.
Troops. One of these components is required for each point of population the system has to conquer it and claim it as your own. May also incur less diplomatic problems.
(Later)
Boarding parties (chance per round of initiating a boarding action. The target ship, however, will get a free extra attack when this happens. More boarding parties increases the chance of success of commandeering the ship.)
Crew/Life support/power plant (mostly backup facilities, probably not required)
Supply storage (for limited ship range, but this would increase it/provide backup if regular supply storage is knocked out)

Fleet ideas (probably later):
Formations can be used to change fleet tactics. A flanking formation will result in much faster and lethal combat on both sides with a chance of taking out support ships (ships with no weapons but engineering bays and supply storage and beam point defense), but beam point defense will have a lessened effect across the fleet, making missiles hits more likely.
Wall formation. Ships are close together. Increased chance of performing focus fire to destroy enemy ships, but missile hits may cause damage to more than one ship.

Facilities:
Facilities come in different varieties. Each can be built multiple times.

Farms provide food, based on planetary conditions. Hydroponics bays provide a fixed amount of food but cost more. They might also not take up planetary space.
Mineral Mining. These provide minerals based on planetary conditions. Mineral synths provide a fixed amount of minerals, but have a monetary cost to maintain.
Space Port. These transport some local minerals to player-wide minerals. If supplies go in, these will also resupply ships that pass through. These also provide a modest commerce modifier.
Infrastructure. This provides more space for buildings, but the cost increases with each successive building.
Research Facility. These provide a flat +1 research, as well as a research modifier. Thus, the more of these combined the larger the effect. They do require gold and minerals to maintain, however.
Bank. Provides +1 gold and a small % boost to gold production.
Espionage facility. Provides +1 espionage and a small % boost to espionage.
Manufacturing plant. Allows stuff to be built faster. Provides more hammers and a small % boost to hammers. Costs minerals to operate.
Mineral Enhancer. Enhances the mineral content of a planet over time. Expensive to build and costs gold to maintain. Later in the tech tree.
Terraformer. Enhances farm output of the planet over time (up to a maximum). Expensive to build and costs gold to maintain.
Ringworld. Not exactly a facility in itself, but transforms the entire system into a ringworld. As a bonus it comes filled with manufacturing plants. This idealizes farm production, proves tons of facility and population space, but has a low mineral production rate.
Sphereworld. As above, but even bigger. Additionally, makes the system immune to solar destruction, unless it's the owner trying to destroy it (for whatever reason).

 

[Zuul]

As said the the chat. I like the ideas. Thought most if it myself already . I want to be in the team. Thought of any name yet?

 

[lamppost4]

I think this mod sounds awesome. One thing I may suggest is to maybe have infantry units that do the actually guarding and capturing of cities. The infantry would only be able to stay on the planet itself or move via transport to another planet to capture it or provide a garrison, the ships of the fleet would act more like the helicopter does in normal civ. I suggest that if this is implemented, that there be some sort of limit to the number of infantry holding one planet. It just seems unreal to me any other way because if an alien race wanted to take over earth, the only way they could really capture it would be to land aliens on it. Otherwise it would be like a permanent siege.
I hate to be someone who suggests but does no work but I really do not have the ability to mod.

 

[Zuul]

So Mylon, what shall we begin doing?

A few names I came up with is:
Omega Point
The Phenomenon of Man
Harvest of Stars
Type III Civilization
Type IV Civilization
Universe as we know it!
Interstella
Intergalactic
Milky Way
Orion


What is the story. Either different races or man has been split into diferent starsystems around the galaxy (and somehow forgetting alot of tech).


Would be cool if in the beginning the you don't have any FTL drive, or some very limited one.
You can only build (or after some early techs):

Probe:
Move 1, Strength 0, Fuel 10, Size 1.
After first movement it will follow that direction until removed (left/right/up/down/diagonal).
Cannot inspect/collect wreckages.
20% chance to be removed in asteroid fields.
Destroyed if path is blocked (civ border or nebolusa).
Leaves a tiny wreck.

