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Microwarpdrives

Adds microwarpdrive technology and ship component, which greatly increase ship speed at the expense of its combat potential, and can only be used on lighter ships up to a cruiser.
Does not override anything, compatible with any other mods and existing savegames.



MWD technology is same tier/slot as Advanced Afterburners, slightly easier to research, same cost/power for components, and also unlocked after Afterburners and Plasma Thrusters, with Advanced Afterburners research giving it more likelihood to appear.
Unlike Advanced Afterburners, it completely negates ship evasion and gives large (but not entirely crippling) combat penalties.

Increased ship speed provided by the module will drop system travel time down proportionally, also putting greater emphasis on Hyper Drive tech (as MWD won't affect hyperlane jump wind-up time), ship size (sets base speed that is multiplied), admiral skills and system/starbase bonuses (applied on top of ship speed, so have more effect on already-large values).
Cruisers get one more use this way as well, being heaviest ship that can field this technology.

Intended role for these is mid-game fleet logistics or rapid response in case of overwhelming fleet superiority - e.g. to redeploy bunch of support ships between starbases or chase down few pesky pirates with a pack of corvettes/destroyers.

Similar technology available in the base game is Jump Drives, which has different mechanics, available at a much later stage and is more suitable for late-game heavy fleet logistics.

AI empires will never research the technology or use MWDs in any of their ship designs, as these are not suitable for general-purpose fleets and there's probably no way to have AI make any kind of special-purpose fleets in the game at the moment.



Sublight Speed: +300%
Evasion: -100%
Chance to Hit: -10%
Fire Rate: -20%
Shield Hit Points: -10%

Didn't test it extensively balance-wise yet, so these might be subject to change.

Suspect that it can be extremely overpowered against AI if used liberally, e.g. allowing small fleets to take over all of its resources while it tries to respond with slow main fleets.
Simple solution for that - don't run loops around poor AI, play fair, use MWDs responsibly :)



Does not overwrite any files, only adding new technology and component, so should work with any other mods.
Technology will become available when mod is enabled for both existing saves and new games.
Disabling the mod should strip MWD modules from existing ships/designs and hide the technology.

Name (and icon) is from EVE Online, where Afterburners (AB) are complemented by Microwarpdrives (MWD), with former working pretty much like they do in Stellaris, passively increasing ship speed, while latter boost it through the roof (e.g. 5x), but also increase ship signature likewise, making it easier to lock and hit even by larger weapons, unless negated by sheer velocity (usually is for smaller ships).

License: WTFPL[en.wikipedia.org]