Topic: G-Racks

[knightstorm]

A number of people who post say that the G-Racks in SFC don't work right.  I've never played SFB.  Can you explain to me what's wrong with them?

[Roychipoqua_Mace]

Hey Knight,

I haven't played SFB either, but people here say in that in SFB, G-racks either had to be set to ADD/AMD mode or Drone mode, so you couldn't do both at the same time. With SFC, they always seem to have an A-type ADD for every G-rack launcher.

I guess the only issues are that Fed ships have a little more offense or defense (depending on what you look at) than in SFB. Also, you could have your drone launcher destroyed, but still have the ADD work, and vice versa. I don't think these are too critical though, IMO.

Any SFB vets please help me out if I'm wrong.

[Age]

What a G Rack is a rack plus an add(ati drone defence) all in one so in essence you get drone luancher and anti drone defence built into one.This is why Feds make up more scatterpacks I beleive.This is how it is done in SFB not SFC as they are separate.Don't quote me on this though.

[marstone]

In SFB a G-rack is a rack that can fire either in ADD mode or Standard drone mode.  The G-rack holds 4 spaces of drones (could be 8 ADD or 2 drones and 4ADD or any mix).  You then choose which mode it will be in when first fired in each round.  After the first firing you have to wait until the end of turn to change to the other mode.

The purpose of a G-rack was that it made a ship more flexable in that if you flew on the Romulan border, you don't really need the ADD's that much, but the drones are a nice thing to have.  If you are on the Klingon border, the one or two drone racks you have are not good anough for much against the Klingons, so having ADD's would be better.  So instead of building different versions of ships for each border they made a rack that could do both.

A fix for SFC is to make both versions of the ships like they would have been without the G-racks or add the 1.5 or 2 BPV points to the value of the ship for each ADD6/12 added to the ship for balance.  (I have to look back at my stuff to figure out the cost of the ADD for sure).  The simplest method is to incread the BPV of the ships the small amount to cover the improvement.

[marstone]

Overall drone racks work alittle different in SFB compared to SFC.  In SFC the drone rack is loaded with one drone and the reload time is done before the next drone can fire.  In SFB during reload you have to take the rack out of service for a turn (full 32 impulses) to reload I think 2 drones into it  So your reloading time are way different and does make a difference in tactics used for drones because of the continuous waves you can launch because you never have to take the rack offline to reload it.

[Rod ONeal]

Mace's description is correct. It makes a bigger difference than he assumes though. Especially against Klingons. In SFB you load your racks with the drone types you want. A G-rack can carry any type of munition. 1/2 space, 1space, and 2space drones plus ADDs, which are 1/2space as well. Add to that all drones aren't explosive types. Most Fed mainline ships only have 1 or 2 racks. Against Klingons you need to carry enough ADDs to effectively counter their drone attacks. So, typically your 1st load will be mostly, or all, ADDs. You will carry most of your explosive drones as "reloads" for your racks. This is where Age's, "Feds are mostly scatterpack users" comes from. Feds, compared to other drone races, have more shuttles and their drones are mostly in their reloads, not available for immediate use until loaded on the drone racks. SPs become an obvious tactic.

against plasma races there's not as much of a difference, except they will carry less drones (still have ADDs taking up some spaces. At least 1 reload, by rule, must be all ADDs) and the ADD rack is extra padding to absorb a critical Drone hit that in SFB would always take out your drone rack.

There have been other posts since I started this, but it still applies. 

[marstone]

Mace's description is correct. It makes a bigger difference than he assumes though. Especially against Klingons. In SFB you load your racks with the drone types you want. A G-rack can carry any type of munition. 1/2 space, 1space, and 2space drones plus ADDs, which are 1/2space as well. Add to that all drones aren't explosive types. Most Fed mainline ships only have 1 or 2 racks. Against Klingons you need to carry enough ADDs to effectively counter their drone attacks. So, typically your 1st load will be mostly, or all, ADDs. You will carry most of your explosive drones as "reloads" for your racks. This is where Age's, "Feds are mostly scatterpack users" comes from. Feds, compared to other drone races, have more shuttles and their drones are mostly in their reloads, not available for immediate use until loaded on the drone racks. SPs become an obvious tactic.

against plasma races there's not as much of a difference, except they will carry less drones (still have ADDs taking up some spaces. At least 1 reload, by rule, must be all ADDs) and the ADD rack is extra padding to absorb a critical Drone hit that in SFB would always take out your drone rack.

There have been other posts since I started this, but it still applies. 

Well, the SFB rules state that one reload is to be all ADD's, you can start the rack with whatever you want in it.  But as most Fed ships only have one or two drones racks, you cannot make a good drone wave with this so thus, you load your rack with ADD's and use your explosive drones in scatter packs as that puts 6 drones in flight at once instead of 2, then 2 more, then 2 more.  But in SFB you can also fill a SP with double space drones so it carries only 3, or you can load it with 12 dogfight drones (typeVI in SFB not the same in SFC) or a mix to fool people.  YOu can load it with just 3 single space dones and the enemy might think they are double spaced and use more phasers then needed to blow them up.  Simple tactics that don't translate to realtime very well.

In SFB you also have dozens of possible drone loads as you can build your drones to do alot of things using drone modules, something that also doesn't translate to realtime very well for only one person to run.

[Corbomite]

...The simplest method is to incread the BPV of the ships the small amount to cover the improvement.

That was already done -

"Patch fixes in 2.5.3.8 by the KhoroMag patching team: James King and Dutch Blomenkamp and Taldren:

59)BPV adjusted upward for Missile G ships."


G-Racks are as "fixed " as they will ever be in OP. The code to make Plasma I's work correctly was a failure (they never figured out the lock up bug) and since the code structure was pretty much the same as the way they would try to fix G-Racks, it never got tried to my knowledge.

