[MOD] Ship Rebalance Mod ver 0.59 [30/08/2009] + 2 COCKPIT PACKS + Alkeena's BSD!!!!

[cnecktor]

I tried it out and I notice the Kha'ak and Xenon they seam a bit tougher and faster. I think the Borons need some thing done to there fighters either more shields or a 3 to 4 boost in speed. I think also that maybe the Paranid fighters could use a bit more fire power.

[spikegifted]

Nice little mod! Just installed it for the first time. Do I have to fly each ship to a Trade platform or Equipment Dock to upgrade it to the new speeds?

[someone else]

depends from what you are flying... in most cases yes.

but I don't recall changing a lot of speeds... about 10-20 "ownable" ships overall.

feel free to post comments, ideas and feedback

[someone else]

New version! 0.52!

Rebalance of all ships of the same Class/Race done so far:
1.Enhanced Turning rate on those M6 in need:
Centaur 6
Hvy Centaur 4,9
Hvy Cent. Prot. 5,2
Dragon 8,1
Hvy Dragon 6,7
Hydra 5,6
Hvy Hydra 6
Nemesis 6,7
Hvy Nemesis 5,3
Osprey 5,3
Hvy Osprey 4,8
Otas Skiron 6,1
Katana 7,4
ATF Vali 5

2.Paranid M6/M6H can mount PSG everywhere. (but not the Hyperion)
3.Terran M6/M6H can mount SSC everywhere.
4.Split/Argon/Paranid M6H can now mount their prototype beam cannons in the main slot.
5.All M6/M6H turrets with an odd number of guns now should have an even number of guns.
6.Removed IBL compatibility from ALL Commonwealth M1 and M2, (except pirates and yakis of course)
7.Removed IC/IPG compatiblity from Pirate and Yaki Capitals.
8.Terran/ATF frigates are now able to load only 4 guns on main, but they can now use PSP on main.
9.Added PBG's to Pirate and Yaki M1/2 turrets.
10.Increased the cargo capacity of all M1 by 60 % (they are BIG and require massive stockpiles of ammo and missiles for the fighters...) (not on Teladi)
11.Increased cargo on M2 by 30 %. (they need to carry a lot more weapons, the current Ego loading sistem requires a good cargo bay to spawn a decent weapon selection on enemy M2) (not on Teladi)
12.All Xenon ships now have better stats... (like in Reunion) but no modifies have been done to the turrets placement of the K.
13.All Kha'ak small ships have better speed and turning. I want them ass-kicking again.
14.All Teladi “military ships” have double the original Cargo Bay (TS and TL excluded), now they make sense.
15.Removed compatibility to all Anti- capital weapons on all M1. (They are Carriers! And only the Raptor was able to use them effectively)
16.TS, TP now are upgraded to 200 Mj shields and have a scaled-up shield generator.
17.TL are upgraded to 1Gj shields and have a scaled-up shield generator.
18.OWP are now more powerful and heavily shielded, a small OWP has the same firepower of a M7 without IBL, a medium OWP is dangerous as a M2, a big OWP kicks anything.
19.All drones now have 0 energy recharge. They now shoot from batteries, and when the batteries are dry they stop shooting. (to recharge the battery you need to recover them and launch them again)


Single Ship rebalanced so far:

