[MOD] Missiles Rebalance Mod v1.2, Updated 25/9/2010 [Lost File Appeal]

[imperium3]

Wildfire is not intended to be a swarm, nor should it be in vanilla either. Did you have another mod which caused that? (I think CMOD may have messed with missiles). This one does overwrite all changes made by any other missile mods. If you're really attached to it I can send you a separate version with swarm-wildfires, but I don't think it's necessary.

On the subject of swarms, check out the Cyclone, which has grown into a mini-flail (even the retargeting). I got barraged by Argon One during testing, and it was scary. Warheads everywhere!

[paulwheeler]

I have the CMOD installed too so that must be it.

I'm not that attached... not if we have a replacement with the cyclone anyway! I'll give that a try tonight.

I love the flail so it'll be good to have something similar I can fire from my Collosus.

[Esgaro]

Nice mod. I've always loved missiles, so it is nice to see a mod which gives them a little more bite. The general speed boost was badly needed. The slow speed of a lot of the missiles was just sad, really. Missiles should be able to be outmaneuvered by smaller ships, but they should be difficult to outrun. The fact that everybody used swarm missiles 90% of the time illustrated a problem right there

I think the changes to the tornado's damage might have been a little much, as it was already a pretty damn powerful M3 missile before, and the one dumbfire which was really worth using. I would probably favor upping the speed instead of the damage. Even so, I wouldn't consider it a big deal. By the time a person can manufacture them in numbers, they probably aren't flying an M3, and it isn't the sort of missile I would probably equip wingman M3s with. Those guys are more likely to get tempests, or the new improved cyclone.

[imperium3]

Hi Esgaro, glad to hear you like the mod!

WRT the Tornado, you're right, I probably have made an error there. The aim in increasing the damage was to keep total damage above that of the Firelance, but I forgot that Tornado already has a significant advantage over the Firelance: speed and swarminess. Plus, you'd be a fool to launch a Firelance at point blank range without Missile Safety installed.

I'll have a fiddle with Tornado, and see if I can balance it out a bit more. Actually I think you can take out one of the lighter-shielded TLs in one volley with these, which ain't right. It should still be fairly lethal though!

EDIT: OK, I've tweaked the tornado a bit, and the new version is now available to download from the first post. I basically reduced the damage close to the original (but still a little higher) and improved the speed and reduced the size to compensate.

If you spot anything else that looks a little odd, don't hesitate to post it here and I'll correct it!

[paulwheeler]

I've been firing a lot of missiles recently and I have a few thoughts...

Now I installed the Missile Defense Mk2 script and that pretty much renders missiles useless as a rule. You have to be very lucky for one to get through the defense unless its a swarm.

On the other hand I like the fact that the turrets try to shoot the missiles down. Ignoring them is unrealistic.

So... I was thinking that many of the missiles could use a bit of a speed boost. Also is there any way of adding shields to missiles or increasing the hull? (I'm thinking boarding pods here especially).

I don't want every missile to get through like vanilla, but if I launch a barrage of hammers it would be nice if a couple would get through a K's defenses... ISRs make short work of them with Missile Defense Mk 2.

Swarm missiles seem to do OK, but standard ones just get shot down so easily. I fire Banshees most often from my Collosus (I pick up so many after battles) and they are really slow and too easy to shoot down.

I think I'd rather all missiles were much faster but less damaging.

What do you think?

[imperium3]

Yeah, the fact that missiles are so easy to shoot down is a bit of a pain. The main problem is that the missiles' hitboxes are so large that you varely need to aim at all in order to take them out. So what can I do about it?

-Shrink the hitbox: This can apparently be done by altering some level of detail on the missile model itself, however this would have to be done to each and every model, moreover requiring skills which I don't possess. So for the meantime that's out the window.

-Make missiles tougher: Sadly, AFAIK for regular missiles that's impossible - if some clever modder out there does know a way I'd love to hear from them. The only exception, strangely enough, is boarding pods - their HP is defined in a seperate little file named Globals. So I'll have a look and make sure it wouldn't be incompatible with anything much (as I aim to make this turkey compatible with as many other mods as possible), and for boarding pods this might well be a viable option.