Interplanetary Ship:
Move 1, Strength 1, Fuel 6, Size 1.
10% chance to be hit in asteroid fields.
Have different components, like different weapons, or a small bording crew.


Wormholes:
Conecting either static or randomly on wast distances.

------

Fuel:
Drains one fuel each movement. When having noting left it is lost in space (leaves a wreck). Amount of fuel may be dependent on universe size.

Wreck:
Small/big anicent wrecks: Goody huts like in ff but 2 different ones, the big ones giving more.
Small/medium/big/huge wreck. Gives resources.

Commets:
Flys around in the galaxy in a random direction. Can crash into things. Can be harvested.

Asteroid fields:
Sparce and dence. Can have resources. Can hit ships.


-------
Some engine types:

Nuclear pulse propulsion (10% lightspeed)
Bussard ramjet (20% lightspeed)
Antimatter rocket (30% lightspeed)
Pion rocket (40% lightspeed)
Relativistic rockets (50% lightspeed)
Singularity (90% lightspeed)

 

[woodelf]

Good luck on this one. I'll be watching it.

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

What about to dissociate population and city level ?
Population will be ranged from 1 million per system to 20 billion per system
City Level will be ranged from 1 to 100, the first being the main population and the 99 remainings being specialists (counting toward pop from 100 000 to 50 million each) ... etc ...
I don't want to go too far yet and develop the idea behind but if you're interested PM me.

 

[Mylon]

The title of the mod is "The Frontier Awaits". Plays some homage to the graphics and expertise it's leaning on from Final Frontier, but has a very forward looking approach (as opposed to a terminal approach).

As for the first order of business, I'm working on adding the extra resource to the SDK. Slow going, as I have to hunt down each and every commerce reference and duplicate the basics (it's making me wonder if adding an additional yield type would be easier). I would suggest you work on the Python, Zuul, as planets need to be changed from being population controlled to being building-controlled.

The first order of business is to change the building requirement function (for now, just disable it) and remove the population assignment functions. Planets are still picked for where to place buildings, as the food value is important for farms and the hammer value will determine how many minerals each mine produces. I suppose changing how buildings work will require a few SDK hooks.

Also, some python/XML work will be required to get promotions to work. If you can add two versions of each component promotion as above, the functional and "damaged" versions of each, plus a pair of "undesigned" and "designed" promotions that enable components and enable traditional promotions, respectively, and get the code to make it behave that would get ship design started. If you're feeling really daring (or get ahead of me) you can try and make a custom interface using a python popup window where designs can be saved and recalled. These components will be called up in the SDK for the custom combat function, so it will be difficult to add new components for anyone wanting to mod the mod, but complex changes require drastic actions.

Another task will be to add the new resource to the interface. Put it next to current gold in the main interface and somewhere in the city screen. If someone can modify the widget files of the SDK to support mouse-over display of minerals/mineral production of the city that would save me some time.

I'm a ringworld junkie, so another task would be to add sphere worlds and dyson spheres, at least graphically. I figure by using about 8 or so of the dashed trails that normally follow planets at a 1/8th offset (or 1/n offset if more used) all at the same distance from the sun, that can represent a ring world. Take one of the nicer looking planets and making it bigger (replacing the Sun) would represent a sphere world or dyson sphere.

If anyone wants to work on the SDK, please wrap any changes you make with "// Begin Final Frontier" and "// End Final Frontier" or add "// Final Frontier" for single lines of code. Adding your name for credit is okay, but that makes it easier to find new bits of code.

For suggestions, culture is going to need some purpose. It had a very lackluster effect in Final Frontier, partly due to the distances of solar systems and the small range of culture levels. I'm thinking that culture will provide small boosts to yield/production (same as population, given how buildings do most of the work), have a larger reach so they might influence other systems, and help defend against land invasions.

Population itself is going to remain the same abstracted Civ4. Each population point provides a boost to a planet's productivity, but represents a progressively larger amount of population (5 population is much more than five 1 population units). There might be a custom growth function that allows an unlimited amount of population, but growth takes much longer once the planet is filled up.

