[3.2/2.5 MOD] X3TC Naval Shuffle 1.3.3.3/1.1: Now reasonably AP compatable

[Shadow_Wolf33]

The faster build time on weapons is definitely a good thing, as long as it doesn't cripple the profitability of SELLING said weapons when you have a huge stockpile. When I build my weapon plexes for my fleet operations I generally go off multiples of 5 for number of end producers and it gives me rather good results. So I'm all for decreasing build times of guns and such, so long as the price remains consistent in such a way that <teladi>there are still profitsssssss</teladi> to be made by selling the item.

Oh, and if you decrease build times for the love of god make sure you do it for Concussion Impulse Generators and Ion Shard Railguns, building up a decent stock of those to outfit corvette wing patrols can be INFURIATING....I usually set those up VERY early in my weapons plex build so that I have a good stockpile.

Oh and be careful with beefing up Missile speed TOO much, we still need to have reasonably good missile defense options on our boats. I'm running MARS for turret control, and if they get to the point that uber-MARS can't shoot down Missiles, that's when you know you've gone a step too far.

[Sorenson]

Just a quick note to say THANK YOU for this and keep up the good work. I spent a few hours with the X3 editor updating the 'Improved Ships' piece of CMOD for 2.5 but this is far and away better, and absolutely necessary in terms of 'fun game' philosophy. The late-game manufacturing morass is also near the top of my list of things that Could Be Better.

Aw, shucks, thank you! I'm just trying to make this game as enjoyable and non-aggrivating as possible, and while I understand some people can't enjoy this mod because of certain issues or prefer more "hardcore" space sim design and whatnot, it's nice to see that the basic tenants I'm basing Naval Shuffle on appear to be agreeable to at least some folks.

The faster build time on weapons is definitely a good thing, as long as it doesn't cripple the profitability of SELLING said weapons when you have a huge stockpile. When I build my weapon plexes for my fleet operations I generally go off multiples of 5 for number of end producers and it gives me rather good results. So I'm all for decreasing build times of guns and such, so long as the price remains consistent in such a way that <teladi>there are still profitsssssss</teladi> to be made by selling the item.

Since I'm pretty certain Relval factors into a station's total capacity for items as well as determining their overall price, there shouldn't be too much of a problem of being able to sell as docks should be able to buy more of the items, hopefully in a proportional-enough level to match the current total values of weapons when doing a zilch-to-full transaction.

Oh and be careful with beefing up Missile speed TOO much, we still need to have reasonably good missile defense options on our boats. I'm running MARS for turret control, and if they get to the point that uber-MARS can't shoot down Missiles, that's when you know you've gone a step too far.

One idea I'm toying with at the moment is trying to classify missiles into short and long-range based on their performance characteristics and their intended targets. Because a Poltergeist is designed to track multiple targets and to switch targets as they're destroyed, they'd have considerably longer lifetimes and ranges than, say, a Beluga, which is a single-round fighter-to-fighter missile which would have a considerably shorter lifespan, enough for a single max-range strike or two or three dogfighting ones, and the Wraiths, Hammerheads, Phantoms and Shadows would have good long lifetimes since they're designed for attacks against capital ships and stations and benifit from early launches. I'm not quite sure how MARS will react to the increased speeds since I don't use it, but inbetween the lessening of the lifetimes for a good number of missiles and the lessening of damage on fighter-scale missiles (no more insta-gibs if you're fighting someone on equal footing, at least in fighters) it shouldn't be burdened too much.

[Serial Kicked]

This is a great rebalance mod. Probably the best available so far. Good work!

I've a comment, though. Dunno if it's included or not (i've not checked when my game was running) and i've not read the whole topic to check it out. But here's a suggestion that i've "stolen" from either jlehtone or Nanook:

The TM has little interest ingame, and it doesn't really makes sense that TP are able to board ships when TM can't. So what I am basically proposing is to give the "boarding pod" missile ability to most TM, and switch TP/TM max marine count for all races. So, a TM could deploy its 4 M3 with Ion weapons to lower the shields while sending a bunch of marines to take the enemy ship.

I would be glad to give you a script that enable boarding commands on TM
(or whatever command on whatever ship kind, btw).

[Aquitaine]

This makes sense to me too. The whole TP class is a bit weird; nearly all of them are passenger ships with maybe one or two qualifying as real military transports, whereas the entire TM line are clearly military in nature. Why you'd send your marines in a greyhound and not an APC is beyond me.