[marstone]

...The simplest method is to incread the BPV of the ships the small amount to cover the improvement.

That was already done -

"Patch fixes in 2.5.3.8 by the KhoroMag patching team: James King and Dutch Blomenkamp and Taldren:

59)BPV adjusted upward for Missile G ships."


G-Racks are as "fixed " as they will ever be in OP. The code to make Plasma I's work correctly was a failure (they never figured out the lock up bug) and since the code structure was pretty much the same as the way they would try to fix G-Racks, it never got tried to my knowledge.

'tis good, just have to have anyone who might make a new ship list to remember to raise the values up (I have been fiddling with a shiplist/fighterlist so have to make sure I have the values higher then the list BPV for the ship to adjust).

I have commented here not on my own problems with the ships (heck a 6 point difference in value isn't a big deal), but it is a major complaint that i keep hereing about over and over.  So I just posted what would be a simple fix for the guys (it was simple hence someone has already done it, but people still like to complain).

[Slider]

I think the only fix is to as mentioned above remove them at 0 cost to the base bpv. Or make varients were you have no more capability than the number of original drone racks.

I always felt the game was better before AMD anyway.

[The_Joker]

I've always felt that anything bigger than a "D" rack was a waste of....oh, wait a minute.....you're talking about phasers.

[Nemesis]

I've always felt that anything bigger than a "D" rack was a waste of....oh, wait a minute.....you're talking about phasers.

Not phasers, missile racks (aka drone racks in SFB).

[FPF-Tobin Dax]

I've always felt that anything bigger than a "D" rack was a waste of....oh, wait a minute.....you're talking about phasers.

Not phasers, missile racks (aka drone racks in SFB).

Pardon me if I'm wrong, but you seem to have missed Jokers' "D rack" humor.......Just look at gunz' signature for reference.

[Nemesis]

I've always felt that anything bigger than a "D" rack was a waste of....oh, wait a minute.....you're talking about phasers.

Not phasers, missile racks (aka drone racks in SFB).

Pardon me if I'm wrong, but you seem to have missed Jokers' "D rack" humor.......Just look at gunz' signature for reference.

I did recognize the humour.  I just chose to point out the error in weapons type.

Personally I never refer to womens breasts as "racks" but I am familiar with the usage.  If I did I would consider a "G-Rack" excessive on a woman just as they are in the game.

The big issue with the SFC implementation of G-Racks is on ships that sport multiple G-Racks and multiple ADD (mostly Klingon and Federation ships).  Some of these ships can in SFC function as drone ships while being essentially immune to drones themeselves.  With the SFB original such ships had to choose to either be a droner or be "immune" to drones.  Typically in SFB the drone "immunity" would be used when escorting another ship rather than acting independently.  In such cases the escorted ships provided the offensive punch and the G-Rack ship the defense allowing both at once is a very substantial boost in combat effectiveness and is unbalancing especially versus the Mirak.

On ships that sport one or two G-Racks and no ADD the effect is not nearly as great since another ship can swarm them while the limited number of G-Racks does not allow major drone swarms to be easily generated unless the ship has multiple racks of other types as well.

[Age]

It is good thing Tracey G. and Kim aren't here you two would end up with cyber slap in the face.I have never seen just ship with only a G-Racks unless are talking about a F-CFF.

[marstone]

It is good thing Tracey G. and Kim aren't here you two would end up with cyber slap in the face.I have never seen just ship with only a G-Racks unless are talking about a F-CFF.

IN SFC you should never see a ship with just a G-rack.  The work around it to have both the rack and the ADD, the G-rack in SFC is functionally just an A-rack.  In SFB you will see lots of ships with just G-racks, but that is where they work correctly.

IN SFB a ship with multi G-racks, they can choose (per turn) to be a droner or a ADD ship (or even a mix).  Just a tough thing to pull off in realtime.

[KBF-Crim]

There was an easy fix for this....with little code involved...Mags was looking into it...

We were on the verge of tryin' it out when someone freaked about it...

The easiest way to give a psuedo fix...was to toggle the ADD and G rack together....so if you fire one...it locked out the other for one turn...

If you didnt want your ADD to fire (thus locking your G rack for a turn) all you had to do was take it offline...

Simple and elegant...you could also put the BPV's back to stock...

There was also a Fix for the plasma bolt as well...

Again...the freak out... and thus...we never got to test it...

Needless to say the person is now long gone...while those of us who wanted the fixes at least tested...are still here...

Mags left his notes on it IIRC....so it's not impossible that we may yet see it someday...

GOD I wish I knew how to code...

[marstone]

would that fix be a serverside fix, or mission side fix?  If a mission fix it would have to be included in everymission (substantial work), serverside would be much nicer and a choice when you put up a server to us or not.

Of course a fix in-vivo would be best.

[KBF-Crim]

would that fix be a serverside fix, or mission side fix?  If a mission fix it would have to be included in everymission (substantial work), serverside would be much nicer and a choice when you put up a server to us or not.

Of course a fix in-vivo would be best.

No...this is neither....it's a code fix.

Koro-mag was given access to the EAW/sfc2 game code......most of the later improvements where in fact Fixes for EAW that Dave ported to OP...

http://www.khoromag.org/

If you go into your Op game file...look at the "readme" file...you'll find a full list of the bug fixes and game improvements over each version...

As I said...we never even got to test it....But Mags assured me that these fixes would work...

I firmly believe that Taldren and Koromag will go down in history as providing the most game fixes and added features ,post production, besides the play to pay games...

WOW...holy crap..look at what I just found...we have our own wiki page...I didnt even know this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Starfleet_Command_II:_Empires_at_War

how COOL is that!

[marstone]

cool, it would be in vivo, now that would be awesome.