-Speed: Yes, increasing the speed will make missiles harder to hit and to some degree that's what I've already done. However, I'm worried about a couple of things, namely 1)Missiles become so fast, that the player cannot offer a meaningful defence or have time to evade. This would especially be a problem for M3s without turrets like the Barracuda, which rely on the player's reflexes to shoot down incoming missiles. Also 2)The vanilla missile defences would become even more of a joke than they already are. Bear in mind that this mod is tuned towards vanilla TC - it's nice if it makes MDMk2 or MARS easier to beat, but that's not the aim of the mod and I won't do so at the expense of vanilla users. So on balance, I probably won't increase the speed of these missiles without a lot of thought, and/or a large baying mob demanding that I do so.

Conclusion then: Sorry paulwheeler, it looks like there isn't really much I can do about that within the scope of this mod. I will look at making the boarding pods tougher, but other changes will require a lot of testing, time which I don't have to spare owing to lectures and nother modding project which will go up on the forums either today or tomorrow.

Keep throwing the feedback at me though

[paulwheeler]

No worries.

If you feel like doing a special MDMk2 tailored verison of this then that would be great!

Its a great mod anyway - far better than vanila.

Cheers

Paul

[imperium3]

As things stand, synaptic detonator missiles are all but useless. Maybe one or two of those could be "converted" to a defence-breaking missile? IE, one whose prime directive is to actually hit the target regardless of MARS etc, but without much of a warhead?

I'll have a think about that and see if it's worth implementing. More than likely it'd be unnecessary under vanilla (but no one uses those missiles anyway so no loss), but it might be a cool addition with turret scripts running.

[apricotslice]

Idle thought.....if the boarding pod is in globals, cannot all missiles be added to globals in the same way ?

Docks can all be changed by adding them into hq. Maybe the missiles can all be changed by adding them into globals ?

As I said, an idle thought.

[vampirecosmonaut]

I wonder how many thousands of hull points you would need to add to a boarding pod to stop MARS from destroying it... I added several thousand points to a boarding pod and MARS still make quick work of it.

[paulwheeler]

Well as long as my prized team of 5 star marines can't be taken out with one shot I'll be happy!

Wouldn't it be good though if Ion based weapons dissabled the targets weapon systems for a period of time once the shields were down...

Anyone remember X-wing, where you had to use your Ion Cannons to dissable a ship before the boarding party could dock?

[paulwheeler]

Just a FYI (and I hope you don't mind), I went through your tmissiles file and gave every missile a 20% speed increase across the board to compensate for the Missile Defence Mk 2 script. It still has the "flavour" of your rebalance mod, just a bit faster.

Seemed to work quite well. Now, although a K still takes out most of the missiles, I can actually take out a K with a few (well several) barrages of hammers with MDMk2.

Still have more testing to do. I might opt for a straight +50 or so onto the speed across the board rather than a 20% increase as it makes the faster missiles a little too fast...

[Rott]

When i downloaded the file it was numbered 10 dat and cat file. When i went to insall it i already had like 12 dat directories. I renamed your files to 13 put the tm file under scripts and nothing is working. Did i do something wrong?

[imperium3]

When i downloaded the file it was numbered 10 dat and cat file. When i went to insall it i already had like 12 dat directories. I renamed your files to 13 put the tm file under scripts and nothing is working. Did i do something wrong?

By "nothing is working", I presume you don't notice any changes?

If you renamed both the .cat and the .dat to 13 and the script file went into X3 Terran Conflict/scripts as you say, there shouldn't be any problems.

1) Do you have any other .cat or .dat files numbered after the MRM? (14, 15, etc)

2) Do you have a types folder in the X3 Terran Conflict folder? If so, does this contain a file called TMissiles?

3) Do you run any major mods that are located in the X3 Terran Conflict/mods folder?

If yes to any of these, then you have another mod which is overwriting MRM. Make sure that MRM is last of your cat/dats and that you don't have a TMissiles file in X3 Terran Conflict/types. Finally, if it is a major mod that is overwriting, the only real way around that is to either merge the mods (which I can do without any trouble if you know which one is causing the problem), or to install that mod as a fakepatch instead (ie in cat/dat form) and remove its files from the "mods" folder.

Hope that helps

[imperium3]

Seems 2.7 has a new TMissiles file out (see note on first post). I'll have a look and release a patch-friendly version, but that'll need to wait till after my exams. If anyone spots any changes, please let me know! It saves me work