1.Springblossom's speed tuned down to 250, price up to around 35 milions, back turret down to 2 weapons
2.All Drones CAN mount Repair laser (useful for MARS scripts, otherwise ininfluent) making another type of drone is beyond this Mod's scope, but now you can give repair laser to them by scripting means.
3.Boreas is now a Light destroyer, speed to 82, manouverablility to 3.2, 2x 2 Gj shields, 4 weapons front/right/left/side turrets, less shield/laser generator, capital weapons only on front/rear/side turrets.
4.Increased the weapon slots for each Python's side turrets to 8, PPC and Gauss compatibility on all other turrets.
5.Tokio has laser energy and regeneration closer to that of Odin/Woden. And its cost has raised...
6.Zeus has 4x 2GJ shields and a 9000KW shield generator.
7.Odin has 2000MW of laser regeneration to cope with its 4 more PSP than other Terran M1
8.Odisseus will have 5x 2Gj shields and 14400KW shield generator.
9.Cerberus is now a REAL anti-fighter platform. Added Flak to the cockpit lasers (and tweaked the laser selection of other turrets), increased rear/up/down turrets to 6 lasers each, and boosted the laser generator, increased cargo bay to 4500 to account for more weapons. Speed increased to 135-140 manouverability has also been increased to be able to catch fighters.
Increased hangar bay to 10 fighters (just to have some wings in it).
10.The falcon sentinel loads 5x 25MJ shields.
11.The kite vangaurd loads 2x 25MJ shields and has a 265 shield generator, weapon generator up to 1000.
12.The Tyr has a bigger cargo bay (but it will be still small if compared to other M2).
13.The Yokohama has now 4 guns per turret.
14.Increased the cargo bay on Panther to 5000
15.Removed the compatibility to PPC on Q's side turrets
16.Raised the number of frontal guns on Heavy Hydra, raised the cargo hold to 1000 and toned down the price
17.Done something on Xperimental shuttle, but waiting to do more on it.
18.Doubled weapon mounts on Kha'ak M2 and M1. They need to be real threats for M7 and bigger ships.
19.Kha'ak corvette now mounts Gamma kyons and has bigger generators to fire them, has bigger shield generators and only 4 shields.

[Gazz]

All drones now have 0 energy recharge. They now shoot from batteries, and when the batteries are dry they stop shooting. (to recharge the battery you need to recover them and launch them again)

How does your mod identify itself to scripts?
Is there a global variable set that reports if the mod is currently installed?

A tiny recharge alters gameplay but zero means a completely new feature that scripts have to account for.

[someone else]

How does your mod identify itself to scripts?
Is there a global variable set that reports if the mod is currently installed?

A tiny recharge alters gameplay but zero means a completely new feature that scripts have to account for.

no identification, I don't even know how to identify it... probably using scripts.

what do you mean for new feature? when the drones have no more power in the "laser energy" they stop shooting... and fly aimlessly until recalled/killed.

I don't see any problem for scripts... the energy lasts for a lot of time, enough to shoot down a big number of missiles or damage a big target.
Maybe this will interfere with the "repair drones" feature of MARS though... or not?

p.s. if I made a gruesome mistake caused by supreme ignorance please point it out...

[Gazz]

no identification, I don't even know how to identify it... probably using scripts.

Yeh, that would require a setup script that either just sets a variable if the mod is installed
(simple but can fail because the variable stays set if the mod is removed)

or a setup script that checks specific data from your mod and reports if the mod was present at the last game load.

That is the cool way and has the side benefit that the setup script can send the player a message:
Yo fool! You messed up the mod installation. It doesn't work like that!
Or something along those lines.

That makes support easier because you know the mod isn't installed.
That has helped me countless times when players screwed up the Complex Cleaner mod installation.
When the script says "not installed", the mod is not installed. Simple.

what do you mean for new feature? when the drones have no more power in the "laser energy" they stop shooting... and fly aimlessly until recalled/killed.

Oh, sure, but fight scripts don't expect that their laser energy ever runs out. No ship in X3 works like that.

So in the case of MARS Drones, if their job is missile defense and their batteries are dry, they'd still keep pulling the trigger instead of flying home to recharge. Same with repairs.

That's why I originally suggested a tiny recharge rate instead of zero.
The global effect is the same but it does not completely break any fight scripts.

[someone else]

The global effect is the same but it does not completely break any fight scripts.

nope. it degrades performances of drones missile defence, and has the same problem of 0 regeneration... they shoot only sometimes and some missiles slip trough.

if I leave the standard energy rigeneration on normal drones would that be better? (they were balanced imho...)
MARS prefers to use standard drones over Mk2 and Keris... but that won't solve the problem completely

maybe I can change the weapons of Mk2 to something that is more lethal to fighters and only an annoyance to bigships. (like having 4 or 8 IREs)
but Keris will be unbalanced... no lighter terran weapons.

damn. no simple solution...

[Gazz]

if I leave the standard energy rigeneration on normal drones would that be better? (they were balanced imho...)
MARS prefers to use standard drones over Mk2 and Keris... but that won't solve the problem completely

Mk2 use up an estimated 20-30 /s in a longer fight.

While their theoretical firepower is about 10 times as high, they do spend quite some time evading and not shooting.