[Sorenson]

The TM has little interest ingame, and it doesn't really makes sense that TP are able to board ships when TM can't. So what I am basically proposing is to give the "boarding pod" missile ability to most TM, and switch TP/TM max marine count for all races. So, a TM could deploy its 4 M3 with Ion weapons to lower the shields while sending a bunch of marines to take the enemy ship.

I've actually changed things up so that ships of the M6/7/1/2 and TL/TP class can use boarding pods - anything that can hold marines, really - and while I've not checked the exact capacity for TMs it'd literily be all of two minutes to enable them to use it if they actually can carry marines. And thank you for the kind words.

[Shadow_Wolf33]

For a better boarding experience I highly suggest trying out Cycrow's "Improved Boarding" mod. It allows for boarding with any kind of ship that can carry marines through the boarding transporter. I think even if you do add boarding pods to the other ships, I think I would personally stick to only using them on M7Ms, just on principle that it's something that makes the missile boats a bit extra special, rather than JUST being a ship that's good at nuking every ship in a sector at max range. Gives the ship another dimension.

To each their own though, guess that'll be one of my own house rules when playing the mod.

Oh and if you're knowledgeable at scripting at all, you can modify Cycrow's Improved Boarding mod to increase the range of the tele-boarding (comes stock as 1km).

[Sorenson]

Which is practically shoving your front turrets up the enemy vessel's engine in capital ship terms. I always wonder why he low-balled it so - 2.5 I could understand 'cause that's you lined up next to the other dude exchanging broadsides.

Speaking of which, boarding and ion-stripping ships for capture should be a lot easier once the next Shuffle update hits - I've cut the Ion Cannon and Pulse Generator's hull damages to remain consistant with the Disruptor's 1/315th damage ratio, and it works wonders in preserving that payday-in-ship's-clothing you're beating the snot out of. I just wish the boarding pods wouldn't explode as soon as your turrets fire again, but hey, that's what the Ship Hijacker's for, and no bothersome Marine training to boot.

EDIT: Speaking of boarding, has anybody ever found out where TC keeps the values/scripts it uses for such? One thing I've noticed with the increased shield regen speeds on giggers is that even if the boarding pod has already made contact with the ship's hull the team will still get zapped if you don't keep pegging at the shield. I'd like to set it up so that once the pod attaches to the hull it's able to disrupt it at that very point so the team can burrow in in peace, since getting past the shield in the first place is the biggest hurdle at that stage.

EDIT: Bah. Of all the things they could leave hard-coded, they had to hard-code one of the orniest and difficult of functions. Oh well.

[Serial Kicked]

/off-topic=on

Woow someone called "Aquitaine", which is the region i live in, but living in the states agrees with me, that's weird

/off-topic=off

You didn't answered my last question

Like i said, if you don't know how to do it i can easily add the "Piracy/Board Ship" command to TM so they can capture ship even without boarding pods. Same if you want me to add patrol commands to M3, MK3 commands to TM, and so on. This is basically a one line script per command so it's not really a big deal.

About your post-scriptum question: well, it's more or less hard-coded. You can find various ways around through script, but to do what you want you'll need a whole working "capture script" and not some alterations on a t-files.

[Shadow_Wolf33]

Speaking of which, boarding and ion-stripping ships for capture should be a lot easier once the next Shuffle update hits - I've cut the Ion Cannon and Pulse Generator's hull damages to remain consistant with the Disruptor's 1/315th damage ratio, and it works wonders in preserving that payday-in-ship's-clothing you're beating the snot out of. I just wish the boarding pods wouldn't explode as soon as your turrets fire again, but hey, that's what the Ship Hijacker's for, and no bothersome Marine training to boot.

Sounds like I'm going to have to start carrying Ion Cannons on my main pilfering ship.

I edited Cycrow's tele-boarding script so that it can be done at standard teleporter range (5km) and it makes getting your marines on the enemy ship almost TOO easy.

Generally what I used for keeping the shields down while waiting for the marines to board was either a weapons group with only a single weapon in it, and controlled fire or just swap in a piddly pea shooter that I could essentially just keep held down and it wont do much other than tickle the other ship's hull, but keep the shields down.

[Sorenson]

OK, what would you guys prefer for bombers: F117-launched long-range missiles of mass destruction, or Macross Missile Massacre with tons of decently-powerful rounds peppering dudes? Because Gladiator + Tomahawk with .5 s refire rate = ludicrous fun, though horrifically overpowered. I can only imagine how insane it must get on missile frigates with their dozens of missile ports.