Initially, we'll be using the different civilizations from Final Frontier. Later on, if graphic artists pop up (or someone find some already made aliens and space ships) we can add new races. But for now I want to get the mechanics in and working. Additional content will come later.

 

[Mylon]

I just need to put this down on paper.

The combat model.

Ships attack each other in fleets. First the different fleets are assembled in memory and checked for initiative-based promotions. Attacking will provide an initiative bonus, unless the defending fleet is in a solar system, in which case the defender gets the initiative bonus.

Initiative is rolled. Each ship is checked in order for beam weapons and they get to fire their beam weapons.

Begin Combat Round
Initiative is rolled again.

Each ship first decides its action (board, attack, ram, flee, do nothing). This is situational. Ships with boarding parties get a chance to board (it's not definite). Ships with no weapons but more engines will attempt to flee. If the entire fleet has more engines than the enemy fleet and smaller numbers, then the fleet may attempt to skirmish (this will come later with fleet orders).

Ships attacking pick an attacker and fire their weapons. Missiles get put into a queue and are resolved later. The target is picked semi-randomly. Ships will favor targets they have a good chance of hitting (frigates->fighters, battleships->cruisers). Promotions may improve the intelligence of target selection (reducing likelihood of targeting weaponless ships, making targeting favored targets more likely, etc).
*OR*
Ship attempts a boarding action.
*OR*
A damaged ship with a self destruct component may attempt to ram and self destruct. If the ship has no weapons left, cannot flee, and its fleet is very outnumbered ( 2 to 1), the ship will likely attempt to ram. A ship will never ram a smaller ship.
*OR*
If the defending fleet has no weapons, the ship will attempt to flee. If it has more engines than the enemy fleet, it will be vulnerable for at least one round, but will be vulnerable to fighters for the full three rounds. Ships with no weapons in a fleet with weapons will attempt to hang back and avoid fire.
*OR*
Do nothing. A ship with no bridge is inoperable in combat. A ship with no engines may find itself out of combat for a round as well.

Next Initiative

Missiles are resolved. The sum of all beam PD weapons is taken and compared against incoming missiles. A function is used to determine how many missiles survive (missiles never miss, but cannot target fighters). Ships fire their individual PD cannons at any surviving missiles targeting them. The functions are weighted so overwhelming PD can still fail and overwhelming missile onslaught is more likely to have the maximum number of missiles shot down. Any remaining missiles hit. Possible PD function for missiles shot down: 1d[max{missiles + 1 : (PD beams + 1 or (PD Cannons * 3 + 1))}] - 1

Repair Phase. Ships with engineering bays may roll to see if a component is restored to operating condition. The component will be considered broken after battle, but can be used in-battle.

Go back to beginning of round. Repeat a limited number of times (3 rounds total?)

Damage phase: A ship takes damage based on the size of the ship firing the weapon and armor. Armor reduces damage taken slightly. Damage over a certain portion knocks one or more components. Dice are rolled to determine which component, with armor more likely to be chosen than others. In the event that a ship is destroyed by damage, a check is made against each ship in the same fleet for damage caused by debris. In theory, after so many ships are blown up in an infinitely sized fleet, the whole fleet would blow up from a chain reaction. This creates a small drawback to larger fleets. Also, ship destruction will credit the killer some EXP points based on the destroyed ship's size.

Boarding phase: When a ship is boarded, it gets to fire all of its weapons at the boarding ship. This means the ship may fire twice if it has already fired this round. If the boarding ship's boarding component is destroyed, this phase is aborted. Otherwise, the ship's crew fights with the boarding party and dice are rolled to determine if the action is successful. If so, the boarded ship is delayed by one turn but given command to the other team. Some components may cut this victory short, like a self destruct device which has a high likelihood of activating in the event of a loss, but may activate even if the crew would otherwise have won. This component also has a likelihood of damaging the boarding ship.