So if you want to nerf something, you need to go lower than that.

The Mk1 has 15 / sec and needs maybe 3-4.
Even that nerf that would hardly be noticable. 1 IRE doesn't show on any normal firepower scale. =)

Completely taking out laser recharge on drones without updating the ES fight script breaks their standard "protect" mission.
A drone is supposed to get the attention of whatever attacks the protected ship. So they need some laser recharge to be able to do that job even after they have used their initial pool.

maybe I can change the weapons of Mk2 to something that is more lethal to fighters and only an annoyance to bigships. (like having 4 or 8 IREs)
but Keris will be unbalanced... no lighter terran weapons.

PAC is about 5 times as powerful as IRE.

Reducing the Mk1 recharge doesn't really achieve anything until you lower it to 2-3.
The Mk2 are a wholly different league of energy consumption.
Those you can balance through a lower recharge.


I'm not worried about "my" drones becoming too weak. As long as your mod identifies itself in a way that is clearly visible to scripts, such drastic gameplay changes can be detected and reacted to.

[someone else]

mmmh... the problem that I wanted to correct is that they shoot until the target blows up...
if they have less recharge they need more time (double or more), but in any case they will overrun the target.
Killing 100-150 drones in a reasonable amount of time is way beyond MARS, (disregarding Egosoft scripts) and even a player-piloted M7M will have some trouble against 300 or more... (i died 2 times on 5 tries)

maybe the Mk2/Keris drones could become slower and less manouverable... to be easier targets for turrets. What do you think?

for now the only good defense i can think about against a swarm of mk2 drones is a "AI-Mosquito-mk2drone-defence" script.

those damn things... their power comes from the ability to vastly outnumber anything... probably only a script (that you said before) that limits the number of launchable drones can solve the problem: 20-30 are ok, but 200-300 are a Sector Leveling armada, even for MARS equipped ships.

[Gazz]

for now the only good defense i can think about against a swarm of mk2 drones is a "AI-Mosquito-mk2drone-defence" script.

And right now you'd need 6 mosquitos to kill one Mk2 drone. =)

There is no way to fix overkill in X3 unless with scripts that prevent that.
If it's not drones, it's Discos.
I think you can buy ready-to-fly discos with 2 PAC. Buy 130 of them, fill 2 Raptors, and zerg the hell out of a sector.

Same principle, only marginally more work.

[Pisces1]

I have another request. Increase the steering of all sentinel variants to the steering of the base (non-variant) ship. The sentinel variants all make good AI controlled ships. I.E. Slower & more shields=less likely to die, but steering is the measure of AI effectiveness (accuracy & the ability to dodge and manovour). Sentinels have limited sentinel ability due to this counter balance. If you accepted my change, the sentinel would still be balanced by it's inflated price, slower speed & the fact that steering on a fighter makes no difference to the player, only to the AI. I never fully upgrade the steering on the fighters I intend to fly myself.

The vangaurd on the other hand needs a cargobay nerf. It is superior to the base ship in speed, steering, weapons energy/regen & shield regen. It is counter balanced by slightly increased price (still much less than a raider or sentinel variant), slightly smaller cargo bay, usually ~5%; and occasionally a smaller weapon selection. If we consider the vangaurd as the militiary variant of the versitile base ship; it has sacrificed cargobay space for a stronger ship; after all, why would a military ship need to be transporting passangers, picking up loot, jumping all round the universe, carrying teddybears etc. Personally I'd half the cargobay on all vangaurd ships. This is still enough for a full selection of weapons/shields and some left over for basic supplies (missiles & E.Cells) but it gives room for the player to choose between a cosy personal ships and a cold efficient killer.


On the fighter drone discussion. It is logical that 130 discos could beat everything. Captial ships will still exist in the universe because captial ships can beat 130 discos in a sequential battle. I don't see many players flying around in or with discos.

I dislike fighter drones because 1 mk2 fighter drone can kill a M3 (IS) due to it's decreased size, better steering and similiar weapon's regen. This coupled with the fact they are a fraction of the price & deployable from any ship, no need for TMs, jumpdrives or escorts.

[Seathal]

Is it me or this should be part of the next official Egosoft release patch?