[Matterom]

OK, what would you guys prefer for bombers: F117-launched long-range missiles of mass destruction, or Macross Missile Massacre with tons of decently-powerful rounds peppering dudes? Because Gladiator + Tomahawk with .5 s refire rate = ludicrous fun, though horrifically overpowered. I can only imagine how insane it must get on missile frigates with their dozens of missile ports.

i once made a missile that destroyed anything in 50^2 kilometers
i called it a Nova Bomb tonns of Fun

any way i can make the spawning scripts for your factory's and stock them

[Shadow_Wolf33]

OK, what would you guys prefer for bombers: F117-launched long-range missiles of mass destruction, or Macross Missile Massacre with tons of decently-powerful rounds peppering dudes? Because Gladiator + Tomahawk with .5 s refire rate = ludicrous fun, though horrifically overpowered. I can only imagine how insane it must get on missile frigates with their dozens of missile ports.

Just remember that any changes you make to bombers that increases the strength of them, will be coming up against YOU sooner or later. When I go pillaging in Paranid sectors I routinely run up against patrol groups with 3ish bombers at a fairly mid-range combat ranking and if you're not careful they can really tear you a new one. In my opinion, bombers are something that are designed to work best in a wing configuration (like in CODEA, a bomber wing is 4 bombers that launch simultaneously). Lone wolf missile ops should be left to the missile frigates, with bombers being in more of a support role to a main fleet to add extra punch to the main attack, rather than the BFG that comes in and facerolls their way to victory by mass missile launching.

[Sorenson]

Since the production facilities for bomber ordinance and the like simply lack the capacity to support low-damage/high-ROF, that shouldn't be a problem as I don't seem to have much choice on the matter. Then again as noted it's simply a matter of getting a hold of an actual missile frigate for my missile swarm fix.

[Shadow_Wolf33]

Still makes more sense to have the bombers be F117 style, rather than just being a baby missile frigate. Bombers should be strong vs. cap ships but very weak against fighters. I vote for long range high damage like their ordinance currently is, albeit maybe a bit faster to hit the cap ships that can boogie along much faster now.

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

i personally think there should be M8- and M8+ bombers

- anti-fighty
+ anti-cap

[Aquitaine]

Isn't an anti-fighter M8 essentially an M6?

[Sorenson]

Considering that M6s can now use Flails and Ghouls, pretty much, yeah.

EDIT: Good lord.

I just started up an Argon Patriot game to do some tests on higher PAC/HEPT/CIG speeds (which I've got a feeling aren't going to work) and not even two seconds after the game emerged from its setup script-induced pause a ****-ton of Kha'ak ships jumped right into the middle of the sector.

Perhaps I should take this as some kind of message?

EDIT: Well, having Kha'ak Invasion enabled certainely didn't help. Though of the 100+ sectors they could've popped into right at the start of the game, they had to pop into mine.

[lamoyja]

Well, they are Kha'ak.

Did you change anything with the kha'ak aggression?

Dear god I can't hold a serious conversation while talking about Kha'ak. I'm just going to let a better man try to figure out whats going on.

[Shadow_Wolf33]

Considering that M6s can now use Flails and Ghouls,

Zuh? I seriously hope that you have something planned for Missile Frigates so that they don't become completely useless then. Cause if you're giving everything that can carry marines boarding pods, and M6s the capability to launch Flails/Ghouls, they're suddenly becoming an epic waste of money.

[Sorenson]

Considering that M6s can now use Flails and Ghouls,

Zuh? I seriously hope that you have something planned for Missile Frigates so that they don't become completely useless then. Cause if you're giving everything that can carry marines boarding pods, and M6s the capability to launch Flails/Ghouls, they're suddenly becoming an epic waste of money.

16 missile tubes sure don't seem a waste to me. Plus I've cranked up the cooldown times for the heavy capship torpedoes - after the tweaking I've given missiles over the last few days, Firestorms and Hammerheads now take 20 seconds between shots, and Hammers and Shadows are now 15. An M6 can use Flails and Ghouls to deal with peskier fighters its guns might be too slow to hit, and anti-capship torpedoes to deal with things it's hideously outgunned by, but full-on missile frigates are the only things capable of launching mass ordinance. Just try taking a Flail'd M6 into a Kha'ak sector invasion fleet and tell me afterwards that missile frigates aree a waste with a straight face.

In other news, after getting permission from Amurph and whats-his-name currently running the ATF Shipyard script I've managed to replicate and optomize it to make a nice little somethin' to make it possible to buy Terran stations straight off the bat. Now I just have to get word back from Nividium for a base to make beam forges functional with.