Ramming phase: Like the boarding phase, the defending ship gets to fire all of it's weapons at the ramming ship, including firing twice if it has fired already. If the self-destruct component is destroyed, this phase is _not_ aborted, but damage will be reduced. Note that ramming can only fail if the ship is destroyed in the opportunity attack. Dice are rolled to determine how much damage is done. In the event that the self-destruct device was destroyed, the ramming ship may survive the attack, and damage is rolled (instead of assuming destruction). Any ships destroyed risk hitting other ships of the defender's fleet using the debris check, as above.

If possible, a log of the combat will be generated for detailed analysis.

At the end of the combat, all ships will gain 1 exp point. Hotfixed components return to broken status.

 

[Zuul]

Laser - Low damage, fast. 25% vs planetary.
Projectile - Normal damage, normal speed. 10% vs planetary.
Missiles - Great damage, slow, can be shot down. 33% vs planetary.
Bombs - Huge damage, very slow, easy to shot down or evade. 100% vs planetary.



Ship Parts:
-----------
Weapon - Beam
Weapon - Projectile
Weapon - Missile
Weapon - Bomb
Defence - Fleet
Defence - Self
Bridge - Main
Bridge - Backup
*Bridge - AI
Crew Quarters
Engine
Engineering - Bay
*Engineering - AI
Armor
Self-Destruct Unit
Ramming Equipment
Storage
Ship Bay

* = some civs may use AI instead
All ships have ~10 parts.
All parts can be: working(green)/damaged(red)/destroyed(gray)
A ship can have size: small/medium/big


People:
-------
Crew
Engineers
Boarding Party
Troops


A fleet example:
----------------

Gunner:
Big: Bridge, Missile#2, Projectile#2, Beam, Armor#3, Engine

Carriers:
Normal: Bridge, BrigeBackup, SelfDefence, Ship Bay#3, Armor#2, Engine#2

Defender:
Small: Bridge, Beam, FleetDefence#3, Armor#2, Engine#3

Rammer:
Small: Bridge, Ramming, SelfDefence, Self-Destruct, Armor#3, Engine#3

Planetary:
Normal: Bridge, Bomb#3, CrewQ#3, Armor#2, Engine

 

[Mylon]

An idea components in late-tech:

Space-folding. The ship can fold space to teleport anywhere in the known galaxy, except an already occupied square.
Some limitations (not all need apply)
Removes all of the ship's movement points.
Destroys the component (so it would require visiting a friendly base to repair)
Early version only works inside cultural boundaries.

Cloaking. This component allows a ship to get a free extra round of combat. This does not stack with the distance closing effect that lasers get. The drawback to this device is that target selection will be poorer (typically a non-combat ship, if one exists). The specialized design may also weaken the ship and make it more prone to total destruction (less total health). It will also increase the ships expenses. On the plus side, cloaked ships will be a separate group for the purpose of debris damage. That is, exploding cloaked ships can only damage other cloaked ships from the same fleet.

Couple of caveats:
Boarding and ramming can only occur on the second and third round of combat, as ships are still closing in during the first round.

Missiles fired as opportunity fire action (against boarding and ramming) do not get a chance to be shot down by fleet-wide point defense. Self point defense weapons operate as normal.

Using projectile weapons as a base, they will probably do 20% damage and have a base 60% chance to hit for the same ship class. This means three weapons firing for three rounds (assuming no knocked out weapons and an unarmored target) will do, on average, 1.08% damage. Laser weapons will do 8% damage, and have 90% chance to hit. Over 4 attacks (assuming no knocked out weapons and an unarmored target) this will do 86.4% damage on average, but benefits from the initiative. Missiles will be a special case, since they hit 100% of the time and will require more adjustment. A missile might do 30% damage, so 3 missile launchers over 3 rounds for 9 unblocked missiles would do a total of a whopping 270% damage.

This values should probably be tweaked higher to account for the fact that ships will get crippled as combat wears on.

The built-in Combat Odds Calculator will be replaced with Completely Redone Odds Calculator, or CROC for short.