Great job, specially on the Terran side. I'd also suggest some tweaking of the Pirate Galleon and Carrack, to make them more worthwhile, faster and more cargobay would do it (Pirate style).

The Boreas _had_ to be nerfed down and the M6 given a role again, some of the Terran stats were illogical (Tokyo's mighty laser capacity, Tyr's ridiculous cargobay...), Terran M7s urgently needed some punch against capital ships...

I like it very much overall. Good job!

[someone else]

@Gazz: I think that Discos attrition rate will be much higher... they are bigger and (as most M5) love to splat anywhere. Anyways I'm not trying to fix overkill... to have the same firepower and a bit more speed the disco costs around 50.000 credits or more (not counting the cost of two raptors... ehm... I could always them) while a mk2 drone costs... nothing! (no AI produces them afaik, and a Player can easily link the fab to a closed loop) and the Keris costs 8000 and can be launched from any ship. (and the cheapness of "any ship" is well known)

the fighter drones pack a too big bang for the bucks you spend on them imho.

If i decide to go porcupine I can unleash 20 M2 (or 30 M7M) on a sector, that will also be overkill, but I had to buy/:pirat: and then outfit all of them.... a looong affair.(:goner:)

@Pisces1: the Sentinel/vanguard/raider versions always needed to have more differences... that Nova raider with 3x25Mj shields... mhhh... and your ideas on the sentinel/vanguard are quite useful.

@Sethal: yep! that was my dream... most of the changes in this mod come from ideas thet people post in ideas L3 section and elsewhere.... I started this mod after a never ending discussion on the poor steering of M6 and that there are only 3 that are good (and all three, among other amusing things, have good steering).

I was thinking of a "global pirate rebalance", mainly because I was bored of outrunning a pirate Nova with my Cobra , but I'm not sure of the exact "Pirate Philosophy"... you say "faster and more cargo bay", that is perfect for smuggling... but... smuggling something in a Carrack or Galleon....

p.s. still waiting good ideas for Xperimental shuttle

[SNav]

I like most of the changes except last ones form the list.

18.Doubled weapon mounts on Kha'ak M2 and M1. They need to be real threats for M7 and
bigger ships.
19.Kha'ak corvette now mounts Gamma kyons and has bigger generators to fire them, has
bigger shield generators and only 4 shields.

I have CMOD3 installed as well and if don't know there is very powerful G-Kyon cannon. And this 18, 19 rebalance changes makes Kha'ak invincible. One Kha'ak Destroyer can easily take down 2-3 Pythons. Anti-Kha'ak patrols are impossible mission. Maybe you can make this change optional through AL plugin or different install package?

[someone else]

oooooops! double beefing... XD sorry mate!

I'm not a scripter and dunno how to make the modifies available by AL plugin.

but making two versions is simple enough, I'll just remove the two changes to create a Cmod3-compatible version. please wait
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
done!
Cmod3-comptatible SRM0.51

have fun blasting Kaaks.. but maybe a Python is not the best M2 to use on them.... try a Ray with full Gauss... they go BOOOM from 14 Km...

[Gazz]

p.s. still waiting good ideas for Xperimental shuttle :P

The key issue with it is that it randomly jumps the player into new universes.
That's a constant in the X3 universe just like an M0 is a planet destroyer.

So there should be a 1% chance that instead of jumping you get a nice message that your experimental hyperdrive acted up again and you are now stranded between the galaxies without any chance of ever getting back home.

When the player acknowledges the message, the ship self destructs. Game over.

There's a reason why people are wary of flying experimental ships.

[SNav]

14km Gauss ? Vanila exls stats says that gauss has 4.78km and CMOD has gauss range at 9km.
Anyway. Thanks for nerfing Kha'aks a little.

[X2-Eliah]

The Xperimental Shuttle could jump you into the following:

1) Intended sectors

2) Random sectors

3) Unfocussed sector

4) Completely blank and empty sector, with no stars, no suns, no planets, no rocks, no nothing.

5) Explosion instead of a jump, damages EQ and hull

6) Jumps to the secret UFO base / A sector full of UFOs (some 400 in 20km^3)

7) jumps to a sector full of spaceflies (several thousand)

Ejects you and jumps off on it's own. To a random sector.

[Gazz]

Yah, kinda like the Heart of Gold.

There might be whales. And flower pots.